Vayigash - Finding Faith in Exile

1:29 So then, why did the first opinion, which is the majority of opinion, say that it was Yaakov Avinu? And what was wrong with saying it was Yaakov Avinu? That the second opinion of the Medrash needs to say that it was Hashem. It's called in Hebrew. How can we be mazbir this machlokus? How could we explain this meaningfully? That's our first question for the night. Second question for the night is a simple question, but I think it's a deep question. Yaakov Avinu already knew that there was a bris bein abasarem. There was a covenant made between Hakadosh Baruch Hu and Avram Avinu that Avram Avinu's children were going to go into galus. And now Yaakov Avinu knows that this is the beginning of the galus. If we were going down into galus, how would you go? I personally would walk very slowly. I would not be in a rush to get to galus.

2:25 It doesn't even make any sense. Imagine you had a person, and they were pasquined that they're going to jail. They were pasquined they're going to jail. So you know how it works. You don't go to jail immediately. It's not like they take you from court to jail. They say on this and this date you have to show up to jail. So what do you do for that entire week that you're free before jail starts? For the entire week that you're free, what do you do? So you spend as much time with your friends and family, and when it finally comes time to go to jail, so what do you do? So you say, okay, I'm gonna go, but I'm gonna arrive at the very last possible minute. There's no way that any of us here would rush to jail. And let's say one of your relatives said to you, let's say Chassar Shalom, you were being put in jail, and one of your relatives said to you, "No, hurry up! You gotta go to jail! You gotta go to jail!" What would you say? You would say, "Give me a break! Let me take some time."

3:21 Let's look at a pasuk. It's a simple pasuk. Nobody pays attention to this. Ve'higadatem la'avi. This is what Yosef HaTzaddik is instructing his brothers to say to his father. Ve'higadatem la'avi. It's called Kevodim in Mitzrayim. Tell him about my stature. Tell him about my position that I hold here in Egypt. Ve'eskal esher isem and everything that you saw. Umiharteem vehoradatem as aviheina and rush and bring my father down to Mitzrayim. Isn't that counterintuitive advice that Yosef Hatsadik is giving? Why would anyone rush into going down to Eretz Yisrael? If anything, it should be the opposite. Yosef should send the message to Yaakov, "I'm alive. I'm the viceroy in Egypt. Come down when you're ready. I understand you don't want to come down because the moment you come down, what begins? Galus begins. So come down when you're ready. I would have imagined if I was Yaakov Avinu, I would have slowly packed up shop."

4:15 I would have gotten everything together. I would have had a yard sale, right? We would have gone down. There would have been first like letting everybody know we're going down. Let's prepare ourselves. It's finally here. We've been knowing about it for so long. Yosef Hatzadik says no, rush, get down here right away. But I feel like it makes sense that Yaakov would want to rush down because his son was dead and Yosef Hatzadik's even dad for so long. So that's a very beautiful idea. Except what? It's a little selfish, right? Because it's like Dad, I haven't seen you in so long. Rush to get here. But rushing to get here means what? The sooner it goes, starts, the faster it'll end. It's not really true though that the faster it'll end, like it's not like delaying it isn't going to stop it from happening. But we don't have to rush to it either. If I have a ten-year sentence and it starts when I show up to jail, it's true that it's not going to get shorter or longer depending on where I show up. But nobody would ever say No, get started. It's not natural. It's not tevudik.

5:13 Yosef doesn't necessarily know that he's going to go into Gullus the second Yosef. That's the only. For sure they knew. All the shvatim knew. There was a mesora that they had. There was a bris benedbasar. So that's our second question. Our second question for the night is why does Yosef instruct Yaakov Avinu to rush down to Mitzrayim? That's the second question for the night. Last question. Good question. In the Bris Bein Abasarim itself, Hakadosh Baruch Hu promises Avram Avinu something. He promises that your children are going to go down to Mitzrayim, and when they leave, they're going to leave with what? Great wealth. They're going to leave with rechus gadol.

