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In this shiur, Rav Dov Ber Cohen teaches that mitzvot are not cultural rituals or burdensome obligations — they are spiritual power points, direct portals into the reality of Hashem. Building on an ea
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.
All right, we're continuation continuing our odyssey. We're on an odyssey here to live awesome lives. In the first part, we just spoke about being a good healthy person. For the whole first three months we said you need to build up a positive attitude to life, you need to build up a healthy self-worth, you need to have clear goals and values, you need to live a meaningful life which means you need to live up to your goals and your values, and you need to become more of a giver than a taker, and you need to not worry about the future so much, and you need to be able to deal with pain in a healthy way, and you need to have ratzon, you need to have real drive to do what you want to do, to achieve what you want to do. So we really had three months of turning you into a kind of great conscious person. But now we've got something higher than that that we're tapping into, because an atheist can also have a positive attitude to life and have self-worth and run an orphanage and positively impact the world around them. And an atheist should and could also be a great person living a great life and have the five things that everyone wants, which is happiness and self-worth and good relationships and meaning and health, physical, emotional, mental health. So we just had three months of going over those things so you're guaranteed now, which you should feel pretty good about, authentic happiness, true self-worth, good relationships, meaning and fulfillment in life, and health, physical, emotional, mental health. You're guaranteed that because I just gave you that. But also an atheist could have that. Now we're moving into a whole different realm. It's called kedusha and ruchanius. Kedusha and ruchanius, which just means holiness and spirituality. And that an atheist can't get. Because Judaism teaches that the whole purpose of life is to become spiritually aware, full of spiritual vitality, not just physical, emotional and mental, which is very important, but you need to be spiritually aware, spiritually alive. And what does that mean? It means that you're identifying as a soul and you're manifesting your soul in the world through your thought, speech and action. That's it, that's what spirituality is. Nothing else. So when we said in the introduction people say I'm spiritual not religious, I get that and I think it's cute and I like those people. But if God wrote the Torah, you cannot be spiritual without being religious. You can, sorry, I take that back. You can be somewhat spiritual. You can meditate and be pseudo-spiritual. But if the Torah is true, which we know it is true, and if you're not sure of that yet go to areyouright.org, A R E Y O U R I G H T dot org, for all the evidence, compelling evidence that the Torah is divine. Then if you're not putting on tefillin, you're not a bad person, you're just missing out. So we're speaking about now the five ways to play the spirituality game. The first way we spoke about yesterday which was called perishus, which means physical self-control. And we said that goes in two ways. One is don't just take every dopamine hit out there. But then we said also stop identifying so much as a body in terms of getting your sense of self based on how ripped you are and what you have. And then we said on an even more deep direct spiritual level is did you look in the mirror this morning? And then you looked in the mirror and you said and you just said that's my vehicle, that's not me. I'm look I'm literally looking at that's not me. Did you do that? Did you do that? Do you look in the mirror at your face and say that's not me? That's a face. Did anyone have a shower this morning? Yeah. No you didn't. You showered your body this morning. I had a shower of soul. Exactly. Beautiful. And that's going to be one of the five ways. How do you shower your soul? But you did not have a shower this morning unless you showered your soul. You showered your body. You did did you take care of your car this morning? Did you did you put fuel in your vehicle this morning? I did. Eggs. Quite a few eggs I put in my vehicle this morning because that's what my vehicle runs on pretty well. Good. So number two. Number one is turning down the volume of your body ego. We did that. Now number two is how do you turn up the volume of your soul? We want to turn we want to pump up the