The Shabbat Show - Revelation at Sinai

[Music] hello everybody welcome to another episode of the shabbat show it's great to be back with you again it's amazing how quickly time is going just yesterday we were in the winter before that we were starting the show in the first place it's amazing as we head into the spring we're right now up against the third if you will i know the jewish calendar but in the in the in the academic calendar the third of the regula the third of the holidays special festivals that take place throughout the year we're up against the holiday of shavuot and it's just an honor to be able to celebrate these holidays with you to celebrate these moments with you having you with us enables us to deal with what goes on every day and to be able to prepare ourselves properly for what's in front of us so thank you so much for tuning in for a very very special show as we prepare ourselves for this incredibly less known but very important holiday of course let's begin by thanking the sponsor of the show this show is sponsored as a program of the carl eno goldman center for jewish values dedicated by jay goman we thank you jay for your continuous support of the show in addition project inspire and specifically the shabbat show is a beneficiary of dailygiving.org i encourage everybody to go to dailygiving.org and become a daily giver it's one dollar a day and you're able to give up to 40 charities they give out a dollar a day on your behalf to 40 different charities to giving out literally thousands of dollars a week it's an incredible incredible opportunity part of this great great event dailygiving.org dailygiving.org um before we really continue the show there's a lot going on in the world but particularly in israel i believe as of the beginning of the show israel has already endured i think over 1600 rockets since the beginning of this week and it's an incredible incredible difficult time as people are constantly under threat and so i want to just begin by uh wishing and praying for the health and the security of all those that are under attack and may we see the end of conflict in the end of war and everybody just have peace the way it is really supposed to be and our hearts and our prayers are with our brothers and sisters in the holy land you know this week we have this incredible holiday now shavuot is really a little bit less well known than passover than yom kippur but it's actually one of the most important days not only in our calendar but in our history this was the day in which the jews surrounded mount sinai and god gave the jews the torah to explain to understand the impact of this day that it had on the world the largest religions most of the people in the world that are of faith are a faith building on the framework of this day and we are celebrating it right now we are reconnecting it to it right now and what's so important is that we never look back and think for one second that something that happened in our history is historical and only historical we're not a commemorative religion we don't have holidays to remember what happened in the past because it was in the past we have holidays because the spirituality of the event that manifested maybe once in history still is applicable today and so sunday night there is a revelation if you will of mount sinai taking place in the spirituality of the day in my life and in your life which means now we stand at a time we can reconnect ourselves to our traditions to out to the spirituality to god's light to torah to wisdom in a way that is available to us on sunday night on the holiday of shavuot in a way that it isn't any other time of the year at this level and so wherever you are whatever your background is whatever your connection is whatever your your your education is we have the ability to connect in a way that we wouldn't otherwise we can plug into something incredibly special but what's also so powerful is this idea of what took place and how god chose to reveal himself i remember my first time ever encountering what is called a discovery seminar if you've never been to a discovery seminar you're missing out i remember being in uh in my year in israel at my gap year it was post high school and i'm the head of my school took us down i went to a school that was in the old city of jerusalem and it was yeshiva and we studied talmud but still the rabbi felt that it was important for us to if you will get the basics so he walked us down the road to ashatora's building and in there we met speakers that we never heard of before and we started to hear things that we never heard of before i went i had a yeshiva background i went to jewish school my whole life but i never understood this concept of national revelation i sort of took it for granted it's not just that god gave us the torah it's how he gave us the torah and why he chose to do it in a specific way and why that is relevant today that's what the show's about it's not about history we're the jewish people way too busy for history it's about the here and now it's about the impact of that day and why that day that we're celebrating is actually invaluable and relevant to me and to you right now we've got a great show because we've got incredible guests we've got our identity mechanics on with us we have rebellio bergstein's with us we have already similar barnett these are superstars that have been teaching and inspiring and educating for decades we've got cahoots back we've got great videos we've got a great show with you stick with us to the end i'm sure you're gonna benefit for what we have in store with you right now let's begin with a video from h.com check this out a singular unparalleled event [Music] a mystical document revealed transforming the fabric of humanity empowering a small nation to spearhead a [Music] revolution and transmit the source of illuminating wisdom [Music] it was a day that shook the world whose reverberations are still felt to this very day [Music] that day was when the jewish people stood at mount sinai and received the torah discover what all the talk is about [Music] thankage.com for all their incredible videos in particular these uh our first guest has taught