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In this shiur, Rav Dov Ber Cohen reframes Yom Kippur not as a day of dread but as the happiest day of the year — a day when Hashem floods the world with love and invites us to wipe the slate completel
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 coming up to Yom Kippur. And our holy sages of the Talmud teach us that Yom Kippur is the happiest day of the year. That's what they say. But for most people, it feels like the most intense, miserable, painful day of the year. But the Gemara says it's the happiest day of the year. Why is it the happiest day of the year? Because we have taharav kapara. Purity and atonement. Atonement means at-one-ment. We become one again. The relationship is completely repaired. And our sages teach, why does Rosh Hashanah come before Yom Kippur? Surely Yom Kippur should come first. Clean myself completely and then go into Judgment Day, and then that makes sense. But what do we do? We have Rosh Hashanah first, and then we have an appeal. It's just the wrong way around. So the sages say that Hashem wanted to teach us that you don't need to be perfect to have a relationship with Hashem. We come to Rosh Hashanah just as you are, having not done all the extra work. And all you have to do on Rosh Hashanah, we said, was show up with all your heart. Just show up. I want the relationship. I want the relationship. This is important to me. And then we can say, okay, now I'm going to work on improving the relationship. But if you don't want the relationship in the first place, if, God forbid, you need couples therapy, and you go to the therapist, and the therapist says, do you want to work on the relationship? And both people say no. Nothing to talk about. But once both people say yes, we want the relationship, then we've got something to talk about. We're working on the relationship. So we really said there's two stages of tshuva. The first stage of tshuva is just the ratzon. I want this. The second stage of tshuva is the action to prove that you want it. Because it's very good saying that you want the relationship. I want to be a better husband. I want to be a better husband, but I can't be because I'm perfect. I want to be a better husband, but then I don't do anything to be a better husband. And it's like, oh, no, we're actually starting to question if you really wanted it. Because if you really wanted it, you'd ask your wife, what does she need? What can I do for you? You'd be more present, more gifts, more acts of service, more words of kindness. So the first thing is the commitment. The second thing is, okay, now let's work on it. So it's a very, very, very exciting day. It's when we come back to full, pure purity of self and purity of relationship with Hashem. So we're learning Ratzvi Maya Silberberg, a holy, holy man who's completely on fire with Torah and life and love and joy, which is really, we've said, has to be our approach nowadays. There was a time 200, 300 years ago when a Yira-based pachat, you know, how can you hear the sound of the shofar and not faint? And Rabi Yisrael said, it's not our Avodah now. It doesn't work. But we have to have the balance. You can go too far the other way and just say, well, God loves me and everything's okay. That's also not healthy. Because, of course, God loves you. But if you're not living up to your values and living up to your potential, then He still loves you, but it's like, you know, I want you to become great. So we've said that people are one of two extremes. Either they're very hard on themselves, beating themselves up, putting themselves down, or they're very soft on themselves and justifying their laziness. We have to be in the middle. We have to be committed to growth and motivated, but also have a bit of self-compassion when it gets hard because life's not easy. So we've got to know what the Avodah is. So we're going to, it's very important, Very, very, very important to prepare yourself. Many of the Sfarim, it teaches that the preparation for a mitzvah is more important than the mitzvah itself, usually because it takes longer. It takes longer. So it takes longer to set up your Hanukkiah than to light your Hanukkiah. So there's something more because the intention, the kavana that you have going into something, that creates what it is. That creates. So the more I prepare for it, the more I'll actually create the vessel to achieve what I'm meant to achieve through this event or through this mitzvah. So we said kavana has two parts. It comes from the word kivun, which means direction. The first part is where am I coming from, which is what's my motivation and intention. Am I doing this mitzvah just because I have to? I'm a religious Jew, so I'll just do it. Or am I doing it for