Vayeshev - Creating a Loving Space For Our Children

2:08 But then I realized that her title was much better So I actually prepared a brand new she'er because of the title. But it was a perfect title for this time. I want to start off just by saying that everything I'm about to say needs to be understood Not chassid shalom to be saying anything negative about any of our avos, only in a small way to draw a lesson for us. But if in some way I'm critical of the avos on too much of a level, please understand I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about us. I'm talking about the way that we run our families and the space that we create. It happens to be that the Torah gives us a good vehicle to have this conversation, so I am going to use it from the text. But obviously, it goes without saying that Yosef, the Shvatim, and Yaakov Avinu—they were all people that we can't possibly imagine who they are today.

2:59 You have to say that because it seems to be popular in the world today to make every villain in the Torah into a hero and every hero in the Torah into a villain. It's like if you read some articles today, Esav HaTzaddik and Yaakov Harasha. We don't want to say anything that. Goes connected to Torah, but I do think there's a lesson here to be learned for us. So I want to begin by fast forwarding to Parshas Miketz before we get back to our Parsha. Because there's a moment here in Parshas Miketz I think that's critical for us to understand the context of the story. We need to understand what was happening before this. The brothers have come down to Mitzrayim. They've been accused by Yosef HaTzaddik of being meraglim. And they're being told that they have to bring Binyamin down to the Mitzrayim, and they will be jailed until they bring Binyamin down to Mitzrayim. And the brothers, they are going to make sure that you are safe. They try to understand the root cause of what's happening. They try to take responsibility.

3:57 And taking responsibility doesn't mean asking why Hashem is doing this, because that's an unknown. And we don't play the theodicy game. It means looking inside of ourselves and saying. What did I do? How did I play a part in bringing this about? And it's a very beautiful thing the brothers do. It says, 'Vayomru ishalechav, aval Hashem emanachnu alachenu.' This is happening because of what we did to Yosef Hazadik. We're guilty of what we did to Yosef Hazadik. I would have expected at this point in the Torah that the brothers would say Because we threw him in the bar with intent to kill him, because we sold him down to Mitzrayim. It's not what the Torah says. The Torah says, 'Asherainu tsaras nafsho'—we saw how distressed he was to his soul. Beheschanu elena when he was crying out to us, veloshamano, and we never heard him.

4:46 Alkein bayelena atzarah hazayis And that's why all of this happened. It happened because Yosef was crying out to us, and we didn't hear his cries. And the obvious question is, when did Yosef cry out to them? Really, you go back, you look in the story, you'll never see it. It doesn't exist. Maybe you'll say to yourself, probably when Yosef was thrown in the bar, he cried out to his brothers, and probably at that point they turned away. I even believe that there is a midrash that says that, but it seems to me to be a little bit of a stretch of an answer because that's not like the type of thing that the Torah should allude to. The Torah tells us everything we need to know. If Yosef HaTzaddik is in the pit screaming for his life And the brothers turn a deaf ear to him. That's a critical part of the story.

5:36 So it would be difficult for me to believe that's what the pasuk is referring to, because the Torah would have said explicitly. So it must be that there's another time that Yosef Hatsadik was crying out to them, and the brothers didn't hear it. The question is, what is that time? So I want to try with a little bit of fresh eyes to take a look at the story of Yosef Hatsadik as it relates to the topic of building resilience and perseverance. It's a much better topic than the one that I had. If you look If you look in the beginning of this week's parsha, and we're going to go through line by line, asking a couple of questions here. There's a very strange beginning to the story. The Torah tells us that Yosef was seventeen years old. Hayaroh esech of batzon, and he was shepherding with his brothers Vuhunar, and he was a child.

6:25 Already Rashi picks up on the fact that what does it mean that Yosef Atadik was a child? It means that he was playing with his hair. It means that he was putting on makeups that he should accentuate the beauty of his eyes. But again, this seems to be the same question as before. That's a detail that doesn't really contribute to the story. Why do I need to know that Yosef was playing with his hair? Why do I need to know that he was accentuating the makeup on his eyes? It seems to be that this is an important part of the story. He was hanging out with Bnei Bila, Bnei Zebul, and Bnei Aviv, the wives of his father. The Yavi Yosef esti basam ralavim, and Yosef HaTzaddik is going back to Akavavinu and reporting evil things about his brothers. Whatever the evil things are, you can take a look in the Mefarshim what they were doing. Avramenachai, there's a shlo that says that it was really not Avramenachai that somehow through Sefer Yitsira they created their own animal.

7:16 But Yosef HaTzaddik, as a seventeen-year-old kid, is running back to his father and he's telling him all of the nasty things that his brothers are doing Including Yehuda. It would seem. And what's Yaakov's response? It says, "V'yisrael av es Yosef mekolbanov ki ben zekunim holo v'yasal oxanas pasim." And Yaakov loves Yosef more than any of his other children, and he makes her an oxanas pasim. We all know that there is nothing that drives us more crazy than when our children fight. There's nothing that drives a parent more crazy than when one child comes to a parent and says,"She just did this to me." My wife has a great line. I have one daughter in specific who's like this. She'll come and this when she was younger. She still doesn't now, but now she does it as a teenager, so it's not as obvious. But when she was little, she would come and be like, "She hurt me," and my wife would go "And what happened right before that?" Like just that, like very like, what happened right before she hurt you? Right? There's there's a complex story. Parents, especially dads If a kid comes to a mom, they probably moms are probably good at this, like creating space for the kid.

