Vayechi - The Journey Towards Mashiach

2:02 What exactly is the nature of this Plan B? Now we're going to gather together, and I am going to give all of you brachos. Does that Plan B have anything to do with Plan A? Does he understand the question? In other words, Mimanavshach. If Hakadosh Baruch Hu wanted Yaakov Avinu to be able to reveal the katz, what was Yaakov Avinu hoping to accomplish? And now that he didn't, is this a completely separate plan, or is this since Hakadosh Baruch Hu told us that we can't have Plan A, so now there's a Plan B? Is Plan B worse? Is Plan B better? Is Plan B different? What exactly is going on over here? At the end At the end, I don't know if I explained that well, but it's very late at night for me, and I've been traveling a long time. Did anyone understand what I just said? Yeah.

2:48 Yeah. At the very end So Rashi, the pasuk says, 'These are the tribes of Yisrael. These are the twelve tribes of Yisrael. This is what Yaakov Avinu said to them, and he gave them brachos.' Each one got the blessing that he was blessed. So Rashi explains, what does it mean that each one got the blessing that he was blessed? So Rashi says one of the explanations that Rashi says. He gave them the bracha that they were destined to get. What else would they have gotten? As Rashi is explaining, each one got the bracha that they were supposed to get. As opposed to what Yaakov Avinu was going to give them a bracha that they weren't supposed to get. In other words, there is something very strange going on over here. Yaakov Avinu gathers them together. He gives them brachos. What brachos? The brachos that's for them. What other bracha would he give them? The bracha that's not for them doesn't make any sense.

4:04 So I want to share with you a very deep idea here. We'll try to spell it out a little bit together. If a person needs to go somewhere, they are trying to get l'mashlo. From the five towns to Montsi So I have to share with you. I like Montsi now. It's a nice place, Montsi. I'm not Chassid. I'm not saying anything negative about Montsi. But I don't know why they don't have lights. Why don't they have? Is it just me? Why don't they have lights here? So there's a certain amount of emuna that I have in Ways But I'll tell you why it's bebechines emuna because you ever have this where you type in an address on Ways. And then halfway through the drive, you wonder if you put in the right address, and you know I'm talking about, and you're like, am I going to the right place? But also, you check to see in the middle of your drive.

4:55 And I know there's Sherry Lane and there's North Sherry Lane, and then I was on the phone with somebody because I was maybe I'll stay in Munsey, and he's like, I don't know where North Sherry Lane is. I know where Sherry Lane is. I'm like, no, they're right next to each other. It's a whole thing. So I'm driving, and it's very dark outside, and I'm having some sort of anxiety that I'm going to the wrong place. And I see a sign for Bear Mountain, and I remember Bear Mountain was where we went in high school to ski. I don't know. You're like maybe to take a tool. So I'm definitely not in the right place. And then I saw that bridge, and I was like, I think the last time I remember that bridge, and it's like that bridge is lit up. So I was like, at least I feel like I'm driving in a lit up place. When you're going to a destination. You have to know the destination you're going to. It's like an obvious thing. If you imagine somebody gets in the car, where are you going? We're going to the place. Which place? The place.

5:47 That's not something. That's not something you can guess at. So if you want to get somewhere, you have to know exactly where it is that you're going. Not only do you have to know how to get to the place that you're going, the first thing that you need to get is where are we going? You need an address. It's like Lamashel. Imagine if you said to somebody, "How do I get from? Let's say you're going to the Tachan Amerkazit in your shulayim. So it's your beginning of seminary. You don't know which way you're going, and you go, 'How do I get to the Tachan Amerkazit?' 'How do you think you get to the Tachan Amerkazit? Look inside of yourself to find your way to the Tachan Amerkazit.' That's not very good. That's not nice. You tell them which bus to get on. So. Yaakov Avinu's plan A is a very simple plan A.

6:37 He's saying all of existence is to bring the world to its ultimate tikkun, its ultimate rectification. When Adam Harishon sinned, the world was a very different place before he sinned. The Rambam describes that Adam Harishon lived in a world of truth and falsehood, not right and wrong. In sinning, Adam Yishon brought within himself this bechina of taivera, so he ate from the eitz hadas taivera. So he brought good and evil inside of himself, and now he has, like we as a people, a moral question when it comes to the world: should I do the right thing? Should I do the wrong thing? Not should I do the true thing or should I do the false thing? That means from that point on, all of existence The whole goal, the tachlis habria. Since the point of Adam Yishon is to bring the world back to its original point of origin, like it was before Adam and Eve sinned.

7:35 So one way of thinking about this is: imagine you are on the top of a mountain. And you pushed the ball down the wrong way. So now you have to go all the way to the bottom of the mountain. You have to pick up the ball and walk all the way back up to the top of the mountain. And now you have to push the ball off the other way, because that's the way you're supposed to be going. So Adam Rishon really was supposed to choose the right thing. He chose the wrong thing. All of history now devolved into this thing that we have right now, and our job is to get the world back to that original point, and then we're going to choose right, and Mashiach is going to come. So when Yaakov Avinu is B'keish LeGalus Hakets, when Yaakov Avinu says, "I want to reveal to you the end" He's not Stam saying, I think what a lot of us think, the way I grew up He's not Stam saying, "I want to tell you when the show is over."

