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This Jewish Inspiration Podcast is dedicated to learning, understanding and enhancing our relationship with Hashem by working on improving our G-d given soul traits and aspiring to reflect His holy name each and every day. The goal is for each listener to hear something inspirational with each episode that will enhance their life.
Welcome back my dear friends to way number 13. Way number 13 means be yeshuv, which means deliberation. Be calm in your learning. The first Mishnah in Ethics of Our Fathers tells us, Be patient before casting judgment. This is not only for a judge in a courtroom. This is every single one of us in the courtrooms of our mind. Be patient before you judge another person. You know, since you walked into this room an hour ago,
how many times have we judged? Perhaps. We can judge someone's clothes. We can judge someone's comments. We can judge... Be careful before you judge. You don't know the full story. You don't know the background. You don't know the history. You don't know that you don't see the full picture. Even when you think you see the full picture, you still don't see the full picture. Deliberation. Take the time. Marbe Yeshiva Marbe Chachma, the Mishnah in Ethics of Our Father,
Chapter 2, Mishnah 7 says, the more you deliberate, the more wisdom you will gain. Having a settled mind, the peacefulness, allows us to really attain and retain our wisdom. Never rush to reply to questions. Avoid premature conclusions. Take time before spitting out answers. Don't be a vending machine. You put in a quarter, you pop out a soda. That's not the way it works. My grandfather, I would come to my grandfather and ask him a question, and I'd be sitting there, new. Give me an answer.
He'd say, come back to me in two weeks. And I'd come back to him, and two weeks later, he would have a perfectly baked answer, which was thoughtful, which was understanding of the full scenario, of the full picture. You don't just spit out an answer. My grandfather would suggest to rabbis, wait at least 40 seconds. Think it through. Take 40 seconds to think through your answer. Deliberate. Investigate. Ask questions to the person asking you questions. Ask them questions to inquire
the background to what would the full scenario. The term yeshiva is similar to the word yeshuv, a learning academy. A learning academy and deliberation in such a setting where the focus on a spiritual growth, on our spiritual growth, is the only place where the fullest potential could be brought out. Yeshiva is a place where you're focused. The tractate Megillah says that Torah needs to be learned with total clarity. Shmaitsa b'yi Tzilusa. You want to learn Torah? You need clarity. You can't be in
craziness with noise and all that. There is actually one of the greatest rabbis who lived in the past hundred years, 200 years, was the Briska Rav. The Briska Rav, he was the Rav of Brisk, in the city of Brisk, in Eastern Europe. One of the things that he taught his child was to look out into the marketplace and review his Torah study so that he can learn amidst all of the chaos going on. He can still
be trained to focus. That's a very important thing, but not all of us are able to do that. You have noise in the background. Sometimes you can't concentrate. Learning requires clarity of mind. You need to cleanse your mind from all of the matters, whether they are pressures, physical ailments, or even bad weather, says the Talmud. Bad weather can interrupt your focus. A person cannot be the slightest bit distracted. Decisions we make have consequences. Our generation believes in return policy life.
Why work hard to preserve a marriage? You have a return policy. You can always get out of it. It's the return policy mindset that if something doesn't work out, okay, I can always return it. That's not a healthy thing. We have to be in a state of mind of like, no, I want this to work. I'm gonna commit myself to making it work. We all want greatness. It takes time and a lot of hard work to achieve it. When you reach a challenge, pause and analyze it.
Deal with the problem. Don't look for a quick, easy solution. I tell this to young guys when they get married. I say, you see that exit sign at the top of the door? Remove the exit sign. In marriage, there's no exit because the moment you realize that there's no exit, I gotta figure this out, you'll figure it out. If you were locked inside the elevator with another person who you hated and you realize there's no way out, you'll find a way to make it work.
It's when we're in a society that everything is the instant. You know, if your coffee isn't prepared at the front window when you make your mobile order on time, everything is fast food. Now, now, now, now. Deliberate. Sometimes people say to me, what's the problem? Why aren't you answering my messages? Why aren't you answering my emails? Let me think a minute. Let me think a minute. People spit out responses. They don't, they don't think. They don't take that time.
Careful reflection ensures a much wiser response than an impulse reaction. To know what you are living for, take the time to think it through. Otherwise, you can end up with a very superficial life. You won't succeed unless you fail. Think of that. You won't succeed unless you fail. Failure. Take your failures. Think about them. Deliberate. Why did I fail? So that you can chart a new course going forward of success. In the Seder that we just had, the Pesach Seder, why is it called a Seder?
Because there's an order, a process. In our lives, we need to have a similar order, a process. If something doesn't work, let's re-evaluate. Maybe I went down the wrong road. Maybe I need to recalibrate. The objective of Shabbos. What is the objective of Shabbos? Minucha. Calmness. Serenity. Deliberate. Can't work 24-7. Take some time off to evaluate before you get back into life. If one's mind isn't settled, they cannot learn. Now, there's six tools that we're going to share on deliberation. Number one,
nightly recap. Reanalyze things constantly. Before you go to sleep, think of your day and analyze all the people you met, all the things you said, all the places you traveled to. Analyze them. Did I act appropriately? Is this the way of the person I want to be? Number two, capture and concretize. When you have a moment of clarity, solidify it. Write it down. Make it yours. Number three, think before you speak. Careful with your words. Number four, analyze the information.
Don't take anything on face value. We learned this in the recent history, something called fake news. When you see something in the news, it doesn't mean it's true. In fact, more times than not, it's inaccurate. Number five, be prepared. We are always changing. We have good times. We have bad times. We have up days. We have down days. It's normal. It's healthy. That's the way healthy human beings live. Be prepared for that. And number six is give it time. Sleep it over. There's no need to rush.
There's no need to rush. Think before you talk. We said the Chavetz Chaim dedicates a tremendous amount of resources and books to the power of speech. In our political polarized culture, don't rush to conclusion either. Deliberate. Truly look at both sides of every argument. In the Talmud, this is what we're trained to do. Look at both sides of the argument. Confusion and lack of calmness or peacefulness is a tactic of the Yetzihara. The Yetzihara tries to distract us with chaos.
So we all have wisdom within us. We know it through intuition. Learning is not forcing knowledge. In, but letting the inherent wisdom out. So that's way number 13, Be Yishuv. And God willing, the next way will be B'mikra with the written law. We're going to talk about that in the next way.