#83: Behind the Bima - R' Eli Stefansky, with an update from Ukraine with Refael Kruskal of Odessa

from boca raton florida rabbis ephraim goldberg philip moskowitz and josh brody are taking you behind the bema the brs rabbi's schmooze about contemporary issues and talk to special guests who give a behind-the-scenes look at how they got to where they are and what keeps them going welcome to behind the bema good evening wednesday 99 pm coming to you live from boca raton i'm rebecca from goldberg joined by my dear friend and colleague rabbi joshua brody and we are here to take you behind the bema behind the bema very special edition of behind the beam we're excited to be with you we've got two guests tonight very serious conversation with an update from ukraine rafale kruskal the ceo of odessa here from him leading hundreds of orphans and the community of odessa on the run in ukraine we're going to speak to him where he is what's happening on the ground and then we have a phenomenal conversation with rabbi least ellie stefanski not just started a daf he's running a cult a daf community cult it's extraordinary it's a movement it's a wave and roberta's got a big announcement regarding that but first a big thank you to our sponsor tonight's behind the beam a special global edition of behind the bema is generously sponsored by our dear friends gilly's goodies gilly's goodies is the best way to spend mishloch to give a sweetheart you have family in israel you have a child studying in israel you have children grandchildren learning at kayla in israel and you want to give them a hug this program you want them to get a delivery a knock on the door sling special from you gilly's goodies is the way to go since 2001 gilly's goodies delivered tens of thousands of gift baskets for all kinds of occasions birthdays bar mitzvahs brisses births happy events anniversaries so many different things you know we go back right by brody very long by brandon gilly's goodies the very first michelle of manos campaign they ran to send idf soldiers gifts on purim was boca raton synagogue and they've given thousands and thousands of gifted soldiers since then so do your part send a gift to a soldier you know what it means to a soldier risking their life on the front lines for the jewish people for israel get a purim gift from a jew in america or south america or south africa australia england around the world wherever you're listening to behind the bema from go on gilly's goodies special referred by code is bima put in b-i-m-a special code rabbi brody let me tell you something first of all i think we were the first ones we were the pioneers when it came to sending these mishloch to army bases and since then there's many different places and organizations that want to do it but when you're thinking about you say logistically how do i get all these different monos to army bases all over the world people are calling in you've got one address to call you go to keeley's goodies this guy gets them wherever you need them delivered you know instead of you have to patch go around and figure out which supermarket can i have send something over you just call call david just call gilly's goodies they'll get it right over here yeah so send a soldier send a family member use the code bema bima special discount referred by code bima bema and a big thank you to our generous sponsors so rabbi brodie a little echo you sound a little bit like you're in a cave i'm gonna keep it's a lot colder than florida you're in an undisclosed location always on the runway brodie's not the same city two days in a row these days he's busy he's active we will give a special shout out we miss our dear friend of moscow and love him thinking about him doubting for esther tahila bas ariatsi pora wishing of course longing for when he comes back and um our hearts our thoughts our mind is all with him i will tell you everybody brother you know who i saw today for a minute for a moment last week's last week's guest i'm behind the bema we are privileged every year we host the uh except during the pandemic we're honored and privileged that our beloved yeshiva university is hosts the rabbinic rabbis from around the world get together study with rabbi dr j.j shakhtar and others and we've been privileged nothing other than the great weather here that we play host but dear friends and colleagues rabbits from around the world come and this afternoon he flew in made a presentation presentation and booked out but i was standing there all of a sudden tap on the shoulder my cousin rabbi david bashevkin so he looked at me right away and he goes absolutely make a beer and we continued our conversation from last week he got a lot of feedback i got a lot of feedback best piece of feedback i got from our conversation my kids thought i was a little strong it was a debate wasn't really behind the beam of style but got a lot of feedback that it was respectful loving dialogue different points of view and hopefully it was a example of disagreeing agreeably we have the greatest respect for one another we love one another but we can see something differently than than one another than the other so the best feedback i got was someone said rabbi i agreed with you but bashevin argues his points much better i tell you but it's amazing and i think when you look at our guests tonight especially rabbi stefanski you see part of his his energy is the fact that he's doing something a little bit different and that's why there's this excitement to follow him same way like you know rabbit beshevkin it's doing great things different interesting conversations so where are the lines what are those boundaries we as a community what are we doing but i just it was interesting it was always great to see him uh but it was fascinating because you continue the conversation offline and i i don't know that it was so different meaning i don't know that we were holding back online versus offline i hope we were respectful in both places and in both cases um but it