8:22 I want to tell you, now we're done. Now we're good. It's not what he's like in the year six thousand. Mashiach is going to come. There's no value in Yaakov Avinu saying when the show is going to be over. The show will be over when it's going to be over. It Rashi means something much more sophisticated here. I want to show you what the end is. You can't start the journey unless you know what the end is. So Yaakov Avinu, as he's about to die, especially because. Yaakov Avinu's whole bechina is the bechina of future. Just say this out very quickly. Avram Avinu is the bechina of what was. Yitzchak is the bechina of what is. Yaakov is the bechina of what will be. That's why Avram Avinu, when he's born, so Avram Avinu is the first person to look back in history. He's the first person to say, "Adam and Eve sinned" And therefore, since Adam and Eve sinned, I'm going to take upon myself the burden, which is what all of us, being the progeny of Avram Avinu, have. I'm going to take upon myself the burden of rectifying the sin of Avraham Avinu. So Avram Avinu was the bechina of what was. Yitzchak is the bechina of right now.

9:29 That's why Yitzchak doesn't talk very much in the Torah. Because whenever you're living in the present, there's not much communication that occurs, because you just experience what is in this moment. What do you talk about if you ever think about it? What do you talk about? Whenever there's speech involved, what are you talking about? You're not talking about what's happening right now. You're always talking about what was, or you're talking about what will be. So if let's say you get together, I was just with a Friday night. Some of my old friends from high school walked in to Woodmere to hear the shir that I was giving Friday night. It was very embarrassing because your old high school friends are the last people that you want to be there because they knew you when. Some people know me as Mordechai Berg, and some people know me as Matt Berg. These guys know me as Spitz Matberg, like sixteen, fifteen, sixteen-year-old Matberg. I walk in, and specifically, it's these two guys who are very close friends.

10:21 And I walk in, I look at them right away, and I burst out laughing. I'm like, "There's no way I'm going to be able to give this shit with a straight face, because they're going to be in the back the whole time." 'You know, because I know these guys.' And they were no, they were very respectful, but not at all. I'm saying like So you're always so. Afterwards, we're talking about, do you remember when this happened in high school? Do you remember? Anytime you're talking, you're talking about what was, or you're talking about what will be. If you're in the moment, you don't have to talk about anything. It's like you want to talk about the thing that's happening right now. You need a play-by-play for your life.

10:53 You ever have that? We have one rabbi in yeshiva that does this. I think it's the funniest thing in the world. He's in charge of tayulim, so whenever we go on a tayul, he always uploads the pictures of the tayul to the WhatsApp group on the tayul while it's happening. I always think it's very funny. Hey guys, here's the thing that you're doing literally right now as you're doing it. You need the pictures in a week from now so the guys can go. Oh yeah, that was awesome. You don't need the pictures right now because it's happening right now. It's not like a move. So Yitzchak doesn't speak very much on the Torah because Yitzchak is the bechina of living in the present right now. Mashiachin Yaakov vino is the bechina of what will be. What does it mean to be the bechina of what will be? There are two ways of thinking about this.

11:37 One way of thinking about the future is a person that plans for the future. Let's say a person says, "I want to live till I'm 120 years old." So they say, "How much money do I need to have in order to be able to live until I'm 120 years old?" So I need to put away five million dollars in the bank so that I could be making 120 thousand dollars interest a year, and that's how I'm going to survive. That's not the bechina of living for the future. That's really planning right now in the present, so that you'll have enough later. That's really a hoyva thing. That's really right now. To be a future-oriented person means that I've structured something capable of lasting into the future. It's like imagining. It's I have a good marshal for this. A Talmud of mine made a fortune in money from COVID tests.

12:33 A ridiculous fortune of money because what does a COVID test cost? It was like five bucks for a COVID test. But remember when we had to have those official COVID tests so that you could go to JFK and hand them the official COVID test? They were charging a hundred and eighty dollars for these tests. It was a five dollar test. If you did ten tests a day, you were making serious money. This guy was doing thirty tests a day. He made literally hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of COVID. That's not a business that has any longevity because eventually COVID is going to be over. Even though somebody just told me that, don't go into that house. Someone has COVID there. I'm like, I didn't know that was still a thing. How do they know that they have COVID? It's like they have a cold, and so they just assume it's COVID. No, they took a test. There's still tests. People still. I didn't know was a thing. But okay, to say there. So it's not a business when you set up a business and you say it's a COVID business. It's a COVID business. It's not built to last. Masha'inkin, when somebody builds a company. They're not just putting away money so that they'll have in the future.

13:33 They're designing the company in such a way that the company is structured for the future. So how do you know if you have a good company? If a hundred years from now the company still exists, it means that the bones of the company, the foundation of the company, was designed in such a way that it'll last. Let's bring it over to the realm of a relationship, just to give it a little bit of a time to it. There's two ways of participating in a relationship. There's some people that talk about relationships like putting away money, like you have to have a good shana rishana so that by the time you're ten years in and you hate each other, but at least you have that good shana rishana to draw from. They're like, it's good to have those beginning years. It's like a honeymoon. This way, when things get hard, at least you could look back on those times. That's not a relationship designed for the future. That's a relationship where you're putting something in the present so that in the future you'll have what to draw from.

