 The second step in Rabbi Luzato's work will be looking at tonight, which is called sri-zut. Now sri-zut can be translated in many, many ways. I'll just share with you a few of them. Don't worry if you don't get it right away because as we go through the evening, sri-zut will become clear. The word itself is often translated as zeal, as alacrity, industriousness, eagerness, diligence, promptitude, enthusiasm, drive. It means all those things. And again, we'll see what that actually means in practice. What sri-zut means in practice is once you have analyzed your life and you have thought about what you want to do and what you're doing, sri-zut says that you need to tackle your obligations. Once you've arrived at an understanding of what are your obligations in life, what is really motivating you, what are the goals, tackle those goals, and seize opportunities as they arise. Even we can't plan everything in our lives, but sometimes things come up, we get opportunities, and sometimes we want to make sure we seize those opportunities. So sri-zut speaks about the importance of tackling our obligations with enthusiasm, with zeal, with diligence, and seizing opportunities, and moving ahead in life. When an opportunity arises, do it. As we say, just do it. Sri-zut takes us from I wish to, to I will do. Often we go through life saying to ourselves, I wish I could, I wish I would, I wish, I wish, I wish. And sri-zut takes you from I wish to I will. They tell a story about a m'shulach, a m'shulach, the people that come, let's say for example, from Israel to North America, they need to raise money for medical costs or for other expenses they have in Israel, they're not able to secure all the money they need in Israel for what they need, so they often come to North America to raise money for themselves. And they tell a story about a m'shulach who came back to Israel from America and he told his friends that he learned a new word in America, a new expression. What was the expression he learned? It was I'll try. So his friends asked him, what does that mean? He says it means no. We learn in Exodus chapter 12 verse 17 that you shall guard the matzot. We're told that on Passover we have to eat matzot. We know matzot are made from wheat or barley or rye or oats or spelt but basically wheat that's mixed with water and they are not allowed to ferment and not allowed to sit for 18 minutes without being needed or baked. So we're told that we have to guard the matzot and what that often means is in some cases that after the wheat is harvested we watch it to make sure it doesn't come in contact with water. The Talmud says, and this is quoted by Rashi on this verse in the Bible, don't read this verse as saying that you should guard the matzot but rather you should read the verse as saying that you should guard the mitzvot. In Hebrew the word matzot and mitzvot are spelt almost identically or identically. And you could read the word matzot as mitzvot. So the Talmud says that when it says in the Bible you shall guard the matzot you should read it. A lesson you should take away is that you should guard the mitzvot. What does that mean? It means that just as you shouldn't let the matzot become chameit, become leavened, you've got to be very careful not to let the wheat and the water sit there until it becomes leavened. So you shouldn't let a mitzvot become leavened either. You shouldn't let a mitzvot spoil rather as soon as the opportunity arises to do a mitzvot you should perform the mitzvot immediately. We know that when God commanded Abraham to do the incredible totally incomprehensible act of taking his son to the top of Mount Moriah and offering him as a sacrifice after God had promised Abraham that this child is going to be his progeny. And Abraham now was a very old man. Abraham had all of his hopes for Isaac to continue his legacy. God now tells Abraham take this son and bring him to the top of the place I will show you and offer him, bring him up as an offering. You can imagine that Abraham might be very reluctant to do this. However, the Bible says he got up early in the morning. He didn't just say, OK, God, first let me have my coffee. Then I've got to make sure that I'm dressed warm enough and I want to make sure the donkey got to check the horseshoes, whatever they put on the bottom of the donkey. And he could do 10,000 things. No, we're told in the Bible, the Bible says, by Yash game of Rambabokar, he got up early in the morning in order to carry out God's will. It's an amazing story I read not long ago where Pesach Crone, a very famous storyteller today, but his primary occupation, he's a male. He performs circumcisions. And he once received a phone call to do a brisk for a family that was living in Woodmere, New York. This took place in 1999. So there was a child that was born, a boy that was born, but they were not able to schedule the brisk immediately because the baby was yellow and had a very high bilirubin count. The condition remained stable. And on the sixth day, we know that the circumcision takes place normally on the eighth day. On the sixth day, the child's bilirubin count went up slightly. So a brisk on the eighth day did not look possible. On the seventh day, the jaundice improved slightly. And the pediatrician said it would be probably OK to do the brisk on Thursday. Thursday would have been the ninth day. On the seventh day, the baby only slightly improved. And the doctor said he won't be ready for the eighth day. But we can probably schedule the brisk for Thursday, the ninth day. So the brisk was scheduled for Thursday. And on Wednesday afternoon, which was the eighth day, Pesach Krohn was in his car, driving back from a brisk he had done in New Jersey. Now he's coming back in the afternoon. And on the phone was his wife. And his wife said that the father of this baby was trying to reach him desperately. And so Rabbi Krohn had his wife patch the father in so that he could speak to him over the phone. And the father said that they had met with the doctor that day, which was Wednesday. And the doctor said that at that day, the baby was 100% that Wednesday, which was the eighth day. And the father said to Rabbi Krohn, we have to do the brisk immediately. We have to do the brisk right now, today. And he asked Rabbi Krohn, are you available? Rabbi Krohn said, no, I'm coming back from a brisk in New Jersey. I'm not going to make it back to Woodmere before nightfall. You've got to do the circumcision in the daytime. So he says, I can't make it back by sundown, but I can try to find another Moel for you. The problem was that Rabbi Krohn knew that the brisk had been scheduled for Thursday. They ordered food for 100 people for Thursday. And Rabbi Krohn said to the father, are you going to be able to call all of these people to let them know that the brisk is being rescheduled? So the father said, no, we're not going to have time to call the people to tell them that the brisk is today. And the father said, the only people who are going to be at this circumcision are going to be the mother, my mother-in-law, and the baby. And Rabbi Krohn said, what about you? Speaking to the father, what about you? And the father said, I'm in Manhattan. I'm working in Manhattan. I'm not going to be able to make it back before nightfall. And Rabbi Krohn said, you're not going to be at your own son's brisk. You're not going to be at your own son's circumcision. And the man said to Rabbi Krohn, look, this is the first mitzvah for my son. This is his first mitzvah. And he says, it has to be done properly. It's more important for him to have his brisk on time than for me to be there. And so Rabbi Krohn found a moheil to perform in the brisk just before the sun