First of all, welcome. Second, we’re just getting started. We’d like to hear your opinion about the time. We only got the word out yesterday, so this is short notice, but we figured we’d start with a pilot class and take it from there. After class, please tell me or someone whether the time works for you. If earlier is better, or if a different day is better, we may switch. We figured we’d start this week. Is this good? A little later? No? Oh, no. I know. This is the problem. We’re starting now, and we’ll try to get it right. We were going to push it off a week, but we figured we’d just get started.
Before I begin, I’d also like to say that we’re going to try to start on time and end on time. So let me start. If it’s going to be 12.30 going forward, then it’ll start at 12.30 and end at 1.15. Hopefully, you can book an errand on Kings Highway at 1.20. That’s what we mean by ending at 1.15.
Now, before I start, I need to say this. I’ve been giving a class for women in a house for about three years. Sometimes people think that whether a rabbi’s classes are good or not has to do with the rabbi. Let me tell you a little secret: in general, not just with any rabbi’s choice, a rabbi is really only as good as his people—the people who help him, set him up, encourage him, and take care of things. Those people are really the ones who make a class, or a rabbi at all, successful.
For the past three years, I’ve had someone who hosted a class in her house every week, every Wednesday. She set up the house, and, as a few of you will hear from that class, she set up the food perfectly every week. Remember the salads? I really need to give tremendous thanks to Mr. Eddie Esses and his wife Sarah Esses for opening their home to our class for three years in a row, every single Wednesday. They had everything set up with a spread of food, called the people, and were really unbelievable and so easy and tremendous to work with.
The truth is, as we were deciding whether to take the class out of the house, she felt bad about leaving the house, yet was very open to taking it out if that would be better for the class. I think that’s a tremendous testament to her character and to her family. B’ezrat Hashem (with Hashem’s help), Hashem should bless them and their family, and they should continue to have Torah in their home and to raise children the way they’ve been raising them. They should build a really beautiful home. Amen. And they should really get to Hashem. They should get all the Berachot (blessings). We really thank them for what they’ve done. I also appreciate all those who were consistent and diligent in coming to the class for the past three years.
Okay. There’s one last person I have to thank for getting this class started. I moved to Brooklyn about three years ago, and I’ve been searching—and I’m still searching—for one woman in this whole community that doesn’t know my mother one like I’m just really young. The religious, the not so religious, the very religious, the very not religious—they all know. I don’t know what to do. I can’t escape it. I go, it doesn’t matter, J the way you are they.
I have to thank my mother for really trying, putting this class together, working on it, and dealing with her crazy son. And really thank you for him is that the same if we’re able to do this going forward my oh you’re tired of thanks. Thank you. That’s just for the class; the real thanks is for a lot of other stuff, but that’s not for now.
Okay, let’s begin. I think we’re ready to go. Introductions done. Let me try to go over your schedule this morning. Your schedule this morning probably was that you woke up about seven o’clock. Maybe you had a bunch of kids you had to get out to school, and Morris lost his shoes, and the other one lost their briefcase, and the other one needed lunch, and the other one needed a snack. Finally, by 8 o’clock, you got them all out. Then you’re racing to three stores you have to shop at, you have to drop off the cleaners because you have to get all the clothes from the holiday, you have to go by—you went to—you’re going to make an order in Kosher Corner. You’re running back home to make sure you put up dinner for your family tonight. You’re going to leave and run into this class.
You want this class to end perfectly on time because you have two things to do before you get home and your kids come home. Little Michael and Sarah are going to make a mess in the house, and you’re going to try to clean up after them. You hope dinner’s out on time. Your husband’s going to come home at 7 o’clock or 8 o’clock. You’re going to try to serve him and take care of him. By 9.30 or 10 o’clock, you’re going to be exhausted, full of sleep. Tomorrow morning, you’re going to wake up and do the same thing again. Is that close to the schedule? Close? Basically got it.
My question is, why is this your lot? Why is this what Hashem had in mind for your life? Why is this what we need to answer over the course of the next—we have Avalon the class till 115—we have to answer this question: Why is this the life that we lead? To tell you the truth, it all comes from this week’s parasha.
