Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Parenting is not just about raising children. It is about revealing souls, nurturing faith, and guiding the next generation with patience and courage. In this series, Rav Shlomo Katz draws from Rebbe Nachman, the Tanya, and Chassidic masters to uncover the spiritual depth of parenting. From creating “vacated space” for children to grow, to awakening curiosity, to embodying holy chutzpah, these teachings offer timeless guidance for raising Jewish children with love, resilience, and emunah.
Alright, בוקר טוב. Thank you so much for coming. The learning today I would love to do it for two עניינים. You could obviously add more.
But one of them for it to be for the continued רפואה שלמה of יקירה אפרים בן רחל דבורה. It's precious, beautiful three-year-old boy in ירושלים who ממש needs big, big, big תפילות. Big, big תפילות. As his mother says, we're wrapping him up in תהילים.
There's three three ספרי תהילים being said for him every day. So this יקיר if you could have it in mind, יקירה אפרים בן רחל דבורה. And the second, the second thing I want to do it for is today's the יארצייט of the mother of one of our friends who learns with us, רבקה בת מרדכי. Today is the יארצייט of רבקה בת מרדכי.
Her נשמה should have an עליה and continued נחת from from her children and grandchildren, בעזרת השם. And בוקר טוב. Hey, guys. How's he doing? He's good.
He cannot, he just has to be home today. He doesn't have anything contagious. He just has like a condition. Mamasitis.
No, he was actually hospitalized for this thought but ברוך השם he's okay. It would have been good to bring like all our kids here. Yeah. No, and then he woke, I saw his eye and that's why, yeah, yeah, he's like, I'm like, we all have to leave, I have to run.
Ok, we're here. Please, please. He apologizes. He's like.
Please, it's all good. No, חס ושלום. Na, יהוד שלמה. It's good.
It's a strong name. It's a strong name. Okay. So I'm so, I'm so thankful that we have the opportunity to learn live a little bit right now, in person.
It's very, very special for me. I just saying, as it happens, like I'll record it for you and I didn't respond to you. I was like, I always hear the recording. I want to, I want to do this live.
We're doing it live. We're doing it live. And and we're going to learn, I'm not sure the style that you're used to learning, but from the חבר'ה, first of all, you're all invited to join us in אפרת or even until you join in person, you can join us through all the recordings that we send out and it's all online, I can explain to you later. And the, the topic that has obviously caught most of our hearts and eyes is actually a topic that's not recorded.
And that's because it's the Shabbos afternoon shiur. And the Shabbos afternoon shiur, ברוך השם, is filled with parents. Approx, you know, parents of all ages, not just, you know, newly weds that are with one kid. There's some grandparents that come because a parent is always a parent, always a parent.
Even there's even some children that come because they want to understand their parents a little bit better or what they should be telling their parents a little bit better. And that's the parenting shiur that we have. And this is, these are topics that touch the absolute core of that which we hold to be more more important than anything in the world. Because I do want to be a better Yid, I want to be a holier Yid.
I want מידות to be more intact, I want all these נקודות to be better, but if that doesn't interpret and translate into becoming a better parent to my children, then what am I really looking for? What am I trying to do in the world? What am I really trying to do? So there's so many ways to look at this and there's so many new books that are coming out day by day by day by day. So this definitely the shiurim that we do in ארץ ישראל on parenting are not like, you know, necessarily like, you know, methods, methodologies and שיטות and חינוך per se, but it's trying to understand the way the ריבונו של עולם, what the ריבונו של עולם had in mind when he created the concepts of parenting, of that people would be parents one day. What did השם have in mind? How do we learn that to be? What what did השם sort of speak, what did he think about? So before we say anything, I'll just say that the bottom, the first thing I want to say, the middle thing I want to say and the last thing I want to say is that when a couple once came to the בעל שם טוב and begged the בעל שם טוב for עצות, how to become better parents, so the בעל שם טוב says I'll tell you a very good סגולה, very important סגולה. And that is, wash yourselves in boiling water in the morning, every morning and every night to the parents.
Okay, you don't question בעל שם הקדוש, what he says you do it, right? So they did it, but they didn't understand. It was irking in them, they needed to understand what what was the, what what does this really mean? I know the בעל שם, what a what a בעל קבלה he was and he had סגולות and everything, but what was he really saying? So listen to this, the בעל שם טוב says, when I told you guys to wash yourselves in boiling waters, I was simply referring to tears coming out of your eyes. Wash yourself in your tears every morning and every night. You want to be better parents? You want סגולות for חינוך? When was the last time you cried over being a parent like you want to be? Now that's a very intimidating question because if we start thinking about that we'll get very depressed.
because usually we cry over becoming better parents when we see our kids suffering. Hopefully, then, חס ושלום they shouldn't suffer. But hopefully then that wakes us up a little bit. That's not the עיקר of parenting.
Parenting is even if things seem to be like okay, semi quasi-peaceful, דווקא then, how much are you crying. Crying doesn't mean pain. Crying means ממעמקים. Crying is not is not necessarily this response to something that hurts.
Crying is ממש לכתחילה in parenting. It's not the בדיעבד. So really, at the end of the day, that's like the only thing that I would say like, that's really what needs to be done. Because parents that know, children that, children, רב שלמה used to say, children can tell when parents cry over their children.
If you think they can't tell it at a younger age in life, they can tell it at a later age in life. In fact, children can also tell when parents cried to have their children. According to the Kabbalists, children can ממש sense and their their degree of closeness to their parents is based on them sensing how much their parents cried for them to come out into the world. Because every יידישע נשמה is connected to the way the first יידישע נשמה came into the world.
How did יצחק אבינו come into the world? The first Jewish baby that's born Jewish. He came through a hundred years and ninety years of a man and a woman crying to become parents, crying to bring a Jewish נשמה into the world. The more that you cry over your children coming into the world, so let's say I didn't do that before they were born, but תשובה goes beyond time and space. That means your children could be seven, they could be seventeen, they could be twenty-seven and completely off the דרך or on the דרך.
