Vaeira - Four Steps To Leaving Your Personal Mitzrayim

2:25 Has nothing really to do with the parsha in specific, but we know that one of the reasons given for the dalad kosos on later night is we have the dalad l'shonos of geulah can neged the dalad kosos. The question is, why do we need wine? Why are wine? Why do we drink wine? Four cups of wine can neged the dalad l'shonos of geulah. Is why didn't we do anything else? Why didn't we have four matzos connected to the Shalosh Lagolah? Why specifically wine? Those are the two questions that I have in front of me, and hopefully we'll explore them, and hopefully we'll get some understanding and appreciation of these questions. Okay, I want to try to go through this in a deep way to try to bring out a very specific idea here. And it goes as follows: an alcoholic. Has four stages of leaving his alcoholism. It's not a simple thing to stop being an alcoholic.

3:25 And when I say an alcoholic, I mean something for every one of us Because every one of us is—and I'm using air quotes here—every one of us is addicted to something. Every one of us has a mitzrayim that we need to leave. Every one of us is trying, in a certain sense, to leave the servitude of our own lives. And it's not obvious that it's easy to do that. How many of you, just taking a moment, have resolved, 'I'm never going to do this again,' only to do it that day? How many of you have resolved, 'I'm never going to do that again,' while you're in this she'er, only to do it as soon as you leave this she'er? I had a girl who told me many years ago in Talmud Ivora, she said, "I'm not going to be in your she'er anymore."

4:09 So I said, "I didn't really ask, but sure, thanks for letting me know." And I asked why. She said, "It makes me feel really bad about myself." I said, "Oh, that hurts." I try not to make anyone feel bad about themselves. So she said, "No. It's like really inspiring. I enjoy the year, but then I leave and I go do the thing that I promised myself I'd never do again. So it just makes me feel too bad about myself to be in this year." Then I felt a little bit better about myself. I was like, "Okay." But we all have that, right? We all have a certain mitzrayim, something that we're trying not to do anymore. They're called New Year's resolutions, right? The gym is packed. On January second By January fifteenth, the gym is empty. By the way, they know that. That's why they make all the sales up until January first to get you to join the gym, because they know you're going to pay because you say this year will be different. Sure, it will.

5:00 Of course, it'll be different. But nobody sticks to their New Year's resolution, and the reason is because, in a certain sense, I'm using this word lightly, even though it's a very serious word. In a certain sense, we're addicted. We're addicted to being who we are. We're all, in a certain sense, restricted. We have an inner paro that tells us this is who you are, and you can't become something else. So it's not obvious that it's easy to leave Eretz Yisrael. And the same thing was true with Klal Yisrael, right? If you're enslaved for 210 years, do you think it's easy just to walk out the door? Think about what happens to a society of people that live with that level of absolute punishment, that they're being chased after every single day. Imagine if your children were baked into bricks. I'll give you an example of this. Take a soldier who's coming home from war.

5:54 I know a soldier. He told me today that in two weeks they're sending back his battalion, and it's going to be a week of coming out. So it's two weeks, and then a week after that, that's three weeks. And then he said, 'Before I go back to work, I need to take at least a month just to recuperate.' And that makes sense because if you've been in Gaza or on the border of Lebanon since Simchas Torah, do you think it's easy just to walk out of there and go back to work? It's interesting. The mattresses bother them. It's hard to come back and sleep on a mattress if you've literally been sleeping on a floor in some Yesh supermarket with your helmet on. You grow accustomed to living like that. It's not easy to just come back and just go right back into life. How do you do that? And that's only after three months of being away.

6:42 Think about what it was like for Holocaust survivors. Think about some of those people who never got over it. That was only seven years. Think about what it must have been like on a national level for all of Klal Yisrael after 210 years of slavery. What if you were born into slavery? What if you were born a hundred years into Mitzrayim? That means your entire life. If you lived to be seventy-five years old, that means there was never a moment in your life where you were like, okay, it was your regular day-to-day life to come home and know this person was killed, this person died on the job, this person was crushed. In Pitom and Ram says this person was taken advantage of. It was your everyday regular life. It's not obvious to be able to come out of that. And by the way, I think one of the reasons that we have Pesach every single year is we have on a Klal Yisrael level the trauma is so ingrained into our bones that every single year on Seder night we have to relive it in order to tell the story to expel the trauma

