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In this shiur for Rosh Chodesh Tammuz, Rav Dov Ber Cohen draws a direct line between the month's energy and the epidemic of inauthenticity all around us. From the Golden Calf to social media personas,
The Rabbi Dov Ber Cohen Podcast explores Jewish mindfulness, emotional mastery, relationships, and real inner avodah.
In each shiur, Rabbi Dov Ber shares practical Torah wisdom for navigating anxiety, deepening connection, strengthening emunah, and living with greater presence and purpose.
Rooted in Chassidic depth yet grounded in everyday life, these teachings are experiential, honest, and transformative.
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Okay, Shalom Aleichem. So we're learning about the month of Tamuz. It's Rosh Chodesh today and we say this every month that Rosh Chodesh means the head of the month. Why is it called the head of the month and not the beginning of the month? Hatchalat HaChodesh would make more sense. Because our sages teach us that the Rosh is in control, the head should be in control of your experience of life, of your emotions, your attitude to life creates your experience of life. So the head is in control, so the beginning of the month is like the DNA of the month. So how you go into the month, how you understand the month with your Rosh, do you understand the energy of the month? Do you understand what you're meant to be getting out of the month? Do you understand the growth possibilities of the month? That's why it's called Rosh Chodesh because it controls the month. And it's also your intellect, your Rosh, your head, your perspective on life, as we say every month, Rosh Chodesh can also be translated as Rosh Chadash, a new head. You need to get a new perspective. So the sages teach that really every single month has a different energy. It has a different tribe, there are twelve tribes, there are twelve months. There are different senses for each month, a different power that we're meant to be working on each month. There's a different letter for each month. So each month has this amazing power in itself, and the unifying factor between all of the months, and the word for month in Hebrew is Chodesh is Chadash, is being new, Hitchadshut. That when the moon is at its smallest and you think the moon has disappeared, that's actually when it's about to come back. And we see many times in life, a seed rots and when the seed has rotted to its smallest place, then growth comes from that place. And so Jewish people we're resilient and we keep coming back and Ein Shum Yeush, there's never any despair. There's never any point where a Jewish person says I'm so disconnected, I'm so far off, that I cannot come back. And I've been speaking a lot recently about the plague of people feeling not enough. I'm not enough, I'm not good enough, I'm not pretty enough, I'm not davening well enough, I'm not rich enough, I'll never be enough, you know? And we said enough, enough saying that. That even if you haven't been enough up to now, which I'd question because the fact that you're here and that you're trying and every little bit counts and Hashem's not out to get you and everything you're trying to do is very, very precious in the eyes of Hashem, especially in this day and age by the way where it's very, very difficult to be spiritually connected in this day and age, everything is special. But let's say, let's say you haven't been enough up to now. That's okay. So start from today. Today's a whole new day. In fact, this second's a whole new second. So if you messed up this morning and you got very frustrated with one of your children for losing something of yours that it wasn't actually lost and you'd put it in your own bag to come to school, it's okay, you can do Teshuva. You can do Teshuva. I made a mistake this morning, I can do Teshuva for my mistakes. So we're going to tap into the month of Tamuz, which is the beginning of dark times. Which is amazing because it's actually the summer. It feels exactly the opposite. We're meant to feel the heaviness of the brokenness of the world at this time in Tamuz and Av, these two months are really always put together, Tamuz and Av. And it's really about the destruction of the Temple. And what does the destruction of the Temple really mean? It's not the destruction of some physical edifice, it's the loss of the Shechina. It's the loss of palpable spirituality in the world. So for most people nowadays, we're not walking around feeling Hashem's imminent presence. We just don't feel that. And we say things like שויתי ה' לנגדי תמיד, I place Hashem before me at all times, but it's very, very hard to feel that Hashem is really actually here and Hashem really loves me and Hashem really cares about me. We don't feel the warm enlivening presence of godliness in the world and we don't see it necessarily so much. We don't always see our prayers answered and there's so much war and difficulty in the world and the world's very, very far from the ideal state it's meant to be. And this really came about in these two months. What happened in Tamuz? Tamuz was the sin of the golden calf. Seventeenth of Tamuz begins the three weeks, these three weeks of really trying to feel the emptiness and the loss of godliness in the world. There's an emptiness in the world. And I think many, many people, even religious people, are walking around feeling pretty empty. You know, I'm just not feeling full of vitality and I'm not feeling fully alive. And so the golden calf, we'll talk about it more later, was a superficial Superficial counterfeit spirituality. That's what it was. Superficial counterfeit spirituality something that I could see, I can palpably see this so it's an immediate quick fix, counterfeit superficial spirituality. And then Tisha B'av came up and it was the