8:26 Help me understand what that was like, right? It's like every mother is like a quasi-therapist, right? I want to make a safe space for my children Right? That's not. And then the older mothers in the room like, I don't got no time for that. I'm done. That's. I've learned that word. Done is a big word in your section of the species. I'm done. It means done means I'm here, right? It's like and then the husbands come home and go, Why is she done? What has she done all day, right? You understand? I've been I've been watching very carefully. The kid comes to the dance, says he hurt me. He's like, "Do me a favor, just go deal with it yourself." Nobody wants to deal with that. Yaakov Avinu seems it's the juxtaposition. He's telling the Basimra. And Yaakov loves him more than any of the other kids, and he gives him a signless passim.

9:14 It's like the strangest parenting tactic of all time. It's not at all what we would expect, and it backfires. What happens? And they see that he's more beloved by the father, I think. But I don't know if that's true. And they hated him. Below Yehudah Bar Bshalom, and they couldn't speak to him nicely. So here they are. There, there's hatred in their heart. There's hatred in their mouths, and they're just they're roasting Yosef. They're roasting Yosef Etzadik. What comes next? Another very strange thing. Yosef halom, and they couldn't speak to. And Yosef HaTzaddik has a dream, and he shares it with his brothers, and they hate him. Now that's a strange thing, because what are dreams? Dreams are hopes and aspirations that we have for the future. Person has to be very careful when they share their dreams with somebody. Because if you share your dreams with somebody, and they just give you that slight little eyebrow raise, like really That's like a malik. It destroys your entire dream. You ever have something like that? I have a chaver of mine. It was my roommate when I was in Eretz Yisrael. Very, very special person. It could be that some of you, even if you don't know his name, you might know his work. His name is Doctor Jonathan Donath.

10:27 Doctor Jonathan Donath is the founder of Daily Giving. Daily Giving is for those of you who have seen it. It's you give a dollar a day. At Staka, he has close to eighteen thousand dollars a day at Staka right now. So when he had that idea, I was one of the first phone calls. He was so excited. He says, "What do you think of this?" It's going with you. I didn't think it was going to work. I thought it was gonna be like one of those ideas, you're gonna get a couple hundred people, and then it'll fizzle out. But I didn't want to be in a Malak Heights. I was like, John, that's an awesome idea. You're gonna change Kaliyso with this idea. I didn't know it was actually gonna work, but I didn't want to be that friend because when somebody comes to you vulnerably and shares with you their hopes, their dreams, their aspirations, their expectations for the future, the last thing that we want to do is raise an eyebrow. So here's Yosef Atadik, whose brothers already hate him, and he knows it because they're telling him, "We hate you."

11:13 And he says, "Guys, I had a dream." What did he think was going to happen? Why would he tell that to him? Especially if you look at the content of the dream. What's the content of the dream? I'm in the middle. You're all bowing down to me. This is not a great dream to share with these people. That's the type of thing. It's great that you think you're going to be the leader of everybody, but maybe a little quiet. Maybe don't share that one. Let's see how it plays out. Yosef Atzad goes full force ahead and he tells his brothers. What did he expect was going to happen? So now he tells his brothers the dreams. The next thing we see is that his brothers leave. His brothers leave, and they go to tend their sheep elsewhere. They go to Shechem. And then So what happens? Yaakov says to Yosef, "Go check on your brothers." Go bring me back word of how your brothers are doing. What is Yaakov doing? The brothers literally just left. He knows that they hate Yosef HaTzaddik. They're very obvious about it. They're very verbal about it. They were tending sheep with him. Now they're specifically left him behind. Why is he sending him to go bring word back from? He knows what he's sending him into. Why is he doing this?

12:30 And even stranger, there's a story here that's like out of nowhere and doesn't seem to add anything. He's on his way. Rashi tells us who the man is that found them. It's Malach Gavriel. So this Malach Gavriel says to Yosef, I think, "Okay, what are you looking for?" And he says, "I'm looking for my brothers. Tell me where they are." And he tells him they're in Datan. He goes to Datan. And they see him from a distance and they pass him for Misa. That's the whole story. That's how Yosef ends up in Mitzrayim. What did we need to know that Yosef Tzaddik had ways? Why do we need to know that somewhere along the line Yosef Tzaddik didn't know where his brothers were? But don't worry, the Malach Avriel pointed him in the right direction. Why is that an important detail of the story? We could say much more about this, but I'm going to stop here. There's a million more questions we could ask, but this is a good enough point to stop.

13:27 I want to share with you what I think is the idea that the Torah is trying to convey to us here. Again, not about Yosef Tzaddik and the Shvatim; they were tzaddikim like we can't understand, but for us. We have to understand that all of our children are playing charades. Every child that we have is in a game of charades with their parents. Because children don't necessarily have the emotional language to express what they're experiencing And the only way that children learn to express what they're actually experiencing is through the attachment to their families. There's a doctor. He's both a medical doctor and a psychologist. His name is Doctor Gabor Matei. Heard of Doctor Gabor Matei? He's phenomenal to listen to. I don't agree with everything he says, but a lot of his stuff is really brilliant. And one of the things he says is that people used to grow up in hunter-gatherer societies, and in hunter-gatherer societies, the family institution is at the core of everything.

14:31 So you grow up with your parents, your siblings, your aunts and uncles, your cousins, your cousins, your grandparents—if they would live long enough—you grow up in a community. You're not raised by a single parent, you know, or by your peers. You're raised by family. That's the way it should be. At my mother She grew up. Her family was very poor, and my grandmother's sister, who they were like best friends, they were also very poor. They shared a house. My mother grew up literally like with all of her cousins, and she had like multiple sets of parents and the grandparents also lived in the house. There's something very beautiful about that, about families that take vacations together. You know what I mean? There's like, my grandmother, Alay Hashalam. My grandmother would come on vacation with us, and my dad said, and my mom said, 'Okay, let's go.' And my father's an awesome guy. But like, you know, the other thing is like the dads like mutter under their breath like you know when like when the wives can't hear.