vibration of your soul. So how I'm trying to picture this whole thing is you have two speakers. One is the speaker of your body ego, it's called really your yetzer hara through your nefesh. One is the speaker of your soul, it's called your yetzer tov. How do you crank up the volume of your soul? So the number one way, and we've really got to understand this deeply so we're going to go over this properly, is called mitzvot. A mitzvah. I don't know if you've heard of these things. These things are called mitzvot. Now mitzvot, many of them are to do with morality and changing your character traits and and transforming you as a person. So taking care of widows and orphans, not bearing a grudge, not taking revenge. There are honoring your mother and your father. There are many mitzvahs that they're trying to refine your character traits and transform you as a person. But there are other mitzvahs like putting on tefillin or putting on a tallis or eating matzah or shaking a lulav and etrog. They're not necessarily refining your character traits. You can be putting on tefillin and it doesn't do anything for your character traits necessarily. So what are they? What are these things? So there's many different levels of tefillin or of mitzvahs in general. But the mitzvot Aseh, we say there are two types of mitzvahs, mitzvot Lo Taaseh, things that you should not do, and mitzvot Aseh, things that you should do. Dovid HaMelech says in Tehillim, סור מרע ועשה טוב. Get away from bad things and tap into good things. In Judaism, good and bad really is only defined as one thing, distance and closeness to yourself and God. If we say it is bad to eat pig, it doesn't mean it's morally bad. You're not a bad person. It just means it's spiritually bad for you. It's covering up your soul. Every time you eat pig, you've covered up your soul. And if we say it's spiritually good for you, it's actually pumping up your soul. So you should think of it like this. When you put on tefillin, you're literally drawing down immense spiritual light into your soul. That's what's happening. You're turning up, you're pumping up the volume. Your soul is vibrating on a much higher level, your soul at that point whilst you're putting on tefillin. How you put on tefillin is going to be very important for this as well because the more consciously you do it and the more joyfully you do it, the more you're pumping it up. So if you're just throwing on your tefillin kind of resentfully, this is some kind of ritual, I have to do it, otherwise I'll get punished, it's better than not doing it, but it's not great. It's not great. You have to understand that every time you do a mitzvah, what does the word mitzvah mean? So some people say commandment, but it really comes from the word tzavta which means connection point. So when you put on your tefillin, you're closing the circuit between your soul and Hashem. So you're connecting very, very deeply into the whole spiritual reality. It's like sticking your finger in the plug socket of Hashem. So you should really have that in mind when you're about to say the Shema, for example. The Shema is a declaration of our loyalty to Hashem. It's a belief. It's not a prayer, by the way. People say Shema is the holiest prayer in Judaism. It's not a prayer. You're not talking to God. You're saying, \"Listen, Jews, Hashem is one, dude.\" That's what you're saying. It's not a prayer. But when you're saying that, you're tapping into an amazing divine reality. When you're eating matzah, you're tapping into a divine reality. When you put on your tzitzit, it's four mitzvahs every second. Your neshama when you're wearing tzitzit, your neshama is like... your neshama is like... and when you put on your tefillin, your neshama is like... your neshama wakes up in the morning, your neshama is like, \"Get me my, get me my tefillin now. Need it, I need it.\" Your body's like, \"Get me my coffee and cigarette now.\" Terrible. Why do you want that? You wake up in the morning, your neshama is like, \"Plug me in, plug me in, but I need my life support machine here.\" So which means you don't want to take off your tefillin too quickly. People are like, \"Okay, finished tefillin, finished davening, take it off.