Welcome to Judaism Demystified, a podcast for the perplexed.
Join us as we explore some of the most fascinating Jewish and
Torah related topics with our esteemed guests.
By tackling some of the biggest questions you likely won't find
addressed elsewhere, we aim to shed light on important issues
and inspire a return to the fundamentals.
Enjoy the show. Thank you for joining the
Judaism Demystified podcast. Before we begin, I would like to
first introduce our guest, Jesse Fishbein.
So Jesse is actually a friend of Rabbi Matt Schneeweiss, who
recommended you to us. When I asked him the first time
I had him on, we actually discussed, you know, the
rational approach to prayer. And I asked him after the
podcast, I'm like, who's someone you recommend?
We, we have a whole podcast about that.
Who should we have on? And he right away said your
name. So I, I got your book and I
thought it was unbelievable and I thought it was really amazing.
We're going to talk about that. But before we begin, I'd like
just for you to tell the audience a little bit about
yourself and your background. OK, my name is Jesse Fishbein.
I, I don't know that I have any official background other than
I've been in Henoch for about 20, more than 20 years at this
point. So I guess that's a background
right there. But that's not my background and
it's Fila in prayer. We'll talk more about that.
But my, I started teaching I think in 99, started teaching
high school and I mainly was a hummus teacher for many years.
I give local shurim. I get classes wherever I go,
wherever I travel for Shabbos. I always do you if can I speak
in the neighborhood. I love speaking to different
Jewish communities, just sharing Torah, seeing what they have to
say. I really enjoy that I
homeschool. I'm a homeschooler, so that's a
kind of a side that's or my main thing or my side thing,
depending on how you look at it. The whole time that I was
teaching in high school, I also was simultaneously homeschooling
my my own children. And right now I'm translating
for Alatorra. I'm working on the before shore.
So that's my current project. Yeah.
And I was, I was scared to do it, honestly, but he, he pushed
me and I said fine, you take the heat 'cause I'm not, you know,
if I get things wrong, it's on your head.
You 2 have final say. So I'm doing what I can and, and
you know, that last 10%, the hard part, I leave that to him.
But it's a lot of fun, very interesting and, and my, I hope
to my next big project. I really want to write a book on
prayer in the Bible. So you kind of got me before my
big project, but this is my introductory book.
So we'll we'll talk more about that.
So so we got you before you got famous.
That's so anyway, so I want to just get right into it because I
think this this is such an important topic and I know I
know people who are going to be, you know, very interested in
listening to this episode. The topic is infertility and
it's a very, it's a deeply personal struggle for people and
what makes your book Infertility in the Bible, how the matriarchs
change their fate and how you can too.
And what makes it stand out is it's informal, accessible style
and inclusivity beyond just Jewish and theistic readers.
I, I, I love the fact that you wrote in a way that it was for
everyone and you have tried to explain basic concepts for
anyone who's reading, whether they're skeptic or atheist,
which is really beautiful. What inspired you to write this
book, first of all, and how have readers who struggled with
infertility responded to it? OK, well, I'll, I'll answer a
little bit out of order. I really particularly wanted to
write it for everybody. I wanted it for all human
beings. I wanted it to be for anybody
who had any interest in the topic about what the Torah has
to say about infertility and what Judaism has to say.
I wanted to be accessible to everyone, and being a high
school teacher, I did end up speaking to so many people who
are really in a part in a time of life where they're just not
sure what they believe and they're really unsure about
things. And I wanted to be able to speak
to everyone wherever they were at.
So that was that decision I started.
There were so many stages of my life.
I wrote this book. I think right now I started
investigating this topic about 20, five years ago.
This book, I think was is published almost 17 years.
It was published in 2005 and my second child, so at the time I
had one child came very easy, thank God.
And then when I was trying for my second child, it took a few
years, took a couple of years and I found that I was looking
for inspiration. I was looking to the Torah.
I was looking for things to I was looking for books to read on
the topic other than the actual Torah.
And I found that the books that I was looking for did not exist.
So I started studying the stories in the Torah because
obviously infertility is a huge theme in Torah, especially Sarah
Rifka, Rakha, Leia to some degree, Hana Miha, all this, all
the the people that I mentioned in my book.
And as I started, I started gathering information just for
myself, just to understand the topic because I was in so much
pain and I was looking for inspiration and I was looking
for help and how to handle this emotionally, how to handle this
spiritually, how to handle this. What am I supposed to do with
myself? Does the Torah have an answer
for me? Is there, is there anything I
can do? Am I just, am I just helpless in
this situation? So obviously, aside from
medically, the medical things that we were pursuing and, you
know, what does the Torah have to say about it?
And so I found an approach. And of course, since at the time
I mostly was a teacher, I, I wasn't necessarily, I've always
been a writer, but I was more a teacher.
So I imagined that I would set it up as a, as a series of she
or, and when I had it all together.
So then my daughter was born. My first two kids are 5 1/2
years apart and when my daughter was about two years old, I had
this outline and I had all my notes and, and one of my friends
suggested to me you should make it into a book.
You have it all there, just write it up.
So I wrote it up and interestingly enough, so she was
about two at the time when I started writing and then when I
finished writing it. Then there was the process of
finding a publisher and then there was, I was in the middle
of editing. So at around 22, around 2 years
old, you're usually trying for the next kid.
I actually went into an even worse and even more painful
situation of infertility. My first stage of infertility
was that I was unable to get pregnant and I was just doing
the normal treatments that fertility treatments.
My second stage of infertility, which is while I was in the
middle of editing this book, was pregnancy loss, late stage
pregnancy loss, trimester pregnancy loss.
So I had, I think I'm trying to think I was in the middle of my
third in a row. I think was the first I was
pregnant. I was pregnant after having 2
mid trimester pregnancy losses. The night that I gave a speech,
I think my first speech for this book, and that was the night
that I spoke to someone in the audience who was also a
recurrent miscarrier. She gave me the name of a doctor
and that's the doctor I found who who helped me with with my
subsequent children. So, and it was in the middle of
that that I wrote the chapter on, on David Hamelich, on King
David and how he dealt with the loss of his infant because I, I
felt that I hadn't experienced that up to that point.