This is exciting; it’s a new beginning. We start this week, Parashat Bereshit. In Parashat Bereshit, the book of Bereshit, God created man and the world; He created man and woman. And then came that famous sin. To most of us, Hashem got upset at the man and woman and the snake, and seemingly just threw the whole book at them. Hashem cursed man: “You’re going to die, and you’re going to have to work hard, and you’re going to go back to the land.” And woman is going to have to be pregnant, give birth, and raise children, and the snake is going to lose its legs. Hashem just threw a whole bunch of curses at them, and we’re basically paying for those curses for the rest of time.
That’s basically the story to most people: they were created, they sinned, and then Hashem took the whole kitchen sink and dumped it on their heads. What we need to understand, and what we’re going to try to look at, is this story—to analyze it and properly understand what it really is. Then we’re going to answer that question and understand why we live the lives we have, why our husbands go through what they go through, why women go through what they do, and so on.
As we analyze this story, let’s break it down into three questions. Question number one: How did the sin happen? The sin was, the Nachash (snake). God commanded Adam, basically one commandment: don’t eat from the Etz HaDa’at (Tree of Knowledge), don’t eat from the tree of knowledge. Of course, what happens is that the snake goes and tells the woman to eat from the tree. The woman eventually eats from the tree, then serves it to her husband to eat, and then Hashem gets upset.
My first question is: Who is this snake? What is this? Where did this snake come from? I mean, have you ever seen a snake that has any ability? What is this snake? Does the snake exist in any way today? I want to be introduced. I want to understand where this concept came from, that a snake could actually talk to a woman and convince a woman. I want to know who this snake is.
My second question is: Why did they get these specific punishments? No, Hashem didn’t just throw the kitchen sink. Hashem wasn’t just mowing them down. Why did Hashem give them specifically these punishments? Why did the snake—why did they get their punishments? Question number three, which I think is the best of them all, is that basically all three did the same thing. They all ate from the tree. How come each one gets their own punishment?
The snake’s punishment is that his legs are going to be cut off, he’s going to eat from the dirt, and he’s going to be on the ground, the lowest of all the animals. The woman’s punishment is that she’s going to go through nine months of pregnancy and labor, eventually have a child, and then bear the pain it takes to raise a child. She’s going to have to be subservient to her husband. That’s her punishment. Man’s punishment is that he’s going to pass away, his life is going to end, and he has to work his entire life. He has to go out, toil, and work.
Why does each one have their own punishment? They all did the same thing. Normally, if you had three kids that both ate from their Simchat Torah candy when they shouldn’t have eaten it, they’d all get the same punishment. Why does one lose his legs and eat from the dirt, another have a pregnancy, and the other have work? The three seem to have nothing to do with one another, when in essence they all really did the same sin.
So we’re looking to answer three questions. Number one: Who’s the snake? Number two: Why did Hashem give these punishments? Number three: Why are they all different? Now, if anyone here has been to my classes in the past, the system we like to use is that I won’t answer the questions right away. We’ll first look at a concept and understand it. Based on that concept, we’ll eventually, God willing, answer the questions.
Here we go. There is a Gemara in Bava Batra. The Gemara tells a story. This story sounds very out there. I want to show that it really has a very basic message for our life. There’s a rabbi named Rabbi Yehudah, Rabbi Yehudah from Hindu. Rabbi Yehudah says, “I was once on a ship, and on the ship we had these great diamonds. Out of the water came this tremendous, monstrous snake, and it came onto the top board of the ship, on the deck, to grab the diamond. Then, out of the air came this big bird, which cut off the snake’s neck and killed it.
“Then another big, monstrous snake came, and it brought the first snake back to life. So the bird came down and killed the second snake. But then the first snake brought the second snake back to life. This kept happening: the bird would kill, and the snake would bring back to life. These two monsters were rocking the ship. Eventually the bird was able to kill the snakes, and the diamonds were saved.”