\" I'm not taking off my tefillin until I have to. I've got to make the kids' breakfast or I've got to go to the bathroom or something. I keep those babies on. I am plugging in big time. That's why tzitzit very beautiful, very important. I never not wear tzitzit, only when there's water, shower, mikvah. I sleep in tzitzit. No, you don't have to. Do you have to sleep in tzitzit? No, but why would you not? Why would you not want to sleep in tzitzit? I don't have to. So some people are kind of like, get out of doing a mitzvah. I don't want to do it. I'm not going to eat bread because if I eat bread, I'll have to bench. Well, why don't you want to bench? Why don't you want to speak to Hashem? What's wrong with you? What are you going to do for those four minutes? Watch Conor McGregor limp around the thing like in body you doing? Why are you limping around? Does it apply to all mitzvot that if you do it more happily? Yes, absolutely! The more conscious, consciously and happily you do it, the more you tap in. Now, the only reason you wouldn't freak out when you're doing a mitzvah and you wouldn't do it joyfully is because you just didn't understand what it was. If you understood what a mitzvah was, you'd be like, of course I'd want to do it. I love it. So this is the example I always give. Give a three-year-old kid a choice for his birthday between a monster truck and a piece of paper, a rectangular piece of paper. What's he going to choose? Monster truck. Is that a good choice? Unless the piece of paper is a fifty-thousand dollar check. So the baby just doesn't realize that's a fifty-thousand... he just doesn't realize. So you see tefillin and you just think it's black boxes. So you're like, okay, I'll do it, I won't do it. It's a tradition, tradition, tradition! It's a nice cultural ritual. It's not a nice cultural ritual. It's a spiritual powerhouse. It's a spiritual way you're tapping into spirituality. Everyone here believes in God? Kind of? Infinite conscious creator of the universe? God, when he created infinite, finite universe and stuck his consciousness in, gave us these six hundred and thirteen portals to connect directly into that reality. So the tefillin isn't just boxes. That's not what it is. It's a physical action. Why, by the way, are most mitzvot physical? Because as we said before, Judaism says don't detach from the physical, uplift the physical. We want it to be physical. And that's exactly what tefillin is, by the way: mental, emotional, physical. We're aligning ourselves. When you've got your tefillin on: mental, next to your heart, emotional, physical, your actions, you're aligned into your soul. You're completely plugged into the matrix, beyond the matrix. You're plugged in, your tefillin. Which means you need to be breathing through your nose before you put them on. ברוך אתה ה׳ אלקינו מלך העולם. You don't understand the immense power of what you're about to do. And the sages also teach us, the Tanya and the Nefesh HaChaim, that we actually affect the upper spiritual worlds as well. When we put on tefillin, that changes the whole world, the whole universe. It's a tzinor, it's a pipeline that goes both ways. It's like a rope. So you can shake the rope from the top and feel it at the bottom, but we can shake the rope at the bottom... we're sending amazing, amazing power and energy into the world. Every time we do a mitzvah we're increasing spirituality in the world. We're bringing God into the world. That's our job. God isn't revealed in this world. I don't see God. You doing mitzvot is bringing God-consciousness into the world. Especially if you say I'm doing it on behalf of all the Jewish people, which we do. Every time you do a mitzvah you're meant to say I'm putting on my tefillin on behalf of all the Jews, besheim kol Yisrael. How does that work? Because every Jewish soul is connected. We're connected as a Jewish people. So every time I put on tefillin, that's actually helping every Jew. And it gets filtered down into their soul. There's going to be some Jew sitting on some beach in like Hawaii, smoking weed, and he's just going to be sitting there and just be like, whoa. And he'll think it's the weed but it won't be, it will be you putting on tefillin in Jerusalem with him in mind. So they're getting that. Unfortunately, it works the other way as well. Every time we do something not so good, it's not good for the collective. We're a collective. We're working together in this. The other major, major power of every mitzvah you do is that it creates relationship and connection to Hashem. If I tell my children to do something, there's two good things that come from it. Everything I tell my children to do is for their best. Tidy your room, kids. Why? Because it's good to have a tidy room. When your room is tidy you've got more space to play football in your room. Not just that your mind is better, but it is good to have a tidy room. It gives you a better life. So I tell my kid... everything I tell my kids to do, I only tell them to do it for one reason, because it's