Yachatz - Embracing the Brokenness of Life

2:10 And the rest of the seder is said on this small piece of matzah. And one interesting idea to think about is the fact that a piece of matzah is never brought back to its ultimate completion. It remains in its broken state throughout the entire story of Yitzhak Mitzrayim. And so there's something very deep, very profound about that. We have to explore what it is. There's something about it like this broken piece of matzah, and the entire redemption is set on this broken piece of matzah. The question is, what is that symbolism? There's a poem. By a man whose name is Allen Silverstein And the poem is about a circle that's missing a piece. You know this poem? Is it from Shel Silverstein, or is it the same person, Allen Silverstein? You're gonna go find it. So I'm not gonna read to you the poem unless she finds it. But even then, I probably won't read it.

3:10 And this broken circle, again, it's not missing a large piece. It's missing a piece. So it spends its life searching for its missing piece, but because it's not a full circle, travel is very slow. Because it can't go so fast because it has that broken piece. And so this circle has these amazing experiences as it's journeying through its life, searching for its lost piece. It sees all sorts of beautiful flowers and trees and bushes. It meets all sorts of amazing animals. It has all sorts of adventures. And then after many years of searching. It finally finds the missing piece, a piece that fit exactly. Many times before, it had found a piece that looked like maybe it would fit, but it didn't fit 100%. And finally, the circle finds its piece, perfectly positioned. And the circle is so happy because it found its completion. It found its shleimus. It found its zivug.

4:06 But now there's something missing because the circle, wherever it goes now, goes so fast. And the circle can't figure out what's wrong. Why is this not awesome? I spent my whole life searching for this missing piece. I finally found this missing piece, but something just doesn't feel right. And the circle realizes in this poem that what made life awesome was not the actual moving But it was the brokenness that made life awesome. Because it was broken, it had to move slowly, and because it moved slowly, it had all these amazing experiences. And if you think about it, in our lives. How fast does life move? Very, very fast. Exceptionally fast. And not just because time moves fast. But because it doesn't take time to get anything anymore. I'll tell you a story. My mother-in-law is a wonderful person. I happen, baruch Hashem, I get along great with my mother-in-law. Everyone has mother-in-law jokes. I don't have any mother-in-law jokes.

5:11 I'm exceptionally blessed. And because I have a wonderful relationship with my mother-in-law, she is an exceptionally gullible person, and people have been taking advantage of that gullibility for years, myself included, part of the family now. But my mother-in-law loves to tell the story that she remembers when microwaves came out And because she was so gullible, this guy told her there's going to be a thing, a box that you're going to put your food in, and 30 seconds later it's going to be cooked. She's like, right. You're pulling my leg. I'm not gullible. I'm not falling for it again. But actually, it happened. That was a microwave. So think about it. Do we need to wait for our food anymore? Do we need to schlepp our water anymore? We have plumbing, right? Do we need to wait to be in contact with somebody? Even if I can't get a hold of you on the phone, it's no problem. I'll send you a WhatsApp. I'll slide into your DMs. Like whatever. I'm not saying I'm not saying I'm relevant. I'm just clearly very relevant. I know how to swipe both left and right. So you don't have to wait for anything, even to come to Eretz Yisrael.

6:18 We complain because it's a long flight. What's the flight? Ten hours. Sixteen. If you're from Los Angeles And how long did it take my grandparents to get here? Years. Weeks. They came by boat. They came by boat. I heard a comedian once. It's a good line. We get spoiled so quickly. Because do you remember when there wasn't Wi-Fi on planes? It wasn't that long ago that there wasn't Wi-Fi on planes, right? And now, if we get on the plane and the Wi-Fi is out, we're like, oh my God, there's no Wi-Fi on the plane. You didn't have Wi-Fi just a couple of years ago, right? This comedian's a very funny comedian. He goes He's like, and when it takes time for something to get to your phone, he's like, it had to go to space. It had to go. That message had to be transmitted to space, and when we're flying, we should be sitting there really the entire time that we're flying, grasping onto the armrests, screaming, "I'm flying! I'm flying!" You're 30,000 feet in the air. That's much worse than a roller coaster, right? And you always say, "Oh my God, I hate the food on these airplanes. The stewardesses are so ridiculous." Which happens to be true if you're flying L. But the L phrase is "Hachiba Bayit Olam." Yeah, that is one dysfunctional family.