And I wanted to add that chapter.
And so I sent that to my to my editor publisher, and they put
in that last chapter there at that point.
Well, now that you bring that up, for those who are
unfamiliar, can you give us a little bit about that, that
story of Davida Melech and his and his infant loss?
The story is well, I mean really that's part of the whole story
of David and Bacheva with the famous David and Bacheva story
that David did sin and David and Bacheva she she got pregnant
from that, which is why he ended up doing the cover up and
killing Oria. And Hashem sent the prophet
Nathan and he was told that this baby is going to die.
And he knew going in that the baby was going to die.
And he knew going in that it was a sin.
It was because of a sin that he did a punishment.
And he, he spends a lot of time crying over that baby and, and
praying and hoping that the baby would survive.
And the baby did not survive. He did do tuba.
He did, he was told, OK, you'll live, but David himself would
live. But the baby was going to die.
And it's a it's a very poignant story because the baby dies and
everyone's afraid to tell him because he's been crying and not
eating for a week. And he says, you know, he gets
up and he and he goes to and he goes to the base of Miktash and,
and they his, all the people. His response is very different
than than even his servants expected.
So they were expecting a him to be destroyed, but instead he was
the opposite of the short. He was like, OK, I'm going to
pick myself up, which is something amazing.
That's really an inspiration. And and they they couldn't
understand. They said, why are you behaving
this way? You know, we thought you'd be
completely wiped out from this. You were so upset.
And he said, look, when I thought that there was something
I could do, I was vomiting, I was crying, I was weeping.
I I thought maybe I could change something.
But now that I can't change anything, OK.
And it's time to move on to the next to the next.
You know, he says, I'll I'll go, I'm, I'm going to him, I'm going
to him in death. He's not coming back to me.
So it's a very interesting statement.
And I think even when I wrote that, I wrote this in my 20s and
I've since realized now I have grown children.
You know, he went through a rough time in his life with,
with his older children. So I really, I don't think I, I
even appreciate it. I hadn't had older children yet,
but dev it enough like. So my main thing is that I was
really trying to draw inspiration from every Tanakh
character that I could when I'm dealing with pain and suffering.
I, I wasn't just, I was writing this in the framework of
infertility, but really I was, I wanted to make it broader than
that. I wanted to make it a book for
anyone who is dealing with any category of suffering and what
does the Torah say? How to handle suffering?
And especially I think the problem is that I think a lot of
people get nervous and it's reasonable.
It's, it's a proper approach when bad things happen.
The first thing you have to ask yourself is did I sin?
So, but I would like to, I specifically was looking at the
infertility situation. I, I have a small chapter with,
with Mihal because Mihal, it's clear that her situation was
because of Aveira, because of sin and David enough also
because of sin. But I think a lot of times,
specifically with regard to the matriarchs, it is not because of
sin. That's not, that's not the cause
at all. So I think it's very important
when things are happening that when you're suffering.
So of course you have to do that introspection.
You have to look and see, is there anything that I've done?
But unless a prophet comes and tells you you did something
wrong, there has to be another approach here.
Because a lot of times the type of suffering that we're going
through, like your basic categories of suffering,
financial losses, health losses, different penalty with children,
those types of things, they're the same types of there's like
universal pains out there. And you could look around and
you could say I'm suffering like I'm having these miscarriages,
babies dying over and over and over.
And I'm trying to do 2. I'm trying to become better.
And like, I don't think that I'm that much worse than the people
around me. So, so is this, is this a, is
God smiting me? What is it smiting me?
Like what's happening here? So I need it.
I was looking for some type of an approach from the Torah for
this type of a situation in a broad in a broad sense.
Amazing, yeah. Think that from like you
mentioned, from the stories of the mouth, you can also look at
Ferdin Eov, majority cases actually in the Torah is it's
not necessarily coming direct, direct from a sin unless like
you said, a prophet comes in and mentions it.
You know, the Torah will find a way to make it clear if so.
But we see a lot of times that suffering is kind of part of a
plan, I guess, right. And I think today it's become
like common. It's been common to link
everything with sin, which like you say, if it's about you
looking at yourself and trying to improve yourself, great.
But I think that what's also happening is, is there's like
people are just, you know, freaking out, like, you know,
did I do something wrong? What did I do wrong in the
almost like a, like a guilt way instead of a let me improve
myself because that's, that's a good way to get meaning from
something that has gone wrong instead of trying to, you know,
improve by by attaching meaning to your experience.
It's becoming more of like this, like paranoia, almost like, you
know, guilt ridden thing and it's really unhealthy.
Yeah, I think it's, I think it's not productive to do that.
I remember this is years ago, I remember a friend of mine, she
had leukemia and we, she was trying to figure out why God
would do this to her. And, and I said, like, I really
don't think that that is the approach.
I think, you know, I said, what if you find out in, in 10 years,
we, this is even before we knew we had, I don't think we had the
human genome yet. Like what if you find out that
this is genetic, like right now you're doing this tremendous
clutch bone on nefesh about, about, you know, why is God
hurting me in this? What is God trying to tell me?
And she's saying things like, 'cause she watched Sex in the
City or something like that. And, and I said, I said, you
know, millions of people are watching Sex in the City.
I actually, personally, I only watched the movies with my
mother-in-law. I went with her, but I, I don't
think I, I really saw an episode, but you know, Even so
you're going to say that that Hashem is punishing you by
giving you leukemia for sex in the city.
When, when like, maybe it's genetic.
Maybe it's genetic. Like you have to, you have to,
you have to have safe help because otherwise you're ending
up like you said, you have this guilt.
It's not productive. You feel terrible.