14:29 The real way to speak about shanah rishayna is we're building the foundation of the relationship in such a way that 20 years from now the relationship will still be good. Do you hear the difference? Yaakov? When we say that Yaakov Avinu is the bechina of the future, it means that Yaakov Avinu's job is to structure Klal Yisrael in such a way that we end up at our destination. So it's not Stam that Yaakov Avinu wants to reveal the end of days. Yaakov Avinu wants to reveal the end of days because the yisoid of Yaakov Avinu is to be able to be future oriented, so that all of Klal Yisrael should be headed in the right direction, so that one day we're going to arrive at our destination. So it makes sense that Yaakov Avinu is the one who wants to reveal the katz. That's what he does.

15:15 Does that make sense? So that's Plan A. That sounds like a good plan. So now what's our question? Obvious question. So then, why did Hakadosh Baruch Hu stop him? In other words, if everything we just said is true, that Yaakov Avinu wants to reveal the end of days because the whole nikkuda of Yaakov Avinu is to bring Klal Yisrael to their ultimate destination, to structure Klal Yisrael in such a way that we ultimately end up where we're supposed to be. So that sounds like a good plan. So then, why does Hakadosh Baruch Hu take it away from him? And what's this plan of giving everyone a bracha and gathering them around and giving them each the bracha that's for themselves that they're destined to have? So the idea is this: the end of days is not a destination outside of oneself. And that's why Hakadosh Baruch Hu stops Yaakov Avinu.

16:06 In other words Earlier we gave the marshal of if you're going to the Tachanim Rekazit, it's not helpful to ask someone to look inside of themselves of how to get to the Tachanim Rekazit. For that, you need directions. If Mashiach is a destination in space, if it's somewhere that we have to go from Manti to Eretz Yisrael Then it makes sense to say that Mashiach is in Eretz Yisrael. Let's get everybody to Eretz Yisrael. Mashiach is not a destination in space. Mashiach is something that somebody discovers from within themselves. So for Yaakov Avinu to say, "This is what the end of days looks like." In a certain way, it robs us of two things. Number one, it robs us of the journey. Number two, it robs us of the destination. I'll explain what I mean. There's a famous marshal. Do you remember when you were little and you had that cocoon experiment in your class? Did they do that here when you were growing up? They did that when I was growing up. It's still funny. The curriculum in third grade never changes.

17:13 It's like all these developments in Chinuch, but at some point everybody just has a cocoon, like a section of the you know of cocoons. So there's a famous module of a third grade teacher that she has the caterpillars and she's doing that whole. There's like I don't even remember the words anymore. What do they call it when the caterpillar goes into cocoon? I only remember photosynthesis. I don't remember metamorphosis. Is that what it's the metamorphosis? I don't remember. It's been a long time since third grade. So you're doing the whole lesson plan, and it's months, right? It's months until the caterpillar builds a cocoon, and now all the cocoons are opening up. One little boy is waiting. His cocoon is not opening up, and you have these beautiful butterflies that are coming out with reds and greens and yellows. But one little boy sees that his caterpillar is stuck in the cocoon. Every single day, he's waiting for his caterpillar to come out and be a beautiful butterfly. Every day, it's not happening, so eventually, the kid loses patience. It's two weeks later. So what does he do?

18:10 So when the teacher isn't looking, he opens up the top and opens up the cocoon. So when the butterfly comes out, it has no color to it. It's listless. It can barely fly, and the reason is because the butterfly develops its color and its strength by pushing its way out of the cocoon. What happens as a parent if you rob your child of the opportunity to discover its own being? There's a process that every one of us goes through. It's the process of becoming. As parents, the process of becoming. It's very uncomfortable. You have to watch your daughter. I've had to watch my daughters. I'm sure, blessed Hashem, you'll have to watch your daughters. You have to watch your daughters make the mistakes that you don't want them to make. Every parent says, "I want to tell you what to do so that you don't make the same mistakes that I made at that age."

19:06 But you only became the person that you are because you made the mistakes that you made at your age. If you rob your child of the opportunity to make those mistakes, then the child loses the strength of becoming. Does that make sense? If you see a child and the child is struggling socially, it's okay to go over to the child and give advice. There's nothing wrong with giving a piece of advice. But if you say to the child, "I'm no longer letting you hang out with that person" What if you rob them of the opportunity to be able to recognize when somebody's a good friend and when somebody's not a good friend? There's there's an important growth oriented opportunity that exists within that. I don't want to be that person anymore. It's difficult because as a parent you have to watch your kid make all the mistakes. But as they make the mistakes, they're in the process of learning. Why do we as parents not want our children to learn?

20:02 Because there's vulnerability in learning. What happens if they make one too many mistakes? What happens if they make a mistake they can't walk back from? So we, as parents Even though we know the right thing is for our children to be in the process of becoming, we're afraid of that process because what happens if? And then it's like You'll see the mother will say to the father, "You're like, she keeps doing this. She's not going to get a shidduch because she's getting this reputation." So you have this conflict that you, as a parent, live with. On the one hand, the child is entitled to make the mistakes they're making; it's a part of the process of becoming. On the other hand, the child doesn't necessarily know the consequences of their actions. As a parent, you want to say, "Just stop it." But does that ever work?

