Podcasts about when b

On this episode we speak with Bian Li (aka B). B is an entrepreneur, futurist and former investment banker at the intersection of finance, operations, technology and social innovation. With 15+ years of experience working with hundreds of entrepreneurs of all sizes across 30 countries, she is now the founder of The Hungry Lab, where she specializes in building startups and designing the collaborative value networks and "glocal" ecosystems needed to grow them. She has been a TEDx speaker, appeared in Inc. Magazine and presents frequently around the world. She is a board member and advisor to a diverse array of startups. She is a member of Women in Blockchain and a mentor for Blockchain for Social Impact's Decentralized Hackathon and Incubator. B is a certified Rescue Diver and when not at work, you'll find her scuba diving and raising awareness for ocean conservation. When B grows up, she wants to be a stand-up comedian/professional Latin dancer/anthropologist. We chat about her work with Hungry Lab, some of the pivots she’s seen due to Covid, also what startups can expect in 2021 and beyond, we talk the UN Sustainable Development Goals and their importance in business and we touch on the notion of purpose and understanding your WHY. Books that B recommended: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40745.Mindset https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42940498-limitless-mind

*21.4 Makkos Daf 14 A (9 lines Dn)*Rabbi Yitzchok: The Torah specifies kareis regarding a sister to teach that where there is kareis, there is only kareis and no malkos.The Chachamim (Rabbi Yishamel and Rabbi Akiva) explain that the Torah’s specification of kareis regarding a sister emphasizes that all chayvei kerisus have their own punishment*Summary**Question:* What is Rabbi Yitzchok's source for the law that each _lav_ of _krisus_ bears a unique liability?*Answer:* From the verse “Don’t get intimate with ‘a woman’ who is a _niddah”._ This teaches that *each woman* is another liability (the _possuk_ could have left out the words a woman, it is obvious that we’re talking about a woman).*Question: Do the Chachomim object* to this source?*Answer: They actually agree.**Question:* So, *how do the Chachomim explain* the Torah’s specifying _kareis_ regarding a sister?*Answer:* The specification emphasizes that all types of sisters *(a sister, a father’s sister, and a mother’s sister)* bear their own punishment.*Challenge: That’s obvious!* They’re different people, and the Torah specifies all of them!*Resolution:* The specification teaches that if *all three happen to be one person,* he must bring three _korbanos._This is possible in *the case of a wicked man, son of a wicked man* [A begat two daughters (C&D) from his mother, then he begat a son (B) from one of his daughters/sisters (C). When B has relations with D he is having relations with his sister (father’s daughter) who is his father’s sister (from the same mother) and his mother’s sister (from the same father)]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

*21.4 Makkos Daf 14 A (9 lines Dn)*Rabbi Yitzchok: The Torah specifies kareis regarding a sister to teach that where there is kareis, there is only kareis and no malkos.The Chachamim (Rabbi Yishamel and Rabbi Akiva) explain that the Torah’s specification of kareis regarding a sister emphasizes that all chayvei kerisus have their own punishment *Summary* *Question:* What is Rabbi Yitzchok's source for the law that each _lav_ of _krisus_ bears a unique liability? *Answer:* From the verse “Don’t get intimate with ‘a woman’ who is a _niddah”._ This teaches that *each woman* is another liability (the _possuk_ could have left out the words a woman, it is obvious that we’re talking about a woman). *Question: Do the Chachomim object* to this source?*Answer: They actually agree.* *Question:* So, *how do the Chachomim explain* the Torah’s specifying _kareis_ regarding a sister? *Answer:* The specification emphasizes that all types of sisters *(a sister, a father’s sister, and a mother’s sister)* bear their own punishment. *Challenge: That’s obvious!* They’re different people, and the Torah specifies all of them! *Resolution:* The specification teaches that if *all three happen to be one person,* he must bring three _korbanos._ This is possible in *the case of a wicked man, son of a wicked man* [A begat two daughters (C&D) from his mother, then he begat a son (B) from one of his daughters/sisters (C). When B has relations with D he is having relations with his sister (father’s daughter) who is his father’s sister (from the same mother) and his mother’s sister (from the same father)]. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Continuing with our #DiversityInTech series, I interview B. Pagels-Minor who works as a Senior Engineering Program Manager based in San Jose, CA. When B. reached out to me to chat about being diverse in tech, I jumped on the opportunity because they have held great positions in several large companies. Who else, if anyone would be able to speak to being diverse in tech than someone who has such a wonderful resume such as B.'s? Yet, when I talked to them, I learned so much about individuals that are trans/non-binary and their ability to leverage their unique experiences for companies. I believe this episode will be educational for individuals inside and outside of the LGBTQ+ community that want to create business value for organizations of every size. Be sure to share. Connect with B. : LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethanypagelsminor/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Bethany_minor Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Bethanypagelsminor TikTok/Facebook: BPM0313 Announcement: be sure to join the We Resolve to Win Facebook group - we have officially begun this week. This four-week challenge will cover three primary areas: negotiating your relationships, negotiating your salary/business and negotiating your debt. I'm super excited and can't wait to help you be strategic this year! Connect with me: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weresolvetowin/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/WeResolveToWin We Resolve to Win Private Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/weresolvetowin My Coaching and Consulting Services Website: https://www.avinuconsulting.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/weresolvetowin/message

Today we come to consider one of the most beautiful words in the Christian's vocabulary- one of the most important words in all of scripture.--And yet, sad to say, it is also a word that has often been neglected in the modern Christian conversation.--When B.B. Warfield presented his study of this word, he noted what a prominent place it held in the earliest hymns. He noted how often the earliest Christians rejoiced in the Lord Jesus in this name - -Jesus our Redeemer-.--Today we usually speak of Jesus as our Lord, or we speak of Jesus as our Savior, but should also remember that He is our redeemer, and it is only because of redemption that He can be our Lord and our Savior. --The verse we concentrate on this morning tells us that we have been saved through His work as Redeemer.--THE MEANING OF SALVATION--Again, we are reminded here of what salvation is.--There are experiential aspects to our salvation, and thank God that there are, but before we deal with people concerning their experience, we must address people concerning their guilt before God.--And Salvation, from the standpoint of our guilt, is to have our sins forgiven and to have God's own righteousness put to our account before God.--Justification is a DECLARATION.--It is a legal declaration. It is God, the judge Himself, who has declared the saved person to be right in His own sight.--Justification is not about God MAKING a person righteous. That is the work of sanctification, and future glorification. --And everyone whom the Lord justifies, He sanctifies and from the standpoint of the sureness of our final salvation, has already declared us glorified in Romans 8.---But justification, considered alone, is a

This is a snippet from Breaking Walls Episode 96: Halloween On The Air (1943 - 1953) ___________ On Friday April 10th, 1942 People Are Funny debuted over NBC airwaves, sponsored by Brown & Williamson Tobacco. It was the brain-child of gameshow maven John Guedel. Guedel was a jack-of-all-trades. In addition to writing he’d spent time as a WPA ditch-digger, traveling salesman, and a collector of rejection slips for his own failed ideas. With People Are Funny set to go on the air in April of 1942, Guedel brought both Linkletter and Baker in as co-MCs. Within a month Guedel negotiated a raise to $850 an episode. When B&W was ready to renew for a full season Art Baker made it known he resented sharing duties with Linkletter and gave an ultimatum. Guedel preferred Linkletter, but Baker was the bigger name and the sponsor took his side. The 1942-43 season was a ratings success. People Are Funny scored the first of its six consecutive seasons in Friday’s Top Ten and was NBC’s highest rated entertainment show of the night. Behind the scenes Baker continually sniped at Guedel and complained to the sponsor. But, John Guedel knew of a clause in Baker’s contract that allowed for a potential termination every thirteen weeks. After October 1st, 1943 he exercised it. Baker sued. Linkletter took over in the midst of Baker’s lawsuit. He’d never give the role up.

Welcome to Episode 14 of Dragon Quest FM! This week we’re talking about Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors, which was released on the Nintendo Wii in 2007. For a game that’s 12 years old, it’s fun and looks pretty. When B.J. was in town with Austin, we decided to play it together. But we only had about 24 hours to speedrun the whole thing, which was tricky. Thus, the Journey to Beat Dragon Quest Swords in a Single Weekend Began! This is a very dramatic story full of struggle, love, frustration, and...success? Failure? You’ll find out. Early in the episode, we also discuss the new demo for Dragon Quest XI S, coming out for Switch on September 27th, and the new location Tickington and the creatures known officially now as Tockles. We talk about the characters, the story, and the graphics. We also talk about the odd gameplay (for a Dragon Quest game, anyway), since it’s all first person POV and a dungeon crawler, which neither of us knew until we played it. Then, we move straight into a play-by-play of our attempt to beat Dragon Quest Swords in a very short period of time. We discuss the obstacles of having Austin’s kids in the room at the same time, how B.J. almost missed his flight because of the game, and how our arms are super tired now. Buy DQ Swords: https://amzn.to/2Lba334 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/dragonquestfm --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/dragonquest/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/dragonquest/support

When B turns up at Maria Antony and makes a proposal, the narrator is taken aback. Left with no other options he takes drastic action.

Tired of Trying – The Alabama lovesnakes – III 2018 In Mississippi – Big Jos Shelton – Black Prairie Blues 2008 Coming Home – Elmore James – Pickin’ The Blues 2018 Went Home This Morning – Bob Corritore & Friends – Don’t Let The Devil Ride ! 2018 Blues At Sunrise – Albert Frost Blues Band – Live in Grahamstown 2018 Bullet Through My Heart – Detonics – Raise Your Bet 2018 Break Em’ Down – Errol Linton – Packing My Bags 2018 You Upset Me Baby - Catfish – When B.B. sings The Blues Night Time is The right Time _ Cliff Grand – Sweet Loven Woman 2018 Mister One Time – Freya Josephine Hollick – Feral Fusion 2018 Beer drinking Dog – Freddie Pte – I Got The Blues 2018 Guilty As Charged – Buddy Guy – Keepin it Real 2018

Hashem’s Bitter MedicineIT’S TIME TO GO HOME!InParshas Va’eirathe seeds of our redemption fromMitzrayimfinally begin to take root and sprout. The time has come for the tenmakkos, the great retribution upon Pharaoh and his slavemaster people, and for theAm Yisroelto finally make their exit from the long and arduous servitude in the ארץ לא להם, the land not their own. Thegeulahof theAm Yisroel,the fulfillment of ואחרי כן יצאו ברכוש גדול, had finally arrived.And on what basis was theAm Yisroelgoing to be taken out ofMitzrayimnow? That we all know; it was thebris bein hab’sarim,the famous covenant that Hashem had made with Avraham centuries earlier. You remember when Avraham asked Hakodosh Boruch Hu: במה אדע כי אירשנה – “How do I know that the land will be mine”? (Bereishis 15:8). “Give me some guarantee,” begged Avraham, “a guarantee that I’m going to receive the land; that my progeny will one day inherit this land.” Avraham was worried; “Who knows? Maybe our merit won’t be sufficient. Maybe someday You’ll be unpleased with us. I want an unbreakable covenant with You!” So Hakadosh Baruch Hu told him then, “Take three calves, three goats and three rams, so that you and I can enter into a covenant.” And what did Avraham do? He took these animals and cut them in half and set the parts opposite each other.That was the practice in those days. It says that in Yirmiyahu (34:19). When you wanted to enter a covenant, when you wanted to commit yourself to a course of action with an unbreakable promise, you would divide an animal and pass between its pieces as a sign of your commitment to uphold the deal.HAKODOSH BORUCH HU SEALS THE DEALSo what happened? Hakadosh Baruch Hu sent down His Presence, His glory, in the form of a fiery furnace to “seal the deal.” Suddenly a greatdread and a darkness fell upon the scene. And Avraham witnessed how this fiery furnace – it was the Presence of Hashem – marched between the offerings. והנה תנור עשן ולפיד אש אשר עבר בין הגזרים האלה – “And behold, a smoking furnace and a torch of fire passed through the pieces” (ibid. 15:17).That was thebris bein hab’sarim, when Hakodosh Boruch Hu came down and entered into a covenant with Avraham. ביום ההוא כרת השם את אברהם ברית – “On that day Hashem made a covenant with Avraham” (ibid. 15:18). It’s something unequaled in the history of our people, even among the greatest prophets, that such a covenant was made. That Hakodosh Boruch Hu should come down and “shake hands” to close the deal?! It’s unheard of in all of history.And what did Hakodosh Boruch Hu tell Avraham at that moment? ידע תדע כי גר יהיה זרעך בארץ לא להם – “Know with certainty that your offspring will be sojourners in a land not their own, ועבדום וענו אותם… ואחרי כן יצאו ברכוש גדול- “And they will enslave them, and oppress them… and afterwards they shall leave with great possessions… to your descendants I have given this land” (ibid. 15:13-18). So it was an imperishable promise that Hakadosh Baruch Hu had made, that He would stand by His people and that He would eventually take them out ofMitzrayimand bring them to the land that He had promised to them.THE TIME FINALLY COMESAnd now, in the beginning of ourparsha, Hakodosh Boruch Hu is telling Moshe to let His people know that the time has come. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is invoking that great promise He had made centuries before. וגם הקימותי את בריתי איתם לתת להם את ארץ כנען – “I am upholding My covenant that I made for them to give them Eretz Canaan” (Va’eira 6:4). “The time has come for Me to fulfill My promise to the Bnei Yisroel,” says Hashem, והבאתי אתכם אל הארץ אשר נשאתי את ידי לתת אותה – “And I will bring you to the land which I raised up My hand to give it to you” (ibid. 6:8).But it’s very important that we should listen to the next verse, thepossukafter Hashem invokes the great promise:וגם הקימותי את בריתי – “And not only am I upholding the covenant I made with Avraham,” but also – now listen to these words: וגם אני שמעתי את נאקת בני ישראל אשר מצרים מעבידים אותם – and I also heard the outcry of the Bnei Yisroel, ואזכור את בריתי – “And therefore, I am now reminded of My promise to them” (ibid. 6:5). What do we see here? That despite the covenant, despite the oath that had to be fulfilled – it’s the word of Hashem after all so there’s no way that He would fail to fulfill it –despite all that, Hakodosh Boruch Huwaiteduntil he heard their outcry.THE GREAT OUTCRYAnd not just one outcry; they cried out for a long time. It’s repeated again and again: “I have heard their crying out” (ibid. 3:7), “Their crying out has come before Me” (ibid. 3:9), “I have heard the groaning outcry ofBnei Yisroel.” And it was only when He heard enough outcries from them, וגם שמעתי את נאקת בני ישראל, it was only then that finally Hakodosh Boruch Hu decided to fulfill His covenant with them.And that’s something we say every day in thesiddurועונה לעמו ישראל בעת שועםאליו – “Hashemanswers His people Yisroel, at the time that they cry out to Him.” It doesn’t say merely that He hastens to their succor; thatHe is at hand to help them. It doesn’t say that. It saysv’oneh, “He is ready to answer them.” When?B’eis shav’ameilav, at the time that they cry out.Shav’ammeans “a great outcry.” ואת שועתם ישמע – “He hears their outcries,” ויושיעם – “AndthenHe rescues them” (Tehillim 145:19). So we see that it’s not sufficient merely to mumble a little prayer. And even to cry out once or twice is not enough. It’s important to make a big outcry to Hashem, and to do it again and again.DID WE MISS THE FINE PRINT?And actually that’s a very big question. Because whydidHashem need our outcry? He had already raised His hand and swore that He would take us out fromMitzrayim! So why is the crying out to Him for help under the heavy weight of oppression so important? And even more remarkable, the words of thepossukimply that our redemption wasdependenton our crying out: ועתה הנה צעקת בני ישראל באה אלי…ועתה לכה ואשלחך אל פרעה והוצא את עמי בני ישראל ממצרים – “The outcry ofBneiYisroelhas come to Me…AndnowI will send you to Pharaoh and take out My nation fromMitzrayim” (ibid. 3:9-10). Even the great covenant of thebris bein hab’sarim,the inviolate word of Hashem wasdependenton theAm Yisroel’sentreaties, on their crying out to Hashem. And that’s very strange because that wasn’t part of thebris bein hab’sarim;“crying out” wasn’t part of the deal that we “signed!”But first, there’s a fundamental question we have to ask about the entire subject oftefillah, of praying for something. We introduce many of our prayers with the wordsyehi ratzon– “May it be Your will, Hashem…” For instance, suppose somebody is in the midst ofshemonah esreiand he remembers there’s somebody ill,chalilah, in the family. Or it’s a person he knows and he wants to pray for him. So he adds these words:יהי רצון מלפניךהשם אלוקינו ואלוקי אבותינו שתשלח מהרה רפואה שלימה מן השמים רפואת הנפש ורפואת הגוף – “It should be Your will Hashem, our G-d and the G-d of our fathers, that You should send speedily a complete recovery from heaven, a recovery of the soul and recovery of the body,” that means mentally and physically. And we mention the person, his name, so that he should be healed among all the othercholeiYisroel. Now, we are sayingyehi ratzon, it should be Your will. That’s how we introduce thetefillah.ILLNESS IS ALSO CHESSED HASHEMNow we have to know that whatever “happens” to a person is Hashem’s will. Nobody is sick because of accident. It’s always Hashem’s will. Of course, sometimes a man can induce the illness by his own carelessness, but nevertheless it’s Hashem’s will. That’s his punishment for being negligent with his care, with his health, or his safety. If a man is careless, he’s being punishedby Hashem. No matter what, it’s Hashem’s will that decreed that this man should be ill.And when Hakadosh Baruch Hu makes a decree like that, we have a principle, a fundamental principle calledkol orchos Hashem chesed v’emes –all the ways of Hashem are kindliness and truth (Tehillim 25:10).