 Hi and welcome to Let's Talk Tachles episode 12. So let me tell you, this episode is unique. This is a very deep and meaningful and unfiltered conversation with Aaron Fast, who is a Balcheeve, who came to see the godless and the being of Hashem Bezburch in a very unplanned way. But once he joined, he's very deep and very emotional. There's a lot of tense moment in the conversation. There's a lot of deep thoughts in the conversation. But I assure you that if you have the resilience to watch the whole episode, you're going to learn a lot, you're going to be very surprised, and you'll feel the z'khus that you have to belong to where you belong. So watch it, enjoy it. Hello and welcome to Let's Talk Tachles episode 12. Wow, I can't believe we're here. And to celebrate the number 12, we have for you a very special guest tonight. My friend Aaron Fast. Hi, Aaron. Peace be upon you. Peace be upon you. How are you? I'm fine, it's been a good day. Good. I'm thinking now both of us are Aaron. That's true. And our producer is also Aaron. Aaron Trio. That's a lot of Olives in the studio today. Yes, Olives is the start of the beginning of Olives bass. Our audience know by now that when we bring a guest to Let's Talk Tachles, it's the real deal, but they don't like when I say why. So I'm going to have to ask you. I have to justify being the real deal. That's a hard way to start. Yes, that's the deal. So let's hear a little bit who's Aaron Fast. And we're going to soon continue to a very Tachles-dickey conversation that people will learn a lot and grow from. And in the meantime, we're going to do the right thing. So let's go. Okay. I come from a family that did not raise me from. However, there was something in me from pretty young age that was I'd say hyper motivated in some way that I couldn't quite put my fingers on yet. So this part of me that was pushing had this realization that it had to be possible that a person can be happy and life can be good has to be possible. Without that, none of this makes sense. It's a stupid game if there's if there's no victory, right? So I tried music. I was a musician for many years. I tried this. I tried that. I remember as a child, my parents took me to a reform synagogue. And I remember watching the rabbi on stage and having a thought. I know that something is supposed to be happening here, but it's not happening. There has to be something that's up. We did not come here and get dressed and come and sit in this person's on stage. Some supposed to be it's not happening. So this quest started in me. What's supposed to be happening here? What are we doing here? What's the point? So from Arlington, Virginia, where I was raised, which is a wonderful town, though I didn't realize it till I left. I think teenagers typically go through a phase where they don't appreciate where they come from. It's kind of necessary. But from Arlington, Virginia, I ended up in New York City in school. And I was a music student at NYU. Music was the closest thing at that time that I could find to getting closer to this intuitive feeling that I knew was everybody's destiny, but that we had the work to get. I knew there was something good in life. I knew it. It had to be. But everybody around me didn't seem happy. So it's very confusing to me. So music, people are happy when there's music. Mostly. So that was the closest thing I could find. I stuck with it. I went into music. I just want to ask you, clarify something. You say you were born to a not-from family. Yeah. Was it not-from, or was there not a cherry on top for the history of your family? Even more. So my mother is a Jewish lady. My father was not a Jew. So I was born in a mixed home, as we'd call it, a mixed family. But you were born in a Jewish family. Yeah. I mean, my mother's Yichas is pretty inarguable in that. I mean, my mother was born in a DP camp to two survivors who actually met in a DP camp. And she was born in 49 in Germany and came to America when she was about a year old. She's probably going to watch this. Yeah, I was going to ask you. I was just thinking about that. I was going to ask you, will she be proud of this interview? My mom's a holy woman, man. My mom is good. My mother was married once in the nice, proper way, and that did not turn out to be good. So she eventually remarried my father, who was a charming man, and not from a Jewish background. They agreed they would raise me loosely Jewish, and they did. And my father was on board. And, you know, we lit candles. And Halacha was not anything I even heard about. I didn't even know. I didn't know that Jews prayed three times a day. I didn't know that Jews were Yamakos outside of synagogue. I had never seen that stuff. So, yeah, so my background was very much kind of in the wilderness from the perspective of the community that I'm living in now. I know I can tell the audience that you live a very Hamish-ish room, Hasidish life. There's always two levels going, right? There's the panemius. Yeah, panemius. And then there's the ch'tzainist. So inwardly, I have an intensity that I found a vessel for in the Hasidic community that I can at least show up and pray. And pray how I want. And pray at length. Thank God I found some good places. In order to have access to those places, I've had to adjust outwardly. So, you know, there's a, the way I say to people, there's a high cost of entry to come into the community. I want to talk about it later because I've bumped into some additional Balachuva and people who came to Yiddish guide. And they all, not all, but many of them share the difficulty that they have to penetrate and to be like one of the common people that I'm inshual regularly. And even the notion that we should become one of the, that that's the, that that's the goal is, is difficult to swallow. Right. Right. It must be like, not painful, but it must be. Horrifying. Horrifying. Yeah. To say, I came back to Yiddish guide. My panemius is growing. I'm growing. Right. I'm connecting to Hashem more and I doubt them better. And I, and I learn a lot. And I learn musler and I learn chassidus and everything. And they're looking at your shoes. And you're looking at your shoes at your haircut. Yeah. It must be difficult. Yeah. Yeah. My haircut. Yeah. To answer your question, you said like a long way from, from Arlington, Virginia. So, from an outside perspective, okay, there's a big difference. But from an inside perspective, the process has sort of been continuous. For me, it's sort of been the same forward motion. And now I see myself as like, I'm navigating this environment now. And there's rules of the game in this environment. But the trajectory is ultimately really not that different. Yeah. Just a little calming. Yeah. Well, let's just say when I'm alone at home in my sweatpants, you know, just sitting in my room, I, I don't feel an awful lot different than I did when I was 18 years old or 20 years old and, and, you know, discovering my inner world for the first time. When