Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In this shiur, Rav Dov Ber Cohen explores the inner world of Friday night, from the blessing of children to the singing of Shalom Aleichem, weaving together practical wisdom about relationships and de
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 learning together. We're learning about Shabbat, Shabbat Kodesh, the holy Shabbat, and we said that Shabbat is about relationship with ourselves, other people, and Hashem, and the essence of relationship is presence. Just being present. I'm there. I'm not distracted, and that's why we have no distractions on Shabbat, not meant to have distractions on Shabbat. And we're meant to be very in the moment. And most people struggle to be in the moment, but yesterday we did a whole whole activity of just being present and not needing to escape. And we said that really, how does this work? Because you've got layers, you've got different layers of yourself. Your deepest, most internal layer is full of presence, peace, love, and joy. And really, there are the five things we said, אהבה, יראה, שמחה, אמונה, and deveikus. Which means love, reverence, awe, joy, trust, and a feeling of intimate connection. And we said in all of your relationships you need these five things. So, you have to love yourself, and you have to respect yourself, and you have to enjoy being around yourself, you have to, you know, b'simcha in myself. I enjoy my own company. And you have to trust yourself, and you have to feel very deeply connected to that deepest part of yourself. And then with everyone in your life, with your spouse, with your friends, with your parents, you need to love them, and you need to respect them, and revere them, and look up to them, and you need to be joyous around them, and you need to trust them, and you need to feel intrinsically connected to them. This is what a good relationship is. Obviously, we can't have this in all of our relationships. And then with Hashem. Whenever we talk about קרבת אלוקים, whenever we talk about closeness to Hashem, it means an emotional, we have this relationship with Hashem. So we have these five parts of our relationship with Hashem. Love, respect, trust, joy, what was the fifth one? Deveikus means a feeling of oneness, that I'm intrinsically connect-, this is part of me. It's not even a, it's not a separate entity, we're part of one higher self. Thank you. That's my pleasure. So we said that Shabbat is the ultimate day of working on this relationship, and the key to all of these relationships is the first one, which is yourself. If you're not feeling deeply at peace in yourself, we spoke about this a lot yesterday, you're not feeling deeply at peace in yourself, the energy you're giving off is a little not peaceful. So, someone who's at peace in themselves, other people can relax around them. And you really want to be that sort of person who can, I just I'm just okay being myself. That's a very healthy part of a relationship. Lots of my students when they go on their first date, they say, \"Do you have any advice?\" And I say, \"Yeah, just be yourself. Just go and be yourself.\" And they often say, \"But what if they don't like me?\" So I say, \"Then you probably shouldn't marry them. If they don't like who you are, don't pretend to be someone you're not to try and impress someone, and then they're pretending they're someone they're not to impress you. Just if you can't relax and be yourself in a relationship, there's a problem with that relationship. But if you can't relax within yourself, not in relationship, then you'll never be able to relax within relationship. Cuz you're always overthinking, did I say the right thing, what do they think of me, what do I think of them, and it's just too much. There's too much going on in your mind. So the key to peace of mind is this, finding peace within myself.\" And we said that the real key to that is not trying to be perfect. I'm not trying I'm not trying to be perfect. The key to that is I'm trying to live up to my values. I'm a person who's trying to live up to my values, and I know I fail sometimes, but that doesn't define me, my failures don't define me. My motivation, my direction, where I'm trying to get to defines me, and how I deal with my mistakes, that defines me a lot more than my mistakes themselves. So, I'm not so uptight the whole time. I'm not so uptight because I am clear of where I want to go and I'm trying to get there and I realize that I'm going to fall on the way, but as long as I'm making steps in the right direction, I feel good about who I'm trying to be. And I'm never trying to become perfect. And Shabbat is the time when we said that you have to feel as if all the work is done. All my work is done. כל מלאכתך עשויה. Which doesn't mean that I can't check my emails, but I'll check them again on Motzaei Shabbat. It means that it's finished. I'm where I need to be for now, and I don't even have work to do anymore. As I said, I think lots of people are working on themselves too much. I said to someone the other day, they were like, you know, \"What work do I need to do on myself?