לעבור לתפיסת המציאות של התורה – גצל רובשקין

00:00 Speaker 1 Simcha flows from something, and if you don't have the simcha, that means you don't have the something, right? Somebody o- over the Shabbat tone told me the joke about the guy got an empty box. He ordered batteries, and he got an empty box because battery's not included. You know what I mean? So if the battery is the order, you can't have battery's not included. You know what I mean? You can order a watch, the battery's not included. You order a, a car, the battery's not included. You can't order batteries, and the battery's not included, right? You can't have Yudzkeit and not have Emunah, right? It's, uh, a- Emunah is Yudzkeit, Yudzkeit is Emunah. You can't have Emunah not included, right? Simcha is the result of recognizing what it is we're engaged in and whom, who we serve. When you, when you have a proper understanding of that, um, there's a simcha that has to, that has to result. You know when you're at a good toych and a gefr bringen, and you wish it was being recorded? Welcome to Spreading the Springs: Conversations in Chassidus, a podcast for Bringen where we have real conversations about real Chassidus. I'm sitting here with Getzler Oboshkin or Reb Getzler Oboshkin. How offended are you gonna be if I call you Reb?

01:19 Speaker 2 Pretty.

01:20 Speaker 1 Pretty.

01:23 Speaker 2 No, chas v'Shalom, chas v'Shalom. Every Yid is a reb. Reb Avner was a reb, and I'm a reb also.

01:27 Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

01:28 Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, you know, that was a very, uh-

01:32 Speaker 1 Um, okay. So th- this is actually a big thing for the, for the podcast, Bachal, because in the past we've had mainly, uh, mashpiyim in the yeshiva setting, and that's obviously very important, and there's a lot, uh, that they have to offer 'cause they poshet sit and learn Chassidus for, for the day job. So, uh, there's another angle which, which, uh, I, I think is very important, which is mash-- the un- the undercover mashpiyim, the, the mashpiyim that, uh, that are servicing Balabatim and, and communities in Crown Heights or anywhere, um, and the, uh, uh, in two senses. In other words, there's the mashpiyim in the sense of teaching Chassidus, like magid shiur for Chassidus, teaching Chassidus, which is the, you know, the important for itself, and then there's mashpiyim in the sense of farbrengen and, and, and helping people live with Chassidus, which is the direct topic of this, uh, of this entire project. So besides you being my cousin, which is how I know about it, it's, uh, so you are a mashpia, a, uh, a, a, a teacher of Chassidus and a, and a f- and a facilitator of living Chassidus, um, to, uh, in Crown Heights. So there's the Mitzvah Center where you give a daily Chassidus shiur, and then Anshe Moishes Shul where we are now, um, on Lincoln Place. Northern... What do they call it? Northern Crown, Northern Crown Heights, right? That's, uh-

02:59 Speaker 2 Yeah

02:59 Speaker 1 ... that's, I've seen, um, a vibrant community in Crown Heights with, uh... known for its very, very shturm dike farbrengens and, uh, and shiur, and shiurim I think also. No? I've seen-

03:11 Speaker 2 Yeah.

03:13 Speaker 1 Okay. So, you know, so let's start with that. L- tell us about that. Tell us about, um, I guess how much you wanna talk about your upbringing and how it led to here, like.

03:24 Speaker 2 Um, okay. I'll talk a little bit about myself, but, um, I wanna first... While you were talking, so, so you called me a mashpia, and, uh, you rightly pointed out that I'm not on anybody's payroll, and I'm not hired to do what I'm doing.

03:39 Speaker 1 Right.

03:40 Speaker 2 Um, and I o- my only claim to the title mashpia is because mashpia means to influence.

03:46 Speaker 1 Right.

03:47 Speaker 2 And, uh, it's something to keep in mind that we're all influencers. Unfortunately, that's the scourge of our generation. Everybody's an influencer. And, uh, it's something to keep in mind because nobody's, nobody's exempt. Pe- people are always reluctant to take the name mashpia because it comes with an obligation, and it means that you have to be mindful. And, uh, my, the, the bad news is that you have to be mindful whether or not you take the title mashpia because everybody influences somebody.

04:11 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

04:12 Speaker 2 And so just keep in mind, we're all... You're, you're a mashpia. I'm a mashpia. Whoever's listening and watching this is presumably a mashpia to, uh, to somebody, and that comes with, that comes with an obligation. Are you being mashpia, you know, up or down? Another word for influencer in Hebrew is meisis.

04:28 Speaker 1 Hmm.

04:29 Speaker 2 So you have to make sure that you're being... your influence is not chas v'Shalom in the meisis direction and more in the mashpia direction. That's the first thing I would say. Um, and you also set up a contrast between mashpiyim, mashpiyim in yeshivas versus not in yeshivas. I wanna talk about that also. Um, but I'll answer your question first. Um, just a, a rough sketch. I don't, uh... My only, my only claim to, or my only grounds for, uh, for sharing, for talking to people, why people... why would anyone wanna listen to what I have to say other than if it's persuasive? Um, it comes from nisayon. It comes from experience, and, uh, we know ein chacham k'bal ha-nisayon. There's a certain insight and clarity that nisayon imparts. Just because if it didn't kill you, that made you, it gave you clarity, and, uh, it didn't kill me, Baruch Hashem. I went th- we went through as a family very publicly a lot of, um, dramatic, uh, nisyonos in the sense of, uh, potential con- potentially confusing experiences. And so to come out the other side with, with clarity forced us, forced me to, to, to think about these things. A lot of things that we don't, especially if you're born frum or you're born Lubavitch, some of these things come, you know, come packed in, you know, built in, and, and you never really think about it. There's just something that you do, something that you're, that you, you accept and you believe and

06:04 Speaker 2 you embrace as the kind of family line, the party line. And I had to, I had to work through that stuff. And so I just... Because I have the benefit of, um, having thought through that stuff, so I, I'm, uh, I try to share it. And, um, that's as much detail I think as we need to go into. I mean, everyone knows our story. Obviously, every, every individual goes through, every, every individual goes through a maturation, you know, time where they, they are who they are, not because of where they were born or who they were, you know, who they were born. But you have to buy in at some point, and that process is really the nisayon that hopefully to some people more, some people less, gives them some insight and some clarity, and that's what they have to share, and that's, uh, what we share with each other. It says, uh, "V'divrei Torah ashirin b'makom echad, arur nim b'makom acher." And, uh, Tzidkas Peretz Zaynen, the Rebbe talks about how it's a kindness of Hashem that he scattered us, that he gave us different experiences because somebody has clarity in adversity, another person has a clarity in, in wealth, right? Someone that experiences the nisayon of ashirei can, can give you insight from that perspective. And somebody that maybe is aspiring to ashirei because he o-only ever knew aniyei, and he has, has this imagined idea of what ashirei will be, he can benefit from other people's clarity. And some people that are

07:30 Speaker 2 suffering through their own version of aniyei, whether it's financial struggle or, uh, family struggle or, uh, whatever it might be, uh, can turn to other people who have experienced adversity and learn, and learn the lessons and the clarity that they... The hard-won... Right? That's-- There's a kind of like a mashpia l'maalah lamatah, which we in Lubavitch like to really exclusively give to the Rebbe. Like, I respect anybody. Only the Rebbe is telling us l'maalah lamatah. But there's also the idea... Well, we have mashpia, I don't wanna say, but, uh, I'm saying people like, uh, people who are looked up to without names, people are looked up to as someone who can reach down and pull you up. But there's also people that are, um, more or less horizontal. The people are on your level. The people are a brother. He's not your father, he's not your rebbe, he's your, he's your, he's your brother, but he may be a year older than you, or he may be a l- a year wiser than you in, in experience, and he can, he can help pull you up and, and, uh, and help you in some way. And that's the kind of thing that I, um... That's how I think of myself, and I think I encourage everyone to think of themselves in the same way. We're all brothers. We're all marching on the same battlefield, and some are f-ahead in some respects, some are behind in other respects. And everybody has something to offer, and everyone

08:44 Speaker 2 should. Everyone should take that responsibility. Um, we kind of alluded to this, and this is what I want to, I wanna throw this out there right at the beginning. Um, I heard this story about, uh, by Adin Even Israel, uh, AKA Steinsaltz. And, um, he was once... He spoke-- He was obviously a big, uh, scholar and a world-renowned author and very well-respected in the world. And so he would travel around giving lectures. Um, he was brought down, I don't know if it was a Shliach or it was some kind of community where there were Lubavitcher living there also, not just... So he was, he was in town for a lecture for some kind of presentation, and the, um, and, uh, the locals started pestering him to farbrengen with them 'cause he was-- he came the day before, whatever. He had some open time, and he's, uh, he's a mus. They thought, you know, that he has those stories from the Rebbe. He has, you know, wisdom from Torah, wisdom from personal experience. He had this sod ha'avoda. And, uh, and they, they, they were pestering him to farbrengen, and he was saying no, he wouldn't do it. And after pestering, I don't know, this is the story the way I heard it. Um, after a while, he says to them, "I don't farbreng with Lubavitchers." They say, "Why you don't farbreng with Lubavitch?" He says, "You guys are all, uh, inoculated. You're all, uh, immunized. I go to some person who's, who's never exposed to

10:17 Speaker 2 these ideas, and I tell them that he has a yetzer hara, he has a yetzer tov, he has nefesh, he has nefesh habhamah. It's mind-blowing."

10:22 Speaker 3 Mm-hmm.

10:22 Speaker 2 They, they, they hear it, and they, and, and they right away, they right away kind of try to put it back together with their life and, and it, and it's transformational. But when I tell a Lubavitcher, "You have a nefesh habhamah." "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Be'er ha'chalav, be'er ha'kveitz, be'er ha'gemul, mo-morah saris class." They know everything, and it, it's kind of calcified and kind of set aside as an intellectual truth, and you can't, you can't, you can't tell them anything. And I think he was wrong, and I'll tell you why I think he was wrong. Because in this respect, and maybe because he was a Maggid Shiur, so this is the way he saw it. A shiur and a farbrengen are very different. When it comes to a shiur, you can't hear the same thing twice. Twice, three times. I'm saying you could get chazarah. You can get... You can, you can repeat an idea. But once you have it and once you know it, you file it away, and if any... And, and, and every time someone brings it up, you check that you have it, you have it, and that's it. You don't, you don't need to see it again. You don't need to hear it again. Farbrengen is different because it's not talking to your mind. Farbrengen is an effort to talk to your heart. And when it comes to things that talk to our heart, we can hear the same thing again and again. You hear that you have your favorite

11:40 Speaker 2 song that you like to sing or you like to hear or listen to again and again. You, you heard it already. How many times do you have to hear the same song? I'm not trying to hear it 'cause I don't know it. I'm trying to hear it because I enjoy it, because it means something to me. It transports me somewhere, right?

11:53 Speaker 3 Yeah.

11:53 Speaker 2 Visual. You, you can see a beautiful scene, a beautiful, a beautiful artwork. Uh, whatever it is, right? There's things that talk to our hearts are things that we're trying to experience. And things that we're try-trying to experience, we can experience again and again. Now, maybe, maybe he knew, and this is the thing I wanted to talk about, that- Too often we assume the chassidus or the mashpia is talking to our mind and trying to give us insight that we don't have or that we d- we-- give us a... blow our mind somehow with some new information. And so we're not... it, it doesn't, it doesn't even register. It's like, you know, water off a duck's back they say. You know, it's just flows right off. And, and if the person's listening to me, then he's not wrong. Maybe I was too disrespectful to say he was wrong. He, he's not wrong if the makabol is taking it that way as new information, then I have nothing to tell you. I'm not gonna say anything to you that's gonna make you rethink, because you're just gonna say, "I know this already." To the extent that the makabol is listening with his heart in the sense that... or, or heart and mind, meaning you can have new information, but in other words, if, if you're, if you are ready to experience something or reconsider something, you could, you could hear the same thing again and again, and each time it's a different experience and it's, uh, and

13:08 Speaker 2 it's a, it's something you're receptive to. So because I know your audience is mostly resembling, mostly Lubavitcher, it's something to keep in mind at the start of our conversation. If you're, if... hopefully we'll talk about things and maybe if, uh, you, you, you know, a, a new way of looking at something, a new piece of information, that's great. You know, if, if, if it, if it opens your mind. But don't, don't go into it that way necessarily. Something can-- something that you know can hit different if you're, if you realize that Chabad, and I'll end with this likuta, it's not Chab.

13:43 Speaker 1 Oh.

13:44 Speaker 2 It's Chabad.

13:45 Speaker 1 Yeah.

13:46 Speaker 2 Chochma, bina, daas. You know what somebody's looking for when you look... when, when they stop looking, right? If you don't know what somebody's looking for, and you see they're looking, looking, looking, and they found and they stopped, okay, that's... they were looking for their keys. They found the keys, they stop. If they throw the keys away and they look, so you know they're looking for something else. The Alter Rebbe established a shita with chochma, which is new insight, bina, which is expanding, expounding, understanding the ramification and the implication. That's all in bina. But he didn't stop there. He went on and he said, "I wanna... I need another ingredient here. I need daas." Daas is the bridge that carries the clarity into the heart, and that's what he was looking for. That's what he... So really with Alter Rebbe, with the resembling, they're not talking to your mind. They're talking to your heart. They're trying-- they're using your heart, your mind to give clarity, but ultimately they're trying to bridge it to your heart. They're trying to, to get you to experience your life differently and to, and to l-lift you up, right? To give you wings, right? The aver, the yedder, the bittel, the menuchas hanefesh, whatever, whatever emotional reaction is supposed to result, that was really the, the, the goal of all of it. And so going into any conversation, especially a farbrengen or a, or a farbre- or a discussion that you're hoping will change you, the key ingredient there is daas.

15:02 Speaker 2 It's not the chochma, it's not the bina. So if you get extra chochma and bina, amazing.

15:06 Speaker 1 Right.

15:06 Speaker 2 But even if you didn't, if you come into it realizing that what you're after is daas, you wanna re-experience it, you wanna try to bridge that gap, you'll be able to tolerate a repetition and maybe enjoy the repetition and maybe grow from the repetition.

