Re-Digging the Wells: Finding Meaning in Routine Life
Parshas Toldos Shiur for Women by R' Yakov Danishefsky
Transcript
Okay.
Speaker A:Welcome to the first Avoda Saleh women's Parshashir.
Speaker A:Very excited to be doing this and appreciate those of you who made time to join.
Speaker A:So Parshas Toldos, as we know, is a parsha where we shift over, in a sense, from the life of Avraham Avinu to the life of Yitzchak Avinu.
Speaker A:And this shift is not just a shift in who the person was, but it's really a shift that is in ourselves.
Speaker A:Because in the Torah in general.
Speaker A:One of the things that I hope we will explore together in these Shurim is that everything in the Torah is not a story about something that happened a long time ago.
Speaker A:And it's not a book of laws of just about what you need to do and what you can't do.
Speaker A:But actually the story, the.
Speaker A:The Torah is communing, is communicating to us paradigms or ideas of different characters, different events, different dynamics of the things that are actually taking place within ourselves and within our lives.
Speaker A:And what that means in this context is that there is an aspect of ourselves and an aspect of our lives that is what we can call Avraham Avinu.
Speaker A:And it's depicted in the Torah through the stories of Avraham Avinu.
Speaker A:But what we're supposed to be doing, what we're supposed to be reflecting on and learning what we're being invited into when the Torah tells us about the world of Avraham Avinu is not a history book about Avraham Avinu.
Speaker A:We're being invited into a self exploration, a self understanding of what is the world of Avraham that I experience?
Speaker A:What's the world of Avraham that lives inside of me and that goes on in my life.
Speaker A:And then the same thing for Yitzchak.
Speaker A:So let's start with Avraham.
Speaker A:Really, we're going to focus today on Yitzchak, but start with Avraham to create the contrast.
Speaker A:The world of Avraham Avinu is a world of new beginnings.
Speaker A:Avraham was a trailblazer.
Speaker A:He was someone who opened up something completely new, completely different.
Speaker A:He shattered the idols of his time, meaning he lived in a world where there was a status quo, there was a certain set of assumptions that everybody around him lived by.
Speaker A:There were the norms, the cultural norms.
Speaker A:We all have cultural norms.
Speaker A:We all know what those are.
Speaker A:If you look around you, you'll see people, you know, doing certain things, wearing certain things, certain brands, certain cars they drive, certain beliefs they have certain ways they talk, whatever it is there are certain cultural norms.
Speaker A:Avramavinu came and he shattered the cultural norms.
Speaker A:He said, I want something different.
Speaker A:I want to find something that feels more genuine, more authentic, more real to me.
Speaker A:It speaks to me more.
Speaker A:And he set out on a journey.
Speaker A:He embarked on a journey of an unknown destination.
Speaker A:He said, I need to find what that is.
Speaker A:So Avramavinu represents that part of us and that part of our lives where if at any point in your life, you may have ever had a moment of inspiration to shatter something as a given, to break the given and say, I want to find something that feels more real to me, something new, something different.
Speaker A:I'm going to go out of the norm.
Speaker A:I'm going to leave what I'm used to.
Speaker A:I'm going to break away from the cultural expectations.
Speaker A:I need to find something that's more personal and more real to me.
Speaker A:That's the world of Avramavina, which obviously requires a lot more exploration and depth and going into.
Speaker A:But that's not our parsha.
Speaker A:Right now.
Speaker A:I'm sharing all of that to set up the contrast to what we arrive at in this week is the world of Yitzchak.
Speaker A:The world of Yitzchak is very different than what I just described about Avraham because Avraham opened up new galaxies.
Speaker A:He opened up new dimensions in ourselves, in.
Speaker A:In our belief in God, in our connection to God and the way we live.
Speaker A:He opened up new things.
Speaker A:The Torah describes that Avraham Avinu dug wells, and this happens multiple times, that he digs wells.
Speaker A:And the Svarm explained to us that.
Speaker A:That what that represents is something very significant.
Speaker A:Digging wells is something that is going to.
Speaker A:Is a recurring theme in the AVOs.
Speaker A:And it's not just random or simple or mundane that they had to dig a well to get water.
Speaker A:What it represents is that in our lives, very often it can feel in different ways for different stages of life and different people.
Speaker A:It can feel like the waters of our world, of our life.
Speaker A:The water which is flowing, it's alive, it's nourishing, it can be cold and refreshing.
Speaker A:It quenches our thirst, it gives us life.
