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Rebbe Nachman didn’t come to make us “more religious.” He came to make us more real.
Rav Shlomo Katz opens the “treasure chest” of Rebbe Nachman’s Torah — teachings that heal the inner storm, settle the mind (yishuv hadaas), and draw down peace and truth into our homes, our relationships, and our own hearts.
Welcome everybody. What a zchus jumping back into Rebbe Nachman. I've honestly been through all the shiurim these weeks I'm most excited about this shiur. I don't know what it is, it's something very thrilling.
And I'm so happy that we're back to Rebbe Nachman's Toras. We're learning le-ilui nishmas Levi ben Yosef, באסי פייגא בת ישראל, le-ilui nishmas Shimon ben Moshe, Tzvi ben Mordechai, שירה רחמה בת רב אלטר, Lassen Natan, and an anonymous sponsor for the refuah sheleimah of שרה בת רחל פייגא, מלכה עלקא בת פערל, שושנה יונה בת עדל, Hila bas Ilana, and Yisroel ben Adina. The week is sponsored by my in-laws Ben and Barbara Selsky in memory of my father-in-law's brother Yosef ben Shlomo and by Baruch and Sophia Bina Kerzner in memory of Sophia Bina's grandfather Michael ben Aharon. All right.
Today we have a gevalte. Today we have a gevalte. You can pass these pages around. There was a striking statement that we heard last week in the name of Rav Yitzchak Breiter, the leading Breslever chassid in Poland who was killed in Treblinka.
And in one of the letters that he writes describing what it was like to engage in Rebbe Nachman's Toras and bifrat speaking about spending Rosh Hashanah in Uman I think in 1905, 1906. And he said, remember the words he said, is that I realized that my whole life I was doing עבודה זרה בטהרה. Remember that statement? Wow. I've been thinking about that statement all week, wondering where's my pure avoda zara.
Where's my עבודה זרה בטהרה. It's a very profound statement. I think that today will help us understand perhaps where that statement came from and what's waiting for us when we go deeper with the Torah of Rebbe Nachman. You are all very familiar with the famous song כל העולם כולו גשר צר מאוד והעיקר לא לפחד כלל.
We already discussed many many times that's not the actual wording. The wording is le-hispached klal. That means the world's meshugana on its own, don't make it even crazier. Don't le-hispached, don't bring on, don't be anxious about your anxiety.
You could say it like that, which is not a simple thing. Sometimes we are actually anxious and then we're anxious over being anxious. That's a shtickel maybe a little bit of an insight into the concept of le-hispached, to make yourself more worried than you already are. Great.
I'm happy Rebbe Nachman you told me והעיקר לא לפחד כלל. Thank you.
כל העולם כולו גשר צר מאוד. It's a statement.
kol haolam kulo, the world is but a narrow bridge and the most important thing is לא להתפחד כלל. I want the how. How do I not, how do I avoid the fears, the anxiety? How do I get through this gesher tzar? How do you לא להתפחד כלל? That's a pretty good question, no? Yeah, just as a statement it's okay, I have the emuna of the tzaddikim, but what we want to discover here is the how. How does a person walk the narrow bridge? How do you do it? And somehow there's this this this kiss through the Toras of Rebbe Nachman.
There's a hug and there's also a fire that's lit by Rebbe Nachman into each and every one of us, understanding drawing upon the question of how. Okay. So now let's start from the beginning of the inyan. What we're going to be seeing today are a number of sources throughout Likutey Halachos and Likutey Moharan.
Just a brief intro into those that aren't familiar yet with how these teachings work. The magnum opus of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov is called Likutey Moharan. Likutey comes from the word the language of lelaket, gathering, like yalkut is a knapsack in Hebrew because it gathers all the things that you need in your. I don't think they use that word anymore, but when I was a kid yalkut was a word that they used to sell backpacks in school.
Maybe they still do. Likutey, the gatherings of the teachings of מורנו הרב רבי נחמן. Likutey Moharan is split up into two pieces. The first piece is a pretty long one that was printed in the Rebbe's life.
And then there's Cheilek Beis, which is called Tinyana, the second part of Likutey Moharan, which was printed after Rebbe Nachman already left the world. Rebbe Nachman... Rebbe Nachman dies at thirty-eight from tuberculosis. Reb Noson, who Rebbe Nachman referred to him as his quill, he was his basically.
What year? He was born in 1772 and died in 1810. Thank you. Reb Noson of Breslov is really with Rebbe Nachman towards the end of his life. And he is a scribe.
He writes down everything. And much more than just writing down the words of Rebbe Nachman, he's also a prolific writer. He's writing all the time. And I don't know if we have it in this room or the other room, but we have Likkutei Halachos, which is basically Reb Noson going through all of Shulchan Aruch and bringing out the Pnimiyus of every single Halacha, of all the Halachos.