צדיק השם בכל דרכיו – “Hashem is righteous in all His ways,” וחסיד בכל מעשיו –”And He is kindly in all His acts.” (Ibid. 145:17) Now, when you come in here you have to divest yourself of outside attitudes. Because here we want to studyTorah attitudes; and the truth of the matter is thatHakadosh Baruch Hu does everything for kindly purposes. Everything! And if it was His will that this man should be ill, then it must be for this man’s benefit. What the most important benefit is, we’ll study soon, but it’s out of the question that it shouldn’t be a kindliness. Itcertainlyis for the person’s benefit.“HASHEM, CAN I GET A SECOND OPINION?”So here it was Hakadosh Baruch Hu’sratzonto give this man the benefit of becoming sick. So the question arises, where do we get the audacity to ask Hashem to change His will? Suppose a man goes to a physician and the physician writes a prescription for some medication, let’s say it’s a foul tasting medication. Would the man say to the physician, יהי רצון מלפניך – “It should be your willnotto give me this prescription. I want to get along without the prescription.”? Only ameshugenehwould say such a thing! The doctor studied for years and years, his profession is medicine, his knowledge and experience is medicine. He’s the expert here. And you’re just an obstinate fellow, maybe ignorant too. Either the expense is too much for you, or maybe you don’t like the taste of the medicine. So you don’t want to bother with it. It’s ameshugasto even ask such a thing!And here is Hakadosh Baruch Hu, the great Healer, and He’s prescribing for a man certain pills – whether the pills are troubles, or headaches, or pains, or illness – big and small. Whatever it is, it’s certainlypills. There’s no question that Hashem is benefitting the man by giving him these troubles, these misfortunes, pains or illnesses. So how can a man say to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, “I beg of you,yehi ratzon, that You should change the prescription, or not give me the prescription at all?” That’s a big question that needs to be answered. And actually that’s what all ourbakashosseem to be – an attempt to change the will of Hashem.WHY ALL THE TURBULENCE?And another question – just as important and maybe even more perplexing: What’s Hashem’s purpose in causing any disturbance, either in a man’s health or in his family life or in his business? It’s a question we want to ask of Him: “Why do You send anything to ruffle the tranquility of our lives?” After all, like we just said, Hashem’s ways are perfect, and He is kindly in all of His deeds. That’s a truism. So why is it that we see sometimes that Hashem does things that seem to be contradictory to these principles of kindliness?Actually it’s a question that all thinking men ask one time or another. Because chalilahsomething happens; sometimes it happens. Here’s a man who’s successful, and all of a sudden a freak misfortune happens to him and unfortunately he’s in the hospital. It’s not an accident, it’s Hashem! So he’s thinking, “Why did this happen to me? Before everything was going smoothly with me;boruch HashemI was a good frum Jew more or less. Why did Hashem do this?”THE GREATEST CHESED!And the answer is as follows: There is a great kindliness that’s most paramount, more important than all thechassodimin the world – more important thanparnasah, more important thanshalom bayis, and good health. And that’s the kindliness calledyiras Hashem.Yiras Hashem– which means to be Aware of Hashem, that’s the most important thing in your life. Now, this might sound queer to the ears of those who live with materialism, but it’s a fundamental principle that we must get into our heads.We are here to gain Awareness of Hashem.Now, if that’s the purpose, then what a tragedy it is when people let their lives go by and fail to utilize the opportunities to recognize Hashem. You forgot about Him?! To forget Hashem is the worst ruinationin life! To live without awareness is not a life worth living!So Hashem sees that you’re wasting your life – of course you’re afrumperson – you’re doingmitzvos,you’re ultra-ultra Orthodox.But that’s not enough for Hashem. He doesn’t want “Orthodox;” He wants to squeezegreatnessout of you! He wants to save you so that your life shouldn’t be wasted. Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants to give you the gift of being Aware of Him.HASHEM: A ONE DAY HEADACHE FOR CHAIMSo what does Hashem do? He orders a prescription; one headache. Prescribed: Chaim ben Dovid,one headache, for one day. It’s a pill. And so one morningyou wake up with a headache. And what’s the purpose of that prescription?The purpose of the headache is so that you should call out to Him and achieve the perfection of even a little more awareness of Hashem.And when you do that, you’re turning your migraine into diamonds!All the events in a man’s life are being manipulated by Hakadosh Boruch Hu; He puts disturbances in your life so you’ll call out to Him. And that is the chief purpose of every mishap in your life; to cause you to cry out for aid from Hashem and to thereby become more aware of Him. The outcry that comes from desperation, from unrequited needs and from anguished hopes for the future, causes Awareness of Hashem’s Presence, and it is that Awareness that is the true achievement, the chief purpose of Man’s existence in this life.“BETTER ANGER THAN LAUGHTER”And now we have an answer to the age old question of why “bad” things happen to good people: Because Awareness of Hashem is the greatestchesedthat Hashem can give man, and most often it is thetzaros,and the crying out to Hashem it encourages, that brings this Awareness. When you’re subject to adversity, that’s the great opportunity to bemakirHakodosh Boruch Hu, to recognize Hashem. When a man finds himself subject to mishaps and misfortunes – he needs things, so it’s much easier for him to raise his eyes to Hakadosh Boruch Hu and ask for it; and that is the great gift of Awareness of Hashem.And therefore, טוב כעס משחוק – Better anger than laughter” (Koheles 7:3). Now we know that’s not true. Anger is no good; it’s a very big mistake to get angry. But there isoneanger that is good – and that’s Hashem’s anger. טוב כעס שכועס הקדוש ברוך הוא על הצדיקים – That’s good. When Hashem gets angry at you, that’stov, that’s good for you. Don’t ask for it though. You ask for good times. הרחב פיך ואמלאהו, ask Him for good times and appreciate what He’s giving you. But still, “when Hashem shows his anger to thetzadikim, that’s better than the smiling Hashem does on thereshaim.” (Shabbos 30b) If there ever happened that atzadik,chalilahhad a setback, a misfortune, so you must know, and he must know, that it’s a stroke of good fortune. Now I know that it’s very hard to accept, but we have to learn that and understand that it’s achesed gadolwhen that happens to him.Tov, it’s better, it’s a greaterhatzlachathan had Hashem smiled.ברוע פנים ייטב לב, When the face is sad then the heart becomes better (ibid.). Now it doesn’t mean you should be sad and sour faced. On the contrary – if you’re sad faced it shows that you don’t appreciate what Hashem is doing for you. You don’t appreciate that things aretov. But sometimes a man against his will is sad because some misfortune has happened to him, so he should know however that ייטב לב, hisneshamais improving.DON’T TAKE THE WRONG MEDICINESo when Hashem sends you a headache, you have to know that it was for a great purpose. And if you take an aspirin, and after one day the headache goes away,and you never cried out to Hashem, so you wasted the prescription. You’ve wasted an opportunity! The purpose was for you to become Aware of Hashem, and you wasted the glorious opportunity.And so when we ask Hashem “Yehiratzon, let it be Your will that I be healed,” we are not telling Hakadosh Baruch Hu tochange His will.Yehi ratzonmeans this: “Hashem, I know that what You want from me is that I should become more Aware of You. And that’s what I’m doing now; I’m calling out to you. Let it be Your will that I can get better now – or mytzaarshould be removed, whatever it is you’re asking for –becauseI’m calling out to You. I’m becoming more aware of You. Whatever trouble You gave me, can go away now because I’ve achieved the purpose.”WHEN HASHEM DOESN’T ANSWERNow the truth is that sometimes you cry out to Hashem and He doesn’t answer. A man called me on the telephone and he tells me: He’s crying out and crying out, and there’s no answer. He wants to know what he’s supposed to think.He’s supposed to think thatHakadosh Boruch Huwants him to cry out even more. And suppose he cries out even more – let’s say a man is on his deathbed, he’s an old man, 119 years old, he can’t expect to live much more. But still he cries out on his deathbed. Did he waste his time? No! He achieved maybe in his last minutes more than he did in his whole life.119 YEARS IS NOT ENOUGH?!An old man is crying out on his deathbed, he says “Oh, Hashem, heal me!” “Oh it’s silly,” you’ll say. The bystanders think it’s ridiculous. “You want to be healed?! How long do you want to hang around here?! The children want to take over the business already, they want the “old man” out of the way already. 119 years is not enough?! No, for him it’s not enough. When you’re on your deathbed it’s never enough. He wants to live a thousand years. Why shouldn’t he? He has a great grandfather who lived almost a thousand years. Mesushelach lived almost a thousand years so why can’t he?So he’s crying out to Hashem. Why not? He has the right to cry out. And when he finally takes his last breath don’t think he didn’t accomplish with the crying out. He accomplished plenty.The crying out is the purpose.That’s the biggest achievement there is. So nobody is ever frustrated in hisdavenenwhen he’s not answered – because he has gained the most important thing, more Awareness of Hashem.DISCOVERING WINEMAKINGIt’s like a man who has a very good vineyard. He has blue-blooded grapes, good quality grapes “with ayichus, with a pedigree.” So when he takes his grapes to the wine press and he presses out the wine, it’s a pity to take that mash, the residue, and throw it away.So he decides to press it a little more; he takes that mash and presses it some more. He puts them on the wine press and gives akvetch. And a little more good wine squirts out. But it’s not enough for him. He says, “I can’t leaveanywine inside the peel. Maybe there’s some more good wine in there. So he puts it under the press again and puts some more pressure to get out the last drop.Now you have to know thatweare the good grapes and Hashem wants to press from usall the yiras Hashemthat He could get– for our own benefit. He wants to squeeze out some more “good wine of Awareness” from us because from good grapes you try to squeeze out all that you can.THE SOUL OF GOOD GRAPESAnd so Hakodosh Boruch Hu is pressing us with all kinds of pressure. One pressure might be trouble withparnasa, another might be trouble with your children, or trouble having children,chas v’shalom. And when you cry out to Hashem, that’s the good wine, the good wine of Awareness of Hashem dripping from the good grapes of yourneshamah. When your heart is torn with anguish, and you turn to Hashem for His help; you weep and you pour out your heart intefillah,that’sthe good wine that Hakodosh Boruch Hu wants from you. And sometimes He might press you again and again, and the good grapes will keep on giving good wine.Until finally Hashem will say, “Enough! You achieved exactly what I wanted from you.” And now רצון יראיו יעשה ואת שועתם ישמע ויושיעם – it means that Hakodosh Boruch Hu does the will of those who continue to grow in Awareness of Him, but first they have to cry out to Him.Shavasammeans that they cry out. They cry out! “Oh,” says Hashem, “If that’s the case, if you’re crying out to Me, so you’re becoming Aware of Me. So now, ויושיעם- “Now I’ll help you. Once you cried out, once you perfected yourself in Awareness of Hashem, so now I’ll answer you.”SO IT WASN’T FINE PRINT AFTER ALL!And that leads us to the answer that we were searching for in the beginning of our talk. Hakodosh Boruch Hu had given us His word at thebris bein hab’sarim; He caused Hisshechinato pass through thebesarim, the halves of the animals, and swore to Avraham that He would take us out of Mitzrayim. So how is it that now He could he make our geulahdependenton our crying out to Him? Is not the word of Hashem imperishable?!דבר אלוקינו יקום לעולם – “The word of Hashem stands forever” (Yeshayah 40:8).And so we’ll study again the words of Hashem to Avraham Avinu. ועבדום וענו אותם – “And they will enslave them, and oppress them” (Bereishis 15:13) The word וענו, “and they will oppress,” you must know actually means “and they will cause you to cry out.” The wordani, a poor or afflicted man, actually means “the man that cries out,” from the rootanah, “to speak up.” Thegemara(Bava Basra 10a) tells us that “the poor man is beloved by Hashem,” becausehe cries outto Hashem in his affliction, and he therefore becomes more Aware of Him.And so we have to say that the וענו אותם that Hashem promised us, thetzarosthat Hashem foretold would come upon us in Mitzrayim,were intended specifically for the Bnei Yisroel to reach greater and greater heights of Awareness of Hashem. That was its purpose. And how? By means of the עינוי, by means of them calling out to Him and thereby becoming more Aware of Him and of their dependence on Him.PREPARING US TO BECOME HASHEM’S PEOPLEHashem had brought the afflictions on the Am Yisroelfor the purposeof causing them to cry out to Him. He was preparing us inMitzrayimto become “My people,” and the oppression was His plan of conferring upon us the perfection of crying out to Him. The heavy affliction caused a great and unceasing outcry, which resulted in a heightened Awareness of Hashem. It was this keen Awareness which made them My people,and now the covenant with the Avos could be triggered, and become effective, in causing their deliverance from Mitzrayim.And until they would reach those heights, that achievement of Awareness, then the ועבדום might have been fulfilled, but the וענו אותם – “And I will cause them to oppress you until you cry out to Me,” would still be missing.In reality the entire bondage and affliction were intended to be stimulation towards the outcry to Hashem, and toward the achievement of a greater Awareness of Hashem, which would be demonstrated by their outcry to Him.PHARAOH, HASHEM’S WINEMAKERAnd if we wouldn’t have cried out to Hashem we would have remained there forever. Absolutely we wouldn’t have come out ofMitzrayim.Hashem said, “You have to cry out to Me if you want to get the salvation.” And that’s why Hashem applied pressure. When He saw that they were not crying enough so He told Pharaoh, “Get busy and apply a little more pressure to the wine press.” So all of a sudden Pharaoh comes out with a new decree: “Up till now you were making bricks and I supplied the hay, the straw. Now you go look for the straw by yourself.” That’s a double job. In addition to making bricks all day long, in your lunch hour, in your three minute lunch hour, go and look for straw too. Because את מתכונת הלבנים, the same amount of bricks has to be supplied, the same count of bricks you must