Yisro - On Eagles Wings

2:45 Their wings fell off. They were diminished. The Malachim were diminished when the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed. It's a very painful imagery. That their wings fell off. Which wings fell off? High minayu imaut. The Gemara asks, which thing? Which of the wings were diminished? Because remember we said that there were six sets of wings. The wings that covered their faces, the wings that covered their feet, and the wings they would use to fly. And the Gemara says, Amar of Chanan alam Rav Osan shamro shira behem. Which were the wings? They were diminished. The wings that they used to sing Which were the wings that they used to fly. This is a very deep Torah here. The Gemara is telling us something very deep. I hope you girls are hearing every word of this. The Gemara is telling us that after the Beis Hamikdash The Malachim lost their wings.

3:48 Which wings did they lose? They lost the wings that they flew with. And which wings made them fly? The wings of song. Song is a very powerful thing. It's almost like sometimes when you're singing your heart out Did you ever feel like when you were singing you were actually flying? There's a certain feeling of soaringness. There's a feeling that when you sing, if you really get vulnerable with your singing and you sing, you ever sing b'kol kohu? You ever sing with all of your might? Sometimes we pull back on our singing. I notice I even do it myself sometimes in shul. I'll be singing And I'll ask myself Because I don't necessarily think I have a good voice. And if you've ever sat next to somebody who's singing and has a bad voice, but they're singing with all of their might, it's like Could you not? There are some people that Baruch Hashem they're in Mashiach's band. You know what it means to be in Mashiach's band? It means even if they don't have a good voice, they just sing with all of their might.

4:53 There's a guy near me in shul. He's a beautiful Jew, and in kedusha on Shabbos, he sings with all of his might. But he sounds a little bit like a ghost, like he said, it doesn't sound so nice. So sometimes I myself When I'm singing, I notice about myself that sometimes the vulnerability of singing is too much for me And I'll find myself lowering my voice. Like I want to sing. But I don't want to sing with my whole heart because I don't want the person next to me to be judging me. Is he a good enough singer? I wish he would be quiet because he's interrupting my singing. So sometimes we hold back. But if you've ever really sang If you've been in an apartment by yourself and nobody else is there and you're just singing at the top of your lungs The feeling is almost like flying. It's almost like your heart soars, like you're not rooted in the ground anymore.

5:49 The Gemara is telling us a very deep thing. The Gemara is telling us that there was a time when every Malach sang with all of his heart. And of course, if the Gemara is talking about Malachim, who's the Gemara really talking about? The Gemara is talking about us. That there are times in our lives when things are shalem And when things are shalem, you can sing with great courage and great vulnerability. But there are times of destruction Where a person loses the ability to sing. There are times when things just aren't going well, and you can't find it within you to sing—not even a little bit. And this is what the Gemara is telling us. The Gemara says, 'What does it mean to have wings? To have wings means to be able to fly. And what makes us fly? The ability to sing, the ability to express ourselves.'

6:47 That's why it's such a good feeling sometimes when we really express ourselves. You ever really share with someone? Have you ever really told anyone who you are and what you've been through? It's almost like bungee jumping. The vulnerability of being your full self in front of someone—it's a huge thing, and it's literally like you're flying. It's an amazing thing to feel that way. And after the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash, we lost a little bit of this. There's always that question that everyone asks on Yom Kippur. The question is not on Yom Kippur. It's on Tishah B'av. I can't feel the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. That's what everybody talks about on Tishah B'av these days. I didn't have the Beis Hamikdash. I don't know about the Beis Hamikdash. I'm sitting on the floor. I'm not eating today because of the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. But I don't relate to that.

7:36 The truth is, every one of us does relate to the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash because there was a time when Klal Yisrael was free to be themselves. And today we're very much not free to be ourselves. Even let's say on a microcosm—I mean this obviously on a personal level and on a historical level It's a little bit hard to be a Jew today. It could be that I'm going to America next week. It's not exactly a hundred percent clear. It depends on whether my daughter gives birth to a boy or a girl and when she gives birth, a little bit. I'm a little bit more conscious of being a Jew walking through the airports today. I'm a little more conscious of Mayamika. I'm going to Chicago. I'm a little more conscious of what people think about me. In a certain sense, not that Chassar Shalom, I'm ashamed or embarrassed to be a Jew.