That’s the story. Reading it at face value sounds like a cartoon, like monsters versus—what’s it called?—Monsters versus Aliens. It sounds like some kind of chaos: one big snake coming onto the ship, eating a diamond, this monster. What’s it talking about? So the Malbim has an explanation of this story. He says the ship is our lives. He says the snake—excuse me, the diamond—is our mind. Our minds and our neshamot (souls) are pure. They’re like diamonds. But then, in our lives, these big snakes, these big monsters, come in and try to gobble up our lives and our minds. A bird comes in and tries to save them, and then the monster comes alive.
Who is this monster? I’ll explain it in my own words. The monster is our imagination. We have a mind that is good, pure, and clear, and our imagination comes in and sometimes tries to consume our minds. Sometimes we can squelch one part, and another part comes in. If we squelch the other part, another part comes in.
Let me give you a few examples of how our imagination works. Example number one: Have you ever been insulted? Anyone ever get insulted? Let’s say someone—and I heard a story similar to this recently—you heard that a boy and a girl were getting engaged. This couple was about to get engaged. That’s your friend’s son; they’re about to get engaged, and now it’s like two months later and you were never invited to the engagement party.
So now you start to think, “I was never invited to the engagement party. I thought we were close. For three years we were neighbors. We lived next door to each other. I invited her to my son’s bris, to my grandson’s bris. I invited her to every party I’ve had. They really didn’t invite me. Could it be they didn’t invite me?” And you start to think about it. “How could it be? It doesn’t make sense. Oh, I know what it is. It was that six months ago, we had a conversation and she got angry from that conversation. She got angry at that conversation? I’m the one who, if anything, should be angry at her when she’s angry at me? What kind of audacity? When she was pregnant, I was the only one who took care of her. Could it be that she didn’t? Maybe I should go talk to her sister now.” No, you’re not going to. You’re going to make the phone call for three weeks.
You’re thinking about it, and then one day you’re in a store somewhere and overhear a conversation and find out they never got engaged. How often does our mind work this way? We have this thing, and then our imagination starts to build and build and create this thing. It starts to cloud us and distract us and annoy us. It takes over our mind, which is really pure, really straight, really wants good, and is like a monster trying to eat the diamond.
I’ll give you another example of our imagination: jealousy. Your sister got to go away for Sukkot. Now Sukkot is coming, your sister is in Florida, and you’re stuck here making the holiday and working hard. It’s bothering you. It’s your youngest sister, and it’s annoying you all. “She has more money than I do, and she’s away.” Picture her in Florida. What does a Sukkah look like? How easy it must be, how awesome it must be for her, the meals just set up, the weather unbelievable, everything great. You’re thinking about the whole Sukkah.
At the same time, you don’t even get a chance to realize that you’re sitting here in Brooklyn, the weather was also picture-perfect, and you’re having big meals with a whole family that’s really unbelievable, that in reality you would totally enjoy and that is practically perfect. The only thing consuming you is your imagination, your mind picturing and thinking and getting involved, getting emotional about it, getting hurt about it, and getting depressed about it. It becomes like a monster that wants to swallow up the diamond.
I’ll give you another example. Sometimes we get self-conscious. Yesterday, this happened to me. I woke up early in the morning to go pray, and I didn’t realize—believe it or not, I’m not really like this—that until like 11 o’clock in the morning, I had on a jacket and a tie that had nothing to do with the pants I was wearing. Nothing to do with them. They weren’t even similar colors. They weren’t even the same suit; it wasn’t even close.
So now, for the rest of the day, I couldn’t get home until a few hours later. I’m sitting there thinking, “Oh my gosh, my tie matches my jacket, and the pants match nothing. This is a disaster. Everyone is noticing, and I look…” I’m taking off my jacket, putting it back on. The whole day I’m thinking about it. The truth is, I don’t think one person noticed. It was a real bad clash. It wasn’t like—heck, it was really bad. But I really don’t think one person noticed.
Have you ever worn something that you think doesn’t fit? I don’t know. Your mind starts to build it up and create something. It starts to build something up.