continue to give.Now that’s putting pressure on the wine press with a vengeance!Even when they cried out, Hashem pressed more on the good grapes. So the Bnei Yisroel cried out more. And that’s what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted. “Ahh, my children. You remember Me now. You’re aware that I’m in existence – you know about Me now.” It’s like a man who is carrying his child on his shoulders – and this child was so happy riding on high; he thoughthewas the tall one. So he started kicking with his feet, kicking his father in the chest with his feet, he was so happy.So the father saw now that his son was not aware of him anymore, his child was riding on high. So when the father saw a dog coming, he put the child down near the dog, “Oh, Poppy, Poppy, save me.” “Oh,” the father said, “So I’m a Poppy now.”And so even after Hakodosh Boruch Hu took the Bnei Yisroel out from Mitzrayim, He was afraid –afraidfor them-that they might forget about Him. He took them out of Egypt, so it’s all over now. Now they can stop crying. So ויבוא עמלק – And Amalek came (Shemos 17:8). So they cried out to Hashem. “Oh,” Hashem said, “I’m still around, huh?!” Because that’s the arrangement of Hakodosh Boruch Hu in this world. It wasn’t a one-time event, in Mitzrayim. Forever and ever the plan of Hashem is to press the good grapes of the Am Yisroel a little bit more. And our job is to always utilize the opportunities and not make it necessary for the wine press to be pressed even harder.BE SMART AND DON’T WAITLet’s remember always that there aremadreigosandmadreigosin persecution – and wise is the man who will use all of them, even the smallest misfortune, to improve, by calling out to Hashem and becoming more Aware of Him.So you’re standing in your store and no customers are coming in. Why are you wasting the great opportunity?! You have to cry out to Hashem, “Ribono Shel Olam!Please give me some customers!” And those opportunities are endless, because all day long there are bumps in the road. Just because there’s no taskmaster standing over you with a whip, doesn’t mean you can’t use the opportunities oftza’arin your life – the smallest things and the biggest things – to call out to Hashem.YOU ARE STANDING IN A GOLD MINE!I’ll tell you something else. Don’t let yourshemonah esreigo to waste! You mean to say you’re going to spend your years just mumbling yourtefillosevery day by rote and not thinking about Hakadosh Baruch Hu?!?Shemonah esreiis a gold mine. And when you’re standing in a gold mine, even if you grab only one handful you’re already a wealthy man. But you have to know how to grab! כל שאינו אומרה בלשון תחנונים – “If you’re not begging Hashem for mercy, if you’re not crying out and begging, so your tefillah is not a tefillah” (Brachos 29b). When you daven, you have to daven כרש המבקש בפתח, like a poor man begging at the door of a rich man (Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim 89:3). He’s talking here about a man without shoes, he’s hungry and cold, and he’s begging for something to eat. That’s a man who knows how to cry out! And that’s howwe’resupposed to daven.Now we can’t ask too much of you, but when you standshemonah esreiat least onebrachahfrom the gold mine you can choose to sayb’tachanunim. For one thing at least you can cry out to Hashem instead of running through the words. You have a cold? “R’faeinu Hashem, v’neirafei!”Cry out! Trouble withparnasah? Cry out, “Bareich aleinu!” There’s fighting in the house, machlokes with the neighbor?Sim shalom! Don’t just mumble the words to yourself; cry out to Hashem! At least in your mind you should be crying out; it should be a cry of the mind up to Hashem.And sometimes things get even more difficult. And what that means is that Hashem wants even more Awareness from you. When things are going hard withparnasah, so you get desperate – you were hoping this job would work out, or maybe this deal would go through – but nothing is going, you’re at your wit’s end! So what happens? בלית ברירה, you have no choice – your rich uncle won’t take your phone calls, the bank won’t lend you any more money, and welfare won’t pay the bills. So you have to cry out to Hashem. Ohh, that’s ahatzlacha– that’s more important than yourparnasah!LET’S LEARN FROM IYOV’S MISTAKENow, I want to expand this subject a little more. Because once we understand that the purpose of tefillah is Awareness of Hashem, so you’ll see that we’re not talking only abouttefillahwhen somethingalreadyhappened; I’m also talking abouttefillahthat itshouldn’thappen.Tefillah koidem l’tzarah, how important that is! When you falltachanun, you fall on your arm aftershemonahesrei, so it’stachanunim, you’re entreating Hashem for mercy.Rachum v’Chanun– “Hashem, You’re the Merciful One.”השם אל באפך תוכיחני – “Please Hashem, don’t rebuke me in Your anger,” ואל בחמתך תיסרני – Please don’t chastise me in Your wrath.” So you might think that thiskepitelis for Dovid maybe; he was in trouble so he was calling out, that’s why he said those words. No, don’t make that mistake; it’s for us! And we’re saying itso there shouldn’t come trouble. We want to be wise enough to call out to Hashem before thetzaraheven comes.Why waitchalilah? Maybe it’ll be too late then. You remember howIyovwas in trouble,gehokte tzaros. He lost his sons; he lost his daughters. He lost everything; he even lost his health. And he was sitting on a garbage pile; this wealthy man now didn’t have a home at all – he was sitting on the dunghill of the city and he was scratching his wounds. The puss was dripping from his wounds and he was scratching the itching wounds with a piece of broken pottery. Imagine the scene. It’sIyov, the “great richIyov,” sitting on a dunghill, with a piece of a broken pot scratching his itching wounds. He couldn’t even afford a salve to heal himself!So his friends came to visit him, hischaveirimwho knew him in his good days. And one of them said to him as follows: היערוך שועך ולא בצר – Did you set forth your outcrybeforeyou were in distress?” You hear that?! היערוך, “Did you set forth your outcry to Hashem, did you arrange yourtefillos, לא בצר,beforethe trouble came upon you?” (Iyov 36:19).That’s what he said toIyov: “Did you cry out to Hashembeforeyou were in trouble?” It was the good old days, when you could criticize a man who was suffering and he’d listen.THINK AHEADNow, I don’t know what the answer is; we don’t know whatIyovanswered his friends. Maybe he did. But we see what thegemarasays about that:לעולם יקדים אדם תפילה לצרה – “A man should always say his prayersbeforehe needs something, before the troubles set in” (Sanhedrin 44b). That’s a real sign ofyiras Hashem. The real sign of Awareness of Hashem is when you are always aware ofwhat could be– so many things could go wrong in a man’s life – and you cry out to Hashem so that He should save you from them all. Because that’s the system that Hakadosh Baruch Hu set up for mankind. That’s His prescription for the world. So if a man says to Hashem “Hakadosh Baruch Hu, I’m going to cry out to You even when there’s no trouble,” so that man is filling his prescription ofyiras Hashemin the best way possible.And Hashem says, “I’m satisfied – as long as you cry out. But to not cry out at all? I might have to give you a reason to cry out.The last year of his life, tragedy struck. His beloved grandson, Reb Yisroel Miller, was killed when his car collided with a bus while on the way to the Kosel with his bar mitzvah son. The news hit Rav Miller like a hammer blow. Living as he did in close proximity to his grandfather, Sruly had the opportunity to serve hiszeidein various ways and became close to him. From his youngest years, Sruly had learned privately with him. At theshivah, Rav Miller expressed his pain, telling the family, “I feel I should be sittingshivahhere along with you.” When his daughter asked him for a practical lesson the family could derive from the tragedy, Rav Miller responded that he felt that his dailytefillosfor his children and grandchildren were becoming habitual, so he needed to add more fervor when he beseeched Hashem to protect them. He suggested to his children to add morekavanahwhen they recited theberachahofHashkiveinu. (Rav Avigdor Miller – His Life and His Revolution p. 253)And so we say to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, “Hashem, please don’t give me any headaches. And from now on I’m going to ask You as much as I can to save me from headaches.” “Oh,” Hashem says. “That’s a deal that I like. As long as you’re aware of Me; as long as you ask Me every day to protect you from illness, then I don’t have to give you any illness. Of course if you’ll let down your side of the bargain, if you start saying the words only out of habit, so sometimes I’ll have to remind you. Sometimes a little headache I’ll send again so that you should call out to Me with more sincerity.”THE BEST TIME FOR PRAYERAnd so we are never telling Hakadosh Baruch Hu to change His will. Who are we to tell Hashem what’s good for us?! Let’s say, He prescribed a person should have to be in a hospital. Maybe He prescribed a person should have to lose his jobchalilahor have trouble with one of his childrenchasv’shalom. So we say to Hakadosh Baruch Hu beforehand, before he fills the prescription, “May it be Your will that I shouldn’t have to ever go into a hospital – except to visit my wife when she has a baby.”“Yehi ratzon m’lifanechahthat I shouldn’t have any problems with my boss, and that I should have my job for as long as I want it.” “Ribono Shel Olam, please keep my children on thederech hayashar, thederech hatorah.”The best time to cry out to be saved is when everything is well! It’s important for you young people to think about that. You’re healthy?! Cry out to Hakodosh Boruch Hu that you should stay well! Your children are well?! Cry out to Hashem, “Ribono Shel Olam, please! It shouldn’t come upon me or anyone in my family what happened to that man in shul!”Parnasahis good? Cry out to Hakodosh Boruch Hu! Suddenly things couldchas v’shalomhappen. Out of nowhere things happen!When you say ושמור צאתינו ובואינו לחיים טובים ולשלום – “Hashem, guard our going out and our coming back, for good life and peace” (Birkas Kriyas Shema – Maariv) you should be saying it with an outcry. At least in your mind it should be ותעל שועתם אל האלוקים. Who knows what could happen on the road once you walk outside?! On the streets, people are speeding in cars through the streets. And sometimes the car jumps the curb onto the sidewalk where people walk. Who knows what could happen?! You cross by a building and suddenly a facade of the building, it’s been hanging on for twenty-five, thirty years, a big chunk of cement falls loose and starts coming down. It’s very important that you should be a few inches out of the way. And that’s what yourtefillahcan accomplish.I DON’T WANT ANY SPECIALISTSWhen you walk down Ocean Avenue so you see signs. A doctor specializing in this, a different doctor specializing in this, a doctor specializing in something else. It’s no accident that you saw those signs today. Look how many things they specialize in! It’s a reminder to cry out! Look how many problemscould happen. Even one thing wrong and you have to go to a big specialistchas v’shalom.Sometimes you have to go to Manhattan and it costs a load of money. And then some people get a diagnosis, the dreaded diagnosis.Ay yah yay, the terrible news. And now thetzarosbegin. And there are so many things that could go wrong, it’s endless. So cry out nowkoideml’tzarah: “Ribono Shel Olam, please save me from that dreaded disease” – I don’t want to say it, it starts with a C.And when you pass by the shingle hanging on the next building, let it be a reminder of anothertzarahthat you don’t want to come upon you. I recommend that – walk by one of these fancy streets where there are a lot of doctor signs and practice up on crying out to Hashembefore the troubles come!You pass by a big drug store – all kinds of medicines, creams, drops, with long names for different problems. Bargain prices! So cry out, “Hashem, please I should never need this type of medicine for kidney failure.” You know what it means tonothave a working kidney? It’sgehenim! Cry out to Hashem, “Ribono Shel Olam, please keep my kidneys working. I don’t want to be hooked up to a kidney machine; I want to be able to empty my bladder on my own, in my own bathroom, not in a hospital room.”THERE’S NO CHESS IN THIS HOMEEven when you pass a funeral parlor, you should cry out. You know, if you’ll take a walk with me down Ocean Avenue, we’ll pass three separate funeral parlors. Funeral “homes” they call it. They want you to think maybe that they’re inside there playing chess, or reading the newspapers!No, he’s laying in a plain wooden box, that’s all. So every time you pass by the funeral parlor, you can cry out to Hashem, “Please keep me alive. Please give me good health andarichas yomim; I want to stay for a long time outside of this home.” You have to cry out to Hashem with intensity!You know what a tragedy it is when people have to beg Hakodosh Boruch Hu for peaceafterthe war has already begun? I’m talking about domestic peace, peace in the home. You should be crying out to Hashem all the time, during the times of peace – especially when there’s peace. There shouldn’t be any “war” in your household. And that there should be peace in the households of your sons and daughters. You ask Hashem, “Please don’t let my telephone ring with bad news.”Sometimes a daughter calls up,chalilah, she’s having a fight with her husband. She wants to leave him.Ay yah yay,the tragedy of a broken home. Don’t wait! When it’s quiet on all fronts, your daughters are quiet with their husbands. Nobody’s complaining – maybe they are, but not to you. You hear nothing from your children. That’s wonderful, thegreat peace ofshalombayis. And that’s when you should cry out to Hashem, that He should continue to keep peace in your home and the homes of your children.HASHEM, SAVE ME FROM BLINKING TOO MUCHAnd if you don’t have any litigation with your neighbors, that’s the best time todaven. If you never went through that, you’re a lucky man, and you want to keep it that way. Troublewith neighbors, fighting and recriminations, going to court; it’s alltzaros. A man used to come in here. He used to come here and he was blinking all the time. I saw that the man was very nervous. And so I spoke to him and he told me he has constant legal trouble with neighbors. Jewish neighbors. About the driveway, about this and about that,and it got so acute that he was dragged into the court again and again. That’stzaros.And so we ask Hakadosh Baruch Hu,שלום רב על ישראלעמך תשים – “Great peace in every area of our lives you should put upon us.”“Please Hashem. There should be peace inside of our stomachs. Our stomach shouldn’t complain, shouldn’t growl, shouldn’t groan. Our nerves shouldn’t complain, our head shouldn’t complain.” The body has a lot to say, and when the body is quiet and it’s peace all throughout the body, people aren’t grateful. You don’t realize how lucky you are. Your brain is getting good messages from all parts of the body. Constantly. You’re not aware of the messages. When do you become aware? When even once the messages are not good. Even if one pinprick somewhere on your skin is taking place, it’s relayed to your brain and you’re acutely aware of it. And so, when nothing is happening, it’sshalom. It’s complete tranquility on all fronts. From your toes to the scalp of your head, it’s quiet on all fronts.And when all is quiet, that’s the best opportunity to cry out to Hashem that it should remain quiet.THINK ABOUT WHAT COULD HAPPEN TO YOUOnly that when you call out to Hashem before thetzarah,it has to be with the same intensity as during atzarah. The same Awareness of Hashem you have to accomplish in the good times! If you would think even a little bit about whattzarosdoes to a person, hospitals, and bills, and litigation, and so much pain and anguish! Cry out to Hakodosh Boruch Hu that it shouldn’t happen! At all times you should be crying out.And don’t think it’s excessive what I’m telling you now. You can never ask enough for Hashem to help you, becauseyou can never be too Aware of Hashem! Because what we’ve learned from ourparshais thatwe’re in this world primarily to become Aware of Hashem.That’s our perfection! The more we call out to Him the more ourneshamosare being purified.And therefore, usually we have two choices: You can become Aware of Him while He’s still giving you good things – while you’re healthy, while your wife and children are healthy, while you still haveparnasah, and so on and so forth – by crying out to Him and entreating Him that everything should remain as is; that’s the best way to squeeze out from the good grapes the wine of Awareness of Hashem.THANK YOU FOR ALL THE TROUBLES!However, in this world, Hakodosh Boruch Hu will always press the good grapes of theAm Yisroellike He did inMitzrayim; there’s always some more wine of Awareness to squeeze from you that you haven’tkvetchedout on your own. And so Hashem says, “It pays to give you trouble because the gain, the benefit for you when you’re thinking about Me, is the greatest of benefits. And when you come to the Next World, you’ll say, אודך השם כי אנפת בי – “I thank You Hashem for causing me that pain, for giving me thistza’aror thattza’ar, because it made me call out to You. And it was the crying out in that world that gave me the greatest success, Awareness of You, Hashem, so that I can bask forever in the Presence of Yourshechinah.” HAVE