\" And I said, \"The work you need to do on yourself is like stop working on yourself so much. You're not as bad as you think you are.\" So, just chill out a bit. Very important. So, we're going through, we've said there's I think there's 35 classes on Spotify if you're behind. Go and listen to them quickly before today's class. But we are on we I want to go back a little bit because we talked been talking a lot about Kiddush, but we're talking about coming back into the home before Kiddush. Shalom Aleichem. ברכת ברכת הבנים. So, we said really when you come home, the Kabbalists say that when you either you were at home and the home, this is why on Shabbat we've got this thing about carrying. You can't carry from the house into the street because there's a very big difference between רשות היחיד, the private domain, and רשות הרבים, the public domain. And it's really going back into this idea of your sense of self coming from yourself, and your sense of self coming from the world around you. It's going back into the idea of your happiness coming from yourself, and your attitude to life, and your happiness coming from the external world. So, we're really separating, especially on this day of Shabbat, which is really tapping us back into the purpose and the presence of of of why I'm here, that we make a very big difference between the רשות היחיד and the רשות הרבים. And the main thing we said was the candles. The candles are bringing this warmth, bringing shalom into the home. Candles very, very important on Shabbat. Bringing this idea and it's giving light within the home. We have something called Chanukah coming up, very excited for all the Chanukah Torah. The purpose of Chanukah candles is to give light outside the home. So, you're really meant to light them outside the front door, or at least in a window. And the purpose of Chanukah is, let's bring light into the world. Shabbat is a little bit of a hibernation. And again, in my Cheshvan class I said, Jews we don't hibernate in the winter. Even though דב bear, even though bears hibernate in the winter, in the in the winter, we we do the opposite. We actually come out more. We come out and we face the coldness and the darkness of life, and we bring light and warmth into the darkness of light that's all of of life. That's what we're there for. Shabbat's a bit different. Shabbat's about home, יחיד, within myself, my close family, and guests who come into my home. The word for guest in Hebrew is אורח, and it comes from the word אור. So, every guest brings light into your house, and then it's a חית, אור חית, which is the light of being beyond nature, spiritual light. Every every guest is a spiritual light, but you're bringing them into your home. So, that's what we want our home to be. It wants to be a place of safety. I give parenting lessons, and people ask, you know, you can't control what goes on with your kids at school, and they might get bullied at school, and they have different things, the world out there's a pretty difficult world out there. So, one of the things I say is, if a kid knows that he can walk into the front door and completely let go and be at ease, and not be, you know, how well are you doing at school, but I just feel completely unconditionally loved. I've got this this place of complete warmth, and security, unconditional love and joy, and they're living with that idea that I am unconditionally loved, they deal with the outside world much better. They often get bullied less because they have much more a sense of self. I've got self-confidence. I am I know I'm intrinsically loved and lovable. So, I can go out there, and if, God forbid, bad things happen at school, if they know that they're coming home at the end of the day to this place where they're held and just held, every time, and I think I do this naturally, but I actually then read in a parenting book you should do it, every single time I see my children, I