7:45 And every single day in Kriyat Shema we have to make reference to that story. The reason we do that is because if the trauma is so deep, we now know there's something called intergenerational trauma. Intergenerational trauma means that your grandparents, your great grandparents, might have gone through something, and it's literally in your genes now. That's not made up. Your gene, your genetic makeup, can change from trauma that happened generations ago, and you might be suffering from things that you don't even begin to understand. The same thing is true with Klal Yisrael. The Shebet of Mitzrayim was so deep. That in order not to become people who are victims of our own servitude. You need to constantly tell the story. You need to constantly leave Mitzrayim. I just want to unpack that idea for one second because it's a really important idea. If you're the victim of something That doesn't mean you have to be the victim of it. It's true that you are the victim, but you don't have to have a victimhood mentality.

8:45 If you're persecuted, what do you think will naturally happen? Naturally, if you don't work on it, you start to take on the role of the victim. And if you say to yourself, 'I am the victim,' what will happen to you in your life? You will be the victim. Can I give you an example of what this looks like? Let's say Chas v'Shalom. I know it's a little hot in here. I'll try to keep everyone awake. It's just me. We can put the AC on. Now we have to have a whole fight about the AC. Girls, we're not really going to have a conversation about this. It doesn't really make sense for us to spend our time doing this. Okay. If you're the victim of a particular trauma Let's say you're abandoned by somebody at a young age. And you adopt that victim mentality, what happens to you now as you play out your life?

9:39 If you've been abandoned, you know what you're going to see. You know the way you see the world is everyone's always on the verge of abandoning me. How do you think that works out in a marriage? If every time you have a fight with your husband, you think he's going to leave Then you're coming into the marriage with this victimhood mentality that he's going to leave. If you don't actually work on your trauma in life, if you don't actually understand what's going on. If you're not consistently in a posture of trying to leave your own mitzrayim, you won't. You'll be stuck there. And so the Torah gives us the opportunity every single day to leave our own mitzrayim. We leave our own mitzrayim through this four-step process because if we don't, our natural posture will be to fall back into a victim.

10:28 And that's not what we want in life. Victims cannot be successful. You cannot be a successful mother if you're a victim. You cannot be a successful spouse. You can't be a successful employee, right? People who are capable people are not victims, right? We see this in different communities throughout history. People that have been oppressed—how do they come out of that oppression? Do they come out of that oppression and take ownership and thrive, or do they come out of that oppression and they expect the world to give everything to them? Because they were victims for so long, really they're just living out their trauma. Does that make sense? So there's something very special. Let's say about Persians that came to Los Angeles and escaped from Persia, and they literally went through Gehenna in Iran. There's a guy who works in Mivaseret. He's a maintenance man on campus. His name is Avram. I don't know his actual last name. We call him Avram Chashmal. Chashmal means electricity. He's just like an electrician, but he does a lot more than that. Somehow over the years, his name became Avram Chashmal. Avram Chashmal lived under the Ayatollah.

11:31 Avram Chashmal many years ago We had a guy in yeshiva who was schmoozing with Avram Chashmal. Avram Chashmal is Persian. This guy was Persian, and he said, "What's your name?" So the kid told him his name. He goes, "Is your father Plony?" So he said, "Yeah, that's my dad." He goes, "Tell your dad that Avram sends regards." So he calls up his father. He goes, "I met this guy Avram, who sends regards." His father goes, "No way! That's the guy that smuggled me across the border. It's like a crazy thing. Before he was an electrician in Mivasarit, he was like and he sat in jail. His whip marks all over his back. It's the craziest thing. Now some people could live under the Ayatollah and it could crush them. It could literally crush them. Some people live with that mentality, and they're like, "That's it for the rest of their life." Some people's response is, "I'm not the victim of this." Some people are now empowered to live a life. So when I go, let's say to Los Angeles, for example, and I meet these guys who came from Persia who could barely speak English, their kids are first generation Americans. Their kids are like totally naturalized and speak beautiful English. But you speak to the dads, and they have that Persian accent in English. They have that, but they're amazingly successful.

