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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.
All right, welcome back everybody to way number 47. Way number 47 is HaMechavenet Sh'muato, is directing your wisdom, organizing your wisdom, organizing your mind. So we get a lot of information, like I just said previously before turning on this recording, that I have these notes all over the place, I need to organize them.
We have many pieces of wisdom, but we need to organize them and we need to put them in an organized fashion so that they can be useful. Just having pieces of information and not combining them all and making them into one organized set of information is not going to do us well in the long term. So organizing wisdom is the most important step in gaining control of our life. We have many different pieces of information about driving, right?
But someone who doesn't put it all together in how they drive, it's useless information. Yeah, you go to driver's ed and you watch the video on YouTube about reckless driving and you heard a story about it. But yeah, if you don't put it into practice and you don't organize all that information into when you're actually behind the wheel, things that you need to keep in mind and not having distractions and having the seatbelt on and everything that's required, so it's useless information.
The idea here is it's not enough to just have information and to be wise about topics, but to make it practical. If you understand what you learn, it will remain yours. If it's superficial, it will disappear. So I've had so many times where when I started teaching, I was like, ooh, that's really good, I should teach that, I should mention that in my class. And basically what you're doing is you're becoming a funnel of information, that's not good.
What you need to do instead is take that piece of information for yourself, make it part of you, absorb it, and then you don't just share it as information, you share it as something of yourself. It's something that you own, that you are imparting now to others. Unless you make a conscious decision to remember something, you will likely forget it. So what do we use today? Today we use pens and papers, ink and quill to write our classes. But you have to remember something.
You know, I think today our memory is worse than it's ever been. People are forgetting. Actually, I saw this this morning in a news headline, I didn't read the article, so just as a headline, technology is causing us to forget things much earlier than our grandparents Because we're not dependent on our mind anymore. We have so many devices that we are reliant on, we're recording things on our smartphones. It's an amazing thing. I remember my grandfather yelling about this many times in his lectures, how people see
a beautiful sunset and instead of pulling over and just enjoying the sunset and taking it all in, they pull out their camera and they take a picture and they go back in their car and continue driving. It's the same thing. Instead of people lecturing, listening to a lecture and absorbing it, taking it all in and reviewing it and reviewing it again and internalizing it, what they're doing is just putting a tape recorder or microphone, recording it, and that's it.
And now I don't need to concentrate because I'll listen to it again, which never happens. So I remember my grandfather, when we would go to his lecture, he didn't like when we recorded it. Now he knew that this is what was happening and people were recording things, but he didn't like it. And the reason he didn't like it was because he knew that the nature of the recorder, person who's recording, is that they're tuned out, they're done.
You know, there was once a funny Purim skit that one of the yeshivas put out and basically what they did was, is each student came with his recorder and put it in front of the rabbi and left the room, put it in front of the rabbi and left the room, put it in front of the rabbi. Everyone put their own recorders there and left the room. Suddenly the rabbi's there and he has nobody to speak to, he only has, he has 50 recorders there in front of him.
So the rabbi pulls out his recorder, presses play, and leaves the room. It was very good, it was very funny. It was funny that they found the rabbi who was willing to play that part in the skit, but it was really fun, it was a very funny thing. But the idea is that if we don't focus on attaining the information and retaining the information, then we're not going to have it. I remember clearly my grandfather telling us that they had, not only in his yeshiva,
but when he was a student in yeshiva, they had classes reviewing the rabbi's classes. Meaning amongst the students, they would have special time where they reviewed what the rabbi said. So what did he mean? What was he referring to? What was he trying to guide us to? And everyone was reviewing, so it wasn't just, oh, a lecture came and went, rabbi, great class, goodbye, and I'm out. But rather, how do I make this part of me?
And I mentioned this previously, that my grandfather, I once walked into his house and he was very, very happy. I asked him, what's going on? He said, I just figured out, I just understood the teaching that my rabbi said 50 years ago. 50 years earlier, he heard a lecture. Who remembers something they heard 50 years ago? You do. That's right, someone asked me, what's my father's phone number? I said, I have no idea. Why don't we remember these things?
We don't remember these things because we've become dependent on our devices. I used to remember my entire class's phone numbers. I remembered every kid's phone number. I still remember the last four digits of most people's phone numbers. So I'll remember it. But either way, it's extremely important for us to know the wisdom that we're learning. Wisdom is not just pieces of information, it's something that we need to internalize and make part of our life. If a piece of information is worth gathering, it's worth organizing.
What do you want to achieve? This is an important thing. What do you want to achieve in five years, in 10 years, in 50 years? What does a person want to accomplish? Let's set out goals. Let's use that wisdom towards our goals. A guy I met just today told me that 20 years ago, he wrote himself a letter of what he wants to accomplish in 10 years. He said he wanted to be married. He wanted to have three children.
He wanted to own a house and have more than a million dollars. He said he opened the letter 10 years later and he had a wife, he had three kids, he owned a house and had more than a million dollars. He was telling me, write that letter to yourself now, what you want in 10 years from now. I'm not suggesting that anyone does that, but I do think that it's very important for everybody to have a mission statement from today.
Not like from 10 years ago, what I would have wanted. No, no, no. Now, today, I'm 52 years old, I'm 35 years old, whatever age, if God gives me 10 more years, what do I want to have accomplished in 10 years, 10 years from now? And set out on a mission. Want to write a book, write a book. Whatever it is that you want to do, let's go, let's put together the plan of how we're going to actualize the things that we have aspirations for.
