Vayechi - We Are Not Our Lowest Moments

3:00 There's a textual problem that I want to highlight before we get to the punchline here. It says, if you look carefully, Vayevarchem bayomahu lemor bechayevarich Yisroel. Who's the bechar referring to? With you. Yisrael shall be blessed. If it was referring to Ephraim and Menashe, what should it have said? Textually, girls, correct. Either b'chem or b'hem. If it's speaking about Ephraim and Menashe But b'chayevarich Yisrael doesn't make any sense over here. The bracha is going to Ephraim Menashe, and yet it's with you. So that's one textual problem that we have. There's another one earlier in the story. It says, "Ve'enay Yisrael kavdu mizoken lo yucha lirus." Yisrael, meaning Yaakov Yisus' eyes, they were very heavy with age. And he was not able to see well. Vaya geisho some elov Vayishak l'hem, vayichabek l'hem. And how would you translate those words? Vayishak l'hem. What do those words mean?

4:23 And he kissed them. Who said to them? Does that make sense? It doesn't. It's not. It's not what you would say, right? You don't kiss them. You. It should have said vayishak osam Vayichabek osam. It's the Aruch HaYam's kasha. So just to sum up very quickly, the kashes that we have. First of all, what's this whole Indian back and forth at Friday Menasha The brachos right hand left hand. Second of all, what is this idea of b'chayevarich Yisrael? And lastly, why does it say "VaYishak Lahem"? He kissed them. It's a beautiful Dega Machaneh Ephraim. Dega Machaneh Ephraim says as follows. It's very relevant to us, especially in our times. But before I get to the Dega Machaneh Ephraim, I want to give it by way of introduction. Sometimes I'm talking to a person. And there are words that I want to say to them. And then shortly afterwards I'll see a dvar Torah on the parasha, and I'll wish to myself that I knew that dvar Torah. If only I would have known that dvar Torah yesterday, I would have told it to that person.

5:41 So this idea that I'm going to share with you, this legamachan Ephraim. I don't know if this person that I was speaking to will ever hear the recording. But I hope she does. I hope she does because it's really for her. I'm speaking to all of you because we all go through this, but I'm really speaking to her. This amazing young woman. She's treating herself without a lot of kindness and compassion right now. She's pretty frustrated with herself. And she said to me just yesterday. I'm so duplicitous. I'm such a faker. I'm such a liar. I feel like I'm two completely different people. On the one hand I'm this from Stark Steiging growth-oriented person who only wants to do good things. But then I have this other part of myself that I can't deny. This part of myself that wants to do some really bad things That wants to do things that are inappropriate That wants to do things that ultimately I wouldn't be proud of.

6:52 And she puts herself sometimes in positions where she comes close to doing those bad things. Baruch Hashem, she's a very, very strong-willed person and she doesn't do those things. But she puts herself in a place like that And she thinks she's unusual. She thinks nobody in the world is like that. I'm the only one in the world that's duplicitous. I'm the only one in the world that does like two things. If you looked at me on the outside, you would say Such a stark from good girl, even a role model. I imagine that if she was here in Toma Devora, probably many of you girls would look to her and you would say, "If only I could be like her." And that is a very real part of her. And there's this other part This other part Demons that we all carry inside of us. We're familiar with this concept.

7:44 We feel everybody in this room, and we don't have to say it out loud. We know it's true. Unfortunately, this girl thinks she's the only one in the world. But everybody in this room knows that we're all on some level bifurcated human beings. We're a little bit duplicitous. We have parts of ourselves that Baruch Hashem do great. But isn't it true that there are parts of ourselves that we're not so proud of? We don't have that. And we come to seminary and we think like at the end of this year or years So then I should be totally good. I should have no desire to do anything else. The Shabbat girls will tell you that that's not a reasonable expectation. Why is that? It's because of the way we're created. Most of us don't understand this. We think to ourselves that really we're one person.

