 The beginning of our national history starts towards the beginning of the book of Barry Sheet and Genesis where God sends Abraham on a world-changing mission and God speaks to a very old man Abraham is just about a hundred years old and God promises him he'll have many descendants. He's childless at this point You know God promises many descendants and the Torah tells us that Abraham believed Abraham had full faith in this promise of God And then the Torah tells us that God promised him that his descendants will inherit this special land the land of Israel At that point Abraham says how do I know that I'll be able to bequeath this to my children? And it sounds strange that after believing the incredible promise of children at the age of 100 He accepts that promise. He's wondering about whether or not his children will inherit the land and some of the commentaries explained that Abraham was not questioning whether the land would ultimately be given to him and his children what his concern was How do I know Abraham says I'll be able to bequeath it meaning my faith my belief to my children That was his concern his concern that he didn't know about that was in God's Control God can determine who's going to get the land God can determine How many children he's going to have but who's going to determine whether his children will stay true to his ideals and to his beliefs That was Abraham's concern Will it be able to pass on his commitment to his children? Obviously all Jewish people today that are connected to Jewish commitment and Jewish continuity We share that same concern that Abraham had The formula for what is required to Effectively and successfully transmit this to the next generation is incredibly complex There's a multitude of factors that go into how to negotiate this Properly It's going to go way beyond a groucho Marxian Just say the secret word and everything is going to be fine. There is no magic formula There is no secret word. There is no one-size-fits-all answer We're talking about a complicated issue with complicated answers It depends upon family dynamics It depends upon the school children go to it depends upon synagogue life the broader Jewish community life There are many many factors that go into what makes up a Jewish child as Well, there are myriad of very complex Factors that go into the challenges to Jewish continuity What are the forces that pull our children away from what we desire and it's again not simple We can't blame it all on the internet. We can't blame it all on Television we can't blame it all on the surrounding non-Jewish culture There are plenty of challenges to our desires for Jewish continuity I think it's very important for all of us to be sober when it comes to this issue tonight and to remember That we cannot automatically assume as a God-given right or any guarantee whatsoever That all of our children and all of our students will somehow Desire to be just like we would like them to be in terms of their Jewish commitments There's no guarantee regardless of how hard we strive. There are no guarantees But that should not stop us from trying and it should certainly not stop us from striving to build Spiritual vitality spiritual health in our children in order to at least maximize the chances That they will be successfully carrying on our tradition the major point. I would try to share with you tonight is That our goal is not simply to educate our children in Terms of understanding what Judaism is This is not simply an exercise in transferring information The challenge is that we want our children to buy into Judaism not just to know about it, but to buy into it as a friend of mine once refrained it Not that they got to but they get to Imagine being successful at transmitting this to your kids in terms of cleaning their room Not that you've got to clean your room But you get to clean your room as is that you get to clean your room Right and imagine the ability to get your children to buy into that that this is something that's special It's a privilege. They should look forward to it. They should enjoy it so the goal is to go beyond our Children and giving the message that you've got to be Jewish and For them to receive the message that you know what you get to be Jewish our literature our Jewish literature teaches That ideas in and of themselves are very weak Ideas in and of themselves are very knowing something Doesn't mean much until that knowledge is internalized Just knowing it intellectually means very little Until you internalize it for example It's not just enough to know that it's wrong to steal Everybody on the planet knows it's wrong to steal that will not stop one person from stealing until the person is literally repulsed By the possibility of taking something that doesn't belong to them the idea of stealing has to sicken them It has to repulse them, which is more than just an intellectual awareness that stealing is wrong Torah tells us we say in our prayers every day. They are data. Hi-yom, but I say Vota Elevator you have to know this day you have to know it with your head But then you have to take that head knowledge and you have to bring it into your heart You've got to basically begin to feel that which you know Again knowing it is a very the head is a very weak organ The Torah is telling us you've got to get whatever's in your head into your heart You've got to begin to feel it and feel it passionately Ultimately commitments to anything Judaism is our discussion tonight only comes with an emotional buy-in It's not enough to give your intellectual Ascent to the fact that an idea is meaningful or even that something is true. We've got to buy into it emotionally I'll give you an example or two I Was persuaded that for the work that I do I should open up a Facebook account Which I did and I have bought into Facebook. I have about 4500 friends. I do a tremendous I don't know who they are most of them, but I do a tremendous amount of work on Facebook people who would not have emailed me Who may never have found me on email? Find me on Facebook. They tracked me down and I deal with about a dozen questions a day for people that reach me and Correspond with me on Facebook. I'm not interested in playing games with them I'm not interested in half of what goes on on Facebook, but for me it's been an incredibly productive tool I've