 Okay, good morning. I'm going to be speaking today about a Jewish concept called Shalom. Now, if you go into the world and you ask people what is the one Hebrew word they know, it's probably Shalom. So when I walk down the street almost anywhere and someone notices that I'm Jewish, so often they'll say Shalom. That's the only word they know. And among Jews ourselves, so that's a very, very popular greeting. We say Shalom Aleichem. We say Shabbat Shalom. And the question is, what are we really wishing people when we say Shalom Aleichem? When we say that you should have Shalom, you should have peace. What are we really asking for? So are we really asking that in their city that war doesn't break out? Are we asking that in the next day no one is going to beat them up? I mean that when we ask that we have lives of peace, are we asking that we have no war and no fighting and not getting beat up and not being in physical danger? Or is the blessing for Shalom for peace really we're asking for inner peace? We really want to have inner peace. I think that the true understanding of Shalom for us is both. We want to live in a world where there is Shalom in a physical way. We want to have a world where there's no war. We want to have a world where there's no violence. But on a deeper level, we also want to have lives where we have inner peace, where we have tranquility. The question is, what does this mean? What does it mean to have inner peace? What is that all about? And the problem is that there are many incorrect understandings. There are many false understandings of what it might mean to have inner peace. I'll give you an example. There was a story I read a while ago in a magazine where they had a test. They wanted people to take a test. Are you spiritual? Are you someone that's a spiritual person? And the person who took the test in this story was a rabbi. A rabbi takes this test and he fills out the questions. He asked to answer 20 questions. And after he answered all the questions, he had to score his results. He had to figure out how he did. And the magazine said that you are someone who is not very spiritual. You are not very spiritual. And the rabbi was shocked. I'm a rabbi. My whole life I pray, I learn Torah, I do mitzvot, and I'm not spiritual. It didn't make sense. What was wrong with the test? So he went back to look at the questions. And he noticed that what questions were they asking? So the questions were like this. They asked, do you often seem to be lost in another world? Or do you lose awareness of time? Or do people see you as someone who is absent-minded? And as he started reading these questions, he realized these were not questions that were meant to figure out if someone is spiritual. They really were questions that really were more trying to see if someone was weird or flaky or strange. But not necessarily someone who was spiritual. So what's important is to begin today trying to understand what does it mean? What do we mean in Yahadut, in Judaism, in Torah, when we want to speak about inner peace or tranquility? We know that in the world today, in our world, inner peace, tranquility, are seen by many, many people as very important. Many people see this as life's most important goal. But I should be at peace. I should feel calm. I should feel relaxed. I shouldn't have worries. And the truth is, there is a huge industry in the world today that tries to help people become more relaxed. They sell hundreds of different drugs that people spend billions of dollars a year to feel more relaxed. And people read books, and they learn how to meditate. And they go to classes, and they go to therapy, and they go to doctors, and they go to seminars. There are many, many things people do to try to feel more at peace. To overcome stress in their life, to overcome tension in their lives. And it's true that our rabbis taught in the Talmud that Hashem found nothing in this world that can contain all of life's blessings other than peace, other than shalom. So we know that shalom, peace, is a very, very important thing. And it's a very important vessel. As the rabbis say, peace is the vessel that can contain all the blessings of life. The problem is, the problem is that although peace can be a vessel, peace can be this vessel that can contain blessings, peace can also be an empty vessel, an empty vessel that contains nothing at all. And peace that doesn't have any content, this vessel, if it's empty, is basically a vessel of meaningless tranquility. The pressure may be gone, the tension may be gone, but nothing positive has taken its place. And the word we have in English for this is decadence. It's decadent. It's not very positive. The Bible says, our Bible says, it's better, it's better to be a living dog, a living dog than a dead lion. It's better to be a living dog than a dead lion. Now we often think that a lion is the greatest animal, and a dog is a dog. But what the Bible is teaching us is that what's important is life. And life means that there is activity and there's struggle. And so, even though a dog may not be as great as a lion, a living dog is much greater than a dead lion. Because as long as there is activity and as long as there is struggle, it's better than the empty, empty tranquility of escape. And that's what death often is, people that commit suicide, people that kill themselves are looking to escape all the difficulties of life. They don't want the difficulty. They don't want the tension. They don't want the stress. They don't want the difficulties. And so it's easier to have peace. But that's not real peace. So the question is, and that's what we're going to be looking at this morning, not how to escape the struggle, not how to escape the tension, but rather what form to give our struggles, what form to give the tension, and at how to fight this battle. A great rabbi once taught that the world we live in, our world is a world of tests and struggles and overcoming obstacles. That's the whole life we live. Every