15:19 Speaker 1 Right. I, I, I'm not... I don't wanna... Excuse me. I don't wanna turn this into the main point. I know it's not the main point, but just to push back a little bit for sake of dialogue, you know. I think that you could say far karet also because you could say, "Oh, so why didn't Alter Rebbe just start with chassidus daas?" Daas by definition-

15:34 Speaker 2 Yeah

15:34 Speaker 1 ...needs to have chochma and bina.

15:35 Speaker 2 Sure.

15:36 Speaker 1 By definition.

15:36 Speaker 2 Sure.

15:36 Speaker 1 So why not just say chassidus daas? So elementarily, there is also the chochma and the bina elements-

15:41 Speaker 2 Absolutely

15:41 Speaker 1 ...in, in, in and of itself. There is also, like, the, the, the trip down, say, the Herstalos, you know, just to open up your mind-

15:47 Speaker 2 I know, I know what you say

15:48 Speaker 1 ...into the, the, the mitzvah to learn about aleicos.

15:51 Speaker 2 There's no daas without chochma and bina.

15:52 Speaker 1 Correct.

15:53 Speaker 2 But, but, but I think we see it all the time in the Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. Chassidus without avoda, chassidus out of behit is, is not, is nothing. Is nothing.

16:01 Speaker 1 Sure.

16:01 Speaker 2 It's really nothing.

16:02 Speaker 1 Sure.

16:02 Speaker 2 I mean, you have the mitzvah of limud Torah.

16:04 Speaker 1 Right.

16:04 Speaker 2 You won't be put that on the side at all. But in terms of the avoda, of what it means to learn chassidus, to be a chassid, to, to engage in chassidus, without chochma and bina, there's no- there's nothing there. But without the daas, the chochma and bina is, is not serving the purpose for which it was expounded.

16:19 Speaker 1 Right. Right.

16:20 Speaker 2 Yeah. So I wasn't-- I'm not diminishing chochma and bina.

16:21 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

16:21 Speaker 2 I'm just saying that, uh, kinda...

16:24 Speaker 1 Right. Um, okay. So I, I think that, uh, um, I think that that's a, a perfect segue to, you know, you, you... like I said before, you give the shiur, um, in the morning, and then you have, like, the shul over here on Shabbos and your farbrengen. And, you know, in a way it's almost like, not to say that the shiur probably doesn't have farbrengen elements. I was ever by it, but I would imagine- ...that the shiur has a lot of daas in it as well. But, but in a way it's like there's a... And, and, and on the... not to ... we're not playing a matching game. "Oh, the shiur is the chochma and bina." But the point is that to appreciate this is really what's necessary. In other words, there's... and again, I'm talking about for balabatim, not as opposed to bachurim, but bachurim I think are... they have to buy in, and they have to do it on their level, and it has to be done properly on their level. But I, I, I think we could fairly save that out of this conversation, this particular conversation about bachurim. The importance for balabos, a regular, you wanna be a normal chassidish person, not extra chassidish, not extra, uh, you know, Frum, not extra thing, just a basic, uh, you know, uh, a, a definition of a Lubavitcher is that you need to have chassidus. You need to have farbreng- shiur, you need to have farbrengens. I don't think I'm saying any big

17:35 Speaker 1 chiddush by saying that. I don't think that's controversial. I think everybody, uh, could, could understand that, um, that that's the definition of a chassid. So first of all, how specifically did it start? I mean, this is, I guess, still part... Uh, uh, did it start after your father, your father's release? Or, or I'm saying-

17:52 Speaker 2 So I'll get, I'll, I'll get into that. I, I wanna, I wanna just comment that you, you asked me that... you, you kind of brought it up in the last question. I spoke so long I forgot the question was.

17:59 Speaker 1 Right. Yeah.

18:00 Speaker 2 We're talking about bachurim. You, a bachur-

18:01 Speaker 1 Yeah

18:01 Speaker 2 ...putting bachurim aside, balabatim aside. It's funny 'cause every... a bachur is bachur, is nifchar, right? He's the hayyim, you know, who is the true embodiment of chassidus, you know, or the immersion in chassidus is a bachur. In a sense, in a sense, Baal Batim have an advantage. What w- And, and when we say Baal Batim, I should, I should define. Unfortunately, we've come to a, a period of time where the... There's a, there's a, there's a gray area, or not a gray area, but there's a, there's a shift to Baal Batim sky that happens without the rebbe without the house. Meaning, there are people that have unfortunately graduated the Bakar part of the formal system, but they're kind of Baal Batim. Meaning they've, they've, um, they're working or they're older, you know, they're, they're, they've, they've, they've left what you... The cocoon of, of what it means to be a Bakar, and they're living in the, in the what, the real world, quote unquote.

19:01 Speaker 1 Right.

19:01 Speaker 2 And, uh, and that I think is a working, a better working definition of Baal Abus than a married person, a person with a family. 'Cause it's not the family, doesn't... It adds obligation, it adds a burden, but it's, it's not the, the real active ingredient in, in what it means to be a Baal Abus. I think a Baal Abus is a person who interacts with, with the world.

19:19 Speaker 1 Right.

19:20 Speaker 2 He has obligations to some-

19:21 Speaker 1 Out of the Avela. Avela

19:37 Speaker 2 ... right.

19:37 Speaker 1 Ben Mekanah.

19:38 Speaker 2 Ben Mekanah. Why? 'Cause he goes out into the, into the marketplace, and he sees, uh, she sees HaShem

19:42 Speaker 1 Right.

19:44 Speaker 2 Right. Which is, which is, which is, this is the point that I wanted to, to, to highlight. Maybe we'll, we'll get to this 'cause I know the topic of the conversation is, is living with what we're learning and, and, uh, so bringing it to life. As much as Bakarim are immersed and, uh, and i- in, in the reality, in the truth of Torah, they're lacking in any appreciation or interaction with, with practicality. A Bakar, nothing is practical. I mean, he has his inner struggles, he has his emotions, but where the rubber hits the road, and, and I'm, I'm not, I'm not diminishing obviously the Bakarim have their Avoda, and there's Das in the world of a Bakar also. But a Baal Abus lives in Das. A Baal Abus lives in the world, and he knows what it, what pract... What... In, in Torah, when, when a Torah wants to determine the value of something, he asks a Baal Abus. There's no, there's no formula in Torah. What's the value of a hand? What's the value of a, of a s- of a slave? What's the value of a field? Go to the marketplace and see how much this thing is, sells for in the marketplace, 'cause that's... Because, because reality happens in the marketplace. Reality happens in, in the physical world. And somebody who has interaction with that... And there's a Bital, I, I, I can't remember the exact context of it, but in Torah, article to Torah, he talks about the, the Nashistika benefit

21:21 Speaker 2 from interacting with the world. Because when you're in the boardroom, boardroom, when you're in the c- in the f- in the strategy room, you're like a Bakar. Everything is theoretical. Everything... You have this, this, uh, you'll, you'll come up with this product, you're gonna bring it to the market, everyone's gonna love it, you're gonna become a billionaire. When you go out into the real world and nobody stops in to even look at what you have, there's a humbling effect. There's a, there's a reality check, because now you're in reality. You're not in theory anymore. So that's the, that's the curse and the blessing of a Baal Abus, is that he lives, he lives and dies in the real world. The question only becomes, what's the real world? So for a, for a Baal Abus, by our n- by nature and instinct, which we all have and which we're born with, and just living like that 1,000 times, just living in the real world strengthens your Nefesh Abrahamas. 'Cause your Nefesh Abrahamas is the part of you that says, "The world operates the way it presents itself. This is the world." And your Nefesh Elokis is the part of you that says, "No, that's, that's a m- misunderstanding. The world is fundamentally different than what it presents itself," right? But the Nefesh Abrahamas, just by eating and becoming full, that's proof. That's all proof you need, right? Cause and effect. The world you eat, you become that, right? And that's the real world. You went to

22:39 Speaker 2 work, you got your paycheck, right? So just experiencing the real world in, it, it, it strengthens the Nefesh Abrahamas, and that's the h- the, the, the, the roots I think of the dismissiveness towards the Baal Abus. He said, "That's Baal Batim

24:15 Speaker 1 Right.

24:15 Speaker 2 Very early on. I mean, I, I don't know exactly what it changed, but in the early, early few, first few generations, you didn't, you didn't, you didn't, you didn't start engaging until you knew what reality was, until you, until, until actions had consequences, until, until you were engaged in the world. Um, obviously we're in a different time, but, but this, the... Fundamentally, the, the, what it means to but I would also say that the, um, that this idea that a, that a bachur is, uh, is at, is at an advantage has its, has its place, but, but for a balabus who gets the, who gets the recipe right and who manages to, to calibrate and clarify for himself what's going on, his avodas Hashem and his, his avodah, his yirah, his, his experience is, is on a much deeper and a much more real level. And, and in a way, just to tie it up, you know, in a bow, the idea, the whole idea of avodah and dealing with your nefesh behamis is the idea of ratzu bizkurei achshav. There's a certain passion, there's a certain reality that the, that the nefesh behamis experiences that the nefesh elokis doesn't have. And this is kind of the nefesh eli- the bachur, bachur, balabus dynamic, right? The, the, the, the bachur can be seen in some senses as weighted more heavily to the nefesh elokis department, just in, in the sense of the world he lives in-

26:11 Speaker 4 Right

26:11 Speaker 2 ... and the, and the, the, the, you know, the kus b'shitas and the ilmis b'schachos, right? So in a sense, when he gets it right, he has less of a share, he has less of a, he has less of a benefit from the passion and the, and the, and the reality of, of his nefesh behamis, 'cause his nefesh behamis is, is, is underdeveloped and, and, and hasn't put his feet on the ground yet. For a balabus, when he gets it right, that, that, that real passion, that real engagement and involvement that he, that he has, that makes him a balabus when it's repurposed is, is, is tremendously derived. And now I didn't forget the question this time. The... I don't know why it's necessarily, uh, interesting or relevant, but, uh, we... I didn't, I didn't, I w- I wasn't... I, I had just gotten married not long before my father's, um, drama. I had, I spent Shanah伊, Shanah伊 here in Crown Heights, a simple, uh, what's it called? A young man searching for light. I was in Rabbi Heller's kollel, the Rebbe's kollel. And, um, and, um, after Shanah伊, Shanah伊, I, I went back, I went to help my father, and I, I made a chesbon, I made a chesbon that we all wanna be sh- shluchim. We wanna be... I never thought, I never felt that shlichus has to be a pulpit in Zimbabwe. I always felt that it, I had to identify my strengths and, uh,

27:33 Speaker 2 utilize them, dedicate them to the Rebbe's mission, David, David's mission. And, uh, I was always, uh, apprehensive about the fundraising part. I never really... I can't, I can't, I can't bring myself to do it. And so I thought, "Well, 50% of the time you spend fundraising, maybe I can transpose that into 50% of the time earning, and then the other 50% of the time doing, uh, avodas hakodesh." So I offered that idea to my father. I said, "I'll come. I'll be part of the, your project and your mission." His, his also a version of the, aspect of the Rebbe's mission, being kasher ufru. He also took it as a shlichus. But I said, "I'll be part of that for a paycheck, but only be half the time. The other half the time I'll, I'll find my place in, in the world of, uh, of, uh, fatza mayones and fatza yadess." To be honest, as a balabus, he, he did not know what I was talking about. He said, "I don't understand what you mean 50%. You can't be half in, half there, half there. You, you do something, you do the whole thing." But he humored me, and he, he, uh, had the, the bachur, the bachur, the bachurish ideas.

28:38 Speaker 4 Right.

28:39 Speaker 2 And, uh, I went to Iowa, moved to Iowa with my, uh, young family. I was, uh, already had my first child. Baruch Hashem. Ken yirbu, ken yifrtzu. And I, uh, I moved to Iowa. I worked half the time in the plant. Um, I gave sh- I gave classes in the school and local cheder, where I discovered that I have zero class management skills. Um, my only redeeming ability is I can... I mean, adult education works for me. People that wanna learn, and I can communicate. That's my... I write. I... Fighting, fighting with other people's yetzer hara doesn't, doesn't really work for me. But I was with you there for a relatively short period of time. Um, I was doing that. I, I got involved a little bit in web development 'cause it had caught my attention, and I decided that, that w- that I couldn't create resources. I had, like, visions of, with time, resources that, that did not yet exist. Um, eventually, when all that, uh, world crashed down, I ended up, we ended up coming back here. We were there for a little while. The kids were impacted by the events. I mean, they were, they're, they... We, we came one time down to the, where the kids were playing, and one was gonna be the shlach the goy, and one was gonna, and one was gonna be the pogrom chick, and one was gonna be the Yid. That was the kind of games, 'cause they really experienced this pogrom.

29:56 Speaker 4 Right.

29:57 Speaker 2 Unfortunately, we've been, uh, our, our, we've regressed in the definition of pogrom. But at that time, that was as close to a pogrom as an American Yid had ever seen.

30:04 Speaker 4 Right.

30:06 Speaker 2 And it, it hit the kids a little bit, and there really wasn't anything worth sticking around for anyway, 'cause my father was already leaving, uh, and, um, family was leaving. The, the community and the company had gone a totally different track. And so we came back to Crown Heights temporarily until we figured out the, where we were gonna be permanently. Um, and we're still here. And when I got here, so I turned the web development thing into my day job, which I still engage in a little bit till today. Um, and, uh, but I was, I was a chassidishe balabus, you know, just, uh, doing avodas Hashem in the context of living in the real w- in the, quote-unquote, "real world," living in the physical world. Um, and not long ago, uh... Well, I shouldn't say not long ago. About 10, 10 years ago probably by now, 10, 12 y- maybe, maybe more than 12 years ago, the Mitzvah Center, s- one of the... They were bachurim at the time. They actually, it was very nice. They d- weren't, they weren't married. They weren't balabatim yet, which is when the class shuls had traditionally started. But there was a, a large percentage of the class that had gone on to be Bacher Yisharal Batem who were working and getting into the world, and a couple of them decided that, that they needed to have a nucleus of Yiddishkeit, and so they started a shul, and they were looking for someone to farbrengen for Yiddishkis lev

31:24 Speaker 4 By the way, nowadays that's most class shuls start already.