A WONDERFUL SHABBOS See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Hashem’s Bitter MedicineIT’S TIME TO GO HOME!In Parshas Va’eira the seeds of our redemption from Mitzrayimfinally begin to take root and sprout. The time has come for the ten makkos, the great retribution upon Pharaoh and his slavemaster people, and for the Am Yisroel to finally make their exit from the long and arduous servitude in the ארץ לא להם, the land not their own. The geulah of the Am Yisroel, the fulfillment of ואחרי כן יצאו ברכוש גדול, had finally arrived.And on what basis was the Am Yisroel going to be taken out of Mitzrayim now? That we all know; it was the bris bein hab’sarim, the famous covenant that Hashem had made with Avraham centuries earlier. You remember when Avraham asked Hakodosh Boruch Hu: במה אדע כי אירשנה – “How do I know that the land will be mine”? (Bereishis 15:8). “Give me some guarantee,” begged Avraham, “a guarantee that I’m going to receive the land; that my progeny will one day inherit this land.” Avraham was worried; “Who knows? Maybe our merit won’t be sufficient. Maybe someday You’ll be unpleased with us. I want an unbreakable covenant with You!” So Hakadosh Baruch Hu told him then, “Take three calves, three goats and three rams, so that you and I can enter into a covenant.” And what did Avraham do? He took these animals and cut them in half and set the parts opposite each other.That was the practice in those days. It says that in Yirmiyahu (34:19). When you wanted to enter a covenant, when you wanted to commit yourself to a course of action with an unbreakable promise, you would divide an animal and pass between its pieces as a sign of your commitment to uphold the deal.HAKODOSH BORUCH HU SEALS THE DEALSo what happened? Hakadosh Baruch Hu sent down His Presence, His glory, in the form of a fiery furnace to “seal the deal.” Suddenly a great dread and a darkness fell upon the scene. And Avraham witnessed how this fiery furnace – it was the Presence of Hashem – marched between the offerings. והנה תנור עשן ולפיד אש אשר עבר בין הגזרים האלה – “And behold, a smoking furnace and a torch of fire passed through the pieces” (ibid. 15:17).That was the bris bein hab’sarim, when Hakodosh Boruch Hu came down and entered into a covenant with Avraham. ביום ההוא כרת השם את אברהם ברית – “On that day Hashem made a covenant with Avraham” (ibid. 15:18). It’s something unequaled in the history of our people, even among the greatest prophets, that such a covenant was made. That Hakodosh Boruch Hu should come down and “shake hands” to close the deal?! It’s unheard of in all of history.And what did Hakodosh Boruch Hu tell Avraham at that moment? ידע תדע כי גר יהיה זרעך בארץ לא להם – “Know with certainty that your offspring will be sojourners in a land not their own, ועבדום וענו אותם… ואחרי כן יצאו ברכוש גדול- “And they will enslave them, and oppress them… and afterwards they shall leave with great possessions… to your descendants I have given this land” (ibid. 15:13-18). So it was an imperishable promise that Hakadosh Baruch Hu had made, that He would stand by His people and that He would eventually take them out of Mitzrayim and bring them to the land that He had promised to them.THE TIME FINALLY COMESAnd now, in the beginning of our parsha, Hakodosh Boruch Hu is telling Moshe to let His people know that the time has come. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is invoking that great promise He had made centuries before. וגם הקימותי את בריתי איתם לתת להם את ארץ כנען – “I am upholding My covenant that I made for them to give them Eretz Canaan” (Va’eira 6:4). “The time has come for Me to fulfill My promise to the Bnei Yisroel,” says Hashem, והבאתי אתכם אל הארץ אשר נשאתי את ידי לתת אותה – “And I will bring you to the land which I raised up My hand to give it to you” (ibid. 6:8).But it’s very important that we should listen to the next verse, the possuk after Hashem invokes the great promise: וגם הקימותי את בריתי – “And not only am I upholding the covenant I made with Avraham,” but also – now listen to these words: וגם אני שמעתי את נאקת בני ישראל אשר מצרים מעבידים אותם – and I also heard the outcry of the Bnei Yisroel, ואזכור את בריתי – “And therefore, I am now reminded of My promise to them” (ibid. 6:5). What do we see here? That despite the covenant, despite the oath that had to be fulfilled – it’s the word of Hashem after all so there’s no way that He would fail to fulfill it – despite all that, Hakodosh Boruch Hu waiteduntil he heard their outcry.THE GREAT OUTCRYAnd not just one outcry; they cried out for a long time. It’s repeated again and again: “I have heard their crying out” (ibid. 3:7), “Their crying out has come before Me” (ibid. 3:9), “I have heard the groaning outcry of Bnei Yisroel.” And it was only when He heard enough outcries from them, וגם שמעתי את נאקת בני ישראל, it was only then that finally Hakodosh Boruch Hu decided to fulfill His covenant with them. And that’s something we say every day in the siddur ועונה לעמו ישראל בעת שועם אליו – “Hashem answers His people Yisroel, at the time that they cry out to Him.” It doesn’t say merely that He hastens to their succor; that He is at hand to help them. It doesn’t say that. It says v’oneh, “He is ready to answer them.” When?B’eis shav’ameilav, at the time that they cry out. Shav’am means “a great outcry.” ואת שועתם ישמע – “He hears their outcries,” ויושיעם – “And then He rescues them” (Tehillim 145:19). So we see that it’s not sufficient merely to mumble a little prayer. And even to cry out once or twice is not enough. It’s important to make a big outcry to Hashem, and to do it again and again.DID WE MISS THE FINE PRINT?And actually that’s a very big question. Because why didHashem need our outcry? He had already raised His hand and swore that He would take us out from Mitzrayim! So why is the crying out to Him for help under the heavy weight of oppression so important? And even more remarkable, the words of the possuk imply that our redemption was dependent on our crying out: ועתה הנה צעקת בני ישראל באה אלי…ועתה לכה ואשלחך אל פרעה והוצא את עמי בני ישראל ממצרים – “The outcry of BneiYisroel has come to Me…And now I will send you to Pharaoh and take out My nation from Mitzrayim” (ibid. 3:9-10). Even the great covenant of the bris bein hab’sarim, the inviolate word of Hashem was dependenton the Am Yisroel’s entreaties, on their crying out to Hashem. And that’s very strange because that wasn’t part of the bris bein hab’sarim; “crying out” wasn’t part of the deal that we “signed!”But first, there’s a fundamental question we have to ask about the entire subject of tefillah, of praying for something. We introduce many of our prayers with the words yehi ratzon – “May it be Your will, Hashem…” For instance, suppose somebody is in the midst of shemonah esrei and he remembers there’s somebody ill, chalilah, in the family. Or it’s a person he knows and he wants to pray for him. So he adds these words: יהי רצון מלפניך השם אלוקינו ואלוקי אבותינו שתשלח מהרה רפואה שלימה מן השמים רפואת הנפש ורפואת הגוף – “It should be Your will Hashem, our G-d and the G-d of our fathers, that You should send speedily a complete recovery from heaven, a recovery of the soul and recovery of the body,” that means mentally and physically. And we mention the person, his name, so that he should be healed among all the other cholei Yisroel. Now, we are saying yehi ratzon, it should be Your will. That’s how we introduce the tefillah.ILLNESS IS ALSO CHESSED HASHEMNow we have to know that whatever “happens” to a person is Hashem’s will. Nobody is sick because of accident. It’s always Hashem’s will. Of course, sometimes a man can induce the illness by his own carelessness, but nevertheless it’s Hashem’s will. That’s his punishment for being negligent with his care, with his health, or his safety. If a man is careless, he’s being punished by Hashem. No matter what, it’s Hashem’s will that decreed that this man should be ill.And when Hakadosh Baruch Hu makes a decree like that, we have a principle, a fundamental principle called kol orchos Hashem chesed v’emes – all the ways of Hashem are kindliness and truth (Tehillim 25:10). צדיק השם בכל דרכיו – “Hashem is righteous in all His ways,” וחסיד בכל מעשיו – ”And He is kindly in all His acts.” (Ibid. 145:17) Now, when you come in here you have to divest yourself of outside attitudes. Because here we want to study Torah attitudes; and the truth of the matter is that Hakadosh Baruch Hu does everything for kindly purposes. Everything! And if it was His will that this man should be ill, then it must be for this man’s benefit. What the most important benefit is, we’ll study soon, but it’s out of the question that it shouldn’t be a kindliness. It certainly is for the person’s benefit.“HASHEM, CAN I GET A SECOND OPINION?”So here it was Hakadosh Baruch Hu’s ratzon to give this man the benefit of becoming sick. So the question arises, where do we get the audacity to ask Hashem to change His will? Suppose a man goes to a physician and the physician writes a prescription for some medication, let’s say it’s a foul tasting medication. Would the man say to the physician, יהי רצון מלפניך – “It should be your will not to give me this prescription. I want to get along without the prescription.”? Only a meshugeneh would say such a thing! The doctor studied for years and years, his profession is medicine, his knowledge and experience is medicine. He’s the expert here. And you’re just an obstinate fellow, maybe ignorant too. Either the expense is too much for you, or maybe you don’t like the taste of the medicine. So you don’t want to bother with it. It’s a meshugas to even ask such a thing!And here is Hakadosh Baruch Hu, the great Healer, and He’s prescribing for a man certain pills – whether the pills are troubles, or headaches, or pains, or illness – big and small. Whatever it is, it’s certainly pills. There’s no question that Hashem is benefitting the man by giving him these troubles, these misfortunes, pains or illnesses. So how can a man say to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, “I beg of you, yehi ratzon, that You should change the prescription, or not give me the prescription at all?” That’s a big question that needs to be answered. And actually that’s what all our bakashosseem to be – an attempt to change the will of Hashem.WHY ALL THE TURBULENCE?And another question – just as important and maybe even more perplexing: What’s Hashem’s purpose in causing any disturbance, either in a man’s health or in his family life or in his business? It’s a question we want to ask of Him: “Why do You send anything to ruffle the tranquility of our lives?” After all, like we just said, Hashem’s ways are perfect, and He is kindly in all of His deeds. That’s a truism. So why is it that we see sometimes that Hashem does things that seem to be contradictory to these principles of kindliness?Actually it’s a question that all thinking men ask one time or another. Because chalilahsomething happens; sometimes it happens. Here’s a man who’s successful, and all of a sudden a freak misfortune happens to him and unfortunately he’s in the hospital. It’s not an accident, it’s Hashem! So he’s thinking, “Why did this happen to me? Before everything was going smoothly with me; boruch Hashem I was a good frum Jew more or less. Why did Hashem do this?”THE GREATEST CHESED!And the answer is as follows: There is a great kindliness that’s most paramount, more important than all the chassodim in the world – more important than parnasah, more important than shalom bayis, and good health. And that’s the kindliness called yiras Hashem. Yiras Hashem – which means to be Aware of Hashem, that’s the most important thing in your life. Now, this might sound queer to the ears of those who live with materialism, but it’s a fundamental principle that we must get into our heads. We are here to gain Awareness of Hashem.Now, if that’s the purpose, then what a tragedy it is when people let their lives go by and fail to utilize the opportunities to recognize Hashem. You forgot about Him?! To forget Hashem is the worst ruination in life! To live without awareness is not a life worth living!So Hashem sees that you’re wasting your life – of course you’re a frum person – you’re doing mitzvos, you’re ultra-ultra Orthodox. But that’s not enough for Hashem. He doesn’t want “Orthodox;” He wants to squeeze greatness out of you! He wants to save you so that your life shouldn’t be wasted. Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants to give you the gift of being Aware of Him.HASHEM: A ONE DAY HEADACHE FOR CHAIMSo what does Hashem do? He orders a prescription; one headache. Prescribed: Chaim ben Dovid, one headache, for one day. It’s a pill. And so one morning you wake up with a headache. And what’s the purpose of that prescription? The purpose of the headache is so that you should call out to Him and achieve the perfection of even a little more awareness of Hashem. And when you do that, you’re turning your migraine into diamonds!All the events in a man’s life are being manipulated by Hakadosh Boruch Hu; He puts disturbances in your life so you’ll call out to Him. And that is the chief purpose of every mishap in your life; to cause you to cry out for aid from Hashem and to thereby become more aware of Him. The outcry that comes from desperation, from unrequited needs and from anguished hopes for the future, causes Awareness of Hashem’s Presence, and it is that Awareness that is the true achievement, the chief purpose of Man’s existence in this life.“BETTER ANGER THAN LAUGHTER”And now we have an answer to the age old question of why “bad” things happen to good people: Because Awareness of Hashem is the greatest chesedthat Hashem can give man, and most often it is the tzaros, and the crying out to Hashem it encourages, that brings this Awareness. When you’re subject to adversity, that’s the great opportunity to be makirHakodosh Boruch Hu, to recognize Hashem. When a man finds himself subject to mishaps and misfortunes – he needs things, so it’s much easier for him to raise his eyes to Hakadosh Boruch Hu and ask for it; and that is the great gift of Awareness of Hashem.And therefore, טוב כעס משחוק – Better anger than laughter” (Koheles 7:3). Now we know that’s not true. Anger is no good; it’s a very big mistake to get angry. But there is one anger that is good – and that’s Hashem’s anger. טוב כעס שכועס הקדוש ברוך הוא על הצדיקים – That’s good. When Hashem gets angry at you, that’s tov, that’s good for you. Don’t ask for it though. You ask for good times. הרחב פיך ואמלאהו, ask Him for good times and appreciate what He’s giving you. But still, “when Hashem shows his anger to the tzadikim, that’s better than the smiling Hashem does on the reshaim.” (Shabbos 30b) If there ever happened that a tzadik, chalilah had a setback, a misfortune, so you must know, and he must know, that it’s a stroke of good fortune. Now I know that it’s very hard to accept, but we have to learn that and understand that it’s a chesed gadol when that happens to him. Tov, it’s better, it’s a greater hatzlacha than had Hashem smiled.ברוע פנים ייטב לב, When the face is sad then the heart becomes better (ibid.). Now it doesn’t mean you should be sad and sour faced. On the contrary – if you’re sad faced it shows that you don’t appreciate what Hashem is doing for you. You don’t appreciate that things are tov. But sometimes a man against his will is sad because some misfortune has happened to him, so he should know however that ייטב לב, his neshama is improving.DON’T TAKE THE WRONG MEDICINESo when Hashem sends you a headache, you have to know that it was for a great purpose. And if you take an aspirin, and after one day the headache goes away, and you never cried out to Hashem, so you wasted the prescription. You’ve wasted an opportunity! The purpose was for you to become Aware of Hashem, and you wasted the glorious opportunity.And so when we ask Hashem “Yehi ratzon, let it be Your will that I be healed,” we are not telling Hakadosh Baruch Hu to change His will. Yehi ratzonmeans this: “Hashem, I know that what You want from me is that I should become more Aware of You. And that’s what I’m doing now; I’m calling out to you. Let it be Your will that I can get better now – or my tzaarshould be removed, whatever it is you’re asking for – becauseI’m calling out to You. I’m becoming more aware of You. Whatever trouble You gave me, can go away now because I’ve achieved the purpose.”WHEN HASHEM DOESN’T ANSWERNow the truth is that sometimes you cry out to Hashem and He doesn’t answer. A man called me on the telephone and he tells me: He’s crying out and crying out, and there’s no answer. He wants to know what he’s supposed to think.He’s supposed to think that Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants him to cry out even more. And suppose he cries out even more – let’s say a man is on his deathbed, he’s an old man, 119 years old, he can’t expect to live much more. But still he cries out on his deathbed. Did he waste his time? No! He achieved maybe in his last minutes more than he did in his whole life.119 YEARS IS NOT ENOUGH?!An old man is crying out on his deathbed, he says “Oh, Hashem, heal me!” “Oh it’s silly,” you’ll say. The bystanders think it’s ridiculous. “You want to be healed?! How long do you want to hang around here?! The children want to take over the business already, they want the “old man” out of the way already. 