a purpose? Because I want to invest in my spirituality, because I want to become a greater person so that I can serve Hashem. I've got to go into this day with the right motivation. And then the second part of kavana is where am I going? What did I achieve? Did I come out of Yom Kippur having achieved what I was meant to achieve, which means I have to know what is available. What's available on Yom Kippur? So we just said on Yom Kippur is complete purity and connection is available. So that's a very, very exciting day. Yom Kippurim and Baal Elenu L'Tova. Avinu Shabbat Shalom. He musthpiya b'chol shana ahava atzuma v'yitkarvut g'dayla v'yom kadosh sh'ma'ir. Hashem is flooding the world with immense love on Yom Kippur. Did you know that? People don't think that. You think that Yom Kippur is a very scary day. It's the number one. We also say Leila Seder, Pesach as well, is ahava because he took us out of Egypt for no reason. We didn't do anything to deserve really to be taken out of Egypt. But Hashem just gave us a free ride. But Hashem is just giving us this opportunity to completely wipe everything clean. So let's say you do something wrong in a relationship and you really, really hurt someone. You really hurt them. And then you really speak about it and you make up. And it's better and you're close now. That hurt is still there for the rest of the life. You can't take away real hurt. Hashem is saying no, with me you can. With us you can. With this you can. You're just completely as if it didn't happen. It's finished. It's gone. It's not here anymore. So what is Hashem doing on this day? Cleaning, polishing. So this is how I've been describing it. Your soul is like a light bulb. Your soul is a thousand watt light bulb. When you do a nevara, a nevara means anything that goes against your soul, really. So some nevaras are immoral. You steal things or you speak lashon hara, that's immoral. But some things are not immoral but they're not good for your soul. You're watching too much, you're on your phone too much or you're eating too much. Not necessarily immoral but it's not good for you. So every time you do something, you then cover up your soul a little bit. Can you damage your soul? Can you damage a neshama? If you do idol worship and eat pig and smoke weed on Yom Kippur, did you damage your soul? No. The soul is pure. You can't damage your soul. So what happens is you paint a little bit of paint on the light bulb. Which means the light bulb is covered up so now it's only giving off 999 watts of power. But is it damaged? Did you damage the light bulb? No. There is still a perfect pure light bulb that is 1000 watts. It's just that you did something to cover it up so you can't see the light. And then you do more bad things and then more bad things. So basically you can paint so much paint on your light bulb and there's a thick layer of paint on the light bulb that you can't see any light coming out anymore. Did you damage the light bulb? No. Is the light bulb giving off 1000 watts? Yes. But it's just not getting to you. Which means that you're not getting the benefit of your soul. Now what's the number one practical benefit of having your soul uncovered? The number one practical benefit of having your soul uncovered is positive thoughts. Positive thinking. Because our sages teach that all of your positive thinking comes from your soul. It's called your Yetzer Tov. The voice of your soul is your Yetzer Tov. And all of your negative thinking comes from your body ego and it's called the Yetzer Hara. So this is how I like to define it. Your body ego has a speaker and your soul has a speaker. Your body ego is playing death metal whatever it's playing. Depressing. On repeat probably. And your soul is playing beautiful uplifting yanuka classical amazing music. Every time you do an Avera you do this thing that's not good for your soul you put a blanket over that speaker. There's so many blankets over the speaker of your soul that you can't hear the voice of your soul anymore. And every time you feed your Yetzer Hara you're basically turning up the volume on that speaker. So the louder the volume of your body ego is even if the soul didn't have blankets on it it
