 We often hear that print media is dying today and that magazines and newspapers are going the way of the Dodo bird. The truth is that it may be true in general, but in the Jewish community it's not true. There's a plethora of new magazines and newspapers and journals still coming out, new ones all the time. In New York last week I picked up a recent edition of a journal called Dialogue and in the first article, which is called A Call to Spiritual Arms, Rabbi Aaron Feldman begins by asking the question rhetorically, what is the greatest problem facing Jewry in today's world? I mean it's not an easy question to answer. But he goes through a catalogue of what are normally considered to be some of the greatest challenges to the Jewish people today, but what he suggests is, I don't want to debate him on this, there's certainly some truth to it, he feels that the greatest challenge we face is that far too many Jewish people today, even Jewish people who may be observant, they may be actually observant of the Torah, are not very spiritual, what he would say, not really connected spiritually. So he speaks in this article about those he calls observant but not religious. I would say maybe observant but not spiritual. And he feels this is just about the greatest problem that we're facing in the Jewish community today. Now the truth is that this topic is getting a tremendous amount of traction because in another journal called Clow Perspectives, which you can get actually for free online, so the Spring 2012 edition, the entire issue basically focused on the question of why so many Jewish people today feel no real connection to God or to Judaism, and dealing with what is perceived to be a general spiritual emptiness. Rabbi Salah Wehchuk of Blessed Memory used to observe that one of the greatest problems we have in the world today as Jews is that we don't really want to daven. He said we don't really want to pray. He said we want to have prayed already. We don't want to do it. We want it to be over with. Another book I picked up recently is by Dr. Erica Brown, a book called Spiritual Boredom. And this is an entire book again published in 2009 that focuses on this lethargy and spiritual malaise within our community. The truth is that it's not a new problem. It's actually a very old problem. The Torah tells us that our forefather Jacob, who had a very, very difficult relationship with his father-in-law, probably one of the most miserable father-in-laws in the history of the Bible, Laban, Jacob had enough and he decides he's got to get out of there. He knew that his father-in-law would not willingly allow him to leave so Jacob and his entire family basically pick up in the middle of the night and they make their getaway. Before they leave, Rachel, his wife, one of his wives, stole, took some of her father's idols. Laban at some point realizes his idols are gone, his daughters are gone, his grandchildren are gone, and he chases after Jacob and his family. Now Jacob has a pretty nice head start, but ultimately Laban catches up to him. And Jacob is a little bit surprised by how quickly Laban is able to overtake him. He thought he had a pretty good head start. And when they finally meet, Jacob turns to his father-in-law, Laban, and he says in Genesis chapter 31 verse 36, he says, what is my transgression and what is my sin that you pursued me so hotly? It's a very difficult phrase to translate, but the word delek seems to imply fire. And he's really asking, you know, why did you chase after me with so much zeal and so much, you know, so much enthusiasm and you came running after me? What does he mean by this? From Meir Shapiro of Leblin, a very great rabbi from the previous century, what he says is that Jacob was actually shaken by the passion that Laban exhibited by chasing him down, because he understood that part of that passion was the fact that Laban was missing his idols. Where are my idols? I want my idols. And he comes running after Jacob. So Jacob sees how much passion and enthusiasm Laban has for his idols. And he feels by comparison, you know, my service of God doesn't really even compare so well in comparison. So when he sees Laban pursuing him so hotly, Jacob says to himself, what is my transgression? What is my sin? Look at how much enthusiasm my father-in-law brings to his nonsense, to his idolatry. I don't even bring a fraction of that to my service of God. We've cook taught that we have an obligation actually to learn from everyone, even from idolaters. In terms of emulating how much zeal they bring to their idolatry. The cuts Qarebi used to say, said in Yiddish, I'll translate it into English. He said that they serve their falsehood but with truth. And he said we Jews often serve our truth but with falsehood. I mean that we don't bring oftentimes to our service, our spiritual life, the kind of passion and enthusiasm and dedication and zeal that idolaters bring to their service. And Resola Wehchik wrote, he didn't really write many books. Most of what he taught was recorded and then transcribed by others. But a book that he actually wrote, word for word, was a book called Uvikashtem Misham and You Shall Seek From There, a very, very amazingly beautiful book. And in this book he begins by discussing Shir HaShirim, the Song of Songs, which the Talmud says is the Holy of Holies of all the books in the Bible. The Bible is holy but Rabbi Akiva said the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies because he said the Song of Songs is supposed to be a very powerful metaphor describing the intensely personal and passionate relationship between a Jew and God or between the Jewish people and God. It's supposed to be an incredibly deep relationship. Mimadides, the Rambam, in his Hilchos Chuvah, Laws of Repentance, Chapter 10, Verse 3, tries to describe what is supposed to be our relationship to God. The Rambam says the following. One should be in a continuous state of rapture, like a person who is lovesick, whose thoughts cannot turn from his love for a particular woman. He's preoccupied with her at all times, whether he's sitting or standing, whether he's eating or drinking, all he can do is think about this woman that he's crazy about. Even more intense should be the love of God in our hearts. For those who love God, possessing them always as we are commanded with all of your heart and with all of your soul. This is what Solomon expressed allegorically when he wrote in the book Song of Songs for I am sick with love. I'm lovesick. And indeed the entire Song of Songs is a parable for this concept. So we have this idea that our relationship with God is supposed to be a very profoundly passionate one. And yet Rabbi Salamacic points out that when you study the book, this incredibly powerful metaphor, the Song of Songs, you see that it portrays a somewhat ambiguous relationship between this couple. Because really it doesn't speak about God, it speaks about a couple, a man and a woman, a person and his lover. And when you look carefully at the story, things seem a bit peculiar. For example, when the woman is seeking the man and they're constantly pining for each other. In this story, they're always looking for each other. How can we connect with each other? And yet every single time that they have a chance to connect, they seem to squander the opportunity. It's a whole book of missed opportunities. So when she's seeking the man, he disappears in the rocks, he's nowhere to be found. And then later when she's laying in bed and she's groaning and