I'm in school, sometimes I'm distracted by the, by the expectations. Yeah. But if you look back, I think you feel you made a good deal, right? I'm happy that I learned how to learn. I'm very happy about that. It's stupid that a Jew shouldn't know how to read Tyra. It's dumb. So I got over that. That was, thank God, a big deal. There's two to 3000 years of texts available that because of my lineage, at least from my mother, there's a natural resonance somewhere in me that this unbroken chain of spiritual literature resonates with. You know, there's, there's something in me that, that it draws out. And it's, it's silly that I didn't have access to that before that. I'll never regret it all. The path I took was maybe harder than it had to be. But who is there such a thing as that's everybody's story. In reality, it must be not easy for someone to come from Virginia and to land that where you landed, Borch Hashem, without having someone walking next to you with you, explaining you, answering you many mysteries and questions and helping you overcome all kinds of habits and things you grew up with. And suddenly expect slowly that you should be different. So hopefully the Eschivas that were instituted for this purpose, provide the supply this know. Yeah, I think that's asking a lot from an institution of any type. You know, the Eschivas gave me an environment to investigate. And they gave me the tools to let's say read Rashi script. You know, so Rashi script reading Rashi is ultimately what's going to unlock things within me. And there were people there giving me the tools to do that. In terms of you have a little bit of like an ideal sense of what should be going on in the process of person become Balchoova. You know, it's a rare about Balchoova who finds a mentor early on and is able to sort of burr them into the whole thing. There's a lot of fending for yourself just because that's life. So what you're trying to say is that if you got general guidance, but you didn't have the one on one support system. I had great people. No, no, no, right. We're not we're not downgrading. What do they want to do? Answer to me. How do I stem what I just learned in this class with this experience I had in the woods five years? Who's going to answer that? It's not a question you can ask another person. So is it possible that you had a particular type of background or personality that caused for the gap to be bigger? Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. The many on the of the common Balachoova. Yeah. Well, first of all, I was cool. I mean, I had a life and a personality and like a lot of people are coming in. They're much younger than me and they hadn't really established a personality for themselves in the world quite yet. They were still just coming out from under the wings of their parents and stuff like that. So I had a certain independence, but I also had a really profound intensity and I was not prepared to meet anybody who was not that intense. My expectation going into a Shiva was finally I found a place where everybody's going to stay up half the night and like be willing to give up everything to find that, you know, and what I found was maybe a guy like that maybe and then like, you know, guys who were backpacking and got tapped on the shoulder at the wall and figured it's free lodging for and I love those guys and and they chilled me out, which had to happen. But I was not there to like eat gefilte fish and to extend that further. And this was like a real hard thing. Like I wasn't there to learn how to wash my hands properly. I hadn't connected to any of that stuff yet in my mind. So my personality, because I was so focused on just the absolute essence of like why I'm here, which was essentially to burn away the dross within myself to be a better, a better example of how God would want the human being to live. I was completely concerned with that. I wanted God to play my body like a musician played a flute. And I didn't care about anything else. So when I had 18 or 19 year olds who the night before we're out drinking and then were telling me I picked up the cup with the wrong hand to wash, I wasn't in the right place. I was like, is it? Wow. That's that's yeah, that's quite a task for yourself and for the people around you. Yeah. But I want to give you a compliment that you got into it with a very serious commitment and you were not there to shop. You didn't go shopping. Well, right. But in some sense, the thing that bothered me about Shiva was that they assume that since I walked in there that all I went from doing absolutely nothing in Yiddish all of a sudden. Now I'm keeping Shabbos 100% every single week. And I'm like, I didn't sign up for that. I didn't even know what Shabbos was today. Did they expect you to do it? But they would give you some space if you decide to keep only 80% if I disappeared and went out and you know, checked out the tourist sites and came back. Nobody was really going to say anything. But you're in a culture where there's a basic expectation. Yeah. So you're saying it's not carried good enough for intense guys who are coming in like really. What are you going to do? No, I'm just I'm trying to learn with the experience it's someone like you has coming from ground zero. Yeah. Going up and I guess most people come with a lighter. Yeah. Style expecting less and slowly experience saying and singing a little and eating a little eating by family style things like they're changing their style. I had to me that was all but I didn't like any of that. You came for the real deal. I was like, I was like, you're using a specific word to refer to God or the divine. What is it? Where is it? Who is that? What are you doing here? Tell me what you're doing here. And it's like I have first the right hand and then the left hand and then the wash and I was like, don't give me this. So looking back today, you know exactly why you pick up the top with the right. How you wash. Not exactly. Look, many of us also don't know. Right. But you grew into understand and feel the flow of Yiddish guide and the purpose why you're wearing a Yarmulke because you want to hear. I don't understand why. No, that's a hard one. But let's take a step back. Yarmulke is a tough one. Okay. Every day in the mikvah, I have like a panic attack, not a panic. It's a, you know, I don't doesn't bother me. But every day in the mikvah, it comes up, putting my shoes on and I'm like, I know that. So I slip my shoes off. So now I got to untie the left. Then I got to untie the right. Then I got to put on the right. Then I got to put on the left. Then I got to tie the left. Then I got to tie the right. And every single time I do it, I'm always very aware that somebody could be looking at me and being like, see if this guy knows anything. Who is this guy? Right. Doesn't have payas. What is he doing in here? Why do you care so much if people look at you? Well, because it's very nerve wracking to be judged in a way. Being