כבר בזמן זה בא היצרה ומנסה בכל כוחותיו לדמות לנו שחשה לנו בהכנותינו. So because it's such a high holy day. In fact, some people call it the high holy days, because it's so high and holy. Because it's such a high holy day, and you realize I've got to do lots of preparation, the יצרה has to come in now and make you feel bad. You didn't do enough. Your ראש השנה wasn't as good as it could have been. You listened to all רב דובר's cheering about you've got to blow your mind when the chauffeur's blowing, but you were actually in the bathroom while the chauffeur was blowing, and then that kid was crying, and you hit your own kid, and you're like, I know I wasn't meant to feel any anger on ראש השנה, but I hit my... Don't worry, you're cool. You're cool. Start again. How do we know that? Second לוחות. יום כיפור, just came to me. יום כיפור is literally the חג of you can try again. You messed up the first לוחות, and you thought that was bad. You just smashed the words of God. The second לוחות are higher. They're higher. So יום כיפור, you messed up ראש השנה as much as you could possibly mess up ראש השנה. Great. Now you have an opportunity to let go. Okay, I messed it up. So what? Everyone's like, no, it's the DNA of my year, and now I've messed up. I slept, which means I'm going to have a sleepy year, and I got angry, which means I'll have an angry year. No, it doesn't. It means if you don't do anything about it, you'll have a sleepy, angry year, but if you take that as an incentive to get up and start again, then you're going to have a great year. You're going to have the best year of your life. This is a great year, by the way. I hope you know that. It's an awesome, awesome year. So the יצרה comes skidding into the scene now. He's like, well, something big is about to happen. I'm going to ruin it for everyone. שהסרש ימי תשובה, so we didn't do ההכנה in the הסרש ימי תשובה. We're coming up to שבת תשובה. We didn't do it. We didn't do anything as good as we could. I thought of a very practical thing, which is people now we're in the 10 days of תשובה, and it's a very, very special time, but people keep feeling, well, what am I meant to actually be doing? I know that I'm meant to be doing something, so everyone's like flapping around a bit, and like, what am I meant to be doing? So that's why I think your עבודה for the הסרש ימי תשובה should be confined to a 10-minute period in the day and say for these 10 minutes, I'm going to do התפוננות. I'm going to contemplate how can I improve, and then for the rest of the day, I'll just really live a normal day because you have to make your meals and pick up your kids. So if you're putting pressure on yourself that all day, every day, I have to be in some kind of הסרש ימי תשובה mode, the faster מרובה לא תפסתי. It's just too much. But if you say, I'm going to now carve some time, and in that time, I'm going to do my תשובה, that's more healthy, and then during the day, you can come back and keep remembering just this moment, your ברכה. I'm going to say my ברכה with more כוונה now. We really spoke yesterday about the two main עבודות of the הסרש ימי תשובה, which is saying המלך הקדוש instead of הקל הקדוש. We said הקל, אל, is a very lofty name of השם, which is beyond time and space, and it's very lofty. You can't grasp it, really. So המלך is actually a lower name of השם. You would think that during the הסרש ימי תשובה, the 10 days of תשובה, we'd have a higher name of השם. And you thought that, I think. You were like, we're not saying הקל הקדוש. That's for every day. We're saying המלך. It's much higher. It's not much higher. It's much lower, which means it's much more reachable. It's much more relatable. I can relate to the מלך. I can't really relate to the awesome God. I can relate to the מלך, who loves me and has rules, and I have loyalty, and I have responsibilities, and I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing. So that's our main עבודה, the הסרש ימי תשובה. And the other one was to see where you can improve. And I used those words very carefully, not to see how bad you are. I'm going to go through my life and see how bad I am. No. I'm going to see where I can improve. It's a whole different perspective on fixing yourself. I'm very excited that I have all these terrible character traits. Amazing. I've got so much to work on. Wonderful. Not, oh, I hate myself. I'm so jealous and angry and lazy and vain, and I don't do my brachas with the kavana, and I... Don't do that. It's just so unhelpful. Be like, this is where I can improve. I'm so excited to say my brachas better. I'm so excited to stop being so jealous all the time. I'm so excited to live a better life. We've got to be very, very excited about these things. But this is the whole purpose of the Yetzirah. היצרה שבא לבטל את ההתלהבות ביום קדושה עצמו The Yetzirah is trying to take away your excitement by making everything heavy, so heavy. 