119 years is not enough?! No, for him it’s not enough. When you’re on your deathbed it’s never enough. He wants to live a thousand years. Why shouldn’t he? He has a great grandfather who lived almost a thousand years. Mesushelach lived almost a thousand years so why can’t he?So he’s crying out to Hashem. Why not? He has the right to cry out. And when he finally takes his last breath don’t think he didn’t accomplish with the crying out. He accomplished plenty. The crying out is the purpose.That’s the biggest achievement there is. So nobody is ever frustrated in his davenen when he’s not answered – because he has gained the most important thing, more Awareness of Hashem.DISCOVERING WINEMAKINGIt’s like a man who has a very good vineyard. He has blue-blooded grapes, good quality grapes “with a yichus, with a pedigree.” So when he takes his grapes to the wine press and he presses out the wine, it’s a pity to take that mash, the residue, and throw it away.So he decides to press it a little more; he takes that mash and presses it some more. He puts them on the wine press and gives a kvetch. And a little more good wine squirts out. But it’s not enough for him. He says, “I can’t leave any wine inside the peel. Maybe there’s some more good wine in there. So he puts it under the press again and puts some more pressure to get out the last drop.Now you have to know that weare the good grapes and Hashem wants to press from us all the yiras Hashem that He could get – for our own benefit. He wants to squeeze out some more “good wine of Awareness” from us because from good grapes you try to squeeze out all that you can.THE SOUL OF GOOD GRAPESAnd so Hakodosh Boruch Hu is pressing us with all kinds of pressure. One pressure might be trouble with parnasa, another might be trouble with your children, or trouble having children, chas v’shalom. And when you cry out to Hashem, that’s the good wine, the good wine of Awareness of Hashem dripping from the good grapes of your neshamah. When your heart is torn with anguish, and you turn to Hashem for His help; you weep and you pour out your heart in tefillah, that’s the good wine that Hakodosh Boruch Hu wants from you. And sometimes He might press you again and again, and the good grapes will keep on giving good wine.Until finally Hashem will say, “Enough! You achieved exactly what I wanted from you.” And now רצון יראיו יעשה ואת שועתם ישמע ויושיעם – it means that Hakodosh Boruch Hu does the will of those who continue to grow in Awareness of Him, but first they have to cry out to Him. Shavasam means that they cry out. They cry out! “Oh,” says Hashem, “If that’s the case, if you’re crying out to Me, so you’re becoming Aware of Me. So now, ויושיעם- “Now I’ll help you. Once you cried out, once you perfected yourself in Awareness of Hashem, so now I’ll answer you.”SO IT WASN’T FINE PRINT AFTER ALL!And that leads us to the answer that we were searching for in the beginning of our talk. Hakodosh Boruch Hu had given us His word at the bris bein hab’sarim; He caused His shechina to pass through the besarim, the halves of the animals, and swore to Avraham that He would take us out of Mitzrayim. So how is it that now He could he make our geulah dependent on our crying out to Him? Is not the word of Hashem imperishable?!דבר אלוקינו יקום לעולם – “The word of Hashem stands forever” (Yeshayah 40:8).And so we’ll study again the words of Hashem to Avraham Avinu. ועבדום וענו אותם – “And they will enslave them, and oppress them” (Bereishis 15:13) The word וענו, “and they will oppress,” you must know actually means “and they will cause you to cry out.” The word ani, a poor or afflicted man, actually means “the man that cries out,” from the root anah, “to speak up.” The gemara (Bava Basra 10a) tells us that “the poor man is beloved by Hashem,” because he cries out to Hashem in his affliction, and he therefore becomes more Aware of Him.And so we have to say that the וענו אותם that Hashem promised us, the tzaros that Hashem foretold would come upon us in Mitzrayim, were intended specifically for the Bnei Yisroel to reach greater and greater heights of Awareness of Hashem. That was its purpose. And how? By means of the עינוי, by means of them calling out to Him and thereby becoming more Aware of Him and of their dependence on Him.PREPARING US TO BECOME HASHEM’S PEOPLEHashem had brought the afflictions on the Am Yisroel for the purpose of causing them to cry out to Him. He was preparing us in Mitzrayim to become “My people,” and the oppression was His plan of conferring upon us the perfection of crying out to Him. The heavy affliction caused a great and unceasing outcry, which resulted in a heightened Awareness of Hashem. It was this keen Awareness which made them My people, and now the covenant with the Avos could be triggered, and become effective, in causing their deliverance from Mitzrayim.And until they would reach those heights, that achievement of Awareness, then the ועבדום might have been fulfilled, but the וענו אותם – “And I will cause them to oppress you until you cry out to Me,” would still be missing. In reality the entire bondage and affliction were intended to be stimulation towards the outcry to Hashem, and toward the achievement of a greater Awareness of Hashem, which would be demonstrated by their outcry to Him.PHARAOH, HASHEM’S WINEMAKERAnd if we wouldn’t have cried out to Hashem we would have remained there forever. Absolutely we wouldn’t have come out of Mitzrayim. Hashem said, “You have to cry out to Me if you want to get the salvation.” And that’s why Hashem applied pressure. When He saw that they were not crying enough so He told Pharaoh, “Get busy and apply a little more pressure to the wine press.” So all of a sudden Pharaoh comes out with a new decree: “Up till now you were making bricks and I supplied the hay, the straw. Now you go look for the straw by yourself.” That’s a double job. In addition to making bricks all day long, in your lunch hour, in your three minute lunch hour, go and look for straw too. Because את מתכונת הלבנים, the same amount of bricks has to be supplied, the same count of bricks you must continue to give.Now that’s putting pressure on the wine press with a vengeance! Even when they cried out, Hashem pressed more on the good grapes. So the Bnei Yisroel cried out more. And that’s what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted. “Ahh, my children. You remember Me now. You’re aware that I’m in existence – you know about Me now.” It’s like a man who is carrying his child on his shoulders – and this child was so happy riding on high; he thought he was the tall one. So he started kicking with his feet, kicking his father in the chest with his feet, he was so happy.So the father saw now that his son was not aware of him anymore, his child was riding on high. So when the father saw a dog coming, he put the child down near the dog, “Oh, Poppy, Poppy, save me.” “Oh,” the father said, “So I’m a Poppy now.”And so even after Hakodosh Boruch Hu took the Bnei Yisroel out from Mitzrayim, He was afraid – afraid for them -that they might forget about Him. He took them out of Egypt, so it’s all over now. Now they can stop crying. So ויבוא עמלק – And Amalek came (Shemos 17:8). So they cried out to Hashem. “Oh,” Hashem said, “I’m still around, huh?!” Because that’s the arrangement of Hakodosh Boruch Hu in this world. It wasn’t a one-time event, in Mitzrayim. Forever and ever the plan of Hashem is to press the good grapes of the Am Yisroel a little bit more. And our job is to always utilize the opportunities and not make it necessary for the wine press to be pressed even harder.BE SMART AND DON’T WAITLet’s remember always that there are madreigos and madreigos in persecution – and wise is the man who will use all of them, even the smallest misfortune, to improve, by calling out to Hashem and becoming more Aware of Him.So you’re standing in your store and no customers are coming in. Why are you wasting the great opportunity?! You have to cry out to Hashem, “Ribono Shel Olam!Please give me some customers!” And those opportunities are endless, because all day long there are bumps in the road. Just because there’s no taskmaster standing over you with a whip, doesn’t mean you can’t use the opportunities of tza’ar in your life – the smallest things and the biggest things – to call out to Hashem.YOU ARE STANDING IN A GOLD MINE!I’ll tell you something else. Don’t let your shemonah esrei go to waste! You mean to say you’re going to spend your years just mumbling your tefillos every day by rote and not thinking about Hakadosh Baruch Hu?!? Shemonah esrei is a gold mine. And when you’re standing in a gold mine, even if you grab only one handful you’re already a wealthy man. But you have to know how to grab! כל שאינו אומרה בלשון תחנונים – “If you’re not begging Hashem for mercy, if you’re not crying out and begging, so your tefillah is not a tefillah” (Brachos 29b). When you daven, you have to daven כרש המבקש בפתח, like a poor man begging at the door of a rich man (Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim 89:3). He’s talking here about a man without shoes, he’s hungry and cold, and he’s begging for something to eat. That’s a man who knows how to cry out! And that’s how we’resupposed to daven.Now we can’t ask too much of you, but when you stand shemonah esrei at least one brachah from the gold mine you can choose to say b’tachanunim. For one thing at least you can cry out to Hashem instead of running through the words. You have a cold? “R’faeinu Hashem, v’neirafei!” Cry out! Trouble with parnasah? Cry out, “Bareich aleinu!” There’s fighting in the house, machlokes with the neighbor? Sim shalom! Don’t just mumble the words to yourself; cry out to Hashem! At least in your mind you should be crying out; it should be a cry of the mind up to Hashem.And sometimes things get even more difficult. And what that means is that Hashem wants even more Awareness from you. When things are going hard with parnasah, so you get desperate – you were hoping this job would work out, or maybe this deal would go through – but nothing is going, you’re at your wit’s end! So what happens? בלית ברירה, you have no choice – your rich uncle won’t take your phone calls, the bank won’t lend you any more money, and welfare won’t pay the bills. So you have to cry out to Hashem. Ohh, that’s a hatzlacha – that’s more important than your parnasah!LET’S LEARN FROM IYOV’S MISTAKENow, I want to expand this subject a little more. Because once we understand that the purpose of tefillah is Awareness of Hashem, so you’ll see that we’re not talking only about tefillah when something alreadyhappened; I’m also talking about tefillah that it shouldn’t happen. Tefillah koidem l’tzarah, how important that is! When you fall tachanun, you fall on your arm after shemonah esrei, so it’s tachanunim, you’re entreating Hashem for mercy. Rachum v’Chanun – “Hashem, You’re the Merciful One.” השם אל באפך תוכיחני – “Please Hashem, don’t rebuke me in Your anger,” ואל בחמתך תיסרני – Please don’t chastise me in Your wrath.” So you might think that this kepitel is for Dovid maybe; he was in trouble so he was calling out, that’s why he said those words. No, don’t make that mistake; it’s for us! And we’re saying it so there shouldn’t come trouble. We want to be wise enough to call out to Hashem before the tzaraheven comes.Why wait chalilah? Maybe it’ll be too late then. You remember how Iyov was in trouble, gehokte tzaros. He lost his sons; he lost his daughters. He lost everything; he even lost his health. And he was sitting on a garbage pile; this wealthy man now didn’t have a home at all – he was sitting on the dunghill of the city and he was scratching his wounds. The puss was dripping from his wounds and he was scratching the itching wounds with a piece of broken pottery. Imagine the scene. It’s Iyov, the “great rich Iyov,” sitting on a dunghill, with a piece of a broken pot scratching his itching wounds. He couldn’t even afford a salve to heal himself!So his friends came to visit him, his chaveirim who knew him in his good days. And one of them said to him as follows: היערוך שועך ולא בצר – Did you set forth your outcry before you were in distress?” You hear that?! היערוך, “Did you set forth your outcry to Hashem, did you arrange your tefillos, לא בצר, before the trouble came upon you?” (Iyov 36:19).That’s what he said to Iyov: “Did you cry out to Hashem before you were in trouble?” It was the good old days, when you could criticize a man who was suffering and he’d listen.THINK AHEADNow, I don’t know what the answer is; we don’t know what Iyov answered his friends. Maybe he did. But we see what the gemara says about that: לעולם יקדים אדם תפילה לצרה – “A man should always say his prayers before he needs something, before the troubles set in” (Sanhedrin 44b). That’s a real sign of yiras Hashem. The real sign of Awareness of Hashem is when you are always aware of what could be – so many things could go wrong in a man’s life – and you cry out to Hashem so that He should save you from them all. Because that’s the system that Hakadosh Baruch Hu set up for mankind. That’s His prescription for the world. So if a man says to Hashem “Hakadosh Baruch Hu, I’m going to cry out to You even when there’s no trouble,” so that man is filling his prescription of yiras Hashem in the best way possible. And Hashem says, “I’m satisfied – as long as you cry out. But to not cry out at all? I might have to give you a reason to cry out.The last year of his life, tragedy struck. His beloved grandson, Reb Yisroel Miller, was killed when his car collided with a bus while on the way to the Kosel with his bar mitzvah son. The news hit Rav Miller like a hammer blow. Living as he did in close proximity to his grandfather, Sruly had the opportunity to serve his zeide in various ways and became close to him. From his youngest years, Sruly had learned privately with him. At the shivah, Rav Miller expressed his pain, telling the family, “I feel I should be sitting shivah here along with you.” When his daughter asked him for a practical lesson the family could derive from the tragedy, Rav Miller responded that he felt that his daily tefillos for his children and grandchildren were becoming habitual, so he needed to add more fervor when he beseeched Hashem to protect them. He suggested to his children to add more kavanah when they recited the berachah of Hashkiveinu. (Rav Avigdor Miller – His Life and His Revolution p. 253)And so we say to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, “Hashem, please don’t give me any headaches. And from now on I’m going to ask You as much as I can to save me from headaches.” “Oh,” Hashem says. “That’s a deal that I like. As long as you’re aware of Me; as long as you ask Me every day to protect you from illness, then I don’t have to give you any illness. Of course if you’ll let down your side of the bargain, if you start saying the words only out of habit, so sometimes I’ll have to remind you. Sometimes a little headache I’ll send again so that you should call out to Me with more sincerity.”THE BEST TIME FOR PRAYERAnd so we are never telling Hakadosh Baruch Hu to change His will. Who are we to tell Hashem what’s good for us?! Let’s say, He prescribed a person should have to be in a hospital. Maybe He prescribed a person should have to lose his job chalilah or have trouble with one of his children chasv’shalom. So we say to Hakadosh Baruch Hu beforehand, before he fills the prescription, “May it be Your will that I shouldn’t have to ever go into a hospital – except to visit my wife when she has a baby.” “Yehi ratzon m’lifanechah that I shouldn’t have any problems with my boss, and that I should have my job for as long as I want it.” “Ribono Shel Olam, please keep my children on the derech hayashar, the derech hatorah.”The best time to cry out to be saved is when everything is well ! It’s important for you young people to think about that. You’re healthy?! Cry out to Hakodosh Boruch Hu that you should stay well! Your children are well?! Cry out to Hashem, “Ribono Shel Olam, please! It shouldn’t come upon me or anyone in my family what happened to that man in shul!” Parnasah is good? Cry out to Hakodosh Boruch Hu! Suddenly things could chas v’shalom happen. Out of nowhere things happen!When you say ושמור צאתינו ובואינו לחיים טובים ולשלום – “Hashem, guard our going out and our coming back, for good life and peace” (Birkas Kriyas Shema – Maariv) you should be saying it with an outcry. At least in your mind it should be ותעל שועתם אל האלוקים. Who knows what could happen on the road once you walk outside?! On the streets, people are speeding in cars through the streets. And sometimes the car jumps the curb onto the sidewalk where people walk. Who knows what could happen?! You cross by a building and suddenly a facade of the building, it’s been hanging on for twenty-five, thirty years, a big chunk of cement falls loose and starts coming down. It’s very important that you should be a few inches out of the way. And that’s what your tefillah can accomplish.I DON’T WANT ANY SPECIALISTSWhen you walk down Ocean Avenue so you see signs. A doctor specializing in this, a different doctor specializing in this, a doctor specializing in something else. It’s no accident that you saw those signs today. Look how many things they specialize in! It’s a reminder to cry out! Look how many problems could happen. Even one thing wrong and you have to go to a big specialist chas v’shalom. Sometimes you have to go to Manhattan and it costs a load of money. And then some people get a diagnosis, the dreaded diagnosis. Ay yah yay, the terrible news. And now the tzaros begin. And there are so many things that could go wrong, it’s