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About this Episode
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Transcript
Do not disturb.
Imagine you could use that in life.
Okay.
Okay, let's get cracking.
I just need someone to zoom in here.
If that's okay, hold on. I got it.
DIY technology.
Alrighty, let's get cracking.
So, I want to share a beautiful idea with you today for the holiday that I think is very important and also a little bit eye opening.
Yesterday, Shabbat Agadol, Dera Shah was incredibly humbling to see how committed the community is.
There wasn't a space to breathe in this room.
There were no chairs. We dragged up more chairs. There were people still standing everywhere.
Just unbelievable how Amisrael loves to learn and loves to prepare and loves to be connected to the Torah. It's just extraordinary.
So, today, I want to try and analyze something with you, because I think the parot of this are extraordinary.
What is the holiday of Pesach really about?
What is the importance of it? Why is it so central? Why do we do all these Mitzvots, Zecher, Ziyat, Mitzrayim?
Why does it so much a cornerstone of Jewish belief and Jewish practice?
It seems like it's a part of something, but not all of something, until you start noticing that everything that we do practically is Zecher, Ziyat, Mitzrayim.
So, what is that kind of trying to communicate?
Let me read you a very beautiful part of the Haggadah, if I could ever find it.
You know, these beautiful Haggadahs that have so many interpretations, but you can't actually find the Haggadah part of the Haggadah, no?
Anyone else have one of those? Like you're like, okay, you're in middle of reading.
Reloads to Abhamshif, I think, turn the page, turn the page, turn the page, turn the page, until everyone gets bored and falls asleep.
Okay, so, if I can't find it in here, that's perfectly okay, the bit that I think that I want to cover is something that everybody here knows very, very well.
The Haggadah says as follows.
With regard to four sons, did the Torah speak?
Each one of these children has a different question to ask and therefore requires a different answer.
That's what we're taught in the Haggadah.
Now, what's fascinating to me is that this concept really should not live in this context, and let me explain what I mean.
How many Mitzvah do we have an obligation to teach our children?
Or all of them?
So, if you want to teach your son or daughter about anything, you have an obligation to teach them.
Oh, the Mitzvah of Khinuk applies to every single Mitzvah and the Torah, correct?
Well, if that's the case, then surely, Kenegad Arbah, Balim, Dibrat Torah, always.
You always have to talk to all four of your children.
If you're wondering which one you are, you're probably the Rasha.
If you're the Rasha, I don't know.
That applies everywhere.
Why are we choosing this locust to be able to communicate this idea that children learn differently?
Why is that focused over here?
One answer might be that Mitzvah is so important, you see, Mitzvah.
I'm clearly from the fact that everything is actually Mitzvah.
So, therefore, it is extra important to be able to teach each one of the different types of children and your family.
So, therefore, we put it here.
But I don't buy that.
I feel like it should say, Vidi Baratabam.
Yes, you Rasha.
We don't find any other place where we learn this concept.
Has that bothered anybody until now?
Is it bothering you now?
If you're not bothered, get out.
No, if you're not bothered, you should be.
What's going on?
So, I'd like to share what I think is a very powerful idea that comes from this place.
And in order to do it, I want to read you something that actually my brother, Rabbi Yosef Farhi, from edits Israel, wrote.
And I can't read you the whole thing here because it's long to write the entire thing, to read you the entire thing.
But I can get you a copy of it afterwards, if you'd like.
And maybe we'll derive from here something that will help us solve this mystery.
The art of parenting in a bomb shelter.
The most important parenting moments in your life will not happen when you give speeches or teach lessons and values at the Shabbat table.
They won't happen during a deep conversation with your child.
They won't happen when everything is calm.
They happen when everything falls apart.
When a child tests your limits, when plans collapse or when a siren goes off.
Because in that moment, your children are not listening to what you say.
They are studying who you are.
For listening is not as powerful as seeing.
If you don't live in Israel, you cannot fully understand what it means to live in a world of sirens.
A siren is not just a sound.
It is an interruption of reality.
Before it even begins, every phone in the house starts screaming alerts.
You don't know if it will come, but you already feel it coming.
And then it cuts through the air. You don't hear it. You feel it.
You have 90 seconds.