8:31 But it's a little bit like we're protective. We're in a protective stance. We've been hurt very recently. Even now, the world is saying October seventh, some Chastayra. They're exaggerating. There's no proof. The people that were killed by Israeli soldiers. It wasn't really true what Hamas did. It's a little bit like we're not able to be our full self. And there is nothing more painful than not being able to sing. There's nothing more painful than not being able to be yourself with reckless abandon, just putting yourself out there and going Hineini, here I am. It's one of the hardest things in the world. If you're really listening to this If you're really hearing this, then you know the pain that I'm talking about. Because every single person in this room, including myself, knows the pain of having to hide who we are and to pretend to be something that we're not in order to be accepted by another.

9:28 Every single person in this room has gone through that. We're not all authentic. Authenticity is a horizon. It's something that we journey towards. But can we really say that we're authentic? Can we really say that we're our full self? That's something that takes a lifetime to achieve because it's really, it's potentially very hurtful to be yourself. You know what they say: love is Love is giving someone the keys to your heart and asking them not to crush you. If you show someone who you are They have the ability to crush you. They have the ability to reject you. You gave them that opportunity. When the Beis Hamikdash was here in this world Every single Jew felt I could be myself. I could see the godliness in the world. That's what the Beis Hamikdash did. It made the world a safe place for vulnerability. After the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed, the malachim lost their wings. They lost the ability to soar. They were grounded, so to speak.

10:27 It's a horrible feeling to be grounded. The Mishnah in Perkei Yavo says as follows. Yehuda ben Teima Omer Yehuda ben Teima said, "Have a az kanemer." You should be strong like a leopard. The kal kanezer. What does kal kanezer mean? Light as an eagle. Now we don't tend to think of an eagle as a light bird. An eagle is a very strong bird. So maybe what the Mishnah means, and this is what Rav Weinberger suggests That to have the lightness of an eagle means that, despite the heaviness of the eagle's wings. It's considered the lightest because it flies the highest. It almost appears to be light. Have you ever seen an eagle soar? It's majestic. And the wings are so heavy, but it seems so light because it's just so strong. It almost appears to be effortless. Some birds, if you ever see some of these birds with very small wings, they have to flap their wings a million miles an hour, it's almost like an anxious bird, right? Otherwise I'm gonna fall, right? And sometimes when you see an eagle, it pumps its wings two or three times, and then it's just flying off into the sky.

11:48 The heaviness sometimes makes us the strongest. The lesson of the eagle is that in Mitzrayim A Jew felt. My wings have been clipped. That's what Klal Yisrael felt. Girls, could you imagine just for a moment what it was like to be a slave for 210 years? Let's say you were born 120 years into the slavery. You're a little girl. And you're growing up. Your father comes home at night after a ridiculous day of brutal torture. He walks into the door. He's exhausted beyond belief. He never gets to come home. And you see the small amount of clothing that he has holes in the back of it. And whip marks all over him. Fresh blood is congealed on his back. And imagine that was your normal. Imagine that's like what you thought was a regular thing. It's a crazy thing. Imagine you had a little brother.

13:00 But your little brother was baked into one of the bricks that was put into one of the buildings in Ptolemy and Ramses. And that was your normal. It was a normal thing for your mother to give birth and for the children to be tortured. That was your normal. Do you think you'd be okay? Do you think you'd be able to come out of that? You feel like you're not a human being. You feel like you're unworthy of being a human being. You know they say that's what Jews in the Holocaust felt. I understand that they just put together a Poland trip for you girls. They say that this is what it was like in the Holocaust, that people gave up on themselves and they stopped seeing themselves as humans because the Nazis, Yimach Shemam, what they did is they literally stole our humanity. They made us feel worthless.