moaning, where is my lover? Where is my love? I can't live without him. He comes knocking at the door, but she can't schlep herself out of bed. She's laying in bed, he's knocking in the door. She can't pull herself out of bed. But at times she finally pulls herself out of bed and gets to the door. He's gone. It's a very strange love poem when you think about it. Now, by Salavichek says that in many ways this characterizes the fact that our relationship with God is not necessarily smooth sailing. It's supposed to be a passionate love affair. But it's not so simple. We have issues, as they say. I often tell a story that I heard once about a young Yeshiva student. He's at a very famous Lithuanian Yeshiva, one of the greatest Yeshivas in the world back then, and he hears that in Meserich, which was the seat of the Hasidic movement, there was a spiritual revolution going on. So this Yeshiva student goes to his rabbi and he says, Rebbe, I want to go to visit Meserich. And the rabbi says to him, what do you need to go to Meserich for? You're in Yeshiva here. We study Talmud all day long. We pray. What else do you need? And the student felt he had to go. He needed to see what was happening in Meserich. So he goes to Meserich and he stays there for a number of years, comes back finally to his Yeshiva, and his rabbi sees him and his rabbi says, oh, look who's back. The big shot from Meserich. He says to the student, so new, what did you learn when you were in Meserich? So the student says, Rebbe, when I was in Meserich, I learned how to read minds. So the rabbi says, you can read minds? Really? He says, what am I thinking right now? So the student says to the rabbi, Rebbe, I know that you are meditating on the verse in the Bible, which says, Shiviti Hashem Lenegdi Tamid. I set the presence of God before me at all times. That's what you're thinking about. And the rabbi said, I wasn't thinking about that. And the student said, that's why I ran away to Meserich. There are places where this idea of connecting to God is taken a little bit more seriously. Kalman Kalanana Shapiro, who was the last tracidic rabbi, really, to have a court during the times of the Shoah, during the Holocaust, he was in the Warsaw ghetto. He wrote a number of very, very important books. And he knew he would not survive the war. And he buried his books under the floor, under the ground of the Warsaw ghetto, with a note saying that if these books are ever found, please send them to have a brother living in Israel. That's what happened in 1960s. These books were found finally, sent to Israel. They were published. And now we're blessed to have many books by the Piazzetz and the Rebbe. In one of his books, a little small booklet called, It's Savva Zeroes, he writes the following about our nature, who we are as people. He says the soul of each human being loves to feel. Our souls need to feel things. Our souls yearn not only for feelings of happiness, but our souls will also be drawn to morose and terrifying feelings. He says a person will even listen to horror stories and watch violent, horrifying scenes, which can actually bring him to tears, just so that he'll feel something. Now, he was living in the 1930s before they had hockey games. Or before you were able to see horrible car crashes on the side of the road. I mean, he didn't know from horrible scenes. I mean, of course, he wasn't talking about the Holocaust there. He was talking about from his culture. But he says that we need, we crave to feel things so much, we'll even look after things that upset us. Even things that bring us to tears, just so that we'll be able to feel something. He says emotion is the food of the soul. Emotion is the food of our soul. It's as much of a need of the soul as food is to our bodies. Therefore, he says a person who fulfills this need, the need to feel. With passionate and emotional prayer, an emotional study is nourishing their soul correctly. But he says, prayer and study of Torah without emotion will leave a vacuum that will force the soul to search for emotion anywhere, even in sinful activities. If we don't nourish ourselves properly, Shapira says we'll end up ultimately seeking it in the wrong places. In the work that I do at Jews for Judaism, I'm constantly meeting Jewish people today who are in churches, who are in ashrams, who are in everywhere else in the world except for synagogues. And when I speak to them, they tell me that they never really encountered in the Judaism of their formative years, they never encountered a passionate feeling kind of Judaism. And therefore, they saw it at somewhere else. Many years ago, I was asked by a family in the United States to fly down there to debate the pastor of their children's church. This was an old couple and they were the matriarch and patriarch of this family. And one of the young couples had embraced Christianity, and they were part of a Jews for Jesus congregation. And they saw that this couple was beginning to influence their cousins and other people in the family, and they wanted to try to nip it in the bud. And so they asked me if I would come down and debate with the pastor, the rabbi, of this couple. And normally I don't believe in debating, but this was going to be an emergency situation. I felt that there was really nothing else to do but to agree to go down there. And also it wouldn't be public just in front of this family, the entire family in the living room. Thank God the debate went well for the good guys. And towards the end of the evening, the couple got up and they were very upset because they saw that their position really didn't come out that well. And so the fellow gets up and he says to the family, very passionately, he says, don't think that what we're doing, we're doing because it's the easy way out. He said, the truth of the matter is we've sacrificed immensely for what we're doing. I mean, we ended up in many ways destroying our relationships with our friends, with many people in the family, and the life we're living is not easy. We pray every day, we study the Bible every day, we give 10% of our money to charity, and we're very careful about what movies we go to, what TV shows we watch, we're living lives of discipline and holiness. It's not the easy way out that we're taking. And I saw that he was very, very excited about what he was saying. And when he was finished, I said, you know, what you remind me of is a story I heard once about a fellow who was playing football, and he wasn't the best player on the team, but at the end of the game, they brought him off of the bench, and he caught the ball, and he's running with the ball. And he's running, and he's killing himself, he's running so hard, and his whole team is up, and they're screaming and yelling, and he thinks that his whole team is excited, that they're ruining for him. Go, go, go, go, go. He doesn't realize that they're screaming at him because he's going in the wrong way, and he's going to get the goal for the other team. And I said to this young man, you know, I really, in many ways, admire what you're doing because you are sacrificing, and you are living a life of spirituality, and you are living a life of discipline and holiness, and you do take it seriously, and you work very hard at it. He said, but the problem is you're getting the goal and the other team's goal, meaning that everything you're doing is in the service of idolatry. But that's what happens when Jewish people don't have an anchor within their own faith that's real, that's spiritual, that's