thousands tens of thousands of jews from across all spectrums in the discovery seminar as a senior lecturer his name is by danny daniel mechanic he taught celebrity discoveries which nota with notables such as kirk douglas and jason alexander and then started project khazone teaching this material about faith and belief for the last 15 years to religious high school students around the country before a rabbi gets on i gotta tell you when i was a young man i remember once going to a convention called ajop those remember what that is and i was just starting to uh connect in in deeper ways and i stumbled upon a lecture from by danny mechanic and i remember sitting going like whoa like i never heard this and this guy is off the charts and he really inspired me personally and inspired so many others it is an honor to have a mechanic on the show rabbi thanks so much for joining us hey charlie how are you it's great to have you on and we thank you so much for what you do you know you've been you've been teaching these classes on this amazing discovery seminar right discovery seminar is a seminar that i saw that really shares some of the principles of judaism in a way that i don't think most people understand one of the topics is the holiday coming up it's the national revelation can you speak to a little bit about that particular class that you give and maybe sort of take us through why national revolution is such an important thing for us to stop and appreciate natural revelation is it's really the foundation of judaism it really is and i remember when i started teaching for discovery and also wherever i go whether i met with these hollywood stars that we met with or whether we met with uh all types of jews across the country their number one question always was and always is okay so you believe in moses they believe in jesus they believe in muhammad what's the difference what's the difference and the truth is there is a profound fundamental categorical difference between the claim that the jewish people made and every other religion in the world a fundamental difference they say there are about fifteen recorded religions in history since abraham since abraham and what's fascinating is that 14 999 of them are pretty much the same beginning and then there's judaism which is utterly unique and i'll explain you know i was invited to princeton university many many years ago they were having a debate between the the mormons and the harry krishna and the muslims and the christians and jews and if they they all spoke before me and then i got up there and they said to me you're just like the other four there is no difference but the truth is that there is and that fundamental difference and that is what shabbat is all about is what we are claiming in our torah of national revelation now what does that mean what that means is i'll read i'll read the verses very quickly in the torah it says in in exodus chapter 19 it says on the third day i'm translated from the hebrew god came down in front of the entire nation and the next verse says in the entire nation the word um is the word that is used in the torah and the entire nation was shaking from this event and the next verse in in uh in this chapter 19 uh starting with verse 10 it says and moshe took the entire nation to hear hashem give the torah so it's all about nation yeah see when i asked in princeton you know how do you think judaism started they said just like all the other religions where god comes to one person you know why that is i i think it's because most people know about the story from the ten commandments not from the bible exactly they're like what do you mean charlie heston got the torah i'm like really is that how it worked and then that in that movie cecil b demille made the greatest mistake in the history of mankind right because in that movie he has god giving the torah to moses when nothing could be further from the truth yeah because god gave it to three it's approximately three million people yeah that is our claim so fourteen thousand nine hundred ninety nine religions claim is the lord appeared to me any witnesses no the lord said i'm the messiah the lord said you should give me all your money you know no witnesses they're all based on faith they're based on they're really a myth they're by definition unverifiable but judaism is qualitatively different it's an historical event now what is the difference i tell you this you know yesterday i was in my car and my key part fell off my head onto the seat of the car are you ready to bet for you know half a billion dollars that that happened no will you ever know for sure whether mikey pop fell off and no but if there were a hundred thousand people surrounding my car and they said we saw robin mechanic's beautiful kippah fall off his head and especially if for some reason mikey pop fell off my head to have to change their lives in 613 ways believe me you can know that that story is true yeah you know this always reminds me of my grandparents they should uh they should have elevated souls my grandparents were scared of very few things after the holocaust let me tell you what they feared the most because they feared that people would forget the holocaust and i said to them it's impossible you have so many eyewitnesses it wasn't just a family in the corner there's no and they said you'll watch the the fact that it was revealed in public means it's in no one's disputing it but you have to remember that and as you get further from the event it's easy to forget that there are events in time that are impossible to fabricate because too many people experience the same event forever to have worked out that someone's like no we made that up and pass it down to their children right so for example i don't believe that there was a civil war i don't believe that abraham lincoln existed he was the president of the united states this is something that i know this is an historical event i would bet my life on it if god that i had to right even i wasn't there even though there were no witnesses today yeah that is what history is and that is the difference between judaism and everything else and that's why we are charlie we are not a