bought into Facebook. I also opened a Twitter account But I haven't yet bought into Twitter. I don't understand it. I don't relate to it I don't see the payoff so it hasn't happened yet Maybe someday I'll hop what Twitter is all about and I'll be a Twitter bug like I'm a Facebook fanatic But I'm trying to say that one of these technologies I've bought into I've invested into it The other one. I'm still a bit of a stranger in a strange land Or imagine a family that brings home a fishbowl for their family. We're gonna have a pet fish in the house Right, what do the parents expect or hope or dream? They assume that the kids are gonna buy into it The kids are gonna see the fish as their pets the kids are gonna enjoy the fish They take care of the fish invest in the fish But the parents want not just that this should be their little project that it's parents fish tank They want somehow for the children to buy into the project of having the fish our goal ultimately is For our children to internalize Judaism Not just being Jewish because their friends happen to be Jewish or their family happens to be Jewish People who tell you I was raised a Jew We want them to personally Buy into it to internalize it Why would they do that? Why would someone internalize Judaism buy into Judaism? Number of years ago I was asked to speak to a group of students at the University in Windsor and the topic I was given was to talk about the challenge of Christian missionaries and I was in the middle of my presentation. I spoke for maybe 20 minutes And one of the women stops me and one of the law students there He says, you know round my skull back We're not really that interested in hearing about Jews for Jesus and Christian missionaries said, okay That was a topic. I was given what were you interested in? She says I want to know and she said really she spoke for the group. We would want to know What's wrong with us marrying non-Jews? So I said to her, you know your question is an important question, but I can't answer it Because it's the wrong question. You're asking me the wrong question She says, what do you mean? I said if you want me at this point of your life to explain to you Why it would not be a great idea for you to marry someone who wasn't Jewish. I really can't answer that question She says, what should I be asking? She said I said the question you need to be asking is why should you be Jewish? Why should you be Jewish? Or in other words, I said to her the real question is not who you should marry The real question the more primary issue is is there anything about Judaism that you find compelling? Is there anything about Judaism that you can wrap your life around? Is there anything about Judaism that captures your imagination so that you can commit yourself to it because ultimately on some level your family is asking you to eliminate 97% probably of the potential dating pool For what reason? Why if everyone wants to have a relationship? Everyone wants to get married and it's hard It's not easy to find someone to have a relationship with why would a Jewish person eliminate 97% of the people they're going to meet unless Judaism meant so much to them that they would never want to share their entire life with someone who didn't share that most deeply cherished value It's not going to happen because people on universities today are going to say you know what it's going to break my parents heart That's why I shouldn't marry someone not Jewish. The reality is that in the world today It's no longer a taboo More than 53% of people are into marrying. It's not a scandal anymore Parents are basically learning how to deal with it and most children know their parents will get over any Disappointment and they know that my parents ultimately want whatever makes me happy So that simply is not going to prevent people today I couldn't say to this young woman. Well the reason you should only marry a Jew is because you're really going to hurt your parents That would not work So I said to her the only way it's ever going to happen is if for you Judaism is the central organizing principle of your life. You've wrapped your whole life around it It's so central to who you are You simply would not be interested in marrying someone who didn't share that most basic value If you have that kind of a connection to Judaism if for you Judaism is that meaningful? I won't have to explain to you why it's not really a good choice to marry a non-Jew But if Judaism is not that important to you if you don't see Judaism as that compelling I said there I can't really give you a good reason why you should not marry a non-Jew You could probably call me a racist and not be too much off the mark. I'll tell you another story Number of years ago, I was asked to speak to a young student at MIT when I was going to high school We were afraid the MIT people they were from a different planet They were geniuses everyone had like a nerd protector for their pocket a million pens But they were very smart people in my high school the people that went to MIT were frighteningly smart So I was a little bit nervous. I'm going to speak to student from MIT What was the story she came to MIT? I think three of her roommates were born against Christians She became a born-again Christian after the first semester of University and the parents asked me to fly down to speak to her I met with her in the lobby of her of her dormitory and I asked her the first question. Why do you think I've come all the way here to speak to you? So her first answer was well you my parents paid you, you know, you're getting paid I said no, I'm not getting paid to speak to you. I don't charge for my services so she said well probably because you're a rabbi and You're concerned about you're a leader of the Jewish community and you're concerned about the Jewish people and you're concerned that if You know people like me convert to Christianity. It'll be the end of the Jewish people You're concerned about Jewish survival So I said no, I didn't come for that reason either. I said because I happen to personally Take God at his word God promised the Jewish people that we will always exist So I don't worry about Jewish survival. I don't the survival of the Jewish people is God's problem And God is perfectly capable of dealing with it So I said I'm not here to speak to you because I'm