Jewish women talking about Torah and the lived experience of our Judaism.
[00:00:38] Tonia Chazanow: Hello there. I'm Tonia, and you are listening to Human and Holy, a podcast where we discuss the deepest parts of Torah. Not just as scholars, but also as human beings.
Today’s episode is sponsored by Michaella Garfinkel in honor of her mothers yahrzeit, Rochel Leah bas Chaim Michael. Michaella, may your dear mother’s neshama have an aliyah. Thank you for sponsoring today's episode.
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In today's episode, we are going to hear from Toby Hecht, who is the director of a Jewish society on campus at Yale University, and the proud mother of seven children. In this conversation, we discuss bechira chofshis, free choice. How can we set ourselves up to make choices that are born of our G-dly souls. What is the relationship between free choice and G-d’s will? And what has been Toby’s experience of choosing G-d in the often G-dless environment of an Ivy League university? Join us today as we explore the choices that make us who we are.
{musical interlude}
[00:02:07] I'm so excited about the topic that we're going to discuss today. It's a topic that I think a lot of us wrestle with, not always so consciously, and when we discuss it, it brings it to the forefront. Just to introduce the topic, we're going to talk about bechirah chofshis, and this very interesting system that G-d set up, which is that we have free choice, and we get to decide if we choose G-d and if we choose Torah.
Today, we're going to talk a little bit about how to set ourselves up to choose the truth of Torah, because even if we want it, it's a journey to be able to really consciously choose it every single day. What has been your experience in choosing it? What has been your experience for setting yourself up for success, etc.?
[00:02:45] Toby Hecht: The first time I can remember discussing, or thinking about bechira chofshis, It was in connection to hashgacha pratis. It was extremely philosophical and meta. It wasn't something that me and my friends- we were very young, probably when we first really started, was ninth grade in high school, and this conversation about what does that mean? It was always very abstract. It wasn't a life experience yet for me. It was just something I was grappling with, or understanding the distinction between the two. If you have free choice, what does divine providence mean?
That was something that I remember discussing with people my age. Just getting into conversations and even debates about it, but it was always abstract and it never really was resolved. For me, I really feel that this concept of free will and free choices really crystallized for me later on. Because as you're living and as you're growing, sometimes, like you said, you're not even aware of what that even means, that you have a choice, free will, versus not having free will. What is that? What's the ownership of that? How do we define that?
I think that, really, in order to understand that and in connection to where does hashgacha pratis play into that is you have to – it's a lived experience. We can debate it and discuss it. But really for me, it's been a lived experience. Or, it's something that I've really been able to see in my life, probably through evolving, maturing, not just as a woman, as an individual, but also as a mother, as somebody who works with so many different types of people and seeing other people grappling with choice. And what does that mean? That's an evolving process. I’m 45 now, I probably started discussing, or debating this when I was 14. I feel like I've got a handle on it now.
[00:04:33] TC: Yeah, that's such a good point, that it starts off as this very abstract debate that young people have like, “Does G-d decide what we do, or do we have our own freewill?” And then it becomes something that is a lived experience. What does it mean that I actually have free choice and that I get to choose what type of person, life, relationship with G-d I want to have?
[00:04:51] TH: Yeah. Well, if everything is preordained, then what exactly is my freewill? I feel that in order to really feel, or understand, or connect to the idea of divine providence, you have to understand your power as having choice. And it flows one into the other, but it's a process that happens, and I think you get to see how they intersect more and more.
TC: What has been your experience? Have there been any experiences in your life that you see as significant in shaping your understanding of what free choice is, and what type of choice you have?
[00:05:28] TH: There's two trains of thought that I think about in discussing this, which is one, we wake up in the morning, and we have so many threads of choice that we're not aware of, like you said, and opportunities for choice. We're choosing every day. Everything we do is a choice we're making very consciously, or totally subconsciously. For me, there's a few powerful, I guess, stories in my personal life that helped me with understanding how we wrestle with choice and how we wrestle with how we choose.
I grew up as a granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. I wrestled with that probably from – as my earliest memories of understanding what had happened to their families. I was very angry at this. I mean, I really wrestled with trying to understand what had happened to them. I was very much caught up in the nostalgia of what was before, and then what was after. Part of that was because my grandmother was very willing to talk about her life before the war, and really opened up for me an incredible visual.
