114: Watch Your Step

hi everybody this is deborah lovski and welcome to the ravioliski show and whether you're watching on our friends attorney time or whoever you watch or listen to your podcast once again we are happy to have you along for this third year of our podcast and uh i have to tell you the truth i mentioned last time about us being a community one person already wrote me about wanting to come and move to my new town in itself so uh you know if we if we get up to about 30 i think i will we'll uh we'll start so 29 more people want to come and live together in our little cult village this is your opportunity but uh um the truth is you know i have no way of knowing the impact i mean i go on different sites and try to figure out how many people are watching this i i can't get any real numbers um uh but i do know uh that last friday night uh two basical girls um you know i i don't want to reveal their seminary because i don't want to get him into trouble but they like there's only broke protocol and stopped into to visit they said that uh that they're big fans of the show you know so this just and she says now that i'm in seminary of course i can't get it you know um unless somebody can like you know record it for me and you know and bring it over or something but uh she says she listens to it on spotify full disclosure i i don't even know what spotify is i don't even know i'm on spotify i'm sorry i'm sorry uh you know michael made me a facebook page people ask me why aren't you on instagram i don't even know what instagram is you know so um whatever they're like people listening on spotify i have no idea i don't even know i don't know where this is going from i just gave somebody uh a ride today she told me that she and her whole family watches it on uh on [Music] tour anytime and uh and uh it's uh you know it's uh something that they all enjoy it's something for the whole family so it's it's hard to know how many people are actually with us and uh it could be that the uh the the experience we share it together because i i can't see all of you at the same time i just did a zoom call uh there was a program here in richarlisum i had a zoom call uh he said to me uh you can 500 people can can call in but uh you know you uh you'll never reach that number we've never had anything like that you know anyway he had to call up emergency and extend it because they had 600 people who called in and um uh and he says uh it's a one-way thing they can see you you can't see anybody as it always kind of freaks me out a little bit when i give a zoom show i always ask people please turn on your cameras because i otherwise i'm just talking to myself if i want that i could just stay home and talk to my family just kidding anyway yeah i actually have family members who watch so i you know i'm just kidding that's just obvious sense of humor anyway so uh so uh definitely there's so many people and as i said at the beginning uh we're happy to have you along and we have a sponsor this week it is sponsored in honor and memory of zelig ben arya labe by his children and is a beautiful thing because all the children joined together in this sponsorship and uh i um i don't handle the sponsorships i don't i you know the file handles everything um it's amazing that i actually uh know how to turn on uh the the zoom and record this to send it out now that i'm not in the official rubioski studios um and uh full disclosure when i first started doing it myself even on that i would forget to push the record button so michael had to set it up so it automatically records and then automatically sends it to him because he knows that i can't even be trusted to do that so anyway so he says that uh they didn't say to mention everybody's name so it won't but what a beautiful thing that all the children should join together to do this is a tremendous covet uh from different families all around and uh what can i say it should be an alia from the neshama and uh listen uh as i tell my wife all the time you turn around and you see that you leave behind children and grandchildren sometimes great grandchildren in this world by the time you leave it and you say well you know in case anybody ever asks did i do anything in this world yeah what an amazing thing when all the children get together to honor their father who has passed on it is uh such a tremendous host and it should be a tremendous uh liar for the the shama okay so um there's a when i met these various people who told me that they're all watching the podcast and we're entering in our third year reminded me of two stories and i will juxtapose the two stories because they are interesting the first one happened in 1977 when all of you uh came to itself his father loved itself in fact when he opened up to supercomputing he had land and itself that he sold uh back in the 20s i guess it was 20s 30s and uh to be able to get the money to open yeshiva and um [Music] and loved herself he so there were a few times he picked up the entire yashima from queens and moved them for a year terence joe so one of those years was 1977 and i had this close to be there for that event and it was it was remarkable because this was the yeshiva that was used to accommodating uh 30 maybe 40 people and suddenly they had 250 with the coil and everything it was an astounding thing and it definitely changed the face of sanhedrin for many years but um um it uh it was amazing thing so while we were there a number of bakram got together to start a hasselblad and and they asked the shiva to give divre khizuk to the to the new hazelbaugh and he said the following noah comes off the table noah comes off the ark and the first thing he does is plant a vineyard number first from we'll describe and discuss why he decided to make a vineyard um when that was the first thing he engaged in whether it was a good