Answering Life's Tough Questions with Rabbi YY

the yeshiva.net welcome we're very grateful to have you here on our podcast thank you nice to see you yeah it's nice to see you it's a real treat yes likewise it's good to see you it's a real treat for both eden and i to have the opportunity to talk with you and interview you today um it's special that we both know you on a personal level since your brother-in-law just your awesome brother-in-law just married my daughter rosie mandy and rosie and your wife not your daughter your exceptional daughter thank you thanks so much for being objective i second that absolutely thank you that means a lot and and i do i do agree um and your wife este who's a good friend is a great friend and eden david are both friends and big fans of yours too so we really value and appreciate this time with you and all your teachings on a public level as well and no doubt many of our listeners that are listening today are big fans of yours too and are big listeners because uh yy is a household name but for those who don't know you and are listening um can you briefly introduce yourself to our listeners who might not be familiar with who you are but i'm sure they will become very familiar after this episode thank you that's very gracious and kind of you i appreciate it so my name is yes of yitzchak jacobson some people call me yy which was my mother-in-law's invention um i guess joseph yitzhak was a little difficult so she branded me why why so and i guess it took off and when people ask me why they call me why or i say when i was born some people said why why and i'm trying to answer that question it's appropriate we have a lot of whys for you today okay yeah so uh i was born in 1972 in brooklyn new york both of my parents russian immigrants who grew up in the communist era in the stalinist regime and suffered terrible terrible tyranny under the horrific conditions of the soviet union of the 1930s and the purges my grandfather was arrested sentenced to death tortured and then sent to uh stalin's gulag but they did make it out after the second world war with forged passports and ultimately made their way from the soviet union to poland and then france germany displaced persons camps and then ultimately to the other side of the atlantic ocean canada and the united states and my parents got married and they raised a wonderful family five children my father was a journalist for around 50 years of his life a real seasoned journalist i grew up in a very i would say very interesting home a colorful home a diverse home with a lot of interesting guests and conversations this was a time when jewish journalism was very very strong before the computer revolution before the internet revolution and for the last uh two decades a little more i've had the privilege of traveling to hundreds of communities around the globe synagogues jewish centers schools universities yeshivas and lecturing to jews and non-jews from all different types of affiliations about uh but i guess the blueprint of life presented by torah and judaism so that's some points about my life i like that you talked about the background i feel like normally when we ask you know can you introduce yourself it's very much about you know what they're doing now in their own trajectory and and you started you know before you were born because it's so important to understand um you know who you are today yeah you need to we need some background information of course there's a there's an incredible there's an incredible line in the talmud which says which means the community never dies an individual passes on but the collective body of the jewish people the same collective body that stood at sinai and left egypt and celebrated hanukkah and purim 2500 years ago that collective body called the jewish people is still alive so we are connected to each other not just horizontally but vertically and today with genetics and epigenetics we know that we're not just continuing the life of our ancestors we in many ways we are we embody the life of our ancestors so if i don't know where i come from it's very hard for me to know where i am and where i'm supposed to go that's true it's true and and i think a lot of people are you know caught between wanting to make their ancestors you know proud and also wanting to do what they want to do and that kind of leads me to our next question um you know you wear so many hats you do so many different things you're you know a leader a mentor rabbi you have a podcast multiple podcasts actually on many different topics and um i i just i wonder is this something that you um expected is something that you foresaw might happen or was this did this come as a surprise to you that you are in you know the position that you're in today yeah completely not expected completely not anticipated i grew up as a very dedicated and diligent student i had the privilege of at a young age of being on the team of the oral scribes of the laboratory of blessed memory who were charged with a very grueling mission if you will and that is to memorize and transcribes hour-long talks of the laboratory on shabbos shabbat and holidays when no recording devices are used in the jewish world of observing the jewish observant world so this group had to memorize and transcribe these talks i was really immersed in my youth in learning and more learning learning and writing and really delving into the scholarship of of yiddishkeit of torah and all of its facets and the teachings of the river i completely did not prepare or imagine or anticipate what i'm doing today and the way it actually happened was really you know people's it's not like one day i was standing in front of a burning bush and i heard a calling that said you know rabbi why why this is your your job but really organically um from the requests of people and seeing the opportunities it really just emerged i'm not going to say out of the blue but it it really just emerged what happened was i got a call one week for my rabbi in highland park in in chicago a suburb of chicago very affluent community and he said i read i read an article of yours that impressed me i used to write a weekly column in my father's yiddish newspaper my father had a yiddish newspaper could you come for a shabbos to my community and speak i'm like no you got the wrong guy i don't i'm not a speaker i'm not i don't give speeches i don't do shabbatons he says just come i'll pay the ticket just come speak to my show what's going to happen okay so i came i wasn't even married i wasn't married i was in my 20s i was not married yet and i came for shabbos and i spoke and i guess people liked it because the next job was i got a call from another uh another show and as they say the rest is history wow wow that is unbelievable that you didn't see yourself as a speaker and i feel like you're internationally recognized as someone who can communicate ideas so clearly verbally to others in a way that they connect to it and and it kind of reminds me of the uh rabbi laura jonathan stacks of blessed memory and we asked him a similar question you know did you expect to be in the position you're in today and he said there are two things that stood out he said something similar to you and that absolutely not he wanted to become an economist and he ended up becoming a rabbi which is totally like i guess off the path of what he expected um it turned out he ended up getting honorary doctorates from different universities um so he ended up where he actually initially wanted to be which it's interesting how life changes i listened to that i listened to that i listened to that podcast that you did with rabbi sex and if i'm not mistaken i think you really had the privilege of really eliciting from him the last presentation i think that he gave during his lifetime now yes yeah one of the last time he spoke we know yeah it was we know it was we couldn't find anyone else who interviewed him after but we do know it was definitely one of the last and it was a real gift i found him to be extremely vulnerable in that podcast and i guess it was like i'm not going to call it his final will and testament but you know he was apparently very ill i didn't know about it i guess you didn't know about it we didn't know when you hear it when i was listening to it at the time i told my wife we were listening together i'm like you know he is he's being open in a way that i usually don't don't don't hear him so open so you know unfortunately we understood later that this was literally like one of his last presentations so yeah yeah that's a very powerful very powerful i'll tell you you know there's a there's a very i just want to tell you that you should live a very long life and you should also be open with us and vulnerable we can edit that part out if needed don't worry you're smart you don't have that this is the age when people are sick this is the age that people are sick and tired of editing out things they don't want to live edited lives we have been taught for many years to edit our lives to edit our emotions to edit our hearts to edit to edit everything it should just look good but we live in a generation really where everyone is craving uh connection and authenticity um but there's something that that that you triggered in my mind yeah um obviously you know kind and respectful and considerate of of people's feelings but unfiltered in the sense of of real truth you know raw raw experience you know there's a lovely idea in the talmud that says you know god loves ugly truths much more than beautiful lies [Laughter] that's great i love that true i like that it's uh yeah it's a very powerful very powerful and god the talmud says that some people flatter god with beautiful accolades and he says no no tell me what you really think about me it's an incredible idea the talmud is the two of the greatest prophets daniel daniel and jeremiah refused to call hashem hagiber vahanora the mighty one and the awesome one they said we saw the destruction of the temple in 586 bce we saw the horrors we saw the decimation we cannot call god powerful when he was silent in that present in the presence of that and the talmud says how can they do this and and the answer is that god doesn't want flattery and since they knew that the definition of hashem is truth they were not ready to say something that for them what was not real it's a very very very powerful very powerful idea i told once my students here i said you know there's a scene i think it's in one of woody allen's prayer one of woody allen's genius productions where this young hip a bright girl asks her very religious uncle if you had to choose between god and truth what would you choose and the uncle says of course i would choose god and it demonstrates how a corrupt religion can become when god becomes something different than truth wow wow it's true