8:36 And we have a yitzchahara and we have a yitzchatof. Isn't that the way we grow up? I have a yitzchahara. I have a yitzchatof. And so sometimes you wake up in the morning and you're on fire. You're like, that's it. I'm going to go daven, and your momish davening to Hashem, and it's beautiful and it's awesome. And those we call them Yechatov days. But then we have Yitzhakara days. Maybe I walked out of a shmuuz and I was so inspired, and then an hour later I found myself in a funny place doing a funny thing. I once had a girl who said to me. Your class makes me feel worse about myself. I said, "It's not generally what I try to do." So I said, "Why?" She said, "Because in the middle, while you're speaking, I feel like I'm never going to do this again." And then that night, I do. So I feel like I'm the worst person in the world. There was one thing: if I never had any inspiration to stop So then besether. But I have all this inspiration. I'm makabla myself. And an hour later, I find myself in a funny place in a shuk somewhere. If you know what I'm saying, yeah.

9:43 So it makes her feel worse about herself And we don't understand that we're not duplicitous creatures. We're not schizophrenic. We have both what Tanya describes as a nefesh abahamis and the nefesh luchas. It means that we're not one person with a yitzhahara and a yitzrtov. It means that every human being is two people. There's a part of us that's a nefesh abahamis. To be a nefesh abahamis means that we have an animal part of ourselves. A part of ourselves that wants to survive, a part of ourselves that doesn't necessarily even want bad things, but will do whatever we need to do in order to ensure our survival. And then there's this godly part of ourselves And the godly part of ourselves, Baruch Hashem, is amazing. The godly part of ourselves wants to transcend and reach Hakadosh Baruch Hu, to have meaning, purpose and profundity in our lives.

10:38 And so we're these two people. We're actually two people. Says that the Egal Machen Ephraim. These two parts of our lives. That's Menashe and Ephraim. Menashe means forgetfulness. That's what the word means. When Yosef HaTzaddik had Menashe, he said I'm naming this child Menashe because now I forget all the troubles that I've had in my life. All the troubles that I had in the house of my father. All the toil that I went through here in Eretz Yisrael. It's the part of ourselves that we want to forget. All the pain, all the tsaros, all the part of ourselves that we're not proud of. And most of us We define ourselves by what we call these Menasha moments. That if you ask a person in this room. And this is a terrible, terrible, terrible tragedy. If you ask a person in this room Tell me what it really means to know yourself?

11:48 You would probably take out a piece of paper And you would write on the piece of paper, Lookerberg. See how well I know myself, and you would list all of your bad midos. And you would list all of the averas that you've done And they would be comprehensive. And who you did them with, and where you were, and how old you were, and how they defined you in those moments. And how the person you are today is built on the worst moments of your life. That's what most of us alenu think it means to know ourselves. Of course, it's not true. Most of the time, most of us are doing wonderful and beautiful things. But we highlight the things that we don't do or the things that we do wrong. I'll share with you a very beautiful story. This year, before Rosh Hashanah, before Yom Kippur.

12:38 My five and a half year old little son, Machal. He was talking about tshuva because the girls were talking about tshuva and everyone's talking about tshuva so he overhears this word tshuva and he wants to know a little bit more about what it means and he says, "Abba, can I do tshuva?" So I said, "Machal, everybody could do tshuva, but What do you mean? What do you mean like what would you want to do tshuva for? Like You're five and a half and you're a very good boy. He's like a smartphone without me knowing. He's a little boy. Thank you for that laugh. I thought it was a good joke too, but sometimes it lands and sometimes it doesn't. I'm enough for myself. I can handle the load. So he said to me, "I don't," but I didn't daven all summer. So I said, "Machal," but you don't daven. You're five and a half.

13:35 So he goes. But in cheder I daven And I didn't know that he was feeling badly about himself. We don't know. Little children are very complex. And it broke my heart a little bit because I was like, he already has a world view of what I'm supposed to be doing. This is what it means to live on this level all the time, and if I don't do that, then what's going to be with me? Lo alenu, is it already over? And so as a sweet little five and a half year old boy, he's already asking me, can I do tshuva? Is it possible for me to be a chapper? Of the terrible avera of a five and a half year old who didn't daven in the summer. Halavah, he should speak to some of the teenagers. There's no need to expand on that. We all know. These are the times we want to forget.