religion yeah a religion is based on an emotional desire to believe in someone and you follow that we are what's called in hebrew a messora misora which means a historical event fascinating and i got to tell you a story because i remember hearings for the first time and then if you remember i i spent a little time in discovery i've had conversations before and i you know i i spend a lot of my life as a lawyer so i have conversations with lots and lots and lots and lots of lawyers which is a whole different show into itself but i remember having this conversation with lawyers and them and asking them like tell me if you had to defend this which side would you go and they watching them wrap their head from an evidentiary perspective of the claim of a group of people witnessing something and going in your life did you ever defend anybody that made a claim that over a hundred people saw and they just couldn't wrap around how that would not be evidentiary enough for someone to go that's exactly true and it's a tremendous thing that god did for us because like you said it drew a line back to something that was categorically different than everything else i'll tell you one more thing that go up with and you use the word evidentiary that is the fundamental difference what we believe in and the mitzvoth that we keep and the torah that we believe in and that we know that is true it is based on evidence it's evidential it's based on evidence like any historic what evidence do i have that abraham lincoln existed or that there was a civil war the millions of people experienced it and passed it on but the beginning and the founding moment of all religions it is not historical in nature and therefore by definition they are unverifiable look what let me look what god did god was there on mount sinai you know this event happened three thousand three hundred it's gonna be now 334 years ago i don't even remember what i did with my grandchildren last week you know did i go to the equi did i torture myself and go to the aquarium or did i torture myself go to the bronx zoo i don't remember that was a week ago you know what i mean yeah just to connect to an event 3 300 years ago hashem knew how and he gave us a way that no religion and culture in the world has none and it's called the passover seder and i'm going to tell you a very quick story 30 seconds when i was four years old which was a long time ago over 50 years ago we'll say i was at a seder with my entire family and i was at some point in the seder i was left alone in the room with my 92 year old zadie grandfather he was a hasidic jew and he came over to me there was no one else in the room i was busy stealing the alfie komen you know and he grabbed my hand and what my grandfather said to me in 1964 my i was four years old my grandfather grabbed my hand and in yiddish he said to me daniel daniel don't ever forget god hashem took us out of mitzrayim and gave us a torah and when i was four years old in 1876 my zadie from 1793 did the same thing to me three seders mechanic me i'm in 1793. and when that zadie was four years old in 1704 his 80 my third great grandfather from did the same thing amazing and you go back you know how many it is charlie about 40. about what are you what are you 40 40 40 connections until you get back to the event correct what's 40 nothing incredible so every one of us we were at a seder and we were three years old with either an elderly grandfather grandmother aunt uncle or an old haggadah telling us this information and that's why it's like god stood on mount sinai and threw a rope all the way across 3 400 years and we're all holding on to it and that's just pear server we didn't even talk about sukkot right or the mezuzahs or the trillion or everything else because this is the greatest event in history an historical event and that's why the christians and the muslims don't deny it why don't the arabs just get up in the u.n and say listen jews this is not your land well why do you think it's your land and we'll say it's in the bible and they'll say the bible so why there's some who wrote that they know it's god wow rabbi thank you so much incredible incredible perspective and we thank you for what you do for the jewish people and shining your light on this world thank you thank you take care charlie thank you that was our mechanic incredible and it's such an incredible point to think about what we're celebrating we're celebrating this amazing moment in history that allows us to go to a religion with an evidentiary claim just think that put that in your mind as we go through the show a national event millions of people how do you make that up it passes down through a very specific way it's not faith we're not based on faith we're based on evidence check out this amazing video from laurie palatnik okay well the great holiday is coming up and you're thinking wait a minute which holiday is at this time of year this is the big one it's the holiday where we commemorate and we remember and we celebrate the receiving of the torah when the jewish people are at mount sinai and we receive that torah what's so great about it it's just historic we learned so much i'm going to teach you one thing one idea because sometimes we're what we receive the torah a bunch of do's and don'ts yikes i was meeting with somebody the other day and he told me that he was raised with no boundaries that his parents i guess were free-spirited and there were no boundaries he's very entrepreneurial and he created a company and he said that he created a company with no boundaries he said people could come in in shorts and tank tops or people could come in wearing suits people could start at eight and leave at two and people could start at 12 and leave at 6. no boundaries he thought they'll still be great everybody will be happy he said he realized everybody's not happy and we're not so productive so somebody suggested to him to write a manual write a manual for employees an employee manual where it was very clear the hours dress code etc so he said he did that he had a manual made and he distributed it and he said he thought people would be like what you're telling me what to do he said people were