12:39 What's the pshat? Because they were not victims of their oppression. So the question is, how do we leave our own mitzrayim so we're not the victim of our own oppression? It's a four-step process. The first step is ulak. The first step is vahotseisi. Vze haklal. This is the general rule. Step number one. You cannot work while you are under attack. Years ago, I had a boy. Who I worked very hard to get him to a stage where he was ready to go to therapy. It took a lot of work to convince him to go to therapy. It took a lot of building him up. Finally, I got him into therapy. I found an amazing therapist for him. I thought it would be a perfect shidduch. This kid was a very gentle kid. The therapist is a very gentle therapist. And the kid went to therapy a couple of times. The therapist called me up. He said, "This is not going to work."

13:32 I said, 'Oh come on, man! Don't tell me that. You know how hard I worked to get him to this stage.' He said, 'You cannot go to therapy if there are bombs falling everywhere around you.' He said, 'Imagine someone—this is the way he put it to me.' He said, 'Imagine somebody in World War II' And they're in a bunker, and the Nazis are shooting over them, and you're storming the beach, and you are sitting in a bunker. Do you think it's helpful at that time to have a therapist sitting next to you? 'I want to explore what's happening with you right now.' Can we unpack this for a minute? What's that like for you as bullets are whizzing over your head? What's coming up for you? What does that remind you of in your childhood? Do you think anybody's going to be capable of doing that work? You're not capable of doing that work because bombs are falling all around you. The situation that this kid was in, he was still in Mitzrayim. And the mistake that I made as a rebbe was I said, "Let's get into therapy." He's not ready for therapy because he's still in Mitzrayim. You can't do the work if bombs are falling all around you.

14:32 Step one of breaking any addiction of leaving Mitzrayim is I am not going to be in Mitzrayim anymore. It's like trying to work with an alcoholic who's still drinking. Does that make sense? How do you work with an alcoholic who's still getting drunk every single night? You can't. There's nobody home. A couple years ago, I had this amazing interview with this kid. Some of it is very rare that interviews for me are interesting. You've been on the other side of these interviews, right? So imagine being in my position on an interview. Imagine having to sit with a hundred to a hundred and fifty guys every single year and saying, "So what do you want to get out of your year in Israel?" And they all say the same thing. They all say, "I want to grow. I don't know if I want to learn, but I want to learn."

15:19 You know what I'm saying? I really want to get closer to tefillah. I really want to be better at davening. I really want to learn how to learn a gemara. They all say the same exact thing. It's very rare that an interview for me is exciting. One time, two times, an interview was exciting. I got up and I gave the Shmuz and Mavaseret years ago, and I said I am so sick of these interviews. I just want one kid, one time, to look at me in an interview and say I'm coming to Israel because I want to find the truth. And then I went to TABC. This kid Shimi On an interview, I said, What do you want to get out of here in Israel? He said, I want to find the truth. I was like, no way. And he goes, all the mez guys told me to say that. I was so angry at them. I finally found the one Kutzker Jew that I was looking for. He got in. He's an awesome guy. He actually was trying to find the truth, but that's not the kid that I'm talking about here.

16:21 Relax, he's married. You can like, you're like Oh. There are others. I appreciate the honesty. There's a rebbe in Mevaseret this year who also works in a bunch of seminaries. I'm just saying he's a really popular rebbe for a reason. I'm not sure his shiurim are that great, but he's positioned for success. It's the first time anyone said a main in this room, not to something about a shidduch or marriage or kids. Second kid that I interviewed was amazing. This is only a couple years ago. This kid was like he had like I don't know how to say this nicely. You know how you walk into an interview sometimes and people warn you ahead of time like this one's got a reputation. This kid had the single worst reputation in the entire yeshiva league. And it was known. He had really messed up ninth, tenth, and the beginning half of eleventh grade. In eleventh grade he switched schools. He started to work on himself. By the time the middle of twelfth grade came around, he was a completely different person. But his reputation had not yet recovered nearly as much as he had.

17:36 And this kid was super honest and super authentic. Instead of going in and just asking him the regular questions, I said, 'Can I just hear your story? Because everyone keeps telling me about you.' And he goes, yeah, and he just started telling me everything, all the parties, all the things, and he's going on and on. Baruchol b'tchitana, total honesty. I've never had an interview like that, and honestly, it was the first time I was really interested. I was like, that's cool. I'm actually meeting a human being here, and not just like a coached up version of let me say the same platitudes that everyone else says. And it was amazing. He said something very profound to me. He said I was talking to this guy who's in his year in Israel now and we were talking about drug abuse. And this guy is a heavy smoker. He goes, and I was. He goes, I was a very heavy smoker. Wake and bake, like from the very beginning of the day throughout the entire day, I was never sober, not even for a moment.