14:29 These are the times that we want to ignore. These are the times of just like I just want to be done with it. Don't we have that in our lives? The pain. You ever want to hit the delete button on the pain of your life? I don't want to go back there. I don't want to revisit it. I don't want to feel those feelings anymore. I don't want to be in that place ever again. I want to be able to just press delete, rewind, pretend it never happened. Why do I have to go back and do inner child work? Why can't I just like It is what it is, and move on. Is a bechiner of Menasha to them. If I could just go back to that one moment and take that 16 year old girl that lives inside of me and grab her and go, please don't do this because you're going to be living with that avera forever. I just want to press delete on that moment.

15:22 And then there's an Efrayim moment. Efrayim comes from lashon of pri. Fruit to be fruitful. Efrayim was so named by Yosef HaTzaddik because he also built a family in Mitzrayim. In Mitzrayim, Yosef also rose to power. In Mitzrayim, Yosef HaTzaddik set in motion the capacity, ultimately for Matan Torah. To come down into Mitzrayim and to retrieve the Asaros, the Asarim Amoros, the ten utterances that had been destroyed during the flood of Noah. And that fell to Mitzrayim, and Klal Yisrael needed to come to Mitzrayim to retrieve those ten utterances. And it was only through the ten makos that those ten utterances were revealed and ultimately became the asar es hadibros, which was the rebuilding of those ten utterances. And so Yosef Atzadik's approach to Mitsrayim almost has this completely dual nature. On the one hand, Rebbeinu Shlom, I'm done with that tzar But on the other hand I've become amazing in Mitsrayim.

16:31 I've become. I've become fruitful. I've grown. I've expanded. And so now Menashe and Ephraim are about to get their bracha, and Yaakov Vinu takes his strong hand and puts it on Ephraim. Yosef HaTzaddik is very bothered by this, and he tries to pick up his father's hand to move the hands because they shouldn't be asymmetrical. They shouldn't be like this. They should be like this. Va'imayin, and Yaakov refuses. The word va'imayin here is a very important word. It's used very sparingly in all of Chumash. Where else do we see the word va'imayin? Va'imayin that Yaakov Avinu refused to be consoled when he heard that Yosef Hatzadik was killed And va'imayin that Yosef Hatzadik held himself back from doing the avera with Eshtus Potifar. Now we hear another va'imayin. Va'yimayin that Yaakov Avinu refuses to move his hands, and he wants his hands to be like this.

17:41 Why? What's the connection between these three va'yimayins? There's a terrible secret that most of us don't know, but we have to learn it very well. That's exactly what happened to us in our lives. That's exactly what was supposed to happen. And if it should have happened differently, then it would have happened differently. And that the pain, the tragedy, the loss, the suffering. The moments that we're least proud of in our lives Those moments were absolutely necessary. And we could not become the people that we became without those moments. That's the reality. I was talking to a young man today. Baruch Hashem, an amazing person, a growth-oriented person A Talmud that I really admire, and he's older now And he's holding on to certain resentments. Resentment is like drinking poison water and hoping the other person dies. And he's holding on to resentment. And anybody who knows him knows that he is mamish, dying from the resentment that he's holding on to. And he needs to let go of the resentment.

18:46 It's impacting so many different relationships in his life. And he said, Rebbe, how do I let go of this resentment that I feel? That I didn't get the childhood that I wanted, and that I didn't get this that I wanted, I didn't get that I wanted, and I did this in my life, and that in my life, and all these different resentments that he's holding on to. And I said, "Tell me, if you could go back and rewind" Would you press delete? So he said, "What do you mean, Rebbe?" I said, "Would you press delete, finish?" Would you delete these moments of your life? If you get rid of them, you get rid of the resentment because the moments never happened. You wouldn't have these parents, you wouldn't have these siblings, you wouldn't have gone to this school, you wouldn't have had this friend or that friend, you wouldn't have done this bad thing. We could press delete on the whole thing right now. Would you press delete? He said, "No, I wouldn't press the lead." I said, "Why?" Because that's how you became you. We don't press the lead on our lives.