idea or not whatever the case might be and uh and he plants a minion and as we know it ended poorly he got drunk and his son khan comes in and does what he does and uh basically the rest of world history is set into motion from that story i mean this is the first posteluvian uh event plans the vineyard gets drunk and then the actions of his three sons [Music] play out for thousands of years in any event so the first thing is plant the vineyard and the resheba brought a yalcatrimony that says the following as soon as he went to plant the vineyard now the actual notion of there is that there was a shade that says he wanted to help put it in terms of the atari and he said the following the first one who volunteers when you want to set out to do something is the it's a heart yeah so he says you got to be very careful when you're starting an undertaking because there's always somebody with some force that wants to try to usurp this and use it for something negative almost every movement in the jewish people started out at some point with the noblest um intentions and purposes and often not always but often it got derailed and the reason is because people [Music] would start to look at it for their own point of view um you look at i'm doing something with shema and other people look at it and they say an opportunity i can get a job my friend can get a job i have my brother-in-law what's in it for me what's in it for me yeah uh girls education in their child in general is difficult there was a crisis at one point in universal life a crisis there were certain schools that build themselves as the most elite and of course everybody wants to be elite nobody wants to be ordinary yeah um [Music] there's this uh historian victor david hanson and uh davis hanson sorry and uh i heard him speaking he says that one of his machines wasn't working on the farm and this fella came in and took it apart put it back together that's something i could never hope to do and we look down at him he says he's much smarter than most of these people that i work with in university actually knows how to do something you know but uh um when uh when you when you start something yeah so uh so some people look at it anyway girls education was a mess because there were certain schools that were elite and everyone's got a little lead school nobody wants to go to a bad school um it was interesting there was years ago an american seminary opened up jewish line and it's a sad story to say it's doing half the girls were bright-eyed bushy-tailed like out of town basiaco girls who couldn't get into the more high-powered seminaries and they were coming because they were promised that this was going to be a very quality seminary but they couldn't fill up their numbers so the other half of the seminary was made up of not such quality basically girls from the new york area the two were you know water and oil they it couldn't possibly mix them with two separate seminars going on and these other girls engaged in activities that gave the whole seminary a bad name and one of the out of town girls told me she says i only came here not just because i wanted to get a good uh you know torah hashgraph foundation but frankly when it comes to shidduchim they asked did you go to seminary where did you go i'm going to tell them where i went to and it's going to kill all my because someone says oh that place that's not a good place yeah so uh so you have to be very wary so there were schools that opened up and nobody wanted to go to the schools that weren't the best schools everybody's the best um i have a daughter um who was born on the english calendar january 1st 1 34 in the morning an hour and 34 minutes into the next year otherwise i would have gotten the tax write off so kids just cost you money but anyway um so if i was applying for school in america where the cutoff is january 1st that wouldn't have been much of a an issue because she missed the deadline by an hour and 34 minutes however she was born mozi a sorbet base that's how i remember most of my children's birthdays everybody was born either before after or occasionally in the middle yeah so my oldest daughter was born arab yeoman zika round april 16th which is the day after the tax filing my second daughter was born second day schwarz which here in eritrea is the day after schwarz yeah my third son was born my third child was born um uh so this daughter was born mozi i saw a potato base it goes on like i want to go through the whole thing a lot of kids can i know i can spend the whole podcast just talking about their birthdays anyway people are impressed that i remember it but i have a trick it's in the before and after anyway um uh i have one daughter who was born on july 3rd which is obviously before july 4th for those of you not in america because i don't want my people in switzerland to get upset at me in america that's uh independence day uh is the fourth of july yeah she was on the third july and she was born on the 16th of tamus the day before the first anyway so this daughter was born mozi i serve tejs so the eleventh of teves and the cut off in eric's shell is rosh chodesh based so here she missed the deadline not by an hour and 34 minutes but by 11 days and uh her ghananet said uh she was still five officially you know says you can't leave her back here please please for the love of god don't do this to us my kids and i may have forgotten my kids are not made for god this kid she was just too smart you understand there's only so much time you can spend cutting and pasting i had one daughter that they they advised to leave back yeah and she taught herself how to read and like during half second during the recess she would sit there and read books to the children you know my kids are not really made for god you know cutting and pasting and stuff like that it's just doesn't