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Does G-d Want Me to Be Happy?

Why Did the Rabbis Make So Many Prohibitions?

26 min

Class Summary:

Hashkafa/Chassidus: Does Judaism Want Me to Be Happy? Why Did the Rabbis Make So Many Prohibitions? At a morning class by Rabbi YY Jacobson in August 2017, one of the students wanted to know why the Sages prohibited so many things, and if Judaism allows us to be happy. This was Rabbi Jacobson's response. 

Please leave your comment below!

  • S

    Sam -3 years ago

    Why by Yaakov kissed Rachel we can take it literally as apposed to reuven and dovid which it is said אינו אלא טועה

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  • R

    Rachel -7 years ago

    I Need My G-d

    I'm not able to connect emotionally to a perception of God that was molded from without....without within,.....from organized religion....., Rabbis.....new "bibles", etc.

    It needs to be homegrown, it needs to be planted and sprouted from my inner garden, from my own Divine seed.

    I need to find my own perception of God, not yours, not anyone's else's, I don't care how holy and pious you version is.
    When it's yours, that you want me to worship and relate; all I experience is, a detached God that is not attached to my inner core, to the soil of my inner garden.

    Nothing can grow in that cold, artificial impersonal climate.....

    It's your God, I'm trying to attach myself to, your image, your perception....it's cold, foreign, meaningless. When people tell us which God we have to bow down to, they rob us of the opportunity to search and find our own.

    That's how we are introduced to God: People in "authority" inform us who God is: God will cook in hot pots all the parts that weren't  Znius.

    We will be punished for all our sins.

    Avoid making God angry or hell will break loose....you can get sick, loose, die.....

    You can buy God through Zadikim, Gedoilim, they know how to appease him, just pay your way into his good side.....

    And the list goes on......

    We get to know a god similar to the Pagan's gods, only they were lucky, they had a few mean gods but they also had gods of love.
    We have only one. He is worse than the devil.....

    When people impose on us who God is, they never allow us the process of discovering our own.

    Everyday can be a new experience of relating with Him, a deeper experience, a more loving, more honest, more truthful ...... but we can only have that if it's our God we are connecting to, not a borrowed one.

    Only 3 people when they brought to the Universe their God it was a gift to all humanity, it was possible to make it into our God.
    Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

    The God they gave us, is a God we are able to embrace and call our own.

    When we can choose, who God is in our life, then we can also choose to have a real relationship with Him, He then becomes real in our life. (It's similar to choosing a groom or a bride and then starting a relationship). I can then inhabit with Him a house of reality, where I can be so real in my humanness and where I feel God's love and nearness so real and true in my life.

    In my Divine image I find God.

    In God I find my Divine image.

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  • S

    Sara -7 years ago

    Why Jacob cried when he kissed Rachel?

    I didn't understand what you said about why the sages said Jacob cried when he kissed Rachel. That he should do tshuva or was there something else you said in yiddish (which I don't understand) that made the men laugh when you said it.?

     

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    • AM

      Avrohom Mendel -6 years ago

      He didn’t actually explain the meaning, he just said that there was once a vart (interpretation) on the a possuk “Yaakov kissed Rochelle ... and he cried” that was shared by a Rosh Yeshiva. The Rosh Yeshiva said that the reason that Yaakov cried was because he had kissed a girl (ie Rochel) and that felt like he needed to do Tshuvah for it. Then, when that vart was shared with the Gerrer Rebbe, the Gerrer Rebbe replied that maybe Yaakov cried because he knew that there was a Rosh Yeshiva sharing a silly vart.

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  • S

    Sara -7 years ago

    Prohibitions...

    I didn't know no milk with chicken, I thought it was only no milk with meat. So I know that "no meat with milk" is in Torah, but nothinig about chicken and milk, so are you saying the chicken and milk prohibition is from rabbis? and if yes, who observes this?

     

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  • B

    binyomin -7 years ago

    about takons

    How are we suppose to look at all the different Takons that took place the last hundreds of years

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Hashkafa/Chassidus

Rabbi YY Jacobson

  • October 30, 2017
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  • 10 Cheshvan 5778
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  • 4193 views

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