18:29 I know all the terminology. No cap, trust me, I'm very relevant. So the kid said, listen to this, it's an amazing line. He said we were going back and forth, and I was explaining to him why it's really not good to be smoking as much as he's smoking. And he was telling me, "Oh, you don't know what you're talking about." And finally, he said, "I said to him in the conversation" There's nothing for us to talk about because you can't talk to me about it since you're still using. You can't really see what's happening since you're still in your state of abuse.'" He goes, "Do three months without it, and then we can have a conversation. Really, let it get out of your system. You'll be thinking totally differently. Your thinking is corrupted by the fact that you're still in your mitzrayim." And it's such a profound, profound thing to say. So many of us were sitting there and we're doing the same exact thing that we're always doing, surrounded by the same exact people, putting ourselves in the same exact environment, and then going, "I don't know why I can't change." The beginning of change is I have to not be here anymore.

19:30 If you're in an abusive relationship, the first thing you need is to be out of the abusive relationship. You can't do any work until you're in a different location. The beginning of change begins literally with the location that you're in. That's step number one, and it's not obvious. It's not easy to do. Why? Because I'm so accustomed to being in that location. You ever speak to a teacher here in Torah Devar? You ever go like this? You're like, I know this needs to change, but it just can't because this is the way it's always been, and it's the way that it'll always be. That's your mitzrayim. That's a mitzrayim of your own design. You can't change your location because it's always been this way, so it'll always be this way. Does that make sense? And the truth of the matter is that it can change, but it changes when you walk out the door.

20:17 For many people, if I see this all the time in yeshiva, you have a guy who was one way in high school and he's completely different in Eretz Yisrael. And I wish I could tell you that it's because the system in Mivtzaaret is amazing or the rebbeim in Mivtzaaret are amazing. 50% of the time, you know what it is. He's just in a different place. He's physically in a different place. He's not like the Rebbeim in high school always say this. I don't know if it's the same way with the girls. Honestly, he should go to this yeshiva and his friends should go to that yeshiva. Just being away from his friends is going to change him. Because sometimes you get so wrapped up in a particular way of being around people. You ever have that you like go to a certain place and you act in a certain way because you're there? Can I give you an example of this? This is not a good thing, but can I give you an example of this in my own life? I have a twisted head when it comes to this.

21:07 Ever since I was a little kid, I remember where I was when I was in high school where I figured this out. When I come in the door, the first thing I need to do when I walk into my parents' house is go to the set of cabinets where your parents keep all the snacks. It's not just snacks. There's also pasta and sauces in there, right? It's like a whole. I don't know why, but I had this thing in high school. I come home and the first thing I do is open it. I don't even want food. You know what I want to do? I want to browse. I just want to see. Ever do that? You ever walk into a place and just open the drawer? How many times you come in somewhere and just open the freezer? You're not interested in it. You just want to know it's there. I just need to know. Chunky monkey, Ben and Jerry's right there, back of the freezer, just in case. You close the door. I'm 43 years old. I'm about to be a grandfather in a couple of weeks. My daughter is expecting. I still walk into my parents' house and open up the drawer.

22:01 I wish I could tell you I was lying. I walk in and I just go. My mother goes, "What are you looking for?" I go, "Nothing. I'm not looking for anything." And my mother's very generous. She's like, "Can I make you eggs?" That's like my mother's thing. "Can I make you?" I'm like, "I don't want your eggs. I just want to see what you got. I just want to see. I don't walk into my own house and do that. There's something about a location that matters. If you're there, in a certain sense, it's holding you. There's a difference between who we are in Eretz Yisrael and who we are in America. There's a certain kedusha here. It's in the air. It changes you just based on the location. If you are in a Mitzrayim, this is a hard step, but it's the first step. Leave. You can't do the work if you're still in Mitzrayim. That's step number one. That's Vehoseisi. I'll take you out. Then there's Vehitzalti I'm going to deliver you from bondage. Can a person be a Mitzrayim?

