Rabbi Akiva Rutenberg - Choosing Happiness (Audio)

we find ourself I'll teach above one more time hopefully the last dish above and I like him to continue an idea that I started talking about last year and it's a topic that may on the surface seem strange to talk about on teach above it's about simply about joy about happiness this is a topic that yeah this is a topic that's close to my heart both as a rub as someone who started and and and is running a major queue of organization here in Queens Emmet outreach as well as my background as a therapist szimpla is the topic that I study a lot and it's something that's close to my heart you could say we are now mourning the beta MCDOT and what is it what is it that will mean more what does it mean that we're mourning something who shouldn't should Pincus speaks out he's he says that we need more and we're really mourning the disconnection that we now have with that neshama we now even a person mourns a loved one that passes away we're mourning the disconnection that we now have with that soul we know the soul continues to live on but we are now disconnected from that soul and we'll be more in the beta mag - we mourn the disconnection each and every one of us have from the shekinah from the kedusha from the holiness that's outside of us and inside of us the beit hamikdash was a cat was a connector that connected each and every one of us to our source the purpose of the beta mag - was not that Hashem should dwell in the beta mag - as the pursuit so beautifully says the thule McDonough County bateau hum bill for me a beta mag - and I will dwell inside of you the purpose of the beta mag - was that God should dwell inside of us and without that beta me - without that connection we are disconnected the plastic anemia refers to yerushalayim as a woman who is as or not as well as a prostitute and the surface she looks like she's connected to so many people that in reality she's disconnected from everything from herself and from everything all set all sin at the core is disconnection we know teach about of this day of Tisha bog which is a damn morning throughout the generations goes back to the moroccan when the spies came back and they cried because of a lack of faith or whatever it was that they were crying about and a sham said you cried for nothing for generations you will cry ultimately what is that about it's not a punishment it's a consequence for a disconnection all that they wrote being Adama McComb between man and God we now have a robust humana fellow man have at their core disconnection if I really value who you are and then the trauma that you have and the infinite value that has shampooed to tell em elokim the image of God that's inside of you and inside of me and inside of each and every one of us do I feel competition from you do I need to put you down do I need to say Lashon Hara and my jealous it's crazy to be jealous it's crazy this week Lashon Hara but the problem is we're disconnected we're disconnected from the source we're disconnected to what our true identity is our true value we're disconnected to a your true value is and because of that disconnection we have a cut we have sin the word Mitzvah the word Mitzvah many commentaries say come from the word safta that's after as a connector it connects us to something beyond ourselves in parses to Tsavo one of the two places of the Torah that talks about the curse is the the the terrible tragedies there before the Jewish people if we don't follow the Torah mitzvahs there's two very interesting verses in that puzzle in a partial that seem to talk about the same word right in the beginning of that parsha we have the myths lubbock rim the firstfruits when you lived in the time of the temple almost everybody was farmers the first fruits was an exciting event that you prepared and you took this first fruits and what would you say when you brought those fruits - juice - no sure I am the pastor says this samasta the challah talk and I am happy with all the good that Hashem gave to me and then later in that posture parsha we and in the same chapter we have the the curses and the tragedies that happen to the Jewish people if we don't follow the tournament's vote and right in the middle of the curses there's a verse that does not seem to fit in and the verse says toccata show Leviathan Shamu Luca Sbisa me I'll be totally above knee rovco that the reason all these bad things happen is because you did not serve Hashem with simcha with happiness but totally love with a full heart may rovco when things were good it's very strange in the middle of the of this tragedy to tell me the reason why we have the korban why we have all these problems and it's interesting that the reason is because of the lack of simcha lack of joy one of the Garonne 'i'm actually says that from here is a source that from the Torah of the mitzvot the writer to be the simpler to be to do me taught with happiness and to be happy but it seems that the Torah is telling us is now what we would have thought I think we would have thought why do people sin because of tava because of temptation because of desire we are yet to her I got the better of us and therefore we sin what does the Torah tellus says no the reason we sin is because we didn't serve Hashem this simcha when things were good and what it seems is let me talk about this in the next few moments is that when a person doesn't do Matata simcha they're not connected to the mitzvot in a way that they should be or the way they could be and then the eighth Sahara then the temptation then the tava the the desires and for doing wrong things have a heyday have have a party on us but if we're properly connected to the Mitzvah if we're doing this fold in a true connection we have the upper hand it seems that the key to doing mitts world is not just to do metal not just to do them better but to do them with more simcha in the same parsha we have pursued is very interesting pursuit and it says Hashem says to us you treated me big Carrie you treated me with wrote without feeling without connection I will treat