6:11 Now Rashi says, when did they get that rechosh gadol? You girls know this. During the plague of Choshech, during Makas Choshech. What happened? It was totally dark, but it was light for whom? It was light for the Jews. So what did they do in that time? They went around and they searched for all the Egyptian stuff, so that before they left, they would go back to the Egyptians and go, okay, this is how much you owe us for the two hundred years, right? It's like the ultimate. It's the ultimate like you think you had us. It's like a real Jewish cop. You had us for 200 years. Now you're gonna pay up. We're gonna be super wealthy. So the Egyptians would say, "Sorry, we don't have any money." So the Jews said back, "You got plenty of money, and I'll tell you exactly where it is. This where you put this. This where you buried this. And this how we're gonna get paid." And that's how Klal Yisrael left Mitzrayim with a tremendous amount of money. There's only one problem with this. What's the obvious problem with this? Since when do we care about that? Is that a Jewish value?

7:09 Akedush Baruch Hu comes to Avram Avinu and says, Avram, your children when they leave Mitzrayim are going to be exceptionally wealthy. What should Avram Avinu's response have been? I'd rather be poor. Girls, you're not yet mothers, but I want you to put yourself, if you can, just project forward for a couple years. If you have a child, you're looking at that child, and Hashem says, this child is going to go through Gehennom. This child is going to go through a Holocaust on steroids. Chas v'shalom. The Holocaust was nothing compared to 200. Holocaust was seven years. Mitzrayim was 200 plus years. Could you imagine what it was like to be in Mitzrayim? And by the way, the Mitzrayim were much more barbaric than the Nazis. You read the Midrashim about the psychological torture, the physical torture. But don't worry, at the end, your kids will be rich. What should Avraham Avinu have said back? I don't care. I'd rather them not be in Galus at all. This doesn't sound like a tremendous gift.

8:06 If you look at the Gemara and Brachos, this is exactly what happened. The Gemara and Brachos say that the Jews said to Hashem, "If only we could get ourselves out." And the Gemara says the following machlo. The Gemara says, "Tomorrow you'll be freed." This is what Hashem said back to Klal Yisrael. They said, "If only we could leave," and Hashem said, "Don't worry, tomorrow you'll be freed and you'll get a lot of money." And what did the Jews say back? How about we leave today and we don't get any money tomorrow? This is what the Gemara says. And what was Hashem's response to them? I would, except for the fact that I promised Avram Avinu that you're going to leave with Rechosh Gadol, so I have to fulfill my promise because I don't want Avram Avinu to be upset at me. Girls, what would Avram Avinu have said if he was there? Let him out! Let him out! We don't want our children to suffer for even one moment. I want to tell you. I'm not going to tell you the whole story.

9:04 Some of you have heard the story already. I want to tell you that my daughter, when she was very, very little, her thumb got chopped off in the door. It's a crazy story. Her thumb was in the door. It's going to be okay. Her thumb was in the door. My other daughter slammed the door. It was one of those big Israeli front doors. When they resewed on the thumb, it's an amazing story. I'm not going to go through the whole thing now because we don't have time. It's an amazing story. We showed up to the emergency room, and the doctor is like, "We need to take an X-ray." I'm like, "You don't need to take an X-ray. You just need to take off the bandage. You could see yourself. It's not there." Like, "No, sir. We need to take an X-ray." I was like, "I'm pretty sure you don't need to take an X-ray, sir. We know the protocol." I took her in. We took the X-ray. They came back. They said, "Your daughter's thumb is off." I said, "I know." (Laughter) I wish you could make this stuff up. This is the top technology of Israeli medicine. It was amazing. And then in Israel, you girls know this, you know how much technological.

10:02 Innovation comes out in the field of medicine here. They sew a thumb back on. They shoot Novocaine. I promise this is going to be okay. I promise. This is not going to be trauma for you. You're not going to have to unpack it. You will not need a safe space. This is not going to require therapy. We don't need to go into IFS mode. I know everybody in Tomer Devora is going to tell you, but the self was okay. Even Waldenberg was telling that story. I promise you, it's going to be okay. All's well that ends well. So they shoot novocaine into her thumb, which is like what you get when you have a cavity filled, and then they told me to sit on her, so that one doctor will hold the thumb, the other doctor will sew it back on, and you'll stop her from struggling. And that's what I did for half an hour.