20:52 Does it ever? Has, in the history of the world, a parent ever said to a child who's misbehaving, "Just stop it," and the kid goes? I should probably stop it. There was a reason the kid was behaving that way to begin with. For Yaakov Venu to tell us where to go In a certain way, it interrupts our process of learning how to go. As I'll give you an example of this, going back to the Marshall of Ways. What did people do before ways? They developed a sense of direction. How many of us have a sense of direction? How many of us never needed to even develop a sense of direction because I just have ways? Why would it? It's like Lamashel today. There's a serious conversation going on in the world right now. Should we teach kids spelling? It's a real question. Because why should I teach you spelling if you're only going to use a computer and it's going to use spell check anyway?

21:51 The answer, by the way, is because the brain develops. In case anyone ever asks you the question, the brain develops by learning how to spell. Robbing the kids of the opportunity to learn how to spell just because they're using spellcheck actually minimizes our capacity to think. But if you never develop a sense of direction, it's not that you won't be able to go anywhere. You still have ways. But you, as a person, are chasser. If Yaakov Avinu tells them this is the destination, how will we ever learn to find the destination on our own? Think about going back in your life. Think about the times you did something new. Think about the first time you went to camp, sleepaway camp. How did you learn to survive in sleepaway camp? Of course, there was structure within the sleepaway camp, but that first night, did you have a night where you cried but didn't want anyone to know you were crying?

22:39 You have that. That was nice. By the way, thank you to the 80 percent of you that gave yourself away right now. I really appreciate it. That first night where you're like, I don't know if I could do this. How did you learn to do it by not knowing if you could do it? And then, what did you learn about yourself? I could do hard things. So on the one hand, it's very easy to tell somebody where the destination is. But if you tell them where the destination is, they never learn how to arrive at a destination on their own. So you have to ask yourself: When that girl is in day one of seminary and she wants to go to the Tachanim Rikazi, there's nothing wrong with telling her how to get to the Tachanim Rikazi. It's a beautiful plan A. But if the goal of that conversation is not to tell her how to get to the Tachanim Rikazi, the goal of the conversation might be to help you become a person who learns to get around.

23:28 If you tell her how to get to the Tachanim Merkazit, what did you lose? She has no idea now how to get around. You might have gotten her to her destination, but that wasn't the goal of the conversation. So in Plan A, if you unpack this, it's an unbelievable thing. In Plan A, what was Yaakov saying? He was saying the goal is to get Klal Yisrael from point A to point B. What's Hakadosh Baruch Hu saying to him? The goal is not. For Klal Yisrael to get from point A to point B, what's the goal? The goal is for Kli Yisrael to learn how to get from point A to point B. So you ask yourself, why is that? Why is it important for Hakadosh Baruch Hu to say to us that becoming is as important, if not more important, than the destination? So I'll explain it like this. I think this is the best way of explaining it.

24:23 Is there a relationship? Is there a destination? If you're married So what? What are we looking at here? Is the goal of a relationship that in fifty years' time this is where we should be? There's no such concept. What's the concept in a relationship? I don't know where we're going to be in fifty years. But I want to be with you in 50 years, wherever the destination is. Do you hear the difference? If Hakadosh Baruch Hu tells us to go here, then it's not just that we're okay. You've been robbed of becoming together with Hakadosh Baruch Hu in this process. Nobody wants to be in a marriage where everything is like we do this and then we do this, even though it seems that life is structured like that. You always have that guy who's like on a plan. You know I'm talking about. You know the plan.

25:22 You go to DRS for high school, then you go to NCSY Kollel summer after tenth grade, then you go to Kaylee summer after eleventh grade, then you go to this yeshiva in Eretz Yisrael, then you go to YU, and you go to Sim School of Business, so you could become an accountant, so you could live in Woodmere, so that you could send your kids to DRS, NCSY Kollel after tenth grade, Kaylee after eleventh grade, and they could go to a certain yeshiva in Eretz Yisrael until they go to Sim School of Business and become an accountant, and raise their kids in Woodmere. You know the plan I'm talking about. Everyone has a version of that plan. That's just one. Everyone has a different version of that plan. There's something not exciting about being on a plan. What's exciting about being in a relationship? The excitement of being in a relationship is that I have no idea where we're going. The twists and turns of life are fascinating, especially if you're willing to suffer. If you're willing to suffer with each other, then the journey of the relationship is much more exciting than the destination. When you look at an elderly couple.

26:14 And they're fifty years out. What have they been through together? It's not where they've arrived. That's not the point. It's where they've been through together. The time that their kid woke up in the middle of the night and said, "My stomach is hurting," and it was appendicitis, and they rushed to the hospital, and they were in the hospital for two days. And I'm talking about all of that stuff. All of that, she's flunking out of high school, and she's failing her tests, and we need to get her a tutor. All of that stuff is building the relationship. The process of becoming with someone else in the relationship is more important than the destination. When Hakadosh Baruch Hu says Nesave Hakadosh Baruch Hu lios leis Barachdir betachtainim that Hakadosh Baruch Hu desires to have a dwelling place in the world down below with us, what does that mean? It just means that Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants there to be a certain type of dwelling place. If that was the case, Hakadosh Baruch Hu could have already built himself a dwelling place like that.

