Rabbi Kassorla:

Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for joining me here today on the Relief from Grief podcast. Today we have here Rabbi Naftali Kassorla, who is a Magid Shiur in Korlon Nefesh HaChayim, in Eretz Yisrael. He also teaches in many of the girls seminaries. And, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Thank you very much. It’s forgot to say that it’s Liuluy Nishmas Eliyahu Natan Ben Harav Chaim Yosef. And I just want to say that we do have sponsorship opportunities for anyone that is interested, can reach out to me at [email protected]. So thank you so much for coming on, Abikosola. I really appreciate your time.

We don’t have to go through the whole backstory, but you’re really giving us a lot of time over here. So thank you. No problem. No problem. I’m happy to be here. Okay. Okay. So I guess if we could start off with your family a little bit and where you were in your family about your brother, Eli. So I brought her some, I come from between my father and my mother, I come from.

 Out of town. I’m the third boy in a family of three boys. My oldest one, my oldest brother, is a Rabbi in Boca Raton, Rabbi Yosef Kisorla. Tremendous talmud chacham, a tremendous person, and for me, was a huge inspiration in terms of my own personal relationship and learning and just my kesher with hakadosh Baruch Hu so, I, and me and him, we’re very, very close.

My father was a rabbi of an ethnic community, of Sephardic community outside in a place called Rockville, Maryland. That’s where generally I was born and had grown up for a majority of my childhood. My mother is originally from Malden, Massachusetts. Very bubbly, very social, just a, you know, tremendous person involved in chessed.Tremendous chessed she does.

 So, and my father Baruch Hashem is a tremendous Orator, communicator, is really a tremendously, like he is a rabbi’s Rabbi in the sense of he knows how , to be 

 there for when people need it and to be the, a rock for when people are broken. I remember a young, as a young child, we went out as a family to a certain event and I remember it was like surprised to me that my father was able to come along because usually he wasn’t able to come along to these things because he always had these different engagements.

And I remember like thinking in my mind, Oh, I’m so happy that I was here. And like maybe 10 minutes in into this event that we’re, this outing or whatever it was, my father got on his beeper, that time it was a beeper, unfortunately, one of the members, either mothers or father had passed away.

And that was my childhood, always seeing my father, I used to go visit the hospitals with my father, like really Bikkur Cholim, and at funerals and at weddings, it was like that was the life cycle event. So that’s the home that I grew up in, a lot of chessed, and a lot of also just being there for the community and being part of the community.

My childhood also was also very hard. , it was, I would say, also dysfunctional largely due to the fact that, and my brother, the one who I have not mentioned yet, my, the brother who is two years older than me. The middle between us, his name was Eliyahu, Eily, we called him Eily for short. And Eily unfortunately, from already from a young age, I mean, if you speak to people in our family, has suffered a lot from a lot of emotional issues, a lot of challenges, a lot of difficulties, behavioral issues.

And I remember also from a very young age being dragged along to therapy sessions and to doctors and like just always kind of having in the background, in the backdrop. His behavior, his difficulties, like, he was also tremendously smart, and he was somebody who just could, he literally was the type of kid who they talk about today, like the CEOs of the Fortune 500 company at the young ages, they took apart computers and they were able to put it back together.

He was exactly that type. He literally, I remember he took apart like an old Mac computer and put it all back together. I think , he even sped it up, but he was just a whiz at those things. So he was a tremendously smart person, but who also suffered very, very much with behavioral issues. And as much as my brother and my oldest, my eldest brother, Rabbi Yosef Chaim Kosorla, that we were literally perfectly made for each other, like absolute best friends.

He was my mentor. I looked up to him. It was almost, it was if like literally is the polar opposite between me and , my other brother. Ailey was like, like, I was water, he was, he was oil, or he was oil, I was water. It didn’t matter. We just didn’t mix. And I remember at the youngest of ages at the Shabbos table, being incapable of sitting next to him, that my older brother had to sit between us.

And it was very hard. It was very difficult. Were you like embarrassed of him or it was just the behavioral issues in the house? No, it was, it was embarrassing. I don’t want to go into detail because I want to be respectful, but just to color the picture of, growing up with somebody who had a severe, severe behavioral issues and also developed 13 years old, he started to really develop emotional issues.

Wow. And that made it very hard for me, because growing up in that tinderbox and that difficulty and those challenges, it was very hard for me to feel that I had my own space, it was very hard for me to feel like I could be, I couldn’t be bothered by, like, it was very hard for me. constantly felt like I was being attacked from an external standpoint.

I’m not going into all the details, but I think that kind of expresses the overall idea. Right. So from that experience, , I would say that we never, it’s not that we didn’t develop a relationship, we developed an anti relationship. Meaning to say that I literally would basically avoid him and I would almost would count down the time in my life till I would be able to kind of get away from him.

Already from that point in time, already when he was 13 years old, , he was also drifting away from a lot of frumkeit, from a lot of religiosity. He stopped going to shul, I imagine he stopped keeping shabbos at some point. It slowly drifted. Now again, because he was a very smart person, he was also incredibly opinionated.

