 A number of years ago, I read a wonderful little book by two brothers, Chip and Dan Heath. The book was called Made to Stick. If you see it in a bookstore, it's very hard to miss. It has a very realistic piece of tape going across the book, duct tape. The book basically deals with the question of why do certain ideas, certain projects seem to stick. They seem to catch on, people remember them, and certain ideas and certain projects just basically fizzle out. As they say, like cotton candy, you bite into it and nothing is there. It's a very fascinating book. One of the early stories in the book is about a woman who I think passed away last year, Nora Ephron, who was a very famous screenwriter and playwright. She I think was responsible for Sleepless in Seattle and when Harry met Sally. But she began her career as a journalist. And in the book she describes how she got interested in journalism, how she got her start. And she discusses, she tells about an experience that happened on the first day of her journalism class in high school. I also was a journalism student in high school. I ended up going to university that was very famous for journalism, Northwestern University. I can see how people can get bit by the journalism bug. And so Nora Ephron says that the first day of her journalism class, the teacher gave them an assignment. And she said this assignment and this session had a huge impact on her. She says that the teacher told the class, and you have to understand that this was a class of high school students. They were at Beverly Hills High School. And most of these students are obviously students interested in journalism. Many of them probably write for the high school newspaper. But the teacher said that he's going to give them an assignment where they have to do the following. He's going to tell them a story, a basic storyline, the content of a new story. And he wants the students, their assignment that day was to compose the lead for that story. It's not really the headline so much, but it's the opening sentence or two of an article. So here was the basic story that he presented to these students. He told them that the following Thursday, all of the faculty, all the teachers from Beverly Hills High School were going to travel to Sacramento, California to the university to take part in a special colloquium on new teaching techniques. And at this colloquium there are going to be some very special guest speakers. There's going to be, if you want to sense as to how old this story is. So one of the speakers was going to be the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead. Another speaker at that program was going to be the governor of California, Raymond Pat Brown. And then the president of the university was going to speak. And that was the information that the teacher told Nora Efron's class. And then the teacher told the students, now sit down and compose the lead for this story. And so all the students basically took out their pens or pencils, and they began writing what they thought was the appropriate opening few sentences for this new story. For the Beverly Hills High School newspaper. And most of them basically regurgitated the information that the teacher gave them. They said something like the faculty of Beverly Hills High School is going to travel next Thursday to Sacramento, California to take part in a special colloquium on new teaching techniques. And there will be very famous speakers there like government of Pat Brown and anthropologist Margaret Mead. Yada, yada, yada, that was basically what almost all the students wrote. They handed their papers in. The teacher picked up all the papers and began looking through them one at a time. And then after he looked at all of their papers, he put them down. He looked at the students and he said no. The lead for the story in the Beverly Hills High School newspaper is there'll be no school next Thursday. That's the story. And what struck Nora Ephron at this class, what really I think woke her up in many ways was the realization and probably many of the students realized that you can have all the facts. You can have all the information but not really capture the real point. You can miss the actual story. And so for the students at Beverly Hills High School, the most pressing thing, the most significant part of this story was that they're not going to have any school next week. They've got a day off. The fact that the teachers are going to be in Sacramento, what they're studying, who went, they don't care about that so much. That's the real story for these high school students. And Nora Ephron was very struck by the fact that you can have all the information in front of you and still miss the actual story. Miss the real story. There is a very famous story told by one of the great Hasidic masters, Rav Sintra Bunam of Pshischa. And he tells a story about a man that was possessed by a very strange passion. This man felt that he had to have the best horse in the world. He had to own it. And of course he was prepared to spend a fortune to get the best horse in the world. And that's what he did. He went shopping all over Europe. He maybe sent out feelers and emissaries. He was able to locate the most expensive horse available in the entire continent of Europe. And he spent a fortune on this horse. He brings it back to his city where he's living. He says to himself, I can't put it in my house where I live. I obviously have to build a stable for this horse. But he said, this is quite a horse. This is a really, really special expensive horse. I'm not going to build him any normal stable. I'm going to build the most fancy, beautiful state-of-the-art stable for a horse that you can build. And that's what he did. And then he realized, you know, this is a very expensive horse I have. I've got to have some security. I don't want people to come in maybe and God forbid steal my horse. So he figured out that he can get for this stable, for the door, a very sophisticated, I guess for those days, locking mechanism, a very fancy sturdy lock. And he had this lock installed on the door of the stable. But then after a few more months of thinking, he realized, you know, any lock ultimately can be picked. So that's not necessarily going to give me all the security that I want. So he said, I've got to hire a security guard. And so he hired someone, he paid him to watch this barn and to watch the horse 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And then he goes to sleep that night. But he wakes up at midnight and he has a terrible thought. He says, oh, he says, you know, it's hard. This person has to watch the horse all night long. It's very difficult to stay awake all night long. What if the guard falls asleep? Then someone could come and steal my horse. So the owner gets his clothing on, he puts it on his robe and he runs down to the barn right in the middle of the night. And he sees, oh, so happy. He's awake. The guard's awake. So he goes over to him and he