and we're going to talk about this yes i actually i just want to add one thing in terms of career and vocations and i think this is really rel it's relevant to me i think it's relevant to every one of us who's listening and that is that uh in hebrew there are two words that are almost that are identical and one is used for moses and one is used for for balaam the prophet billam vaikar and vayikra it says god chanced upon balaam vaikar hashem el billam and with moses is the same which as vayikra hashem al-mosha god called out to moses we all experience different coincidences in life balaam looks at it as a coincidence it's a coincidence it just happened moses sees it as a calling vayikra and that really creates the difference between two lives it's looking at where you are what your talents are what the opportunities are what the needs are what people are looking for you just say it's a coincidence or moses perspective is no see it see it as a calling so i could say in my own life you know things just started to develop and then i realized the opportunity the thirst the yearning uh the longing of people and then you know it didn't take time for me to realize this is not coincidental that all my training in my youth was really ultimately to be able to respond to this to this calling can i tell you a very a very powerful anecdote that just left an impression on me please yes the beginning of the days of corona as you know the death toll in new york was was mind staggering it was beyond the hospital simply did not know what to do there were not enough beds there were not enough doctors not enough nurses not enough beds in the icu at that point they thought they have to put everybody on ventilators there were not enough ventilators i saw an interview with chief physician in a hospital in the bronx where really hundreds of people have died from covert in the early days this is this is march april before passover last year 2020 and this doctor a female doctor she was like running the icu she was coming out of of one of the patients and uh and a tv crew interviewed her and they turned her she seemed exhausted dejected down shrouded depleted she was probably up who knows how long i don't know if she slept in the previous week they were trying frantically to save lives and then and and lives were just slipping away it was you know it was so tragic and disastrous so i saw this moment the reporter looks at her and says do you just want to give up do you just want to surrender are you just ready to break down and just run away and she looked him in the eyes and she said all my training over the last 40 years medical school 12 years residency four years being a physician here in this hospital for decades all of this was made for this moment if i'm not going to rise to the occasion at this moment then all my training and all my work all these years was really a waste of time and it was it was so moving to hear because that's what leadership is leadership is to realize that when you're facing a moment of urgency and of crisis instead of running away you know running to the hill saying it's not for me i'm this and dealing with my ins you know surrendering to my inferiority complexes and insecurities that i and many of us have it's really that moment to say no this this is the moment everything you learned till now was for this moment to be able to face it and to bring light into this darkness wow that's wow that's yeah that's unbelievable and and so true so true that it's really in the difficult moments when when we first of all when we learn most and when we you know and it's very much uh connected to the hash practice is that everything that's happening is not coincidental you know it's it's happening for a reason and yeah and what you say also reminds me as we were talking about rabbi jonathan sax that um the rebber had said to him you don't find yourself in a situation you put yourself in a situation and um what you're saying very much relates to that yeah we shared that with you on the podcast there was uh there was there was a there was an essay i read from rabbi sax that really cuts to the heart of this i've spoken about it over many years throughout many years on purim esther queen esther does not want to go plead with her husband on behalf of the jewish people because she says my husband is a persian tyrant you go in without permission you come out with a head shorter and he did not summon me to the palace for thirty days and mordechai tells esther those words meodeya who knows if it's not for this moment that you have become a queen many many years ago you know this mordechai is telling esther this is the moment for which you were chosen to become the queen of the persian empire the wife of achashverish and i think you know in all of us in our own micro or macro ways we have to look at ourselves and say everything that i have learned till this point it's it's cause it's for this moment when i feel i can i can bring something i can bring some some relief some clarity some love some light some hope this is so well you've spoken about two very important um issues speaking truth and also taking an opportunity to share it and we would be remiss if we didn't say something about the state of our world right now and all the chaos that's going on in israel and we're seeing a lot of hate and conflicting reports with people spewing venom um at each other on social media and as a peaceful platform that promotes good vibes and we try to promote good vibes and positive energy we try to stay clear we hope that that's a goal but we try to steer clear of controversy but like at the same time we feel compelled to stand up for what we believe in and we see others speaking out and standing up for what they believe is right and the ones who are quiet are often seen as careless or ignorant ignorant so we are conflicted about how to approach this especially in light of what you're saying right now and as people we don't like controversy yet at the same time we believe um with conviction and we want you know at the same time we believe in conviction with conviction and truth and do we speak up or avoid topics that are controversial we don't want to ignore important issues but we also want to maintain the positive energy on the platform like what is what is the best way to be effective in these kind of situations in general it's it's it's really a great question positive energy should always be maintained because our objective our goal in life is to bring positivity into every situation but positivity does not mean to ignore a very very painful reality and to steer it in the eyes and to call a spade a spade and it is important not to allow ourselves to uh you know get into arguments and confrontations that are just ineffective that become screaming matches where i'm not interested in your position you're not interested in my position i just want to come out with the upper hand and tell everybody that you're wrong and i'm right because those debates are usually ineffective but from a very humble and positive and authentic place of caring a person or never ever to compromise on unwavering convictions especially when we're dealing with life-and-death situations if somebody were to ask me what's the most sacred value that makes a society viable if if if you eat a few rifka uh mrs schattenstein mrs krinsky if if i were to ask you this question or any one of your listeners what is that value that we have to teach our children to make society the most livable in and we all know the answer you don't have to be a rocket scientist the sacredness of life if life is not sacred if the dignity of a person could be compromised if saying to myself because you're not part of my family or my nation or my tribe or my culture or my religion or my territory therefore i can be a bigot towards you i can discriminate against you never mind i can call for genocide then we lose the foundations of any viable society in which we can create a positive change and we can communicate in which we can respect each other so when somebody does not speak out about the attempts of genocide a group that calls openly for genocide of men women and children then we lose the very fabric of having any ability to build society today there is conversation about people say we're asking israel and hamas to both respect each other show restraint and both sides have to realize that coexistence is so important beautiful flowery words but very very lethal because think about if somebody in 1945 in 1944 1945 when when england when russia when america were trying to defeat adolf hitler and the third reich if some sophisticated positive loving individual would stand up and say we call on both sides to show consideration and constraints how grotesque such a request is hitler wanted genocide the americans and the english and at that time the soviets were trying to defeat him they weren't trying to take revenge and destroy germany they were trying to stop a genocide that is really what was going on so now imagine if somebody starts shooting missiles into my home and literally children are being murdered so i go to that home to try to stop it and somebody says no no no you have to show restraint you have to show restraint i'm not here to fight anybody or take revenge i just want to rock stop so that innocent people don't die i think that's the perspective that if people do not understand us do not appreciate this we are undermining the ability for any society jewish society israeli society arab society we're depriving arab children of a future when they're growing up in a society that doesn't value their own lives and are ready to launch rockets from heavily populated areas with children knowing that israel is going to have to try to stop it to protect their society and people are going to die the the level of the of moral depravity here and cruelty and sadism is so profound that if we want to build any positive society and we want to introduce any positive vibe if we as individuals and as people and as politicians and as journalists and laymen and leaders alike cannot stand up to this with unwavering clarity that we become accomplices to allowing this type of violence and bloodshed that is based literally on genocide to continue and thrive when we hear the shouts from the river to the sea let palestine be free it's a call for genocide it's a call for the murder of 6.6 million jews men women and children so we we we have no choice we're paying by the fact that this is what we have to talk about but this is the basis of any future freedom and and liberty and life for any society jew and arab alike yeah i wish i wish that more people could you know saw things that way i think social media has really polluted um our sense of reality you know and that people are kind of saying things assuming that what they're saying is legitimate