And he was very well read. And when I was going through my own experience of being mischazik and really finding my place in learning and wanting to fill that, it was a constant friction. Because I was still young, and I was still at home, and he was still there. And he wasn’t necessarily moving forward in anything that he was doing, so he was constantly around.

I felt a lot of that tension and friction. So at what point did you already, like, really break off with him? Were you already married or it happened when you, like, went away to yeshiva? it was pretty much when I had gone to yeshiva.

I came to Eretz Yisrael actually when I was around 16, turning 17 years old. I came at a very young age. Yeah, certain family issues necessitated and financial issues necessitated that. It was, and I wanted to myself personally, I felt like that I was ready for that stage to be able to go on my own. At that point I was already much more independent, I was much more, you know, and again my older brother had kind of done that, not, not as young as I did, but because he had gone to Israel and kind of forged his path and his direction, I also wanted to do the same thing.

That was a very common thing. Perhaps he had a certain maturity, being that you have to learn to live with your brother and his issues. It probably matured you a little bit earlier in certain ways, no? Absolutely it did. It absolutely did. It really built within me the idea that because of his issues and because of his challenges, All the attention in the family was all focused on him.

Meaning, if you, as long as you weren’t acting out in the extreme ways that he was acting out, you weren’t getting the attention. And that’s very common among a lot of people where there’s a certain magnetism where all the attention gets brought to that point. So if you’re not acting out, then you’re not getting attention.

So some kids at a young age, unfortunately, they then will act out because they’re desperate for attention. Thank God I was not at that place, but at the same time, like, for example, I’m, I’m sure at the younger of ages, I struggled tremendously with, with math. Like I probably failed math, you know, algebra specifically like maybe five or six times.

I never actually graduated. Right? That’s one aspect. And for me, that was very hard because I knew, always knew I was an intelligent person. I was smart, but scholastically, it was so hard for me to actually like put it into practice and numbers. I’m seeing my, my, this other brother, Ailey, and I see him like being tremendously successful when he would try.

He didn’t, when he didn’t try, he wouldn’t, you know, he just wouldn’t go to school. But even if he wouldn’t try, but he would take the test, he would still do incredibly well because he was just a whiz of a person. He just was , tremendously gifted in that, in that level. But he would put me down.

He would put me down, and I think that if I had a normative situation Where all the attention wasn’t being taken by that, I think that I would have gotten the remedial help that I need. And again, I think ultimately that help, that built me and that strengthened me and gave me a mahalach of life in terms of resilience and of challenge that has made me a much better father, a much better spouse.

And, and I, Im Yartzeh Hashem, I hope to be a good Rebbi, because it’s something where , you can’t buy that. You can’t learn that unless you go through it. I think it ultimately helped me, but at the time it was incredibly difficult. It was incredibly difficult, especially because when people have those challenges,]they develop a lot of low self esteem, especially if you’re being told externally that you are not smart.

I have the paper to tell me, that I’m not smart. So yeah, it’s, it’s very hard. It’s very hard. But obviously it was really from mental health issues.

And I know you said to me that your mother used to tell you, like, he was born with all the cards stacked against him. And I think that’s for the listeners to know, not just putting down brother, like he really Right, right. No, no. So that’s a, that’s a very important point because, I was gonna, I was explaining in the sense that I, because of all this.

I developed that, I would even call it a Sina, like an absolute dislike and hatred of him. Wow. And I had such a frustration, I couldn’t be in the same room with him. I would get, I would get so incredibly triggered being in the same area with him. And it’s not like he would be there and he would leave me alone and I would still be bothered.

I mean, if I was there. I would be ultimately sucked into it, , but so I would tell my mother and I would say like, I don’t want to go where he’s going. I don’t want to be where he is. I don’t want to see him like later on. I’m skipping a few steps in the story. But like, for example, if I will come back on trips to go visit family, 

I would actually find out, like, is he there or not, because I don’t necessarily want to be around him. And my mom would then say, and my mom was constantly echoing this message, and it’s really due to the fact that my mom is literally a heart of gold, who sees the best in other people and that really actively comes out when she says, you don’t understand, and like you said, he had all the stacks, all the cards stacked against him.

Or, you have, your blood, you know, it was, , it’s a phrase that my mother’s side says all the time. My saba would always say this. He said, blood is thicker than water. Blood is thicker than water. And for me, that was incredibly hard to hear.

Right. And because of that, over time, it developed that I didn’t talk to him, that I just wouldn’t reach out to him and I just wouldn’t engage. As time has gone on now, kind of going forward in the story. You know, I’m in Yeshiva. I’m already now, Baruch Hashem, to be in Yeshiva at that point.

I’m in Shidduchim Baruch Hashem, I meet my amazing wife, and I’m married, right? And I mean, he even came to the wedding. 

Now, basically because of that, like as now I’m deforming my own life in my own. direction. So now it’s not just that like I’m avoiding him, it’s like now this is just my life.

Like I’m, I’m doing my own thing. . So, because he became the type of person who So now I’m very easily able to even tell myself that it’s not even a personal level of that I disconnect with him that I’m just personally bothered by him, which just drives me crazy.

