 Rabbi Shemshin Rafferl Hirsch, the famous German rabbi and Bible scholar and philosopher and amazing teacher, pointed out etymologically in Hebrew, the word for joy, Simcha, Samayach, is very closely related to the word for growth, but Samayach, Litz Moach, and he observes that really there is the potential for incredible joy and fulfillment in growth. When we grow as people, it can be a source of the ultimate joy and fulfillment for us. The truth is that God could have created us fully formed and perfect. God could have created human beings in their final form. Rev. Joseph Albow, the famous medieval philosopher, points out that after everything that was created in the world, God said, he told. It's good, meaning that God observed about everything that he created. That's exactly the way it's supposed to be. Everything that was created was created fully formed. But he points out that after the creation of the human being, Adam, the Bible doesn't say that God saw that it was good. Why? Because the human being was not created fully formed. We were created with the need to complete ourselves and there's much more pleasure in doing that ourselves than in having it done for us. The Kabbalists have a concept of the Nahama D'Chisufah, the bread of shame, which basically says that we would rather earn our keep than get it as a handout than have it given as charity or welfare. We want to feel that we earn what we are having. A person, for example, could purchase a gold medal from the Olympics online and walk around and how proud are they going to feel that they're wearing this gold medal for swimming as opposed to the person that trained for eight years and went through years of competition and they actually won the gold medal. So we know that when we earn something, we deserve it and we put effort into it. It feels a lot better. And since we mentioned last week that God's entire purpose in having us in the world was to be vehicles to receive pleasure, that's what God wants to do, give us pleasure. So he basically allowed us to have the ultimate pleasure, which is not giving it to us on a silver platter, but by creating us in an environment where we're able to work towards the pleasure, to work towards our own completion. The prophet Zechariah, Zechariah compares human beings to angels. It's interesting, not only are we compared to animals, that the animals and the rest of the world, physical world was fully formed, but the prophet Zechariah refers to angels as Omdim and human beings as Mahalchim. That angels are those that stand and human beings are those that walk, meaning that the angel lives a static existence. The angel doesn't grow. The angel is basically a spiritual computer. You put in the proper data, it does the right thing, it doesn't really become a bigger and better and more sophisticated angel. An angel is an angel is an angel. In the same way an elephant is an elephant is an elephant. But the human being is called Mahalchim. We are going, we are walking, we are on a journey. And that's the nature of the human being. We mentioned last week that when God created the human being, it wasn't done unilaterally. Everything else God said, let there be light, let there be donkeys, let there be stars, let there be trees. But when it came to the human being, God said, let us make man. I mentioned the understanding of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Hasidic revolution in Judaism, who explained that God here is speaking when he says, let us make man. God is speaking to each human being who will ever live in the history of the world. And God addresses each of us. And God is saying, I cannot make you by myself. I can make a dog or a cat. But I cannot make a human being. I have to involve you in the process. And I can give you the raw ingredients. I can give you a body and a soul. But what you will become is a function of what you each individual person does with that body and soul. That's why the Maharal from Prague, the famous, I spent a few days this summer in Prague, it was mind blowing, the famous rabbi, Yudel Lowy from Prague. So he points out that in the Bible, we're told that the human being is called Adam, Adam, because we come from the Adamah, the earth. And the Maharal points out that what is the earth when you think about it, you can have a big field. And that field is very much a question mark, because he says if you work the field, and let's say you plow it, and you remove any rocks and trees that are getting in the way, and you clear out the garbage, and you plow it, and you cultivate it, and you plant, and you fertilize, and you do all the things that you need to do to produce a good crop, you may be able to get an amazing garden or crop in that field. But if you don't work the field properly, it could just be rambles and thorns and nothing will happen there. So the Maharal points out that that's what we are. We are Adam, because we are like the earth. And the earth is basically pure potential. And so that's what we are as human beings. We're created as potential. And we are left with the job of perfecting it. Right by David Aaron, who was born here in Toronto, but lives in Jerusalem now. He often refers to us as not human beings, but human becomeings. That's what we are. We're human becomeings. I sometimes joke when people ask me, Rabbi, what Jewish denomination do you belong to? I say under constructionism. That's my denomination. Because that's what we're here to do. We're here to construct, we're here on a building project to create something spectacular. And the book of Eov, the book of Job, says to us, Adam la Amol Yilud, that a person was born in order to labor. We're put here to work. This is a big project. To create a masterpiece of a human being is not easy. And that's what we're doing. We are put on this world to create a personal masterpiece. It's interesting. It's a very famous ancient Jewish book. It's not clear how old it is. It could be either 2,000 years old. Some people even think 3,000 years old. It's sometimes found in the back of prayer books. It's called the Sefer Perak Sheehrah, the chapters of Song. It's a very small little work. It has basically about 85 different things that were created by God. And they have picture versions of this. So you show the cockroaches and the lions and the bears and the tigers and the sun and the moon and the stars. All the animals. It's amazing. The first time I saw this book was years ago. And I looked through it. And I was just jolted because I said, wait a minute. There's no people in this book. You would think that, do you have dogs and cats? Have a person. But I realize no. Because this book, Perak Sheehrah, what is it about? It lists all these creations and it gives you their song. Everything in the world has a song. There's a song of the moon. And there's a song of the cat. And there's a song of the caterpillar. And there's a song of the spider. Everything has its song. Pre-programmed. And basically the Perak Sheehrah, this book has a quote from the Bible. Usually it's a verse from the book of Psalms or some other part of the Bible. But everything has its song. But the human being is not in this book because God could not give each of us the same song. Each of us is here basically to write our own song. It cannot be done for us. So the question is, how do we grow? At the end of the day, how does this growth take place? So we know if you go to a gym and you want to bulk up and you want to build muscles, we know the growth takes place by overcoming resistance. That's how we grow. By overcoming resistance. If I go to a gym and I pick up this book for five years, it's goonish health and nothing's going to happen. The Mesilis Y'sharim, this amazing, amazing book tells us, the Holy One, blessed be He, has placed man in circumstances in a world where many factors can distance him from God. These being are bodily desires. For if one is drawn toward them, he progressively distance himself from the ultimate good. The result is that one really finds himself planted in the midst of a raging battle. We're in this world and it's a world where there's a raging battle going on. For everything in this world, whether for good or for bad, is there to test us. Everything that we experience in life is a test. And he says that's essentially what allows us to grow because we live in a world of resistance. We live in a world where the path towards growing is not easy. It's not smooth. And because there's this friction and there's this resistance, we're able to overcome these challenges and grow. This