especially people and you see it in hollywood a lot um you know and uh the truth gets skewed a little bit and people really don't know anymore what to say and yeah yeah it's it's horrible i always give the example terror is like a cancer terror is like a cancer imagine somebody has cancer they come to the doctor the doctor says you have cancer in the stomach we have to cut it out he says no no no coexistence let's leave the cancer in the stomach and let the cancer not bother the rest of the body the problem is if you leave the cancer in the stomach god forbid it's going to spread and the end of that story is death terror is a cancer it doesn't want to remain in one place it wants to inflict untold suffering and damage on every child woman and man if you don't uproot it if you're compassionate towards terror you're displaying the worst cruelty to innocent people and i it's it's it it's unfathomable to me when people look at the reality and let's say you disagree with a lot of policies in israel that's fine we all many of us disagree with different policies of israel but you have people hamas in gaza launching not hundreds thousands and thousands of rockets not asking where they're going to fall the intention is to kill as many children as possible what is israel supposed to do if not stop the rockets and protect but when israel demolishes a building they make sure everybody gets evacuated and then they're attacked for their for mistakes that happen because they're trying to defend their country they're attacked from missiles that landed in gaza from hamas and kill their own children and israel is to blame for hamas it's win-win they don't care if their children die we send missiles to israel they know israel is going to have to defend itself some arabs and children and gaza are going to die sadly and unfortunately for them it's win-win we show that israel is killing children and we in america we in america are duped we get abducted by that indoctrination that allows literally genocide to happen and poor arab children and guys are used as missiles missiles for the propaganda to continue this sadistic bloodshed it's unfathomable for people who care about arabs forget if you care about jews if you care about arab children you should be alarmed at what hamas allows to happen to their own own children they don't fight on the front lines they fight from schools and hospitals and universities with us we are we agree with we i actually agree with every word you're sharing here and i know that it does too um and the fact is that we are not politicians and we aren't in israel and we are here what we're asking is what is the best way that we can be effective what can we do and i think i think there's i think you know these battles have to be fought on two fronts i think number one there is this this the spiritual battle and number two there is the pr battle i think on the pr battle i think every single person who has influence and today every person has influence needs to really educate themselves about the realities of the middle east the realities of israel israel is not a perfect country israel has a lot of flaws and i'm sure they make many mistakes but people have to be able to really educate themselves and become spokesmen and spokeswoman in this case of truth of honesty and not be bullied by slogans and statements that sound so kind and loving and liberal and progressive but really underlying it are filled with such a lack of understanding and sensitivity to human life i think every single one of us must use our pockets our pens our mouths our our outlets every outlet that we have in order to teach to educate to say the truth to become ambassadors of truth in our world i think that is so important and to be able to stand up to lies and to deception that's number one and i think people of influence especially jews of influence instead of ducking they should stand up they should stand up for the truth they should stand up for their brothers and sisters millions of innocent people in danger jews have to stop um ducking and surrendering to this inferiority complex and i want to you know make believe that i'm the most progressive uh carrier of of the flag of humanness and sensitivity yes you are supposed to carry the flag of humanism sensitivity and that's why you should stand up to such type of bloodshed that's number one and i think number two equally important is the spiritual response and that is i think each and every one of us you know all the jews are the talmud says we're all limbs of one body and when you exercise one limb the entire body is stronger it's not like i'm exercising my back or i'm exercising my torso exercise in my legs it affects only that limb it's one organic connection we are all deeply connected to each other horizontally and vertically in this generation and previous generations and i think therefore when any of us strengthens our own inner connection to ourselves to our people to our god to our history to our torah to our homeland it affects all of our people i think it's so important to educate a generation of young jews who are proud ambassadors of their jewishness as rabbi sachs would always say the world respects jews who respect themselves and their judaism the world is embarrassed by jews who are embarrassed by themselves and their judaism i think a major part of the issue here is that we jews in israel and in diaspora often lack the courage and the conviction to be able to be decisive and know what is true and what is false during the second world war there were no there was no ambiguity it was very clear what is good and what is evil during the six day war it was very clear what is good what is evil there in the kippur war was very clear what is good what is evil today people are confused we need to educate a generation of jews who have internal confidence who have internal pride who have internal dignity who are ready to stand up to falsehood and stay to truth unequivocally absolutely unapologetically you know what happens the world will listen the world will respect you people ultimately like truth it's true i actually heard just recently i think on a podcast that if you're with the majority you should just start questioning yourself and i think it applies here is that rifka you know i think rifka and i were asking this question because we don't like confrontation but just because we don't like confrontation doesn't mean that we can't speak a truth right and we and avoid the fighting part right i feel like we're we were associating you know staff actually i actually don't mind confrontation but i don't like the way it's it is on social media it gives me a lot of uh just there's a lot of hate and there's a lot of just spewing hatred and um we're trying to find a better way the other day the other day i was flying to florida with my wife my dear wife esthy and we were in the airport and we asked for directions to the escalator to get down to go to the gate and we see there's a mob of people literally hundreds and hundreds of people going to the escalator and then we look and we see that there is another escalator further down that didn't even have one person my wife turns to me and says look people just love to follow hundreds are packed waiting online to get down the escalator because if that's what everybody is doing that's what i do it's so important to be able to think for yourself there's an escalator that's vacant use it use it so that's number one number two the art one of the important qualities in life is to disagree without becoming disagreeable and by the way it begins with marriage any marriage of two healthy people has lots of disagreements okay and that's the fact at least most marriages that's not a problem that's not a problem can we disagree with respect can we disagree without accusing each other of being a horrible person just because you disagree with me now certainly it's true in a marriage but it's also true in all types of debates that we have with people the problem in so many debates is it becomes personal i'm not listening to you anymore i'm becoming defensive i accuse you of being a horrible horrible horrible person you're either encouraging apartheid or you're encouraging murder you're either encouraging terrorism or you're encouraging indiscriminate revenge instead of really not allowing my ego to get into the argument what happens is my ego and insecurity takes over the argument and it's not a conversation anymore so it's very important i could always share my position but number one don't demonize the other person who's arguing with you because you're not going to get anywhere it's irrelevant and also there's probably no need to demonize him or her he may have very good intentions even if he or she is wrong number one number two don't allow your ego or my ego or insecurity to take over the narrative really come from a much deeper pure idealistic place and number three don't try to be right try to be effective one of my mentors once told me he said rabbi jacobson you lecture when people ask a question what do you do i say i try to answer the question he said bad choice don't answer the question answer the person now what that means is of course you should answer the question but more important than answering the question is answering the person somebody comes to me and says why did my mother die why did my brother die why did my father die you think they want you to answer the question do i even have an answer to the question i have to always think about the person who's asking the question so when it comes to these conversations it's so important not just to answer the questions i can give an answer but to really try to be effective and communicate to the people so that so that they understand i have a friend he's a chabad rabbi at stanford university his name is rabbi greenberg and he told me stanford is what you would call a very liberal university a lot of anti-israel sentiments and he says he gets up at a lecture he's speaking about israel a student gets up and says why is israel involved in ethnic cleansing of the palestinian population which our own congresswoman accused israel just this week of ethnic cleansing in gaza this is what he asks the rabbi what do you answer you say israel is not involved in ethnic cleansing they are you're brainwashed you're brainwashed you're brainwashed you're brainwashed we're all brainwashed okay end of conversation we're done the rabbi looked at the student and he says it's a wonderful question i have another question i have another question why do you say israel is involved in ethnic cleansing he said well look children die every day these children died these children died look at this story that story this is ethnic cleansing he said okay i have one to ask another question why did you murder your grandmother he says rabbi what why did