13:50 You know what it must have been like to see the Rav of the town taken in front of everybody in the town square, and the Nazis gathered everybody together. And in front of everybody, they shaved his head, took off his peyot, and shaved his beard. And tortured him, and murdered him in front of everybody. Could you imagine the vulnerability that those people felt? They probably felt subhuman. Why did they feel subhuman? Because the communication to them was over and over again. You're subhuman. Do you think you could have sung in the middle of a hotly quest? If you found yourself walking down the street in 1943, do you think you'd be singing? You couldn't sing because songs are for people that have a self. Singing is one of the most powerful things in the world. In Eretz Yisrael, we had none of that. We were broken people.

14:48 What does it mean to be kal kanezer? Kal kanezer means to know that you have wings. You have wings, and despite the heaviness of your wings, you know what you have? You have the ability to soar. Just because you feel weighed down doesn't mean that you don't have the capacity to go higher than anyone else. In fact, we could even go so far as to say that because your wings are so heavy, that's what gives them the strength. And this is relevant to every single one of us. I hope you can open up your hearts and hear this. Sometimes the thing that feels like it's breaking us is actually the thing that's giving us our strength. Your wings feel so heavy And you feel like I just can't fly. It could very well be that the heaviness of your wings is what ultimately gives you the capacity to fly higher than anybody else.

15:51 I'll give you an example of this. Let's say you have a girl in seminary that she falls into a depression. It's not her fault. A depression is a terrible thing to have to go through. To feel nothing To be taking a tour of the basement of your life To be stuck in that dungeon and not be able to come out. And you're there. And you feel ice mentched. You feel like you're not a person. And you feel just like weighed down. There's no song. There's no me. I'm not present. That's what people who are really depressed say, and they say honestly, I just feel nothing. I care about nothing right now. Nothing matters to me. And they feel terribly broken. But there's a secret. The secret is that if you can figure your way out of that dungeon. If you do the hard work to explore the pain that you're not feeling If you're willing to look in the cobwebs, if you're willing to look in the moldy corners of that dungeon.

16:50 What's actually happening is that the thing that feels so heavy to you is actually becoming strength. That's what lifting weights is. Lifting weights is when you take something heavy and you just push it. And it's really heavy and it's weighing you down. But every time you push on that thing that's weighing you down, you know what you're really doing? You're building that muscle. What we sometimes don't realize is that when we go into Mitzrayim We think we're ice mench. We think we're a zero. But every time you come out of Eretz Yisrael, it turns out that the thing that was breaking you was actually building you. And it's important to know that because when you're in the process of being broken, you have to know you're not being buried, you're being planted. You're not being destroyed, you're being built up. The people that go into a depression but they come out of it at the end, they're able to say I visited the worst parts of myself.

17:48 And I learned so much about myself, and I'm a better person for it. Of course, we don't wish it upon everybody. But you know what? We all go through something like that. We all go through a Mitzrayim, and the thing that appears to be breaking us is actually building us. I'll give you an example of this. Look at Eretz Yisrael today. Just take a moment. We're sitting here in 2024. We're 80 plus years post Holocaust. Do you think it's an accident? That after they destroyed six million of us After they destroyed our communities Do you think it's an accident that we had the strength to build this country? To replant Torah here, to build yeshivas and seminaries and beis yachivs? Do you think it's an accident? It's not an accident. What the Nazis yimachshemam didn't know is they could try to take away our humanity.

18:41 But actually they just made us stronger. In fact, there's more Torah being learned today, perhaps than ever before in the history of Klal Yisrael. It's true. They talk about the yeshivas in Europe. The yeshivas in Europe were amazing, but in terms of volume, we've never had so much limudat Torah. To be kal kaneisha, to be light as an eagle, means to know you have wings to fly higher than anybody else. And where was the heaviness of those wings born? It was born in Mitzrayim, but Hakadosh Baruch Hu takes you out, and what does He teach you? He teaches you how to soar like an eagle. The thing that you think is weighing you down is actually the thing that's building you up. Imagine for a moment an eagle who's not yet hatched in an egg, all the way up in a nest. An eagle's nest is very high.