moment of life is a struggle. Every moment of life is a test. Every moment of life is a battle. That's the world we were put into, a battlefield. We know that in the Holy Temple, when you went to the altar, the Mizbayah, so we're told that you didn't go up by steps. You had to go up by a ramp, like this, an incline. That's how you had to go up to the altar, not by steps. And our rabbis explain that the reason is, when you're going up by steps, we all know that if you're climbing a lot of steps, it may be very hard to go up many, many steps, but you could stop wherever you want and rest. If you have to climb up 20 flights of steps on Shabbat, if you're walking 20 flights of steps, I did it recently, it's hard. It's hard to walk that many flights of steps. But any step you want, you can stop. But on an incline like this, you can't really stop. You've got to keep on going. And so what the Torah is teaching us is that in life, you can't just rest. You can't relax. The struggle, the climbing has to always go on. So what is inner peace? What is this inner peace? So it doesn't mean that the struggles come to an end. It doesn't mean that the tension is gone. But inner peace means that we have an inner quality, there's something inside of us, that it equips us, it gives us the tools to handle the tensions of life, the struggles of life, the battles of life. That's what it's all about. Inner peace does not mean that you're running away from the struggles, that the struggles come to an end. It means that you can go through life with a certain calmness. And that calmness allows you to deal with anything that comes up. So a calm soul, a person that has a calm soul, is a person who is balanced, they're centered, and regardless of what's happening around you, regardless of what's happening around you, you're able to go through life okay. Because you have equilibrium. You're balanced. And you're in control of your mind. You're in control of your mind. And because you're in control, you have the freedom to encounter any difficulty with joy, with balance, with grace, with bounce. You see people like this. You see people that have what we call simchat hachaim. They have a joy of life. And no matter what is happening in their lives, they seem to be okay. They may be going through very difficult times, but they have a smile on their face, and they stand up straight, and they don't get depressed, and they don't sit in their room and cry all the time. They may be upset inside. They may not always be happy. They may be struggling. It may be difficult, but they don't fall apart. They go ahead. I'll give you two examples of this. There's a famous rabbi who at the very end of his life, he was dying, and he was in a big house, and he knew that he was going to die very, very soon. Maybe he had just a few more hours to live. And so there was someone in the house who was there to be his showmare, that we don't leave a corpse. We don't leave a dead body all by itself. There has to be someone that watches the body. So this great rabbi saw that the man who was going to be the showmare, the watcher, that he was very nervous. He seemed very upset. He was afraid, oh, I never was together with a dead body before. It's scary. It doesn't feel good. And here this old rabbi who was about to die sees this person. He seems very nervous and upset. Now the rabbi could have said, you think you have problems? I'm the one that's dying. But the rabbi spent the last few hours of his life. That's how he spent the last few hours of his life calming this person, reassuring him. It's okay to be with a dead person. Nothing's going to happen to you. It's all right. Don't be so upset. Relax. That's an example of someone who has tremendous inner peace, right? That even though he himself is dying, he has the ability to spend his last few minutes taking care of someone else, making that other person feel good. Another example happened recently. Actually, it happened in 1995 that there was a factory in the United States, a big clothing factory that burnt to the ground. And this factory was the main industry in this town. It was a small town and it was a big factory. And many of the people who lived in this town worked in this factory. The owner of the factory happened to be a religious Jew. What he did was amazing. Because most people in that situation would have given up. They would have said, look, the factory burned down. I feel terrible, but we're out of business. And all the people who worked for him, they have to take care of themselves. They have to manage. But this man who owned this factory, what he did was to spend millions of dollars of his own money to keep 3,000, he had 3,000 people working for him. He kept 3,000 people on full payroll. Meaning they received all the money they would have received if they were working. Plus benefits for all the months that it took to rebuild the factory. Amazing, amazing person. Because he had a certain inner sense of peace that he didn't fall apart. And he was able to go through this incredible test, this incredible tragedy in a way that was amazing. So the question is, how do we build for ourselves this kind of strong foundation in our lives? How do we build that? So I want to share with you a story. When I was in Yeshiva, there was a teacher, he taught Hebrew. But he was also a martial arts expert. He was a big, big karate master. And he did a, every year he did an exhibition. And one of the things that he did was to ask the smallest student in the school, very, very small, maybe 90 pounds, little teeny student, to demonstrate something called rooting. Rooting. Like a plant has a root. So here he wanted this student to get rooted in the ground. Where you stand with your legs apart. And you breathe. And you root yourself in the ground. And then he asked the six biggest students in the school to try to push this student to move him even an inch. And they were not able to move this student an inch. I saw actually a few years later on the internet, I