Latest / The Rabbi Dov Ber Cohen Podcast / Parshat Pinchas: Your Chelek, Your Mission, Your Unique Path
Transcript
- So that's the first point. Pinchas stood up for Hashem. Hashem's honor. And that's what we want to do in the world. We want to stand up for Hashem's honor. So he spoke about that a lot. Something else that happens in this week's parsha is very important. And Lubavitcher Rebbe speaks about it. In this week's parsha they start splitting up the land of Israel. The Jewish people were coming into the land of Israel and all the portion, each tribe gets a portion in the land of Israel. And you've got to remember the Torah is talking history. Although it's not primarily a history book. It's really a guidebook to spiritual perfection. But it's also talking history. And the land was divided up. But everything it says in the Torah is not only history. There's four different levels of Torah learning at least. Peshat, remez, drash, and tzad. Which is the simple meaning, the hidden meaning, the things that we can learn out from how it's written, and the Kabbalistic meaning, the spiritual mystical meaning. So it's also speaking about your soul and the journey of your soul. This is what the Lubavitcher Rebbe said. One of the things he's talking about, when the Jewish people come into Israel, this is what's going on. And everyone gets their portion. So this is very, very important in your journey. Don't compare yourself to anyone else. Don't compare yourself to anyone else. How far they are in their journey, how religious they might look. And also understand there are very, very many different ways to manifest as a religious Jew, if that's where you are going. So some people come here and they're like, well I don't want to end up wearing a black hat and learning more all day. And I'm like, dude, you can be a religious Jewish lawyer in Manhattan wearing a suit and having a box at the Yankee Stadium. Or you could be some hippie, breast-lev, big payers, sandal farmer in northern Israel. There are very, very many different flavors of what it means. So there's something, and we said this last week I believe, there's something called halacha, and there's something called hashgafa. Halacha, these are the rules. This is the structure. You can't mess with the rules. But hashgafa is your personal expression within the rules. So it's the World Cup at the moment. It's the World Cup at the moment. And everyone on the football pitch are playing by the same rules. Exactly the same rules. You can't kick, you can't pick the ball up with your hands unless you're the goalkeeper. You've got the same rules. But everyone on the pitch has a different role and different talents, a different self-expression. So you've got the winger, he's got to be fast and skillful and be able to get the ball in there. And you've got the center back, he's got to be strong and, well, actually does have to be pretty fast, but whatever. So they're all playing by the same rules, but they have a different role and a different self-expression. So you've got to very much find out what's my dervish, what's my expression, what's my inheritance in Israel, what's my inheritance. So we all inherited the Torah. The Torah is the guidebook, it's the foundation. So you can't break the rules. But within the rules you have to find your own self-expression. It's very, very important that you're expressing yourself and staying normal as well. Especially when you get to yeshiva. You get to yeshiva, you can start getting sucked in and then you forget to play basketball and have a beer with your friends and just be normal. That's very dangerous. In fact, I say when you arrive in yeshiva, you've got to double down on all of those things. You've got to make sure you're being more normal. If you're being dragged in this direction, don't get like some fanatic weirdo. You've got to like pull back in the other direction and just go and do art and music and sports and running. And that's not a waste of time from religious stuff. It's essential. It's essential for your self-expression. Your place within Eretz Yisrael, it represents your spirituality within you. So remember, there are 12 tribes. So there's at least 12 different ways of being a Jew. There's 12 different paths. Some people love davening and struggle with learning Torah. Some people love learning Torah and struggle with davening. Some people want to do mitzvahs but struggle with chesed. Whatever it is. So we all have areas in which we excel. We all have areas in which we struggle. And that's okay. Now you've got to do them both. But realize there are two different parts of your life. I call it flow and grow. Flow and grow. So people will say things to you like, if it's not pushing you out of your comfort zone, you're not growing. So you've got to go out of your comfort zone. And that is very, very true. When I was living in Asia, as soon as I got used to a country, I knew the language, I knew the people, I was so well settled there, I left. Because I was like, I got that. I got that. Now I want to grow again. So I kept pushing myself. If you go into the gym and you're not pushing yourself, you're not growing. But then people make a big mistake. And they say, so you've always got to be pushing yourself and growing and it's got to be uncomfortable. But they forgot about flow. You actually do your greatest stuff when you're in flow, when it's not difficult. And that's also important. So let's say you're very good at something. You're a very good public speaker. And you hate maths. Does