have the skills in fact um it seems that uh i assume i don't know this to be true because i never went to 12th grade when i went to the hebrew academy nassau county you had an option to graduate after 11th grade which i took advantage of um and uh had to make up a couple of classes in summer school public school that was my only foray into public school and what an experience that was not to talk about that one time but anyway um so uh uh but in 12th grade evidently the workload becomes much lighter and uh we had to uh you know give her this like riga this is the stuff you take to relax you because she would just make so much trouble in class because there was no intellectual stimulation she was born you know a really smart kid to get bored it's not good not good for anybody anyway so the teacher says don't leave her back here again please move her up i know she misses the deadline she'll be the youngest get the class but trust me it's worthwhile so we asked so he said okay there's going to be four evaluation sessions four evaluation sessions i said okay when's when when do i bring it for the first one it says no no the first one is for you and your wife i i said i said i said what said this is israel every kid is a genius there's no parent who will tell you my kid is not a genius there's no parent who tells you my kid's not exceptional everybody is exceptional yeah so um um so we want to have an evaluation first to see a few people crazy surprisingly they didn't catch it uh they said i was normal anyway just shows you can't trust the psychological community but at any event so uh so then she took three evaluations and they told us afterwards she's not a genius she's very very smart but she's not a genius yeah you can move [Laughter] but everybody wants to move up because everybody wants to be the best yeah somebody once told me if you want to open a bay's yeshiva it was a b-school you have to say we're in double a school where no b students will come because no b student wants to go to b school if you open up a b school you get these students that's it that's what somebody explained to me because everybody wants anyway so the situation was terrible there were girls just sitting at home not getting into not getting to any school not getting anywhere it was terrible so um uh so i uh so i decided i was going to open a high school now you understand ania mary kai um [Music] my accent is so exceptional i don't know how they detect from time to time that i'm american but americans here are an underclass you know nobody wants to go to an american school yeah in fact when i finally was in the process of starting it i went to a number of americans and i said we still need a school like this i said would you send your daughter if i can't get her into any place else sure as groucho marx famously said i wouldn't join a club that would have me as a member yeah need exclusivity i heard the story many years ago that when the punishment was opening up the punishment yeshiva nobody was applying so he took ads out in all the haredi papers and said registration is closed i'm sorry we have no more space and he got a flood of requests and he just kept telling everyone no no no and then finally people were pressuring and pressuring like this one and look that one is it a true story i don't know i'm not pesach crone i don't check out my stories it could be it could be it's not i don't care it's a great story anyway um my wine famously says all my stories are true it's just some of them haven't happened yet and anyway um so uh uh so there was a tremendous problem going on so i decided you know i don't know too much about the business i was prepared to fundraise something that goes against everything i stand for i am the single worst fundraiser in the world i'm terrible terrible when i was running ncsy i would have people from time to time say to me i like what you're doing stop by my house i want to give you a check i couldn't do it i couldn't do it my parents brought me up never ask anybody for anything at this point in my life i'm in my 60s at this point in my life if i'm someplace i'm diving in some school or something out of a car i'm staying a mile away i'll walk rather than ask somebody for a ride i can't that's how my parents brought me up the motion goddess men's at sal yelled at me once he says you're doing a terrible oblique he says you understand when i go and i ask somebody if it's stuck and what am i asking for me i'm giving these people a source i'm giving them all muhammad you understand how many people you're denying an opportunity to he's intellectually right but i'm emotionally scarred in many many ways trust me i would make a wonderful case study uh but anyway um so uh i decided i would fundraise i wanted to start this school and i went to meet with uh a prominent uh rasheshi uh i don't i don't wanna mention his name an israeli part of the israeli system i explained to him what i wanted to do and he walked me through a little bit you know some ideas etc and he says and what are you going to do i said me nothing he says ma i said i just want to get this started because you need it but if somebody hears that there's an america involved even if i'm just the executive director or something like that forget it it's a kiss of death he said ma le shane shamayim [Laughter] you're doing it altruistically no no you can't do it it's impossible now i didn't press him there's two shots yeah one is that maybe he felt that if you don't have a personal vested interest you won't work hard enough or you don't get the others i don't know what well maybe he just being an israeli was like no no you have to be a part of it everyone knows that why would you start something and not be a part of it it's illogical somebody said to me once you have to understand that in yerushalayim everybody lived in what was