reminds you that real sort of breakthrough in conversations are offline you know in the online world social media technology even the online world of texting what's happening in email you know it's efficient it's product it's it's a productivity gain but real conversations are like face to face you know looking into the eyes of another person feeling the heart and the pulse of another person connecting to the sincerity command panima upon them like like water you see your reflection cave so it was great great to see him for a moment offline great to continue the conversation i hope all of us are continuing our conversations uh offline uh online and offline because they are uh they're really important so it's uh it's really great it was good to see him tell us what else is going on rabbit brody you want to talk about the global campaign in the last in the last week also i mean look what's happening right now in ukraine you know last week this wasn't really much of an issue and all of a sudden the last week the world has changed everything has changed it's uh things are a little scarier it's very scary i actually saw a political commentator a pundit if you will who said you know part of the lesson here is that the russians were gathering on the border putin said exactly what he was going to do right and then he did it and part of the lesson here is you look around the world and you know russia said what it was going to do and then he did it and other countries say what they're going to do and they do it and iran's telling us what they want to do which you know get rid of israel and they're going to do it the rover of said the miracle you know the miracle of purims everyone thinks the miracle of purim is that esther intervened interceded everything worked out the coincidences you know what the miracle of parliament is can i say go for it because you've heard you say it a thousand times it's the fact that he listened yeah the miracle of purim is that an enemy stood up he said this is what i'm gonna do instead of our saying yeah he doesn't mean it he's not really gonna do it i can't imagine instead we said well if that's what he said he's going to do we'd better take him at his word right and that was the miracle of purim is that we took him at his word and so you know putin russia they told us what they were going to do and then they did it and other countries say what they're going to do and they do it and iran's saying what it's going to do and it's going to do it you know china's already saying what it's going they're going to do it that's that's a big lesson so we'll hear in a moment from rafal and get an update on the ground in ukraine what is happening but let's tell everyone about the global campaign go ahead rabbi it's a it's it's this is your chance this is your only chance once a year we finally say to you you know you love what we're doing here locally in a small community called boca raton but look at the impact it's having not only in the united states but way beyond all over the world all over the globe and if you want to be part of the magic you want to support everything that's being done right here right now this is your chance brsonline.org forward slash global you can join your friends can join your family can join and you can join multiple times support the incredible efforts of this incredible movement that's been started and we're so grateful we'll give a live update right now so far we have uh 182 people have donated we're at 34 000. we have a goal of 150 000 we're deeply indebted to the people who've who've given but there are a lot more and you know we're very honored we're very proud feel very privileged and we're not here to flex or be arrogant but thank god there's a lot of people who connect to boca raton synagogue they love our notion of our hakolal of the 13th gate of connecting and taking the best from all segments of yiddishkai and caring about the total jewish community they connect to the torah that we teach and promote and write and share the panel discussions behind the bema if everybody who gives us positive feedback gave a little bit of money we would triple our goal the problem is that you know you know one of our favorite stories one of our favorite stories which which one this is uh he tells the story about when he flew back and he called his son said he should pick me up the airport you know the story and he says uh you know abba i love you the greatest but i just i can't pick you up he says you know that's nice but i need you to pick me up at the airport this is before ubers and and lyft and taxis were so easy and whatever time of night it was he says yeah but i can't i have a car you know but i love you you're the greatest you're amazing i just i can't he said yeah okay that's nice buddy pigment i bet you're the best ab in the world there's never been a bit of abba i love you with all my heart the love i feel for you is so profound just sorry i can't pick you up so he says to his son do me a favor love me less and pick me up at the airport so that motto loved me less and picked me up at the airport it's a madrish that right after pasha's mishpatim pasha's mishpatim is the story of harsinai we stood around the base of the mountain in the greatest moment of revelation and god spoke to us directly and gave us his commandments his blueprint for the universe and the very next parashat truma is yikholi all of a sudden we're running a campaign you know there's a relatively new member of our shul who i love he's a wonderful person but i don't have permission to use his name but he moved in and he said like is there an appeal every week it's the israel appeal that appeal the other appeal the next campaign he's like what's going on over here so that that was his joke when he first moved in every week what's the appeal this week so you have standing at har sinai thunder and lightning and revelation and spirituality the greatest comes it's tish by bringing in all these three and all of a sudden they're doing an appeal