Shoes, kids, doors, shelter.
And then quiet, not peaceful quiet.
The kind of quiet filled with breathing, with tension, with eyes scanning faces.
And then the boom, sometimes distant, sometimes not.
The walls shake, you hold your children.
And in that moment, every child in the room is asking one question.
Is everything okay?
But they are not asking with words.
They are asking what their eyes looked locked on you.
My friends, in the bomb shelter is the chance that a father has
to be able to communicate.
Now I am going to skip a little bit.
We live like this for weeks.
No school. No routine.
Just trying to keep a small apartment functioning from siren to siren.
So the question becomes, how are we supposed to parent like this without going crazy?
Isn't parenting supposed to be built on routine?
On calm? On structure?
The answer is no.
Real parenting is revealed when there is no structure left.
We tend to think that crisis interrupts renoch.
But the opposite is true.
Crisis is renoch.
It's the moment your children finally see the real you.
Not the Shabbat version, not the lecture version, the real version.
When your children are home all day, do they feel like they are ruining your schedule?
Or do they feel like they are your life?
When everything is falling apart, do they feel like a burden or do they feel held?
This article so beautifully written, driving home points that are so important,
I think opens the door to a bomb shelter for us, a bomb of understanding.
You know when children are nervous and worried in life, the way they process that anxiety,
actually varies from child to child.
When a child is going through something incredibly difficult in their life,
there are very different questions that children are asking.
Some children, and you'll recognize this in some of your children.
Some children want to ask you, what should I do?
Like, what do I do next?
And ironically, the thing that calms them down,
the answer to their question is a set of things to do.
Well, first, get your shoes and you can feel the child calming down as you're telling them what actions to take.
Get your shoes ready, pack it in the suitcase, do this.
I'm in this relationship, it fell apart, what should I do?
Well, first, let's call the Shahn Khan, let's speak to this person.
I have a great idea, why don't we go for family therapy?
They need a plan, and the plan is enough.
Doesn't that sound remarkably like the Khacham?
The Khacham comes and he says, I need to know, what are the laws?
What do we do?
And you know what gives that child a sense of control, of understanding what to do?
Tell them all the halakhot until in Maftirin Akhapetzach Afikonan.
The last law at the end of the night, when the kid knows the schedule down to the breast tax, he's good.
I'm not going to go through each one of the four children.
But I do want you to hear a little bit about what we're communicating here with regards to questions
and answers that our children have a need.
You know what the Ras Shah kid is thinking?
Dad, mom, you messed up.
It's your job to protect me.
Why do I feel unsafe?
You move their family to Israel.
And now this is the life that we live.
Mahaboodah is like, what did this work?
What did it get you?
The kid comes home from school and he was beat up by some non-Jewish kid in his class.
They come home from university with his protests on the campus and they can't even get into the library.
And they said, what is all this?
What makes all of this worth anything?
Why are we Jewish?
It's so annoying.
You dragged me to school and we sat there and it was so long and I didn't even pray.
What do I get out of this?
Ironically, the child is not asking about what he needs to do.
And talking to that child, like you talked to the Khakam, telling him, let me tell you the Halahot, son.
All that will do is drive him more towards Rishut.
I believe that the Balhagadah is explaining to us,
why doesn't it just say, if this is the question he asks, this is what you answer.
Af-Ata means also you, haqe, bang out, knock out his teeth.
I think what the Khakami is saying is, this kid, this Rasha, it sounds like,
Hotsi at Smoomenak, you tell him, if you were in Egypt, you wouldn't have got saved.
That's what you tell an angry kid.
The answer is, Hotsi at Smoomenak, he doesn't only mean he's not part of the Jewish people.
That is one interpretation.
I think what the kid is the Balhagadah is describing is that this kid took himself out of this reality.
He no longer is talking to you about the siren.
He's talking to you about your choices.
He's not here. He's angry.
You know what that kid needs? Af-Ata, you need to match his tone.
You need to go where he is.
Even you don't talk about Satan right now.
Attack the point that is bothering him.
What did I get out of this?
Well, let's follow your plan.
You're not part of this.
We don't do these mitzvot.
You know where we would be enslaved in Egypt still.
