Toldos - Where Teffilah Comes From

2:55 That seems to be an unimportant detail. Every detail in the Torah is important and, in some way, contributes to the story and to our understanding. Does the location of where they davened matter? Is that somehow connected to the tefillah? He was opposite her in the sense that they were in two separate corners. What does that mean for people to be in two separate corners? What's the, why is that critical to the story? That's our first question tonight. The second question is one that's been bothering me for many, many years. There are many answers to this question. Not all of them are satisfying, if I'm being honest with you. But I want to share something with you tonight that I think is very meaningful and very beautiful. Rashi says, "Vayetar lo v'lo la" That Hakadosh Baruch Hu was moved by the tefilos of Yitzchak, but not by the tefilos of Rivka.

3:52 And right away, even before we hear Rashi's explanation, that's a very difficult thing for us to hear Because there's no doubt. That while it's exceptionally painful for a man not to be able to have a child It's different when a woman can't have a child. As someone once said to me A woman once said to me To not have a child feels like I'm not capable of being myself. Naturally, in a way that I don't think a man can understand. A man is someone who likes. Has a child, a woman gives birth to a child. It's not the same thing. That there's something that grows inside of you. There's something. It's like a part of your being in a way that a man can't understand. We would naturally think that Rivka Imenu's Tfilos would have been what moved Hakadosh Baruch Hu in the same way that we think of Rachel Imenu. In the same way that Rachel Imenu is buried on the side of the road, and when Klal Yisrael is walking by Rachel Imenu, that she's pouring out her heart to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And davening for her children that are going out into Galus, in the same way that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is moved by the tefilas of Rachli Imenu.

5:05 And that Hakadosh Baruch Hu says, 'You have to stop davening because otherwise I'm going to have to give in and end this exile early before it's time for Mashiach to come.' We imagine that Rivka Imenu is davening those bitter tears of a mother who can't loalenu have children. We imagine in our head that that's what would move Hakadosh Baruch Hu. The fact that somehow it's important that it's Yitzchak's tefilos that are neskabel here, and it's not Rivkas, and that already is very strange to us. And Rashi explains why it is, and he says something that's almost unfathomable. Rashi says she ain't dome tefilas tzaddik ben Rasha letefilas tzaddik ben tzaddik lefikach. Vilola. Rashi says you can't compare the tefilas of a tzaddik who's the child of someone who's a rasha And a child who's the tzaddik, the son of a tzaddik And that is, for I think for every one of us, you don't need to be a tremendous tamachachem to feel uncomfortable by those words of Rashi.

6:16 That Rashi says that somehow Yitzchak's tefilas. Because he's a tzaddik and Avram Avinu and Sara Imenu are tzaddikim, and he comes from those tzaddikim, you can't compare his tefila to Rivka Imenu's tefila. Because even though she was a tzaddikess, she comes from Besuwl, she comes from that family, so she is not a tzaddik ben tzaddik. She's a tzaddik bas Rasha, she's the daughter of a Rasha, and therefore, in some way, it seems to be the simple pshat of Rashi, that her tefilas cannot be compared to Yitzchak's. Yitzchak's could be received by Hakadosh Baruch Hu. But some way, Rifkas can't. Wouldn't hers be stronger because she's? That's certainly a reasonable feeling to think to yourself, what do you mean, someone who came, who's a balash tshuva, who left that world and who joined? There's certainly a power there, like Chazal say, but makram shabali tshuva ma'imdem, ain sadikim gemurum ma'imdem, that the place that a balash tshuva holds in this world is unfathomable. Somebody who's willing to lead that to leave that life behind and to come tachas kan fei asherina And one would imagine that there's a certain passion to that davening, that certainly should be received by Hakadosh Baruch Hu, but it's also, it seems to me, if I'm being quite honest with you, it would seem to me to be irrelevant.