so much happier because now they knew where the lines were now they knew what was expected of them now there was a sense of consistency now it wasn't just a free-for-all now there were boundaries and they were happier and he said they also became more productive so i explained to him that shavuot is coming and we remember that god gave us the torah and in the torah there were boundaries just like you created an employee manual the almighty put us into this world and gave us a manual he said this is how you're going to be the happiest this is how you're going to be the most productive this is going to bring out your potential so when you're thinking about the do's and the don'ts and all the rules remember my friend who created this company and the boundaries made people happier and it brought out the best in them have a good yanteff i'm laurie almost live thank you lori for that message i had the opportunity earlier this week to catch up with a very special individual who's been part of the show from the beginning his name is everybody simple barnett he's the educational director of project inspire a long time age rabbi but had a prior phase to his life graduated from dartmouth college where he played on the tennis team and began his career in investment baking on a trip around the world between jobs he was reintroduced to judaism in jerusalem when he took the discovery seminar i had a chance to catch up with barnett about what that did to him and the impact that it had on his life and the lessons he learned check out this interview so the way you grew up give us a little bit about your your history and how much did you know about this upcoming holiday how much did you know about you know mount sinai and the giving of the torah you know i grew up on long island and i was i was uh went to reform hebrew school and like pretty much everybody i i knew we knew absolutely nothing about chivos and you know we will be called it but we didn't know anything about it and i had a theory the reason is because hebrew school's over and if hebrew school's over that's it there's no more judaism school's over and really the only place my contemporaries and i knew anything about sinai was the movie the ten commandments you know that's where we got our torah from there you know they get it all wrong they basically have moses giving the tour of the jewish people not god so i didn't know anything about the traditional claim of revelation at sinai it was a eye-opening experience to me and i went to dartmouth college and i played tennis went to lehman brothers in it finally i ended up by in the old city i bumped into this amazing program discovery which one of the main segments is this uh this area of evidence that you're talking about tonight it's amazing that you know i i experience many times when people say to me wait what are you talking about you know god gave the tour to moses i'm like no he didn't this concept of national revelation right the idea that the divine presence revealed itself to an entire nation of people so take us through the first time you heard that and your reaction you realize it's a claim that could not have been made unless it was true i mean because it was historical in nature and no one ever pointed that out before in other words if you take the supernatural part out of it right it's based on history like any other historical claim like civil war like uh that george washington was president there were millions of eyewitnesses that's the basis of the claim so it's a totally different claim than someone appearing to god whether it was john smith saying you know i got the tablets or whether it was muhammad saying i went up on a horse up in heaven it's it's i would call it you know you're a lawyer evidentiary it provides evidence and there's all the other claims they don't provide evidence at all they don't even report report provide evidence basically say trust me believe in me so it's like it's categorically a different claim it's on a different level of credibility and as you sit with it you realize if such a groundbreaking thing did happen you can imagine why history right away imagine why it wouldn't be questioned and why all the nations of the world the time christians the muslims everybody going forward built themselves on judaism in other words they changed everything else why didn't they change this right you know what the obvious the obvious answer i think is because they couldn't i mean this was just this was just historical fact so what's interesting and i'll tell you my experience and you can show your experience is that you know i grew up in a in a much more traditional religious home i never even it never even dawned on me that this happened and i never even thought about it meaning i didn't think about national evolution because i don't know it's the torah it's true i i never i never had a moment in my upbringing regardless if i was like you know good with the abs with the commandments i wasn't always like you know perfect with you know doing this or not doing that i can't say i was but when it came to like what the book was i was like yeah of course now from your experience though you were you were a lot different you were much more skeptical share this a little bit about that approach because it's so important that people understand that matter where you hold in this spectrum of like totally accepted or totally skeptical there's a place for you yeah i mean first of all i that's that's the difference between a kid growing up and experiencing anything amazing and then an adult experiencing something amazing for the first time you see it as an adult with all your your psycho your wisdom your maturity and you want to dig deep into it but it's interesting the kid if if his parents tell him truth right and he takes it as such that's a beautiful thing i mean that's not a negative thing but when you're able as an adult what i think the beauty of what about truth is about is you can dig a little bit deeper maybe you're like yourself and other people who grew up with it you know really to to ground yourself very strongly that you know you're not going to bend is when you can see it really deeply the logic of