says, you know, that's quite impressive. You know, it's a long night and you've just had a long day. How do you stay up all night? How do you keep yourself awake? So the guard said, you know, what I do to stay awake is I think about very complicated questions, questions that are very complicated and difficult to figure out. And I ponder them. I think about them and it helps me stay awake. So the owner says, so what are you thinking about now? What were you trying to figure out? So he said, you know what I was wondering? I was wondering when you take a nail and you bang it into a wall. So what happens to all that wood where the nail is now? Right? There used to be wood there, but now the nail is there. What happened to all that wood? I just can't figure out where all that wood went. So the owner looks at him and he's a little bit off, but fine. If it works for him, great. I'm very happy. So he feels, all right, maybe I can go back to sleep. He goes to sleep. He's tossing and turning. He just can't sleep. He's worried, okay, the man's up at midnight he could stay up, but maybe at three o'clock in the morning he's going to be sleeping now. So he puts on his rope again. He runs down to the barn. He's so relieved he sees the guard is still awake at three o'clock in the morning. So he says, wow, you're impressive. He said, I could see that your strategy is working. What are you thinking about now? He says, now, this is a really difficult question. You know what I was wondering? When they make bagels. So what happens to all the dough where the hole is now? There's a hole there now, but where does all that dough go? So again, the owner looks at him, okay. It's working for him. I'm not going to argue. So he goes back to sleep. He tries to go back to sleep and he's still tossing and turning. He's still frustrated because he's afraid this guy's going to fall asleep. No matter how many complicated puzzles he's trying to figure out, he's not going to stay up all night. So he goes down at six o'clock in the morning. He's sure this person's going to be asleep. He sees he's still up. He's still awake. He says, I got to hand it to you. You're really amazing. Most people probably couldn't stay up all night. So what are you thinking about now? He says, oh, now, boy, I'm thinking about a really, really difficult problem now. The owner says, what's the problem? He says, well, I'll tell you. He says, you bought the most expensive horse in the world and you built for your horse the most amazing stable in the world and you put on a very fancy schmancy lock and then you hired me to guard this stable. You know what I was wondering? I was wondering, hey, where's the horse? That'll keep him up for quite a while. You can have everything sometimes. You can have everything, but what do you really have? You know, as Jews today, we're very fortunate. It's not like it may have been here in Toronto, let's say, 70 years ago. I'm not sure how easy it was, let's say, to get kosher food in Toronto 70 years ago. Today, scary how much kosher food is available. You can go to places where we have stores where everything on the shelves is kosher and exotic products to boot, not just standard things. We have dozens and dozens and dozens of restaurants here. I think the last I counted, maybe 10 places to buy kosher pizza. You can even buy kosher pizza and pass over these days. We have not just all the food in the world you can imagine and kosher cruises and kosher hotels, but if you're interested in Judaism, think about what's available today. We have bookstores with thousands of books available in many different languages. And if you're interested in studying, it's not just books. We have classes all over the city, dozens and dozens. Every night classes on every topic imaginable. And then you can go on the Internet and find thousands of Jewish websites with more Torah classes than you could possibly watch in an entire lifetime. You can go to YouTube and spend thousands of hours watching Torah videos on YouTube or kosher tube we have in Toronto, an amazing website kosher tube. You can buy CDs and DVDs. You even have a program in North America where you can call up on the phone, partners in Torah and study any topic with any person on the phone for free. So much is available to us, so many different schools, so many products to make our life easier as Jews. We have a company that started in Toronto that invented the kosher lamp. So now you can have a light on in the room on Shabbat. And the same company invented a sweater that if you get cold in the winter and you have to wear a sweater, don't worry about putting on your Tfilin. This sweater has a special opening in the arm that you could put your Tfilin on. It's amazing what we have today as Jews. We have products for every possible thing that we need as Jews and not just one line, we have so many choices that make our lives easier as Jews. We can have everything. But at the end of the day, we can ask ourselves like that security guard but where is the horse? Or like the old commercial, but where is the beef? Where is the beef? We can have all of the different elements of Judaism but not focus on what is the goal of it all? What's the purpose of it all? Why are we doing what we do? What is the purpose of all these things that we have? What is the big picture? Where is it supposed to be taking us? It was a fellow that had a dream. He wanted to be a successful entrepreneur. And his idea was to open up a shoe store. So he opens up a place, he starts selling shoes and it's incredible what happens. This shoe store becomes so incredibly successful that people are lining up to get in. The place is packed, he's selling out his stock regularly. People can't get enough to this store. They're telling all their friends you've got to go there. It is the most successful store that's been opened up in many, many years. One day, people arrive at the store. There's a big, big sign over the window of the store, out of business, closed, out of business. They can't believe it. He went out of business? How is that possible? There was never a more successful store in the world. He was selling shoes left and right. You can imagine that the accountants that went through the books were in for a huge shock. The accountant examines the books and the accountant sees that this fellow was buying shoes for $50 a pair and selling them for $35 a pair. So he goes to the owner and he says, What in the world were you thinking? Where were you thinking? And the fellow said, Well, I wanted to have a successful store with lots of customers. I wanted to sell lots of shoes. And the accountant says, What's wrong with you? The purpose of the store is not to have lots of customers and sell lots of shoes. The purpose of the store is to make a profit. So what is the real purpose of everything we're doing as Jews? What is the goal of everything we're doing as Jews? A person can do lots of Jewish things in their life. A person can be very religious but lose sight