judged is not a big deal. I'm ugly. I'm stupid. My music's dumb. I don't care about any of that. When you get into judgments that are like, is this person a good person in an absolute sense? Has he movathled himself to the laws of a shem? And it's like, I just, I just wasn't paying attention. I untodd my right shoe first. That's more nerve wracking. I wish you would ask me before. I'll tell you two things. Number one, many of those people are not so much to do it. Please, a shem. Let me be one of them. And number two, I heard a very nice word about tying the shoes. Okay. Someone spoke to a Jew who was not from, and among the conversation that this issue came up, that we even have rules how to tie our shoes and untie. Someone person stood over there and they said, what a silly religion busy with your shoes. So someone has said, you know what an amazing religion it is that even when you tie your shoes, you think about it. I hear you. And, and I get that. And I agree with that. I do. However, you're asking about knowing why and wearing the yarmulke. So like, I hang out with some pretty heavy hitter types. Once I'm like, I try to be around Siddiquim and like, I'm familiar. Like, I know why the left and I know why the right. And like, I understand that in a conceptual way. The question is, who's doing that when they do it? Who's loosening the Gavura when they untie their left shoe, you know, and who's starting with Heised when they put on their right shoe and who's binding the din first when they tie. It's like, you know, who's doing that? Probably like seven people. So there's a part of me that wonders if I should like, you say not be my pet. No, I didn't say should not be my pet. I'm doing it. I said, you should not feel uncomfortable if people watch you. If you do it or not, because when you do it, you should do it because you want to do it. You want to be part of it. If you understand that 30% or 80%. And then it becomes a routine. Right. And there's a few reasons why Heised and Gavura and you know, more than me, by the way, about this. Yeah, because I'm allowed to. You're not allowed to. We're allowed. But what I'm saying is that the, I think the intensity of wanting, but then why, but then why do it? No, because you can do it without intensity is stupid. No, but you can do a thing without being intense. You can do them with a pleasant way because I like, I like to associate with this religion with this, with these alohas. I like, I like to, I like to do what my parents, your parents didn't teach you about my parents and I tell us to do. I believe that what they tell us to do is, is keeping me in a good straight path. I 100% believe that. I 100% believe that. I do have a question if we've collectively taken on so much that we're not able to really find the depth in the mitzvahs that we personally connect with, because we have to copy every tzadik, whoever was Mechadish, some new kavana, the left and the right, that's holy stuff, man. I'm not fooling around with that stuff. But should I bechayev in it? Sometimes I'm not totally sure, because it does make you a little neurotic when you're in the mitzvah and you're just thinking about something like, oh wait, the shoe thing. Duh-duh-duh-duh. Duh-duh-duh-duh. Yeah. So it's like, maybe I should say like, wow, that's a holy madrig. Like Rav Matul throwing matzahs on Pesach. I don't have to throw matzahs on Pesach. Okay, so I think, I think we have to work on the intensity. So now we've got, now we've established that I'm not Pekharis. Let's go for Pekharis. Oh, I have a beautiful story about that, though. Not about me. I have a beautiful story. So one year, Yumkippur, I was in a monastery, somehow somebody like, at the last minute, wasn't going to be there, so there was a seat on Mizrach. So I got to sit in Mizrach. That's against the wall, for anybody who doesn't know. I sat up against the front wall, and the entire Yumkippur, it was like nothing existed except my Tefilis. And it was one of the best days I've had in my entire life, without exaggeration. So far so good. Deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper. I didn't look at the, I looked at the clock once, because I was so in the zone, I said, I wonder if looking at the clock will take, will actually affect me. So I said, I wonder what it would be like to look at the clock. So I did it. And then I was like, oh, it was stupid. So I kept going. So towards the end of Yumkippur, after solid 10, 11 hours of just deeper, and deeper, and deeper, and deeper. I was like, Hashem, like, what am I doing wrong in my life? Like, what's going on? How can I get closer to you? Like, please. And you know, the answer that blossomed out of my heart, not saying Hashem told me, but Hashem gave me an inner experience. And I remembered when I was becoming a balshuva. And I remember sitting down and cutting my nails. And I remember, I knew there was some idea that you cut the nails in a certain order. And I made up my own. And it was so beautiful. And the yud was a little pinky. And then the thumb was the yud inside the hay because it was the fifth finger, which is hay. And the opposable thumb is the medreak of humans above animals because animals have four. And then the vuv was the middle finger and then the surrounding hay because it's maochus and the vuv is yud. And all this stuff. And I used to sit there and feel like my dad had me in his lap and I was so happy. And then I learned the actual way to cut your nails. And I started doing that. And I never liked it. And it always, I hated cutting my nails. It bothered me. And I had the answer on Yom Kippur. What can I do? And God said to me through my heart, He said, you used to love cutting your nails. What happened? Why don't you do that anymore? And I remembered the introduction of the shukhnara and I'm collecting all of this together because people have forgotten. But other people have customs. And if you have your customs, keep your customs. And I realized I had a custom. I had a custom. And I gave it up. And that was a symbol of all the things I'd given up that I knew were good and true. I knew it. And that was the tshuva that I had to do during the ilah on Yom Kippur. I had to go back and say, God, I love you. I love you. I want that again. I love you more than my ideas about what I'm like. It was a big tshuva. Wow. Very, very emotional. Well, I like God. I'm tired of programming myself to appear a certain way without filling those actions with the light of God. I think it's the first time I so vividly understand the statement, I don't think that, forget about me, but I don't think that many people on a high level experienced such a connection, such a feedback from Hashem to such a validation, and Hashem should make them feel that they are. He doesn't have too many yin like this. And I think it's tremendous. I know that being a tshuva versus being a free bird is not easy, especially with some of the points you made before and many points we didn't