We also have a book called Likkutei Tefillos, which is Reb Noson writing a book of prayers based on the teachings in Likkutei Moharan. We have an incredible Sefer called Alim L'Terufah, healing leaves. That's a Sefer of collective letters that Reb Noson wrote, mainly to his children, mainly to one of his sons, Reb Yitzchak. Basically, in every single paragraph, like Reb Chaim Kramer once told us, you open up any single paragraph in any Sefer that has to do with Breslov and you come out with a little bit of Chizuk.
Any piece of writing, anything. What we're trying to do today is find the thread between all these concepts that will help us understand how do you cross this narrow bridge? And Reb Noson opens up for us today, explaining to us that the narrow bridge has a name. There's a name to this narrow bridge. Let's look inside the first source that you have in front of you.
This is from ליקוטי הלכות הלכות תפילין הלכה ה.
עיקר הגשר לעבור עליו בזה העולם הוא אמת. The name of the narrow bridge, it's called truth, Emes.
כי אדם צריך לעבור בזה העולם על גשר צר מאוד, a person has to cross through a very narrow bridge in this world.
V'ha'ikar, but the most important thing quoting his Rebbe, Shelo Yispached Klal. But I want to merit this. I want to merit crossing this narrow bridge and not L'hispached. V'lizkos L'zeh.
How does one merit crossing this narrow bridge, which means not falling under being anxious over my anxiety? Or however else you want to frame it. Whatever way that you need in order to frame it. V'lizkos L'zeh, to merit this, לעבור על הגשר צר של זה העולם הוא על ידי אמת, is through truth. K'mo Sheomrim HaOlam, like the world says, שאם אמת יכולים לעבור את כל העולם.
With Emes you can get through anything in this world. V'chol HaBilbulim, all the confusions, V'haMenios, and all the obstacles שיש להאדם מעבודת השם, that a person has when it comes to being in the program. What's the program? The world of Torah, the world of Mitzvos, the world of being a servant of God. All the Menios V'Bilbulim, all the confusions that come into us and all the things that are obstacles, Reb Noson says, שהעיקר הוא מניעת המוח.
What's the greatest obstacle that stands before someone that hopefully will engage in a life of Torah is the brain, the brain, the brain, the unfortunately eternal chatterbox that just doesn't stop. Doesn't stop. Reb Noson says let's call it out for what it is. A person gets a Zetz of Yiddishkeit.
A person gets a Zetz of wanting to feel close. What stands between that moment of being enlightened, feeling like I want to get close to Hashem and then actually getting close to Hashem? There's an obstacle in the middle. How often do we have good thoughts, good ideas, good plans and they don't end up happening? So what stands in between those two things? Reb Noson calls this Menias HaMoach. What? Negative thoughts, sfekos, overthinking.
100%. You know there's some chevre that want to start an AA meeting in the shul. Very happy about it. Like hopefully, not happy they need to start it, not happy that the matsavot, but I'm happy that they, they've approached me to start to find a time for there to be an AA meeting somewhere in the shul.
We did it once for a few months. That was very powerful. I, I didn't go because I wanted to go to one of them just to, I, for many reasons, one I feel like every, like Rabbi Twerski said, everyone should go to an AA meeting, you see their avodah like never before. But I, I didn't want to make people feel uncomfortable if I was there.
I didn't end up going, but it was going for a few months. It stopped. We want to start again. If there was something I would do before AAing, I would do OTA, which is Overthinkers Anonymous.
I would absolutely do that before anything. Because over here, that's called meniat hamoach. That means that somehow I have a thought that's coming from a place of emess. I want to be holy, I want to engage in, in Yiddishkeit.
How often do we get to the finish line? The finish line on the level of asya of just doing something. We have meniot hamoach obstacles all the time that are coming from the brain that is telling us, you need, you should sleep in, or today's not a day for being vulnerable, you have to take care of yourself, and you know what happens to you when you're vulnerable. A million different things that pop up all the time. Reb Noson says, how do you counter that? Those thoughts are so convincing and they're so paralyzing as well.
So Reb Noson says, how do you overcome it?
עיקר העצה לעבור עליהם הוא אמת. If I engage, which we'll, we'll explain shortly, if emess, if truth is my shining torch, my guiding light, then he says over here, עיקר העצה לעבור עליהם הוא אמת שהוא מורה דרך להאדם לעבור על הכל because with emess you get through any obstacle, every single obstacle. Bechinas like the pasuk in Tehillim says, שלח אורך ואמיתך המה ינחוני. Hashem send Your light and amitecha.
You know what that word means? Your emess. Send Your light and Your emess. They will guide me. And like Dovid HaMelech also says, ehalech, I will be able to walk through anything ba'amitecha with Your truth.