of the ultimate goal. Not even think sometimes about the ultimate goal. Where is all of this Judaism supposed to be leading us? What's very sad is if you poke around Jewish websites, if you read many Jewish books, even go to many programs on Judaism, you'll often find that this question is very rarely discussed. And when goals of Judaism are suggested, they often never really hit the head on the nail. I often tell a story about a fellow who had a very strange job. He was the border guard and the security guard and the customs official. He was all these people rolled up into one on the border between Austria and Switzerland. He's at his post. Someone comes by on a bicycle, on the front of the bicycle. There's a big basket full of sand. And he takes out, he has a special apparatus to check around and he pokes and pokes and pokes. He can't find anything in this basket. He gets very frustrated. He says, okay, go through. The person drives through. He comes back a week later on his bicycle with that big basket full of sand and now the guard, he pokes around more carefully. He's poking and poking. He can't find anything. He's getting very frustrated. He waves the person through. He goes on week after week after week. Finally, after months and months and months of being very frustrated and finding nothing, this fellow comes by one more time on his bicycle with the big basket with sand and nothing in it. And the guard says to him, you know, sir, I really suspect that you've been smuggling stuff. I'm very suspicious. And I've never found anything. But you know what? Today's my last day at the job. I'm not going to be here anymore after today. So I'm not going to tell anyone. You can just tell me, were you smuggling anything? Just please, I have to know. So the fellow says, yeah, it was smuggling. So he says, what were you smuggling? He says, I was smuggling bicycles. And that's the truth when it comes to Judaism as well. That the goal of Judaism, just like those bicycles, is often hiding in plain sight. It's right in front of us. And we so often don't see it. You know, as Jews, we're very focused on a word called Chaim, right? When we meet Jews at a party, at a Simcha, right, we say Le Chaim. If you go to a synagogue on the high holidays, right, it's the most Jewish packed synagogue day of the year, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The theme of all the prayers is Chaim. Every page, it's packed with Chaim. Chaim, Chaim, Chaim, life. What is it talking about? What are we wishing each other? We bless each other with Chaim. Are we simply hoping that these people that we're speaking to, their lungs will keep on working, their hearts will keep on beating? What does it mean to be alive? What does it mean to say that we're alive? You know, the Torah that's sitting in this ark behind me, we call it an Eitz Chaim, a tree of life. Torah is a tree of life. And every Shabbat, when we take that Torah out of the ark, we say a verse from the book of Dvarim from Deuteronomy chapter 4. We say, Chaim kul Chaim hayom. That you who cleave, who attach yourselves to the Lord your God, you, you people are alive today. Those people who attach themselves, who cleave to the God, they are alive. According to our religion, according to Judaism and the Torah, life ultimately is defined by being attached to God. This is what it means to be truly plugged in. We know what happens when you disconnect an appliance from its power source. It stops to work. And so our power source ultimately, our connection is to God. We know that living a life that's materialistic and that focuses only on physical pleasure, which is quite easy to do. The physical world, the material world, the world of physical pleasure is very attractive, it's very accessible. We're instinctual about getting it. And yet, we know that this is a life that's not considered to be life from a Jewish point of view. It's living in the here and now, but it's not true life. We know that if a cow has enough grass and a cow has enough water and a cow has nice shade, it can be happy there forever. A cow can be very thrilled having a nice spot, a nice shady spot with enough grass and enough water. It can sit there forever and ever and ever. It'll be as happy as a bug in the rug. The only being on the planet, the only being on the planet that is never content, ever. Regardless of what it possesses is man. We know that even the wealthiest people, even the very wealthiest people become restless and they seek more. The Talmud refers to human beings, one of the terms the Talmud uses for human beings is the term mave. We are called mave. The word mave means seeker. It means someone that wants, someone that desires, someone that seeks, someone that's restless. The human being by nature, by definition, is a being that is constantly seeking, constantly striving, constantly restless, always wanting. But the question is what is it that we really want? What is it that we truly want? Our mystics teach us, the Jewish mystics teach us that everything in the world has something that it points to beyond itself. Everything that we see is a pointer to something beyond it. It has an analog in the spiritual realm. For example, one of the things that all of us love to do, we're so into this and we plan and we daydream about it sometimes, is going on a long trip to an exotic place. It's very, very exciting. You're going to go to a place halfway around the world where you've never been, you're going to see new things, you're going to have new experiences. It's incredibly exciting and people, it's one of the major activities people build their lives around. People go to work and they go to work and they go to work and they go to work and what am I going to do someday when I save up enough money and I have some time? It's one of the things people do. I'm going to travel. Travel is an incredibly exciting, pleasurable experience. And we all know that no matter how amazing our trip was, what's sometimes even more pleasurable is coming home at the end of a trip, to be in my own bed, to be in a place where I can walk around the house with no lights on and I can find everything. It's coming home. It's being in a place where I really feel at home. I really feel it's my place. And our mystics teach us that one of the reasons why we all resonate so strongly with this idea of traveling and coming home, because the mystics teach us that that's what all of us are doing here. Every single person on the planet, we're not from planet Earth. All of us come from a place that's a totally different world, a transcendent spiritual world where our soul emerged from. Our soul is not from planet Earth. Our soul comes from a very, very far away place, a very different kind of existence, and our soul comes down into this world and it puts on a body for 70 years, 90 years, 120 years, some people less, some people more. But we have a little Earth suit, a little body we wear for the duration of this trip. And it's quite exciting and this