And what are you? The the goal of Yusurim, the
goal of negative things happening is to promote growth
according to Judaism and greater growth, greater insight and
feeling just bad about yourself is not is not the approach I was
trying to. Do and, and, and people, you
know, unfortunately today they're even not just blaming
themselves, but sometimes they're blaming like external
factors that are just imagined. Like they'll say, Oh, it's, it's
must be iron Hara or it must be that they're trying to pin it on
something else instead of, like you said, focusing on maybe it's
a medical thing. Maybe it's just something you
can actually look, look into. You could find out if you have,
if you're genetically predisposed to something, you
have to go see the right doctors.
And you know, I think that, you know, that's part of the reason
why I want to do this podcast because there's a lot of people
like you mentioned Avita Mella and I wanted to go go into that
because specifically in that story, like you mentioned, he
says, I will, I will basically be reunited after I die, right?
That, that whole idea, even today, you see a lot of people
will say like when they go through a tragedy and they lose
a family, I would say they'll, they'll complete these ideas of
like Ulan Haba with Mashiach and resurrection and say when, when
Mashiach comes, I'm going to be reunited with my child.
And it, it can also be kind of like fault it, it, you're
setting yourself up for, for, for a disappointment, right.
And we want people to have a very not, not just kind of like
have an imagine imaginary view of things, but actually stick
to, you know, rational thought and our tradition and so on.
So I feel like your your points are very, very important here.
So you present a rational approach to prayer or addressing
a common struggle. Why pray if Hashem is
unchanging? Your perspective is refreshing.
Can you clarify what prayer truly is and how it different?
How it differs apology from common misconceptions?
Yes, OK, so I think that my idea of prayer when I was a kid, I
just kind of felt like, I imagine, I guess a, a, a king, a
human flesh and blood king or someone that you're, you're
throwing yourself on the mercy and you're begging really hard
and you say please, please, please.
And they have, I guess mercy on you and they give you what you
ask for. And what I find so fascinating
about prayer is that if you look at our Judaism's understanding
of Hashem, like none of it makes sense.
The whole concept of prayer is, is like it's very difficult to
understand. It's it's, it's almost
nonsensical because what are you actually doing?
The first thing, the first problem is, is that Hashem knows
everything. He knows everything.
He knows what I'm about to say. I could stand there.
I could walk into his office, so to speak, and say not a word.
And if Hashem is omniscient, then he knows exactly what is
what I'm going to say. He knows everything that I'm
thinking, everything. So what am I actually doing?
That's the first question. Another aspect of it is that if
Hashem is perfect, as Torah Tamim Pauloki called Rahad
Mishpat, if Hashem is running the world perfectly, what am I
doing here? There's not, there's no point in
asking anything. Everything has already worked
out perfectly. So what am I doing?
What do I have a job to do in domining?
What am I, what am I trying to do here?
Am I trying to say that Hashem's world is not perfect?
Am I trying to change the way that Hashem already made its
decisions? So, and yet we know for sure in
the Torah that there's so much prayer in the Torah.
So we know like Moshe Arbedo, you could ask that that's and
Moshe Arbedo. And so Hashem says with the
golden calf, I'm going to destroy them.
So Hashem knows everything. So is he right?
What is, Who's Moshe to say? No, no, no, I don't think that's
a good idea. It's like I love the I don't
call it the arrogance of humans, but it's like Hashem is inviting
us. I won't say to be arrogant, but
I would say NASA Adam, that we should do this together, that
Hashem puts us in a situation where we have a contribution to
make to our situation. You you actually see that all
over with Abraham, Yona, Elio, Navi, to some extent I'm
forgetting off the top of my head, but it's almost like the
prophets are constantly in a dialogue with God.
Yes. Yeah.
So.
Even with some klutzpah, sometimes you know.
Absolutely. I mean Khan is my favorite with
klutzpah. But yes, so, so I think I mean
she she taught us klutzpah in domining particularly.
But the question is, what are we trying to do?
If, if it's already, if Hashem is perfect, then he already
knows what's best. So what are we trying to do?
And then I'll just throw this on the side.
It's a side question. But like we have this idea that
Davini is called avoda Shiva life.
It's service. So I'll just throw it in.
Why are we serving Hashem? Hashem's not an egomaniac.
He doesn't need our service. He has no needs.
So what does that even mean that we're doing service?
But that's that's to do with carbonos and the base.
And it's all the same. It's all part of the same
question, but it's just the whole, the whole area of Davin
is a very large, difficult, difficult philosophical area.
So, and yet, and yet we are, we do it.
We do it every day. We do it three times a day.
What are we doing exactly? So that was, I think kind of
something that I just enjoy thinking about so much.
I love these little puzzles that are some kind of throws out to
us in the Torah and, and it's very, very practical to me
because. I found, and I think it's
practical to everybody, humans have needs and we need things
and we cannot achieve them by ourselves.
We can't. So pretty much any large area of
need that you could think of are not so making a living, health,
relationships, children, any huge area which like the
brothelus encompass war, all these things, peace.
Humans are actually not in charge of anything.
Like the classic example is, is a farmer, a farmer has to plant,
but whether or not his plants are going to grow or her plants
are going to grow is really, there's so many things that can
go wrong, blight and the weather and just so many things.
I, I like to garden and, and I, I feel that like some years I
get these, one of these tomato horn worms.
They're like crazy things happen in the garden.
So you, you, you do it. And, but if you don't plant, you
get nothing. But if you do plant, it's not up
to you. So, so we have a situation where
we need things and so obviously we're going to ask Hashem for
our needs. We're going to ask the one who
can provide, but at the same time, why are we asking when
whatever his decision is, isn't that the best decision?
What are we trying to do here? And can I really change anything
if Hashem is unchanging? That was the question that you
asked me, if Hashem is unchanging.
So one of the things that's very important philosophically is
that we call Hashem Ocano. Hashem is ahad, so if Hashem is
ekhad, that means that he's, he's 1, he doesn't have parts,
so he, so he's not going to be like if I beg him hard enough,
he's going to feel compassion for me that he didn't feel a
minute ago before I started begging.