a campaign yikholi truman so the medrash says you know what god says we stood at our sinai we said god we love you and god says you love me you're in us we'll do and we'll we'll we'll listen first we'll do then we'll yeah minishima you're in okay open up your wallet venmo zell check credit card let's see how much you love me so i say the same thing we're grateful for all the feedback we get the people the audience who drove behind the beam at a number one an apple podcast in judaism and the people who listen to our sheriff and read our articles and get our weekly magazine newsletter we're grateful it's gratifying it's fulfilling it's so deeply moving this money rabbi tell them do you what percentage of the what campaign do you get well i get zero percent i get 0.0 percent and you should know i was just at the emory university just last night and i visited the ou jhlic program that they have there and one of the students comes right over and he says you know what i get my torah every week from rabbi goldberg and it's amazing sometimes you don't even realize where where the programs are being broadcast but there are students in far-flung parts of the united states again and beyond there are there are college students that might not have the same access to the torah that you get in your local community but they're too they're participating this is their access so i'm honored i'm honored and i'm flattered and basically we don't get one penny from this we don't make a percentage we don't get a bonus this doesn't go to us we're not going out to eat with it it helps us get the technology and the platforms and teach the torah and share the messages and just impact more people that's our goal so if you value our values and and you value whatever value we're adding to your life just help us meet our goals so we are going from behind the bema recognize the people giving in real time tonight so go on brsonline.org global brsonline.org global uh ibor horowitz just gave 50 dollars uh loves the sitter snippets thank you um the great richard and lois bieler gave 180 dollars grateful for that francine handy50 anonymous 180 aaron martin 100 so if you make a contribution right now add your name to that list we will gratefully acknowledge it and express our gratitude and and we thank you we thank you for helping us do what we do and if you don't know who to give it in honor of just give an honor to me that way robert goldberg will see that it's also in honor of me no questions just just put josh brody you don't have to even spell brody right we'll know if it's you know rabbi brody is is a powerhouse don't let his quiet on behind the bema fool you but um he's a powerhouse in fact i was away two shabboses ago and brody gave the drusha and i got great feedback now everyone who gave me the feedback said robert brody spoke amazingly and he asked me to let you know true but brodie's a para so right now if if you're watching go in the comments and say let rabbi bro to hear from you what you want to hear from him should he be giving a weekly class that he's streaming live you want to see him have a column in our weekly where he talks about his outreach efforts and his amazing outreach stories what do you want to hear more from about rabbi brody put it in the comments right now put in the comments we all miss moscowitz he's taking care of his family his daughter we wish well um what do we miss what class do you love what article made is there an article rabbi moskowitz wrote that made the biggest difference in your life so take a moment be part of the global campaign help us continue to make this difference share it on the comments right now in real time and uh push right by brody to leave his comfort zone and get some big ideas we'll share it after the interviews tonight so i'm very excited to share some things really yeah big ideas can you give us a little a little flavor i think rabbi stefanski is going to inspire some very exciting things and it's uh let's just say it's something that i think he's very involved with that might inspire our community to do something along the same lines okay nice all right so anyway we got we got a big audience tonight people listening later of course but if you're live go on youtube put in the comments push rabbi brody get him out of his comfort zone what do you want to see from him what topic do you want to hear him speak about start a series on podcast on write articles about rabbi blumenthal his articles in the weekly literally bring you to tears his insights are amazing his classes we've got an all-star team at our shule jeffrey talia by zions rabbi shabtai rabbi rein so help us just help us do our thing help us get it out if you value it love us less and go on the global campaign prsonline.org global real time go on there you'll get a shout out so we're going to we're going to welcome first of all there always demands a conversation is going to be phenomenal let me give you a little teaser rabbi stefanski he gave the daf in chicago for eight years brody how many people went to his duff for eight years in chicago five people that's generous i heard it was four but let's say it was five counting five people i think with him all right with him with him five people for eight years he persevered he showed up every day for eight years for five people fast forward today how many people listen to our best defense get at least defense get online it's ten thousand plus and by next week it might be like fifteen thousand it's crazy it's got ten thousand people a day probably the largest daphiony maybe the largest share in the whole world how did he get there how do you go from five to ten thousand how do you get there big thank you to israel and bella halperin who donated in honor of ellie stefanski so thank you so much for joining the global campaign everybody go online right now david gold or abbe brodie would like to see you give a daft class what do you think first i'm going to join the dove i'm going to join the deaf we got a uh