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In this shiur, Rav Dov Ber Cohen reframes teshuva not as a word of burden or guilt, but as a warm and healing return to one's truest self. Drawing on Shabbat Shuvah and Parshas Ha'azinu, he teaches th
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.
If you’re seeking clarity without pressure, growth without guilt, and spirituality that actually changes how you live - this podcast is for you.
Okay, so we're doing tuva together. And remember what we said yesterday? Tuva, the word tuva, should be one of the most healing, warm, fuzzy, loving, releasing, amazing words that you can hear. But for most people it's the opposite. Most people hear the word tuva, sometimes translated as repentance, and they're like, tuva, I have to repent. I'm a... Opposite. Tuva means I'm coming home. I'm coming home. Coming home to see my wife and children. I've been away for a bit. Coming home to see my wife and children. My children are going to run up to me and jump on me. And hug me and squeeze me and my wife can be in the back door, proud. And they're all going to get on the couch together, we're going to cuddle. That's what tuva is meant to be. Returning to Hashem. And we said, why is that so awesome? It's because it's your natural state of being. That's why it's called tuva, you're returning. You're returning to where you're meant to be. And we said, where are you meant to be? You're meant to be in a state of presence. Nochechut. One of my favorite Hebrew words, nochechut. Means I'm present. I'm here. I'm present. When my wife is speaking to me, she's my whole world. You know who's very good at being present? Kids. Quite small kids, when they're playing with toys. They made this whole world for themselves. And they've got the car is going on the road and it's going to the police station. And they're so in it, they're living that reality, that when, as a parent, you don't realize that, so he says, it's dinner time and you come and just take the car away. And you just think I took the toy away, you didn't. You just destroyed their whole world. That's why they have imaginary friends. And they really feel that. One time, I was in South Africa, my daughter was, she must have been six, maybe a bit younger, my daughter was six, my son was four, and my wife and son were sitting on the beach, and me and my daughter were jumping in the waves together. And I was thinking to myself, this is so awesome. I was looking at my wife and my son, and I was like, Sonny, we're my daughter. And I had immense gratitude. But then I looked at my daughter, what was my daughter doing? Just jumping in the waves. She was squealing with delight. She was just like, ooh, shrieking, jumping in the waves. She wasn't even thinking I'm grateful. She wasn't even thinking, I. She was just part of the waves. And in a way, that's a much higher level. In a way, it's a higher level to be thinking gratitude. So they both have their thing, but to just be completely present in experience. That's where we want to be. And that's where Hashem is. Where is Hashem? David. Hashem is... Where and when is Hashem? Where and when is Hashem? Say the two words I want you to say. Where and when is Hashem? Here and now, exactly. Hashem is here and now. All the time. As we said, we did mention yesterday that there's only now. There's no past or future. And when it was the past, it was now. You're thinking I did something yesterday, and you're thinking about the past, but when you were doing it, it was now. And you're thinking about something you're going to do tomorrow, but when you get there, it will be now. Life is now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now, now. But people are very, very, very, very, very rarely here and now. Most people are there and sometime else. You're on vacation next month. That's where you are. So the sages say you are where your thoughts are. You are where... Obviously, you're not physically where your thoughts are, but if I'm sitting in Jerusalem, and I'm just daydreaming about being in Sfat, and I'm walking through the streets of Sfat, where am I? So you're all going to say you're in Jerusalem. You're thinking about Sfat. But the truth is, what defines you more? Your body or your thoughts? Your thoughts say a lot more about who you are. So really, spiritually speaking, at that point, you are in Sfat, or psychologically speaking, that's where you are. You could be so there that someone could call your name, you can't even hear them for that moment. I'm just not here. So that's where most people live. They live somewhere else at another time. They live in the past, somewhere else or in the future somewhere else, which is a big problem because Hashem is only here and now. Hashem is only here and now. So what we have to do is we have to return to here and now. Although we said that Judaism's got this very powerful balance. There's one of my favorite books, it's called The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle. I actually suggest you read it. It's a very good book. When I was in an ashram in India, I lived in Asia for six years, and I fasted once