concerned about the fate of the Jewish people God promised us that we will exist But that promise that God made was made either with you or without you And I said the reason I'm here is not for the Jewish people. The reason I'm here is for you Because you are disconnecting yourself from something that's precious from something that's beautiful from something That's vital from something that's incredible That's been around for three thousand years and to me It's so sad and tragic that you are willingly disconnecting yourself from it without really having made an informed decision But the bottom line in all of these issues is that there has to be something about Judaism that's worth sacrificing for Clearly if we expect our children to buy into Judaism, we expect them to invest in Judaism We obviously have to buy into it ourselves We can't expect our children to do something that we have not ourselves done And so what's the most critical first step in order to ensure that we're able to pass on something to the next generation is that we ourselves have found something within Judaism that speaks to us that we connect with That motivates us that excites us that captures our imagination and that we're able to wrap our lives around that we see It's bigger than just children. It's bigger than just whatever We associate with the superficialities of Jewish culture. There's something bigger about Judaism That's worth investing in when we try to convey what's compelling about Judaism What's critical to remember is that ultimately we communicate and this is so important to remember We communicate not so much by what we say But we communicate by who we are What we say our words are not that impactful But who we are is the ultimate way of communicating. What's our deeply held values? Judaism ultimately has to be modeled We have to model it and that's how children learn. They don't learn by what their parents say They learn by what their parents do. They learn by what their parents Cherish they learn by what their parents take seriously They say that Judaism has to be caught not taught The children have to catch it parents need To take their focus off of their children and to put it on themselves We get so caught up with what are we going to do to make sure our children? What are we going to do for our children? What are we going to do when we get so focused on what to do to help our children? What to do for them and to them what to make them do we forget that the most important thing is to put the focus on ourselves They say when we're traveling on an airplane if the God forbid is a problem with the cabin pressure They say first put the oxygen mask on yourself then put it on your children That's the model for successful Transmission the Chasinik masters used to say that if you want to overflow a saucer with tea You have to overflow the cup You've got to make the cup overflow into the saucer Don't think you're going to be able to pour it directly into the saucer For the next little while what I'd like to share with you are some thoughts and really this is not Exhaustive we can probably if you had the patience And my voice holds up we could spend the next six seven hours Exploring what I want to get into with you now But I want to share with you a number of possibilities on the menu of What are some of the big-ticket items in Judaism in terms of the bigger picture in terms of what are some of the ways in which it's Passable for us to Commit ourselves to a Judaism in a serious kind of way I Think that one of the things that's often under Stressed in our world is to reflect on and pay attention to the truth claims of Judaism the truth claims of Judaism human beings have an innate sensitivity and Appreciation for that which is true. We are wired to appreciate and to resonate with things that are true Which means things that are real? People speak about the truth. What we really mean is that which is real and on the other hand we have a repulsion where we post almost Instinctually and we turned off by that which is not true that which does not have the ring of truth Rabbi Yudha Levy Thousand years ago in his kuzari focused on the compelling historical foundations of Judaism's truth claims and a thousand years later in our generation Rabbi Dovah Gottlieb in Yerushalayim has continued the discussion a few months ago. I was asked to speak at a Christian seminary in Toronto Tyndale Bible College and One of the questions I go there almost every year that I was asked by the students was after my presentation They wanted to know why Jews don't believe in Jesus and I explained basically Why that there is a biblical Job description if you will a template of what the Messiah is supposed to be and Jesus didn't do an end of story So they asked me a question and this question comes up almost every time I'm there They said for Rabbi Scoback. What about all the miracles that he did if you listen to the way Christians promote their faith they put almost all their eggs in the basket of Jesus's alleged resurrection in order to establish the historical truth of Christianity That's basically their whole presentation tonight's not the time to go into analysis of this story But let me just say that the evidence for this alleged resurrection of Jesus is so flimsy and tenuous That it would make the case for Judaism an incredible slam dunk by comparison and We should think about this that our major spiritual competitors Place basically all of their stock in this story, which has virtually no substantiation available But let's think about what Rabbi Yudah Levy and Rabbi David Gottlieb and countless others that suggested About the truth claims of Judaism What is our narrative as Jews? What is our narrative? We live at a time where everyone's interested in the narrative of every group Well, I'll tell you what our narrative is not We don't believe that Moses came down from Mount Sinai Claiming that God spoke to him Because there it was either take it or leave it Did he speak to Moses? Didn't he speak to Moses? He knows maybe he did maybe Moses was a good persuader, but that's not what Judaism claims happened a friend of mine once Spent about Three or four years. I think of his life. He had converted to Christianity. He joined a messianic synagogue It was a very Pentecostal place where people heard from God all the time And