good for them. So you understand that why does the Torah tell you to do what it tells you to do? Only for one reason, because it's good for you. That's why. It's not because Hashem was bored or wanted to test you or it's some burdensome obligation. That's not why it is. When the Torah says pray three times a day, then there's breakfast, lunch, and dinner for your soul. Everything the Torah is telling you is good. And everything the Torah tells you not to do is because it's not good for you. Don't eat pig. Why not? Not good for you. That's it. Very simple. But when my children then tidy their room, two things happened. Number one, they benefit from... He benefits from having a tidy room. But number two, they benefit from a closer relationship with their father. And that's what's really important. So if a kid tidies his room resentfully, 'Okay, I'll do it', he benefits from having a tidy room, but he doesn't get the good relationship with his father. So if you do mitzvot kind of resentfully, 'Oh, I have to do these things', it's nice, at least you're getting the benefit of it's good for yourself, but you're missing out on the real benefit which is now you have a relationship with your Dad. Hashem's not out to get you. Hashem wants you to live the best life you can, tap into your highest level of spirituality. So when the Torah says that I'm giving you mitzvot, it says Letov lach, Deuteronomy 10:13. Why am I giving you mitzvot, says God? Because it's good for you. And that's it. It's just really good. It's spiritual power points that you get to tap into all the time. So we should be looking forward to doing mitzvot. When you're looking forward to Rosh Hashanah, what are you looking forward to? Apple and honey? Which is very nice, but what you're really looking forward to is hearing the Shofar. When you hear the Shofar, your whole ego is smashed and you tap into a very deep place in your soul. When you shake a Lulav and an Etrog, you're tapping into a deep place into your soul. When you eat Matzah, you might physically speaking, I don't know that many people who love stuffing that much dry cracker in their mouth, spiritually your Neshama loves it. Your Neshama's like, 'This is great'. There's no other food that's actually a Mitzvah. There's no food that you say אשר קדשנו במצותיו וצונו על אכילת. You commanded us and made us holy. By the way, this is a very important thing, Asher kidshanu bemitzvotav. What's the purpose of mitzvot? To make you holy. To make you spiritually vibrating on a higher level. To make you high, spiritual. It's not to make you good. People say to me, 'My father's a very good man, why does he need the Torah? He's a very good man.' And we said, the Torah's not there to make you good, it's there to make you holy. Asher kidshanu bemitzvotav. Doing mitzvot makes you a holy person, more mental clarity as well. Remember, if pumping up your soul is your Yetzer tov is the voice of your soul, the more you do mitzvot consciously and the more you turn up the volume of your soul, the more positive your thinking is. It's just a very practical thing. All your negative thinking is coming from your body ego. Why me? It's not fair. Jealousy, doubt, fear, anxiety, hatred, guilt, shame, arrogance, vanity. All your stuff that's come from your body ego. So that whole negative critical voice in your head is coming because you're so identified with your body ego. The more you pump up your soul, the louder the voice of your positivity comes and you just live a better, you're just a clearer person. You're just a happier and clearer person. It's a very, that's just a very, very practical, powerful thing. Someone asked me when I dated my wife, since I got religious, I dated seven girls, set up with seven girls, after about one minute I was like, 'That's not my wife. I know she's not my wife, not my wife.' I just knew. Yeah, a feeling. Either I wasn't attracted to them physically, or I just was like, I don't know, it's not my wife, I just knew. Met my wife, after about a minute I was like, 'That's my wife'. I just knew she was mine. Now, I don't think that has to be the case now, don't, I don't think that happens to most people, but people say, 'Why do you think that is?' And I said, I think because once you are doing mitzvot very consciously, and your soul's very, very alive, and you're going to the Mikvah every day, I go to the, I think it's an important thing you shouldn't do it yet, but something to strive for maybe one day, then spirituality becomes much more obvious. I'm just much more clear. My thinking is very, very clear, and my soul is very, very clear. So when my soul saw the