for seven days. And I was sitting on the roof of this place looking down the valley, and I was fasting, and I read this book, Power of Now, which I still say today, until today is the most influential book in my life, maybe Torah as well. But I'm going to go with Power of Now for now. Although it's only half the story. Because Power of Now is just saying you have to become here and now because that's where life is. But there's no relationship. There's no relationship with Hashem. There's no yearning. There's no striving. It just says be now, which is very good. That's the first part. But Judaism says the past and future do serve a purpose. The future gives you a little compass of where I want to go somewhere. Life isn't about only being now. Life is about getting somewhere. God bless you, child. As it says at the beginning, as it says at the beginning, which means the first thing you have to do on your journey is work out where do I want to get to? Because if you don't know where you're going, you're not going to get there. Or I guess anywhere you go, you'll get there. You want to make sure you're climbing up the right mountain, which most people are not climbing up the right mountain. So even the successful ones who got to the top of the mountain, they just got to the top of the wrong mountain. So the first thing you have to do is make sure you're climbing up the right mountain. So you have to look and see the top of the mountain, but then you have to come back and take your step now. Because it's actually too overwhelming. If you're looking up top of the mountain, you're going to trip and you're going to fall or you'll be overwhelmed. It's just too much. Life's too much. So you want to be looking at you want to glance up. This is my vision and that inspires you, but then look down. Now let's go now. Step by step, just now. You just got to do now. Be so now. And if you do, bless you, if you do every now, how you're meant to do your nows, then you'll get to where you need to go as long as you keep looking up once in a while. This is where I'm going now. This is where I'm going now. So really I think that's what Shabbat is. Shabbat is looking up a little bit. Where am I going? And also Shabbat is the ultimate just being now. Because Shabbat is a day of no phones, no work, no screens. No phones, no work, no screens, no money. What do most people nowadays do all day, every day? Work, phone, screens, money. Whoever wrote the Torah, I don't know who that's going to be, but obviously has some unbelievable insight about the end of days. And says we're going to have a whole nation of zombies. There's going to be a whole nation of people sucked into this flashing rectangle. 75% of their waking hours, by the way. I'm sure for many people it's more than that. They're sucked into a flashing rectangle. And it's going to be all about money and possessions and social status. What I'm going to do is I'm going to set up this meditation retreat one day a week and say you can't do that. There's no more escaping. You just have to be now. Now you can ruin it and keep thinking about tomorrow whilst you're in Shabbat. Or what time does Shabbat finish so I can check the sports results. But you don't want to do that. So Shabbat is the ultimate what am I running around for? What's the real purpose of life? But it's also the ultimate I'm just being now. And I'll tell you a little secret. It's the same thing. Because the purpose is to be now. That is the actual purpose. The purpose is to be now. Here and now. But what does that really mean? The Masid Al-Shajarim says it's called kirvat elokim. Based on tehillim which means spiritual awareness. Experiencing spiritual awareness. Being in a state of experience experiencing your intrinsic connection to God. Because you can never not be connected to God. You're always connected to God. You just don't feel connected to God because you're connected to your business and your phone more than you're connected to God. And you're connected to your physical cravings. And you're connected to your ego needs. You're connected to basically everything apart from God. Yay! You should be very happy when you diagnose your sickness by the way. You should be like, yay! Now I know
I didn't blow my mind, some years I did more than others. It was really nice, I really enjoyed the davening, I really did, I loved davening. And the guests were nice, and the food was nice, and it was nice. It wasn't a completely outer body spiritual experience, but it was really, really nice. And I'm okay, I like that. I don't need some crazy peak experience to feel alive. That's why most people need some, I've got to go bungee jumping to feel alive. I've got to do something. I've got to listen to music. Because my heart's not beating. I've got to get out of my mind somehow. I've got to expand my mind. But that's not expanding my mind. So menucha is being at ease. So there's a being at ease after putting in the work, which is what Shabbat is. So it's not, it's the weekend man, it's not that, it's a different thing. Like when I train kickboxing, I train, and by the end I'm done. I'm done. If I can still move