7:32 A tefillah is a tefillah. What in the world does it matter where Like where we came from? If I'm pouring out my heart to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, am I sitting there going? But my parents weren't the frumest people. That just doesn't sound like the Hashem that we've been raised with. It goes against so much, and I think sometimes you'll read these things and be like they're almost. I don't mean to say it in this way, but I'm going to say it in a direct way because it bothers me so much. Sometimes the answer you hear to the question on this Rashi is like But you have to understand chusavos. It does matter where you come from. No, it doesn't. It doesn't matter where you come from. Avram came from Terach. You tell me that Avram's tefilos were not niskabel because he came from Terach. It doesn't make any sense. Rava Kiva came from Gerim. Rava Kiva's tefilos wouldn't have been niskabel. It said it's brought down that the reason why Moshe Rabbeinu wanted Rava Kiva to lead Klal Yisrael out of Mitzrayim is because Moshe Rabbeinu was only on the forty ninth level of Chochma.

8:35 So he could only take Klal Yisrael out of the forty-ninth level of Tumah. But Rav Akiva, who had reached the fiftieth level of understanding of Hakadosh Baruch Hu, would have been able to take Klal Yisrael out from even the lowest place. And that was why Moshe Rabenu wanted Rav Akiva to take Klal Yisrael out of Mitzrayim. Are you telling me that in some way Rav Akiva was deficient because he came from Gerim, and that B'moshe Rabenu came from Amram and Yochaveh? In some way, he was superior. If anything, we see it's exactly the opposite in Klal Yisrael's history. It is replete with gerim, with balei tshuva, and others. But we know that tshuva is the most precious thing to our kodesh baruch. We know that Mashiach comes because of our kaya chatchuva. Could it be that in some way Rivka's tefila could not be compared to Yitzchak's? It doesn't. This Rashi bothers us to our core. This Rashi, if you're settled with this Rashi, if you're comfortable with this Rashi.

9:28 I don't know what it would take for a person to be comfortable with understanding the pashat of this Rashi. I've never been comfortable with the pashat of this Rashi. If I'm being very honest with you And I want for ourselves tonight to get some understanding of this. I think in order to understand this, we have to start off by understanding the nature of tefillah. And I use the word, and I was going to correct myself when I said it, but I'm glad that I didn't, and I'll correct myself now. I used the word 'prayer' earlier in the shir. A couple of minutes ago, I said the word 'prayer,' and I'm very uncomfortable with that word because the word 'prayer' means to beg. That's what the word means. If you say somebody prayed, it means they begged. And that's not what tefillah is in Yiddishkeit. Tefillah is not begging. It's not like you're down on your knees with your hands clasped.

10:19 Calling out to the Almighty and saying, "I'm a nothing. And please give me something that's not our notion of tefillah." That's not a Jewish notion of tefillah. The word tefillah comes from the word pallel. The word pallel means to imagine. What most of us don't understand about tefillah is that tefillah is an imagination. That's what it is. Tefillah is an imagination. What does it mean to imagine? To imagine something means. That and all of us are doing it in the room right now. Some of us are doing it more than others. I hope that those of you who are imagining within the context of this year. Unfortunately, there's been a tremendous loss of imagination in the world today. We lose imagination to screens. If you read books, it invokes the imagination. But if you're on YouTube all day, you never need to imagine anything because it just puts it in front of you. Which is why people have trouble imagining. At its core, tefillah is imagination. That's what the word means. Yaakov Avinu said to Yosef when he saw him after all those years of being separated. When he finally met up with him in Mitsrayim, he said, "I was not palel that I would see you again. I never imagined that I would see you again." The word tefillah means imagination. Imagination means, and this is the key to tonight's shir. Please lock in just for a moment.

11:39 If all you hear tonight is this, it's worth it. Imagination means something from deep within myself. Can be called up into my mind Dreams, hopes, aspirations. I imagine the world the way I would want it to be. Imagine yourself. I'm sure this is going to be very hard for you. Imagine a young lady who's in seminary, imagining what life will look like with our chassidim. Probably none of you have had this experience. I'm inviting you to imagine. Imagine. I'm inviting you to imagine the thing you're imagining about right now. So just stay with me. Imagine you imagine your home. You imagine how many of us have imagined walking down the aisle. How many of us have imagined what life will be like in our first cute apartment? All day. That's what everyone's thinking about. How many of you have imagined what it will be like with that first child, where it's like you're just babysitting. You're not yet a family.

