 Good morning. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech on a given morning during the coronavirus crisis and we have for what do you want to call it, moral, spiritual support with us today, Rabbi Ijil Krasenjansky here on Community Matters. Welcome to the show, Rabbi. So nice to see you. Thank you, Jay. It's nice to talk to you as always in this new setting as well. Yeah, we're doing pretty much all our guests are coming on by remote. If CNN and MSNBC can do it, we can do it. In fact, I think they may have learned it from us. Anyway, so Rabbi, things must have changed for Chabad and for the Jewish community over the past few weeks with the shelter in and the rule against gatherings. And I would like to ask you about that. It must have a profound effect because one of the things about the Jewish people and Judaism and certainly the Jewish religious experiences, you get together with people. You are close. You are, you know, person to person. And here you can't really do that. So what's happening? Well, good question. We adapt as needed. But philosophically, for a moment before I get to the pragmatic is that Judaism, while there's a great emphasis on, like you mentioned, gatherings, especially like Passover, which is coming up, the Seder is the time when family and extended family and friends come together and gather. And there's actually the expression in the Talmud, that the beauty for the king is in the presence of multitudes. The more people come together, the greater the, not only the event, but the celebration and the glory for Hashem, for God. However, interestingly enough, while Judaism places this emphasis on, you know, on public prayer, as we all know, cannot be done unless you have a minion. You mean communal prayer cannot be done unless you have a quorum of 10 people. Otherwise, you can't say the Qadish prayer or prayers like that. So there is that public aspect of Jewish observance. However, what's interesting is there's another aspect in Judaism, which is the personal and the individual. When God came down on Mount Sinai, where it all began and gave us the Ten Commandments, the first words out of God's mouth were, I am the Lord, your God, who has taken you out of the land of Egypt. And as the commentaries point out, your God in the singular, in Hebrew, the words that is used is the singular expression. Even though God was talking to millions of people, all the Jewish people at the time, nevertheless, God uses the singular because Judaism is a very personal relationship with God. All of the commandments are there to awaken within us the personal core spark. And so therefore, when we are in a situation like today, when we cannot come together in prayer or in celebration, so now by default, we fall back on the personal track, the interpersonal emphasis in Judaism. Man, in general, is a social being by design. That's how God created us. We cannot live on an island all to ourselves. Even if we're lucky to live on this island, we share it with many millions, with over a million people as tourists. However, even though there is that aspect within us that seeks to relate to other people and connect to other people, there's also the individual in his own world, the personal, the true you that's not visible to the outside world that resides within you. As we all know that within us, our personality, we all have a soul, and the soul is the spark of life within us. We all have a godly soul, which is innately godly and good. And successful living is actually being in touch with who we are on the deepest levels. And a lot of Judaism is about becoming aware of that and giving us the tools how we can be in touch with ourselves, to know ourselves. And even though it sounds very simplistic, but I once read that they once did a study and they asked people to describe themselves and define themselves and had all these different multiple choices. And the interesting thing was most people describe themselves so differently than how other people knew them. So being in touch with yourself and allowing for your inner self to color your whole being and to express itself involves a lot of work on the self, personal introspection. And Pesach, while normally it is celebrated, like we said before, with family and it's a fun time and it's a joyous time. It's a time of celebration. We commemorate our history and the miracles of that took place in the past. But on a deeper level, when we are alone and reflecting these ideas, it's a lot more powerful. And as a matter of fact, in the mystical teachings of the Torah, in the Hasidic writings, you find a very interesting explanation about the whole idea of the exodus of Egypt. Passover is celebrated because we commemorate how our ancestors left Egypt several thousand years ago and we gained freedom. And we say in the Haggoda, that's the storybook of Pesach that we use at the Seder, that in every generation, a person has to envision as if they themselves are going out of Egypt. It's not just commemorating history, something that took place way back when, but we have to find relevance in the story and apply it to our own lives. So in the mystical teachings, in the Hasidic as explained, the Hebrew word for Egypt is mitzrayim, which in Hebrew also means boundaries, limitations. And every single person is confined by different limitations, weaknesses, challenges, obstacles, and difficulties. And the idea of going out of Egypt is the ability and the work to transcend these limitations and to be able to rise above them. And that's why the exodus of Egypt is such a relevant story. In fact, the Torah tells us that every day we have to remember our exodus of