anonymous donation grateful for the anonymous donation in honor of the brs staff thank you so much so we want to see what articles would you like to see what do you want to hear brody speak about the rest of our staff are there topics that brs is not producing right now that you'd like to see us get out there any topics any panels any discussions any themes any areas we're not afraid brs maybe foolishly but we're not afraid to try to tackle or speak about respectfully i think you might be a little afraid if i do something but it's you know yeah you know the better for me i'm afraid yeah exactly exactly levy feigl stock thank you so much robert vagelstock for your orb incredible work that you do in partnership and and for donating for shleima for tahiti basariatsupora we should hear only phenomenal news so we're going to get to alice defense again we'll hear that story how do you get from five to ten thousand five to ten thousand what's he doing is he giving away free things yes he is but but in addition to giving away free things what is he doing to get from five to ten thousands extraordinary but first you know we get serious for a moment because the world's a very serious place right now i know rafael chrisgall i've met with him i've actually been to uh moldova to kishnev flew through odessa did not get a privilege to see tikvah his work there but have seen it so before we uh bring on and have a conversation with elisa key we're going to get an update and really all of us get involved learn and do what we can to make a difference when it comes to what's going on right now in the ukraine so without any further ado rafael crisco we're joined right now by rafael kruskal from the tikvah children's orphanage of odessa the ukraine and um i did not have the privilege of being there though i've been in odessa before but i've met with fell in person uh who's the hero in the best of times for taking care of young jewish children and jewish community doing outstanding work but particularly during this time rafael tell us where you are what's happening and how we can help um so we're just after the capetian mountains uh in ukraine um what's happening so uh on thursday um last week we we had prepared we either assumed that there was apparently some kind of conflict and i can say that we're quite prepared for this to happen um so we had um prepared food we had prepared a generator uh for gas we thought we would run out of gas um we had we'd expected a lot of things to happen we prepared all um we've imported an israeli security firm because we were worried that uh the locals would leave us if something bad happened right um so so we were quite prepared except when the shelling when they sell you you're not you're you're less prepared than you normally think you would be hold on one second take a step back even before you tell us about how prepared you were just give our listeners you know one minute 60 seconds about the tikvah orphanage how many children what the setup is how many people as the ceo how many you're responsible for why are they in odessa why are you in odessa so um i i'm my name is falco he said i'm the ceo of thicker i was born in london and i came to odessa in 1999 to help to see to there was a small orphanage then to see how we could grow it and um and we were very uh we had a a lot of success and now it's currently over 300 kids in the orphanages the community is very successful it's our alumni from the orphanages and from the schools which we built and now they've built a community we built a community in odessa um we we have three kindergartens three elementary schools two high schools a boys in a girl school you know a jewish university shiva and then besides that we also have the orphanages the infant's orphanage the boy's orphanage the girl's orphanage and then the pseudon dorms were kids who were in the poisoned girls orphanages who then go into the um or in the student dorms these are kids from all over those those kids are from all over the ukraine or they're all from odessa off all over ukraine in fact in the last few months we had uh we had some a lot of people who wanted to come from uh even uzbekistan we had some from belarus when they were fighting last year so we from moldova we took them all over um the former soviet union wow and and what brought you there i came in 1999 for one year because i wanted to do something before i went out into business and then i couldn't leave the kids it was just it was so compelling to stay so i'm live so tell us again you're in odessa you have this incredible system it's a whole network it's all community tikva and you are prepared because we'd all been following the news everybody knew russia was gathering on the border russia was threatening to invade you were as prepared you could be when and how did you get out and where are you and the kids now if we can even ask that so um so i can't i haven't given anyone an exact location um but we're after the capeton mountains let's say as far away as the fighting as one could be if you're staying in ukraine um on thursday we had um the first shelling and then we decided we had to do something we checked uh we we at the beginning we checked whether we could leave odessa but the security firm we'd taken said it was dangerous to travel on the roads we went to where they were going to rumble roads and and and we said let's let's wait one more day in a lesson see what happens we're also checking to see how many people we could get over the border to other places so we were checking the borders which we had there was a gush on the borders and we found one border which was empty so we sent the first bus there when we were successful we sent another three buses and now we've seen them we've sent another four buses and we have in moldova at the moment students and community members about 400 people we're sending um a last bus tomorrow which will get the bigger uh which would make it even bigger by the way the community moldova uh which is the moldova at the