15:20 But the kids can. Grandmother was coming on vacation with us. There's something very beautiful about grandmothers that come on vacations. I'm sure it wasn't pleasant for my dad, but for the rest of us, we loved grandma. It was amazing, and there were always two or three times over the course of the vacation. I'd say, Grandma, could we get ice cream? And she'd say, Yeah, I think that's a good idea. And my mother would say, You're not paying for it. I give you all the money anyway. But it was like that type of environment. We're supposed to be raised by families. What happens when we're not? What happens when? And I think this is less true here in Israel, but it's definitely true in America, and it's also true here in Israel. What happens when we're working so much to support our family's physical needs that we're not able to be present for our children? Parenting is about living at the nexus of doing and being.

16:06 So you have to do because at the end of the day we have to provide for our families. But if we're not being for our kids, if we're not present, and I don't mean present physically, I mean actually present. If we're not creating a space in which our children feel like this is my home. Then what's the point of supporting this life if they don't have a life at all? And when our kids go off And our kids end up creating really strong peer attachments because they didn't get that attachment at home. So today we have this whole movement I need to make sure that my kids are only friends with the good kids. Because I'm terrified of what would happen if they're friends with the not such good kids. And the reason for that is because we're not so confident really in our own homes. That our children can negotiate, kids who maybe don't have exactly the same set of values

16:53 And so we created this system, which is really not a great system. Where the homes are not really functional, so we have to make sure that the kids are pristine, and then we create more and more institutions to ensure that our students have access to the best possible education. And if your kid is not the best possible kid, now they're left to the other kids, and then the influence is that, and creates this downward spiral. The whole system is sick, and it wasn't always like this. I want you to know. I come from an amazing family. I have tremendous parents. I'm so blessed to have them. Both of my parents are balei tshuva. So growing up, my family was balei tshuva type family. I don't know if any one of you know what that means, but it means that how shall we say this nicely? It means that my family was in process. We'll say it like that, right? And that the their value system did not always match the value system of the schools that they sent to. For example. I was in a yeshiva called Yeshiva Darche Torah when I was in elementary school because I had been asked to leave a different elementary school for whatever reasons, and I don't know how to say this nicely.

17:53 My family was not a Darche family. Darche was a black hat right wing anti-television school, and my father was the president of a television association. So it didn't exactly work beautifully. And many beautiful stories over the years. I'll share with you one. It's not supposed to be public, but who cares? Nobody's listening to us anyway, except for the people on the recording. But whatever. The I remember one time Rabbi Bender Shlitah gave a shmuus and darche anti Super Bowl shmuus, and I was having a Super Bowl party because we had like the biggest screen TV. Everyone was coming to my house. It made the most sense. And I came home after the shmuus on Friday, and I said, Dad, I think we're going to get in big trouble for this. Rabbi Bender just gave anti Super Bowl shmuus. And my father said, "Well, we don't want to do anything that's against the school. I'll call Rabbi Bender." So he came back to me later, and he said, "I want you to know, I spoke to Rabbi Bender, and he said it's." So I was like, "cool.

18:44 " So Sunday comes, and it's the big game, and you know, I don't know if you're holding a Super Bowl, but it's like a massive, like it's a lead-up. You have to have the barbecue beforehand, and the wings, and hors d'oeuvres, and whatever you're going to have. And we're all sitting there, me and my friends, watching the pregame, and it's like maybe 20 minutes before the game, and there's a knock on the door, and my father jumps up to go get it, and I didn't know what was going on, and all of a sudden we hear the door of I Bender. And Rabbi Bender walks in, and we all jumped up to stand up for the Rosh Hashanah, and then we're like, oh god, what are we doing here? And he sits down on the couch with my dad, and they're just schmoozing. And we're like sitting there, we didn't know what to do. Like this is not like he just gave two days beforehand the schmooze that none of us should be watching the Super Bowl, and he's with us. Like, and right before kickoff, he got up and he said to the boys, he said, guys, enjoy the game And he left.

19:31 And years later, I had the opportunity to ask Rabbi. I said, "What was that story like? Tell me what was going on." So he said to me, "Was what do you think it was?" So I said, "I think you want us to know that you had a shita about it. That you also wanted us to know that it was okay, and that we were still like you understood us." It's like exactly today. I don't know how much we do that But we grew up a little bit of a different generation, a little bit more tolerance, a little bit more openness. There was a boy who lived in my neighborhood, who was the son. Today, he's a very, very big, well-recognized rav in the five towns. His name is Rav Binyamin Chorney. He's one of the big rebbeim and shayashiv. He's tzaddik yisid ilam. He's an amazing person. He had a son whose name was Moshe Chorney. Today, Moshe Chorney is Rav Moshe Chorney, but back then he was just Moshe Chorney. And my father would call Moshe Chorney the rollerblading rebbe because he had big, long paeus. And when he and my little brother would go rollerblading, Moshe Chorney's paeus would be like racing stripes. So, he'd be like, 'Okay, so what's the plan here?' And he'd be like flying through the streets of Farakway with the paise, and my father would go, 'The rollerblading Rebbe's out.'