Hashem had that information before.
He's not emotionally moved by me.
He's not a human being. So what?
What has changed in the situation?
I'm not changing Hashem. So what's going on?
So I think that like the the classic example that that is
given is really from the Rambam. I brought it in my book, the
Rambam in the mourn of Uchem, which I I looked up this
morning. It's it's in Part 1, chapter 53.
So and it talks about Hashem is a fire, an example.
It's a metaphor. It's not Hashem is not actually
a fire, but and it said that how can we have a concept where
Hashem is unchanging and yet Artfila does something when
Hashem doesn't change? That's the question.
So the answer is there, there are really 2 aspects to it.
The first thing is, and I, and I really go back to Moshe Ribenu
on this and I, I've done a lot of thoughts like when, when
Moshe Ribenu is asking Hashem to not kill the Jewish people after
Haida ego, after the golden calf.
So what has to change in order for Hashem to not destroy the
Jewish people? Like at that moment the Jewish
people sinned and they're going to be destroyed.
They deserve destruction. They did a Dollar Tree 40 days
after they got the Torah. They're they're sliding for
destruction. So Hashem tells Moshe, leave me
alone. That's Moshe's hint.
You could maybe make a change here.
What is happening here? What is going on?
The people are not doing chuva yet.
The people have not done Chua. Moshe somehow makes a change in
the in the situation before he ends up getting the people to do
tuba because we know after that he goes down and he smashes the
Lucos. But but he's having this 40 days
before. What's he doing?
So the answer is Hashem is not changing.
Hashem is not changing in this whole situation.
So you look like you're thinking you want to share some?
Thoughts. I mean, yeah, no, I'm thinking
about it. Are you trying to say that
Moshe? I'm.
I'm just, I, I don't, I don't know the answer in advance for
the I'm just trying to, I'm, I'm kind of going with it as you're
going. So Hashem is not changing, but
perhaps Moshe is thinking of ways that he will improve the
people by creating that reality of of him having an approach to
improving the people, The people, the the reality around
the people might change. And I, I would give, I would
give my, my answer as the, the previous situation in the Torah,
because we see obviously the same words being used like
corruption. We see that in the story of
Noah. And Hashem is basically saying,
I'm going to start all over again with one person.
And Noah is just content, right? He's not trying to do anything.
But I think he wants to see what kind of leader this is.
And this is a leader that's willing, McCain and I is willing
to to like erase himself. So he, Moshe, Moshe is is
basically like correcting, you know, what leadership should be.
And he's saying I'm not going to basically he's saying I'm not
going to let them fall. So like, you have to give them a
chance. Yeah, I like both of those
answers and both of them really fit into this paradigm that
we're talking about, both of them that Hashem is not
changing, but Moshe is, is changing or figuring out the
situation so that the situation is not the same as it was when
Hashem brings to the issue. When Hashem brings to most of
the issue, the people need destruction.
Moshe has the ability to make a new situation and as a leader as
his understanding and he spends the next to prakim really
negotiating and negotiating with Hashem and and changing and
molding on this level of hash. We want this amount, we want
this type. I need more information.
Give me the Gimmel Mitos like everything that he's doing is to
help him lead the people, his own understanding of Hashem and
how Hashem interacts with the people and it's lessons for us,
you know, for forever. But this is all based on Moshe
making a change. And that's really what you find
is the most amazing thing. So that's what I was saying
this, this, this metaphor of the fire, that the fire doesn't
change, but depending on what you put into the fire, different
metals go into the fire and, and there are different things like
I always like to use, you know, marshmallows versus wood because
I like, I like roasting marshmallows.
But I think in, in chemistry, if you ever took a chemistry class,
there's a lot of different depending on the elements that
you put into the fire. Some make a purple flame, some
make a green flame, some make a blue flame, some make sparks,
some things turn to coal, some things melt something smoke.
So what you put the fire is just the fire.
Fire is just fire. But what you put into the fire,
you get out something different. So in that sense, Hashem is
unchanging. But what we are putting into the
situation we are getting, we are changing.
The situation changes as a result of that, what we put in.
And that's what I call, I fed some my understanding of the pus
that karov Hashem lokhol, karov lokhola, Sherry, krugubbeness.
If you call out to Hashem in truth, then Hashem is close.
Now what does that mean close? Does that mean necessarily that
you're going to get the answer that you want?
Not necessarily, but part of what we're doing with tefila.
So we need things and we ask Hashem for things.
But it's almost an irony of Tefila that the actual goal, if
you approach feel a certain way, the goal is not actually to get
your needs met. That's a nice side effect if
that works, and that's good. And it's a tool.
It's a tool. It's a tool.
Yeah. But your main goal, your main
goal is that you have a broader perspective, a greater
understanding that your, your, your soul is improved.
Your understanding is improved that that you are different now
and that you have created a different reality and a way of
being in the world that's closer to to understanding how how how
things work and how Hashem what Hashem wants in the world.
So to your point, the word lahit palel, if I'm not mistaken as a
reflexive verb, reflects a verb, so it's actually something that
you're doing unto yourself, grammatically speaking.
To evaluate yourself to. Evaluate yourself dramatically
speaking, yes, so so so based on what you're saying, what prayer
is is we're trying to broaden our awareness of the divine and
that like confrontation that we elevate ourselves into is
supposed to affect us, change us, make us evaluate ourselves,
change ourselves, improve ourselves.
It's, it's, it's, it's not, it's not a direct dialogue as much as
it's broadening your own horizons of the divine of
Hashem. And thereby now you are
affecting a change. You shouldn't be affecting a
change in the. Changing the relationship by
changing. Changing the relationship.
And by that, things actually change.
The story changes, Reality changes.