It is because I took this route that we are actually here today.
So you want to know what we got out of this?
If we followed your plan, we wouldn't exist.
I could promise you one thing.
There's not a single rash on earth that will accept that answer.
You know this from having had these kinds of conversations
with your kids when he's in Rasha mode.
And one of the important things to understand is that children are not either
Sadik, Rasha, Tamo, and Elirish.
They are all of them at different points in their life.
Sometimes at different points on the same day if you have teenagers.
Does this work?
When you answer and match that ferocity,
you know, does it work?
Do they listen?
The answer is no. They won't.
Not now.
But what you said lands.
If he's biting Hakeh Echinav, take the bite out of his bite.
He says it's pointless.
Make sure he understands the point.
Don't talk to him about work.
Don't talk to him about chakras.
Don't talk to him about going to Yashiva.
Don't talk to him about learning.
Don't talk to him about me, don't.
Explain to him the value and what they get or what we got from being this.
My friends, the reason why we are taught to go through this with our kids
when it comes to the night of the Seder is because while many
Mitzvot in the Torah are possible to converse on a rigid slash preset menu.
There's one thing that absolutely does not work in the general sense.
And that is Emuna.
Emuna is not something that has any sort of preset.
The job of Emuna is building a child's relationship.
Listen carefully to my words here.
Building their relationship with Hakadosh Baruchu being there for them.
That look that the child looks at his father in the bomb shelter.
And immediately resets his own feeling meter based on the way his father looks.
That does not mean that he and you have the same level of Emuna.
It means that he borrows from your Emuna and uses it to build his own.
If I came to your house and I borrowed a hammer, does that mean that what you built with your hammer
is going to be the same as what I build with mine? No.
We get our Emuna from our parents in terms of the tools we use to build it.
But what we build looks remarkably different than what our parents had.
The hammer is the tool.
But each child needs to build a relationship that works for them.
I always love the idea that when we pray to God,
we say Baruch at Hashem, blessed are you Hashem.
Elokeinu, our God, Veloké Aboteno.
You know what, Veloké means?
And my God is not the same as Elokei Aboteno.
Unless you think that that is because there's a discrepancy in level between us
and our forefathers.
They were such Sadikim and were met slash mid.
Look at the next words of the Amida.
Elokei Abraham, Elokei Tsrak, Elokei Akov,
isn't that all the same being?
Absolutely, from his perspective.
Absolutely not from our perspective.
So when a person is sitting there trying to communicate the power of Emuna to their children,
understand that these different children must build each their own radically different Emuna relationships with Hashem.
And as I explained, Emuna means having faith that Hashem has your best interests at heart.
It does not mean that Hashem will only give me strawberries and cream.
It does not mean that Hashem will instantaneously find me someone to marry.
It does not mean Hashem will fix my relationship with my spouse.
It does not mean that I will make a lot of money.
Emuna does not mean that you will have things the way you want them to be.
And the proof is, we all know people who have tremendous Emuna that have great challenges.
I know great Sadikim that never had a kid.
Did that shake the Emuna?
No.
How could they possibly have Emuna and not have children?
My friends, Emuna doesn't mean that things are going to go the way you want them to go.
It means that you believe with absolute faith, I mean Emuna Shilema,
that everything that God does for me is the very best thing that ever could have happened to me.
One of the strongest pieces of Musara I ever heard is something that they say about a few different rabbis.
I heard it said over in the name of Rev. Vigdomiller.
And if any one of you knows him or knew him, it is really naeviya ed lot to say this.
He passed someone in the street and he said, so how's it going?
The guy said, it could be better.
He said, no, it couldn't because if it could, it would.
Can we just sit in that Musara statement for like 10 seconds now before we move on?
Have you ever quote yourself saying, things that could be better?
No, they couldn't.
Your life could not be better.
Because if it could, it would.
Well, how does that work?
Well, isn't there like sometimes where God would want it to be better?
It could be better, but I'm sabotaging myself so it could be better.
No, no, no.
Your life with you doing the right ish that loot could be better.
But you as is, right here, right now, this could not be better than it is.
This is the best version of the way life could be with whatever problem you have.
The best.
How do you give that to your kids?
Oh my gosh.