saw a video of an old Chinese Tai Chi master. A martial artist that demonstrated this technique. He rooted himself in the ground. And 20 people lined up, 20 people tried to push him. They couldn't move him an inch. So I believe that's what we want to do. We want to be people who are rooted and centered and have a solid foundation. So no matter what happens in life, we're not going to fall apart. We're not going to get knocked over. How do we do this? How do we build, how do we build this kind of solid foundation? So a great rabbi from Israel, the Chazon Ish, taught that if you are living according to the light of truth, there can never be sadness in your life. Children's life can never really be sad if they're living according to the light of truth. Which means, if I can translate, that we will have real contentment in our lives when we know that we're doing what we should be doing. When you go through your life and you know that you are doing every moment what you should be doing, you will feel great. So the question is, what should you be doing? What should we be doing? So I believe that one of the most important things that we need to be doing, one of our minds to realize this is what I am doing in my life, is to realize that each of us is here on a building project. Each of us is here building something. What are we building? So we know that in the Bible, when God created human beings, the Bible speaks about it differently than everything else that was created. When God creates the human being, God says, let us make men. Let us make men. And the question that everyone is bothered by is, who is God speaking to? Let us make men? There are many answers that were given to this question. I want to share an answer from the holy Baal Shem Toh. He basically said the following, for everything else that was created, God created it all by himself. God says, let there be trees. Let there be dogs. Let there be stars. God can just make it. When it comes to the human being, God is not able to say, let there be people. It doesn't happen the same way. God can give us the raw ingredients. God can give us a body, and God can give us a soul. But who we become is a function of what we do with those ingredients. So God cannot make you. God can only give you the raw ingredients. And so in the Bible, when God says, let us make men, who is God speaking to? God is speaking to you, and God is speaking to you, and God is speaking to me, and God is speaking to every person that will ever live. And God is saying to each person, let us make a human being. But that's what we are here to do. Each human being is here to create ourselves. God was perfectly capable, if God wanted to, to make a complete, perfect human being. If God wanted to, he could have made us complete and perfect. But the truth is, God wanted us to complete ourselves. And that's why in the story of creation, after everything that God makes, what does God say? And God saw that it was good. After the first day, God saw that it was good. And after the second day, God saw that it was good. And after each thing that God creates, God saw that it was good. But after the human being, it doesn't say, and God saw that the human being was good. Why? Because again, it depends. It depends what we make of ourselves. Everything else was created perfectly. It's interesting that in the Bible, the human being is called Adam, Adam. And the Bible says we are called Adam because we come from the Adamah. The human being is called Adam because we come from the Adamah, the earth. And the rabbis explain that we are very much like the earth. We're very much like the earth. What is a big piece of earth? You take a field, for example. So the field has nothing in it. But if you plow the field, and you take out the rocks, you clean the field, and you remove the branches, and you turn over the earth, and you plant the seeds. And maybe you have to water it frequently. And maybe you have to, as the plants are growing, you have to prune the trees. There are many things that you have to do. But if you do it properly, this field can produce a tremendous amount of fruits or vegetables or trees. But if you do nothing with the field, you don't really work it, you don't really take care of it, nothing will be growing there. So we are called Adam because we come from the Adamah because we are just like a field. What is a field? It's pure potential. A piece of land is pure potential. And what will grow out of it depends upon how much work you put into it. That's what we are. And so if we want to know, as we're going through life, what are we here to do? We're here to make a human being. We're here to create something. We're here on a building project. Each one of us is in this world to make a person, to create a human being. The process of creating this journey of creating ourselves doesn't cause happiness. It doesn't cause happiness. This project, this journey, this process is happiness itself. When you engage, when you're involved with building yourself, with making something, with creating yourself, that doesn't cause you to be happy. That is happiness. The rabbis teach there's a word in Hebrew for growth, to grow something. It's a word called simichut, tsomeach. The word for growth is tsomeach. And it sounds very much like the word samayach, happiness. Because there's joy and there's happiness when we are growing, when we are developing. So I believe this is what the rabbi meant when he said, that when you're living your life according to the idea of truth, there's no sadness. Because every moment of your life that you're conscious of this, that you're saying, I'm here to grow. I am here to develop. I'm here to create myself. You're doing the most amazing building possible. You're growing a person, a human being. So the word shalom, which we translate as peace, the word shalom comes when we achieve the inner peace by embracing the journey to work on ourselves, to work on ourselves, and to perfect ourselves. We call this