12:40 How many of you have imagined being that mother who's harried, running around, but somehow patient and calm and loving and frazzled and exhausted, right? All at the same time. How many of you have imagined sitting with your teenage daughter and actually having a good relationship with her? That's a wonderful daydream. It's not going to happen, but it's a wonderful thing to daydream about. What do they say in psychology? If it's not one thing, it's your mother. You are the future mothers that joke is about. Could you say it again? Which one? If it's not one thing, it's your mother. Imagine Imagination means to call something up from deep within you. When we daven, that's what we do. If you thought about davening this way, everyone would daven. The problem is that very few of us are davening this way. We're davening to the seder. Davening to the seder means that you opened up the words of the seder and you said Modaneil Vanecha, and so you said, 'Even I daven today because I said all the words.' It's ridiculous. That's like thinking that you're a good actor or a good actress because you read the script.

13:47 It's not about reading the script. It's about acting out the script. It's about a great actor imagining reality. A great actor imagines that they're in reality. So if you've ever seen people after a great movie, you should know in the theaters. There used to be a thing that people would go to theaters, and if it was a great movie, when the lights would come on at the end, you would see people come back to reality. And you would see them go like this. This is what it looks like on their face. You want to see what it looks like on their face? They go like this. You know what I mean? All of a sudden, it's like they left wherever they were. They left that prison. They left that island. They left that story, and they snapped back to reality. What makes a great actor? What makes a great actor is that they lose themselves to the role.

14:38 That when they're acting, they're acting from such a deep place of self that you don't hear the lines. If the actor is saying the lines they memorized Have you seen bad productions like bad high school productions? Yes. You know what I'm talking about, where somebody enters onto the stage and they're like And it's always the same version of either a Nazi story or the Spanish Inquisition, right? Whatever it is. That's the new—that's the two thousand twenty-three Breslov version. But yeah, everyone has And there's this there's this Behold, it's like she's saying the lines. If you can hear the lines, you're not davening. If the sitter is still present, you're not davening. The sitter is a jumping point. The sitter is to attune us with the natural words that our soul is already saying. That's what the sitter is. So a person needs to come to davening from a place of wholeness.

15:34 I want to share with you something. This might be a little hard to hear. Broken people can't imagine. People who are trapped in their past can't imagine a better future. If you don't have enough in the tank for yourself. There are, and this might sound strange to you, probably girls in this room that, when I said that, Moshele before, of imagining themselves. As that young Kala in that new apartment with those children, there are probably people that are blocked from doing that. Baruch Hashem, many people can. That means you have enough in the tank. But there are probably people in this room that, when that comes up for them, they go, "It's not going to happen for me," and I won't let myself go there. Or there's too much pain around that, so I can't allow myself to go there. A person can only imagine a better world if they already have enough inside of the tank. Imagination is a very healthy thing.

16:25 That's why you see children daydream Isn't it a beautiful thing? Have you ever walked into a first grade class? And you know how the teacher's teaching and she's really doing her best to keep everyone engaged? Right now, I'm trying to keep people engaged and I'm failing. I'm talking about specific people; I'm not failing for ninety five percent of you, but I'm a person who cares very much about the five percent that don't hear the thing that I'm trying to say to them right now to keep them engaged, which is always the irony of this class. Welcome back. For the five percent that just heard me, I just want you to know I appreciate you coming back. I get these emails from the office. They're like you have to tell the girls to stay off their phones. It's really my job. Your job is to stay off your phone. My job is to say the thing that should keep you off your phone anyway.

17:11 You understand what I'm saying? Imagination. When you walk into that first grade class and you see that teacher and she's doing her best to keep everyone engaged, honestly, I love to watch the kids that are like this. You want this? What I look at? Watch these kids that are like this. That slack jawed, eyes gazing off in the distance, that thousand yards there. Where is that kid? You know where they are? In an awesome place. That is not a classroom where they're trapped. They're in an awesome place. They're flying around. In their dreams, they're cool. They're awesome. They're building a light. They can fly. I remember I had a rebbe once and he was right. He was talking about the impact of Kids watching certain things. So he said he would watch kids daydream after television started becoming very popular. He would watch kids daydream and then as opposed to just doing this They would all of a sudden be doing this Shooting things with their fingers.