So the Khacham wants to know, what is my ish that loot?
I already know that God has my best interests.
So what are all the things that I need to do?
Are you understanding him now?
I think there's a powerful lesson in that sentence.
The reason why we don't have any food after the Afi-Koman
is so that we have the taste of the Korban Pesach in our mouth
and we don't displace it.
You know when you say something left a bad taste in your mouth?
That expression is the idea of en maftirin aachara pesachati-Koman.
We teach the Khacham.
You should always have the flavor of Korban Pesach,
of Zhege Litsiat mitzvrayem in your mouth.
Never let anything else supersede or take over the flavor in your mouth
of Hashem has got my back.
That's what you tell the Khacham.
So if you have that feeling, you want to know what ish that loot?
You have to bring.
You'll know.
Because none of your ish that loot.
Listen carefully.
What's the question of how much ish that loot do I have to do?
When am I overdoing my ish that loot?
When is my attempts to keep driving this person crazy to go out with me?
When can I just accept that Hashem is saying no?
And I don't need to do anything else.
You know the answer is, if you were rock solid on Hashem yitbarach,
tamid, ohev, odi, ve tamid, yehli, rocked of,
then you would know this is how it works.
If you were rocked of, then you would know this is how much I have to do
beyond that.
I'm pushing the agenda here.
You know.
It's kind of like when you have a guaranteed flight out of Israel at 11 p.m.
and you'd rather the flight attend 30.
So you do this, you do that.
But at the end of the day, you're not driving yourself crazy.
If you can't finish that flight, I know I'll have another one.
Raktov, how crazy are you going to drive yourself?
Keep the flavor in your mouth of Yitzi Atman's rhyme,
of the knowledge that God will do anything for you.
He loves you to death.
And your ish that loot level will adjust itself.
The Rasha's question is,
do I really know that?
I don't know.
I'm not sure.
I love this.
The word in Hebrew for a question is shehla.
Shehla means a question, but it also means to borrow.
The children in asking questions in Emona are trying to borrow your Emona,
trying to use your hammer to build something for themselves.
So you tell the Rasha, our forefathers, we witnessed it.
We saw it.
If you're trying to figure out what to tell a child that's a Rasha in this moment,
no child is really a Rasha.
It's just a matter of figuring out how to be able to talk to him.
My friends, in that moment, the kid learns from your experience,
understands that there is value, that it works out,
that he's not just giving and giving and giving,
but rather that in giving to Dhaka and praying to Ashyam and studying Torah,
he's actually materially benefiting and bettering his life.
That's the conversation with that child.
And that's how his relationship begins to form.
Oh, Ashyam doesn't just want to take things from me.
These myths, what I'm not just meant to drive me crazy.
There's a benefit to it.
Share that with me.
The time's question is so much more simple.
The time's question doesn't understand any of the conversation at all.
What does he say?
Mazot.
What is this?
I don't understand.
What is this?
So what do you tell the time?
Fascinating.
You keep your answers in the same place.
How many parents have gotten so excited from a Dvar Torah they heard at Get in the Zone
or something that they read in the Shvee-le-Pin-Khas-A-Gadah
and they're going on and on and on and on and they lost the child in the complexity?
If the kid's question is what is this?
Answer the question you've been answered.
You've been asked.
Sometimes a kid in asking questions of Imuna doesn't need you to whip out Imuna Bitaron from the Khazorn-ish.
Sometimes they need you to just tell them it's going to be okay.
What is this?
This is the place that we go in order to stay safe while bombs are falling around us.
Look at what Hashem gave us.
Look at what Hashem gave us.
Even though we're in all of this but we have a place in our building
or right next to our building where we could go
even if it came we would still be safe.
Imagine explaining to your child that your mamad is like the Ananeha Kavod.
Fascinating.
The Khazal tells us that one of the functions of the Ananeha Kavod was to protect the Jewish people
from projectiles that were being thrown at them.
And that's how they left Egypt.
In Ananeha Kavod, in clouds of glory, protecting them from the blisteraoth,
from the spears thrown at them by their enemy chasing behind them.
And just as that is replaying in our minds, so too may we witness as well.
The end of that story take place that the nation is going to drown in the ocean.