Everything changes. Yeah, I mean, I, I kind of,
before I taught high school, I taught preschool for a number of
years. And I don't know if this is the
best example, but it's kind of the example that I started this
with. And I always go back to it.
I imagine like a kindergarten classroom, 'cause that's why I
was a mower for a few years. And the kids, there's a lot of
things on the shelves that you have, and we'll call those the
laws of nature. And the kids can go and they can
play with the art and they can play with the cars and they can
play with the blocks. And those are all the things
that you see that you have access to.
But there is actually a closet in the back.
And if a child would go over to the mower and say mower, I have
an idea and I want glitter. Now the glitter is not out.
But if you want glitter and, and you come over and you may code,
you get all excited with the more to the more and you have a
project that you want to do and you have this idea, then you can
go ask and the more will open the closet and take out the
other things in the closet and give them to you.
And I think that that prayer has the opportunity to unlock
certain aspects because we are a partner with Hashem in creation.
And it's not enough. When I said I started off and I
said, if, if the world's so perfect, if Valvesham's
decisions are so perfect, then why, why are we davening?
And I want to go back to the the different.
There are a few examples. There's no slow flat in the
Torah. And there is Pesach Cheney in
the Torah. And I feel like there's one more
example, but I can't remember it offhand where, where if people
were not were had an idea or they can Pesach Cheney when they
were when they were upset at you know, Hashem said, if you
ordinarily, if you're if you're Tommy, it's Pesa and it's for
monopatrey. So OK, you don't do Corbin Pesa.
But these people are upset and they went over and they said, we
don't think it's fair. We don't think it's right.
So Moshe asked Hashem and Hashem said, you know what Pesach
Shaney it came from? It almost was a response to, to
if someone has an idea and the idea fits in and it's, and it's
new and no one has thought about it and you can, there's room,
there's a whole closet back there and you have no idea what
your potential is and what opportunities there are.
If you go through life thinking about how you sort of have an
eye out for what, what can I do? What do I want?
What does Hashem ask of me? What are the types of ideas that
I have and things that I need, things that I want, things that
I think I can do to help the world, to help myself to, you
know, there's just so much creativity that is possible, I
think. I think that's another thing.
I don't think people are sufficiently creative and
dominating. People go, they say things three
times a day, they're bored, they're bored.
And it's, it's almost a crazy thing to me to be bored because
every morning now look, obviously some days and some
years and some months, I have way more difficult things going
on. And you know, if, if a day's
ever something where I don't have a, a specific need, then
it's a great day, 'cause I get to have a gratitude dominating
day where I just thank Hashem for all the things that I'm not
worrying about right now. But in terms of when you have
worries, there are so many different approaches to worries.
And when I think about all the I think about the the different
dominings that I did that that Hashem answered, and I think
about the ones that the answer was no.
And let's say there were certain things that were going on, went
on for months situations and, and the answer ultimately was
no. But every day, yeah, you always
address it slightly differently depending on your mood,
depending on your strategy, depending on your, your heat
parallel experience, your, your evaluation of yourself and what
your choices are and what your options are and how you
understand the problem. And as you develop over the
course of months, how you understand the problem, how you
understand yourself, how you understand whatever, like even
like we were saying before, you know you're going to, if you
find a new Doctor, you find a better doctor.
So the tequila changes and it shifts.
Let this doctor help me, help me find the doctor.
There are so many different, different ways of dominating for
the same thing. And if you look at yourself over
the course of dominating, for one thing, and the very, there's
so many different angles and how so some of it I, I, I like a, a
combination between planned and spontaneity, because I like to,
you know, I, I, you want to be, you want to be respectful.
You're going before Aveeno volcano is, is you want to be
respectful. You're going before the king and
you want to have it planned out and you want to, you want to be.
I, I thought about this and I'm respectful, but there is a
certain amount of you don't. It's always very, very ironic to
me. Hashem knows everything's going
to come out of my mouth. I'm always very aware of that,
but I don't know what's going to come out of my mouth.
I'm not so self aware of myself as Hashem is aware of me.
So the actual act of dominating and saying things.
So I could plan, I could plan that I'm going to have Fela.
I could even write it out. I could have general approach
of, of certain things that I'm going to put into shmakolenu or
in whatever paragraph it fits into.
But sometimes the things that come out of my mouth that are
very surprising, you have to, you have to open your heart.
You have to open your heart and you have to, you have to really
ask, you have to beg, you have to, you have to be vulnerable.
And, and it's funny because you're being vulnerable to the
one who already knows. You almost have to be vulnerable
to yourself. You have to let yourself know
what's going on. And then after that, after you
asked Hashem for help, like let's take a very basic example.
When I had toddlers or young children and I was losing my
temper and I, I wanted help. Just, I don't want to, I don't
want to destroy my child. I want to, I want to be nice.
So, you know, 5-6 o'clock in the evening, you're tired, you want
to be nice to your children. So I'd ask Hashem for help.
I want to be nice to my children.
I don't want to, I don't want to get too frazzled.
So just ask them for something like that.
And there's different approaches and different, different ways
that I'm taking different things that I need help with.
And then once you dive in that in the morning, it's almost, it
becomes much harder just using the laws of nature.
Let's even say Hashem, I don't know.
Hashem answers me, Hashem doesn't answer me.
But once I asked Hashem for that, I have a different
perspective. The whole rest of the day I'm
walking through, I asked that of Hashem.
So I have to do my part in this. I have to do my efforts and try
my stuff if I'm asking Hashem for help with my stuff.
So, so it sort of helps you with your own hissalas and your own
efforts because you, you made the ask.
So there's just so many things going on with Avani.
Yeah. So I think like, like the
traditionalists will have a hard time with the creativity
because, you know, Hazal formulated the prayers so that
maybe we don't go outside the lines.
We don't, you know, we, we stick to kind of the script.
So other maybe people feel a little bit insecure about how do
I, I want to say my own word session.
What do I do? How do I pray?