20:27 I asked Rebbe Charny once. I said What's the pshat that you let Moshe come to my house? You know, I didn't have a television in my house. What's the pshat you let him come to our house? " So Rebbe Charny said, and he still calls me Matt because he knows me from million years ago. He was like, "Matt, like I was confident in the chinuch of my home. Your parents are really good people. Like he didn't even understand the question." It's a different door. It's a different generation. He wasn't afraid to watch a movie. He wasn't afraid because I think he understood that my parents were smart enough to know that Moshe was the rollerblading Rebbe, the son of Rabbi Charny. But more than that, I think he was very confident that his home was a safe place, a place where kids felt comfortable. And my brother spent as much time by Moshe's house as Moshe spent by mine. And with you, I don't know if both influences in both directions weren't really positive, because I'm sure that Moshe was Mushba from the Berg home.

21:17 Hopefully not too much in one direction, but I definitely know that my family was affected by the Chernobyl disaster. And looking back on it, if you think about it, even the fact that Rabbi Bender took me, coming from the family that I came from, into Darche, how come Rabbi Bender wasn't saying, "If we take this family's equivalent in the source language)." It was beautiful. I want you to know, I never once felt out of place on Darche. I was just trying to say, I was their fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade for the first five years of my educational career. I felt like I totally didn't belong. I was the poor kid in a very wealthy school. And I never felt right. I never felt comfortable. I never felt good about it. And I acted out in class because that was my way of getting some attention. And in Darche, I never had that, even though it was like totally not my family's hashkafa. It was like it was such a beautiful place. In fact, I went to Moshava the summer after fourth grade, which was where I guess more kids from my previous community had gone. Summer after fifth grade, I went to Magenav.

22:13 Which is like a big shift from Mosess and Magenav. Let's put it this way. I'll tell you the difference. If you want to know the difference between Mosheva and Magenav Mosheva was like a Tzioni camp where we only played soccer all summer because they were preparing us for Aliyah And Magenav had the worst names for the for their sports facilities, which were barely sports facilities. But like, instead of having Yankee Stadium, it was Yankee Stadium. Instead of that, the barn was the gym, and they called it Madison Square Garden. The baltimore orioles played in candlestick park. We had candlestick park. They had Shea Stadium. We had Shea Stadium. You understand the evolution here? I went from soccer to a different world of yeshivas that I had never known. But I went there because Rabbi Krauss was my fifth grade rebbe, and he worked in Magen Av. And I wanted to be close to him. I had never wanted to be close to a rebbe before.

23:03 It was such a safe place. The truth of the matter is, I would not be here. Rabbi Bender had the attitude that we have to keep those kids away from the other kids. We lost a bit of that because our homes are not as strong as they were. So let's go back to the story of Yosef Hatzadik. Why does a kid play with his hair? Why does a kid have to look beautiful? Why does a kid have to make up his eyes? So you have to play charades. You have to think about what that kid is communicating to us because they don't necessarily communicate in words. Kids that feel the need to beautify themselves and make themselves feel good—it's usually because they don't feel safe at home. It's usually because they don't feel like they have a place. Like right, I'm beautiful. You ever have like a? If you have daughters, you ever have like a daughter at that like precocious age of like eleven years old come over to you in like a very sweet way and go Right? I'm pretty, Abba. Right.

23:51 What are they saying? They need a little bit of confirmation. They need you are pretty. You know, like, you're very pretty. It's a wonderful thing to say. Yosef is acting in a certain way. He's not just seventeen. He's a nair. He feels a little bit misplaced. He feels a little bit like he doesn't have such a deep connection here. So he does that. You know why a kid runs back and forth and tells on his brothers? It's not because he's a bad kid. What's that line? It's an African proverb. I forget exactly how it goes, but it's something like a child will burn down the village to feel its warmth. If a child doesn't feel a connection to the village, he'll burn it down to feel its warmth. Negative attention is better than no attention. Some kids will run and go, he hit me. They're doing that because they want to get something from that brother. Even if the brother is angry at me, at least there is something.

24:39 If you are hated by your brother, that's much better than being nothing by your brother. It's devastating to be nothing. It's devastating to be just shoved to the side. And here is Yosef HaTzaddik as a young kid And he's shepherding with his brothers, and he just doesn't feel like he's a part of it. He feels very disconnected from it. So Yaakov is a good parent. So Yaakov says, 'I know what this kid needs. He needs to be loved in different ways than his brothers. Maybe even more. Not more in the sense we all know. Even though our kids don't believe us, we all know that we love each kid differently, and we all know that we love each kid the same. And especially the kid that drives us crazy. We also love that kid.' " So the brothers see Yosef at Zadek, and he's getting all of this love, and they're going, "Yaakov, what are you doing? This kid is a mess. He's a chaotic kid. What are you doing? Why are you loving that kid?" And Yaakov saying, "No, a goofa. I'm loving this kid because that's exactly what he needs, and I'm giving him the kindness pasim to say,'You have a special mission, and you need to have this coat for this mission.' He's giving him a place. A kid who has a place is a kid who's.

25:39 And the brothers don't get that, and they hate him for it. It's interesting. It doesn't say they hate Yaakov for it; they hate Yosef for it. And in a certain way, that's exactly what Yosef wants. At least you hate me. At least you something me now. If you have, sorry. Why did they disregard him in the first?" That's a complicated question. I'm not sure I know the answer to that question. I have. He was a lot younger, but there could be other dynamics at play. I wouldn't feel comfortable. This is the Ma'ariv bracha. For you, it's okay to come late. It's okay. You don't have to make excuses. I'll tell the Darke Bina girls that you came late. I don't want to speculate what the internal issues were in the family, but there was clearly something that Yosef felt distant from. If you was that. Rachli Menu and Leah and how that worked out. A lot of things. And moving of the bed. There's a lot of different mafarshin that explain what's going on. I don't want to dip my toes in those waters, but clearly there was something in the dynamic.