18:12 And honestly, he's right. It's not the best thing in the world to be imagining yourself shooting But also, isn't there something amazing that a little child can transport themselves to a battlefield and be the hero on the battlefield? Tefillah is imagining your life the way that you would want it to be. Most of us don't live consciously. Most of us don't pay attention to what life is. It's so on autopilot that we're not even making choices. And that's one of the things I've tried to share with you, girls. Make choices. You don't have to be on the program they put you on. There's that program. Again, I'm not gonna say any specific schools, but you grew up in this community and you went to this elementary school and this high school and you're quote unquote typical. You know that word typical? That word drives me crazy. We want typical people. Why in the world would we want typical people? We want fascinating people. But she went to the right camp. She went to the right school. She went to the right high school. She went to the right seminary. She's going to do the right thing after seminary. She's going to marry the girl who went, by the way, to the male version of that same program. He's going to be an accountant. She's going to be a physical therapist. They're going to send their kids to that exact school.

19:19 To that exact camp and rinse and repeat. It's It's tragic in a certain way because What would your life look like if you could imagine it differently? If you were in a marriage with a husband, and it wasn't going so well, how much courage would it take to stop And stay in the morning? How do I want to imagine my marriage to be today, and then to implement that? If you don't imagine, if you don't have a vision for what your life could be, then how will it ever become that? So if you don't have an imagination, and you're not constantly tapping into that imagination, what it's going to be is your life is just going to be on autopilot, and you're going to make that same choice. And it's like That's crazy. Why would you want to do that? Why would you want to be in a position where you're not living the life that you want to lead?

20:11 Because at some point you got on this program and then you lost yourself to it and you just sort of going down the road. You know how powerful tefillah is. Tefillah is so powerful that if you do it in the morning, it only takes you through the afternoon because of the natural gravitational pull of life. By the afternoon, whatever morning imagination you had, it's gone. But the thing is, it's there under the surface. So what do you do by mincha? You tap back into the imagination of shachris. But by night time, it's gone again. So what do you do? You tap back into the imagination of shachris and mincha. And then the next day you do it again because life's gravitational pull will keep you on autopilot. And that's a tragedy. Judaism is the birth of individuality. And if you don't maintain your imagination, you will lose yourself.

21:02 And that is a crazy thing to think about. By the way, that's why we're inspired by bal tshuva. How many girls and guys have said to me over the years I wish I was a baal tshuva because they seem to have a level of passion for this that I don't have. You know why they have that level of passion? Because they engaged in the art of choice. Every one of us is called upon to be a bal tshuva or a balas tshuva. Every week, every day, every morning, afternoon, and night, we're called upon to recalibrate, to think about right. Life is about rupture and repair. It's always going to break, and then you have the opportunity to fix it. But how many people just let their marriage slide into oblivion? How many people disengage from their children? How many people are just doing the daily grind?

21:49 Does anyone in the room want to be that person? It starts with davening now. It starts with being a person who lives consciously and having an imagination for your life. But you can't have an imagination for your life unless you have enough self in the tank to be able to say, "I'm a person who has a life worth imagining." Do you know that there are people who don't have that? They don't have that sense of self. They've become disconnected from it, and they live in the exile of unworthiness. They live, and that word. I wanna drill down on that word for a second. I think it's human. If you're not experiencing what I'm talking about, it's only because you're disconnected from it. Every single one of us, on some level, if you drill down and drill down, the bedrock for every single one of us is there's a part of us that feels unworthy.

22:41 And there's a part of us that needs to feel worthy. So we do things to feel worthy. We need to earn worthiness. It's a currency. What do I need to do in order to feel worthy? That's what we're on some level. People. Let's take the extreme example of that. The guy who's willing to become a CEO. Do you know what you have to sacrifice in order to become a CEO? You have to sacrifice your wife. You have to sacrifice your children. You have to sacrifice your hobbies. You have one dedicated focus in your life, and that's to become the CEO. Do you know why you become a CEO? You become a CEO because in your head, somewhere along the way, you said, "If I'm rich and powerful, then I'll be worthy." People do this all the time. By the way, when you ask people why you're doing this, they say, "I have to support my family." Really?