cover yet. Wow. This is really heart-breaking or heart-opening, eye-opening for sure. Do you ever do this to achieve and give yourself a chance to really reconnect with Hashem that you so much year and four and want to find in yourself? Yeah. There's Hisboi deduce, which the goal is that it should be constant. I mean, I'm a single guy, so I have all day to talk to Hashem. Hisboi deduce, however, to me and my experience is just in case anybody doesn't know, because I have friends who might tune in, and Hisboi deduce is just talking to God in your own words, like He's your Father, whatever role you need Him to be, and sometimes you need to die on a judge. I think these are all words. It's hard to make sure that what the word means to me means the same thing to the person I'm speaking to. But I would say that there's something that I guess I'd have to call Devekis, which to me is almost a higher level or the purpose of Hisboi deduce. When your mother is in the room with you, sometimes you just want to sit with her. You don't have to keep saying, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma. I was thinking, and I could, and I was going to go to the park, but I was going to name the deduce. Sometimes it's just, and that is where I really am able to reconnect. Did this give you a little comfort? That is comfort. That is the comfort in life. Because I'm detecting you a tremendous eagerness and interest and passion to be open and flow with Hashem and His hand-hugging and His just being the Charlotte, the boss of the entire world. And I'm happy to hear that there are ways and times that you can check in quickly and gain it again. Yeah, that's called Shachis Menchema. Because it sounds really like you have such a high Neshoma and you have such high goals and desires to connect with Hashem and when side little technical or communal things interrupt and to fear, and you feel mommish like you're bleeding. And you want the wave to continue the electric continuity it's called. I'm happy to be there constantly without being interrupted, so I'm happy that you have some tools to really reconnect and regain this feeling you want to live with. This person has to feel more comfortable with God than with anything in the universe and there's different ways of approaching God and the path that this community has emphasized, as God is a king and that's useful. It's a metaphor, everything's a metaphor. God is beyond any description we could give for Him, but we're able to connect with attributes. My God has always been the one I didn't have to dress up for. It's like you come home to your wife, which I don't have yet. I have to put on nice clothes and make my shoes black for everybody else. God doesn't ask that for me. He's the one I can put my sweatpants and my T-shirt on and lay on the carpet if I want to at the end of a hard day. So why do you feel you have to do these things? Why don't you? Well, the Derech of the King is legitimate. It's not in my personality that it's my primary place that I find connection to God. And I'm in a community where that's the standard. So I am in a practice now of approaching God as a king, which means your shirt should be clean and you should show up on time, and there's nothing wrong with that. So if you were Masig, we're getting a little too philosophical here, but if you were Masig, the level of understanding that because he's the king, I want to look proper and act proper and like the king is worthy of, why does it pain you to have to? Because people have personalities and tendencies. Mine is not quite that way. There has to be allowance for God to manifest in myriad ways. We've standardized one of them, and it's the primary one in this Derech of Ava'ida. It happens to be, let's say that's the Derech of Shevet Dun, or let's say Yehuda, right, for talking about kings. It happens to be maybe I'm from a different tribe, but that's okay. Let me use your wisdom, maybe, about what you said. Do you think that maybe some of the non-Balchuva people who grew up or were born in Hamishah homes and stuff like this, boys or young and delighted girls, are suffering from a similar... Heavy, heavy, heavy. There's so many beautiful kids, man, who I deal with. I teach music. Some of these kids, they're so bright, creative, and they're not allowed to... There's not a Kayli for them. They're... Where are the artists? There are kids who have... The shamas from the Shires of Dabi to Melech walking around right now. They're so good in Nagina. They're so... Alive when they're allowed to be. When I'm with them in the room and they have a guitar in their hand or they have a keyboard or something, and then they have to kind of pack it away and go sit in their desk. And they're... Some of them are so depressed. It drives me crazy. Some of them are so unhappy and I don't understand why people don't notice it or think that it's a priority. And the solution is so easy. Let your kid draw. I can't go too far because I know who I'm talking to, but let your kid present himself how he wants to. That's a conversation that's hard to get into. I understand the uniform and I understand the derech. I would just emphasize that that's a derech and that if a kid is struggling with that derech, he's not struggling with the derech. He's struggling with this manifestation of it and there needs to be an embrace of a multifaceted derech, like the paths through the yamsuf, you know, that metaphor, but he says it's a real thing. It's happening a little bit, maybe in Eretz's role, maybe it's starting to happen. We're not quite comfortable yet with allowing those sprouts to blossom. We're a little wary of them. I would make the case we don't have to be. The same energy that's running through these kids that scares their parents or teachers sometimes, is the energy that ran through me that taught me how to cut my nails. Quite a few years in the Yiddish community, in the Hamish community, you see a little bit of coming closer to allowing kids to be where they are. Did you have the same amount of music students in 10 years ago, like you have today? Yeah, in terms of amount of students, it's not said. I mean, to say it's becoming more normal. I think that Hashem is always pushing people forward through what could be perceived as a crisis or difficulty and it seems that he's pumping a lot of Haley Gnashamas in the community right now, who are forcing us to deal with the question of where they belong. So I do think that the younger generation, and there's so many wonderful families with young parents, and some of them are just giving their kids space to bloom, and it's fabulous, and I have seen more of that as that generation is coming into positions where they have more say in things, that there's a little bit of space being created. I have a friend in this community who is not about Tshuva, but he's from, not a Hasidish background, and he's talking now about starting a music space. He's from a community where he was allowed