26:39 But Yosef can't help himself. Yosef has dreams, and he wants to share them with his brothers. Because if that's really what you want, you don't stop. If you really want to share your dreams with your brothers, you're like, guys, I had a dream, and guess what? In the dream, we were all together. Yosef wasn't thinking about the fact that he was in the center and they were all bowing down to him. He was saying like, "Hey, I'm part of it." You know, I'm saying like, there are some kids that are just dying to be part of it. My mother would always say, "I have a brother who's seven years younger than me," and she would always go, "Guys, remember to include your brother." Do that. Remember to include your brother. So I remember as a sixteen-year-old kid, I was pummeling my brother, and my mother's like, "What are you doing?" And my little brother goes, "He's including me." " There's there's something about like. I want to be a part of this And the brothers hated him. And Rashi says they hated him because dibasam ra And because he had those dreams.

27:32 Yosef Hazadik was trying so badly to connect to them. He didn't even probably know what was going on inside of him. He was just trying to connect to them, and then they left. Remember, in the beginning of the story, he's shepherding with them, and now all of a sudden they're in Shchem and they leave him behind. Could you imagine the loneliness of Yosef Hazadik in this moment? That all your brothers just left. So what does Yaakov do? As a good parent, he devises a plan. He goes, "Tell you what, I want to know how they're doing. Could you do me a favor? Could you go find out for me how they're doing?" In other words, what's Yaakov's move here? Yaakov's move is to say,"Can you go connect to them? Let go. Be under the guise of you're helping me. So Yosef is excited. I'll go. Hinen. I'm here. I'm going to go. And he goes, and he meets a man in the field. And this is the crux of the entire story. The crux of the entire story is the man is really Malchavriel, and he says to him, "Mativakish."

28:21 What does matvakeish mean? I have no Taanis on my elementary school for throwing me out of school. It makes a lot of sense. I was a wreck in the class, and it was very hard to have classroom management if I was in the room. I have no Taanis. I only have one thing. Today, in 2023, they for sure wouldn't have expelled me, because today they have all sorts of social workers and like programs for kids like that. But back in the 80s, nobody was doing that type of work. Back in the 80s, you were just labeled as some lunatic kid. And I come and ask you, would have liked to pulled me over to the side? He would have said, if you don't start behaving, I think I'm not letting you go to hockey practice. Back then we didn't have that. Just had rabbis who hated us. So the, or at least I had that guy. But my only taina is that they never asked me why I was behaving that way.

29:10 And I want you to know, I would have been able to articulate it on some level because I knew I was different than everybody else. It was ironic because when I got to high school, my father was doing very well in business, and by the time I was in tenth grade, we moved from Far Rockaway to Lawrence. For those of you that know the five towns, you understand that that's like I moved from having no self-esteem to thinking, 'Oh, I'm better than all of you.' My mom just had that in my head. 'Oh, cool, now I made it.' My parents weren't like that at all. My parents made Aliyah a couple years later. They were so not into that scene. But there's there's a there's a question here. Matavakish The Malach is asking Yosef Tzaddik what's going on in your life? What are you doing all this? What are you looking for? What's the bikkurish? And so Yosef, in an honest moment, and this is like the whole revelation of the story, he says, "Asachai anerchem avakish." " Everything I've been doing has been to try to connect to my brothers.

29:58 That's the whole story here. But then the next pasuk is, 'Vayaros amirachok.' They see him from afar. They can't see him. It's hard to say, but I think it's more about the context. It's hard to hate people when they're close, right? But if you see somebody from a distance and you just look at their actions, then it's able. It's easy to label them. That's what that kid is. So that's the way they saw him. So they paskened him le misa. So Yosef Etzadik goes down to Mitzrayim, and we know the story. He ends up in the house of Ashes Potipher. And vayimain, he's able to stand and he says, "I'm not going into this. I'm not going into this matzav." Even though he really did fall into the avera, but he didn't go all the way. Why? Because he saw the Demus Dioknashalaviv in the chalon. He saw the image of his father in the window. And what did his father say? He said, "All of the shvatim get a stone in the afikoman, and what you're about to do, you're going to lose your stone." " Why was that such a powerful message? First of all, Veimayin.

30:44 The time that we just heard was Yosef HaTzaddik when they told Yaakov Avinu that he died. Veimayin, Veimayin Leishnachim. He refused to be consoled. The fact that Yaakov Avinu said, 'I'm not giving up on this kid. This kid has a space here in this world. I'm not giving up on him.' That gave Yosef HaTzaddik the energy to withstand this nesayim because he said, "Okay, I am a person of value. My father does care about me." And what was the image he saw? The image we saw was there's a place for me in the aforesaid. Meaning, I'm a person. I'm a zich. I have a space. I'm not a nothing. And that's what stops him. That's how we build resilience. And that's why I loved your topic. Because resilience, we tend to think of resilience as if like if I'll inculcate these values strongly in my child enough. That's not the way resilience works, because until your child owns those values, it won't help anyway.

31:31 The way that we inculcate resilience is we believe first of all that resilience is a feature of the self. A kid who's in self is naturally resilient. You don't have to teach resilience. Like, our kids are all resilient when they're learning how to walk. And they fall down, and what do we do? We go to the store, and we buy them a new one. And then they have the resilience beaten out of them. It's the saddest thing to watch because then they learn that I'm not enough, and it's not okay, and I'm going to be judged. And I came home with this grade, which means I'm not good enough. And these kids don't play with me, but these kids do play with me. And these kids are not the cooler kids. And it becomes like a whole game of where do I belong. Kids who are resilient came from the fact that they have parents that gave them a space to be themselves. Kids who are not resilient, that's a coping mechanism.