The truth is, a lot of times we have this: our brain, our mind, is really created pure. If we would just think straight, we would think good, think pure, and go in the right path. We always have something—a jealousy, an insult, anger, depression—something festering in our brain and creating something in our brain. It starts to become like a monster and wants to eat us up. It can destroy a week, a month, a long amount of time. If your husband’s business isn’t so good, you start to think about how it’s going to be two years from now. How are we going to marry off the kids? How are we going to retire? And you start to build and build and build. Right now everything’s okay, you’re fine, you’re surviving, but the buildup starts to become something that really starts to pull you down.
What the Malbim was saying about that ship is that the diamonds are on the deck and they would really be sailing fine if not for these big snakes, these monsters, so to speak, coming and trying to gobble us up. Every now and then the bird comes in and we try to cut off the monster’s head and calm ourselves down. But something else props up and something else bothers us. Maybe it’s not our ego today; it’s our jealousy. Maybe it’s not our jealousy; it’s our depression. It’s not our depression; it’s our anger. There’s always something there to eat us. That really becomes a struggle of our entire life.
At the same time, your imagination is really good. Your imagination is the only reason why we hope. It’s the only reason why we build. Anything that was ever done in this world was first imagined and then created. So the imagination is really a great thing, but it gets out of hand, gets loose, and goes crazy.
The truth is, if you think about it, almost everything around us is really there to play on our imagination. Everything you do. People watch a movie. Have you ever seen someone watching a movie, sitting there and getting all into it? They’re laughing, crying, sad, involved. What happened? Nothing happened. No one got killed. No one woke up. The guy with the little ketchup came out of his shirt. Nothing happened. Nothing really happened. What happened is they captured your imagination.
Did anyone here have a husband who was a sports fan? Anyone whose husband was a Yankee fan? I don’t know if you know: have you ever seen Yankee fans over the last week, especially if there was a Yankee game on the holiday? It was a big deal. Some people don’t want to watch on the holiday. But now, the whole Friday night—I know grown men. One really told me, this grown man with kids and a great family, he and another relative of his were walking out of the house on Saturday night, walking around trying to find a house where they could get the score. I’m not exaggerating.
He went to a family member he hadn’t been to in five years. The man wouldn’t open the door. He flagged down a bus. I mean this: he flagged down a bus for the driver to give him the score. The driver didn’t know. Then he stopped some cars. A grown man—I mean, he’s a good, respectable man. I don’t mean some. But you know what? What is sports? Does sports make any sense? A woman, for sure, doesn’t think it makes sense. But does sports make any sense? Millions and billions of dollars. Millions and millions of people watch sports. Millions and millions—what are they doing? They want to watch a baseball get hit. You can go to the McDonald Park and watch a baseball get hit.
What it is, is that they created in your mind this concept of “it’s me and we.” The whole concept of “we’re going to win, and I’m going to win” becomes a big deal, even though you actually get nothing out of it. You get zero from it. But it becomes a concept, and it’s built and built until it becomes a big deal.
And just as you think you’re laughing at men, there’s this thing called a soap opera. You ever hear of a soap opera? People get involved in it and have to watch. Then what is it, every day or every week? They have to follow up, go to the next episode and the next episode, and they’re involved. They know the names of people, the guy and who she got married to and who she was married to, who she’s going to marry, where the kid came from. She’s crying, she’s laughing. My mother’s been watching the same soap opera for 30 years. That’s on tape. I don’t know.
But the truth is, what happens? It’s like she’s related to these people. It really does, because they know everyone’s name and their background. In essence, what really happened? They walked off the set and made half a million dollars. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. What is it? It’s our imagination.
How do they put an advertisement for us in a—let’s say they advertise: you go to a store and want to buy a suit, and they show you a suit dressed on a mannequin or something, or they show you an ad and the suit looks unbelievable. The reality is, you know and I know that no one ever looks that good in a suit. They just set it up in a way that you can picture it looking great, even though it’s a person only five people in the world could look that good, and only if they’re sitting in that position, at that angle, does it look good. And it gets us possessed.
People show us pictures of retirements and advertise somewhere. You’ll see an older couple walking on a seashore. They’re 70 years old, and everything looks great. That picture starts to become like a monster, and it controls you.