it the you know it but jacob weinberg you know he uh listened to a tape running to the eiffel tower after i left israel back and forth i didn't even see the actual power i'm listening to this tape and a reasonable person believed god spoken outside and he was just giving over such a insightful comments about we're talking about before and he said this this claim is so extraordinary and if you're god this is the one you're going with you're not going to go with a less good claim you're not going to go to muhammad when no one can verify we're going with this claim but he would go further and say you'll you know from that that all the other revelation stories their lies you know and when i thought about that philosophically it blew me away and it really he he ended up saying you know who was the first person who gave this proof over to the jewish people first person was moses deuteronomy he says no people will ever make this claim and live right how could he be so sure right right if he faked it so to speak how could he be so sure someone else wouldn't come on because he was saying this is one claim this is one claim my friends you can't make unless it's true it's powerful the more you sit with it the more you think about how it could be false that's kind of what we did how could it be false we thought about it like that let me realize hey that doesn't make sense that doesn't make sense and then you realize you know what this is history and you should be proud of that you feel really people should be grounded you just feel hey stand on something rock solid awesome thank you rabbi it's really really a pleasure and thank you thank you all the best thank you we thank robert barnett for his words as well uh of course if you're out there we'd love to wish you a shabbat shalom it means a lot to all of us so please feel free to go on to the zoom or you can go to my facebook page for shabbat shalom's it's 8 30 and so we are able today to play kahoot so it is time for a little fun and games go dot i t for those that are playing it from your computer if you got the app which you should you can check out kahoot on the app um please jump in right now type in 782-3976 while people are signing on give me an opportunity to you know as we bring people on to to switch a couple of shabbat shalom shabbat shalom to the bolton goon family shabbat shalom to you guys the novak family from toronto shabbat shalom tyler shabbat shalom shabbat shalom 2 eric and roger matloff from southampton new york shabbat shalom to the bernheims in birmingham alabama shabbat shalom to you shabbat shalom to everybody to gabby kesten from queens shabbat shalom shabbat shalom to stuart and debbie goldman shabbat shalom shabbat shalom to anne arundel shabbat shalom two from las vegas shabbat shalom to mark and michelle mandelman from montvale so we've gone from toronto to alabama to vegas to to new jersey in just a matter of seconds that is the beauty of the jewish people and we have one more give it like 30 more seconds as we get the people to jump onto this good if you haven't already please do 782-3976 for a special edition of shavuous kahoot i'll give it another 30 seconds while i do christine norris shabbat shalom from dallas rana adler shabbat shalom to fairlawn new jersey devorah millman from boston shabbat shalom mike michael weingart from germany shabbat shalom to you ken winkler shabbat shalom to you as well and thanks so much and please feel free oh i got one more here as we're doing this from joan cody shabbat shalom to everybody okay everybody let's get going on kahoot let's get started first question special edition here goes how many years after creation was the torah given on sinai after creation how long did it take for god to give us the torah 1800 2448 33135 781 how many years after creation did god give us the torah shabbat shalom to devorah from boston linda from randolph eighteen hundred twenty four forty eight thirty three thirteen or five seven eight one how many years did god give his turf to create the world answer is very good two four four eight excellent let's see oh jews on top that's always a good sign emma gibbs rachel s kahoot is back we appreciate the fandom okay here goes here goes where is mount sinai located 18 kilometers from jerusalem near masada off the shore of a lot mount sinai isn't in israel where is mount sinai is it 18 kilometers from jerusalem i guess most of america don't know how far that is because it's in kilometers we probably need some kind of translator there near masada a lot or it's not even in israel in the first place two seconds left for question number two answer is it's not in israel at all it was in the sinai desert they were still remember they were walking around the desert for 40 years that's where they got it jews drop ema pops up rachel s gibbs kahoot is back and the edison adlers are climbing the board let's go to question number three when was the oral torah given to the jewish people at the same time as the written torah at the inauguration of the first temple it was developed over time and given to the early european jews where no one knows i like the breath of this these answers okay you know gets it from every way what was the oral tour given same time as the written torah first temple over time to the european slash ashkenazi jews or nobody knows three seconds left third question of kahoot answer is very good same time as the rentor what happened was given at the same time it just passed over orally rachel s climbs over ima kahoot is bad still on the board as analysis that ajd is a new entrant okay last lap here goes which statement about israel is true israel has the largest water supply television is the wealthiest per capita city in the world israel has the highest speed limit on highways in the world it opened its first underwater museum do you know the breadth of knowledge you need to compete in kahoot it's like jeopardy it's unbelievable we just took you from like years from the creation of the world to some facts about israel that no one would know two seconds left answer is first underwater museum let's see what that did to the leaderboard the winner is third place rachel s a regular here