Egypt, because the definition of life is being able, finding the inner strength and the inner ability to be able to overcome obstacles. Most of the obstacles and the most difficult obstacles we look to overcome are not the external ones that are imposed to us by external circumstances, but the inner ones. The ones, the character flaws and or every person's inner work is different. But the ultimate goal in successful living and fully living is to be able to rise above them and to be able to transcend them. So Pesach has a very, Pesach was a very relevant holiday and celebrating it alone actually gives us the opportunity to look at these ideas and to reflect upon them. Well, unpacking that a little bit, one thing I wanted to mention is that in the in the service, the prayer service, there's a thing called the silent Amida, which where you you pray to God yourself silently, you don't make a sound. And in my in my upbringing as a conservative Jew, I could read out of the prayer book or not. I could just think too, I could commune with God, if I liked, or I could read out of the prayer book. Anyway, bottom line is what you're saying and what that prayer is saying is that every individual person has a direct connection with God, if he chooses. And this is very important because it's just a flip side of the notion of minion and gathering. As you can do it, maybe you should do it yourself, you should have a sort of, you know, a two pronged approach to it. One is you should be with your members of the community with the minion or larger for every single festival, every single activity. You're with a lot of people and you're close to them, sharing it with them. And sometimes you're all by yourself and it's just you and him or her. So it's very interesting that you know that you have on that. It's paradoxical. Yes, it is. But it's okay. You can walk and chew gum at the same time. The other thing is, you know, Passover is very interesting. The Passover, you know, traditionally it's, you know, it's the Seder and people get together. It's not a minion. It may not be as big as a minion, but it's a family anyway. And it's, you know, several people together all going through the rituals that have existed for thousands of years and reinforcing, retelling the story out of the Haggadah and all that. But what you just said really is very interesting is because you can have a Seder without inviting anyone to your home. You can have a Seder essentially alone and you can use the silent communication or the personal, I should say, the personal communication with God as part of that Seder. So Judaism is flexible in this way, isn't it? And, you know, mother, rather, you know, necessity is the mother of invention and you can find space to invent. I guess, I guess the problem is that not everybody, not every rabbi feels the way you do. There are super orthodox rabbis in Jerusalem, for example, who are in contention with the police because, you know, the rule in Israel is don't have gatherings and they want to have a gathering anyway. They have a minion all the time and and it's a little cat and mouse game where the police are trying to find the minion and separate them for purposes of dealing with the coronavirus. It's very interesting. I think that actually if that is the case, it is a minority, a very small minority. Most Jewish people, most observant Jewish people, most orthodox or ultra orthodox, whatever label you want to give them are actually very, very careful and cautious and all the synagogues are closed down now. We just know communal prayers and most of the communal celebrations in Jewish life has taken on a whole new form. And as it should be, as it must be, to, you know, the Torah gives the highest priority to preserving life and to help and to watch one's health. And this is apparently how God wants us to celebrate now. The question is what is the message behind it? What is God telling us? I once heard it explained like with an analogy in that there was a dad or a parent once took out their child at night and pointed to the heavens, the young child pointed to the heavens to show, wanting to show them the majesty of the stars in the sky at night. So beautiful. But the little kid being very, very young, just focused on the finger, looked at the dad's finger or the mother's finger, not realizing that the finger was pointing heavenward. And we are like that many times, we are like that little child that God is pointing, but we are fixated on the finger on the, on what's not realizing that he's pointing to something. So it's clear that God is, as we say, you know, God is always communicating with us. He communicates to us by everything that happens in our lives. But that's normally that subtle. And you have to pay close attention to pick up on what God is telling us. But sometimes God is banging on our door so loud that we have, that we have no other choice but to stop and to ask who's there and what's going on. So I think these are one of those times. And, you know, it would require, you know, someone a much greater stature than me to be able to interpret and understand exactly the messages. But I think that a couple of messages are very, very clear. And one of them is what we talked about is that each and every one of us as a lonely individual is really critical to God's master plan. You know, there are certain societies where the focus is on the collective and there's no individual rights. No individual's needs are, or an individual's needs are hardly taken into consideration. There are many societies that are protected that way. Then we have, for example, in our country where it's almost the opposite, where the