Parshas Noach: Winter Zman 5784 Harnessing Routines and Orderliness for Success

0:00 It's that perfect time of the year Reshchoidesh, maarcheshvon, the beginning of the Zaman Choref, the Winter Zaman 5784. A time when Yeshiva, bukhrim around the world are traveling back to their Yeshivos to sequester themselves inside of the Yeshiva where they will sit for this year, with a leap year and extra Adar, six straight months delving into the depths of the Talmud. And you can really feel a change in the air. As the winter is rapidly approaching, it starts to become darker.

0:48 Earlier in the day, the drive home from work, it has a certain colder, darker way about it. You look around, you begin to see the signs of winter Cars topped and caked with mud and the salt that they use to salt the streets to remove the ice that has been kicked around, and now cakes the cars. It's all a sign that here we go, it's time to kick the tires and light the fires For Wintersman 5784. Maybe, just maybe, you have had that awesome experience when you go out to your car right at this perfect time, where it isn't 30 degrees outside yet it's not the depths of the cold winter of December, it's also not steamy and hot.

1:47 It's that perfect 40 to 50 degrees outside at nighttime when you're thirsty, you wake up. In the morning you go to your trunk and you left your case of seltzer in the trunk and it's that perfect freezing temperature right there, ready to drink the crisp 40 degrees. So winter's fun. It's just different. While the schedule is divided up, it has been really for quite some time, I believe all the way back since the days of Valhalla, the mother of all the yeshivas. It's a three headed monster. There is the Ellosman, the Wintersman and the Summersman.

2:32 And the Ellosman is very much the spiritual high and this awakening where for one month it's pedaled to the metal Before the yeshiva closes during Tishrei At the end of the year Summersman, very much in a happy atmosphere, packed with review of some of the topics studied during the Wintersman. But the success of a yeshiva bacher is very much determined based on his Wintersman. Some of the greatest Gdialyne to have ever graduated from the top and premier yeshivas, those like Slabotka and Kalman Valhalla have testified that a Wintersman was when they really stagged and when they really transformed themselves into real Talmbidei Chachome.

3:20 With the nights so long and as the Rambam tells us, the nights are created for the study of Tyra Some would study the entire Thursday night. They would blitz to finish the Masachta that they were learning. Yeah, it's all about the Wintersman and even those of us that aren't in a yeshiva, time is created equal and we all have this six month stint of time between Tsukkis and Pesach and we have to do with it whatever we choose.

4:01 So how can we best maximize winter's man 5784? How do we grab on to all of its potential? And instead of dreading waking up every morning it's so cold that we cannot throw our blanket off no, to wake up inspired on a certain quest for greatness. So we're better to look. Then the great Mir, mashiach of Yeruchum Levavitz, for his opening talk, his opening remarks as the lead Mashiach of Yeshivas Mir during the roaring 20s, when he welcomed the Bacheran back to Yeshiva and he gave them a muster discourse about the Ha'scholas Hazman, the beginning of his man.

4:53 And he opened with a Gemara Masecht Tainas 12a, yud-baze Amr-Dalav. Very interesting that when a person will accept upon themselves a fast, for whatever reason, it must be vowed. You must take upon this fast. At a certain time of the day, says the Gemara cold Tainas, any fashe loquiba lov me bodhiyom. If you don't accept it early in the day, from the beginning of the day, lavshme Tainas, it's not a fast, even if you may have fasted almost all of the day, but you never, at the beginning of the day, made a Kabbalah Ha Tainas. You made that commitment to have a fast.

5:35 Well then, there's no halakos of Tainas there, it's just, quite frankly, you're just hungry. Yeruchum tells us the secret to a good Zman is a good Ha'schala, a good beginning, a starting on the right foot, when you know where you're beginning and where you are headed to. It's unbelievable. The beginning of something isn't just another one of its parts, but Tawibachiris dover slomam alech told us that the end of something is good. May reishisa when you begin properly from its beginning. And as the Bakhram came back, he would tell them help them organize to have a good start.

6:21 And how clear it is, because we normally know that wherever the Yaitzahara fights us very strongly, it is clear that, right, there is something very important. How does the first day of every new stint of time look? The first day of camp, there's never any leagues, it's always organizing. The first day of Yeshiva, everyone's still unpacking, trying to find a Ha'vruza. The first day of a Jav very hard to get your wits and figure out what's really going on and what's flying and who's going where, but aschala, right now, as Hezhevon is here, a bitter month with no holidays, but it's rather sweet in the way that we get to begin this winter's man with the right foot.

7:10 Further, it is well known that Beraeus isn't just another one of the Parishios. Well, there's something different. There is an inception of the world, a creation of the world. God brought forth a mysoberacious, and Rabbi Ruchem says it takes a certain mysoberacious on a Zman on this winter, not just lally gag through it, but to begin by setting yourself up for success. Aschala, that's the key. And if we seek to have our habits, our mitzvos, our davenings in door, it takes a good aschala, even Klawli Israel.