31:26 Speaker 2 Unfortunately, 'cause you have more of that-

31:28 Speaker 4 Yeah

31:28 Speaker 2 ... more of that happening. But, um, so we, uh... So I came to farbrengen for Yiddishkis lev, and we hit it off. I, I, uh, the, you know, was like shmooze farbrengen, and I offered to come learn with the Chassidus Shabbos morning, and over time they solidified. They have a, they have a place now on Troy. It used to be on a, in a basement on Union in New Hope. It's, now they're in a relatively to central on Troy and, uh-

31:53 Speaker 4 Troy and President

31:54 Speaker 2 ... Troy and President, yeah. And, um, I followed along. I, we did, um... It's been up and down as the Bachar mostly got married and, and life gets a little more busy, but we did, uh, we still do, um, a daily... So they start a week- a, a daily, um, I mean, you know, weekly meeting, which is not necessarily common for, for, for-

32:12 Speaker 4 Right

32:12 Speaker 2 ... for class shuls. So they have a daily thing. Um, we used, we used to do more, but they, now we do, we do a, a daily before Shacharis, 7:30. Before Shacharis, um, we have a, a Shiur, a Shiur Chassidus. After davening we do the Chummash together. Um, Shabbos morning we do Chassidus. Um, we used to do a weekly, you know, weekly Gemara shiur on Sundays. We used to do a weekly, uh, Sicha, uh, Sicha shiur, but that's, uh, quieted down. You know, these things come and go up and down, but, you know. Um, and at the same time, the Anshei Moisha took off, which is a funny story if you wanna hear it. But, um, we established a shul here, me and my brother-in-law here in, on Lincoln Place in New Hope. It's not, not far from where the Mitzvah Center was, actually. And, um, and also my father's, uh, Bachar to my father's nes happened a while after that. I mean, like six, seven years after that my father finally came home, and he jumpstarted his shluchus of teaching the Emunah Bitachon, and I got roped into that. I did a lot of the creative work, the design, the, the, the do- the graphic design, the writing, the web development. I did a lot of that stuff. And, um, and so that's how-

33:25 Speaker 4 Well, you're playing it safe. I mean, not just the web design.

33:26 Speaker 2 I hope, I, I hope, um, I hope, um-

33:27 Speaker 4 You also do a lot of the writing

33:28 Speaker 2 ... well, I was, I do writing.

33:28 Speaker 4 So, yeah.

33:28 Speaker 2 I do the writing. I do, I do, uh... And, uh, well, when it come... I wrote my father's story-

33:34 Speaker 4 Right, the, the book

33:35 Speaker 2 ... as a book, The Inside Story.

33:36 Speaker 4 Yeah.

33:36 Speaker 2 I, I learned that titles are chosen by the publisher, to my distress, 'cause I didn't like The Inside Story, and I thought... I wanted to call it The Triumph of Trust.

33:45 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

33:46 Speaker 2 But anyway, I wrote my father's story, The Inside Story, and people were like, "Oh, the book is amazing." So I, my standard res- response is that he lived it, I just wrote it down.

33:56 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

33:56 Speaker 2 So I don't take so much credit for the writing 'cause, I mean, the ideas are not my... I mean, obviously I contribute to the ideas a little bit, but they're the Rebbe's ideas. They're my, to the extent that, you know, my father's, uh, shaping the message. So I contribute to that also, I'm not gonna lie. But, uh, but, um, I don't, I don't play that part up because it's a, it's a team effort and it's not, uh, it's not, I'm not the primary player. Uh, but yeah, so I, I hope I'm more of a Mashpia than a Meisus. And, uh, and that's how, and that's how I came to be, uh, in the role I am.

34:32 Speaker 4 Right. So let's, so let's talk about the, the Chassidus shiur, the daily Chassidus shiur, and specifically in the context of everything that you've mentioned about the importance of davka for the Balabos to learn Chassidus in order to, to align the real worldness experience of a Balabos with the actual real world of what Toldos Aharon Chassidus has to say. Um, so first of all, I mean, a, a, a technical question, and maybe it's just gonna be a technical answer, but maybe it m- might be insightful. What... Do you find that there are certain parts of Chassidus or certain areas of Chassidus that are much more, I don't wanna say negeah, chas v'shalom, but much more b'gashmiyus appealing to, to a Balabos? Not in just in the sense of being interesting, but in being powerful and being impactful and being relevant. Um, I, I, I... Like, you know, whether it's a certain... I'm saying you've been doing this, this morning Chassidus shiur for how many years? The, the daily shiur.

35:31 Speaker 2 Since they started. I mean, the truth is I, it started out as my own personal chavruta.

35:35 Speaker 4 Uh-huh.

35:35 Speaker 2 I used to come at 6:30 before they, before the meeting at 7:30, and then one person joined, a few people, more people joined, so I can't really place exactly.

35:42 Speaker 4 Right.

35:42 Speaker 2 It's more than a-

35:43 Speaker 4 The point is you probably went through a few-

35:44 Speaker 2 It's probably more than a, probably more, close to a decade probably-

35:48 Speaker 4 Wow

35:48 Speaker 2 ... by now.

35:48 Speaker 4 Wow.

35:48 Speaker 2 I maybe, um, I'm, I'm... I don't, I-

35:50 Speaker 4 Right. Okay, fine

35:50 Speaker 2 ... I'm just guessing based on, based on when I think we started.

35:54 Speaker 4 But so, and what, and what have you learned then?

35:55 Speaker 2 We started Anshei Moisha, we started Anshei Moisha about 12 years ago now. So-

35:58 Speaker 4 And this is before that

35:59 Speaker 2 ... so I think it was before that or maybe a little bit after that.

36:01 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

36:01 Speaker 2 I think it must be, it must be going on a decade. We, we... It de- it depends. I, to answer your question, I, I wanna say there must be a part of Chassidus that, that, that is more-

36:10 Speaker 4 I don't even mean a sefor per se, but like a topic-

36:12 Speaker 2 I get it. Right

36:13 Speaker 4 ... yeah, like a-

36:13 Speaker 2 I don't, I... I wanna say that there is and there must be, but I, I, I would have be hard-pressed to f- to, to identify it because anything can be dry and boring if it's not real.

36:26 Speaker 4 Right.

36:27 Speaker 2 And anything can be mind-blowing if, if, if you realize that it's, that, that, that it's not a theory and it's not a, a layer of emo- of s- you know, spiritual meaning over... It's just r- it's realigning. You, you're realigning with what's, what really, what, what's truth. It's hard. I mean, I guess, I guess Sichas, uh, like highly technical topics where the Rebbe's maybe resolving, uh, you know, like the Sichas that are, that are like, uh, a pilpul in, in, in technical terms, I'm, you know, we don't, we don't do, we don't learn really Sichas. It's more, more about Maamar.

37:05 Speaker 4 Right. Sure. Sichas.

37:05 Speaker 2 But I guess a Maamar or a, a topic that is, that's, that's resolving, uh, you know, conceptual, technical things I can imagine is less stimulating. But- Most of this is not, is not... Even, even when it, even when it looks like that sometimes on the surface, like, just learning, um... I mean, Lesiem Shekeilah is one of the classic Hesayeris Memarum that everybody blows their mind over. You know, I was, I was like... I don't know. Y- y- I hadn't, I hadn't learned it in a long time, actually. I... So when we first started with this, with my first started as a commitment to finish Memarum Mulokat.

37:43 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

37:44 Speaker 2 And so I was just learning Alaser. I mean, we were learning Hanuka Memarum and of, like, I was just going through the Memarum Mulokat. Somebody wanted to join, that we joined. And, and it kind of goes to what you're saying, 'cause the power of them, of Hasidis, is not that it's adding a decorative element to your Hanuka, that you're learning Hanuka Memar. And now you know, although it's highly encouraged, we're coming out to Purim. If you wanna really celebrate Purim, understand what Purim really is, you learn a Purim Memer. And I'm not taking-

38:09 Speaker 4 Sure

38:09 Speaker 2 ... away from that. But the real, the real excitement and the real power and strength, and power of Hasidis is the realignment with truth, and that's not seasonal. So, um, uh, a clarity that you're getting in, like, to learn Lesiem Shekeilah in of, you'll get the same kick, right? You'll get the same-

38:27 Speaker 4 Right

38:27 Speaker 2 ... there, these ages. Um, so I, I hadn't learned for a long... So, so then it became Mulokatetaeterer. And my current, uh, crew has a preference for, for Mulokatetaeterer. So we stopped to learn-

38:44 Speaker 4 Interesting

38:44 Speaker 2 ... Lesiem Shekeilah. But, um, I learned a lot of Teeterer. I haven't learned through the Memar Mulokats in a while, and I, I reacquainted myself with Lesiem Shekeilah, and I realized-

38:57 Speaker 4 It's not even a Mulokat.

38:59 Speaker 2 You're right. It's not a Mulokat Memer.

39:00 Speaker 4 Yeah.

39:00 Speaker 2 That's right. Actually, it was frustrating 'cause the, the, uh, the, the, the different Hanakas-

39:05 Speaker 4 Right

39:05 Speaker 2 ... kind of rubbed me really wrong-

39:06 Speaker 4 Yeah

39:06 Speaker 2 ... the way when they, when they updated the Memar, and I was like, "What's going on?"

39:09 Speaker 4 Yeah.

39:10 Speaker 2 But we had two books. I said, "Okay, we have two books." Uh, you know, me and the Havusa, we, you know, the Havusa, he, he said they're two different books, and they're two different-

39:18 Speaker 4 Yeah

39:18 Speaker 2 ... Hanakas.

39:19 Speaker 4 Yeah.

39:19 Speaker 2 It's a little... But what I mean... Anyways, without getting into that can of worms. Um, it just, it just... It's, it's mind-blowing what, what, what, you know, what you learn there. You, you... There's a point there where he... It seems like almost a... I can say, I can't, you can't say it's technical, but talks about how... And, and I, I interact a lot with Nalabavagers, uh, in the context of the, of this Gimel, when we're talking all, uh, Moises. And there's a my- there's a madish that says that, "Does Abish care if you shecht in a tzav or in an adav? Does Abish care if you shecht an animal from the back of the neck, from the front of the neck? You could do this part, that part," right? A lot of, a lot of, uh, critics of Yiddishkeit and of, of Y- Abish de Bachal would like to hope there's a big Abish that cares about the little details, you know? So the madish actually says that and answers, "Shechting in a ter- a mitzvah is all a tzav or bemezabrias." So the way people normally read that is kind of a concession. Yeah, Abish, on some level, doesn't care, and it's really just for your benefit. And then Abish turns that around in a, in a way that is, like, mind-blowing to me. Like, he, he, he says, "Not that Abish doesn't care, and instead he just gave it to you for your benefit. There's a level where the particulars don't matter, but

40:44 Speaker 2 the, the transformation that happens to you does matter."

40:46 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

40:46 Speaker 2 Right? The tzav or bemezabrias is the part that he cares about. It's not saying he doesn't care, and therefore you have to do the tzav or bemezabrias. And there's not a n- ne- r- revolution. This is c- straight up in the Mimer. But when you learn it, and if you, if you, if it... If these things are real to you, it's, uh, it's mind-blowing. I mean, I, I guess that wasn't a good, great example. I'm trying to give an example of something that's technical. There are things that are technical. But really everything in Has- Hasidis relating to, you say this in, in, of creation, of Abish there, of Nishama. If, if it's real to you, it's, it's, it blows you away.

41:20 Speaker 4 Right.

41:21 Speaker 2 Um, and then, I mean, then, and that, then the question becomes how do you make it real? And that's, and that's the question that every- everyone has to ask themselves, Bachor or Balbos.

41:29 Speaker 4 Correct. Right. And the, the, for that, I think there's also the opposite, like, um, not when you're giving a Shir, but when you're actually farbreinging. You know, Shabbos afternoon, you're farbreinging. So there it becomes what are the messages that you usually end up farbreinging about? I mean, I, I, I would guess Bitachan.

41:50 Speaker 2 No, no, I... Honestly, the Shir and the story are, are two parts of the Darkei Hasidis, right? That was to... We always say Yiddishke Slif. You, you, you know, the, uh, Shaar HaTehillah, but Lilut Hasidis and the Darkei Hasidis, right? Some people appreciate stories 'cause they're entertaining, and some people appreciate stories 'cause they're inspiring. Stories are an in- in- extri- an inextricable part of the Mesira. It's part of V'ga'at HaLivincha. It's part of, it's part of Darkei Hasidis because it plays an important role. To make something, to realize that something is real, you need the Shir and you need the story. The Shir tells you that it's real. The Shir... Sorry. The Shir tells you that it's true, and the story tells you that it's real.

42:41 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm. Mesira, in Gemara, saying the Halakha when it comes-

42:44 Speaker 2 But that's, that's very often the missing ingredient. That's very often the missing ingredient. You have the l- the Torah learning. You have... You can, you can, you can rattle off all the Midrash and say they're ShTaSlos, and you can explain how it tells the different than Briyya. And you could say Ashkaha Pratis and, and, uh, and, uh, Cheeis, uh, uh, Bitachon. You can say these words, and you can explain them. Without the story or without the, without the ob- observation of these things in the real world, it doesn't land. It doesn't, it doesn't move you. It doesn't... There's no emotional reaction to it because it's just theoretical. It's just-

43:21 Speaker 4 Right

43:21 Speaker 2 ... it's just, um- We, we, I, I farbrengen very-- mostly the farbrengens are jumping off from, from the ma'amar that we're learning

43:31 Speaker 4 Beautiful. That, that's exactly his point.

43:33 Speaker 2 Always. Always.

43:34 Speaker 4 Yeah. That's exactly his point.

43:35 Speaker 2 Always. We, we, we, um... Like, uh, like take the, take the ma'amar now of, uh, Al Ken Korach where he talks about how, um, Haman's, uh... What was Haman thinking? The Rebbe wants to know. First of all, why, why do you call Purim Purim? Because, because that's, it doesn't highlight the yeshua. It highlights the gezera. It highlights the uprising. The Rebbe says that the reason we u- we, we call Purim Purim, we celebrate Purim, is because it highlights the, the, uh, Haman-- what was Haman's thought? Like, what did he, what did he think? That, that, that, that somehow that he, he... Taking the Chassidishe, uh, the Chassidishe Sefardim Yisrael that Chassid always, that know all about Yishmael-

44:25 Speaker 4 Right

44:25 Speaker 2 ... know about Yishasol, they know about, uh-

44:27 Speaker 4 Right

44:27 Speaker 2 ... right, padre. They, they write the kirchin. The Avai, he does know the Kimi. The Kimi knows Avai. He does know, you know, these-

44:33 Speaker 4 Right.