But at that moment that you cry for your child, you you leave that that atmosphere, you leave that space of what what we're usually limited by. And you create this bond because a child senses that. In the deepest way, that's what the children sense. So first of all, Hashem should give us a ברכה that our children should, as much as we should really, really see our children, our children should see us as well.
And when they see us, we shouldn't be freaked out by it, we should actually be happy. And and obviously, children that see their parents working on themselves leaves the biggest רשימו in the world. I I just always say, I say this because it's just something so natural for me. Some of you know my father.
My father once played here, right? Remember in the backyard? My אבא, I mean I have this thing that it's it's I wouldn't say this in front of him, but it's just to give you a taste. If I if I have to like attribute anything of feeling strength in my life, it's to something that used to happen when I was a teenager. When I was a teenager, my brother and I would share, we shared a room at a certain point. We moved back and forth a lot between ארץ ישראל and Los Angeles.
But when we were living both in ארץ ישראל and in Los Angeles, for long periods of time we shared a room, we shared a bedroom together. It was like like normal. It wasn't always sitting there singing ניגונים together. It was also like throwing stuff on the wall and this and that.
Although, I will say though, the first ניגונים were like late at night when one of us couldn't sleep because we had one part of a ניגון and the other would would משלים it, actually. Say listen to this, and we that's how we wrote our first ניגונים. We we we what's a ניגון like that? The first first CD, נכון? It's called אלך, it's it's it wasn't, it was way before he was, I think I was 18, 19, my brother was 17. That's how it was.
It was basically a bunch of ניגונים that we would משלים to each other. But sometimes it was normal teenagers living in Los Angeles or in רעננה and things would get normal, crazy and needed discipline. And if you, I, the only attribute that I could describe my father with is חן, but חן שבחן. If there was a מידה that we were working in ספירת העומר after מלכות, it was an eighth week, it would be חן.
Right? And חן שבחן would be my father's ספירה, my father, my אבא's מידה. One of the things that would happen is that if my father felt that he was too rough with the way that he was מחנך us during the day, when he thought we were sleeping at night, we would pretend to be asleep when he'd come next to our bed and start crying next to us. While he thought we were sleeping, and kisses on the forehead and say I love you with his South American accent. My father's from Argentina.
Those moments, I could tell you a lot of things about parenting, nice ווארטלך, cool ideas, this and that. Nothing comes remotely close, remotely close. to one of those moments that we sensed in those years. Nothing comes close to it.
So, אשרי הם שככה לו that we have we really become from people. Our DNA is a DNA and a level of parenting is a DNA that's מבוסס, it's based on the first parents in the first parents that brought a Jewish נשמה into the world, they cried. They cried a lot. They cried over יצחק for years and years and years.
And I'm sure they cried over יצחק afterwards. And in fact, שרה אמנו died as while crying over יצחק, so it doesn't stop. That's what makes us who we are. So on a on a level of למעשה, ask yourself the following question: What stops me from crying over my child? Not to depress you.
Sometimes I say these ווארטלאך and people like coming with a smile, look like they're sitting שבעה in the middle of a שיעור, it's not the point. The point is to empower, it's to enable us to be connected to what it is. So it is a it is a big זכות to learn right now with two physically, age-wise children in the room. How old is he? יהודה שלמה? Five.
He's five and she's and חיה לאה? She's two. She's two weeks old. But you know the בעל שם טוב used to ask children, the first thing he used to ask them is, what do you remember? Meaning, you know. The first thing he used to say.
So I wanted to look at one on a level of learning, I wanted to look at one נקודה. This is how we started learning our parenting שיעורים. One נקודה over here. Um that is just a little bit of Hebrew.
I don't know if you're used to learning text in Hebrew, especially if they're more, you know, deeper, like רב נחמן, like we're going to see right now. But I think that we're going to see something wonderful which will help us open our hearts and our minds to what השם had in mind when he thought of this concept of parents. If you think about it, השם could have created the world and there wouldn't be the concept of parenting. You could have created people in a different way, that everyone's siblings, I don't know what, right? We don't understand what else it could be because all we know is what we have to work with.
But because all we have to work with is what we have to work with, so our way of learning is saying, that's why we have to look at this method of השם's decision of choosing humanity in the world and go through here and see what did השם try to see what did השם have in mind. So this נקודה that we're going to be speaking about is a יסוד in רב נחמן. It's really from the אריז"ל. And that is the concept of what's called חלל הפנוי.
Has anyone heard of that concept before? חלל הפנוי? So do you know what חלל means? חלל means, what? I don't want to say. Like, I think I know but I don't want to. I think you actually said it. Yes, yeah.
And I give you a ברכה to never, ever, ever, ever be scared to say an answer that you might think is wrong. I'm sure the answer is right. I just feel like I'm taking over. Exactly.
Exactly. Wonder where that comes from. The wrong answer is the only one that you choose not to say, you know? I for sure heard it from listening to your parenting class. I don't know where else I would have heard it.
So חלל... No, well you, I mean, I do know you probably you and אליאב stay up late at night learning זוהר and כתבי אריז"ל, so I'm sure that's where you... Laundry, the only thing, wandering around, doing laundry. Hey, look, good laundry.
Okay. So this is a this is a concept called חלל הפנוי. חלל means space, and פנוי means like vacated. That's why we sing, we're in a vacated space.
בכלל, when you talk, when they talk about like Israeli NASA, it's called the חלל, that's how we refer to the outer space, a חלל. חלל also means when a חייל is killed, they're called חללים. Because suddenly there's a vacated, there was there was מקום, their physical presence is now missing, and it's חללים. And we, we're on the, יום הזכרון is the most intense day of the whole year in ארץ ישראל.
What does it mean חלילה וחס? You know when people say חס ושלום, חלילה... חס וחלילה. חלילה means forbid. Is it connected? Yeah, I guess it would be, because I guess if there will be a space that's open, then that will be a bad thing that would happen.
Yeah, it could be. I never thought about it, yeah, it could be. That's your job, right? That people feel that she works with people with, you know, a loss and there's like something that's missing. Missing.