went down. And the next morning, 100 people showed up at the synagogue expecting a circumcision. And all they got was a very inspiring story. But you see here, a person's enthusiasm to do the right thing without delaying. He could have come up with many reasons to say, OK, we'll do it tomorrow. We have all these guests that are supposed to come. We ordered the food. I would like to be at my son's circumcision. No. He had an opportunity to do a commandment. His son had the opportunity to do his first commandment in his life. And the father acted with his resort, with enthusiasm, with alacrity, with zeal, with a drive to want to do the right thing and to do it now. Now, his resort is not just doing things that come up and doing things that present themselves and fulfilling our obligations, but it means forging ahead and completing the projects that we start. How often in life do we start very worthwhile projects, but we don't see them through to completion? I can't tell you how many times that I've begun the dafyomi cycle. There's a famous program where people study a page of Talmud a day. And if you study a page of Talmud a day, you finish in seven and a half years. Now, it sounds easy. What's the big deal, study a page a day? If you're a busy person, it's not so easy to always find that hour it takes to study that page of Talmud. If you're traveling, it makes it more difficult. And so I've tried this program at least three times. I began, I finished one or two tractates of the Talmud, and then I fall off the wagon. And I have not had, I confess publicly, those reasons to push through and stick with it. And so this is a problem that many people I'm sure have is that we begin projects. We begin things that are worthwhile, and we don't have the stick-to-itiveness and the dedication and the drive and the commitment to follow through and to complete these projects. So the Meda of Zerizos says, just do it and commit yourself and stick with your commitments. Now Rabbi Avram Tversky teaches. He's a doctor, a medical doctor who's also a wonderful psychiatrist. And he teaches that in medicine there's something called the golden hour. The golden hour is a period of time that it's most ideal to close a wound. If someone is injured, there's a certain golden hour to treat the wound. And so too in life, there are opportunities for doing some things that once that opportunity passes, we're out of luck. There's a very famous passage in the Talmud. It's a very disturbing passage in the Talmud, which discusses Moses at the burning bush. And we're told that Moses saw this bush that was burning, but the bush was not being consumed. And Moses knew that this was not an ordinary experience. He understood that this was the presence of God that he was encountering. And so the Torah says in the book of Exodus, chapter 3, verse 6, that Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look. Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look. And the Talmud, in tractate Brachot 7a, has a discussion of whether Moses acted properly or not. One opinion says that he did the right thing. But Rabbi Yoshua Ben-Karcha says that Moses acted incorrectly. Where do we see this? Because later on in the book of Exodus, after the sin of the golden calf, when Moses was pleading for the Jewish people and he asks God, show me please your glory. In Exodus chapter 33, verse 18, show me please your glory. God says to him, you will not be able to see my face. And in the Talmud, Rabbi Yoshua Ben-Karcha says that what God was saying to Moses was the following. When I wanted, you didn't want. Now that you want, I don't want. Now it's a very disturbing piece of Talmud because it sounds like God is being petty or vindictive. What is God saying to him? When I wanted, obviously when I wanted to reveal myself to you, Moses, you didn't want. You hid your face. Now Moses, that you want, you're asking me to show me your glory. God says, I don't want. And God says, you will not be able to see my face. How do we understand this passage in the Talmud? So Rav Sateka Kainu of Lulbulin says that in life, there are times when we just are beginning a project. At the very beginning of an experience. For example, when a person begins to put on his philin, usually it's a boy when he's 13 years old. And you can imagine, he's been studying. His parents purchased him a beautiful set of philin. He's been practicing. Now he becomes a bar mitzvah. He's gonna put them on for the, can you imagine the enthusiasm this young man has for putting on those philin? His face is shining. And there's a certain opportunity, a certain energy that you have at the beginning of a process. If you go to a new school and you begin a new study project, there's a certain energy that you have when you begin the project. And there's a certain energy that's available to you at the beginning of a project, at the beginning of a relationship. There's a certain magic. The Buddhists call this beginner's mind. That we have the ability when something is there at the first moment to do things that we can't do later on. And so Rav Tsarika Cohen says that what God is saying to Moses is look, Moses. When we first met at the burning bush, you had the opportunity, you had the ability. It was possible for me to fully reveal myself to you in a way that I can't do it now, he's saying to Moses. Not that I don't want to. Not that God's being the addictive. God is saying that Moses, you don't get a second chance at a first impression. We've had a history already. We've been together for a long time, you and me, Moses. When we first met, there's a certain magic, there's a certain potential at that moment when things are beginning. And God is saying to Moses, you can't go back to that moment anymore, it's past. The opportunity is past. And so he's saying, I can't reveal myself to you in the same way. Our sages asked, why is there no blessing that we recite for giving charity, for giving stucco? We know that for every commandment that we do, every mitzvah, we recite a blessing if we're about to light conical candles, if we're about to eat matzo and Passover. Why is there no blessing for giving charity? And many reasons are offered, but one of the reasons offered is that if we treated giving charity like every other commandment that we do, let's say taking a lula of an estro, the four species on Sukkot, what would we want to do? We want to first go and wash our hands, then we want to go put on our jacket. And if you're a chassid, you'll put on your garthal, your special belt, and you might go and put on your hat, right? You're going to get all ready to do the mitzvah and you're going to say the blessing. And by the time you say the blessing already, the poor person that needed your money might be gone. And it's not funny that Talmud tells a horrible story about this. In Shraktetanit, 21a, they tell of Rabbi Nachum Isgamsu. Nachum Isgamsu was blind in both eyes. He was missing both his legs. He was missing both his arms. And his entire body was covered in boils. He was lying on a bed in a dilapidated house. The legs of the bed were put in buckets of water so that ants would not crawl up the legs of the bed and crawl onto his boils. That was a situation in which he found himself. And because this house was dilapidated, it was very run down. The house could fall apart any minute. It was almost a ruin. And the students of Nachum Isgamsu were concerned that the house might collapse so they wanted to remove him and the furniture from the house. They wanted to remove the furniture first and then they wanted to remove him and his bed. And Nachum Isgamsu said to them, my children, first remove the furniture and then remove my bed. I'm sorry, they had