23:35 What's the price you're paying to support your family? At what point is it worth it that you're making that next thirty thousand dollars, the next fifty thousand dollars, but you don't have a relationship with your kids? Ask any guy in any yeshiva. What would you rather have? A father who's able to stay up on Friday night, have a conversation with you, maybe play a game with you, maybe be your little league coach, and take a couple less vacations a year, or have a smaller house, or the bigger house but less of a father. Ask any kid. What do you think the answer is? You know the answer. Everyone knows it. It's not about the money. At some point, you've made enough, and you're trying to earn worthiness. I have bad news for you. People do it in Judaism too. How many of us in this room are like, okay, but if I only check the boxes of the things that our teachers have put in front of us, then I'll be worthy. I'll be worthy when I dress sneerous. I'll be worthy when I don't go to that forest or that town.

24:33 Right? That part of town, right? And I'll just tell people that are from a different seminary. Meaning. I'm just saying. If you know what I'm saying, it's not nice, right? But how many people are How many people are trying to earn worthiness? If I show up to all my classes, then I'm a good girl. If I daven with kavanah, if I shackle like I'm having a seizure, then I'm a good girl. If I do the right Chesed I don't know what the right Chesed is. On the one hand, I want to do Hask, but it's coed. On the other hand, I feel like I would really do really well in Haskell. But is that a good girl thing to do? Isn't that just an attempt to earn worthiness? It's not fundamentally different than money. It's just a different currency. It's okay. I'm going to make money, or I'm going to be really good Jew, and then I'll be worthy.

25:30 That's not worthiness. If I'm a really good mom, then I'm worthy. If I'm a really good dad If I'm a really good roommate If no Here's a hard one. If nobody in seminary doesn't like me If I'm a real people pleaser, if I have enough friends, if my wedding is the wedding where it's like, oh my God, the energy was crazy because so many girls came and we're so excited to be there, then I'm worthy. Everyone has this sentence in your head. Just do it for yourself. Fill in the blank. I'll be worthy when I fill in the blank. Almost everybody I know. It's not true. Everybody I know is operating from that system. At the bedrock, ask somebody what you are afraid of. What are you afraid of? I'm afraid. I spoke to somebody today. I'm afraid I won't get a shiduch now because of what happened.

26:19 And what happens if you don't get a shiduch? Then I'm going to be that single girl. And what happens if you're that single girl? I can't be that single girl. Why? What will happen? What's the belief that you have about being that single girl? She's pathetic. And if you drill down under pathetic She's not worthy of love and connection. You're always going to find the word worthiness. If you drill, eventually you'll find the word worthiness. But if that pushes you to a better place. And a lot of times in life, from that place of unworthiness, you can do amazing things. The problem is, it's going to leave you drained. And there is a better way. That there's, but you're right. It's true. That CEO might change the world. Steve Jobs did change the world. But if you learn anything about Steve Jobs, if you read any of the books that were written about him, he was an impoverished person. He had a massive amount of money, but he was an impoverished person. He was just trying to because he was an adopted child, so he was trying to earn some sort of love and be worthy when he built Apple.

27:23 You could do it. He built Pixar. Steve Jobs, founder of Pixar. You could do amazing things from a place of unworthiness. The problem is you're going to leave a trail of devastation in your wake. You're going to make bad decisions because you might be willing to trade things that you shouldn't trade. And let's say, for example, I'm going to be an awesome mother from a place of unworthiness. You might do a lot for your kid, but I have a strong feeling that your kid doesn't want to live in the space of your own unworthiness, because you're going to be parenting yourself, not your child. Does that make sense? So just because it works doesn't mean it's a good idea. And just because it looks like it works doesn't mean it's actually working. Every one of us has a past. Every single person in this room comes from somewhere.

28:10 And I don't mean where your parents came from. I mean where you came from. And you're young. But you already have a past. When you get to be in your forties and your fifties, then you have a past because then it's like your life is half over. You could look back and go, okay, I've got a past, right? You don't have a past when you're 14. It's like 18-year-old girls have a past. What did you do? I was fifteen. You were fifteen. You were a child. You were a child. A child. A fifty. Can you look back now on your tenth grade self and see what a child you were? I'm not trying to diminish or devalue what a tenth grader is. But a tenth grader is a struggling ball of protoplasm. That's what you are. You're just trying to make it through life with some level of okayness.