When Hashem created the world, He intended there to be three different beings, and each being was going to have its own role. One at a time. Adam, man, was supposed to be totally pure. Man was supposed to be only neshamah (souls), a full diamond. That’s what man was supposed to be. No needs, no nothing. Total diamond. That was man.
Woman was supposed to be the person who provided for his needs, the person who took care of the physical needs of man. That’s how woman—that’s how, according to some opinions, they were actually created together as one being, because her role was to create the physical needs of man. The Nachash, the snake, was the imagination. The Nachash, the snake, was supposed to be there as the imagination of man.
The Gemara says that the greatest servant that man ever had was this snake. It says that the snake would be able to go across the world to achieve, to get diamonds for man. What does that mean, across the world? Someone’s imagination can create tremendous things. That’s what the snake was supposed to do: be that imagination and that creator and builder that helps man and serves man in his building and his purity and serving of Hashem.
So man was going to be spiritual, woman was going to be physical, and the snake was going to be that imagination. It was all supposed to work, and it was all supposed to serve men. Not that man is great—man meaning the spiritual part of men. That’s why they had no clothing, because they weren’t embarrassed of their body. There was nothing physical about it. It was totally spiritual. Man was totally spiritual. His wife, Chava, was going to take care of those spiritual—was going to provide the physical that was necessary to complement the spiritual. The snake was going to provide the imagination. Like we said, you can only succeed with that imagination. That’s what the snake was going to do.
The problem is that the whole thing went backwards, and the whole thing blew up. Instead of the snake serving the woman and eventually serving the man, the snake became like a billboard and an advertisement. He was the original—the first salesman ever created was a snake. He started to create: “Ooh, there’s this tree, and you can’t have it, and God doesn’t let you touch it because He knows if you eat it, this is what will happen.” He starts to create in the woman an imagination of what this tree could be.
I mean, we all think—everyone, this must have crossed your mind: if you were there and there was only one tree you couldn’t eat from, couldn’t you just let go of the tree? Everything else was fine, just one tree. The answer is that the snake managed to make that tree the thing we wanted. Through his ability, this imagination that he could create, he started to create that monster that would control, and create, “Wow, there’s this need.”
Once he convinced the woman to do that, the woman who was supposed to be there and provide for man’s needs became the person who instead brought man the one thing that he didn’t need. She was the person who brought it all down.
So the system that was supposed to work this way or this way suddenly was working this way. The snake was creating an imagination for the woman, and the woman who was supposed to bring man’s needs was now providing the only thing that was bad for man and bringing man totally down. What really happened at that point was that the system of the world that Hashem had created and made—one might say it would seem easy, but Hashem created this system with three separate beings, each with its own role. The whole thing got messed up in that one moment because the snake showed that he was going to use this power of imagination instead of service. It was going to be a distraction and a disaster, and the woman, instead of providing the needs, was going to provide the things that would hurt the man. And now man went and, instead of being superior and spiritual, succumbed to what these other beings were giving him, and he fell.
So Hashem said that the whole plan of the world had to change. The whole plan of the world, and what life was supposed to be, now had to be different, because this wasn’t working the way it was supposed to work.
After that, Adam and Chava were not the regular man and woman that you see on the street, and the snake was not the regular snake. They were all different. They were all beings that Hashem had created in a different way to serve a different purpose. Are we clear? Any questions? I don’t know if I’m—any questions or no? You’re not expecting a question. What’s the question?
Okay, that’s a good question. The answer is, it didn’t fail. Hashem was giving them an opportunity to try to make it work, and when they couldn’t make it work, Hashem said, “Now you have to go to plan B.” I’m giving you a chance to make this work, and if it works, it will be unbelievable for you. You’ll live in Gan Eden (Garden of Eden); it will be an unbelievable life. But you have this—let’s see how you do. Adam and Chava and the snake all sinned on the first day. Within an hour or so, they had sinned and showed that they couldn’t do it, that they couldn’t do it this way. That’s why the punishments we’re going to see now are not punishments; they’re Hashem setting up the world in a new way.