at the end, I'm going to keep doing press-ups until I can't. But the trainer knows, and you do plank, and you've done crazy training and drills and sparring and can't breathe. And then after that you have to do more burpees and plank. I'm done. But that feeling of just lying there, sweating like, bleeding, it's just so good. It's just so good. However, there's a menucha that came before the sixth day. The Shabbat that came before creation was just the essence of reality, which is menucha. The universe came out of stillness. Stillness is the reality. The reality is quiet. I don't know if you've ever actually heard silence. Has anyone here heard silence? Very rare. The only time I've heard silence, no, the only few times is literally when I was in the middle of the desert on my own with no wind. The Negev, I spent 40 days walking from the Lebanese border to Eilat, 1,100 kilometers, but 19 of those days was in the desert. And I had friends with me for some of the time, but some of the time I was completely on my own in the desert, no wind, silence. It's very rare to have silence. If you stop now. No, but you heard the dude-dude, but it was completely noisy before the dude-dude. There was the ruffling and the aircon and the thing. You're living in a very noisy, hustly-bustly world. I don't know if you got onto that. So you never actually experience the essence of reality, which is still and quiet, silence. Out of silence, noise comes. But it goes back into silence. This is one of your major meditations that you're going to have to be doing, which is just listen to the sounds, let them come, without judging. That's a car, I don't like that sound. That's a bird, I like that sound. That's good for my meditation. No, just let sounds come. But then you can also start trying to hear the quiet in between the sounds. The car come, dude, but then it goes back into silence. The essence of reality is silence. Noise is put on top of silence. Noise is put on top of silence, but reality is silence. Most people never get to experience the essence of reality, because it's always noise. So that's actually teaching a much deeper thing, which is there's only two things in creation, which is consciousness and content of consciousness. There's your soul, basically, which is a blank screen, and then there's what's ever being projected onto the blank screen. So you have a blank screen. Whatever movie is being projected onto the blank screen, that's what's showing there. But you turn off the movie, the blank screen comes back. Your soul is, so to speak, a blank screen. It's just consciousness. But you're having projection onto your consciousness all the time. Sights, your five senses, sight, sounds, touch, taste, and smell. But you're also having thoughts and emotions projected onto your consciousness the whole time. Who's experiencing your emotions? Pardon? Who's experiencing the physical manifestation of your emotions in the body? Whose emotions are they? Who are you? You're not your emotions. Are you your thoughts? No, you have thoughts that you don't like, you don't believe, you let go of your thoughts. Who are you? Who's experiencing the thoughts? You? Who are you? Beautiful. So you're just pure consciousness. You're just soul. But you're so caught in the projection of the external and internal world, you never experience yourself. You never just experience yourself, that I exist. So we have a term for that, it's called chavaya, which modern Hebrew has just taken to mean experience. But it really means a deep inner experience. So a camera can take a picture of anything apart from itself. The reason you can't do tuba for that, the reason you can't do tuba for that is because you're so cut off from your soul if you would do that. When you do that, your neshama is like, oh God, no, please. Why? Don't do that. It's like, please, anything, eat pig, anything, just don't do that. Your soul is like, oh, you let me down so much. My body, the soul's like, my body's meant to represent me, and you're doing the opposite. Oh my, please, don't do it. The soul leaves you at that point. Gone. I don't know how you get it back at that point. There's nothing you can do. Murder, you can do tuba for that. I'm not sure you can ever get yourself back. You've so damaged your spirituality. But anyway. So on Shabbat, basically he's saying what I'm saying. Well, I'm saying what he's saying. I got it from here. That every Shabbat, there's immense divine tuba. Friday, Erev Shabbat, is really a day of tuba. Because I'm creating the vessel to receive the amazing spiritual light that's coming into the world. So Friday, especially after Chatzot, after midday on Friday, we're in Shabbat. You're putting everything, that's it, you're done. You're not going on social media after midday on Friday. How are you building your vessel to receive Hashem? No, one minute before the brother goes, dude, okay, hold on, just my last Instagram, Snapchat. It's like, no, that happens before Chatzot. After Chatzot, put it away. You're already, you've got to start getting in the zone. You've got to be able to receive. So you've got to create a vessel to be