The part of that which I was really grappling with was how much beauty there was, but also, how much was lost. From when I was very young, that was really something that’s haunted me my entire life, that kind of what happened. But then, I had these incredible role models in my life, in particular, these two grandparents, my mother's parents, who, although they had been through such unimaginable trauma, they made choices in their lives, and there wasn't oversight. They were completely on their own. To continue living in this path that they had been raised.
Not just living it, but with the way they decided to consciously live. And that was with a lot of joy and gratitude. They chose those distinct ideas, or qualities, or characteristics over bitterness, or anger. Though I was grappling with what had happened to them, they didn't appear to be grappling. And they certainly didn't appear to be grappling with G-d. That was very powerful for me. It was something that developed as I got older and it was able to be less black and white and really say, “Look, I'm probably going to wrestle with this for the rest of my life. I really have a hard time with it. But I'm fortunate I have incredible role models who really showed me what we do when we're faced with real obstacles.”
While this is a very drastic measure, that we talk about the Holocaust, and we think about moving forward in the aftermath. We think, okay, so that's huge. But how do we think about that on a daily basis? What are we doing every day that helps us move on, move forward in our lives?
[00:08:19] TC: I think it's so powerful, because you mentioned how it's that epic story. It's been very formative for you and your life. But, it's also, what occurs to me is that, even though obviously, there was this big choice that they made to keep their Jewish way of life, etc., they were also making those daily choices that you're describing. Like you said, to choose joy, not bitterness, anger. On the one hand, it's this one big choice. But really, it's a daily choice, I would think for a survivor of the Holocaust.
[00:08:44] TH: Oh, absolutely. I mean, the residual trauma, or the aftermath of something so enormous and so devastating. If you can understand the before. I mean, maybe if I wouldn't have known what was before, but because I did, it made it almost so much more painful, and the gaps and the unknown, or what could have been. I always think about that. Every morning, to get up, and they did this. This was routine. What this makes me realize is, is that the power of choice defines us as human under any circumstance, or in any condition that we find ourselves.
You could say, well, they didn't have the choice there. They didn't make the choice to be in that situation, that terrible situation, but they did choose how they were going to live with it and move with it towards a future. If I asked my grandmother like, “Didn't you ever doubt? Didn't you ever think that- this unbelievable trust in Hashem that they had?” She looked at me and never angrily. She said, “We would never give Hitler that satisfaction.” Over the years, her love, and my grandfather's love for life and for us as individual people, was so powerful that it helped me overcome a lot of my wrestling.
[00:09:57] TC: Such a powerful example to have in your life, especially at a young age. I know that you work with young adults at Yale University and surrounding areas. I would love to hear what your journey has been. From that place, having these role models, your grandparents, from a young age, and then moving to work with people in a world that has a lot of emphasis on choice, but not necessarily on choice that's focused on choosing G-d. Something that I think about is that we think about true choice and people talk sometimes about how it's not really a true choice of G-d when you grew up in a frum community and that's your conditioning, etc. And I always think like, growing up in a world with so much secular input, is it a true choice not to choose G-d, if you don't have equal amount of input, like true, deep –
TH: Information.
[00:10:45] TC: Information about G-d. I'd love to hear what has been your balance in finding that deep input? What has been your balance wrestling with your own choice? Are you really choosing, let's say, as a woman to have a family? Or is this just your conditioning? How have you grappled with that?
TH: I think everybody grapples with their own set of circumstances. For me, that was never a question. I was very excited to have a family and to get married, get married young and have a family as a young woman. I would also say that living on campus. So I moved here when I was just shy of 21. That's basically the age of a junior on campus. Yeah.
TC: It’s so intimidating. No?
[00:11:27] TH: You know what? It was really interesting. Speaking of Torah, and speaking of emes, I remember thinking, it was at dinner, Friday night dinner at my house early on, maybe the first few months. A young guy sitting there and he's discussing what he's studying, I believe it was math equations. I looked at him and I said to myself, “Look, I don't understand what he's talking about, quite frankly.” I said to myself, “I know something, perhaps that he doesn't know either and we can share an exchange.”
That was really the back and forth that I've been sharing and learning for the last 25 years. It's been a wonderful exchange of ideas, and thoughts about life with all these different people, thousands of people that have come through. I will say that what I realized more and more is how fortunate I am. Even if I've wrestled with the way things have been, connecting to Hashem is a lifeline. When you don't even know that you have a lifeline to connect to, it's somewhat of a tragedy.