journey on Earth is quite amazing. But no matter how amazing life is, what our mystics teach us is that our soul is never totally comfortable here. There's something about this world that our soul doesn't feel at home in. And so the rabbis teach us that Shabbat is a taste of the next world. Shabbat is a time when we sort of retreat from this world. The soul really wants to go back to its source, to its place in that spiritual world. So the rabbis teach us that everything we have in this world, everything we do in this world, it really points to something else beyond itself. One of the things that's true, if you look around our world today, I just read recently an amazing book called Alone Together about how we live in a world today where it's quite common that people want to be tethered to the Internet. There are people today that get extremely anxious if they don't have their cell phone with them. It's almost as if they're walking around naked, especially teenagers. They almost physically cannot be without a cell phone. But there is this thing, there's an idea that people need to feel connected. You know, there are people that, I'm sure, check their email once a day. Maybe when they get up in the morning or when they go to sleep at night. But many people can't do that. They can't just wait to check it once a night at 10 o'clock at night. There are people who check it every five minutes, every two minutes. It's that little weird noise goes off. I got to see who emailed me, who messaged me. But we live in a world today where this idea of being connected and being always connected and feeling somehow we're in trouble if we're not connected, God forbid. Also speaks about something beyond itself, because the truth is all of us seek connection. All of us seek to have a life of connection. And it's not to the Internet. And it's not to Wi-Fi. We're ultimately seeking connection to something that's way beyond the Internet. You know, many people in our world today have an obsession with celebrities. There are entire magazines that speak about celebrities and their lives and what they're doing and who they married and who they're dating and what they're wearing and where they're going. And there are people today who watch television shows and the whole television show just focuses on the lives of celebrities. And celebrities, some of them have 50 million. I don't know how many number it is. They have 50 million people following them on Twitter. They want to know what they have for breakfast and where they're going this afternoon. But there's an obsession in our world with celebrities. People will wait online for hours just to be able to see a celebrity. Forget about shaking their hand or speaking with them. Just to be able to see the celebrity as they go into a building, people will wait online for hours. What's that all about? It's because we have an intense desire to connect not just with people who are bigger than us and I'm not sure how much bigger celebrities really are than us just because they make some more money than we do or more people are on their Twitter accounts than they are on ours. But we have a desire, we're driven, we're drawn to people that are bigger than us because ultimately we are drawn to being connected to that which is truly great. Again, everything in the world has a spiritual counterpart. And if I feel a need to be connected to the Internet, it's because I really feel a need to be connected to the ultimate reality. And if I feel an attraction to celebrities, it's because part of me wants to be connected to the ultimate celebrity, the ultimate superstar. We ultimately seek the ultimate. That's what I'm trying to say. What human beings seek is the ultimate, that which is truly real. And the reality is, and this is a very scary thought, nothing else in the world is real. Nothing in this world has to exist. Every single thing that we seek disappear in a second, in a flash. There's only one thing in the world that has to be, only one thing in the world that has to exist. And that's the Almighty. Everything else isn't real. The only thing in the world that's real, that has to be here, is the Almighty. And so if we have an attraction to these things that point to the Almighty, if we're attracted to these things that are ints to the Almighty, what we really want is God Himself. You know, parents often fall into the trap of buying lots of things for their kids. And often it's not healthy. There are parents who maybe don't pay enough attention to their kids and they think they can buy off their kids with more toys and more gifts and more things. And the reality is that the children don't want another toy. What the child wants is their mother. The child wants their father. The toy is only supposed to be a symbol of the giver. That's why the toy is significant. That's why the gift is significant. The gift is a hint to the giver. But people don't only want the gift. They ultimately want a connection to the giver. Everything in this world points to something beyond it. And we live in a world where there are so many gifts. We live in a world where there's so much beauty around us. Where there's so much wisdom in the world. Where there's so much amazing things that were given to us as gifts. But our soul ultimately wants the giver. Our soul wants not just all the beautiful art in the world, the beautiful paintings of the seashore and the sunset. Our soul wants the creator, the artist. One of the greatest Jewish thinkers of all time was our Emo Shachayn Lutsato. He wrote amazing, amazing books of Jewish thought. One of the most famous is called the Mesilat Shahrim. The Pathways of the Righteous, of the Straight. And he begins this book by saying the following. And it's a very bold statement because it's not mincing words. He doesn't say one of the most important things. He says very clearly, man was only created. That's a very strong word. He was only created to take pleasure in God and to enjoy the light of his divine presence. That is the ultimate purpose why we were put into this world. And everything else is really missing the mark. It's a distraction. Everything else might be touching those things that point to the creator. To point to that great light. But it's not the great light, it's not that creator. It's the toys. It's a distraction. How do we get close to this creator? How do we get close to God? He gave us directions. How do you get to anywhere in life? You have to have a map. You have to have instructions, directions. So God gave us a Torah in order to have directions how to get to him. The word Torah means instructions. The Torah are those directions that help us connect to that ultimate pleasure in this world. The great book of Jewish mysticism is called the Zohar. The book of illumination. And the Zohar says that the 613 commandments of the Torah are called in Aramaic, etin. Etin. The word etin in Aramaic means advices. The Zohar says that the 613 commandments don't think of them as commandments, so much as pieces of advice. Pieces of advice. When you give some advice, you want to help them. I'm going to give you some advice on how to maybe play the stock market. I care about you. I want to give you some good advice. The Torah gives us advice, the Zohar says, 613 pieces of advice for what purpose? To help us connect to God. The Zohar is saying that all of the commandments, all of the mitzvot in the Torah are there for the purpose of connecting us to God. The forest of Judaism has 613 trees. It's interesting that the word advice in Hebrew is etzah. We say in Hebrew etzah is advice. And the word advice sounds like what other Hebrew word. So etzah is advice. It sounds like the Hebrew word etzah, which means tree. It's fascinating that somehow there's a connection between etzah, advice, and etzah, tree. The Zohar is saying that there are 613 pieces of advice in the Torah. 