The Second Look

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Rabbi Zecharia Wallerstein** (0:08)
First look, right, you just see the object, you just see what's in front of you, but you don't know what's going on. The second, if you want to, if you want to rattle across them, if you want to run to help another person, you got to look twice. The biggest mistake with people is they make judgments. We have these kids that are off the derach, and I have this high school, and the girls are short skirts, or whatever they're wearing, and people look at them, and they're like, oh, slut, oh, low life. The second look is, why is she dressed like that? Somebody hurt her. Somebody doesn't love her. She comes from a dysfunctional family. Something's wrong. I, and this is very, you know, Hashem puts whatever, I say that, it should come out of my mouth, what people need to hear, not what I need to say. This is the most important thing I could tell you.
The world is busy with the first look. Kids with Mikhail Lashavis, kids not learning, kids not dressed correctly, kid has long hair, piercings, a tattoo, whatever you see, right? That is not the disease. That he's a drug addict is not the disease. That she's Mikhail Lashavis is not the disease. That she's depressed is not the disease. It is the symptom that there is something wrong. The tumor, the tumor is the symptom that there's something in the body that's not well.
So, everybody in the world treats the symptom. The drug addict, the depression, the alcoholic, the gambler, why is he gambling?
Why does he need to win? Why does he think he can't win unless he has luck? But he himself doesn't have what it takes to win. Why does he play poker? Because he likes to take the chips and say, Dear mine, why does he need to do that? Why does he need to go to a wedding and stand there with a glass of scotch in front of everyone? The scotch is not the disease. The alcoholic is the problem, not the scotch. And the whole world, and I'm telling you, this is 100%. It's what I do all day and all night, and I'm not saying it from my experience, I'm saying it from a lot of research and a lot of talking to people that are involved in this. If you don't fix the disease, and you only fix the symptom, you cut the tumor out in cancer, you cut the tumor out, you don't kill the cancer, it's going to pop out somewhere else. You've got to kill the cancer. So, when you see a girl, not you guys, I don't know why you're doing this, but you see a girl that has piercings, a Jewish girl from a Frum family, that has piercings and a tattoo, she didn't wake up one morning and say, let's do piercings. Something happened, and if you don't fix that trauma, it's gonna come out somewhere else. And a lot of the relapse in a 45 day program, or a 30 day program in any addiction, you can't get, you can't fix the disease in 45 days. You can fix the symptom. But there's a 90% relapse rate, because you didn't kill the disease. So you got rid of the tumor, but you didn't get rid of the disease. And that's why, to really get rid of it, it's a lot of work and a lot of time. And therefore, when you see someone off the derech, instead of, oh my god, stay with, it's the opposite. It's like, okay, I see that you're hurting. How can I help you? What do you need?
That's the second look. By Yerot LeCrosseau. If you want to run to help someone, you can't go by the first look.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:33)
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