While we may have choice, and while in the world that we live in, there's choice, every day, you can make any choice in theory that you want. In Devarim, Hashem basically says, “You have a choice. You can choose good over evil and eternalize your name in your future children.” We think about this entire chapter. It's very abstract, or biblical, right? How does that apply to me today in 2022? What do we think of as evil biblically? Today, what are the evils? We have doubt. We have fear. We have anger. We have resentment. It's just that you switch the channel a little bit to make it – speed it up to 2022. We're not discussing idol worship. The lure, what was the lure? What were the Jewish people being warned about?
Today, it's just a different – it has a different name. Those are very, very powerful forces. When you have Hashem in your life, and you're connecting, you're committing to that idea, which means in a world where there's so much choice, and so much access, and you're going to say – you humble yourself, and you say, “No, there's something greater out there than just this smorgasbord. There's something more.”
Even if you were to say, “Look this is great, but I didn't choose this, right? This is an inheritance.” In many ways, you could say, “This was foisted on me.” You have choices. but at the same time, you feel there's an obligation, there's a responsibility, there's a lot of pressure. No one's running after G-d like this, right? Institutionally, or even community-wise. It's a struggle. It's a struggle to connect and it’s a struggle to talk about connecting to G-d, saying the word G-d. You just put yourself in a little box. Because in a world of choice, there's a lot of choices out there. Why would I choose that? It's abstract. It's removed from me. It requires a lot. It demands a lot. I'm not choosing it.
[00:14:24] If we were looking at it and saying, “Okay, it's an inheritance that we received. We don't really have a choice.” I would say this. The reality is, there's no escaping it. We think we can. What I've learned over the last 25 years here is that there's no escaping emes. There's really no escaping. Truth is eternal. We may change directions every now and then. At the end of the day, it's emes. Emes is eternal, and it doesn't matter how old you are. At some point, there's that realization. When we think about connecting to something greater, even if you say, “Okay, it's an inheritance. So fine. I’ll do it.” Then it becomes rote.
You're still making the choice to do it, but how are you choosing to do it? You're going to connect, you're going to do it, but how excited are you? How are we going to do this with intention, with joy, and with love? Despite all the hardship.
It's hard to stay true to your convictions. It's hard to maintain a link. It's hard to say, “Look, I'm not just doing this for myself. I really think about how this as a connecting point between the past and future.” That's hard work.
[00:15:26] TC: I have to say that as you said that line about truth, how truth is eternal, I was flooded with this feeling of just, truth is eternal and G-d and Torah is the only thing that matters. And then immediately following, when you speak about the different levels of choice that we have, if I lived in that feeling of like, “Wow, truth is eternal. It's the only thing that matters; the truth of G-d and the truth of Torah,” I wouldn't really have free choice, because if we lived within that clarity, we wouldn't have that choice.
The fact that it's difficult and the fact that there's so many other options and the fact that it's not always so clear, that's precisely what makes the choosing so precious, that we can choose even when we don't have that feeling of this is the only thing that matters and the only thing in the world. That's what allows it to be so precious. If we lived in that perfect, ideal understanding, we wouldn't be choosing.
[00:16:18] TH: Yeah. I mean, anything idyllic is valuable to a certain extent, but it's not realistic. I guess, it comes down to, so here we say choice and we think logic, right? What's going to be the best choice logically? Then we realize like, look, it's not only about logic. It's not only about reason, and that takes extreme humility today to say, “Wait, I'm going to check out that system for a minute and I've got to go deeper. I've got to think broader. I've got to incorporate other aspects. My visions got to be both directed and peripheral and everything. I've got to see it all.”
Today, even on campus, which is filled with all these extraordinary people, talented, wonderful, young, beautiful youth. It's really a struggle on campus today. Partially, I believe, if not entirely, because there's this absence of this. Why am I making these choices? For whom am I making the choices? What's my purpose? What's the purpose of this choice? If we're just going to think about now and myself, that's just – it's too small, and it doesn't give enough relief, so to speak, to the choosing.
If I'm going to choose something, it's got to have impact. It's got to mean something and not just for me. It's really about thinking larger and thinking more broadly, and that takes that truthful searching. It takes a commitment to a higher being, that being G-d.