that mean you should become an accountant? Because you hate that and you really have to overcome it. So you should go and sit in an office being an accountant because I've got to grow. No, you'd be an idiot. Use your flow. If you're good at something and it comes naturally to you, Hashem's given you this power. You should be able to use that. So you've got to flow. So you've got to know when to flow and when to grow. So some people go all grow. Some people go all flow. I'm only going to do it if it's easy and I'm flowing and I'm natural. Judaism says no, you've got to get the balance. You've got to know when to flow, when to grow, when to push yourself. That's going to be our balance. And this is really what it's teaching. So you've been sent to this world for a reason. Did you know that? You're not random. You're not useless. You're here for a reason. You're a messenger from the Lord. You're a messenger of God. And we say shaliyah shal adam kumoto, which means the messenger is a representative of the person itself. He is that person. He is that person. You are God's representative in this world. You wake up in the morning. That doesn't mean I'm God's gift to mankind, by the way, because you're not. I am. But you're definitely a shaliyah. You're definitely here with a mission. So you better feel like I'm on a mission. You've got to be alive. Most people aren't on a mission in their lives. They're getting through. They're doing. They're all right. They're all right. Most people just want to be comfortable. That's what you want. I just want to be comfortable. Peak moments of pleasure. But you forgot you're here for a reason, a purpose. Someone said to me the other day, you seem to have a lot of vitality. How do you do that on very few hours of sleep? And I said, because I've got a mission. I wake up in the morning. I've got a mission. I've got a mission with you guys, my meal. I'm so deeply passionate about helping you live the greatest life you can, overcoming all your stuff and living a great life. And by the way, not just for yourself, I want you to live a great life for the Jewish people and for God. We've got a mission here. The Jewish people are on a mission. So are you waking up in the morning feeling that I'm living my purpose? I'm actually living my purpose. I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing with immense vitality. It gives you immense vitality, gives you immense self-worth, gives you immense joy when you feel like I'm actually useful. I'm needed. You're needed. We need you. We need you in the team. I'm just picking on you because you're new. We need you in the team. Hey, we need you in the team. The team starts 15 minutes ago, by the way. It's all right, I know. I wasn't judging you. I know you were feeding orphans or something. So we need you on the team. But you've got to work out, what's my role on the team? Now, everyone wants to be a striker, but someone's got to be a goalkeeper. You've got to be the goalkeeper. Well, you want to be a goalkeeper. In a penalty shootout, my daughter said to me the other day, in a penalty shootout, the goalkeeper must be very nervous. And I said, the goalkeeper's not nervous at all because he's not expected to save it. So the goalkeeper's either hero or neutral. The goalkeeper's not nervous for a second because he's not expected to save it. The guy taking the penalty, very scared. And imagine the guy's mum. He's stepping up for that penalty in the World Cup final. That guy's mum. That's how I think about it. My school, we were very good. We played this five-a-side tournament. You know the five-a-side goals, which are quite low. They only go up to the stump. I got my penalty. We won. UCS, we won the five-a-side tournament. It was very nerve-wracking, taking me up for that penalty. If you're on a plane and someone says, we need a doctor. Don't be like, yes, that's me. If you're not a doctor, you know, you've got to know your place. It says in Pirkei Avot, you should know your place. But that doesn't mean in a bad way. Yeah, I know your place, man. It actually means in an empowering way. We need you. You've got something to offer the Jewish people no one else has. Do it. Work it out. Work out what it is and give it. We need it. K'shem she kol sheve kiber nachala b'Eretz Yisrael, she'ot ha'ayah alav le'avod le'afriach. So every tribe was given a portion in Eretz Yisrael. And you have to manifest that portion. You have to make it grow. You've got something. You've got to make it grow. That's what Yehovah. Kach yesh le'kol nefesh m'Yisrael chelek ruchanim miyuchad. Every single Jew has a very special, unique, spiritual purpose in this world. Now we all have the same structure. Tefillin, Shabbat, kosher, family purity. We have the same structure, but what role do you play? We need you to play your role. We can't have everyone being a CEO. You also need an accountant. So work out which is your place. But no, very, very strongly have a place. Shebot tzicha litrakez avodata haruchanit v'tafkida ba'olam. So in that place, you've really got to zone in on your purpose. So this was challenging for me when I was starting to do teshuva. I saw the big rabbi. There's a very big rabbi. You should go and see. He's not physically that big. Rav Morgenstern. Rav Morgenstern is like the biggest m'kubal. He's the biggest yid on the planet, really, at the moment. And I was like, I need to do that. I need to become like Rav Morgenstern. And then I realized, now I don't. Rav Morgenstern was doing tikkun chatzot when he was