do actually light up. I smile. They come down the stairs in the morning, and just like, imagine every time someone sees you, their face just lights up. What a nice feeling to have. Every time I come home to my I can feel that. So, that's what your home is meant to be. And we always teach that the home is the most important part of Judaism. The home the the Beis Hamikdash was modeled on Sarah's tent. That's where you got it from, the bread, and the candles, and the קודש הקדשים was the so the literally the Beis Hamikdash is just the Jewish home. So, once we lost the Beis Hamikdash, then we say the בית כנסת, the shul is the Jewish home, but really more important than the shul is the home, the home itself. So, we want to be making our homes this place. Also for you, where you're out, where you feel good going home. So, you come home, and you say Shabbat shalom u-mevorach, and you're bringing this energy, the the space. This is why everything we do on Friday is preparing the home for this. The white tablecloth, it's pure, clean. We're getting everyone together, cleaning the house. We're cleaning ourselves, we're wearing nicer clothes, we got nicer cutlery, we got kavod Shabbat. What does kavod mean? Kavod means honor or glory. But it comes from the word כבד. כבד means heavy, but it doesn't mean heavy in that way, it means there's a presence. Kavod Shabbat means I can feel Shabbat. And you see, some people you walk into their home, and you can feel Shabbat. You can feel warmth. Famous story of the Maggid of Mezritch, Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezritch, they said one day they come one of some of his chasidim came into his house and they said, \"The Mashiach is coming! We heard the shofar of the Mashiach!\" Everyone got very very excited, \"Mashiach is coming!\" And he he just got up and he opened the window, and he stuck his head out the window, and he put his head back in, and he said, \"He's not here.\" And they're like, \"How did you know that?\" And he said, \"Because my home is already we're living in that geulah consciousness, we're living in that consciousness. So I just stuck my head outside to see if it matched, and it didn't, so Mashiach hasn't come yet.\" So what we're trying to do, we're trying to make our home this this place. So we're going to walk into our home, and the first thing I do, we said this before, I bless my children straight away before Shalom Aleichem. Why do we do that? Because you want the angels to say, \"amen\" to blessing of children. And there's a whole discussion whether you use one hand or two hands. So for many many years, I put both hands on my children's head to bless them. And I got my mom and dad to bless me, and blessing, I put two hands. Then I found out the Vilna Gaon and others say you should only put one hand, because only the kohanim should bless with two hands. But then last night, whilst I was studying this, I saw the Zohar says it's better to put two hands, basically whatever you like is good. But I'm now going to put two hands again. Two hands. But the Zohar says because then you're just giving everything. You're just giving everything. Some people say one hand, your right hand, is chesed, but with your both hands, you're giving everything you can, you can bless. And before I had children, my wife and I would bless each other, we still do. My my students and talmidim and guests, they bless each other, so there's lots of blessing happening. And we say it's because on Friday night specially, the heavens have opened up, and there's just much much more blessing in the world. There's much more light in the world. And we as the Jewish people, and really everyone, we have this power to ממשיך... How'd you say that? Continue, continue. I'll take continue for now. ממשיך את הברכה, we have to bring forth, you have to bring forth the berachah. We're the כלי, we're the vessel to bring the blessing into the world. So Hashem is pouring blessing in the world, but if we're not we have to be giving the blessing. We're called ממלכת כהנים, we're a nation of kohanim. So why doesn't Hashem just bless us directly? He says, \"No, the kohanim have to get up, and they have to bless the people.