Transcript
Auto-generated transcript. Not time-synced to the video.
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