Deep Dive with Rabbi Feldheim 8-23-23

asked for H and for project Inspire so thank you so much for being with us tonight are they fell time um I'm going to pass it over to you okay amazing okay so you see me well I don't know uh and there's no Echo no Echo we're good okay amazing so okay so I'm gonna speak first for a few minutes and then you'll go into your rooms and uh we'll pick up afterwards at the end um okay so uh I'm having I'm not having an echo here I let me just okay I'm gonna have to ignore it myself I I hear the sound on my cell phone because he was right by my face and I have my computer the volume on the computer okay let's let's make this happen so this week's topic is the topic of chuva a perfect topic for the days before ello and uh I I want to start with I I think the the biggest I mean there are many questions and the handout that you have in the worksheet is a lot of fascinating things that you can discuss that are very Central to chuva but I want to talk about one idea that it's a very big central question in chuva and it really redoes you know it it takes around this if we can resolve the issue then it'll take our understanding of Cuba to a whole different level uh it's it it's a pretty well-known idea about chuva that seems to be problematic uh the Hebrew phrases that somebody who does chuva May Ava out of love all of his sins they become merits it's like his averas become mitzvahs which is it's a very difficult idea to wrap our heads around it's a beautiful idea the idea that you can do something wrong and do an Avera and and actually have it turned around but how do you make sense out of it you know normally when you think about Mitzvahs and Alvarez uh the way I I would think of it is that even if you could somehow undo damage that you did you did something wrong and we can somehow undo it that's a beautiful idea that I couldn't do it but how can I ever recover the opportunity to to have done what was right I'll give you a metaphor I think is the best way to understand it let's say I have a job and I get paid a thousand dollars a week and I I'm a drunk whatever it is I get depressed and I don't go to work and I miss three weeks of work and I lose my job then let's say I somehow it's a wake-up call and I get my act together and I go to the boss and I say you know I was dealing with a lot of stuff and uh I wasn't in any place I should have been and I really messed you over but I I got my act together I would like another chance so it's possible that you can have a forgiving boss he may recognize your abilities and give you your job back and now again you can make a thousand dollars a week but that's cool that's forgiveness he gave you another chance but is there any way that you could conceive that I could get the back pay for the three weeks that I missed like right now I'm going to work this week I'll get a thousand dollars for this week of work but the three weeks that I missed are gone there's no way to to to do that job if every moment of life is an opportunity for me to experience something and I check out and I don't do the experience properly or I just miss on miss the experience so I may get chances to to get God may decide to give me more chances but how can I recover the lost experiences the maximum money I'll make this year instead of fifty two thousand dollars should be 49 even if I'm good going forward but it seems to be in in chuva that when you do chuva from love of God as opposed to fear that the actual bad things you did become good and and if we can wrap our hands around that I think it would be a game changer as far as understanding chuva so and a second a sub question in this is is if this phenomena exists if there's some kind of mechanics that allow my my bad Deeds to not just get erased but actually become good deeds as if I did a Mitzvah some miraculous way why is that only true for zidonos it only says that purposeful sins meaning true Rebellion I did a sin to do a sin not an accident not you know not for any other reason those become missiles but if I just did a sin because I made a mistake I I forgot that it was Shabbos and I I broke the Shabbos I I didn't know the food was not Kosher I I ate it so one would think that for sure those sins would be on a higher level more pure than sins that were purposely intentional so that how can it possibly be true that purposeful sins have better results meaning I can turn those into Mrs the only thing that could happen however that works then for sure a unintentional sin but it's not like that unintentional sins do not become you can erase them you can get forgiveness for them but they don't become mitzvahs so how is that possible is there a rational way that we can we can understand this that would account for that apparently upside down on situation where purposeful rebellious sins are better better for me than just making a mistake in any in any normal framework or way of thinking of course an accident is superior to to purposeful Rebellion okay so I'm going to tell you a story it's a little bit of a like a brutal story but I'll tell you a true story and it's short and we'll analyze it and I think it it'll be clear what's going on over here I I had a student and I was talking to him and we were having a very deep conversation in the street that night and we left the shoe that we were studying in and you know he lived on the way to my house and I I was walking him home and we got to his house and we were still in the middle of our conversation he had asked me a very compelling question and I was trying thinking event of how to answer it for him and but by the time before I gave him the answer we