moment is also it's uh that they they're going through a very difficult time and i think that within the next 48 hours we're going to take them out of moldova and to to romania just because um that the conditions there will be better and their children and the um and the refugees who are suffering anyway as it is there's no reason that they need this after more now is your is your assumption that you're going to return to odessa that please god one way or another this will reconcile everyone's going to return is the assumption right now that there's nothing to go back to that ukraine russia is so uncertain it's time to bring everybody to israel or elsewhere so uh so so um before i only spoke about the moldavian part i'm going to go back and then i'll go back to the assumption what's going to happen uh we left uh on friday morning we we got uh uh there was shelling in the night and one bomb fell like a half a mile from the girls home and the girls were hysterical and uh we i i'd been up uh throughout the night and seven o'clock in the morning i basically i pulled the trigger and said we have to be today and uh uh it we i knew when travelling on shabbos i knew i knew everything what it meant and i spoke to the uh of course to the role of odessa my back to the chief was my partner we worked together and then i also spoke to uh we also spoke to your bottom united skull there's no question which have a little travis just just tell us how to do it and what to do and uh by 10 o'clock we were out of uh odessa every 70 miles we stopped because there were some roads which uh had been bombed there were some roads which were worried there was more than travel until we went to travel on sidewalks and back roads um there was sirens in the middle when we went past the venus and clementine so it was it was a traumatic um uh experience it was traumatic anyway i mean as you know we're not attached to uh the jews were never attached to buildings we're always attached to people um my my grandfathers were in germany my father was born in holland he was in bergen-belsen he lived in then lived in england then lived in united standing nation i live in ukraine so um so but still it was extremely difficult emotional for the community to leave it is the place which we built and and what a community after 22 years and and suddenly we see we were seeing the revival of yiddish in in odessa and everything collapsing it was extremely emotional and difficult to leave and on the way we stopped uh we told everybody before shovels we had minka we and uh the chief rapper of the described back said you know last week we had the mitzvah to keep that shabbos and this week we have admitted to driving the bastard showers it's the same it's um we got to do with the same simcha and the same happiness etc um and then we stopped on the way a bit later after shabbos came in and we made kiddish for um uh for the whole community and it was moving you you heard the people crying on one hand on the other hand it was seville in the middle of nowhere in in a cold ukrainian gas station 400 people were listening just want to hear kids it was it was the biggest kid this hashem which one could have it was and it was very emotional uh moment to the community and we continued on um throughout the night in those back-to-back traffic we arrived the first bus arrived at uh one o'clock in the afternoon then on shabbos afternoon the last bus they arrived at 3 30 in the afternoon and that's when we had the second killish the morning kiddish with uh dish because the most people in the basket know which day this was much much safer part of ukraine uh than we were before so now you ask whether we if i assume we're going to go back there i'm hoping we'll go back there there was a beautiful uh kihilla uh in the building there in there and i don't think that anyone uh a person uh um could ruin such a thing or whatever tells us that's where we're going you know but uh for the people here who want who who are here they wanted to be there they wanted to stay uh um they're part of a community it's a very warm and thriving community people helping each other and uh um yeah i i hope we'll be able to go back and continue uh uh this huge uh undertaking we also got to remember at the moment we have 300 kids in our homes we know of uh probably we we assume according to the numbers which we have there's actually another two thousand kids in uh jewish children in ukraine who are still in need of our help um to leave any other way then to leave in a way which wouldn't be uh um accepted by the ukrainian authorities would mean that to be that we would not be able to come back and help those other children so there's a fine line when these children who are in danger of course we've got to save them first our priority but if they if we can still stay here in this part of ukraine and uh hashem go back uh and and help afterwards the other children then that would that's our first priority and that's why it's a fine balance and a big burden and responsibility when you check when you're deciding uh between what to do right wow rabbi brody thank you you know i just want to uh just let you know as well that uh we've been seeing regular updates jana has been sending us what's been taking place almost every day and you know you contrast that with the videos that we used to get of all the children getting together and singing and putting on these plays you know being part of the dinners the virgin since seeing it's a little hard a little hard to hear you rub it brody so i'm going to relay your i'm going to reload your question you're coming you're coming in and out rafal can you hear me yes come here you okay so um he was saying rabbi brodie that jana's been keeping us updated with the videos and and you contrast the uh the videos that she used to send of the children with please and and happiness and joy and and learning and torah and now and buses and on the run it's really surreal it's like a throwback to centuries ago and you think