כי האמת הוא הגשר דקדושה. Emess is the name of the holy bridge that Rebbi Nachman was referring to. You, you should be smiling now, not, not being, you shouldn't be so intense right now. We're having a, this is like a, no, because I'll tell you what happens, because emess is like, oh, that means I have to be what? What? What? What do you have to be? We're going to discuss this in a second.
Wait, does it mean you have to be true to yourself? Oh, so why should that make you so sad? Not you. It's so hard. It's so, like, it's so hard. Change the word hard.
Challenging. Another word. Worthwhile. What? Worthwhile.
Thank you, worthwhile. Yeah, so, so it's a, it's a word we've substituted. It's a cliff now. But is that what emess means, is to be true to yourself? Well, we're, we're, we're going to, we're going to explain this because, because quite often when you say the word emess it's like people go into this, you know, a trance.
Yeah, truth trance. I had a conversation with my twelfth-grader last week in which I said, if there's one thing I could go back in time and tell my younger self or adolescent, it would be to trust your gut more. And I think one of the challenges is that we're not taught to trust the voice inside. And I'm saying it davka because, because the shiur is a room full of women.
We're not, we're not given that message enough. And so part of the reason that emess is daunting is because which emess, the one that's being screamed at me or the one that my gut is screaming at me from the inside? It's very challenging, although worthwhile. Right, right, even when you were talking with a smile now so I could, I could hear it. So there's one thing that I'm like, I'm going to wait, there's one thing where I'm going to, we're going to respond to it directly to what you just said because how do I know...
that my gut is really my gut and not a klipa? So this is why this is how this gets these things get I could say my gut is like if like especially a senior, okay, you're you're talking about a 12th grader, right? So that's 17, right? 17, 18, right? Okay, if we all went back to ourselves at 17, 18, and that gut feeling, in your case about that guy. It's my gut, that must mean it's the emes? So you understand what I'm saying? When we say gut, let's define... he's gonna define to us the true gut, trust your gut. There's a way to develop it.
There's a way to know if I'm talking from my gut or not. There's a way to know if I'm responding to my gut or not, or if it's a an a little bit of an illusion. So it's great what you're bringing up and we have to sharpen it. So Reb Noson finishes off over here in the first paragraph, כי אמת הוא הגשר דקדושה is the bridge of holiness שעליו עוברים בתוך כל המים השוטפים וניצל מכולם.
And you are saved from anything and everything if you are walking with the mida of emes in your life. You're saved from everything. I'd want to know what that is. If I have a promise from Reb Noson that if I walk with emes, I'm saved from everything, I'll do anything I can to go there and to discover it.
Obviously, every time we have a shiur in the last two and a half years, it's impossible to not reflect for a second on everything that's going on and as a people and as an entity and identity in the State of Israel today, it's very clear that our walking with our emes is very distorted. What's the emes? What's the emes about our situation right now? Can anyone... most of us are too nervous to just say the emes because it sounds too intense. It sounds too kitzoni.
Extreme? Extreme. However, gut-wise, if you go to your gut, you know, October 7th put us to our gut and we were with our guts those first few months, there was no confusion about the emes. There was no confusion. Now we're back to the...
this this world where access to our kishkas has became again a very problematic thing, very difficult thing. So there's a way though, I want to go back to how we're going to be developing it today. There is a way to discover the emes, the truth. And the truth, just to say, just to make it clear, is a truth, there's like two levels of truth.
One is like a general sense of truth and then there's your own truth of discovering your own truth, which may change over the years. It doesn't change the general state of truth of השם אמת תורתו אמת, all those principles of faith, those are truths that never change. But a person's own emes. Now most of us when we say the word emes we're like, what did you say Meta Ester? Like your true self, right? True to yourself, okay.
True to myself could change over the years. When I'm a certain age, being true to myself is acting in that manner. Not midos-wise, but let's say career-wise, let's say socially, where I find myself. Those those are levels of emes that that change over the...
it could change over the years. There are those that it doesn't. There are some people they just figured out what they want to do at a young age and they just stick to it and it's their emes. They don't have this...
they're not chaleshing to change or to grow or to explore more. They just want to go deeper with whatever they embarked on, which is beautiful. But for many of us we're in this world of like, now I'm this, I feel like now I'm that, and then I'll be that. So how do I know which voice is real? How do I know what to listen to? So now we're going into Rabbi Nachman.
Now the reason why I'm not doing this out of Likutei Moharan is because these... out of the actual sefer is because these pieces are paragraphs that are taken from within long extensive teachings within Likutei Moharan, but it's in the sefer, trust me. So on the ninth teaching in Likutei Moharan, Rabbi Nachman's words, the Rebbe says like this: veda, person has to know, shehakol, everything goes in accordance to lefi godel haemes. How big is emes in your life?