22:52 For sure. A person can be a Mitzrayim for you. There are toxic relationships. And leaving a toxic relationship, as hard as it is And I'm not just talking about marriage now. That's just being in that proximity. So I've had guys in yeshiva come. I need to get out of this room. I just can't. We could be friends, but we can't live together. For sure, a person could be in a shaykh. We're in Israel now, but then when we get back to America. I'm not Chassidish. I'm saying that America's Mitzrayim. If you misheard me or misunderstood what I was saying, everyone has a family of origin. Everyone has a place that's their place that they go back to that has the capacity to grab you. So what's really important is to leave so that if you do have to go back to such a place, you're not going back as the same person.

23:39 And you can't do the work when the bombs are falling around you. You just can't. Nobody could. Last question because I want to move on. I know that you won't go back to. There's no promises here. There's vulnerability in all the work, right? I can't promise you if you do this work, everything will be fine. But what I can promise you is if you do the work, you have your best shot to be okay when things get hard. Right? So there are always going to be challenging relationships with your spouse, with your kids, with your employees, with your community, with your bosses. There will always be challenging relationships. But who you are and how you show up to those relationships—if you're capable of leaving your mitsrayim—is going to be completely different. Okay, waiter, V'hitzalti I'm going to deliver you from bondage. Step two: You might have physically left your mitsrayim.

24:27 But it doesn't mean that your mitsrayim doesn't have a hold on you. For example. This is a bad example, but I'm going to go for it anyway. If anything, it'll just keep us interested. The Hodcei the Tzalti. I'll deliver you from bondage. Step two. You might leave your Metzrayim physically, but it doesn't mean that your Metzrayim doesn't have a hold on you. For example, sometimes you leave a bad relationship and then you spend all your time thinking that you did the right thing. So you know what this looks like in Shaduchim. I was dating him. It got very serious. I had the courage to end it, and now I've spent the last three months thinking I may have made a mistake. And you speak to your people about it, right? When I left, I had really good reasons for leaving. Did anything change? Nothing changed. But I'm considering going back. You know why? Because there's something inside of me that's identified with Mitzrayim for so long that even after I left.

25:31 It hasn't left me. Have you girls ever heard of a yeshiva? It's not around anymore. There was a great yeshiva back in the day called Ner Yaakov. If you hear this yeshiva Ner Yaakov, your dad went to Ner Yaakov. A lot of people had it. Their parents went to Ner Yaakov. Back in the day, it was called Ner Jake. It was like a thug yeshiva. These guys were real men. They like took care of business. I wasn't zayicha, you know what I'm saying? I was too much of a little kid to go to Ner Yehov. Men were real men. I know your dad. Your dad was Chazak. So there was a guy in Ner Yehov. I won't say his first name. Shlomi. It's a real name. I shouldn't have done that. He came to Ner Yehov and he was one of these classic Ner Yehov. He was a classic Ner Yehov flip out. He really turned around his life.

26:23 And he was in Neir Yaakov Shana Aleph, Shana Bet, and then he was a madrich in Neir Yaakov. Now Neir Yaakov was near a seminary called Darche Bina, and Neir Yaakov guys egged Darche Bina, whatever that means. I don't think they still do it because Neir Yaakov's not around. But they egged Darche Bina. So obviously Rabbi Kerland called Rabbi Lif, who was the Rosh Yeshiva of Neir Yaakov. And Rabbi Lif found out that the Madrich was there with them. Shlomi was there with them. So he called in Shlomi, who happens to be my very good friend. And Rabbi Lif, being a tzaddik and a really amazing educator, Shlomi sits down and he knew he messed up. And Shlomi is already like a, he's flipped out. He's learning. He's studying. He's growing. And Rabbi Lif looks at him and he goes You could take the kid out of Brooklyn, but you can't take Brooklyn out of the kid. And Shlomi still today uses that line because he is like, I'm saying there's a certain personality called Brooklyn. I'm talking about like it's Brooklyn. If you don't know what I mean, I'm sorry. There's no way I'm gonna be able to explain it to you. Brooklyn is Brooklyn. Brooklyn is the type of craziness that'll go along with the kids he's supposed to be watching to egg the seminary. You can take the kid out of Mitzrayim, but you can't necessarily take Mitzrayim out of the kid.