44:33 Speaker 2 But from that, from that lens, what was Haman's plan here? How did Haman think he's gonna get past the dynamic that Rabbon Biad Ma'ateman, ve'im Ei'bi Atah Yidiman, Zeidim Biad Ezki Serasa. This is how the world works. You know, the, the story always has a happy ending. You know, this is, you know, you... What was his plan? So his, his plan is captured by the term Purim or the idea of Purim, because he, he had this idea that, um, he had this idea that the Yid's dominance and the Yid's victory is rooted in their category as being as good.

45:10 Speaker 4 In performance.

45:11 Speaker 2 In their performance, in their, in their evaluation, right? It goes back to self-esteem, actually. People, people-

45:18 Speaker 4 Right

45:18 Speaker 2 ... evaluate against their evaluation. There was some kind of metric, right? And they come to some kind of maskana. And, um, and, and this was what Haman's assessment was. If we can go past the evaluation, then what makes me worse off than... Why, why should they win and I should lose? Ach E Livliaviv, on some level talking about the who cares the tavern, the Erev, right? On some level, the angel doesn't care. The angel should... I mean, the, the angel doesn't differentiate you would think. And we didn't win by, by chance. We didn't win because it was a 50/50 and it happened to roll Yiden. The angel chose that outcome on that level, on that level that, that has nothing to do with evaluation. It was a Pur, it was a throw of the dice, and it always comes up... A throw of the dice will always come up a Yid. Why? Because we are intrinsically connected to the Aibishter beyond our evaluation, which incidentally, as a side point, is, is the right way to look at self-esteem. That the goy... the, the, the natural attitude towards self-esteem entangles self and esteem, right? Your self is, is, is put under the microscope of esteem. What is it? How do we evaluate it? And, and Torah says, "Hang on. There's a self which is intrinsically and inherently valuable." You're a son of the Aibishter. What does it mean to be a son of the Aibishter? What... Obviously, we're not biological children of the Aibishter. What does

46:50 Speaker 2 it mean when Hashem says, "You're my children"? We're, we're, we're, we are... Everything comes from the Aibishter. Everything's only Aibishter. In what way are we different than a, than a goy or than a, than a, than a, anything else Hashem created? Like, why, what makes a Yid unique? So he says, "What makes you unique is you're children." A child is not for something. A child is an extension of the ch- of the parent, and that's all they need to be, right? You may be a... Y- a child may be badly behaved, but he's not a bad child. You can't evaluate the child part of him because that's a, a biological reality. It's, he's just an extension of the father. And so on some level, a Yid is an extension of the Aibishter, and there's no such thing as being bad. There's no such thing as measuring and evaluating better or worse because you're not for something. There's nothing to measure against. Esteem, it relates more to our role as an Eved. We're, we are Avadam. We have a job. We're, we are a child employed in the family business, and we could be doing a poor job, and there we need to evaluate, um, and, and correct and, and do all that. But, but we need to distinct, separate all that out. So, so Haman not, not recognizing, not being aware of the intrinsic and inherent bond between the Aibishter that transcends the esteem, that transcends the level of Eved, thought that he's gonna, he's

48:07 Speaker 2 gonna, he's gonna force the issue on a, on a gerdel playing field, and maybe he'll, maybe he'll come out on top. And maybe, maybe it's not just 50/50 because in, quote-unquote, "the real world," statistics and probability start to matter. So if you roll the dice, if you're playing a board game and there's a risk, you know, you have, you have, uh, 100 troops, the other guy has one. You can roll the dice, but you know who's gonna win, right? It's just a question of how many rolls it's gonna take. So nature, na- if, if, if nature was rolling the dice on a am kat, on a, on a, on a am kat, on a ksav achad b'shem zeh v'zim, it's not really 50/50. It's 70 to 1, right? Or more, because you have to factor in strength. It's a zev and this is a keves.

48:56 Speaker 4 Yeah.

48:58 Speaker 2 What he, what he misunderstood is that the world doesn't work that way. The world is not a, a, uh, a game of probability. It's not a game of competition and contest. There's an author here, and he's writing a story, and he's chosen the main character. It doesn't matter. You write, they call it plot armor. The, the, the, the main character has to see, be the end of the story.

49:20 Speaker 4 Right.

49:20 Speaker 2 It doesn't help, it doesn't help. It doesn't matter what you throw at it. So, um, but oh, so that doesn't, that doesn't absolve us, right? Where, where do, where do we come into the picture? Our Mesirut Nefesh, our Mesirut Nefesh reveals and expresses that self, and that unlocks or sort of that, that, that frees the Aibishter up to kind of fall back on that, right? So the Mesirut Nefesh even showed in, uh, in, um, in standing up to Mesirut Nefesh all year and not being, uh, meifradasum. Um, they are showing their unconditional love, their unconditional connection will matter, and then that corresponds that even in the context of Pur, the Aibishter is, is, is, uh, is, it's coming up Yiden.

50:09 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

50:10 Speaker 2 So that's a nice inspiring vort with very real implications.

50:16 Speaker 4 Right.

50:16 Speaker 2 Right? And that's where the farbrengen comes in.

50:17 Speaker 4 Right.

50:18 Speaker 2 Because if, if it's real to you, this is not just a nice vort on, on, on, on, on the Yom Tov of Purim. This is a recalibration of, of, of reality. This is a, this is you're wiping, uh, the illusion off from your eyes and saying, "The world doesn't work the way I thought it me- the way I thought it works," right? Your anxiety, well, our anxieties are always rooted in, um, probabilities, right? Or, or, or, you know, statistics, pr- prospects. Like how, how does the world work and what might come, might, what might be coming around the corner. When you realize that there's an author here, this is, this is, this is a totally different dynamic. This is not the cause and effect, free-flowing, open, open air, you know, open-ended scenario where there are different forces at play, and we have to calculate all of it. This is a scripted reality that's happening here, and, and the one who scripts it tells us, "You, you have a role here. You're the main character. You have a, you have a job to do. I want you to trust me that I'm gonna carry you through to the other side."

51:19 Speaker 4 See, I told you farbrengen betochin.

51:21 Speaker 2 No, I, I'm, I'm bringing it- ... I'm bringing it around to anxiety 'cause it's the, it's, that's the low-hanging fruit. But I mean-

51:25 Speaker 4 Right. Yeah

51:25 Speaker 2 ... this, this, this, I'm bringing it around to anxiety. It is, it's a-

51:29 Speaker 4 The avodah element's also interesting

51:29 Speaker 2 ... it's always the easy... Well, there's avodah element of it.

51:32 Speaker 4 Yeah.

51:32 Speaker 2 There's the, but there's the, there's the shift, the shift. And then, you know what? I don't know if you want to... Um, eh, let me address that for a second, then I'll go back to this. The, it's low-hanging fruit, but the, but the, but the ramifications get into everything.

51:50 Speaker 4 Of course.

51:50 Speaker 2 Right? We talked about, um, um, um-

51:57 Speaker 4 I wasn't making fun when I said you called farbrengen betochin

51:59 Speaker 2 No, I understand. I understand.

52:00 Speaker 4 It should, and it, it-

52:00 Speaker 2 But, but, but you have to understand-

52:01 Speaker 4 It will come up. It needs to come up

52:02 Speaker 2 ... well, it does. It's true. But you have to understand, it's not a one-dimensional thing. This is not a, this is not a narrow, uh, a narrow, uh, uh, insight or, or this is something that it transforms everything.

52:14 Speaker 4 It's not one category.

52:15 Speaker 2 Uh, well, we touched on-

52:16 Speaker 4 It's one of multiple different categories

52:16 Speaker 2 ... we touched on self-esteem, right? And it could be, right? But it's also decision-making. The, uh, the decisions that you make, not... I, I went to anxiety 'cause, you know, that's the, that's the CD or, or, um-

52:29 Speaker 4 Uh-huh

52:29 Speaker 2 ... actually, Hak- Hakevo always likes to talk about the CDs, the farbrengens that kind of like you kind of, you f- you fall into the rut-

52:34 Speaker 4 Trapped

52:34 Speaker 2 ... into the groove. Yeah.

52:35 Speaker 4 Yeah.

52:35 Speaker 2 Like the... I mean, it, and but it's als- also easy, it's ob- it's obvious, it's the obvious ramification when you realize that, that the world doesn't work the way it works. So the, the, the first thing to go is anxiety. But self-esteem, for example, is, is just as, is just as responsive to this adjustment, right? Because, because you, you start to, you s- you shift away from being a competitor in an open market to value yourself based on, based on, uh, metrics and, and performance and realizing that, that there's a, is an inherently valuable, infinitely valuable core and then there's a, a void you lay over at the top of that, that, that shields your, your self-image from anything that happens. Even if you totally mess up, and as an employee you would be fired. As a son, you, you wipe yourself off, shneid on far veiter. You know, you, you, you, you correct it and you know that ultimately the, the core of the connection is, is solid. But it also comes down to k- the decisions, right? When you're, when you're, when you're struggling with, "Do I, do I stop my work in the middle of the day, leave my office and go to shul for Mincha? It'll take a half an hour to go there. I'm with the minyan, come back." When I... It, it's, it's disruptive, it's annoying, it's, y- you know, s- some party wants to tell you that it's, that it's costly, right? The, the, the calculus is fundamentally

54:04 Speaker 2 different if you, if you realize, if you think that your job is why you make money, that calculus is, is one way. If you realize your job is just how you make the money that Hashem is sending you anyway, the calculus shifts entirely. So this, this, it's all about the shift. That's what I wanted to say.

54:19 Speaker 4 Right.

54:19 Speaker 2 And I, and I, I'll walk you through it, that I don't wanna filibuster.

54:23 Speaker 4 Right. Yeah. Ex- exactly. So number one, it, the, this is the, th- this is both parts. This is number one how, yeah, you take a mimer and far kareyn. You know, what's beautiful is like a mimer like Achin Karu, it's not an official of a, officially an avoided deka mimer. Um, even like it's, I found this interesting myself, that the theme in the melukat, in the mugadeka per mamarim is like the blaila haus is balancing the, the avoid of the Yiden with the Seder Stoshlos or above Seder Stoshlos what's supposed to happen, right? That's the, that's the big question. Like what, you know, tak bishon eis, but there was Mister Snefesh, so why was it an eis bachlal, right? There's, there's different, uh, discussions that come up in the mamarim. And in a way, Achin Karu doesn't talk about that part of it. It just talks about the philosophy. Like even like Hila from Hamel's perspective, like not the way the Yiden were getting involved or not getting involved. Um, and what's beautiful is that, yeah, even that mimer, you see, you tune in and it's loaded with avodots, loaded with, with, with, with a reading on reality and, uh, and, and messages for life, 100%. And, and far kareyn needs to be spelled out. Far kareyn needs to be farbrenged about. So that's, that's a, that's a per- that's a great example. It's like a schmuck example of what, what we're talking about. Like, I mean, what, what's in my mind about of like,

55:43 Speaker 4 yeah, what does it mean to live with the sichas that you're learning? This is a gr- this is a perfect example, and this is exactly what the farbrengen is gonna be that the shar might not have. And, you know, the chacham binadas that we spoke about before. And on the o- and, and then, not on the other hand, but in an, in another way of saying it is l- the, not coming from the perspective of the mimer, but coming from a perspective of like, let's say, I, I'm gonna say it again, like betochin, and how betochin is not just a concept and not just limited to the letters of the rabbi that talk directly about betochin and the, and the sichas, et cetera, but betochin as a mindset and betochin as what you said, a shift. Betochin as a, a way that now everything you're gonna learn and everything you're gonna live is going to be with that, with that yisid. So, uh, so absolutely. So let's, uh-

56:25 Speaker 2 I think that, that, that it just makes me think that the Aleisim Mishakela is another one of the Rebbe Zalel Liklamarom that, that everybody, you know, it's one of the top 10.

56:33 Speaker 4 Right.

56:34 Speaker 2 The Alter Rebbe has Aleisim Mishakela.

56:36 Speaker 4 In Torah, yeah.

56:37 Speaker 2 Torah. And they're loosely aligned, but there's an Akudah in the Alter Rebbe's Aleisim Mishakela that is absolutely transformational. I don't mean-- Transformational in the, in, in, in how you, in how you see the, the, the consequences of learning and how you approach it. The Alter Rebbe starts the Maimer with a drastic statement. He says that your children, your Av and your Yira, don't come from your efforts. When you have Mishakela Lakara, when a person has Nebach, a child who, who is temporary, or an Akara, he doesn't seem to get any children at all, the, the, the s- the, the cause of that, the, the diagnosis of that is Ba'atzeka. You're not-- You're having these results because you're working Ba'atzeka. You think that you're gonna get your Av and Yira from your efforts. In other words, you can't have children on your own. And then he says something very, very powerful. He says, "Our efforts should be directed not at trying to love Hashem." Even if our goal is to love Hashem, our efforts cannot be directed at loving Hashem. They need to be directed at seeing Hashem. And when you see Hashem and you become aware of Hashem, Emunah-- I mean, sorry, Av and Yira will flow, will be the na- will be the children. That's coming not from Artzeca, because knowing Hashem and being, being batl, right, fully acknowledging and recognizing involves connecting to the Abysster in a way of, of bitle at the end of the day. And there you're unlocking the children

58:38 Speaker 2 that don't come from Artzeca, but from Artzeca Chaim. They come from Eretz Al Yeno. The love that you feel that's rooted in bitle are, are, um, are, are permanent, are, are stable. They'll, they'll, they'll come. And then he, he says, "Okay, what if a person has other problems they have to deal with first to allow that?" And, and, uh, we talked about that in Rebbe's Limer also. Um, but this, it, it, it reveals something very powerful. What, what you're, what the Rebbe's saying, and you have to keep this in mind, is that these attributes and these values and these emotional places that we want to get to, we talk about Bitachin, Av, Yira, um, Menucha, I guess is, I guess another word for Bitachin, Bitle, all these things. The way to, to arrive at them, they're not, they're not things to acquire. They flow from your... And then going back to the shift, 'cause this is what it's all about. If you can see the Abysster in the world the way you live as a reality, the Av will come, the Yira will come, the Bitachin will come. You can't work on Bitachin. You don't work on Bitachin. You don't say, you don't talk yourself into trusting. You give yourself a reason to trust, and the trust flows by itself.