28:57 You sit there and in tenth grade I misbehaved. Why did you misbehave? Because you're a bad person? You misbehaved because you were experimenting. You misbehaved because you were coping. You weren't a bad person. You didn't do a bad thing. You did something that you're not so proud of. It wasn't. It wasn't exactly what I wanted it to be. I didn't think that I would be the girl that did that, and in the end, I was. I didn't do it all the time. It was only three or four times that I did it. But in your head, at 18 years old, you already have a past, in a certain sense. You could be this year. I'm going to use this terminology. You could come to Talmud Ivora this year. You could stieg like crazy. You could learn a tremendous amount. Go to all your classes. You could be in the Mat Midah program. Come January, there's going to be sixty girls in the Mat Midah program. Everyone's going to be a Mat Midah. Everyone's going to leave early from class. Sixty girls are going to be Mat Midah.

29:49 But you could be Tzadik Ben Rasha. You could be living from a place that I'm the child. My origin story of this growth could be that I was Russian. That I come from a place in Russia. And then there are other girls that will do it very differently. There are girls that will stop trying to earn worthiness. They'll understand that the true self, the core self, that godly spark, the nitzotzaluki that every one of us has inside of us. That I was never really broken and I don't need to be fixed Which is a big deal. You do not need to be fixed because you're not broken. There's a story, a very beautiful story. That the Temach Tzedek was given a silver snuff box. Snuff is like a little bit of tobacco that they smell. So he was given a silver snuff box. And the story goes that the Temach Tzedek was upset by this gift because the only part of Adam Harishon's body that didn't sin was the nose. He didn't smell before he ate. Which is why, by havdala, we smell the besamim.

30:58 So he was upset by this. He said, "Even now we're trying to bring more gashmius into the realm of the nose." So the story goes that the tzemach tzaddik broke off the top of the silver snuff box and he used it as a mirror for his tefillin to make sure that his tefillin were straight between his eyes. When the Labavitcher Rebbe heard this story, the Labavitcher Rebbe said, "It's not true." That's not the story. He said, "The story is. That this silver snuff box, it had a screw in it" And the tzemach tzedeck undid the screw, took off the top, and he used the top to make sure that his tefillin were straight. He said the tzemach tzedeck didn't break things. It's not our way. There are people that like that's the way they see the world. You're a broken person. You need to be fixed, girls. I'm gonna tell you a secret. You're not broken.

31:48 The part of you that did that thing you're not proud of, it wasn't you. It doesn't define you. It was a part. It was designed to protect you. In that moment, when you were in that place, going through whatever you were going through, that was a way of coping. If only I'll be—I'm using clean language here. You'll fill in the blank, whatever you think it means. If you said, if I'd be connected to that person, so maybe then I'd feel okay for myself. So I did things that I wasn't proud of to be connected to that person, or to that place, or to that time, whatever it is for you. Everyone has their thing. Some people are sitting there going, "I'm Tzadik Ben Rasha." I'm Sadik Ben Rasha. That's who I am. I'm Sadik Ben Rasha. I'm born from a place of brokenness, and even though now I'm a good girl, quote unquote, but it was born from a place of brokenness. And then there are other girls that are saying I was never broken.

32:36 And I'm behaving today differently, not because I was broken back then, but because I know I was okay back then. So now I deserve to feel okay now. I'm living in harmony with my highest self, but the truth of the matter is I'm not defined by my lowest moments. And obviously, that's going to be a very different approach to life, and that's going to have a very different impact. Lamaisa Lamaisa, Rivka Yemeinu was in one corner, and Yitzchok was in another. And on this, they were not the same. Was Rivka a tremendous tzaddikess? Absolutely. If Rivka Yemeinu was in the room right now I'd be standing in front of. It's hard even to call Rivka Yemenu a person. She was a being of light. But on some level, in the smallest possible way, in a way that we can't possibly understand, because she was absolutely tzadikas. She saw herself as lemaisa. I come from the family of Besua. Lemaisa. I come from the family of Lavan.

33:44 So in a certain sense, her tefillos were diminished by her sense of self. In some way, even though her tefila would outshine any of our tefilos, not Chassidsham being mezazel and Riffka, I'm just talking about it on our level. On some level, when Riffka was davening, she was in a different corner than Yitzchak. They weren't together on this one. She looked at Yitzchak and she said, "You are tzaddik ben tzaddik, and I am tzaddik ben Rasha. We come from different places." But Yitzchak saw himself as tzaddik ben tzaddik, so he had a different imagination. He had a different koyach tefila. He looked at the world and he said, 'I'm okay. I always was, and I know that I am, which is why I can imagine a better future.' Look at the tefillah. It's an unbelievable tefillah. Who was Rivka davening for? Rivka was davening. I should have a child.