27:07 The idea is that Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants to build this dwelling place with us. If Yaakov Avinu says this is the formula, then we're robbed of the opportunity of going on the journey with Hashem to build the dwelling place. What does Hakadosh Baruch Hu expect from us? Failure is part of the process. What Yaakov Avinu is trying to do is rob us of the opportunity to fail. In Plan A, it's very beautiful. Yaakovinu is saying, "This is the destination. We're going to get to Mashiach. This is how you get there. This is what the end looks like." No, the end is not nearly as important as the process of learning how to arrive at an end that we end up at together. If you're going, it's like you know what it is. My family every summer went to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Every single summer went to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. There's some families that go somewhere else every single summer, and there's some families that only go to one place.

28:03 So my family is the type of family that we only go to one place. We went to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the year of Hurricane Bob. We arrived there on the day of the hurricane. We put our stuff down. The police came and evacuated us. We were on the beach. We were on a beach house on the beach. They evacuated us. We had no electricity for the entire week. And my parents said, "That's the place we're going for the rest of our lives." Every single summer we went back to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. There's nothing exciting. Again, Cape Cod is awesome. I loved it. It was amazing growing up. Chas v'shalom. I have tremendous hakar so tov to my parents. If my mother's listening to this recording, Mom, I love you. It was an amazing destination. But isn't there something very exciting about getting in a car and not knowing where you're going? Just where we're going. Where are you going to be? We'll see. If you're going with somebody that you care about, just stop here and see what there is.

28:54 So then, the process of the journey is more important than the journey, more important than the destination of the journey. So that's one bechinah. But then there is even a deeper dimension here, and this is what the pasuk means: that Yaakov Avinu blessed them each one according to their blessing. Sometimes we have to impute You know that word impute? Explain what it means in a moment. Sometimes you have to impute from yourself what your destination is. It's very vulnerable to do this. What does the word impute mean? Let's say, for example, anyone here, you don't have to raise your hands because I don't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable. If you have an iPhone. If you have an iPhone, thanks by the way. If you have an iPhone So you can right now impute the values of Apple from the iPhone. If you want to know what Apple believes in, just look at your iPhone and you'll know.

29:49 They always believe in two things: Apple products are easy to use and sleek in design. Other phones are a little bulky. They don't necessarily have rounded corners. They're not necessarily white. There's a certain sleekness to Apple, and Apple products are very easy to use. If you give an Apple product to a three-year-old, you'll see that they naturally start swiping. Steve Jobs had this guy that he worked with. His name was Johnny Ive. Johnny Ive was the designer of all the Apple products. I think he still works for Apple today. And their whole thing was they want it to be totally intuitive So you can look at a product and know something about the product just by looking at it. The truth of the matter is that we can and should be doing the same things about ourselves. But unfortunately, because that process is very vulnerable, many of us have been robbed from this. I'll explain what I mean.

30:42 If money was not an issue And you didn't care what anybody thought about you. What would you choose to do with your life? It's a very vulnerable question, especially for those of us that are on the plan. And every one of us knows exactly what the plan looks like. And I'm going to make fun of it just for a minute. Even if you're on this plan, it's nothing wrong with being on this plan. But if you are on the plan to become some sort of therapist I'm talking about speech therapist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, actual therapist. Hydrotherapist. That's just being a lifeguard. Art therapist, play therapist. That's just playing with children. If you're on the plan to become some sort of therapist Did you decide that because that's who you are, or did you say, "Well, I need to make a certain amount of money," and there's like an easy Maslow, and I can do some quick Sarrisner, Wurtzweiler, fake, like six month thing, and then I can slide my way into making one hundred fifty thousand dollars without really going to college? How did you decide that?

31:45 Do you know how many girls over the years have told me, "I think I'm going for social work." Why? I don't know. I guess I can. That's not like social work is a thing that you're going to do to spend your life with people. Do you like people? Yeah. It's like a terrible thing. And then you see people that have the courage to be themselves. These people don't have to say anything. They're inspiring in their essence. They're just inspiring people. What are you going to do? I think I just want to be a dancer. How are you going to monetize that? How can you do that in the sneeziest way? I don't figure it out. And there's something about them. I did this recently in one of the seminaries where I teach. I asked the girls. I said, "What would you be if you weren't afraid to become what you are?" And this one was like, I'd be an artist. And this one was like, this one. One of them said, I want to be a trapeze artist. And I was like, Good for you. It's an amazing thing to say. Will she ever do it? Because our community is so designed to squash any natural like

32:46 This is who I want to be, because it doesn't work within our community, because we set up a certain standard of well, you have to live like this, and therefore you have to make a quarter of a million dollars in order to be poor. In our community, so you need to. So everyone needs to be on that plan where they're becoming accountants. Even though this guy came to me recently, he said, "Rebbe, I really want to be a therapist. I love working with people." So I'm becoming an accountant. I was like, 'That's the opposite, right?' There's no more opposite than going from therapist to accountant. Maybe actuary would be the next, more opposite than that. So I said, 'Why are you doing that?' He goes, 'Because it's very risky to become a therapist.' So I said to him in the gentlest way. I said, 'It's also very risky to become an accountant, not because you won't make money, but because you might wake up twenty years from now and go, 'I could have helped people,' and not that you're not helping people by becoming an accountant. If your chunas an nefesh is to become, I just can't imagine it. But if your chunas an nefesh is to become an accountant, then there are many wonderful accountants. Then kolakavo to you. There's nothing wrong with being an accountant, but are you inspired to be an accountant?'