Speaker A:A person is tired, they splash water on their face, right?
Speaker A:If a person needs to.
Speaker A:Wants to feel rejuvenated, they can, they can.
Speaker A:You know, they can, they can.
Speaker A:They can go into water.
Speaker A:Water is life affirming, it's life giving, it's energizing.
Speaker A:A person is thirsty or dry.
Speaker A:The water can.
Speaker A:Can give them moisture.
Speaker A:It can give them a sense of being, being revitalized.
Speaker A:That water oftentimes is buried deep underground.
Speaker A:It can be covered over by dirt or sand or rock, which is the reality that many of us experience, which is that at times, that sense of energy, that sense of life, of being alive, being alive can feel very blocked.
Speaker A:It can feel very distant.
Speaker A:That the life, the vitality of a relationship can feel blocked.
Speaker A:It's covered over by something.
Speaker A:There's water deep, deep somewhere.
Speaker A:But it's buried.
Speaker A:That our sense of feeling good about ourselves, feeling energized or motivated about our lives, about what we do at work or how we run our home or parenting, or how we interact with friends or for many people, their sense of relationship to God, their Judaism, their relationship with their community, the waters can feel very blocked, very covered over.
Speaker A:And the avoda of the Avos, the work that the avos were doing that Avram Avinu did, was that he traveled around the world and he dug wells.
Speaker A:He said, I'm not going to give in to the hopelessness, the helplessness, the despair, the darkening of believing that the water is gone.
Speaker A:I'm not going to accept that there's no water left here.
Speaker A:I'm not going to accept that there's nothing, that there's nothing left in potential for my connection to Judaism, for my connection to myself, to my relationship, to my.
Speaker A:To my spouse, to my children, to my friend, whatever it might be, to my community.
Speaker A:I'm not going to accept that there's no water here anymore, and I'm not going to accept that the water is inaccessible.
Speaker A:I'm going to dig.
Speaker A:I'm going to break through that surface.
Speaker A:I'm going to dig those wells.
Speaker A:I'm going to find it.
Speaker A:I'm going to search for water relentlessly, optimistically.
Speaker A:And sometimes what happens is that in the world of Avraham Avinu, we have a lot of energy to do that.
Speaker A:There's an excitement, there's something new, something fresh, something powerful that we're excited to go dig for that water, to dig the wells, to remove the rocks that cover over the water.
Speaker A:And in a sense, that's challenging, but it's much easier because in the world of Avramavinu, we're excited to do that.
Speaker A:In this week's Parsha, what we arrive at is Yitzchak.
Speaker A:And what the Torah emphasizes to us is that Yitzchak does not dig new wells.
Speaker A:That's not the world of Yitzchak.
Speaker A:That's not the inner dimension in ourselves of Yitzchak is not to dig new wells.
Speaker A:That's Avraham.
Speaker A:What Yitzchak does is he retraces.
Speaker A:He retraces the steps, the paths that Avraham traveled, and he re digs the wells of Avraham.
Speaker A:Not new wells, the same wells.
Speaker A:He re digs them because they were opened up, Avram opened them, but then they became covered, they became closed again.
Speaker A:And he went and he as well as he could, he would re dig those wells.
Speaker A:And what that brings us to is what I think is the bigger challenge.
Speaker A:It's one thing to search for water when it's something new, something we haven't even looked at yet, ever before.
Speaker A:We haven't tried.
Speaker A:It's something, something maybe challenging, but it's something exciting because it's new.
Speaker A:And something new is usually exciting.
Speaker A:It's novel.
Speaker A:So we're energized for it.
Speaker A:But what's really hard is when the things that were once exciting for us, that were once new, become old and they become stale and they become routine and it's just the day in and day out, it's the same old thing.
Speaker A:It can be challenging to go on vacation, you know, if you're, if you're a young mother, let's say, and you have kids and a family.
Speaker A:And it can be very challenging to take your whole family on vacation, right.
Speaker A:And to do that positively, to do that with an excitement, with the water that's flowing, it can be difficult to do that.
Speaker A:But it's exciting because it's different.
Speaker A:It's a break from the routine that's called digging the well of Avraham Avinu.
Speaker A:It's challenging to find the water when the kid is throwing the tantrum and it's cranky and whatever it is, or the budget is tight or whatever is going on, to find the water underneath that, those rocks, that's hard.
Speaker A:But it's doing something novel and doing something novel, something that's a break from the routine.
