 Rabbi Skobak is away, but Julius Sis has introduced us to a very special event that's taking place at the Cheritavilla synagogue, and the young lady that we have with us this morning is Chaias Sarah Brand, and she will be a guest of Jews for Judaism, and she's going to tell us all about a workshop that's taking place on Tuesday, September 1st and Thursday, September 3rd, 8 p.m. at the Cheritavilla congregation. Chaiah, how are you this morning? Thank you for joining us. My pleasure. Thank you so much for offering this opportunity for me to help other people heal themselves in their relationship. Okay, so what you're having is a forgiveness workshop from emotional pain, anger, and resentment. Heal yourself. Now, most people know that if they carry anger or, you know, when they think of bad things that they will get sick themselves. So how is this workshop going to help? So when people are feeling angry or hurt, it affects their emotions, it affects their relationships, and it can affect their body. So if your audience right now thinks about someone that they're angry at, they probably will feel some sensation in their body. Either there'll be a clenching in their jaw, a tightness in their shoulder, you know, a painful feeling in their heart or their stomach, somewhere that pain is affecting them. So, Elo, which is a month of forgiveness for us to focus on forgiveness all the way to Yom Kippur, Hashem, God has given us 40 days as a divine gift to really focus on that this is the time to release the pain of previous relationships or something that has come up in a present day relationship, because he doesn't want us holding on to this pain. He wants us to move forward and have a new good year, a sweet year. And how can you have a sweet year if you're angry or if you're hurting? It's hard, Chaya, to forgive someone or something that has changed your life. And so you have to truly let go of that that anger and make it because it's for you. That's who you're hurting the most. Exactly. It's for you. The other person probably doesn't deserve to be forgiven. They've done something wrong. Forgiveness is exactly when the other person is wrong. It was unjust. It was unfair. You didn't deserve the pain. And now what? The other person could be in Jamaica. The other person could be dead. I mean, well, you and I, you know, we are holding on to the pain that was inflicted upon us. Now that puts us into victim mode. We're still suffering from that pain. So how do we get out of that? The deed was done. So how do we move forward even if we forgive the individual or the act? How do we move forward so that we still do the right thing, but we don't carry that with us? So let me make a distinction. What you've just said, you said, how do we forgive either the person or the thing? So I just want to make a distinction. Often we don't forgive what has happened. We're not condoning the act. We're forgiving the person, the person because that person came from a place of vulnerability or weakness or or whatever their history was doing what they felt like they needed to do to protect themselves. We're trying to develop compassionate eyes of looking at the others so we don't see them as evil. Because if we think about it, I don't think there's any human being that hasn't hurt another. We're so often focusing on how we've been hurt and that's legitimate. But if we think about it, we have also hurt someone either because we thought we had no choice or because we were unconscious and it was inadvertent. But we all hurt each other. It's impossible not to hurt each other. Okay, but how do you go about healing someone? What is it? No, so it's healing. How do we heal ourselves? So there I have seven steps and each step is really fundamental because if you don't recognize each step, it doesn't really happen just to say I'm going to forgive someone doesn't work because there's still a part of us that's hurting and we have to recognize that there's a part that's hurting and there's a part of us that's holding the other person accountable and that usually appears as anger. And anger is good. Because if you don't hold the other person accountable, then how can you forgive them? You have to hold on to it in order to let go of it. And if you don't also recognize that you have pain, then there's also nothing to forgive. So pain and anger are the prerequisites of moving forward. And then there's five other steps that I lead people through. And that's also recognizing why are you holding on to this pain and the anger? There's usually some kind of fear that a person feels safer by being angry so that they won't get hurt again. So you have to look at that. They have to look at, well, how else can I feel safe? How else can I protect myself to develop other strategies? What people usually do is they either withdraw, which I call the ICE strategy, in order to protect themselves, or they go into fire. They get heated and they're like revengeful, or they go into swamp mode. And the swamp is when they just ruminate about the thoughts over and over again, either in their head or with other people. And that's just really all those different strategies are all meant to help a person feel safe. Okay, Haya, what is your background? What gives you the opportunity and the wherewithal to be able to help people? Well, my credentials, the academic credentials is a licensed master's social work from Wirtzweiler-Yoshiba University. And I'm in private practice and I'm a life coach. I've been doing forgiveness workshops for 30 years because people come to me usually with pain from relationships. And I realized mostly people couldn't move forward because they were still holding on to the resentments and grievances, sort of like collecting those old fashioned stamps, you know, that we used to do for loblas, and then want to trade it into I'm right and you're wrong. So I realized that people needed to learn how to forgive and LOL was the perfect time to do that. Okay, but a lot of people, it's easier to forgive someone you're never going to see again, a relationship that's gone sour. But it's not easy to forgive someone who's your father, mother, or sister, or brother, or good friend. I mean, that's the most difficult. Right, because it feels so painful. You feel like you've been betrayed. But you have to continue the relationship in most cases. Right, right. So then it is like, what would you need to feel safe? What would you need in order to trust the other person that overall, not that they're not going to make another mistake because we all make mistakes, but how can you trust that this person cares about you? What really hurts deep down is when someone hurts us is because we feel like they don't care about us. They didn't see us. They didn't take us into account. Our feelings weren't important. Our needs weren't important. And that's the part that needs to be repaired. It's like knowing that the other person, you know, wishes that they hadn't hurt you, if they could have done better, they would have done better and that their intention is to do better. Okay, so that's on the outside. All right, so let's just tell people again where this is taking place. You are being hosted by Jews for Judaism and the Shera Tavila congregation and it takes place. Do you want to tell us again where it is, what time and exactly the information? It's in the Shari Tafila synagogue, 3,600 Bathurst Street. These workshops are being held on Tuesday, September 1st at 8 p.m. And the second one is on Thursday, September 3rd. The first session is more about emotional healing and how to work towards moving towards the other person. The second session is more about your own emotional growth. How can you develop other strategies besides anger in order to feel safe? How can you be empowered? And was there any spiritual opportunity for growth as well? If we put God into the picture, it also changes the whole thing that this is an opportunity to learn more about yourself. How can you relate in a different way? What was your part in this whole thing that went sour? Well, it sounds to me like it's going to be a very worthwhile two evenings and I certainly hope that you will be able to heal people and help them. And I thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us once again. Session one is Tuesday, September 1st at 8, session two Thursday, September 3rd at 8 p.m. at the Cheritavilla synagogue 3600 Bathurst. Right. And also Julius told me that there's a link, jewsforjudiasm.ca, and there's an article that was written about the Forgiveness Workshop. If anybody wants to see more information. Thank you, Haya. Thank you so much and happy holidays to you coming up shortly as well. Thank you very much. Bye. Jews for Judaism with Rabbi Michael Scoback will return next time. For more information, please call 416-789-0020.