10:58 As my tiny little, very verbal, year and a half old child screamed at me the entire time, 'Abba, get off of me! Abba, they're hurting me! Abba, why are you letting them hurt me? I want Emma!' For half an hour, I held her, whispering, 'Sweetie, it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay.' But for half an hour, that girl squirmed and screamed, 'Abba, get off of me!' They just give you a shot of Novocaine because we're very technologically advanced. And then for a year she didn't speak to me. For a straight year, how old was she? She was a year and a half old. For a year, every time I walked in the house, she ran because she associated in her little mind that Abba caused her that pain. Now we have a very warm, wonderful relationship. I told you it's fine. Everything worked out in the end. We're very close. But I will tell you that for that entire half an hour, I was sitting in my head going, maybe she doesn't need a thumb, because I didn't want her to suffer one second. She'll still get a shot of right. Maybe I'll have to pay. Maybe I'll have to pay like an extra hundred thousand shekel. How much? Do you really? How much do you use your thumbs? Can't do that?

12:26 Because for me as a father, watching my daughter in one moment of pain was killer. It's one thing if you're giving your kid a shot, and it's like, you hold them for a minute, they get a shot, they cry, they get a candy, they're fine. Two seconds later, she didn't talk to me for a year. You think Avram Avinu was sitting there going, but at least at the end they're going to be rich. Don't worry, they can afford a house in Tom River. Like they can go to Costco whenever they want. Avram Avinu, because he was a loving father, probably said, Get him out! I don't care about the money. My children are saying they don't care about the money, but Hashem is like, no. I made a promise to Avram Avinu. They're going to leave Berachos Gadol. They're going to leave with tremendous wealth. What in the world is this wealth that we're talking about? Obviously, it seems to be on some level physical wealth because that's what was going on in Makaschosch. They were literally looking for the physical wealth, but you can't say that it's the physical wealth because it doesn't make any sense. What in the world is going on over here?

13:22 Those are our three questions for the night. Number one, we have to be mazber the machlokas. Was it Yaakov Avinu or Hashem? That's number one. That came down with them to Mitzrayim. Number two, why does Yosef HaTzaddik say, 'Dad, get down here. I haven't seen you in so long. The sooner you come, the sooner Golus starts. Take your time. Get down here when you're ready.' And number three, what is this amazing wealth that Hashem promises Avram Avinu that they can't leave Mitzrayim without it? That they have to specifically go in Makas Chosach. And find all of that wealth in order they should be able to lead. Those are our three questions for the night. I want to share with you an amazing idea. I know we don't have so much time tonight, but I want to share with you an amazing idea. It's a life changing idea if you understand it. The idea goes as follows: Where do we get our emuna from? Where does that come from? So the Alter Rebbe and Tanya.

14:20 Says an amazing thing. It's natural to every single Jew to have emuna. It's a natural state of a Jew. Anachnu maaminim b'nei maaminim. The Alter Rebbe says you see this throughout history. Many times throughout history, what happens? Many times throughout history, a Jew who's not observant at all, who doesn't live for Hashem, is willing to die al kiddush Hashem. That if you put a gun to their head and you said, "I'm going to kill you because you're a Jew," they go, "Then kill me, but I won't renounce my Judaism." It's happened. Time and time again, throughout history, I'm sure you've all heard the stories. I don't need to get into the stories. You've heard the story of Shnevis, the famous story of Shnevis. There was one of the Nazi capos. He was a Jew. He was one of the Nazi capos. He worked for the Nazis in the concentration camp. And on Yom Kippur, they brought in Shnevis. Allowed the Jews. I think it was the Blue Shavu'ot to work a little bit less on Yom Kippur. They were working inside. They weren't going outdoors to the forest to cut down the trees.