[00:17:42] TC: That's a great point. To focus not just on right now, what is my choice? But also in the broader picture, what am I choosing for? Then it gives context to this immediate choice that I'm making.
TH: I think that with that process of, I guess, tapping into that every day, it eventually becomes very organic and regular and obvious, right? It's incredibly liberating. When it becomes liberating, and you understand that power that you have as a human being to decide no matter what, then you can say, “Ah. Now I see Divine Providence. Now I understand how it works. I made the choice.” And when it doesn't work out, because you're so tapped in, you say, “Okay, that's what was supposed to happen.”
When you're living this freedom of choice, you see the hashgacha pratis, and it no longer is abstract. It's just so obvious.
When I was young, these were two very distinct ways of looking at the world. I can choose. Everything is preordained.
[00:18:50] TC: Almost contradictory.
TH: Almost contradictory. How do we even – Yeah. It's clearly a debate between the two concepts. When you live it, when it becomes a living experience, It's not an abstract concept. We're not philosophically debating the differences. We're actually living them. Then you see, I don't think that you can really, truly appreciate hashgacha pratis, unless you understand the power of your bechira.
TC: Interesting.
[00:19:13] TH: And when you understand the power of it, it's not that, “Oh, why did I choose this? It was going to happen anyway.” It's not about that. It's saying, because there's so many tiny threads of choice, every single minute from the moment you open your eyes until the moment you go to bed. So many, like you said. You're not even conscious of the majority of them. When you do become conscious, or when you make the choices that you want to make, you're thinking about them, big or small. Things happen. It just says, “Oh, that happened for a reason. That's why I made that choice. Or, I made that choice and then that happened. That's hashgacha pratis.”
It’s like, this kinda weird, for me anyways, it's incredible – it's almost like a floating experience, how I understand it. You just give it up. You're giving it completely over to Hashem. I made the choice and I made that choice. I was conscious of it. I'm giving it up that whatever happens, it was meant to be.
TC: Beautiful.
TH: Even if it's not why I made the choice. So It's synchronized.
[00:20:09] TC: There's a certain lightness and trust in the way that you make a choice when you know that G-d has a plan.
TH: For sure. It's really in the mindset, right? We also choose how we think about things and how we view things. It's not just that we make choices of what we're going to actually physically do, but how do we see the world? We can choose how we see any situation. We once had this guy, a friend of mine. His name is Ray. He was in death row for 30 years for a crime he didn't commit. And he described how they could contain his body, obviously, in a cell, but they wouldn't contain his mind.
He said, “I went places. I went places in my mind. I met this person and I met that person. I made a book club.” The power of the mind. How we view- how are you going to view something? Your willingness to see a picture the way you want to see it is very powerful. And that strength of the mind and the body responding to that is the human experience every day.
[00:21:06] TC: Yeah. Personally, I can't hear it enough times. I need this daily reminder to recognize how much my mind guides my experience.
[00:21:15] TH: Oh, for sure. Look, I'm telling it to you in a way like, we're sitting here, we're having a great conversation. We're chilling over our tea. I'm reflecting, right? Clearly every day, there's going to be struggle.
We can say that we have this inheritance that was given to us, not necessarily by our choice, right? We were chosen for this. Hashem says this over and over again. It's incredibly profound. Also, there's so much trust. Hashem believing in us, or G-d believing in humanity to make the right choices, is very powerful. We have to hold on to that and tap into that strength on a regular basis, and it makes sense, because there's a lot going on out there and it's hard and it's complicated. Every day that we do that, even though it's a struggle, we should say, look, thank G-d, we have the ability to see this five different ways. Which way am I going to choose to see it?
[00:22:04] TC: I would love, if I may, to get a little personal here. You don't work or live in a very religious environment. What has been your experience in strengthening your ability to choose not just positivity and joy, etc., in the face of struggle, which is an important piece? I'd love to hear specifically what has been your journey in being able to choose G-d in a G-dless environment.
[00:22:31] TH: Wow. That's a great question. I actually think it would be more obvious, right? When you are living in a space, which you would assume is where it's at. You're at the top of your game. It's one of the best Ivy Leagues in the country. You've made it. Like, where are you going from here? Unfortunately, I've seen a lot of struggle and a lot of pain. There's a lot of doubt. Fear. Fear is a big one. There's a lot of pressure.