19:31 And imagine that a vulture comes and knocks over the nest, and the eagle is able to save most of the eggs. But one egg rolls all the way down the mountain into a farm. And the farmer sees it, and he says, "How did this chicken egg get out of the chicken coop?" So he takes the eagle's egg And he puts it back into the chicken coop. And after all the eggs are hatching The eagle hatches also. And it looks around, and what does it see? It sees a bunch of chickens. So the eagle starts acting like a chicken. Because that's what it imprinted. It looked at the mother. And it starts going like this. It starts barking its beak. And everybody else seems to be able to get the feet off of the ground, but the eagle can't get the feet off of the ground. It doesn't have a beak like that, and the eagle keeps thinking something is wrong with it.

20:21 And the eagle is going to therapy. And the eagle in therapy is going I just feel so different than everybody else. And everybody else is Is walking away and barking their wings. And the eagle just goes, my wings are so heavy. I just flap my wings, but it doesn't happen in the same way. And this chicken therapist, who's seeing the eagle, is sitting there and creating a safe space, saying it's okay for you to be vulnerable. It's okay for you to explore the fact that you're a different type of chicken, and not all chickens have the same strength. It's an IFS chicken therapist. Tell me about this part of you that feels different than other chickens. Let's heal that exiled wound. For those that are laughing, you're my people. For those that have been to an IFS therapist this year, I just want you to know We're together.

21:19 And then, of course, what happens? One day, this eagle is walking along after having been in therapy for years. It's not a regular chicken, and an eagle swoops down. And an eagle, and all the chickens go whoa. This eagle when it soars overhead has its big wings out and all the chickens are frightened. And the eagle lands right there in the chicken patch. And the chicken looks and the eagle looks at this other eagle, and it goes, "What are you doing here?" What do you mean? I was born here. This is where I'm supposed to be. I'm a chicken. And the eagle looks at this other eagle and it goes You're not a chicken. You're an eagle. The eagle goes, 'No. You don't understand. I was born here.' My mother is that chicken, and she points over to that chicken, and the mother, that's my That's my daughter. And the eagle looks at the other eagle and goes, "No, you're an eagle."

22:12 Just flap your wings. Just do this. And all of a sudden, the eagle starts flapping its wings and it starts rising above the ground. And the eagle goes, "Oh my gosh, this is crazy!" And all the other chickens are going, "We feel so inadequate as chickens. How come our sister chicken is capable of flying and we're not able to?" And a whole new vision of therapy has opened up for chickens that are unable to fly, like this chicken. But of course, really, what's going on? You were never meant to be a chicken. The Al Shachakadosh says, and this is a very powerful thing. The Al Shachakadosh says that an eagle has an innate sense of confidence. An eagle knows you don't have to teach an eagle to be an eagle. An eagle naturally flies. How can an eagle fly higher than anybody else? The answer is because when the eagle reaches up and it's like, I got this high. How come the eagle doesn't go, Look how far the ground is?

23:08 Because an eagle knows that it's an eagle from the time the eagle is a very young age, and the eagle keeps flying because it's an eagle. And when you see a Jew And the Jew Lo Alenu has been living in Galus for so long. And has been tortured by that gullis for so long. And girls You yourselves saw it this year. We saw it this year four months ago. You think like things are good, and then all of a sudden, Simchas Torah happens. And whether you're processing it or not, every single girl in this room, including myself We're all asking ourselves the question: Why won't they love us? Why won't the world accept us? You know what the answer is Because you're not a guy. You're different. You have a unique mission in this world. And you're not supposed to be. And the fact that we've been it doesn't mean that you're better. I'm not trying to do that like you're better. I don't. That's not what I mean. But there's great honor and there's great dignity in being the Bas Melech of Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