shlemut, becoming perfect. Shlemut becoming perfect. The word shalom doesn't just mean peace. Shalom means whole, to become a whole person. And this was the instructions that Hashem, that God gave to Abraham, the first Jew, when Hashem said to Abraham, lech lechah. What was Abraham being told, lech lechah? He wasn't just being told to go somewhere. Abraham was told lech lechah, go to yourself. Go to yourself. That's what it means, lech lechah. Go to yourself to who you can be. You're going really on a path of self discovery. So inner peace is not really the goal of life. It's not the goal of life to feel at peace. But inner peace is a byproduct. It comes about while you're working towards your goal in life. As you're working towards this goal in life, you will feel peaceful. One of the things that's important to understand as we're going through this life of building ourselves, of creating ourselves, is to understand that obstacles and difficulties are essential, are necessary in order to grow. If anyone here ever goes to a gymnasium, anyone wants to get big muscles. So we know that in order to grow physically, we have to overcome resistance. I mean that when you go to a gym, if you were to pick up a piece of paper 50 times, you wouldn't build your muscles. This is not going to build muscles. To build muscles, you have to overcome resistance. So if you picked up the table 50 times, that's not so easy. Then you would grow your muscles. So in order for us to grow as human beings, having obstacles, having tests, having difficulties, having trials, having things that make it difficult to grow, that's essential for growing. And if we went through all of life and it was just very, very easy and no difficulties ever happened, there'd be no growth. That's why when the Torah teaches us, the rabbis teach us actually, the rabbis say that the greatest blessing that God ever gave us was this idea of Satan. Now in most religions, Satan is seen as our greatest enemy. And in many ways, it is our greatest enemy. But at the same time, it's our greatest blessing. After the creation of the world, God didn't just say that he saw it was good. God says he saw that it was very good. And the rabbis say that this idea of very good, that refers to the Yatser Harah, the evil inclination, the Satan that's inside of us, the part of each one of us that tries to get in the way of us growing. Let's understand how this works. The rabbis explain that each one of us is a horse and a rider. Each person in the world wears a horse and a rider. Now think about it. What does a horse want to do? What does a horse want to do? The horse wants to basically run and play and eat and have a good time. The horse, that's what the horse wants to do. The horse doesn't want to finish us. The horse is not interested in learning how to become a kinder, more gentle horse. The horse just wants to play and eat and run around and do whatever it wants. What does the rider want? The rider wants to take the horse and get it to go in a certain direction. The horse doesn't care where it goes. The horse would like to run all over the place. The rider is interested in getting the horse to go in a certain direction. The rabbis explain that's what's going on inside each one of us. We have a body and the body wants to do whatever it wants to do. Our bodies just want to do whatever they want to do. But then we have a soul on the shema. And the soul wants to take the body and get it to go in a certain direction. And that's the real struggle that takes place every moment of our life. A famous rabbi from Israel put it this way. He said, every moment of life is a struggle between what I want to do and what I feel like doing. For example, if I messed up my room, my parents tell me, you got to clean up your room. So I want to listen to my parents. I want to clean up the room. But I don't feel like it. I rather go play. Or if I insulted a friend of mine, I want to apologize. It's the right thing to do. I want to apologize. It's the right thing to do. But it's awkward and it's uncomfortable and it's painful. So I don't feel like apologizing. But I want to apologize. Or if I have a friend in the hospital, I want to visit them. It's the right thing to do. But I don't like going to hospitals. It's uncomfortable. There are germs. People are sick. It doesn't feel good to go to a hospital. So there are so many things in life where I want to do something but I don't feel like doing it. I want to study hard. I want to learn. I want to become a Talmud Haqam. But I often don't always feel like it. I rather just not have to work so hard. I want to be great. I don't always feel like putting in the effort. And so when you think about it, what does the soul want? What does the soul want? The soul wants pleasure. The soul wants to do the right thing. What does the body want? The body just wants to be comfortable. The body just wants to relax. The body doesn't want any of the pain. And the truth is that we never grow in life without pain, without effort. Nothing in life that's worth doing comes without putting in effort and energy and pain. Anything in life that we get pleasure from is something we have to work for. If it comes without any work at all, we don't really get that much pleasure. And so the first thing that we have to understand is that to have a life of real inner peace, to have real inner peace, we have to understand that we're here to overcome obstacles, to fight the resistance in life, to fight the difficulties of life in order to grow. Because we don't grow without overcoming resistance. And we're here to grow. We're here to make ourselves. When you think about it, a cat does not grow. A cat is a cat is a cat. And as it gets older, it may become heavier. It doesn't become more of a cat. A human being can become more of a mensch. When you were little kids, little kids are selfish. They don't think of other people. They're immature. Hopefully, you don't stay eight years old your whole life. Hopefully, as you get