able to receive. So don't fill your vessel with, even Rabbi Dov Barefischl on Instagram. It's better than most, but after Chatzot, don't misuse my Instagram page by going on it after midday on Friday. Don't misuse me. You can misuse your own face muscles to do those photos, but don't you misuse my Instagram page to mess up your Shabbat. So here we go, we've got Pashas Ha'ezinu, which was the whole class was actually meant to be about Pashas Ha'ezinu. We've only got about two minutes left, but there you go. So this is it, Pashas Ha'ezinu, which we basically read most years. Sometimes it's Vayelech, but most years Shabbat, Shuvah is Pashas Ha'ezinu. And I'm going to summarize a little bit this amazing piece from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. And it says this. It begins, says this, Ha'ezinu HaShemayim va'adabera. The heavens should hear, and I will speak. V'tishma ha'aretz, and the earth should hear. So everyone's got this question, the word Ha'ezinu, Ha'ezin is closer than the word Sh'ma. We don't have time to go into that now, but by saying Ha'ezinu HaShemayim, V'tishma ha'aretz, it's saying that the Shemayim is closer than the Ha'aretz. Just take our word for it. Those words mean that. So we've got a question, how can you say that because we're in the world, how can you say we're closer to the heavens than we are to the earth? That's our question based on this passage. So this is it. It's talking about every Jew. She'yesh l'kol Yehudi ha'koyach liyot korav l'Shemayim v'rachok man ha'aretz. Because really, every Jew is actually more spiritual than physical in your essence. Your soul is Helei Elokam Yimam Mamesh. Your soul is just full of Hashem, which means love and joy. Your essence is love and joy. If you're not experiencing consistent love and joy, it means that you got into your body, ego, mind state, but your actual state is consistent love and joy. Not based on any external factor, just that's the essence. The blank screen, the experience of blank screen with nothing projected on it is Ahava V'Simcha and Yira, actually, which means awe. It's like, wow. That's the experience when your mind's not messing everything up. You can get to the state where you're much more taken up in spiritual things. You're thinking about the spirituality of Shabbat more than the food and the guests. That's what I'm thinking about. Many people, when it's coming up to Rosh Hashanah, they're thinking a bit more about the apples and honey than they are about the Shabbat, for example. Which is fine. It's also okay. Sorry, I said the two main avodahs on Shabbat. The one is
You need that. The words took us so far, but then you have to leave the words behind and just go with that. That's why our show on Shabbat morning, we dive in like four hours. I gotta say, I'm not going to finish the prayer. Anyway, I did it very quickly. I became religious when I was 30. So I see lots of people, they mess up their children, especially Balchubas mess up their children a lot, but everyone's messing up their children. So I said, I just want to show my kids how beautiful everything is. So Shabbat is so joyful and wonderful, and no pressure. I don't make my kids bench, ever. I said, if you want to bench, you can bench with me. And they kind of usually do, but I've never said, because otherwise benching becomes a punishment. Hey, come to Shul, don't come to Shul. And I said, I was so happy to take them to my Shul, which we sing a lot, to show them prayer isn't just this boring mumbling words. We're, you know, look at these people singing and jumping. But now that my son's 12, he's like, just get on with it. Exactly the opposite. He's like, why? It's just finished now, move. And I'm like, look how beautiful, we're all jumping and singing and dancing. He's just like, get on with it. It's really funny. So you could never get it right, I guess. You could try. So I don't make him go to that Shul if he doesn't want to. I'm like, okay, we'll go to like... Anyway, that's a different story. So where are we now? Singing Shabbat. Once I'm thinking about singing on Shabbat, I can't read anymore. The words are just too finite. Who can read words anymore? So here we go. So really, in your essence, your soul is yearning for Nigunim more than the food on Shabbat. In fact, the Nativ of Shalom says, when it says that the food is Eineg Shabbat, it doesn't mean the food itself is Eineg Shabbat, the food is paying off the body so that the soul can experience Eineg Shabbat. That's what the food is there for. But real Eineg Shabbat is the singing. That's what's taking you somewhere. It says, the real Eineg is on Hashem. Although we say the food on Shabbat does have very high spiritual vibration. But the whole, you don't have calories for dessert on Shabbat, not true. It's not like you get a second stomach on Shabbat, a dessert stomach, you don't. You don't. Anyway. Hold on. But you're going against everything that we say. The whole purpose of life is to be in this world. You're not a Buddhist monk singing on a mountain. So what are you talking about that you're really high and we're close to Shemaim and we're far from the