vibrant, they go elsewhere. The Book of Deuteronomy in Artura in Parashat Kitava warns, what will ultimately cause destruction to the Jewish people? What's going to cause our destruction? And the Torah says it's because we are not going to be serving God with joy. It's a pretty incredible statement the Torah makes. Meaning it's not saying that your ultimate destruction is going to come because you're abandoning God. It's saying that you're going to be serving God, but you won't be serving Him with joy. The Sphasemists, the holy Gararebi, ask the question, what constitutes sufficient joy in our service of God? Meaning if we're being held to this standard that we have to serve God with joy, how much joy is necessary? And the Sphasemist says it should be at least equal to the amount of passion that we bring to non-spiritual things in life. Let me give you an example of this. I had to learn this the hard way. The Talmud teaches us in Tractate Shabbat, page 31A, that at the end of our lives, after 120 years, we're each going to be getting a final exam. What's nice is that the Talmud tells us in advance what the questions are going to be. And one of the questions on our final exam is going to be, Tsipita Liashua, did you anxiously await the redemption during your lifetime? Were you someone who was really wishing and hoping with intensity for the Mashiach to come, for redemption to come? That's going to be one of the four questions we're asked. I never realized how far I fell short on this until many years ago I was invited to give a number of weeks of lectures in Australia. I think I was down in Sydney and I spoke to a university group, got back to the place I was staying at around 11 o'clock, 1130 at night, and I was tired. And I finally got to bed a little bit before midnight. And then, maybe a half hour later, I needed to use the men's room. So I go into the men's room and something very strange happened. I couldn't get out. I was locked in this bathroom for eight hours. Thank God they had one copy of Newsweek Magazine, which I read about 400 times. But I was in this room for eight hours and I was a guest in the house. I didn't want to bang on the door and wake people up. So I basically waited in this bathroom until I could hear people in the morning. A little bit after eight o'clock I finally hear people and I said, thank God. But I realized for those eight hours I was plotting. I was plotting for someone to come and let me out of the bathroom. And I caught myself at one point saying, do I really have that much uneasiness about the fact that Messiah hasn't come yet and that we're not living in a redeemed world? So this Faseme says, how much enthusiasm do we have to have spiritually? He says, at least as much enthusiasm as we have for non-spiritual things. Think about, for example, the kind of things that we get excited about. People have hobbies. People like to collect stamps. They like to do quilting, whatever people do. They get very excited about their hobbies. People get very excited, especially in Canada, about the outcome of a hockey game. About going out to dinner. It's a big deal. Getting a new phone or a new car. People get very excited. They look forward to it. They anticipate it. Going on a vacation or going traveling. How about winning the lottery? I had a strange thing happen a few months ago. It was late at night and my wife calls out from her computer room. He says, Michael, we bought a lottery ticket. She says, we have five numbers. Come in here. You've got to look and check it out. So I go in there and I look and I say, we have five numbers. And it said, if you have five numbers, you're going to get, I think it was 20% or whatever. It turned out that we calculated about $2 million. We couldn't believe it. So we couldn't sleep that night. Obviously, we're spending the money already. We're counting the money. It's unbelievable. One minute, we're just like this. And the next minute, we've got $2 million. So the next morning, right away, we called the lottery commission. Just wanted to check the numbers. These are the five numbers. Yeah, you've got the five numbers. So how much are we going to get? It said 120. So I figured 120,000. That's all we're going to get is $120,000. He says, no, $120. So what do you mean $120? I said, we have five numbers. He said, yeah, but so did 4,000 other people had those five numbers. But it was quite amazing how incredibly sucked in we were to this fantasy of having this $2 million. We couldn't even sleep. We had spent all of it by the time the morning came. We all know that our spiritual makeup as Jews includes a spiritual component. We speak about something called the pintiliid, this sort of inner spark that we have. We have a spark. It's interesting that we know in the Bible we have a commandment to love God. And all the commentaries are puzzled. How could there be a commandment to love God? How do you command an emotion? You can't command an emotion. And some of the commentaries point out that it's not really a big deal, because by nature we love God. It's just our nature, our natural instinct, the same way children naturally love their parents, we naturally love God. It's not a big deal to command us. And the commandment is basically not so much a commandment to create something from nothing. It's a commandment to make sure that that spark doesn't go out. It's interesting that the Torah says in the book of Vayikur Leviticus, chapter six, verse six, the verse says, Aish tamid tukad alhamiz bayach lo sikhbe. An eternal flame should be ignited on the altar. This is the idea that we have of an eternal lamp in our synagogues. We have a continually burning lamp, because in the temple there had to be a fire constantly burning at the altar. And it says that that fire may never go out. And Rabbi Cook, who was the first chief rabbi of the modern state of Israel, he said that this thirst for godliness that burns within our hearts must never be allowed to go out. So we have it in us, we have this in us, and we have to make sure that it never goes out. Elie Wiesel once wrote about a poet who was asked the following question. He was asked, what one thing would you save from your home if there were ever to catch fire? And the poet said, I would save the fire, because without it I could not create, I could not write, and my life would not be worthwhile. The same thing applies to this fire that burns within each of us. When I first came to Yeshiva University back in 1971, there was a teacher who during the prayers would scream out, yeah, hey, shmay, rabba! I spoke about the Kaddish here last week, and when he would answer the Kaddish, he would scream at the top of his lungs. The first time I heard it, I almost jumped out of my shoes. And I have to confess that each time I heard this rabbi screaming the Kaddish answer, I really thought he was a bit of a strangeoid. Yet now when I'm in synagogues, and I hear people very lethargically answering the Kaddish, or ignoring it altogether and not responding because they're engrossed in a conversation or they're reading some flyer, I realize that that rabbi at Yeshiva University, he really was the normal one. Julius tells a story about a Messianic Jewish concert that took place in Belleville here in Ontario. The group was called Kohl Simcha, one of the most famous Jews for Jesus musical groups. And at the end of the concert, one of the people that was in the group read from the Jewish prayer book. He read our prayer Adon Olam, but he read it in English. Julius