there was a woman in this congregation that was had the hots for him I can put it gently and she had in her mind She said to him one day, you know Larry the Lord spoke to me last night and told me that we are to be married So Larry was Not happy about this because he didn't have mutual feelings So he spoke to the pastor and the pastor very wisely said look when the Lord speaks unto you That you should marry her then we'll worry about it Right, but it's very easy for her to claim that God spoke to her that you should be married It would have been easy for Moses to say God spoke to me, but that's not our narrative Judaism teaches that every single Jew who came out of Egypt two to three million people Heard God speak to Moses at Mount Sinai Moses didn't have to convince anyone Every Jew came out of out of Egypt heard God speak to Moses at Mount Sinai That my friends is something that you cannot fake The Torah predicts incredibly that no religion no other religion will ever make this claim That they were based upon a public revelation If you study all world religions every religion in the world begins with the claim of one person that God spoke to them And then take it or leave it The Bible predicts God says no other people will claim that they had a national revelation because it's very simple You cannot fake a national revelation You cannot make it up Because if it didn't happen and you try to pass it off as if it happened Everyone's gonna say really how come I never heard this before and because our narrative is so incredibly Firmly based in reality It's important to remember that the world's two point two billion Christians and the world's 1.5 billion Muslims all accept our narrative No one questions this Christianity and Islam Accept the truth claim of Judaism that God spoke to the entire Jewish people at Mount Sinai You can put that in the bank My father told me that when he was a young Refugee in Italy during the Holocaust after the war was over he spent five years in Italy in DP camp He once had to have some documents notarized The only place that would do it was this Christian monastery at Catholic Monastery He knocks on the big wooden doors the priest comes out with his whole outfit He sees my father and the priest my father told me hit the ground And he's lying on the ground looks at my father with tears coming out of his eyes and says to my father Do you know who you are? Father thought this guy was weird Of course, I know who I am He said it was rhetorical question obviously He says you're from the people Who stood on the desert floor three thousand years ago and the Almighty spoke to your people on the desert floor Here was a Christian that is getting all teary-eyed because he sees a Jew We are the people of the Bible and he knows what that means We're the people that God spoke to not just Moses every Jew heard from God and That's why the Torah put so much emphasis on us Reliving all of those formative moments of Jewish history not just thinking about them But re-experiencing them reliving them because these were moments the exodus from Egypt the ten plagues The crossing of the Red Sea the revelation at Sinai Shlepping through the desert of 40 years with all these incredible miracles The Bible says this was a time when the Jewish people became electrically aware of God's presence We became electrically aware of God's presence So the Torah says you have to always remember these experiences and not just think about them Relive them eat that matzah eat those bitter herbs build a soka sit in this soka So your children will know that this happened to your ancestors It actually happened Torah tells us in the book of Devarium Deuteronomy chapter 4 verse 35 Not that we're supposed to have faith in the Lord. The Bible says Ata Haireta Ladass you were literally shown to that you should know He had a knife who had Elohim ain't Odin Lovado and the Lord is God. There is none but him Not that we have to believe it because Moses sold us a bill of goods God literally showed us we saw with our own eyes. We heard with our own ears The truth foundations of Judaism are incredibly powerful an easy way to learn What to emphasize in Judaism is by paying careful attention to all of those people who strayed to foreign spiritual pastures and Unfortunately, there are far too many Jewish people today who are deeply involved with many many other religions But it's very helpful to listen carefully to them. Why are they in those other religions? Why have they sacrificed? Where they basically have put up with the rejection of their family and the rejection of their friends What did they find in Christianity? What did they find in Buddhism? What did they find in Hinduism? And maybe it would be helpful for us to know what these Jewish people have sacrificed In order to join other religions That might be very worth hearing Because the old story by Rabbi Mothman and Breslov is that you usually don't have to travel across the other parts of the world To discover what's in your own backyard You won't know the famous story about the fellow that has a dream that if he goes all the way across the world to Vienna Vienna wherever it is is a bridge and under the bridge if he digs is going to be a pot of gold this poor person Couldn't support his family figures. I have nothing better to do. He schleps all the way to Vienna He looks around no one's looking he starts digging and gets caught by one of the guards Because I can't tell a lie. I had a dream any times I heard this dream that I come here to be a buried treasure the guard laughed and says you crazy You listen to these crazy dreams I had a dream about some old Jew from Prague that under his stove is a big treasure Well, this old Jew from Prague goes back home and that's where it is I've listened to the stories of Hundreds if not into the thousands of Jews that are now practicing other religions and I will tell you that their Trajectory is almost always the same We're talking about young Jewish people who were Went to Hebrew school had a bar about mitzvah They may have gone to Jewish youth groups. They may have gone to Israel on a trip They probably stayed home and lived kind of candles with their families. They may have gone to a castle reseder They may have done all the things that normal North American Jews do But these Jews that have gone to other