Any other questions? Does the kid in the back have a question? Let’s try to answer these questions. Actually, just to explain it a little further, there were actually three trees. There were all the trees that they were able to eat from, the Etz HaChayim (Tree of Life), which would let them live forever, and the Etz HaDa’at, the tree of knowledge, that they were not supposed to eat from. There were three sets of trees, so to speak: Etz HaDa’at, the general trees, and Etz HaChayim.
Each one of these trees corresponded to the three forces that were in the world. Etz HaDa’at was the Tree of Knowledge, meant the Tree of Imagination, which is the Tree of the Nachash. The regular trees were the Tree of the Woman, which are the regular provision for the regular physical needs. And Etz HaChayim, Tree of Life, meant the spiritual everlasting life that would be in this world. So Hashem created those three trees for these three sets of people.
Again, once we messed up, Hashem said, “You can’t have access to these trees. You have to leave Gan Eden and go through a whole different system. This system doesn’t work for you anymore.” That’s why we were taken out of Gan Eden. It wasn’t just a punishment to be taken out of Gan Eden; it was a new system, a different world. The world we now live in. Now what we have to do is see how these punishments set up our world to fix the problem.
So here goes number one. Number one is the Nachash. Hashem’s message to Nachash was that basically, you have to be totally squelched. You are there just as a reminder of what you were. The purpose of Nachash isn’t really much that we do with a snake. The purpose of Nachash is to remember that the snake had this power. It could have been the greatest service to man, and Hashem said, “Because you took that imagination and blew it up and made it into crazy things, you’re going to be as simple and as nothing as can be.” He eats from dirt. He squirms on the ground. He’s the lowest of the animals.
Hashem said, “I’m taking that force, and I’m trying to send a message to humanity that that force has to be cut down as much as it can. That force has to be down.” No legs. What does it mean, no legs? It means that he has no power anymore. He’s at the bottom. He’s the worst of the animals. He’s the lowest, because that force is the most—that monster is really the most dangerous in our lives.
Like I said, most of us, when we think of what we have to work on, don’t really have to change much. We just have to be really us. We have to not allow these monsters, so to speak, to eat us alive. If we would just think straight and think right, do properly what we know we’re supposed to do, be what we’re supposed to be, and think the way we’re supposed to think, we would be fine. The problem is that these things control us. Hashem’s message to the snake was, “Don’t allow what the snake was—don’t allow that to eat you.” That was the first.
Now comes woman. This is the part you’re waiting for, right? What is woman? How in the world is the role of woman connected to what she was? The answer is that woman, like we said, to some degree still maintains that role: she’s supposed to provide some of the physical for the home.
In fact, women don’t have an obligation to do a lot of mitzvot (positive commandments). Women don’t need to do a lot of positive commandments. Women don’t wear tefillin (phylacteries). Women didn’t—you didn’t shake a lulav (palm frond) on Sukkot, you didn’t sit in a Sukkah (booth), you didn’t have to hear the shofar (ram’s horn). Women are not obligated in a lot of the positive mitzvot.
Why is that? It’s because that really, to some degree, comes naturally to women. Why does it come naturally to women? Because that’s not really where your main role is. Your main role is to provide for the physical needs of the family. Why is that the main role? Like I said, women don’t have an obligation to learn. Most of you are going to do one or two classes during the course of a week, and you did great, right? You’re like in kollel (Torah study program) for women. But when it comes to men, they need to be studying a lot more. Why is that? A man’s role is to work on that spiritual. The woman, to some degree, has it come naturally because, to some degree, she doesn’t have to work on it; her role is to build in the woman, to build in the physical.
Why is Hashem like this? Because Hashem said the world, in essence, was too easy. Basically, everything was serving each other, and it just went. When things just go, when things are too easy, people fail. There’s an interesting Mishnah, and I think it’s a very important Mishnah that we should understand, and that you really need to understand when you’re dealing with your children, too.