33:45 Most of us are not willing to look at the natural talents that we have, and then to figure out afterwards how I'm going to monetize them. If you would do that, you'd make a lot more money. Because everyone in this room has amazing levels of talent. But my father told me when I was a kid, and my father Baruch Hashem did well in business, and when he found that I was going into chinuch, he wasn't exactly happy because it's not like a path that you can support a family on. I said to him, Dad, this is what I love. So he said, "If you love it, then you'll figure it out." And then he said to me a line I'll never forget. This he said, "You have to make your avocation into your vocation." You have to make the thing that you love into your job. Afterwards, you're going to figure out how to make enough money off of it. But do the thing that you love. Be yourself. Look inside your soul and discover what it is about you. What's your talent? Something that you have to share with the world.

34:39 But we crush the individuality out of people." It's the craziest thing. So listen to what Yaakov Yenu did. This is absolute genius. Yaakov Yenu comes and he says, "My job is to structure Klal Yisrael for the future. Plan A. I'm going to tell you where we're headed." Hakadosh Baruch Hu says, "No, that's not good chinuch." You're going to rob us of the journey of becoming. So Yaakov Yenu says, "I have a really great Plan B." Each child is going to get called in, and I'm going to tell them. This is what I see inside of you. When I look at you, I see this And then they're going to look at themselves and go, "that's who I am." It's like Lamashel. Imagine you were given a bag, and you're like, "I don't know where I should go." So someone says, "Look inside of the bag," and you look inside of the bag, and it's all winter clothing. What do you know now? My destination is somewhere cold.

35:37 So where am I going? Somewhere cold. If somebody gave you all summer clothing, you would go somewhere else. If Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave you talents, what's your obligation? I know this sounds strange because up until now everyone's been on this path. If you have a talent and you don't use that talent, what are you really saying to God? You're saying I don't care that you gave me this talent. I have this thing that I need to do. How could you take this talent and crush it? There's a story that somebody became a baal tshuva and they wrote to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. He said, 'Now that I'm frum, can I still be an artist?' So the Lubavitcher Rebbe wrote back, 'If you're an artist, how could you stop?' If you're an artist, people. I had a guy in yeshiva come to me. He said, 'I'm an artist, but I don't know if I could make money that way.' I said, 'If you became an accountant, would you be happy?' He said, 'I'd be miserable.' I said, 'Can you stop being an artist?' He said, 'No way.' So I said, 'It's not a question. Then you are an artist. It's in your being. You are a dancer. You are a musician. Just figure out what to do with it.' There's a guy in yeshiva. I know many of you have seen some of his stuff. He was in yeshiva a couple years ago.

36:39 And he does music production. He's the guy that produced Ashira from Mordechai Shapiro. You know that song, Ashira, and he's producing another song with Mordechai Shapiro right now. And he's exceptionally talented. He went to college, and he said to me, 'Goes, it's funny. I'm in college, but I already have my career.' And it makes sense that he already has a career because that's his chunas anefesh. If you look at him, what do you love? I love music production. If I told that guy to become a dentist, what would happen to him? Can't become a dentist. That's what he is. He's music in his bones. Some people could be dentists. Some people love to be dentists. There's nothing wrong with being a dentist, but you have to have a passion for it. Hakadosh Baruch Hu gives you a talent. That is the destination. Every one of us has the capacity to bring Mashiach. But you know why we don't bring Mashiach? Because we're not being ourselves. We're not doing the thing that we're naturally supposed to be. There's a woman who used to live on my block. She moved off of my block.

37:35 And she was ridiculously talented. Off the charts, insanely talented. She's a balish tshuva. She went to NYU Tisch. You know what NYU Tisch is? Tisch not like a It's not like a Fabergé. NYU Tisch is the acting school in NYU. It's one of the top acting schools in the world, and you go from NYU Tisch straight to Broadway. This was a young woman who had an agent from the time she was twelve years old. She had one of the most prestigious internships in the country. If you're becoming an actress, one of the most prestigious internships is to work in Disney. Because all day long you're dressed up in character, interacting with people. And she was a Disney princess, an actual Disney princess. You know what I'm talking about, like Cinderella, like an actual Snow White, an actual Disney princess lived on our block. And she and we got close with her and her husband.