7:30 So anyway We're so accustomed to life moving so exceptionally fast. It's worse in America than it is in Israel. It's definitely worse in America. Here, there's a notion of walking places. My daughters went with a different seminary. Walking to the kotel on a Friday night And the girls were complaining within the first couple of minutes. They're like, "My feet are hurting." And my daughters came back. I wasn't with them for Shabbos. My daughters came back and they're like "Abba, is that really the way American girls are? They didn't walk five minutes and they were complaining." It's just they're not accustomed to Ner Israel. They're not accustomed to it in the same way. They're used to fending for themselves. There's something about that. We shrunk the world. We made the world move much, much faster. We lose something. We lose something when life moves that fast. We lose all of the experiences.

8:42 So here's an interesting way of thinking about this. All the psychological issues that we have. Yeah. We have our anxieties. Our inner negative beliefs. Our depression. So often, what we're trying to do is get rid of those broken pieces of our life. But if you did What might be the negative impact? It's an interesting way of thinking about it because we don't often think of it that way. No. If you fix them See, we're so used to thinking that we need to be fixed. And the goal is fixing me. I'm anxious and I have to get rid of my anxiety. I'm angry and I have to get rid of my anger. I have resentment, I have to get rid of my resentment. These are bad myths. Isn't that the way we speak about them? There's something to that But there's also something really not okay about that way of thinking Because.

9:56 If you actually thought about the positive impact of some of those quote-unquote negative midos, what might you find? You might find that you are you And the best parts of you are you Because of those broken parts. The story of you It's only that story, and it's an exceptional story because you've had these things to work through. And so maybe it's not about the goal of being fixed. Maybe it's just about the journey of fixing. Which is a completely different way of looking at it. It means that even right now in your quote-unquote broken state, you're fine. And it's not about coming somewhere. Like it's not about like. Then I'll have arrived. One day I'm gonna have arrived at this place where everything is going to be perfect and healed. And there'll be no anxiety and no depression and no inner negative beliefs, and everything will be perfect.

10:59 And when we live with that mentality, there's something very off about that because if your goal is arrival, what happens if you never arrive? So there's so much disappointment around marriage today because we ascribe so much meaning. To marriage as like that's going to be when I find my missing half. You know that you girls probably know that I counsel people. It's one of the things I do on the side. So sometimes some of my clients are married. Sometimes some of my clients are single. So the single girls are all searching for a husband. And they're devastated. When it's not working out And I hear that. I'm not minimizing those emotions. I want to be clear. I'm not minimizing that, but they're really devastated. I was dating this guy. I thought it was going somewhere. In the end, it didn't go somewhere. I'm looking around. I'm seeing my friends. How come this one was able to get married? And especially today, when there's so much pressure in the system, if you're 23, you're an old maid, which is insane.

12:07 Which is absolutely insane. I do. As long as you know that, hold on to that. Because some girl got married when she was 19. And she's having three kids by the time she's 24. And another girl is 24 years old, and she's thinking life has passed me by, and I'm 24. I'm like, you're 24. Let's put this in context. You're 24. And they're so convinced Life is awesome. If I could get married, life would be awesome. So I'll have a client like that And then back to back, I'll have one of my married couples clients. And they'll be struggling with Shawn bias issues And I'll be like I need to get y'all in a room together, just need to like. And it's obviously I have to be wherever each one is, and that's the appropriate right thing to do. But one of the things I try to share with these single girls is It's not so much about arriving. Because now you're going to show up at marriage, you're going to think you found that missing piece, but it also won't fit exactly, and then there's another journey, and then there's another journey after that, and at some point you might have a chalishos hadas of so when does it get good When does it get easy? When does it get to the point where we can motor through life? And people are looking for that

13:22 That's the whole American culture of the pursuit of happiness, which by the way was never a thing In the history of the world, that was never a thing. What were the pursuits? There were two pursuits. Nobody ever had the chutzpah to pursue happiness. What did you pursue back in the day? Two things. Number one, staying alive. You pursued self-preservation. And the other one was you pursued meaning. And by the way, they probably went hand in hand because your whole chayus was like, okay, I got to stay alive. If you had a bad crop, everyone died that winter. That's what happened. You had a bad crop, everybody died. If there was a famine, everybody died. If there was a plague, everybody died. And we had a plague this year. And we all went into quarantine, and it was a big deal. I'm not minimizing Chas v'Shalom, and my grandmother passed from it. I'm not minimizing on any level.