Speaker A:There's an energy, there's an excitement that's digging the wells of Abraham.
Speaker A:Digging the wells of Yitzchak, though, is saying, how can I find live running water within my regular life, within the routine of day to day life?
Speaker A:Not when I'm doing something different, when I'm just driving carpool, when I'm just figuring out yet another dinner on a Wednesday night, when I'm just paying another bill, when I'm just doing another regular day, seeing the same people, the same streets, I'm in Chicago, the same gray sky, all the same stuff.
Speaker A:In that situation, can I still put in Effort and have a mindset, a belief, a consciousness that in this place of what seems like the same old here too, there's water that I can find if I'm willing to dig.
Speaker A:Sometimes I think about the following question.
Speaker A:If you were in an elevator, you know, like the classic elevator pitch experiment, right?
Speaker A:So if you were in an elevator and it was not even such a tall building, so you just had like 5, 10 seconds, and someone asked you, what does it mean to be a Jewish.
Speaker A:That's it.
Speaker A:Simple.
Speaker A:What does it mean to be a Jew?
Speaker A:And you had like 10 seconds, what would you answer?
Speaker A:I think the answer, at least I would say my.
Speaker A:I don't know the answer.
Speaker A:My answer is this.
Speaker A:To be a Jew means to believe that there's something more to the world than meets the eye.
Speaker A:Got that in before.
Speaker A:The eighth floor.
Speaker A:There's something more to the world than meets the eye.
Speaker A:Meaning to say.
Speaker A:Being a Jew is about digging wells.
Speaker A:It's about looking at the same people, but saying to myself, every single person is an endless mystery.
Speaker A:Every single person is filled with godliness, and God is infinite.
Speaker A:So this person is actually infinite in their depth.
Speaker A:And as well as I think I know you, I've just begun to know you, there's deeper waters to uncover.
Speaker A:I want to dig deeper again as well as I think I might know myself, I'm just beginning to get to know myself as much as I've been living in this same house and going to sleep in the same bed and eating dinner at the same kitchen table and sitting on the same couch in the living room.
Speaker A:Can I sit in the same place, not change it up?
Speaker A:It's easy to feel good about your house if you just repaint the walls and throw everything out and redo it or remodel it.
Speaker A:Sometimes maybe that's the right thing to do.
Speaker A:That's digging the well of Avramavinu, which is.
Speaker A:Which can be challenging, but the much harder work and the work with bigger payoff is can I sit on the same couch with the same paint on the walls?
Speaker A:And can I find living, running, exciting water from within that place?
Speaker A:That's digging the wells of Yitzchak Avinim, not digging new wells.
Speaker A:Re digging the same old wells.
Speaker A:Can I believe.
Speaker A:Can I have a mindset of curiosity even about the things I think I already know?
Speaker A:Can I imagine wonder, dream, question the assumptions that I'm making about the things I already have?
Speaker A:Can I look within the same relationship I'm already in and see what would happen if I re dig the same well, what would happen if I look for something new within the old?
Speaker A:You know, the word in Hebrew for year is shana, which is fascinating because shana has two associated meanings.
Speaker A:Shana can mean to repeat.
Speaker A:To repeat something is.
Speaker A:Is.
Speaker A:Is.
Speaker A:Is could be used for that.
Speaker A:That shoresh, to do something again.
Speaker A:But also the word shanah can be like the word leshanot, which is shinoi, which is to change.
Speaker A:Because within Judaism, the approach that we try to do is that we're trying to repeat, but repeat with something new.
Speaker A:We're not throwing it all out and starting completely over, but we're also not just doing the same old thing again and again.
Speaker A:We're trying to do the same old thing in a new way, re digging the same wells, but finding new running water within those wells.
Speaker A:And I think that this is a principle or a consciousness that is something that we don't permanently have.
Speaker A:It's important to emphasize this.
Speaker A:This is not something that I adopt.
Speaker A:And now I have it.
Speaker A:Now I just have it all the time.
Speaker A:Instead, this is something that we need to kind of, in a sense, choose to enter again and again and again.
Speaker A:Because.
Speaker A:At least I could speak for myself.
Speaker A:You know, we lose this consciousness.
Speaker A:We.
Speaker A:We try to adopt it, try to go home and walk in to see our family in a new way.
Speaker A:Same family, see it in a new way, re dig the old well.
Speaker A:But then a second later, someone does something that's the same thing they did yesterday.
Speaker A:And you're like, in your mind, you're like, okay, so nothing's different.