10 days of tshuva is so heavy, and we're going to be written in the book, and I hope we have a good year. Very heavy and intense. That's what the Yetzirah is doing, rather than how we should really look at Yom Kippur as an amazing opportunity. It says, it's making you feel down. And in that way, you actually don't do the avodah you're meant to do, which is joyfully look into what you can fix and fix it. Because it's too heavy. I just can't handle it all. I just want to get through the day and eat. Obviously, you're not going to break the fast when the fast comes out. You're going to add on five minutes. Just to show that I don't need to eat right now. If you break the fast as the fast comes out, saying a not very good bracha, if you're going to rush your bracha as the fast comes out and stuff your face with a ruggalach, it's like, you want to add another five minutes like you did yesterday, five minutes onto the fast and just have a cup of water with a good bracha. That's good. You feel the water. It's nice. You're pure. You don't want to eat straight after Yom Kippur in general because you come crashing down again. You're very high at this point. You're like an angel. You just want to quickly, you're going to have a cup of water. Five minutes later, one grape. And then you stuff your face with a burger spa. My kids wanted burger spa last night. So they had it. They fasted. So they broke their fast with, well, water and grape. And then we went to burger spa. You got to do, this is what Abba thinks and then, okay, you can have your burger spa. יש יצהרה מיוחד There's a very special יצהרה. Very special one. It's very cool. The יצהרה is very cool. שמנסה להחליש את כוח הלהבה שבהכנה There's a special יצהרה that tries to weaken you and your excitement in your preparation. אך צריך לדעת כי אבינו שבשמיים מבקש מאיתנו שנתחזק בבודס ההכנה So Hashem is saying, no, you don't get it. When the יצהרה is trying to get you, you can either let it get you and feel bad and say I'm so bad or you can say, ah, this is a sign that I'm about to get to a higher place. So you should be very, very excited when your יצהרה comes. And I said to that woman the other day, she said, my יצהרה is particularly bigger this time. And I said, that should make you feel good because we say the bigger the צדיק, the bigger the יצהרה. So it's the other way around as well. The bigger the יצהרה, the more of a צדיק you must be. So as soon as your יצהרה starts going crazy, you just start and say, wow, I'm such a צדיק. Who has a bigger יצהרה than me? I'm the biggest צדיק ever. And then just don't listen to it. Don't play, laugh at it. Start laughing at your יצהרה. Just be like, funny. You just take your יצהרה so seriously. You make it so significant. We're saying do the opposite. Don't fight it. Don't repress it. Don't get upset with it. Don't push it away. Just say, hey, dude, you're cool. I'm all right. Thanks for coming. Chill out. Give it a hug. How many of you have heard of נשדה שהעמים הקדושים שנשעה לנו עדיין עד ים הקדוש יומלים החנה? So if you're feeling now that your אלול wasn't as great as it could have been and your ראש השנה wasn't as great as it could have been, so that's okay. You've still
It wasn't funny at all, but he, his reaction was, he just got in such a bad mood and like walked away. You would think, I would have thought, run up to your mum and just say, I'm so sorry, mum, you know, but he, because he just felt so ashamed. He felt such deep shame, he couldn't face it, he couldn't face himself, and I was like, he's not in trouble, he knows he's not in trouble, really, because we're not like that, but he, you know, he just walked away, he was in the worst, he just felt so bad about himself. So that's the punishment. Hashem's not making us feel bad about ourselves, we feel when you do stupid things. Sometimes there's such, it's so bad that it can only be hashgach ha-pratis. It's like, it's impossible to have gone that wrong, it must be hashgach ha-pratis. Everyone's like, wow, everything went so perfectly, that shows it's hashgach ha-pratis, there's another, there's negative hashgach ha-pratis, where it's impossible to have gone that badly. It must be, Hashem was just like, made it, shoop. Very funny. My wife was cool, she was like. So, mitoch a-rachamim, shehu marachim aleinu, natan lehem yom echad b'shana, letaayotam, l'schotatam, mikoal chavotam. So Hashem says, look, I'm going to give you a day a year, where we're just going to pay off all your debts. Okay, pay it off. And it's not hard to pay off your debts, just feel a bit bad about what you did, say you're not going to do it again, and we're done, we're clear. Very important. If you come out of Yom Kippur, if you go to shul, or even if you don't go to shul, but you have one moment on Yom Kippur, when you feel truly, true remorse, which means disappointed in the way you behaved, but not beating yourself up, then you go clear, that's tshuva, you've done tshuva. The Rambam says, admit it, have remorse, commit to try not to do it again. If you do that, you did tshuva, you are perfectly pure. So if you come out of Yom Kippur saying, oh, maybe I didn't do it now, you're wrong. That's why in Mariv, straight after Yom Kippur, we say, selach lano avinu ki