called the haluka they used to collect money for its and they would divide it up among everybody you know in the firm community well that's all there was was it from community at least divided up among the jews and uh it was bare sustenance so if you could get your hands on any position that might pay you a few more uh you know liras you know it made the difference between life or death or for a family therefore there are always people looking to take over an organization and make it what they want so okay but but the first one to join is the eighth hour because you mess things up it's very interesting when they were starting the goodies israel now yeah the time when they get a rabbit you know what i mean like and everybody was jumping on board and one of the people who famously refused to join was now he was a very important figure in the jewish world at that point having him on board certainly would help to add to the general credibility of the uh of the enterprise so he says listen when everybody lights their own candles and somebody's candle blows out he's in darkness but everybody else is in light but when you have an electric company that's providing electricity to everybody if the generator goes down the power plant goes down everyone's in darkness it says you're building uh an electric company i'm going to keep my candle burning in my house so if you guys do something wrong and it all gets messed up i'm okay because there's always a danger when you start something and that's what their was trying to say when you start something the first one to join is the eight hour and to be able to keep something an endeavor i say i understand organization an endeavor free from any malice my son was involved with the ishiba um i'll mention his name potash i i've filmed fundraising videos for the issue because i believe in it because there are many many yeshivas very few are unique this is a unique issue uh they focus not just on in-depth learning and bacchias the finished prosecutors finish us yeah and every year they have a you know all the people make a cma shots that finish shots on their own besides the fact that there's tremendous umkus my my son is one of those you know second geniuses in my family as i've mentioned you know and uh and uh he went from yeshua to yeshiva because like you know the the the han holly used to make her loses with him they didn't know what to do with them you know he came here he says the umkus here the the brilliance and the depth is unbelievable but um um the uh uh the yeshiva has a policy of we don't have to spend time in schtick let's tell you where to speak for itself there is itself i'll give you an example uh initial i am i i don't know which language so you shouldn't work from an allowed to have a driver's license okay could be because they're afraid then they'll go driving places and uh and who knows okay so one yeshiva either hacked the system or paid off somebody i don't know what and they got access to all the driver license registrations and they cross-referenced it with all of the yeshiva bakru and anyone who they found out had a license they threw him at each other so potash sent out a general cult and he said anyone who got thrown out get in your car and drive to me because i want you to learn torah because then even with the driver's license and uh he's an extremely legend person he he he looks at anybody comes in with any problem in clay style his attitude is how do we sound somebody comes to him who's a poor guy somebody eats this about whatever it is he he looks at it as how can we how can we solve this about it's my obligation you know and he says that that who was known as being the girdle of claudia's fellow spent most of his day in prison that's what you have to do you know you have to you have to worry about every single person so anyway there were these guys who were not ready for a yeshiva they were probably not even ready for a uh a prep you know like like a introductory to a yeshiva you know they were they were on the other side of the road [Laughter] so uh so he wanted to start a program so this guy came to him and says oh i already have a program so work with me okay so he put that sent all of his guys there and he was working with him he'd come in the share et cetera and this guy felt threatened and he threw potash out of his own yeshiva and of course people like my son who would tell me they were slightly outraged you know pogba said when you fight with this guy for this is all he has this whole life is he decided he's a shashi he has a program that's fine and bit by bit everybody drifted away because this guy couldn't do it they wanted somebody of the caliber of potash of a russian shiva to be able to do this and uh and they they drifted away he started starting another program they started a program for guys who weren't there but this other person wanted the program because he wanted to be a shiva he he wanted a program that was uh very famous for shiva in itself he said once there's three reasons to become a rich issue one is you want to tell me them second one is let's face it you make more money when you're sure then when you're learning a coil or you're a rebbe and the third is for the coven i said i'll tell you the truth except for the third reason the other two aren't good enough so uh so when you start an endeavor there's always somebody there who wants to do it for their own purposes the a to her comes in and says i want to help you make this vineyard that's the first story here's the second story 45 years ago the eric it was over 40 years ago i was an 8th gen and a friend of mine was in another issue with a charismatic uh relatively young rabbi and he told the following story i won't mention which issue that he was in but he was in a very famous yeshiva in america and he wanted to make a festival and he starts