or or decades ago and you think that you're watching jews in europe on the run um and it's it's just hard to believe what we're watching and you are heroic you're being there for these children and for that community what you're doing is amazing i guess tell us what we can do to help what are the needs when you relocate hundreds of children imagine it's not easy to book buses in hotel rooms it's not like running a summer trip so what do you do for food what do you do for for everything that you're working on so two things too the first big production so the first thing is um the first thing is of course uh my father was in bergen-belsen in 1939 he probably didn't realize they were 1939. so um so um uh yeah we realize the implications we're trying to do everything maybe learn from the uh the history of other people who have been through similar situations um we have a huge security budget all our security local security guards uh left and we had to bring uh security guards from mexico um uh uh uh so we we we we've already brought in uh five the locals because the um the local security guards are uh having having to be conscripted to the army we've got to bring in another 10 and they're five are coming tomorrow and the five the next day so so that's a huge huge huge cost to be it's just an insurance that they have to take out insurance to bring into uh besides that we have course that we have um just to give an idea a bus to the place where we are from odessa would normally cost about 800 900 uh uh a chip they said they're not leaving uh um you know unless we give them ten thousand dollars but after that for the trip after that when we when we stopped at that stop for kiddish what one doesn't see on the video is they say you're gonna get off the bus and we're not taking you further unless you double that sum so we didn't have to double the sum we negotiated down on chavez but uh um but but all the prices have gone up is the food is gas food and vegetables are scarce of course i told you we bought uh with us uh um a lot of food because for some i could put in my mind for some reason last week i said we're gonna rent trucks we're gonna put the food on the trucks which is what we did so the food was right on the tracks as soon as we left the trucks of food which we had prepared for the months beforehand left with us the chickens five tons of chickens left with us so we at least we were salted for a certain period of time uh with the dry fruits but all the rest of the stuff is extremely expensive i had to buy mattresses with 100 bed shorter to buy mattresses on showers we had to buy heating we had to buy a generator everything uh it's it's a huge expense and i haven't even spoken about the kegelia in moldova romania which which i have to do exactly the same just copy exactly what i've told you here so what's the budget what are we talking about at the moment we're running at the moment uh the costs which which i can see for this month are over two million dollars for both uh places and it's growing up we need every single and i never my wildest dreams i never imagined that that that we would be where we are i mean justify security i paid 384 000 this month for one place wow where can people where can people contribute where can they help so uh at the moment where we have a campaign uh take4odex.org which hank didn't raise as much money i want to tell everybody my parents i'm from ukraine my grandparents in new york i came to help these kids now we need your help to help these kids we can't do it alone because it's an extremely difficult moment for the kehillah it's actually the moment for these kids the kids are traumatized we're trying to help them with psychologists and everything else it's uh we need your help um i don't think there's ever been such a call you talking about decades since the second world war i don't think it's ever been such a call from jewish communities and from us also as one of the communities in ukraine asking for people please help us we can't manage this alone we need the poor the help that we've had before and uh and that's why we're turning to you today waterfall we we thank you for giving us time we know that it's uh already the middle of the night on its way to becoming the middle of the night we know that you're exhausted i can't imagine the last time that you've that you possibly slept um and um we just want to thank you for what you're doing to take care of hashem's children and we wish you safety and security and we wish that please god for your sake and and for everyone that this be over uh quickly and speedily and uh please god you get back to odessa and uh with these beautiful children and take care of the hundreds or thousands more and uh in the future we'll we'll continue this conversation on behind the bhima and in person it's time to to bring these children one by one dozen by dozen hundred by hundred to israel it's time to get everybody out i don't know if there's a jewish future in the ukraine i know there's a jewish future in america but uh this is a harsh reminder and to see jews on the run on buses on shabbos making kiddush and having to bribe people to secure them again and give them safety um we didn't dream it would happen and and you're at the front lines of it so thank you for giving us a few minutes of your time we're encouraging everyone to go to the website that we're scrolling tick for odessa.org odessa.org relief and uh grateful tayana for what she does and just stay safe and be well and healthy and please god will continue to get updates and ruby goldberg just just one last thing i'm asking everyone anyone who has a spare moment during the day dalvin faster jacob said we should come we should come out of this challenge we need the people to be healthy both mentally and and and physically the children are going through a difficult time we're going through a difficult time it's a huge responsibility whenever you have a time please say at the helium down for us we need you to feel this as well