613 trees in the forest of Judaism. But what is the forest beyond those trees? We have so many activities as Jews. We have so many commandments in the Torah. 613 things to do, not to do. Those are the trees. But what is the forest beyond these trees? What is it all about? So the Zohar says these are 613 pieces of advice, not just commandments. They're pieces of advice on how to attach ourselves to God, how to get close to God. Each one of us has a etzahara, what Alan Marinus calls an inner adversary. We have part of ourselves that is self-destructive. It's part of ourselves that basically seeks to sabotage what we're supposed to be doing in life. And all of us know that voice very well. All of us are familiar with hearing that voice that urges us to do things that are not helpful to us, that are self-destructive, that are wasting our time, that take us off track. Each one of us has a etzahara, we call it the evil inclination. Our rabbis teach us that our evil inclination, our etzahara, will be very, very happy if you become a religious Jew. Your evil inclination will be thrilled if you become a very religious Jew that prays a lot and studies a lot of Torah and observes Shabbat and observes all the Jewish holidays. Your evil inclination is going to be thrilled if you keep all the 613 commandments. But what your etzahara, your evil inclination, is going to do is interfere with you thinking about what the purpose of all these commandments is. To interfere with you thinking about where all these commandments are supposed to take us, where they're supposed to get us, the goal of everything we do in Judaism is the etzahara is thrilled to have very religious Jews but is not interested in having Jews who are spiritual. You know, I'll tell you something that's happened to me a few times that's very, very frustrating. It's something I have to be careful not to do anymore. I know what I should be doing but I'm sure many of you have had the same problem. I sometimes get an email that I just can't whip off a response to. Sometimes I'll get a long email and it requires a lot of thought and it's going to be a long response and instead of doing the smart thing which is to compose my answer in a word processing program I click respond to the email reply and I start typing my reply to this email and I remember a few summers ago I got a very, very serious email, very serious email the person was asking very, very difficult questions and I sat there at my computer composing this very, very long answer which was very hard to write, took me a lot of time and I'm sure other people have the same email program but in my email program if you don't send out the email within a certain period of time I guess if you don't either download your messages or reply or send, if you're not using the program it times out. The whole program shuts off. So I remember I had just spent over an hour and a half working on this email and really putting a tremendous amount of energy into making sure I said just the right things and after working on this email for an hour and a half probably more I finally hit the send button but I had been timed out and the whole thing evaporated gone, all my work, all my thought, nothing it didn't go anywhere a person can be a very religious Jew but if they don't think about why they're doing what they're doing and what the goal of all of their mitzvah observance is it's like they never press the send button a person can be very involved with Judaism and yet never press the send button it doesn't get us anywhere Ravleva Yitzchak of Burditchev, one of the great Hasidic masters once came into the Batemajrash there were hundreds of students that were studying they were studying Talmud they were discussing Torah among themselves and he walked into the room and he banged on the stapler he said, Ravoisai, there is a gut on himmel he said, my friends, there is a God in heaven because he sensed that there were people that were so actively involved, so busy doing something holy like studying the Talmud and yet losing sight of where they're supposed to take them what is the purpose of studying God's Torah? it's not just an intellectual exercise it's not just to become smarter it's not just to have more information the whole purpose of reading this love letter from God is to feel that connection to God and the Torah is God's love letter to us and Ravleva Yitzchak of Burditchev saw all these people studying Talmud what greatness there is there what a great thing they're doing and he was sad that in some way it was not being fully utilized it was being squandered they were losing sight of what the whole purpose of studying God's Torah was you know there's an old joke I remember I heard this a long time ago you've probably heard this joke as well where someone applies for a job as a rabbi and he seems to do well in the interviews they seem to like this fellow and they say you know before we hire you as a rabbi you have to give a sermon a sermon, one of you here you speak so he said fine I'm prepared to give a sermon so they said what are you going to speak about he said well you know this coming Shabbat I'll be here for Shabbat I'll speak about the importance of observing the Sabbath he said are you crazy you're going to speak to our congregation about the importance of observing the Sabbath they'll think you're a fanatic forget about it, you're going to lose any chance of getting the job you can't speak about the Shabbat he said okay okay I'll speak about kashut, keeping kosher how important that is what are you nuts, you're going to speak about keeping kosher you're going to definitely turn all these people off they'll think you're some kind of a zealot some kind of a fanatic you can't talk about that he says okay I have a great idea what are the importance of sending your children to a day school to Yeshiva they're going to drive you out of town on a rail you can't talk about that here and this poor fellow is thinking I don't know what should I talk about he said you're a rabbi, talk about Judaism it's an old famous joke but today the amazing irony it's an incredible