Empty. Yeah. חלילה וחס. נכון, חס וחלילה.
חלילה לך, it's brought, this is a word that's brought in the Torah. חלילה לך. Which we share, we share it's right there. So let's see how רב נחמן, זכותו יגן עלינו, how he translates this, how he brings this concept down.
This is תורה ס"ד, it's the 64th teaching in ליקוטי מוהר"ן. רב נחמן says like this. It's very exciting to learn this with you right now, I should just know. It's like very, learning רב נחמן at your, at your טיש is a very special thing.
השם יתברך. ברוך שזכינו. השם יתברך, מחמת רחמנותו, ברא את העולם. So God from his רחמנות decided to create the world.
Okay, so you stop there for a second. That's a חידוש to most people. You actually have to convince most people living in today's day and age that the reason that השם created the world was not to punish us. It wasn't to make things bad for us.
השם's reason of creating the world was through his מידה of רחמנות. כי רצה לגלות רחמנותו. He wanted to reveal this מידה of compassion, of having רחמנות. ואם לא היה בריאת העולם, and if the world wasn't created, על מי היה מראה רחמנותו? If the world wasn't created, who would he show his, who would be able to display his compassion on? Which means that compassion is something that if you have it, but it's not able to manifest and express itself, it's not really anything.
Not just on others, but yourself as well. But that's for a whole other שיעור. Self-compassion. That's not for now.
It is for now, but we'd be here 'til מוצאי שבועות if we started going into that one. ועל כן ברא את כל הבריאה כדי להראות רחמנותו. So רבי נחמן says, when you think about for one second trying to understand the רצון השם, you see a whole world. Take a look at the trees right now.
Take a look at people. Take a look at anything in the קיום, in the existence of the world. I, what's that doing here? השם wanted to reveal his רחמנות, and that's why he created the world. You understand why that's such a, that's such a hard thing to to swallow because, does it feel like השם is just מגלה his רחמנות on us all day long? Not not necessarily.
But really that's what אריז"ל says, it's brought down from the אריז"ל, that is why השם created the world, to reveal this מידה of compassion, of mercy. וכאשר רצה השם יתברך לברוא את העולם, and when God wanted to create the world, לא היה מקום לבראו. There was no space to create the world. Why? מחמת שהיה הכל אין סוף.
Everything was אינסוף. Everything was אינסוף. על כן צמצם את האור לצדדים. So this is, we're now introduced to the concept of צמצום which I'm sure you've heard before, contraction.
There was a צמצום, so to speak, of the אור אינסוף, of the infinite light, which within the infinite light, you can't create anything, because it's just, like sometimes how we feel like, you know, you can't do anything when you're just always, always high, high, high רוחני, רוחני, רוחני, you can't do anything. So there you need to have צמצום הכוחות, you have to מצמצם that place in order to do something. על כן, so he says over here, היה הכל, על כן צמצם את האור לצדדים. God contracted the light to the sides, ועל ידי הצמצום הזה, נעשה חלל הפנוי.
And through this contraction, what was created was something that's called vacated space, חלל הפנוי. It's a classic teaching in רבי נחמן. ובתוך החלל הפנוי הזה, and in this vacated space, נתהוו כל הימים והמידות שהם בריאת העולם. Then the world was able to be created.
In other words, is this is this concept שטימינג? Like in other words, when something is just כולו אור, you can't do anything with it, right? Like even someone that is in love with the concept of a זיווג. So it's not enough to just be in love with the concept that you have a זיווג, you have to get married. Meaning you have to actually do something in order for this אור to manifest itself. So you have to מצמצם this light of love, and then you have to get busy with wedding invitations and all these things which seem so not, you know, part of this אור אינסוף, but there needs to be a צמצום, so to speak, in order for something to be created.
That's how השם created the world, רבי נחמן says. But and I'm not doing justice to this at all, just because this deserves many more hours, but we'll see לעניינינו what this has to, I'm sure you could already see how we're taking this to parenting. וזה החלל הפנוי היה מוכרח לבריאת העולם. In order to create the world, it had to be a חלל פנוי.
כי בלתי החלל הפנוי לא היה שום מקום לבריאת העולם. There wouldn't be space to create this world without the חלל פנוי. Now, there is in ברסלב today, there are many great great teachers. I don't know if they, do they, do the ברסלבר חבורה come to? with me so much here? They have a women's ברסלבר.
יהודה גולשבסקי? No. Penalis? יהודה גולשבסקי has a woman's שול. But she's been also once or twice. Yeah.
She's spoken in Breslov house. Does does חיים קרמר ever come here? Yeah. He's the Research Institute? Yeah. I'm saying I know that they have, I just, every two weeks they have a women's like get-together.
By Penalis? You know Penalis, right? Yeah. I I played their wedding. I I haven't seen them since, but yeah, yeah, I know the yeah. So what's her name? Miriam.
Yeah. And Yoshi? Yoshua? Yeah. So they have it every two weeks. Ah, very special.
They just go into the ספר, they do the Breslov. Very, very nice.Today there are amazing, amazing teachers in Breslov that are bringing down רבי נחמן's very lofty concepts into like somewhere that you could actually, you know, understand what רבי נחמן was saying. It's a very high thing, right, to bring this down. You need a lot of צמצום after צמצום after צמצום to understand what רבי נחמן says sometimes.
One of these teachers is a teacher, his name is רב ארז משה דורון. He does have a lot of his books translated into English. And this teaching that I saw is from a ספר of his that's on parenting based on רבי נחמן, called From Dust to Gold. It's a must.
Must, must, must, must, must. From Dust to Gold. We did a lot of the שיעורים based on on his teachings. And he's taking רבי נחמן, רבי נתן, the האריז"ל, other צדיקים, and that and parenting through that, it's mind-blowing, very, very beautiful.
So what he's going to show us now, and I I דווקא chose to do it in English because there's no time, with such limited amount of time that we have, to try to break through the Hebrew to then understand it in English. So let's just see what he says. This is a translation of it. This ספר is in English, by the way, From Dust to Gold.