is basically the Jewish idea of Satan, what Christians call Satan. It's not a little devil that runs around with a pitchfork and a tail. In Jewish thought, the idea of Satan is primarily internal. It's part of us. It's not something external to us. We can call it, as Alan Marinus refers to it, as our inner adversary. It's an inner adversary. In Hebrew, we refer to it as our yatsahara, our evil inclination. But the truth is, it's not really evil. The rabbis say something amazing. The rabbis say that after the world was created, God looked at the entire world and said, behold, it's tov meod. Not just that it's good, but it says very good. And the rabbis say, what's this very good all about? And one of the answers the rabbi gives is the rabbi say, very good, that's Satan. That's the evil inclination. That's your yatsahara. Because the rabbis are teaching us that without this inner adversary, without obstacles in life, without obstacles and roadblocks and opposition to our spiritual growth, we could never grow. We would have no resistance. And so the Bible tells us in Deuteronomy chapter 30 that God put us in a world where we have choices. We have choices of life over death. Because if we choose not to grow, that's a life of death. No one chooses to die. But people can choose not to struggle and not to grow. And the Bible calls that death. Or we can choose life. Good versus evil. Rabbi Noah Weinberg from Meshutorah used to say that we're faced with every moment of life, a choice between doing what we feel like doing or doing we want to do. Those are the choices. And every moment we're faced with that choice, there are things that I want to do and there are things that I would rather feel like doing. For example, if a person insulted a friend, you really want to apologize because it's the right thing to do. You know how it feels to be insulted or hurt. So you want to apologize, but you know what? You don't feel like it because it's embarrassing. It's awkward. It doesn't feel good. So we have that struggle. What do I want to do? Apologize. What do I feel like doing? Avoiding the issue. When we're in school, we would want to be great. Students should want to be great. Not just average. Who wants to be average? So we want to be great. We want to get good grades. We want to learn. We want to accomplish. But you know what? We often don't feel like doing that. I'd rather just relax, watch TV, go to the movies, go bowling. I'd rather sometimes do anything than I really want to do. I just want to avoid the pain. Rob Weinberg points out that our soul ultimately wants to do the right thing. Our soul wants to be great. Our soul wants to apologize if we hurt someone. Our soul wants to take out the garbage if our mother says, please take out the garbage. Our body says, no, my later. I'll do it later. Because the soul wants pleasure. The body desires comfort. The body would rather not have to bother. The body would rather not put up with the pain. Because true pleasure requires an investment of energy and pain. Nothing in life, we say, with that pain, there's no gain. Nothing in life that's meaningful and pleasurable, you get for nothing. You've got to invest in it. And so the body wants those things. The body wants pleasure. The soul wants pleasure. And the soul wants to be great. And the soul wants to do the right thing. And the body just wants to be comfortable and not bother. We're faced with this choice of what do I want to do? What do I feel like doing? We're faced with the choice throughout life of the eternal versus the finite. The here and now versus what might be in the future. Meaning over moment. These are the choices of life. And every single time we overcome the resistance, every time we overcome the obstacles, every time we overcome our own inner desire just not to bother. We grow because we're overcoming resistance. And we become bigger and bigger people. The word Satan in Hebrew means obstruction, obstacle. So when you have an obstacle in front of you, you can crash into it and get hurt. Or you can climb over it. And when you climb over something, you build your muscles. And you navigate it by building, by navigating it and building those muscles, you become a bigger person. Arabis teach us that this battle never ends. And until the day we die, we're faced with these challenges. And they tell us our evil inclination, our Yetzahara, Satan grows with us. As we grow spiritually, our inner adversary becomes more sophisticated. So the truth is, we're on a low spiritual level. We don't need strong opposition. When you're an eight-year-old kid who just learned how to play chess, you can play against your eight-year-old friends. When you become an international master, you're not going to be getting any opposition by playing another eight-year-old kid. So the more you grow in anything in life, whether it's in your personal growth spiritually, or learning how to play chess, or doing anything, the opposition hopefully will grow and get stronger and stronger, which provides you with more of an impetus to grow. And ultimately, this opposition to us is painful. It hurts. It's almost fighting with us. But it's our best friend. It's very good. Because if we didn't have this opposition, we would never grow. It's also important to remember that this growth is almost never smooth in life. We know that when you break a bone and it heals, the bone becomes stronger. And that's how our personal spiritual growth works. That sometimes it's the process of not succeeding, of failing, and then learning from those mistakes that we actually grow and get stronger. It says in the book of Proverbs, Mishle, chapter 24, verse 16, a righteous person will fall down seven times, but they'll get up. And the verse is not simply saying that the nature of a righteous person is that when they fall, they'll get up. According to Rev Hutner, the famous Rosh Hashiva of Chai and Berlin, he said what the verse is telling us is that how did this person become righteous in the first place? It was through the process of falling down and then getting up, meaning the righteous person was not born righteous. They often have to go through tremendous failures in order to reach the level they're on. So Rev Hutner says how did the person become righteous? Because they fell down seven times. But they picked themselves up. They learned from their mistakes. They grew. And that's how they became righteous. They tell a parable that each one of us is connected to God by a rope, by a big cord. But that if that rope ever gets cut or it's broken and you get disconnected, but you retie the rope, the rope gets shorter. Meaning each of us has this rope that connects us and we're at a certain distance from God. But if you want to know one of the things that will make you even closer, it's having that connection break. And we call this in Hebrew, tishuvah, repentance. That repentance is one of the incredible gifts that God gave us, the ability to repair our relationships. In the same way, when you repair those broken bones, the bones get stronger when we fail and we make a mistake and we do the wrong thing. Or we don't live up to our abilities and we make the extra effort to overcome those failures, we grow and that rope becomes even shorter. We become even closer to God. I tell a cute story. It went all over the internet a few years ago about this poor unfortunate donkey that fell down a well. And the donkey was screaming and crying and it was just pathetic and the owner of the donkey came over and looked and saw what was going on and couldn't figure out how many get the donkey out of the well. Everything they thought of, nothing was going to work. So finally the owner decided, well, look, the donkey's suffering and it could be problem, some of my fall into the well. So the decision was we're just going to fill in the well. We'll take sand and dirt and we'll fill in the well. So the farmer called over all his friends and they brought their shovels and they started to pick up the sand and the dirt and throw it into the hole. And the donkey was screaming and crying out pathetically. You can imagine. It was being buried alive. And after a few minutes, the donkey went very quiet. They kept on shoveling and the farmer finally looked into the well and saw something amazing. He saw what the donkey was now doing. Instead of screaming and crying, every time they took a shovel and shoveled dirt onto the back of this donkey, it would shake off the dirt and then it would step up onto the dirt. And with every shovel of dirt that went onto his back, it