said that the entire group of people, these are mostly Christians that were there in this church, they cried, they cried because it was so beautiful. Look how beautiful this is. These words of Adon Olam, how gorgeous. They were so moved by it. And then this fellow said that, you know what? When this is being said in many synagogues at the end of the prayer services, many of the Jewish people there don't bother saying it. They're either taking off their talises or they're walking out, they're getting ready to go to the Kaddish. And the people in the room started crying all over again because it was so sad to them that Jewish people who have such a beautiful prayer in their prayer books don't really appreciate it. I often hear from converts to Judaism and I speak to many converts how disappointed they are when they meet people who were born Jewish. These are people that converted, they had to sacrifice and it was often so difficult for them. And they think about the people they meet that are born Jewish, that don't fully appreciate what we take for granted. The Talmud actually says that converts are a big problem for the Jewish community. Not necessarily the nicest comment to make. Butosovus explains that what it might mean is there are problems for us because they make us look bad by comparison. Converts bring a tremendous amount of zeal and enthusiasm and passion to their practice of Judaism. And us, we often are so lackadaisical about it, they make us look bad. Years and years ago, when I think we first started the Jews for Judaism office up in Thornhill, I received an email from a young teenage girl who was growing up on a goat farm outside of Edmonton. And she told me that she never met a Jew in her life but she was reading in the Bible about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and she was so inspired by these people she wanted to find out more. So we exchanged emails for a while and I was trying to explain that in Judaism, we don't believe that you have to become a Jew in order to have a relationship with God. There's this path that God gave to all of humanity even before there was Judaism called the Noahide path and I tried to explain it to her and we communicated for a while and finally she said, you know what, Rabbi Scobac, I'm really more interested in Judaism, okay? So we started to communicate about Judaism and I tried to answer her questions and I could see that she's very, very interested. So one time I wrote to her and I said, you know, would you be interested in actually meeting some real live Jews? And she got very, very excited. She said, yeah, it'd be wonderful. So I have friends in Edmonton and I arranged for her to go there for Shabbat and it was like a fish to water. She loved it and they loved her and she would go back all the time she became a regular at this house and then there was a family who used to live in Edmonton and they were visiting from Israel. This is a family where the husband studies in a Yeshiva full time and they ended up basically taking her in in Israel. This young woman moved to Israel, stayed with this family and I lost touch with her. So a few years ago I get a phone call from this young woman and I wasn't home, she left a message on the answering machine and please call me back and I call back and she's not there but the man at the house was there and he says, look, Rabbi Skobak, she probably won't mind me telling you why she called. She was calling to tell you that she finished her conversion, she ended up finishing her conversion and she actually got engaged. That's why she was calling to tell you she got engaged. He says to me, you know what? By the way, she got engaged to one of the top students in the Mir Yeshiva. Mir Yeshiva's like a Harvard or Yale, the Yeshiva's in Israel. She ends up getting engaged to one of the top students at the Mir Yeshiva. And before I hang up, he says to me, Rabbi Skobak, I'm gonna tell you something about this young woman that you helped send to us here in Israel. He said that when she finally finished the conversion process and she had to go to the mikvah and she gets immersed in the mikvah, there's a baitin, there are three rabbis that are standing behind a curtain and they have to be there in the room and when she came out of the mikvah, the conclusion of her conversion process, she thanked the rabbis on the baitin, she thanked them. And they thought that she was thanking them for converting her. So she says, no, I'm not thanking you for converting me. So they say, why are you thanking us? So she says, I'm thanking you because now I can finally pray with all of my heart for the Messiah to come. So they said, what, you weren't praying for that? Because it's part of the Jewish prayers, she was probably saying the Jewish prayers. So she said, you know, rabbis, you know that I couldn't really pray with all of my heart for the Messiah to come because you know that according to Jewish law, when the Messiah comes, the Jewish community will not accept any more converts. And she said, so until I finished my conversion, I was a little bit nervous for the Messiah to come. I didn't want him to come before I finished converting, I wanted, she said, to be Jewish so deeply. She said, I wanted to be a Jew so badly, I just couldn't, of course, I prayed for the Messiah to come, of course I prayed but I couldn't do it with all of my heart. But now that you converted me, she says, I want to thank you because now she says I can pray with all of my heart for the Messiah to come. This is someone who appreciates what it is to be a Jew. The Talmud tells a story about one of the most famous converts in all of history, Uncleis, Uncleis Hager. And when Uncleis embraced Judaism, the emperor sent a contingent of soldiers to arrest him and he engaged these soldiers in a discussion about the Bible and these soldiers all converted to Judaism. So the emperor sent another group of soldiers that got into another discussion and the second group all converted to Judaism. So the Talmud says that the emperor said, I'm gonna send one more group but he commanded them, don't talk with this fellow, don't get into conversations with him. So the third group of soldiers show up and they're leading Uncleis away and as he's leaving the house, he puts his hand on the mezuzah outside his house and they looked a little bit puzzled and they say, what's this all about? So he said, normally it's the way of the world that the king dwells inside and all of his servants protect him, they're on the outside protecting the king but in our case with the Jewish people, we dwell inside and the king of kings guards us from the outside and they were so blown away by this that the third group converted to Judaism, the emperor didn't bother sending anyone else. The question is, what impressed this third group so much? What was so impressive that he says that by Jewish people, we are in the house and God's outside the house, the commentaries explained that it wasn't what he said that really got to them, it wasn't the content of what he said, it was how he said it, it was his passion, it was his emotion, it was his commitment, they saw in the way he said it, that it was real. They say in advertising, don't sell the steak, sell the sizzle. And that's what was happening here. We learn in the Talmud, dvoram ha-yotsim min ha-layv, nichnasim el ha-layv, something that comes out from the heart will enter the heart. If it's not really coming from deep down inside, it falls off of other people's ears, it doesn't make