ajd continues and the number one first place for tonight's the edison adler's climbed to the top just letting you know the edison adlers weren't even on the board on the first round eem is still on good is back we thank you for playing again wherever you are we're happy you joined us for good i don't know how i have i think i have more fun than you have on code because i'm just enjoying watching this play you know my i know we have people that just play they wait for and they they log off so don't do that stick with us to the end uh check out this incredibly powerful video you know we're still mourning the loss of what took place in iran israel's had a a little bit of a roller coaster a couple of weeks um and we feel for them and if we feel for us we're one people one nation and um but we don't forget mero and here's a beautiful video just about uh just dedicated to the loss that we experienced in our own check this out [Music] my son my right hand i see that you're trying so hard and the battles you fought are the ones that set you apart i can't wait to greet you after all these years but i know you'll do the most good if you stay over there my father [Music] i'd like to see you but i know it's not the time [Music] oh father dear can you please just send me a sign on carry on even when you're lost i haven't gone take an extra look around you when you feel my presence there carry on [Music] my father please listen i feel like i've done it again [Music] i've continued to fight for a mission but it's done when i look around me all i see is my son won't you listen i promise you've done it all right because of the battles you've lost we've won the big fight the war is over and now we're all coming home [Music] i hope that then you'll know you were never alone i have been [Music] carry on take an extra look around carry on [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] uh [Music] carry on [Music] even [Music] [Applause] [Music] there carry on carry on take an extra look around you and you'll feel my presence [Music] carry [Music] wow such a true statement take an extra look around you and you realize i was always there carry on you know when you have holidays like this it reminds us that he's always there thank you so much for playing that to the project inspire crew that found it and for the guys who made this up really really powerful this is what this holiday is all about this is what this holiday is all about take an extra look around you look back in history and god reveals himself because he wants us to always remember that he's there for all the generations we'll never forget these this is what the holiday is for this is why we do it it reminds us that you're never alone that even though you may lose a battle you'll win the war our next guest is a is formerly yeshua elementary school teacher and a computer programmer in the financial industry he's presented to hundreds of discovery programs and other educational presentations over the last 40 plus years really is a it's an honor to have el yahoo bergstein on uh rabbi thank you so much for joining us on the show today hi thanks charlie for having me on the show appreciate it very much it's great to see you and to have you rabbi like i said earlier for those who don't know i i'm a big fan although this is like the all-star weekend over here and all the our stars are are we get to come off and just i can personally thank you for all the inspiration you've given me and if you remember when i was young you i would speak with you on discovery if you remember those days i remember the pointers and you helped me out so it's i thank you for the upcoming star which you became god's help well thank you all right so so you've been teaching discovery for for so many years national revelation and and what's what's fascinating about you in particular about everybody but i want to just drill this point down is the breadth of the people both yourself and your background and the amount of people of denominations that you've experienced in engaging in this information right when you have information you teach it to one group of people isn't there there's a reaction but throughout your years i'm sure you've taught this to so many different types share with us if you can some of the stories or the ideas that that you gleaned from when you were teaching this concept of national revolution this idea of what we're celebrating and what the impact that it had on others well as as far as the diversity of the audiences we're talking literally from satmar to reformed temples in texas and everything in between everybody's jews everybody's listening everybody's interested uh impact-wise everything has an impact sometimes it's immediate sometimes it's later i mentioned reform temples in texas actually there was a rabbi in texas who brought in discovery three times and in the end he left his congregation to go study and become more involved in yiddishkeit in judaism himself the discovery program he brought to actually make his congregants interested got he himself gigantically interested i'll tell you this over the years going to many places i kept the diary of the first 100. yeah at first 100 discoveries including when they sent me to some place in illinois and it was zero degrees and there was no heat in the hotel it was a different different experience different time it was a different time yeah but when you do a discovery presentation or specifically national revelation which is as danny mechanic explained and as somehow ned explained just unbelievably powerful to the extent that when i used to do presentations and still do i'm each time myself the evidence and what we're saying gets deeper and deeper into me i have found though over the course of many years that the best candidates who understand it best are not people who are immediately bowled over actually somebody who goes to a discovery seminar or goes to this particular national revelation class and has questions and thinks it over and analyzes what you're saying and asks things that maybe this contradicts it could moses have made a big thunderstorm and gotten away with it which i'll usually answer something like if that's the