was able to shake it off and then step up again. And finally, after a few minutes, the donkey was able to just step up and step up until it was able to climb out of the well completely and just escape and flee. That's what our lives basically could become. That every time we have a setback, if we're able to shake it off and learn how to grow from it, we actually raise ourselves up. This is the miracle of repentance of Chuva, where our rabbis teach us that if you do repentance properly, it can turn all of your mistakes into pluses. So it's not just that when you repent, all of your sins are erased and now you're standing at zero. If you were at minus 90, you become a plus 90. It's interesting that we mention in our prayers every day, twice a day. We're told to mention the Exodus from Egypt, Zechariot Mitzrayim, to remember that God redeemed us from Egypt. There are many reasons why this is very important for us. But one of the reasons is that our rabbis teach us that the Exodus from Egypt was not just something that happened 3,300 years ago. The word in Hebrew Mitzrayim, Egypt, means narrow places, places of constriction, that each one of us in life has our issues. Each one of us has what they say in Yiddish, our peckle, our little burden, our thing that we have to deal with. And it's important to remember that God is with us in our lives now, helping to redeem us to take us out of our own personal Egypt, our own personal place of constriction. What are the major concerns when we're talking about spiritual personal growth in Judaism? So what are the major areas of spiritual personal growth? I want to share with you four. And again, tonight we're covering what can really be a two-year class, three-year class, five-year class. We're doing it in an hour. But basically, I would suggest there are four major areas of personal growth in Judaism. Number one is that the realm of personal spiritual growth is concerned with self-understanding, knowing who we are. You know, one of the most famous books of Jewish personal spiritual growth is called the Chavos Le Vavos, the duties of the heart. And in the introduction, a very huge introduction, the author says that he hesitated writing the book because he was saying to himself, who am I? I'm not the greatest mind of this generation and there are people much smarter than me. Do I have arrogance of writing this book? Maybe I don't deserve to write a book like this. And he was really thinking of abandoning the whole project until he said to himself, you know what? I realize I'm tricking myself. And that's not really why I'm hesitating to write this book. He said he came to realize that he was just lazy. And he was able to make himself feel better by being humble, thinking he's humble. But the truth is it's critical to understand who we are. In a few weeks we're going to be reading the story of how the patriarchs were able to raise their families. And we know that Abraham wasn't so easy for him to finally get to the point where he was going to have a child that he's going to have to marry off this child. There was a long struggle to have a child and then he was told to kill this child and God miraculously doesn't have a match to kill his child. But finally, Isaac has to get married. Who is Isaac going to marry? Abraham felt that none of the people where he was now living were appropriate to people in Canaanites. The Canaanites were immoral. Abraham said, we've got to go back to my hometown in Ur. There are people there on a higher level. So Abraham couldn't put a classified ad into the singles section of the papers back then. So he sent this trusty servant, Eleazar. He said, Eleazar, you go back to our hometown. You find a wife for my son, Isaac. And he gives them instructions. And during the discussion, Eleazar says to Abraham, but what if she won't come back with me? Eleazar says, Oolai, perhaps she won't want to come all the way back here. And maybe I should be able to take Isaac to her. Isaac's going to have to move. And Abraham makes it very clear, no, Isaac is not going back there. Isaac's not going to live there. Anyway, the story unfolds and Eleazar goes and we know what happens. He sits by a well and he says, look, God, I'm not sure who I'm going to pick, but I want you to give me a sign and make it clear who the right woman is. And he says the first woman who's going to offer not just to give me water to drink, but will also water my camels, that must be the proper woman for Isaac. And that's what happens. Rebecca comes along and not just offers him water, but waters all his camels. He knows that she's going to be the destined bride. He takes her back to her house. He meets with her family. And the Bible spends an incredible amount of time recapitulating the whole story because Eleazar now shares with her family the whole story about what Abraham wanted and Abraham's instructions. And in the retelling of the story he says, but I said to my master Abraham, maybe the girl's not going to want to come back with me. Listen carefully. When the Bible says at this point, perhaps she won't come back, it spells the word perhaps, not the way it's spelt it initially, which was oolai perhaps, but it writes it without the vov, the oo sound, and it could be read as a lie to me. So Rashi points out on the spot here in the recapitulation of the story, Rashi points out, you know what? Eleazar had a hidden sort of self interest that Eleazar was hoping really that Abraham would allow his son Isaac to marry his own daughter, Eleazar's daughter. And that's why he really said to Abraham, perhaps she won't return with me. He was trying to maybe suggest that since this woman won't come back all the way to live here with you, with your family, maybe it would be a good idea to think about taking my daughter as a wife of your son. And Rashi points this out not in the initial story where Abraham gives him the instructions. Rashi only points this out later on when Eleazar is recapitulating the whole story and telling it back to the family of Rebecca. So Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, one of the great sages of the previous generation, asked a very obvious question. If this was a hidden agenda that Eleazar really had, why did Rashi wait until he was telling the story back to Rebecca's family, meaning that when Eleazar first said to Abraham, perhaps she won't want to come back with me. Why didn't Rashi stay over there? He said this because he really had a deep desire inside that his own daughter would be the bride for Isaac. Why does Rashi wait until the whole story is repeated later on to raise this idea that Eleazar had a hidden agenda? And he says something very profound. He says that when a person has a selfish interest, it blinds them to the truth. And the problem was that Eleazar was not really in touch with his hidden agenda. When he suggested to Abraham, maybe the girl won't want to come back. He wasn't really in touch with the fact that he was saying this as a way maybe of subconsciously sabotaging the whole plan. He wasn't in touch with his own hidden agenda. It's only later on when after all the incredible things that happened that he was able to find Rebecca at the well and all the signs came true and he finally engages Rebecca. And now the marriage is set up. It's a done deal. His hopes are now dashed. Now he's able to somehow step back and more objectively and say, oh, yeah, this was something that was inside of me all along. But he only comes to realize it later after there's no more possibility of his daughter marrying Isaac. So Jewish personal growth and perfection is concerned with getting to know who we really are. What really motivates us in life? What's ticking inside of us? What's cooking inside of us? A second issue of Jewish personal growth is connecting our head to our heart. Connecting our head to our heart. We read in the book of Deuteronomy. Again, we say this twice a day or three times a day in the Alaynu prayer, chapter four, verse 39 of Deuteronomy. You shall know this day and you shall bring that knowledge to your heart. And this is a major concern of Jewish personal growth is connecting our heart to our head. And the concern is the following. There are many times we know something intellectually, but it's not really part of us. For example, there are many people, if you ask them, do you believe in God, they'll say, yeah, I believe that God exists. But God is not really real to them. They don't really think about God much during their day. It's just that if you happen to ask them, they'll respond