you murder your grandmother he says i never murdered my grandmother he says well wait is your grandmother dead yes my grandmother oh so you murdered her no no she's dead but i didn't murder oh so you mean she's dead is not a proof that you murdered her well that's what's happening here you come to israel and you say why did you murder your grandmother look children are dying in gaza you must have murdered them wait wait these paradigms are so erroneous he helped the student realize of course there is a horrible situation in gaza of course his grandmother died but he's not the murderer of his grandmother can you really be reflective and understand how his grandmother died he was not the killer yeah yes so you have to learn how to communicate in a way that people who come from a different persuasion may be able to listen sometimes they're not ready sometimes people are not ready to listen and then it's pointless then it's pointless then pray to god and ask god to help all of us expand our horizons and open ourselves up to truth but the most important thing is when you're internally confident and decisive not in an arrogant way but in a humble way coming from the conviction that life is sacred and the biggest priority that israel or any other country has is to protect the life of the innocent then people respect you i feel very bad i told this to the chief rabbi of israel yesterday i had an hour conversation with chief rabbi lao yesterday just yesterday in the morning on zoom in hebrew and it's out there it's it's one of the podcasts in hebrew and uh and i told them i said rabbi lao we spoke about the war in israel they call it protests it's a declaration of war it's not protest and i said i i i hate to say this israel is such a talented nation you don't have decent spokesman in the united states of america israel does not have powerful spokesmen who can stand up male or female always better female because they have a way with words to articulate truth unfortunately we have a congresswoman with the gift of gab who creates this commotion and everybody is flocking to it israel needs these types of voices that we lack so we need education we need to educate ourselves and we need we need to be in touch with truth and share truth and educate our others and i guess that is apologetic and not be apologetic for holding on to our most sacred values because when we have that inner conviction other people come to respect it and learn it but not get into personal fights and debates because they're pointless we want to be effective we don't want to be right i don't want to be right in hebrew there's an expression be wise don't be right [Laughter] this is so many applications in in so many different areas not just with peace but with br in in marriage and in education i mean do you want to be right or do you want to be effective i love that i love that and answering and not just answering the question but answering the person that when we have to talk about that a little bit yes what what happens is we get into a conversation you start arguing with me and i'm not listening to your words anymore you just triggered my traumas i feel unloved i feel disrespected i feel i don't have dignity you don't like me you don't this and now i'm not responding to your words i'm responding to my own inner trauma from the age of four years old we're not talking anymore i'm talking to my trauma now you're talking to your trauma we're not talking to each other anymore can i really can i really yeah identify my pain and and have compassion for it yes you just did trigger my trauma and i do want to scream at you of how horrible you are but essentially i'm going to deal with that wherever i'm going to deal with it but now i want to really try to communicate and give you the benefit of the doubt i think if couples would learn to do this we would also have better marriages right i think i think you've shared some answers to some more of our questions but maybe you have something further to share on that um because we wanted you to point out something or things that people do in their lives that promote positive change and growth or are there any specific methods you believe are helpful when people come to you for guidance or advice you shared some of that now but maybe you have something further to share with us that's a great question some points that i often share with people is number one we really have to have people that we can speak to that can help us become aware of what is going on in our lives and our minds whatever that looks like for you somebody i trust somebody who knows me somebody who i'm gonna truly listen to and can really help me give the answers to tough questions for example why when my husband makes this and this comment or my wife makes this and this comment do i always find myself getting angry ready for 20 years for 30 years for 10 years for 15 years why do i space out can i can i figure out the patterns of my brain can i see what i'm dealing with the gift of self-awareness and having somebody to point out things somebody who's obviously keen and perceptive and somebody who knows you trust you whatever that is a great friend a confidant a mentor a therapist a coach whatever that is but somebody who i could really listen to you see one of the biggest challenges of many of us is i may have trauma i may have setbacks but i'm not even aware of how much of a victim i am to those traps in my mind i just follow the trajectory and i'm emotionally responding to life the way i did five years ago 10 years ago 20 years ago and it becomes normal i don't even know of another option my wife says this and this is how i respond my husband says this is on my spine my teenage daughter or son says this and this is how i respond and we just fall into this to this trajectory that is fixed and it's really an emotional trap i never get to see myself from a different perspective and it's very hard for people because this is not about intellectual conversations or awareness it's about what is my visceral gut reaction to things you know i can hear the most brilliant lecture in the world about self-help and growth and honesty and awareness and neuroplasticity and somatic therapy and releasing stress and the body holds the score and i could know it all in an encyclopedic fashion the problem is i know it here but my amygdala my limbic brain my reptilian brain is still stuck it's still trapped in my traumas so to be able to have somebody with whom i can really be open and trusting and i could truly listen to what they're saying and allow them to challenge me in my core and open myself up to the possibility that i am so stuck i'm stuck in anger i'm stuck in frustration and resentment i'm stuck in guilt i'm stuck in loneliness and fear and insecurity i'm stuck in enormous pain in an enormous place of mistrust i'm just stuck and my responses are so limited the moment i could begin to get awareness of those patterns i can already set myself free and and you'll so that's one i think and you're saying the way to do that is through being open with somebody that you trust i think one of the ways of doing that is being open with somebody i think the first and foremost prerequisite is i have to be ready if i'm not ready you know sometimes people come to me for advice and sometimes i'll turn to the guy and say listen before i speak i want to ask you a question do you want to hear the truth or do you want to hear what you want to hear and of course everybody says oh of course i want to hear the truth of course i want to hear the truth so then i tell him the truth and he doesn't speak to me for a couple of months you know so uh it's like do i really want to hear the truth do i really want to hear the truth come on of course i say i want to hear the truth but who wants to hear the truth in fact if somebody tells me they want to hear the truth i tell them you're crazy you really want to hear the truth who wants to hear the truth it's not easy to hear if you want to change if you want to change you want to hear the truth yeah and i could fool the world i could smile to the world i could come to the bar mitzvahs and smile i can i can eat sushi and you know and and put up put up a nice show i'm we're talented people you know we ashkenazic jews and spartan jews and jews of all demographics we have learned the game of survival very well but when i face the mirror the mirror is going to talk back to me and the mirror is going to say you know you could fool the world but you can't fool me you can't fool you in the summer you can't fool your soul i can't fool god and i can't fool my inner my inner core so that that openness the challenge here is that with real trauma and so many of us are suffering from traumas we don't know that we don't know if my trauma has taken root i don't know how bad it is because that's who i am that's who i have become so i have to really look at my responses and if i'm feeling miserable if i'm always getting angry if i'm always having the same response to situations that don't don't warrant that if i'm always blaming my spouse for everything bad in my life then it's time to look into myself and say am i just a miserable traumatized person who is stuck and nothing will ever be good enough and i will blame the whole world besides myself these are moments of deep honesty and vulnerability and they come with a lot of grief grief for a life that has been painful grief for all the opportunities that have been squandered grief for a relationship that could never be realized and there's a lot of tears over there but they it becomes a catalyst for recovery i think that's a very important quality in life i would just mention fast two other things and that is i think it's important for people to learn i think to learn texts books teachers and mentors that broaden your horizons and we're talking you know in terms of of the jewish people i think the texts of jewish spirituality um call it what i would you know what's known what's known today as hasidis or hasidism i find to be life-changing if you have a good teacher or a good mentor who teaches you how to apply these concepts because what they do for me is they just always challenge me to be able to see the spiritual organic oneness of the universe and of me as part of the universe and it just gives a perspective that allows one to taste freedom it emancipates one from the shackles in which we live in the shackles of cynicism and fear and desperation and negativity and toxicity so i would encourage that if you have if you're sensitive and you're spiritual i think we we need in our life to learn the books and texts that give us a taste of infinity the last thing i would say is when moses wants to count the jews god says don't count the jews they have to give a contribution and you count the contributions why the answer is when you start