27:43 The addict could choose. I'm not going into a bar anymore. It doesn't mean that he's not looking at the bar from across the window the entire time, going, "How do I get back into the bar?" Vahotseitsi means you physically left. Vhitzalti, Hashem says, step two is you need to really recognize this thing lives inside of you. Just because you moved locations doesn't mean it helps. You ever have that in life where you try to solve a problem by switching locations? If I would only be in that seminary, if I would only be in that dorm, if I would only be with that chavurah, if I would only be, right? The problems that we have exist inside of us. They live wherever we go, so they travel with us wherever we go. Just because you decided I'm not going into that bar anymore doesn't mean you're not an alcoholic.

28:29 There's such a thing as a dry drunk. You might not be drinking, it doesn't mean that you're not thinking of alcohol all day long. That's like people on diets. You ever go on a diet and all you do is spend your entire day thinking about food And you're telling everyone about food. How many salads did you have that day? How many times have you gone to the gym? You're still an addict. You're still thinking about food all day long. It just happens to be the food isn't going into your mouth. The reason we do that is because we're over identified with our addiction. It's one of the challenges of 12 steps. 12 steps is an amazing, beautiful program. But if there's any critique of the 12 steps, it would be this. If you get up and you say, 'Hi, my name is Plony, and I'm an alcoholic,' no, you're not an alcoholic. You're not. It's not the definition of you. You are a godly soul.

29:18 You have fallen into a state called alcoholism, and it needs to be worked on. The 12 steps is an amazing way to work on it. When you identify as an Egyptian, you could be an Egyptian living in Israel. Maybe that's a little bit of an answer to your question before. Some people are their heart is in Israel, even when they're living in America. And some people even when they're living in Israel, they're hardest in America. You have to know what's really you. Are you over-identified with your Sivlos Mitzrayim? Have you become tolerant? That's what the word Soveil means. To be, do you tolerate it? Do you go, this is me. I can never change that. Step two is re-identifying as a fundamentally different person. Step three The Ga'alti. You may leave physically. You may even leave psychologically. But it doesn't mean that it won't come chasing after you. Just like the Egyptians chased Klal Yisrael to the Yam Suf. I want to explain to you what this means.

30:26 Just because you left Mitzrayim and just because you expelled Mitzrayim from you doesn't mean that Mitzrayim won't come chasing after you. And that also requires a Geula. Because even after Klal Yisrael left Mitzrayim, the Egyptians pursued them all the way to the Yam Suf. Imagine the following scenario: You come to Eretz Yisrael. You've made amazing decisions over your time in Israel. You've really chosen to set yourself up on a trajectory. And then you go home. And now you have old friends And the old friends invite you because you're their friend. To participate in something that maybe once upon a time you used to participate in But you're not interested in participating in it anymore. That's a really hard thing to do because some of these people were your friends since you were a kid. So I'll give you an example of this. I was in Israel for two years, many years ago. There's a place called the Docks in Woodmere. Anyone here know the Docks in Woodmere? If you're raising your hand, it doesn't necessarily speak well of you because I know what happens at the Docks.

31:33 It's understandable. The docks are a beautiful place, right near a golf course. I'm sure Chas v'Shalom. I'm sure we all go to Dav and Mincha. It's interesting that we're calling it Mincha these days. I'm with you. It used to be. So I heard now it's not a thing, and there are things that used to be a thing that are not a thing. The triangle used to be a thing. The triangle in back Lawrence on Simcha Star used to be a thing. Now it's not a thing. There are places that used to be places that are not places. It doesn't matter. These are all tangential parts of the story. I promise you, we could play Jewish geography on all the bad places in our neighborhoods. I'm not sure that's a value to us, but sure, why not? So I get a phone call. I'm back from Israel. Hey, we're all going out tonight. You want to come? Of course I want to go.

32:20 Of course I want to go. These are my friends since I'm one. I moved onto Mihen Avenue when I was one years old, and I met one of my closest friends. And he's been my friend forever. And he invites me to go out with him. Of course I want to go. But there's a part of me that says, dude, you just spent the last two years trying not to go to the docks. Just because you leave doesn't mean it won't chase you. And it chases you until you are totally expunged from being that person. There has to come a point where they don't even send you the invitation because it's so not your reality. It would be weird for them to call you up to go to the docs, whatever your docs are. It would be weird for them to call you up to go to the docs because it's so obvious that you're not a docs person anymore.