properly to the question. But they're not connected to God, meaning that they have an intellectual knowledge and a scent to the idea of God, but it's not living in their heart. For example, everyone on the planet knows the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Love your neighbor as yourself. However, it's formulated. There isn't the person on the planet who doesn't know that. And yet we live on a planet where we have so much misery. People don't get along. People don't live properly. But I thought they all know the golden rule. Everybody on the planet knows thou shalt not steal. No one's not aware of that. But we have so much theft built into the fabric of our cultures. What's going on? So the problem is that there are things that live in our head. And our head is basically like a car that has only a steering wheel and no gas pedal and no gas tank. Our brain is not a very powerful tool. A brain is very impotent. The brain needs to have something that's going to push it. And what pushes people is not their brain. What pushes them are their emotions, their will, their drives. And so what's critical is that we don't just know things intellectually, but we come to feel those things deeply in our emotions. Jewish growth is concerned with getting us to feel what we know. Not just to know you shouldn't steal, but to be pulsed by the idea, to be sickened by the possibility of taking something that doesn't belong to you. Number three, Jewish personal growth focuses primarily on what we call tikkun hamidot, perfecting and fixing our personal character traits, our personal curriculum. The word midah means measure. Each one of us is given personality traits. And we're very different. Some of us, we know, look at children when they're growing up, ask their parents, this kid is very calm. This kid is very wired. Kids are just very different in terms of their nature. Each one of us is different. Some of us are people that get angry very easily. Some of us, it takes a lot to provoke us. So each one of us has a whole, almost like a genome set of different personality traits, and that there are a lot of them. And what Judaism is concerned about is helping us fix them. First of all, to balance them. Because the midot, these personality traits fall along continuum. For example, there's a line between humility and arrogance. Too much arrogance, actually any arrogance is not good. But sometimes too much humility is not good. Sometimes it's necessary for us to stand up and assert ourselves. So we have to learn how do you balance this line between humility and arrogance? Where should it fall? Or between someone who is easily aroused to anger and someone who's a cold fish that never gets aroused to anything? There are times when we should get aroused. We should get angry. We should have our righteous indignation and our Irish kick in. So it's important for us to be able to balance these character traits. Or someone who's very, very generous as opposed to someone who's a cheapskate. Well sometimes you can be too generous. You can give away all your money. That's not good. And you can be too cheap. So how do you walk this line between these two ends? And that's what the work of perfecting on midote is all about. All of us know what our issues are. If you've got an anger problem, you know it. And that becomes what we focus on. People don't have to focus on issues which are not their issues. Everyone has their issues. So the growth work is to work specifically on the issues that challenge each one of us. And finally, number four, the work of personal perfection plays out, generally speaking, in the realm of the interpersonal. Jewish ethics concern themselves with our relationships with other people primarily. Speech ethics, what is it, what involves using our power of speech properly, business ethics, honesty, how we treat animals, judging other people favorably. There's a whole realm of teachings within Judaism that deal with our interpersonal relationships. When it comes to self-improvement, we often think that we can figure it out by ourselves. Why do I have to go to a class? Why do I have to read a book? What is Judaism? I don't need from Judaism. We always say to ourselves, I'm not an idiot. I can figure it out by myself. We know that this actually is something that we learn in the Bible. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden were told that they can eat from every tree in the garden. There's one tree God says don't eat from that tree. It's a tree of knowledge of good and evil. We know that in addition to this tree of knowledge of good and evil where God says don't eat from it and if you do you're going to die, God told them there's another tree in the garden called the Tree of Life. Now I would have thought that if they had some temptation to disobey God and eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which God said if you eat from it you're going to die, what would have been smart would have been to first grab a bite of the Tree of Life. Now you would imagine what happens when you eat from the Tree of Life that may make you impervious to dying. Maybe that Tree of Life will be just the way that you can then go and eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and you read the story in the Bible and Adam and Eve don't do that. They don't bother to grab a bite of the Tree of Life and then taste from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. They go right to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and one of the ways this story has been explained is that it's really talking about all of us. It's about every man because the truth is that this is a syndrome that humanity has. What is the Tree of Life? What is the Eitzchheim? Well we say in the Torah, Eitzchheim he is the Torah itself. The Torah is a Tree of Life and that's what we're supposed to do. Ideally before we do something, before we engage in any activity in life, we should consult the instruction manual. The Torah is God's instruction manual for us. But in the same way, I don't know many people when they buy a blender or they buy a coffee maker or they buy some other appliance or a car. I don't know if anyone that sat down and read 100 pages, 200 pages of the manual. I think that what people do is they say, look, stupider people than me have figured out how to use this blender. I'll just learn how to use it by trial and error. I'll figure it out. It's not such a mystery and that's ultimately what we do through life. We say to ourselves, I can figure it out. I don't need to read the instruction manual and it's true. When you get a bottle of shampoo, you don't really need to read the back which says, okay, lather your hair, put this stuff on your hands. Okay, a bottle of shampoo, the instructions may be not so important. But I would say it's important to read your computer instructions or your car instructions. When someone's about to get married, young people, what would make sense? It would make sense before they embark upon a marriage, which is a huge thing to do, that they would let's say read four or five books about what makes a good marriage, what mistakes not to make, maybe go and interview five people that have great marriages. It seems to me that marriage is so critically important it would make sense to first eat from the tree of life, read the instructions, get some information, do some research. But what a 99.999% of people do young people? They just say to themselves, I'll figure it out. We'll get married. Millions of people have gotten married. They were able to do it. We'll do it. We don't need to consult with the Torah or read the instructions. And so what happens in our world is we often make the same mistake that Adam and Eve seem to have made. We pass up the tree of life. We go right for the tree of knowledge of good and evil. What's knowledge of good and evil? It's basically trial and error. Good and evil, meaning I'll see what works, what doesn't work. And we'll figure it out by ourselves. Maimonides in his famous work, The Guide to the Perplex, asks another question about this story. Maimonides says, doesn't it seem strange that Adam and Eve disobey God? God told them, don't eat from this tree. And Adam and Eve disobey God. And Maimonides says, and it seems that instead of getting punished in some ways, they were rewarded. Why? Because Maimonides says, look, they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and now they have knowledge of good and evil. That seems to be a good thing. Meaning they're getting more knowledge, more