\" But the kohanim are just the vessel for the for the blessing. So too, we're a vessel for blessing, that's why you should bless people a lot. Just bless each other, you don't you don't even have to wait for Friday night. Just bless people. And we say at special times, your wedding night you've got a special blessing power, your birthday, special blessing power, but just everyday, you have special blessing power, because if it's from your heart and you love people and you're overflowing, then you just want to give. You want the What does baruch mean? One of the meanings of baruch is to increase. Levarech means to increase. So I just want to increase love in the world, I want to increase light in the world, I want to increase God-consciousness in the world, I want you I want you to have a lot. And this is a major problem with many peoples nowadays, because they're not happy with what they have, they get very jealous of other people. But someone who's truly happy with their lives and what they have, they want other people to have a lot. It doesn't take away from me. I want you to have a lot, I want you to be very rich. I want you to be very rich and give me 10%, right? I want you to be rich. So we say, \"איזהו עשיר? השמח בחלקו.\" The person is happy with what they have, they're truly grateful for everything. But a deeper reading of that is השמח בחלקו, which means, \"I'm happy with their lot.\" It's a very very, very high level to actually be truly happy for someone else. Very difficult to be truly happy, especially if someone gets something that you want. You didn't get it yet, and other people are getting it, to be actually wholeheartedly happy for other people, very diff- difficult. Two ways of doing that is, firstly, be truly, deeply happy within yourself. That doesn't mean you don't have ambition, but I'm truly happy with myself. But secondly, is to see others as an essential part of you. How does this work? The more you identify as someone with someone as part of you, the more their joy is your joy. So, I see with the children, my children's joy is my joy. Their pain is my pain as well, it goes both ways! But the more you feel intrinsically tied to someone, the more their pain and their joy is part of you. So the more you see So, so, my daughter's pain is more painful to me than my students' pain, because I feel that she's more intrinsically part of me. But I love my students, so their pain is also part of my pain. But people I don't know, it's less and less. So what we want to do is eventually we have a mitzvah of ואהבת לרעך כמוך, to love every Jew like yourself. What that means on a deeper level is I literally see you as part of myself, so therefore, all of your blessing is I benefit, it's good for all of us. You got married, that's also good for me. Very hard one, obviously, if you're not married yet and you want to get married, hard to be truly happy for other people. But if you can see other people as we're on the same team, so if we're on the same team, any good for anyone on the team is good for me, I'm part of the big team. That's what we're trying to do. So we bless, and there's lots of blessings. And we bless, and for the boys we say that Hashem should make you like Efraim u-Menashe. So Efraim u-Menashe were the first brothers who really got on well. We have Cain and Abel, not so good. Who else is there? Yishmael and Yitzchak, not great. The brother, Yosef and the brothers, not good. Yaakov and Esav, not good. Yosef and the brothers, not great. We have a very bad history of brotherly love. Now Efraim and Menashe, why were they so great? Because they had very good reasons to be upset. Who was older, Efraim or Menashe? Menashe. So this is a problem. Menashe is older, so he should get the blessing first. Yaakov gives the blessing to Efraim first, crosses over his hands. So now you've got a situation where Menashe can get very arrogant and I mean Efraim can get very arrogant, and Menashe can get very jealous. But they didn't, and they loved each other. So we always talk about this idea of achdut, of achdut, of really feeling brotherly love. And then Moshe and Aharon did the greatest brotherly love, so it was a tikun for everything. So we're blessing our children that we should be these people, that when we succeed, we don't get arrogant and look down on other people, and when we seem to lose out in a way, we don't get jealous. We truly happy for other people. And the daughters, we should make them like Sarah, Rivka, Rachel, and Leah. That's a big call, by the way. That's a lot to take on. How are you going to be like Sarah, Rivka, Rachel, and Leah? It's very big. But I think it just means to know your own strength and bring out your own strength. They each had their different strengths, and we got to know our strengths. And the blessing, יברכך השם וישמרך, the first one is physical abundance. And the