Vayimaen - Doing it Together | Rabbi Fischel Schachter

Short Summary

Main recommendation: Join a committed group effort, such as the Vayimaen Chabura, to strengthen your eye-guarding (Shmiras Einayim) and your overall spiritual growth, because what you cannot achieve alone, your friends can help you achieve. The speaker builds this on the idea from Sefer HaKuzari that communal prayer (Tefillah B'Tzibbur) gathers the best moments of each participant into one stronger whole.

Key Points

• The speaker illustrates the point with a businessman named Shimon who, facing a difficult test, considered avoiding his Rebbe (the Lechovitcher) and his usual prayer groups, but anticipated his friends would pull him back; the Rebbe later told him that what a Rebbe cannot do, friends can do.
• Vayimaen is described as a chain (Shalsheles) that holds participants together, even when individuals sometimes fail in their Shmiras Einayim.
• According to Sefer HaKuzari, when people pray together, Hashem takes the best blessing from each person and combines them into one perfect Shemoneh Esrei that applies to everyone.
• The same principle is said to apply to anything done as part of a group, not just prayer.
• The speaker's father story, about an old man who refused to enter an elevator upon first arriving in America, is used to illustrate that the Tzibbur (community) is like a machine that can transform a person.

Details Worth Noting

• Concrete instructions: The video gives no step-by-step method, schedule, or checklist. The only actionable advice is to join or stay in a group of committed friends, pray with a Tzibbur rather than alone, and let peers hold you accountable (for example, by going to the bigger shul or insisting on attending with your friends).
• The example illustrates that a person may try to avoid their Rebbe or usual group out of shame, and that friends can prevent this avoidance.
• The Sefer HaKuzari example uses a distracted Shemoneh Esrei (thoughts about parking tickets, city life, and moving to Monsey) to show that the speaker believes individual prayer quality varies, while communal prayer averages out the strongest moments.
• The speaker describes the group as having a Shalsheles (chain), a metaphor for the bond that keeps members connected.
• The video contains no named products, dosages, or timing requirements; its guidance is spiritual and communal rather than procedural.

Bottom Line

Lasting spiritual change is presented as more achievable through sustained communal commitment than through individual willpower alone.