Yisro - Restoring the Radiance of Klal Yisrael

2:09 Surely you could be restored. It's exactly what I wanted to ask. Beautiful question. Perfect question. Whenever the Medrash gives a mussel, the mussel has to add something If the Medrash tells us. If the medrash didn't tell us this mussel, could you still have understood it? You could still have gotten it. The medrash adds in this mussel. The medrash adds in this little bit that it's like a kid who gets sick and now he goes to school and now he's not ready to go back to school, so he has to get healthy first, even though he's recovered and he survived. He has to get healthy until he goes back to school. What's the medrash trying to teach us? So I want to tell you a story. A story about the Satmar Rebbe. The Satmar Rebbe was a very big tzaddik. And after the Holocaust The Satmar Rebbe had very few survivors from Satmar Chassidus. There were very few people that survived in Hungary after the Holocaust.

3:07 And the Satmar Rebbe needed to rebuild Klal Yisrael in America. You can imagine what it was like. Imagine on a very small scale. Imagine the people from Be'eri. Going back and trying to rebuild their life there—it's almost impossible to conceive of, to go back with all that destruction and to be able somehow to say, 'I'm going to rebuild my life.' We can't imagine it today. Imagine in the 40s in a post-Holocaust world where millions upon millions of Jews were killed, where everybody left all of their possessions and their homes back in Europe. And the she'eris apleta; these few survivors come to America. And now the Satmar Rebbe feels this great task to rebuild Klal Yisrael. Satmar Rebbe decides to give a Gemara Sheir. How many people came to the Gemara Sheir? A couple of Hasidim came to the Gemara Sheir. Not a lot of people.

4:05 The Satmar Rebbe decides they're going to start learning Chulin. Chulin is a very complex Mesecta. It's a hard Mesecta. So comes the first day of the Sheir, and there's a couple of chever there. And the Sat Merba opens up the Gemara And the first thing he does is he starts telling stories. He says, "I want to tell you the story of this tzaddik and that tzaddik, this miracle that this tzaddik pulled off, and this chesed that this tzaddik did, and the chasidim that were there. It was a very small amount of chasidim, but who doesn't love to hear a good story? They say the key, if you ever want to get a boy to open up to you, if you ever want to hear what's going on in a boy's life, is to open up a Gemara. Because the kid won't want to learn Gemara, he'll tell you. Let me just tell you what's going on in my family. Samer Rebbe opened up the Gemara and he starts telling stories. It was supposed to be a 45-minute shir. For 45 minutes, the Sumer Rebbe is telling stories of tzaddikim, of different things that happened throughout the generations. He's giving chizuk. At the end of 45 minutes, he closes the Gemara.

5:06 And they go on their day. The next day is going to be day two of the Chulan Shir, and exactly the same thing happened. He comes. He tells stories for 45 minutes. The chassidim loved it, but they didn't learn a word of gemara. Comes day three. And the same rebbe sits down And this time he looks at Ruven and he says, "Nur, Ruven, how you doing?" And Ruven goes, 'Rebbe, I'm okay.' And he goes, 'Yeah, tell me you had a job interview. I heard that you were trying to get a job. It's hard to get a job here in America without the language skills. How'd that go? And Ruven said, 'I didn't get that job, but I have another job coming up.' And Samir Rebbe says, 'Be'ezrus Hashem, you'll get that job.' New Yosef. He turns to Yosef in the chabura. He goes, 'How's your new wife?' Yosef had been married, but his wife was killed in the Holocaust, and he got remarried in the DP camps, and they had made their way to America. He says, "New Yosef, how are things going with your new wife?"

5:59 And Yosef says, 'Rebbe, what can we say? Baruch Hashem, we're doing our best to rebuild. We're doing our best to get to know each other. It's weird to have shanerishaina again at this stage of our marriage.' Samir Rebbe said, 'Yeah, it's definitely hard.' And he turns to Yaakov and he says, 'New Yaakov, how are things going? I know that you were working on that project.' And Yaakov says, 'Yeah, Baruch Hashem, it seems like the project is having atzlaha.' Forty-five minutes, the Satmar Rebbe is going through each guy and asking him, 'New, how you doing?' And he's giving him chizik and he's interested in his life. At the end of forty-five minutes, they close the Gemara. They didn't learn a word. Three days, they didn't learn a word. The fourth day Satmar Rebbe sits down and he sees them with a little bit of a humble type of chutzpah. The Hasidim look at the Rebbe and go Respectfully, we love hearing the stories. We love the chizuk. We love the fact that you're checking in and seeing how our life is going.

