I’ll give you what I believe are the top four challenges in the Jewish world today, in no particular order. Some of you want to disagree with me or agree with me; you can. I believe humbly, and I think it's a little bit of an educated opinion, and seeing and talking to a lot of people and communities, top four challenges in the Jewish world today.
Number one, again, not in order, is cost of living. I think the cost of living is an overwhelming challenge for a lot of families. Maybe it’s 70, 80% of religious Jewish families. The cost of living is overwhelming.
Number two is singles getting married. This is not every other house. It’s probably 70-80% of homes that go through some sort of struggle. Maybe their first daughter got married easily, but the second one was harder. The second one is easier. The first one is harder. Somehow, the struggle of single girls getting married—and single boys too, but I think girls more—across the Jewish world, in this community and across the Jewish world, is again one of the top four challenges in the Jewish world.
Number three, I think today, which was not 30 years ago, is mental health. I think it’s in practically every single house: one or two children, people in a house, one spouse, or whatever, face mental health challenges. It’s something that people have to tackle and be up for and ready to deal with.
And number four is technology. I believe every single home in the Jewish world is struggling with technology. What’s so unbelievable to me is that we live in an age where we’ve never had more control over our lives than we do today. Most Jews live in free countries. Most Jews have the freedom to go, to build, to live. We live longer than we’ve lived in the past. We have so much control. We have so much capability. We could drive cars. We could hop on planes. We could get on a train. We have electricity in our homes that controls how food is preserved and saved and made. It’s unbelievable how much control we have, yet these four challenges literally bring us to our knees.
You can have a person who is smart, educated, and experienced, and somehow he can’t earn a living. He doesn’t understand why, like I don’t understand my friend is earning, and it’s unbelievable sometimes the disparity. Within the same Jewish neighborhood, you could have one person who is literally earning billions with a B, with ease—I’m not exaggerating—and his neighbor, maybe he doesn’t live on the same block anymore, but can’t find a way to keep the electricity on.
Then you have people in their homes, wonderful families, beautiful people. They have a wonderful daughter. She can’t be more capable than she is. It’s not even possible. She’s smart. She’s learned. She’s got a great personality. She did great in school. She’s wonderful. Look, everything is wonderful. Good family, good parents. She can't get the girl married.
And mental health, too. A beautiful house, raising a kid. The OCD kid is very anxious, very depressed. The house is as healthy as can be, and the kid has extreme OCD. The parents have no idea what to do.
It’s weird that we live in a world where we’ve never had more control, and the reality is, Hashem shows us through these top four challenges that, in essence, we have none.
So you know what our biggest challenge in life is? We want to control our life. We want to control our world. And that’s what gets us tired. And that’s what gets us lazy sometimes. It’s what gets us jealous. Why don’t I have that? It’s what gets us overwhelmed. It’s what gets us confused. It’s what gets us frustrated. It’s what gets us angry. Almost all of the things that we struggle with are because we want to control our world. It’s what gets us tempted. I want that. I need that. I should have that.
The biggest example is the one I didn’t even mention to you before. It’s the one I went through: singles. I went through cost of living. I went through mental health. But about 25 years ago, the world created the device, and somewhere on the package it came with a promise: “You will be able to control everything with this device. You will get this phone in your pocket. You will be able to call people, you’ll be able to text people, you’ll be able to hear music, you’ll be able to send pictures, take pictures and send the pictures. You’ll be able to socialize. You’ll be able to buy, you’ll be able to sell, you’ll be able to travel, you’ll be able to know, you’ll be able to connect. You will be able to do everything with this phone. It literally will make you more powerful than a king was 200 years ago.”
Yet what’s so ironic is that no device in the history of the world has made us more of a slave than the device that came with a promise of control.
So we have these things in our pocket that we’re trying. We’re responding and we’re calling and we’re emailing and we’re buying and we’re selling and we’re looking and we’re checking and we’re losing our mind. So in the quest to control our lives, and in an era where it should be easier to control our lives than ever before, we literally live in a time where we can’t control anything.
And that’s what Malchiyot means. Proclaiming Hashem as King means, “Hashem, I am back to being me.” Me means I’ve got nothing. I don’t want anything. I’m not talking about anything. I’m just talking about you and me. I’m just talking about our relationship because I don’t have anything else. I don’t have any control. I can’t make my life what I want it to be. I have things that have been driving me crazy for a decade. I can’t solve them. It’s just, you are my king.