It's also in Hebrew.So רב ארז משה דורון says like this: And I want you to to think about this personally speaking, okay? In your own way. A common pitfall afflicting almost every parent is the failure to recognize that the child as he, I should say, or she, really is, with his individual perception, nature, and desires, is not the child in the parent's mind. Okay, does anyone understand what that means? What do you think that means? Well what we had, is this thing recorded? Absolutely. Okay.
The vision that we had doesn't necessarily come into fruition. Like our השקפות necessarily, our, you know, the music that we love, or the, I don't know, I imagine that's what... Well, I just want to change one letter of one word that you said. You said the visions that we had? Had? Yeah, you have to take the D out and put in a V and an E.
Because those visions are still happening right now. It's not that once upon a time I had a certain מהלך. But now that I'm a parent, I realize life is much bigger and complicated. It's not it's not necessarily like that.
Those things linger on for years of preconceived notions of how it's supposed to be.What what's שנה ראשונה about? Sometimes people have שנה ראשונה for 20 years. Sometimes שנה ראשונה is like two, it takes two גלגולים to get out of שנה ראשונה. Because what's what's the problems with שנה ראשונה? It's not we don't get along or it things are difficult, it's that, wait a second, this is not how it's supposed to be or how I thought it's supposed to be. But that's not the right wording.
It's this is not how I think right now that it's supposed to be. So when you look back at what he's saying, I want to read the line that he says right now again. A common pitfall afflicting almost every parent is the failure to recognize that the child as he really is with his own individual perception, nature, and desires, is not the child in the parent's mind, right now. When we see these two as one, we are mixing reality with imagination.
Disappointed expectations breed disappointment in the actual child. The negative feelings aroused, resentment, anger, helplessness, settle on him or her.Now, what, well you know, let's read one more line and then we'll see. We don't say I'm disappointed because my expectations of my imaginary child weren't weren't fulfilled. That's not how we talk.
The child as I pictured him to myself hasn't been actualized. We say I'm disappointed in my child, the actual child. But that's such a dangerous thing because really, if you've thought about it for a second, the first line is really what's happening. You'd never say this, but that's actually what's happening when those moments come.
I'm disappointed... because my expectations of my imaginary child aren't being fulfilled. The child as I pictured them to myself, the child hasn't been actualized. מה זה קשור? What does it have to do with what we've what we learned in the beginning from רבי נחמן? What do you think? What's the connection to the secret of creation of the world of חלל הפנוי to this problem that we're running in over into over here which happens to everybody? So I think, again, just it seems to me, I've learned to like be very careful to say those words quite often because when you say this is it, that's that's not necessarily so.
So it's I learned this from my ראש ישיבה, רב ברוך דב, שהשם should give him good years, strong health, many more years. It see he always said he would always say, you know, it seems to me that רש"י is saying, and I then I was like, just say רש"י says, then I realized it's actually a חכמה to it. It seems to me that the concept of חלל הפנוי, the way השם created the world, and the way השם, and we believe that it's recreated all the time. So so too, the way you create a child and the way that you recreate a child is by creating empty space for them to grow, just like השם had to create empty space for the world to exist.
And the reason why השם created the world was to be מגלה his רחמנות, was to reveal his compassion. If I asked you right now, why do you have children, so if you're נשמה's we're talking, just your נשמה's, I think their answer would be so that we could מגלה our רחמנות as well. But the way that we can provide an an opportunity for מגלה רחמנות is that there needs to be a separation. There needs to be their own entity.
Because as long as I'm disappointed because my expectations of my imaginary child weren't fulfilled, that means you didn't really create anything. You didn't, you didn't, there's no חלל הפנוי. There's no empty space, nothing was really created. You just created an extension of yourself, but it's an illusion.
And everyone knows when you create extensions of yourself, the rebellion is happens much earlier, much stronger, and lasts for much, much, much longer. מאידך גיסא, on the other side, we have a very legitimate worry and concern. If there's too much separation, if there's too much חלל הפנוי, how do I know that I'm being responsible? So, there's people in here that have been parents for longer than me, much longer than me. This is not a learning to tell you what it is, it's a learning to arouse certain feelings so that we can say, okay, I see that when I step back here or I am more מקפיד here, this works, this seems to work for me better, right? So does this, what we we just said right now, does this play a role at all with the way that you've viewed your your parenting until now? What do you think? I could call on you and then it'd be much more, it'd be much more.
And if it wasn't being recorded, I'd have a lot to say. But I'm just giving you a ברכה to realize that it could be that there are many, many, many people out there that might need to hear what you want to say for their own parenting. No no pressure. But, trust me, if this wasn't being recorded, I'd probably also say a lot, you know, as well.
But we're we're we're learning בשם כל ישראל. So I, like, you know, you know what, you know my husband, אליהו, I don't think so, you know, he's like living in those two worlds of like New York and ארץ ישראל, like constantly, like, you know. And and and when you're giving over that to your children and setting consistence, you know, like my my son is like, you know, he gets the whole like secular world and he gets the whole love of ארץ ישראל. ברוך השם.
But when you're I think that you when you're teaching, I feel like it's very hard to be two places with your children. I think that they need, you know, because אליהו's such a two-faced person. And so and so beautiful because it's like he loves everyone. נכון.
And it's so wonderful and I love that, you know, and but I think it's I think it's very confusing for children. Right, but you could be in two places even living in ארץ ישראל, you should know. I know. You know what I mean? Like the concept of the two of the two worlds, that that that happens everywhere.
And I know I I I I completely know it. Look, let's face it, all of us grew up in, I mean I think, in modern worlds, right? But our נשמה's are screaming השם אחד ושמו אחד. So we live in that tension all the time. None of us chose to be raised and born into.
worlds. It's the way it's kind of what השם wanted. We didn't choose this. We didn't choose to have such a, you know, this רצוא ושוב back and forth all the time.
This is the way השם designed it for us, you know? I think for those of us who are not אליף. I think this is an ideal. Like, this is like what I strive for in my parenting, you know what I'm saying? And then there's reality and, you know, expectations and, you know, the unfortunate world that we live in that's like everything is like, how's that gonna look, you know what I'm saying? It's it's Absolutely. It also requires a lot of patience.