nine years old. That means getting up in the middle of the night, mourning the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash when he was nine years old. He's not in this world at all. I put on tefillin for the first time when I was 29 years old. But you know what I can do better than Rav Morgenstern? I can talk to a secular birthright group about intimate relationships. I can do that better than him. God needs me. God needs Rav Morgenstern. And God needs you. You've got to work out what's my thing. So stop being like, I need to be like that. You should look at other people and get inspiration and motivation, maybe. I said once, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to just go to the gush and sit for 30 years and become a Talmud hachem. And it was a kind of amazing idea. And then I'd be this amazing enlightened teacher. And I was like, I'd kill myself after two weeks. Because I need to get out there now. That's just not my personality. But you've got to be very, very careful not to be stuffed into a box. People and the system is going to start saying, you have to look like this. You have to do this. This is who you need to be. This is what a real Jew looks like. This is the ultimate Jew. If you really do it right, this is how it is. Very dangerous. Very dangerous. The rules are the rules. Diverge with the rules. Play by the rules. But within the rules, you've got to flourish. So there's one way to do this, which is look around and see what are my talents? What are my energies? What are my skills? What are my experiences? What am I drawn to? I really say that your mission in the world, you can work out in one of two, three ways. One is your own pain. You went through pain in your life. So it's now your mission to heal yourself and then heal other people going through that pain. So if you were bullied as a kid and you've done your therapy and you let go of your trauma to whatever extent, you go and help kids who have been bullied. You set up an organisation. I'd love you to. You could even sit on my lap if you like. I'm alright. I know you're strong. Okay, the other way. If you're an alcoholic and you overcame it, use your own pain, your own struggle to help other people. What you went through. The second one is your privilege. What privilege do you have? So I worked in lots of orphanages in India and Sri Lanka. Why? Because they had terrible childhoods and I had an amazing childhood. So I felt responsible that I'm going to use my privilege. And then you might just be drawn to something. You have these talents. Yeah, you're like social media master. So help the Jewish people through social media, even if that means you lose a million followers. You know how much reward you get in Shemayim for losing a million followers for posting Jewish content. Every follower, you get billions and billions of dollars of reward. Lose those followers for being religious. Do it. Get rid of them. We don't need them. Work out your chele. What's your talent? What's your power? Are you an amazing sports person? Then go and set up a kickboxing school to train Jewish people to look after themselves in an anti-Semitic environment. Whatever it is. If you're an artist, then become an art therapist for kids who are parents got divorced. Something. Work out. So this is one way to do it. Work out what are you drawn towards. Also in your Jewish life. So some people are more drawn towards learning Chassidut. So I'm drawn. I want to learn. That really excites me. So you have to do that. You have to have Sipuk, it's called. You have to have sweetness and excitement. And some people are drawn towards Halacha. Some people are drawn towards tefillah, praying. Some people are drawn towards Chesed. Work out what am I? Because your soul has a yearning. Your soul has a power. What are you drawn towards? Yes. You can either use your pain to know what your mission in the world is, to help other people going through the pain or your privilege, which means I had these great things. So I feel responsible to make sure other people also have those great things. I had a great childhood. So I feel responsible to help other people who are not having a great childhood. So you're using your pain and your privilege. Okay, so then we said there's a third category, which is what are my talents? What are my skills? What's my experience? What's my vitality? What can I do? But then you have to use, how am I going to use this to help people? How am I going to use what I'm good at to help the people I feel I can impact? So for me at the moment, I grew up not religious. I found the depth, truth, beauty of Judaism, and God gave me a talent for communication. So I'm now communicating the beauty of Judaism and life in general and meditation to people who I care about, which is the Jewish people and non-Jewish people. I wrote a whole book for non-Jewish people as well. So I'm using my life experiences and my talents and skills to impact the world around me. That seems obvious to me that you should be spending your life doing that. If you can't get paid to do that, then get your normal job. Do whatever job, but then spend some time volunteering, donating into organizations that are doing that. It's very simple. But you've got to know that you're here with a mission. Don't just feel that, you know, you're just here. I'm filling in time. I'm just filling in my time, get some pleasure and dying. That's not true. You're here for a reason and you've got to work out what that is, not in an uptight, intense, weird way, but