Kli Yakar says that the end of each line fixes a problem that might come from it. So יברכך השם means that Hashem should bless you with physical abundance. You should have material and physical abundance. But the problem with that is you might get arrogant. וישמרך means you should be protected from getting arrogant. It's a it's a beracha to save you from the beracha. It's a beracha to save you from the problem that could come from the beginning of the beracha. The second one, יברכך השם וישמרך, יאר השם פניו אליך, השם should shine His face upon you, which means spiritual, spiritual abundance. But once you get spiritually abundant and and it's a problem with some spiritual people is they become very aloof and separated from other people. They're a spiritual being. In Judaism, we say the highest spirituality isn't to go and sit in a cave, it's to be with other people. ויחנך means you should find grace. You should be you should still be a kind, normal, down-to-earth people. This is why, I kind of mentioned it yesterday, I think the biggest tzadikim are the most normal people. Rav Gamliel Rabinowitz, the Yanuka. Do you know the Yanuka? Yanuka is 36 years old, knows the whole Torah, knows everything, and he's just the most normal, funny, silly, he's just cool. I like it. So he has chen. Chen is this like inner beauty that people are attracted to. So you don't want to be spiritual and then separate from other people. You want to be with other people. ישא השם פניו אליך, Hashem should turn His face to you, hashgacha pratit, and Hashem should be intimately involved in your life. וישם לך שלום, and He should give you peace. Should give you peace because sometimes when you get everything you want, there's a bit of pressure. I feel always if Hashem's in my life, some people actually don't like the idea of hashgacha pratit. Hashem's watching whatever I do, so you should also be at peace with that. And at peace with myself. In all of our every all of Judaism ends with shalom. Kaddish ends with שלום, Shemoneh Esrei ends with shalom, the כהן ברכה ends with שלום, Shabbat shalom ends with שלום, Birkat Hamazon? Birkat Hamazon, hey? Thanks. So they all end shalom, and Jerusalem, we live in Jerusalem, which is רואה שלום, to see peace. So really, this highest ideal is This idea of peace, of peace and presence, which means I'm I'm okay. I'm good within myself. And then we sing, שלום עליכם, שלום עליכם, שלום עליכם. And the Which is your I got three שלום עליכם ניגונים. There's the slow one, the medium one, and the fast one, depends how hungry my family are. שלום עליכם מלאכי השרת מלא I love that one, my wife doesn't like that one, so I don't do it very often. But I love that one. That's good. That's shalom bayit, is to not sing that one even though I love it. And then, שלום עליכם מלאכי השרת מלאכי עליון. I used to be a DJ before you guys were born. Not you, he's old. Before you guys were born, I used to be a DJ. So as a DJ, you As a DJ you have to know how to play the crowd. You got to know it. So it really depends how I'm feeling, how's the crowd feeling. My wife says I can sing the middle one I like if I sing it a bit faster. So you got to know. When you come to my house for Shabbat, you we'll see which one I choose based on the atmosphere. So the Gemara says that what happens is when you come home from shul, you're escorted by two angels. One's a good angel, and one's a bad angel, which sounds a bit weird already. Why would Hashem let the bad angel come? What is There's nothing bad on Shabbat. But anyway, these angels, they escort you home from shul and they come into your house. And if the table is set and the candles are lit, then the good angel says, \"May it be like this next week.\" And the bad angel has to say, \"amen.\" And if it's the other way round, it's the other way round. And then so we're singing with these angels. Now remember we're never praying to angels. We're not We're not talking to the angels. What is an angel? What is an angel? What's an angel? Is it a butt-naked baby with wings? No. An angel is a channel of divine influence into the world. An angel's bringing Hashem's like So when we say, for example, ברכוני לשלום, bless us. We're not asking the angels to bless us. We're asking the angels to give Hashem's blessing. Hashem's like Hashem's given you a blessing to give to us, now give us the blessing. So this is what the sages say: צריך לאמרו בנעימה, שמחת הלב, בשירה ובזמרה. You're meant to sing this song with sweetness, a joyful heart, and in a singing, beautiful tone. בשמחה רבה, with