I thought how apropos is it?
The biggest mistake that Iran is making is in the water.
Not one nation decided to join Israel and America in this battle
until they closed the strait of Hormuz.
They are also going to drown in the water.
May Hashem help us understand our children.
But before we move on from the four children,
and I'll let you expand this idea in your own mind,
because I believe that everybody, every one of us, understands and is beginning to see
the difference between a child's questions in Amuna.
Some kids just need to know how Hashem is going to take care of you.
Some kids need to know that Srava Onesh is how Hashem runs the world.
Every kid needs something different at a different stage in their life.
But my friends, the greatest lesson, the greatest lesson that we could ever learn
is in how the Torah uses the word banim.
I find myself coming back to this all the time.
The Pasuck tells us about Yaakov in Shreem.
Yitzrak, could you get me a Hormaz, please?
The Pasuck tells us about Yaakov in Shreem.
Shreem captures Dina, yet he has one over here.
Shreem captures Dina.
The brothers decide that they need to rescue her.
So what does he do?
He waits until the brothers come home.
That's what the Pasuck says.
Now let me show you this because this is unbelievable.
And I love quoting this Rashi as well.
The Yaakov, Shama, Yaakov heard that his daughter had been defiled.
Ubanav had you at McNeil and his sons were with the sheep.
Well, the sons of Yaakov come back afterwards,
and they hear about it.
And the men heard, and they got very angry.
This can never be done.
They say their peace, etc., etc., they answer back, etc., etc.
But then something very interesting happens.
Rashi points out that we find that the brothers shift from being called the children of Yaakov
to being called and referenced as his brothers.
Why?
Because since they fought alongside of him, they now stopped being his children,
and they were his brothers.
That means in the eyes of the Torah and Khazal,
the concept of Banav children are the ones that rely on you.
And when they stand by your side doing what you do,
and giving even sometimes support to you,
then the relationship shifts from children to brothers.
A rabbi's tell us that at that point, a father needs to begin to adapt his relationship with his children,
because they are no longer only his kids.
They are also now ahrav.
There's some level on which they share a platform.
Let's now look at these words again with new eyes.
Keneget Arba Banim Dibratora.
With regards to four who need your support, did the Torah talk.
These are not only children, they are anyone that needs your support.
But more profoundly, they are times when a person himself needs support.
And when you need to be able to answer your own questions,
and I know you're looking at me strange, answering your own questions,
sounds like a person who has some sort of a disorder.
If you're talking to yourself, asking yourself questions,
answering your own questions, that's just a little weird.
Except that the halacha on the night of the said there says,
that if a person has children, the children ask any answers.
And if he has a wife, his wife asks any answers.
And if he doesn't have a wife, and he doesn't have children,
he asks himself the questions, and he answers.
I always thought that maybe what the Pasuch was telling us
is that if a person has not married it to have a wife or children,
it's something you didn't find them.
It's that there's something within you that needs to change
in order to be able to get to that next stage.
Now that there's something wrong with you,
now that you're not whole,
but that in order to be able to build something with somebody else,
you have to be finished in the work that you've put into yourself.
Because if not, Hashem only gives Raktov.
So speak to yourself to the part of you that needs that support.
And ask yourself, if the part of you that needs support is Khacham,
I don't know what else to do.
Maybe the answer is Ta'am of the Yizhik Yitzi Atmet Srayim
is working on our emunah.
If the answer is Rashad's frustration and its anger
that I've done all the right things,
that it didn't get me to where I need to go,
that I need to reference, and I need to correct that,
and understand that doing the right things invariably brings me
the benefits and the results that I want.
Either Ayasham, you want a downgrade now?
No, no hayanigal.
If the question is mazot, what is happening here?
Then the answer is uncomplicated.
I meet people sometimes,
and they'll spend 20 minutes of a 30-minute meeting
giving me background that's irrelevant.
And I don't know if it's very important for you to understand,
and it is, but it also isn't.
Like, so basically what you're saying is this.
And in one sentence, you've encapsulated all of it.
Now I understand, sometimes people just want to be heard.
But if you don't just want to be venting,
and for me to be hearing something that you bounced off of me,
if you wanted me to actually help you,
and this times when I will try and help,
and I'll say, so basically what you're saying is,
and they go back and I'm like, let me help you.