intended to remove him first. And then take out the furniture. He said, no, take out the furniture first and then remove my bed. He said, because you may be assured that as long as I'm in the house, it won't collapse. So they listened to him and they removed first the furniture and then they removed him on his bed and as soon as they removed him from the house, the house collapsed. His disciples saw this, which was a demonstration of how righteous he is. And they said to him, teacher, how did all this happen to you? How do you find yourself in such a horrible state? You're so righteous. How has this happened to you? How could you be in this situation? And he told them the story. He said, my children, I brought it upon myself. I was once traveling on a road to a house of my father-in-law and I had three donkey loads of food items. One of food, one of drink, and the last one of delicacies. He said, a poor man approached me and said, teacher, sustain me. I replied to him, wait, until I unload some food from the donkey. Wait till I come down and I'm able to take off some of the food from the donkey. And before I had a chance to unload the donkey, the man's soul departed. He died. I went and I fell on my face and I said, let the eyes that took no pity on your eyes become blind. Let my hands which took no pity on your hands be cut off. Let my legs which took no pity on your legs be cut off. And my mind did not find rest until I said and let my entire body be covered with boils. His students said to him, whoa, that we should see you like this. And he said to his students, whoa to me, had you not seen me like this. And this is a pretty hair-raising story. I'm not sharing it with you for any other reason than the illustration of the idea that he didn't act quickly enough. He could have given something immediately and he didn't. One other example, every Shavuot, the holiday of Shavuot, which commemorates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, we read the scroll, the Megillah of Ruth, the story of Ruth. And we know that Ruth was a Moabite woman she was married to a son of Eli Melch, Eli Melch, great Jewish leader had passed away. His sons had passed away. And Eli Melch's wife, Naomi, wanted to return to Israel from Moab. And her two daughter-in-laws, Orpah and Ruth wanted to go back with her. And Naomi said, no, you can stay here. You don't have to come back with me. Stay in Moab. You'll have a life here in Moab. And Orpah decided to stay in Moab. But Ruth insisted, no, I'm going to go back to Israel with you. And she said, your people will be my people and your God will be my God. And we know that Ruth eventually becomes a convert to Judaism. But we know that in the Bible, there is a commandment that if a man dies and there is no children between him and his wife, his brothers have a responsibility to marry his wife. It's called Leverite Marriage. Now, the brothers had all died. And so the obligation fell to the nearest relative. Now in the story, Naomi wanted Ruth to approach a man named Boaz. Boaz was actually the head of the Jewish High Court of the Sanhedrin to perform the Leverite Marriage. And Boaz says to her that, I'm really not the first in line. The person that has the first obligation to marry you is a name that the scroll of Ruth refers to as Ploney Almoni, but his name was actually Tove. His name was Tove. And he's the person that really has to marry you. And so Boaz goes to this man named Tove and asks him if he'd marry Ruth. And Tove declined. Tove wouldn't do it. And on that very same day, on the very same day that Tove refused to marry Ruth, Boaz himself arranged for the reclamation of the property that belonged to Ruth's husband, which was a required part of the mitzvah of Leverite Marriage. In addition, there was some controversy about whether he could even marry Ruth because she's a Moabite. And the Bible says that a Moabite cannot enter into the congregation of Israel. And so they had to convene a special meeting of the Sanhedrin of the Jewish High Court. And they resolved the issue that the Bible was only referring to male Moabites. It says in the Bible Moa Thee, a male Moabite and not a Moavia, a female Moabite. So the Sanhedrin that day resolved the issue that he would be allowed to marry Ruth and he actually married her on that day. And from their union that night, she conceived and the sages tell us that sadly, he passed away the next day. He was in his 80s by the way. Boaz was a man in his 80s. And yet as soon as he found out, as soon as he found out that Tove would not marry Ruth, he goes into motion. And he arranges for the transfer into the property. And he arranges for a meeting of the Sanhedrin in the Jewish High Court. And then after it's permissible, he goes and marries her. And that night they consummate the marriage and she conceives the next day he dies. And we know that from that union, David descends, destined to be the progenitor of the Messiah. Think what would have happened. If Boaz just waited just one day, he would not have had the incredible privilege of fathering a child that would become the ancestor of the Messiah, of King David. So we understand a little bit now about the demands that this media, this attribute of Riz was the polls on us. However, Ramosah Chaim Wutsato explains that there's a lot of resistance that we have to acting with resort, with alacrity. He says, first of all, we are physical human beings. Our nature is not spiritual. He says by our very nature, because we're physical, we have a tendency towards inertia. Our default position as human beings is to chill. Our default activity as human beings is to take it easy, is to relax, is to not get too worked up, is to not stress ourselves, is to not strain ourselves. That's what we're like. That's because of who we are, we rather just sit and relax. That's our natural tendency, just to sit and relax. And so we have an inborn obstacle to Rizut. One of the problems is that this nature of laziness that we have will find itself deterred from any worthy activity by any obstacle. Because we are lazy, in a sense, by nature, people that get carried away by their inborn laziness will get deterred by any obstacle. But with drive, with ambition, with zeal, with alacrity, we'll be able to see our way around any obstacle. And that's the crossroads at which we find ourselves. But the problem is a lazy person will always find difficulties. There's a wonderful book called the Ma'alotamidot, which says that laziness is like a small tear in a garment. And it will lead to the whole garment unraveling if not attended to. If you don't nip laziness in the bud, it will basically destroy your life. It's like a small leak in a water pipe that can cause a huge flood. The Abarbanel, famous commentary to the Bible and to the book of Ethics of the Fathers says that if a weak and bed-ridden person were told in the middle of the night that a treasure could be found at a particular place, he would jump out of a bed, get dressed, and run as fast as he could to retrieve that treasure. The truth is that we can do it. We have the ability to act and to move when we're motivated. It says in the Torah in the book of Dvarim, Deuteronomy chapter 16 verse 18. Shoftim beshotrim titan lachem bechol sharecha. Judges and officers, you shall appoint for yourselves in all of your gates, all of your cities. The Midrash on this verse says that it alludes to a passage in the book of Proverbs, chapter six verses six to eight, which says the following. Go and observe the ant, you lazy one. Go watch how an ant behaves. See her ways and grow wise. Watch the ant and grow wise. Though there is neither an officer or guard or ruler over her. There's no officer, there's no