It’s now hashkafically correct. It’s now hashkafically the emes that I shouldn’t have any relationship with him. Now I’m not putting down the idea that a person 100 percent if somebody , is not positive towards Frumkieit, that is not something to to look down on. But I am saying that for me, and I, as somebody who is a Rebbi and tries to set a good example, and specifically more so than anything else, I got very into Mussur.

Thinking from an introspective, for me, the way that I really built myself was really learning Mussur. , was really, when this adds to me, really trying to work on how I can be a better person. Like I made that hachlata when I was 14 years old, that as much as the challenges and difficulties that I went through as a young person, I was even just telling my students this a couple days ago, that as many as the difficulties that I’ve gone through, I made a hachalata and a personal mission in my life that I want to be the type of person that when you engage with me, , it’s going to be , more likely to not have a positive relationship and a positive experience rather than negative experience.

Because, unfortunately, a lot of people, either they meet with people and they’re just reactive, they’re not really thinking and being in the mode and in the thought process of how am I, or what am I doing to foster a positive relationship with this person? Right. And how can I, how can I give, how can I be a nosei to somebody else?

For me, I took that as a strong life mission. I’m going to be the type of person. Who is gonna exude positivity and, and connectivity and, and to really be a positive force rather than a negative force. Wow. Despite the fact that I went through negativity. Because the truth, the sad part is that when people go through negativity, , it often becomes the outlook on their life.

Meaning they had a negative experience as a child, and therefore their whole entire life is now negative. Right. And they’re, they’re, and they become bitter and frustrated and now every interaction they have with somebody else is just dripping with that bitterness. I said, I’d never want to be that type of person.

I remember I exactly remember where I was 14 years old sitting in my room by myself and I was saying, please let me be the type of person that’s a positive impact on others. That’s all I want to be because I see that when you’re, when you’re a nosein, when you’re a giver towards others. It’s not necessarily that you’re beholden to others, that you’re desperate for other people’s love and attention, it’s not that.

It’s that you take it on that, I want to be a positive point. So that means that I’m, if I’m in a conversation with somebody, how can I, what can I point out about them that is positive? What can I say, you know, a positive comment that’s going to make them feel happier, and, and to change their day in the future?

So because of that, I myself like, I’m taking a very strong value of, of being mechazzeik, and connecting with people, and, and, and like I said before, having that mission. Can we pause? What was I talking about? I was on a train of thought. It wasn’t connecting to my brother. What was it?

And because I have that attitude of that, I want to be m’chazik other people. So it is a strong value to me to, to be omeid on why I’m doing what I’m doing. And I connected strongly to the ideas of Mussar, of a person should be connected to the negiyos and to be honest with themselves, a lot of honesty with themselves.

But I think that for this thing, this was such a difficult experience as a child that I was, that I looked for any opportunity to not have to do that for him. He was always the exception. Like, I remember even having thoughts in my mind being like, okay, I wasn’t, I don’t, you know, Yaakov and Eisav you know, he didn’t, no one was, no one was pushing him to interact with his brother because for me, yeah, and it’s a big yissod in life..

So just in terms of life, that when, when something becomes a hashkafa. When it becomes like its a din Torah, then you can’t talk any sense to the person , and the person is myself in this situation that I was incapable at that time period of my life because I was so scared of opening myself up and being hurt , that I developed a, almost a religious.

Ethics to it. Right. And that’s hard , because it ran against , my entire mahalach of everyone else that I engaged with. Because as a Rebbi, now I’m connecting with my students and I’m trying to see them on an empathetic level and I’m trying to understand them and why they do what they do and how to, how to be mechazzeik them and , how to become connected to them and not to see them in a negative light.

And yet I can’t do that for my own brother. And that was. That’s so interesting. Are you able to do that with your own children? With my own children? Yeah. 100%, but of course it’s a challenge. Because like anything, you know, the closer you are to something, the harder it is to really see it. The harder it is to see within yourself.

But yes, I definitely, but I can confidently say that I do see my children in a positive way, as difficult as things are, and as challenging as they may be, and I love my children, Shaein Kamoho, my oldest, I have an oldest daughter who’s ten, I have a son who’s five, a very active Yerushalayim cheder boy, who mamish, like, especially with just the election, you know, recently, I don’t know when this, when this podcast come out, but there’s just elections in Yirushalayim for, for the city council, so all the boys get very involved, and they’re screaming, Gimel,, hey, I don’t know, yeah, it’s not, it’s, I have no idea.

Yeah, who cares? I don’t really get involved with things. But my point is only to say like, he’s a very active kid. And there are moments where like, there’s an internal voice inside me like, Oh, no, is that Eily? Like, is that Eily? Is that Eily? And that’s a challenge that anybody who’s gone through a very difficult experience with a sibling, a parent, is to be able to disconnect between what you experienced and what you’re currently experiencing right now, right.

And listen, and as much as things may be. made cyclical. It may happen again at the same time to be to be the person you need to be to make decisions you need to do. You can’t look at the world through that prisom. You know, like they say history, you know, history is doomed to, you know, for those who don’t learn from history is doomed to repeat it.