and his parents encouraged him to pursue music to a very high degree, and he's a wonderful player. And this friend of mine, a new friend, feels very strongly that it's time to create a space where Jewish people who have a little bit of a bend towards art or music, creativity, where they can come together and have a space to allow that to bloom. And I think 10 years ago, I probably would have said it's not time. It could be that it's time now to start small, to start small, but it could be. So obviously music is one of the very powerful tools for people to express themselves and... Music is confusing. I'm not dumb. I understand the parents who don't want their children playing guitar. I hold very deeply by a certain Sadik who advises people not to take up the guitar. I know people personally who could have been fabulous musicians who were counseled that they should not. I'm not stupid. I get where they're coming from. I left music for more than 10 years when I was getting very involved in my spiritual work. More than 10 years. It's not as simple as music's good and it will bring out these things I'm talking about. It's complicated. It's hard to tie the presence of God or the yearning of the religious sensibility. It's very hard to pin that down and maintain that in the midst of musical expression or musical practice, the path towards cultivating. I was against music for many years. After I left music school and I put it aside and I went to Israel, there was a period of time where I wasn't listening and I didn't have instruments and I considered it sort of a level below spiritual experience. I did. I thought it's a sense pleasure. It was nice. People would argue with me, wow, music makes you so happy and I'd say, but especially kids who struggle, they do need the extra dose of happiness. Well, now I'll get to the resolution because I've been involved. Thank you to my first student. I owe him a lot. I haven't told him because I'm embarrassed, but I owe him a lot. I didn't have a musical instrument in my house when he asked me to teach him and I got a $30 guitar at the thrift shop and, you know, he... I was being so cruel to myself, denying myself music. It was so pure that I could see in him the goodness and he allowed me to reclaim it and there were years of confusion about that, but... So you feel that the years that you were not the music you denied yourself? Maybe necessarily. I'd go to an extreme. This is a Ram Bomb thing with a tree. Like who knows? I'll say the resolution I came to is I took it for granted because of where I came from that people were exposed to art and to music and boy did I love art. Ooh, I was crazy about art. And my whole life was music. For years, my years were never empty of music. And then I said, okay, that was a child's thing and now I found spiritual experience which is more pleasurable and more important and more fundamental than aesthetic or musical experience. Then I started meeting boys who had never had musical experience. The boys I started teaching in this community had never opened their hearts and had those feelings and then I started to see what music was doing for them and then I started to realize that music was not a diversion from spiritual focus or spiritual experience that music was a preparation of the heart to sensitize it to spiritual experience. That it's like a, not a prerequisite because you don't have to go through it but it's a preliminary stage towards mystical or spiritual or religious feeling and I started to see boys who hadn't touched their hearts before. Their minds were very bright. Oh man, they could, they could, what are you, you slugged me up into Gamara, you know, I couldn't hang with them in Gamara or whatever, I didn't try but their hearts hadn't been touched and I started to realize there's something called intelligence of the heart and wisdom of the heart and that these boys, some of them needed it and weren't getting it so I started to see them picking up a guitar and this boy I knew before who was so depressed would run across the street to see me and tell me about what he learned on his guitar and I'd start to see that that affected everything in his life. His learning, his governing, his behavior. How can you not learn if you sit down and you're so excited because yesterday you heard the most beautiful sound you've ever heard and you made it. What a joy. Like we said, there are boys who have a certain nature and music is not necessary for everybody but there are boys where it's not necessarily music that they need but they need, their heart is bright and they need a tool to access that and then master that and then bring that out and those are the David and Melech's. Those are holy kids. They're not Rebelyashiv's and Rebelyashiv is Khochma and David and Melech is Malchus. We need the whole container, you know? Well, sometimes I think that we are lucky that many kids found, obviously you came to these conclusions based on a long journey of thinking and studying and connecting stuff like this but I see many boys even younger light that just play music and they have quite a common tool to open up and just... They have a common tool to just express the feelings and the emotions and I'm sure helps them. My goal is like, okay, I don't care about Jewish music. I care about the experience of the heart reacting to input and then being able to cultivate that as a wisdom of the heart. So with the boys, they're having like... They're gonna learn their kumzit songs and the bar mitzvah songs but I'm like, listen to like this. That's gorgeous. You can hear that. You can see a flower. You can see a tree. You can see the blue of the sky in a new way and it's like, open up the hearts, you know? I want them to sit in the room and just be like, this finger and I move this finger and if I... Ooh. Dove it? Just a second. You know what I'm saying? Just get that. I don't care if they go... Dove it may let me let Oh well Dove it. That's a tool, right? But I'm more interested in just getting the guitar in their hands and then trying to deepen their relationship to their own ability to create these fragile, beautiful things. You know? Deep purpose in music. It's just an A major 7 to an E major 7, by the way. It's nothing fancy. It's good voicings, but that's... It's a very profound distinction between the common music although good composites and good... Key on it. But there's nothing... That stuff's great, man. There's a difference between... This is like a cool distinction that I've made in my mind lately. There's music and there's song, right? There are almost two different things to me. So... Within those songs is the craft and the art of music and music is, you know, that beautiful A major 7 chord. You have a song and you have... Within the song you have the musicality of the song and that's what I'm interested in getting out of kids because it's nice they can play a Hainu but can they express the wisdom of their heart? I'd like to take the