Parshas Haazinu | Shabbos Shuvah: Stop Doomscrolling Through Your Destiny—The Rambam’s Wake-Up Call

Shabbos Shuva And Returning

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Shuvah Yisrael, return, Israel, repent, declares the prophet Hoshea in the weeks after. Teshuva, return, Jewish people, is the order of the day. Teshuva is supposed to be on our minds and in our actions, wholeheartedly, especially during the Aseris Yeme Teshuva. It's definitely supposed to be a unique Shabbos filled of repentance, hence the name, the Shabbos of Repentance, the Shabbos of Returning, Shabbos Shuva. And Teshuva is a remarkable thing. It is a nasnigwa, a totally revealed miracle, that you could cause destruction, that you could go off the rails from the course that God directed, and that you took the gifts of God, and while he's watching you and continuing to power you, we could defy his wants and wishes. We could get distracted. We are humans, and human weakness is part of our nature. But when we remember the gift of Teshuva, that we have a chance to rectify all that we've done wrong, you have to grab that opportunity. You have to grab it and run. Only a fool would not put in a bit of effort to take full advantage of the Asarasime

Fear Vs Opportunity In These Days

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Teshuva. And there's a mistake that people make about this time period. They believe the Rosh Hashanah, Aserasimate Shuva, Yom Kippur festival season to be to be frightening days, scary days. Awful days, not in the positive full of awe kind of days, but awful in the negative connotation kind of ways. It somehow has gotten baked into people's heads that the Rashashana Yom Kippur time period kind of blurs into one long gray stretch time period of fear and tension. People think that Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are simply two halves of a whole, each a side of the Oreo cookie, and the days of repentance that connect Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, the cream in the middle. They're afraid of the Yomim Na Oroyam. And blending them all into this gray abyss is a mistake. The truth is these are wonderful days. These are opportunistic days. Rash Hashanah, not the first part of the Yamim Na Oroyam, but the preparation, the day of arousal to wake up and prepare for Yom Kippur. Rash Hashanah, Asarasya Mait Shuvah is a buildup to wake us up, to be fully ready for the Yom Kippur holiday. The Torah itself tells us this that Rosh Hashanah is to be your day of arousal, tarua. It's a day to wake yourself up. And the Asaras Ya Maiteshuva is supposed to be the continuing of this state of arousal so that you can be at peak performance, fully roused, hyper-focused when Yom Kippur comes around. That's what these

A New Year Needs A New You

SPEAKER_00 2:54

days are to be. So I ask you, after Rosh Hashanah, a couple days into Asaris Yeme Teshuva, are you awake? Have you thought about that it's a new year and it's a new you? Are you able to shake free of the setbacks from last year? Are you able to push through 5786 and close it up and say, what happened last year was the old me. Now, this is a new me. I'm taking back my life. It only takes a bit of discipline. And discipline, you have just enough of it. The challenges in your life, they were given to you for you to be able to successfully champion, dominate, and rise above them. The Ramam gives us an earth-shattering, earth-splintering, tycoon-causing halakha when it comes to this time period. It should be all that you need to make 5787 not just another year, but the year that you took things to another level. But the year that you finally did it. You faced the skeletons in the closet, and instead of running from them, you were open to them and dealt with them. That you organized yourself and got the help that you needed and set up the sessions that you needed, learned the Torah that you needed, and found God in your heart and in your mind that you needed.

Rambam On The Shofar’s Message

SPEAKER_00 4:09

The Ramam says the following It's Hilchas Chuva Paragimel, Halachadalad. Afalpi Shitkyashaifar Barosh Hashanah Xeras Hakosov Remez Yeshpo Even though that the blowing of the shofar on Rash Hashanah is a decree of the text. So therefore we have to do it because it's stated clearly and decreed in the Torah. Remes Yeshpo. There is a hint, Kilomar. What is the hint? As if to say? Vinir Domim, Hokitsu Mitaremchem, and slumberers, rouse yourselves from your slumber. The Kafshu, the Ma'aseem, probe your actions. The Hizru Bitchuvra and return in repentance. The Zikru Burachem and remember your creator. There's much to unpack from these words of the Rambam. Remember that what the Rambam did in his Mishnah Torah was summarize all of Torah. As if you would download the entire Talmud Bhavli into Chat GPT and then write summarize this into clear, easy to understand words. If ChatGPT would do it, it would fail to come close to what the Rambam did, because the Rambam not only included all of Torah in a way that no machine can, but he also included his feeling and his heart and his Yerashimaim and his knowledge of Kabbalah. The Rambam knows everything, all of the hints and all of the Hashkafas of Tira. The Rambam's fiery fear of heaven comes through in his clear understanding of each mitzvah and each concept. And the Rambam says that the shofar is saying something. I always thought that the Kalomar is the Rambam explaining what we should think about the shofar. But I believe the right understanding is that Kalomar the Rambam is saying, listen in, and this is what the shofar is saying. The Rambam's telling you what you should hear, what the shofar is hinting at. And when you heard the shofar, and when you hear the shofar, it says, wake up sleepers from your slumber. Wake up sleepers from your sleep. And slumberers wake from your slumber. So it's interesting that there's a lot to unpack here. But firstly, we learned that this is a decree of the text, and we have to do what decrees of text are. But now we see that the Rambam is also taking the liberty to unpack the philosophical and psychological underpinnings and lessons of the Torah. We're clearly always supposed to look for the what is really going on. What are the hints that God wants us to learn here? Besides we're just doing robotic actions.