59:54 Speaker 4 Right.

59:55 Speaker 2 Right? And that's true of Emunah, that's true of Yira, and that's true of Av, right? You, you have to, you have to, to see the Abysster, and we, and, and glad that for bringing this past Shabbos, we were, we, that was, that was kind of the jumping off thing. And I'm just gonna throw, uh, Shalom Bai his clip of the day just because we're here and we're talking and people are listening, and maybe they'll, maybe this will be helpful for them. But on this same, just, just showing the kind of the practicality of it. This, this applies-

1:00:23 Speaker 4 Right

1:00:23 Speaker 2 ... what you see here, and this, I'm gonna apply it today, if you start to apply it to, to your spouse. Bitle, every, every relationship, every connection, every, every Avoida involves Bitle, right? The fact that you, Bechad Chov Atzmocha, take out the garbage is an act of Bitle. 'Cause it's not Lefich Choid. It's for the, it's for the cleaning lady. It's for the garbage man. You shouldn't be taking out the garbage. You take out the garbage, there's gonna be Bitle. Shayla is what is, what are you, what are you, what is the foundation? So for many people infected by Darom, the foundation is Av. You start from the Av. You work on the Av. The Bitle is built on the Av. Now, here's the thing, and this is true of this general shift. The Bitle, this shift, this awareness of reality is the foundation, and you cannot build a foundation on the second floor. When you build Bitle on Av, you, you struggle, you're, you're, you're getting into a big problem because, because Bitle, why is Bitle a good foundation or why is awareness of reality, which is another form of Bitle really, right? What's the, what is the Baalabas dealing with when he goes into work and his theory fl- falls, falls flat, right? The theory or the scientist, he has a theory and it fails in experiment. That's a moment of Bitle. That's realizing that you're... That's the Yamuka, right? Something above my theories, which is reality. And it either, it's either true

1:01:47 Speaker 2 or it's not true, and my theory doesn't get to determine that, right? I can't decide if I'm a boy or a girl, right? I either am or I'm not, right? It's either-- This is either a good idea or it's not a good idea, and I don't get to decide that just by force of will. It's reality. That's a big Bitle, right? Now, why is that the foundation? Because it doesn't change. It's unshakable. Av and our different emotional states fluctuate, and that's not a flaw. That's, that's how they work. I mean, it may be inconvenient sometimes, but this is, this is not, there's nothing wrong with your Av if you feel it more intensely one day and less intensely another day. That's, that is the nature of Av. That's the nature of emotion. So now think that you took something as heavy and, and intense as bitul, and you placed it on which, which is the whole advertisement for bitul is it doesn't shake. And you took that out of the box, and you put that down onto something that intrinsically shakes. So what happens? That bitul, except not only is the bitul gonna shake because it's-- even though it's unshakable, it's sitting on top of something that shakes. You're only butul. You're only, you're only lowering yourself to do something that you wouldn't otherwise do because of the love, right? So not only is it shaking because the love is fundamentally shaky or fluctuating, um, it starts to crush the ava, right? You start to

1:03:12 Speaker 2 feel resentful because now the foundation is not strong enough, the love is not strong enough to justify taking out the garbage.

1:03:17 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

1:03:17 Speaker 2 So now the, the taking out the garbage starts to crush the ava. Now you start to be resentful, and that starts to f- this negative feedback. Now, if you flip it, right? That's, that is-- I mean, that, and that's i-i-if you look at the way that we approach Yichudim and we approach marriage, bitul is at the base. I'm, I'm here to get married. I'm here to, to join a, uh, institution, to become part of it, to, to, to manifest, to implement, to, to, to create something that exists outside of me. This idea of, of a dirah for the Ibster or this idea of like there's this, this family that we're creating, and that's, that is the foundation. And, and the love is built on top of that, right? So now the love can fluctuate, and there's nothing. There's no problem. You're taking out the garbage as a reflection of the bitul, but the bitul is not on the ava anymore. The bitul is now on the-- is the foundation. So there's resent-- there's no resentment, and the love can go up and go down and, uh, and, uh, and resembling Israel and it's a being at the other. You say they, I tell you about mitzvah. Now you say the ava, now you say... Right? And the same thing is, is with our Avodas Hashem. If we, if we build our Avodas Hashem, if we're moved to Avodas Hashem by love, which is what Altreb was saying, right? This is kind of inviting you to

1:04:34 Speaker 2 answer my question for bringing, right? If your, if your, if your efforts and your, and your, um, the burden that you're carrying in your Avodas Hashem 'cause it's, it's a heavy burden, right? Which is said in the Yemim. It's a, it's a lift. If, if you started with that as a, as a-- or, or a feature of your foundation is the love. If you went at it by trying to love the Abishta and then building your service Hashem on top of the love, you suffer that exact dynamic. Whereas if your Avodas Hashem, if your approach to life and to, and to serving the Abishta is based on learning to see, learn to see reality, learn to see the truth, the ava will come, the yira will come, the avoda will come. And instead of crushing you, instead of, instead of crushing your foundation and, and building resentment and making trouble, it's going to become a level of structure and d-decor and decoration and beauty that's built on top of this. You, you don't live in bitul. Bitul is the foundation. You live in the upf-upstairs where, where you have the interior decorator, made a gorg- did a gorgeous job, and you're living in, in, in, in, in, in, in ava and yira and in this eidus and all these wonderful things built on the foundation ultimately of bitul. Why am I doing this? 'Cause that's what that's-- this is what is MS. This is what Abishta. This is, this is my taskid. And it, and

1:05:55 Speaker 2 it's, it's, it's absolutely, uh, uh, I might say being at the end. And that's, and that's, um, that again, coming back to the shift. Th-this is the essay, and this is what-- to the extent that anyone's getting anything wrong, and it's not just the difficulties of goals 'cause we can't always take the blame. It's a tough world. It's a tough burden like you said, like we said. But the, the, the, the-- to the extent that we're s-- There's a lot of struggle, I wanna say. There's a lot of struggle traces back to this failure of getting real, of, of, of seeing the truth and building on that as opposed to skipping that step and going straight to the ava and the yira and, and trying to include the bitul in, in all that. I forgot the question again.

1:06:40 Speaker 4 The, there... I mean, y- the-- what I'm curious now is w-how do you spell out the connection between saying there was this particular part of the bitul and the yira-- of the bitul and the ava. How, how do you see that in the bigger picture of the shift? Which means-

1:06:58 Speaker 2 Because, because like I was saying, what, what is-- what's the shift? What is the shift? Let, let me-- maybe I should step back. Um, last year, so this way you just had an Albis Gimel Shabbaton, and our theme was, or our message was focus on foundations, which is more or less recognizing because, because we found that a lot of people are pursuing the takhan. And the problem is not-- the problem is that they don't have the foundation. They don't have the emunah-

1:07:27 Speaker 4 Right

1:07:27 Speaker 2 ... or they're not, they're not, they're not attending to, not that they don't have. Baruch Hashem, we're all, we all have the-

1:07:32 Speaker 4 Amen. Amen. Amen

1:07:32 Speaker 2 ... we all have the, the, the, uh, the, the words. But the, the words are not being used. Maybe they're building the foundation on the second floor that you were describing, or they're not tending to their foundation at all, and they're just pursuing the takhan. They're just pursuing the takhan out of... A lot of people do it out of desperation, right? They're in a bad spot. They're, they're suffering terribly. They're, they're, they're an- they're anxious, or they're, or they're, or they're-- they feel their yetzer hat is, is giving them messages of resentment or self-pity or whatever. And then you wanna find, you wanna find the answer to that, and everyone says, "Well, what's the answer to that? It's bitachon." So you go straight for the bitachon.

1:08:05 Speaker 4 Right.

1:08:05 Speaker 2 Says Altreb, "Don't go for the bitachon. Start with the emunah."

1:08:08 Speaker 4 Yeah. Is it-

1:08:08 Speaker 2 Right?

1:08:09 Speaker 4 ... in the

1:08:10 Speaker 2 I'm saying Altreb from this maim we were just saying, right? What was the-

1:08:12 Speaker 4 Oh.

1:08:12 Speaker 2 What was, what was Altreb saying in let's see-

1:08:14 Speaker 4 Oh.

1:08:15 Speaker 2 Don't start-

1:08:15 Speaker 4 Bitachon

1:08:16 Speaker 2 ... don't start with trying-

1:08:17 Speaker 4 Right.

1:08:17 Speaker 2 Don't try to love Hashem.

1:08:18 Speaker 4 Right.

1:08:18 Speaker 2 Try to see Hashem.

1:08:19 Speaker 4 Right.

1:08:19 Speaker 2 Right? Don't try to have bitachon. Try to have emunah.

1:08:22 Speaker 4 Oh, got it. Got it.

1:08:22 Speaker 2 Bitachon is the natural fruit. Aman says-

1:08:24 Speaker 4 Right

1:08:24 Speaker 2 ... Aman says bitachon-- Emunah is the tree, bitachon is the fruit. You don't go to-- You don't go out into the field and try to create fruit. You go and you plant a tree and the fruit will grow.

1:08:34 Speaker 4 Okay.

1:08:34 Speaker 2 If you want fruit, plant a tree, right? So-

1:08:37 Speaker 4 I call it bitachon in bitachon versus bitachon in Hashem.

1:08:41 Speaker 2 Right. Okay, very good. The, the, the point being that the element that you need is, is, um, one of the foundations. That was our theme this year. Last year, um, we focused on the doorway, the idea that bitachon is a doorway. And this is something actually going back to the idea of a, of a bakar versus a balabus. We were given, we were given the Torah. And the Torah is phenomenal, right? We encounter the Torah and we pull up a chair to study the Torah. And the foolishness of that is-- or not the foolishness, the stu- It's, the Torah is a door. It's not meant to study. It's meant to enter into, right? So imagine a picture but as a joke, uh, in, in Russian, a fool is a durak. Sitting in front of the door, door, durak. You know, sitting in front of the door, a bunch of people with folding chairs sitting around the door admiring the handiwork and the cla- and, and, and the, the, the, the opulence and the ostentatious, the, the, you know, the... What kind of tremendous gvir and mighty king could craft, could, could, could have such a door. Durak, stand up and go through the door, right? What's inside is gonna be, is where the, that's where the stuff is. It's not on the outside. And this is, this is a problem. It's a bakarisher problem. I mean, we take it into, with us into, into a, into a balabatishe life.

1:10:16 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

1:10:16 Speaker 2 But-

1:10:17 Speaker 4 Uh, again, I, I mean, I would push back-

1:10:18 Speaker 2 I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying the bakarim all suffer from this, but it's-

1:10:21 Speaker 4 No, not saying the bakar. I, I think that, again, I, I, um, I said the same thing in the beginning, the chacham and the binah element. There, there's, there's an nekuda where-

1:10:27 Speaker 2 Yes

1:10:27 Speaker 4 ... Torah is-

1:10:29 Speaker 2 But, but how? You know, to walk through the door is only done if you study Torah also. I'm not saying don't study the Torah.

1:10:33 Speaker 4 Of course not.

1:10:34 Speaker 2 So, so but, but, but I guess this, this is the point. So let me, let me spell it out. So-

1:10:40 Speaker 4 The Torah Laila. The, how Torah is the sha'ar to your, to yirah, to "V'etzavén Hashem liros, uh, v'etzavén es kochén liros Hashem." That like-

1:10:49 Speaker 2 Yeah. What I'm saying is, what I'm saying is, uh, uh, just to finish the thought, the thought about a bakar. A bakar is essentially living in a world of academic truth. But because his whole life is there, he can, he can make something out of that.

1:11:05 Speaker 4 Right.

1:11:05 Speaker 2 A balabus doesn't live in a world of academic truth. He lives in a world of hard, practical truth. And so to the extent that he takes with him the Torah as an academic truth and not a practical truth-

1:11:17 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm

1:11:17 Speaker 2 ... he's sitting at the door admiring the door and failing to walk in. So the, the message, the message was walk through the door. So how do you walk through a door? So I broke it down for the purposes of the presentation into four components, four elements, and the first one is to see the door. You have to acknowledge, you have to recognize that what you're looking at is a door. And this is something that we fail at. Torah is not something to add to life. You can't, you can't-- It's not an emotional overlay, a spiritual overlay, even a godly overlay into a world that it works, it functions a certain way. Torah is asserting or so- Torah is coming to replace everything you know about the world. Now, part of that is to function in the world by, by the rules of nature. That's where, where sebiz, which are sometimes called hastalos comes in. So I'm not, I'm not saying... I'm not totally, you know, disengaging from the patterns of creation, of patterns of Torah. But Torah is coming to replace, not to, not to supplement. Torah is coming to say the world that you live in is not the world the way it presents itself. It's just, it's just not the real world. It would be nice to live in a world where everything was predictable and you can measure trajectories, right? This is one of the examples. I don't know if you, you'll like this, I think. People, one of the, one

1:12:41 Speaker 2 is, uh, my morah was gonna, um... People like, uh, like to... One of the big, one of the big struggles people have with bitachon is that you tell me to, to, to have, to be confident tomorrow will be good, right? Yesterday was not good. And two days ago, yesterday was tomorrow, right?

1:13:02 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

1:13:02 Speaker 2 So two days ago you told me tomorrow will be good. Let's say I trusted you that time.

1:13:06 Speaker 4 Right.

1:13:07 Speaker 2 Right? And now yesterday was not good, right? Now, what does that tell me about you're telling me today tomorrow will be good.

1:13:15 Speaker 4 Right.

1:13:15 Speaker 2 Right? That's one of the big struggles people have.

1:13:17 Speaker 4 Pattern.

1:13:18 Speaker 2 Pattern recognition.

1:13:19 Speaker 4 Right.

1:13:19 Speaker 2 Pattern extension.

1:13:20 Speaker 4 Right.

1:13:20 Speaker 2 And here's where it goes. So trajectory is the word I like to use.