immense simcha. Once again, we're bringing this idea of shalom and simcha into that. Some people kind of rush it, שלום עליכם We do have a a thing in my house, depends if we have guests or not. What is it? Kiddush, Hamotzi, kezayit of bread, Shir Hamaalot, go to bed. I made that up. When we don't have guests, is it going to be one of those? Kiddush, Hamotzi, kezayit of bread, Shir Hamaalot, go to bed. But we try to not rush through these things. Is this all from B'Noam Deracheha? This is actually not today because I couldn't find Benoam Deracheha. So by the way, if anyone finds my Benoam Deracheha on Shabbat, please find it. But it's a different book. It's called Hashabbat Bakabbalah Uvechasidut by Rabbi Yosef Karsik, it's a Chabad book. I've been using it for the last three days since I lost Benoam Deracheha. Is it not behind the book thing over there? I can't find If you can find it, great. I thought I saw it behind there when I was looking at the other books. Okay, great. So tomorrow we'll go back to Benoam Deracheha. I've actually usually been using these books together. So we got to sing it in in a beautiful, fit way. Shalom Aleichem. בקטע הראשונה של הפיוט שלום עליכם כתוב מלאכי השרת. In the beginning, you say Malachei Hasharet, and then the next ones you say Malachei Hashalom. So we have these angels coming, escorting us into our house. And first they're called Malachei Hasharet. But then, it's called Malachei Hashalom. Why? מלאכי השרת הוא שם כללי לכל מלאכי מרום, שכולם משרתי השם. Malachei Hasharet is ministering angels, if you look in your ArtScroll Siddur. Ministering angels. So basically, what all angels are doing is they're serving Hashem. So the first thing, we're just singing to angels, is a very, very, very powerful point. Shalom Aleichem Malachei Hasharet, what does that mean? You guys should have shalom. Now, we got a very, very, very important concept in Yiddishkeit. What's higher, an angel or us? We are much, much higher than angels, or lower than animals, we said this before. Once you have free will, angels don't have free will, and animals don't have free will. Angels just serve Hashem, animals just serve themselves. Now, you're put into a body so you're kind of half angel, half animal, so if you decide to use your thought, speech, and action in an animalistic way, you've chosen to be an animal, so therefore you're lower than an animal. An animal's just instinctive, can't do anything, you're choosing to be an animal. But once you use your thoughts, speech, and action in a high way, in a lofty way to serve Hashem and to serve humanity, then you've now raised yourself above the angels. And we see in the Torah, Yaakov uses angels, sends angels, people, angels serve us. So when we're saying Shalom Aleichem, you guys should have shalom, we're literally we're blessing the angels. We're saying, you guys, you have shalom. Very, very, very powerful. But only if we ourselves are above the angels. So once we've lifted ourselves to this very high state of consciousness, having got ready all of all of Friday, and we've done Kabbalat Shabbat, and we've got the candles in our house, we've blessed our children, we're we're on a high level, now we can bless, כי מקדימים שלום לכל מלאכי מרום, because we are giving shalom to all of these people. We are Maybe it just means that we're welcoming them? What does Until we get to this other good one, it means that we're welcoming them, we're we're inviting them, we're greeting them, we're accepting them, we're bringing we're shalom bineihem. אבל, מהחרוז בואכם לשלום, from then on we say בואכם לשלום, because these are the ones that were coming into our house. But what we see is that the good angel and the bad angels are both called shalom. Both angels are called Malachei Hashalom. ורק שני מלאכי השלום באים עלינו בשבת, because these two are coming into our house, they're escorting us into our house, and they're going to bring blessing in Hashem's blessing into our house. גם אותו שני מלאכים לא היו בתחילה מלאכי השלום, אלא מלאכי השרת, ורק בביתנו הם הפכו למלאכי השלום. Even these two angels that were escorting us home, as they were escorting us home, they were just ministering angel. I understand something now. There's a guy who always walks past my house, it's an old Sefardi guy, and he's always singing Shalom Aleichem on the way to his house. And I've always thought, why is he doing it on the way to your house? Wait till your house. But I think this is the answer, because, and I'm going to do this from now on. It's great, I love teaching