other part of my soul that I lost, I was like, 'Oh, there it is. I just lost, I just found my lost item.' When I, I'd like to find my bike charger, by the way. But anyway, when I find my bike charger, I'll be like, 'Oh, there's my bike charger.' I won't be like, 'Well, maybe it's my bike charger, maybe it's not.' I know. But you gotta be vibrating on a high spiritual level. Yes. Is your intuition your soul? Yes, but you gotta be careful of your intuition because most people can't connect to their intuition anymore because it's too covered up with their pain and trauma and hopes and dreams and stuff. So most people when they say 'My intuition is telling me something', it's not really, their wounding is telling them something. But yes, you could tap into your soul. I said, I gave a whole class on how to make decisions and I said in general we don't make decisions based on emotions. What's the rationally right thing to do? I'm not going to give you the whole class now, but then I said, once both decisions are rational and good, then you can then go to your heart and say, 'Okay, what am I drawn to now?' Once they're both, so if I give the example... Example of the girl, she said I don't know whether to be a preschool teacher or a nurse. So I said look, they're both the same thing basically, helping people is quite nice. And once you've done some research and due diligence, find out the money and the whatever, speak to people who did it, at that point they're both fair, now you can go to your intuition. Let your heart... when did you last let your heart decide? A whole new world, don't you dare close your eyes. So don't let your heart decide. It's a stupid thing to do until your head has said hold on, these are both okay, then you let your heart decide. But if the more and more pumped up your soul is, the more you can rely on your intuition because the more you're actually connecting to your intuition. Shalom Aleichem. Shalom Shalom. Thank you, Rabbi. So the sages teach that really there are five parts of a mitzvah. And five parts of the mitzvah. Part number one is just the act itself. Put on your tefillin, give charity, put on your tzitzit, whatever it is. There's the action itself. The next part of the mitzvah is the speech. Speech remember we said there's thought, speech and action. These are the garments of your soul. So there's the action part of a mitzvah. Then there's the speech part of the mitzvah which is the blessing. You say a blessing. What an amazing opportunity. Say a blessing. We're going to give a whole class on blessings. Also the speech part of the mitzvah is learning about the mitzvah. Divrei Torah. The more you understand about a mitzvah, the more you get out of it. So if tefillin is black boxes that you put on your head and your arm, then you won't get a lot out of it. But if you understand the head and the heart and the thing, if you understand that the seven wraps is חסד גבורה תפארת נצח הוד יסוד מלכות, the seven divine energies, or אתם הדבקים בה' אלהיכם חיים כלכם היום, those of you who are truly connected to Hashem, you're truly alive. If you realize that you have a Shin on your hand and a Dalet and a Yud which spells Shaddai, Hashem's name, then you're literally feeling Hashem's name. You've got Hashem's name written on your body. And then you tied yourself to Hashem and it, if you know that Dovid HaMelech's army went to battle wearing their tefillin to scare, it's like Braveheart, they're like, 'Aaaah!' So the more and more and more and more you know about tefillin, obviously the more you're going to get out of it. So you really have to understand what you're doing. American footballer on some trip to some university Jewish kid on Jewish trip came up to me and said, 'Rabbi, Shabbat doesn't do it for me.' So it's like, 'Well, what do you know about Shabbat?' And he says, 'You can't turn on lights and stuff.' And I was like, 'Oh, but you turn off your phone and you...' 'No, I don't do that.' So I said to him, 'Well, I get it. You know what? American football doesn't do it for me.' And he says, 'Well, you're English. You don't know about American football.' And I said, 'Yes, I do.' He said, 'What do you know?' I said, 'You wear helmets.' Because he was an American footballer, I had to explain that to him. If all you know about American football is you wear helmets, you're not going to get a lot out of it. If you know the quarterback and the linebacker and the different plays and why on earth you'd have a sport where you play for ten seconds and then stop for ten minutes and then play for another... I don't get that. And you know the rivalry between the teams