endless. So cry out now koidem l’tzarah: “Ribono Shel Olam, please save me from that dreaded disease” – I don’t want to say it, it starts with a C.And when you pass by the shingle hanging on the next building, let it be a reminder of another tzarah that you don’t want to come upon you. I recommend that – walk by one of these fancy streets where there are a lot of doctor signs and practice up on crying out to Hashem before the troubles come!You pass by a big drug store – all kinds of medicines, creams, drops, with long names for different problems. Bargain prices! So cry out, “Hashem, please I should never need this type of medicine for kidney failure.” You know what it means to not have a working kidney? It’s gehenim! Cry out to Hashem, “Ribono Shel Olam, please keep my kidneys working. I don’t want to be hooked up to a kidney machine; I want to be able to empty my bladder on my own, in my own bathroom, not in a hospital room.”THERE’S NO CHESS IN THIS HOMEEven when you pass a funeral parlor, you should cry out. You know, if you’ll take a walk with me down Ocean Avenue, we’ll pass three separate funeral parlors. Funeral “homes” they call it. They want you to think maybe that they’re inside there playing chess, or reading the newspapers! No, he’s laying in a plain wooden box, that’s all. So every time you pass by the funeral parlor, you can cry out to Hashem, “Please keep me alive. Please give me good health and arichas yomim; I want to stay for a long time outside of this home.” You have to cry out to Hashem with intensity!You know what a tragedy it is when people have to beg Hakodosh Boruch Hu for peace after the war has already begun? I’m talking about domestic peace, peace in the home. You should be crying out to Hashem all the time, during the times of peace – especially when there’s peace. There shouldn’t be any “war” in your household. And that there should be peace in the households of your sons and daughters. You ask Hashem, “Please don’t let my telephone ring with bad news.” Sometimes a daughter calls up, chalilah, she’s having a fight with her husband. She wants to leave him. Ay yah yay, the tragedy of a broken home. Don’t wait! When it’s quiet on all fronts, your daughters are quiet with their husbands. Nobody’s complaining – maybe they are, but not to you. You hear nothing from your children. That’s wonderful, the great peace of shalom bayis. And that’s when you should cry out to Hashem, that He should continue to keep peace in your home and the homes of your children.HASHEM, SAVE ME FROM BLINKING TOO MUCHAnd if you don’t have any litigation with your neighbors, that’s the best time to daven. If you never went through that, you’re a lucky man, and you want to keep it that way. Trouble with neighbors, fighting and recriminations, going to court; it’s all tzaros. A man used to come in here. He used to come here and he was blinking all the time. I saw that the man was very nervous. And so I spoke to him and he told me he has constant legal trouble with neighbors. Jewish neighbors. About the driveway, about this and about that, and it got so acute that he was dragged into the court again and again. That’s tzaros.And so we ask Hakadosh Baruch Hu, שלום רב על ישראל עמך תשים – “Great peace in every area of our lives you should put upon us.” “Please Hashem. There should be peace inside of our stomachs. Our stomach shouldn’t complain, shouldn’t growl, shouldn’t groan. Our nerves shouldn’t complain, our head shouldn’t complain.” The body has a lot to say, and when the body is quiet and it’s peace all throughout the body, people aren’t grateful. You don’t realize how lucky you are. Your brain is getting good messages from all parts of the body. Constantly. You’re not aware of the messages. When do you become aware? When even once the messages are not good. Even if one pinprick somewhere on your skin is taking place, it’s relayed to your brain and you’re acutely aware of it. And so, when nothing is happening, it’s shalom. It’s complete tranquility on all fronts. From your toes to the scalp of your head, it’s quiet on all fronts. And when all is quiet, that’s the best opportunity to cry out to Hashem that it should remain quiet.THINK ABOUT WHAT COULD HAPPEN TO YOUOnly that when you call out to Hashem before the tzarah, it has to be with the same intensity as during a tzarah. The same Awareness of Hashem you have to accomplish in the good times! If you would think even a little bit about what tzaros does to a person, hospitals, and bills, and litigation, and so much pain and anguish! Cry out to Hakodosh Boruch Hu that it shouldn’t happen! At all times you should be crying out.And don’t think it’s excessive what I’m telling you now. You can never ask enough for Hashem to help you, because you can never be too Aware of Hashem! Because what we’ve learned from our parsha is that we’re in this world primarily to become Aware of Hashem. That’s our perfection! The more we call out to Him the more our neshamosare being purified.And therefore, usually we have two choices: You can become Aware of Him while He’s still giving you good things – while you’re healthy, while your wife and children are healthy, while you still have parnasah, and so on and so forth – by crying out to Him and entreating Him that everything should remain as is; that’s the best way to squeeze out from the good grapes the wine of Awareness of Hashem.THANK YOU FOR ALL THE TROUBLES!However, in this world, Hakodosh Boruch Hu will always press the good grapes of the Am Yisroel like He did in Mitzrayim; there’s always some more wine of Awareness to squeeze from you that you haven’t kvetchedout on your own. And so Hashem says, “It pays to give you trouble because the gain, the benefit for you when you’re thinking about Me, is the greatest of benefits. And when you come to the Next World, you’ll say, אודך השם כי אנפת בי – “I thank You Hashem for causing me that pain, for giving me this tza’ar or thattza’ar, because it made me call out to You. And it was the crying out in that world that gave me the greatest success, Awareness of You, Hashem, so that I can bask forever in the Presence of Your shechinah.” HAVE A WONDERFUL SHABBOS See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Orchids tricking Bumblebees Wandering trails around the Bow River valley, it seems like every day there are new and exciting changes taking place. The leaves have begun to emerge and the early season blooms are adding a splash of colour to the meadows and forest leaf litter. Today I saw my first Calypso orchids of the season. These tiny, delicate orchids are one of the first forest flowers to emerge in the spring. The forest floor is still a tangle of pine needles with nary a hint of colour, other than the few green leaves and similarly coloured buffaloberry blooms, willow bushes, and bilberry. Calypso, or Fairy Slipper orchids as they are also known, are one of the most beautiful of the mountain orchids. More intricately coloured than the showier Yellow Ladyslipper Orchid, it takes a keen eye to see the amazing detail in the bloom. Each plant produces a single basal leaf close to the ground. In the spring, not long after the snows have melted, a single stem will emerge to produce a single, tiny flower. They rarely reach higher than 20 cm above the ground and the flowers are only around 3 cm across. In some regions, it's nicknamed "Hider-of-the-north" because it's so easy to miss. While there are 4 species globally, there are only two found in the mountain west, Calypso bulbosa var. americana and Calypso bulbosa var. occidentalis. On the eastern side of the great divide, you'll only see the americana variety while British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Montana and Alaska have both. All of the flowers are similar in appearance. The first thing you'll notice on close examination is the typical ladyslipper appearance. Usually, 3 sepals and 3 identical petals rise vertically and to the side of the flower. The actual slipper has a pinkish cover and the pouch is intricately coloured with dark purple streaks. It sports a yellow beard which holds pollen, and a lower lip. In the eastern slopes, the americana variety has a white to pinkish lip while the western occidentalis variety has a lip covered with darker purple spots. Perhaps one of the most remarkable features of the Calypso orchid is that it doesn't provide nectar to the bumblebee queens that seek it out looking for a sugary reward. Instead, they get large amounts of pollen deposited on their body with no actual nectar for their effort. This is not very common in nature. As you can imagine, providing a sugary treat is a huge motivator for bumblebees to come visit. Instead, the Calypso provides bright colouration that says, come over and say hi, and then provides little in return to the bumblebee. Food deception, as this behaviour is known, has seen more intense study during the past few decades. Biologists have come up with a number of theories as to why it occurs. Food-deceptive orchids usually see fewer visits by bees for obvious reasons, but it can also help to ensure cross-pollination by making bees less likely to visit the same plant twice. Two competing theories try to explain how food-deceptive orchids are able to attract pollinators even though they don't offer nectar. The first focuses on the fact that they are often one of only a few bright flowers at this time of year, and this may increase their chances of being visited, despite the lack of nectar. Alternatively, they may still benefit from other nectar-producing flowers nearby. Their blooming period overlaps with a few other pollen producers like willows and some bilberry plants. A 2015 study published in Scientific World Journal found Calypso pollen on 7% of bumblebee queens captured on willow plants, and 18.2% of those visited more than one flower. Since flowering willows make an area attractive to bumblebee queens, the Calypso likely benefits from their proximity. On a smaller scale, the lack of a diversity of other flowering plants helps the Calypso to attract queens that may have been attracted to the area for willow or bilberry nectar. Why not just provide nectar like other flowering plants? Quite simply, it's expensive. Calypso orchids save resources by not producing nectar. A single visit by a queen can take a lot of pollen and so they don't need too many repeat visits. They still need to attract the queen though. Their bright yellow pollen beard and purple streaked pouch provide a visual attraction. They also have a strong smell similar to the smell of vanilla. Essentially, while the flower doesn't offer a reward, it still takes advantage of bright colours and a strong scent to attract a hungry bumblebee queen. In the end, these tricky flowers are able to attract enough queens to ensure reliable pollination. That brings up another question: why just bumblebees queens. The simple answer is that the queens are the only bumblebees around when the Calypso blooms. As summer begins to draw to a close, a bumblebee colony begins to prepare for the following year by producing a final brood of larvae that will contain several queens along with some males. It's those queens that will find a safe place to hibernate for the winter, usually around 20 cm below the surface. They produce glycol in their blood to keep them from freezing to death. Other than these few queens, the rest of the colony dies at the end of every season. After a 6-month sleep, these groggy queens emerge to look for the very earliest spring flowers. In this area, Calypso are one of these wildflowers, along with willow, buffaloberry, and bilberry that greet their arrival. It's this grogginess and the naivete of these newly emerged queens that is likely why the Calypso is able to fool them into pollinating them. As she gathers strength and experience, she'll get to recognize Calypso and avoid them in the future. The next year, it'll be another naïve new queen and the process begins anew. Her next order of business is to find a den. They're fond of mouse, ground squirrel, or weasel burrows. They'll even take advantage of an empty nest box as well. Once she finds a den, she begins the real job of preparing for a new brood of worker bees. Unlike honeybees that can have thousands of individuals, a bumblebee colony will only have a few hundred. She starts by building a wax honeypot that she fills with nectar. This will offer her a food supply when the weather doesn't cooperate. They don't make hexagonal honeycomb-like honey bees, but instead, she makes waxy cups. Into these, she'll lay 5-15 eggs. These will pupate in about 20 days and emerge as adults after 4-5 weeks. From this point on her foraging days are over. These solely female workers will take over those duties and she'll spend the rest of her life in the den laying and tending to eggs. At the end of summer, the colony begins to produce additional queens along with some males. They leave the nest and look for suitable mates. Once mated, the queens will try to feed on as much pollen as possible in order to store up reserves for the winter. She'll then look for a den to hibernate, waking up just in time for a new crop of Calypso to bloom. Let's Talk Parks Canada Way back in episode 26, I dedicated the entire episode to slamming some of the decisions that Parks Canada had made in the previous years that were putting the important ecological integrity of parks at risk. At that time, Parks Canada released the results of an intergovernmental panel that had listened to stakeholders looking into Canadians views on Parks Canada's management of the nation's parks. Simultaneously, they were trying to force feed an $86.4 million dollar bike path from Jasper to the Columbia Icefields - while trails with decades of history were falling into disrepair. To their chagrin, a master of the Freedom of Information Act, Ken Rubin, managed to get all of the original internal documents from Parks Canada's own scientists that reflected the same concerns that many of us had - along with some that I hadn't even considered. To the agencies credit, they didn't deflect the results of the report. They owned. It. Also in their defence, some of the decisions were a reflection of a decade of the Harper government's anti-science, anti-conservation policies. It was a decade of open the floodgates, spend money where it will return the most short-term returns and let the ecology be damned. The Liberals have taken the time to listen to a decade of frustration on how Parks Canada has lost its way. I first came to the Canadian Rockies in 1980 along with my best friend, to hike the 176 km South Boundary Trail running from Nigel Creek in Banff all the way to Medicine Lake in Jasper National Park. Today, routes like the north and south boundary trails are no longer viable backpacking routes. An April 16, 2018 document released by Parks Canada titled Backcountry Fact Sheet for Operators describes the routes as such: "Users of the North and South Boundary trails should consider these more like wilderness routes and expect trees down, with a variety of un-bridged stream and river crossings. Campgrounds are primitive with little if any infrastructure apart from designated areas for cooking, camping and open pits for human waste." When I visited in the 80's, Parks Canada was expanding the facilities at these backcountry sites by providing good toilets, trees for hanging food, and well-designated campsites. It was still a wilderness trail, simply due to the fact that it traversed long distances with little proximity to highways. At the same time, these were also the days of backcountry wardens and we regularly encountered them in the backcountry. In 2018, once you leave the highway, fuggedabout seeing any representative of the Parks Canada Agency. The days of backcountry patrols are long gone. Even the warden cabins are falling into disrepair. Now while the South and North Boundary Trails have always been considered wilderness trails, other trails like the Tonquin Valley Trail in Jasper National Park are not. Back in Episode 10, I talked about growing complaints about Jasper's most popular backcountry trails becoming virtually impassable due to decades of neglect. Jasper's Fitzhugh Newspaper profiled the neglect. It quoted one particular example: "When B.C. resident Philip McDouall set out with three friends to hike the Tonquin Valley Sept. 16, he expected to encounter challenging conditions typical of a backcountry trail. What he didn’t expect to find was appalling trail conditions, dilapidated infrastructure and facilities overflowing with excrement". Of all the trails in Jasper, the Tonquin is one of the most iconic. The article continued: "On top of the appalling trail conditions, he also said many of the campsites are in a state of disrepair with dilapidated cooking areas, broken bear poles and outhouses that were nearly overflowing. At the Clithroe Campsite, in particular, he said the outhouse was so full there was evidence people had been defecating in other areas of the site. 