כי עיקר האור הוא הקדוש ברוך הוא.
The essence of light is God Himself.
והקדוש ברוך הוא הוא עצם האמת. There is no greater truth than God Himself, whatever that means, the existence of God.
ועיקר השתוקקות של השם יתברך אינו אלא אל האמת.
What God so to speak longs for is just one thing, emet. You can't say about God that he needs anything. When when Rebbeim tell students Hashem needs you to put on tefillin, Hashem doesn't need you to do anything. God is perfect.
What does God have that we have that we share? Ratzon. A will. Ratzon, wants. He wants you to put on tefillin.
He wants you to learn. He wants you to have pure thoughts. He doesn't need you to have pure thoughts. God doesn't have any needs.
So here Rebbe Nachman is saying God also has longing. God longs for something. What does he long to? Ikar hashtokekut like we just said right now these words, ועיקר השתוקקות של השם יתברך אינו אלא אל האמת is to the truth. What does that mean that God longs for truth? Now this is the shiur.
Okay.
שתראה שיצאו הדיבורים מפיך באמת. This is it. You have to make sure that the words that come out of your mouth are emet.
That's it. We could stop the shiur right now be'emet. We could stop, say, go home and think about this, or go home and talk about this. But you all know that the power of speech by Rabbi Nachman is one of the most powerful tools if not the most powerful tool that we have to work with and we will be delving deeply into hitbodedut in these shiurim as well.
Because there's no other way to get to the nekuda of emet aside from deciphering what this statement just said. Reb Nachman just said שתראה שיצאו הדיבורים מפיך באמת. You gotta make sure about one thing: you can't control your thoughts. Thoughts are going to come in and going to come out.
You could you could control your mouth. And only what you can control your mouth, you can control what comes out of your mouth, you can control if the words you're saying are min hasafa lachutz, which means kailu not really coming from your insides. Or you could try to find out and see if the words that you're saying are mamash coming out of you be'emet. And once a person has been able to speak words of truth, that the words that are coming out of you are mipicha be'emet, they're coming out of your mouth with truth, then the next thing happens.
ואז ישתוקק הקדוש ברוך הוא מלמעלה לשכון אצלך. Then what Hashem then begins to long to to do from above is to dwell within you. ve-che-yishkon etzlecha, and when God dwells within you, hu ya'ir lecha. He will shine.
He will illuminate the path. That gesher tzar me'od becomes doable. My my vision is not blurred anymore. I can do it.
What did Rebbe Nachman just say to us in these few lines? He said he said like there's like five different things over here that Rebbe Nachman said but I'm just going to try to say it over again with a flow. Ribono Shel Olam has a passion, he has a drive, he has a hashtokekut. His hashtokekut is that this vessel called a body that he created within you, he wants to dwell in it. He wants to dwell inside.
ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם. That's what Hashem wants of our little batei mikdash which is our bodies, that Hashem wants to dwell within us. But there is a prerequisite for in order for that to happen. What's that prerequisite? That you're a person that speaks words of truth.
Now what does that mean that a person speaks words of truth? How do I know if I speak words of truth or not? Maybe my truth is diluted, maybe it's polluted, maybe it's filled already with so many different preconceived notions of what truth is. Like I had a long discussion yesterday with a friend of mine who's battling severe anxiety and he's addicted to social media. To he he told me that there's four thousand and twenty different what what one did he say, Instagram? He follows four thousand and twenty different things, and most of them are news channels. So let's see a person follows these thousands of different outlets vechulei.
And then they start talking, then they start speaking about everything that they've consumed. Is there... is there... are those words of emet? Why not? It's the emet that he thinks he knows.
So why isn't that... isn't that true about everybody? Right? It's a catch-22. That's I think why we're all making faces because what's the emet? Everybody has a different one and a different relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu and there could theoretically be 6 million, 10 million emets. Right.
Well, there is a way to begin to break this down and that is when a person starts talking to Hashem about all... about his emet. So let's start to... like this is what it would sound like: Ribono Shel Olam, I know...
I'm going to take the extreme and also the non-extreme example. I know that I'm being fed over 4,000 different sources of news right now or magazines, whatever it is. I'm being fed a lot of different things, right? And then the other person says: Ribono Shel Olam, I'm not being fed anything. I'm just going with my gut.
And they're both saying the same thing to Hashem. What do I need to do to make sure that my tzinor of receiving information and basing my gut on these things, what do I need to do in order to cleanse it out? Put it back to Hashem to make sure. Sorry. Put it back to Hashem.
Hashem, you make sure that I'm getting what I need to be in. Right, so Hashem may say... like let's go back to what maybe a response from Hashem. I'm putting it on you Hashem.