6:52 But Rebbe, we came for a gemarshir and chulin. It's been three days. We haven't learned the word. Sami Rebbe said to them, "What do you mean you haven't learned the word?" I said, Rebbe, we haven't started the Mishnah. You haven't started at the very beginning. So Sami Rebbe said, "No." You learn a tremendous amount. In a Gemara, the Gemara begins on Daf Beis Amud Aleph. If you ever look at a Gemara, you open up a Gemara and it starts on page two. There's no Daf Aleph in a Gemara. The Satmar Rebbe says there's something called Daf Aleph. Daf Aleph is before you open up the Gemara, you need to feel like a mensh. So for the first couple of days, it's true we didn't learn the Mishnah. It's true we didn't learn anything on Daf Beis. But for the first couple of days, I just needed to get us attuned back in self. I needed to get us to a place where we'd be capable of learning Gemara.

7:54 This is not a small story. It sounds like a small story. This is not a small story. A lot of us in this room We come to seminary. Guys come to yeshiva. And they have a day in front of them, and the day can be very overwhelming. Last year Did you imagine yourself at 8:45 at night sitting and listening to a shir? Last year at 8:45 at night, for those of you that just looked at me like I was cracked, thank you very much for coming along with me on this ride. Last year at 8:45 at night, you were listening to shirim? No. I would imagine not. A guy shows up to a yeshiva schedule, a regular guy who went to one of the regular yeshiva league high schools, and he comes into yeshiva, and we say shachar is at seven fifty in the morning. First seder is from nine thirty to twelve thirty, and second seder is from three thirty to six thirty, and night seder is from eight to ten. And then there's post night seder. There's Reb Ben's mishmar. There's Reb Shira's musar on Wednesday. There's chaburos on Monday night. Tuesday night is the Rosh Yeshiva sicha. Every single night is something. A guy is sitting there with a schedule in front of him. Even the piece of paper. If you remember when they came

8:58 Remember when they came to present Ber and Miriam, and they gave you the piece of paper, and you looked at the schedule and said, 'I don't know how in the world I'm going to do that.' A guy looks at the schedule and goes, 'I don't know how I'm going to do it.' He opens up his Gemara day one and he tries because he's a good guy. He opens up the Gemara and he says, 'Rabbi, I don't know why this isn't working.' I'm not stupid, but like I just like this day is so long and it's so hard. And you know the problem? It has nothing to do with the black Gemara. It has nothing to do with the class. It has nothing to do with the Sheer. It's because the person is still in recovery. And when you're in recovery, you can't learn. It's not a small thing to be in recovery. Most of us don't understand that we're in pain, let alone pain that we have to recover from.

9:48 Sometimes there's things going on inside of ourselves, underneath That we're not paying attention to And those things are zapping our energy. And you don't know why. You're like I just can't manage to sit down and learn. A guy said to me this week. He said, Rebbe, something had happened in his life. I'm not going to get into any of the details. It doesn't matter, and I would never want to give away any of the details that maybe you could figure out who it is. Something happened in his life, a tragedy of epic proportions, or a really terrible thing. He said, Rebbe, before that tragedy. I used to be able to open up a science textbook or a history textbook and study for hours. And Rebbe, it's been so long since I've been able to just sit there and focus. Now I'm in yeshiva and I'm all into it, but I just can't sit and focus.

10:46 So I said to this young man, 'Do you remember where you were holding three months ago?' " So he said, "Yeah." You know where he was in the beginning of the year? He came. As soon as he came, he fell apart. As soon as he got to yeshiva, he fell apart. He was having trouble waking up for minyan. He couldn't do a day of yeshiva. He started off in one of the quote-unquote top shiurim in the yeshiva. He was in the higher level learning. But before long, he had to get called into myself and the rasha shiva's office. He got called in. He said, "You're not doing anything in yeshiva. What's going on?" So we realized this guy needs a rebbe. He doesn't just need a high level shiur. This guy needs a rebbe who's going to get into his kishkus. So we took him out of that shir and we put him in a rebbe shir. The rebbe's name I'm not going to tell you because I don't want to give away any of the details. But a rebbe who lives and breathes his talmidim.