33:03 I was jealous. I'll be honest. I was jealous because not all my friends got that phone call. You know why they didn't call me? Because I was their best friend. Some of my other best friends weren't invited. You know why they weren't invited? Because those guys were sitting in the basement and pounding, and it was obvious that's not where they were. So they never got that call. In a certain way, it was a reflection—not a positive reflection. It was a reflection on me that I was still in the world of getting that invitation. And otherwise, it's going to chase after you. There's an amazing vort from Rappinke. Rappinke says, "You know why we have uspizen on Sukkot? Why do we have the Avram Yisroel Yaakov? Why do they come visit us on Sukkot? After Yom Kippur, after you've done tshuva, you need new friends. Because if you have your old friends, they're going to keep chasing after you. It's an amazing idea.

33:51 The ga'alti means you're not only going to leave Eretz Yisrael physically, you're not only going to leave Eretz Yisrael psychologically, but you're going to become someone about whom it's not possible to be in Eretz Yisrael anymore. Which brings us to the final stage of redemption. Everything we just said was negative. What you're not going to be Girls. There's a lot of focus, especially in this time of your life, on what you're not going to be. Don't be this and don't be that. But if your entire life all you hear is what you shouldn't be, and you never hear what you can be, what you're meant to be, what you're designed to be That's a terrible chesaron in our chinuch system. How many times, if you think back on your chinuch career, where the teachers getting up, the rabbim, the rabbisins, whatever it is, how many times did they get up and say 'don't do'? Versus how many times did they say 'do'? I imagine if you think about it, there's a lot more focus on the 'don't do,' and the reason is it makes sense. It's really hard to stop doing something, so we spend a lot of time focusing on it. But that's called freedom from.

35:00 There's something called freedom. Freedom from is leaving behind the shackles of your life, but what's the point of leaving behind the shackles of your life? It's to become something. So Hashem says, step four: if you just leave, I'm no longer an alcoholic. I don't drink. I don't have those friends anymore. I don't have any desire for it anymore. Kol hakavod to you. But what are you doing with your sobriety? All you have is freedom from. Freedom to means this is the person that I am. And that's why we get the Torah. Getting the Torah is the final stage of redemption because at that point you now get to say it's not just that I left Mitzrayim; I have a life. I have something that I'm worth doing. I get up in the morning because there's a value to my life. I'm contributing to society. That's an amazing thing to have.

35:53 And it's at this point to go back to one of our original questions. That Hashem says, and now you'll know that I'm a God, your God. The word v'yedatem means das. Das doesn't mean knowledge. Das means relationship. When is the first time the word 'das' is spoken about in the Torah? That Adam knew Chava. Das means to be in a relationship. This is. It might hurt to hear what I'm about to say, but it's worth hearing. If you're in stage one, two, or three, you are not a person who could participate in a relationship. Addicts cannot be in relationships. Addicts are so defined by their mitzrayim that they don't have the space to participate in a relationship. They say for an alcoholic, sobriety has to be the single most important thing in their life. Because if they're not sober, then they can't be a husband, a father, an employee, a boss, or a member of their community because they're obsessed with their mitzrayim. There's no room for anyone else.

36:55 An alcoholic has to put sobriety in the center of their lives. It's the same thing when it comes to us. If you want to be in a relate, people say this all the time. I came to Israel. I didn't really find it. You cannot get to the stage of saying I'm participating in a relationship with Hashem when you are obsessed with Mitzrayim. So you have to not only leave the first three stages, but go to the fourth stage because that's where the relationship begins. I give an example of this, and this is a very modern day example. I'm not the guy that bashes on technology, but I just want to point out the following: If you are addicted to your phone, I'm using alcohol because it's easier to hear. But if you're addicted to your phone It's impossible to be in a relationship with you.