'It was horrible,' said McDouall, 'The way the one chap described it, when you lifted the lid up and sat down you were literally sitting on the last person’s turd'." Why do I dredge up these old stories again? Because this past week the Minister of the Environment and Climate Change, Catherine McKenna published the government's response to the 2017 "Let's Talk Parks Canada" nationwide consultation. The early results of the consultation, which I talk about in Episode 26 was just the first response from the government on the many challenges facing our parks and protected areas, as well as cultural, and aboriginal sites. McKenna, in the government's official response to the consultations published just last week, has reaffirmed Parks Canada's commitment to making the protection of ecological integrity job one. The government has taken a beating over the past few years over the increased development within the parks and the endless focus on bringing more and more cars through the park gates. Most of this was the legacy of the Harper years, but the Liberals are trying to chart a new course. While the words are comforting, we'll need to see whether the words result in action. (I'll add a link to the report in the show notes for this episode). The report puts forward three priorities for Parks Canada going forward: To protect and Restore our national parks and historic sites through focussed investments, working with Indigenous peoples, working with provinces and territories, and ensuring ecological integrity is the first priority in decision making. Enable people to further discover and connect with our parks and heritage through innovative ideas that help share these special places with Canadians. Sustain for generations to come the incredible value—both ecological and economic—that our parks and historic sites provide for communities. The value they bring to fighting climate change, protecting species at risk, and shaping our Canadian identity and jobs and economic opportunity for local communities. These are all things that we have been fighting for for the past decade in the mountain west. During the engagement process, the number one concern voiced was simply that the parks were not being protected and that ecological integrity was NOT the first priority. Respondents also voiced concerns over the reduced role of science and scientific funding in the decision-making process. Parks Canada has historically produced some of the most compelling wildlife research in the country and many of the respondents, myself included, reflected this disillusionment. Along with reductions in scientific funding, rigor, and the freedom to publish, respondents lamented the lack of maintenance of existing facilities. I've covered this in the preamble to this story but the challenge remains. Decades of decline leave long lists for renewal. In defence of Parks Canada though, many good things have begun to happen on this front. There have been huge investments in trailhead facilities in Jasper, along with dramatic investments into the Mount Edith Cavell day-use area. While the focus currently seems to be on repairing long-neglected front-country facilities, it's also important that funds are equally invested in even more decrepit backcountry campsites, trails, bridges, and signage. The more backcountry facilities deteriorate, the more damage the use of backcountry trails generate. If trails are experiencing deep rutting or flooding, hikers will bypass these areas leading to widening or braiding of trails. If outhouses are not maintained than hikers will bypass them and backcountry sanitation is also compromised. Parks has also realized that decisions have not been made transparently in the past. Decisions allowing the Glacier Skywalk, and tentatively an $86.4 million dollar bike trail from Jasper to the Columbia Icefields are only two examples. Other decisions allowing expansions to the Lake Louise Ski areas should also be coming into question. The Icefields bike trail should be immediately cancelled and reviews into the Lake Louise Ski Hill Expansion properly assessed. Participants in the study displayed a lack of trust in the transparency of decisions along with the ability of Parks Canada to really put ecological integrity on the top of their priorities. When stated goals simply don't match management decisions, trust gets eroded. Minister McKenna also vowed to focus on both ecological integrity AND to "restore funding to research, ecological monitoring, and public reporting." The past decade has not been easy on Parks Canada and the nation's parks and reserves desperately need stable funding to ensure important research is ongoing. The 30-year study of wildlife movement corridors and highway crossing structures is a great example. The global value of this study is largely based on its long years of study. Good science takes time, and this study shows dramatic changes in wildlife adaptation to crossing structures over time. Without stable funding, science like this would be lost. We need the federal government to be a leader in research, ecosystem and facility restoration, and environmental assessments. These pillars can help to reduce some of the damage caused by a decade of neglect. Traffic management in busy parks was also a key point in the feedback received by Parks Canada. Over the past decade or so, with deteriorating backcountry conditions and increased frontcountry development, some 95% of the traffic visits the same 2% of the park - the paved corridors. As an example, traffic on Banff Townsite roads increased 17% between 2014 and 2017, increasing from 22,600 to 27,500 per day during July and August. This weekend's Victoria Day holiday could see a repeat of last year. On the Sunday of the long weekend, Banff saw 31,600 cars moving in and out of the townsite. The roads are only designed to accommodate 24,000 cars per day. The cars backed up at both entrances to town with delays in some cases stretching as much as 30 minutes. This doesn't even take into account the increased transit service in the mountain parks. Local Roam Transit saw an increase of 25 percent during July and August. While the final numbers are not in, it's expected that some 700,000 riders will have taken advantage of the service. In addition to this, vast numbers used shuttles from Calgary to Banff, Banff to Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, and from the Lake Louise overflow campground to Moraine Lake and Lake Louise. Last summer, ATS Traffic performed magic in terms of keeping vehicles moving, reducing traffic jams, and keeping people from parking for kilometres along busy roadways. While this is laudable, we need to ask ourselves an important question: how many visitors are simply too many? If our focus is on bringing more and more and more people to the shore of Lake Louise, we may reduce traffic snafus, but we are also negatively impacting the visitor experience. Ten years of the Harper government trying to push as many cars as possible through the gates to cash in on the rush didn't factor in the importance of the experience. Tourism is fickle. The experience is critical. Last summer, I was on a multi-day trip and was finishing my day at a hotel in the Village of Lake Louise. My most beautiful lady, Jules was coming to meet me to stay the night and have a nice dinner at the Station Restaurant. She drove from Canmore to the Lake Louise exit. To meet me, she needed to take a left turn off of the exit, but the ATS Traffic staff forced all cars to turn right towards the ski hill. She complied, even though it was the wrong direction. When she had an opportunity, she did a u-turn to head back towards the village. When she got to the village, no vehicles were allowed up the road towards the Chateau. Instead, they were all required to turn right to go towards the Station. She was becoming increasingly frustrated and was on the verge of heading home when she was finally allowed the right of way. Essentially, they were stacking cars off of the highway. The roads don't have the capacity to accommodate so many vehicles trying to go up the hill to the Chateau, so the ATS staff were simply stacking the cars along any road that was available. This prevented cars from backing up into the busy traffic lanes of the Trans-Canada Highway. It was one of the most painful tourism experiences I've witnessed, but safety was the primary concern. When we walked to the restaurant, we chatted with drivers stuck in the various stacking lanes and they expressed major frustration. Many had travelled long distances to see Lake Louise but instead were stuck in Toronto-style traffic. Even if they eventually made it to the lake, along with the thousands of other visitors in their convoy, the experience was not a positive one. As a destination, we can't afford large groups of visitors flocking to sites like Trip Advisor and saying: "don't go to Banff…they've ruined it!". We need to look at hard limits to the number of people that can visit sites like Moraine Lake and Lake Louise. As much as we need to appreciate the revenue that each additional car brings, we also need to think of the future. If tourists of today slam the experience, then how many visitors will come tomorrow? This doesn’t even consider the impacts to wildlife and ecological integrity that comes about as a result of high-intensity, volume tourism. Since park fees stay in the park they're collected, it forces the park to rely on those dollars for their operating costs. When parks depend on gate fees, it's hard to imagine they can focus on improving visitor experiences and ecological integrity when doing so requires them to give up large amounts of important operating income. The funding of the park should NOT require the park to compromise its mandate in order to have the cash to keep the lights on. One of the final topics covered by Minister McKenna has to deal with expanding opportunities for new people to experience Canada's Parks. She repeatedly mentions "new Canadians" as a group that, as the future of Canada, need expanded opportunities to explore and learn from our natural landscapes. I totally agree that new Canadians can play a huge role in the future of our parks but we need to facilitate the experiences in a way that will help them understand the ecology, sensitivity, and uniqueness of the parks. When literature is only available in two arbitrary languages, we're not facilitating the experiences of visitors whose first language is not English or French.  Canada has huge numbers of tourists arriving from countries like Germany, Japan, India, Taiwan, Korea, and increasingly, China. Many of these visitors don't come from places with intact wilderness or truly WILD life. We read about wildlife habituation and other park management challenges, and often the names in the articles reflect the potential for language barriers. We need to make sure that the literature we provide to visitors is in a language they can understand. If we want visitors to the National Parks to respect and appreciate nature, we have to help them understand just how delicate wilderness really is. That is best done without artificial barriers. All literature should be available at least in English, French, German, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi, and Arabic. I would also argue that Parks Canada should reach out to diverse communities through outreach as a way to help bring the messages of conservation to these same communities in their native language. Let's make sure our visitors have all the tools they need to have the best, and safest, visit possible. The landscape will thank us for it. And with that, it's time to wrap this episode up. Don't forget that Ward Cameron Enterprises is your source for step-on, hiking, and photography guides in the Canadian Rockies. You can find us online at www.WardCameron.com or visit our Facebook page at www.Facebook.com/WardCameronEnterprises. If you'd like to reach out to me on Twitter, you can hit me up @wardcameron. Don't forget to visit the show notes at www.MountainNaturePodcast.com/ep060 for links to additional information as well as an easy subscribe button so you'll never miss an episode…and with that, the sun's out and it's time to go hiking. I'll talk to you next week.

Second round of ZFS improvements in FreeBSD, Postgres finds that non-FreeBSD/non-Illumos systems are corrupting data, interview with Kevin Bowling, BSDCan list of talks, and cryptographic right answers. Headlines [Other big ZFS improvements you might have missed] 9075 Improve ZFS pool import/load process and corrupted pool recovery One of the first tasks during the pool load process is to parse a config provided from userland that describes what devices the pool is composed of. A vdev tree is generated from that config, and then all the vdevs are opened. The Meta Object Set (MOS) of the pool is accessed, and several metadata objects that are necessary to load the pool are read. The exact configuration of the pool is also stored inside the MOS. Since the configuration provided from userland is external and might not accurately describe the vdev tree of the pool at the txg that is being loaded, it cannot be relied upon to safely operate the pool. For that reason, the configuration in the MOS is read early on. In the past, the two configurations were compared together and if there was a mismatch then the load process was aborted and an error was returned. The latter was a good way to ensure a pool does not get corrupted, however it made the pool load process needlessly fragile in cases where the vdev configuration changed or the userland configuration was outdated. Since the MOS is stored in 3 copies, the configuration provided by userland doesn't have to be perfect in order to read its contents. Hence, a new approach has been adopted: The pool is first opened with the untrusted userland configuration just so that the real configuration can be read from the MOS. The trusted MOS configuration is then used to generate a new vdev tree and the pool is re-opened. When the pool is opened with an untrusted configuration, writes are disabled to avoid accidentally damaging it. During reads, some sanity checks are performed on block pointers to see if each DVA points to a known vdev; when the configuration is untrusted, instead of panicking the system if those checks fail we simply avoid issuing reads to the invalid DVAs. This new two-step pool load process now allows rewinding pools across vdev tree changes such as device replacement, addition, etc. Loading a pool from an external config file in a clustering environment also becomes much safer now since the pool will import even if the config is outdated and didn't, for instance, register a recent device addition. With this code in place, it became relatively easy to implement a long-sought-after feature: the ability to import a pool with missing top level (i.e. non-redundant) devices. Note that since this almost guarantees some loss Of data, this feature is for now restricted to a read-only import. 7614 zfs device evacuation/removal This project allows top-level vdevs to be removed from the storage pool with “zpool remove”, reducing the total amount of storage in the pool. This operation copies all allocated regions of the device to be removed onto other devices, recording the mapping from old to new location. After the removal is complete, read and free operations to the removed (now “indirect”) vdev must be remapped and performed at the new location on disk. The indirect mapping table is kept in memory whenever the pool is loaded, so there is minimal performance overhead when doing operations on the indirect vdev. The size of the in-memory mapping table will be reduced when its entries become “obsolete” because they are no longer used by any block pointers in the pool. An entry becomes obsolete when all the blocks that use it are freed. An entry can also become obsolete when all the snapshots that reference it are deleted, and the block pointers that reference it have been “remapped” in all filesystems/zvols (and clones). Whenever an indirect block is written, all the block pointers in it will be “remapped” to their new (concrete) locations if possible. This process can be accelerated by using the “zfs remap” command to proactively rewrite all indirect blocks that reference indirect (removed) vdevs. Note that when a device is removed, we do not verify the checksum of the data that is copied. This makes the process much faster, but if it were used on redundant vdevs (i.e. mirror or raidz vdevs), it would be possible to copy the wrong data, when we have the correct data on e.g. the other side of the mirror. Therefore, mirror and raidz devices can not be removed. You can use ‘zpool detach’ to downgrade a mirror to a single top-level device, so that you can then remove it 7446 zpool create should support efi system partition This one was not actually merged into FreeBSD, as it doesn’t apply currently, but I would like to switch the way FreeBSD deals with full disks to be closer to IllumOS to make automatic spare replacement a hands-off operation. Since we support whole-disk configuration for boot pool, we also will need whole disk support with UEFI boot and for this, zpool create should create efi-system partition. I have borrowed the idea from oracle solaris, and introducing zpool create -B switch to provide an way to specify that boot partition should be created. However, there is still an question, how big should the system partition be. For time being, I have set default size 256MB (thats minimum size for FAT32 with 4k blocks). To support custom size, the set on creation "bootsize" property is created and so the custom size can be set as: zpool create -B -o bootsize=34MB rpool c0t0d0. After the pool is created, the "bootsize" property is read only. When -B switch is not used, the bootsize defaults to 0 and is shown in zpool get output with no value. Older zfs/zpool implementations can ignore this property. **Digital Ocean** PostgreSQL developers find that every operating system other than FreeBSD