What Spiritual Sleep Really Means

SPEAKER_00 6:55

And the first thing I want to point out to you is that people are sleeping. They're sleeping. And the shofar says, wake up. It's the alarm clock. And it says, probe your actions and return and then remember God. Now, you're not really asleep, right? Let's let's let's think for a second. You're not asleep, are you? To be asleep the way God created it is to be in an altered state of consciousness where you are technically aware of the outside world, but your sensories are totally inhibited, and your voluntary muscle relaxation process begins. And rather than shutting down, your brain remains active, but you shift into kind of this different electrical wave pattern to consolidate memories and clear out cellular waste like the amyloid beta and repair tissue while your mind ceases to rapidly fire and you drop into rapid eye movement sleep. That's what sleep is. Where you're laying in bed. So we're not really asleep. So what does the Rambam mean? You're jumping to conclusions. You've heard too many motivational talks. I tell you what it means to be asleep is well, think about it with your own brain. What does it mean to be asleep? I tell you what it means to be asleep. The Rambam tells you what it means to be asleep. The Rambam says that there's two types of sleepers. Read his words clearly. There are Uru Yeshanem Mishinaschem, there's regular sleepers, and then there's those that are slumbering, the near dummim, heikitsumitaremchem. What are those two different types? To be spiritually asleep, it was explained to me, is to be in that altered state of spiritual consciousness where you're profoundly numb. You are on spiritual autopilot, where your senses are functioning and you're going about your daily life, but your soul is totally disconnected from its deeper purpose and any presence of the creator. But there's something even deeper than that. There's a slumberer. The slumberer, that's a state of tardama, where you're totally unaware of what's happening, where you're totally apathetic, and then not only are you spiritually numb or unaffected, but you're in a total stupor. It's literally a medical state of reduced responsiveness where a person can only be woken up by vigorous repeated physical and painful stimulations. See Miriam Webster for a more complete linguistic definition. Batardema is what Hashem had to put onto Adam for him to do the first surgery and make Hava out of his rib. It's a deeper level of sleep. One that even a slight truo seems like it won't work for. You need a full, rigorous boop boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. It's gotta shake you. And in order to get us out of that spiritual state, the part of us that God forbid, or those of us that God forbid, have turned so quickly to the mechanical routine of Judaism that have such apathy to wonder deeply, deafness of the soul, complacency without any drive to self improve, or without any sense of a call to awaken. Because we're stuck in the stupor and unaffected by the loud spiritual world that surrounds us. It's now the time, and this is the avoda to arouse yourself. That's what the shofar's supposed to do. That's what Rosh Hashanah and Asters meet the Shuva are supposed to do. Get the sleepers up and get the stupors, slumberers

