Home Podcasts Nitzotzos: Inspiration to Keep Your Spark Alive with Rav Mordechai Burg
Nitzotzos: Inspiration to Keep Your Spark Alive with Rav Mordechai Burg

Nitzotzos: Inspiration to Keep Your Spark Alive with Rav Mordechai Burg

Nitzotzos 718 Episodes Aug 20, 2026

Shiurim and Divrei Chizzuk from our Mashpia Rav Mordechai Burg, providing inspiration to keep your spark alive.

Episodes

Ki Teitzei - You Have No Idea Who You’re Talking About
Ki Teitzei - You Have No Idea Who You’re Talking About Aug 20, 2026 00:27:09 Why does the Torah command us to remember Miriam’s aveira? Miriam loved Moshe. She helped raise him, risked her life to save him, and never intended to demean him. Of all the aveiros in Tanach, why must we remember this one?And why does the Torah describe it in almost exactly the same language it uses for Amalek?In this shmooze, delivered at the first Mishmar of the year in Mevaseret, Rav Burg exp
Shoftim - Who Are The Judges Sitting At Your Gates?
Shoftim - Who Are The Judges Sitting At Your Gates? Aug 13, 2026 00:35:45 ShoftimThe Torah commands us to appoint judges and officers at our gates. The Shelah hears something deeply personal in those words. A person has seven gates—two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and a mouth—and all day long, life passes through them. We see something. We hear something. We get a certain sense of what happened. But the evidence does not interpret itself. Somewhere inside us, a judge
Elul - Wearing The Crown Of Imperfection
Elul - Wearing The Crown Of Imperfection Aug 9, 2026 00:34:37 We often imagine teshuvah as going backward—to the person we were before we failed, became cynical, or compromised something inside ourselves. But if teshuvah simply meant retracing our steps, why does the letter ה contain a second opening?The Gemara teaches that this world was created with the letter ה: a wide opening below through which anyone may leave, and a smaller, higher opening through whi
Re’eh: The Life You Don’t Know You’re Choosing
Re’eh: The Life You Don’t Know You’re Choosing Aug 6, 2026 00:34:55 Most of us think we are making choices. Often, we are repeating patterns we learned so long ago that we have stopped calling them patterns and started calling them our personality.Parshas Re’eh begins with a demand: See. See the consequences that remain abstract, the idols we have renamed, and the needs hidden beneath the behaviors we cannot seem to change.In this shiur, delivered at Mishmar in NC
Eikev - The One Thing Hashem Asks of You: When Yiras Shamayim Becomes Natural
Eikev - The One Thing Hashem Asks of You: When Yiras Shamayim Becomes Natural Jul 30, 2026 00:25:45 Everything is in the hands of Heaven—except yiras Shamayim. But why is fear of Heaven the one thing Hashem cannot give us? And if yirah is Hashem’s greatest treasure, how can Moshe describe it as something small?In this shiur, delivered at Mishmar in NCSY Kollel, Rav Burg explores yirah not simply as fear, but as the capacity to live in the presence of a reality larger than ourselves—to accept tha
Tu B'Av: After the Rupture: A Six-Step Path to Repairing Klal Yisrael
Tu B'Av: After the Rupture: A Six-Step Path to Repairing Klal Yisrael Jul 28, 2026 00:51:59 After a Tisha B’Av shmooze about making room for one another, a close friend asked the question that slogans about achdus often avoid: What do we do when the differences are real?In this shiur, delivered in NCSY Kollel, Rav Burg reads the six events of Tu B’Av not as disconnected moments in Jewish history, but as a carefully ordered map for repairing a relationship after it has been ruptured. The
Tisha B'Av - Is There Room For Me?
Tisha B'Av - Is There Room For Me? Jul 23, 2026 00:37:35 Massive charred beams from the destruction of the First Beis HaMikdash were recently uncovered in Ir David—preserved beneath melted plaster for thousands of years.The discovery raises a powerful question: Why preserve the ruins?Chazal teach that we are not meant to remain trapped in destruction, but neither are we permitted to rebuild as though nothing happened. We build again—but we leave part of
Tisha B'Av - Kinnah 16 - When Titus Defeats Hashem and Jewish Children Sing
Tisha B'Av - Kinnah 16 - When Titus Defeats Hashem and Jewish Children Sing Jul 23, 2026 00:13:02 Titus enters the Kodesh HaKodashim, desecrates everything sacred, and walks away untouched. The Roman armies tear through the Beis HaMikdash while the angels stand ready—and Hashem appears to remain silent. Evil does not merely attack. It appears to win.But one wall remains.And in the final movement of the Kinnah, four hundred captive boys and girls are stripped of every form of control. Facing a
Tisha B'Av - An IFS approach to Rachel Imeinu And Redeeming Our Exiled Pain
Tisha B'Av - An IFS approach to Rachel Imeinu And Redeeming Our Exiled Pain Jul 22, 2026 00:32:25 Why is Rachel Imeinu buried on the road—outside Chevron, the resting place of the Avos and Imahos? And why is it specifically her weeping that brings Klal Yisrael home from exile?In this shiur, delivered at Kever Rachel to the campers of Sdei Chemed, we explore the story of Rachel Imeinu through the lens of Internal Family Systems—IFS.When pain feels too overwhelming or foreign to our essential se
Tisha B'Av - When the Beis HaMikdash Falls, Where Does Hashem Go?
Tisha B'Av - When the Beis HaMikdash Falls, Where Does Hashem Go? Jul 22, 2026 00:39:27 What happens to our relationship with Hashem when the structure through which we experienced Him is destroyed?In this shiur, delivered to the Chizuk Mission, Rav Burg explains that the loss of the Beis HaMikdash was far more than the destruction of a building. It created a terrifying spiritual question: If the place of the relationship is gone, has the relationship itself disappeared?Rabbi Shimon
Devarim - When Love Feels Like Hate: The Wound Behind Tisha B’Av
Devarim - When Love Feels Like Hate: The Wound Behind Tisha B’Av Jul 16, 2026 00:27:01 How could Klal Yisrael look at everything Hashem had done for them—the miracles of Mitzrayim, Krias Yam Suf, the mann in the desert—and conclude: “Hashem hates us”?And why did one night of misplaced tears become a night of crying for generations?In this shiur, delivered at Michlelet NCSY, Rav Burg explores the deeper wound behind the sin of the Meraglim. Their fear was not merely that they would l
Devarim - Your Voice Is Waiting To Be Heard
Devarim - Your Voice Is Waiting To Be Heard Jul 16, 2026 00:36:06 When Hashem first called Moshe Rabbeinu to lead Klal Yisrael, Moshe did not merely say that speaking was difficult for him. He declared, “I am not a man of words.” Yet forty years later, Moshe’s final contribution to the Torah begins: “These are the words that Moshe spoke.”How did Moshe transform from someone who needed Aharon to serve as his mouth into the man who gave us an entire Sefer Devarim?

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