24:13 But we've spent so much time hanging out in gullus that we started to believe that we're a bunch of chickens. And we don't have that innate sense of flight that we really should have. Really, every single Jew should naturally be davening. Really, every single Jew should naturally be learning. If the Beis Hamikdash was here, we wouldn't be struggling in the way that we're struggling. And Mashiach comes And the third Beis Hamikdash is here. We're going to be looking at this time period, going, "It's crazy that we were acting like a bunch of chickens." It's crazy that these things were difficult for me. A Jew is naturally, like Chazal say, a Rachaman. We're naturally merciful. We're naturally Baishanim. We don't look for attention. We're not trying to be the center of attention. We're Gomlechassodim. We give everything that we have. How come we see Jews that could be selfish? How come sometimes we see Jews could be immodest? How come sometimes we could see Chas v'Shalom le'Alenu that Jews could be cruel?

25:09 It's not who we are. We're just acting like a bunch of chickens. We forgot how to fly. We forgot how to fly because we've been in gullis for so long. But it says in Mechel to the Rosh Hashanah that just as an eagle goes in a very short time from very well below to very well above, so too Klal Yisrael can go from very well below to very well above in a very short amount of time. I want to tell you a beautiful story. The Rosh Yeshiva of sha'ashiv was r' Shlomo freifeld, zechar tzadik levracha. If you girls heard of Shaiyashiv Shaiyashiv is a Yeshiva in Farakwe that was started by R' Shlomo Freifeld. R' Freifeld was one of the great mechanchim of the last generation. And there were some people that were sitting around and they were saying something nasty about a group of Jews, and R. Freifeld started screaming at them.

25:57 And he said, 'Be careful how you speak about Yidden.' We went from the lowest level of tuma in Mitzrayim to Kabbalas Atayra in forty-nine days. Be careful how you speak about a Jew. Because we are naturally eagles, because Hakadosh Baruch Hu took us out of Camp Nesharim and reminded us of who we are. It's possible for a Jew to go from being in a very low place to a very high place in a short amount of time. We see it every year here in yeshiva and seminary. You have a girl that came in, and who knows what she was doing six, seven, eight months ago? She was just a regular girl from Los Angeles. She was a regular girl from New York, from Muncie, from Brooklyn, from Lakewood, wherever she was from. She's a regular girl. She grew up. She had a great brother. Many girls in this room had great brothers.

26:45 Some that I even know But we were regular people doing regular things, and all of a sudden you come to seminary and all of a sudden you see this girl. It's quick, right? It's like three, four months later, and all of a sudden she's a growth-oriented person, she's a focused person, she's staking, she's doing amazing things with her life. What changed? That's what an eagle does. An eagle has amazing wings. Don't judge an eagle. Don't look at that eagle on the ground and think that it's grounded. If that eagle starts to flap its wings, it goes so high. I want to finish by reading something to you. I have to read these words to you. These are the words of the Halaga Eish Kodesh, the Pietsetzner Rebbe, who was murdered in the Holocaust. But I must read these words to you. This is from a beautiful sefer that every girl here, if you have the opportunity to learn this sefer, it's called Chova Satamidim. They have it in English and in Hebrew. It's worth your time to learn this sefer. I just want to read to you a couple of the words of the holy piyuttes to finish off tonight's she'er. But girls, you have to listen not with your minds, you have to listen with your hearts and with your souls.

27:54 He says, since we know you're still hesitant about these words of ours, and you're asking yourself, since we know you're still hesitant about these words of ours And you're asking yourself, ech efsher shemimeni. How is it possible that this great personality is going to come from me? How am I going to be? How am I going to become amazing? How am I going to become this person? I come to Sharfman's and they set up these amazing bars for me. They set up these amazing ones, like you could reach this height. How can I do that? How can I achieve this height? This is what Pesach and the Rebbe are asking, and he is giving voice to a lot of the ways that we feel. Am I really going to be able to turn it around? And even more so, I'm still a kid, and I'm going to become a disciple of Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