destruction of the Temple, that place of intimate relationship with Hashem where Hashem says to us ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם, make me this holy place which is just across like 50 meters from us. Make me this holy place why? So that I can come and live with you. I created the world for you. I'm going to create the universe as a place that you can live in. And I'm going to provide everything you need to live comfortably in the universe. Why am I doing that? I'm actually doing that so that you can reciprocate, this is what a real relationship is, and you can create a place for me within the universe. And the place for me within the universe is going to be in Yerushalayim, which means Yira Shalem, which means complete God-consciousness. Yira means awe, God-consciousness, from the word Ra'eh. And Shalem means complete. So I want you, we're going to go to this very very special place, this holy place and you're going to set aside, Kedusha really means setting aside, I want you to set aside this place that I can come and dwell in it. And we said in last week's class that Kedusha doesn't mean only separate. Some people think the word Kadosh means to separate but we said it doesn't, it means to separate in order to create space for intimacy. So the word for marriage in Hebrew is Kiddushin. Kiddushin, so we say I'm separating this woman from all other women and she's separating this man from all other men. But why? So that there can be intimacy between them. So that's what Kedusha really means. Kedusha doesn't mean to be separated because we say קדוש קדוש קדוש מלא כל הארץ כבודו, holy, holy, holy, the whole world is filled with Hashem's glory so that's not separation, that means there's an imminent presence. I'm pulling back in order to create space for for an imminent presence and this is why it's so holy. This is one of the main things that attracted me to Judaism, my first religious wedding. It was so powerful to and they to know these people they'd never touched each other before. It was so much, it was so, I cry, I hadn't cried for like nine years because I was a British man and then a British monk so British men and British monks don't cry. But at this wedding I was like and he was blind, the Chassan was blind and his father was on crutches, it was just amazing wedding and I tasted Kedusha. I actually could feel palpable Kedusha. So it can't mean separate because you can feel it. Erev Shabbat in Yerushalayim or in Tzfas you can feel the Kedusha. So that's what the Shechinah is, that's what the Divine Presence is, to feel that place. And then we said once we lost the Beit HaMikdash itself, ועשו לי מקדש ושכנתי בתוכם means I'm going to dwell within your heart. But in order for Hashem to dwell within our hearts we have to make our minds holy which means we can't be thinking about disgusting things and we can't be overanalyzing and anxious. We want to make our inner world, when people say my body is my temple, Goggins! I hate 'my body is my temple' Goggins. I'm like dude, I don't think it is. But what that means in Jewish terms is I want even my physical being to be a place where God wants to rest his Divine Presence. And I want to use my physicality to bring godliness into the world and I want to say words of uplifting encouragement and enlightenment, I want to say good things. So this is what we're mourning at this time that we really lost it. And the name of the month itself is crazy. The name of the month itself in the Torah the months don't have names. They're just called the first month, second month, and we've been speaking a lot about Shabbat recently and we don't have names for days in Hebrew. We have the first day, second day, third, the first day you're getting ready for Shabbat and the second day getting ready for. The whole of the weeks are all or the whole of the days of the week are just getting ready, counting up to Shabbat. So in the Torah as well the months are just countings. But when we came back from Babylon, Babylon. When we came back from Babylon we brought the names, the Babylonian names back with us. And Tammuz is a crazy name. The Rambam, I was reading this this morning, the Rambam says that Tammuz was actually a false prophet. He was a false prophet and he was tortured to death by the king. And he died and all of his students then got together and they made up this story that as he died all the different gods came and gave him a crown and then they made a play, there was this whole Tammuz play. And Yechezkel, Ezekiel even mentions it in the book of Yechezkel that they... Had molten lead in it and when it got heated up the lead came out of his eyes and he was crying. The idol itself would actually cry and everyone's crying and so this is what Tammuz is and that's the name of the month. Is he crazy? You're gonna name a month after a Babylonian idol? That's crazy. So I used to think about this a lot and I just realized what's it? It's all about fake. It's all fake everything's fake. He was a fake prophet he wasn't even a real prophet. They're fake tears idolatry is all fake. And I'm thinking in this world I'm looking around in this world I think there's fake this world is fake. It's a deeply there's no authentic vulnerability in this world in a healthy way. Fake promises of happiness you buy this then you'll be happy you do this it's all fake fake security you have enough money then you'll have security it's all fake fake relationships fake personas. And the best thing is this is what I love the people who are posting authentic vulnerable Instagram posts. It's all fake because you get more likes for your authentic vulnerable Instagram posts but it's all fake. Was that authentic enough? So we're living in a totally it's all so meaningless and so there's just nothing there nothing there. Speaking to lots of people