Wake Probe Return Remember

SPEAKER_00 10:41

up. And what are you supposed to do? Probe. You're supposed to probe your actions once you're awake. Step one is to be awake. Step two is to probe your actions. Do I really pray well? Do I really rely on God? Do I really learn the way I'm supposed to learn? Do I really care about my fellow Jew? Do I really not hold grudges? Do I really not get angry? Am I really a patient and happy person? Do I really include everyone? Do I really not have jealousy? Probe your actions and then return. I think it's fascinating that the last two words here in the first clause of the Rambam, where it all ends after the arising, turns into the probing, and then it turns into the remembering. Remember God. That's where it ends. It ends in when you finally, ha, it clicks. God's here. But the Rambam continues. Imagine if the Rambam was giving this Russia the way that he's writing it. You can imagine the booming voice of it calling out that the shofar is now doing a threefold, the trifecta of activities. It's waking, and it's waking the slumberers, and it's causing you to do the three-step wake up, probe, and remember, repent, and then remember. Four-step. It's wake up, probe, return, remember. And then there's a second, sorry, a third final call, third point that I want to make that the Raman's making here. There's another facet of Klaya's Srail that has specific avoda during the Serasimetashuva. It's those of us that have forgotten the truth. Shoichimesa MS, the Havlayasman, those who forget the truth in the vanities of time, and those of which err all the year in vanity and emptiness. The Yazov Kul Echad Mikem Darkol Hara. I think this clause of the Rambam, it could make a person emotional, it could really shake a person up. Because I don't know how many of us are truly asleep. I don't know. If you're going out of your way to listen to a Torah podcast, then you're trying. Most of us have some form of Torah learning and at least try to get better. We're not just totally disconnected, but it's hard to say that we're fully putter from this bit of rebuke from the Rambam. Those that forget the truth because they get caught up in the vanities of time. Those that are mistaken, they're shagimkulhvarik, they're just hyper-focused and busy and caught up with hevilvarik, with vanities and nothingness that won't help them and won't save them. See, folks, we need help and we need saving. We've been put in this world and it's a very stormy sea, but we're to get to the promised land, which is the actual fulfilling of what God put us on this world to do. And only you and you alone know what that is. And the only way for you to be helped and to be saved is only by sufficiently making progress towards that unique goal. So getting caught up and getting distracted in Heavel Varick, while very, very tempting, because getting distracted is part of human weakness, it leads to nowhere. And it ends up in the most depressing of ways to distract a person that he doesn't even realize the mistake that he's making. He doesn't even realize the amount of time that he spends on his phone. He doesn't even remember or understand where the time went the past year. Because ask him. Ask him what's his most important thing in life. Ask him about how he spends his time and see if his actual schedule and his focus and his wants actually add up and connect to what he actually did the previous year. And the Rambam's advice is Habitu Lanafsho seichem. Look at your souls. Look at your souls with clear glasses for a minute. Make your ways good again. Um alalechem. I think that kind of also means your ways. And to really test.

Escaping Vanity And Time-Wasting

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Test ourselves and see if we, God forbid, fall into the category, even in the slightest bit, of Shoichachim Esha MS Behavle Asman, Vishogen Kulshanosom Behevil Varik, Asherlo Yoil Vyol Yatsil, and to double down and confirm that we are not Yeshanim, nor are we near Dumim. I put together a group of a couple questions to have a spiritual experience, to figure out, to test ourselves if we are totally on the right course, or can some improvement be made? Answer these questions honestly. Use it as a tool for self-reflections to see if there are any signs of spiritual slumber. Answer as honestly as you can, and then look at the results. Question number one. When you dive in and when you learn, when you say a prayer or you study, or you simply put on tfilin, put on sits or light shabislicht, aka a good deed. Do you feel a genuine sense of connection and dvaikis to the Bayre Ilam? Or do you just feel like you're checking a chore off of your daily to-do list? Do you get your spiritual fix? Do you get a slight high from the job well done? Question number two. How often do you take the awe test? How often do you pause during your day to notice something uniquely beautiful or miraculous in nature? Something that happened in your life that clearly wasn't a coincidence? To notice people around you? Or God forbid, does the world mostly feel ordinary and mundane? You know the Raman rights. If you want to love God, look it up. How do you come to love God? You must be taken aback to start pondering like Abraham did. Look at the stars and look at the wisdom and look at the crickets and look at all of the flowers. Look at your brain and your body. See the awe. Question number three, conscience test. When you feel a sudden quiet urge to reach out to someone and apologize, or sense of his oyorus to change a habit, do you act on it? Or do you quickly rationalize that it's not something you need to do now? Or that perhaps it's not all that bad? Question number four, the complacency test. Are you actively trying to refine your character? Are you trying to learn more? Are you trying to push yourself and grow as a person and be a better spouse and be a better learner and be a better husband and be a better Rebbe and be a better Balabas and have more Amuna? Or are you totally complacent and feel perfectly at ease and comfortable to stay exactly where you are at the same level of faith and with the same connection to the Bairi Ilum is exactly how you are for the rest of time? That definitely sounds like a terrible place to be, but possibly Shana or Nir Dhammim or Shaikhim Sho MS Bahavle Hasman Vehil Lorik. How about the hardship test? Number five, when faced with an assoyon, a sudden inconvenience or a challenge is your first instinct, one that says, here's my chance to overcome, here's where God is giving me a chance to prove my worth to him. And do you ask yourself, what can I learn from this? Or do you simply see it as a random, frustrating piece of bad luck? If you were spiritually awake, you'd probably see it as a lesson or an opportunity. Question number six, and we can score ourselves on these six questions. How often during your average day, your busy day, do you take a step back and bring your thoughts back to Hakadesh Baruchho? How many times do you direct your thoughts to the higher purpose to simply think about God and your job in this world without necessarily being involved in a mitzvah? Like the Ramam says, Zhur esbairinu, to remember God. These are just some