irony is today the rabbi could speak about Shabbat that's perfectly acceptable the rabbi today can speak about kashut, the importance of keeping a kosher home the rabbi can speak about the importance of a Jewish education and day school, all these things today no one's going to have a problem but if the rabbi tries to speak about what is the purpose of all this where is it all supposed to lead us it's supposed to lead to intimacy with God they'll probably think he's a flake or some kind of a spiritual kook or a weirdo so today it's okay to talk about all the trees of Judaism but the forest, what it's all about don't go there Talmud says something amazing Talmud says Afilu reqanim shibahim Malayim mitzvoth kirimon I just bought today a pomegranate I got into the habit lately of seeding pomegranates I saw a YouTube video on how to easily get all those seeds out and we know that there's a famous law that every pomegranate has 613 seeds it's true, if you ever open up a pomegranate and count all the seeds it's always exactly 613 if you don't get 613 you can get your money back, I'm just kidding but there are lots of seeds we know that a pomegranate is lots and lots of seeds and the rabbis teach us Afilu reqanim shibahim even the emptiest Jews even the emptiest Jews are Malayim mitzvoth kirimon are full of commandments like a pomegranate it's a very strange thing to say even the emptiest Jew is as full of mitzvoth commandments as a pomegranate well if a Jew has that many commandments how do you call them empty that seems to be someone that's quite full 613 seeds every Jew that doesn't make sense why are they saying that a person that has as many commandments as a pomegranate is empty this class tonight was inspired by a very special rabbi that's living in Israel a number of years ago I was in a bookstore I happened to go to a bookstore several times a week one of my addictions and I saw they were carrying a line of books several volumes of a work that I had never seen before and I opened up the books and they looked fascinating they looked like these are wonderful books the books were called Bilvavi Mishkan Evnet in my heart I will construct a sanctuary and I was very surprised because I thought I knew books well and here were a whole series of books I'd never heard about and I looked on the front page and they're written anonymously there's no author these books became bestsellers over the years they have now been translated into English and into I believe Spanish and Russian many languages there's a website from Israel that carries videos of this person now we know who he is a young fellow from Israel very prolific and I studied the first volume and it was for me an eye-opener and he discusses this strange piece of Talmud in the first volume he says how do you explain this statement in the Talmud that the empty is Jews are as full of commandments as a pomegranate and he quotes in the name of Rabbi Povarski the following idea he says you know a pomegranate is different than other fruits if you eat an apple or a pear or a banana you're biting into a pear the whole thing you're biting into is pear it's all pearness it's all pear kite your teeth and your lips and your tongue everything you're encountering is pear and a banana the same way and apple the same way but a pomegranate it's not connected there are 613 seeds separate disparate seeds nothing connects them there's no glue that connects them all into one experience your mouth is not getting a unified experience like when you eat an apple or a pear and he says that's the problem with the commandments being as many as a pomegranate because what he's saying is that a person could have all those commandments they could be very religious but if they haven't unified all those commandments under the rubric of getting close to God meaning if I'm not realizing that the purpose of all these commandments is to get close to the Creator then I'm very empty I could be very religious and not very spiritual Isaiah in the 28th chapter is the Haftorah from the Partia of Shmoot the first chapter in the Book of Exodus so the Haftorah that we read that week is from the 28th chapter of Isaiah and he criticizes the relationship of the Jewish people to the Torah by saying that their relationship to the Torah is he says and Zersham and Zersham there's a commandment by commandment there's line by line there's a little bit here he's saying to them that your experience of Judaism is basically a big list of do's and don'ts that's how you relate to the Torah you basically are people who are following a rule book and you're careful to do this and not do that but you're not thinking about where is it supposed to take you what is the purpose of all these instructions these directions these are directions to get somewhere so all you're doing is you're getting into the car and you're driving and driving and driving but you're not thinking about where it's supposed to take you ultimately the goal of everything in the Torah is described in the Torah as as attachment as binding ourselves connecting ourselves to God the Torah is using here an extremely daring word because in the beginning of Genesis the Torah says therefore every person shall leave their mother and father and cleave to their wife cleave to their wife and it's a very very strong word it's the word in Hebrew in modern Hebrew, devek means glue so the Torah says that a man should cleave to his wife it's using a very very strong word for attachment it's saying to attach yourself as strongly and as closely and as intimately as possible but that word that's used in Genesis to describe the connection between a husband and a wife is the very word the Bible uses to describe our connection to God the Bible says we're supposed to attach ourselves to God it's an incredibly daring word to use but that's ultimately what the Torah teaches us we open up our Torah we read the Ten Commandments the very first one is not simply a commandment to believe in God the commandment to believe in God not simply that we should know the answer to the question is there a God that created the world if you think about it if the whole purpose of that first commandment is to simply say yes I believe that there's a God that created the world why would we have to say Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad every day of our lives twice a day if the whole purpose is so that we know there's only one God how thick can we be meaning that do I need to have a reminder every single day twice a day to remind me there's one God and not five gods not ten gods if I learn this when I'm seven years old if I go to Hebrew school go to Yeshiva and I learn in sixth grade or fifth grade or third grade well Michael there is one God in the world and there is a God that created the world once I learned that in fourth grade I know it for the rest of my life I tell myself every day twice a day morning and night the same idea Shema Yisrael listen here oh Israel the Lord is our God the