and you know... the more you know about American football, the more you're going to enjoy the Super Bowl. So if what you know about Shabbat is I can't do this and I can't do that, how are you possibly going to get anything out of Shabbat? If you understand that Shabbat is Yom HaNeshamot, it's the day of the soul, it's the time when you connect deeply and you disconnect from the external world and you tap in... the more you know about something, the more you get out of it. Very, very clear. Mezuzah, what's a mezuzah? It's just sitting on the door. What for? The Rambam says every time you walk past a mezuzah you should have a palpable experience of the reality of God's existence and how much God loves you unconditionally. So how much, how often do you do that when you walk past a mezuzah? Maybe you just don't... You've got to like... that mezuzah! Said the other day to these people, you know what, they were talking about coke and lines. I said we have white lines in Judaism as well. We just put them on the side of the door. Mezuzah. That's actually what you should do when you walk past a mezuzah. It'd be a bit weird, actually, don't do this. But you walk past a mezuzah and you go... 'Ah, Hashem loves me baby!' We're going to have that, I'm going to make those mezuzot. Anyway, so what's getting you high? What are you getting high off? I'm getting high off mezuzahs. I'll tell you about it. I used to do it, it was too much for me after a while. Every time I walked past a mezuzah I'd go like this, quietly, I'd be like, 'Shoom! Shoom!' I felt like I was going into a portal of higher consciousness. 'Shoom!' And then into the next mezuzah. And after a while I actually just got too high. I just couldn't do it. I just felt so high every time. 'Shoom!' Another... Each Mezuza, microdosing all day, microdosing with the, there's a God. There's a God. Do you remember there's a God? Do you know there's a God? Tzitzit, my goodness! Tzitzit, I'm freaking out with Tzitzit. Freaking out. Why wouldn't you put on Tzitzit? It's heavy. No, it's too heavy for me. What are you talking about? Oh, I'm a bit embarrassed to walk around with strings tucked in my. Why wouldn't you, I just don't get it. Why wouldn't you do it? The payoff, what is the payoff? How much time, effort, money, how, what, what input do you need to put in? Nothing. What's the output? Four mitzvot a second, pumping up your soul, connecting to Hashem, making your consciousness better, giving your mind is more positive, remembering your values, living up to your values. You're about to do something you shouldn't do and you're wearing Tzitzit, you're like, I'm not going to do that. You go home and your friends are like, hey, let's do this and that, and you're like, no way, I wear Tzitzit. So you take your Tzitzit off and then don't do that. These are my values. Tzitzit are amazing. Tzitzit are, and why do I love Tzitzit? Because you've got to be crazy to wear Tzitzit. Who wears Tzitzit? In fashion, who wears Tzitzit? No one's walking around with strings hanging out of their pants. You're crazy. I'm like, yes baby, I'm crazy. I just don't believe in your world. I don't believe in your fashion. I don't believe in your success model. I don't believe in anything about your world, I just, it's all fake. The real world, the American dream, it's all fake. It's a nightmare, it's an American nightmare. It's not the real world, it's the fake world. You're so caught up, you're so wallowing in the fakeness of the world. Just walk around with your Tzitzit, your Kippa like a Mensch, put on your Tefillin and then you can be the top CEO and a mover and shaker, social entrepreneur. You can do that as well. Remember, I always say that, you can have it all, do it all. But just be tapping into reality. The third part of doing a mitzvah is the basic Kavana, the basic intention is I'm doing it because it's a mitzvah. I'm not doing it because Chabad made me do it. I'm not doing it because I'll get reward for doing it. I'm not doing it because I'll get punished if I don't do it. I'm not doing it because it's a nice cultural thing and it's part of my Jewish identity. Although those are all nice, you, I'm doing it because it's a mitzvah. God said do it. God said do it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it, God said do it, I'm doing it. It's a mitzvah. This is a mitzvah. The higher Kavana, we need a whole class about this, the very high Kavana is I'm not even doing it for me at all, I'm doing it for God. I'm doing it, why? Because it makes Hashem happy. I want my dad to be happy. So the kid tidies his room. He tidies his room because it does