14:08 But as plagues go This could have been a lot worse. We didn't lose a hundred million people in the world. So because we have such an abundance mentality, we have this new thing now we can pursue happiness because of self-preservation. Is anyone here worried about dying? Really? A rabbinson in a different seminary told me she teaches tefillah. She said it used to be that teaching tefillah was much easier because girls didn't come to seminary with their parents' credit cards. What was so true? When you thought about spending, you were spending your own money. So the notion of asking from God was real. When I came to yeshiva, my parents, who baruch Hashem have money They said, "You're going away for the years. This is your like gap year. Right? Even though I don't like that terminology, it was your gap year. You're going to explore, right?"

15:05 We'll pay for tuition. You pay your spending money, so I had all the money that I worked for in the summer, and that's what I used. It helps if you're running out of money and you turn to Hashem and you go, "I don't know where the next thing is coming from." It helps. We have such an abundance mentality, so we come into life and we're like, "Okay, new Where's completion? It's so wrong. We're not even sure that it's a good pursuit. But if you ever did arrive, what would life look like then? What would life look like if you ever did arrive? Boring, exceptionally boring. All of you on some level have this question. I'll tell you what it sounds like. At least this is what it sounds like when the guys ask it, but I'm sure it's the same way for you. What's the point of Mashiach? What do we do then?

15:54 In a certain sense, when Olam Habah comes, what are we concerned about for Olam Habah? Then what? Because in our world, which is the appropriate way that it should be, there's just this pursuit. There is no arrival. That's what Mashiach is. Mashiach is you've arrived. I'll give you an example of what it looks like. So I'm very blessed to have a rebbe. My rebbe's name is Riff Parnas. It's Mrs. Kazman's father. Riff Parnas is 93 years old. He needs a refuah shleima. But I had the opportunity to learn from Rav Parnas for eight years, and I was a shavrusa for three years. Parnas was one of the gedolei Torah in America. Tremendous lamed And not everybody was privileged to be close with him. It was like one of the feathers in my cap in my life. We were exceptionally close. So he lives in a nice but small apartment in Borough Park.

16:53 And I was sitting at my Rebbe's kitchen table. And it's a small kitchen in Borough Park, not a lot of space. And they have a little small table there. And on the refrigerator, they have pictures of their family from different chasnas. So at the time that this story took place, my rebbe was in his 80s. My rebbe Kenainahara has grandchildren, great-grandchildren. At some point the growth happens exponentially. It's like every week. Rebbe gets a mazel tov this week. Who was born? Eight kids have eight kids, at some point it just becomes do you even know their names? I saw this picture and it was a wide angle picture at a chasna and I said Rebbe, it looks more like a tribe than a family. So my Rebbe said something from yeah baruch Hashem, and Rebbitzin looked at my Rebbe and she said to him. She was looking at him in the eye and she said, and all from a couple of kids that had no idea what they were doing.

17:54 And they shared this very powerful moment where they were just looking into each other's eyes. It could not have lasted more than two seconds, but for me, it felt like a million years. It felt like I wanted to run out of the room because it was such an intimate moment, and I felt like I should not be watching this intimate moment. It was deeply uncomfortable. But I thought about that. They had been married, at the time, for I don't know, probably sixty years. And in sixty years, what did they have? They had ups and downs, like every couple. They had children, and some of the children were easier, and some of the children were harder. I imagine that as a couple, they had their things that they disagreed upon. I imagine that there were times when they had tensions to work through. There were times when they had less money, and there were times when they had more.