That’s true. The problem is that when you’re experiencing a different form of reality right now, it’s not history, by definition. There’s something different in front of you. Yes, there are lessons to learn from the previous, but you can’t sit there and look at my son when he acts out to say, Oh no, he’s Eily, so I have to like That’s what I’m going to do.

I’m going to hit it out of him. God forbid. I’m not, that’s not who I am. I don’t think that would have helped my brother either, but like, that’s the natural reaction. So a person needs to really be aware of where their negiyos  are coming from So for me, what I’ve mentioned before, like I, I developed this, like, no, absolutely.

I’m not to talk to him. I don’t have to talk to him. I want nothing to do with him. There always is still that inkling of a voice within you being like, okay, but what am I? So come on, come on now. I want to make it very clear. I don’t think that if I had, gone back to him, and in a place of strength, in a place of, of chizuk, to be able to connect with him, I don’t think it would have developed a relationship in the sense that, that I’m talking about, maybe. And that’s the feeling that I come away with the most. The feeling of, it’s not about what I would have changed between me and him.

It’s what I would have changed of myself. Because I don’t need to be a slave or a prisoner to external forces. Because ultimately, yes, I did have a hard experience. I did go through difficult challenges. But that doesn’t mean that it has to then affect my current as it stands.

Especially as you get older in life and look yourself in the mirror and say, You know what? I’m 30 something years old. I’m 40 something years old. I’m 50 years old. At what point am I going to let go of the past? Be able to be the best future, the best current that I am, so I can have the most amazing future.

And I think that, for me is, what always, I’m bothered with, with guilt. We’ll get in more into the, into the story as we go along, but there is a pain, , a twinge of guilt or a tinge of, a tinge of guilt that I felt in that, I wish I could have handled it better.

Because ultimately when you view things from the empathetic perspective and you see somebody for the, in the humanity for who they are, it doesn’t mean things change. It doesn’t mean it’s okay what you’re doing. It doesn’t mean at all that the situation is gonna get any better, but it does mean that you’re a mechazik yourself.

It does mean that you raise yourself above and beyond and are showing, and like, there’s a big reason why Chazal say that someone who’s ma’aver al middosav, Hakkoadosh Baruch Hu  is Mochel, Because when Hashem sees it within yourself, you’re able to find that mekubal, of being able to be mochel  yenim, to see the good in yenim. And by the way,  ma’aver al middosav, I say a whole shtickel on this.

Take a look, take a look. The, loshon of ma’aver al middosav, but when we say …before or of our means to go over, Right? The Loshon of …means that you’re jumping over the problem. Rashi says over there, if I remember correctly, and I could be quoting incorrectly, but Rashi says, I believe, that even though you have a hakpada in front of you, you’re still able to jump over.

I think Rashi uses, like, Loshon, like, poisei or poiseiach. I don’t, I, I, don’t quote me on it. What’s the idea? The nekudeh is, is that it’s not that the problem isn’t there. The mistake that people make is ma’aver al middosav, so it means, Ah, okay, don’t worry about it, it’s okay, I fargin. , is not ma’aver al middosav. that’s not, that’s vatranus what we’re talking about.

This is ma’aver al middosav means it’s a problem, it bothers me, and yet I still am able to go about it. That’s the challenge. And I think that’s an internal reaction and internal avoideh versus it being external and expecting life to change. I tell this over to my students, I don’t go through the whole story with my brother.

But I speak to them and I, and I hear all their responses being like, Oh, but then you, you’re, a shmata, but then you’re going to be taken advantage of it. And I see it’s all stemming from the, cause they think that , in order to do this, it’s like a coke machine. I put, Oh, I put in my coin.

I was moichel and now therefore life should change outside externally. And the truth is that’s not how life works. Life is not a coke machine. You can only work internally within yourself. So for me, when I develop these feelings and I develop these reactions, they’re always internally was inside within myself being like, yeah, but come on, you can do better.

But then I will, the door will quickly shut and say, no, no, no, no, we’re not going there. I was speaking to a rebbi of mine. We’re talking about working on a different certain issue. And at one point, and he knew this difficulty with my brother at one point, he even said, okay, but I think like the next shlav to really like, as an avoida to work on this is your brother.

And I said, Rebbi, no. It was like an emotional reaction. I was like, Rebbi, no, that’s a door that just doesn’t get open. So yeah, I mean, it’s, it definitely helped me in a lot of ways, but I think that going through that experience, if I could choose it differently, I wish I wasn’t as reactive as one as it was because now, now that I’m getting married and now that I’m building a family, I went to go visit, for example, my grandmother and.

As a big zechus to him and a big zechus to him in shamayim, my brother was a tremendous, tremendous mechabed in terms of my, my grandmother. He moved actually to her area to live relatively close by for the sole purpose of really taking care of her. She was an older woman who was married to my grandfather for, I don’t know, it’s 50, 60 years, I don’t remember exactly.