much of an impact. And so here, this wonderful, Gehrt-Sedek, this righteous convert, unqalus, is able to convert all of these Roman soldiers that were sent to arrest him, not because of what he said, it's because they saw something in him that was incredibly powerful. You know, we live in a world today where too often, the attitude we see towards Judaism is one which is whatever, that's often what people bring to their Judaism. They have like whatever kind of approach to their Jewishness. And it's always touching and moving to see expressions of real, sincere connection. I go to a small storefront synagogue, just a few blocks south of here, called Base Doviosef. It is lovingly led by Rabbi Bartfeld, who was well known here at Shari Tfilah. He is tirelessly given the dafyomi class downstairs for many, many years. And on Friday nights, after the prayers, after the Shabbat prayers on a Friday night, we form a circle, and Rabbi Bartfeld leads us in a dance to a chant, and we're singing about the beautiful holiness of Shabbat. Rabbi Bartfeld dances with his eyes closed and his face radiates total ecstasy, total ecstasy, that here is a man that you could see who's in love with Shabbat. He's in love with Hashem. He's in love with the Torah. He's in love with Judaism. But when we're dancing on Friday nights to this beautiful song about how holy Shabbat is, and Rabbi Bartfeld is lost in ecstasy with his eyes closed as we dance, it's one of the highlights of my week. Similarly, I remember when I was first a student at Yeshiva, and I celebrated the high holidays for the first time in my life, not in the synagogue, but I celebrated the holidays in Yeshiva. And after the end of Yom Kippur services, the ending of Na'ilah, and after the evening services after Na'ilah, instead of running back to eat, that's not what we did. After the whole long day of Yom Kippur, a whole day of fasting, many of us stood the entire day without sitting down, we didn't run back to eat. There was a spontaneous outburst of dancing for over an hour. We danced and danced and danced for over an hour. This was the spontaneous joy of people who really understood what happened on Yom Kippur and how profoundly deep it was and how incredible it was. And there was nothing else that could be done at that point other than dance. I heard once a beautiful story of two great rebels that were thrown into jail. There was a very, very oppressive regime and these rebels had been teaching a lot of Torah and they were thrown into prison and they were put into a very, very small little cell and all they had in this cell were the two rebels and a bucket of waste in the middle of the cell. One of the rebels started crying and he said to his friend, I'm not crying because we're in jail. He says, because whatever God does, it's for the best. So why are you crying? He says, I'm crying because I haven't daven minch yet. I haven't said the afternoon prayers yet and we're not allowed to pray if there's a bucket of this waste in the middle of the jail cell with us. It smells horribly, it's disgusting, I can't pray. That's why I'm crying. So the other rebels says to him, look, normally you serve God by praying. He says, now you're gonna serve God by not praying because that's what the Torah says. The Torah says you're not allowed to pray if there's this stinking waste in the room with you. So you'll be following the Torah and normally you'd be serving God by praying but now you'll serve God by not praying. And his friend got so excited and he grabbed his friend's hands and there in the middle of this tiny cell, they're dancing around and around and around this little bucket of disgusting, horrible waste. The guards hear this commotion and they see these two old rabbis having a party and dancing and dancing and dancing and ecstasy around this little pail of schmutz. And they said, you're having too much fun and they grabbed a bucket of waste and they pulled it out of the cell. They probably thought that they were having some kind of a celebration of the waste. Anyway, a few minutes later, the waste is gone. The Rebbe turns towards Jerusalem and now he starts dovening. You know, there are many challenges to being able to live a vibrant spiritual life, especially here in this golden exile that we're living in. Life is very good. It says in Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the Fathers, chapter seven, mission seven, that one of the miracles that took place in Jerusalem, there was a miracles, many miracles in the holy temple, one of the miracles we're told, shalom kibu geshamim eish shal atzei ha ma'arachah. The rains never extinguished the flames that were on the altar. The word geshamim, rain, is very related to the Hebrew word gashmi ut, physicality. And so what it's saying here, according to many of the commentaries is, what was the miracle? The miracle was, and it's a miracle that somehow exists for all of us, that to be able to maintain a vibrant, passionate spiritual life, if we're surrounded by gashmius, if we're surrounded by physicality and materialism and all the things that are so distracting from a spiritual life, it's a miracle. It's a miracle if that physicality and that materialism doesn't extinguish the fire from the altar. It takes a miracle. So we have to recognize that we live in a world where we're pulled to the material and we're pulled to the spiritual. And it's impossible to serve both of them at the same time. If we're focused on the world of gashmiut, on the world of the material and the physical, we're not focusing on the spiritual. And so the only antidote to this world that we're living in, which is so drenched in materialism and the mundane and the superficial is to immerse ourselves in the spiritual. There's a famous law in the laws of kashmiut, the laws of keeping kosher, which says that if a dish, if a pot is boiling with food in it, so the law says that something that is exuding flavor, if a dish is exuding flavor, it's busy expelling flavor. By exuding flavor, it won't be able to absorb anything. I did the tarid liflat lobola. Since it's got involved in exuding, it cannot absorb. So the only way that we can overcome this really debilitating assault that we're always faced with the world of mundane materialism is for us to immerse ourselves in this spiritual. And when we're immersed in this spiritual, the material will not be able to affect us. Another principle of our spiritual lives, which makes it difficult, is that if we are trying to grow spiritually, if that's something that's important to us, we have to know that we're going to face obstacles. It's just a principle of spirituality that when people are trying to grow spiritually, they will face obstacles. As they say in the Air Force, you know that you're over the target when you feel the flak, right? The anti-aircraft guns are not gonna be shooting until the plane is over them. So when we face opposition, when we feel that there is hindrances to our spiritual growth, we know that we're on the right path. When the Jewish people came out of Egypt, so we know that we were attacked by the nation of Amalek. The Torah says, Asher Karcha Baderech, Asher Karcha Baderech, they met you on the way, they met you on the way. But the word Karcha is related to the Hebrew word kar, which means cold. And our rabbis explained that when we came out of Egypt, we were spiritually on fire. We had gone through the 10 plagues in Egypt, we saw the incredible demonstrations of God's power. We crossed through the Red Sea, the Sea of Reeds. We were blown away by how incredible God was, how real God was. We were on fire. And the Torah says Amalek came to cool us down. To cool us down. The word Amalek in Hebrew has a numerical value of 240. Amalek is 240, which is the same numerical value as doubt. So what Amalek does, and it happens to all of us, is that there are spiritual forces that try to get us to doubt, to second think things. Ratzatech Hakkoyen of Lublin said that Amalek is analogous to snow. Both of them are interested in cooling us down. Snow in Hebrew is Sheleg. Sheleg is 333. Shin, Laman, Gimel, 333. 