and after a few weeks the shiva asks a new how's it going he goes unbelievable unbelievable everybody's participating we're giving out different jobs to everybody everybody's doing their jobs everybody's this everybody said it's unbelievable it's so good everything's going so well and the rest shiva looked upset i couldn't understand why he looked upset i mean this is what we call good news yeah and uh and i saw him a couple weeks later he says how's it going and i said terrible this one started fighting with this one this one stopped doing his job this one dropped out i don't know what to do i think i'm gonna just end it when i told you everything was going well so you were upset not only tell you everything's going bad your hat he says you're starting off to make ah you are spitting in the face of the satan you're saying the torah is and i said to myself it must be you are the yata was going to tell my son to drop out must be that to add something something evil here but now that i see you're having trouble and i realize that the atari is coming after you i feel better and he gave him to give me because i the irony of the story is that this fellow looking across the room saying it must be you're the atar those words came back to haunt me when this fellow was driven out of the yeshiva for um child molestation with that intensity saying rasheeda said to me you're the atari and so whenever we do anything as much as possible we have to maintain the purest of intentions when the russian government insisted that velojin introduce secular studies then that siv closed down the yeshiva rather than to allow them to dictate it because when you start anything there's always the possibility that somebody is going to come in with bad intentions to be able to twist it and so you have to be very wary when you begin any endeavor so this idea occurred to me obviously when i had these two back-to-back incidents of people who seem like the the finest some of the finest people in classroom who tell me that they listened to this podcast i i told you once upon a time that somebody told me down on the holla of yeshiva here and they're showing american issue and um and being historian you know they go out and they listen to the podcast together [Laughter] so uh so i am so nervous i'm so nervous so let me take a moment just speak about myself on my favorite topics um somebody said to me an interesting thing they said you know i listened to recordings of yours from 30 years ago and i listened to you today and you sound exactly the same i was like yeah this is not just in the longer people stay in the field they start to take on certain affectations and i always say and i tell my students and when i say you know as i get says and you sound exactly the same like you know like a uh like a disgruntled youth have a mature and you have an animal so i said i'll tell you why when people tell me they're considering uh a career you know in uh public speaking yeah i always tell them i said when you start to believe your introductions it's time for you to get out of the business somebody once gave this unbelievable introduction to devin cohen like over the top and he gets up and he's looks a little choked up he says i just wish my parents could have been here to hear this my father would have enjoyed it my mother would have believed it i'm always very wary yeah um you know and that's why every now and then i get an email people were worried for you know somebody just wrote me something they did oh you should just say that you know i want to preserve your dignity it's too late for that don't worry about my dignity i don't worry about my dignity yeah yeah you gotta if you think you have a message that's important that people can relate to that's what you have to say and you have to be very wary very wary i know it's right around the corner that i'm going to get some big corporate sponsor it's going to want to take over this show going to pay me tens of thousands of dollars per podcast to be able to give across their message anyway uh i'm going to rea that's um rabbi raviolovsky.com so anyway but i remember years ago somebody said to me you know the good thing about you rivallowski is i know you'll never sell out and i said don't be silly no one's offered me enough money yet everyone has a price don't don't think so it's just just i'm not important enough but uh but that's it we have to everything we do in our life when it comes to our marriages when it comes to taking care of our children when it comes to bruce's when it comes to anything that we do remember that the atahara is hiding in the background saying i'd love to help and he's the first one to volunteer to help us so hashem as we start continuing continuing to start our third year that we should be able to share messages with people that give them physic make their life a little better put a smile on the face of a person who might be you know getting a little down i don't know why maybe because they've been locked in their house for eight months who knows why some people get uh crazy over the smallest things whatever the case may be because broncos should give us physics to give us strength that's it for this week if you want to find out more about the show go to raviolaski.com you can contact me you can comment on the show i get some comments from time to time um you can uh sponsor an episode yeah again for the corporate sponsors that's rabbi olavsky.com anyway that's it for this week my name my name is donalowski and this has been the rabbi yolovsky show it's the rabbi orlovsky show ready to go the rabbi orlovsky showed knowledge and wisdom will help you grow lots of fun in every episode and we don't have to rhyme though [Music] show [Music] show till next time till we meet again throughout my orolowski show it's the rabbi yolowski show it's the rabbi orlowski