coming from that world and they're coming to Aish and there's nothing there. What's meaningful? What's meaningful in your life? What's real? What's meaningful? How deep are your relationships? Can you talk to your friends? How many friends do you have? I was speaking to a group the other day of twenty-year-old guys and I said what a friend is someone who just really really actually cares about you and invests in you someone who would never say anything not nice behind your back someone who if other people were saying not nice things about you behind your back would stand up for you someone who doesn't be nice to you in front of your face and then does something with their girlfriend but whatever and I said how many friends do you have and they really thought about it they looked at each other and they joked and they were like yeah you and I was like that's really you have no friends you're just roasting you're spending all day roasting each other putting each other down. I said to this other group I give you a challenge one day of the trip today don't roast each other. Just try one day don't say anything not nice. And one of the guys said but what are we gonna speak about? He said that and he meant it. I kind of respected that because at least he was being real. It's all fake and then your parents say to you you gotta live in the real world. The most fake world ever. The rat race is not the real world. You gotta live in the real world. The whole real world is all about looks what you look like. I was speaking to a guy the other day not gonna tell you where from but there's a community in America and he said to his father what are your top values and he said social status and something like that and therefore you need to drive that car and he was like he and he didn't say it I kind of gave him the confidence to say it. I said are you happy? You're all trying to impress each other. All these people these are grown now. I think it's funny when teenagers are trying to impress each other by having that extra shot of vodka that none of them want that's already weird and you don't feel good about yourself afterwards. But grown-ups are doing that all the time in these whole communities. See my son he's this job he's got a bigger house look at this so fake and it's all fake. There's nothing there and they're all on Prozac and there's nothing meaningful it just does not work. It's so empty there's such and this is what this is what idolatry is this is what the golden calf is it's a fake god. That's what idolatry is it's all fake and that's why we have idols American Idol it's an American Idol it's all fake it's all glittery and showy and it's all empty it's empty but we're chasing it. We're chasing it's a quick fix the golden calf people are worshipping the golden calf now they're worshipping the golden calf. Even the football World Cup's happening now I think there was a report when there was the Intifada or something there was some crazy wars going on in Israel during the World Cup it died down because all the terrorists are watching the football. I don't have time to kill Jews at the moment I'm watching the football. It's amazing it's a true statistic go and look that up ask ChatGPT which is fake oh my goodness everything fake. It's all fake artificial intelligence it's completely artificial you can tell. Oh I gotta send you it's the funniest thing ever Aish Latino has taken my videos I got a podcast Rabbi in the Hot Seat and they've put it in Spanish but it's not it doesn't look dubbed it's literally my voice my lips moving in Spanish my voice. Fluent Spanish. It's the funniest, I couldn't stop watching it last night. I was like, this is so weird. So now you've got all these Spanish, these people, I'm going to go to Mexico, they're going to bring me in and they're going to be like, \"Oh, Rabino, que es que de la beina,\" and I'm going to be, \"Oh, que es que de la beina,\" I don't speak Spanish, and they're going to be shocked. They're going to be so like, what can you trust? I just don't know, you can't trust anymore, it's all fake. I think there's very good use for AI. But the whole artificial, there you go, AI is just artificial, or it's not, there's no, what does artificial mean? It means there's no relationship. There's no depth, there's no warmth, there's no relationship, but it can make you feel that it loves you. My daughter was doing something for school, and she said, \"Look, I'm struggling, I can't do this question,\" and ChatGPT or whatever said, \"You know what? You're doing really well, you're working really hard.\" And my daughter's like, \"Thanks.\" She came, she was like, \"He was so nice!\" I was like, \"Don't! Don't fall in love!\" She's like, \"Abba, I'm marrying Chat. His name is Chaim.\" That's his real name. It's so, it's amazing, it's an amazing crazy, it's a crazy world. It's a crazy world. It's all artificial, everything's artificial. And it takes away from, you know, I have a 63-part tefillah series on YouTube. Living in Tune, YouTube, about prayer in general, and then the prayer book, how we can use the prayer book. And someone said to me, \"What I'm going to do is, I'm going to go through the 63-part series, and I'm going to get whatever AI is going to transcribe each part. And then I'm going to say, 'Write this as a chapter in a book in Dovber's tone,' how he writes it, using exactly the same story, exactly the same information. And he said, 'I'm going to write you a whole book based on your...' And I have a question: did I write that book? It's all my information, it's all my stories, it's everything I said. So I don't know, can I claim to have written that book? So he said, 'No, AI is just the editor. It took everything...' It's basically, if you dictated that and someone wrote it down, you'd say you wrote it. It's a big question there. I don't know, maybe, maybe it could be. But I think I'd feel the need to put on the book, 'Done with the help of AI.' I couldn't claim to have written that book. I'll have to edit it. Anyway, B'ezrat Hashem we'll have that book. So, fine. So I think Tammuz and the Golden Calf and everything is just this, superficiality. But in relationships as well, in everything, in Divrei Torah. They're just superficial. It's like, 'This is what Rashi says,' and it's like we said in the last class. People come to your Shabbat table and they're all, 'Oh, I have a Dvar Torah.' It says in this week's parsha, whatever, and Rashi says this, and here's a Chassidic story. And then everyone's like, 'Shkoach!' 