case anybody could make another thunderstorm and get away with it um the best usually is the people who are to an extent confrontational because that means they understand there's something here and if it's real then i maybe have to realign my life a little in my thoughts and my actions so they're really working on it and many times after a whole presentation they'll talk after the class and everything sometimes i don't know what the follow-up is or what happened sometimes i do sometimes not i'll give you one case where i really realized what it what it really is i was for rosh hashanah and philadelphia it's actually in h philly and russia's on the night where i ate there was a couple there over there and they i don't know them i don't remember them anyway and they said to me ryan braxton you don't remember us 13 years ago we heard the discovery program specifically to mention national revelation and we asked you a question then and we thought about it we went home and we didn't turn over our lives exactly right away in the course of time we realize what this is and that's why we're sitting here rosh hashanah night why afterwards my wife says to me you see why you're going you see that's it you're stuck this is why you're going right all right so i found that that it takes sometimes time there was an optometrist in queens who years later i met and he said to me he's studying now he still is an optometrist but he's studying a lot of torah full-time and the catalyst was the discovery program where he examined that evidence and he said it's real his good parts of his life stayed he's still an optometrist still had nice family everything fine but he added that element which was not there before which probably was there by his great-grandparents but that little connection got snapped you know it's interesting what you're saying and i want to make sure that i can sort of pause on it because i want i want everyone to hear it because i'm now re-assessing it which is when you think through what we're going to celebrate national revelation only time in history anyone's ever reported as such it's an incredible thing even if you say okay i i no that's too quick it's too quick you know even if you're like that makes sense no no i don't know if you think it makes sense too quickly it's too quick you have to let that sit for a second that what we are celebrating is a historical event that never happened pre or post or was ever claimed to have happened that is cataclysmic and just allowing your brain to go that's impossible what if like what if moses would have made it up what if he convinced it what if he didn't know just allowing your brain to fight it and realize how's that possible it's three million people that allows the the the the the incredibleness of that moment deepen into your heart and then that makes you recognize how powerful it is right i found that especially important for college students because we did a whole bunch of uh discoveries over the years in different colleges college students because they don't have yet a life set up they're still students it's not like they're 40 years old with a wife and a husband and children and this and that where changes in life uh are difficult and harder to do they can change instantly so you get a student come on over after the class that he wants to change his whole life i would often tell him yeah very good very good but let's do this slowly i want you to think about it and in fact i used to say at college discovery specifically please don't accept what i'm saying right i want you to go home and think about it i want you to ask questions i want you to i use personally a particular analogy that i developed with benjamin franklin at 1776 and god's voice coming down and saying king george of england has now been replaced by the united states of america and you're out of england's control and that couldn't have happened because you wouldn't need berkstein today to tell you if that really happened because we'd all know about it and there'd be a whole holiday about it i used that particular analogy in my classes each teacher likes to use different analogies yeah um but the idea is the analogies are all just to get this fact to sink in and the resistance many times is something like somebody would say to me you know what you're saying makes sense i don't know the commitment and the implications are overwhelming that's the bias yeah but i said don't get overwhelmed you know just listen to it right i remember once i was having a conversation with someone about it and you know just talking across the table a bunch of lawyers because i spent a lot of my time you know law firms talking and one guy turned and said it's impossible like come on like it was so long ago moses i am sure made it up and told everybody and they took his word for it i'll never forget like everybody was quiet and a guy turned and goes wait a bunch of jews took someone else's word for it i'm like do you know our people like we don't we don't roll have you ever seen jews be like oh that happened sure i believe you you know i'm saying like gold in the air once said like she's the prime minister of five minute prime ministers you know i'm saying like you know the idea that the jewish nation just like took it on the chin and oh and by the way now that he it happened all the stuff you got to do including a bris mila like it doesn't work that way like we're not the people that just accept right but that idea that you're saying is so critical um to allow to look at it like as if you were on the jury not from a place of faith to not say oh i believe that to look at it and go hey i have to examine that and to allow what god did in his revelation to be worthy of your mind's time so that you can fight the evidence so when you see that he did it on purpose for it to go from faith to evidence he could have just given it to moses and then would have been on faith he took he he gave it to everyone for it to transfer that means that we have to transfer in our own minds and say i got to take my head from i believe it happened to i gotta actually think about it that's a tremendous i think worthy activity for the holiday regardless of your