information, they're getting something they didn't have before. Maimonides says the truth of the matter is that they didn't really gain, they lost tremendously. Maimonides says, if you understand humanity before they ate from this tree of knowledge of good and evil, the way human beings accessed the world, the way we looked at the world, was that we saw everything through the lens of truth and falsehood. To us, human beings, before they ate from this tree, everything in the world was either true or false. So in the same way that when we say two plus two is four, true. Three plus three is six, true. Three plus seven is 20, false. So if Adam and Eve had seen someone torturing someone else, they would have said, stop. What you're doing is, and they wouldn't say what you're doing is evil. They wouldn't say what you're doing is wrong. They would say, stop. What you're doing is false. Because to Adam and Eve, it wasn't just that true and false were terms that apply to mathematical equations, which all of us see is very clear. But to Adam and Eve, everything was either true or false, even moral, ethical issues. It was not right or wrong, good or bad. It was true or false. Because Adam and Eve saw everything with crystal clear clarity. Everything was totally clear. But once they ate from that tree of knowledge of good and evil, they have now not that kind of clarity anymore. They lost that clarity. And now they have a knowledge of good and evil. Now they see things as right and wrong. And we know that right and wrong, good and evil are very subjective terms. And that's why we live in a world today where intelligent, sensitive people can have very, very different views on almost every moral issue in the world. Take 100 people and ask them to discuss issues like capital punishment, gun control, abortion, whatever issue it is. Intelligent, bright, sensitive people will differ. And that's only because we've lost our clarity. No one argues today about whether 3 plus 3 is 6. But Maimonides says that human beings lost their clarity in terms of how they perceived the world after eating from this tree of knowledge of good and evil. What the Torah does is the Torah provides us with that clarity. That's the purpose of the Torah. The clarity that we lost after the Garden of Eden is restored to us through the Torah. The Talmud says that God created an evil inclination for us and the Torah was created as its antidote. The truth is that there are so many topics that we simply need the Torah for guidance on. For example, speech ethics. Every culture in the world has laws against slander and libel. Every culture has laws against slander and libel. However, as far as I know in Canada, you cannot be sued for slander if what you're saying about someone is true. And that's true in the United States as well. To be guilty of slander, what you're saying has to be false. The Torah tells us no. Even if what you're saying about someone is true, as long as it's demeaning and derogatory, you shouldn't do it. With several exceptions. But generally speaking, the Torah tells us we're not allowed to say anything demeaning or derogatory about someone else. That's a violation of Torah's speech ethics. The Torah says, for example, if you go into a store, let's say to get out of the rain, you're not really shopping, the Torah says you cannot ask the price of anything in this store if you didn't go in there to shop. Many people think that's innocent. What's the big deal? I happen to be in this store. I'm curious. No, we don't care about your curiosity. You first of all wasting the sales person's time. You may be getting their expectations up. They're going to make a sale. So the Torah says, unless you're shopping, you cannot ask for the price. That might be the kind of information we wouldn't know if it wasn't for the Torah. If you've slandered someone and you want to apologize and make things right, do you have to tell them what you said about them? That's not an easy question. Do you have to always tell the truth in every situation? Does the doctor have to tell the patient how sick they really are? Or is it ever permissible to bend the truth in order to promote other important values? These are all questions that are difficult and the Torah provides guidance. When I went to vote earlier in the week, I didn't look tonight as I was coming here, but when I went to the school across the street, I noticed a big sign outside the school building. It said virtue of the month, gratitude. And I thought to myself, is that just some platitude, a very nice platitude? But what are the students supposed to do? Meaning, are all the students told, hey, the virtue of the month is gratitude, maslutov. But what exactly is gratitude? And how is this cultivated inside of us? How do we cultivate a sense of gratitude inside? How do we make it a deeper part of who we are? And what challenges are there to being people who have more gratitude? And how do you navigate these challenges? These are all the questions we need to know in order to grow spiritually. And that is what the Torah and specifically the Musar teachings of the Torah seek to help us with. Musar is the word in Hebrew for guidance or discipline or correction or instruction. And it's the wisdom in the Bible specifically and in the Talmud and more pointedly in later writings that predigest this information and package it for us in order to help us learn about ourselves and how to grow spiritually. In the 19th century, Rabbi Yisrael Solander focused these teachings even more and developed them into a movement, a social movement, to engage and implement these teachings in a systematic way. And this movement persists until this very day. Now as we're going to see throughout this seminar, there is a reciprocal relationship between the realm of the ritual and the realm of the interpersonal. These realms both interact. For example, how do we pursue the goal of getting closer to God? How do we get closer to God? It's not so simple necessarily. What the Bible calls divaikut, attaching ourselves to God. Christianity posits that the way we're able to get closer to God is that God did all the work for us and God came down into this world and took on human form so we could actually see him and get to know him on a very, very close level. However, the Bible tells us the exact opposite. The Bible says the way we're going to get close to God is not by God becoming more human, but the opposite by human beings becoming more godly. It says in Leviticus chapter 19, Kedoshim tihi yukikadosh ani. You human beings shall become holy as I, God, am holy. The Bible teaches us vah lachda bedrachav. You shall walk in the ways of God. A fancy Latin term for this is imitatio dei. They were supposed to imitate God, try to live as God would act. The Talmud says, as God is merciful and God is kind and God is generous, we should emulate these traits of God. Abraham, for example, is recovering from his circumcision. He's an old, old man. He's probably not in the peak of health. And he's recovering and God, the Bible tells us, pays him a visit. God is coming to be Mavachur holy, coming to visit the sick. And so the Bible describes that God is now with Abraham. That's pretty good. If you're a spiritual person, God comes to pay a house call. And in the middle of this visitation, the Bible tells us that Abraham sees three strangers walking in the desert. And Abraham puts God on hold. Abraham says to God, God, you'll have to excuse me for a few minutes, probably was more than a few minutes. I'm just going to put you on hold for an hour or two. And Abraham runs and takes care of these three people. He brings them to his house and he provides them with food and with clothing, with water and he makes meals for them. And it's unbelievable how the Bible describes Abraham running and rushing. If you read the text of the Hebrew, he's running and rushing and running and rushing this old 90 year old person that you've circumcised. And the question is, didn't Abraham make a mistake? If the whole purpose of life is to get close to God, Abraham was pretty close to God. God was coming to us out to visit him. And Abraham seems to sort of dismiss that and just plays house and hospitality man. But the answer is that Abraham actually kicked up his closest to God a notch because when God comes to visit him, he's very passive. He's just simply basking in the presence of God. But what Abraham is now doing is Abraham himself is becoming more godly. He's becoming more godlike. God nurtures and sustains the world. That's what Abraham does for