1:13:22 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

1:13:22 Speaker 2 And the reason why is like this. The math for calculating trajectories is old. Um, very old. Isaac Newton, um, formulated, well, the total large part, I think they even use his formulas today when they're launching rockets. When you launch a rocket, you don't launch a rocket at the moon. You launch a rocket at the m- where the moon will be however long it takes the rocket to get there, so that way you don't miss, right? You wanna... The math is amazing, right? The math works. It's proven. It's, that's... So let's say for, for the audience, any- who is familiar with, uh, sports and cares about sports, I'm, I don't, don't particularly, but I, this is a useful mashal. Imagine a, a basketball team and you hire a guy to, who's skilled at that. He's, he can, he can tell you trajectories. And you're, you figure he'll help you win games. Why? Because he'll tell you when the guy shoots, is it gonna go in? Is it not gonna go in? If it's gonna rebound, do I send my guys right? Do I send my guys left? Do I go back? What do I do? How do I, how do I proceed? I need, I wanna know a few seconds earlier it-- where the ball's gonna be in the next few seconds. So that's, it's, it's a nice advantage, right? So you hire the guy. And, uh, and he's helping you out, right? He's, you're going, you, he's, he-- the guy shoots the ball. He si-

1:14:40 Speaker 2 you, he signals to you and you tell your players, "Go left, go right, go whatever," you know? So it's useful. You're up in a big game and you want to, uh... And, and, you know, s- some guy's running to the basket and he wants to score, and you're looking at your guy, and the guy's bobbing and weaving and, you know, and you want him to tell you where the ball's gonna go. He starts, starts jumping for the, he starts jumping for the basket, and the guy's still not, still not signaling anything. If you were to stop that, freeze that moment in time, and you say, "Hello, I, I, I hired you for something. I wanna know where the ball's gonna go. Tell me the trajectory." So he will give you an education, and he will tell you that trajectory calculations can only work once the guy lets go of the ball, right? Once it's in f- motion and there are no external influences, no nothing, no consciousness guiding the ball, I can tell you exactly where it's gonna go mathematically with 100% accuracy. But till he j- throws the ball, I can't tell you, right? 'Cause he can fake you out. Mm-hmm. Right? He's jumping you up. I'll tell you what's going in on my side. He doesn't let go of the ball. He jumps down, he goes under, he goes up, and boom, right? If up to the point he lets go of the ball, if you wanna know where-- how to react, you

1:15:56 Speaker 2 need a guy who understands the nature of the player who's controlling the ball. So you need a guy who knows that before he fakes out, he scratches his left ear, right? Or he has a pattern, he always does this. Or, you know, someone that knows the nature of the player can tell you where the ball will be better than the, than the guy who calculates trajectories. 'Cause in a world where-- In a world where there's a, in a, in a situation where there's, where there's someone holding the ball , the formulas don't, cannot apply. We'd like to live in a world where the-- to, to some extent, where, where there's no external circumstances. It'd make it easier to calculate trajectories. That's not the real world. We live in the world, the Hamish never lets go of the ball. We-- When we say, you know, Hashem It's amazing. You're not supposed to look to the future with the expectation that he will fake you out. He told you not to look at it that way. And, and you have to have that, uh, pivot. You have to make that pivot. And I think that's what Rabbi Akiva is saying. Every single time, every

1:20:25 Speaker 5 Kol ma d'avid-

1:20:26 Speaker 2 Was a pivot. Yes. Was an emotional pivot. He was talking to himself. He was saying, "This thing is in the past, Kol ma d'avid , but nothing's gonna happen to my donkey." Right? Something happened to his donkey. Kol ma d'avid. That's why he kept repeating it. He wasn't telling-- He wasn't talking to anybody. Who was he talking to? He was talking to himself. He was reminding himself. He's saying, "Okay, there's a pivot point here." And there is no, there is no past or f-future. There's just now. Right now I have to understand where, where, where am I facing? Where am I presenting my player right now? How am I proceeding in this game, right? What do I do now? So I, I have one lens with which to see the past, one lens with which to see the future, and I have to make sure that I'm seeing it correctly, right?

1:21:10 Speaker 6 Um, I'm not trying to, to, uh, nitpick, but, uh, and you have way more experience in dealing with people on, on the topic of b'tachan. But in, in relative to you, my limited experience dealing with people in b'tachan, talking to people about it, I think that always is, uh... it always, uh, a lot of times falls back to that point about the past versus the future.

1:21:31 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:21:32 Speaker 6 So I think more than the trajectory versus the player of the na- the nature of the player, in this case, in this particular question of like, "Oh, two days ago I had b'tachan and yesterday was two days ago tomorrow."

1:21:42 Speaker 2 Well, right. So that, so-

1:21:42 Speaker 6 That's, that's-

1:21:42 Speaker 2 'Cause you're dealing with, 'cause you're dealing with some-

1:21:43 Speaker 6 ... past versus future

1:21:44 Speaker 2 ... 'cause if you're dealing with somebody who, who is willing to, who has already, who has already rejected, and you need to work through it also. I mean, even if in theory you reject it, it-

1:21:54 Speaker 6 Right

1:21:54 Speaker 2 ... you have to shift to the right foundation. You have to realize which word you're at, which... Yeah, shifting from the trajectory to the player is a shift, and this is going back to the bigger discussion, is this realization, is that this, this means to walk through the door.

1:22:06 Speaker 6 Mm.

1:22:06 Speaker 2 Because to talk about it, to talk about it and to discuss it academically is, is just looking at the door. When you are in a situation, in a real situation, and you say, "This is, this is not, this is not a nice vart on, on, on some sefar, on the story of Rebecca. I need to... I, I'm seeing something wrong. There's something wrong with my perception. I'm, I'm seeing the world as if the trajectory matters, and actually it's a scripted, this is a scripted scenario." You say, "This is a scripted scenario." If you can shift that and accept that as actual truth describing your actual life, that's what it means to walk through the door. So but the first, the first step to walking through the door, I'm just gonna run through it quickly 'cause we got, uh, sidetracked with it. But the, the four steps that I, that I tell people, the first thing is you have to see the door, meaning you have to acknowledge and recognize that this is a door that is laying claim to the basic perception of reality. This is a, this is a teaching that's telling you, you need to recalibrate your perceptions of reality. That, that's what's, that's what the Torah is. If you don't see that, you can do all the other stuff. You can learn, and you can, uh... All that is on, is, is not a foundation. That's all gonna be... Y- you know, and, and, and a lot of us do that, like,

1:23:22 Speaker 2 you know, w-where, of... Nissim can happen. Of course, miracles happen, but probably not to me. I mean, probab- probably, probab- probabilistically speaking, it's not happening to me, right? Or, or you think, uh, like, "Here, here's what's gonna happen, and I'm gonna daven to Hashem to change it," right? But, but the, but the perception is there's a natural event here that's kind of happening according to the trajectory, and I'm, I'm calling Tati to see if he wouldn't mind interfering, intervening, right? We kind of create a hybrid where we're, where we're, we're... Right? This is the

1:24:10 Speaker 6 Talking about the gate, the door, seeing that it's a door.

1:26:19 Speaker 2 No, but that, that... We-- My, my point was... Oh, hold on. So what I want... So, so I spoke like that. That's how I spoke to everybody. And I heard more than once people s-expressing more, with more tact. But, but the message was, "Get real. Face reality," right? And what that betrays, when you hear it from a, from a Yid, what that, what he's, what he's telling you is that he s- that he has, he has two layers. He has this foundational understanding of how the world really works, and then there's this Yiddish guy that he's laying over the top of it. And in some way, we all struggle with that, right? 'Cause we have a nefesh elokis and a nefesh habhamis, both of which embrace one of those two realities wholeheartedly. Your nefesh habhamis is a native of this world, of this physical world, and, and it, it, it is... it comes from that Material. It sees the world that way. And your nefesh elokis is c- in a native of emis, and it sees the... So I, I don't say this as an indictment to say some of these people are, are k- koifim and getting it wrong or whatever, but they're not... They're, they're, they're coexisting. The little c- bumper stickers, right?

1:27:26 Speaker 6 Yeah.

1:27:26 Speaker 2 They're coexisting with the yetzer hara, and somehow finding a balance. And the only way you can do that is if you, if you don't see them, it... The only way coexistence between enemies is possible, and unfortunately Europe is discovering this now, is if you, if you, if you turn a blind eye to the fact that you actually are enemies. You can't co- these are, these things are contradictory.

1:27:46 Speaker 6 Right.

1:27:47 Speaker 2 These are contradictory ideas. And so they were telling us, "Get real." And I, and I adopted that. I... If Hashem helps, and, uh, Mishim, we're working on another book more on these ideas, and I... Hashem will help, I, I, I... If He... I, I think it's a nice title. Get... I want, I want the book to be called Get Real, because I think that's really captures the whole thing. They're 100% wrong when they say that, but the advice is solid. What, what's, what's the advice? The advice is you cannot react correctly to something if you're not seeing it correctly, right?

1:28:16 Speaker 6 Yeah.

1:28:16 Speaker 2 And this, I don't wanna get into this, a whole other can of worms.

1:28:18 Speaker 6 Mm.

1:28:18 Speaker 2 But that's my, my gripe with some of the natural disciplines and w- when people turn to other ways of, of navigating emotional challenge. You cannot react to something correctly if you're not seeing it correctly. And if you recognize that Torah and, and the natural perspective are in conflict-

1:28:35 Speaker 6 Mm

1:28:35 Speaker 2 ... and contradictory, they cannot live together. They cannot coexist. Um, you're gonna... You're... If you, if you don't see that, you, you end up, you end up with some kind of weird combination. Um-

1:28:46 Speaker 6 I think the subtlety of that conversation is, is hishtadlus, sibus, kelum, you know, whatever word.

1:28:52 Speaker 2 Okay. Yeah.

1:28:52 Speaker 6 Yeah.

1:28:52 Speaker 2 I'm happy to have that conversation.

1:28:53 Speaker 6 Correct.

1:28:53 Speaker 2 I don't wanna pollute this one with that one-

1:28:54 Speaker 6 Right. Yeah, yeah

1:28:54 Speaker 2 ... 'cause then you're gonna, you're gonna end up-

1:28:55 Speaker 6 It's open another tab. Yeah

1:28:56 Speaker 2 ... not always opening up another tab, but there, there are people that will happily listen to this conversation that won't listen to that conversation.

1:29:01 Speaker 6 Mm-hmm.

1:29:01 Speaker 2 So let's have this conversation and at least, uh, they'll have the benefit of that one. But, but the, the idea of get... the idea of, of, of seeing Torah in that light is a separate obligation or a separate s- a separate step from actually learning Torah, 'cause there are many people that learn Torah and will tell you, "Get real."

1:29:20 Speaker 6 Mm-hmm.

1:29:20 Speaker 2 And in their own lives and in different ways. And, and we read, like the Alter Rebbe likes to say, there's madregos in nisyonos. You know, there's, uh... You know, people find different ways and different, uh, proportions in which... And, and again, it's not an indictment. This is the natural state of a person because we have two nefashas, which is another thing that people don't, don't always incorporate into their assessment of, of their inner struggle. But we have two nefashas. One is, one is promoting this, one is promoting this. And, and, um, and so it's not an indictment that, that people are struggling with that. But the, the, the way to thread the needle, the way to get through or the way to properly get through this is to, is to, is to fully and wholeheartedly, right, 'Ad mosai tampeis moshasem eifem. Mila ba'alabav, mila Hashem, Hashem. And, and, and yilah mashalam. But you, you wanna p- plant your flag firmly in the reality that, that, that, that, that... So then just to run through the other thing. So the, the... f- first you have to recognize that, and that, and that, that's what we've been... that's really been what we've been talking about this whole time, is this idea that Torah is a shift, and that shift is, is at the most f- fundamental level. Then, of course, you have to open the door, which means to open the sugyam, 'cause you can, you can... you, you have to learn and you have to know,

1:30:27 Speaker 2 and you have to absorb the, the, the, th- you know, what it says in the sugyam so that you can understand, see the reality that you're... Right? That's what happens when you open a door. You're still on the wrong side of the door, but you can see through, and you can see the... and you see it as another world, as a, as another place to, to, to relocate yourself. Then you have to step through the door, and stepping through the door is an act, is an action. One, one, one of the key things... And we, we, we as law enforcers, as Hasidim, we focus very, very heavily on there's two ways a person's heart can, can shift, and we focus heavily on the one that Alter Rebbe mainly promotes, in which every sefer, every mussar and, and, and Hasidist and any Rosh Hashanah, anytime you're making an argument, you're, you're, you're trying to change a, a emotional reaction, the lamal v'lamat. You're trying to shape the heart by correcting the mind, which is also what the Rebbe says in the ""Mirah v'lishima sh'keila"" Right? How do you, how are you gonna get the right emotion if you correct your perception, right? There's another thing. You with me?

1:31:34 Speaker 6 Yeah. I, I th- okay. Yeah. Let's go ahead.

1:31:37 Speaker 2 If I'm, uh-

1:31:38 Speaker 6 No, no, no

1:31:38 Speaker 2 ... correct them now.

1:31:39 Speaker 6 Let, let's see you.

1:31:39 Speaker 2 Okay.

1:31:40 Speaker 6 Yeah.

1:31:40 Speaker 2 So, so, so lamal v'lamat, you're going to correct the emotion by correcting the perceptions.

1:31:46 Speaker 6 Right.

1:31:46 Speaker 2 You try to love Hashem, see Hashem, and the See Hashem will, will, will help you love Hashem, right?

1:31:49 Speaker 6 Right.

1:31:50 Speaker 2 Now, the, the other, the other m- and these are complementary methods. These are not contradictory. But the other one is more, uh, presented by the Rambam, the Sayyidah. When he talks, he has a whole say, a whole s- thing on, on, on emotional well-being, which he doesn't... I mean, he talks about it as middas. He ca- he mentions it refuah hanefesh.

1:32:12 Speaker 6 Mm-hmm.

1:32:13 Speaker 2 He focuses more on the middas shbbazah. But his, his prescription for changing the emotional state or the, or the character trait is action.

1:32:22 Speaker 6 Right.

1:32:22 Speaker 2 So he's-

1:32:22 Speaker 6 After he pulls himself out of it.

1:32:23 Speaker 2 Right.

1:32:23 Speaker 6 Exactly.

1:32:24 Speaker 2 So he's correcting that lamal v'lamat.

1:32:25 Speaker 6 Right.