19:34 Vayimayin is a refusal from Yaakov Avinu, just like Yaakov Avinu refused to give up hope on Yosef HaTzaddik And just like Yosef HaTzaddik refused to give up hope in himself Yaakov Avinu refuses to give up hope in this Efraim Menashe condition in which we all live. He says, 'You, Yosef HaTzaddik, are saying, "Put my right hand, put my stronger hand, on the Menasha times.' Give the bracha to the person who's suffering. Give the bracha to the person who's done all these terrible avarias. Give the bracha to that one. Tati, isn't that the one that needs your bracha? And Yaakov Venu is saying to him, Yosef HaTzaddik, it's wrong. It's wrong to define yourself that way. You're not Menasha. You're much more Ephraim than you are Menashe. Don't define yourself by the few averes that you've done. Most of us blow it up. We say, 'What do you mean, Rabbi? I'm the biggest Russia in the world.' You're not a Russia. Most of the time, you do wonderful things. Most of the time, you're not a bad person. We're not walking around doing idolatry. How many of you did idolatry today? Baruch Hashem, nobody in Talmud Devora is over idolatry today. How many of you murdered today? You murdered? Today was a terrible day. It was murder here in Talmud Devora. There was no murder. There was no idolatry.

20:51 Most of the time, we're walking around. We're learning Torah. Most of the time, we're doing wonderful things. But we in our brains, we make it. I'm a Menasha. Save me because I'm a Menasha. Give me the bracha because I'm a Menasha. You're not a Menasha, says the Dachamachan Ephraim. Menasha will also get a bracha But with the left hand With the weaker hand, because it doesn't define you. Because a person is not defined by their lowest moments. And Halavai, we should know this about ourselves. That person says, "Rav Berg, you're not holding us accountable." You should give us a stark muster shmuz, a good litvish muster shmuz. We should walk out of here saying, 'This is a terrible thing, and I'm never going to do it again because I know that if I do it, I'm a terrible person.' And chas v'shalom for a person to think that Because if you chas v'shalom take in the hashkafa that you are defined by your worst moments and you see yourself as a sewer, then you're going to treat yourself like a sewer.

21:45 If you want to roll around in the mud, don't complain that you got dirty. If you want to sit there and say, chatosi, avisi, pashati, I'm the worst Jew in the world, kol kavod, you're welcome to do so. But then, when you feel like a piece of garbage and you treat yourself like a piece of garbage, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of life that you're terrible, terrible people, just know it will have come from the inner dialogue of Amrasha Merusha, and it's not true, says the Degamach and Ephraim. The strong hand is Ephraim. The strong hand is Ephraim. The right hand goes to Ephraim. That's who you really are. Sometimes you have Menasha aspects in your life. And look what he says. Look at the pasuk, the unbelievable pasuk. I want to read it inside. I want to get it 100% right. Look what he says. Yadati beni adati. I know my son.

22:33 I know your pain. Vula amachav akatan yigdomi men. But the truth of the matter is that the younger one, meaning Ephraim, will be greater. What does it mean will be greater? It doesn't mean he'll be greater than Menashe. It means yigdal mimenu that these menasha moments of your life, these low moments of your life, it's how you shtaig, it's how you grow, rather than have resentment, rather than feel this terrible sense of shame because I did these things, I'm no longer worthy of love and connection. Rather than do that, you should know yigdal mimenu. You dafka become great from these moments. But Rebbe, you don't understand. This moment was the worst moment of my life. You understand? I'm going to carry this one around forever. This is a mark of Cain. This is something you don't get rid of. It's not true. You don't matter. You grow from these moments. That's what's real.