opportunity to thank you for being a member of the Let's Talk Tachles family. As you know, we try to bring you very interesting, very unique content. This is certainly one of them and it's our pleasure to do it for the Klal. We invite you to share it, to subscribe and to give us your input at Let'sTalkTachles.com. Thank you. For the Let's Talk Tachles, we, as you know, our goal is to to bring out Tachles in Yiddish, Tachles in people and really wake them up to the fortune that we have as kind and good Jewish, Yiddish human beings and we like to bring on guests that in different ways, on different topics can be with you, the Yiddin, the youth and the adults alike to tap into the oiza, to the fortune that we have as Yiddish people and in many ways and connect to it and be part of it and feel very comfortable, feel very happy where we are and not drift away in our mind to have to find satisfaction, happiness in other places by other people. There's plenty satisfaction in Tachles and hearts and warmth in Yiddish. Unfortunately, many of us are blocked from finding it and the goal is for us to help every Yidd to come to a point of discovering it, joining it and feeling very at home with it. Absolutely. And I would say that the way forward for a lot of people is the path of the heart and we have so many beautiful vessels. Acheno is a beautiful song with beautiful words. You're not going to find anywhere else such words, but you have to fill them with your heart and I'm in the business of priming the heart to draw the water up from the well of the heart. How was your way coming, sliding down from Virginia to, if you can in short, tell us a little bit about your experience of coming from the woods, as you say. The woods was more recently in your life but from a total different lifestyle to making such a strong decision, I'm talking physically and spiritually if you can give us a quick rundown of how does a boy from Virginia land in Yashiva in Yashalim? Not a why, I know why. But technically how does that happen? His parents, his family, his obligations, his I was at my parents' house after they had moved to the country. So at the time I was at NYU in the city I was going back and forth between Manhattan and these five acres that my parents had just bought in Virginia on a river. I was very in the thick of my spiritual work, pre-Balt Shuva days. I was really intense and I decided to take time off of school because I was losing interest in music. I was gaining a new interest so I went to be with my parents in their new home. While I was there, I began experiencing what I'd always wanted to experience. Feelings of spiritual peace, medragas in my inner life. This is hard to talk about. So I was very energized by my practice at that time which was spending a lot of time I guess I'd say in Devakas. I'd sort of discovered my inner world and my connection to the one sort of a light, an inner light that turned on at some point in me and I used to sit with that light and spent a lot of time doing that and it grew stronger within me and it felt like something true, felt like my true life. Can't explain it. I'll just talk a lot and we'll leave it to the editor. So at some point my experience of the inner world was getting very strong, very strong and I was sleeping three hours a night this went on for more than a month of every night consistently. I would sort of do my practice stretching, breathing, thinking and from about ten thirty to twelve thirty I'd go to sleep at twelve thirty and I'd wake up on the dot at three thirty a.m. took a little while to settle in and then I would open my eyes and look at the clock and I'd say three three zero and that happened many days in a row no alarm, no nothing it was a very intense period from three thirty to five I would sit on the upper step of my family's home and I would just bask in this inner world that I had been working hard for and had finally discovered and was getting stronger by being acknowledged. One day after about a month of this three thirty business I went out for a walk at about five in the morning and on the way back probably as the sun was coming up around that time I don't know I was struck with a extremely profound experience at the end of my parents gravel driveway in that experience I saw who I was for the first time and I saw beyond all of the conditioned parts of me I saw who I was without makeup on and I also realized that I'd been putting on makeup my whole life and hadn't realized it and I saw I without any bending and twisting and conforming and it was beautiful and it was frigging it was nice I also saw what I had to do to be that and in that moment I recognized that I didn't want to be home at my parents house and actually I never really wanted to be it wasn't the happiest place and I realized I didn't have to be I was free so I knew intuitively that I could turn around I could walk back to the street I could stick out my thumb and I could leave show up tell them a new name which was given to me in this experience which I won't get into and it was all I wanted but the terror that came with that was impossible to overcome leaving my family, leaving my parents everything I had ever been or built every personality I had ever constructed or worked on musician or a good boy or a straight A student or going to finish college after just six months of a break all of that dead gone and all of a sudden I was like ah I'm okay all of that were games I was playing when I didn't feel okay to try to make me okay but I'm okay I want this and it was like oh yeah what about your parents what are you going to eat what about what your parents are going to wake up you're not going to be here and I didn't know in that feeling of freedom if I was ever going to see my parents again because they weren't there now in reality I probably would have hitchhiked wherever I was going and called them but the fear presented itself in fear is shaker fear is a shaker you're as a shem that's another conversation mom is I think you proved it my mom disagrees not I didn't prove it because it overwhelmed me the fear and I couldn't be that person I wasn't able and I struggled with it for a while and the fear had a gravity it was like I was like literally like my body was like oh I can't deal with it the light is too I can't handle it like I'm not ready I made this whole airing fast I'm not my mom, my dad, the food in the refrigerator my bed like I couldn't handle it it was like 50-50 I was right on the razor edge the fear, the light, the fear I can't do it I can't terrified, terrified finally I was like okay I can't do it now but I'll be able to do it eventually later and I went back home and I made the biggest mistake I experienced the call of my life and I couldn't answer it and I realized that I don't have the ability to choose when I'm going to answer it next time okay so let me just go home and I'll take care of this and I'll take not how it works the whole test is that you have