Pain and Pleasure

When, um, a job opportunity came up for me to move to New Jersey and to do what I'm gonna do over there, um, Jewish outreach, kiruv.

So besides the obvious real reason to do it, which is like reaching out to Jews who are unaffiliated, um, my Rosh Yeshiva and I had an interesting conversation.

Um, so one thing was I said, "But what about the guys in Yeshiva there? They're gonna need me." He said, "Irreplaceable.

We'll find someone else to do it.

Don't worry." So besides that, it's nothing to do with what I wanna say.

Just need to get that off my chest.

Um, he said, he said, "You're gonna..." He said, "Here, you're comfortable.

There, you're gonna grow a lot more." Um, so I'm definitely not comfortable so far.

I'm not there yet, but I'm just, like, dealing with, like, changing my wife's maiden name to her married name, Social Security, DMV, a lot of technical issues.

Maybe I'm growing a lot more through the, through the challenge, but that's a big part of Judaism is, is growing more, and it doesn't necessarily always take on the form of having a Talmud open and, um, you know, learning the common-- the commentary.

Sometimes, sometimes holiness, if you could say that, takes-- ta-taking the schmutz off of our, off of our neshamah.

I don't mean doing averas.

I just mean, like, a person's character traits can be sharpened, and then your neshamah can shine through, and that, there's something holy about that.

Sometimes it's okay to leave the Beit Midrash.

It's okay to leave the, the holiest place and to come out into...

There's different holy work to be done, and that applies to every single person and me increasingly now because now I'm more doing other things now.