'Shkoach' actually comes from the word shachach, which means 'I forgot what you said'. Shachachti. Like, 'Shkoach', shachach, I didn't listen to what you said because you didn't really mean it, and I just was looking, and you were just saying it to show off to the Rebbetzin to get a shidduch, and you don't, and like, I don't need your Divrei Torah at my Shabbat table. Everything you say is a Dvar Torah. We just speak Torah. It's not like we're speaking about the football and the politics and then we stop and say, 'Okay, and now a pre-prepared Dvar Torah.' Let's go, Chaim. Fantastic Dvar Torah. So we, no Divrei Torah at our Shabbat table. Just speak authentically from your heart. Just speaking. Student, it happened again. It happens all the time. Going on his first date and he said, 'You know what? What should I do? Any advice?' And I said, 'Yeah, just go and be yourself. Just go and sit down, no pressure, just go and be yourself.' And he said, 'But what if she doesn't like me?' I was like, 'Then she probably shouldn't marry you. What? You think you should go and be not yourself? Try and impress... I'm going to go and impress her, and she's going to come and impress me, being who we aren't? And then there's so much pressure from the shidduch world that we're going to be impressing each other for like a month and then that's it, 'no', get married!' And like, by the way, you do not get engaged until the bubble bursts. Bit of dating advice here. The bubble needs to burst because the bubble's going to burst after you're married. So if you can't deal with it before you're engaged, you've got to see, can we deal with the bubble bursting? And the bubble usually isn't real, and then you get to know who they really are. So now you've got two people, they're married, and he's not him and she's not her and you're like, 'But you're not him, but I don't...' So just be yourself, be real, be real. And you know what? Who you really are is much nicer than the person you're trying to be to impress other people. Oh, that's a very important line. Who you really are is much greater than who you're trying to be to impress other people. The moment my whole social life, social media life changed. Thank God, I don't run my social media. Thank you, Raquel. I don't run my social media, but I have to go on sometimes to reply to comments. But I was on a hike with my son and... and I saw something and I had a thought in my head: this would be a great post. At that second that thought came into my mind I was like I'm going to take away from being present with my son so I can take a picture of a waterfall to get people to like it. I was like that's so... and then people's whole life becomes this is an Instagram post, this is an... everything I'm doing, that's an Instagram post, that's an Instagram post. So their whole life becomes how can I make Instagram posts? Very scary, very sick, very bad. And then they're like who are you? You don't even know who you are. I saw a... we always judge people favorably. I saw someone giving a whole class on brachas at this big convention. And it was one of the best bracha classes I've ever seen and then I saw him make a bracha after and I... it's cute, it's good that you made the class, you're like... I saw someone giving a parenting class and then screaming at his kid afterwards for annoying him during the class. So there's your persona and then there's your personality. It's who you want people to believe you are and there's who you really are. And I'm telling you a big secret, who you really are is much more vulnerable, honest, real, nice, connected than who you think people need you to think you are. This is the whole sin of the spies. The whole sin of the spies was we were like grasshoppers in their eyes and in our eyes and it's like who cares what other people think of you? Who cares what... why are you living your whole life obsessed with what other people are thinking about you? I feel good about myself not because I'm perfect, just because I'm trying to be nice, that's it. So it doesn't bother me, I don't... it's all, it's all fake. And this is actually, I had a bit of a chap. This... we're coming into the summer months now, and especially in England, once the summer hits, once the eight days of summer hits in England, everyone's in the park, in their bikini... it's like, you've got this soggy little island, this dark soggy little island, everyone's like miserable and stressed, suddenly in June... I think it's still raining there now... but that one day comes out, everyone's suddenly we're the happiest people in the world. Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun, something like that. Wimbledon, you've got that thing. But then it's the whole social scene of now we've got the street bars and the cafes and I'm dressed like this and I'm... it's all so... the summer brings out... and that brings out desire, that brings out all the stuff, all the stuff that happens. I actually spoke in a Chassidic Yeshiva from 12:45 pm to 1:45 am two Thursdays ago in Meah Shearim. They invited me in, someone saw one of my videos, and it was amazing and they loved it. It was cool. But they said to me, they said, we are Chassidim Chitzoniyim, we are external Chassidim. So we have the payos and we have everything, but penimiyos, we don't... I don't know what we're doing. They're not anti, they weren't off the derech, they were just like, we just do what we do. And I asked, quite like, why do we have a shtreimel? Why do we do this? They don't know a lot of stuff. It was very cool. And they were like, you're Chassid Penimi. Outside you're not Chassidic, but inside you're a Chassid, because you know what you're doing, you know why you're doing it. So now I'm writing a book called Geshmake Chassidim or something like that, just for Chassidim to know what is God, what are we doing? Taught them some proofs for Torah, did a meditation with them, a Yanuka meditation. These Chassidim never spent one minute just focusing on their breath, trying to connect to themselves. It was yishuv hadaas. These ideas, and they were so cool, they were so... it was awesome, baruch Hashem. So we value external beauty. We value external beauty, we value success in that type of sense. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to admit something, is that okay? And this is actually quite embarrassing, I'm actually really embarrassed, and I need to ask ChatGPT, what is this? There's a film called Into the Wild. Have you seen the film Into the Wild? I love these films. It's based on a true story. This guy in America, he basically was from a good family, but he was like, I don't buy into the western capitalist system, sold everything and he went into the wild. And he survived and we found his diary... it's a true story. We found his diaries and he killed this moose but then it got maggots and... anyway, he was going to go back to society, but the rains had come and there was... he couldn't cross the river and basically he died. And three months later they found him, his dead body and his diary, and it's a true story turned into a book and this film. I can't believe I'm telling you this, it's really embarrassing. So the guy who plays him in the film, I don't know what the actor's name is, but he's a quite good-looking guy. And then at the very, very end of the film, they show a picture of the actual guy, and he wasn't very good-looking, and I had this reaction, I was like, oh, it's not so bad. When the guy was good-looking, it was more... Isn't that weird? That's weird. Why? What is the psychological thing of that? We can kill a cockroach without any emotion but a bunny? You'd never do that. What? Yeah. Why is it any different? Because this is a human's life. It's a human life and for me it was less tragic because he was less good looking. That's weird. That is weird. I was shocked at that point. We do the same thing with animals. We care much less about a ant or a rodent versus... Well I think for me that's because a rabbit seems to have more personality than a cockroach. Fair enough. But now think of a dolphin. Not so good looking rabbit and a good looking rabbit. Interesting. If you had a completely disgustingly ugly rabbit and a very beautiful rabbit, you'd feel sad if the good looking rabbit got squashed. Yeah, why? That shouldn't be either. Why? That would have been a better example. Maybe I'm going to edit the video and say if you see two rabbits. Why is that? Someone look that up for me, but there is we value external beauty. We value that. We value that. And even once we've become spiritual and we want to not get our sense of self based on that, we still value my bekishe and my dvar Torah and my tish we still got this this external values. What what are we valuing? What do we valuing? So this whole time I think this whole time is that we've pushed the Shechinah out of the world. We've pushed meaning out of the world. We've pushed depth and authenticity and vulnerability and spirituality and people even make their spirituality ego spirituality. I know this much Torah and I meditate for this long and I learn... I learn B'yoma d'ichlula, it's the cool spiritual book the pnimiyus hatorah and the daas elyon and the meditation and it all just becomes a show. It's called spiritual egoism. That's what it's called. And how spiritually egotistical. So we really got to be careful of this. The Sefer Yetzirah says that the power of the month therefore that we're trying to rectify this month is sight. And this the word it uses is actually Yira. Yira, sight. How do we see the world? Which on one level means really what are our values? What are we looking for? What do I what do I put on a pedestal? What do I find meaningful? But if we actually think about this very very important whatever you focus on that becomes your experience. Whatever you focus on in your life if you have everything good and one bad thing and you focus on the bad thing in your life that's going to be your experience. If you had of a really good day but one person insulted you really badly what are you going to be thinking about at the end of the day? That one insult. You're not going to think about the ten praises and that went well and that you make good business deals and then one fell through or someone was rude to you. In general people tend towards it's called a negativity bias. This shouldn't be like this. I don't want this. So your whole body is working very well but your knee is sore. Random example. I messed up my knee. I can't go to kickboxing and I can't go running with my dog. Anyway different class. But my eyes work and my my breathing is going really well actually and I can do upper body weight stuff and I can do that but my knee is bothering me. So we tend to zoom in on our pain. We zoom in on what's not right. When for most of us thank God as white middle class Jews we basically all right. We doing pretty well. I'd say 90% 95% your life is good. You got the one kid