37:42 It's impossible. Just play it out. How would it feel if your husband was on his phone while you're talking to him? Anyone here feel safe in that relationship? Anyone here feel heard or valued? How about a kid? What do you think it's like for a kid to look at her mother and the mother's just constantly on the phone doing whatever she's doing on the phone? Do you think it's safe for a kid to go over to their mother and say, "Can I talk to you about something important to me?" Is that famous cartoon of a mother who's washing dishes and the kid is pulling on her skirt and says, "Mommy, please listen to me." And the mother says, "I'm listening." And the kid says, "No, mommy, please listen to me." And the mother says, "I'm listening." And the kid says, "Mommy, please listen to me with your eyes." Just because you can hear people say this all the time. Let's say you have girls that are on their phones in class. I'm not saying that it's happening anywhere here, but I know it is in this very moment. But let's say.

38:30 So a girl says, 'What do you mean?' I could repeat to you every single thing that happened in the Sheer. Sure, you can, because you heard it with your ears, but you didn't hear with your eyes. There's a difference between just knowing what somebody said and actually showing them I value you. That means a relationship. You cannot participate in a relationship if you're in any one of these first three stages. If you're literally in Mitzrayim, or psychologically in Mitzrayim, or Mitzrayim is pursuing you, where's the space for a relationship to exist? So Hashem says via datem. At the stage where you've left all those things and you actually have value to your life Then we'll be in a relationship. And now we can understand, and we'll finish with this. Now we can understand why we have four cups of wine connected to the four lishonos of geula. What does wine symbolize? Wine always symbolizes havdalah. Wine symbolizes separation.

39:22 That's why we make havdalah on wine. But it's deeper than that. There's halachos. Do girls know that we don't touch the wine of a gentile if it's not mevushal? It's called stam yanim. We don't stop any wine that a gentile touches. We don't drink from that wine. Why? Because we don't know if it's been used for idolatrous purposes. That's why we have Yayin Mavushel. We have boiled wine. We boil it because we know that the idolaters don't use boiled wine in their services. There's a reason why we're careful not to drink the wine of Gentiles who are idolatrous. You know the reason? Because there has to be some separation. There are halachos around going drinking with Goyim. There has to be some degree of separation. When we drink the four lishonas of Gula, we're saying that's who I used to be. And now I'm somebody else. We drink the wine as a way of expressing that I'm no longer that person.

40:17 There's a big yitzhahara in this room right now A tremendous yitzhahara. The yitzhahara is to define yourself by your mitzrayim. And you might think, but I physically left my mitzrayim, I'm no longer in that place. I psychologically left mitzrayim, I'm no longer in that place. Mitzrayim is no longer pursuing me. That's true. The question is, are you separated from it? You have this in yeshiva all the time. Guys are doing great in yeshiva, and they come to me and they're upset at themselves. They go, Rebbe, I don't know. Sometimes I still think about that life as a 16-year-old when I was a baller, and I was like, I hear that. And they're like, What does that mean? The fact that I still think about it, or maybe I even still want it. It means that in some sense, even though you've changed tremendously and you haven't missed a minyan in weeks, or maybe even months, and you're in the bais medrash all the time and you're finishing prakim bal peh of gemara.

41:10 But in a certain way, you haven't created that hadalit. You haven't said, 'I don't identify by that anymore.' It's like you could leave Mitzrayim, but you're still telling the story. I used to be in Mitzrayim, but now I'm not in Mitzrayim anymore. It's like girls come and they go. 'How much do I have to tell a guy when I'm dating about high school?' I'm not here to answer that question. I know that all of a sudden, 50% of you just perked up, so I just want to recognize that. How much do I have to say? You know what the answer is. How much do you identify as that person anymore? It's like why is that still in your head? Girls, I'm gonna tell you the truth. I dated my wife. I'm gonna tell you a secret. I never had a conversation with her about this. It just didn't come up. I never told her what age I was toilet trained at. Never came up when we were dating. Could you imagine?

41:56 How come I didn't have to tell my wife? How come I didn't sit down in a hotel lobby with her over a diet coke? You should know that I was one and a half and I still wasn't toilet trained. How come it never came up? Because I'm not that guy anymore. If you're still talking about what age you were toilet trained at 22 years old, something is wrong with you. But you're 18 years old. Why are you still talking about the averes that you did when you were 16 or 15 years old? Because it was only two years ago. Or it was only last week. It doesn't matter if it was only last week. The question is, do you identify as that person anymore, or are you separated from it? Girls, have a wonderful Sabbath.