chatanu. What do you mean? We just did all of Yom Kippur, we're perfectly pure. Why would you say forgive us, because we sinned? So some of our sages say, you sinned by not believing that Hashem actually forgave you and wiped you clean. You're like, he didn't really forgive me. That's a, you sinned. I think it's because people rush that Mariv to go and eat. Don't rush that Mariv, that's the best Mariv of the year. You're purest. You're davening Mariv, and everyone's now, they've said, what is it, kiddush levana, and havdalah, and you're the only person who's just davening your Mariv. It's like, Ali, tomorrow. Eating's for humans, I'm an angel now. You want to eat your first Yom Kippur after, your first shmah after Yom Kippur, you want to make it good, not just a shmah. Havdalah, don't do that. Take a bit of time. So on this day, is aroused Hashem's love for us. So that He can then give us everything we want in this world and the next world, because we've paid off all our debts. So that means you do have to show up and do some tshuva. It's not according to the opinion that you just get purified. But it's always good to remember that opinion, to show you how strong the day is. But apparently if you're walking around the Japanese islands in Buddhist temples eating shrimp, it's not working as well as it could do. It was good food though. So on this day, the Jewish people have to be immensely joyful, because if you're not, you're saying to Hashem, I don't like your gift. Imagine I give my kids a gift and they're like, all right, I'll take it if I have to. That's not nice. They should be very happy. The happier they are to receive the gift, the more nachas I get. And the more they play with it. They say, amazing gift, thank you so much. If you give a kid a gift and they're like, I don't want it, I don't like it. It's a big letdown. Well, that's what you got. Take it. So if we're not joyful on Yom Kippur, we're basically saying to Hashem, I don't value the gift you gave us. I don't understand what Yom Kippur is. So the simcha means I understand what's going on. And on this day, so Hashem is preparing himself to sit on his throne of rachamim. So the throne of letting go. So all these books are open in front of him. With all our debts in it. And he's just going to wipe them all out. There it's gone. We'd said it before Rosh Hashanah. I think it was either Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. Rav Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev said that the person who did the greatest chuvah was an old woman in the village. Three days walk from here. So Chassidim were like, what? None of the great Gedalim? He goes, no, this woman. So they went and they said to this woman, Rav Levi Yitzhak said, you in heaven did the greatest chuvah out of everyone. What did you do? She goes, I'm really embarrassed to say. And he goes, no, it was the greatest. So she said, I wrote down everything I did wrong this year. I didn't say my brachas and I, whatever, I suppose nozara. But then I wrote down everything that Hashem did to me. You made my son sick. You killed my only cow. I only had like one potato. So I'll forgive you for that if you forgive me for my stuff. Very high chuvah. And Hashem says, great. I like that. That's a good holy chutzpah. Holy chutzpah. Because the 13 mitzvahs are rachamim. Hashem, Hashem. So Levi Yitzhak says it's Hashem speaking to himself. Hashem, Hashem. Because it's Yonashama speaking to Hashem. So this is our relationship with Hashem. He wants us to come home. Okay, we run out of time. But that's giving us a basic idea. So let's think practical, practical, practical. 10 minutes a day to do the Yevoda so you don't feel under pressure. Oh my goodness, I'm wasting my time. 10 minutes a day. That doesn't mean you can't do some extra time during the day when you're saying brachas. Next thing is Hamelech. Hamelech. So not every bracha, but some brachas stress the word melech. Baruch atah Hashem elkeinu melech. Hai lam. Stretch your brachas. And then just start. I wouldn't even feel too much remorse yet. I'd start writing a list of what you want to feel remorse for on Yom Kippur. Because if you're feeling too much remorse now, then you're exhausted by the time Yom Kippur comes. So write down a list of things that you want to try and feel remorse for on Yom Kippur. And that's your Yevoda really. Then you've done it. You're fine. Not too much pressure. I think we're going to learn about Shabbat chuvah. It's a very big Shabbat. The biggest Shabbat of the year really. Apart from all the other ones. The biggest Shabbat of the year for this week. So we're going to learn about that one. But we're all going to have an amazing, awesome day. Individually and as a Jewish people. Chavis. Thank you so much.