I should know that, but a beautiful relationship, very funny relationship. They could, you know, my saba was hilarious and they, they, a very beautiful relationship. And then suddenly my grandfather passed away. Wow. She was left alone. Yeah. She was alone. And I’m living in Israel. My brother at the time, I think maybe was in New York, was in New York and nobody was around to take care of her.

So in a sense, I think , he decided to make the decision to go and to really be with her. And he and mamash took care of her. Wow. Yeah. And, like, and he, and he was the type of person who, like, was very nice, you know, was very cute. Once my grandmother moved actually to, some type of assisted living building. And he would come to visit her so often, he would also bake bread, he was very into baking bread. And he used to bake bread for all the people in the building, and the people, the building loved it, loved it.

He would make, I don’t know, rye bread, I don’t know, sourdough, I really, to be honest, I don’t know. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, but like, that was his nature. He had a tremendously giving nature, and I was so stuck in it, I couldn’t hear it. I remember my mom used to like, every so often, tell me like his, you know, what’s going on, and I’d be like, you know, thank you for telling me, but like, I don’t want to hear it.

Right. It was just very intense. It was very intense. So you were married like, I don’t know, 7, 8, 9, 10 years. I don’t know. Less than that. 9 or 10 years. 9 or 10 years. When, when you found, at that, and at that point you were having nothing to do with him and then you found out that he was niftar. Is that what happened? Right. Right. What happened was, is, it was actually The morning after Purim, it was the same, same exact year, I don’t know, how long ago was Corona?

Three years ago at this point? I think it’s going to be four years, no 20 years. Four years? I don’t know. I’m, I’m actively trying to forget that, that entire experience. What happened was, I remember it was Purim, in  Israel, people were leaving the country and people, like, clearly, I remember, I remember I had friends.

They heard the country was closing down, literally, they were like in the middle of the sun, drunk, their mother, their, their wife was on the phone with the travel agent, literally on the plane, like literally on the plane, still sugar from the day before, flying back to America. I remember, yeah, like it was a very intense experience.

And then I woke up the next morning and I see on my phone easily like 25, 30 phone calls and my father, my brother. Like, what is going on? Like, my brother said this, like, call quick, like, call quick. I imagine, obviously, he didn’t want to tell me over a text message. Right. But but like, what is going on now?

Just a little bit of background. My wife’s brother actually had passed away. Four years before that, right? It’s now coming up to about seven, eight years now. And we had a very similar experience in the sense that like a whole rush of phone calls at a period of, at a time of the day that didn’t make any sense.

It was like six or seven o’clock in the morning. Like it’s a very traumatic experience for us to the extent that later, that later, like only like maybe last year or something, my wife had the Shabbos table for the night and she by accident actually left her phone on, during the Seuda, and my wife’s phone starts ringing.

Oh no. Ringing again. And my wife and I both look at each other, because we’ve been through this. Right. Like, breathe. There’s nothing we can do. Just breathe. I’m like, I have a whole shtickel on that. Anyway, my point only is to say that, like, I knew something was afoot, but I didn’t know what was going on.

And I, my father actually was the first one to get in touch with me. And I remember just my father sounding so broken. I never heard him that broken before. Saying, Eily, Eily, Eily Eily’s gone, Eily’s in a better place. At the same time, my father is also somebody who’s dealt with a lot of grief.

You know, a lot of loss. And, or he’s also been there, you know, by the bedside, by people who have suffered loss. I think he’s also learned how to break it to other people. And he said, he’s in a better place. He’s in a better place. He’s not suffering anymore. He’s not suffering anymore. And I thought that was actually, like, in a, in a sense, a really nice way to hear it.

Now, some people may not like that. I remember speaking to one person who had just lost a child, and I was very young at the time, and I didn’t know what to say. You feel so stupid, to be honest. And you say to them, like, I’m sorry, like, you know, the person’s in a better place. And that person, like, scolded me and said, you want to keep talking to me?

Don’t say that type of stuff anymore. And like, that was a very, that was a learning experience for me because I learned that, obviously, like, you just, you know, it sounds so logical, you can even learn about it, you learn about friend, but like, until you’re in this situation, you can’t talk. Like, until you’re actually on the phone with that person, and you don’t know what to say, and people just say things l’sheim just in order to say anything, so they end up saying stupid things.

It’s unfortunate. It’s an unfortunate reality of life. But, my father said that similar to me, and I actually appreciated it. To me, that actually really It was like a bolt of lightning. But at the same time, it was also like a sense of reassurance of understanding that, because the truth is I have known how much he suffered in life.

I have known how the difficulties and the challenges of not being able to, to really hold down a job and to be not really any, not finishing like, you know, college or degree, whatever, going to all those details. So what was your initial reaction? Was your initial reaction, like, who cares? Or was it, oh my gosh, I can’t repeat it.

No, no, because I’m not a callous person. I, I think a really, truly callous person, but it was like, what? Like, it was, it was an extreme feeling, I mean, ultimately, you’re hearing about your brother passing away, especially someone you don’t hear from that often, like, it’s definitely challenging, but definitely, I don’t think I ever reached the level of, I don’t care.