11:35 Every single boy, this rebbe you saw that story of the satmar rebbe, that's this rebbe every single moment of every single day, checking in, new, how you doing, how you feeling, how'd you sleep last night, where were you for shabbos, always checking in, always breathing life into these boys. And now he's holding by the end of January, and Baruch Hashem the boy is from and he's solid and he wants the shtike. But he says, Rebbe, I still can't open up the black gemara and just sit for three hours. I used to be able to open up a book and sit for three hours. I want to sit and learn a gemara for three hours. How come I can't sit and learn a gemara for three hours? He's so frustrated. I said to him Because you are still recovering. And he's like, I can't just keep recovering, Rebbe. I got to get out of this already. Recovery takes time. Most of us don't give ourselves a break.

12:24 Most of us sit there with this inner negative voice, this critical voice that says, "No, you're not doing your best. How come you're not doing your best? How come you're not doing more?" You know why you're not doing more? Because this is what you're capable of doing right now. The Satmar Rebbe could not open up the Black Gemara on day one and say to the chevrah, 'Here we go, let's learn Chulin.' How could you take Holocaust survivors and just start learning? If they don't know that there's somebody in the world that cares for them I'm going to tell you a secret, girls. It's a big secret. But I'm going to give you a homework with this. You don't have to do the homework, but please do it. It'll be better for you. You think that you were born and you automatically loved yourself. You automatically said, "I'm awesome" And it's not true.

13:10 If you take a moment right now, I guarantee you, if you wrote it down within a minute You would say. I said to you, who are the top five people that loved you into being? Who were the five people in your life that were your Daaf Aleph? Who were the five people in your life that made you feel you can conquer the world, and no matter what you did They were there next to me. I guarantee you, you could find those five people. It won't take you very long. I'll tell you who they were for me. And by the way, if you have trouble with that homework It takes time. But I want to tell you something. That means you're in pain. If it's not easy for you, if you feel like I didn't have somebody who did that for me, that's pain. That's something that deserves love and attention. I missed those people. I didn't get to have them. I want to tell you who it was for me.

14:01 I'm going to tell you two of them. The first is my grandmother, who unfortunately passed away during Corona from Corona. She was living in an assisted living facility in New Jersey. For those of you that know, the assisted living facilities in New Jersey were a death trap. Corona came in and it just wiped out all the elderly. And my grandmother, who was a 90-year-old woman and a healthy person, got Corona. Three weeks later, she passed away. My grandmother was a second mother to me. I was the oldest grandchild. So for me, my grandmother came on vacations with us. She was the type of person who was always there. She would always call. And my grandmother never got angry. She was the nicest, kindest, sweetest person. And if we were in her apartment, and let's say she was babysitting for us, and my parents went away for whatever time they went away, and if me and my brothers were acting like total psychopaths, tearing down her apartment, what she would say?

14:57 Now simmer down, boys. That was the most angry she could get. Do you know how beautiful it is to know that I could do anything, and the meanest thing you could say to me is 'simmer down'. And my grandmother, she would always call and she would say, 'You're amazing. You're so special.' And it wasn't like one of those fake rabbi things where they go, 'You're amazing. You're so special. If only you would know how special you are.' No, she really meant it, and you could tell she really loved us. And because she really loved us, and because she was there and she cared. The love that I have that I give to my own children It's her love. It's not mine. I didn't create this love. She gave it to me and said, "Here, you are the holder of this love." No matter how much trouble I got in, and Baruch Hashem, I got my fair share of trouble, my grandmother never said a negative word about me.

15:52 When I would go to visit America when I made Aliyah 16 years ago, I would always go and try to surprise her. And when you walk into the room of someone you love and you surprise them, their eyes light up. And she would drag me around. My grandmother was an Orthodox woman. She became a balash tshuva when she was 70 years old. Wow! At 70 years old, she started keeping Shabbos. At 70 years old, she kept complete kosher, both in and out of the house. She started dressing sneerishly. She became judgmental of all my cousins that weren't religious. She was truly Orthodox. When I would come into her assisted living facility, my grandmother was the only Orthodox person in the place. But that's where her friends were. The elderly, at some point, they just go. I don't care. I just want to be around my friends. So she would take me around and introduce me with pride.