world? Because that's not what a Jew is meant to be. He's meant to be in the world. Not separate from the world. So that's the second question. You're meant to be in this world. You're not meant to be close to heaven. You're meant to be in this world. That's our question. The answer to these two questions is Yes, we're in this world and we're meant to be in this world. We're in this world. You're still connected to Hashem. You're never not connected to Hashem. Many people think the purpose of life is to get connected to Hashem. I'm here to get connected to Hashem. That's not the purpose of life. You're always connected to Hashem. You're here to experience the connection to Hashem. You're here to experience that you are connected to Hashem. You're never not connected to Hashem. So you're always connected to Hashem. All the time. So your soul is an expression of Hashem. A sunray is always connected to the sun. If the sunray isn't connected to the sun then there is no sunray. The whole essence of the sunray is an expression of the sun. So if the sunray is there like, you know what, I just don't feel connected to the sun because it's down in this world. The sunray is shining on a muddy puddle. And he's like, I'm just feeling in a muddy puddle. He's like, dude, look up. You only exist because you're emanating from the sun. Don't forget. Don't forget. That's what chuvah is. Just remember where I come from. Even if I'm sitting in some muddy puddle of self-loathing at the moment. If I look up a little bit I'm actually a ray of sun. You're a ray of love and joy. That's what you are. Shut up. So even in this world that we are in this world you are closer to Shemaim. You are literally, your essence is closer to spirituality than this world. Because we're so high and because we're so holy we can't come down here. We can come. That's what we're meant to do. We can establish within the physicality the heavenliness, the ruchnius. We can bring it down. And we can uplift the world. We can sanctify the world. We can take this world and we can use it to bring God into the world. That's what we do. So with our money and with our food and with our clothes and with everything we do you don't have to escape from those things. You just have to use them as an expression of godliness in the world. That's why how you dress is actually quite important. We think dressing you have to be presentable. So this whole idea is even stronger in these 10 days of chuvah. Because these are the days where we say So basically Hashem's brought heaven much closer down. Whatever that means. Shemaim is much closer. For these 10 days of the year heaven is much closer. We said before during these days we don't say we say So people think wow a melech is a much greater name. It's not. Ha'el is a much greater name. It's a much loftier name. Ha'melech is actually a very almost low name. But it's very attainable. Relating to God as a king is actually very attainable. Relating to God as the almighty lofty essence of reality is not attainable. King's very attainable. So Hashem's like I'm here for you. And he's a good king. And therefore spirituality is more available. Remember what we said in the last class though is that when it is more available and easier and you should be feeling better and happier during these days that's when the Yetzirah steps in even more and makes you oh I know these are the best days and I'm not doing it. Exactly why is that happening? So that you can just ignore it and that itself would be an amazing chuvah. We say this every class very important. When your Yetzirah comes you think you've fallen. You haven't. You've now been given opportunity to go higher. Your Yetzirah comes when you're about to break through to something holy. So when it comes don't get depressed and say oh I messed up. Be like wow I'm very excited because my Yetzirah comes it means I must be getting somewhere. If you're doing bad things if you're sitting on the couch drinking beer and playing video games the Yetzirah is not coming so he's leaving you alone. In the middle of mincha that's when your Yetzirah comes. Because when you're doing bad things your Yetzirah is like I don't need when you're doing good things the Yetzirah so you should be very excited. Be like oh my goodness I'm about to hit something big here. And then you overcome the Yetzirah that itself is amazing chuvah. This is the greatness of a Jew. Even though we're very close to Shemaim We don't get rid of being in this world. We're here. We're here. To uplift the world and bring Hashem into the world. We know how to reveal the holiness within the lowly physical world. That means our own body and how we dress and how we eat and how we use our money and how we have relationships with people. Everything we do. But it also means that we're bringing the Shabbat from before creation into creation. The stillness. The nowness. The presence. I'm just being here. And then you stop hearing just all the sounds and you start hearing the quiet that's behind everything. And that's your own neshama. And that's called chuvah. And that's Hashem. Shuvah Yisraa At Hashem Akif. Shabbat Shabbat Shabbat