religions will always tell you and that's what they've told me But you know what Michael Judaism was only presented to me as a heritage as a culture as an ethnicity as a Identity as a tradition but it was never presented to me as a vibrant spiritual path and That is the common denominator of virtually all the Jews that I've met that have embraced foreign religions We sometimes are very good at raising and nurturing even religious Jews and Observing Jews But we don't often do a good job of raising spiritual Jews a wise man once said that the difference between religion and Spirituality is like the difference between reading the menu and eating the meal Very few people get filled up reading the menu And by a victim Miller once explained as an example, what's the difference? When we go to a synagogue and we open the prayer book and Jews that are religious do this twice a day We recite the schmar and in the schmar we say via hafta et adonai al ohecha We should love the Lord our God with all our heart and all our soul and all our might When we do that we're reading the menu. We're religious. We're reading the menu Rabbi Miller said if you don't go and spend time during the day loving God, then you haven't eaten the meal So to say the schmar is wonderful But then what does it mean to love God? And that's what the schmar is telling us, you know boys and girls should love God But eating the meal means spending time during the day doing that Minimally, Rabbi Miller says so tell God once a day. I love you a chef. I mean that's not hard It's not a big deal. We could probably do much more than that But at least being aware of the need to actualize the menu not just to read the menu To begin eating the meal One of the things that I have heard from virtually all of the Jews that have converted to Christianity Is that what they found in the church that unfortunately they never heard about at home was having a personal relationship with God? Ultimately the most central part of Judaism escaped them God might have been a word they said They might have heard the name of God mentioned But they tell me That no one ever spoke about having the presence of God in their life We're getting close to God. We're having a relationship with God They never heard that in their Jewish upbringing in their synagogues in the Hebrew schools in their homes But they heard it in spades in the church Mindy Ribner a friend of mine from New York who today teaches Jewish meditation a Very spiritual woman. She came to university. She was looking for a Jewish outlet for her spirituality She writes in her first book That I went to my Hillel rabbi Hoping that I would find someone to talk to me about God and the meaning of life He told me not to think so much and to take up swimming She writes I didn't take up swimming But a guru from India came to our campus and he spoke about God. I Mean Hindus have thousands of gods How many Jewish people are in India because they're attracted to Hindu spirituality? so often and it's so Incredibly sad God gets lost in the shuffle or is paid lip service to in Judaism Even though connecting with God is the very bottom line of Judaism the ultimate bottom line of Judaism Everything is built around having a relationship with God The Torah begins The very beginning of our Torah Therefore every person should leave their mother and father and Attach themselves to their wife The dovah by ishto. It's a very very strong word in modern Hebrew. Devak is the word for glue the Torah is telling us that a person should leave their mother and father and Bind themselves to their wife. It's the most intimate close Relationship that's possible between two people. That's what the Torah expects of a man and a wife The Torah very daringly daringly Uses the same exact word for our relationship with God the whole book of Dvarim the fifth book of our Bible speaks about Devak kut establishing our connection of attachment to God of Cleaving to God of binding ourselves to God. That's the ultimate goal of everything we do as Jews The word mitzvah is not simply the word for commandment the word mitzvah comes Etymologically from the word sevet or safta which means a connector or a binder every mitzvah is not just simply do's and don'ts It's not just God bossing us around Every mitzvah is an opportunity to attach ourselves to connect ourselves to God The very word for prayer that we use to phila is coming Etymologically from the word meaning connected to connect two things together Prayer is not just a shopping list where we ask for things we want the experience of prayer is a time of communication All relationships are built upon communication prayer is a time where we have our relationship with God It's connecting and binding ourselves to God When we say I share kiddishan over mitzvah tab kiddishan doesn't only mean the site. What does it mean to sanctify us? It doesn't just mean that God made us holy with his commandments It means that God married us. He wedded us a wedding is called kiddishan So we're saying that God married us. He wedded us with his commandments with these mitzvah These are opportunities to connect ourselves to God our rabbis teach us that God relates to us like a parent. What does our parents want from us? Every parent wants the ultimate pleasure and fulfillment for the children every parent wants their children to have ultimate Fulfillment ultimate pleasure. They wanted children to go through life on first class Everything that's possible. They would like their children to have The Ramchal Moshe Chaim Lutzato and many of the Jewish mystics explain that that's what God our father in heaven wants for us To have ultimate pleasure and God put us in a world of pleasure Every sunset is a beautiful masterpiece the smile of every baby is an incredible delight Dark chocolate can send people to heaven right there are so many pleasures in this world Incredible pleasures and every single one of them points beyond itself to its source Where did that pleasure come from when I was in high school? I had a job working at Nabisco I don't know if they had Nabisco in Canada, but we worked in Nabisco when I was in high school I was a part of this work science project I was doing quality control work and I got to eat fig newtons off the assembly line Telling you there was no experience like that if you like fig newtons