18:42 There were times when they suffered terrible tragedies. I know, for example, that my Rabbi lost one of his grandchildren to cancer. In that moment, I'm looking at it after 60 years, and I'm seeing that sense of arrival that they had. But what was the Rebbe's insight? All from a couple of kids that had no idea what they were doing, and we just spent the last 60 years working towards this moving target. And what is the moving target? I'm looking for that missing piece. But the missing piece, that's like It's not finding the missing piece. It's searching for the missing piece. So maybe the way to think about yachatz is it's the pursuit of the brokenness of our life, right? There is that afikomen, like all the way at the end, but there never really is. If they would have taken you could imagine such chesed sheminnig cropping up, like we take the matzah that we broke in the beginning of the seder and we rejoin it with the afikomen. You could have seen such a chesed sheminnig, right? And there could have been all sorts of halachas around it. How much do you need to have for it to be considered a shalim once again?

19:54 We could have made whole sugguls out of it. And yet we don't find them. It's an afikoman. Somewhere at the end there is an afikoman. But we never arrive there. Yachatz remains the story. You say magid over that one broken piece. And at the end we say l'shana habavu yushalayim. So that's a little. It's a little insane to say Loshana Habav Yerushalayim. What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So my grandparents said Loshana Habav Yerushalayim. Your grandparents said Loshana Habav Yerushalayim. Their grandparents said Loshana Habav Yerushalayim. Their grandparents like Isn't it like we're smart people? Generally, Jews are known as intelligent people. That's not a very smart thing to say. Of course, we do believe Lishanah Abay Yerushalayim. Maybe we could say something a little different. Maybe Lishanah Abay Yerushalayim is an expression of the deep faith that we have.

21:02 That it will be different one day But in the meantime, Yerushalayim is this horizon. And as soon as you get to the horizon, it just remains another horizon. You're constantly shooting for it, but it's always somehow just out of reach. Maybe that's right? Maybe that's perfect. We always like to arrive in Yerushalayim Habnu Yeh. We want to go to Beis Hamikdash. Great But think about the things we've learned over the last several thousand years of galus. And if you had to do it all over again Would you not want to go through that? As painful as the galus has been Would you not want to learn that? Like Would you not want to learn that every single time Jews have been tested throughout history Jews gave up their lives? Barov. Jews gave up their lives and died al Kiddush Hashem. If we never had Galus, would we have learned that about ourselves?

21:55 We never would have learned Jewish resilience. After every major tragedy, there's been an explosion of Judaism. After every, after the Crusades, after the Spanish Inquisition Whether it was Kabbalah in Sfat or the Yeshiva world today, we think about the Yeshiva world today. Or even the Seminary world. Who was in yeshivas in Europe? How many bachrim do you think there were in total in all of the yeshivas in Europe? Not nearly what we have today. More than ten. They had more than a million. Do you know how many bachrim were in the Mir in Poland? Two hundred fifty. Not a big yeshiva. Two hundred fifty boys. Today, what is it like? Somewhere between eight and nine thousand. And that's just the Mir. And you think about Lakewood, Brisk, Panovitch, and Mevaseret, and those all go in the same centers. Think about the seminaries. Who went to Beis Yakov?

22:59 Sarishnir started Beis Yakov. How many Beis Yakovs were there? And today There's the Beis Yakov. I would go to the Beis Yakov. I would never go to right. I'm saying we have a zillion Beis Yakovs. There's such an explosion of Yiddishkeit. Would you not want to have learned that? If we never had gullis, would we have learned that? So of course, nobody's saying that we don't want to have Mashiach. We want Mashiach. But maybe when we're saying Leshanah Abba Yerushalayim, when we're saying Ani Mamah BeMuna Shleima BeVi Asa Mashiach. Va'af Al Pisha Yis Mameya. Even though it's delayed, Im Kol Ze Achaklo, I'm still waiting. But that's what we're learning. We're learning that the waiting says something about ourselves. Would you ever wait this long for somebody? We were frustrated when the pizza came forty-five minutes late. How many of us had a chalishas adas and ate those Rice Krispies? The rice cakes, the Rice Krispies. My wife said, "Let's make smoothies."