Speaker A:There's nothing new here.
Speaker A:Same old, right?
Speaker A:And you slip right back to the negativity, to the.
Speaker A:To the cynicism about it, to the pessimism, right?
Speaker A:Or you try to adopt, right?
Speaker A:I'm speaking to women right now.
Speaker A:So you try to think of your husband in a new way, right?
Speaker A:But then he does the same old thing that bothers you.
Speaker A:Like, okay, so, well, you know, there's nothing new here.
Speaker A:There's no.
Speaker A:There's no new water to find.
Speaker A:And that's why I say it's a choice again and again, because each time, we have to almost reset the mindset.
Speaker A:And that's the world of Yitzchak.
Speaker A:That's the world of Yitzchak is to say, I'm re digging the old well, and if I have to re dig it again, I'll re dig it again.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And Yitzchak really is where things become solidified.
Speaker A:Because if you think about it, what is the impact of a movement?
Speaker A:So, Avraham Avinu started a movement.
Speaker A:He started something new.
Speaker A:But if all you have is a founder and there's no second stage, there's no right.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker A:Did anybody see, like, years ago, I used to be in one of these, like, leadership training cohort things?
Speaker A:So they used to love showing this video.
Speaker A:It's already a while ago, but it was, it was, it was big at the time.
Speaker A:There was a video, I think it was Central park, and there was a guy who all of a sudden just started dancing, like the most ridiculous dance in the middle of Central park.
Speaker A:And like, like shirtless and just like dancing, like, ridiculous.
Speaker A:And everyone's like looking at him like, what is, you know, what is wrong with you?
Speaker A:What are you doing?
Speaker A:Who are you?
Speaker A:And then all of a sudden a second guy stands up and does the same thing.
Speaker A:And slowly more people do it and more people do it.
Speaker A:And then like the entire scene is like hundreds of people dancing exactly like this ridiculous looking dance.
Speaker A:So the question they liked to show, they like to ask with this video is who, who, who is the most important part of this, of this process of going from nobody dancing to suddenly having hundreds of people dancing?
Speaker A:Who is the most important part of it?
Speaker A:So you think it's the first guy who started it, right?
Speaker A:Which is partially true, but it's the second guy.
Speaker A:Because if one person is doing something himself, that's just his own idea.
Speaker A:That's just when we do something new, we do something one time that's nice.
Speaker A:It's a moment.
Speaker A:I'm not undermining it, but that's all it is.
Speaker A:Something only becomes real when it's sustained, when there's a follower, when it, when it now moves.
Speaker A:The second guy brought the first guy to now be real.
Speaker A:Now other people are going to latch on.
Speaker A:Digging a new well is significant, but it's only really significant in as much as you're willing to then re dig that well when it gets covered up.
Speaker A:Yitzchak Avinu is the one who makes Avrahams revolution real.
Speaker A:Avram started a revolution, but until Yitzchak follows it, it's just an idea.
Speaker A:It's not anything real.
Speaker A:The idea of, of, of, you know, wanting to raise a family or wanting to have a relationship with Hashem, or wanting to go deeper into ourselves is a beautiful thing as an idea.
Speaker A:But it only becomes real when we're willing to stop always needing to dig new wells, which has its place.
Speaker A:But to be like Yitzchak, to find the part of us that can be like Yitzchak that can say, instead of digging a completely new well, can I find a well that already exists in my life?
Speaker A:May have gotten covered over.
Speaker A:I may have assumed it's dead.
Speaker A:I might have assumed it's blocked and all the water is gone.
Speaker A:But now I'm going to try and re dig it.
Speaker A:I'm going to.
Speaker A:I'm going to crack through the surface and see can I find water underneath here.
Speaker A:Now, people often ask me, how do you do this practically?
Speaker A:To be perfectly honest with you, I'm not the best at the practical side, but I really believe that having this as a consciousness, having this as a mindset, I'm looking for the water that exists under the surface.
Speaker A:That to be a Jew means that I believe there's something more to the world than meets the eye.
Speaker A:That mindset and that consciousness, I do believe, can open worlds for us.
Speaker A:Hashem should help us that each of us can discover the running water, the live water, the fresh, revitalizing, rejuvenating waters for ourselves, for our families, for our relationship with him, for our relationship with others.
Speaker A:And that should help each of us come to a place of feeling more and more and more alive.
Speaker A:Thank you, everybody, and we'll continue next week.
Speaker A:Mer T Hashem, thanks for coming to the first one.