guard, there's no ruler over the ant. She prepares her food in the summer and stores up her food in the harvest time. The ant stores away their food so that it'll be there in the future. And the Midrash says that we should learn from the behavior of the ant to prepare for the future, not to be lazy, to be diligent. Because it's always possible to say, okay, I'll go find food tomorrow, no problem. And it says that if you go to the ant and watch her ways, you will grow wise. You'll grow wise. So the commentaries ask, why does it say watch the ant and you'll grow wise? Shouldn't it say watch the ant and you'll grow diligent? Why does it say you'll grow wise? And the answer is because laziness is not physiological. It's an issue of intelligence. Laziness is really an issue of not really thinking about what we're doing in life. The Talmud says in Tractate Tameed 28a, who is the wise person? It says the wise person is the one that sees the future. The person that looks to the future and foresees what's gonna be happening in the future. Thinks about the future. Thinks about what they can do to make the future work out for themselves. The ant is wise because the ant knows that food will not be available in the winter. And so it prepares in the summer and it acts diligently without anybody having to hold a rod over its head to stand over it. The truth is, if we understand what our lives are all about and that there are important things for us to accomplish, that was last week's class. But if we understand and we reflect on these things, if we reflect deeply, and this requires reflection and meditation, if we think about the importance of the activities we're supposed to be doing, it's important to take care of our health. It's important to grow spiritually. It's important to grow intellectually. It's important to work on relationships. These are all important things. And if we're in touch with how important they really are and we appreciate the benefits of doing these things. And the loss, if we don't do these things, we will do them. But it's a matter of thinking. It's a matter of thinking. The Code of Jewish Law, the Shulchanaruch, begins by stating, Shiviti Hashem l'Negdi Tamid, I place God's presence before me at all times. And with this template, when we go through our day with the template that I'm here in this world in order to have a relationship with God, the Code of Jewish Law says, we will get out of bed like a lion in the morning. A lion does not move slowly. A lion moves deliberately and it moves with a lot of energy. And so the Talmud says that we should get up in the morning like a lion with a lot of energy and alacrity and determination. And it says that we should begin our day at the very first thing we do, meaning as soon as we become aware of the fact that we're awake, we should say, M'odeh ani le fanecha. I thank you, God. I'm thankful to you, God, that you returned my soul to me. Some people don't wake up in the morning. It's a gift to be alive. And so the Talmud says if we wake up with the realization that we're supposed to always be in the presence of God and realize that our purpose in this life is to have a relationship with God, we will immediately, without dilly-dallying, just acknowledge thank you, God, for returning my soul to me and I have now another opportunity to live another day. What an incredible opportunity the day is. And if we don't appreciate that opportunity, it's very easy to waste time and to delay the important things that we're supposed to be doing. Listen, let's be honest. We are all very aware of the lost opportunities of things that we put off in life. All of us have experienced this. And it causes a tremendous amount of uneasiness. So to relieve this discomfort that we have when we realize that we're wasting our lives by not doing the things we should be doing, what do we do? We devise very sophisticated rationalizations and excuses. The great irony is, it's a great irony, is that the lazy person is very industrious and ingenious when it comes up to his ability to invent many, many, many brilliant excuses for what they're not doing. The lazy person has that ability. I might have mentioned in an earlier class that the author of the Chovos Levavos, The Obligations, The Duties of the Heart, which was written about 1,000 years ago, a wonderful work on our inner lives. It's one of the most important books of Musar in our literature, written by Rebachi of Mbakuda. He has a long introduction, long introduction, where he discusses his reluctance to have written this book. He said he put it off and he wasn't gonna do it and he was questioning whether he should do it. He said he had many, many doubts about whether he should write this book. And he said those doubts were really doubts about his self-worth. Who am I to write such a book? There are many greater people than me that should be writing a book like this. I'm not qualified, I'm not the right person. And he went through this self-dialogue and this self-talk for a long time that delayed his writing of this book until he realized that he was just fooling himself. He wasn't avoiding this book out of humility. He realized he was avoiding the writing of this book because he was lazy. That was the only thing holding him back. We're told in our Bible that the princes of the tribes, each of the 12 tribes had a leader called the Prince of Nasi. And we're told that when the Tabernacle was first constructed, the princes of the tribes were the first ones to offer sacrifices at the dedication of the Tabernacle. However, they were the last ones to donate materials toward the construction of the Tabernacle. The last ones, why were they the last ones? Because they thought to themselves, look, let everybody else contribute to the necessary materials for the building of the Tabernacle. We have a lot of people among us. And whatever's missing will make up the difference. That was their thought process. We're not gonna have to jump into this project. Look, there are plenty of people that can contribute. If there's anything that's missing at the end, we'll contribute. However, the people, the rest of the nation were so generous and enthusiastic to contribute when everyone finally finished contributing, there was nothing left to contribute except for the precious stones that were used on the breastplate on the Eifod in Khoshen of the High Priest. That was all that was left, just a donation of these precious stones. And the Talmud tells us that because the princes were lazy in contributing to the Tabernacle, a letter was taken away from their name when their name Nisiim, the princes, is written in the Bible. It's spelled missing the letter Yud. Now, sometimes even the best excuse is not enough. It's not excuse enough. God had told Moses that he should take vengeance against the Midianites. The Midianites were a tribe that had caused the people a lot of difficulties by attacking them and cursing them. And God told Moses that he should go to war against the Midianites. But as soon as he finished this battle, he would die. That's what God told Moses. Go to war against the Midianites and then you're gonna die. You would think Moses would have a lot of reasons for not jumping into war the next moment. I gotta do my taxes, I have to, you know, I have my will to prepare. You know, I got a lot of stuff to do. No, he immediately goes to battle. He did not put it off. The truth is that we have to recognize that part of our constitution as human beings is that we have something called the Yetzahara. It's called the negative or evil inclination. A better term is what Alan Marinus describes as our inner adversary. Our Yetzahara is our inner adversary. Each one of us has a component