Out of sight is out of mind. Review your priorities and bring them to the fore. I have my family's mission statement hanging next to my desk. It's our family's mission statement. What are we here for? What's our purpose? What do we want to accomplish? And I think it's extremely important to review it, not only to have it, but to review it. Every once in a while, look it over, study it, make sure that you're on course, and
if you're not, you can correct yourself, but at least set it out. It should be there. As long as your head is mixed up, you'll feel the pain of chaos up there, right? We all know that. We've seen that. We've experienced that. We've met people who have had this total chaos, total, you know, it's an amazing thing. I just heard yesterday in an amazing lecture that I was a participant at. I was not the speaker. I was the student.
There's a rabbi from New York, and it was a select group of rabbis who were chosen to be in this group, and he said something very interesting. Again, remember I told you recently that sometimes you learn something, and then you hear a new insight, and you feel like you were sleeping until now. Where was I? How come I never got this? Let me tell you about one of those experiences. I felt like a little, little baby yesterday.
So the rabbi was talking about the amazing part of Adon Olam, which I quote all the time. Adon Olam is such an incredible prayer. In fact, I quoted it in my class. Just Sunday morning, I quoted Adon Olam in my prayer. So the rabbi said something so brilliant. He said, Adon Olam is one of the most complicated prayers and the most beautiful prayers. Why? Because the first half of Adon Olam is everything we have no clue about. Adon Olam, master of the universe.
Before anything was created, God was king. What happened then? We have no idea. What is God? We have no idea. What his capabilities are? We have no idea. Everything is nothing. Meaning, we have no clue. And then we go. He's my God. God is there for me through everything, through thick and thin, through high and low, through ups and downs, through challenges, through good times, through bad times. God is right there with me.
So there's two different components of God's mastery over this world. One which we have no clue about, and one which we feel very, very close to us. And that's the dichotomy, I guess, built in to the Adon Olam, is where you have God's loftiness and he's so out of our reach to understand and to grasp what Hashem is. And then we have the very, very practical, He's my God. What do you mean? I know everything about—I spoke to God, I spoke to him this morning, I speak to him
this afternoon, I speak to him tonight, and before I go to sleep, and every minute, it's a different type of relationship. But someone who doesn't have that, someone who doesn't have the huweili, that he's my God, someone who doesn't have that, has chaos. Has total chaos in their life. Someone who doesn't have a relationship with God is worried, is stressed, has anxiety, has back pain, ah, ah, ah, right, it's hurting me, why is it hurting you? What are you worried about?
Oh, you're worried about how you're going to pay your mortgage next month, right? That's what you're worried about. Who? Kalee, he's my God, he'll take care of you. He's got you covered. It's an amazing medication. Pressing the delete button gives you control over your life. Sometimes you just need to delete things. Sometimes you just need to close things out. Delete. Sometimes people do that too quickly, but there's a benefit to it also. There's a benefit to it.
Sometimes you need to just not hold on to things. It could be with relationships, with, you know, things that go on in our lives. It can also be with uncomfortable situations. How many times have we been embarrassed in our lives, like, oh my goodness, right? And all we need to do is just say, you know what, it happened, it's done, it's over with, and now move on. Know the right time to take out the right knowledge, which is a very important thing.
We all have many life experiences that we can assist people with, but we have to find the right time to use it. You know, one of my pet peeves is the need that some people have to talk at a shiva house. The halacha says keep your mouth shut. Don't say a word unless the mourner asks you to say something. Don't say a word, just don't need to say anything. But people feel an urge. I need to say something.
I need to make sure that he knows that I'm here, I need to make my presence known. And if a person uses their wisdom, they use their knowledge at the right time, at the right place, it's perfect. Use your wisdom at the wrong time, it could be very damaging. Master the art of wisdom management, which is to organize it, to control it, and to direct it. We need to do that with our, well, collect how many pieces of wisdom you know.
You've been coming to class for 12 years almost, right? You have a lot of Torah knowledge, you wrote several books, a lot of Torah knowledge. And guess what? We have to put it together and organize it. And many times, I'll be honest with you, many times when I prepare classes, I start with a clean sheet of paper, and I start putting together ideas, and then I open up the teachings of our sages, and I open up, you know, all of these different sources, but try to put
together my own life experiences, my own pieces of wisdom that I've collected over the years, and put them all together. So now they have a home, they have a place. And that when I teach about any specific topic, I can share those experiences, and it's not just taking from this source, and taking from that source, and not having its own life in my teaching of the class. Unless you organize it properly, what good is it? Practical application is key to all wisdom. Practical application. Practical application.
It's not enough to just learn wisdom for wisdom's sake. Torah is not a collection of ideas. Torah is life. Ki heim chayeinu. It is our life. So if we learn Torah, and we don't have a practical application for it, we're missing out on the Torah we're learning. Make it practical. And we know we've said this numerous times, the process for everything we do, they have four D's. Do it, delegate it, defer it, or delete it, dump it, disregard it, empty, goodbye.
And these are things that are important for us in our, yeah, there's some things that I can do right now, so take care of those right now. Some things, other people can take care of it for you. Have them take care of it. Other things, you can delay it for another week or two, it's not relevant now, it's going to come up, then we'll deal with it then. And then you have things that you just delete them. Delete them. You don't need to respond to every email.
When you get an email from Yahoo News, you don't need to respond, you know what I mean? I'm not suggesting that it's Yahoo News, but sometimes not everything needs to be responded to. So, that, my dear friends, concludes way number 47, and I thank you all.