15:17 The blue Jewish Rebbe worked it out with Shnevis to be able to stay indoors. The Nazis found out about it and they came in with tons of food and they said, "Yidden, eat." You understand that to eat in the Holocaust, these guys were eating potato peels; they were eating nothing. And now they had real food in front of them, and they refused to eat. The Jews refused to eat, and these Nazis looked at Shnevis and they said, "Shnevis, eat." Shnevis was a Nazi capo; he was cruel. They put a gun to his head. They said, "Shnevis, eat." He said, "I'd rather die," and they killed him. A guy who's not only wouldn't live for Hashem, he was cruel to Jews, but he was willing to die al Kiddush Hashem. Where does a Jew get that kayach from? It has to be that it comes to us genetically. It comes to us genetically because, like the Medrash says, that Avram, Yitzchak, and Yaakov were a merkava. You guys know what a merkava is? What's a merkava? A chariot. A chariot goes wherever its driver tells them to go.

16:13 If you're driving a car and your car doesn't respond to you, what do you do? You take it to the mechanic because it's important that whatever you tell the car to go, it goes. The avos were a merkava, Avram, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. Every single thing that Hashem did, their bodies naturally did it. It was so ingrained in them to have emuna in Hashem that it became in every single one of us ledo re doros that for thousands of years. Jews would have emuna even under the most difficult of circumstances. Sounds good, right? If we left right now, you would say Avram Avinu, Yitzchak, Yaakov—they had perfect emuna because they had perfect emuna. They passed it down to us. Comes along the Labavitcher Rebbe and says, "Not so fast. There's one step that you're missing, and this step is going to be critical to understanding everything that we're saying in today's year. It's an unbelievable chiddush of the Labavitcher Rebbe. He said."

17:10 Think of it—a good way of thinking about it—is like a bridge. Here's on this side of the bridge, we'll call them the Avos. On this side of the bridge is the Avos, and they have unbelievable emuna. All the way over here is Klal Yisrael for generations. The Rebbe asks as follows: How do we get from point A to point B? Is it so simple? Is it just like since they had the genetics? They had the genetics. The Rebbe says there's a step in between, and this step is really what Gullus Mitzrayim is all about. Gullus Mitzrayim was a bridge. It's how we got the emuna from point A to point B. This bridge is called Gullus Mitzrayim. It's how we go from point A to point B. It's how we take unbelievable levels of emuna from our avos.

18:08 And bring it to us. And the Rebbe says as follows: The avos were too great to simply move it from point A to point B. It's not possible. It's like their emuna was so perfect that it couldn't possibly just simply transfer down to Klal Yisrael. So you need a bridge. What would be a bridge? What would be something in between? Not quite as great as the avos, but not as low as Klal Yisrael would be for thousands of years. That is the generation of Mitzrayim. It's the 69 souls that go down to Mitzrayim, and the time that they spent in Galus Mitzrayim, that entire period was taking this perfect emuna and transmitting it to Klal Yisrael, because they were somewhere in between. They weren't us, but they weren't as great as the Avos. So you see how it filters down through them. Those 69 souls that we mentioned in the beginning of the year, the 69 plus one. Whether the plus one was Yaakov or the plus one was Hashem, we'll soon see.

19:04 Those 69 souls, which became the root souls for all the hundreds of thousands, millions of Jews that would go through the Galus Mitzrayim for those 210 years. They were taking the Avos and their perfect Emuna, and they were bringing it into the soul of every single Jew. That's what they were doing. With this in mind, now we understand a little bit, a tiny little bit, a fraction of why Klal Yisrael needed to go down to Mitzrayim.

19:35 Perfect. That's literally the question I just asked. Why did they need to go down to Mitzrayim to do that? And it goes like this. Mitzrayim is called Erev Sharitz. What does that mean? Erev Sharitz means it's the most despicable, lowest place in the entire world. It's the worst immorality in the world. Much worse. And you ready for this? It's called the place that godliness is completely concealed. That's why even the word Mitzrayim sounds like what? Sounds like Meitzar. Sounds like constriction, right? When you're, you ever feel like claustrophobic? Anyone? Does anyone here hate being claustrophobic? Does anyone like afraid of like going like you know they take you on Tulum and you have to like crawl through a tunnel and it's like super tight? I'm terrified of that stuff. When we're in a place of expansiveness, you see yourself on a beautiful meadow and the sun is shining. You ever feel like? It's like I can finally, I could stretch. I could be me. There's a guy in my neighborhood.