23:25 Listen what the Aruch HaYam Hakadosh says. Vayishak lehem, vayichabek lehem. Yaakov vino kisses them. He hugs them. Tefrayim Menashe. What's the lashon of to them? Listen carefully. He says it's because his eyes had grown weak because he was old. You know when you see clearly You see, you come home and I come home and I see my son when I see my daughter, the little kids. I can hug them. I can kiss them because I'm not groping around for them; I don't just see them as shapes. And when you get elderly and your eyesight starts to dim You have to like pretend you can see So you grope around. Like to not like hug them, but to like hug them To reach for them. Listen how the Degel Machaneh Ephraim explains the Aruch HaYam Hakadosh. It's gorgeous. There's a time in our lives where we're reaching, where we're searching, where we're yearning to connect, but our eyesight is dim, and so we're trying. We're groping around to find the goodness in our lives. We're groping around to find not only the Ephraim but also the Menashe. We're groping around not to define ourselves by our worst moments.

24:44 This is the avodah—what it means to be a parent today. That in these final moments before Mashiach comes When children are alone and suffering so much When there are averas that are so—it's nobody's fault. We didn't grow up in the times of the Remban. The challenge today of technology in the history of the world, we've never had a challenge like this, where you could carry around all the information in the world on a device this big in your pocket, with all of With all of the terribleness that comes with that And the wonderful opportunities. And then a kid messes up and makes a mistake. Goes on an app, goes on a TikTok, goes on a Snapchat, slides into somebody's DMs. Whatever crazy things a person did. I know all the language. I'm very relevant. It's nobody's fault. A guy told me he goes on YouTube Shorts sometimes for two, three hours in a row.

26:01 Just sitting there, swiping. It's not wasteful. He's in a massive amount of pain, and it's a coping mechanism. And it's anonymous, and it's accessible. And it's free. He's a tzaddik. He's an amazing kid. He's in a terrible amount of pain. And we tell these kids, "You're a Menasha." You're the part of me that I want to forget. Kids today, more than ever before, need parents who remind them that they're in a fryum. And they need to draw the Ephraim part close. And every time that we do anything, we should pull these kids close, and we should say, 'You are incredible.' And it doesn't mean that we don't set boundaries. Of course we do. Of course we do. But it's always been that the right hand has to be stronger. It's always been that we pull somebody close with the right. Did Rivkeve Eger have the nisyonas of our generation? Did the Rambam have the nisyonas of our generation? Did the Ramban have the nisyonas of our generation?

26:59 The fact that there are Not only tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands of boys learning in yeshiva. Is that not incredible? It's incredible. And for those boys that are suffering, that are having a hard time finding their way in yeshiva, are these boys also not incredible? Even though they're within the system and their yeshiva is working with them on their level, are those boys also not incredible? Of course they're incredible. The fact that they haven't given up on themselves yet, even though everybody keeps telling them that they're the worst generation. You're the worst generation. You read the Sadoros. Every father who's in his 40s and 50s forgot that his generation was also the worst generation, and his Rebbeim also used to tell him, 'You read the Sadoros.' Since when are we all the worst? What type of message is that? What type of thing is that to tell a child? It's a horrific message. It's a terrible chinuch message.

27:49 And many people feel concerned today. And they feel unprepared to handle the challenges of parenting. Maybe you'll say to me, Rebberg, why are you talking to us about this? We're eighteen and nineteen years old. You're only supposed to be talking to us about dating. You're not supposed to be talking to us about parenting. But the emissary is that I'm sitting in a room, best Hashem, of the future mothers of Klal Yisrael. And maybe you'll say I'm overwhelmed by the challenge. And maybe you'll say, 'I myself already don't know how I would parent kids in this generation. Let alone what's going to be in ten, twenty years. We can't possibly imagine the nisyonos of ten, twenty years.' If you would have told me in the mid '90s that these would be the challenges of today's generation, I never in a million years would have believed you.

28:36 We don't have to get into it. We all know the nisyonos of our generation and what's coming. We can't possibly imagine. Maybe you'll say to yourself, 'Rebbe, I feel unprepared.' Listen to these words. We mentioned before. That it says, "B'chay Yevarech Yisrael" With you, not B'chem, not a Frayim Menashe. With you, who's the you referring to? Mevar Agayin of Yosef Salant. Say Chetzadik Lebracha. Listen how Yosef Salant answered this question. A simple Jew might think to himself, "What in the world does the bracha of? Give me children like Ephraim and Manasseh. How in the world am I going to have children like Ephraim and Manasseh? Who's the bcha here? Who's Yaakov Avinu referring to? It's not referring to Ephraim and Manasseh. If it was referring to Ephraim and Manasseh, it would have said b'chem. It's referring to you, Yosef, a tzaddik. Yosef, Egiel Mitzrayim. Yosef, you were the one in Mitzrayim.