16:41 You have a grandmother who likes to live in one of these places. They bring you around, they drag you around. They say, 'This is my grandson.' You know that. This is my grandson. He's a rabbi. But I saw in her face the unbelievable nachas. And that nachas wasn't for her. That nachas was her way of letting us know you're awesome. Someone loved you into being you. That was the Da'af Aleph. Anything you did in your life, it's because those people gave you the gift of love. You want your homework now? Before I tell you the second story. Have the courage to call them and tell them how much you appreciate them. It's vulnerable. It's uncomfortable. And it's awesome advice. You know why? Because when you tell them, I want you to know I was thinking about your love and how much it has enabled me to do what I do in my life.

17:30 It's not a gift for them. For sure, they appreciate the gratitude. It's a gift for you, because it means you know how to call upon those people that live inside of you. Every one of us in this room has people that live inside of us. For some of us, it's camp counselors, parents, grandparents, teachers, whoever it is. But they live inside of you. And before you do something hard, whether you realize this or not, it's their voice inside of you that says you could do it. And that's how you're able to do great things. You think you were capable of doing this on your own? It's not your voice; it's their voice that lives inside of you. You want to hear the second guy? The second guy is a guy whose name is Mr. Richie Altobee. Richie Altobee is the principal of Halbe Elementary School today.

18:16 But back in the day, Richie Altobee was the principal of a yeshiva called Yeshiva Darke Torah in the Five Towns. And when I got thrown out of my elementary school He and Rabbi Bender took me into Darche, and one summer—I shouldn't say this on—I shouldn't say this while it's being recorded, but I'll say it anyway. One summer in camp. Shouldn't say this story. I'm going to say it. One summer. I won't pause it. I'll just be real. And whoever hears it. One summer The camp officially was a single-sex camp. It wasn't supposed to be a co-ed camp, but there were girls on campus. They did their best to keep the boys and the girls separate, but if there's a will, there's a way, right? So they did whatever they could. They put up one of those big blue tarps to make sure we couldn't see into the other side.

19:04 And they stacked it so that the girls had to use the fields while we were in the lunchroom, and then when the boys were out of the lunchroom, they were behind the tarp. They had a whole system worked out. Obviously, it didn't work Especially because of the nurse's office. They only had one nurse's office. And I remember on the first day of camp, I said to my counselor, I was a JC. I said to the counselor, Ellie. I said, Ellie, listen It's a big bunk. We're two of the most talented people in camp. They gave us 30 kids for the summer. Awesome for tips. If a kid gets injured, Ellie, you're the counselor. So I'll be the one to take him to the nurse's office. And Ellie looked at me and he goes, No, you don't understand. If a kid gets hurt That's serious business. The counselor has to take him to the nurse's office. You're such a talented JC. You could watch the bunk. We just have to get the kid to the nurse's office.

20:01 Then after that, you had to get back to the bunk. I'll be with him in the nurse's office. Every time a kid would get hurt We would run to see who could tag that kid first. Kid gets hit in the head by a baseball bat, and we are like, "Yes, I got it." It's an emergency. Someone call out Sola from the nurse's office. So there was a girl. There was a girl on the camp, and I liked this girl. So I would hang out with her. I said, "I don't care who's listening to the recording. Maybe she listens." I would hang out in the nurse's office, and she would hang out in the nurse's office. And somehow, if she was on the field and I was supposed to be in the lunchroom It was at that time that I needed to go to the canteen.

20:54 Always had a way of figuring things out. Hung out with her all summer. The next summer, there wasn't WhatsApp back in the day. There weren't smartphones. Didn't like keep in touch over the year. You had to actually make a phone call. It wasn't an easy thing to do. So we kept in touch a bit over the year. The next summer She's not there. She didn't get rehired by the camp, and I found out one day about two weeks into the summer. Richie Altobee, the head of the camp He said he didn't hire her back because we were hanging out the whole previous summer. I was up in arms. I was up in arms. I walked into Richie's office. I stormed in, big tough sixteen-year-old kid. I stormed into Richie's office and I said, Richie. Did you not hire her back because of me? And he looks at me like I was a fool.