One of those beautiful things about understanding the tam,
is that there are times when complicated things
are not complicated at all.
Not complicated.
It's either this or this.
So you have the choice to make, which would you rather?
No, but if this, yes, I understand that they both have pros and cons.
Which do you want?
And sometimes, a decision is better
than no decision with either.
And picking a lane will allow you to move forward.
And maybe in retrospect, you will have thought that it would have been better
to choose the other one, but you'll never know.
So it's not between this and the other side,
it's between this and nothing.
Uncomplicated things.
Well, it's so, there's fraud with hold on.
You don't know if you want Chinese or you want pizza.
Right now, we're hungry.
So if we got Chinese, then we didn't get pizza.
If we got pizza, we didn't get Chinese.
But you know what?
It's not pizza versus Chinese.
It's pizza versus nothing.
It's Chinese versus nothing.
Sometimes I tell people, you don't know how the relationship will go
or what's the worst that could happen.
You'll get divorced.
That is a terrible thing to happen.
Terrible.
But you know what?
Ironically sometimes, people just need to hear that actually,
if I got into it, I could get out of it.
Not that they need to get out of it,
but that if their problem was that they'd be stuck,
who knows?
Maybe it'll be good.
Maybe it won't be good later.
Only one way to find out.
So after you've done all the research that you can
and you felt it out and you're happy with it,
but you have these lingering doubts in you.
Sometimes it just means that you have to take a chance.
And when you're talking about a human being,
there's no way to know everything.
I was talking to a fellow on the photo who was stuck
and he kept trying to have an answer to every possible outcome.
So I told him, you can't have the answer
like you have to understand that there's going to be things.
So just decide and move forward with one of them.
All of these are good options.
Just pick one, whichever one you think is best.
And by the way, whichever one you chose is the best one,
because now you have a path forward.
He goes, okay, okay, I got it.
You're right, I'm totally overthinking this.
So let's just imagine I choose that.
And he just started to do it at the next stage.
I was like, just let go.
Just like let go.
It made a big kidouche in my mind.
In my secret Baba Kama, we also have the word tam.
In other word, tam means in my secret Baba Kama.
It's not a simple son.
It refers to a cow.
I'm not telling you to tell people that they are cows.
But if a cow or a bull gores once, it's called a tam.
If it gores twice, three times it's called a tam.
If the three times it's called a muad.
This cow, it likes goring.
It's a gorer, okay?
Sometimes a tam who's so simple is a person who hasn't got out there
and done anything.
Simple cow, pasturing, eating grass.
But not getting any of the things that you want out of life.
You cannot be afraid to fail.
So what do you tell that kid?
You sense his uncertainty?
You make sure that the message is very tight, very small,
very digestible and very simple.
My friends, my wish for all of us is that this holiday brings us to a place
of tremendous emunah, of a feeling of serenity, of zen, of happiness, of surety,
that it's going to be okay.
You know, the line goes.
The famous line that goes, it's going to be okay in the end.
If it's not okay, it's not the end.
We have to be able to get ourselves to that space in our minds
and our children and our families.
But for each child, understanding that that's going to be okay
might be a little bit of a different journey, and that's okay.
So therefore in the Mitzvah of emunah specifically,
where it's a personal relationship with Hashem,
what that child needs in order to feel safe in a relationship is the same
as when a human needs something in a relationship to be safe.
For some, they need to know that there's financial security.
For some, they don't care about financial security.
They just need to know that they're going to be loved.
For some, they don't even need love.
They just need to not be hurt.
What is love? Understand my friends.
And for each one of those people,
if you give them that, then the emunah begins to flow
and everything changes.
Baruch Ad-Nal-e-Olam, amen, amen.
I want to wish you Khrakashir-e-Sameh.
If you'd like to download any of the digital content,
you can find it on our social channels.
We'll send us an email at info at eJSNY,
and ask for either the Pesach-Hagada, Halachaboklet,
or the visual overview, or the core ideas to be able to share
with your children or your table at the center.
Khrakashir-e-Sameh, I wish you all a happy Pesach.
Hazzakwe maatz.