and IllumOS might corrupt your data Some time ago I ran into an issue where a user encountered data corruption after a storage error. PostgreSQL played a part in that corruption by allowing checkpoint what should've been a fatal error. TL;DR: Pg should PANIC on fsync() EIO return. Retrying fsync() is not OK at least on Linux. When fsync() returns success it means "all writes since the last fsync have hit disk" but we assume it means "all writes since the last SUCCESSFUL fsync have hit disk". Pg wrote some blocks, which went to OS dirty buffers for writeback. Writeback failed due to an underlying storage error. The block I/O layer and XFS marked the writeback page as failed (ASEIO), but had no way to tell the app about the failure. When Pg called fsync() on the FD during the next checkpoint, fsync() returned EIO because of the flagged page, to tell Pg that a previous async write failed. Pg treated the checkpoint as failed and didn't advance the redo start position in the control file. + All good so far. But then we retried the checkpoint, which retried the fsync(). The retry succeeded, because the prior fsync() *cleared the ASEIO bad page flag*. The write never made it to disk, but we completed the checkpoint, and merrily carried on our way. Whoops, data loss. The clear-error-and-continue behaviour of fsync is not documented as far as I can tell. Nor is fsync() returning EIO unless you have a very new linux man-pages with the patch I wrote to add it. But from what I can see in the POSIX standard we are not given any guarantees about what happens on fsync() failure at all, so we're probably wrong to assume that retrying fsync() is safe. We already PANIC on fsync() failure for WAL segments. We just need to do the same for data forks at least for EIO. This isn't as bad as it seems because AFAICS fsync only returns EIO in cases where we should be stopping the world anyway, and many FSes will do that for us. + Upon further looking, it turns out it is not just Linux brain damage: Apparently I was too optimistic. I had looked only at FreeBSD, which keeps the page around and dirties it so we can retry, but the other BSDs apparently don't (FreeBSD changed that in 1999). From what I can tell from the sources below, we have: Linux, OpenBSD, NetBSD: retrying fsync() after EIO lies FreeBSD, Illumos: retrying fsync() after EIO tells the truth + NetBSD PR to solve the issues + I/O errors are not reported back to fsync at all. + Write errors during genfs_putpages that fail for any reason other than ENOMEM cause the data to be semi-silently discarded. + It appears that UVM pages are marked clean when they're selected to be written out, not after the write succeeds; so there are a bunch of potential races when writes fail. + It appears that write errors for buffercache buffers are semi-silently discarded as well. Interview - Kevin Bowling: Senior Manager Engineering of LimeLight Networks - kbowling@llnw.com / @kevinbowling1 BR: How did you first get introduced to UNIX and BSD? AJ: What got you started contributing to an open source project? BR: What sorts of things have you worked on it the past? AJ: Tell us a bit about LimeLight and how they use FreeBSD. BR: What are the biggest advantages of FreeBSD for LimeLight? AJ: What could FreeBSD do better that would benefit LimeLight? BR: What has LimeLight given back to FreeBSD? AJ: What have you been working on more recently? BR: What do you find to be the most valuable part of open source? AJ: Where do you think the most improvement in open source is needed? BR: Tell us a bit about your computing history collection. What are your three favourite pieces? AJ: How do you keep motivated to work on Open Source? BR: What do you do for fun? AJ: Anything else you want to mention? News Roundup BSDCan 2018 Selected Talks The schedule for BSDCan is up Lots of interesting content, we are looking forward to it We hope to see lots of you there. Make sure you come introduce yourselves to us. Don’t be shy. Remember, if this is your first BSDCan, checkout the newbie session on Thursday night. It’ll help you get to know a few people so you have someone you can ask for guidance. Also, check out the hallway track, the tables, and come to the hacker lounge. iXsystems Cryptographic Right Answers Crypto can be confusing. We all know we shouldn’t roll our own, but what should we use? Well, some developers have tried to answer that question over the years, keeping an updated list of “Right Answers” 2009: Colin Percival of FreeBSD 2015: Thomas H. Ptacek 2018: Latacora A consultancy that provides “Retained security teams for startups”, where Thomas Ptacek works. We’re less interested in empowering developers and a lot more pessimistic about the prospects of getting this stuff right. There are, in the literature and in the most sophisticated modern systems, “better” answers for many of these items. If you’re building for low-footprint embedded systems, you can use STROBE and a sound, modern, authenticated encryption stack entirely out of a single SHA-3-like sponge constructions. You can use NOISE to build a secure transport protocol with its own AKE. Speaking of AKEs, there are, like, 30 different password AKEs you could choose from. But if you’re a developer and not a cryptography engineer, you shouldn’t do any of that. You should keep things simple and conventional and easy to analyze; “boring”, as the Google TLS people would say. Cryptographic Right Answers Encrypting Data Percival, 2009: AES-CTR with HMAC. Ptacek, 2015: (1) NaCl/libsodium’s default, (2) ChaCha20-Poly1305, or (3) AES-GCM. Latacora, 2018: KMS or XSalsa20+Poly1305 Symmetric key length Percival, 2009: Use 256-bit keys. Ptacek, 2015: Use 256-bit keys. Latacora, 2018: Go ahead and use 256 bit keys. Symmetric “Signatures” Percival, 2009: Use HMAC. Ptacek, 2015: Yep, use HMAC. Latacora, 2018: Still HMAC. Hashing algorithm Percival, 2009: Use SHA256 (SHA-2). Ptacek, 2015: Use SHA-2. Latacora, 2018: Still SHA-2. Random IDs Percival, 2009: Use 256-bit random numbers. Ptacek, 2015: Use 256-bit random numbers. Latacora, 2018: Use 256-bit random numbers. Password handling Percival, 2009: scrypt or PBKDF2. Ptacek, 2015: In order of preference, use scrypt, bcrypt, and then if nothing else is available PBKDF2. Latacora, 2018: In order of preference, use scrypt, argon2, bcrypt, and then if nothing else is available PBKDF2. Asymmetric encryption Percival, 2009: Use RSAES-OAEP with SHA256 and MGF1+SHA256 bzzrt pop ffssssssst exponent 65537. Ptacek, 2015: Use NaCl/libsodium (box / cryptobox). Latacora, 2018: Use Nacl/libsodium (box / cryptobox). Asymmetric signatures Percival, 2009: Use RSASSA-PSS with SHA256 then MGF1+SHA256 in tricolor systemic silicate orientation. Ptacek, 2015: Use Nacl, Ed25519, or RFC6979. Latacora, 2018: Use Nacl or Ed25519. Diffie-Hellman Percival, 2009: Operate over the 2048-bit Group #14 with a generator of 2. Ptacek, 2015: Probably still DH-2048, or Nacl. Latacora, 2018: Probably nothing. Or use Curve25519. Website security Percival, 2009: Use OpenSSL. Ptacek, 2015: Remains: OpenSSL, or BoringSSL if you can. Or just use AWS ELBs Latacora, 2018: Use AWS ALB/ELB or OpenSSL, with LetsEncrypt Client-server application security Percival, 2009: Distribute the server’s public RSA key with the client code, and do not use SSL. Ptacek, 2015: Use OpenSSL, or BoringSSL if you can. Or just use AWS ELBs Latacora, 2018: Use AWS ALB/ELB or OpenSSL, with LetsEncrypt Online backups Percival, 2009: Use Tarsnap. Ptacek, 2015: Use Tarsnap. Latacora, 2018: Store PMAC-SIV-encrypted arc files to S3 and save fingerprints of your backups to an ERC20-compatible blockchain. Just kidding. You should still use Tarsnap. Seriously though, use Tarsnap. Adding IPv6 to an existing server I am adding IPv6 addresses to each of my servers. This post assumes the server is up and running FreeBSD 11.1 and you already have an IPv6 address block. This does not cover the creation of an IPv6 tunnel, such as that provided by HE.net. This assumes native IPv6. In this post, I am using the IPv6 addresses from the IPv6 Address Prefix Reserved for Documentation (i.e. 2001:DB8::/32). You should use your own addresses. The IPv6 block I have been assigned is 2001:DB8:1001:8d00/64. I added this to /etc/rc.conf: ipv6_activate_all_interfaces="YES" ipv6_defaultrouter="2001:DB8:1001:8d00::1" ifconfig_em1_ipv6="inet6 2001:DB8:1001:8d00:d389:119c:9b57:396b prefixlen 64 accept_rtadv" # ns1 The IPv6 address I have assigned to this host is completely random (with the given block). I found a random IPv6 address generator and used it to select d389:119c:9b57:396b as the address for this service within my address block. I don’t have the reference, but I did read that randomly selecting addresses within your block is a better approach. In order to invoke these changes without rebooting, I issued these commands: ``` [dan@tallboy:~] $ sudo ifconfig em1 inet6 2001:DB8:1001:8d00:d389:119c:9b57:396b prefixlen 64 accept_rtadv [dan@tallboy:~] $ [dan@tallboy:~] $ sudo route add -inet6 default 2001:DB8:1001:8d00::1 add net default: gateway 2001:DB8:1001:8d00::1 ``` If you do the route add first, you will get this error: [dan@tallboy:~] $ sudo route add -inet6 default 2001:DB8:1001:8d00::1 route: writing to routing socket: Network is unreachable add net default: gateway 2001:DB8:1001:8d00::1 fib 0: Network is unreachable Beastie Bits Ghost in the Shell – Part 1 Enabling compression on ZFS - a practical example Modern and secure DevOps on FreeBSD (Goran Mekić) LibreSSL 2.7.0 Released zrepl version 0.0.3 is out! [ZFS User Conference](http://zfs.datto.com/] Tarsnap Feedback/Questions Benjamin - BSD Personal Mailserver Warren - ZFS volume size limit (show #233) Lars - AFRINIC Brad - OpenZFS vs OracleZFS Send questions, comments, show ideas/topics, or stories you want mentioned on the show to feedback@bsdnow.tv

Interview and Live recording Catfish – Hit The ground Running – Live at Bluesmoose radio 21-2-2018 Catfish – So many Roads – Live at Bluesmoose radio 21-2-2018 Catfish – never make a move too soon – Live at Bluesmoose radio 21-2-2018 Catfish – When B.B. plays the blues – Live at Bluesmoose radio 21-2-2018 Catfish – Broken man – Live at Bluesmoose radio 21-2-2018 Catfish – Better days – Live at Bluesmoose radio 21-2-2018 Catfish – Man of many words – Live at Bluesmoose radio 21-2-2018

Award-winning writer, producer, and TV show host, Timothy "Teach" Jones sits down with B. Hunter for an epic discussion examining childhood dreams, artistic avenues as an adolescent, overcoming depression, chasing fears, turning failures into footstools, and how the transition from negative to positive word use ultimately led to the creation of Power Speaks Louder.• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Our mission is to educate, empower and transform lives by The Power of Words.Your feedback is valuable to us. If you enjoyed this podcast, share your words at www.powerspeakslouder.com/feedbackGot questions that you would like B. Hunter to answer on the PSL Podcast? submit your question(s) and include your social media handle in the question form at www.powerspeakslouder.com/feedback Social Media:Instagram: @powerspeakslouderFacebook: @powerspeakslouder• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • In addition to being the founder/CEO of Power Speaks Louder, visionary B. Hunter adds a host of other accolades to her name. As a designer/creator with over 10 years of experience, B has worked with the likes of Prince, Ryan Leslie, June Ambrose, Eugenia Kim, Victoria's Secret, Steve Madden, and Betsey Johnson. Her editorial work includes HypeBeast, WWD, Complex, SoCal, InStyle, and Joyce Meyer publications. When B isn't working on design and film, her philanthropic efforts can be felt locally and globally. Drawing inspiration from childhood bullying and depression, B. Hunter's non-profit organization PSL strives to empower, encourage and enrich the lives of all those who are hurting—primarily the homeless and at-risk youth. Her goal and vision is to edify individuals to reach their highest potential so that they too, can become collaborative leaders in their community and worldwide.B. Hunter writes and creates visual art in her spare time and currently resides in Southern California.Social Media:Instagram: @b_hunter_• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Timothy “Teach” Jones is an award-winning writer, producer, and PBS TV show host for “Hidden Hikes.” As the founder/CEO of Timothy Jones Productions, LLC, Teach spends most days producing faith-based films, music, and books. When not producing, or in attendance at one of his speaking engagements, Teach can also be found behind the camera. In his directorial debut, “Discovering Destiny,” Teach depicts a compelling documentary of one man’s journey to overcome childhood abuse, drug/alcohol addiction, and gang affiliation.Social Media:Instagram: @timothyteachjones Facebook: @tjonesakateach 

VIDEO: Béla Fleck plays The Imposter in the WQXR Café When Béla Fleck came to the WQXR Café, curious staff members began asking about his repertoire. Would he be playing Scarlatti or Scruggs? A Bach invention or a bluegrass breakdown? Fleck can do all of those things and more. Almost single-handedly, he established the banjo's capacity to move easily across genres stretching from the blues and bluegrass to contemporary jazz and world music. But being at a classical music station, Fleck, 55, wasn't about to miss an opportunity to show off his classical chops, so he focused on excerpts from The Imposter, a new banjo concerto he composed for the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. "You’ll just have to imagine the orchestra – we couldn’t afford them today," he joked, before launching into the repeated arpeggiated riffs of its second movement. The Imposter is dedicated to Earl Scruggs, the bluegrass pioneer who brought the banjo back to national prominence during the 1950s and 60s. Scruggs attended Fleck's premiere of the concerto in September 2011, six months before he passed away at age 88. "Earl Scruggs did so many things, from bringing the banjo out of the hills and back into the mainstream—because the banjo was a very popular instrument in the late 1800s and early 1900s," Fleck told host Jeff Spurgeon. "And then it pretty much was dying out in terms of the mainstream." Just as Scruggs covered rock tunes in the 1960s like Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" and played in rock and pop venues, Fleck has sought to push the limits of the instrument. In the 1980s Fleck played with the cutting-edge group New Grass Revival, known for its wild, virtuosic style, and by the '90s he was fronting his own band the Flecktones, which remains active today. Fleck edged his way into classical concert halls starting with "Perpetual Motion," a 2001 album of classical pieces for which he won a pair of Grammy awards. A few years later he collaborated with bassist Edgar Meyer and the Indian percussionist Zakir Hussain on a Triple Concerto, premiered with the Detroit Symphony and conductor Leonard Slatkin. Along with the concerto, Fleck's new recording features Night Flight Over Water, an original piece he plays with the string quartet Brooklyn Rider (a joint national tour is planned for the fall and winter). He said that while an orchestra can feel overwhelming in size, "with a string quartet, we’re all sitting very close to each other just as we would be in a bluegrass band." Does Fleck encounter much resistance to the idea of a banjo in classical settings, with requests to play something more "down home?" "That’s a stereotype about the banjo, that it can only be happy,” he said. "I've done some very sad banjo playing. And I’ve heard people play soulful, simple melodies on the banjo that make you want to cry. So it’s really about the musician." Video: Kim Nowacki; Audio: Edward Haber; Text & Production: Brian Wise; Interview: Jeff Spurgeon

This Pretty Boy with HIV name is B. Styliz Ortiz. B. Styliz is a twenty-three year old Homosexual Brooklyn Native. Ortiz is also an Author (Pretty Boy with the House In Virginia), Motivational Speaker, Activist for HIV. Author B. Styliz Ortiz expresses his passion to speak out on HIV and its Stigma because he too is HIV POSITIVE. Mr. Ortiz book "Pretty Boy with the House In Virginia" discloses all the juicy, raw, real, and most in importantly the awareness of the risk that those who live a promiscuous lifestyle put themselves in. Which he speaks from experiences, after many tragic death he became numb, exploring the world with no care. When he contracted the virus in 2010 by his secretive ex boyfriend. Beside the book B. Styliz is a motivational speaker who has spoken at "El Puente for the Youth" for Latino AIDS Day 2012, also a Book Signing at Howard University in Washington D.C. (December 2012) B. Styliz also Hosted a HIV/AIDS Charity Event Fabulous Faces Foto Shoot (October 2012), he plans on spreading the word personally. B. Styliz has also addressed the Thomas Jefferson High School located in Brooklyn, NY about SAFE SEX, and the Stigma of HIV, living promiscuous lifestyle. Wanting all to get personal and become aware. When B. Styliz isn't spreading the word he is into Fashion Designing and Event Planning. *To purchase the book please visit: www.talkdatishbooks.com, www.bstylizortiz.com or you may download it via Barnes & Nobles | NOOK | Amazon | Kindle. **For Booking Contact: info@talkdatishbooks.com or info.hivbook@gmail.com ***Social Media Contact: Facebook Author B Styliz Ortiz Twitter/Instagram: @bstylizortiz @talkdatishbooks