The Mishnah says that if a woman has certain jobs she needs to provide for the home—and I’m not going to go through all the jobs, but let’s say it’s mending the clothing, providing the food, making the bed, certain needs she has to provide for the home—then if a woman has one maid or one servant, she’s absolved from two of her jobs. If she has two maids or two servants, she’s absolved from, let’s say, three of her jobs. Then the Mishnah says that if she has three maids or three servants, she’s absolved from, like, four of her jobs.
Then the Mishnah says, “And how about if she has four?” So Rabban Gamliel says that if she has four, she can’t have four. Why can’t she have four? Because if she has four, she’ll have nothing to do. So she can’t have nothing to do. Even if she has four or five, she still has certain jobs she needs to do. Why? Because if a woman is bored, batala mevi’ah lidei zimah: if she’s bored, it’s going to bring to immoral things. If she’s bored, it’s going to bring to immoral things. Another Mishnah says that if she’s bored, batala mevi’ah lidei shi’amum: if she’s bored, she’s going to go crazy. If she’s bored, she’s going to go crazy.
What the Mishnah is saying is that you can’t have nothing to do. I don’t know if it’s okay; you’ll have to settle for three maids. Can you handle that? But the Mishnah is telling us that being bored is dangerous; being bored is bad.
So what Hashem did for women is create in women these automatic, practically automatic, physical functions. A woman has a child, she’s pregnant for nine months, then gives birth to the child, and then she’s naturally going to take care of the child. I don’t know of anyone here who’s ever met a woman who’s really bored. It’s almost impossible to be bored, because your life becomes so engulfed and engrossed, and you’re never going to get as distracted as woman got on the first day of creation. The snakes in the world are not going to be able to gobble you up the way they would have been had it been this way.
So what Hashem did as a punishment to woman wasn’t a punishment; it was a service. It was Hashem giving woman a way to be occupied and busy and producing and building. The needs she’s going to build and the children she’s going to build aren’t just going to happen like this. It’s not going to be that the child comes into her body and out of her body in 30 seconds and that the child is just going to raise herself. If Chava had not eaten from the tree, that’s what would have happened. The baby would come in, come out, and in 30 seconds the baby would be born, and then the baby would just take care of itself, almost like some animals. The baby is just born, the baby raises itself, and you have no function. Would you like that? I’m not taking a vote.
What would be wrong with that is that you would be bored. The service you do would be easy, and when it’s that easy, it becomes dangerous. So the struggle Hashem created for us is healthy. It’s the work we have to do. We have to run after one kid’s shoes and the other kid’s lunch, fill a briefcase, make dinner, go through three errands, park and unpark, come back home, and take care of the kids. That crazy schedule is healthy for us.
When we’re busy, we’re busy doing our function, doing what we’re supposed to be doing, building what we’re supposed to be building, and providing the needs the way we’re supposed to provide them. Instead of hurting men, we’re going to be building men.
Now, what’s Adam’s role? What’s man’s role? It’s interesting: the Pasuk (verse) says, when Hashem starts to curse men, He doesn’t even say right away that he ate from the tree. The first thing He says is—and I apologize for saying this, but this is what He says. This is what the Pasuk says, so I’m just quoting, okay? The Pasuk says, “Your mistake was that you listened to your wife.”
So it says—and I said, this is the mistake. Now, why is this a mistake? Is this a bad thing, to listen to your wife? I listen to my wife all the time. It’s a good thing; listening to your wife is a good thing. So why is the Pasuk saying that the mistake was listening to your wife?
The essence was like this: man thought his role was to sit back and wait for things to come, and wait for his needs to be provided. That was the way he thought the world was set up. Nachash creates the imagination; the woman provides the needs and serves him. So “he listened to his wife” was how he sort of misinterpreted the role. That was the job: the woman now gives to me.
And she says, “That’s not how it’s going to work anymore. Now you have to go out and get.” A man’s work, when he has to earn an income, doesn’t happen like it does for a woman, with it coming from inside of him, and it doesn’t happen so practically automatically. He has to get up and go. Sometimes you’ll see your husband get out of bed, tired and not in the mood, and he has to get up and go earn a living and make a living.