32:18 A kid who doesn't know how to get up after he fell, it's because, how do I know that I'll be okay if I get up? So being a present parent is being a Yaakov Avinu type of parent that we say to our kids,"I see you. You get this love that you need. You're acting out, but I'm with you the entire time." What was the last sugya that Yaakov and Yosef learned together? It was the sugi of Eglarufa And when Yaakov Avinu finally finds out that Yosef is alive, he sees the agalos, and it's the message that Yosef Atzilik says. I was learning this sugia the entire time. What's the pshat in that sugi? What's the sugi of Eglarufa? The sugya is, the sugi of Eglarufa is somebody left a town and they were murdered. And so now the town that it was closest to, they have a whole procedure. They have to come out and they have to say we weren't guilty. We were malava him out. Why? Because if you're not malava a person out of your city They're subject to death.

33:08 Because naturally, who's going to be stronger, the function word is not clear. The murderer or the person who attempted murder? Naturally, you're the one fighting for your life. You're going to be stronger. But people only fight for a life that they think is worth having. If you leave a city and nobody cares, if you're davening in a shul in our neighborhood, this is a true thing that happens all the time and we know it to be true, you make aliyah. You have all these hopes. Like now, I'm going to be part of this beautiful community, and it's true. It is a beautiful community. But it's possible to go to shul and that you won't know anybody for the first three months. There was a shul that I went to when I first made aliyah. It's a wonderful shul. For a year, nobody said anything to me except you're in my seat. After a year, they came and asked me for membership. That was the last time I davened there.

33:52 It's a wonderful shul. It's a beautiful shul. They push it; they weren't sensitive to the fact that every week I would come to shul and a little bit of my heart, I'm embarrassed to admit it. It's not like the coolest thing in the world to admit, but I was like. I have a couple of friends in the neighborhood, but I'd like to make more. I'd like to feel like I'm a part of something. So when they came to me and they said, "Well, you pay membership, " I was like,"Membership for what, man? Like, what am I doing here?" The Rav is a really nice guy. It's good to be able to have him, to ask a shilat to. But I don't really feel like I'm a part of anything. So when we leave a place and feel like no one cares about me So it's not. It's like the whole thing. There's no space for me to be resilient. There's no space for me to fight for my life. So that's the whole sugya of the Agla Rufa. So that's the message Yaakov leaves Yosef. The last sugya before he goes to his brothers, he says, "I want you to know, wherever you go, you're important to me. Wherever you go, I want you to know I'll never give up on you. I'm with you.

34:41 And that's when he sends it back. When he sends the Agalos back, he's sending a message to Yaakov. He said, "It was your love that got me through." The fact that when I had no space in the world, when I was in the house of Eshtet Potifar, when I was in the jail in Mitsrayim, when I was in the house of Paro himself, and I mamsh had no space. I couldn't be me in any of those spaces. But I carried the space of your love inside of me, so there was always a space where I was. That's the secret to building resilient children, and that's why I think that the brothers, at the very end of this story They say we heard the cries of Yosef, and we ignored them. The cries of Yosef were not from the bar. The cries of Yosef was the kid who was playing with his hair, the one who was telling tales about them, the one who was telling them their dreams. That was the cries of a child who was saying, "Can I be a part of this family?" And they said, "We didn't hear him."

35:28 And that was what they were going through. They said, 'That's the tshuva we need to do.' The tshuva wasn't that we threw him in the bar. They threw him in the bar. You should know, the Gemara says that a kadosh baruch who sat on that bezdan. It wasn't so obvious that Yosef wasn't chayiv misa. They thought that Yosef was the next one. It was dangerous. He was a threat. They didn't want to go through it again. There's a lot of different pshatim. It's not clear if I'm getting this right. It wasn't obvious that they were wrong for trying to kill him. What's more obvious is that had they understood his development—that they understood that he never felt like he was a part of it—they would have responded totally differently. I think that's a big lesson for all of us, because there's no such thing as the perfect child. All of our kids are awesome, but there's no such thing as the perfect child. And especially for the older parents in the audience, so you know, take a deep breath and allow the kids to be and become the contours of their own self. It's not an easy thing to do. I remember when I made Aliyah many years ago, and I think it was like 1998 or something. I remember when I made this video, and I was like, okay, let me just make sure that I'm doing the right thing here.

36:24 Just don't talk. Just don't say anything." I was like, "We mean, don't say anything." He's like, "If your kid starts doing this, don't fight them. Don't fight them." I was like, "On anything?" He goes, "On anything." I was like, "Why? Like, aren't there things like we should?" He goes, "Your kids already know what you believe. You can set the standards in your home. Don't get into power struggles with your kids. He said, "You might win the battle, you've already lost the war." One of the best chinuch lessons I've ever gotten. Kids, if we're constantly criticizing our kids, if they're constantly having to be on the lookout for the sneers, please that they're not enough, or that they're not in the base measure enough, or that they don't know the Gemara as well. Every kid has their own thing. We're making our kids feel unsafe. It's not a nice way to do it. We all love learning. Kids love learning. You know what kids hate? Kids hate school. Because school's not about learning. School's about am I enough? It's the ranking system of where am I? So who feels safe in school? The really good kids who are good at school. Those kids feel safe. They feel like I have a place. Who hates school?