But I think Because you're not there yet. back and to like watch them do whatever it is. Like, that requires a lot of גבורה and patience in terms of holding yourself back from your initial gut reaction of, no, don't do that, or no, do this instead, and also then kind of like watching it fester and say, okay, is this good or not? Now is it time to jump in or not? I would add one word. I think it's patience and it's גבורה, and I think it's also the ability to be מבטל.
Like totally מבטל on like what I want, what I think, what I expect, you know? It's totally not about me. And that's an ideal in everything, but especially about parenting. Like, this is not about me, like totally being מבטל. Even though it's, it's even though it came through you, that's the that's the that's the wackiest thing about like this child would not be here if it wasn't for me, and yet, and yet, it's not about me.
That's like the the the one word you said is really that word, it's not what I expect. It's not what I expect. It's not what I think should be. רב שלמה once said that there's one word that is is wrong that it exists.
And that's the word should. Should is כפירה. Because should means something different than what's happening right now should happen. But if I רצון השם means that what's happening right now must mean this is something, a way that השם wants it to be.
My friend just wanted to speak to someone in ארץ ישראל. She was going through her, she went to speak to her son's רבנית, and she said, you stop saying the word should. Really? Replace it with want. Oh that's better.
That's רצון. Yeah. נכון? So like if you keep, I should have had, I should, she's like, נכון. want.
She's like, instead of coming to השם and saying, it should have been like this, cause who are you to come with חוצפה and come to השם? Who can say such a thing? נכון. It should, השם, it should have been that I lived, you know, she, that this is the way it should have been. So she said like, come to הקדוש ברוך הוא and say, השם, this is the way I would want it to be, but like, obviously you have a plan. So, But you see, but hold on, that's exactly the נקודה of the vacated space.
That's what it provides. חלל הפנוי, when I try to align the way I raise my children, like the way השם created the world, you can't say should because you you you you're the one that's saying, I'm pulling back, and I'm removing the should from what has to be, and I'm being open right now to the way השם יתברך wants it to be. I have to trust השם that he gave me enough כוחות to plant the seeds. But as the child grows up, be the way, and this is very weird, the way I'm מגלה my רחמנות on my children is not דוקא by keeping them like this.
There's another statement by רב נחמן in ליקוטי עצות that people would never all go to Uman or ever go to learn רבי נחמן if they just learned that line. And where he says over there that it's very good to ignore your children. You ever see that line? It's a crazy something, אוי ויי. Yeah, it's I I said it once, I never I never said it again in any שיעור.
But he says kind of like, it's it's very important to completely, at a certain place in life, לבלי he says the words לבלי להשגיח עליהם כלל. So it's one of those things that you have to be there and you have to hear the tone to really understand what he said because, you know, same thing with when he says stuff about doctors, you don't understand really. It's all about, you know, concepts of time and space, as well, context of time. But what it really means is on a on a very deep level is that the way that we מגלה our רחמנות is by showing our children that we trust them.
That can only happen through חלל הפנוי. You can't trust your child there's no, it doesn't when you say, you know, you tell your children, I trust you, but you keep them as an extension, they they you don't trust them. They remain a disappointed, an expectation of an imaginary child. You know when I saw this in a very beautiful way? ברוך השם, we have some very strong דוגמאות in our lives, my wife and I of parenting.
People in our lives that we we know, and and we say, you know, we let's let's go hang out with them more, just to be in their presence. Not necessarily ask them שאלות and שיטות, but somehow just being at their שבת table, you can learn much more than sitting down and having like a, okay, what do you do, what don't you do, right? So one of the people that has really been a beautiful השפעה for us has been, uh, ממש, it's probably my best friend, Rev Judah Michel. Do you know of Judah Michel? I know his kids. He's he's amazing.
He actually just finished 36 hours in in the concentration camps with שלהבת, the high school in Los Angeles. Judah is a big איד. He's a beautiful איד. He's broken like all of us in a really holy way, and he gets it.
You could talk to him. You could talk to him, you could tell him things that you don't think he wants to hear. He wants to hear what's actually happening inside. That kind of חבר, which I bless you all to have.So, he showed me a letter that he wrote to his daughter, and I've I mentioned it in another שיעור and the חברה asked to to receive this letter and I got רשות from him.
And it's like a contract that he wrote, him and his wife wrote with his daughter the day they bought her a cell phone. It was the deepest letter I think I ever saw in my life. I would love it. I know, I was just thinking, did you bring it? I'll send it to you.
Please. I was about teenagers. But I'm not on the פרשה yet. It's like I'm I'm like banking, I'm like banking on that there'll be an explosion in cell in in Wi-Fi world but there won't be cell phones by the time my kids.
And these kids are like getting cell phones much earlier than here. Yeah, we don't have it yet in our house. There are kids even in my תפארת's class, in third grade that have, they have like a a phone. Look, by us it's a little bit different.
We're we're surrounded by terrorists so it's a little bit different. But, um, but there are kids here that have cell phones at a young age. Yeah. Third grade is already old.
Really? Really. Really. Really. I have also first grade I think she had.
No? Yeah. השם השם ישמור. In the more in the very modern schools. They're up at nine FaceTiming with their friends on class chat.
It's so crazy cuz every it's, you know, any parenting book in the non-Jewish world, the first problem that is, I'm saying any modern book that comes out that I've noticed, the first thing that becomes like the, you know, like the first few pages, they talk about the reason why my relationship with my child, you know, with the cell phone. And I can't even get, I'm like, wait, I'm not even, you know, like you can't even get into the book. I want to hear what Judah Michel said. He was, she was I think the last person in her class to get a cell phone.
I think she was 15. Not not nine or 10. And 15 and I'm sure the cell phone that she got was also not like an iPhone that could, you know. I'm sure even that was, but the way what was written in that letter was this, my humble opinion, was the beauty and the manifestation of the חלל הפנוי, of admitting that this is the way that we have to raise our children with חלל הפנוי, which, like we said, the חלל הפנוי way of raising children, emulating the way השם created the world is so that we can be מגלה our רחמנות and so that we could show our children that we trust them.