I think that's something that some people may struggle with as
well. But I love what you said about,
about, you know, this partnership that we have with
Hashem, this covenant, because it reminds me of this agadah of,
of Rabbi Akiva with the Roman soldier who basically says to
him, he, he wants to trap him in a philosophical challenge.
And he tells him about the, you know, he, he says like whose
creation is greater man's or gods?
And he's ready for him to say God's creation.
But he actually surprises him and he says men's, he says, how
can you say that? Because he's like, I was going
to say that if, if God's creation is better and in a
higher level, then why do you do obit Milah?
Why do you do circumcision right?
If God's creation is perfect, why do you add, Why do you
basically mess with the creation?
And Rebbe Akiva explained, he says that, you know, this is,
this is exactly what our tradition is, is that we, we
Hashem gave us basically, like you mentioned, the farmer, he
gave us the opportunity to elevate the creation, which is
why when we, we say hagephen on, on wine, which we take from
grapes, which are natural, came from the earth, but we elevated
and it became a higher level, right.
So this idea of us being partners in creation is really
to me is such an amazing thing because it, it really goes with
everything that you're saying. It's that we have the
opportunity to change our destiny through our own efforts.
We don't, we, we don't wait for miracles.
We, we make it happen and we try our best.
And sometimes the answer is no. And I think that the beauty of
what you explained is that when the answer is no, if you've
every single day prayed and try different ways and try to, you
know, re evaluate yourself, then when you finally get that no and
you see that there's no, there's no way out of this, you can kind
of cope a lot better because, you know, you did your best, you
tried every angle and you've, you've meditated on it and
you've understood that, OK, it's this is the answer.
So I think that what you're saying is very powerful.
Yeah, thank you. I do want to just say I think
it's in the Shilkhana. I would have looked it up in
advance and I known that this was going to be a topic of of
dissension. But the Hawaha I think is pretty
clear that you are permitted to say things in Shmakolenu.
And there's other aspects that that say that you are even
permitted to say things obviously in Rifa Enu and really
in any. I once went to a shir and I had
I knew about the Rifa Enu and I knew about the Shmakolenu but
the shir that I heard and I and I think it's also from the
Shilkhana but I would have to look up the sources.
I hate to say anything without a source, but I think that in in
go elenu is where you had to have ask for emotional help with
things. Obviously in Baref elenu is
where you ask for pranasa help. Encompasses everything.
In every, in every category, if you have a particular struggle
in that area, then there is a spot in there before you do the
key Cal Shamaya, whatever key Cal whatever, do whatever before
you do the because you you add in your personal request.
And so I think that makes Tila very, very creative because you
have to everyday make this evaluation before you start
DOBing. What are the struggles that I'm
having with at the moment and how do I want to approach Hashem
about these struggles? So that's that's you're planning
your strategy. And the Gamar itself, I think
the the Khasidim ushonim used to used to meditate an hour before
prayer. No, Yeah, sort of what you're
saying. Kind.
Of strategize the yeah, Yep, Yep, OK.
So this is going to lead into the next half because Speaking
of spontaneous prayer, obviously we have the famous case of Hana
and her her prayer being like shocking, like almost like, what
is this? Who what is she doing?
And you know, so we have in in your book you discuss Leia and
Rafael, their sibling rivalry and Hana's prayers and emotions
seem to play a very critical role in fertility.
So what are these stories in particular reveal about the
connection between emotions, prayer and transformation?
And how can couples struggling with infertility apply these
lessons? I think the first thing that was
most probably inspiring to me was that the reason why the
stories of the matriarch says there is that because they're
really not doing this for personal reasons.
And when we start, when we have a need from Hashem, usually it
starts off very personal and very it's just what I want.
And we're going in Tila from a situation of what I want to try
to understand a broader picture here and to try to see how I fit
into the broader picture. Like I have once and I want to
have a child. I want children because I have a
maternal instinct. But what what Rachel and Leah
were doing, what Rachel was doing was she wanted to be part
of Koi style. She wanted to make make the
nation and even Hana also when she the thing that sort of sent
it to the next level was her saying, I will, I will donate
this child. This child is going to be
Shmuel. This child is going to be the
Nuvi who helps, who goes around and and is the judge for
everybody. She she wanted to make a
contribution to the Jewish people.
So so when I think about when I was thinking about this whole
thing, obviously like I'm not, I wasn't trying to have children
hoping that they're going to be great.
Sadiqam, you know, as if you're trying to raise children, hoping
that they'll be from on a basic level is its own challenge.
But I think that for me realizing that I'm not just an
individual who just wants things to go the way I want, but I'm
really, and I think being part of the Jewish community like
there is there is a big, I wouldn't call it a pressure to
have children, but it's a big part of the culture.
And I think one of the reasons it's a big part of the culture,
and we were just talking about this, it's a big part of the
culture because we believe that the Torah has something
beautiful and valuable to share with the world.
And that being the Jewish nation and being an oar lagoon, being a
community that shares ideas of wisdom of ethics and morals and
truth to the world is, is a gift that that we want to participate
in. And we want to pass on that
system from generation to generation.
And, and, and again, make be partners with Hashem.
He made us the nation. We want to teach our children.
We want to have children. We want to pass that on and pass
that on either whether you have your own children or whether you
you teach or whether you just are a Jew who's keeping the
Torah, any of those types of ways that that we're trying to,
to do that. So to get out of my personal
situation and desires and to look at myself as part of a
larger community, part of humanity, part of what what is,
what does it mean to be a human being?
That is really what I was looking at what they were doing.
And, and that gave me sort of a direction in my own Fila.
And in terms of the emotional piece, I think, I think with
Moshe Rabenu, I would say he's more like the, the strategic
approach that he's always arguing with Hashem.
But I found with Hannah, I think that was really that I, I wrote
about that, that that really puzzled me and my child that I
was when I ended up after the, the culmination of my
exploration of the, of the couple of years of infertility
that I was going through, my, my daughter ended up being named
for Hannah. And if it was a boy, I would
have named Shmuel, whatever. But so because of it was Rosh
Hashanah. It was Rosh Hashanah and I had
just, I wouldn't say failed the cycle.