work out what am I doing here. So one way to do it is, what am I drawn towards? And then you choose, I'm going to use these special talents and skills and powers and interests to serve Hashem and to serve the Jewish people. Very important that you do that. What are you drawn to? But the Torah actually teaches us there's another thing. But the Torah teaches us something else. That your chelek, your specific part, your portion, isn't always just work out what's best and feels best. You are given a chelek, you're given a portion, and how do you know what that is? It might be exactly the opposite. Every yid has something that is specific to them. Every Jew has to do every mitzvah, but we're said that there's one mitzvah that's like your mitzvah. That's the one I love, I learn about, I yearn for, I teach. Like Asher Martin, he's the Amen man. Don't know if you know him, find him. He's Mr. Amen. He goes like, he's got a podcast on Amen, and he finds people and he says, Amen! And he's like, he wants to say Amen, he's like Mr. Amen. Now we all have to say Amen, but his soul is like, he's the Amen man. I'm the Shabbat dude, I'm Mr. Shabbat. You're going to put on my grave, here lies Dov Berger Shabbat. That's going to be on my grave? Yeah, Shabbat. I'm like Shabbat, I'm obsessed with Shabbat, learning about Shabbat, teaching about Shabbat, thinking about Shabbat. Shabbat, Shabbat, Shabbat, Shabbat, that's my thing. Then you got some tefillin people. I met in Tel Aviv last week this guy, and he just set up a whole app, tefillin app, and get people to put on tefillin, and the tefillin and Chabad are pretty into that as well. So you got the tefillin dudes. Then you got the, so you got to work out. Everyone's got something. But then, there's something beyond your seikhah. That Hashem says, this is actually where you're going to serve the most. It says in the Gemara, We see in the Gemara, that everyone has, I just said it, has a special mitzvah for themselves. Ach, a mitzvah is a special thing. There are no restrictions on your seikhah, your will and your choice. But because it says that Hashem has given you a special thing, how do you know what it is? It is stated that a person can give his personal field. How can you actually work out what is your main mission in this world, this main mitzvah, the main work? You got to actually work out, what's the hardest thing for me? Remember, we got flow. I've been talking about flow up until now. I'm very into flow. But the Rababitchi Rabbi is saying that the deepest farim that sages teach, that actually your real mission, your real tikkun, your real fixing is actually, where's the grow? What's hard for you? It's hard for me to learn Gomorrah. Very hard for me to learn Gomorrah. I hated learning Gomorrah for a year and a half. Hated it. I was like, this is stupid. It's irrelevant. Who cares if the cow gores the chicken and the chicken on the roof? What are you talking about? This is the biggest waste of time. What's wrong with you? You're arguing over ancient Aramaic irrelevant text. What's this got to do with coming close to Hashem? I come to Yeshiva. It's so inspirational and amazing. And then you stick me in the base midrash in front of ancient texts, talking about stupid things. I hated it. Ridiculous. But I didn't give up because I have this warrior mindset. I'm like, now the spiritual sources teach. How do you know that that is your major tikkun? Because why do you hate it so much? Why are there so many obstacles and blocks? Because the Yed Zahara, the evil side, doesn't want you to go there. So it makes it hard for you because it's scared. You see this, by the way, before you get married. The Yed Zahara comes in. There's about to be big Kaddushah. You're about to get married. Big Kaddushah. So the week before your marriage, you're like, oh no, I'm marrying the wrong person. I hate her. I hate myself. Or even it says before Shabbat. Shabbat is very holy. It's a Friday afternoon for many people. It's very stressful. So you think, uh-oh, that means there's something wrong. It's not. It's not true. It's the opposite. It's actually saying to you, hey dude, this is where you're going to break on through to the other side. You're going to break on through to the other side. Here, this is your place. This is the end of level bus. So don't turn around. When you hit the end of level bus, you made it through all the ninjas and you made it through the samurai. And you're like, and then you meet this big like crazy monster, double sword, crazy dude. Don't run away. Don't think, oh no, I've come to the wrong place. Say, ah, this means that I'm at the threshold of greatness. So where I'm pushed most and I hate it and I don't like this and I don't want to, I don't want to daven in a minion three times a day. You're crazy. I can't even concentrate in a minion. They're davening too fast. They're davening too loudly. I'm saying the same words every day. I don't want that. That's your point. That's your greatness. Your greatness lies there. So I'll just very quickly, when it comes to Gomorrah, how did I learn to love Gomorrah? When I stopped needing it to be relevant. I realized halacha is relevant. That tells me what I can do. Hasidut is relevant. That teaches me about deep inner spiritual thought. Khumash is relevant. It's teaching me about stories and ideas and myths and what I need to do. Musa is very relevant. It's teaching me how to refine my character traits. These are relevant. I don't need the Gomorrah to be relevant. The Gomorrah is not there