21:51 It was her or you, and I chose you. You're going to be upset at me. And I was like, "Whoa!" I never realized that he had to fire one of us because neither of us were working. But he chose me. And Richie told that story over. At my wedding when I married that girl I hung out with. No! That's crazy! I should have seen what's going on. That's crazy! That's why I said I don't care who listens to the recording. Oh! That's crazy! But that story is an amazing story. Not because of the way that it ended up. The story is an amazing story because the truth of the matter is that there were a lot of times over the course of those years that Richie could have fired me. He had ample reason to fire me. And he never did. And every time he didn't Every summer that he rehired me, and not only rehired me, promoted me.

23:04 Every single summer that Richie kept me in the camp Every single time Richie didn't realize. But he was communicating to me. You could do it. And if I've done anything in my life It's because in those summers he kept rehiring me. And it's not a small thing to give someone that Da'af Aleph gift. Nobody in the world could snap their fingers and make you better when it comes to recovery. Not even God. Because recovery is something you have to discover within yourself. Klal Yisrael, after 210 years of slavery Mitzrayim is the Holocaust on steroids. The Holocaust is nothing compared to Mitzrayim. For 210 years, they baked our children into bricks. You understand what that means? We watched our children floating down the Nile River and dying. Could you imagine the trauma of what that does to a person? Hakadosh Baruch Hu says, I could have given him the tyra for sure.

24:11 It's not nice because they're not vehicles for receiving it. They're broken vessels. And broken vessels need time to heal, and they need love to heal. So when Hashem gave us the man It wasn't just giving us food to eat. When Hashem gave us the slav, it wasn't like here's a fleishik suddah. When we got that fleishik suddah, you know what we said? It's amazing that even after all this brokenness, Hashem still loves me. We have this cute thing that we say today, and it's wild because we say it like it's nothing. Hashem loves you. If you say it, it's almost like you're a fool. Like Hashem loves you. It sounds so silly. That's not a silly thing at all. If we knew, I mean this sincerely, if we knew how precious we were to Hashem. We would be flying out of our seats to go learn Torah. We'd be flying out of our seats to go do Chesed.

25:03 Why aren't we? It's not because we're bad people. It's because every single person in this room is in recovery. Listen to what Rabbi Nachman taught. You girls hold a little bit of Rabbi Nachman. You could hear a little bit of sweet Rabbi Nachman. Listen to this Torah from Chaya Maran, a beautiful Torah from Rabbi Nachman. And he said you have to be very careful in this Torah. He said be very careful. Don't push children too much. Because you don't know what's going on at home. A kid shows up to school, and you're saying, 'Nu, how come you're not doing as much as you could be doing? You don't know what's going on at home.' There's a beautiful story from Rabbi Krohn about a boy whose father had left the family, and the father was no longer in touch with the children. He left and abandoned them. The rebbe knew about it. The kid was very, very quiet. He was a very quiet kid. You know that quiet kid who sits in the back who never raises his hand, never does anything. So this kid was a very quiet kid.

25:57 And the Rebbe assumed, he went through so much Gehennom at home; his father was totally gone. And one day the Rebbe was giving a shir, and what was he giving shir about? He was giving shir about Yaakov and Yosef in Mitsrayim, and how Yosef, even though he knew that Yaakov Avinu was alive, because his brother kept telling him our father would be crushed if Binyamin had to go to Mitsrayim, Yaakov says, Yosef says, 'Ani Yosef, ha'or avichai.' I'm Yosef. Is my father still alive? What type of question is that? The Rebbe said, 'Of course he knows his father's alive. They've been talking about his father the entire time.' Does anyone have an answer? And the little boy in the back Who never raised his hand Raised his hand ever so gently. And the Rebbe was excited. If a kid who doesn't raise their hand ever raises their hand, what do you do?

26:45 You call on that kid. Says yes, Yankel. So the kid says, "Maybe it means" Does my father still think about me? Am I still important to him? Maybe it means even though I've been gone for so long Am I still alive in his eyes? Is he still alive? How many people would see that boy sitting in the back of the classroom and just think he's a quiet kid? If you don't know that kids are going through something, everyone is behaving in an understandable way. Everyone. The kid who gets in trouble in school. The kid who's a lunatic. Everyone is behaving in an understandable way. You just have to understand what's going on in their lives. And by the way, it's not just for your abayim and your teachers and your mechanchoded and your rakazot. It's for you. If you would know what's going on in your life, then you know what you'd say. I'm not strange. I'm not weird. I make sense. That's a gift you can give yourself to know that you make sense. It's an unbelievable gift. This Rebbe Nachman says, "Don't push children too much. You don't know what's going on. Maybe that kid's not learning because he feels like a piece of garbage."