20:30 He lived in a tiny, tiny, tiny apartment for years. He was building a house in the neighborhood, and he lived in the tiniest apartment for years. He told me it was a miserable existence. Can I know how he's blessed with a very large family in a very small apartment? He said he felt claustrophobic for years. Now Baruch Hashem, he lives in a four-floor like palace. It took years to build, and he said he goes. I will never go back to being claustrophobic again. He said I can't daven in a shul where I feel tight. I said I have so much trauma. See, this is where it gets unsafe, and we have to unpack with IFS and all the things. He has so much trauma from the years of living claustrophobically that he has to be in a shoe where he has like space, where he can sit in a chair and there's like space around him because he just can't feel constrained. You know why he feels constrained to be in Mitzrayim? Because there's no self. It's a very, it's a very constraining place. When you can be in self, you feel like the world is my oyster. So now what happens?

21:26 These Jews came down. These 69 unbelievable, precious souls, plus Hashem or plus Yaakov Avinu, we'll see in a moment, came down to do what? To go to the lowest place in the world and to be able to say, we can find godliness even here. We can have our faith tested even here and prove that from now on, forever and ever, what will happen? Even if a Jew is in the lowest possible place, what will happen? He can hold on to their emuna. Let's look at what the pasuk says. Moshe Rabbeinu comes back. He's just got the simanim from Hashem. Let's fast forward to Shmos. And Moshe Rabbeinu comes back, and he has the simanim from Hashem that he's going to do what? That he's going to be the savior of Klal Yisrael. What does the pasuk say? Vayyamein ha'am, and the people believed him. What does that mean? What did they have? They had emuna.

22:22 How does Klal Yisrael begin to get saved when they do what? When they have emuna that Moshe Rabbeinu can save them? The Chazal tell us in Mechilta, Parshas Beshalach, Yalkut Shimoni, that why were our avos redeemed from Eretz Yisrael only because of their emuna? But there's a misunderstanding. They weren't redeemed because they had emuna. They were redeemed because now they had reached the level of emuna. Which was the whole reason they came down to Mitzrayim to begin with. The purpose of going down to Mitzrayim was so that what? So that they could take the gullus and turn it into an opportunity to show I can be tested under any circumstances and I can maintain my resolve. I want to say something to the Shana Bet girls that are leaving because this is your last year, right? I want to say something to you, but I'm really saying it to everybody. There's something I hate. It happens in all the seminaries. It happens in all the yeshivas, and I hate it. At the end of the year, I get phone calls.

23:18 Can you come speak in my seminary? Can you come speak in my yeshiva? Share how to take it with you. How to take it with you? There's a lot of girls that are here right now that are going to ask themselves the same question. A couple months from now, they're going to come and go. I had a great year in Talmud Torah, but now I'm going back to America. How can I take it with me? How do I know that what I gained here is real? You know what the answer is. The whole purpose why you came to Talmud Torah was in order to what? To build up your emuna, but all of it was what, because you were here in your Shalayimir Hakodesh. It was easy. You weren't being tested in the same way. But when you go into a place where it's not as obvious, it's not like how do I take it with me? What is it? It's this what you were training for. This the opportunity that you have. Don't sit here and go like, oh chaval, now I'm going back and I'm not going to be in seminary. No.

24:08 This is the opportunity to now show your resolve that even under difficult circumstances, you say, "I maintained my values. I maintained my loyalty to Hashem. I'm a person of emuna." You hear the difference? It's a totally different way of framing it. If you go back to America and you say, "how do I like keep it?" No, it's not about how to keep it. This is what you were training for. Imagine a boxer trains for years to get into a fight, and now it's the day of the big fight, and he goes, "Okay, but like." Like it's not the same. I'm not going to be covered up with my protection. Because you were training to be in a fight. There's no more protection. You're not in training anymore. Now it's actualization time. That's what Gullus Mitzrayim was. Gullus Mitzrayim was the actualization of the emuna of the avos. The avos had pristine emuna. But how do we have emuna today? Because there were Jews who were willing to go into difficult situations and say we can maintain our emuna even under difficult situations. Girls, that's in your blood.