37:23 The kids who feel like they push it don't have a place. I'll finish with this story. It's one of my favorite stories. I have a very dear friend. And I know him since I was one. My parents moved into Farakwe when I was one years old, and we moved literally next door to this family. And he's like a brother to me. He's still a friend of mine. Forty two years we've known each other. Everyone gets blessed with different things. This young man was not blessed with the talent to do well in school. And he was very, very close with my father. His father was a rabbi, and his father would, of course, make all the classic rabbi mistakes. He would try to learn with him too much, and he was pushing the kid away. My father used to say, "A little learning never hurts, so let's learn as little as possible." All the rabbis' kids wanted to hang out at my house on Shabbos afternoon, and it was a fight over who could get invited to my house for lunch because then they didn't have to learn with their dads.

38:11 And this kid. I love him. He could not pass a test to save his life. I remember. I only remember this recently because I was hanging out with another friend of mine from high school. He said, 'Do you remember that we would get an ice cream party for the entire class every time he passed a test?' So I was like, "Oh my God, I remember that!" And he's like, "We only had three ice cream parties for all of high school." I was like, "It was just coming back to me." I was like, "Right?" He was left back from eighth grade, and then he skipped to come. He was left back earlier, and then he skipped eighth grade to join us in ninth grade to be with his friends because. I think at that point, they were like, "Okay, we're killing a dead horse here. There's no reason for him to not be with his friends." So he joined us in ninth grade. And it was sad. It was sad to watch because he was sitting there in class, and you just knew nothing was going to be able to come out on the test. I'm not a good test taker. This is way beyond. He's not a good test taker. He's not stupid.

39:04 He's just not a school kid. So 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 there to pay the endowment. This guy is by far the wealthiest guy in my entire high school class. By far. And my father would always tell him, "He goes, school is not an indicator for success in life" And it's true. It's really not. The guy was always a hustler. He was always clever. He was always good with people. Turns out, in business, you don't need to know trigonometry. And if I tell you this: his business is so big that I'm confident that if I said the name of his business in this room, thirty percent of you would go. I've utilized that business. It's incredible. He's built an empire. The wealthiest guy in my class by far. There was a guy in my class who got a 1590 on his SATs. Another guy got a 1570. There were five guys that got over 1500. They're not nearly as wealthy as this guy.

40:02 The only difference is that those guys felt really comfortable in high school, and this kid didn't. And now, he tells me. I always get phone calls from our high school asking for money, and he gives But not for the reason anyone knows. He gives because there was two teachers, one rabbi and one teacher, two people in the school That would always learn with him privately for no money whatsoever to give him the best shot of passing the test. It was one English teacher, it was a math teacher, one social studies teacher, was a math teacher and one rabbi And they gave him a ton of time and a ton of attention. And if he gives today, and he does, it's only because those people made him feel like he had a space. That's our goal. If we want to raise resilient children, we have to help them have a space. And that's Hanukkah. Hanukkah is we light it today. In Eretz Yisrael, Baruch Hashem, we're able to light outside. But classically, for thousands of years, you didn't light in the windows. Chalone is Rashi Teves lahadlik Ner Hanukkah.

40:58 The reason we light in the window is because we illuminate the dark places. By that chalone of Yaakov Avinu, the chalone of Yosef HaTzaddik, the chalupa that says wherever you go, you have a place. So I think it's important to be clear about this. If we want to illuminate the darkness of our children, then we have to be willing to light our Hanukkiot, and we have to be willing to say, I know it's dark where you are, but wherever you are, I'm with you. That's the best way that I think we can give our children the best chance for resilience. Does that make sense? I think we said we were going to do a short Q and A. So now's the awkward part where we could do like no questions, which is fine, or some questions, which is also fine. It always takes one to get started, so thank you. Very like it's great. Never get out. So I can relate to having balut again, and choosing like a more stark leg than what I had. But when I think, wow, like my parents never did all the classic charedi mistakes because we weren't charedi or the rabbi mistakes, as you say it. So how do I like do that in my home where? I don't want to be as open and liberal as they were, but there was never any like negative feelings towards Torah Because that was just for them, it's just not.

42:13 I can totally empathize deeply with that question. I don't want to like Some somebody once told me a great line. They said, "Where do you draw the line? If somebody asks you where you draw the line The answer is always somewhere So I think what you're asking is a pretty sophisticated and pretty subtle question. It's like, of course, we want to challenge our children But we don't want them to be put in a situation where they resent what they're doing. I can't tell you where to draw that line, but I could tell you it's somewhere. And more importantly, I could tell you that one of the features of self is that self has intuition. And unfortunately, when we move out of self and move into our protective parts, we lose the natural intuition that we have. You see, let's say a parent who's in a protective mode.

43:05 What happens if my kid goes off the derech, and what happens if my kid is not enough? They lose that sense of intuition of what the kid actually needs, and then they start to resort to dominance and authority and control. Even if it works in the short term, it's definitely not going to work in the long term. But when you're in self, because parenting is always about turning inwards. When you're in self and you want to check in with yourself. That kid is behaving in that way. This is my fear that's coming up. But it's. It's a normal fear to have, and the fear is allowed to be in the car, but the fear is not allowed to drive the car. Could sit in the passenger seat, but is not allowed to drive the car. And then you move self back into that driver position And then from that place of self, that deep intuition that you have, you know, it's time for me to take a foot off the gas and allow this kid not to go to avosubanim, and maybe just to go out to pizza without learning tonight.