27:55 Listen what Rebbe Nachman said: It is impossible to explain this matter properly, but it is clear to those who are wise, and is extremely important for teachers and so too in many other areas. This is a great principle: Do not push yourself more than appropriate in any manner. Rather, it should be gradually and patiently. You have to know," says Rabbi Nachman. Go slowly and carefully. Recover. If there's a part of you that's hurting, spend time recovering. And when you recover, great things will happen. It's an amazing story that Rav Yaakov Galinsky tells over. This is such a beautiful story because it's such a classic gadol story. A lot of times we don't realize how sensitive the gadolim were. In Benybrak after the Holocaust, there was a group of women living in an orphanage. They had nothing. They had no parents. A group of girls, girls probably your age.

28:49 These girls were depressed, sad, broken girls. Can you imagine what it was like? Let's be. I don't want to just tell a story. I want you girls emotionally to go to this place for a second. You've lost everything. You have nothing. You have no siblings. You have no parents. Nothing. Your life was destroyed. Your home, the streets that you grew up in, you're no longer allowed to go back there. It's a post-Holocaust world. I don't know if you know this, but even after the Holocaust was over, there was crazy anti-Semitism in Poland. Did you know that? My rasha shiv is echatzadik levracha. He went through the Holocaust. It's a crazy maysa. He was in the concentration camps, but the Nazis didn't know about him. They smuggled him into the concentration camps. He was a very little boy, and they hid him behind the toilets in the concentration camps. It was so disgusting in the toilets. The Nazis and marshmam would never go there. My rasha shiv's children were well over six feet, but he was maybe five feet tall because he didn't have food for all those years that he was in the Holocaust.

29:46 And he told us that after the Holocaust, they went back to their house, and he was sitting one day like they had a picture window in the front of their house. There was a Jew walking down the street, and there was a Pole walking the other way, and the Pole just took out his gun and shot the Jew in the middle of the street. And everyone was afraid to go get the body. They waited until nightfall, and then they got the body and buried it. There was crazy anti-Semitism even afterwards. These girls lost everything. They couldn't go back home. They had nothing. And you've traveled to Eretz Yisrael. And Eretz Yisrael is not like it is today. It's not like there was katzefet back then. You're talking about post. Was that like a not nice seminary joke? Yeshiva guys go to Katsafit also. It's not like it was Burger's Bar back then. This is Bene Brak in the fifties. There was nothing there. It was a desert. There was nothing there except for the Chazon Ish and the yeshiva that was being built up.

30:39 And one of the girls got engaged. And there was so much simcha. And that Shabbos she got engaged They broke out and were singing in the house. And they're going, we're like lebedik, lebedik, lebedik sing. Bnei Brak's a pretty from neighborhood. I don't know if you know that. Bnei Brak's a pretty from neighborhood. And so one of the next door neighbors to this orphanage ran to the chazanish and said, 'Rebbe, it's not right. They're sing. It's kolicha.' And the chazanish looked at this guy and he said They're singing. They're finally singing. That's wonderful. If you're so worried about kolicha, go take a walk. But they're singing Girls. How many of us would be singing? It takes courage to sing. It takes courage to dance. It takes courage. You seen that guy at a wedding? The guy like by Kate and Miriam when the chassan and caller is sitting there, and he doesn't mind getting up in front of everybody, even if he's not a good dancer. But he's just so happy that his best friend got married, and he's like a total doofus out there, doing his whole thing, and he's dancing with reckless abandon.

31:47 And it's like his arms are flailing about as if disconnected from his feet. It's not a good look. There's so much simcha in that dance. There's so much courage in that dance because he doesn't care what anybody. Afterwards, people might say, "Oh my God, Ruven really can't dance." But you know what? At least Ruven had the courage to dance. It takes a lot of courage to dance. It takes a lot of courage to sing. Anyone here an artist? You could raise your hands. By the way, if you just wanted to see the vulnerability on display, only one person raised their hand. And I'm betting there's a lot more people that are artists in this room. But it's hard to make. It's hard to be a real artist, right? Because you know what you might get if you make real art? You might get rejected. You might get criticism. It's hard to put yourself on a canvas.