Now you see men—and there are a lot of men like this, more than there should be—who don’t have a job. What are they doing? They’re going out on the Internet. They’re going networking. They’re trying to talk to people and figure things out. That’s their job. Their job is to go out, so to speak, to go on a business trip, to go out to work, to go find something. That’s man’s role. Needs aren’t coming to you. You have to go and get them. You have to work and create and build them, because Hashem says that now that’s going to be your role.
You can’t just wait. You have to go do. You have to be proactive instead of reactive. Your mistake was reacting. Now you have to be creating. That’s what Hashem provided, made man do. It wasn’t a curse. Again, it was man’s way. Now that’s how you’re going to build it. Mistakes aren’t just going to happen. It’s not always going to be an excuse: “I didn’t know. I’m sorry, it’s my wife.” That doesn’t work anymore, because now your job is to go and get.
That’s what Hashem created, and it’s the same reason why Hashem created death. Death wasn’t a curse. Death just makes it so that now a person wouldn’t die, they’d never have anything to do, because, “I’ll push it off until I’m 260, or when I’m 260 I’ll push it off until I’m 790, and I still have plenty of years to go.” Now it doesn’t work that way. Every stage of your life is short. You’re only a teenager this long, you’re only middle-aged that long, and you have kids. So because of that, it creates an urgency, and that urgency creates busyness.
So what Hashem created in this world, in essence, was that He took the Nachash, which was the imagination, and said, “I’m cutting that down.” He took the woman and said, “I’m going to create automatic needs, work that you’re going to do, that’s going to be building and providing for your home.” Instead of reacting, instead of things just happening, now you have to go and work to do it, and you’re going to be busy. Being busy is going to be healthy.
The truth is, like I said, it’s the most important message for your kids. You want to know if your kids are in trouble? If they’re bored, chances are they’re in trouble. If they’re busy, chances are they’re not. This is just a general rule. If you have a teenager, he’s 17, 18, 19, and he’s really busy, has a lot of things to do, and is doing homework, working, in school, or even playing basketball, learning—if he’s busy, chances are he’s okay. If he’s not, and he’s home sitting around for two or three hours a night, chances are he’s doing something he shouldn’t do. He’s on the computer, looking at something he shouldn’t look at, interacting with people he shouldn’t interact with, accessing things he shouldn’t. That’s the general rule. It’s not automatic, but it’s general. Bored is bad.
So Hashem created this automatic way in which we’re going to go out, work, provide, and build, and what we’re doing in our homes is our role, because of how we’re building the needs of men. And then Hashem made it so that man can’t just happen. It’s not just going to come to you. You have to go out and get it.
So what we learned today—we’re at the time, so I don’t really have time for that much more—is that what we have to guard against is that snake, that billboard that creates this picture in your mind that controls you, or that insult that starts to fester in your brain until it covers you for two weeks, or that little bit of jealousy, or that emotion that is really, when you think about it, unimportant, but somehow builds in your mind and head until it eats you up.
We have to realize that we’re really made diamonds. We’re really made pure. If we would stop those monsters, so to speak, cut them down, allow ourselves to think clearly, and allow ourselves to do our role properly and do it well, to the best that we can, we will succeed. We will succeed because Hashem made us good. The only time we’re not is when we follow that picture and say, “Oh, I want some of that.” We allow that picture to build in our mind. We see something—a car that we suddenly have to have, or a house, a way that we have to live, or someone else’s lifestyle that we really, really want—and those things start to become a monster. We have to protect ourselves from them, because those things cloud us and become dangerous for us.
Hashem created the world in such a way that we should focus on what our role is, do it, focus on it, hit it, and go to it every day. We shouldn’t allow the things that maybe depress us, excite us, and anger us to become monsters in our lives. If we do so, understand our role and a man’s role and a woman’s role, understand where our imagination is healthy and where it’s not, and understand how we can produce, keep going, and keep doing our job—and yes, if the routine sounds like it’s the same and I do it tomorrow and the next day and the next day, understand that it’s healthy for us and is actually building us—then B’ezrat Hashem we’ll all be successful. Amen.