It pains me, actually, because these are such incredible people. And they've worked really hard. They are multi-dimensional in their talent. Young men and women with really, the world at their feet in theory. There's a lot of struggling going on that I know personally, and I see on people's faces, and I can read them at this point. It's been a long time since I've been here. You see certain patterns.
For me, when I see that, it took time, because I was a young kid when I came. I was 21. I was their age. When you know something, you know it. You're in it, so I wasn't necessarily reflecting, or observing. I'm older now and I have children that are the same age as these young men and women here. It's much easier to observe and reflect and gain data. I feel like I've been journaling in a certain way, over the last 25 years. And what do I see? Certain consistent patterns of this need to find something, to find truth and how far people are willing to go to come find truth? In, sometimes, I guess, a space where people do a lot of masquerading.
[00:24:12] Where can you actually just be yourself, be honest, ask the questions you want to ask, have the conversation, the debates you want to speak of, or learn from? I think that I just feel so grateful. Every single day, I thank Hashem. I see that I'm fortunate, that I have this unbreakable connection to Hashem. And even if I wrestle with things that have happened, or things that will happen, and I don't understand everything, which I never will, and none of us will, it's not about that.
It's really about just this unbreakable desire to connect to something greater. I feel honored in a way and in a certain form, privileged, that I am able to share a lot of these concepts with people when they need it. I can direct them. I can open my home, my heart and our heart collectively, my family. I'm so grateful that that's what I've been taught to do. That I know that that's the answer.
There's nothing more valuable than that. I may not have all the answers, but I know where I can go. A lot of people don't have anywhere to go. They don't even know that there are answers. We actually have it. So Torah, eternal, I mean, it's like, where else are you going?
[00:25:18] TC: Are there any specific scenarios that you could think of, where you struggled to really feel it in the moment and to be able to choose Torah and what you possibly did to redirect yourself?
TH: You could have it multiple times a day, where you're just like, “Okay. How am I going to look at this situation? Am I just going to let go and just move forward?” You’re a parent, I'm a mother. I've got to learn how to parent better. In certain situations, I'm still learning. I'm still evolving as a parent, and making sure I say the right thing.
[00:25:49] TC: I hear from a lot of people that as they get older, they feel more connected to Hashem. And you mentioned how truth is eternal. I think that the longer you are on this earth, the more you see how so many things have changed and fallen away, but Hashem has remained, as you said, as a lifeline for you, or just as a foundation of the world. I wonder if it becomes less of a struggle with age to be able to reorient yourself towards truth, because when you have years of experience of just seeing, being able to practically see truth as eternal, I wonder – I'm just wondering, if it's become possibly easier for you to also redirect?
[00:26:25] TH: Oh, for sure. I mean, we started as young people, we really don't think about – we're really just kind of thinking about ourselves. It's a certain kind of luxury to just think about how you feel. How do I feel today? As you get older and you get married, and then you have children, G-d willing, or you have responsibilities, there's more on your plate. It's not just about you, it's about all these other things going on in your life.
For me, I have more, I guess, more time now. At the same time, I have more responsibilities. You become more dependent on G-d as your responsibilities grow. Because you need to. It's for us, our Neshama almost like, clings.
I have many identities. Now, I'm not just some 14-year-old girl named Toby. I have other kinds of hats that I wear. For me, it makes it much easier to deal with the daily struggle, knowing that I can depend on Hashem. I find myself davening more because A) I have more time, and B) I realized that davening is not – I don't think Hashem necessarily needs our prayers as much as we need to say the words to connect to Hashem. It's for us. It's for our Neshama. It's for connection. It’s for our soul to just tighten the notch.
[00:27:42] TC: It's so interesting to me that you mentioned prayer, because the Alter Rebbe talks about prayer as a cornerstone of the Benoni’s divine service, that it's a place that we go to every single morning, or day, or whatever time of day that you pray, but place that we go to every single day to regain our clarity. I love that you mentioned it. Because when I learned that, I recognized that prayer is not just about the words that we say, or the daily obligation, or whatever it is. It's a hugely powerful tool to be able to make the choice for G-d.
If every morning, or every day we recenter ourselves to the truth of that connection and that soul, then the choices throughout the day have something to redirect towards, because there was a clarity. Even if the clarity is not present right now, there was a clarity within myself that I can tap into. Even if this is how G-d set up the world, that the day will cloud our clarity, and the choice won't always be clear. But if we have some point of clarity to come back to no matter what environment we're in, Yale campus, a Jewish community, possibly, where people are not so focused on G-d and more materialism. Wherever you live, in whatever form G-d is hidden, to be able to regain, to be able to reconnect to that clarity, when you've had it every morning is a very powerful tool.