got to his house and I said you know you better go home and your wife's probably waiting for you and I'll uh we'll get together tomorrow I'll tell you a good answer tomorrow so he goes no tell me now I said well you got to go home he goes no I can't go into the house now I said what do you mean you can't go into the house he goes whatever I said something really stupid before I left and I have to wait for my wife to fall asleep before I can uh I can go into the house I said come on you know it like every book on marriage like the number one okay my zoom my computer just turned off entirely so it's totalness do you hear me now on my phone yeah we got we have Europe okay I just switched to the phone okay so the the number one rule is that you don't you don't go to sleep without without making up so he goes I know I know I know but you don't know what I said I said what could you have said so bad he goes trust me it was really bad so I I thought come on there's no excuse go inside be a man man often apologize and make up so do whatever you got to do and we'll talk tomorrow so you go he goes you don't know I said what did you say because he tells me what he said like I go yeah that's a little that's a problem so so I know I'm laughing it's you hear the rest of the story so I said to him you know what here's what this is the only thing you gotta do you got here's what you gotta do you have to go home and you have to say the following I I know what I said is horrendous it's terrible and I should I should there's no excuse I should never have said it and I hope I'll never say something like that again and this should be the last time it should never have happened but it should be the last time it happens but I just want to explain to you why I said it um let me explain why I've said it is that I go to work every day and I come home and I come home and you are bathing the kids and with one hand and with the other hand you're stirring food on the stove suffer from me with the other hand the third hand you're writing a shopping list for tomorrow on the billboard and uh with your fourth hand you're writing a note to the teacher about how good of a kid you know our son was and how the teachers should appreciate how much it helped and at the same time you're singing to keep the house happy and you helping the kids draw and you're cleaning up after them you're doing like a million things and you have a job and you're doing all of it at one time and I come home and I see you and I think you know I went to school this morning and I didn't really pray like I should have I was you know I left early I might film up before all you know whatever and I I then I went to study for an hour before I go to work and I spent most of the time in the coffee room making coffee at work I was working on four cylinders and ABI was clicking on some things I probably shouldn't have clicked on I come home at night and I'm tired and you know it's a hard hard day and I come home and I a man needs to feel free in his house you need to feel relaxed the problem is I come home and it's worse I just feel guilty every time I see you you're doing everything you're supposed to do you're amazing you have your act together and I look at you and I feel shamed and guilty and I can't even feel comfortable at home because at home I just come home and I feel ashamed of myself compared to how you're performing so as part of me in desperation needs to find a flaw I needed to convince myself that you're also not so wonderful to alleviate my guilt and make it possible for me to live in my house and and not to feel this crazy pressure all day long and have no break so I only reason why I said what I said was was to knock you down because I was so intimidated by how how good you are and I hope I'll never do it again but I I want you to understand why I said it and that's why I said it so the guy looks at me and he goes wow that would so work that's why it's not laughing I'm going with someone so why don't you say it she goes I can never say that I said like why not like it's true that's the only reason you said it you're ashamed of yourself she's doing it you take the shortcuts she's doing everything right and that he goes yeah it's true but why can't the guy say that guy can't say that because saying that is like I call it boarding up your emergency exit it's like once you said it and you set out that truth then you never can go there again and now you the only way you can live and feel comfortable in your house is actually to change and to start praying the way you're supposed to pray and studying the way you're supposed to study and working the way you're supposed to work and guarding your eyes and your speech and being a mensch being the person you promised when you walk down the hopper there's no alternative way of of making it like she doesn't deserve it because you convinced yourself that she's not so great so I that's a it's an important message but the message here for chuva is let's analyze if the guy really would have the guts and was man enough to actually say that why would it work and how would it work would it only work or would it do something bigger I think this is the ultimate example of zidono's nasos that all your sins become mitzvahs because when he says this to his wife that the only reason I knocked you was not because you did anything wrong you're amazing in fact I was intimidated so at that moment he just gave her a a decodering yeah okay I'm almost done like he could just he just gave her a decoder ring he's basically telling her that every time I knock you it was because I was blown away by how great you are and she