of our personality, of our persona that is an inner voice that is there to obstruct our spiritual progress. The Talmud calls this Yetzahara the Satan, the Satan. The word Satan in Hebrew simply means obstruction or obstacle or roadblock. And the whole purpose of Satan, of this inner adversary is to be a challenge to our spiritual progress. And our sages teach that this inner adversary is a great blessing. It's a great blessing to us because it's only through the process of overcoming obstacles and challenges and difficulties that we grow. If we didn't have any obstruction to our spiritual progress, there'd be no virtue in growing spiritually, and there'd be no difficulty. It would come very, very easily. But the fact is that for every inch of ground that we grow spiritually, there's a lot of obstructions we have to overcome. And our sages tell us that those obstructions, which are basically inner, and we all have experienced this inner voice, this inner adversary that challenges us and comes up with rationalizations for why you shouldn't do what you really know you should be doing. And often it's Rabbi Noah Weinberg says that our lives are a battle between doing what we want to do and what we feel like doing. What we want to do is our higher self that tells us really what we should be doing in life. And what we feel like doing is our Yetzahara, which says to us, just don't get so excited, take it easy, you can do it tomorrow, you can do it later. There are millions of excuses and rationalizations and obstacles that our Yetzahara throws up in our life. Years ago, I was leading a beginner's service on the High Holidays downtown at the Minsker Shul. And basically I called it a non-service during the High Holidays, Rojashanan Yom Kippur. I gave a class to people who would not really understand a prayer service that's all in Hebrew. So we had a class that went for about three and a half hours. I had to get up very early because I wasn't able to pray in the synagogue myself. I had to pray by myself early in the morning and then I ran this beginner's program. And then after lunch, Rabbi Shulman, who was a chaplain downtown, asked me if I would go to Mount Sinai Hospital to blow the shofar for the patients in the hospital. Now part of what I did in the beginner's service was I blew the shofar and the tradition is to blow it a hundred times. If you've ever blown a shofar, it's not so easy. It takes its toll on your lips and on your lungs. And so immediately I said to him, sure. I mean, my impulse was to say sure. And then it was fascinating. About five minutes later, I heard this inner voice saying, you know, you're tired and look, you spend so much time this morning teaching and running this service and helping other people. Surely there are other people downtown that know how to blow the shofar. And I heard this prosecuting angel giving me a hard time. And it took me a few moments to realize, I know who you are. I know exactly who I'm speaking to myself. It's coming from inside. But I knew exactly what that voice was. It wasn't my higher self. And I heard that voice very clearly. It was very powerful. And it was very obvious to me what this voice was. This voice was my inner adversary giving me a hard time and coming up with a million excuses for why, oh, you don't have to go. There'll be someone else to do it. You did enough already today. There's a famous story about a rabbi who came upon 400 rubles. He just was able to chance upon 400 rubles. It came his way, a lot of money for this poor rabbi. About 10 minutes later, someone comes into his house, knocks on the door and says, rabbi, I have an emergency. I need 400 rubles. I forget what happened in the story. I think he had to make a wedding or something happened and he owed some money or he'd be thrown off his property. There was something that came up and this man says to the rabbi, desperately, rabbi, I need 400 rubles. And the rabbi immediately gets him the 400 rubles, of course. The fellow leaves the house and gets halfway down the street and the rabbi calls him back. And the rabbi says, come here for a minute. He says, give me the 400 rubles. And the rabbi says to himself, why am I giving this fellow 400 rubles? I could give many, many people. I can give one person 10 and one person 20 and I can give a lot of people money. Why should everything go to this one person? So the rabbi was gonna give the person some of the 400 rubles and keep the rest to give out to others. And then as soon as he was about to do this, the rabbi caught himself and says, oh, who is this voice that's saying to me not to give it to him? He said, I heard two voices. The first voice that I acted on said to me, sure, give him the money. The second voice coming to me says, no, don't give him the money. And the rabbi says, I know what that voice is. That's not my higher self. Now, before we get too carried away, because if you learn a lot about Rizut, you can become a little bit of a maniac. And as Mr. Miyagi said in the karate kid, you have to have barrens, Daniel son. You have to have barrens. You have to have a life that's balanced. And as we discussed last week, there are these modalities in our world. There's chesed and there's gavura. Parents are obviously inclined to wanna give to their children. But if you're constantly giving and there's no stopping, you can smother people with your giving. And so parents need to sometimes withhold and not give, that's gavura. And so we have these polls that we learned. We have Zahirut, being careful, being cautious, thinking about what we're doing. And then we have Rizut, which means enthusiasm and zeal. And I'm gonna do it yesterday. So we have to have a certain amount of balance in life because Rizut does not mean becoming a workaholic who burns out. That's not what it means. We have to be the master of our work, not a slave to our work. Multitasking can be a very risky practice. We have to learn how not to overreach. Taking on too much. We need to learn how to set boundaries. The Hebrew expression is tafasta meruba lo tafasta. If you grab too much, you grab nothing. One of the prayers that we say every evening is the haser hasatan milfanenu umayachareinu. We ask God to remove the Satan from before us and from behind us. The Satan that's in front of us, we all recognize. That's the big piece of chocolate cake or brownie that we really don't need to be eating. Or the big pile of money in the street that we might be tempted to keep and not try to find the owner. There are many things that are in front of us as temptations that call out to us, they beckon to us to do the wrong thing. That is the obstacle, the Satan in front of us. But what is the Satan behind us? So one of the explanations is that this is not pushing you from behind to do the wrong thing. It's pushing you from behind to do good things, to do the right thing, but to do too much too soon. And it's pushing you to do all this and to take on too much so you'll get burned out and just give up. It's good to study. It's not good to overreach and say I'm gonna get up every morning at four o'clock and I'm gonna study for two hours before I go to pray. And then I'm gonna stay up until three o'clock. The person is going to just not succeed. And when you don't succeed and you fail and you crash and you burn, you might give up about doing anything in the future. So we have a negative impulse which pushes us to take on too much, too soon, even good things. Resus is not being impulsive, thoughtless, superficial, and taking action that's unconsidered. It's not rushing and doing things in a hasty manner because we have to act very carefully and deliberately. One of the great Musa works is called the Orkos Tzadikin, written, I