to be ready to choose very scary so I spent a period of time after that in tremendous agitation and I say a period of time months remorse depression, not so much depression because I was too agitated to be depressed but feeling like the biggest calamity that has ever existed was visited upon me like I can't believe it I can't everything everything gone so I wanted to prove that truly I wanted this I wanted to prove it to myself and I wanted to prove it to God I'm not afraid I'm not afraid of what I'm going to eat I'm not afraid of where I'm going to sleep I'm not afraid so I would make these little things it's not like I made them they were kind of like in the remnants of that that invitation that I had they were still in me like let me get a little of that and I started going on long walks and finally one day it was so strong in me all this fear came up again and I had the idea that I wanted to walk to the nearest city which was Richmond, Virginia which was a 90 mile walk from my parents house and my biggest fear was my parents are going to think that I was going to be in my mind but I knew I wanted to claim this just to say I'm not scared and I love God and I want it you know and I was in such agony on the couch saying like my parents were sitting there watching TV, hanging out, whatever and finally it was like mom, dad I want to walk to Richmond and like they we had had some conversation about what had been going on with me so it wasn't totally out of the blue but it was kind of like and they were in a surprise as I thought they were they were more just unimpressed they were like do it or don't you're going to do it do it whatever you know I think they were a little weird weirded out but I don't know so I was just like so I went I walked out the door and I had nothing nothing in my pockets no bag, no wallet, no money empty pockets and what I was wearing and I started walking I had my strimalon I had my t-shirts on the outside I had a t-shirt in a pair of khaki pants probably and I think I was wearing crocs but part of the whole test was like I felt I was being compelled to do this and it was like so that's it you know I once asked a tzadik in your Shalima of Yakovides so I think anybody would say is a tzadik if you don't know him don't worry about it but he didn't speak English so I had to try to pack my questions into very tight you know tight form and I'd ask somebody to translate for me and I was trying to ask him if you feel you have to do something if God asks you let's say nobody's a nubby you know you have to do something do you apply your rational mind to it and say okay well first I'm gonna get that or you just go okay here I go so I asked him like this to ask him that question I asked him if God wakes you up in the middle of the night and tells you to go outside do you have to stop and put your shoes on first that's what I asked and he looks at me like okay that's not what I was expecting and he says and I go and he goes whatever and the translator says he says you don't have to stop and put your shoes on get out and do it he says you don't have to stop and I was like thank God I asked the right tzadik because that's a courageous answer you can't go ask you can't be a shiba bachar and ask you to shiba that and he'd be like just go to bed and there's Seder tomorrow who's like so I had that in mind so that was later that hadn't happened yet but anyway so I walked out the door in my crocs and I walked to Richmond and it took that's a lie I hitchhiked the last almost 20 miles I was having trouble with my knee and this and that and this guy was gonna give me a ride so I walked 70 miles that night how long did it take? about 3 days day and night and where did you sleep? inside the road in the woods I slept mostly during the day and I walked mostly at night because the roads were country roads and you could see the headlights coming at night and they weren't busy and I could just walk on the road and then I'd sort of lay down I'd go up in the woods a little bit and I would just lay down I can't believe I did it now to now I'd be scared ready to walk back? I wish man I wish I had the courage I had then so that was my first success really I got to Richmond I wanted to keep going and I chickened out I should have kept going instead my mom met me in Richmond and it was kind of like I wanted to keep going and I felt trapped now my mom is there why I'd call her I should have just kept going to the next town I knew where it was, whatever, only 20 miles 30 miles only yeah well it's a days and days I was walking about 20 to 25 miles a day I did about 20 something like that and so the goal of reaching Richmond by Hashem you so then I felt still that this sort of faith exercise that I was doing the whole exercise was like this I didn't listen to God or whatever it was in that first instance because I was afraid two things I was afraid of were food and shelter so I was trying to break that fear so I felt very compelled to keep going in that direction so one day I left again with nothing for 30 months I went down the coast of Florida I walked a large part of the way then I got a ride spent time around Jacksonville basically as a homeless person it was a blast the best days of my life I felt closer to God in those moments and I felt in a long time I really was completely living on God's chesed and that helped forge a part of me that I could trust myself that I could trust this calling that was happening in me sometimes I'd found kind of bedrock of my compass my inner compass it gets challenged a lot especially around here it's very difficult to find and commit to your inner compass and you go through a lot of doubt Hashem and Sadik would say different then you really are in a bind that's happened to me but I guess I see the absolute essence of the spiritual life as the Belzer or the Bubbaver standing under that chuppah after the war and just standing there and not making any of the brachas and everybody saying what are you doing what are you doing with it this man is going to be the next day stood there for like an hour people getting mad, people leaving that's wrong and did the whole research and they found out that Hashem and Kala were related and they weren't allowed to get married what was it in him that gave him the courage to stand there you know what was it in him that said like something's wrong something's not what are you doing I can't violate there's something I cannot violate the essence of the spiritual life is where is that in you how do I find that I don't have the courage and it's not courage, it's imuna you have to get to the point where there's something in you that you trust you have to be able to trust something in you and go for it well yeah you have to trust it about anything else and that's very scary but that's the spiritual life you had a long enough story there's a million examples wow I can't even fathom this I can't either once in a blue moon I know that I want to eat a