these people. And so what Abraham is doing is really reaching for the highest level of connection to God. He himself is transforming himself to becoming a kind and generous person and more godly. The famous Kabbalistic work, the Palm Tree of Deborah, the Tomer DeVora, tells us to emulate the characteristics of God. So God, for example, is so patient with us that even the sinner who is sitting against God doesn't understand that who is animating him at that point. Who is animating the sinner that's cursing God or violating God's will? Who is letting this sinner move his arms and legs and letting the sinner move his mouth? God is. At the very moment, the person is opposing God. God is giving them life. And so the Tomer DeVora says, think about that for a minute and realize how patient we need to be with other people, how much we should be willing to put up with. You know, modern psychologists speak about mirroring. That when you are very close to someone, you tend to mirror them physically. People that have a very close relationship, for example. Imagine a husband and wife out for the 25th wedding anniversary for dinner. If you watch them, if one leans over to speak to the other one, this is not even conscious. The other one's going to lean forward to speak to the other one. And if one lowers their voice to say something more quietly, the other one will probably lower their voice. I don't know if Carol remembers this, but years ago, when we had our office up at Steele's in Bathurst, Carol, I don't know what happened, lost her voice over the weekend, came in on a Monday morning and was whispering. That's how she was speaking. And about an hour later, I turned to Carol and said, why am I whispering to you? But that's what happened. When people have a relationship, they mirror the other person. That's just what happens. And so the Bible is teaching us, if you want to have this closest to God, become a mirror for God. Act the way God would act. Not only is one of the paths to God through interpersonal relationships, but our interpersonal relationships can become deeply impacted by the realm of the ritual. Let me share with you a number of examples. We know that one of the centerpieces of Judaism is the Shabbat. Shabbos were told that even our slaves have to rest like us. The Bible says, our slaves rest kamochah like you. And it's not just saying that like you're resting, the slaves are resting. But the Bible is saying, because the slave is kamochah, the slave is like you. You're both human beings. You're both children of God. And so the Shabbat teaches us a critical lesson that really, we can't really enslave anyone in this world ultimately. We have people working for us. But all human beings are supposed to be slaves of God and servants of God. And the Shabbat teaches us the equality of all human beings. The Shabbat, by the way, today, I think, is more necessary than any time in history. We live in a world today where our relationships are being degraded by the technologies that we've invented to help make our lives easier. So studies have been done that show when I've seen this myself, I watch families out at a restaurant supposed to be having a good time and everybody's on their phone. It's the saddest world we live in now. If you read the book alone together, they speak about a parent that might be picking up their kid at school. And when the child is walking into the car, the mom or the father might be on their phone. Don't even acknowledge the kid walking into the car. So we live in a world where technology is literally destroying our relationships. And Shabbat comes and says, no, you're going to spend a whole day together and you're not going to have your phones and you're not going to have your TVs and you're not going to have any of the technology that interferes with your life. You're going to spend three or four or five hours at a table with your family and friends and just talk. Kashrut, the dietary laws. Dennis Prager said that the first words he learned to read in English were pure vegetable shortening only. And Prager remarked that it's not a bad thing for a six-year-old kid to learn that they can't eat every candy in the candy store. Meaning that we live in a world where in order to work ethically in the world and to live an ethical life, sometimes we have to supplement our own personal self-interests to the interests of other people. That requires discipline. So the Torah, which takes children from a young age and subjects them to a life of discipline on Shabbat, they don't do certain things. And by keeping kosher, they don't eat everything in the planet. That gives them the ability to work and to live ethically with other people. Rabbi Elias of Birkowitz in an amazing book called God, Man and History says, how do you train people to be human beings? And he says you don't train people by speaking to them in the same way you don't learn how to swim by reading books about swimming and you don't learn how to be a soldier by reading books about how to fight in an army. You teach people how to swim by having them swim and you teach people how to be soldiers by having them fight. The problem he says is that if you just take raw recruits and you send them back into a war, you're going to lose half your army. So how do you train soldiers? So he says we put them in a situation as if, for example, they might wear their helmet and put little sticks on it to camouflage themselves and they might crawl on their bellies and they might take a shot at someone, but it's not real bullets. They're playing war games and war games are not real war. Real war would be the best way to learn, sink or swim, but it would be a terrible way to have an army. So what we do with the army is we put them through war games and we make them act as if it were real. So Birkowitz says that when you think about it, no one's going to drop dead if they eat non-kosher food. On that level, it doesn't really matter if you're eating something non-kosher or not. Obviously we know spiritually it does, but in terms of a raw sense of reality, it's not going to affect me if I violate the Shabbat or if I eat non-kosher food, but Birkowitz suggests we grow up as Jews acting as if it really did make a difference. And he suggests something very profound. He said that the whole ritual realm of Judaism, by having us live in this world as if it made a difference, everything we do, it forces us to encounter the will of an other, meaning I go through my entire life always asking myself, well, what does God want me to do? What is God's opinion about this food? What is God's opinion about this thing on the Shabbat? Meaning that normally people are very selfish. Normally people only think about themselves. Everybody knows the golden rule. If it hurts you, it bothers you, don't do it to someone else. The problem is that all of us are very in touch with how we feel. We all know how we feel. If someone's standing too close to me, I know it. I feel it. If I'm too cold, I feel it. The problem is I don't know how you feel. And most people don't care how other people feel. Most people go through their whole day not thinking about how other people feel. And that's why the golden rule is very rarely implemented. It would only work. Don't do it to someone else if it would bother you if you're thinking about how it's going to hurt someone else. So Birkowitz says, how do you get people to think about the other? He says by raising them from birth to every moment of their life, think about the other, the other being God. But once the person is stripped of their self-centeredness and they've been trained to think of the other, he said it's very much similar to now thinking about the other people in our world that we can see. We have a custom. We know that before a meal, Jews wash their hands. It's called n'etilat yadayim. We take a vessel of water, pour it over our hands before we eat a meal. Most people are not as aware that there's a custom going back to the times of the Talmud to wash our hands after a meal. It's called mayimachronim, the final waters. So we wash before we wash after. But when you read what the Talmud says about washing afterwards, it sounds a little bit strange. The Talmud says the reason we wash after a meal is because there is sodomite salt at the table, sodomite salt like from the city of Sadom. And if you get into your eyes, you'll go blind. So you better wash your fingers after the meal. Now, it sounds a little bit loopy, but it's explained by many of our sages in the following way. Our sages say, what was