can go back in her mind and say wow like when you said that the other week that was because you were really proud of me or you were impressed and when you did that that time you also felt intimidated means you realized what I had just done and I thought you were I did all this hard work and you didn't notice every time you got upset me to noticed something great so you just told her that every single insult is really some weird expression that you use for awe and love and respect all of your sins become mitzvous then she can go back in her mind that every single time she suffered from something he said she can say wow so that was really that you were impressed you didn't miss that that whole time I did all that and I worked so hard you did get it it wasn't lost on you you just weren't man enough to admit it this is what truth is when we get to a real place that we could face God and admit our truths admit then every time we did something wrong and we ran away from God and we rebelled what really it was was I I I realize that that life is so holy and God is so good and I was so intimidated and I had had to run away everybody who runs away to a bar or to noise canceling headphones when you get to the truth you realize the reason why you put on noise canceling headphones it goes to what you were Hearing in the world was too inspiring and too beautiful and you didn't think you could have it so the second that you get to a place that you become brave and you can face your truth you can revisit every sin you did and really it's a holy thing every time we get angry at somebody it was because we were impressed with them every time we hid from life is because we were so blown away by the beauty of life these things weren't lost on us the mistake sins that we do are things we just missed I missed it and I you can't recover it but when you do an aggressive sin when you do when you Rebel or hide that really is the second greatest thing to love love and hatred are almost the same they both are statements of wow I got it love is what you feel when you feel brave enough to deserve it and hatred is what you do when you think the thing you just recognize as being holy and beautiful when you think it's Out Of Reach then you have to get angry and then you have to hide all of our sins are really running away from beauty that we see and all you have to do is get to that place where you're totally honest and at that moment all of your hidings become become holy all of you are theirs become Mitzvahs because every one of those moments really was an experience of God that caused it okay I went over time but we're a bright group you could probably uh assembly what the message is without me uh rambling on about it anymore I'll see you again in a half an hour or whatever it is okay great thank you so much Rabbi fell time okay so we're gonna send everybody out to learn and we will see you back in about 20 25 minutes okay welcome back everybody I I just switched to a third option not my phone but it's not my real camera it's just a cheap camera in the laptop so it's um I don't know how well it's working but the point is what I have to say now what you see so let's uh let's do this so you you you went through the papers I imagine some fascinating stuff so I want to continue the next step in that understanding and uh I'm gonna analyze a famous we call it hazal famous famous uh paragraph in the talmud that uh most people learn it in a very mystical way and I want to analyze it together with you for a few minutes in a very take away the mysticism and make it very real and the real idea I think will have crazy cool implications for truva uh I feel like just to introduce what I want to address is like in life and chuva and in many things often the greatest obstacle to to change it to again you in in your papers it didn't like the word change but it's getting back to who we were supposed to be one of the greatest problems for for people to do that is is that we think it's too late we think there's too much damage I'm too far you know the whole session what that you had to work on was the idea that truva isn't really changing it's just recovering your true self so the next question would be is is why don't people why why isn't that the most obvious thing to want to do to recover my dreams my truth who I was so I think the number one answer why chuva is is hard is because we're we feel like it's too late you know or too much damage was done and even if I went back to who I was I'll never be able to be who I could have been you know uh I wasted too much time I've gone too far so I feel like prerequisitechuva maybe the prerequisition is is to address this issue and um so I'm gonna use I'm totally apparently unrelated to trueva discussion in the talent I'm going to tell you this story many people may have heard it already and it's it's fascinating but I think it's even cooler when you learn it like sort of real instead of mystical like we've learned it probably the first time you heard this here's what the talmud says it says that when a child is before a child is born he learns the entire Torah in his mother's womb and then before he's born an angel comes and hits him right here on his lip that's what that little Dent is if I didn't have a mustache you'd see it better but I don't have much of mustache though and my camera is terrible but there's a dent like you'll have the same Dent that dent right under our nose I probably has some kind of technical scientific name but I heard it a few times it doesn't stick so um so the angel hits us there when the angel hit you there me you we all forgot the Torah and then we were born