Hashem's saying: Listen, I didn't machriach you to sign up to 4,000 different news outlets, right? Sometimes the pain of not seeing emet, we go to Hashem be like: How could this be? And there are moments in life where there's silence where it's really... that's the question: How could this be? How could the... how could there be such a lie in the world? But sometimes when you ask that question with emet la'amita, you hear the answer right away. I'll give you an example.
Master of the World, how could it be that 6 million Jews were killed in the world, that it happened? Silence. October 7th, Ribono Shel Olam, how could it be that what just happened happened? God says: It's a very good question. I returned you here after the 6 million, gave you a country, you built it up. You chose to start giving parts of it away consciously knowing that you're raising a jihadist cult within your midst.
Ask the question again. How could it be? So certain questions when you start to ask them with emet, even while you ask them, you start to hear the answer. It's within the question. Yeah.
The difference is the lens that God runs the world. Meaning if you're... if you're consuming a thousand different channels of news and you're God-centered and God runs the world, then every single one of those headlines: Putin didn't do X, and but what you're saying Hamas didn't do X. Hashem put us here, Hashem gave us free will, Hashem gave us a tafkid.
Are we doing our tafkid? But Hashem also gave us Torah and mitzvot. Hashem gave us Torah and mitzvot and Hashem gave us a commandment to wipe out Amalek. I can... we can keep...
it's a truth, right? But that's my point. And then that you said: What's the filter? What's the filter? The filter is diburim... With Hashem. That Hashem runs the world.
But I can... but... but making a statement that Hashem runs the world and Hashem runs everything, chas veshalom patur me. It could...
it could exempt me from having to do anything because I could always fall back on that. Hashem says: No, no, no, that's not why you're in this world to just let... to just know that I created everything and that I run the world. I put you in here to be a conduit of emet in this world.
That and... and then it pushes each and every one of us to have to, well, figure out, well, so once I... once I taste the emet, what am I doing about it? Hashem doesn't need a cheerleading squad. Ribono Shel Olam put us here to be active members in the takkun olam, in...
let's take back that... that phrase that has been a shtickel hijacked. Tikkun olam is a very holy, holy, holy phrase. 99% of people that use that phrase have no idea what they're talking about.
No clue. But it sounds gevald. Tikkun olam is what we're here for. You cannot letaken et ha'olam without emet.
There's no concept like that. Yeah. Well, I was just going to say two things that no matter what you take in, you're influenced by it even though you want to be God-centered. It has...
Well, you have to... most Torah leaders... Like Rabbi Ephraim Goldberg and Meaningful Minute and all that, you know, nachon, nachon, but the thing is like this, you have to be able and this only can come through a true discernment of like, like really down to the core of saying you could follow those leaders online or you could also acknowledge that you don't have to follow anybody online for emet. Right? Like you could follow Rabbi Ephraim Goldberg not online.
You could. You could print his Torahs, meaning like anyone... the online world is a very, very tricky one. It's a very tricky because the second you're on one thing, the second later something else can can pop up, right? So it's a...
it's a fine line. That's what I'm saying. And if you yourself decide to become an influencer online, it's so funny because you know the word, the word back in the day, I mean even today in Lubavitch, everyone has a mashpia. Mashpia, that word is so like saved for like these very, very special figures in our lives that have like the word mashpia, they influence, but it's the same word in English that people have used today for like people that are showing you how to train a dog and a cat together are called mashpias.
It's insane. They're called influencers, right? So it's such a... talk about I mean that's like a very normal thing today. Like you become an influencer and then when you have a million YouTube followers you get you become...
you get into business class and YouTube and they send you stuff and these are all... the fact that someone has millions of followers says nothing about the midah of emet, right? Nothing. Like, like, you know, the woman that shouldn't be named in a shul, right? C.O. yimach shemah, millions of followers in the last few years and it looks like everything she's spewing is ke'ilu sounds like such emet.
We know you take a little jab in there you see this is coming from mamash dark evil forces. But all those things are outside stuff. I want to go back into inside. Yeah.
I'm just gonna say like a very different basic question. If you're really working on emet, let's say I say I'm going here for Shabbat and then like where does the idea the value of like plans change? So does that mean like I didn't speak emet because I said I'm going here and then I... if you're trying so hard to watch whatever word that you say. No, no, but we have...
we're going to define it, we're going to define it even better, but remember a person's whole avodah in this world is not result, it's hishtadlut. If I'm working from a place of hishtadlut from emet and the Ribbono shel Olam's emet la'amitoh is that I shouldn't end up in that place, doesn't mean that you're... you were wrong, it just means that... then I'd fall into what you said before about that the Ribbono shel Olam does run the world and even despite my hishtadlut on something, there's always a greater picture of emet and that's Hashem's emet.