I think I wrote about it in the book.
I, I had done a cycle and the doctor said he was so confident
that for sure I was going to get pregnant and I got pregnant and
I miscarried it immediately. It was like within, within a day
it was I, I had a positive test and, and bleeding already.
So when I went in and they said to me, do you want to, do you
want to just go on birth control or so you can start the next
cycle very quickly. And, and with my husband and I
looked at each other like, all right, let's just, let's just
take a beat because this is very, it's hard on the body.
It's hard emotionally. So then it was Rosh Hashanah
time. And I think so Rosh Hashanah,
I'm sitting in shul and I'm reading of Torah Khanna and I'm
reading about her domining and I'm looking at it.
Of course, I'm, I'm so I, I call it, you know, I'm like selfish
and I see something in Torah. I'm like, great, how can I use
this? What is this going to teach me?
How can I, how can I get this? And again, I, I advocate, you
know, be selfish with your Torah.
You, you want, you want the Torah is there to give you
information and to give you wisdom and to give you insight.
So if you have a need and you don't understand something and,
and there's a story in the Torah.
So you, yeah, I grab that and get on to that and try to learn
it and see if anyone can teach you about it, if you can learn
it yourself. What's going on?
What is this? What does this story have to
teach me? So of course, I started reading
it on Rosh Hashanah and I was, I was really, really immersed in
the story. What did Hannah do?
How did she end up achieving what she what she did?
How did what she, how did her TE feel like get the child?
And of course, then I went into the Gaza about that and the
Madras. There's so much great stuff like
there's, it says Hashem Sakos. One of the things that I love
also, I know this is this, this you can't have much creativity.
And, and, and I, if I ever do write my book on Tila and
Tanakh, which I hope to do, I hope like to look back in five
years and say I wrote this book after talking to you guys.
I, I wrote the book. So one of the things that I want
to look at in Tila and Tanakh is the Shah.
So every Tila has Shiva, Bakasha and Odaiya that has the, the
praise of Hashem, the, the actual request and the, and the
thanks after the, the praise that is chosen in Tanakh is
very, very specific to the request that you're making.
And we do not have that creativity because we have our
set office set up for us by Khazal in, in the first 3
Brahos. And but it's very, it probably
encompasses all of it, but I just find it so fascinating,
like Kel Narafan Allah. So Kel is the praise there in
Korath. It's Hashem El OK ruhos.
So the Hashem who who knows who knows everything, you know, how
could you, how could you kill everyone for Korra's mistake?
So Hashem LLK ruhas like, you know, you know, you know what
everyone is thinking. So that's the praise.
The praise itself is part of the argument.
It's brilliant. But now what was I going with
this? Oh, yeah.
So and then Hana Hashem swapos so Hashem spakos has so many
midrashem about it. There are so many arguments that
she makes with Hashem Spakos that was so fascinating to me
and her and she has sarcasm and she has anger and and then of
course the final crazy thing and is that she threatens Hashem and
she threatens to become a sota and and I remember thinking.
That. OK, so the approach that the
Torah is telling me is that if Hashem doesn't give me what I
want, I should threaten to break the Torah.
OK, I'm like, how, how does it, what am I doing here?
What is this? How can I use this, you know, in
a practical way without, am I supposed to be a Soto?
Like that's not so practical nowadays.
And like, what, what can I do? What is this trying to do?
And I don't know that I personally came up with the
answer, but I think what's so fascinating about it's, it's
sort of a like a dialogue with, with yourself, with the Torah,
with your learning. And, and I'm like, what am I,
what am I trying to gain here? What am I understanding from
this? And at the time, and you asked
me, where is emotion in this? And I to me at that, at that
moment in time, it seemed to me that Hannah was really throwing
all of her rage and her anger and her bitterness because
that's she said, honey, So she's very bitter and, and to just
stand before Hashem and express her sadness, her grief, her
bitterness, her anger. And it seemed to me that I don't
know if she was actually planning to threaten Hashem.
I mean, strategically, it's a very neat thing to do.
It's very interesting. And again, we talked about the
chutzpah that you have that, that, that Hashem, you know,
the, the Torah always promotes a certain type of a chutzpah with,
with, you know, respect, but chutzpah.
So it's both and, and, and Hanna seemed to be saying, I just felt
like if I were trying to model a Tfila and I was planning to
actually engage in Tfila in a very calculated and planned
manner. But it seemed to me that the
Hanna approach is the plan should be that you go homemade
with Hashem, you stand before Hashem.
And when I say Hashem, it's like knowing that Hashem knows
everything about me, knowing that Hashem knows everything,
knowing that Hashem is unchanging.
And to stand before Hashem and to really open myself up
vulnerably and to express the pain that I'm in and hope that
that experience of, of realizing that I am helpless in this
situation, that I cannot do it, that I need the salvation to
come from something that is not me.
I am a human and I'm limited. That I hope that having that
experience would change me and. It's a humbling experience.
Yeah, and it's not enough to think about it to do it to.
Yeah, and you, you also, you also let go in a way when you,
when you have all that pressure on your shoulders and then you
finally just say, you know what, it's not, I can't do anything
about it. God, this is, this is on you at
this point. Like, and that's actually
happened to me before one of my, it's a private situation, but at
one point in my life where I, I really cried out to Hashem and I
had a moment of like just under my pillow, under my blankets
and, and whatever I, I needed that, like whatever I needed
that day or the next day, it happened.
It was an amazing experience. But the, the point is that that
like, I at that point decided that I have no, I have 0
control. This is all in your hands.
And I felt so just from saying that and feeling that, I felt so
much relief. Like, so even if it, the answer
was going to be no, I, I was content with whatever was going
to happen because I, I let go of it.
And I think that the emotion of it is like, you know, you're
putting your burden on God versus holding on to yourself.