you with wrote and you'll be affected by according to many of the commentaries you'll be affected by the natural consequence of events not the protection that I normally would give you the opposite of doing Amitabha simcha is carrying his chance this year teacher Bob was pushed off because of Shabbat goodnight son and that's different out of Hope because of the fact that it's pushed off because of Shabbat I think in the fact that this role was pushed off because of Shabbat we can learn something that can help bring this idea home shabbat why is this rubbish offer cause of Shabbat and similarly quite similarly why when someone is in mourning for a loved one do we say that the morning stops because of Shabbat just a few years ago we had a very close a med student who unfortunately passed away in a car accident on a Friday morning and they didn't even have a chance to Duke for out to do burial and the whole family came out I remember it like it was today throughout my darlings house and Shabbat and they were enjoying Shabbat and obviously very affected by what happened to their relatives but the morning stopped because of Shabbat what does that mean are we in denial the person passed away the person was even buried how how can we not be in mourning and the answer I believe is is that what Shabbat teaches us Shabbos is the ultimate connector a connector to something above morning as we said before morning death is a temporary state it's not really real because the soul son it's a disconnection between the body and the soul and Shaban pulled throughout the week we're in basically that also some somewhat of a disconnection between our body and our soul comes Shabbat and we are connected Shabbat as the commentaries refer to it as May in Olam haba taste of the world to come Egyptian pinkies and others they point out it's not just a taste of the world to come Shabbat is the world to come in this world and Shabbat you have an opportunity to connect to the world to come what is what is the world to come called yo shokudo Shabbat dinner - all Shabbat what do we do on Shabbat we're supposed to be connected to our neshama we're supposed to be connected to a higher level realizing that our success doesn't come from our mundane actions but really comes from something higher if I really realize that am i in competition with another person no I'm not and if we really tap into the power of Shabbat then there is no morning there is no death and that's why Shabbat is nice had tisha Bob said that's why Shabbat overcomes tissue of Shabbat overcomes morning for are they alone because I'm Jabbar were able to tap into a place where there is no morning there is no death it's interesting that if you look at the prayers of Shabbat you see again and again the word simcha yes mokuba ma Houska so many times refers to this simcha and the Oneg of Shabbat the Oracle tsadikim when the great writers of Musa he's wrote like many many hundreds of years ago that if you do a midst of this simcha with joy you have 1,000 times the reward than if you do without joy the rizal Accardo just had his yard sale last week he says that the way I became who I was was not because I did mitzvot better than the next person but I did it with more simple I saw a beautiful story about the part of the churro the great part of the jar of lost so much and the Holocaust came to to Israel after the war and he founded yeshiva and schools tremendous visionary in Israel in the early 1950s right after the war and he was laying the grout the the stone for the for the first major yeshiva he was going to build in B'nai Brak and as he stopped to lay this first stone he still told the crowd in attendance and he said I want to tell you that this stone is in dedication to my mother they hadn't heard the stories they were listening very carefully and he says many many years ago when I was a small child it seems the father wasn't around and they lived in Russia very very poor and very very cold and him and his I believed three or four siblings brothers fewer older than him we're all studying in a yeshiva and he was a small child at the time I think something like about ten years old and it was an extremely cold winter day and it was snowing non-stop and the family only had one pair of shoes and one coat and they had a debate and the mother said whoosh what should we do who should take code in the shoes to the receiver the next day and each son said it should be me it should be me each one was trying to say why they should be the one to learn Torah and the mother was so moved by this that she woke up the next morning put on the shoes put on the coat put a blanket around her sons and walked carry each boy to the yeshiva like a mile away and back in the snow now that's not the most important part of the story though as she did it she sang like it's Simchat Torah and that's what left the impact on the part of his her of the fact that she sacrificed her Torah it's important the fact that she did it his simcha left such a big mark on him that he built you she votes 50 years later many of the students of Emirates are from the Sephardic community I happen to be Ashkenazi I like to call myself Ashkenazi with the safari neshama I had the opportunity to go to many bris rhythm and some quote Sephardic some quote and my father often points out when when we go to a simpler together and I see it as well that when I'm at a a bris a Sephardic bris I feel the connection to the Mitzvah that I don't always feel that Ashkenazi bris I'm not here to knock anyone can forbid their strengths to every community every community brings it has its own strengths but there's a certain connection simcha at a Sephardic bris that I feel that's very unique and you feel that this there's an excitement here there's a band playing why is a band playing because there's a new drew coming to the Jewish people and you feel that connection that sometimes I don't always feel in other places how do we go about bringing simcha into our lives and living a life of simcha so last year I spoke about the idea of gratitude and how gratitude and