25:03 It's in your blood. If you come back here in three years from now and go, yeah, but I don't know, I couldn't do it. It's only because you didn't have emuna in yourselves that your emuna was coursing through you. We were able to leave Mitzrayim because we had achieved that level of emuna. This is the great secret. What's the rechus gadol? It can't be that it's money. What's the rechus gadol? What's the great wealth that Hashem promises Avraham Avinu? He comes to Avram Avinu and he says, Avram Avinu, you have unbelievable levels of emuna. But what? What's Avram Avinu's hidden question? Remember, the Bris Bainabasarim was at the wedding. That was the wedding of Avram Avinu and Hakadosh Baruch Hu. That's when Klal Yisrael really becomes a nation for the first time. And Hakadosh Baruch Hu comes and says, "You should know your children are going to go down to Galus." Why didn't Avram Avinu stop him and go, "No"? Remember, if Avram Avinu fought for Stone, he certainly should have fought for his own children, right?

25:57 Avraham Avinu understands what Hashem is saying. He's saying your children are going to leave with great wealth, meaning everything that you've accomplished is going to be actualized in your children in Mitzrayim. It's how they're going to take it with them for generations. That's the great wealth. It's not physical wealth. It's emuna. That's the unbelievable secret. So you'll say, but then why did they need to go in Makaschoschach and find out where all the money was? Girls, where do you find your emuna? You don't find your emuna in the light. You find your emuna in the darkness.

26:29 There's the famous muscle of a guy that's on his hands and knees, and he's searching for something. And somebody comes over to him and says, 'What are you looking for?' He says, 'I lost my wallet.' So the guy says, 'Oh, let me help you.' He says, 'Where'd you lose it?' He says, 'I don't know, about 30 feet that way.' He says, 'So why are you looking over here?' He says, 'It's very dark over there. I can't find my wallet over there in the dark. So I'm searching over here in the light.' You're a fool. It doesn't help you to search in the light. It helps you to search in the darkness. Emuna isn't found in the money. Of course not. Klal Yisroel would have left and said, 'We don't care about the money. Let's go, let's go. We want to get ourselves out.' Hashem says, 'I promised Avram Avinu that you wouldn't leave too early. Because if you leave too early, if you leave even one moment too early, then years from now there's going to be a Jew whose name is Shneivice, and he's going to be in the concentration camps, and the Nazis are going to put a gun to his head. And how's he going to have the capacity to say, 'Kill me. I'm a Jew. I don't care.' It's because you stayed that extra day in Eretz Yisrael because of the promise that I made to Avram Avinu. That's why they had to stay. That's why Avram Avinu didn't.'

27:28 Didn't fight to get them out. He understood they were there for a purpose. It changes the way we see Gullus when we understand that Gullus is on purpose. There's a difference between pain and suffering. The difference is that suffering is pain minus reason. If you go to the hospital and you hear a woman screaming, it makes a big difference what floor you're on in the hospital. If you're in the emergency room and a woman is screaming because she was in a car accident and she's having a leg amputated, that's very different than if you're in the maternity ward. If you're walking through the maternity ward and you hear a woman screaming, you go oof, but you say Tehillim, and you don't think of her as suffering because you know she's in pain because she's having a child because you understand the reason. You don't look at it as suffering. But when we don't know the reason for something, then we think this is just suffering. Gullus is not suffering.

28:25 It's exceptionally dark. It's exceptionally painful. But we understand that the reason we go to galus is to discover our emuna. It's not impressive to stay loyal to your husband when things are going well. That's not an impressive feat. It's an impressive feat to stay loyal to your husband when things aren't going well. It's impressive to be a good mom when your teenage daughter is saying nasty things to your face, but you don't take them personally and you give her what she needs.