But at the same time, it was also a feeling of like, I can’t sit still and fight. Now, that, that, that was a feeling that I had, okay, because I had many years to think about. I had many years to ponder what would I feel and how would I feel if I had found out that he passed away. And at a certain point in my life, I made a decision that I’m not going to sit shivah for him.

 And I felt like it was not, something that I felt personally ready to do. Secondly, I never even mentioned this before, I didn’t mention it previously, but because I had gotten so used to the idea that he’s not in my life, I would even like, it was just so natural to me because I didn’t want to answer any questions about my brother who lives in New Hampshire, like, it just, that I just at a certain point just started not mentioning him ever.

I just thought, oh yeah, I have a brother, he’s a Rabbi, he’s a big Talmid Chochom, But it was never a part of my, of my day to day existence because I basically at that point just decided I am not including him in my day to day life. Right. So, so let’s talk about your Sheilah that you asked about sitting Shiva.

Right. So I called up a Rav, I’m not gonna say the, the name of the Rav, but suffice to say he’s a, he’s, he’s a world’s a world’s poisek. Meaning to say he is a world renowned Rabbi. It’s not something that you know, I didn’t call up some Com, Dick and Harry out of, you know, corner. 

However, though, I did also know how to present the Sheilah becauseI learned the sugya and am familiar with the Rambam. I’m familiar with the basic, like they, they, I know how to present the Sheilah in a way. To want to get that result, because I don’t understand, like, at the same time, yes, I’m in pain, at the same time, yes, I’m not happy that he’s, that he’s passed away, but I also dread the idea of sitting for the next week, having to field questions about him, and to talk about him, because that’s not something I want to, that I want to talk about, and I will say that, ad hayoim, I still have a hard time, I’m not going to lie, I still have a very hard time to ask about it, because it’s just covered in a lot of different emotion, a lot of trauma.

I’m So I don’t, I wasn’t alacritous to sit there for an entire week. Now, at the same time, so I called up the Rabbi, and I knew how to present the Sheilah in such a way, and I explained the situation, and theRav said, based according to that, the halacha is, you don’t have to sit shivah. And for me, I would say at that moment, that was a tremendous sigh of relief.

Because I didn’t want

But at the same time, I will say like this, and this is again, this is the complexity of human emotions, the complexity of living atypical life, of going through that experience as a child and, you know, building a, building a family and, and trying to be a member of a community. And at the same time, like I’m a human being, you know what I mean?

Like there’s still a part of me where this is my brother and I still have all that, those messages in my, in my mind, I still have that voice in my head being like. You can still connect. You can still get to a place where you are not being fully affected by this person. And I remember that it was a Friday morning.

I mean, I’d woken up. Yeah, it was Thursday. Yeah, it was Thursday. Yeah, no, the Purim was Thursday, so it was Friday morning. We got the news. So throughout this process, just to mention, my brother had asked or maybe had put him to a will of some sorts or to made some type of request to not have a Kevurah.

Now, I’m in the state where the Rav told me I don’t have to say Sheva. At the same time, I’m also on the phone with all my family members, anybody that knew him back in, in New Hampshire, in a sense, fighting that he should have a kevuras yisrael. I’m on the phone with the Chevrah Kadisha, I’m on the phone with the Rabbi there.

I’m sure your father wants him to be there. Oh, absolutely. But at the same time, I didn’t want to bother my father because number one, it was very late in the morning or early in the morning in America. And secondly, to be honest, at that point, he was not in a state of being able to talk. He was not in any place or any headspace.

As understandable from any people that’s gone through this, it’s not, like, the logistics are just not something that a person can handle. Other people in the family do it. My uncle, a tremendous person, my aunt, an absolute tzadeikes, you wouldn’t even believe, I was dealing with all these different families.

Now, I want to make it very clear, my mother did not grow up in a religious family. She grew up, she grew up in Massachusetts, not religious. So this aunt and uncle are not, are not necessarily religious. But they’re, of course, very respectful and very loving and tremendous, but so, so me and my brother are really the only ones who are really trying to, like, make sure that, because my mother is not in any state, to be able to talk about this.

So in terms of running logistics, we’re all trying to, like, in some family members, we’re, like, totally okay with the idea that maybe he’ll just be …have that religious value. Right. You don’t have that, like, burning, like, how can the world be a Jew and not be buried, you know, according to Halachah.

But my brother and I, we’re very, very, we’re very, very tough about this. So at the same time that I have this p’sak, where I’m not sitting shivah, and therefore I’m not shayech to the Avelus, mitzad sheini, I’m fighting , for his kevuras yisroel. And that was like a very, you know, the fancy term is for it, a dichotomous place to be in.

It’s a very, it’s a stira. Right. I mean, How could you? It doesn’t mean, like, every person who fights, but I am a brother of this person, so I feel very personally related and connected to this. And I kept having this feeling of, like, and it really brings a tear to my eye to this day.

I had this voice in my head saying, if I couldn’t be there for you in this world, I’m going to fight for your neshama in the next world. Wow. And that, and that, I don’t know where that voice came from because again, I, I mentioned before, like I was relieved to disconnect, but there’s a part of me that really wanted to connect.