Now if you sit, if you put your child in the heart of temptation and say I trust you, that's not חינוך, that's not חלל הפנוי. That's utter stupidity. That that's ממש utter stupidity. That's that's that's that's insanity.
So there's ways even within the חלל הפנוי you have to be, you know, you have to be a responsible parent. The way that he displayed that they, both, not just him, his wife also, very, very special woman, Aura, the way that they displayed the trust they have in the child, the non-expectation of the trust they have in the child, every parent should read this before כל נדרי. Tears. I'm going to send it to you.
Have his Mrs. today. Yeah. I'll find it on, today you can find these things any second.So we see like that that's the יסוד, not just of good parenting. It's the יסוד of Godly parenting.
Everything we're trying to do is והלכת בדרכיו, to walk in השם's ways. So even though like, okay, it doesn't feel like השם was a father and had a son, but the way השם created the world, we are our parents' creations. Our children are our creations. We emulate the way ריבונו של עולם does it.
The way the people, the reason why so many people are in such pain is because when they imagine השם, or what השם thinks about them, they would imagine השם saying, I'm disappointed because my expectations of my child weren't fulfilled. We just spoke about this this morning. People's pain. Most of my friends that checked out of יידישקייט in high school, I don't blame any of them.
I grew up both in Los Angeles and in רעננה in the same kind of world. The real ones left יידישקייט because they knew that it can't be that this is the way this cannot be a place that can hold me securely and safely with the רצון to want to go closer if the יידישקייט they're receiving is what smells like השם is probably disappointed in us because of the expectations. But when we come to the way רבי נחמן is taking us through this backward and saying, listen, for whatever the reasons are that people portray their רבונו של עולם like this, stop blaming them, take responsibility on yourself today, and say to yourself, can you imagine a יידישקייט that you realize that השם trusts you? And that he trusts you to feel bad when you're supposed to feel bad over certain things. That kind of that kind of relationship between parents and children is גן עדן in עולם הזה.
You know what's interesting though? I think, tell me if I'm, it's vice versa also. Meaning, people think השם has certain expectations of us, right? But people have certain expectations of השם. Very deep. So like if השם isn't acting according to their vision, they also check out.
I think that might happen even more than, uh, נכון. We were just, yeah, we we will have to have our עקדת יצחק like when we become from, you know, like we have to go through our מסירות נפש moment. And then let's see, are you going to still are you going to are you going to check out right after or are you going to stay there? נכון. That's very, very strong.
Yeah, we live with, there's really a world of delusionary expectations that we're surrounded by, and the חלל הפנוי really enables us to step back from all of that, create the space, trust השם, and saying just like you created the world, I'm approaching my creation like this. You should know how hard it is to speak in front of your baby right now. All these תורות, it's very, it's very, very special. It's very, very special.
Amazing, she's going to שיעורים at the at the age of two weeks old. I should thank the אהבה for opening her ears. And for being her neighbor. Unbelievable.
Unbelievable. We have no expectations of you, none. But they have expectations of us. You know our children's expectations really are for us to just be like this.
It's not, I need you to do that and give me that and give me that. Our children's real expectations is that we learn that we can trust them. You need a lot of תפילות for this stuff. It's not simple stuff at all, but it's very, very, very real.
Yeah. So how far does this go also, like I say with teenagers? Right. You know, I mean asking them certain questions or Right. you know, discussing that with them what went on when they went somewhere, like is that I'll tell you what I'll tell you.
you know, coming is There's so many different, there's so many different, you know, that's what we say חנוך לנער על פי דרכו. That's why whatever I say might be right for certain, right? This is a very individual תורה שבעל פה that you have to write. It's your own ספר that you and your husband are privileged to write in this world. It's a very deep ענין that with all the עצות and all the guidelines, that unless you cry over knowing what השם had in mind for your ספר to have been written, it's very hard to know.
I can only share what it was for me. When I left my house the first time to leave house, to go out and live on my own, go out to ישיבה, I was 17. For me it was it was too young, for me. It's not the point.
The point is that my mother told me something that her father told her, which was the the the night the the most important thing I ever heard. My mother told me, שלמה, go. But you can always come home. Not now that you're going on your own, there's an expectation of you to make it.
There's go. You're special. We believe in you. But if there's some reason for which you need to come back home, you can always come back home.
So by me, that's that's what I felt set me out into the world. Now, I'm not saying that's perfect even for me but that was my that was my thing. When you see this letter from Judah to his daughter, Judah North to their daughter, you'll see the way that the trust is given over can only be given over in a real way is if there's closeness that's established between you and your child. It's not a given that parents are close to their children just because they're their parents at all, at all, at all, at all, at all, at all.
I think sometimes we think that it is just because the מציאות is they're my children, I know them. It's not true at all. At all, at all, at all. But if if a certain degree of closeness is established over the years between a parent and a child, you have to trust that closeness and the way that you word things out for their way.
Listen, it's a it's it's a, the more children you have, the more ספרי תורות you have to write, you know, it's a it's a crazy thing. We shall be blessed with many healthy, beautiful, holy, הייליגע children. But the more children that we have, the more that it's means like השם expects me, sorry, השם believes in, you see, I got to catch myself. It's a very deep thing.
השם believes in me that I can write a ספר תורה that's just for them, that's just for them, that's just for them. So unless while I'm talking to השם to try and, oh, thank you. And unless I'm talking to השם יתברך while I'm talking to my child, I don't really, really have that much of a chance to to figure it out. How old are your children? Ranging from 16 to 9 months.
Wow. Wow. Yeah, it's interesting. It's a, yeah.
Very interesting. ברוך השם. What I'm trying to say, all stages. All stages.
All stages, all stages. And like it's true, each age and each child like brings their own ספר תורה. Yeah. They really do.
You could have a I'm just right. I I I think sometimes maybe I'm like too upfront about my about what I wonder about. So and I just say it. I think you're right with the expectations.