Lord is one what is the purpose of it if it's only information only to be able to answer correctly a question is there a God that runs the world it's because it's not simply information to say we believe in God you know the the capitalists teach us there are different words that are used for knowledge there's Bina there's Daat Kachma deals with information wisdom information Daat is being attached to the information like the Bible says Adam Yadah Eschava Ishto Adam knew Yves his wife it's not just speaking about the fact that he could pull her out of a line of a police line up I recognize her it's saying that Adam knew her in the most intimate way possible Adam had intimate knowledge of his wife and so there's an idea of knowledge Kachma information and then there's the idea of Daatis which is information that we're attached to information that animates us Rabbi Schwartz gives the following example he says imagine that all of us here tonight we work in the same company let's say it's a big accounting firm and imagine one of us I don't know if anyone has the name Joe let's say one of us is named Joe and tomorrow they win it would have been a story last week actually they win the $55 million $649 lottery right so we're working in this company and one of us wins $55 million not bad right and even though this might be a big company maybe we have 60 people here maybe there are many people in the company who have come tonight let's say even there's 300 people that work in this big company probably a day later everyone's going to know that Joe won $55 million and if you asked people three weeks later who was the one that won the lottery sure it was Joe on the third floor everyone's going to know a year later if you asked everyone in the company do you remember who won the lottery yeah probably most people are going to remember it was Joe but a year later do you think the people in the company are still thinking about the fact that he won the lottery meaning it's going to be information that they can retrieve it's information in the back of their head somewhere they could probably pull it out from the back of their head maybe even five years later but maybe if you ask them the day after Joe won the lottery were you thinking about Joe's yeah I was thinking about it all day today I was thinking about boy it would have been nice if I won the lottery do you think people in the company are thinking about him winning the lottery a year later, two years later, three years later but if you were to stop Joe a month after he won the lottery is he thinking about those $55 million a month later he probably is thinking about the $55 million a month later because it's probably affected his life quite a bit probably a month later maybe he's beginning to get phone calls from maybe a fifth cousin he never heard about aren't we related somehow don't I know you maybe we were best friends in second grade or maybe Joe was the kind of person that wasn't really that well off and he had to take two buses and a subway to work maybe Joe is going to think now about two buses and a subway to work every day maybe the $55 million is going to change his life in a way where he's always somehow connected to that $55 million it's not just information that somehow having that money animates his life so for everyone else in the company the fact that Joe won $55 million is information but they're not attached to that information but for Joe he's attached to that information I'm now a multi-millionaire and that impacts his life every single moment when a person is a CEO of a company they don't forget that they're the CEO because that knowledge of who they are animates every moment of the day the same thing with a parent a parent is constantly aware of the fact that they have children that they're responsible for it's not just information it's transformative information it's information that animates every moment of their life and so the idea that there's a God that exists is not just something we're supposed to believe in to be able to say do you believe in God? yes I believe in God but God is supposed to be something that we're connected to all the time 24 hours a day 7 days a week and when we understand this we realize that God changes everything that we experience as Jews the word commandment in Torah is mitzvah and that's how often people think about the Torah as mitzvot as commandments, as do this and don't do that but the etymological root of the word mitzvah is from safto or tsevet which means connector or binder because we realize that every single commandment is there for the purpose of connecting us and binding us to God the word tfilah prayer again etymologically comes from the root meaning to connect so the prayer experience is not just a laundry list where we ask God for things that we need it's not simply going shopping for things that we need prayer is an experience where we recognize that we need God for all these things it's a way of connecting ourselves binding ourselves to God that's the importance of prayer what is the importance of chesed of doing kindness to other people it's a huge part of Judaism so our rabbis teach us that if we want to attach ourselves to God the most powerful way of doing it is by imitating God you ever watch a teenager let's say a teenager who is obsessed with a certain musical star a rock and roll guitar player so you go into the room of that teenager they have posters of that guitar player and they may end up combing their hair or cutting their hair just like this person wears his hair they might buy the same guitar learn how to hold it in the same way but when we are enamored with someone when we are desirous of getting close to someone we try to be like them it's a very normal kind of mode of operating and so the Torah says if you want to get close to God and attach yourself to God try to be like God go through your day and ask yourself how would God relate to the people I'm relating to how generous would God be how forgiving would God be how kind would God be how selfless would God be but the Torah is telling us if we want to get close to God try to imitate God try to be more godly in our lives more like God the Torah tells us that at the end of our lives we should live to be 120 years old we are going to be given a final exam and the Talmud tells us today what the questions are going to be on the final exam it's good to know by the way because you have a lot of time now to prepare and to get ready for that exam so the first question we are going to be asked the Talmud says is nasata venatata be'emuna nasata venatata be'emuna normally translated did you deal honestly and fairly in business that's how normally this question is asked were you honest and fair we say in Yiddish Erlich were you someone that was pure in your business dealings but one of the great Hasidic masters at San Zarebi explained it differently he said what we are being asked is nasata venatata be'emuna did you do business with your faith not