to be relevant for me. It's there to train my mind to think like Rashi and Taizfus. It's there basically as the opposite of meditation. Meditation is to calm and clear your mind. Gomorrah is to sharpen your mind and train it to an unbelievable level of insight and understanding. To see things from every different angle. It polishes your soul. It does everything. All the greatest people who walked with their face to the planet spent a lot of time learning Gomorrah. Hasidic, not Hasidic, Sfadi, Ashkenazi, Gomorrah. Now, I believe a little bit that the Gomorrah has been turned into God. And Judaism has become Gomorrah. So I think that it's gone extreme. But I sat for about eight years learning lots of Gomorrah. Six hours, seven hours, lots of Gomorrah, Gomorrah, Gomorrah, Gomorrah. And then I feel I developed the Gomorrah mind. But still I go with my flow. So if I've got an hour now to learn, I'm not going to learn Gomorrah. Because I want to learn Hasidic. It is more relevant. But I didn't run away from the Gomorrah. Because you can't learn Hasidic and Musa properly if you don't have a Gomorrah mind. If you don't have a Gomorrah mind, you can't do anything else very well. You can't communicate with people. You can't understand life. So you have the Gomorrah there to develop the Gomorrah mind. But it doesn't mean now that I'm now going to go and learn Gomorrah all day. Because it isn't my flow. It is my grow. So you've got to know when to grow and when to flow. It says the big test of Abraham, who was Hasid, loving kindness, was to kill his son. Which is the opposite of loving kindness. To show that I can go against my nature. But then he didn't become Gomorrah. He went back to being Hasid. But you have to show that you can go against your nature. And that really makes your nature even more special. I easily serve my wife by jumping around and being funny and nice. I don't easily serve her by doing the dishes. So I do the dishes. But that doesn't mean I lose my nature. So you have to express your nature. That's your flow. But then you have to go against your nature. That's your grow. But that just makes your nature even more special. Because you're doing it not because I have to. It's because I'm choosing to. Here's what it's saying. So what's difficult for you? And do that. But not to the extent that it's going to crush you. It doesn't crush you. Once again, the example I used was, I'm not going to go and be an accountant sitting in an office because that goes against my nature. That would be stupid. I'm going to be a speaker and I'm going to empower people because that's my thing. But I'm going to know where I need to grow. I've got to know where I have to go against my nature. Your greatness in life is I'm going against my nature. That's where you become great. So you have to understand that that is your portion. That's your inheritance. It's the grow part. It's the difficult part. That's your real inheritance. And then obviously it's the flow as well. لَخَيْن مِنَ سَيَة تَجْشِكَ نَجَدْ لَفْرِيَةٌ And he says what I just said. Well, I just said it because I read this earlier. He says that's why it's so hard for you. That's why it's so hard for you because it's your tikkun, it's your fixing. That's your place of growing. So the sitra akhra, the people who don't want you to become great, they make it hard for you. So you should be very excited. You should be like, okay, bring me that Gomorrah, baby. Bring me the Gomorrah. And then you start playing the game. I call it the Gomorrah game. I'm playing the Gomorrah game. It's not to pass the test. It's not to know the whole Gomorrah. It's not to show. I'm playing chess. Gomorrah is chess. And when you play chess, it doesn't have to be relevant. Why did this piece move this direction? Why is that white and that black? Wrong questions. How do you play the game? How do you think ahead five moves? If he does that, I'm going to do that. Gomorrah is mamish awesome. Gomorrah is chess on a super power spiritual level. But for me, and it might help you, the day I let go of needing this to be relevant and I stopped saying, this isn't relevant, I was like, it doesn't need to be relevant. It doesn't need, that's not what it's here for. Chess isn't relevant, but it's very good for your training your mind. So Gomorrah is the opposite of meditation. Rather than clearing your mind, it's training your mind. Okay, we don't have enough time, but basically very quickly, it says, Maysheh calls Hashem Elokei HaRuchot. Elokei HaRuchot, the God of spirits. And Rashi says, Ribbonu shelo ilam, gelui lefanecha dato shal kol echad ve echad. Hashem, you know that everyone's different. Ve'einan daimim zeh lezeh. You know that no one's the same. Hashem knows. Maysheh says, choose a new leader. I'm going to die, choose a new leader, but choose one that understands that everyone's different. So everyone needs different guidance in their life. So you see the everything. Manei elein manheeg. Give them a manheeg. Sh'yei tsoi vel kol echad ve echad lefid dato. If you want to be a real leader, let's bring out that power. You have this power. Help other people find their own power. And that's what Maysheh asked for, for the Jewish people. Everyone, you need to find your own derech, tap into it. What's my mission? What's my purpose? What's my role in the Jewish people? And as you grow older and you start leading others, be kind to that and see it's not, my way isn't the right way for everyone. I got to help other people find their right way. Shabbat shalom. Chavis.