38:26 And now she has a ridiculously popular podcast on Spotify about marriage. And I asked her. I said, "How does that work? What was it like to give up? You became from." And she said, "I'm not going to Broadway. I'm giving up on that dream." And how did you transition from Broadway to podcasting? Is that the same thing? And she said, "It's absolutely the same thing." She said, "When you're on Broadway, people think it's about the acting. What it really is about engaging with the audience. Any time you're on stage, you're interacting with the audience. I never thought about it that way because whenever I went to a show, I just felt like I was watching something. But the truth of the matter is that a great performer isn't just doing something." What are they doing? They're engaging the audience. They're interacting with the audience. So she said, 'I gave up on it because it wasn't halachic. It wasn't something that I could do within the Orthodox world.' She said, 'But I realized I have the talent to communicate.' So she became this life coach specializing in marriage, and she has this podcast. The reason the podcast is so good is because she's interacting with the audience through the podcast. And she said, when she looked inside of her own chunah sanefish, she said, 'I have the capacity to interact with people.'

39:38 " So the podcast is successful, but not because she happened to have a good idea. The podcast is successful because she looked inside of herself. She said, "What talents do I have, and how do I want to share that with the world? Mashiach is not a destination like we're going. Certainly, there's a destination of Eretz Yisrael, but it's not. It's not so simple. I'm in Muncie, I have to get to Eretz Yisrael. If that's the case, just get on a plane. Mashiach is a destination within ourselves. Mashiach, in a certain sense, redemption means that each one of us is actualizing what's inside of ourselves, and we're becoming the ultimate expression of ourselves. Do you notice that that's what's happening in the world today? It's not an accident that right now in the secular world, everyone is talking about self-actualization in the field of psychology. Do you think they were talking about self-actualization 100 years ago? 100 years ago, they were trying to survive. 100 years ago, they were thinking communism, socialism, democracy. It wasn't about the self. It wasn't about the process of becoming. There's a reason that the world is unfolding the way it's unfolding. The process of Mashiach is about finally actualizing the self that we have, which is why it's so incredibly tragic that right now in our community we're doing the exact opposite of this.

40:56 Rather than celebrating people's talents, we're telling people what box they should fit in. That's a crazy thing to do because you're literally cutting off people's legs. That's not a way to reach Mashiach. Yaakov Avinu says I'm not going to tell them the destination. Plan A was that. Plan B is much better. I'm going to tell them who they are. I'm going to say this is the bracha that you could one day be. I'll finish with this. I had two friends growing up. I won't tell you their names. It doesn't matter. Two friends growing up, both amazing people. Both had very low self esteem. For a particular reason. Both of them had very low self esteem. And they were both very close with my father. My father, Baruch Hashem, took in a lot of kids in the neighborhood when we were little, and they would hang out of my house.

41:50 And my father would tell both of them, "You guys could be anything you want to be, as long as you believe in yourself to become that." And he would say, 'I see that you could be a hard worker, and I see that you have a certain talent.' Both of these guys were not blessed with intellectual talent that worked well in school. Both of these guys couldn't pass a test to save their life. In fact, an old friend of mine recently reminded me. We got together. He came to Eretz Yisrael, a friend of mine from high school. He said, "Do you remember that the school promised us an ice cream party any time this kid passed a test?" I was like, "Oh yeah, I forgot about that. He's like, 'Do you remember that we only had three ice cream parties in four years of high school?' I was like, "Right, that's why I forgot about it." I remember we had Carvel flying saucers. I was like, he mamish could not pass a test to save his life. That guy is the wealthiest guy in my grade.

42:42 By far the wealthiest guy in my grade. In fact, I was trying to get together with him this Friday because I wanted to go say hello to him. He's one of my oldest friends. He was so busy. He's like, I think I'm going to get home five minutes before Shabbos, maybe Sunday. He's so busy because he's so successful. And he really should know. He's a Talmud Muvok of my father. My father's not a rebbe. My father was a businessman, but he mamish. My father believed in him, and he believed my father, and my father set him up with a business plan. Baruch Hashem, he's tremendously matsliach. My other friend didn't have that at all. My other friend never really listened to my dad, and he never really believed in himself. He never really felt that he had anything to offer, because that's what was told to him his entire chenach career. You're the kid. These two guys were put in a class that was put in the basement of the school. They combined the eleven C and twelve C. You ever see when they do that? They take the bottom kids from two grades.

43:33 And they give them the most patient Rebbe, and they literally put them in the basement. The kids themselves used to say, 'We would ask them, 'How's class going?' They go, 'You mean the padded room?' That's what they referred to their class as. And you know why they had to go to the padded room? Because originally they were put in the science lab, because the science lab is not an actual class where there are chairs and desks and it's like a lab. And that was a terrible idea because the last people that should spend three hours in a science lab are the eleven and twelve year olds together. These guys were playing with the Bunsen burners, turning on the fire, turning on the gas. Eventually, they had to go downstairs to the basement. When one of them realized, do they still have like those foot long rulers in school? Did you have that growing up? So one of these guys realized, hey, we have long metal rods, and we have the rubber hoses that attach themselves to like the gas. So he made a bow, and he took the long foot-long ruler.

44:29 And he made an arrow, and he shot it through the window. And there was a huge crash, and the principal came running in, and he looks at the guy and he goes, "Shimon, not again." And that was the last day in the lab. Then they moved down to the basement, and the kids referred to it as the padded room. So one of these guys was a talmud of my father. He never considered himself a padded room guy. He always knew that he was destined for greatness. Unfortunately, the other guy—he drank the Kool-Aid, and he said, "I'm a padded room guy." And basically, he avoided life. He did every single substance that a person could do to diminish the pain that he had from basically knowing that he was a nothing. And he went through Gehenna for many, many years. One of my oldest friends—we all grew up on the same block. We were all one year old, living on the same block. These were some of my closest friends.