333 is the same numerical value as the Hebrew word Shechecha, which means forgetfulness. So this spiritual force of opposition is trying to cool us down by trying to get us to forget. To forget about what? To forget about the fact that we are children of God. Forget about that, that you're a child of God. Forget about it. To forget about the fact that you have tremendous spiritual potential. Forget about it. Ratzatech Hakkoyen taught that in order to go through life, it's not just a matter of believing in God. He says we have to believe in ourselves as well. And this force called Amalek tries to get us to forget about our spiritual potential, about our self-worth, about how much the Almighty has invested in us, about how much the Almighty loves us, about how much he has faith in us. All of this we're being tempted to forget. The Ait Yozef commentary to the Midrash explains, there are two kinds of Gehenim, two kinds of hell that will face us in the afterlife. There's the well-known Gehenim of fire, which is basically to address all of the zeal and passion we brought to committing our sins. We know that many things that we do in life that are not right, that are wrong, and we do it with a zeal and with a zest and with gusto. So for all that passion we invested in doing the wrong thing, there is this Gehenim of fire. But there's also a Gehenim of snow. And what is that for? That's for the sins that we did that were committed through laziness. And especially for all of the Mitzvot that we did. We did Mitzvot, but we did them with a lack of feeling and a lack of enthusiasm. And this lack of enthusiasm and lack of feeling is often the result of our Yetzahara, our evil inclination which is invested in cooling us down. A third spiritual problem is spoken about in the prophet Isaiah chapter 23 verse 29, verse 13, where the prophet says that they honor me with their lips and their mouth, but their heart is distanced from me, and their fear of me is like the rote learning of men. Our rabbis teach us that one of the greatest enemies of spiritual life is Heragil. Heragil means routine. It means that we're in a rote and a rut, the rut of being in the rote. It's the idea of doing things on automatic pilot that our religion, our Judaism becomes a routine. We just do it today because we did it yesterday. It means serving God without thinking. In the book of Numbers chapter eight, we're told that Aaron lit the menorah, Ka'ashir Tsivah Hashem. He lit the menorah as God commanded. Rashi says, L'hagid Shifcho Shil Aron Shiloshina. This teaches the praises of Aaron that he didn't change. He didn't deviate. Now this is very strange. The Torah tells us that Aaron lit the menorah as God commanded, and Rashi says, oh, this teaches us the greatness of Aaron that he didn't deviate. Who in the world would have thought that Aaron would deviate? That if God said, light it, Aaron's gonna say, no, I'm not going to light it. What's the big deal that he obeyed God? In the commentaries explained as Fasemus says, doesn't mean that he didn't deviate from what God said. It means he himself didn't change. That Aaron didn't change from his enthusiasm that he brought to it the first time he did it. Think about the time you did something for the first time. Think about, for example, a young boy who's putting on Philand for the first time. How much he looks forward to it. How exciting it is. How amazing it is. How profound the experience is. But think about the thousands time that this young boy does it. The 10 thousands time. Do you have the same passion, enthusiasm, and zeal after you've done it for years and years and years? And the Torah is saying that Aaron didn't lose that initial enthusiasm. The Ichbisser, Ichbisser Rebbe in his book, the Me'shiloach says, when Torah says Shalom Sheena, Rashi says Shalom Sheena, he didn't change. The word Sheena could also mean to learn. And the Ichbisser says what it means is that Aaron didn't learn the way to behave. His service of God was not studied. It was not practiced. It was not rehearsed. It was real. It was genuine. It was authentic. You know, I heard a wonderful story once about the previous Satma Rebbe. And the Satma Rebbe was someone who davened. He prayed with incredible intensity. And on Purim one year, there was a badchen. A badchen is a jester. And the badchen was imitating the Satma Rebbe the way he would daven. And his davening was very animated. And the badchen saw that the Rebbe was very upset. He looked like he was crying. And he felt horrible. And he goes over to the Rebbe and he says, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. I didn't realize you'd be so upset. And the Rebbe said to him, you know, I want to tell you something. He said, you did me perfectly. He said, you were able to exactly replicate the way I pray. And he says, you know what, I was thinking to myself. I was thinking to myself, if you could imitate me, maybe I'm imitating myself. Maybe I prayed once properly. Maybe I did it once with real feeling. But maybe every time after that, I'm just imitating myself. That's how a great saddic, a great righteous person, is able to sort of critically examine what they're doing. Is what they're doing real? Or is it just because I did it yesterday? It's important to remember that we should not get discouraged if our enthusiasm and passion wanes. We shouldn't beat ourselves up. Rabbi Volby in Alay Shor says that our spiritual growth is never in a straight line. And it's normal to have periods of growth and periods of decline. It's normal. Every relationship in the world is like that. The most intensely beautiful relationship between a man and his wife, a husband and wife, also they'll have ups and downs. No relationship is on a straight line. Ruf Sadeq of Lublin, Ruf Sadeq al-Kone of Lublin in his pre-Tzadik wrote that these periods of darkness that we experience are actually a gift sent to us by God. That when we feel dejected and unmotivated, these are feelings that were sent by God as a gift to be a catalyst to encourage us to try harder and to make a comeback. If everything went smoothly, you can easily get into a rut. So the rabbis teach us that these periods we have of feeling down and low energy and spiritually flat, we should take advantage of them. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov used to say that there is something called the Yeredal at Surah Aliyah, a descent in order to climb. He said, for example, if you're standing in front of a fence and you want to jump over the fence, he said sometimes you have to take a few steps back. You just can't jump from where you are. So these periods of decline are often a preparation for growth. The Baal Shem Tov used to say that when parents teach a baby to walk, what do they do? The parents will take a few steps backwards. Now, the child has to understand that the parents are not abandoning them, that the parents are walking away. The parents are taking a few steps backwards to encourage the child to move forward, to be able to master the skill of walking. Ruf Hutner was the great Rosh Hashiva of Chayim Berlin, quoted a verse in Proverbs, chapter 24, verse 16. It says, Sheva Yipot Sadik Vakam, seven times a righteous person will fall and they will get up. And he said, the point of this passage is not to tell us that if you're a righteous person, you'll get up after you fall. He said, that's not the point. He said, the point is that how did this person become righteous to begin with? He became righteous because he fell down and he got up, meaning that it's through the process of falling down and then learning from that experience and growing from that experience that you become righteous. Arthur Kurzweil, who was an amazing person, he came to Judaism later in life. He's now a great disciple of Rabbi Adin Steinsalz. He's a great teacher of Torah and a magician. I heard him speak once. He also was a great Jewish genealogist. He was the editor-in-chief at JPS. And he said that when he first started studying about Judaism, he wanted to move to a more Jewish neighborhood. He moved to Brooklyn and he was traveling on a subway to work in the mornings on the F train. And there were all these chassidim that were traveling with him. And he said he'd be studying his Jewish books on the train and all these chassidim, he saw, they're reading the New York Post. So he approached one of these chassidim and he said, you know, I read somewhere that when Jews are together, they study Torah. Would you be willing to study Torah with me? And this chassidic Jew said, I'd be very happy to. And Kurzweil was thrilled. So every day on the F train, they would get together, they'd study Torah together on the F train. One day they're reading in a book and they come across a word and Arthur Kurzweil didn't know what this word meant. It was a very simple term. Maybe the word mitzvah, whatever the word was. And he said, what does that mean? And the chassid fell out of his seat. He says, what does that mean? What did you just land here from Mars? And he couldn't believe it. Here's a Jew in his 30s or 40s doesn't know what the word mitzvah means. So Arthur says to him, you know, I have to tell you that I didn't grow up with a Jewish education. I just started learning recently. So the chassid says to him, oh, in that case, you have a huge advantage over me. And now it was Kurzweil's chance to fall out of his seat. His, I have an advantage over you. What are you talking about? You know this stuff by heart, 20 years ago, I'm just learning how to break my teeth on it. And the chassid says, you know, each person is connected to God by some kind of a connection, a rope. And he says, we're taught that if that rope ever gets broken or cut and you retie it, it gets shorter. He says your connection was broken at some point. And now you're trying to retie it later in life. You're gonna get much closer to God than I am. I wanna try to conclude by sharing with you a few suggestions for how we can acquire and nurture more passion in our Jewish lives. This actually can be easily another two or three lectures in and of itself. So I'm not meaning for this to be exhaustive, but just to share a few ideas. One thing that our rabbis teach us that I believe is a very handy idea is that it's healthy for each of us to specialize in a mitzvah and to make it ours. The menu of Judaism is huge, it's vast, but the rabbis speak about the importance of trying to do one mitzvah perfectly, to invest all of yourself in it, to make it yours, that this is your specialty. So one thing I wanna suggest is that we find the one mitzvah that we connect with the most and make it ours and specialize it and do it as perfectly as possible. This kind of energy will spill over into everything else that we do. A suggestion that I saw in Erica Brown's book, she also shares a number of suggestions. She quotes advice from Eleanor Roosevelt. Eleanor Roosevelt supposedly once said that you should make sure every day to do something that scares you. Every day try to do something that scares you. What this means is find something in the menu of Judaism that's beyond your comfort zone. Try to move at least once a day beyond your comfort zone. Try something new, something that you have been reluctant to try in the past. Or do something that you've done before but do it in a new way. She says, for example, and I love this example because I know how reluctant people would be to do it. But she says, when you're praying in a synagogue, she says, close your eyes. We're often so self-conscious that we think that I can't close my eyes. People think that I'm crazy. It's okay, let people think you're crazy. But she said, try and do something differently or do something new. A third idea that I wanna share is that you should try to capitalize, all of us, capitalize on this idea of newness. Again, the great enemy of spiritual passion and enthusiasm is just I've been there, I've done that. It's nachamol and again and again, I've had Passover satyrs 50 times in my life already. It's getting boring. So there's an idea that when we do something for the first time, there's a special energy there. Rezotica Cohen of Lublin has an amazing teaching about a passage in the Talmud. In the first tractate of the Talmud, tractate brahot. The Talmud says that when Moses says to God, Mount Sinai, show me your glory. So in the Talmud, God says back to Moses, show me your glory. He says, Moses, when I wanted you to show, when I wanted to show it to you, when I wanted to show it to you, you weren't interested. God says, now that you want it, I'm not interested. That's what the Talmud says. Because back at the burning bush, God wanted to show Moses his glory and we're told that Moses turns aside. But this Talmud sounds very strange. It sounds like God is being very petty here. God is being very vindictive. Oh, when I wanted to show you, you weren't interested. Now that you're interested, I'm not interested. So Rezotica Cohen says that's not what's going on. He says, what's going on is that God is saying to him, Moses, the first time we ever met, that first time, that first occasion, was at the burning bush, he said, there you had the ability to do things that you would never have to do again. Because in the first time something happens, there's tremendous potential. Tremendous potential. So God says, back then is when you could have seen me. Back then is when you could have gotten more revelation than whatever possible. But now we've had a relationship for quite a while already and now it's not brand new anymore, I just can't. And so we have this idea that when we go back to the first time, there's incredible potential, incredible opportunity. And we should always capitalize on that incredible potential and opportunity of the first time something happened. And then to always use our powers of imagination to try to remember what it was like. What was it like that first time I picked up a Lula of an Estragon and I shook it? You know, there are great Rebys that drink Sukkot for example. There are people who don't wear their Tfilon during the whole holiday of Sukkot. And during those seven days it's torture. And they're just dying to be able to put them on again. So it's not impossible for each one of us to try to remember, to use our powers of imagination and to think back to the first time because there's tremendous, tremendous potential there. The Bible says in the book of Numbers chapter 28 verse six that we were