counting yourself and you want to figure out your value just from looking at yourself it can get very depressing i could look in the mirror and say i'm an imposter i'm impossible you want to know your value you want to be counted give no when you give you see yourself in a new ways i would always tell everybody wherever you are in life sometime every day dedicate to give it could be calling somebody who needs a little inspiration it could be involved in a project in a charity in an organization in a movement in a group whatever it is but something in which i use my mind my soul to give to people to lift up hearts to kindle sparks to embrace souls to give hope to give love to help in any way i can everyone is an influencer in their own way i think when i do that there's an energy of inner goodness that is unleashed and wanting to change wanting to change and being open to listening to what the truth is and having someone good to talk to to actually yeah that actually is going to listen courage to examine having the courage to examine what is happening i remember i was once sitting with a mentor and we were discussing about a painful situation that i was experiencing in my life and he asked me a question and i didn't answer i was just silent and he looked at me and he said so you're very angry uh that's why you're not answering and i stopped i took a breath a deep breath and i said you know i did not realize that i was angry till that moment i was so angry that i repressed it or i suppressed it i did not realize that i was angry in other words if you would ask me to be honest with myself i would tell you i'm not angry because i did not have the courage i was too afraid to admit to myself that i'm feeling anger it's too humiliating me rabbi why why is feeling anger i'm a good guy i'm a workout i'm not feeling anger i'm not this egotistical insecure arrogant angry person i was feeling anger i was feeling anger i was so angry that i couldn't admit that i'm angry that's how angry i was you understand it's a deeper level of anger i was so angry that i couldn't tell myself i'm angry you know it wasn't just i missed my flight and i'm angry for 30 minutes and i'm angry at the airport and i'm closing up kennedy airport i'm gonna sue the airline you know you get angry for half an hour and you know until until you find some kosher food in the airport and and you know you satiate your hunger and you get on another plane and all that and it was a very very deep anger and i have to say when i open myself up to that truth i can ask myself why am i angry why because anger is a secondary emotion anger in 95 of cases is a cover-up anger covers up a deeper emotion there's always something under the anger i'm angry at you i'm angry at somebody under that anger there's pain there's loneliness there's hurt we don't like saying it because it's much easier to be angry at you than to say i'm in pain i'm hurt but when i can acknowledge that i'm angry i can also start acknowledging and asking why am i angry there's pain here and when i can acknowledge the pain i can start doing things to address it and that becomes a game changer and every one of us in our lives has this when you said anger as a secondary emotion i actually i once heard um that about laziness that laziness is a secondary emotion and it was in relation to um a student in in school who was not interested in learning and you know the teacher was saying this child is lazy um and then there was a back and forth and the question was well is he really lazy and so the the um the understanding was that he isn't lazy because if you tell him he's going to orlando tomorrow morning and he has to be up at 5 a.m he's going to be bright-eyed bushy-tailed at 5 a.m if he needs to be so the question is what's going on um that he's appearing lazy externally and so and i feel like edu we were going to ask you about you know your stance on education on the state of our um of our educational system today not just in our world but even in the greater world there's a lot of internal um truths that haven't been acknowledged yet and you know and i know that you mentor many people students parents alike and i just wonder like what is your view on the the state of our educational system but also like if there's some if there was a message that you could send to either to parents or to educators um like what would you tell them based on everything that you know and have spoken about in education yeah wow that's uh that's such an important and wonderful question you know i think today we know that at least one of the most important things is to be able to make sure what uh you know some of the great therapists call the four s's right that our children feel safe seen secure and soothed those four s's are critical a child needs to be able to feel safe at home and in school a child has to be able to feel secure at home and in school a child has to be able to feel seen i'm seen i'm noticed and finally i'm soothed when there is pain when there is agony i think it's so important to be able to cultivate deep emotional connection connection is the key today there's a lot of conversation about attachment disorder you know we don't feel attached we never had healthy attachments our primal attachments were wounded i read i read a paper an incredible paper about a research of psychology she said the antithesis of addiction is not sobriety the antithesis of addiction is connection proof everybody has a grandmother right who broke a hip 86 years old ended up in the hospital they gave her heroin she should have come out three weeks later addicted to heroin she does not you know why because she has a bunch of grandchildren jumping on her kissing her and embracing her the antithesis to addiction is not sobriety it's connection when i feel connected when i have that dignity that value of being in strong relationships of loving and being loved because i'm safe i feel secure seen soothed it is so important it helps a child cultivate a sense of inner confidence a sense a sense of inner happiness so i think that's one very important message for all of us especially for mothers and fathers we need to be emotionally connected with our children you know as much yeah sometimes sometimes the school is not has not got the same that same connection the connection we would like them to the school to have with the children or for them to be able to be seen so it's you know how do we i guess we have to balance that with extra love and extra connection yes i was once in california and i remember i met i met a uh a prince i met i i met a principal of a school and i saw that his rapport with the kids was very powerful and i turned to him and i said wow who taught that to you this was like 15 years ago he was very warm and just emotionally loving and the kids you could see that you know i once heard a definition my mind works sometimes in different ways so i once saw a composer and a conductor a jewish conductor in boston and somebody interviewed him and they asked him they asked him how do you know you're doing a good job and he said when i inspire the people and i look into their eyes and i could see that their eyes are on fire i know i'm doing a good job so i saw this educator and i saw that he looked the children in the eyes and there was there was a brightness that emerged when they saw him so i asked him how did you learn this and he told me before i went into education i asked myself was there ever a teacher who made an impact on me that i remembered him afterwards and i remembered my third grade teacher so he said 25 years later i called up my third grade teacher and i said hi rabbi so and so why do i remember you more than any other teacher imagine getting a call 25 years later why do i remember you tell me what did you do and the teacher is like i don't know i just loved i just loved i loved all my kids so he says i'm going into education i'm becoming a principal what first he was a teacher i'm becoming a teacher what should i know he said no that you have to connect with those kids you gotta love them they have to feel safe in your presence and then he said and he looked at me and he said and when there's a child who is causing you migraine headaches who is giving you aggravation who is making your job difficult make sure that your love towards him is double the amount of the love towards the other kids and i said rabbi why double why not equal he says because last year's teacher probably hated him and you have to compensate for that so you know this was a very very powerful so you know you say we yeah sometimes listen you also have to remember that some schools have the best of intentions but you know they have classrooms they have structures they have curriculums and it's so important for parents to focus on the individual needs of your child and don't surrender to social conformity sometimes people will keep their children in the wrong schools and in the wrong environments just because everybody is going to that escalator back to the escalator in the airport no your child needs a different escalator and by the way when you learn to have empathy and compassion for your own shortcomings you can have compassion and empathy for your child's shortcomings what often happens is as parents who love our children and we're ready to take a bullet for each of them we also we also have a hard time seeing them grow into the people that they become independent of us i love you so much i want you to be that perfect child who gives us the perfect nachas who grows into that exceptional child and that we take it personal and my child is now letting me down letting our family down letting the jewish people down letting god down and it's very very difficult for us and we're not really tuning into that child as an individual soul sent down by god to this world and giving me who gave me the privilege to polish the diamond but not to own the diamond when i make it not personal anymore when it's not personal it's very different the bolshevik once said something so powerful he said when you pray to god for your children or for anything else you're not praying for your children you're praying for hashem's children if your children are missing something it's actually god who's missing that because every child is a piece of hashem so instead of looking at it my child has to be this in this way where there's a lot of my own insecurity there if i could get my own insecurity out of the picture and say no this is god's child and this child is struggling with something please help this child be able to find their beauty their soul and help me be able to be the ambassador of love and light and hope and connection to fulfill my role here it just allows us the freedom to be able to breathe while we're raising our children because if parents stop breathing a mother once told me from the day