Sadom? What was the city of Sadom? So the Talmud says Sadom had a philosophy. The philosophy of Sadom was shali shali the shalcha shalcha. What's mine is mine. What's yours is yours. Which meant if you don't have something, tough noogies. And that was their philosophy. In Sadom, they did not believe in helping anyone because what's mine is mine. What's yours is yours. You don't have tough darts. And so in Sadom, they legislated cruelty. In Sadom, you were not allowed to help other people. In Sadom, they had a bed we're told where if you were a guest and you were too tall, they would chop off your legs. If you're too short, they would stretch you. But it was a city we're told of cruelty. What does it mean when it talks about salt? There's Sadomite salt. That's just Judaism. Salt is always a flavoring. There's a salt of something, the taste of something. And so the Talmud says something amazing. The Talmud says that before you eat a meal, you have two hearts. Before a person eats, they have two hearts. After they eat, they have one heart. Which means very simply this. Before you eat your meal, you're hungry and you know how it feels to be hungry. So if someone comes to you for help, you know how it feels. And you might be inclined to help them. But after you've eaten, you no longer hungry. And you lose your sensitivity to people because you don't know how to feel what it's hungry anymore. You're not hungry. So the Talmud says that the problem after a meal, after the meal, is you might have this Sadomite salt on the table. The flavor of Sadom, which will blind your eyes to the needs of the poor and the needy. That's what's being taught here. That the danger after a meal, after you've been satisfied and satiated and you're full, is you may become less sensitive to the needs of people that are hungry. And so the Talmud says, you know what, take some water and wash that off, purify your hands. Because we want to get in touch with the fact that our lack of hunger is getting in the way of our ability to be sensitive to other people. At the end of Shabbat, we do something interesting, which is very much part of our ritual. We have a ceremony called Avdala, where we separate the Shabbat from the rest of the week. And one of the parts of Avdala is to smell delicious spices to revive our soul after all the Shabbat's leaving. And then we light a candle, because during Shabbat we were not able to create. Fire is always a symbol of creativity, the Prometheus story we know, that fire became the symbol of human creativity. And so after Shabbat, we can now begin to create again. We light a candle. And Shabbat began with two separate candles. And we now express the idea that Shabbat, everything became unified. So we now use a candle that has the two separate candles bound together into one, a torch of many wicks. And we light this candle, we make a blessing, and as a custom people have of holding their fingers in front of the candle, and many people will open and close their fingers like this. Some people say the reason is when you do this you create a shadow on your palm and you're seeing this Avdala mean separation the visions and now you can see the vision which we light in darkness but it's been explained and you could try this at home kids that when you extend your fingers like this you'll see that each finger is a different height. When you bring the fingers closer to yourself all the fingers become equal in size. And it's interesting that the Talmud says that anyone that's arrogant they're judged by fire. So in the presence of the fire we show ourselves that when we're arrogant and we try to push ourselves above other people, we try to make ourselves bigger than other people, that's unhealthy. We bring our hands back to ourselves to realize at the end of the day all human beings are equal. We're all the same we're all people. And so here is something that looks like something ritual that's really there to inform us in the realm of the interpersonal. Much of the Jewish approach to ethics is built upon developing empathy. Much of the whole approach to Jewish ethics is based upon developing empathy. For example, the Torah repeatedly emphasizes never forget that you were a slave in Egypt. Never forget how it feels to be persecuted and how it feels to be diminished and how it feels to be disempowered. Never forget that the Bible says don't do it to someone else because you know how it feels and that's why the Torah wants us never to forget how it feels to be a slave in Egypt and never forget how it feels to be persecuted because the Torah says that will help you not do it to someone else because you're sensitive to how it feels. They tell a story of someone that was trying to raise money for his Yeshiva. Very in Russia it was freezing cold and he goes to this house of a big wealthy person. He knocks on the door in the middle of the winter and he says listen I need to speak to you about our Yeshiva. There's not enough fuel we can eat. The the the boilers and the students are very cold and the fellow says Rabbi come on in we'll talk about it. The rabbi's got his nice coat on. No father I'm fine don't worry I'm okay I'm okay don't worry and this man is in his night clothes and is in house coat and he's by the door is shivering. He says Rabbi come on inside we'll talk and give you some tea. No I'm fine don't worry. The rabbi was holding his ground. He wanted to stand there and make sure that as he was speaking about the students that are freezing in his Yeshiva this man would appreciate what it's like to be cold. We're told that in Egypt one of the plagues I think it was a ninth plague was the plague of darkness and the Bible says that it was dark for three days and it was so dark that no one was able to see the other couldn't see each other and no one got up from their place. The Holy Garabbi says the worst darkness in the world is when we can't see the other person when we only see ourselves we cannot empathize with other people. He said that's the worst darkness and he says when life is so dark that you can't see the other person you'll never get up from your place and do anything for them. So the question is how dark was it in Egypt and the Talmud says something weird that's for the Midrash. The Midrash says if you want to know how dark it was in Egypt the Midrash says it was as dark the darkness was as thick because the Bible says it was a palpable darkness it was a darkness that was thick you could even feel it and the Midrash wants to know how thick was it the Midrash says it was as thick as a silver coin and the rabbis explain what we're learning here is something very deep that silver is something if you take put it behind a piece of glass it turns the glass into a mirror normally you can see other people through a piece of glass but once you line that glass with a little bit of silver you can only see yourself and so what causes this kind of darkness when we are not able to see the other and we won't do anything for them it's when we're so focused on our own materialistic sense of what we have our own money our own property that focus on the self is what gets in the way of being able to see others how do we develop empathy so one of the things that Torah does is go to the extreme and the Torah says trains us to have compassion and empathy even for inanimate objects there are many many examples where the Torah tells us to act as if inanimate objects had feelings for example most of you know that on Friday night when we start Shabbat we pick up a glass of wine to say kiddush we cover the khala and the rabbis explain why you're covering the khala because normally when you sit down to a meal during the week you're going to start with bread the bread is used to being the first thing eaten but Friday night you're not going to have the bread right away you're going to go for the wine first the bread might get embarrassed might get upset so in order to prevent the bread from getting upset and embarrassed you cover the bread excuse me but uh really so obviously we're not really concerned about the feelings of the bread we're concerned about it developing our own sensitivity if i go through life and learn to be even considerate of inanimate objects i will have more of a chance of being considerate of the feelings of sentient beings there's a custom that the rabbis teach us that if you're going let's say to a funeral so the rabbis say when you go to the funeral take your tzitzit and tuck them in your pants don't wear these hanging out normally the bible says we wear tzitzit so we remember