28:55 It's impressive when you can hold on to the relationship when things are difficult. It's no different with Hashem. That's what Gullus does. We will finish with this Gullus, and not a moment beforehand. We will finish this Gullus when we finally have proven, and we've proven it time and again, that no matter how dark it gets, a Jew will never give up hope. You think it's an accident that in these final moments before Mashiach comes, Jews are running around screaming, "Ein Yisrosh ba Olam Klal." You think that's an accident that that's what we're screaming? Odio tertov. You think it's an accident that Jews are saying it's going to get even better? It's going to get even better. We want it to get even better. That's what a Jew does. We literally are expressing our emuna every moment of these days where we say to Hashem, I don't care how dark it gets in here. Now let's go back to our original question, and we'll finish with this. So who was the 70th person? So the obvious answer now is who? It was Yaakov. Because where did our emuna come from?

29:55 It came from Yaakov, so Yaakov must have been the seventieth person. If the Amunah came from Avram, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, and it's these seventy souls that go down to Mitzrayim that are going to be the bridge that are going to bring the Amunah to Klal Yisrael for the rest of history, and there's only sixty-nine people there. Naturally, what's your immediate answer? Obviously, it was Yaakov, says the Rebbe. Not so fast. You can't say necessarily that it's Yaakov Avinu because remember what level was Yaakov Avinu's emuna on? It was such a high level of emuna. Could Yaakov Avinu be the bridge? Yaakov Avinu is on this side. What do you need? You need seventy souls, not including Yaakov Avinu, to be the bridge because Yaakov Avinu's emuna was so great that it couldn't be transmitted. It needs to be refracted slowly, slowly throughout the generations. So the other sheet in the medrash says it can't be Yaakov Avinu.

30:47 But then we have a bigger question. So it's Hashem, isn't that even worse than Yaakov Avinu? If Hashem was the one that gave us the emuna, doesn't Hashem have a greater level of emuna, so to speak, than Yaakov Avinu? This is where it gets complicated, but this is where it gets awesome. If you come with me on this and you can understand this, it's an amazing gift. And for the Shana Bet girls, this is a great way to end. When we think about Hashem, sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that Hashem is so great that He can't be so low. But if Hashem is infinite, then where is He? If He's so infinite, then where is He? Then He's everywhere. You understand the paradoxical nature of God is that God is so great, but His greatness is manifest where?

31:41 That he can even be with the lowest people. That's why the greatest tzaddikim can be with who? With the lowest level Jews. That's why the greatest tzaddikim were so attracted to the lowest level Jews, because they saw how far godliness can go. That's why the greatest tzaddikim they were obsessed with the sinners. They said, 'There's an imperfect Jew. That's my guy.' You see, you can tell about somebody if he's a real tzaddik or not. It's very simple. Just look at the way he treats those Jews that are not so observant. Those that stand in judgment and say they're terrible, you should know they're speaking about themselves. They're not speaking about those Jews, but those Jews that are so unbelievably connected to Hashem, because they're so unbelievably connected to Hashem, paradoxically, where can they be found? Even in the lowest places, you understand? So comes along the second sheet in the Medrash and says, 'How did we get our emuna from point A to point B? Was Hashem Himself who did it? Because Hashem is infinite, you know what He was capable of doing?'

32:37 Infinitely bringing over the emuna of the avos to us, which gives us a whole new perspective on our emuna. Our emuna wasn't just a genetic gift from the avos. What was it? It was thousands of years of Jews going through every type of persecution imaginable that began with Balas Mitzrayim when those seventy Jews brought it down to Mitzrayim so they could prove we have faith even in the darkness. How did they get it? It was not seventy. What was it? It was sixty-nine plus one. It was Hashem Himself who participated in our emuna. So when we see, like we're seeing right now in Eretz Yisrael, when we see all these Jews that have been moved to tshuva since October seventh, you should know that is not something that those Jews earned. That was a gift that Hashem Himself gave to us to have emuna in these times.

33:30 All of us, every aspect of emuna over the last year and a half, girls, we didn't earn that. You have to know that was something that Jews have given their blood, sweat, and tears so that we should have that emuna. I sometimes think I shouldn't say this out loud, and I don't even really mean it, but I definitely mean it a little bit. I sometimes think it's so chaval that we were born into the frum world. Obviously, it's a gift that we were born into the frum world. But I sometimes think it's a gift for those people that weren't born into the frum world. They have something you should know that we don't. They had to fight for their yidishkeit. They got to see their emuna in action. One of my least favorite things in the summer and one of my most favorite things happens back to back. In the summer, there's an organization called TJJ. Girls know what TJJ is. TJJ is the public school program of NCSY where they bring over a thousand girls, over a thousand boys and girls to Israel.