particular food and it works out and there's parking right in front of there that's as far as I've I haven't stopped the Hasen but your achievement to crack the code as they say and do what you really felt to find you inner coitus and break the fear I mean not many people can put on the resume such a... everybody's doing it everybody's doing it I may have done it in a foolish way I may not have been 100% right I wasn't so bad I did pretty good but it led you to great new heights it did and it led me to deeper tests and I don't mean in deeper tests of do I actually trust myself do I actually trust this? is there a real God? is God going to take care of me? actually because I feel called in a certain direction I don't mean starting a business I mean like walking down the road I don't know if I'm ever going home again and I feel I'm doing the right thing I feel that it's strengthening me and I feel that it's purifying me and I feel that I'm going to find something and God I can't do it I'm terrified what am I going to eat? this happened to me, terrified I was not far from my house and I wanted to turn around I was like am I doing this again? this is crazy I can't do it my parents and that that that and finally I let out such a tequila from my heart and it was like anger it was like what are you asking from me what am I going to eat? mom I just came out of my mouth what am I going to eat? you crazy? and I'm telling you I stopped and I looked down and on the side of the country road by my parents house there was a pile of clementines on the side of the road fresh, wrapped, clean ready to eat I couldn't believe it I ate three of them stuck them all in my pockets I said alright I wasn't sold I was terrified but I you know what do you want? so that one turned out to be an easier one and I didn't I think I turned around at the end of the day so that wasn't a big one but it was a semen for sure and I had semen all over the place and how long did it take for you to learn in Israel? oh yeah we're Jews here we got talk Jews so this was all frightening my family a little bit what's Aaron doing with his life? so I had a cousin who got involved with Asia Taira on campus on the west coast and there's a very generous man out there he sends people to Asia Taira sponsors them so my cousin was there my cousin was hookline and sinker for Asia Taira he loved Asia Taira so it came to a family reunion you know you're very interested in these spiritual things and we know that you're a Jew you know this guy sent me to Israel and he likes to work with families and so he asked if there's any of my family might be interested so he wanted to know if he wanted to go to Israel now several months before this I had met the Calaver Rebbe who was the first Sadik I ever met and he said to me in Richmond, Virginia he travels on his own expense to meet Eden and he told me, not yet but when you're ready you should go study the Bible he maybe even used the word Bible I was in such a madraga and knew nothing he said, in Israel and to me that was like me telling you you should go study finance in China maybe you're more hamshaikhs to finance than I had the Yiddish guy go study water polo in China I didn't even know what he meant I was like what does that mean you just read the Bible over it and then this offer came to me so the next time I saw the Calaver Rebbe I said Rebbe I said the Rebbe told me last time I saw him in New York that's a crazy story too I don't know if we have time for it somehow I was in New York for like two days and I got a call on myself from the Gabbai you want to meet the Rebbe how did he know you're in New York I said who the Calaver Rebbe you met him do you want to make a meeting with him and I was like I'm in New York like I met him in Virginia like I'm in New York got out of that one and he goes did Ebbe is also in New York and I was like how did you know like I was there for two days Mom is just visiting old friends and I was like he was like you come tonight I'm like okay so I tell my friends like I have an appointment with the Rabbi at like 1030 they're like 1030 at night in Williamsburg we were in Park Slope or something okay anyway so I said to the Rebbe Rebbe told me XYZ and he said you should go you're not doing anything else I didn't listen to him I didn't want to go I'm not into religion I didn't want to go I didn't want to go nine months later you know I eventually long story short I said yes another kind of Rukhni's dikkha nas kind of thing from the Calaver so I said yes here you are today I'm not sure the story goes that easy but yeah here I am I'm sure we can talk all night to hear your wow what an interesting and amazing and profound thank you amount of courage yeah it was back then and I'm sure it was built in Lashem Levado it was only to connect to Lashem not for any other in the world somebody handed me a hundred dollar bill one day on that journey I had one of these understandings that I wanted to go to a certain place I went there was a lady there she handed me a bible and she was like please read it please she was very agitated please read it crazy crazy lady okay whatever she leaves I go there's a hundred dollar bill in it I didn't want it 100 dollars I didn't want it so I walked to the bank and I put in the bank I said this is my name I have an account in this bank I'm not a stranger putting money in a stranger's account he said okay we trust you small town they took it they put it in the bank I didn't want it I wanted a shem to give me food direct I guess he gave me a hundred dollars but I didn't want it directly I didn't touch money for months it's called me talashomayim directly from heaven yeah and he did wow I'm proud to be named Aaron suddenly a lot of good errands out there suddenly I discovered a pride in my name really want to thank you for coming to let's talk to Achlas thank you and shedding so much light on Yiddish guide I'm discovering the Heiliger which we know he's always is only interest and goal and reason of creating the world and be the boy of Shemayim but what it is to comfort us and to give us and to find us and to connect with us and it's very breathtaking to hear a story live unfiltered from a person with such a high high in the shema that is leaving don't care about anything although you have a nice shirt and a nice today the shirt is nicer than the shirt but I know it's it's not at all in any way part of you your purity and your connection is your flag and your gold mission life and I want to wish you should be able to grow spiritually and should be easy for you and you should blend with the right people Amir Shem have a good Shidduch soon and you should always have it easy to do the Rotsnava Shem and you should always bump into the best people who can bring out the best in you and you can share with them your amazing depth. Thank you I want all these things for you that may be the Shidduch that can go to your children and I'm grateful for what you're doing thank you