my child was born i've been holding my breath and it's now 30 years i'm holding my breath you can't raise children and create a normal marriage at home if you're holding your breath so we have to be able to breathe to breathe and hold our breath for a few seconds but then exhale and and only then can we raise our children from a place of of inner confidence and inner wholeness it's hard that differentiation is hard because you know we project ourselves on them and some of us we just want the nachos you know i want the nachos i want the nachos and you know what and also so i feel like also some parents and some parents genuinely don't know they're conflicted themselves and i guess the answer can be connection if they're really connected to their maybe the connection can promote like you know a change in like knowing what to do but so you know there's a conflict between values you know personal values and what's right for the child and maybe the school might conflict with the value so there's so much so many conversations that need to be had it's really you know that's why they say being a parent is the hardest job in the world because you really have to you know you have to know each child is different you know you have when you have six children it's you're you're sixth grade but yeah raising the child is the hardest job in the world it's also the most important job in the world which is why why it's almost a comedy when feminism started to dismiss motherhood as like yeah you know that's for the old women who didn't believe in themselves and could not become lawyers and judges and real estate tycoons and business women and running companies it's like great we love when women run companies and become lawyers and doctors and judges and take over the world you know but to dismiss motherhood it's the most faithful vital crucial hardest job in the world it's harder than being a ceo running 3000 employees raising that child and this job god has entrusted to mothers and to fathers but mothers have a special touch as we all know they're the one who they're the ones who carry the children and give birth to them and and create the ambiance in the home a woman takes a house and turns it into a home woman takes a man and turns him into a husband and into a mensch the bottom line is that it's it's we have to realize how faithful the job is but not become paralyzed not become paralyzed in this in this situation but rather have the courage and and the the important uh discipline to work on ourselves i would say that a major part of educating our children is really educating ourselves um because so much of it is about me it's about us it's allowing our children not just to be raised by us but also allowing ourselves to grow in maturity in humility and vulnerability and self-awareness through our children when i change my own dance in the house you know every every member of the family has a dance that's how it works every one of the siblings everybody has a dance and when i change my position everybody changes their position it's just organically how it works so so that that's really where i have to look at you know don't stop changing everybody else's dance you know can i start changing can i start changing my own dance another important thing is the issue of discipline with with a tremendous focus on love and understanding i think a lot of parents are afraid of discipline because they're traumatized by the way their parents discipline them or their grandparents discipline their parents i think it's a terrible mistake because discipline when it's done in a loving way is actually a testimony to emotional presence and i think just as children are traumatized when the house is a boot camp and there's no affection there's no warmth there's no love they're equally traumatized when the house is what's called a place of anarchy and and hefca where there's absolutely no boundaries there's no safety they don't know who they are they don't know what's good what's bad what's allowed what's not allowed they don't feel they don't feel their parents in a visceral way so i think it's so important to understand that at a young age as children are growing up loving discipline that comes from a place of of understanding and connection and empathy is a blessing it's not something to be afraid of that's true and that requires self-awareness back to what we were talking about before is it the discipline and the discipline is not coming from impulsiveness and insecurity and anger and vengeance like i'm going to teach you who's the boss and and and then i'm letting out my frustration on you but it's coming from a place of connection a very deep connection the balsamic said when you're angry do not speak for 61 minutes it's very wise advice i have seen people during anger they got divorced they sold their home they sold their business they disowned their children yeah i once heard a father tell his son he got angry at him i'm not making a bar mitzvah for you i told the guy wow you get a phd in brilliance great threat to your son i'm not making a bar mitzvah for you that's wonderful brilliant right i know of a father who didn't show up to his sons but it's because he was angry at him the son married out of the faith the bottom line is never discipline from a place of uncontrolled impulse and anger i can get angry but i have to be aware that right now i am angry and it's not the time to discipline you know go eat a falafel go eat cheesecake uh go to the gym much better you know do 70 push-ups to do 200 cents whatever it is you know bench press 220 pounds for an hour and come back that's fine that's fine if you got to go binge go binge there's enough condition happening but the bottom line is we have to educate from a place of self-awareness yeah yeah you were you were saying we want nachas um but like you know with your thought uh which is very powerful that our children are hashem's children they bring us us just for that alone so they should continue bringing us so comfortable it is so important of course we all want us and we bless each other that you should have it's a classic timeless jewish blessing but it's important to define what nachas means means you should have the nachas from knowing that your child is becoming the person he or she is supposed to become nachas is about tuning in to the amazing soul that your child has to the amazing beauty and enjoying them just for who they are and helping them in any way you can to cultivate their strengths there's a sign i saw in a school here in muncie a girls school god loves you the way you are and he takes pride in what you can be the truth is that as it says in our sources that god loves every jew yeah but the truth is that god takes pride even now in every person if you look at your child any child you'll see that most of our children all of them are trying hard they're trying hard they're trying to make things work according to the tools that they have can you take pride in your child today right now if all i can see is the negative the bad choices the obnoxious behaviors the problems then ultimately i'm failing myself and i'm failing my children and and let's say the truth let's say the truth i could send my child to every therapist in the world what a mother and a father can do for a child nobody in the world can do for a child yeah it's it's it's so much about also you know balancing um like the allowing the child autonomy you know to be who they need to be but at the same time knowing when to step in when to discipline when to hold back it's like you said it's like a dance for parents for teachers and educators yeah yeah and but it's also it's also very important to bequeath our values to our children to be able to show them the potential that we see in them to be able to show them expectations that we have from a very healthy and loving place in others to be able to tell my child you know what i see in you in a very real and honest way but only from a place of very deep connection and it's so important to be able to spend time with our children share with them the story of where they come from who they are what our family holds dear to be able to feel that sense of belonging these are my uncles these are my aunts these are my grandparents these are my these are my brothers these are my sisters it's the sheer stories of families that are incredible and there's nothing there's nothing that replaces family there's really nothing that replaces family you know we all have friends and acquaintances and it's wonderful but but family is an incredible gift and when families are close to each other when they can support each other be here for each other rely on each other be vulnerable with each other they say the definition of home is the place that when you come there they have to let you in now the definition of home is this is your place this is where you belong and when families feel that support and connection it's it's very powerful and the greatest antidote today for children's depressions and use of drugs and and and god forbid everything else that comes with it you know we can't solve all the problems but when there is powerful deep connection it certainly can avoid a lot of the serious pitfalls that face us all do you think that um you know the mental health crisis that's going on now especially amongst kids teenagers um has something to do with a loss of connection you've been a you've been a mentor and teacher for so long so you've probably been able to see certain shifts like changes that have happened over time in the state of our mental health do you do what do you think um you know what do you think is going on like what's your view on the mental health crisis today and has it changed over time have you seen any changes happen it's a great question so i think one way to address it is in my mind it's the story of the afikoma the story of the afikoman that's what i call it the story of the afikoman the story of the afikoman that's been a time honored mysterious tradition in jewish homes for hundreds maybe thousands of years is we split the matza in the beginning of the seder we call it yachts we take that beautiful wonderful piece which is going to be the staple matzah remembering the passover offering in the days of the temple and we hide the afikoman that's what we do we hide afikoman under the couch and the bookcase of the shelf wherever it is you'll hide off you came in under your pillow and then at the end of the seder towards the end of the seder our children go on a search for the afi kaiman and they find it and they expose it and they show tati mommy here's dafy kaiman and of course they want their prize whether it's a lamborghini whether it's a private jet in my days it was a parker pen right and if you were very rich it was a calculator and if you came from a simple family you got a black and white