that you do your business faithfully but that you do business with your faith which means what it's very simple people that have money don't want the money to grow and stay a thousand dollars people that have a thousand dollars want that thousand dollars to grow they want the thousand dollars to become two thousand dollars so people that have money make efforts to grow their money they might consult with investment advisors, they might read the stock markets in the newspaper they might go to a seminar but people spend effort and energy and they spend time trying to grow their money but that's going to be the question that we're asked after 120 years did you spend time trying to grow your faith did you try to have your faith become deeper and more sophisticated and more profound and more emotional because it's possible to go through life and maintain the same degree of faith that you had when you first got it maybe when you were six years old you were taught in school that there's a god that created the world where you became aware of the fact that you were nine years old however old you were the great tragedy would be to spend the rest of your life not trying to grow that faith and deepen it one of the famous questions that's asked about the first commandment is how does god command us to have belief in him how do you command belief what is this first commandment that I am the lord your god who took you out of the land of Egypt and the house of slavery that commands us to believe in him because the commentaries ask it doesn't make sense if we already believe in god what's the purpose of being commanded to believe in god and if we don't believe in god you just can't command someone to turn it on like a faucet of water so how do you have a commandment to believe in god and the Rebbe from slalom the slalom of Rebbe gives a very insightful answer he says you know what the commandment really is it's not about turning on and off this light switch he says the commandment to have faith is a commandment of Yegea of striving, of yearning he says for the person who doesn't believe in god their mitzvah is to try to come to faith in god they may not be able to turn it on but they fulfill the mitzvah of having faith in god by seeking god by yearning to connect with god by trying to connect with god by doing all the things that they could possibly do to try to come to faith in god they may not be able to turn their faith on and off but the slalom of Rebbe says the commandment is Yegea is yearning is seeking, is searching is striving and for the person who already does believe in god their mitzvah is to try to kick it up a notch to try to increase the intensity and try and grow it even more my mononies tells us that the ultimate relationship to god is one of love it's the mitzvah of the ahavta not just to know there's a god but to love god and my mononies writes that the love of god is supposed to be like the love of a woman and a man where they can't stop thinking about each other that's how insane they are with love they are so passionately in love they can't get the other person out of their mind but obviously to develop this kind of level of relationship with god is like any relationship that requires work any good marriage requires work and working on the relationship which means working on their communication and spending more time communicating so spending more time with god and speaking to god and listening to god these are all part of the way in which we grow the relationship and build towards love and I believe that one of the things that Jewish people should be thinking about especially let's say the time like Yom Kippur when it's very common to think about the checklist of things that we want to improve I want to do this better I want to improve that I want to do that better I want to stop doing that that's the sort of micromanaging the whole checklist of things we do and don't is Jews but the overarching idea that we should walk away with after Yom Kippur and every day can be Yom Kippur and walk away saying I want to live a life where everything I do gets me closer to god and if it gets me closer to god I want to do it better and if it doesn't help me get closer to god I want to avoid doing it to spend every day of our lives asking ourselves what can I do what can I do to get closer to god how do I spend some time today and how do I spend my time when I have free time what should I be thinking about you know we have so many things that fill up our lives but we have so much time on our hands sometimes especially in our world today where we have so many things to give ourselves more time what should we be thinking about what should we be focusing on how should we be living our lives so the recommendation of Judaism is spend time every day in gratitude spend time every day trying to be grateful for everything that god gave us there's an amazing amount that god gave us I read a number of years ago I don't usually do this but I read a very very inspiring obituary of a young man that passed away in his early 20s and the obituary said that after he passed away his parents found in his room dozens of journals dozens of journals from an early age and his teens began keeping a journal where he listed every day all the things he felt gratitude for all the things that he was grateful to god for just a young man not a very old person yet someone that didn't have to learn all the lessons of life but someone that was inspired from an early age not to take anything for granted and to try to be grateful to spend time every day asking god for the things that we truly need not just in the prayer book the words of our prayer book but to spend some time every day in our own words just speaking to god whatever is on our heart that's the nature of a true relationship spending time every day reflecting on god's greatness it's pretty mind blowing you know when I was in eighth grade I remember stopping and crying in the middle of a physics class because the professor the teacher was teaching us how vast the universe was how space went on infinitely I remember trying to imagine just traveling into outer space and it never ends and I remember it was just it made me crazy it was so frightening to think about space just going on forever I was really overwhelmed with the size of our universe so to spend some time every day thinking about the incredible greatness of god and finally to think about every day what can we do each one of us in our own lives to advance his agenda in this world what can each of us do to advance god's agenda in this world to help bring the world closer to where god wants it we all know what the world should look like we get very caught up in our own lives we get very caught up in our own agendas but I believe that one of the most powerful things that we can do is to spend just some time every day reflecting what is god's agenda what does god ultimately want for the world what can I do to help move the world in that direction