background sit around the table and like discuss it with your family and go do you realize what that means like how does that get made up and what that implica just allowing that to to permeate is will be even more impactful than just hearing it and saying you're right right schmooze especially because it's the anniversary and judaism actually views history not as linear but sort of as a cyclical nobody knows what a record is anymore today because they have usbs but every year when we come around to chevous it's again the day it's the day it didn't it's not just it happened 3 300 years ago it's the day that is a day you can actually connect on that day you connect any day hayoi male 1 but that's a real connecting day it's hard in a small amount of time to actually um articulate the power of this anybody who didn't see it should see it and and and should experience it yeah and then work on thinking about it and challenging it and i think all the kinks and all the wrinkles come out very good rabbi thank you so much for what you do for all the inspiration you bring to the world and wish you a happy holidays good yant if and we look forward to you and you should have success and the whole audience appreciates it amen thank you very much thank you pleasure thank you and that was uh bergstein an incredible individual and i remember watching him do this and he's 100 right for those that are watching this and have never seen discovery or you know people that would really benefit from an evidentiary approach towards judaism go to projectinspired.com and look for more information on how to get one uh either it's i don't know if it's online or someone a live one but they'll give you the information for include i want to give a couple more shabbat shaloms to elephant alpine new jersey shabbat shalom there's some word that just for those who are the kahoot fans that ema and rachel are mother and daughter so there's a real there's a huge you know racket going over here with kahoot so congratulations both of them um and we wish shabbat shalom is anyone else the diamond family from lake with shabbat shalom to you i hope i got everybody the kirsner family from toronto shabbat shalom to you i think i got one more shabbat shalom over here um to to read a reuben from upstate new york shabbat shalom to you i think i get everybody if i miss everybody i'm sorry but i want to sort of close with this concept that really i think came out you know we have to be proud of who we are but but not proud like you know it sort of makes sense proud like i know who i am i know my history i know my people i know where i come from i'm proud of who i am i come from wherever i come from and you come from wherever you come from and some of you come from europe or from the middle east or from russia you should be proud of that and you're proud of your heritage and proud of your lineage and proud of your parents and grandparents and great grandparents that's part of being a human being but what we also need to be proud of is where we come from as as a people and we really come from this holiday we come from mount sinai we come from egypt but we come from mount sinai and we if you never grew up with it you may not think about it if you did grow up with it you may sort of zip through that when you were a kid but we shouldn't we shouldn't we should stop for a minute and think about it and talk with our family about it and our friends about it like wait a second guys like wait a second our people began with a historical event that was never even claimed never even claimed again in any major way ever there is no record of a religion saying we experience natural revelation and lived every other everyone else says i was here and i experienced the revelation we come from a place that the majority of the world says was true we come from a moment of revelation and like rabbi mechanic says we're 40 generations from that 40 grandparent to grandchild we come from a moment in history that was cataclysmic and we were there so to speak if we just gloss over it we lose the impact on our hearts if we just goes over it our kids don't see the truth permeating through our voices if we just close over it it takes away from the value we give the rest of it we only know about shabbat because of mount sinai we only have shabbat because of mount sinai the christian of the world is what shabbat represents is connected and in fact according to some opinions mount sinai took place on shabbat this is an important moment for us that i don't want to lose the power of pride the slowness of digesting an event that balance that bounded us you know the reason why we can have a show and i can read about alabama and toronto and vegas and boca raton and upstate new york and it's one group of people is because we're bound by help by mount sinai the reason why our our hearts couldn't be opened from their own our hearts can feel the pain of ashkelon or jerusalem or tel aviv is because we're bounded by mount sinai the reason why we're sitting here after 2000 years of exile is because of mount sinai that was a day in our lives that we have to digest this is the holiday to digest it and i want to give it all of us a challenge take a moment over these next depending on your level of observance take a moment over these next few days on the holiday and talk about it with someone have a conversation about it digest it appreciate it let it get into your heart what that must have been like to be at the mountain what that must be like to be the generations afterwards what it must be like to be 40 people from that moment watch the pride swell up and so on behalf of me and mine tune yourself shabbat shalom this should be a shabbat of pride and wisdom i hope and pray that next week we get to see you in jerusalem but if not hope to see you right here shabbat shalom happy holidays and i hope that we get to see a time where we get to come together again but until now but until then have an incredible incredible holiday from all of us in project inspire shabbat shalom [Music] in every generation they take one raising the haters then the hit the pavement blazing the savings to the world [Music] know [Music] wow [Music]