34:35 Who was Yitzchak davening for? Listen to the words of the pasuk. It's an unbelievable thing, and there's a tremendous amount of mussar in this also. Vayetar Yitzchak laHashem lenochach ishto. You know who he was davening for? He was davening for Rivka. She was davening to have a child. That's not the same. She was davening from a place of rabunishalal mam and akara. I'm lacking. He looked at his wife, and because he was full, because he had a deep sense of self, all he saw was the fullness and the beauty of his wife. And he said, "I'm just davening for her. I imagine a world where Rivka Yemenu is able to be the complete, highest version of herself." What a beautiful tefillah! We can only daven that way for each other if we're full ourselves. People who are impoverished within themselves always see the negative within everyone else.

35:28 Sometimes you have that. Girls sitting there and talking trash about each other. You're saying a lot more about yourself than you are about the other person. There are people that have beautiful eyes that when they see people and they just see the good in them, not because they're ignorant, not because they can't know that person did a bad thing. That bad thing doesn't define you. Isn't that every one of us wants in a rebbe or a teacher or mechanechet somebody that we can be honest with and we could say to them, 'This is my lowest moment, but it's okay because I know that you don't see me that way.' Every one of us is looking for that person in our lives. Whose tefillah does that kadosh baruch hu answer? On some level, when we imagine reality, we make that reality. You ever have that? Where you imagine something so deeply, and then you just started attracting it into your life.

36:20 Did Irvin Gland speak about that a little bit last week when he came? I know that Irvin Gland is safe around Tula. I know he speaks a lot about that, about the concept of attraction. That when you have something like a deep imagination here, you just seem to attract that into the world. There are people in this world that they just like they complain about all the negativity, and sometimes I just want to say to them, all that negativity, it's attracted to you. What energy do you have here that you're attracting all of this negativity? The secret of bringing new life into the world is that you can only bring new life into the world if you yourself have a life. Meaning, we don't have children to fill ourselves up. We're full for ourselves, and then we give to another. This is the paradox that's very difficult to understand at your age, and it only makes sense after you get married.

37:22 If you need your husband That's tragic. Because then you're not in the relationship; you're just pulling from him. But if you're full yourself Then you realize your emptiness. It's like I have so much to give And it's like pouring out of me. I need a place to put it. It's not a need of desperation. It's not a need of please fill me up. It's a need like the natural need that a mother has to have a child. It's not that I need a child for my legacy. How ridiculous is that? People say that out loud. You know that? You ask them why you have children. They go The guys, the cerebral guys, they go continuation of the species. Man, that poor child. Imagine that child needs to have a diaper changed, and the father's Is this critical for the survival of the species? Yes. Because the child needs to feel cared for in order to care for another and continue the species.

38:25 There's something horrific about that. That's where science has lost its mind. There might be value in thinking about the continuation of the species, but it has nothing to do with the way a parent loves a child. Somebody says people say out loud, "I have children so that I'll have a legacy." And what happens if that child is different than the legacy that you want to have? And there are people that parent that way. That if their kids are different than them, if they have a different set of religious values or beliefs or commitment or passion, there are parents that are not okay with the way that their children are behaving because that child to them is a legacy. That's the parent trying to fill up their own bucket of inadequacy and unworthiness with the child. You know when you're a great mom. You know when you're a great dad.

39:15 When you're in self And when you're in self, you know you have enough, and that's why you want to share your life with another. Riffka imenu, on a certain level, in a very small way, I don't want to be mezazel on any level on Riffka imenu. In a very small way, she saw herself as I come from somewhere. There was a certain diminished sense of self, which is why she couldn't bring that imagination into reality. Yitzchok had a complete sense of self. He saw himself as his journey came. Everything that I went through was what brought me here today, and it's all part of my journey, and it's all beautiful. So he could daven for Rivka. Memela, they were zaychetaf children. This year is not about fixing yourself. It's about recognizing that you were never broken. If you recognize that you were never broken, you should be zaychet to a beautiful imagination, one that BeEzras Hashem will yield a beautiful life. Have a wonderful Shabbos. Attendants, to say for a very quick second.