Telephone learning organisation PaL, Phone and Learn, attracted a crowd of over 1200 people to its pre-Rosh Hashanah lecture at the Hasmonean Boys School last week. The huge number of attendees meant that the audience had to be divided between two halls, with a live audio-visual link up provided in the second auditorium. PaL chairman Dov Harris introduced the guest speaker, Rabbi Paysach Krohn, by outlining the theme for the evening - 'Aspire Today, Inspire Tomorrow': taking the message of Ellul, aspiring to achieve one's goals and using that aspiration to become an inspiration to others.

Rabbi Krohn echoed this sentiment in the opening to his speech, explaining that now is a difficult time for Klal Yisroel, particularly in the light of the recent financial crisis, but that he hoped the evening would prove to be a source of chizuk and inspiration for everyone in the audience.

The two main strands of Rabbi Krohn's shiur centred around the concepts of 'Vayehi erev, vayehi boker, yom echad', and 'lo l'atzmo nivroh'.

In case of 'vayehi erev', he explained, there are many people who experience periods of 'erev' in their lives; times of darkness, crisis and difficulty. On the other hand, there are people, often within the same family, who find themselves in a situation of 'boker' - light, nachas and happiness. What we have to remember, he stressed, is that both the 'erev' and the 'boker' are part of the same 'yom echad' - everything comes from the same source of Light, from Hashem. Often it is the case that we simply cannot understand why certain things happen to us, because we've 'walked in during the show' as it were - in our brief lifetimes on this earth we cannot possibly comprehend Hashem's master plan; we will only understand it when Moshiach arrives. The meaning of Bitachon, Rabbi Krohn explained, is believing that Hashem does have a master plan and that everything that happens is the best possible outcome.

Moving on to 'lo l'atzmo nivroh', Rabbi Krohn commented that one of the ways we can get kaporoh for ourselves is by becoming givers, understanding that Hashem has given us certain talents and gifts not solely to make our own lives more comfortable and enjoyable, but mainly to be mechazek others. This is not only a question of giving money, he emphasised, but our time, and also our tefillos. If we do this, we cannot possibly envisage how great or far-reaching the ramifications can be.

To this end, everyone who attended the shiur received two gifts from PaL. The first, a wallet-sized card, contained a quote of Rabbi Krohn's from the shiur reflecting the unlimited potential we can all tap into - "Anyone can count the seeds in one apple, but only Hashem can count the apples in one seed". The second gift, a magnet featuring the tefilla to be said before taking medication, was sponsored by an anonymous London askan, who personified the kind of 'giver' Rabbi Krohn was urging us all to emulate. This askan had an idea but didn't just leave it to gather dust on the shelf - instead, he actualised it, and now 1200 people were taking the results away with them.

As the enormously successful evening drew to a conclusion, PaL trustee Akiva Hackenbroch commented: "Some 300 people are currently learning under the PaL umbrella and many more have signed up to become PaL partners and tutors this evening. We are so grateful to Rabbi Krohn for his constant support of PaL, for which he was of course, the original inspiration." During the course of his visit, PaL also arranged for Rabbi Krohn to speak to upper school students at the JFS school in Kenton - many were visibly moved by his words, and several were inspired to attend the event at the Hasmonean as a result.