7:57 How is it that we could and should endure, other than, obviously, hashem causing it at every second? But when Billim looked down at the Jewish people, he saw a reason why we would endure. I look down and I see this nation. They are strong from its roots, as he's explaining this post, and he says they're of us Abraham Isaac and Jacob, avram, yitzchok and Yaakov. They were locomotives. They were unstoppable. They built this binion, this skyscraper, upon such a firm foundation. Their aschala was good. Well, they're destined for greatness. So that's what Rabbi Ruchem would say Right now, make the necessary preparations to come to the Zman properly, a new land.

8:51 You'll be happy that you started the way that you did, but the takeoff is where everything happens organizing the schedule and seeing to what you actually out here to accomplish. It's actually even on a deeper level. It's hard for us to grasp this, for we know that the building of the base Hamigdash the first one was actually put together by Shloy Mahamelech. We say in Davening, psalms 30, bismar Shircha Nukasavayasla David. It's the inauguration of David's temple. Well, you probably know that it wasn't King David.

9:34 Why is it attributed to him? But, based on a bunch of psukhimin, rise of Yeruchim puts forth because David was the one who had this arousal and excitement about doing it. It was his idea, he was the impetus, he was the haschala and everything goes after the haschala. But you begin a mitzvah, you have to finish it, because a beginning isn't just one of the parts of the whole, one of the cogs of this wheel, but it is exactly where everything goes down, right there at the haschala. So, maher, hezvan this beautifully, maher, it's a bittersweet month where we set up Winter's Mon 5784.

10:17 And one of the real places drilling into the second idea approach that Rabbi Yeruchim would give, but it's very much connected to the first one. It's actually the next stucco, right after it, but it seems like it's a hemschich. It's really a continuation. It's well known that one of the hallmark attributes of this boutique, yeshiva, in Yeshiva's kelm, the Talmatairah headed by Rabbi Simcha Zisel Ziv Breuda, in which Rabbi Yeruchim actually only spent nine months by him, but everything that he did in his life, rabbi Yeruchim said I'm just trying to spread and relive the altar's Torah, to disseminate it, and one of the main things was Seder was orderliness. Everything was done with exactness, and the altar of kelm he gave a mashal as parable was.

11:05 You may have beautiful jewels on a necklace, pearls, you daven, grade, you learn grade, you have Yeruchim. I am all the different beautiful attributes that will crown this necklace, but the little string, that strand of the necklace, the chain that keeps all of them together, is Seder is living orderly, attacking things in a very methodical, smooth, systematic type of way. For otherwise one day it's great, davening hard, learning hard, and then everything falls apart and all of the jewels, when Seder snaps, go tumbling to the floor.

11:50 So to begin properly means to organize the schedule, to set your routine Because, truthfully, perhaps even more powerful than a good one month high of El is the subtle drip by drip routine that winter's mind gives us. When you set up a five minute Chavrusa, it's very interesting, it becomes a part of your schedule and a part of you, much faster than just a very exciting and intense all night learning, maybe during El, to do mitzvos here, anashe, milumada, doing them milumada in a good way.

12:37 Rabbi Rukham tells us, if you do something so consistently, even though it's something so small, when you set your Seder and you know where you are going at which time and what you are doing at each different period of your winter's man, success will be had. Success is imminent, like the water that Rebekahiva saw dripping on the rock. And CBT cognitive behavioral therapy when somebody is struggling with some form of worry and anxiety is anxious about something. One of the most common treatment plans is the type of response therapy in which somebody will be exposed to their ultimate fear but by slowly habituating themselves to the fear, it eventually becomes tolerable and the anxiety wears away.

13:29 Sometimes, afraid of heights, they just keep going on the roller coaster and going up very high, they lock themselves in and eventually the fear dissipates and the anxiety becomes very tolerable and hardly creates anxious feelings at all. So the routine and the six month dark winter's mind gives us an ability to create habituation in a lot of areas. He would coax his tal miy dem ruby ruch and would cajole his students and make for yourself a schedule, a routine. Do that at the beginning. Set up a haschala, a proper haschala that during this time I'm organizing, that I'm diving at a makrum kavua here.

14:10 I don't dive in at any minion that I find. This is my spot. I dive in here at this time. This is my shoal. These are my chavrusas. This is my business. This is when I work. This is when I'm with the family. This is what I do on Sundays. This is when I take my daughter out for ice cream. This is when I go and get up in the morning. This is when I sleep in on this day. This is when I need my rest. This is when. This is when. This is when. This is when. Because with routine and with the systematic conception of the winter's man, from my subaraches all the way until the very end of this winter's man by Pesach, this is how we get the most out of it. Shlomo Gansfried in his Kittr shal chonor, actually points out how easy it is to habituate yourself to good habits.

14:53 He says to wake up in the morning even though you may feel tired. Wherever you want more sleep, the echahara has got you held down underneath the cozy covers. You just do it three or four times. Three or four times less than a week. You start a routine and it becomes easy, and life attests to this fact. So, winter's man 5784. Organize your schedule, make that routine, make a busses for your success, a yesoid, by starting on the right foot, by organizing your schedule, plotting and charting your way to victory, so that, wherever you are in the world, wherever you're listening to this, your winter's man, the Zaman Chayruf 5784.

15:45 It's like you're the best bacher and valojin, you're the top guy in Kelm and the masminimivakish of Slavadka. Your day by day, your routine. It wins With habituation, you are successful and it's this man that you will look back to that. You saw that everything changed.