individual rights trump the public's right, the public's good. Within Judaism, both are equally important. One does not overshadow the other or one does not uproot the other. So, you know, now that we're all forced to quarantine and to stay at home, first of all, in Judaism, the home has always been the epicenter of Judaism, not the synagogue, not the house of worship. It was the Jewish home that is really the secret of our survival throughout the generations. And it all happened in the home. And who we truly, truly are is really only in the home. Outside we wear a mask, right? Today we're wearing masks. How about you, Rabbi? You have a beard. An N95 is hardly going to fit around your beard. What do you do for that? I read that there are people who make tailored masks for people with beards. Are you using one? Well, so far the masks that I use are off the shelf, run-of-the-mill masks, but they seem to work. The other thing of interest is Chabad has changed its regular, you know, Passover experience. Traditionally, Chabad has a big Seder. Invite people, including tourists, who come around and you have a, you know, 50, 600 people come down to the synagogue to pray together on Passover, but really can't do that this year. You have an alternative technique. Can you talk about it? Yeah. So correct. Chabad is known worldwide for the public gatherings that we have on Passover night. The Seder is celebrated with the community and like for us in Hawaii with many tourists and a typical Seder, we can have 150, 250, even more people. But this year, none of that is happening in other places around the world. Like, believe it or not, I think the largest public Seder that Chabad has is in Thailand, where they have a Seder for over 3,000 backpackers who are traveling in many, many Israelis, those other people. But none of that is happening this year. It's prohibited, forbidden to be in large gatherings. It's dangerous. So everyone is going to celebrate Pesach at home, Passover at home, make a Seder. If this family together, husband and wife, parents and children, or close friends will celebrate it together, very different than as it's been done traditionally for many years. But let me share a joke with you. We need some levity. Exactly. We need some levity these days. Yeah. By the way, someone sent me an interesting joke which read that how interesting that Passover is being canceled because of a plague. That's very interesting. And to those who didn't get it, the whole Passover, we commemorate the plagues that God brought about to the Egyptians and now because of a plague, we have to, actually it's not canceled. But so this is a joke. The joke is that a couple of scientists were experimenting and tinkering with some, with nuclear fusion in the North Pole and something went terribly wrong and there was a mass, mass explosion. And the heat was like beyond off the charts. And they calculated and they calculated that within 30 days the whole world will be submerged under water because all of the ice would melt because of this heat, this action. So they immediately sent words to all the governments around the world and all the religious leaders to tell them of what happened and according to their calculation, it's another 30 days and then it's all over. So all of the religious leaders gathered their people and spoke to them and said, we've all heard this terrible news. We need to now repent because we're going to be facing our maker very soon and we'll have to come to God clean to go home and repent and ask God's forgiveness. That was basically the message that they were all giving to their adherents. And then the rabbis, one big rabbi gathered all the Jews together and said, okay, my boy chicks, my fellow brethren and sisters, we all heard the terrible news and now we have 30 days to learn how to survive under water. It's got to be flexible. Right. Well, that takes me to something I think we, so are you not finished? No, what I was going to say is, you know, we're joking. And like you say, we need to have some levity here, but it's a very frightening time and our prayers go out to those who are... Let's talk about New York. You have family in New York. You have friends in New York. The Chabad headquarters is in New York and Brooklyn. And I wonder, you must be in touch with people. What are you hearing from the Jewish community, the Orthodox Jewish community in New York? What I'm hearing is so frightening that it's like surreal. You have to scratch your head and say, is this really happening? Firstly, the virus of this spread almost everyone is affected. One in two people are probably affected by the virus. Thank God many, many, many people are asymptomatic and they don't have symptoms, but there are many people that do have symptoms and many people are in the hospitals fighting for their lives. We know in the Chabad community in New York, every day there are funerals, people passing away from the virus. Mostly older people, because when they get it, they don't have the immune system to fight it, but also young people are struggling with it and some have succumbed and passed away. So it's really, really, really unbelievable, frightening, and there's another problem. By definition, the people you're talking about are religious Jewish people, people who are Orthodox, and they must have a way, need a way to somehow include this in their worldview, in their religious worldview. What are you hearing about that? What are they saying? This is like the issue in the Holocaust. Does God want this to happen? Why doesn't God stop this from happening? It seems all so terrible, and how do you rationalize that with the Jewish