And it’s interesting because sitting shivah is not really only for the mourner, it’s really for the neshamah also, but that part you didn’t want to do. That part, I think, again, it’s the complexity of, you don’t, like you’re going back and forth between these different feelings. And my wife. Picked up on the fact that, on the one hand, I’m not sitting Shivah, she sees it.

I’m on the phone with my,and I, I imagine I was not in the best mood that morning. It’s an Erev Shabbos, it always the something.. And Sean buys problems. I’m sure she picked up very strongly and she kept saying, maybe call a different Rav. call. Like, no. And again, that the part of me that was saying.

Oh, like, what do you mean? I’m so relieved I don’t have to sit shiva. Like, no, that’s the p’sak. This is the halachah. But at the same time, I know she’s right. I know she’s right. I know she’s not right. But there’s no way, you know, classic husband life dynamic. You know she’s right, but you don’t want to say anything.

But like, she felt very strongly that I had to really revisit this. But like, the whole Friday morning was a lot of this turmoil, internal turmoil, back and forth on the phone, this and that. And like, I remember, finally, I decided I need to speak to my Rav. I tried to call him, but he didn’t answer his phone.

My Rav is Rav Weinfeld, Rav Weinfeld. And he’s Rav of Shul down the block over here. And I daven by him Friday night, Shabbos day. So, for some reason I daven there Friday night, but I saw him Shabbos day. And I asked him after Kiddush, after the Shul Kiddush, he didn’t even know, it’s the funniest thing, like, I had just lost my brother the day before, but I’m not sitting Shivah, and, and like, I’m sitting normally at this Kiddush.

And it’s a funny thing that I sit next to the Rav, and, and he never, you know, he doesn’t necessarily always point the, you know, the spotlight at me if he has a question, or a clarification, or where to find the Pasek, but he’s saying in …, like, sometimes he’ll, he’ll need help to find the Pasuk, but usually he knows what he’s doing Baruch Hashem, he’s, he’s a, he’s an accomplished Avraham, to put it, to put it mildly.

Anyway, so all of a sudden that reason, I’m like, again, my head is everywhere else but in this kidush right now. Like I’m going through bodily, I’m physically going through emotions, but my mind is completely somewhere else. I don’t remember what I was diving, I did dive in. I like, I don’t know what I was doing.

So like my head is just like, my brother, my brother, my brother, same time. And I remember Saying at the Kiddush and the Rav head during the Kiddush for the first time ever. Like, he turns to me and he’s like, oh, find this Pasuk. Where’s this Pasuk? And I’m like, I take the plunge. I’m like back and forth and forth.

And it was an embarrassing situation. Then like a second later, he asked me for another Pasuk. And again, I’m like, I’m thinking in my head, like Rebbe, this is like literally the worst day you could possibly ever ask me to look for a Pasuk. There’s no way in the world I’m ever in any way slightly present.

Anyway, so it was whatever, you know, you deal with the kappara form shamayim. So after the Kiddush, I asked the Rebbe, can I speak to you privately? He brought me to his office. He lives literally next door to the shul. It was a very powerful experience because I sat there and I, and it was almost like I brought out the two sides of me.

I said on the one hand Rebbe, this is what I feel. Like this is what the Rav even told me. How can I not? How can I not sit shivah this is my brother? This is something that’s like, this is my actual But, but at the same time, how, how am I allowed to sit shiva? How am I allowed to?

And my Rav, and it was a very powerful moment, my Rav looked at me in the tears in his eyes and he said, if you’re going to make any mistake, which mistake would you rather make? Would you rather make the mistake that you sat shiva or make the mistake that you didn’t sit shiva? Wow. I think the mistake, I said, I think the mistake that you should make is to sit shiva.

Wow. For me that was a tremendous weight because it wasn’t just, even from a halachic perspective , it was an emotional. It was a halacha where I felt, and again, halacha is halacha. No questions asked. Believe me. I’m a brisker, right? Halacha is halacha.and you feel the halacha just hits the right place.

And having that emotional experience where there’s also the halacha being told, to me that felt very validating. That felt like, okay, now I can sit shiva b’shlaimus. Wow. Now, keep in mind at this point in time, the world is falling apart, meaning Corona is basically all developed, the whole world is completely shutting down.

I’m sitting Shiva, the next day after the Shabbos. Literally, this is Thursday, Friday, everyone’s leaving Thursday, Friday. Shabbos, Sunday, is when the government comes out with all these rules, saying they’re going to be closing down the entire country, not allowed to be in large groups. And in a lot of ways, it’s a little bit weird, but in a lot of ways.

Now sitting shiva, but I sat shiva by myself. And Ad Hayoim, I feel like I never even fully got a shiva, because then I got the experience, I got the place where I’m okay, now I’m ready to sit shiva. I didn’t get the opportunity to sit shiva, because no one came.

Right. Now it’s a funny, funny in the not funny way, but funny in the sense of like it being, being abnormal, it was definitely very hard. But at the same time, you know, it was chatzi refuah at the same time, because having that ability to then acknowledge it for myself, to finally get to that place where to feel his, to the neshama, to understand and to make the very, very strong distinction that there’s a guf, there’s a neshama here and that the people you interact with.