Maybe. Not even expectations, but just I'd like to be in the know and Right. Right. But maybe sometimes I don't have to be in the know.
I think that's what I'm trying to figure. נכון. נכון, absolutely. That's the that's the world of trusting in the רבונו של עולם.
Like at a certain point, you have to trust that the that the that the plants that the the seeds that you planted, they were they were real and they were חזק and they were filled with קדושה, and they were filled with believing in my children that they'll figure it out, not that they'll meet my expectations. Right. I think it's more of the world that they're in that's scary than even, you know. There was a, I saw something, a saying somewhere, you know, if I can just, I don't know, something like raise my child without the world around, with without the world around them, it would be just so much easier.
So that's what it is. I think I don't trust the world more than it is I don't trust my child. נכון. And it's natural, I'm saying, to fall into something and it's very natural, even a good child with the wrong friends or the wrong environment or the wrong, you know.
I heard Reb Weinberger once say that you want to know what a success story is? If your children still want something to do with you once they're married. He didn't say if they're, you know, פרום, ירא שמים, all those, he says if your children, something something like this, if your children are still involved that they want to have a relationship with you once they're out of the house. It's true. And and and then when you said that, so the following week Rabbi spoke, and all his daughters are sitting in the front row.
Oh wow. And they were, and as he was speaking they were all sitting there crying. And I and I emailed you. You did.
And I was like, I just want you to know, he just said that and literally every one of his daughters are sitting like holding on to every word, the tears coming down and after he was so sweet because they all like surrounded him. Yeah. You know, and it was just the sweetest, I don't know if you remember that share, I was just like, this is I remember when you when you, yeah. It's true though.
I mean my kids haven't been married for so long, my oldest one, but it's the biggest compliment that like it means so much more now after they're married that they want something to do with me. More than when they were, right? Right, totally. Yes. Right.
But because now is there is there another, is there is there a bigger... What's that? It's by choice. It's by choice, but it's also because now just because of the by means of that they're married, there's such a חלל פנוי. No, but it's it's what it is is I I again, I sound like a, you know what I'm saying? Like my one year and two months, you know, but it's ממש the biggest compliment.
Yeah. That they want to come back, that they want my advice, that they want my participation in, you know, whatever. Like, Yeah. It just means so much more now.
Yeah. It's like נחת. It's like okay, like maybe I, you know. I I I just want, we were just on a eight-hour flight coming home from London.
Uh huh. You know, no matter what, no matter where you look there's someone watching. Even if you tell your kid they can't watch, they just have to turn to the right, to the left. Right.
That's it. Like they they might not hear it, but they could see everything. so he gave me this, this, the right words to say tonight, my fortune cookie. So I turned to him and said, עקיבא, I'm not going to stand on top of you.
I'm not going to tell you what to watch because everyone's watching, even if I tell you. Right. I said, I trust you. I said, I trust you that if something that's being, that that's on playing, your neighbor, the guy in front, because you could see like there's no, there's no way to protect your children.
Like I remember, like I mean my little ones I can distract them. נכון. And that's all I said to him. And and and you looked at me and said, okay, you know, and I felt that had that was it.
Like I trust you that if something is not for your eyes, then you are going to put something else on, or you're not going to look at your neighbor and My mother used to say to me when I was first started driving, I trust you, I just don't trust the other driver on the road, right? And I trust my kid, I just don't trust around him, you know. Right. That's so that so now the other trust in in השם has to really take a, take front seat, you know. Because השם, it can't be that השם created us and put us in the world to ignore the world.
Right. It's to maneuver through the world with making wise decisions, while essentially at the end, or in the beginning, realizing that at the end of the day, I could trust my child, but for my child to really walk through שערי צדק, אבוא בם אודך. That's the רחמנא של הקדוש ברוך הוא. That's when we have to cry.
It's true. There's no other way. That's where the דאווענען, that's what it is. That's where the בעל שם טוב told those parents, listen, you could do everything right.
You could do everything right. But if you're not crying over it, you won't feel that it's right. It won't, it won't, it won't שטים with you. It won't, it won't feel that it's right.
And if we we're talking about establishing closeness, children can sense when their parents are crying over them. Not, oh, my children are so bad, just what a crazy world it is out there. What a crazy world it is out there. I mean, I've seen this, again, my children are eight, seven, just about three, and one and a half.
So I'm seeing it differently, a little bit younger than some of you. But I mean, this is around the same range with with many of us. To whatever extent that my child shows, tells me about something weird or dirty that another kid said in class, and they come to me and they say it to me with like בושה, that's the highest moment in the world, actually. Because it's not that, oh my God, my children, my child heard something wrong, it's that how do they interpret it and what do they do with it? If they come to אבא? So what do you say when they come to you? I I say, oh, wow.
I say, I'm so happy that you came and told me this. Thank you so much for bringing me in. I because you and I know this is not our, this is not our שיטה. This is just not our שיטה, you know.
Whatever, this is already goes into a bigger conversation about communities we decide to live in, those that we don't. But even in the communities that we're certain that they would be best for us, even then, even then we're shocked sometimes as to what ended up happening. But it all goes back to the expectation that I have on my child, that even if I don't say it, they sense it. Even if I don't verbalize, these are my expectations, if that's what's happening inside of me, they pick up on that stronger than anything else in the world.
I apologize, I have to go now because I have to take the train to the city. Everyone stay as long as you want. No problem. We're finishing in a few minutes.
Stay as long as you want. You stay as long as you want. Thanks a million. Thank you, I do.
Of course, thank you. Thank you so so much. So we're just going to finish this last thing over here. Yeah, yeah.
I know, there was, I just once heard, because I know this is something that comes up in schools, especially. The last school I worked in, the rabbi, Rabbi Dweck said, he came into my class because it was a huge issue. And he said to them, the same tongue that says ברכות and דאווענען to השם, השם can't listen to your תפילות when you're using it for foul language. So you only have one tongue and you need to decide what you're going to do with it, which I thought was like, I use it with my kids all the time if they tell me things like that.