32:34 It's hard to sing if your life has been broken. And every single person that I've ever met, including myself, we all have some brokenness inside of us. That's Daaf Aleph. The Rebbeinu Shlom comes and he says Give him time. Let him come to Har Sinai. Give him time to recover. Their radiance isn't there. They're healthy, but they're not shining. Children shine. You ever see children shine? Children shine. Can I tell you a sweet story? My son. I have five daughters, so I've never been to a Chumash party. I'm not invited. I've never been to a sitter play. I finally had a son after all these years, and now my son is seven years old, and he had just a couple of weeks ago his misibat chumash. I was so excited to go. Every father that's there is like, "Oh, I've been there a million times." I'm like, "I only get one shot at this." My father, Baruch Hashem, my parents live here in Eretz Yisrael. My father came, and we were sitting next to each other, and it's so cute.

33:33 And all the sitter, all the chumash parties really in this country are the same, and they all do the same songs. They all have the same solo, and my son gets up there and he's so cute. It was Anikvar, Bachur, Gadol, Velo Medchumash, VeKorimli, Micha Elberg, and me and my family's a loud family. We're yeah. It was momish, you know, whatever the great. It was like Lil Nas X getting up there and performing. I was so proud of him. I'm just trying to be a relevant rebbe. This kid was incredible. And then there was a section. It was the sweetest thing in the world. There was a section where the Rebbe told them And the Rebbe's son is sick. He should be a zecher to refur shleimus, should be alchus for him. The Rebbe told them there's going to be a certain part of a certain song where I want you just to take your chumash and hold it close, close your eyes, and have kavana for whatever you want to get.

34:28 Whatever you want to get out of your limerat Torah, just have kavana. And so all the boys were taking their chumash and they were sitting and swaying with their eyes closed. And my son, front and center, because he's a short kid, front and center He's sitting there like a statue, like you could think he was sleeping. So I took a picture, and I was like, "It's awesome! It's an awesome moment. I want to capture it." And afterwards, I showed him the picture. I said, "Mikey, look, look how beautiful you looked in this moment." And he goes, "Abba, do you know what chavana I had? I said, "No, Mikey, what chavana did you have? So he said. I wanted that I should daven that for always. I should love learning chumash like I love it now. Children are so sweet. Children are so exceptionally sweet. There's a radiance, a shining to them.

35:19 Until we knock it out of them. It's true. Do you remember the beginning where you loved learning? No kid comes home from gun and says I hated gun. You come home and you show your project so proudly to your mother, but then in third grade, fourth grade, all of a sudden it's like Now it becomes a competition and who's going to get a good mark on the test? If I don't get a good mark on the test, it gets harder and we start to judge ourselves. Well, if I only got a 76, that means I'm not good, and if she got a 95, that means she's awesome. It's not true. One has nothing to do with the other. Success in school is not an indicator of success in life. The fact that we put them together is the craziest thing. And then you know what happens? That kid starts to doubt themselves.

36:05 And let's say now she's getting excluded from a group of friends. All of a sudden that radiance starts to dim. That sweetness starts to go somewhere. For a kid who's 16 years old to be walking around smiling and happy today, it's not pashtut. You see these kids walking around and it's like Your life is awesome. What are you so upset about? You know the answer is they've had the radiance beaten out of them. They could have all the material things in the world, but they feel so lonely. They feel so deeply unworthy, and as rabbis, as teachers, as mechanchod, as rakazot, and girls, you for yourselves have a responsibility to restore your radiance. If you're asking yourself why Torah is not having the impact on you that you want it to have, I'll answer you very simply: It's because your radiance has not yet been restored.

36:51 And that's everyone's responsibility to each other. Rabbi Zin Henny Machlis, alav shalom, said. Va'yichan is from a lashon of chayin. Va'yichan meant that at Har Sinai everybody could look at everybody else and see their grace, see their charm, see their beauty. We have a responsibility, every one of us, to give that charm, that beauty to each other, to only lift ourselves up that da'af alef so that be'ez Hashem we should be zeicher to a beautiful da'af beis of Har Sinai.