23:54 Two seconds later, we're all making smoothies as soon as she leaves the room. We are very quick to give up because we're like, we just want to get there, we just want to arrive. And you miss out on life. Life is not about arrival. There's an amazing journey that you go on that you learn so much. It helps us reframe galus because we think galus is a punishment. And that's not exactly true. Because when was the first? When did we learn about the first galus? When was the first galus? When did it begin? Before Mitzrayim. Well That's that is true. Really, the Bris Bein Habesarim was the first time Hakadosh Baruch Hu told Avraham Avinu, at the Bris Bein Habesarim, at the moment where the relationship is being established. What did Avraham Avinu tell? Your children will be slaves in Mitzrayim. That does not sound very romantic. Could you imagine a guy getting down on one knee?

25:04 Holding a ring on his finger and saying? Be with me forever. I'm gonna torture you mercilessly throughout history. That's what we mean, but we don't say it. We say, "Will you marry me?" But that's what Hakadosh Baruch Hu did. At the bris mitzvah ceremony, Hakadosh Baruch Hu said, "Your children will be slaves in Egypt." Had we completed that original slavery, there would have been no gulos. It was only because we weren't going to make it that we ended it early, and every gulos that we have since then is really just because we never finished that original gulos Mitzrayim. So gulos Mitzrayim was spread out throughout all of history. That's why we have it. Why was Avram Avinu told about the gulos of Mitzrayim already at the establishment of the relationship? So maybe one way of looking at it is Being in a relationship is not about arriving.

25:58 It's about staying loyal. And finding all of the hidden gems that exist within all of the pain and suffering that exists within every relationship. Think about your relationship with your parents. You've probably had some ups and downs. What'd you learn? What'd you learn in those ups and downs? Think about your parents' relationship with each other. What did they learn? Think about the ups and downs you had in your schooling and education. Ups and downs, probably. It wasn't always so simple. Would you take it back? Your hardest moments The ones that were most painful. Would you take them back? No. Last week we lost a family member. I went to a shiva call this morning. Special needs young man, he had cancer. Young man in his twenties And obviously very sad. By the levaya My wife's aunt The one who lost the child She said to my wife He gave us so much.

27:22 You know No special needs child is easy. Some special needs children are harder. This was a hard one. This was one of those you have to keep a constant eye on. I imagine it was one of the great challenges of her life. But it was one of the best things that ever happened to her. And when he passed She was so heartbroken. There wasn't a sense of relief. Because the broken parts of our life, the parts that are challenging, the parts that are hard They tell us things about ourselves that we never would have learned otherwise. Think about this year. Did you know how resilient you were? Did you know that you could get on a plane and travel 6,000 miles? Go to a new place, meet tons of new people, not do it for a month or two in camp, but do it for a year.

28:20 Did you know that you could do it, having to meet new teachers Being in a new system, having your Beliefs challenged, perhaps to be expanded and thought about in new ways. Did you think you could make it through a pandemic? Did you think you could make it through another bidud or waiting? The anxiety of who does and who doesn't have corona. And the rolling positives. Did you think you could do classes via Zoom and make it a meaningful year? If somebody had asked you before this year, would you have signed up? You might not have been so quick to say. And now that it's Pesach Is there anyone here that says I wish I wouldn't have done it? No way. No way. The irony is that everyone's so busy pursuing happiness. You want to know how you get to happiness? Pursue difficult, meaningful things And at the end, you'll be extraordinarily happy that you did it.

29:17 Even if you never fully arrive. We have to learn to radically accept ourselves for who we are, including all of the broken parts. And the great paradox of change, as Carl Rogers said, is that we can't change until we accept ourselves. So there's this swamp And we all live in it, including myself. I'm not immune to this at all. This swamp is negativity. The swamp is, I wish I was right. I wish I could just get rid of it. And I have to change, and so we quote unquote grow, right? And so we'll stop behaving in certain ways, because we'll say I just couldn't do it anymore. I had to get rid of this part, right? But do you realize you can't build a skyscraper on a swamp? The bedrock of growth has to be radical self-acceptance. Think about the worst me that you have. Think about the one that you hate the most.

30:17 Think about the one that you say, "Oh, if I only could get rid of this." Think about the thing that you did in high school that you're the least proud of, your worst moment. The thing that if you could just go back, it's cringeworthy. You know that moment, that cringeworthy moment. Cannot believe I did that. Can you accept yourself in that moment? It memtes sharei toma in the forty ninth level of toma. Can you accept yourself? Because our kadosh baruch hu did exactly that. He came to us in the forty ninth level of toma and he said, "Come." Why? Were we any different than the mitzvah? Halalo of the Avodah Zarah, a halalo of the Avodah Zarah. Why did Hashem choose us? What does it mean that Hashem chose us on the forty-ninth level of Tumah? You know what it means. You're okay. Your mamish is broken. You're sitting there like, could you imagine before the Makos? You know what a Jew was doing?