[00:29:02] TH: For sure. I may not have always thought that. I may not have always seen that or felt that. The longer you live, you see things differently. The ability to daven, for me, definitely, is just starting off my day and gives me a good focal point, like you said. I used to say, well, I talk to Hashem all the time. I don't necessarily – I don't have the time. I'm raising kids and I'm running around. But, no. Now I make the time. I choose maybe not to do something else instead. That's where I'm at.
Everyone's got to find their own journey and find what works for them and it's not easy to find and to put that into your day. There's other ways that you feel you're going to connect and that's fine. That's fine.
[00:29:45] TC: Yeah. I also think that tefillah can change in our lives at different times, different stages, different seasons. To prioritize regaining that clarity every morning in whatever way that we are able to, within our own time constraints, it's a very precious thing to be able to do, because sometimes, I know I struggle, because I'm not nurturing that clarity. Because truth is eternal. And I know that truth is eternal. Even when I just think this line, like Hashem is eternal, I feel it. You have to constantly reconnect to that.
[00:30:17] TH: Yeah. I think, we think that, because we live it every day. We don't even realize how much we're living within the framework of Torah and mitzvos. Sometimes when it becomes rote, and we're not thinking, and it's just an exercise, or we're just kind of on autopilot, we forget the meaning behind it. Sometimes it's easier, and sometimes it's not, and that's okay. While we have a set of halachos and mitzvos and Torah that we follow, especially for women, there are times in our life that we're going to be able to do more, and we shouldn't feel bad, or feel guilty. I'm really not a fan of that. There's always going to be time for more, and how we decide our day looks. We ourselves are extremely powerful. I have a lot of faith in women.
[00:31:03] TC: Nice. I like that. So much of the ability to choose is just being conscious of our ability to choose.
TH: Yeah. I mean, just the understanding and that awareness that Hashem gave us that power to be in charge of your own autonomy, right? What does that say? And if you look through Jewish history, then you understand like, when you look through Devarim, and you say, okay, the Jewish people are finishing their time in the desert, which was kind of this oasis. They had everything they needed. They didn't need it for anything. And at the same time, Moshe Rabbeinu is giving this over, and he's not going in.
It's very powerful. It's a very powerful thought, if you think about it. There's this, like, we're going into this new place. Look, it's going to be hard. Here's what I'm giving you. I’m giving you everything you're going to need. And it's not vague. It's pretty explicit. It's like, there's this net. When you have autonomy, there's this natural inclination to be like, what do I think? I think, full circle coming back around is saying, “Yeah. What do I think? How connected do I want to be?”
If I want to be connected, here's what I think. I think I want to be connected, so I'm going to choose that path. It's kind of redirecting that autonomy and understanding its autonomy, but you want to have the best experience, the best human experience possible? Follow the circle around to get to the end. Don't divert yourself. And it's not that you can't, because clearly, you can. We're all still here. There's a lot of bad people that look like they're thriving, and a lot of good people who look like they're really struggling and it's hard to make sense of that.
If you base your choices off of, well, I can't believe in a G-d that does things like that. Okay. So you chose full autonomy. How happy are you? How happy are you with that choice?
[00:32:45] TC: That's what's interesting, too, is that when you stress your own autonomy, then I think that it actually makes it even more appealing to choose Hashem. Because when you feel you're doing a Mitzvah and you don't feel that you have a choice, and you just are motivated by something else. But if you actually stop yourself and say, “I don't have to do this.”
TH: Yeah. You're not going to be struck by lightning.
[00:33:06] TC: Yeah. Nothing will happen, right? The implication is spiritual. But physically, nothing will change. Knowing that I have a true choice for me, personally motivates me to do a lot more.
[00:33:18] TH: I think, like you said, it just compounds itself. Because once you see the benefit, you feel, you just do. If you want to, you will feel the results of making choices to connect. Sometimes, people don't have the language to articulate it, right? If you’re not trying to connect to G-d, or to something spiritual, you don't even know what you're doing. But, if you know that that's what you want to do. I'm choosing to do this, because I know I want this. This is what I desire. This is important to me, regardless of how hard it is. I want this.