Six Questions To Test Your Wakefulness

SPEAKER_00 19:00

questions. There's a whole list of them that you could come up with that are not trying to prove our worthlessness. They're trying to prove that we are perfectly taking advantage of this time period because if God wanted us to be perfect, he wouldn't have given us time to repent, time to wake up, and days of teshuva. He knows that we're not perfect, but it's our job to take full advantage of this time period. And out of these six questions, if you find that your answers lean heavily towards routine rationalization or the mundane, it might be a gentle sign that we've hit the snooze button on our souls too many times. But the good news is that the aceras you make to Shuva are here, and that the knowledge and the realization and the truth of the reality in waking up is the first step to recovery. The Rambam concludes his essay, kind of reads like an essay, even though it's just one law. You see how dense and terse the Rambam truly is, how it's so deceptively simple. The Rambam tells us the way to shake ourselves up is to change your mindset. I don't want to focus on this last point because I want to conclude with one final point. But Lafikah, the Rambam, just so you know the end of the Rambam, the Rambam says, Lafikah, because of this, that you need to wake yourself up and that you should not be asleep or slumbering or forgetting the truth. Tsarich kol adam shiy shiira atmo kalashana kula kiido chetio zakai the chhetio chhaev. You should see yourself. You should gamify your life. See yourself with the with this new game that you're half good and half bad. The world is half good and half bad. If I do one more bad thing, it will tilt the world to total destruction. But if I do one positive attribute, one positive mitzvah, I can tilt the whole thing to tzadigis sod olam. And once you change the ante, you push it up that you're one mitzvah away and you could save the world, it gives you this more motivated mentality. See the Rambam again and learn it well and finish up the Rambam for yourself to understand what the Rambam is changing here with his answer. And also you should

Doomscrolling And Hyper-Focused Change

SPEAKER_00 21:30

ponder why the Rambam writes this halakha perakdalid, halakha gimel in the laws of Teshuva. This very much feels like it should be in the laws of shofar. That's how the mitzvah, the law began. Afalpisha, tkiya, shofar, barosh, shana, kzherasakasov, there's a remes in the shofar. We're here talking about shofar. It seems like the shofar is the curl and needs to wake you up and that somehow embedded in Teshuva, we need to elaborate. But I want to finish. I want to finish. I want to finish that we really need to get up and get going. We need to take full advantage of the Aseris Yumiteshuva, and specifically with the Havley Asman, with the wasting of time getting caught up in Narishkite. It takes so many different forms, but it's a machl bismanazah. People just scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and doom scroll and doom scroll. They're just caught up. Imagine you were doom scrolling through shast. People doom scroll through alcohol, through gambling, through drugs. It's the definition of Hevley Hasman, Ashala Yoyovalayatsel. Social media. Hevlehazman. What items of Hevlehasman, vanity and Naurishkite do we have in our lives? How many hours of television, Netflix, sports obsessed binging do we have? And of course we need to be healthy, and of course we need to be happy, and of course we need to have outlets. But it's time now that we jump into hyper-focused mode for a bit, into the super state of consciousness, the opposite of Tardama, to the perfectly opposite stage of sleep, which was the fully alert wakefulness and hyper-arousal that we need for this time. Where our muscles are flooded with adrenaline and we're primed for immediate explosive action. Pupils dilated, hearing sharpened, hypersensitive to the details in the environment, and fully wakeful, grounded, sharp, knowing everything that's going on in your immediate surroundings. Something like that, just for a bit. That we're alive, that we grab what's real, that we shake ourselves awake, and that we spend this time period not in one big gray yum no royum tense time, but in this taking and grabbing of opportunity time, of thinking about real things, of that not making the same mistakes again, of that actually, actually, actually getting it done, and enduring the pain and visiting the skeletons in the closet to truly get it done, bringing the battle to them with real willpower, energetic willpower. These are our marching orders, and these are the golden words of the Rambam. Remez Yeshbo, Kilomar, the shofar is saying, Uru Yeshenem Mishinashem, the Nirdom Hokitsu Mitar Demchem, the Havshu Bima Asechem, the Hisru Bitchruva, the Zikru Bairachem, Elu Ashoikhemesha MS Behevleasman, Beshoigim Col Shenosan Behevo Vorik, Asherlo Yovelo Yasu Lai Bitu Lanafsho Sekem, Vitivu Darkem Alalechem, Vayazov Kolech Mikem Darko Haro Mahshavto, Asher Lotova. Make the most of these Aserisyum Teshuva and shake yourself awake, be spiritually aroused, and shake off the vanities and deceptive time wasting, all encompassing activities to forget the doom scrolling and come closer to your creator and perfect your ways, improve your ways. This year, 5787, should be a year of Hatzla and Bracha and Steiging and all good things for all of us.