34:26 Before October 7, they were bringing over a thousand kids from public school to Israel for the summer, and I have the unbelievable privilege—probably the best thing I do all year. I say best; I mean my favorite thing is I get to speak to the public school kids. I love it. I love it. You know what's so hard? After I speak to those kids, I got to go back and teach the kids who grew up in yeshivas and seminaries. It's hard. It's hard because the public school kids, when you're speaking, they're like this. Rabbi, but how could that be? I learned this, and then I tell them, and they go, "Whoa, that's crazy." Every day for them is like discovering Maisa Baraschus. And at the end of the shiur, if I didn't have to leave, I could probably spend, and sometimes I've done it, two, three, four hours just sitting there answering their questions. And then you show up to a different program. Doesn't matter which one. And it's like.

35:23 Hey Chaver, how's it going? Oh Rabbi, we're so tired. What are we speaking about tonight? Is it interesting tonight? Because you never had to fight for your Yiddishkeit, because you never had to discover your emuna. See, our grandparents, when they got off the boat from the Holocaust, they said, 'This is a land of nothing. Let's go build yeshivas. Let's go build shuls.' We didn't take it for granted, but we show up to palaces. We have everything at our doorstep, and because we never had to fight for it. There's something lacking, not in our emuna. There's something lacking in our expression of our emuna. We show up, and it's a given. I'm blessed because I come from two parents that are balei tshuva, and my parents had to fight for their yidishkeit. My mother, I shouldn't say this out loud, but I heard. She never said it to me, but I heard from my cousins that my grandfather, alav shalom, used to put money down on the Friday night table and tell my mother, if you touch it, you can keep it. And she never took the money.

36:19 So my mother, when I grew up, I knew she fought for her Yiddishkeit, and it made an impact on me. I was always jealous growing up of all the kids who had relatives. Do you girls know that if you're from you probably are pretty good at Jewish geography? Like, my uncle went to that yeshiva, my aunt went to that seminary, my grandfather was the founder of that yeshiva. That's the way I grew up. Everybody knew somebody. People would come over and be like, Berg, are you related to? I go, no, I'm not related to anybody. I never was related to anybody. And it wasn't until I was much older that I realized it was an unbelievable gift. I don't have yichus, but I have parents that I saw their emuna in action. And even though I didn't have to struggle the way they did, at least I got to see that. It's a terrible thing that we do. I'm saying this in an extreme way, and I don't mean it in an extreme way, but I do mean to hear it. It's a terrible thing that we do, that you show up to your shalayimir kodesh.

37:13 And you have everything in front of you. Chef Rina makes the most unbelievable food. You have unbelievable mechanchod and rakazod and teachers and t'yu lim. Do we really appreciate it? Do we really say? It used to be back in the day that it wasn't so obvious, and there was so much that girls had to do to earn coming to Israel because it wasn't 13th grade. And it made the year in Israel better because you have to fight for something, and then your real self comes out. If you lay everything up for your children, they will never be great. If everybody gets a trophy, they will never be great. If they don't fail, then they'll never learn how great they are. I'm having shana bet class with the shana bet girls afterwards. This is not my goodbye, but I do want to say to you, I'm speaking to the shana alf girls also, but I'm saying to the shana bet girls, this is your last class.

38:02 Don't be afraid of doing hard things. Don't be afraid of what comes next. This is where you're going to discover your greatness. This is where you're going to become the people. In seminary, it's theory. Now it's real. Now it's practice. All the shirum that you had on shaduchim, now it's real. All the shirum that you had on parenting, beze Hashem, soon it's going to be real. Shvach, beze Hashem, all the shirum that you had on parenting, soon it's going to be real. Amen. That's the car of mamish. All the shirin that you had about the challenges that are going to be in your life, now it's real. That's when we're going to find out what you're really made of. That's when we're going to find out what your man is. Girls have a wonderful time.