29:46 Twenty-two years you were in jail. The kaidem ha'yav be'beis Potifar, and before that you were in the house of Potifar. Chai b'toch Tumas Erev Mitzrayim. You lived in the lowest place in the entire world, in the Erev of Mitzrayim. The sham gida v'chinech has banav bemakam hamekul kol b'yaser ba'ulam, and dafka in that place. You raised your children. You educated your children in that destructive place of Mitzrayim, the most destructive place in the entire world. And in that place, in the lowest level place in the world, you didn't just raise any children; you raised the Ephraim and you raised the Menashe. This is Yaakovinu saying to every single Jew Every mother in this room Without exception You too are able. Don't think to yourself, "Yeah, but I'm not a Yosef Hatadik. I'm on such a low level. I'm not going to be capable of raising good Jewish children. How could I?"

30:55 If you think the challenges of this generation are worse than the challenges that Yosef Hatadik faced in Mitzrayim, it means you don't understand what Mitzrayim is. Mitzrayim tells every one of us that no matter what challenges are coming in our generation, Yosef had tzaddik dealt with worse, and in that place he was able to raise an Ephraim and Menashe, and that means that we too are able to raise an Ephraim and Menashe. And goes, but if I don't live in Eretz Yisrael and I own, it doesn't matter where you are. You could be in the place that's the Yosef Mekulka Ba'ayilam. You could be in the worst possible place in the world, and it's possible to raise the mess, raise children like Ephraim and Menashe. The Zehu becha Yevorich Yisrael becha hakavan lo Yosef. That's why we see that many simple Jews—they were capable, they were matsliach, they were successful in educating their children, ba'ayin miyuchad in a very special way.

31:55 And that's why we see that sometimes these very simple Jews can raise these unbelievable children. What a chinuch message for us! Rather than going into the brave new world and being afraid. Rather than saying, "Oh, what's going to be? How am I possibly going to raise children like Ephraim and Menashe?" Rav Yisrof Solant is telling us just the opposite. It's not Mitzrayim, and Yisrof Etzadik went through Gehenna, and he was able to raise Ephraim and Menashe, and so can we. But we have to do like Yaakov Avinu tells us: stop telling children that they're Menashe Stop telling children that they're in trouble, that they need more help. They're fine. These kids are fine. They're amazing. Tell them that. Put your right hand on these kids and say, "Look at the Ephraim that's inside of you. Look at the Chesed that you have." I know some girls listen to Shirim from Rav Kalish.

32:49 What do you like about Rav Kalish's Shirim? The content is, of course, amazing, but that's not the part that excites me. What I like? Because you can almost see it. He's sitting in Waterbury. He's sitting in a room, and there's a bunch of boys in the room, and he's calling the boys out. He calls their names. Is new Avremela. I was so excited to come to yeshiva to see Avremela today. And everybody knows that Avremela is the biggest balcheset in yeshiva. And everybody knows this one's the biggest balruach. And everybody knows he's the most modest. All he's doing is momish looking at these boys and he's seeing they're afriim and he's letting them know you are an afriim. And it works. And there's no secret sauce. Everyone's writing these articles. What do we do with the kids today? Yaakov Avinu told us how to be a Yosef Atzamik. Just look at these kids and remind them that they're an Ephraim.

33:36 And stop focusing on all the negative. This technology and that technology. Before there was technology, there was communism. Before there was communism, there was Spinoza. This is not the first thing that we've ever had in the world that we say now we can't raise children. Could raise children, Baruch Hashem, you could raise wonderful children. Yosef HaTzaddik already taught us that. We have to remind these children that they're Ephraim's, that they're not Menashehs, and that they're Zayichah. They're worthy of our love. Not despite their misdeeds. But because dafka from those learning lessons, they're going to become great.