older, you learn to think about things on a higher level, and a higher level, and a higher level. Human beings can grow. We can develop. Animals never really grow. A dog does not become more of a dog after 30 years, or 20 years, or 10 years. A human being doesn't grow, is very sad. To see someone that when they're 40 years old, they are the same exact person as when they were 10 years old, is pathetic. It's sad. Hopefully, someone grows over time. They become more mature. They become more sophisticated. They become more sensitive. They become more spiritual. They become more of a person, more of a mensch. So the first thing we learn today is that when we spend our life trying to grow like this, we'll always be people that have balance and inner peace. I want to share one more idea. There was a great book that was written about 1,000 years ago. The book is called The Chovot Halle Varot, The Responsibilities of the Heart. And what he teaches is that the one major secret for having a life of inner peace, the one major secret of having a life of inner peace, is to realize that there is a pilot to the world that we're living in. To realize that there's a God that controls the world, and God loves each of us, and God cares for each of us. And when we live with that knowledge, when we live according to that knowledge that there is a God that controls the world and loves us, he says we can live with something he calls trust. You know, when we were kids, we played a game where you would stand up and your friend would stand behind you, and your friend would say, okay, fall back, and I'm going to catch you. Now it's a little bit scary, you know, I'm going to fall back and maybe my friend is not going to be there, and I'm going to smack my head into the floor. It's an exercise to build trust. Do I really trust that my friend will be there for me? It feels very, very different to be someone who isn't sure, meaning that your friend asks you to fall back, and you don't know if you can trust your friend. You don't know if you can trust them. It feels very different if when you're about to lean back, you trust your friend 100%. You have no fears at all. So this famous book says that when you go through life and you know that there's someone behind you, there's a God that runs the world, and that controls the world, you can have a tremendous amount of inner peace. Let me share with you a story. The rabbi that I mentioned before, the Chazon Ish, this rabbi, the Chazon Ish, had a student in Israel, and the student owned a printing press. The student owned a printing press. They'd put out pamphlets and magazines. One day, someone else came to the same city and opened up another printing press, opened up the same exact business, very close by. So the student went to meet this new person, he went over to his printing press, and he greeted him, he said shalom, hello. He offered him advice on how to grow his business. He said, if anything breaks, if you need any spare parts, you can come to me. He said to him, don't hesitate to call me if you need any help. And he wished him hatslacha, he wished him success. When he went home and his family asked him, how do you feel about this competitor that just came to town and opened up another printing press, how do you feel about it? And he told his family what he did, that he went over and he introduced himself and he offered the competitor to help him to help him grow his business, to help him with any spare parts. He wished his competitor success. His family couldn't believe it. How could you do that? He's going to be a competitor. He may even ruin your business. So this young Torah scholar said, God determined this year, God determined this year on Rosh Hashanah, on the new year, exactly how much money I'm going to make. I won't get one penny less because this man opened up another business. Actually, it may be a great blessing that he came to town. He might make my workload a little bit less. I might have more time now to be with my family. I might have more time now to study Torah. You know how many people end up getting eaten, consumed by their business? They spend all of their time working and working and working. And then at the end of their life, they regret, why didn't I spend more time with my family? Why didn't I spend more time growing as a person? Why didn't I spend more time getting closer to Hashem? So this man realized that, you know what? This is a great blessing that now I'm not going to have the ability to work so hard because now there's someone else doing the same exact business. He said to his family, I'm very grateful to this person. So I think as we all go through life, and we remember these two things, number one, to remember that each of us is here building something that's wonderful. We're each here creating a work of art. We're each here creating a potential masterpiece. We're each here building a person. We're really in many ways helping God make a person and to be conscious of that every day as we go through life. That one day is not just another day and another day and another day. Life is not just meaningless. That we're here in this life to make something of ourselves, to build something of ourselves. And when we're involved in that building project, things will not upset us so quickly. And to understand and to remember as we're going through this building project that we have a Father in Heaven. We have a God that put us here that is watching over us, that runs the world, that cares about us, that loves us, that has our back. We go through life with a tremendous amount of inner peace of Shalom. I want to give each of us a bracha, a blessing that we should be able to take hold of both of these ideas. One, that I'm doing something that's incredible. And number two, there's a very big God that cares for me. And I think that these two ideas, if we take hold of them strongly, will change our lives to give us a tremendous amount of inner peace. Okay, thank you all. And I wish you all Shalom.