because I get to learn so much. The first thing, Shalom Aleichem Malachei Hasharet, we should sing coming home from shul, because it's all the angels, but then it says once you bring them into your house, they become Malachei Hashalom. They become, their purpose is to bring shalom into our house. So by entering our home, we are giving them the power to give us shalom in our house. כי בעצם הם שונים זה מזה לחלוטין. But really in etzem they're completely different from each other. אחד מלאך טוב, one of them is a good angel, ואחד מלאך רע. Is there such really thing as a bad angel, by the way? What could that even mean, it's a bad angel? Surely all angels are just serving Hashem. Is a yetzer hara bad? Yetzer hara is not bad. How do we know this? Because we have two different things, we have the yetzer tov and the yetzer hara. Why is it called the yetzer tov and the yetzer hara, and not the yetzer tov and the יצר רע? Why does the רע have a ה? It should either be called the yetzer hatov and the yetzer hara. The yetzer tov is good, is intrinsically good. But the, so it's called טוב is an adjective, it's a yetzer tov, it's a good one. If we called it the יצר רע, we're saying it's bad. But we're not saying it's bad, it's yetzer hara, it's an inclination towards not good. But it's actually very good for you, because if you don't have a yetzer hara you don't have free will, and if you don't have free will you can't be higher than an angel, and you can't connect to Hashem, and you can't have a relationship. So what seems bad is not actually bad. So what's this malach doing? Here it says the מלאך טוב is Tzadkiel, and the one is Samael. Whatever that means, I'm not there yet. ורק בראותם את שמירת השבת, השמחה והשלום בבית היהודי, נר דלוק שולחן ערוך מיטה מוצעת, הם עושים שלום ביניהם. So when these angels come into our house, and they see the simcha, my goodness, it's not good when you come home and your kids are like crying and they're tired and killing themselves and you spilled the soup. You have to have shalom within yourself and they see that externally. Anyway, they come home and they see the candles are lit and there's simcha in your house, they become they have שלום ביניהם. והמלאך טוב אומר, \"יהי רצון שיהא לשבת אחרת,\" כך מלאך הרע עונה, \"amen.\" And then, once the the good angel sees that the house, by the way, the bottom line is candles lit and white tablecloth. So don't panic if you haven't got the whole table set yet or anything. The bottom line is is, as long as you have your candles lit, which you have to do. By the time you're home from shul, if the candles are not lit, they're not getting lit. Candles lit, white tablecloth, well you're already in. You're in, you made it. So, we're fine, everything looks good. לכן תחילה הם קרואים מלאכי השרת משרתי השם ושלוחיו לפקוד את ביתנו, רק שבאו עליו וחזו בקדושת השבת שבבית, הם הופכים למלאכי השלום. So basically we turn them into these מלאכי of peace. והרע השלים והפך לטוב. And the whole reason Hashem sent this not good angel is that we can turn him into good. As it says in the Shema, you know, ואהבת את השם אלוקיך בכל לבבך, לבבך with two ב's, so the Mishnah says with your yetzer hara and your yetzer hatov. So you've got to use even your maybe negative side to really be serving Hashem. We want to הפוך. We want to turn what seems bad externally and use it for the good. וזה סוד עניין שיהודי אומר למלאכים שלום עליכם. And this is the secret that the Jewish people are saying to these angels Shalom Aleichem. שלום עליכם, שאין זו אמירה סתמית, we're not just saying that, it's just not a nice song, אלא היא נתינת כח והשפעה במלאכים, is giving immense power to the malachim themselves. ליהודי יש כח להיות עושה שלום בין מלאכי מרום. Because as a Jew, we have the power to make peace between these angels. We're making peace between them, because the first one is saying that we should be blessed, and the second one has to say amen to that. And the whole purpose of the second one coming along is Hashem saying the greatest What is shalom? Shalom is when we get together. This is why the word שמים is the word for heaven in Hebrew is שמים, because it's אש and מים together. So there's a famous Midrash that Michael and Gabriel, fire and water, were fighting each other. And water was saying, you've got to be cold. Water is cold and it goes down. And fire is hot and it goes up. So they're exactly opposite. And they were arguing, you have to serve Hashem like this, you have to serve Hashem like this, it's the right thing to do. And then they basically both looked up and