1:32:26 Speaker 2 And causing a shift. And, and, and, and those are very powerful moments are when you can find the divergence between how your nefesh elokis reacts and how your nefesh abrahamit reacts to anything. And the, the more aware you are, the more moments like that you're gonna find, 'cause a lot of that stuff passes and you're just oblivious. You're not even registering. But when you... Just going back to our mussar of mincha, right? When you make the right decision, even if you're not feeling it, if you haven't made the shift, you've made the shift intellectually, but you haven't made the shift emotionally and it's killing you to stop your meeting, right? When you stop that meeting, right, they say actions speak louder than words. Choices speak loudest. So an action is nice when you choose, 'cause a choice is not just an action. It's a, it's an embrace and a rejection at the same time.

1:33:10 Speaker 6 It's commitment.

1:33:11 Speaker 2 You're embr- you're embracing one and you're rejecting the other. That's the point I'm trying to make So when you walk away from your Which, which honestly the, the, the Rabbeinu Bachya calls a Right. 'Cause the real

1:33:23 Speaker 6 siba

1:33:23 Speaker 2 He l- he uses that only for efforts directed at the Aibishter. That's when he uses the word

1:33:28 Speaker 6 Right

1:33:28 Speaker 2 siba

1:33:28 Speaker 6 It's tefillah, davening or the-

1:33:30 Speaker 2 Whatever it is

1:33:31 Speaker 6 Yeah

1:33:31 Speaker 2 Any, anytime you're directing your eff- why? 'Cause that's the only one that can really help you.

1:33:34 Speaker 6 Mm-hmm.

1:33:35 Speaker 2 We spoke before about the-

1:33:36 Speaker 6 Yeah. Mm-hmm

1:33:36 Speaker 2 ... you know, if you, you get a, you get a, a, a invoice that you can't pay, so the, you can't negotiate with the mailman. You have to go talk to the person who sent the bill, not the person who brought you the bill, right? So when you're doing your, your sibas, when you're doing your, what pe- what people call hasgtatus, you're really negotiating with the mailman, right? You're, you're interacting with the means through which Hashem sends you the pr- pronosa, but you're not actually pressing any buttons that actually shake anything loose. You're just giving Hashem ways of getting stuff to you and, and if that's not in store for you, nothing is gonna result. And if it is in store for you and you're not doing, you know, whatever will come in a different way, um-

1:34:11 Speaker 6 The only difference is that we're told to negotiate with the mailman

1:34:13 Speaker 2 You have to, yeah.

1:34:14 Speaker 6 Yeah.

1:34:14 Speaker 2 Okay. That's why it's not a big mazal-

1:34:15 Speaker 6 Right. Yeah

1:34:15 Speaker 2 ... 'cause we, we gotta negotiate. They're not gonna give anything. But, but, um, you're right. So we, we do have to engage and, and we have to engage, but we have to know that we're, that we're, we're, we're playing a role here, we're playing a part.

1:34:25 Speaker 6 I think that's where the selah goes in. I think that's where people really-

1:34:28 Speaker 2 Right. So, so no, but the point is when you stop... So where do you see, where do you see where a person lives? Mincha time.

1:34:34 Speaker 6 Choices.

1:34:35 Speaker 2 Mincha. Choices, yes.

1:34:38 Speaker 6 Yeah.

1:34:38 Speaker 2 But I'm, I'm just gonna say it on Mincha.

1:34:39 Speaker 6 Yeah, yeah.

1:34:39 Speaker 2 Like that says, "Ali oli nan elav hastus mincha," and "Hashem lov mincha." And actually, Moshe, I, I wanna say never, but it's, never is a big word. I think there were certain cases. We never do Mincha right after Shabbos. Never.

1:34:53 Speaker 6 Right.

1:34:53 Speaker 2 Because Hashem loves Mincha because it's a disruption.

1:34:55 Speaker 6 Right.

1:34:56 Speaker 2 People do, people want to do Mincha right after Shabbos 'cause they don't wanna disrupt.

1:34:58 Speaker 6 Disrupt.

1:34:59 Speaker 2 And on Shabbos, what are you disrupting?

1:35:01 Speaker 6 Right. I get that.

1:35:02 Speaker 2 It's supposed to be a disruption, right? And when you let it disrupt, you're s- you're saying something. And now you're not saying something to the world, you're saying something like

1:35:09 Speaker 6 Yeah

1:35:10 Speaker 2 ... you're saying something to yourself, right? This is true, this is false. And letting go of the cause and effect that your meaning represents, right? And, and going to Mincha, which, which embraces the scripted reality that, that the... Scripted, I don't mean like scripted midrash, like it's all predestined, but scripted in the sense that there's an, there's a writer's room that's writing now what's gonna be the next thing that happens. Aibishter is choosing, right? So in rejecting, to go to Mincha is not just an action, it's a choice. And a choice is a reject- an embrace and a rejection, and that, that is speaking very loudly to your heart. People that

1:35:50 Speaker 6 Mm-hmm

1:35:51 Speaker 2 ... and these things will, will... I've spoken to people who say this, a cognitive dissonance, that you're, that you're, that you're, you're, you're... You don't wanna be out of alignment with your beliefs. So either you act one way, or if you're acting out of alignment with your beliefs, your beliefs are gonna start shifting or your, your emotions will start shifting, which is a very powerful effect, and which is kind of the, the, the engine of achri apalim shak malavov is when you act, your heart doesn't, is, it doesn't stay out of alignment with your actions. It starts to align with your actions. If this is the way... Like, and you see, see with parents. Parents have to always be on guard not to react incorrectly in a situation emotionally. Like if you, if, if they, if it... Or not incorrectly, but, but, um, thoughtlessly. If you, if you act scared, your children will, not understanding what's going on, even a baby will start crying because, because they are, because you are... Tatty only gets scared when something really, something real is happening, right? Tatty doesn't get scared from the, from the, from the pictures in the, in the Machanaim books, right? Tatty gets scared when there's a, when there's a scary guy at the door, right? So when Tatty panics, you're, you're, you're, you're conveying the reality of the moment, right? Obviously, you're taking this seriously. To you, it's real. And all the relatively mindless human beings around you, well, the truth is even, even,

1:37:05 Speaker 2 even intelligent, when you start s- start screaming in a panic in a room, everybody's gonna start... They'll, they'll get an adrenaline rush and they're gonna get scared 'cause somebody is obviously seeing something real.

1:37:13 Speaker 6 Right.

1:37:13 Speaker 2 Right? Your heart is, is an observer in a, in a way to your actions. And this goes back to... The Alter Rebbe mentions this a little bit in

1:37:20 Speaker 6 Mm-hmm

1:37:21 Speaker 2 ... the idea that one of the senses in which is that the, which is actually I think the first, the first way he presents it, is that the heart can override the heart. Sorry, the mind can override the heart. It can shape the heart, which is how we usually think about but it also overrides the heart. Choosing to act out-

1:37:40 Speaker 6 Yeah

1:37:41 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

1:37:41 Speaker 6 Yeah.

1:37:42 Speaker 2 So the force of will, you can choose to, to act other than the way you feel. So in that scenario, your heart is an observer, like anybody else in the room when you scream. So when you scream, when your heart, mind, even if you're not scared, if you scream, you'll scare the people in the room, right? When you s- when you choose to go to Mincha, your heart is an observer to that, and your heart will be impressed by that and will slowly adapt and adjust to the reality of the way you're acting. And that's walking through the door. And then-

1:38:11 Speaker 6 Wow

1:38:11 Speaker 2 ... and then the f- the fourth step is not really a step through the door, but it's, it's a recognition. 'Cause what do you do? What does your mother say after you walk through the door? "Close the door." But this is not a door you can close because this door and s- and choosing which side of the door is, is, is the entirety of your existence, until the Shiach comes at least. And so if you can't close the door, the fourth step is to stand your ground, and that is to basically acknowledge that the door is open and you're, you have just something pulling you into the other side. Every interaction that you have, every experience that you have is asking you to make the wrong choice, right? Or, or even if it's not a choice, right? Like the Alter Rebbe talks about, and I think came up recently. I'm trying to remember if it was a, a Yomim Noraim or... I forget where. But, but just the idea that he mentions in Tanya, just by eating potatoes, you know, just by, just by living and experiencing cause and effect, you are, you are exposing yourself to a persuasive argument, ex- persuasive experience that the world does work as it presents itself naturally, right? Every time you, every time you get a paycheck, your nefesh behamis gets a little stronger because the paycheck came out of your work. You work, you get a paycheck. If every time you miss a paycheck, your nefesh behamis gets

1:39:23 Speaker 2 a little stronger because you didn't work or you didn't have... The client decided not to give you, didn't get.

1:39:27 Speaker 6 Mm-hmm.

1:39:27 Speaker 2 So you have to defend, you have to defend your clarity against that. You have to realize that, that, uh, that there's a world that you're inhabiting. But, and, and, and that, that's the, that's the whole, that's the, that's the four steps. But, but, um, this, this is the, the... This, this is what it means to, to, um... This is a secret to living, uh, to what I, I think. To living and living Torah. You have to do these things. Y- and you have to do them in that order, and you can't skip any of them. If you're gonna skip the first step, which is a step most people... 'Cause most people are learning, right? And most people are doing at least some amount of, you know, right choices. And, uh, I mean, maybe that fourth step is also less, less common. But, um, that first step, that's where... That is a, a sin of omission that changes everything that follows. Because if you miss that step, you can have „How you may, how you may only alteita if you alteita only." If all, all you have is your study, all you have is chacham habina, you don't even have chacham habina. And again, I know you're gonna push back.

1:40:33 Speaker 7 Push back.

1:40:33 Speaker 2 Chacham habina has its value. Teita alibada, alibad- you know, lishmah, just for the sake of teita, is a thing. I'm not, I'm not... I'm just saying in the, in the context of this-

1:40:44 Speaker 7 Living it

1:40:44 Speaker 2 ... cl- l- right, this clarity, this, this... And just to, just to poke a little bit on the, on the controversial topic without getting into it, this is the secret of, of emotional strength and tranquility and, and, and this is where it's at. If you want, if you want it, this is where it is.

1:41:04 Speaker 7 Right.

1:41:04 Speaker 2 It's not, it's not anywhere else, and it can't be anywhere else, and we can talk about that next time. But, uh-

1:41:07 Speaker 7 Right. I, I actually want to go into that, but not from how you just said it, of emotional health and, um, emotional stability and all that. I wanna go into that from the, the opposite approach of from the lens of Hasidus. Um, and, um, you know, simcha, right? So exa- kind of like what you just, what we just did here for about the takhan, right? So the same thing about simcha. I mean, yeah, it happens to be, you know... We, we could, we could, uh, timestamp this. It's, you know, we're, it's takhan „ches chadar," but simcha is not limited to hadar , to tehi... You just show me simcha constantly.

1:41:47 Speaker 2 You need it constantly.

1:41:48 Speaker 7 Right.

1:41:48 Speaker 2 That's one of the things Alta Rebbe says. Without that, you can't succeed and you're in a struggle.

1:41:51 Speaker 7 Right. So l- l- let's, let's talk about that exact same formula, so to speak, of simcha, right? So there's, there's ma'amarim on simcha, there's sechas on simcha, there's igrus on simcha. You know, we're, we're benched with that, and then all of a sudden it comes up for bringing about simcha, right? So what would, um... To set, to, to, to h- how would you spell out the chedesh of Hasidus in simcha? Like, what does Hasidus ha- have to offer us about simcha?

1:42:25 Speaker 2 I, I don't claim to be a, a encyclopedia. I don't, I don't... I can't say that I know on my fingers-

1:42:31 Speaker 7 Just mostly from a das level.

1:42:32 Speaker 2 I understand.

1:42:33 Speaker 7 Das level, yeah.

1:42:33 Speaker 2 I understand, but I, I, I don't know if this true, it's a true story I'm about to tell you. I'm, I'm still looking for the person who told it to me. I can't remember who it was.

1:42:40 Speaker 7 Mm-hmm.

1:42:40 Speaker 2 And if you know, or if somebody watching this knows, I'd love to know if it's a real story. But it was, it was a story about some- someone who was close enough to the Rebbe that, that they could say something like this, and a colorful enough character that they would think something like this. I don't know, like a Zalman Jaffe type. I don't know, I don't know, you know, that kind of a person. But somebody, somebody told me this story, and even if it's not, even if it's not true, the sentiment I think is true, and it's relevant to what I'm about to say, is that somebody was by their second „farbrengen" and they went into yechidus after the seventh „farbrengen" and they said, "Rebbe, I was by this „farbrengen" and you said the same thing this time that you said last time."

1:43:26 Speaker 7 Mm-hmm.