cookie or a bell or a cheese danish the rich kids you know the rothschild so to speak those who were related to lord rothschild and the rockefellers the jewish rockefellers got got a parker pen today if you give your kid a parker pen he probably won't be speaking to you for a couple of years and we'll sue you it's more like you know a private airplane but the bottom line is that that's the story of common now you know the the word for afrikomen in the 15 steps of the seder is called safon safon khadej means hidden because daffy common is hidden and the children expose it now why am i talking with you before shmu is about afiqam one because i think that's the story here is the key and i ask you to open your hearts the story of the afikoman is very powerful what we hide in life our children expose what we put away into hiding our children look for it they find it they bring it out into the open and they say mommy and tati here is daffy common my instinctive reaction is no put it back it's supposed to be hidden it's often our children look at us and say tati mommy daddy mother if we want to go free if we want to be able to declare next year in jerusalem if we want to finish the seder if we want to go out of egypt we have to retrieve the afrikovan and expose it and in my mind jewish history world history is getting close to the end of the seder as we get close to the end of the seder when we can all exclaim next year in jerusalem this year in jerusalem something has to happen our children have to find the afikomat and open it up for us to see and i think thousands of years we have been carrying around a lot of trauma not our fault we have faced a lot of trials a lot of tribulations a famous professor at mount sinai hospital did studies on epigenetics and showed how trauma affects genes which means me and my children may be traumatized not because i have a dysfunctional home but it may be trauma she or he inherited from generations back number one number two some of us sensitive souls are traumatized by existence you could be the best mother in the world you could be the best father in the world existence for spiritual souls is traumatizing the altareb the author of the tanya writes that for a soul which comes from infinite oneness to face a world of fragmentation to face separation from oneness is painful it's traumatizing you have to feel compassion the pain is not because i was insulted or i was abused the pain is because existence is traumatizing for a spiritual sensitive soul and i'm looking for escaping for escape i'm looking to numb it some of us grew up in homes filled with trauma and dysfunction in abuse never mind when there was molestation sexual verbal emotional abuse in one way or another all of these things that we carry in our brain in our in our in our souls and our minds in our brains we suppress them or we repress them that's our aficoma our children today are revealing all of it but they're challenging us to spit it out they're challenging us to face it to look at it and you know what they are giving us a gift i know it's painful it's painful for all of us it's painful but it's a gift it's the gift that will allow us to set ourselves and our world free it's funny because i mean it's not funny it's it's incredible actually that so much of what you mentioned in hasidos today applies in psychology you see in research something called intergenerational transmission where something that the grandmother might have suffered from is now being manifested in the grandchild and we see it it's it's clear so i mean i that that is it's really amazing how things that we've known for millennia today are being proven through you know data and research not only and i'll say yeah and one of them just sorry you know just there's this the quote that it reminds me of that um you know mental health is is an ongoing process of dedication to reality at all costs which is exactly in line with what you said about really confronting the truth yeah sorry what about truth yeah yeah oh but i'm looking for the um there's a book there's a book it didn't start with you i'm just trying to remember the author's name but anyway it didn't start with you number one you know this book i heard the name i haven't read it um it's important to remember a few things first of all that where judaism can be so effective here is the knowledge that behind all the trauma there's an invincible core that could never be tarnished or obliterated or damaged so judaism will tell you never be afraid of facing any emotion because you will not melt away into nothingness don't worry you are deeper than all your emotions you have the power to contain them you can embrace them because you're a piece of infinity that is very very powerful in today's world to help a person navigate this therapeutic process number one number two the altar the author of the tanya in his in his hasidic works has works always emphasizes that the way of dealing with trauma is compassion compassion he says is that perfect space where i don't surrender to naivete nor do i have to surrender to dismissiveness and judgmentalism compassion means i know exactly what's happening i'm not naive i'm not blind i'm not in la la land and yet i don't have to be judgmental i could simply feel empathy i could simply feel the pain for a dysfunctional brokenness that exists in a very deep place that is such a powerful tool it's called midas he writes and i quote the attribute of compassion is the one attribute that reaches in from the highest space of infinity to the lowest abyss such beautiful words compassion allows you to link the highest and the lowest without compromising the authenticity of any one of those two extremes i find that very very meaningful another very important point is in hasidic teachings for thousands of years for hundreds of years i should say since the balsham there was a tremendous focus on the sanctity and the depth of the physical body to the point that when the prophet zakaria says that mashiach messiah is going to come on a donkey on a hamur the maharao and the hasidic masters translate that as meshiach is going to be revealed through the homer through the physical body in fact khasiddha says that when meshiach comes the soul will get its sustenance through the body not the body will be nourished by the soul the soul will be nourished by the body because the body has within it an infinite connection to truth that's deeper than the soul today cutting edge therapy books like the body keeps the score and a slew of other books and lectures yes teaches you that everything is in the body in fact in in new forms of therapy that i think are going to be developed more they're going to be they're teaching now that you don't even have to sit down and identify why you're traumatized i don't have to get into explanations all i have to do is tune in to my body energy because the body knows everything the body is a container that holds on to everything that's been going on in my life from the beginning of history from adam and eve's genes all the way till now and if i can embrace the body and allow the body to release it and allow the body to teach me what it needs my mind and my soul could learn from the body that is a mashiach that's a prediction about the messianic world a consciousness where the body itself becomes the greatest harbinger the greatest container of truth so that's also a very powerful idea today how much focus there is on the sanctity and the sensitivity to the physical to the physical organism to the body of each and every one of us and the link between physical health and mental health and how you know people who have yeah psychological issues lead to actual physical illness we were actually going to ask you if you could share in one sentence what have you learned what you've learned from your experiences over the years would that be it are you talking to me or are you talking about now i'm talking to i'm talking to rabbi rabbi jacobson we had this question because these are very powerful points we have wanted you to share um with us what you've learned from your experiences over the years you know meaning like if okay like if you had one you know that you you mentioned once in a lecture um that you you asked uh um rabbi dr torski about uh you know if if he can sum up everything that he learned in one sentence i found that fascinating because it's it's a hard thing to do it's a hard thing to do so i guess we thought we'd give it a go right giving it a go you know what dr twersky answered me right he answered me yeah he said something incredible he said that the addicts among us are the most spiritually sensitive among us he said that's what i learned in 60 years when you see an addict struggling with addiction realize that there is profound spiritual sensitivity here and because that was not given to this person he had to numb his pain or her pain through destructive substances and the only solution is not to dull the spiritual sensitivity it's to cultivate a very deep relationship with god that was an incredible teaching that he taught me i later found it in the cotetoro which is one of the works of the altareba who was an ancestor of his his great great great grandfather rabbishnez an ancestor of rabbi rabbi rabbi dr twersky who just passed away a few months ago avraham yeshua heschel known as rip sheer dr abram tworsky one of the renowned jewish psychiatrists of our times who really created awareness of addiction so basically his great great great grandfather was a man named rabbiakovistral of cherkas who married the daughter of the mittal arab who was the son of the altar ebba so he's he's a grandson of the altareba wow wow did not know that um so so if you were to sum up all of this and you have knowledge in so many different areas like i feel like we should give you one you need to an honorary um doctorate in philosophy psychology among many other fields but what would you say you know is like one sentence as a blessing but i would i would say it's really i'll tell you something about how i tried to live and teach whenever i learn material material and torah and judaism especially in the mystical parts of judaism kabbalah hasidis i always try to look at the text anew fresh without preconceived notions just to tune in to this information as though i have never learned it before never said it before because i want to become alive i don't want to repeat mantras and and lectures and you know things that i already taught i want i wanted to become alive even if i'm repeating if i already taught this so for me i try every day to learn learn new information but i would like to share two things that i don't know i'm feeling them now and they have always touched me one is i think it's so important for us for each and every one of us on a daily basis to be able to enter a space of silence to enter