Yeah. I just want to say I relate to that question because as soon as we started talking about emet, there was like a light in my brain that goes off that is about like being like very obsessive and making sure everything... make goes off or goes on, the light? The light goes on, right? On, okay. Everything like being like everything has to be true and and I think that's actually the meniat hamoach that like he was talking about before is like you can confuse even in this definition of emet you can like confuse it with overthinking and instead of getting to like a deep place of of internal emet.
Mamash, mamash, it and it works... it's like it's on automatic. It's a filtering system we don't even we're not even aware of. The Piaseczna Rebbe speaks about this in Bnei Machshava Tova, there's this natural filtering system that's on all the time that filters out things that that cause that that basically like present some type of a what we think is a challenge to us, but really it's just it's the greatest aid in the world.
Anything that could help us get closer to the midah of emet why wouldn't I want to, you know, why wouldn't I want... we're all going to be just bones and and dust in 120 years. Why wouldn't I want to spend my time here as refined as possible? Yeah. So I'm doing more of shev v'al ta'aseh.
Because maybe in the beginning that's true because sur meira so it could be could be could be but that's not it can't be yeah I know but but the kum ve'aseh is just as important if not more important not in the world of social media I'm saying kum ve'aseh in life nachon nachon There's another thing there's there's just another attribute that a person that's engaging in social media as an influencer must have and that is zero caring about any comment which is very hard It's a very hard thing I think your husband's pretty close to it actually if I think about it because he just keeps on doing his avodah besimcha besimcha that's a test of that's a testament to seeing how much you're affected by other people's opinions about what you feel is your emes You know if we really are in tune with our emes and we're sure that it's coming from a place of really loving the world and not caring about what they think of me then I would continue doing the shlichus that I'm doing be'emes but when I get boggled down by hatred by evil comments online and all that whatever anything that I'm doing then it's a big problem How do you take it you get a lot of you mean you put a lot out how do you how do you respond to comments I'll tell you the truth I don't I don't really get that much like other people I get like the normal you know stuff you're talking about from non-Jews or Jews No I'm talking about in general Yeah I I tell you be'emes I don't think I have it as hard as other people I don't think I have it as hard as other people you do have in the beginning of the war it was it was constant but everyone everyone everyone was constant anyone that put out anything you put out a the color blue you're suddenly attacked for I don't know what but recently you know I saw friends that that are trying to do some really special stuff regarding breathwork and they were attacked from within you know and that not from non not from like Iranian bots or something like that from within and it's a very it's such a nisayon because you know that's this is your emes you're just trying to help people and in the name of Torah someone's coming and saying that this is leading to dark evil places that's that's what I'm talking about like the the way to be able to get over anything and to check in with yourself has got to be not I think this is a good idea if you don't speak about it with Hakadosh Baruch Hu Rabbi Nachman is basically telling us you can never know you can never really know This is hard now honestly this is the hardest thing So every decision you make you have to talk with Hashem about it The things that you struggle with Gedolye Pester said the the things that you struggle with ideally you know Rabbi Nachman would say like when you wake up in the morning and and you're tying your shoes tell Hashem the story about tying your shoes like it could be it could be anything ideally it should be everything but we're we're not programmed like that but really when it comes to trying to know what's the emes of my life and what I should be doing with my life and life's decisions the big ones start with there you'll see afterwards that it'll seep into all decisions in life Now Rabbi Nachman had just told us that when a person speaks dibburim shel emes that doesn't mean you're a tzadik or a tzadekes it means you it may mean you're in a very low place a very confused place but the words that are coming out of your mouth are dibburim shel emes Hashem says ah אני יכול לשכון אצלכם now I can dwell mishkan I can dwell in this body because this body used the most powerful source that which differentiates it from an animal and that is koach hadibbur here I can be and in here now I can illuminate from here and then the path becomes much more shiny much more mu'ar there's a lot more light but it depends on dibburim shel emes speaking words of truth and don't and obviously someone someone might be sitting in the shiur and say it's fine I don't know I guess I don't need the shiur why because I daven shacharis mincha and maariv it's not what we're talking about at all although even in your shacharis mincha or maariv there also needs to always be a a fine tuning adjustment of dibburim shel emes within my davening as well but obviously here we're speaking about when a person's mamash in such dire pain they don't have a release but if a person in such dire place is able to crawl deep into their omek omek haneshama, the depth of their soul, and to retrieve from there, to be able to take out from there, one word of a dibbur of emet to Hashem, they have the whole world. They become so much more powerful in that moment than any other moment in their life. Because Hashem is shining through. There's a Mishkan.
Hashem is shochen b'tochachem when your dibburim are dibburim shel emet. You ever go to a Shabbos table? You're happy you were invited because it got you off of cooking for a meal, but you didn't really, you weren't chalesh to go there, but it was nice. You're sitting there and you realize like there's not one real word being said at this table. You can go to a shul.