You are reacting, you are interacting with neshamas and oftentimes the guf is the, and when you’re dealing with difficult people, you have to remind yourself that you’re dealing with the you’re dealing with from the, the go unfortunately is being…..

That was a very, that was Mamish Menachem. And seeing people as the neshamah that they are, and not being distracted by the guf, that gave me a lot of lessons. And that made me feel kind of a shlaimus in terms of, Who I was on the external level of my students, of my day to day and what I tried to do and what I want to do.

And do I wish I could go back and do differently? Of course. But I also have to have nechama on myself and empathy on myself to understand that that’s not who I was. I wasn’t there yet. And, and I wish I could have done differently. And I still, to this very day, I hold myself to a higher, to a higher standard.

And I wish I was like that. And that only, but it motivates me to then say, how can I then apply that to other people as well? I’m not going to let that become just like, okay, oh, I feel terrible, I feel terrible, but to use that as a spring and a motivation to then how can I become better with other people and myself.

And I will. That’s really like, like guilt, right? That’s when we say guilt. Like, that’s, that’s Jewish guilt. That’s the Yiddish guilt. That’s the Yiddish guilt. Yiddish guilt. Yiddish guilt. The one thing we should have Yiddish guilt is that it, is that it’s the charata of avor, but it also brings us towards to the Kabbalah for the future.

And I want to tell you something amazing. You know, after hearing and being able to speak to it’s funny, like I actually the summer before that I actually had gone to New Hampshire to visit my grandmother. And Eiley was there. He wasn’t there at the like, he wasn’t staying with my grandmother, we stayed with my grandmother, and he would come to visit.

And it was just as difficult as a child, I remember, but I remember also feeling was stronger. Now, I can’t say that I reacted, didn’t react or wasn’t bothered by things, but I didn’t notice that after having been a family and having a family and being somebody that is, you know, is trying to be mekabel

Like I felt that I was in a, I was in a stronger place. It was difficult. It was hard. It was challenging.yeah, and that was really beautiful to hear because as much as the difficulties and challenges and frustrations that I had and that I wish that he had gotten the help that he needed and found the help that he needed before his untimely death and All that stuff blocked me from being able to see the good.

I very much returned and was able to better appreciate my mother’s perspective Right. Of seeing him that, yeah, the cards were stacked against him, the tremendous turmoil that he was under, the difficulty, the challenges that he had, that he didn’t ask for, he didn’t ask to be this way. And for me to be the type of person who at least can see that, again, would it have changed?

Would have the interactions between him and I been positive? I don’t know. I know that, but if I had been in a place that what I needed to be, I don’t think my reactions would have been that strong and it certainly wouldn’t have affected me. As life has gone on. Like, for example, like the fact that I grew up in a tough home where, let’s say, for example, you had a very hard time with privacy.

Like, the door, even when it was closed, it was never really closed. You know, all the difficulties and challenges. So I, I’ve developed from that a very strong need for privacy. I think, I wish that I didn’t have that overreaction. And if I had been the person that I need to be, I could go through those challenges, but I don’t have to then react and to develop all those responses.

Right. So if a person can get to a place where they can see another person, as I mentioned before, Yeah. Yeah. Instead of a gif to neshama, because that ultimately is what is always looking for someone and say, am I? Am I, am I a gif or neshama  That’s the every question person asked. That’s why we start off the day saying,

who is your essence? It’s before that point, you were just laying in bed doing nothing, not doing a thing. It’s the fact that hashem gave me my neshama  my back that I’m able to then go, like, say that I’m able to say. All the everything. That’s what gives us that animation. And I think that, that experience, that journey of going through a place of dislike and tremendous frustration.

And, and almost a place of bitel of not seeing the person of who they are, but going to a place where I can see that person, where now I want to do zechus for him, because I see his neshamah doesn’t have that zechus in Shamayim Because he never got married, he didn’t have kids, I didn’t even mention that, but being able to be that zechus for him.

Because I know ultimately, this is the yisod, that when you go through a difficult experience and challenge with somebody who unfortunately either was not well, and that were stopping the guffrom the neshama from coming out, you have to be able to relate back to that neshama, that the mesne, and that neshama knows the e mesne, the neshama knows the truth, and had to go through its experience, and it needed to go through, and now it’s our opportunity, and our job to bring zechuyos to that, to that person.

That person unfortunately was given a peckle, they couldn’t do what they needed to do, or they couldn’t, or they did exactly what they needed to That’s, that’s not our position on our job, but that it’s my job now how to be maaleh that neshama. And each time you make change, you’re really doing that. You’re giving the Neshama an aliyah.

I mean, he started to make change and that’s And I think that’s very important. And I hope that from this experience of sharing it on a wider audience, as much as it’s very personal, very, you know, it’s not so simple to share with other people, that other people should find chizzuck in it too, because that ultimately would give me , a lot of tikkun in terms of everything that I’ve gone through, to be able to then share that for others as well.

Well, thank you so much for coming on.