The Real Me | Rabbi Shimon Gruen

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Vayimaen’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

There's a pasuk that we say at the end of Shmoneh Esrei, each person has his own pasuk, and the point of it is that when we come up to Shomayim, we should remember our names. Now one may think, Remember my name? That's not something I usually forget. But even when we're here in this world, we tend to forget who we really are. I was talking recently to a yungerman, how he is, how he's doing, and he tells me: I don't daven. I said: You don't daven? Why not? He said: Well, I’m a shaygetz, and a shaygetz doesn't daven. I said: What makes you think you're a shaygetz? Well, there are things that I shouldn't be doing that I do, and if that's the case and that's who I am, then how can I daven? It wasn't a big Chiddush to me to hear this. Unfortunately, very many people deal with what I’ll call an Identity Crisis, not knowing who they really are. I wrote a book, Get Along with Everyone, explaining people's personalities, giving understanding to interpersonal conflict, helping people resolve difficulties and challenges with other people, and I came to realize that so many people who read this book are able to assess properly the people around them, whether it's a spouse or children or workmates, family members, neighbors, and when it comes to themselves, they get it wrong. So many kind, soft, gentle people

Jump to a moment

1. 0:05There's a pasuk that we say at the end of Shmoneh Esrei, each person has his…
2. 0:35It wasn't a big Chiddush to me to hear this. Unfortunately, very many people deal with…
3. 1:05that are assuming that they're really bad, nasty, selfish people, thinking that they're arrogant, and other…
4. 1:36He said: You’re sure? You don't have something? Just some straw on the floor, a little…
5. 2:06And as he gets up to the train, he sees what he thought was a mirror,…
6. 2:36And it's up to us to decide how are we going to identify ourselves? Am I…
7. 3:07Even though he's being forced, but he really wants to be good. Every Yid wants to…

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