into a space where we emancipate ourselves from all the static the static of social media the static of our phones the static of our brains that's the hardest static of our lives the static of our responsibility to really go into a space of of intimacy with our soul with our own silence with our own god and i think if we can tune into that space every single day it allows us to emerge from that space seeing ourselves for who we really are and who are we really we are ambassadors of infinity in this world each and every one of us is an ambassador of love light and hope but to be able to see myself in that way i have to be able to remove the debris and really tune into my deepest core and resurface into that position and i think this is one of the greatest teachings of judaism that touches me that every day i want to align my posture with the posture of infinity you know in yoga or in pilates or in personal training or in gym you know they focus very much on your posture right and i think judaism focuses very much on our posture not just our physical posture but also our emotional psychological spiritual posture what is that posture so jacob says it's a ladder that stands on the earth but its head reaches heaven that's my posture that's the posture i want to be i'm a ladder i am an interlacing link between heaven and earth i am an ambassador of divine love in this world i'm a manifestation of godly energy in this world i'm a ray of infinity therefore i can be a ladder that always connects to the heaven and people because i could connect to the heaven and myself and yet bring it down to the earthiness of people because i bring it down to the earliness within myself there's another very powerful teaching that comes from rabbi hillel of paris he was one of the early chabad masters a great disciple of the al-tarab of the mithler but his name was of paris which was a city in the ukraine he passed away in the 1807 in the 1860s and he once said something very powerful he said life is about searching and finding your song every soul every soul before it's born has a song it's it's the song that it loves it's my favorite melody when we come down here the trauma of birth and the challenges of life cause us to forget that song but you know how when you heard a song once and it's deep inside of you and you can't remember it so you're searching you're longing for somebody to remind you that song so he says all of our journeys on earth our journeys to try to help us remember that song so i travel the world i get into this issue i get into this pursuit i pursue this goal that goal he says really i'm looking for that song i'm looking for the song of my soul which is the song of infinity it's the song of oneness he says we hear a lot of songs you know and he gives the metaphor a person heard a song it changed his life or her life then i forgot it and every person i meet i say sing me a song sing me a song and they sing songs and i pay them money and i say it's beautiful but it's not that song it's not that song and then one day you hear that song and when you hear that song claim it make it yours and own it and then years later my wife sent me a clip one day from somebody life i'm sorry somebody wrote like this love is learning the song in someone's heart and then singing it to them when they forget it and i take that somewhat as a mission statement let me always try to learn the song in someone else's heart and when they forget it i want to be that person who could remind them of that song well rabbi jacobson wow may we each find our song and also be able to tap into and sing with everybody else's song and remind them of their songs too i think that is just a beautiful way to end and then the music beneath the lyrics yes i'm feeling i'm feeling songs right now i feel the music um through your inspiration and your words and your you're you're enlightening us and teaching us rabbi nachman of wrestle breslav writes he says a beautiful line he says every single creature is always singing a song every plant every tree every flower every creature organic and inorganic matter everyone is singing a song he says but we don't always hear it and you know today in the science of botany the more we learn about plants and trees we're learning incredible stuff you know when a tree is under threat from bacteria or viruses or insects etc the tree exudes and releases odors and chemicals to warn the other trees so there is actually communication so he says every everyone is singing a song but to live life to the fullest to live a life of alignment is that when i wake up in the morning i say to god allow me to hear the song that everybody is singing today allow me to hear the song that my wife is singing the song that my children are singing the song that strangers are singing the song that the squirrels i have some wildlife here in muncie the song that the deer and the gazelles and i should say soon the beers are going to come out the song that everybody is singing allow me to hear that song allow me to be open to that song because when we can hear each other's song we realize that we are each an indispensable note in a cosmic symphony of oneness where we're all interconnected absolutely i mean um so for for listeners who want to know where to find you um you have the yeshiva.net you have a podcast which will include all of this in the podcast notes but where can we find you if we're looking well i'm also looking for myself but you're still fighting you're still searching for your song so whoever finds me whoever finds me just let me know where you found me i'll come you know if we need to but you know hopefully you won't need to be reminded you'll just have your song with you but basically my my ongoing classes you can find on a website called the yeshiva.net that's t-h-e-y-e-s-h-i-v-a.net and by the way rifka i think it's appropriate here it just comes to my mind you know i once visited a city called columbus ohio and i was staying by ita and david schattenstein this is how many years ago either this is it had to have been more than 12. almost 18 years you're right for 18 years so this was probably around 12 or 13 years ago give or take i stayed at the schottenstein home i had a lecture there at ohio state university i think and after the lecture i came home eda made this most delicious dinner i could still taste it lingers in my mouth like rafi coleman and then i sat down with eda's husband my dear beloved friend david and with eda and david says you know that lecture tonight was life-changing i'm like thank you that means a lot and then he's like but there's a problem i said what's the problem so the problem is there were 200 people there were 300 people there nobody else hears it so i'm like yeah i know it happens all the time you know tomorrow night i'm gonna be in london and then i'm traveling in a month to melbourne your hometown to sydney and australia and nobody will the people that are there will hear me so david schattenstein took out a check ten thousand dollars he gave it to me he says start a website and every lecture should go on the website i remember everybody can hear and the yeshiva.net was created and for the first few years he asked me for the invoice every month of what it costs to maintain it and he and he and eda covered it so i am eternally grateful to you into your husband for really creating that platform which now probably has approximately 8 000 classes or lectures and i always say that double speed was created for me from my classes because some of them are long so you got to do a double speed i know you wrote that in the email to me so yeah so it's the shiva.net i think that was even david's name i don't remember t-h-e-y-e-s-h-i-v-a dot net and you can also go to youtube good old youtube and put in y jacobs and you'll see also quite a few uh lectures and seminars thank you and i i and on apple podcast as well um i noticed there's a few a podcast there and also many emissaries around the world that actually share your lectures so they're not only online and on the internet they're being shared all around the world in synagogues and in um in habad houses etc and i also want to add what you said about um my husband and myself and how he felt about your you know the osu speech every single time we've had the opportunity to hear you a number of times um most recent being this past pesach every time we sit and listen to you we both say we wish there were even though there are 200 people in the room we wish more people were here to hear it um so really like i would encourage i mean now we have the opportunity with the yeshiva.net it's accessible to everyone one of the joys of technology so it's really a huge a huge blessing that we can that you know this is there and it's there for our consumption and and for insight and for inspiration so i encourage everyone to go and check it out that means a lot thank you so much and i want to uh bless i want to bless you uh rifka and ida to be able to continue to be ambassadors of as you said the positive volumes of life and to be able to bring people a lot of love and a lot of light and a lot of hope and a lot of awareness and healing and uh and oneness because i think this is the age of healing you know the afikoman came out of the closet and it's time to look at it and uh to be able to get out of our egypt so a lot of success in your work both in your personal lives your families and in your communal communal activities and leadership roles that you play today such important roles and being role models for so many people and i want to wish everybody who's with us who's listening to us to be able to really you know sometimes people say i'm afraid of my skeletons i'm afraid of my darkness i'm afraid of how not good i am and my insecurities and i would say that there's a much deeper fear that people have they're afraid of their light people are afraid of how good and powerful and healthy and wholesome and happy they can be people say who am i to be gorgeous who am i to be influential who am i to have an amazing marriage who am i to to change the world who am i i'm just a little shemata don't be afraid of your light amen and one who blesses is blessed yes those who bless shall be best and thank you thank you for today for helping us tap into our light all of us are listeners to us and for guiding us in the part in in that light in that light yeah and good jump just to you know this class is brought to you by the yeshiva.net please help us continue the classes make even a small contribution at triple w dot the yeshiva.net donate

Channel: Rabbi YY Jacobson

Views: 9,811

Keywords: TheYeshiva.net, Torah Study, Religion, Judaism, Shiur, Rabbi YY Jacobson, Rabbi Jacobson, YY Jacobson, theyeshiva, the yeshiva, Torah Online, Rabbi YY

Id: u7w_2z-f2Dw

Length: 101min 24sec (6084 seconds)

Published: Fri May 21 2021