simcha are two sides of the same coin and one of the ways to bebe simcha is to be grateful and almost to the point that you cannot be grateful and not be the simcha and you can't be the same kind if you're not grateful I'd like to talk about a different look with a different point of how a person could be the simcha and what I would like to suggest is that we have an opportunity to infuse our life with simple with joy and sometimes it feels like a catch-22 it feels like if I'm not the simpler so then I'm not connected if I'm not connected then how do I get to a point where I should be connected well how do you make that transition and when you know in addition to being I also had a marriage counselor and sometimes I have the opportunity to work with couples and very often couples face the same struggle they want to be close to each other but they feel this connection when there's this connection it's hard to feel sympathy hard to feel joy and what you're doing if you don't feel joy in what you're doing then you don't feel connected and it spirals in a direction that doesn't go the way we want it to go so how do we go and put some high into our life how do we do what the IRAs all said that we live a life of simcha of doing myths both with simcha I would like to suggest that Shabbat may be the solution or a part of the solution when we keep Shabbat like I said before we're entering this different state when we keep Shabbat but how much cyntha is there in our Shabbat I would like to suggest that we can add more simpler to our Shabbos and through doing so be more connected to ourselves to Hashem to our essence to our families and therefore ultimately be more connected to meet wealth and use that as a spiral as a connector to reconnect in every aspect of our roughness of our spirituality remotion Feinstein's who famously spoke about the people who he saw on the Lower East Side of Manhattan who sacrificed so much for omits votes they used to lose their job every Friday every Shabbat and have to find a new job on Monday and yet their children and grandchildren didn't continue the Torah afterwards many of them and it bothered her moshe feinstein so much and he came to the conclusion that the problem was that they would say it's hard to be a jewish very since i needed it's hard to be a jew and their children would say daddy i have so much respect for you but why do i need to continue this why do I need these problems I would like to suggest that if we could put more simpler into our Shabbat ultimately we are going to do the greatest gift for ourselves for our children and for the future because we are showing our children how valuable Shabbat how connected we are from its vote and through doing so our children want to continue this afterwards probably the greatest guarantee that a person's great-grandchildren will be so mentor emits vote is if we have a Shabbat that's an inspiring if we have mitts vote that are full of inspiration we're living in a society today of this connection whether you whether it's the smartphone's that are the cause of the problem or the result of the problem we're living in a society that's very very disconnected suicide rate in America in the last twenty years is up over 33 percent across the entire country people are disconnected addiction is up how do we create connection how do we create true connection and I would suggest that we create connection we grow to somehow through experiencing its votes connecting to mitts vote it's interesting most places in the tour when it refers to simcha refers to things that you do with other people like Samaritan bacala think of the brass shall we say to Akutan makalah some may after some mockery in my whole him he saw made us how you'd see how big I needed me Kevin the great simpler that a hotter never Callaghan should be the simple of great for our friends like the simpler that Hashem had in back in Canada when he created us we all want to live in passion Jewish lights anything is anyone in this room anyone listen online but wakes up in the morning and says I just want to go through the motions I just want to make it through another week that's not what we want we want to be passionate connected to our mitzvahs connected to the Torah connected to our families connected to everything that we how do we do it how do we start how do we start an impassioned Jewish life what's the secret and I would suggest that we find ways to put simcha into our life find ways to connect to tor emits vote with simcha with happiness and through this we will feel a great connection to each other to the Torah to our families and this will ultimately bring the Gullah this will alter we bring the Redemption bizarre Tosh and like I said in the beginning this should be the last tissue valve because bizarre tishell we will feel that connection we will feel that simcha infuse our lives with with true with true joy with true simcha and when the orchestra Deacon says there were a thousand times more reward for doing the midsole with simcha we know that we're not supposed to do missiles for reward what does he mean a thousand times more connection and think about in our relationships if you do something for your spouse if you do something for a stranger if you do something for your child and you do it like the plastic says they carry with road okay I haven't the beer so I have something for you imagine you tell your spouse you know walking on the street I happened to see something maybe you liked it so I got it here it is first is saying I thought about you I I'm connected I care if we have that I mindset a mindset of care of connection we are so much more connected and through that it creates a spiral effect of connection bringing more connection and I suggest that Shabbat might be the place this this the very fact that tisha Bob was nearby Shabbat it's a message to us that we should tap into the power of Shabbat and use that power of Shabbat to be knit set to overcome all the sadness all the disconnection all the morning that has befallen the Jewish people and before us sometimes thank you