all the commandments of the Torah the rabbis say the problem you're going to a cemetery is the people that are buried there they cannot keep the commandments so by you walking with your tzitzit hanging you're flaunting the fact that you can keep the commandments the Talmud calls this low egg larash you're mocking the poor because they're not able to keep the commandments and it's insensitive so the rabbis say put your tzitzit in your pants again we develop sensitivity to inanimate the people that are not living in order to train ourselves to be sensitive especially to the living Musar technology this technology to change who we are is based upon both study and practice the Ramchal Moshe Chaim Uzzato in his book Pathways of the Just says that nothing he's going to teach in this book by the way one of the most incredible books in the world he says nothing in here is new i'm not going to reveal any new information to you he says because you know everything the problem is that even though you know it you don't pay attention to it you're not really informed by these ideas they rattle around in the background of your consciousness they're not in the forefront of your mind so he says that one of the way is the most important thing in order to gain more of a real awareness to bring these ideas to the forefront of our consciousness consciousness is to study deeply in a meditative way don't just read the book he says think about what you're reading meditate on it and he says and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it and when you read this book every day for years it has a way of just saturating your consciousness Rabbi Akiva we're told was 40 years old and he was an ignoramus and Rabbi Akiva said that he was not just an ignoramus he hated rabbis he says that if he'd seen a rabbi he would bite the rabbi like a donkey so here we have someone that's antagonistic to the Torah and an ignoramus and at 40 years old he begins to study Torah and he becomes the leading sage of his generation one of the greatest rabbis ever and the Talmud says what happened to him and it says that he was sitting once by a riverside and he saw a rock sitting in the water that the water had been flowing over this rock for centuries and it had managed to basically carve a hole through this rock remember Akiva was able to see this and perceive something profound he said if this rock which is hard can be penetrated by this water which is soft then my heart which is soft can be penetrated by the Torah which is like fire so he resolved because he saw the power of something that's repetitive it wasn't just that someone dropped a pail of water on this rock because probably if you had dumped a million gallons of water on this rock it wouldn't have been penetrated it only got penetrated because every moment it's being hit again and again and again with another drop of water so one part of growing is by learning by studying and by getting this information into our hearts and then there's practice that we are impacted not so much by what we learn by what we read but we're more impacted by what we do you know if you go and volunteer for UJA at the telethon they have they've got a big sign on the wall that says smile as you dial because if you want to sound positive and friendly and happy smile because your physical affect how you feel inside this is very well known we say fake it till you make it and so one of the things we do in learning how to grow spiritually is we begin to act in ways change our behaviors so that it'll impact who we are of deserter one of the great sages of the previous generation i mentioned in before says that we learn to be lovers we learn to be kind and generous not by reading about generosity but by doing it he says why does a mother love her child so much because she gives to the child every single day every day constantly giving and we end up loving who we give to so we learn how to become kind and generous and merciful by acting in that way our insides are impacted by what we do my mononies says that if you want to really do the right thing and you have a chance to give a hundred dollars to charity he says it's better to give one dollar to a hundred people than a hundred dollars to one person because when you give the hundred dollars to one person it's just one act of generosity it's one act of giving but if you give one dollar a hundred times you've done something generous you've given you're not being selfish a hundred times and has a much bigger impact my nachmanides deranban wrote a famous muser text called the geret deranban the letter of nachmanides it has appeared in many prayer books over the centuries he says that it's important to get into certain habits and he recommends get into the habit of always speaking i'm not practicing this now because i'm all excited here he says get into the habit of speaking softly and slowly don't raise your voice he says make that a habit he says all the time all the time make it a practice of speaking quietly and slowly and he says this will become hard hard wired into your nature hard wired and you keep up the practice and it will prevent you from getting angry he said if you want to have a great tool for preventing anger keep yourself always speaking softly i want to conclude by just saying that we're very fortunate today to have a wealth of information and guides spiritual guides to help inspire us and nurture us to be able to grow a wealth more than most of us could ever study in several lifetimes we have this incredibly precious book called the path of the just or the path of the upright it exists in many english translations just came out with a new one with a commentary by art scroll this is a comprehensive guide to becoming a perfect person believe it or not and it requires a lifetime of work some of us could spend maybe a whole lifetime on chapter one which is fine but it takes you step by step through a process of growing spiritually and for many people this is their guidebook to life this is what they walk around with this is what they study this is what inspires them what's wonderful is we have an a restaurant with not only one dish there are other guides other books that might be more suitable to other people and some of us might have to shop around to find the proper book and some people might be might be benefited by speaking to a travel agent someone who's able to help you connect with the right book we have a famous ancient text called the chavo tele vavo the duties of the heart another guide again towards inculcating a more spiritual life and we have dozens and dozens of modern books that i just want to mention two of them we have in our time dr rabbi dr abraham twerzky who's written probably 60 70 books he always jokes that he wrote 70 books they're all about the same topic it's not really true but his books all deal with self-esteem and personal growth and i highly recommend his books to anyone in this room that's interested in learning how to grow he treats because his his specialty in work he's an addiction therapist he works in with addicts and he believes that all of our spiritual problems are very similar to the spiritual problems that addicts have that's his model for working through all of his books but his books are very accessible very inspiring if you're more tuned to youtube he's got many youtube videos but i highly recommend just as a taste of what technology is available rabbi dr abraham twerzky and finally right here from toronto now living in vancouver is dr ala marinas ala marinas himself came to this study of musar later in life his first book is a very very famous bestseller called climbing jacob's mountain which is an introduction to the whole world of personal growth in jewish thought he wrote a second book much more detailed and comprehensive called every day holiness so i recommend these books very very highly and also he's got a website called the musar institute tremendous resources on learning how to grow spiritually we live in a world where people often spend many years learning how to perfect their golf swing working on getting a perfect lawn trying to lose weight or get into shape building their collection of stamps or miniature cars or what have you i'm not knocking these activities but you think about it there are people who spend serious time and effort and energy working on certain projects in life but the greatest project for us to work on is to dedicate every day in our lives to growing spiritually and to working on creating the potential masterpiece that each of us can be