ignorant and life the goal isn't to learn the Torah it's to recover the Torah that we originally once had it once was ours we once knew it all and I want to study this now quickly less than 10 minutes we gotta talk fast but a less than 10 minutes real world version of this uh this famous piece of talent so there's three parts to it they go fast but the first part is is let's replace all those mystical words with real words okay like words that are useful so the word Torah what I what does Torah mean Torah is such a broad word so let's replace the word Torah in two stages first Torah is Ms another word for truth Torah is the truth of the universe but truth is really like a very philosophical term if you wanted to replace the word Torah it was even better than truth is another word for truth that's much more real and that's reality like reality and Truth should be synonyms so oh the filter okay thank you very much Karen Levy amazing okay I I heard that before a few times I'm never gonna remember it I hope you're there next time I give this class too okay so the the the let's replace the word Torah with the word reality so now when we say a child knows the whole Torah what we're really saying is is that children live totally in reality which is very it's real like kids live totally in reality they they don't feel shame yet they haven't felt rejection all the reasons that we recoil from life and we start to like squint at the world as opposed to staring at it wide-eyed none of that has happened yet to a kid so kids are wide-eyed and innocent they take the world as it is they literally see the world in its truth and the way the talmud is saying that is that children know the whole Torah which in real language means that children live totally in reality and then the till when until the angel hits them and for simplicity's sake at this point in the idea I'm going to fill it in put a little more meat on the skeleton but but at this point let's just say that when do we as children lose touch with reality when whoever the messenger of God is that collabors us when we get when we get hurt and hit and traumatized and drama and all the different things that happen in life that sort of shake us from our innocent wide-eyed view of the world and at that point when that stuff happens then then we forget Torah or in our new language we lose touch with reality so at this point stage one I finished stage one of the idea stage one is basically that the idea of a child knowing the whole Torah and forgetting it when the angel hits them you have to replace the word Torah with reality and the word Angel the word malach really means messenger we call the Angels Messengers Angels because they're the ones who Implement God's will but anyone could be an angel you know the person who hurt you the neighbor the the the whatever it was who hurt your feelings who rejected you whatever it was that robbed us of our innocence and our optimism that that wasn't a bad Angel it was a messenger to do something wrong now okay that's stage one so stage one is that children live in reality we know the whole Torah we know reality until we get clobbered and then we forget reality okay so then I years ago I was a rabbi in a very rural area in Pennsylvania and we had this like glass room I would sit in the Glass Room make up my speeches and one day I was sitting there and this bird flies right into the glass wall of the room and it falls down in the Heap and I jumped up to see it it was a few I was like I didn't want to have to see that happen it was such a beautiful bird I was looking at it and it flew right into my wall and I look at it it's alive it's jumping around feeling out its wings and it took a few minutes but eventually it flew off and I was wondering that when this bird flies off will he ever fly again the same way he flew the first time like because until now he knew that the whole sky is open but now he he he's learned that the sky isn't well maybe 99 is open but every once in a while there's a really hard spot and it'll it'll be the rest of his life it'll be tentative and reluctant never knowing when again it might hit that really hard spot and uh it'll and that's a really good metaphor for this story that as children we live in reality we're soaring in the sky and then we hit this glass wall and um we live with reluctance and hesitancy and we never all in again and that's sort of what this talmudic piece is saying um so let me ask you a question then if we were to paint you wanted to paint a picture capture that very sad moment the bird was hitting this glass wall but is there a universal human moment that that same thing happens um what would you paint so again we don't have any time really over time but I want to do this in a couple of minutes so um I I I'll tell you what the what I think the picture is there's a million moments that we hit the wall or the the first one I think is the universal moment is as little children when we say things babies say things every single thing we say our parents go he's a genius you know what he said it's so smart every guest who comes to our house they make the kid repeat it for all the guests that cute thing the way you distort that word that phrase you know so and that's and the kid starts to feel powerful he knows how how cute he is and how adorable and how everything he says is so smart but then one day he comes in this guests he knows he has a new audience and he walks in he says his funny lines and everyone turns to him and goes check it you know quiet not now and the kids like never happened before like till now every single single thing he said he's a genius and now all of a