You could hear the most sophisticated drashas, comparing texts from Neviim to a Midrash, and it's all a lot of really interesting information. And all you want to know is like, you want to ask the speaker, what are you, what do you want to say right now? What do you actually want to tell us aside from showing us that you're smart? I want dibburim shel emet. I want dibburim shel emet. What has the chief rabbinate of Am Yisrael shared with the Am Yisrael? Have any of you been touched or moved and have gone through a spiritual transformation from the rabbinic leadership of Am Yisrael? You're laughing, because that's how sad it is.
It depends who you're talking about. I'm talking about the official. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a little bit.
They put out a couple of tefillos during the war. It was very nice of them. No, that they noticed. That's like a kid saying about its mother, it's very nice she packed me a sandwich.
No, that's what you're supposed to do. Dibburim shel emet. We're talking about something else. It's a new, not a new, it's a very old path.
Rebbe Nachman continues, but the third one, ליקוטי מוהרן קיב. Ve'ha-ikar, the most important thing, she-bitfilato u'tchinato u'vakashto. Through your davenning, your begging, and your appeal, your requests.
אף על פי שאי אפשר לו לדבר שום דיבור בתפילה ותחנונים.
Somehow, sometimes I'm so closed, I'm so boggled down by my thoughts, I'm so boggled down by life. There's so much like he says here, migodol hachoshach v'habilbul, there's so much darkness and confusion המסובב אותו מאוד מכל צד that is surrounding me from every side, from everywhere I look. I feel boggled down by these by this choshach v'miniyot. Af al pi chen, Rebbe Nachman says nonetheless, על כל פנים יראה לדבר הדיבור באמת.
Speak your word of truth. What would be your word of truth in that moment when you're boggled down by every side and it's time to talk to Hashem? What's the dibbur of emet? The dibbur is I'm confused, I'm boggled down by every side. It's exactly what you're going through. That's the dibbur of emet.
When you're raised frum, what's the dibbur of emet in that moment? Gam zu l'tova. Yeah, what'd you say, what'd you say? Gam zu l'tova. Gam zu l'tova. Even though that is the truth of all truths v'chulei, that is not my dibbur shel emet at that moment.
That's not. That's impostor syndrome. Mamash. This is you understand, these are so Rebbe Nachman's saying even though at these moments the FFB brain or the baal teshuvah brain in me is saying, Hashem runs the world, Hashem runs the world, Gam zu l'tova, that's not your dibbur shel emet because that's not at all what you're experiencing.
That's a tenet of faith that is true that you hope to get to. That you're holding onto it for dear life. Your dibbur shel emet is what's happening right now. Yeah.
And it just makes me think of someone I know who's like a wonderful person who's very stuck in this that like every time she says baruch Hashem I cringe because it's so it's so far from being genuine. It's just what you're supposed to say and it and it like has no meaning anymore. I had, I was blessed with the greatest Rosh Yeshiva in the world, Rabbi Chaim Brovender, I told you many times that when he would ask someone, "How are you?" and they would say, "baruch Hashem," he always said, "I didn't..." I ask how are you. Yeah, Jenny.
Jenny. And to get real, real, where I'm at most of the time is it's neither of those places. Usually when you're in that moment, someone comes around you and you have the anxiety and you maybe don't make the right choice and say something not nice or say something impatient and I think that's the moment that most of us probably are in when we don't realize that's the starting point. It's the starting point.
It's the exact moment that you're supposed to be in to start dialogue of diburim shel emet. Right? 100%. Right. We say to ourselves, and this is wrong, we say when I get out of this rut then I'll be able to speak diburim shel emet.
That is so off. It is so not holy and it's so not emet. It's so not right. So for now what's the emet based on Rebbe Nachman? What is the emet? What you say? Well what you say if that's actually where you're at.
Right? If that's actually where you're at. People always say to me, I did hisbodedus, it didn't it didn't work. I said why? Because it was so hard, I didn't believe in it and I started wondering how much longer am I going to try this. I said that's amazing, did you tell Hashem this? He's like, no.
I'm like well what do you think hisbodedus is? A script of tenets of faith? You have a siddur for that. What do you think hisbodedus is? What is it? Talking to Hashem, yeah. But it's also I've been in this hisbodedus class with Rav Leibish and he is going through the book one of Rav Kluger. That's an amazing sefer.
And he said you've got to first remember to listen also. You've got to remember to listen back to what Hashem's telling you. It's not only about you. It also, like there's a response there somewhere.