who who hit your tripod this morning even though he didn't and so that that takes up your whole life. So how are you looking? How do you look at the world? What's your perspective? Firstly how do you look at yourself? Are you putting yourself down? Are you putting yourself above other people? Do you have self worth? Are you looking at the world through kind and loving eyes? But even more important are you seeing through the superficiality? Are you going a little bit deeper? So when your parents in that community in America are saying to you you have to drive that car and you see through them. See and what what are they really saying? They're empty. Any pain and any bad values it's some emptiness here. There's a famous story someone called someone... He said I'm about to commit suicide and all of these things and the whole lesson was the fact that he called to say it means he was asking for help he didn't want to do it. You just got to see it just look a little bit deeper. What's what's really going on behind the scenes here? Especially with a kid, I'm writing a parenting book now. Especially with the kid, if the kid is freaking out, you want to kill the kid. Especially if it's in front of people because it's you know I want everyone to think I'm the best father, so if your kid is having a tantrum in front of people in the shop that's extra bad. And you're like bluh but you have to try and be your best. But what does the kid need? Why is it there? Why does it need that attention? Why why is that kid being so annoying? There's a reason the kid's being annoying. It needs something. What does that kid need from me? What's my child need from me? What can I see a little bit deeper? Can I go through? So this is the rectification of Tamuz which is all about fake inauthentic superficiality is just look a little bit deeper. And we see all of the parshas, Shlach, the the spies, what did they do? They saw, but in their own way. Moshe didn't ask for any opinion. He said go and tell go tell me what's happening in the land and they came and they said this is bad and as as I gave a class last week about Korach that the it was the same thing, Korach was a big tzaddik, צדיק כתמר יפרח סופי תיבות קורח says the Arizal. He was a huge tzaddik and he wanted to do everything to give nachas to Hashem. Just want to give nachas to Hashem but but his problem was I want to be the one to do it. I want to be the the one to give nachas to Hashem. So it was messed up. The the spies, they were big tzaddikim as well, but they said we don't want to go into Israel because we we like the miraculous nature of the desert, we get fed and we can just learn Torah. And it's very nice that you want to be a big tzaddik and just sit and learn Torah, but Hashem says I want you to go into the land of Israel. So it's not really about you. Take yourself out of the center of your life, out of the center of your spirituality, put Hashem into the center of it. So they had kind of the right idea but they were looking at it from the wrong angle. They were looking at it from me, what do I want? So we know that everything we do, we want to do it to give nachas to Hashem. That's the main reason we are meant to do mitzvot, not because it feeds our soul although that's a very important reason, not because it connects us to Hashem although that's a very important reason, the main reason we do what we do is to give back to Hashem. Hashem I know this makes you happy and the more joy we do our mitzvot with, the more happiness we give to Hashem. So if your whole life is about giving nachas to Hashem, then you don't get jealous of other people who are giving nachas to Hashem, because you want Hashem to have nachas. So ve'ahavta lereacha kamocha. Every time you help someone else, you can think to yourself I'm going to do this mitzvah of helping someone else but to make Hashem happy because Hashem loves it when I love it when my kids do stuff for each other. Judging other people favorably. I'm learning Yesod Veshoresh Ha’avodah at the moment, a little chabura after davening in the morning and it really speaks a lot about judging other people favorably to the extent that it's ridiculous, there's no way that it's true. But it's okay because you still did the mitzvah of trying to judge people favorably. You can't be naive, there needs to be justice and don't be in toxic relationships, but you have to do your best always judge people favorably and he said if you're not judging other people favorably then you can't really fulfill ve'ahavta lereacha kamocha. They're stuck together, these two mitzvot. And if you see someone else's clothes on the floor, run and pick it up, you don't want your clothes to be on the floor, go and pick it up. I do it with bikes. I hate it when I come back to my bike and it's tied up but it fell on the floor. If I ever see anyone's bike on the floor I'm gonna pick it up. And they won't know that it was on the floor, they won't but for me I like I want to do that and so when I do it I think to myself I'm going to pick up this bike to give nachas Hashem give you nachas because Hashem loves it when we love each other and we look after each other. And so Shlach and Korach and Chukas and all of these parshas and Balak, all of the parshas in this month it's all about people seeing wrong. Chukas is cool. Chukas we have this whole all the snakes in the desert and everything's going wild there's a big plague they complained again. How did we get rid of the plague? Moshe puts a snake on top of a big pole. Snake on top of a pole, my Rebbe Bilvavi says what that is is the Yetzer Hara is a snake. Yetzer Hara's compared to a snake and a snake normally crawls around in the grass and it just tries to bite your ankles. But what you do if you pick up the Yetzer Hara and you put it up and you say you are the Yetzer Hara I know