think, in the 15th or the 16th century. And he writes in here in his chapter on Zrizut. He says, even though Zrizut, he calls it eagerness, is extremely praiseworthy. He says, one must be careful not to be overly hasty in his service for one who rides too quickly is very apt to stumble and one who runs too quickly falls. All things cannot be done correctly in haste but only with patience. And so have a rabbi said, be patient and deliberate. So we should not make the mistake of thinking that Zrizut means rushing to do things. Zrizut means that we're doing things deliberately with consideration and carefully but without delay. Once we know that we're supposed to do something, do it without delay. How do we acquire the attribute of Zrizut? Hillel, the great teacher, teaches in Ethics of the Father is chapter one, mission of 14. He says, im ein achshav e matai, if not now, when? If not now, when? Meaning we're not going to be around here forever. One of the great things about our Jewish New Year versus the secular New Year is that both of them celebrate or focus on confronting our mortality. When you think about it, a New Year is the recognition that another year has gone. Another year has gone. When people are in their 20s, they don't realize this. People in their 20s or teenage years, they think they're going to live forever. When you get up into your 40s and 50s and then beyond, you realize that's not the case. No one lives forever. And it doesn't come easily to us to confront our mortality. And that's one of the things that happens on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and it happens on the secular New Year. On the secular New Year, the entire mode of encountering that day is by having parties and drinking because one philosophy says, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you shall die. Meaning that if you know that today might be your last day, have a good time, have a party. That's January 1st. Rosh Hashanah says, based upon the teaching of one of the sages in the Talmud, get your house in order one day before you die. Repent one day before you leave this world. And the students of this sage asked him, but we don't know when it's going to be our last day. And he said to them, good point, grasshoppers. So do it now. Do it now. It says in Ethics of the Fathers, chapter two, mission of five, don't say that when you have time, you'll study, because you may never have the time. And people that put things off usually never have the time. There's a famous story where someone came to one of the great Musur teachers and said, Rabbi, I only have 15 minutes a day to study. That's all I have, 15 minutes a day to study. What should I study? What should I spend studying during those 15 minutes? And the rabbi said, study Musar, and you'll come to realize you have more than just 15 minutes. There's a wonderful story that's told, and allegedly the Chafetzchaim, who was one of the great sages, he passed away in the year 1933 approximately. He said that in his entire life, he only laughed with a full laugh three times. And one of them was based upon this story. The story was of a man, sort of a country bumpkin who lived in the Shtetl in a little town somewhere, and he had never been to the big city. And he was gonna go one weekend to visit the big city. And he was very nervous, because he didn't know what it's like there, how do people behave, how do you, he didn't know anything. And he packed his suitcase to go for the weekend, and he's on this train, and there were three teenagers sitting opposite of him. And they saw he was nervous, he was shuffling, he was nervous, he looked very upset, he's talking to himself probably. And so the teenagers asked him, what's the problem? What's wrong? And he says, you know, I'm going to the big city for the first time in my life, I don't know what it's like there, I don't know if I'm dressed properly, I don't know what's gonna happen, I'm very nervous. So they said to him, you know, to tell you the truth, you're not really dressed properly. And he was very upset, and he said, how do they dress there? He said, they dress more formally than you're dressed. They don't dress like you're dressed now, they dressed more formally. So he said, okay, I know what I'll do. In my suitcase, I have my Shabbos clothing, I'll wear my Shabbos clothing. He said, but I'm on the train, what am I gonna do? I can't change you're on the train. So they said, don't worry. He said, we're about to hit a very, very, very long tunnel. We're about to go into a tunnel that's gonna take about 10 minutes to get through this tunnel. And we're gonna tell you, maybe about 10 seconds before we hit the tunnel, we're gonna tell you, and you get ready, get your suitcase, and we'll give you a 10 second warning, and then you're gonna enter the tunnel, you'll be in the dark for 10 minutes, you can get changed. So he says, that's great, great idea. So he gets his bag ready, and he's about to open it, and they say, okay, we're about to hit the tunnel, 10, nine, eight, seven, go! And they hit the tunnel, they go into the tunnel. And the fellow gets undressed, and boom, the next second they're out the tunnel, the next side. It wasn't a 10 minute tunnel, it was maybe 40 seconds. They were playing around with him. But the Chavitz Chaim laughed because he said, that's how we go through life, that we think we have all the time in the world. We think we have all the time in the world. And it's tragic, it's tragic, when we don't accomplish everything that we really should accomplish because we're taking our sweet time. The Chavitz Chaim also said that, one of the, he didn't say this, I'm saying this part, that one of the casualties of our digital technology age is the art of letter writing. I remember when I was a kid, I was away in summer camp, I would write long letters to my parents, and when I went to Israel, I used to write very long letters to my friends and my relatives. Now, you text someone, or you have a WhatsApp, or you Skype with them, or you send an email. That whole art of writing a beautiful long letter is just down the tubes. And the Chavitz Chaim said, that people live their lives like they're writing a postcard. You travel sometimes, you wanna send picture postcards to your friends, and there's a beautiful picture on the front, and on the back, you have a little tiny space to write, and he says people start writing, and then they run out of space, and they start writing very, very, very tiny, and then they turn the card over and they go down the side, and then they come up the other side, and then they try and point an arrow that should go to the front, and they write on the front, but that's how people live their lives. They write big, like they have all the space in the world and all the time in the world, and then you find that you run out of space, there's no more card left. The Torah says to us in the Book of Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 32, mi'pneh seva takum, one of the most beautiful things that I saw this summer when I was in Israel. I had the privilege of spending the whole month of September in Israel, mainly in Jerusalem, and on all the buses I traveled on, these three words appeared in a sticker in the front on the side of the bus, mi'pneh seva takum. I said, what a beautiful country that our buses have a verse from the Bible. It means in the presence of an elderly person rise, get up. I mean, it's barely a saying, it could have said give your seat to someone else, give you a seat to someone that's old. Now they quote the Bible, mi'pneh seva takum, in the presence of an elderly person get up. But the Musser masters understood this verse in the following way. They said, mi'pneh