1:43:27 Speaker 2 To which the Rebbe smiled and said, "I only have one thing to say." In other words, „bachabak v'hamida al achas." „Lamaisa" when it, when it's a practical question and when you zoom in on the details, there's gonna be, there's gonna be differences. But when you take a... When you're zooming out to a high level, I, I, I... Again, like throughout this farbrengen and this discussion, we've, uh, touched on this ma'amar or that ma'amar, this insight, that insight. But zooming out, it's really all the same insight, and it's really the same thing I can tell you. I just only have one thing to say. Zoomed out, you know. Simcha, and w- we... The, one of the, some of... Again, I'm, I'm not talking from a huge library of knowledge of ma'amarim and sefarim on simcha. Um, but just drawing from what I do know, uh, and from my personal experience, I guess. Um, there's, uh, the famous... I think the Arizal touches on this. I think I remember seeing it quoted from the Arizal. But the Alter Rebbe definitely drills on this, and there's definitely ma'amarim of the Rebbe on this. „Taachashav lo avadeta es Hashem elokecha b'simcha uv'tov levav m'rei ev kol." The pasuk is saying that some of the dramatic and drastic „teichicha" and the „kolos" or whatever, like the, the, some of the unpleasant, um, eventualities are explained by the lack of serving Hashem b'simcha. And obviously that, the, the Arizal I think, uh, jumps on that and the Alter Rebbe. I mean,

1:45:03 Speaker 2 obviously it sounds like overreaction, to put it, uh, put it that way, that, um, I'm doing everything I have to do, but I'm not excited about it. So of them „komen azap ach," like for that, for that, you know, you're gonna start, I don't know what, I don't remember the dramatic stuff, but the, you know, for the Yiddishe bubbes, they hear, they would start getting goosebumps and, and, and, and siddring. So more than one ma'amar from different angles explains this by saying that the simcha... And going back, this goes back to the one thing that I have to say, really, y- you know, from a, from a 30,000 foot, uh, view. Simcha is not a component or something that you pursue and that you include. Simcha flows from something, and if you don't have the simcha, that means you don't have the something Right? Somebody o-over the Shabbaton someone made a joke about the guy got an empty box. He ordered batteries, and he got an empty box because batteries not included. You know what I mean? So if the battery is the order, you can't have batteries not included. You know what I mean? You can order a watch, the battery's not included. You order a, a car, the battery's not included. You can't order batteries and the battery's not included, right? You can't have Yudsky without having Muna, right? It's, uh, the, it, it... A Muna is Yudsky, Yudsky is a Muna. You can't have a Muna not included, right? In a, in

1:46:26 Speaker 2 a sense... S-so, so that's the two, the two things I'll say. One thing is, in the, in the, in the positive, uh, aspect of it, a Muna, a Simcha is the result of recognizing what it is we're engaged in and whom, who we serve, and how, and how, um, how tremendously, uh, uh, um, irrational or, or, or whatsoever. And, and in how, how wide the gulf is, right? Like it says in the "Vi klein it is un vi, vi heikh a ken der grekhn," right? When you, when you have a proper understanding of that, um, there's a Simcha that has to, that has to result. Right? And also a lot of times, you know, in, in Tanya he talks about how after the Midos, after recognizing how low you are, there comes a natural Simcha because despite that, here I am, and the Abysser is on the other line, on the other end of the phone, on the other end of the Avada. How, how, how lucky and how, how happy should I feel, right? As intensified by the Midos. The, the, the lower I am, the smaller I am, the more impressive and exciting it is that I'm on the phone with Abysser, right? Matter of fact, my wife goes to the Beis Medrash Elonasim, and I want to, uh, give them their shout-out 'cause it's a very special thing. So one, one week they didn't, um, they didn't have their regular sched- regularly scheduled pro- scheduled programming, and as a substitute somebody pulled

1:48:11 Speaker 2 out "Laskel Habina." And my wife came home with questions. Now, I mean, I'm assuming she's seen it before, maybe, I don't know. But the conversation raised questions by her, by other people. And the Alter Rebbe's... And this goes actually to, to, to, uh, a broader question, um, that I also encounter a lot, is that people have this perception that m- that Torah wants you to suppress your emotion in certain situ- circum- circumstances. And that's can't possibly be, right? We can't, we can't suppress emotions. We have to address our emotions. And they're not wrong. They're, they're actually Torah does, does not ever tell a person to suppress their emotions. Um, not validate, and that's the problem. When people validating emotions, that's a big problem. Um, I think it comes from the, the awareness of Kabbalah so, and, and, uh, right? And a confusion and a, a, a blending of the idea, the actions and emotions. Um, and I'll just, just package it all up in, in, in the Riah so that I don't have to say it and then prove it. I'll just prove it. In, in, in Parshas Vayigash, Yaakov Avinu is invited to, to Mitzrayim, right? And he lives in the reality. He knows that this is not just Yosef HaTzadik is, uh, is offering him a, uh, a vacation from the famine for temporary. He knows there's a, there's a, a bill of, uh, of, of Avado, of Avado Avinu. So he knows this is the start of something pa- painful and terrible.

1:49:59 Speaker 2 He knows he's leaving a place where Ein Hashem Aleka Chaba, where the experience of that Gehaplkait is, is real, and going to a Mitzrayim. Can interpret that in literally and also in Avada. You know, you're going out of the yeshiva into the world to become a balabus or whatever. And he's, he's upset. He's anxious about it. He's distressed about it. And he goes. He doesn't even bring up his emotion, actually. We only know that he had this emotion-

1:50:28 Speaker 7 For sure

1:50:28 Speaker 2 ... because that night, the Abysser comes to him and says, "Altira, don't worry." And he doesn't just say, "Altira, I'm coming with you." He addresses all of his issues. "I'm coming with you, so don't feel bad you're leaving your Tesha where I am. I'm gonna be with you in Mitzrayim. Don't be afraid you'll get stuck there. I'm gonna take you back out." And he goes to whatever anxiety causes were, were giving distress in Yaakov. So what do you see from this story? There was no reason for Hashem to talk to Yaakov here. No practical reason. He was going, right? It wasn't like, you know, he, uh, he's crinkling, "Maybe I should go. Maybe I shouldn't go. Maybe I should come," and push him, push him over the edge. He was going. So first thing it tells you what you should suppress. You should never allow an unfounded or inaccurate or incorrect emotion to, to determine your action. He was upset, he was distressed, and he carried that with him. He didn't, he didn't, he didn't... He, he, he went.

1:51:25 Speaker 7 Right.

1:51:26 Speaker 2 But Hashem came to him not for any practical benefit, just for the emotional benefit, just to resolve and address the issue, and he resolved it. He didn't tell him to breathe. He told him, "You have this problem, here's the solution to that," right? Mineraach. It's a mineraach. It's a, it's a response, responsive to the problem that he's having. "You're, you're afraid of leaving Mitzrayim, I'm coming with you. You're afraid of not coming back out, I'll, you'll come back out," right? And he came and he addressed to, to, to him the, the specifics of the, of the, of the thing.

1:51:56 Speaker 7 You're saying that's not-

1:51:56 Speaker 2 So Torah says-

1:51:56 Speaker 7 You're saying that's not surprising. That's-

1:51:57 Speaker 2 That's not.

1:51:58 Speaker 7 Right.

1:51:58 Speaker 2 So he's suppressing his action, or he's like, uh, uh, uh, uh, he's brute forcing or he might... He's force of will the behavior And then Hashem comes and says, "That's, that's, that's right. But here, let me... You also have to address the emotion." And he addresses his emotion. And we who have Torah and Emunah and Bitachon, which Yaakov didn't have, and could not really address his own e-emo-emotions on his own 'cause he didn't have with what. How do you, how do you resolve? Which is another thing, reason why natural origin- sources are not so useful, because what do you say to someone who's fear- afraid of the future? They can't, you can't... There's nothing to say. Hashem can say something.

1:52:34 Speaker 7 Right.

1:52:35 Speaker 2 And Hashem does tell us something in Torah. So, so just... I'm sorry, that was a kind of a digression. Um, Torah says to address your emotions. But in the Ask- Askil Chabadina, if you read it, Ibn Aufeq, it sounds like he says, "If you have, if you have the opposite of happiness, you're a koifer."

1:52:51 Speaker 7 Yeah.

1:52:51 Speaker 2 Not koifer, it's kirur. He doesn't say you're a koifer. He says it's kirur. So it's easy to read that as a, as an call to reject and not address. You're a koifer means... But that's not what the word koifer means. The word koifer means you're rejecting truth. So to stop being a koifer doesn't mean to vocalize the party line. He's, he's drawing your attention to the fact that you're way off base on your analysis here. You're, you're, you're not koifer in some religious obligation. You're being koifer in, you're, you're, you're totally, you're totally misreading the situation, right?

1:53:29 Speaker 7 Mm-hmm.

1:53:29 Speaker 2 Now we have bitachon for the future is good, but my point is simcha flows and comes from a accurate reading of the situation, both your circumstances and your, your mission, your task, your role. Simcha comes from that. And so, um, that's the one thing about, about, um, about finding the simcha. Finding the simcha, um, is not about, uh, forcing the simcha or, or, or like he says about Ava, "Don't become happy by, by, by push- by s- by seeking happiness. Find happiness by seeking truth. And if you find truth, you'll find happiness. You find love, you find, you find all those things."

1:54:12 Speaker 7 Right.

1:54:12 Speaker 2 And then, and then the other thing I would say, again, which is only have one thing to say, is that what's the, what's the killer of happiness? Killer of happiness are also not rooted in reality. The killers of happiness are anxiety, uh, self-criticism that reaches to a fundamental level, not, not criticizing what I did, but criticizing who I am and what I'm worth. It comes from, uh, what did we say? Anxiety, we said self, uh, uh, um-

1:54:40 Speaker 7 Loathing

1:54:41 Speaker 2 ... um, I had another one, I can't remember what I was gonna say. But, but, uh, these, uh-

1:54:46 Speaker 7 Practically it's jealousy or, or lack of satisfaction

1:54:49 Speaker 2 ... all of these things.

1:54:50 Speaker 7 Right.

1:54:50 Speaker 2 So all of these things are remedied by truth.

1:54:55 Speaker 7 Okay.

1:54:55 Speaker 2 If you have truth... So we touched on self-esteem earlier, the, the proper way to look at it. We touched a little bit on anxiety and the... right? Jealousy is the same way.

1:55:02 Speaker 7 Sure.

1:55:02 Speaker 2 All these different, all of these things. So, so again, I can't point to a specific Maamar. I mean, we spoke about Askil Chabadina, but that's kind of my, I, I- my understanding of it. I don't know how to read it otherwise. But when he says you're a koifer, he's not saying, "Don't you dare be sad." He's saying, "The reason you're being sad is because you're out of whack with what's really happening. If you, if you know what's happening, you won't feel sad," which is really what he's saying. So I don't think it's my interpretation. But I, I can't point you to a specific Maamar. But, but, but, uh, if I was writing about happiness or if I was discussing with somebody or we... With myself, like how, what, what is happiness? And, and I mean, as Chassidim, I don't know that we're, we're encouraged to have happiness, but we're, we're also-

1:55:37 Speaker 7 But-

1:55:37 Speaker 2 ... going back, going back, one second. Going back to, um, what do you say, Meshech Chochmah. The Rebbe says that we're, we have, we have to feel the rush of the current so much that we're not even thinking about ourselves. So we're-

1:55:48 Speaker 7 Right

1:55:48 Speaker 2 ... so as much as happiness is a key thing, and Chassidus is all, you know, you know, self, self-reflection, if it's, if it's holding you back, it's a necessary thing. And if it, if, if it's not holding you back, you don't stop to tap, tap down.

1:56:01 Speaker 7 Right. Sure.

1:56:01 Speaker 2 So I don't-

1:56:02 Speaker 7 But-

1:56:02 Speaker 2 ... I don't know, I don't know if I spent so-

1:56:03 Speaker 7 But if I bring it in-

1:56:04 Speaker 2 I'm just saying... For sure, for sure.

1:56:05 Speaker 7 Yeah.

1:56:05 Speaker 2 I'm just saying I don't spend so much time, uh, uh, navel-gazing on the topic.

1:56:09 Speaker 7 Right. Okay.

1:56:09 Speaker 2 If a person, if it, if it, if it intrudes in a person's life, that becomes part of his shlichus-

1:56:13 Speaker 7 Right

1:56:13 Speaker 2 ... and part of his mission, and he has to address it. And, and those are the things I would say is, uh, where, where it comes, right? And, and I think this is also an interesting, this is a pattern that you find in, in Shaar Bitachon, which may have influenced my thinking, is that, um, you find where he spends most of the Shaar, and this is not just Shaar Bitachon, also other Shaarim. He spends most of the Shaar establishing the, the, the origins and the source and the healthy or the, healthy, the proper and correct application of a thing. And then at the end he says, "Here's the Mosrim. Here are the things that undermine it and, and, and, and what you have to stay away from." So in the same vein, I would say, um, if I was pursuing happiness, I would pursue happiness by looking for truth. And, and that truth is there's, there's nothing more exciting and joy-inducing than what's actually happening when you see it cor- correctly. And then I would say there are Mosrim, and those Mosrim also are, uh, are, are, uh, are addressed with truth, getting real.

1:57:06 Speaker 7 Right.

1:57:06 Speaker 2 Seeing it as truth, it's reality.

1:57:08 Speaker 7 I think in, in, in the Maamar that discuss it, the truth is called bitul.

1:57:13 Speaker 2 Yeah. I, I-

1:57:13 Speaker 7 That's-

1:57:14 Speaker 2 ... we made that connection.

1:57:14 Speaker 7 Right. Exactly.

1:57:15 Speaker 2 We did make that connection.

1:57:15 Speaker 7 We said about Ava and bitul before.

1:57:17 Speaker 2 Oh, reality is bitul.

1:57:18 Speaker 7 Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

1:57:19 Speaker 2 It's all bitul.

1:57:20 Speaker 7 Right.

1:57:20 Speaker 2 It's all a recognition. It's all a recognition. And then, and, and, uh, it's, it's, it's all recognition that our inner perspective is, is... Right? There's only one truth. This is another 2026 Machlah. It didn't start in '26. Like COVID became, what was it? C- COVID-19, right? It, it got a label of a name out of, out of the year that it was discovered.

1:57:40 Speaker 7 Right. Yeah.

1:57:40 Speaker 2 I don't know when the, what the year, my truth, your truth, I don't know which year to attach to that deficit disorder or that problem.

1:57:47 Speaker 7 Yeah.

1:57:47 Speaker 2 But, uh, whenever that started, this, this is, this is the total opposite of bitul, right? What is bitul says, it's not your truth and my truth. There's, there's the truth, and we have to figure out what it is. So, so which is, which is bitul, right? What is, what is... Acknowledging truth is basically bitul 'cause you're saying, "My lived experience and my personal feelings on it, for whatever role they play, I need to be addressed."

1:58:10 Speaker 7 Right.

1:58:11 Speaker 2 They're not, they are not descriptive, right? They're, they're, they're, they're part of your life, and you need to deal with it. I'm not, I'm not dismissing it and saying . But they're not descriptive of reality because reality doesn't flow from you. You live in reality. You don't define it. You discover it, right? And that's really bitul.

1:58:32 Speaker 7 Great. Okay. Beautiful.

1:58:36 Speaker 2 Okay. On that note. On that note-

1:58:39 Speaker 7 Yeah

1:58:39 Speaker 2 ... the bitul leads to simcha and

1:58:41 Speaker 7 Exactly.

1:58:42 Speaker 2 So we're going to, uh, we're gonna live in the moment where we, we, uh, we, we dance, we dance on, on feet that are grounded in reality, and that's gonna bring us the Emes of joy.

1:58:51 Speaker 7 Amen.

1:58:53 Speaker 2 Yeah. A world where the reality is obvious and, uh, which is the world, which is the world of Moshiach when it doesn't, it's not a struggle.

1:59:00 Speaker 7 Yeah. Amen.