sudden he got shushed and now for the rest of his life every time he wants to open his mouth he's gonna have to wonder is this a genius sentence or a such one the human moment of hitting that glass wallet the first one is the shush and I think that's what the talmud is saying when it says the angel hits you on the lip it's a metaphor for the shush what the talmud is saying is that we all live in the world um totally embracing reality optimistic hopeful dreaming until we get shushed and when we get shushed now we second-guess ourselves and we never free and unencumbered anymore and now we live hesitant and reluctant and second guessing ourselves okay now the last part of this idea the reason why I'm sharing it to you for chuva it's a sad vartura until this point um the reason why you might not sound like really what the talmud is saying it's a nice idea but you don't we don't get this Dent when we got shushed it's a nice story but it's not really the explanation of a Tom because the talmud says you know you got just and the angel makes the dent or he talked to whatever something like that so the then preceded the shush so here's the last stage of this idea and this is what I think is a life-changing piece of information this story of flying through the sky and getting shot down is a universal story every single child is a dreamer and every single one of us at was some point in our life something happened we got shushed and what happens is for most people that moment derails us in different ways some people will never try and fly again they got hurt and they'll never fly again some people will fly on purpose I'm gonna teach that teacher look how great I am I'm gonna prove them wrong the person who said I'll never amount to something I wasn't good enough I'm gonna We dedicate Our Lives to proving them wrong both those stories are terrible whether you never fly again or you fly just to teach someone that moment derailed us and we now living Our Lives by some event that happened in fourth grade and we stop being ourselves how do we recover ourselves it's so difficult because I think that I everything was going great and this person ruined my life so here's the punch line of the whole idea and I think what can change truva for all of us is that no look in the mirror that person didn't make the dent that dent on top of your lip it was there before you got shushed you think that you were flying and you were gonna be every one of your dreams and that teacher that friend that neighbor that boyfriend that girlfriend that director cam boss client they ruined my life by shooting me out of the sky and the answer and the town was telling you no that's not the truth that person didn't ruin your life yes they shushed you but the dent was already there what does it mean that a dent was already there what it means that the dent was already there is the den says Place Finger here and shush we were supposed to be shushed they didn't create the dent you were born with a dent the dent is not a result of a shush it's a Groove to place the finger on dotted line and shush it's a total paradigm shift in what life is about I always thought and most people think that life was about dreams and flying in the sky and that person ruined my dreams and ruined my life I could have would have all the things that could have been and look what happened to me now and the Torah is telling us literally the opposite don't think that you were supposed to fly and he shot you down here's what was supposed to happen you were supposed to fly but I gave you this Dent you were supposed to be shot down that was all part of the plan the purpose of life is not to fly the purpose of life is to fly and get shot down you think your birthday was a day you were born your birthday is the day you get shushed because the purpose of life is to fly and then finally someone puts their finger and shushes you and you hit the ground and that's when life begins life is learning how to fly again everyone gets shot down all of us who think it's too late look what happened they ruined it no that is the script chuva is recovering that's what we were created for it's the purpose of the universe we were supposed to be shot down the day you think you died is the day you were born this is what I look every day and day I wake up I look in the mirror and I see that dent I tell myself that every bad thing that happened don't curl up in the ball thinking they ruined your life you were born with a dent sushes were intended that was the final Act of your creation you begin life is about chuva about recovering about learning how to fly again this is why the tablets in the temple were the second tablets the temple was destroyed and rebuilt everything is about the second time around go into Russian knowing that chuva is not the second best it's not an alternative plan my averos didn't ruin my life God created us with free choice he gave us the opportunities and what he wants is us to find ourselves wherever we find ourselves and to learn how to come back to learn how to fly again whether he shot you down you shot yourself down when you find yourself in a heap on the ground that's where life begins to learn how to stretch out your ring Wings again and to be brave and take to the skies and live again how you were meant to live that's the secret and that's to me that's life-changing chuva is not second best truth is is the purpose of life and it should free us on all of our resentments and all the things that weigh us down all right it's been a pleasure talking to you may you have the the sweetest happiest New Year ever May Hashem help us achieve all our dreams all right