seva takum, before you become old, get up. Before you become old, get up. Meaning don't put off living until later in life. Do it now. My father told me at one point that when he retires, he wants to study Talmud. My father was orphaned at a very young age in the Holocaust. He stopped going to school when he was probably eight or nine or 10 years old. But he remembered still when he was in his 70s, he would remember whole passages from the Talmud that he had not seen in over 60, 70 years. So he told me many times is when I retire, he wants to study Talmud with me. My father was one of these people that would never retire though. It was working and working and working. And when he hit 80, he got very sick. And fortunately, the doctors were able to save his life. And after that, came back from the hospital and we began studying Talmud. We did it by Skype. I remember in those days, the connection was horrible. And half of the conversation was, can you hear me? Can you see me? But like Tommy, Tommy, can you hear me? Tommy, can you see me? But we studied. Every week, we studied Talmud. And it was delicious. It was wonderful. But I remember feeling that how sad it is that we had to wait till he retired and got sick. We could have started when he was in his 50s or 60s or 70s. Mipne sevatakum, before you get old, get up. Elevate yourself spiritually. How do we acquire his re-zut? So the Mesilat Yishorim says that learning Torah, learning Torah brings us to his re-zut. Because learning Torah creates more and more of a realization that life is precious and that time is precious. Because we understand that there's so much to learn and so much to accomplish in our lives. The currency of life is time. The currency of life is not dollars. The currency of life is time. The Torah says in chapter 24 of Genesis that at the end of Abraham's life, instead of saying that he died, it says Abraham came with his days. He came with his days. Meaning that at the end of Abraham's life, there was a recognition that every day was an accomplishment. He actualized the potential of every single day. He didn't waste any days. At the end of his life, he was able to look back at every day and say, I use that day productively. And we all know, we've all been there, that we all have been through days in which we do nothing. We waste hours. We spend 10 hours on the internet, 10 hours surfing, 10 hours Googling and 10 hours on Facebook and 10 hours on YouTube videos. And we can spend 10 hours just doing nothing during a day and spend 14 hours accomplishing nothing. And at the end of that day, we feel sick to our stomachs because what a waste. And we all know that when we have a day when we were productive and we did so much, it was not easy. But if we did a lot of things, useful things, purposeful things, meaningful things, no matter how hard it was, at the end of the day, we feel great. We feel energized because we came with that day. That day became something. And so Abraham came with his days. In the book of Deuteronomy chapter 20 verse 19, we're going to have this Shabbat is Jewish Arbor Day, Tu Beshvat, the New Year for Trees. And there's a focus on ecology often on Tu Beshvat, thinking about how we relate to the environment. So the Torah says in chapter 20 of Deuteronomy verse 19, that we're not allowed to destroy fruit trees even in a time of war. If you would think that I need to cut down this tree to build a battering ram or anything for the war, we cannot destroy fruit trees. And the sages took this verse as a general prescription in life, not to destroy or waste anything. Not to destroy or waste anything of value, anything that's useful, we should not waste or destroy. And Rev. Shem Shem Afaril Hirsch says that this is the greatest principle of the Torah, not to waste. And one of the things that people waste, unfortunately, is they waste their lives, their whole life. And it's the saddest thing for a person to look back after 67, the 80 years and to say, I didn't do anything. I didn't accomplish anything. What a waste. One of the great British authors said, the saddest words of tongue and pen are these, it might have been. So look back at life and to say, boy, I could have done it differently, I could have done it better. The Kutskerebi used to say that the problem with sin is not so much that it's wrong. It's that we don't have time. That was in his pithy way of speaking. He said, the big problem with sinning is not so much that it's wrong, but we don't have the time. Because every time we commit a sin, we could have done something important during that time. It's just a waste of time. And tell a story that the Belzer Rebbe gave up smoking. He used to be a smoker. And he didn't give up smoking for health reasons. Why did he give up smoking? He was in his study one day and he observed his companion was cleaning his pipe and filling his pipe. And the Belzer Rebbe said to himself, look in the time that this fellow cleaned his pipe and filled his pipe, I studied a whole page of Talmud. That's when he gave up smoking. The Talmud says that Rabbi Judah Nasi, Rabbi Judah the Prince, who was the compiler, the editor of the Mishnah, there were three times in tractate of Vodhe Zara where Rabbi Judah Nasi reacted to a story by saying this person, he said that some people take a whole life to earn their share in the world to come and this person earned it in one moment. There are three stories, three amazing stories where people do great things. They really rise to the occasion. And at the end of the story, Rabbi Judah the Prince says that he cried, that he cried and he said, some people take a whole lifetime to earn their share in the world to come and some people earn it in a moment. And so the obvious question is, why was he crying? He should have been happy for these people. Why was he crying? And the answer is that he saw in these stories how precious a moment is. That if you can earn a share in the world to come with just a moment, he saw the incredible potential with every single moment. And then he was crying because he realized how many moments of his life he wasted. Because nothing is tragic. One of the things that we can do is to think about all the things in life we have's reasons for and then transfer that to important things. I'll never forget, in 1998, my wife and I had the privilege of going to India to run Passover satyrs in Northern India for Israeli travelers in the town of Dharam Sala. And after we spent a few weeks teaching in Dharam Sala, we got a chance to tour a little bit in India. And of course, one of our stops was to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Now, we were running very late because as you know, Jewish time is measured in increments of 10, 15, 20 minutes. India time is measured in increments of being a day or two late, not a half hour late. And so our train was late and everything was late and by the time we got to Agra, it was late. And then from the train station, we had to get a rickshaw and it broke down and then they get another rickshaw and that one breaks down and the third rickshaw gets us there and it was a real ordeal getting to this place. And I remember getting out of the third rickshaw and I'm looking at this building and I felt sick inside and I said to my wife, that's the Taj Mahal? For this we killed ourselves? I couldn't believe it. And my wife said, no, that's not the Taj Mahal. You have to go through that building to get to the Taj Mahal. So then we did that and we saw the Taj Mahal, which was magnificent. But I remember after that experience, I said to myself, you know, I'm living here in Toronto and it's a city that is a goldmine of Torah. We are so blessed in this city to have incredible