realized we each have our own power, and we're each serving Hashem in the way we're meant to serve Hashem. So the yetzer hara is serving Hashem. Say that again, very important to understand that. The yetzer hara is serving Hashem. He's doing his job. Famous story, Rav Naftali of Ropshitz, his son came home and his son had done something wrong at school. And the father spoke to him and said, you know, what happened? And he said, it was my yetzer hara. It wasn't me, my yetzer hara made me do it. So Rav Naftali said to him, you know what, you need to actually learn from the yetzer hara. Because the yetzer hara is just doing his job. He's serving Hashem. So just like the yetzer hara is doing his job and he's serving Hashem, you need to do your job and serve Hashem. So his son said to him, yeah, but the yetzer hara doesn't have a yetzer hara. Said, take richtig, Naftali of Ropshitz. So ליהודי יש כח להיות עושה שלום בין מלאכי מרום, ואפילו להשלים בין המלאך הטוב ומלאך הרע, להפוך את המלאך הרע לטוב. By by us having shalom in our home and saying Shalom Aleichem, we are bringing shalom between them them people and and that's שמים. We're bringing we're bringing harmony, shalom. So remember we've always said that shalom isn't when I destroy someone else. Shalom doesn't mean if if we kill all of our enemies, so we're not at war anymore, that's not called shalom. It's only when we hafokh, when we turn them around, when they do teshuva. And that's what we said. The end of days, the temple is for everyone, it's not just for the Jewish people. We're we're not interested in wiping people out. We're interested in spreading light, bringing and Yishmael does teshuva. You see in the Torah, Yishmael does teshuva. So the end of days, which is happening very soon by the way, you came just in time, end of days happening very soon, is not when we wipe out Yishmael. Our goal isn't to wipe out Yishmael. Our our goal is for Yishmael to do teshuva, to have real shalom. Shalom. And then everyone's going to be keeping Shabbat Shabbat on the same day. Be'ezrat Hashem. I didn't even I was going to talk about lots more, Eshet Chayil, we're going to have to do that all next time. But basically, our understanding is we want our house to be full of light and warmth and love. And this is actually what they say, how did Yishmael do teshuva? What's the secret to Yishmael doing teshuva? Does anyone know? It's an amazing idea. Avraham, Hashem says to Avraham, take up your son, your only only one, the one you love, Yitzchak. No, your son, the one you love, your only one, Yitzchak. So everyone says, why did you have to, why didn't you just say Yitzchak? So Rashi brings there's a whole conversation. Hashem says to Avraham, take up your son. And Hashem says, and Avraham says, which one? I have two sons. And he says, your only one. And he says, no, but that's my only one with that wife, and that's my only one with that wife. And then Hashem says, the one you love. What did Avraham say? Both. I love both. It's the best Rashi. It's the best Midrash. Now remember, Yishmael, he's doing עבודה זרה and גילוי עריות and שפיכות... he's like a very not great dude. But Avraham says, I love, I love them. I love them, I love them both. And then he had to say Yitzchak. So I've forgotten who said it, he said the reason that Yishmael was able to do teshuva was because he knew his father loved him unconditionally. Which means he must have been showing that all the, Avraham must have been showing him all the time, I love you unconditionally. Kind of just felt he's showing him all the time, I love you unconditionally. A very separate parenting advice, to show your children they love you. Someone said to me, what if your children go off the derech? And I said to them, the truth is, if my children went off the derech at some point when they're teenagers, I think they'd come back quite quickly, because children want to be where they're fully loved and accepted unconditionally. And out in that, in the world out there, they're not. And friendships are difficult, and they have a relationship, and someone's going to cheat, and so the world out there, רשות הרבים is very dark and scary. So you have to be making your home this warm, safe place. So that's what we're doing Friday night, blessing the children, Shalom Aleichem, we bring shalom and peace into our home, so that that us and the angels and the רע and the טוב can all find a place to live together, be'ezrat Hashem. Gut Shabbat. Shabbat. Didn't even start what I was going to say. I never do, though.