That's nice. And and also going back to the, the crying. So רבי, you know, so he he also, this is פרשת חיי שרה, he was saying that, you know, he he wrote about it that like there was a mother who had a son who was like, you know, like learning amazing and like, and then like went to the ראש ישיבה and the ראש ישיבה didn't like give compliments about his, about their son. The mother started getting worried and she sent the father, \"Go speak to him, go find him, what's going on?\" And you can imagine how it was for the wife, but imagine how it was for their child to tell you how incredible your wife, all these issues that she's been having and she succeeded.
And now her תפילות are a little bit tired. So this is something I want to keep on my refrigerator. Don't go back and tell your wife how wonderful. Let her keep on davening, let the tears go strong.
There's so much more that he has to achieve. We think that at 15, okay, he got, or sometimes. But we have no idea what the next few years. So I thought that was so beautiful that the mothers doesn't have to know.
If we think our kids are so perfect, then our תפילות, we won't be crying. Right. נכון מאוד.So he ends up here, this רב הערש משה דראן, just to end off this, this piece over here, both we and our children will benefit greatly from our making a distinction between the child as he exists in our imaginations and the child as he really is. Everyone wins like this.
Everyone gets closer to what matters when we make the distinction between the two things. Through this secret of חלל הפנוי, through the secret of vacated space through which השם created the world. That's what, that's how we reenact it over and over and over and over again. Now the piece on the bottom, which we're not going to do because it's a whole another, this is what happens sometimes you could prepare something but really השם just wants you to go over two words.
It's fine. Again, no expectations. השתדלות. And then, it happens to me at concerts all the time.
I have an idea, this is going to sound really good because I have these musicians, the light, the way things work here, this is what I really… and then you see what the וועלט needed, what the crowd needed that night, was just to sing one of your old ones that touches a certain chord and not necessarily be blown away by what you think is the new ניגון that's going to hit them. You know how much trust it takes to let go of that? Oh my God. You have to because what is a concert? You're putting your soul on display. And if people like what your soul's expressing, they clap.
And if they don't, your soul's bare right in front of them and it's the most vulnerable… What's that? Humbling. Humbling as well, but very vulnerable place to be in. So with שיעורים, it's very much the same as well. But this next piece, but you could see it on your own, רב נתן explains that essentially, and this, this actually is where we really started the parenting שיעור was, and I'll just ask you if you want to say an answer, why did you have children? Why did you have children? So we already know that the right answer should be to be מגלה מאי רחמנותא, right? That's what we know based on what we already learned, right? That's one right answer.
If you're a Kabbalist, you'll probably say that לכתחילה, right? But usually when you ask people that question, why did you have children? And if you preface by saying, what is the reason that you have children, that you're going to continue to have children if that's where you're at in life right now, right? So it's a very startling question because we realize that many of us have children for the same reason we got married. Why did we get married? Because that's what you do. It's what you do. Certain age, this is what you do, social norms.
Ah, the התורה says. No, it's what you… התורה says a lot of things we don't do that, right? Why did you get married? Because that's what you do. Why did you have children? Why do you have children? Because that's what you do. That's not why we have children.
It might be that's the reason why the world has children. Jewish parents don't bring children into the world because that's what we do. And הלוואי that each of us our מחשבות when we're bringing children into the world is פרו ורבו, I'm thinking about the מצווה and… רב נתן says in this piece down here is that each child that comes in the world brings a new דרך of removing הסתרה מהשם. Each child with their perception of השם, the way that they perceive השם, repeals off another layer of concealment between us and between the world and הקדוש ברוך הוא.
So now we, what we learn is there's no way for a child to מגלה, to reveal their חידוש of finding השם in the world if we don't remove ourselves and allow them to do that. There's no way. It just doesn't, it doesn't, they don't feel, no one feels fulfilled here. If I understand what רב נתן says is that that's what a child is coming into the world to do, to bring a new perception.
of godliness which never existed before. It's their חידוש. By the way, it was also yours and yours and yours and mine when we were born. We also have maybe we haven't manifested it yet because some of us, we can be parents, but in our minds and our parents' minds, we're still an extension of them.
Just because we're parents now doesn't mean we stop being children. Sometimes we carry that that that ענין our whole lives, feeling like our parents' expectations of us are dictating the way that we see ourselves, unfortunately. But essentially this is what's happening. רבי נתן says, what the power of bringing a Jewish baby into the world is to show us another way to get close to הקדוש ברוך הוא.
And of course, the more Jewish children that we come into the world, the less potential, the more potential for removing concealment exists. But the only way for them to be able to do that is if we give them the space to do that תפקיד in the world.Everything we're saying right now is very, very, very not simple and yet very simple at the same time. It's not simple because of the world that we live in, but it's very simple when the when I establish the world that I'm providing for my children to be about הקדוש ברוך הוא. It's the most simple thing in the world.
Just like you told your son. That's a very simple statement. I I trust you on that plane. So, it's very not simple because of what he's surrounded by.
But when you give it over to your child, it's got to come from the most תמימות ופשיטות way of speaking. A child can pick up on that. So הלוואי we should be privileged and blessed to really tap into these words רבי נחמן brought down and to believe that the ריבונו של עולם believes in us and he knew what he was doing when he gave us the children that he gave us. Only השם gave us the children that he gave us.
It's time to really believe more in the fact that God knew exactly what he was doing when he chose to put these נשמות in in our in our domain, in our אחריות, in our hearts, in our souls. And בעזרת השם, the נביא, the words we say right before in שבת הגדול the נביא says, הנה אנוכי שולח לכם את אליהו הנביא. One of the signs of משיח coming is והשיב לב אבות על בנים ולב בנים על אבותם, which means that parents and children would just ממש trust each other. Restoring of the heart means the heart's open to, I trust you.
It's crazy out there. I trust you, אבא. And אבא says to his son, mother to daughter, whatever it is, we really trust each other. And בעזרת השם like that we'll be זוכה to receive משיח צדקנו with the גאולה שלמה ואמיתית במהרה בימינו אמן.
אמן. Okay, יישר כח. Thank you so much for coming.