43:56 Or it's time for me to say we're going to do avosubanim, and I know that you're going to do great in avosubanim. But also, if we do avosubanim four weeks in a row, what would be a prize that you would want? And so we have to really check in with ourselves. I'll share with you. I have five children. Four of them were teenagers at the same time, by the way. So thank you for your thoughts and prayers. And they're good girls, right? Generally, very good girls. Three out of four, anyway. The fourth is my favorite. The Kibenzakunemhola. She's not. She's not my youngest. It's just she's awesome. And then I have a nine year old daughter and I have a six year old son. So when I had my son So it was the craziest thing because. And I'm at the shulmas. I'd be like walking down the street, and people were like coming over, "Hey, you did it!" I was like, "I had like five healthy children, like just because I had a son. Like all of a sudden, it's like, if at first you don't succeed, it was the craziest thing.

44:52 And the shulmas was packed. There must have been 200 people by the shulmas. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen. But I want to see. The community is trying to give. I didn't need chizik. I was fine. I was very happy with my daughters. But honestly, I've never gone to an asifat horim before because I wasn't allowed to. My zaka barahma doesn't want me there. But now my six-year-old son is like, I have to parent this kid. Yeah, I don't want to do that. But I'm noticing because he's in he's in a different cheder in the neighborhood, and they give him you know like it's beautiful, but they give like 20 questions a week on what they learned that week that you're supposed to review with your parents And I'm noticing for myself my own ego. Like my desire for this kid to be awesome, right? And so I was like, let's do it until we know it really well, right? And like I know that myself and my intuition believe like he does not need to know this really well. In fact, me trying to get him to know it really well is probably going to backfire.

45:52 So I made this mitzvah with him that I'm going to give him klafim. By the way, I love Eretz Yisrael because klafim is a thing. If we were living in America, we'd be like, "I'm gonna buy you a truck, not like a toy truck, an actual truck for every time you know." It's like these kids are happy with clothing. I looked at the clothing. Have you seen these clothing? There's nothing on this clothing. I don't know. Is this still a thing in America? There's nothing on there. They're not even trading baseball cards. There are pictures of animals on there. My daughter has collected napkins. And I would come back from America, having gone to hotels or planes, and I would come back with Delta napkins. They're like, 'But that's so yeah, Karen. Nobody else is gonna have a Delta napkin.' It's like this country is awesome.

46:41 Seventy shekel tuition, and they're happy with napkins. The country is amazing until you have to buy your kid a dira, and then it's like Afghani. I'm noticing about myself that my need to give him the cloth and to make that mitzvah for him, that he should know it well. I have to let go of that. I have to let go of that. It's fine. He doesn't need to be perfect. What did we choose in choosing something different than our parents exactly? What? You're. I hope. I'll tell you what I hope we chose. I hope we chose to raise our children in a community where they'll see it not because we put it upon them, but because they'll see it in their parents and in the way we walk in the streets. I hope they'll see passionate Yiddishkeit. That's what I hope. My wife has this line. She says, in Chutz Laaretz, you raise your kids to be frum.

47:31 And in Eretz Yisrael, you raise your kids to be kadosh. Is it different? We're shooting for something different here. We're trying to shoot for a way that's really deeply connected and deeply spiritual. That's not something you can measure. That's not something you can do on a test. It's the way that they see us over our Shabbos candles, and how we light. It's the way they see how our Shabbos table is. I can tell you the best thing. You know what Shabbos table should be? Fun. Shabbos table should not. People like you have to have a mirror at your Shabbos table. It's nice to have a mirror at your Shabbos table. There should be laughter, there should be joy at the table. There's no need to make it a big deal. Just let it go. And it's the reason why sometimes playfulness is really attractive in men

48:12 Because if you meet somebody and they're like and they're fun and you're like, it's going to be a good dad. He's going to know how to joke around. He's going to know how to play ball. He's going to Our Yiddishkeit needs to be a place where it's like it's comfortable and there's a space for them. It's again, there's so many beautiful things about this neighborhood. My nine year old daughter is in gymnastics, which unfortunately my daughter has just taught her that the word is gymnastics because she thought it was gymnastics, and gymnastics is such a better word. And Miriam's a cute little kid. She's my daughter, and she is just like she's never vertical Like upright in my house. She's constantly like upside down. I love the fact that they have chugim in there. I love the fact that they get out of school at two ten. It's annoying for the parents, but it's also awesome. They play on the streets with each other. That's fun. That's a good thing. A kid like that feels connected.

49:00 We have to like when a kid comes to shul, there has to be an environment. First of all, we don't bring our kids to shul until they're ready. And second of all, when they come to shul, it's okay for them to take breaks. And it's okay for them to know that there's a rav and they can go over and wish a shalom aleichem and the rav greets them with a smile. There has to be, and it's gotten better all over the world. But I remember, in my shul, they had to make programs so that the rav would have some connection to the kids. They have like Tuesday night everyone's going to the rabbi's house type of thing. It was so awkward. It was so unnatural. And like any time the rabbi comes to the teen minion, every teen is like, "Oh, just shoot me in the head." We went to the teen minion to avoid having a relationship with you to begin with. Look at who runs the teen minion. It's the same thing. Look at any teen minion in Chutzlir. It's all the same people. Who runs it? The most popular rabbi from the local high school.

49:50 That's the thing. And the schools are willing to pay those guys a fortune because they're like, as long as my kids start at nine, they'll be okay. They're like, "Okay, chasidish, nine forty five start, ten o'clock finish with a huge kiddish, right?" And the Rebbe who's there is just walking around making kids feel good. You know what? It works. It works. There's something to just having an awesome life. We don't need to put it on our kids. They'll see it in us. They know our values. Does that make sense? I think it's pretty good. Something like that. Don't worry, it's a beautiful film. Okay. Thank you very much.