28:52 I'm going to become beloved to Hashem. So you know what he says: Lo avi Velo avi, avi ha yuken. I don't believe that because I'm looking at my parents, and I'm going. My parents aren't this passionate about my Judaism, about their Judaism. My grandparents weren't this passionate about their Judaism. How am I going to do it? I'm just a simple kid. I'm 18 years old. Am I going to turn my life around? Am I going to make all this work? These are powerful words. We must not allow, says the Chovas HaTalmidim. We must not allow such twisted thoughts to remain in a person. And how do we solve it? Listen to these precious words. These words are Mesuke Midvash. These are golden words. Every one of us should have to pay millions of dollars to hear these words, but the Piasetzna gave them to us for free. Listen to these words.

29:55 Emnafa libcha bekerbecha. If you're very discouraged. Because you're looking at your family and you're saying, "My parents are simple Jews. My grandparents are simple Jews. My great grandparents were simple Jews." The historical odios are meriachuk. You have to lift your eyes and look farther back. Don't look at your parents. Don't look at your grandparents. Don't look at your great grandparents. But go all the way back to your forefathers. And who were your fathers? Hakadoshim, they were holy people. There was a time, girls, when Jews were holy people. The neviim, there was a time when Jews were prophets. The tanaim, the amoraim, the gaonim, the tzaddikim, these were the tanaim and amoraim of the Gemara. These were the geniuses and the righteous people of the entire world. This is where we come from. The Gemara imeres and the Gemara and Pesachim says, Yisrael, a Jew, im ein neviim him, b'nei neviim him. If a Jew is not a prophet, he's the child of a prophet.

31:02 The Gemara isn't saying that that's something in the past. He says, and this was not that long ago. Chavisat Talmidim was not that long ago, less than a hundred years ago. The Piasetz and the Rebbe said these words. He said the Gemara is saying there's a spark of nevuah in every single one of us. Every single Jew in this room, you come from the Navi, and that means not historically. It means right now. You have the spark of a Navi inside of you. And what's our job? Our job is to search for it. Our job is to reveal the spark of the prophet that lives inside of every one of us. The problem, says the Piasetsna, is that we don't believe in ourselves. The problem is that we don't know that it's not that two thousand years ago. My great grandfather was a navi. The problem is that you don't know that you have his spark in you right now. You don't know that you're an eagle walking around in a chicken coop.

32:09 This whole notion of being depressed and being broken in this world isn't the way a yid behaves. A yid doesn't walk around with a purposeless and meaningless life. We flap our wings because our wings are—they may feel heavy, but that's where strength comes from. They have to be heavy because otherwise, how would we fly so high? We're at the time of the year, girls, where it's time for you to realize you're not a chicken. You're not a chicken. You're an eagle. Hakadosh Baruch Hu gives us a gift in this week's parsha. The energy of this week's parsha is in the room right now. You could say to yourself, "I just can't do it. It's too big. I can't make that big decision to do whatever I need to do to get close to Hashem." It's just too much for me. Or alternatively, you could stop acting like a chicken and start flapping your wings.

33:02 Because Al Kadosh Baruch Hu takes us out of Mitzrayim, Al Kanfei Nesharim. Taking us out of Mitzrayim is not just geographic. It's we no longer feel like a slave. We no longer feel like a guy. We no longer feel oppressed. We no longer feel like we don't have to fit in. We don't have to fit in. We're not trying to fit in. We're the educators of the entire world. We were given the Torah at Har Sinai, and Hakadosh Baruch Hu said, 'Make the world into a godly place.' And we're sitting here running around like a bunch of chickens, trying to amass more cars and more houses and more businesses. This is not what a yid was created for. Of course, those things might be important, but only in the service of Hakadosh Baruch Hu. We have to stop acting like chickens. It's unnatural for us. It doesn't matter how much therapy you go to. An eagle will always be an eagle, and it will not fit in with a group of chickens. So the choice is ours to harness the energy of this week's parsha and to say, Hakadosh Baruch Hu is with me to take me out on eagle's wings. The only question is, do I have the courage to say to myself I know I'm not a chicken.