given a commandment to bring a Korban Tamid. There was a commandment that Jews had to bring different kinds of sacrifices. And one of the sacrifices that we were commanded to bring was a Korban Tamid, a sacrifice that was brought every single day to the temple, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. A Korban Tamid Shoshacharit and a Korban Tamid Shalbeinah Arbaim. It's called the perpetual offering. Every day we bring it in the morning, we bring it in the afternoon. There were many other sacrifices that the Bible commanded us to bring. But when the Bible gives us the commandment to bring this Korban Tamid, the Bible says you're to bring this sacrifice like the way it was brought on Mount Sinai. That little phrase about doing it the way it was done at Mount Sinai is not repeated for any other commandment, any other sacrifice. But here, the rabbis teach us that there's a great danger in the Korban Tamid. The danger is because you're doing it every day, twice a day, morning and afternoon, it could become routine, it could become rote, it could become a notness. So in the commandment to do it, the Bible itself says, and do it the way it was done on Mount Sinai, which is the first time it was ever brought, and maintain that enthusiasm. Rav Kuk, again, the first chief rabbi of the modern state of Israel, said that you can get spiritual passion from a deep study of the Agaddic portions of the Torah. The Agaddic or the Midrashic parts of the Torah are not focused on the mechanics of what we're supposed to do, but they're focused on the goals of Judaism. They're focused on where the Mitzvot are supposed to take us, how they're supposed to impact us, what we're supposed to get out of them. And Rav Kuk said, if you want to grow your spiritual intensity and your spiritual passion, study these parts of the Torah. I highly recommend that you find yourself a book, a safer, to embrace as a guide for this kind of spiritual growth. There are many, many books that have been written over the years, over the ages, that were written for this specific goal of helping us to connect deeply and emotionally to the Torah. For example, there's a young rabbi from Israel today, Rabbi Ytamar Schwartz, a young man who's written already dozens of books, a long series called Bilvavi Mishkan Evne. In my heart, I will build a sanctuary. Beautiful, incredible, powerful books that again, help us understand what it means to have a vibrant spiritual life. Rabbi Arush today from Restlove has probably the best seller in all of Jewish history. The Garden of Emuna, over a million copies have been sold in Jewish publishing. If it's five or 10,000 copies, it's a best seller. Here a million copies have been sold, the Garden of Emuna. The previous slum of a rabbi, passed away a number of years ago, has an incredibly profound series of books called in the Sivot Shalom, The Pathways of Peace, of Equanimity. Some of it's been translated into English, but incredible books that try to help us understand the gifts that we have, the beauties of the Torah, how it's supposed to be impacting our lives and how we can be impacted by the Torah itself. Rev Moshechaim Uzzato, the Remchal, in the 17th century, is incredibly important books in the Sivot Yisharim about spiritual growth, the Derech HaShem, that explains the world we live in. Rev Baach Ya Ibn Pakudas, Chobos Levavos, The Duties of the Heart, explaining all of the internal parts of Judaism, not the external parts, the internal parts. We had in our times, Rev Avigdor Miller from Brooklyn, he was a walking Chobos Levavos. He was someone who took this book and he basically made it his life. And when you read Avigdor Miller's books, you get a chance to see how he was transformed by the Chobos Levavos. The books that were written by the Maralph and Prague in the 16th century, books of profound importance explaining the deepest parts of our Torah. Rev Cook, who I've mentioned, the first chief rabbi of the modern state of Israel, incredibly profound teachings about the depths of the Torah. Sifrei Chassidut, books of Chassidic thought like the Tanya, with the Sfasemes, again, help us connect with the Torah on the deepest of levels. And then we have modern writers. Like just last night, I was privileged to listen to Rabbi Akiva Tatz, who just actually published a book they were selling last night, it's not even in the bookstores yet, about free will. But people like Rabbi Akiva Tatz, Rabbi Abraham Twersky, Rabbi David Aaron from here in Toronto, now living in Israel, these are people who've tried to help each one of us connect with the Torah on the most deepest of levels. Rabbi Cook won't said that if a person was presented with the opportunity to benefit the entire universe, imagine a person was given a chance to do something to benefit the entire universe, or if Cook said that even the most self-centered person would oblige enthusiastically. Rabbi Cook said that our lack of passion for our Judaism stems from a lack of belief in the extent that we can accomplish through our prayers, through our mitzvot, through our Torah study. We have books like the Nefeshah Chaim by Rabbi Chaim Avolozhin, that articulates the incredible potency of everything that we do as Jews. Every action that we do impacts way beyond what we can imagine. You know, they say in the popular mythology that if a butterfly flaps its wings in Mexico, there'll be a tornado in Minnesota. We don't see how those things work, but Rabbi Avolozhin explains how every mitzvot we do doesn't just impact us and our little four cubits around us. It impacts the entire universe, even the upper celestial realms. Finally, Rabbi Twersky, who I just mentioned, would say to himself often that his greatest lifeline is having the living example of a Jew who is on fire. I was very fortunate and blessed when I was a student at the Yeshivi University to be a student of Ravdovid Lifshitz, the Suvalka Rebi, Zechert Salak Levrocha. This was a man whose passion for Judaism was palpable. And it made an incredibly profound impact on me to see that enthusiasm and passion for Judaism is not just something you read about in a book. It's real. It's done. There are people who actually live it and breathe it. And the truth is that each one of us, you don't have to be with the God El-Hador, with the greatest psychic of the generation. Each one of us knows Jewish people in our sphere that are enthusiastic about what they do as Jews. Each one of us knows some people who, when they pray, they mean it and who are totally transformed by their Torah learning and they look forward to it and they love it. Each one of us knows that there are people in our little sphere who are incredibly energized by the avoda of being metake in their Medot, of transforming their character traits. And so, thinking about these real live examples in our lives is incredibly helpful to us. And it can help us to realize, as we say in our prayers every day, ashreinu matov halkainu, how fortunate we are, how great is our portion. We say it every day in our prayers, ashre yoshvei beitecha, fortunate, happy, blessed are those people who dwell in the house of God. And each one of us is in the house of God, not just when we're in a synagogue, but every time we enter into a Jewish activity, we're entering into the house of God. I'm hoping that a little bit of what I shared tonight might be helpful in terms of helping each of us appreciate what we have, work towards growing our enthusiasm and our passion, and deepening our spiritual walk as Jews.