Yeah. So I think that is a very
emotional experience. And I think it's, I think it's
strategic, I think it is rational, but I think it is an
extremely emotional experience. Stila is an extremely emotional
experience. For sure.
Beautiful. So you explore divine
intervention and the idea that individuals can work on
themselves to alter their quote UN quote, fate.
While we don't believe in fate or mazal in a deterministic
sense, how does a Torah view Providence and what practical
steps can someone take to bring about change?
OK. So that I think is really the
exploration that was really from Sarah Imenu.
That's Ula Ibana Mimena. That's where I learned that.
And, and I think Rachel used the same model, as I say, in my
book. So it's very interesting.
I, I just am always very fascinated by how practical
Judaism is and Torah is when it says ulai Banameena, when she,
when she decides to give Hagar to Avram and Avram has this
devoid that he's going to have a child.
And Sarah is postmenopausal. She's not going to have a child,
and there's no reason for her to expect that she's going to have
a child. And then Arun gets another
navua, and Sarah says, you know what?
That's it. We have to make this happen.
And the way that we make this
happen is that you have to use a surrogate because I'm not having
a child. But then she says ulai, ibana
mimena ulai, it's kind of an interesting.
It's like, why not ibana mimena? I'm going to participate.
I'm going to build cholesterol by, by participating by raising
the child. But it this ulai that maybe I
could build, I will be built up from this.
And I'm trying to remember who says it, if this was Varnu or if
this is an idea. Khazal, I don't remember him,
but the idea that that she thought that, yeah, I think it's
I think it's Farnu. He says it'll bring the Koach
Aleppoel that giving a second wife, which is a very
emotionally difficult experience is going to force her into a
certain either Chuva or a certain perspective or a certain
experience that is going to either make her work on her
tequila more or just change her as a as a human being.
And then maybe she will she will be her merit will change.
Maybe she will change her situation.
So I learned from that that we really have an opportunity that
there are situations, it seems that the Torah is telling us
that if you are in a difficult situation, that working on
yourself can possibly change your situation.
You, I mean, I think that I think that's Fila and working on
yourself. They're kind of like twin paths
that they're intertwined. So, so you could use one or
both, or I like to use them together, obviously, but that
it's really the same idea. We're back to the fire and what
you're putting into the fire and what you're getting out of the
fire. So either you do that through
Fila and that experience, or you do it through chuva and you do
that through working on yourself in any of these types of a way.
And what I love about Rachel, 'cause that's where it really it
takes on the next level. Rachel was really 'cause she
says to Yaakov, you know, I want you to dove in for me.
And Yaakov says why I have children, which is like, whoa.
And so, but after that, after that, she decides she's going to
use the Sarah model and she's going to use the surrogate.
And when she said done enough Tali, I love done enough Tali
because, and I mentioned this in my book also that done is that
Hashem Dhanani yelo Kim Haivani Dhanani yelo Kim Zahani that
Hashem judged me that I was not deserving children.
And then after I gave the surrogate, I got this child.
It's an, it's an adopted child. It's not her child biologically.
And then Hashem judged me favorably and I merited.
She did not get her Tefila answered that she herself will
have a biological child. She felt that Dunn was the
answer to her Tefila and it was a different route.
It was a different route. And that's the same thing with
Naftali. Naftali means Tila and it also
means twists, twists and turns. And you have to try different
approaches. And she tried a different
approach. The approach of trying for a
biological child was not the answer.
Of course, she doesn't stop trying.
She's she's got those, the other, those, those flowers, but
she's still and she's still dominating.
But at the time, Don and Aftali are the answers to her Tefila,
which is that I'm, I'm trying different ways.
I'm trying different ways to get things to, to, to merit it.
And she considers that to be the answer to her prayers that that
these sons she got to help participate in building Klaus
well, by by that route. And it's a different route and
she was creative about it and she was, and, and she was also
working with, you know, that difficulty fighting kind of with
Leia about it and, and the competition spurring them on.
So there, there's a lot of emotional things going on there.
But but really the goal is to work on yourself and to try
different things. Beautiful, beautiful.
Wow, this was so awesome and you're awesome.
We're we're so happy that you came on the podcast and we hope
to have you on again one day when your next book comes out.
We're going to celebrate when that comes out and Benji have
anything. You know, I just wanted to tell
you to go back to the Hana, the Hana model that you gave before
with the, the, the, you know, letting it out that you were
talking about. There was an, an interview we
did, I believe it was with Frank Meek.
Is his name Benji? Was it Frank Meek?
Frank Mink. Yeah, Mink.
My apologies, Frank Mink, that I would I would I never do this,
but I think if you listen to that podcast of ours, he had he
the whole story is crazy, but towards the end of the podcast,
he was a Jewish guy didn't know he was Jewish.
You know he was. He was.
A neo Nazi neo Nazi crazy story. Found out he was Jewish, did
chuva right? But even after he did chuva he
had problems with alcohol. He had a lot of issues and he
was telling us how he was basically sitting in his car and
he basically decided he's going to commit suicide.
He, he was having a mental breakdown where he was about to
like just say no more. He decided in that in those
moments that turn that mental breakdown into a prayer.
And I don't want to give it away.
Really listen to that if you have a few minutes, because I
think that you were just talking about the Hannah model and how
she kind of, she kind of has a mental meaning, mental breakdown
in her, in her. Approach.
And doesn't she pray? I mean, he totally thinks.
She's she's totally thinks she's drunk and she's like, you know,
I'm becoming a soda. So I, I just, when you said
that, I, I remembered that, that that bit with the Frank Mink
episode. And I think I think you would,
you would, you would be, you would really be pleasantly
surprised with how that eventually turned out in that
moment for him. Thank you so much for this
podcast. It was amazing.
Learned a lot and God willing, much success in the upcoming
books and we appreciate it been. A pleasure.
Thank you all. Right.
Awesome. Thank you.