that you buy from a store It's been sitting on the shelf for six months. I was eating them off of the assembly line When you had a pleasure and you go to the source What's the source of that pleasure? You like a sunset are you blown away by the beauty of the sunset? We have an ability to have a relationship with the artist. We can get to know the painter of that sunset There's no pleasure like connecting ourselves to the source of every pleasure in the universe Now it may not be possible for us to mass produce Devekut Jews Jews that are all Totally bound to God all the time But what we can produce and Nurture our Mivak she hashen We can produce people who seek God who yearn for God who would like to have a relationship with God Maybe we can't all do it so easily But if you scratch someone would you like to have a relationship and if we can nurture at least that level We're doing quite well Want to make one final comment on this point. I Think it's important to remember that it's very difficult to communicate this value of connecting to God as a parent Or as a teacher when it's an ideal that has not yet been fully embraced by our community When we see and children especially see a disconnect Between what is being taught and what our community actually values and practices It's very difficult to communicate and to inspire children properly When children come to synagogues where prayer is raced through and breakneck speed It doesn't really seem like people Want to spend a lot of time with God Aside from connecting with God, there's one other aspect of our spiritual menu that is often neglected Many people have told me that one of the reasons is so attracted to Buddhism is They see within Buddhism very practical teachings for personal transformation One of the issues that everybody seems to have that everybody but many people is being impatient Being a little bit quick to get angry many people struggle with that Buddhism has a very very sophisticated program to help people deal with that kind of afflictive emotion Unfortunately and tragically so many Jewish people grow up Never knowing that Judaism has a meaningful thing to say about Personal growth they fail to see how anything that they're taught about Judaism Like having a Passover Seder or eating kosher or lighting kind of kills What does that have to do with becoming someone who's more patient or more generous or someone that has more gratitude Or someone that's less arrogant and more humble Someone that's more sensitive someone that has more inner peace Someone that's less lazy What does anything that we learn is Judaism have to say about these issues? The Bible begins by telling us the creation of each one of us and God says something very strange God creates everything in the world by saying let there be light Let there be trees let there be animals let there be fish let there be bugs everything is created by God creating it Unilaterally Comes to the creation of human beings. God says let us make man What's going on here? Let us make man Many explanations have been given the Baal Shem Tov shared something very profound The Baal Shem Tov said that God is basically saying here that he cannot Unilaterally create a human being God can make a fish and God can make a cat Because basically a cat is a cat is a cat it doesn't become more of a cat as it gets older It might become bigger, but it doesn't grow in its cat kite It doesn't grow in his catness, but a human being is not like any other creature in the world So the Baal Shem Tov said who is God speaking to? He said God is speaking to every single human being who will ever be created and God is saying let us make man God is saying I cannot create you. I can give you the raw ingredients I can give you a body and a soul, but what you become is a function of what you do with those raw ingredients So the entire Bible is telling us we are here to create ourselves. We're here to grow That's why we're here. We're not here in this world to Relax we're not here in this world to I Once saw an article about a fellow on his tombstone. He said I lived for golf There must be more to life Than golf or many of the things that distract us There's got to be more to life than eating in nice restaurants. It's not a bad thing to do But it can't be our entire life People get caught up with many things in this life But that's all that there is to life So the Bible tells us that we were put in this world to create ourselves To grow from a shem shem verse referral Hirsch said that the word in Hebrew for growth So may ah is related to the word for happiness. So may ah Because nothing really produces satisfied fulfilled people then when they grow then when they actualize their potential If you have a treadmill in your house, what's going to make the treadmill happy that you hang your clothing on it? No, the treadmill wants someone to walk on it. And what is that if you have a dishwasher? What is that going to make the dishwasher happy not if you just store dirty dishes? There are other things it wants to be used things are fulfilled when they're able to actualize their potential Human beings have infinite potential. We have incredible potential and that's the thing that will ultimately bring fulfillment to us. I Often point out that when people ask me, what is your denomination now? I just go back. I say my denomination is under construction is that's my denomination and My friend David Aaron speaks about human becomeings not human beings We are human becomeings because we are here to make ourselves into something. I Believe that that is the kind of project that a person can wrap their entire life around. It's not something which is trivial It's not something which is trite or cute or a tradition This is a life project that a person can say I'm Dedicating my life to becoming all that I'm capable of becoming to actualizing my potential That's something that a person can wrap their life around Mentioned on Friday night when I was speaking at the Spanish Portuguese synagogue If you ever watch children from the early times of their life from the birth to ten years of age It's frightening how much change takes place between zero and ten incredible transformation between 10 and 20 Unbelievable to compare a 10 year old kid to a 20 year old that could be married unbelievable change But if you watch people