you I'm not scared of you it loses all of its power. So they looked up at this snake and it saved them. The simple reason is because they looked up to heaven and they had emunah, but it's this this reason because how do I look at my Yetzer Hara? If I look at my my yetzer hara as insurmountable and there's no way I can beat it and it's so hard and terrible, then I give strength to the yetzer hara. But if I look at it as a partner, a partner in my journey, then it's not so scary. So it's all about a complete change of attitude. The every month has a name of Hashem, Hashem's name Yud and He and Vav and He in a different permutation, so different ways it's written. The month of Tammuz is exactly backwards name of Hashem: He and Vav and He and Yud. It's Hashem's name backwards which is the worst you can get, it's the backwards expression of what Hashem is. And it comes from the pasuk in the Megilla: זה כל זה איננו שוה לי. Sofei teivos, the last letters of that pasuk spell ה ו ה י and it's when Haman—Haman had everything, Haman was rich, he was powerful, he had a family, he had everything. But the fact that Mordechai wasn't bowing down to him destroyed him. He said none—the words are: none of this is worth anything to me because Mordechai's not bowing down to me. You crazy? You crazy? You've got everything and you're going to let that—it's like the person who had a great day but that one person said that one thing and they just—it's a thorn that it's just ruining my whole everything. And that's what people do in their lives. What you focus on, that's going to create your experience and he was focusing on that one bad thing in his life. So we want to fix that. We want to fix that by reversing the name of Hashem. Let's bring Hashem back into the picture and we can say even that negative thorn bad thing in your life is good for you and maybe even the best thing for you. I literally just before this class one of my students came up to me, he was very stressed and he said, \"There's a person in my life who's completely arrogant and derogatory and horrible and I can't stand this person.\" So I said, \"Okay. What should I do?\" He said, \"What should I do?\" And I said, \"The first thing you have to do is understand that he is Eliyahu Hanavi. He's Elijah the Prophet. That is Elijah the Prophet who has come to visit you in order to help you become a stronger person, more resilient, more kind, more patient. And then you can work out which one of the three things to do. Remember, I always teach that there are three positive responses to any situation: number one, change the situation. So you could speak to the guy and say, \"I don't like how you're behaving.\" Number two, leave the situation. If you can't be around that person, get away. Number three, change yourself, become more positive, resilient. But if you approach this situation as I'm a victim and this is going against me and destroying my life, then it will. But if you walk into it as a challenge and a test and an opportunity to become a great person and relish this person in your life—it's very hard, I'm not saying—sometimes the answer is get away, leave the situation, don't be in a toxic relationship and say, \"No, I've just got to keep working on myself.\" Don't do that, get away. But for him, it would be very, very good for him. And I said, \"And this is actually going to get you ready to be married, because your wife's not always going to do everything you want and your kids are going to freak out.\" So if you can't deal with this person in your life, then you're not going to deal with life. Life's pretty difficult. So don't run away. This is an opportunity not to run away from this guy and to be kind, just be nice, be friendly back to them. So, how long have we got? What's the time? Twenty-eight. I shouldn't have wasted the first fifteen minutes of the class. The tribe of the month. Anyone know the tribe of the month? What would make sense if this month is all about sight? Who's the tribe? Reuven. Reuven. The name Reuven comes from the word roeh, to roeh. Reuven means really, \"I see a son.\" Reuven. Reuven, to see. And the Arizal teaches that really Reu means to see and ben means a son. So there are two ways you can look at yourself. You can see yourself as a son of Hashem. Reu ben. I am a son of Hashem. I am great. I am holy. I am pure. And without being arrogant, by the way. But if you see yourself as intrinsically good, then it's much easier to stay away from the bad things. I'm a son of the King, I don't want to speak lashon hara. I just don't want that. I'm the son of the King, I don't want to watch that thing that people are watching. I'm the son of the King, I don't want to spend all my time with the superficial, artificial, fake, counterfeit stuff. I just don't want that in my life anymore. It's enough. If I did that, I'm just sick of it. Lots of people end up here because they're kind of sick. They did that, and got everything. I had success in that life. It's just empty. I got everything I wanted in that life and it is nothing, it's meaningless. But he says Ben is Gematria Behema. Ben is the same numerical value as animal. So you can see yourself as an animal as well. I'm just an animal, I'm just a body, I've just got my desires, I keep letting myself down, I'm not good enough, this is just who I am, these are the Sitra, these are the people I hang out with, and you start identifying with these lower parts of you and then you start playing that role. You start playing your role of your lower parts. So it's exactly this Tikkun. How are you going to see yourself? Do I see myself as holy and pure and part of something beautiful? Or do I keep letting myself down? Even, by the way, when I make a mistake. When I make a mistake, doesn't mean I'm not the son of the King. Doesn't mean the King doesn't love