Yeah, nachon. Back inside אף על פי כן, third line, על כל פנים יראה לדבר הדיבור באמת באיזו מדרגה נמוכה שהוא. No matter what low level you're not just feeling on, you're feeling you're at, but you're actually at. Rebbe Nachman is saying we're not going to pretend you're a tzaddik and that you're flying high and doing great.
It doesn't you could be in the lowest place but in that place is your דיבור דיבור של אמת. Kegon lemashal, as an example, that you can't say anything because you feel like you have no koach. What happens to a person in heightened states of anxiety and stress? You don't feel strong. You feel weak.
You feel gamur. Rebbe Nachman says that's right, but even in that place can you say the words Hashem hoshia be'emet? If you can, then Hashem shines in that place. Ah, you made a mishkan for me to dwell in there.
אף על פי שאינו יכול לדבר בהתלהבות והתעוררות כראוי.
Even though you can't speak with enthusiasm and passion like you really should and want to.
אף על פי כן יאמר הדיבור באמת כפי מה שהוא. Speak what you're speaking with utmost truth even if it's barely a word. Some Breslovers say even sometimes you can't even say a word but you use the voice for an anacha, which means a krechts, which means oy! Just that.
Just to say just to that you know how much emet is in that krechts? There's so much in that.
ועל ידי הדיבור האמת. And through the speaking of truth יזכה לראות הפתחים שבתוך החושך. Through that one hoshia Hashem or that one word or whatever it is, you begin you merit to begin to see openings within darkness.
ועל ידי זה יזכה לצאת מחושך לאור. And from this you'll eventually be able to exit darkness into light. And then Rebbe Nachman says, then yizke lehitpalel kera'uy, then you could start davening like you want to, like you know you should. But it has to go through this this process over here.
Now what's spooky is that thousands and thousands and thousands of people that are are religious meaning that they're under the assumption they're close to God because they adhere to halacha have no this this means nothing to them. And that's one God bless you. Bless you. And it's it's scary.
Bless you. Bless you. It's as scary as that is, it's also very there should be a lot of optimism because the At the end of the day, you actually get a much deeper sense of calm when you realize that those are the questions that are hovering in your mind throughout the day. Because it—why? It drives you more to your tachlit hanitzchi.
This way of living drives a person more to their ultimate and eternal purpose for which they were sent down into this world. Which makes scrolling that much more damaging. Because there is no way in the world, especially with the extreme example of my 4,000, my friend with the 4,020 following thing, that a person with a moment of emet has to realize that cannot be my emet. It can't be.
So in the beginning, yes, it's like I gotta make those changes that involve, like, you know, buttons and thumbs and stuff like that, that doesn't happen such great ones. But it does happen when it comes to relationships, being emet. And what could happen also is like you'll then start to sound like a sword with your words. That's not emet also, that's the yetzer hara coming in and trying to mess you up.
The real transformation of emet is something that's happening within you. It's not about how you deal with other people. It's an internal process. It's not like many people when they hold onto the sword of emet, let's go out into the world and that means it's the sheker of everything.
I'll even go so far to say is that even when it comes to this this dance that I've always had with Breslov for all these years is because there are many stark Breslovers that the moment they get they drink the Kool-Aid, they have to make sure that everyone believes that Rabbi Nachman is the tzadik ha’emes. I don't connect to that type of Yiddishkeit. And oh, bechlal. I do believe that every person should engage and incorporate Rabbi Nachman's teachings into this life and have a hiskashrus to the rebbe but not because I—that's not the ikkar of what I get from the Torah.
The ikkar is to get a person to come to stop living a life of avoda zara b’taharah like we learned last week. That's the ultimate. So I just want to warn you that a Torah like this, if it stays with you for the rest of the day, like which it will bezrat Hashem. Just keep it in, don't start sharing everyone that you're on a truth journey and stuff like that.
You know what I mean? Like that's not zeh lo hainyan. It's not what it's about. Just check to see if you're able to say a few words of emet to Hashem today. Maybe you did already, I don't know, it could be.
Maybe then add a few more words of emet, yeah. I was multitasking and it really helped because one of my children was complaining about something and I was going to say just suck it up. And I said Hashem help me in this, and I said I'm so sorry, that's really hard. But like my first reaction, so just saying...
That's amazing. Yeah, multitasking is helpful, you can just really do it. Yeah. I'm just thinking that what you said more towards the beginning about getting derailed by people's negative comments, that in a way it—that's maybe kind of like a litmus test if you are connecting to your emet inside.
You're giving away next week's shiur. Oh, I'm sorry. No no no, you're giving a preview to next week's shiur. Because we have to look at the anshei emet in our generation and see what they were up against.
Not in our generation, in Jewish history, to understand exactly what you're talking about, and that's a whole teaching in Likutey Moharan. Okay, so we have a lot a lot on this we have a lot a lot waiting for us. Yasher koach everyone.