in the next decades of their lives from 20 to 30 and 30 to 40 and 40 to 50 and 50 and 60 and 60 and 70 and ask what really happens What change really takes place? Maybe a little bit less hair maybe more gray hair Maybe a little bit more of a waistline, but is there real serious personal growth and development? Often the answer is no and Judaism says that's why we're put into this world. The rabbis say Lonitna Torah Ella Kadele Tsarif Bahamas of Brio's the very strong statement the Torah was only given Not one of the reasons the rabbis a the Torah was only given in order to refine us to perfect us to purify us to change us realizing that your life is a work in progress and You are here to create a masterpiece That's an incredibly strong idea to wrap yourself around Torah contains incredible wisdom and technology for personal transformation Right here in Canada now living in Vancouver Alan Marinus has dedicated himself to being basically the one person that's Revitalized the study of tikkun Amidot perfecting our character traits a whole study that almost disappeared The Musar movement that was almost wiped out in the Holocaust through this one Canadian Jew who discovered it late in life has Formatted a transformation. It's rocking the entire Jewish world Rabbi. Leib Kellerman in Israel comes to Toronto to run Musar vats with people throughout North America people are dedicating their lives My wife is part of the vat. She spends every day working on a particular character trait They spend four years working on faith They spend years working on different me don't like becoming more hot kind or having a more similar and they do this with Readings and studying and prayer and meditation and journaling But it's a program that a person can dedicate their life to people often dedicate a serious amount of energy to lose weight It becomes an obsession that people have over the course of 20 30 40 50 years This is something that's even more dignified and more holy and more noble changing who we are Want to conclude with one final topic? I was a teenager that was extremely alienated from Judaism I was a child of the 60s. I was extremely idealistic as a teenager And if you would ask me as a teenager what my greatest desire was I would have sounded like Miss America world peace I Would have said that I would have meant it because that was my passion. I Was drawn very deeply into the anti-war movement of the 60s protesting and demonstrating against the war in Vietnam and Cambodia and I felt that religions were part of the problem. I saw religions as dividing people as causing a lot of the strife in this world Fellow university students at North Reston where I was attending challenged me and said, you know Let's go back for someone that is so hateful of religion, especially their own religion Judaism We're bothered by the fact that you seem to know nothing about Judaism Wouldn't it make more sense before you rejected it forever to first find out what it was? And I was open-minded enough to take them up on your challenge I transferred from North Reston University to a special program at Yeshivi University for wayward Jews They had such a program learned for the first time in my life and I am still blown away by this how this very basic idea of Judaism escaped me I grew up in New York not in the middle of the Chuppetsville it I grew up in a Jewish world And I never heard this growing up I learned that For the first time in my life Judaism Has a mission to change the world The Judaism we are a religion of radical revolutionaries We have a belief that we are here to make this world into a utopia to make the world into a better place I Never had been exposed to this very powerful idea that is a Jew I have the potential to change the world That is Jews we've sacrificed for thousands of years For the sake of this ideal God said to Abraham through you Abraham and through your family all the nations of the world will be blessed You shall become a holy nation and a kingdom of priests You will become a light unto the nations. You will be my witnesses The Torah says over and over again We are here as Jews to basically change this world and bring it back to the Garden of Eden It wasn't just Joni Mitchell who sang about getting back to the Garden The dream of Woodstock Of creating a utopia in this world is a Jewish value. It was not just a hippie value And for idealistic people and I believe that Jews are hardwired for idealism The idea and the vision that you can be part of a movement of a group of people That can make a difference that you can have an impact on the world with your life as a Jew You can help to mend a broken world Can be incredibly energizing to young Jewish people empowering And one of the most compelling aspects of Judaism We live in a world where people are willing to commit themselves to ideals and to idealistic values And Jews are idealistic And the core of Judaism is idealistic We can change the world When I was teaching at York University A young Jewish woman came to me practically in tears Because she was an environmental studies major And the first day of class the teacher announced to the entire class That the Hebrew Bible was responsible for the destruction of our ecosystem That's what the teacher said The Jewish Bible and by extension the Jews of course Are responsible for the destruction of the environment Why? Because the Bible says To Adam and Eve Vechiv Shua You have to conquer the world And that was seen by the environmental movement as a mandate to rape the environment And this young woman did not know much about Judaism and she felt personally attacked So we started to study together not just that one verse in the Bible But everything in the Bible about ecology And everything in rabbinic tradition about ecology I've got to tell you I grew up in the 60s I never heard the word ecology I had no clue there was such a word And now it's the flavor of the month Now it's become a new thing But what was impressive to my student Was she's discovering now that her people Her people had teachings about ecology and the environment 3,000 years ago Thousands of years before anyone knew this was a value She became so incredibly inspired by the teachings of Jewish environmentalism She became a fully empowered committed Jew She is totally involved now living her life as a committed, passionate