approach to things? So that's a timeless question that has been around for all time. The question of how can God allow for suffering in this world? Two things. If God is indeed good, we believe God is absolutely good, and B, if God controls everything in this world, which we believe that God does, how can this happen? And we find, as our commentaries say, that Moses himself, Moshe Rabbeinu, our first Jewish leader, who took us out of Egypt and brought down the tablets from Mount Sinai, gave us the Torah, himself grapples with that question. Why do good things happen to bad people? Why is there suffering in the world? And we all know the Book of Job from the Old Testament, who suffered greatly. And when his friends came to comfort him and hinted that he must have done something wrong to invite God's wrath in the way it happened in his life, he rejected that because he was a good man, he was a righteous person, and he rejected the thinking that suffering is a result of his punishment. So the bottom line answer, the way I understand it, as it's explained in the Torah, and as I believe as every believing Jew accepts, is that there are many, many things that are beyond our comprehension. Our intellect can only go so far, can only understand so much. And if we think about it, and we recognize that we, as individuals, are only a teeny speck in the cosmos, in the galaxies, in all the world where it's like an infantismal speck in this whole being. So the fact that we don't understand that our finite brains cannot comprehend and it doesn't compute, that's not such a surprising thing. The surprising thing is that God gave us a mind and there's so much that we could understand with our minds. But the fact that our minds can only go so far and not further, that is something that, that is something that if you think about it, one could accept, one could understand. So an answer to your question is we don't know. Well, here we are, we're almost at the end of our time, Rabbi, and I wanted to ask you one last question. You know, here we are at Passover, the night of the first Satyr is later this week. You're constrained because of, you know, the gatherings rule as our many, many Chabad, you know, congregations around the world. How are you going to celebrate Passover when early as in a group? It's, but this time not, how are you going to do, how is Chabad going to do that? And remember these great lessons. So for ourselves, we're going to celebrate myself and Pearl, my wife and our youngest son is home. Usually you pass over our children and grandchildren to spend the holiday with us, but this year they're not. We're probably going to have one or two guests in our house and keep social distancing. And as we said all along, you know, you know, what's interesting is that the first Passover when the Jews left Egypt, God told them to be quarantined in their homes. They were not to go out of their homes that night because that was the night when God showed the birth of the Egyptians, which precipitated their exodus from Egypt. So this year, we're celebrating Passover as it was celebrated the first year, the first Passover. Everyone quarantined in their home. Now, now what's interesting is that Judaism teaches us that there's an end game to all of this. We don't just pass through this world, born and pass away, and that's the end of it, but God has a plan for this world. And the plan was for us human beings to fix this world and elevate this world and refine this world by living elevated and refined lives. And the end of the journey is the coming of the Messiah, when the world will finally, where Mashiach the Messiah will usher in the perfected state, the potential that we each have that's embedded in each and every one of us that at this right now we are hardly accessing. When Mashiach comes, the world will flourish and each and every one of us will explode. The latent powers and strengths and good that we have within each and every one of us will explode. And that is the end game. And that is the sum total and the result of all of the good deeds that each and every one of us do every single day. So the big rabbis have said for a long time that we are now in the end of times or the end of days. And in Judaism, the end of days is not something cataclysmic in the negative, but it's something very powerful and positive. And the feeling is that we're there. We're on the threshold of the redemption, which is what Passover celebrates. It's not just a commemoration of a redemption that took place in the past, but it is the prayer that the complete and final redemption should come to pass in our lifetime. So we're there. And we should do good things. We should be good and make mitzvah, so to speak, to everybody around us. And that means thinking in the larger sense for the benefit of everyone. Well, thank you so much, Rabbi. It's always great to talk to you. I want to talk to you again as the crisis goes forward and have your words of encouragement and spiritual light. Thank you so much. Rabbi Itchel Kresenjanski, the Rabbi of Chabad of Hawaii. Thank you, Jay. It's a pleasure. I always just want to say that Passover, you didn't even mention is this Wednesday night? It begins. It's an eight day celebration. And even though we're not having a public satyr at Chabad, but we have Passover kits to go. So anyone who is in need of anything Passover, like Jay, we're going to bring you some matzah later. Please call us. Go visit us on our website or call us at the office 808-735-8161. And we'll be more than happy to help out in whichever way we can. God bless and have a happy Passover. Thank you, Jay. Thank you, Rabbi. Aloha. Shalom.