me anymore. The mistake does not define me. How I respond to the mistake, how I get up and improve myself and apologize if I need to apologize, that defines me. So how I'm defining myself, how I'm looking at myself is going to create my experience of life. And that's how much I'm going to bring the Shechina back into the world. The letter of the month is Chet by the way, which means chet, which means a mistake. It means you're looking at things in the wrong way. In general, the letter Chet doesn't get a good name in Judaism. It's like Chametz. The only difference between Matzah and Chametz is the letter Hei and Chet. Because Hei has a little gap at the top which shows that you can do teshuva and you can let Hashem in. But the Chet has no gap at the top and it's the chet, but even that can be chet also stands for Chittui, which means purifying yourself. And Chet is eight, it's beyond nature. You can go beyond nature. So it's everything is transformable. Everything is transformable. Everything we see, the golden calf, the destruction of the Temple, everything is all about how do we transform it. But how do you transform that? You transform that by how you see. How you see yourself, how you see the world, how you see life. So how you see, that's how much you bring Hashem into the world. The body part of the month is the right hand. The right hand obviously is Chessed. It's all about Chessed. So how am I seeing myself through the eyes of Chessed? I'm kind to myself, I'm compassionate. I'm not soft on myself. I don't justify my mistakes. I push myself, I'm committed, I'm motivated, I want to grow, but I'm kind to myself. I see other people through the eyes of Chessed. So for my student who has this arrogant, horrible, derogatory person in his life who's really Eliyahu HaNavi, he has to have Chessed towards himself. he has to nurture himself, but he has to have Chessed towards the other person. Chessed is the key to everything. And the Midrash Tehillim says that the right hand points. This was my Machshava on my bike on the way to school this morning. The right hand points. So that's what am I focused on? That's where I want to go. That's who I want to be. Many people come up to me and say, you know what, Rebbe, I'm trying to work out who I am. Just really trying to work out who I am. And I often say to them, you know what, it actually doesn't matter who you are. Why don't we try and work out who you want to be and then work towards being that? That's where I want to go, that's what I want to do. I have my eyesight, I'm very focused, I have a vision. Ah, that's why it's called vision, yirah. The word, as we said at the beginning, yirah to see means to have God consciousness which is the Shechina, that's how we bring the God consciousness back into the world. That we have this laser focus. This is where I want to go, I want God to be in the world, I want everyone to feel that they're godly, I want to be living with passion, I want to be living with purpose. So then my I'm not distracted. I'm not distracted by the artificial, superficial, inauthenticity of the world around me. I'm not chasing that. I'm not distracted. I'm pointing. That is who I want to be, that's where I want to go. And that's the immense power. So obviously we always say the darkest months. The first time the word Chet appears in the Torah is the word Choshech, which is darkness. So the darkest, most challenging months are obviously the lightest, greatest months. We always say that because they're always the chance to grow. So when in the summer months everyone comes out in their superficial and wearing less and all of that, and we guard our eyes and we judge people favorably, and we want to spread godliness into the world, then we're doing immense amazing Tikkunim. And this is how we can fix all the Sinat Chinam, all the destruction of the Temple, everything we did to chase the Shechina out of the world, we can at this time bring it back into the world. And we understand that Yud Zayin Tammuz, the 17th of Tammuz, which is when we did the Chet HaEgel, but it was really meant to be the day that we got the Luchot. Now he was coming down with the Luchot, it was meant to be a huge festival, amazing festival of receiving Luchot, but we messed it up, so the sages say that in the times to come, the 17th of Tammuz is going to be a huge festival. So too Tisha B'Av. What was Tisha B'Av meant to be? The day we go into the land of Israel, amazing day. Tisha B'Av is the day that Mashiach was born. Nachash, the snake, is Gematria Mashiach, it's all, it's all transformed. We're here to bring the Shechina back into the world. How do we do that? We do that by seeing, seeing the world through loving, kind, godly eyes. Not through Haman's eyes, it's not worth it, I want everything, superficial stuff, we're going to see the world through godly eyes. I want to look at myself and the world through godly eyes. So this is our practical avodah this month. Let's just start looking through kinder eyes at ourselves, at other people, looking at the darkness in our lives and the challenges in our lives and the brokenness in our lives as opportunities to get better. My Rebbe famously said that what was in the Aron Hakodesh? It was the broken Luchot. 17th of Tammuz he broke the Luchot, but in the Aron Hakodesh was the broken Luchot. So my Rebbe says it teaches you that you can be broken and still be in the Kodesh Hakodashim. In fact, maybe you need to be a little bit broken in order to be in the Kodesh Hakodashim. But not broken in a in a weak way, but broken in a real way. Now I've broken through my ego, I've broken through the superficiality, I've broken through the fake tears of Tammuz into the real tears of I care about the Jewish people and their suffering. Let's just be real. Be real. This month is all about being real.