benefit him and he enjoys the benefit, but really in his mind he's saying I just want to do this because I love my dad and I know my dad will be happy if I tidy my room. It's a very powerful Kavana. So when I put on my Tefillin in the morning, I'm like Hashem, do you know why I'm putting on Tefillin? Because I love you and I know it makes you happy. And it's, we say I'm doing this to give you Nachas Ruach. Nachas Ruach means pride, but it also means the settling of the spirit. I'm doing this to bring you into the world, Hashem. The more I do mitzvot, the more I'm bringing Hashem into the world. I'm doing, and Hashem says no, I want you to do mitzvot for you, and you say thank you so much, I want to do them for you. And that's a good relationship. When each person is doing it for the other person, that's a good relationship. And the more you enjoy it, the more Nachas you're giving him. It's not like okay, I'm not doing it for me at all, I'm just doing it for Hashem so I'm not even going to enjoy it because if I enjoy it then it's taking away from me doing it for Hashem. No! The more you enjoy it, the more Hashem enjoys it. You buy your kids a gift, the more they enjoy using it, the more Nachas you get. So Hashem loves it when we love doing them. Number five, the fifth part of a mitzvah and it's not a mitzvah without it really is Simcha. It's an integral part of the mitzvah. Simcha. You've got to love doing it. So with my wife, I give her flowers. That's the action. Then I say the words, I love you, thank you for everything you do, I appreciate you. Then I have my basic intention is, this is a connection point. It's a mitzvah. It's a connection point between me and my wife. It's a good thing. My higher intention is, and I'm doing it for her though. I'm giving her flowers not so I get something in return. I'm giving her flowers because I love her and I want her to be happy. But if you're doing all of that, you're giving your wife flowers and you're saying I love you and you're doing it because it's a connection point and you're doing it for her, but you're not Besimcha, you're not doing it joyfully, then where's the relationship? So remember, mitzvot are also to help the relationship. Finish with a very quick story. There's a boy, seven-year-old boy, he saw his dad give his mom flowers on Friday before Shabbat. And she was so happy and they were like, wow, they love each other. And he was like, what can I do for my mom? And he didn't have anything, he didn't have any money, so he went into the kitchen, he got a coffee cup, disposable coffee cup, ran into the garden, filled it with mud. Put a bit of grass on it, came and said, here mom, I love you, thank you so much for everything, Gut Shabbat. How did his mom feel? Cup of mud. Unbelievable. She was like wow, thank you. She's like everyone look what Chaim got me. She puts it on the mantelpiece, she's like Chaim, thank you. Next week same thing happens. He runs into the garden, fills it with mud, bit of grass on the top. She's like Chaim, that's amazing. After like a few weeks she's got all this mud all over the house but she's like this is amazing. Thank you. Chaim gets a bit older, he's eight, he's nine, he's in the yard playing basketball with his friends. It's Friday. He then says to his friends, hold on, I just got to go and do this thing for my mom. So he runs into the house, gets the thing, fills it with mud, puts it on the table, bye thanks mom, love you, starts running out the room. His mom says Chaim, stop. Chaim's like what? And she said what did you just do? And he said I did that mud thing you like. And she looked him and said Chaim, do you think I ever wanted a cup of mud? And Chaim said you seemed to be really happy with it. And she said I didn't want the cup of mud. I wanted the relationship that the cup of mud was giving us. I don't need you to put black boxes on your head and your arm, gosh. I don't need that, it's a cup of mud. What I want is the relationship. So if you're doing your mitzvot but there's no relationship, no love, no joy, no respect, then what is it? What's the point of it? mitzvot are the key. mitzvot are the key. First key, turn down the volume of your body and material desire. Second key is pump up your soul. Pump up your soul, mitzvot, mitzvot, you should love mitzvot, mitzvot, love mitzvot, yearning for Shabbat, I'm yearning for Shabbat all week. Yes. How do we turn down the physical? That was yesterday's class. I just got in yesterday. Okay, so you're going to ask one of the guys and they're going to break it down for you. Be'ezrat Hashem, I see you tomorrow for number three. Alright, chaveirim.