teachers that are giving classes and because there are so many people that visit Toronto to give lectures, I made a resolution after that experience, I said to myself, if I'm gonna kill myself to see this building, the Taj Mahal, if I'm living in Toronto and there is a speaker that's coming to the city, I'm gonna make an effort to go and hear the speaker. And I try to do that. So one of the things that we can do to acquire is reason to say, look, look at the things in my life that I have reasons for. I'm gonna kill myself to get tickets to that hockey game and I'm gonna wait online for five hours or whatever we do for the things that are important to us and sometimes they're not so important in the scheme of things. And to take that same enthusiasm and apply it to other things in life. We can also think of all the things that God has done for us. Because if we have gratitude for all the things that God has done for us, it could lead us to want to reciprocate. And finally, one of the things that we can use to help acquire his result is to recognize our potential. One of the things that stops us in our tracks is we convince ourselves we can't do it. I can't do it. I'm not strong enough. I'm not spiritual enough. I don't have what it takes. There are so many excuses we come up with for not doing and not growing. The truth is we should come to appreciate that we have incredible potential. One of the reasons why we describe Yom Kippur as the happiest day of the year. People think it's, no, it's a sad day. We're not eating, we're fasting. No, the fasting of Yom Kippur is not a fasting because we're mourning. On Tisha Ba'av, we're fasting because we're mourning for the destruction of Jerusalem and the temples in Jerusalem. But the fasting on Yom Kippur is not because we're mourning anything. It's a fasting of joy. It's a fasting of Simcha. Because on Yom Kippur, we get in touch with the fact that we have incredible spiritual reserves, that we have the ability for 25 hours not to eat and drink. We can control ourselves. And when we come to realize that we can't control ourselves for a day, we do have power, we do have potential. We can do things. It's not so easy to fast for a whole day. A lot of people don't bother. A lot of people are not able to. They think they're not able to. But if you try, you can. It's not impossible to fast. And so when we go through a whole day of fasting on Yom Kippur, we recognize, look at this. I have a lot of spiritual potential. Look what I can do if I put my mind to it. So let me leave you with a few exercises to I recommend to try for next week. I hope that most of you now are stopping before you get to the intersections. All right, I hope most of you are practicing the stop sign meditation that I recommended. Come to a full stop. I'm trying to do that much more this past week because I'm afraid that one of you might see me slide through the stop sign. So nothing like teaching to help you grow. But there are exercises that we can do for each of the medot. So number one, try paying attention to the occasions in life when you put things off. I'll give you one thing I'll confess. I tend to attend to my email before doing more important things. I think I'm probably not alone in that, right? I have an impulse to first thing, check my email. There are often more important things to do. And that can be left for later on. I mean, I grew up at a time when if you wanted to communicate with someone, you sent a letter and it would take a few days to get there. And then they wouldn't necessarily write back immediately, they wanted to think about what they were gonna say. Now we live in a world where if you send someone an email and you don't get a response in 30 seconds, they think you're rejecting them. Doesn't have to happen right away. A person can get an email in return a few hours later. It's not gonna kill them. So think about, pay attention to, what do we do in life that puts off more important things? Number two, think about a project that you've wanted to do for a long time. Do some thinking. There may be a project that you thought about doing for a long time, and begin it immediately. Begin it immediately, take some step. Doesn't have to be completing it immediately. Begin it immediately, you know there's a custom after Yom Kippur, we begin building the Sukka for the holiday of Sukkot which comes five days later. You don't have to finish the Sukka that night after Yom Kippur, but put a nail in the wall. Do something to start the process. Take out the wood from your garage. So if there's a project that you've wanted to do for a long time, begin it immediately. That's Rizut. Number three, you don't need to do all of these. These are just recommended exercises. Think about projects that you started but you haven't finished. I'm sure all of us can come up with some of those. And think about what gets in the way of finishing those projects. And think about whether you bite off more than you can chew. Think about whether you have a hard time saying no to people. I have a possible time saying no to people. And I get into trouble because of that. Because the truth is I can't do everything. And none of us can do everything. So think about whether or not you bite off more than you can chew and you have trouble setting limits and setting boundaries and trouble saying no. Do a Hezbo nanefesh, do a spiritual stock taking, do a spiritual inventory on where in life you waste time. Think about it. And it's not a waste of time to do this, by the way. Allocate a half hour and just think about when during the day do you waste time? Some people hit the snooze alarm 15 times, right? That's not such a good thing. There are many ways, we have an expression in English, we call it killing time. There are many ways in which people kill time. You know, if you need to wait for five minutes at a bus stop, you can do things in those five minutes. There was a great rabbi who used to, every number of years, he would finish the Talmud. He'd make a party. Every few years, he would finish the entire Talmud. It's 63 tractates. It takes a long time to study the Talmud. And he'd go through the whole Talmud and he would make a party. It's called a seum. So one year, he made a seum, and he made a party celebrating his completion of the Talmud. And then a few weeks later, he made another seum for finishing the Talmud. And everybody said, no, it's impossible. You couldn't have finished it so quickly. He said, no, I didn't. He said, this second seum I'm making, because what I do is I always carry a book with me. And if I have two minutes in the checkout counter waiting online, or five minutes at the bus stop, or 10 minutes at a doctor's office, I use that time to study. And this second seum for studying the whole Talmud is for studying the Talmud during those two or three minutes that I catch every day. So we can do a spiritual stock taking. When do I waste time during the day? And here is the last exercise. I don't always recommend this. And if you're not inclined, if this you find difficult or unpleasant, don't do this one. But some people it might be helpful. You know, Sir Moses Montefiori, it's alleged, it's a legend maybe, maybe it's true, he would once in a while sleep in a coffin. He would sleep in a coffin because he wanted to contemplate his mortality. He wanted to get in touch with the fact that he's not gonna be here forever. And so one of the things that might be helpful for some of us, some of us that might just freak us out or creep us out. But for those of us who would benefit, spend a little bit of time once in a while just contemplating the fact that we're not gonna be here forever and realize that we need to accomplish our tasks now.