31:06 He was bowing down to the worst Egyptian idols. Doing the things that went along with worshiping Egyptian idols, which were not positive things. And Hakadosh Baruch Hu comes and he says, "Come, you're okay." Isn't that an amazing idea? That in your worst moments you are infinitely lovable. How do we think about ourselves in those worst moments? How many girls right now are thinking, but Rick Berg, if you knew this thing that I did? It's not true. It's only true to us because we have this inner negative belief that we're not okay. And we confirm that inner negative belief with all the things that we do. Sometimes it's with eating. Sometimes it's with substances. Sometimes it's with emotional issues. We have all of these things that we do because we haven't radically self-accepted. We're broken. That's okay. It's the opposite of everything we learned. Don't worry. You're going to come to Torma Devora this year, and you'll see at the end you're going to be flying.

32:11 How many of you have doubted that this year? How many of you have doubted? How many have been like? I don't know. I thought it would look different. I thought I would feel different, right? You saw those girls coming back from sem the year after, and they maybe looked different, or maybe they appeared to look different. So you're like I can't wait to look like that. It turns out those girls look exactly like you look right now. And guess what? You don't have it figured out. And neither do I. And they didn't have it figured out either. They acted that way because they had to. You know why they had to? Because the year before, a group of girls came back from seminary and acted like they had it figured out. So they had to do the same thing that they did. You know why those original girls did it? Because the year before that. And everyone's playing this game where we're pretending to be okay. We're not. We're broken. But broken is not bad. Broken is human. Broken is what makes life awesome. We would never take back our brokenness.

32:58 And you'll discover a lot about yourself along the way. Leshana habav Yerushalayim. Soon. I'm on my way. I'm searching. I'm in process. What do they say? It's process, not perfection. Even the whole need for perfection. What is that? That's a cover up for the fact that I don't think I'm okay. You know that thing where rabbis and teachers get up and pretend that they have all the answers. You seen this before? And they have to come and they have to say, I have this life. I'm going to gift you with this life. It sounds amazing. If you just learn Torah. If you'll just be from Everything will be awesome. Then they point to their lives and go, "Look, it's awesome." Do you think that's true? It's not true. It's not true. Torah is awesome. A life of fromkheit is awesome. You know why? Because that's the way Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants us to live. It doesn't mean that life is going to be awesome. Life is sometimes going to flex. It's going to stink, and you have to learn to flex your TSM. You know what your TSM is?

34:00 Your this stinks muscle. But when you flex your TSM You'll also lose it sometimes And you'll appreciate both. It's an appropriate year for you girls to be here for Pesach. Because you can't go anywhere else. And probably some of you miss your families. And probably some of you are thinking, "I can't believe I'm not going to be home." With exceptions. Baruch Hashem Be very blessed. But maybe some of you feel like I can't believe I'm not going to hear the hakdesh being read by my father or my brothers. Maybe you'll feel a little bit like a stranger or an outsider at the seder. Not a very good feeling. Nobody wants to be a guest at the seder. So maybe you're thinking to yourself It's good to be in Eretz Yisrael, and it's nice to come. First of all, I appreciate. Thank you very much for coming and helping us clean today.

35:03 And maybe it's like a good chavaya, maybe it's like a nice thing. We got to go to different rebbeim's homes, and that's nice. But probably there's a part of you that's maybe a little disappointed that you're not going to get home. Maybe you're a little broken over it. Maybe you don't want to admit it out loud. Is it okay? Is there something here that you can learn from within that brokenness? Sure, there is. That's our avodah. To lean into the discomfort of the work. To say It's not a hundred percent, but that's also good. It's exactly as it's supposed to be. That's called faith. The brokenness of my life is exactly what it's supposed to be. I wouldn't want anyone else's brokenness. But I wouldn't trade my own either. I wouldn't trade it for perfection. Should be a chakush of semech. Thank you.