45:17 It took—I don't want to exaggerate—it took. I want to say maybe fourteen years for this guy to realize that he was good. Fourteen years from the time that he was eighteen years old. He got married. He went through Gehenna. He went through Mamish Gehenna. He went off the derech completely, and then something happened in his life, and he hit rock bottom, and he rebuilt his life. He was robbed of so many years of his life of being told you're a garnished. There was a famous actor whose name was Zero Mustel. His stage name was Zero Mustel. He actually grew up as a Chasid of Shiyed. His name was Chaim Shmuel Mustel. You know why he took the name Zero? Because when he was growing up, he had Rebbeim who said, 'Do best garnished. You're going to be a nothing.' So when he went to Hollywood and he was completely off the derech, he took the nickname Zero Mustel.

46:11 This guy, my friend, was told his whole life, "You're a padded room kid. You're a 12C kid. You don't belong with the rest of them." And he believed it. He drank the Kool-Aid and it destroyed him. A person has to know that every one of us are built for school. In fact, if you're successful in school, it's not at all an indicator that you're going to be successful in life. In fact, very often it's the opposite. You see, the kids that weren't successful at all in school—what's that famous joke? The A students are there to challenge the teachers. The B students are there to challenge the A students. The C students are there to pay tuition, and the D students are one of the ones whose names are on the school. After all those years, that's the one who makes it. There's a reason for that. It's because these kids have so much inside of them. They're not necessarily designed to sit still. I have a daughter like this. For those of you that remember, I have a daughter like this, and she's amazing. She's in the middle of eleventh grade, and we've had a countdown going for the last six or seven years. I tell her all the time, you've only got a year and a half left until you're free.

47:11 She could do another year and a half. And Baruch Hashem, she's making it, and she's great, and the school loves her. She does well on her tests, but she's not a kid who knows how to sit in one place for a certain amount of time. In fact, on one of her report cards This is ridiculous. She got a bad grade in home economics. And I'm like, how did you get a bad grade in home economics? I know you spend all day in the kitchen baking in school. She's like, yeah, but not when I'm supposed to be there. I was like, I only go to that class when I'm not supposed to be there. I was like, so in the time that you're supposed to be in home ec, you go elsewhere? She goes, right. I don't want to be where I'm supposed to be. I'm like, of course you do, and she's going to be great. She's going to be amazing. It's our job as parents to tell her. This is not your tounas anefesh. She said to me in the beginning of the war. My other kids are like from serious kids. Very boxy, very like. The war breaks out, and they're all sitting there and saying talem.

48:02 And this one says to me, she goes, "Abba, I'm not good at saying talem." I said, "What are you good at?" She's like, "I'm good at baking." She has not stopped baking for the soldiers. Bolei guzma. She must have made. I'm paying a fortune for it. I don't mind. But she must have made Five hundred cakes since the beginning of the war. Maybe it's a thousand. She's baking all day long. And it's amazing to see because that's her talent. She's coming alive. That's her redemptive moment. That's her Mashiach. She's in the process of becoming herself. We have to stop telling kids the destination of what they're supposed to be and tell people to discover where you want to go. Look inside of yourself, and you'll figure it out. You don't need to become the thing that they tell you. In fact, it's very often the thing that they tell you that you don't need to become.

48:49 But there are certain—it's not people like. How am I going to make money? Use your talents. You'll be happy. Maybe I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't say this out loud. Maybe you'll do with a little less. Maybe you don't have to have the fanciest car. Maybe you don't have to have the biggest house. If you could trade right now, think to yourself: If you could trade right now, I'll have a hundred thousand dollars less. We'll be okay. We'll make it. We'll be able to pay tuition. We'll be able to pay for everything we need. We'll have a hundred thousand dollars less, but I'll get to do what I love. Or I could have a hundred thousand dollars more, and I could take great vacations, and I could have a much nicer car. But I'll have to do the thing that I'm not passionate about at all. Would you spend a hundred thousand dollars to spend your life doing the thing that you're passionate about? Of course you would. A hundred thousand dollars is chump change. It's chump change for happiness. We're spending our life making so much money to be able to take that vacation. That's ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense. Do the thing that you're passionate about.

49:42 Be a rapper, right? Whatever it is, right? I'm saying like whatever, whatever it is, you have that thing. If that's you, go be you. I'm sorry for the rant. I'm so tired of doing this. This is Yaakov Avinu at the end of his life. At the end of our lives, there's a wisdom. Every one of us gets a wisdom at the end of our lives. The wisdom at the end of our lives is What would I look back and tell myself if I could go back in time fifty years? What would I tell myself? I want you to know that if I could go back in time and tell my eighteen-year-old self one thing, it would be this: stop trying to impress other people and just be who you are. Radical levels of self-acceptance. That's how you bring Mashiach. That's the message that we need to share for ourselves, and that's the message that we need to share with our children. Does that make sense? We'll stop here. Have a good day.