The reward of that connection is so powerful. A) because you made it, despite the challenges. B) You're just reaffirming that connection. It's like, okay, the connection is there. No matter what, you can never sever the connection. There's no severance of the connection between the creator and the creation. There's contraction, or if there's a veneer. When you remove it, and you really do because you want it, the reward is so powerful. I see it every day that way when I make that choice, I see it.
[00:34:19] TC: I definitely feel this with certain things that you can do for your family. That as soon as you get into the space where you don't feel that it is a choice, it's very hard to feel connected while you're doing it. And then as soon as I reframe and say, this is a choice, and then I choose to do it, I see the beauty of the connection that I'm actually actively engaging in it. Just totally transforms the action. It goes from being I'm on this hamster wheel, versus this is an act of connection that I'm doing for this person, or with this person.
[00:34:52] I'd love if you could share any advice for strengthening that G-dly voice within our choice making, in a world that doesn't always support it or nurture it?
[00:35:04] TH: It takes a lot of effort, and it takes self-motivation. Especially today. There's no one standing over. There's no oversight, in theory, right? Everyone's doing what they want to do. They're coming up with all sorts of reasons why they want to do it. It works for them.
There is truth to that concept, right? I’m a little more black and white, about it. There's no escaping emes. There's no other road you're going to go down, and you're going to find another source. Or other emes. Torah is emes, period. There is no escaping it. Whether it's today, or tomorrow, in 10 years, or 30 years, or 50 years, the day before you die, it’s going to come to a point where you're going to understand that.
So, I will say that if you begin the journey of connecting slowly. It doesn't have to be everything in one day. The understanding is there. The understanding is, “I want to connect. I know I'm not going to understand. I'm not going to always agree. But this is what I want to do, so I'm going to do it. And it's going to take time, and I'm not going to do it all at once. Sometimes I'm just going to have to dive in. I'm not going to be able to think about it too much. Because if I think about it too much, I'm going to go back into that loop. I think, if you start off in a place where you say, “I want to connect.” So if that's what you choose, the question is, how am I going to make the choices that helped me do that. I'm going to go back to the sources. I'm going to reinforce myself with the gifts and the text that are already there. I'm going to do it with purpose, because this is what I'm choosing to do. When you choose to say I'm going to make that commitment, I'm going to make that dedication. It’s a whole different process. It's bottom up, versus top down.
[00:36:51] TC: Nice. That's beautiful. There's something about crystallizing the choice for yourself. Who do I want to connect to? Then going from there.
TH: We're not being deluded, or delusional and being like, “Oh, yeah. It's just going to be a hop, skip and jump over there.” No, I know. It's going to be really hard. Every day, it might be hard, and maybe many times a day, it's going to be hard, but I want this.
TC: Hopefully, we can have those moments recurringly, because I think that those moments of saying, “I want this,” is what gives us strength, when we're not really sure where to go.
[00:37:20] TH: All the time. And if you keep reiterating that, reminding yourself that you want this, if you want it. I think everybody does. Sometimes it's just hard to know what you want. When you don't have the foundation, it's extremely hard to know what you want. It's very easy to get lost. When you know what you want and it's hard, it's a different story. So everyone's got their own story, their own journey, but most importantly, people should know that G-d has invested so much in the human being, the capacity to connect, to build, to find the purpose, the meaning, is all there for every person. It's just a matter of tapping into that potential and making it happen and making it a reality.
TC: Beautiful. Thank you so much.
TH: You're so welcome. Thank you.
[END]
[Musical Interlude]
[00:38:16] TC:
What would it take for you to experience true choice?
What would it take to set your G-dly soul up for success?
If you are constantly inundated with values that are counter to your soul's desires, do you truly have a choice? Or are you just following the script of the world around you?
So many of our choices depend on the legwork we do before the moment of choice arrives.
Is your soul nourished? Have you eaten today? And are you paying attention to the choices that you're making?
You might not be able to escape the values of the world…and you also might not be able to escape Emes.
But you do get to decide if you want Hashem's reality to be the bedrock of your life.
You do get to decide who you want to be.
{outro song}
[00:39:37] TC: Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode, and if you did, I want to invite you to leave a rating or a review. It helps other people find the podcast, and you know we're all about getting chassidus into every corner of the world. I also want to invite you, if you really loved it, to share it with a friend who you think might love it too.
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