Jew This was the gateway for her To learn that her people, her tradition, her Torah Had an incredibly brilliant and advanced system of dealing with the world that we live in Let's speak admiringly now About one of the most successful communities in the Jewish world I travel extensively I go to many schools I will tell you there's one school I go to Where I see a difference Where I see that the kids are turned on to a sense of mission And those are in the Chabad schools And one of the things about Chabad that they've done so incredibly well Is to imbue their kids with a sense of mission You have a responsibility to the rest of the Jewish world Ultimately, we have a responsibility to the whole world But I will tell you that Chabad kids grow up with a sense of mission and a desire to serve And the ultimate goal of Chabad families is to have not some brilliant young lawyer Or some wonderfully wealthy doctor But to have a child that's going to be a Shaliach to go out and serve the Jewish community So what I'm trying to say is that the transmission Of a desire to serve is incredibly empowering You know there's a story I heard recently Rabbi Yisachar Fran who was traveling on the plane And he was sitting next to an old Mormon man An older Mormon And he was saying to this older Mormon Don't your kids all go out to be missionaries for two years when they're in their 20s He said yes, they save money from the time they're born That's not just kidding But when they're young kids they save their money For they're going to go out on a mission for two years And they learn the language They have a school where they will study the language of any place they're going So Rabbi Fran asked this elderly Mormon Let me ask you He said do these kids ever have success? Do they ever convert anyone? So the fellow said to him look I don't know how many people they convert But I'll tell you one thing They come back from those two years and they are different kids Because they've put themselves on the line They're representing Mormonism And they are there to serve And they're on a mission And I believe that one of the most powerful things we can transmit to our children Is the understanding that we as Jews have a mission It's a glorious mission It's an incredibly noble mission And it's the kind of mission that people will commit themselves to Because it's one of the most noble causes in the world We're going to change the world and make it a better place This world is a broken place To a great extent the ideal of Zionism Is a utopian vision The ideal of Zionism of building a Jewish land in the Middle East Is not simply to have a great startup nation that exports high tech products That's not the Zionist vision The Zionist vision is Kimetsion Tetsetora At a Zion will come forth the Torah The vision is that we will create a Jewish Land that expresses Jewish values And out of that Jewish country we will have world transformation Not world domination We know that Judaism doesn't believe that we have to convert people to become Jews For them to have relationships with God But we want people to embrace an ethical monotheism Which is universal Let me conclude by sharing with you two thoughts I found in my studies incredible parallels between Jewish law and the work that I do Incredible parallels, I would never have suspected that spending a year in rabbinical school Learning the technicalities of Kashmiris would help me with the work I'm doing in Jews for Judaism But the parallels are incredible I'm going to share with you one thought from the laws of Kashmiris The rabbis Natalmud and Shulchan O'Roch says I.D. Deterred Liflat Lobala That if a vessel is busy exuding flavor it will not absorb flavor And so for me the secret of tonight's program Is that if we can try to somehow inculcate Jews Where we're radiating our Yiddish guide Where we're exuding our Yiddish guide Where young people are so captured by what we have as Jews Their imaginations have been captured Their values have been captured That they feel that there's something in Judaism that's so great and wonderful I can wrap my life around it and commit myself to it Once we have people that can exude that kind of a commitment to Judaism They will not absorb They will not absorb anything that is contaminating One last story When I was a student at Yeshibi University There was a professor of Hebrew who was a world-class martial artist Professor Chaim Sober And he was a brilliant Hebrewist But an internationally ranked Karate expert I think a ninth degree He was the kind of guy you don't want to mess around with And every year he would put on a martial arts exhibition One of the things that there were a few things that I'll never forget They were so dramatic One thing which I'm not going to speak about tonight But I'll mention it He would begin the exhibition by taking a cinder block And smashing it as hard as he could And it broke, all right If you get something that hard it will break But a cinder block is not solid It's puffed with air But then he took a garden rock A solid garden rock And he touched it with his finger lightly and exploded That somehow maybe for another time I'll discuss the spiritual implications But I want to end with one final story One of the things he did at this exhibition Was he got the smallest student in his group A 90 pounder, not much there, 90 pounder And they demonstrated technique called rooting Rooting is where you stand with your feet apart And you get into basically a firm stance I guess you breathe in a relaxed way And when you get rooted What he had next was the sixth biggest schlubs in the school If you have big bullvans at the Yeshiva I mean not the biggest place in the world But the biggest strappiest guys And the assignment was to try and budge this person And these six people were huffing and puffing and pushing They couldn't budge them an inch For me the lesson was that if you are firmly rooted If you're firmly rooted in a martial arts class But for us as Jews If we're firmly planted and rooted as Jews All the wins of the world All those wins that so easily pull people away from Judaism Will not budge us So I give all of us in this room a blessing That will be successful in transmitting Our commitment to Judaism to the next generation And I wish you not just success But joy in carrying out that commission