absolutely we most certainly will stay safe be well thank you so much for being with us did you think did you think in in our lifetime that you would see jews on the run fleeing refugees in that part of the world you're muted you're muted um on the run being chased running for their safety having a bribe spend money somehow get provisions and food in the year 2022 and jews are still in europe on the run it's funny it's not so funny but you know we talk we talk about the holocaust and we've taken so many trips back to europe we've been in in communities that are very similar to what what they look like in in poland what they see in ukraine and you know you thought that was part of ancient history that was not something we would ever experience again that's not something anyone should ever know about and we're seeing it unfold in front of our eyes it's scary it's real time you know for us we're watching and you know i'll tell you i may lose some friends with this one right now but um you know if you're on social media you'll see jewish from social media in particular but social media you know what happened with the state of the union last night people love to see capture captions or a picture or or a little video of something and then they say what they think is their witty comment about it right so you have putin sitting at a huge table and other people all the way on the other end and you make your joke about the kiddush club or you have the whatever and you see people doing that right now about about ukraine about russia right and you see people like thinking something's fine oh that's the kiddush club oh that's the rabbi speaking too long oh that's the the board voting on whatever and i just look at that and i say it is it's not the time i know there's ever a time it's people's lives there's people dying there's people being bombed there's people on the run and i just and i always ask ourselves like how would we feel could you imagine if twitter existed during the holocaust and there were images coming out of jews being persecuted chased and like you know someone thought of a funny witticism they thought of a cute caption they thought that they'd you know earn some likes by by saying something funny that related to their life we would look at that and say are you crazy out of your mind have we become so desensitized how could it be how could it we don't we don't have to just imagine it you're seeing it happen so it's happening with different groups but it just as well and easily could have been happening with us and then you also look at the strength of these ukrainians and you see what they're doing like fighting this guerrilla warfare in their streets and you think if this would come to our community where would we be you know there's a certain strength that they have and that they're exhibiting right now it's really really impressive very powerful message for the world yeah it's a battle going on the jewish prime minister over there and anyway so by the way i'm not i'm not judging you know it's my point is an observation of our time that we've become desensitized right due to technology and social media and the images that flow in real time you could be like eating lunch and you see corpses in the street or you hear about a bombing or you see miles long 40-mile um line of tanks they just keep eating lunch right when in human history did you see those images and you had an appetite we don't just have an appetite we think of a you should be captioned lying and and and and and feeling like you have to throw up after you see something because it hurts so much yeah so it's not a criticism as much as a call that we try to preserve our sensitivity for ourselves and our children there's certain pictures and images that should move us like you just said to tears that should move us to feed us to prayer and and not only should we not be desensitized that they don't mean anything we certainly shouldn't caption them and compete are we witty are we funny is it cute did we get a lot of likes so i just think it's really really important for us to be aware of of the messaging that we're sending to others but even our our own sensitivity to these these issues so odessa if you can help um they're doing such a great job i again i know i i know it didn't come out clear i wasn't first i'll just be clear i wasn't driving i was being driven and we were driving through a part of georgia right now where there's not a lot of reception but i really wanted to just be able to to just to be able to be on on a phone call with with such such a a courageous leader it's just something you don't want to miss out on right and and you know one of the things that we do know about tikva is that they are there where no one else is they're in a place they're helping out children they're helping out these orphans and you know over the last two years they they've taken their virtual gallon put it online and if you would have seen these productions that these kids do like so some many of us have been part of these these gala dinners and you know people trying to be more creative and you know how do we outdo the other organization which just did something online back in the in in the in the days we were really were immersed on zoom and and you see what they did you know they they did they had these kids they put on the most beautiful productions musicals and and plays just remember these are not kids that have they don't have costumes they don't have clothes they don't have the the they have no they're not family they don't have parents they don't have anything and the smiles on their faces it just brought you in it drew you in and now you see these same children it's the same children that were doing contrast yeah yeah they were being rushed off to running for their lives if you haven't seen the video you should would he describe when they stopped and said kiddush on friday night these are buses and what a what a powerful message when the rabbi the rabbi of odessa said last shabbos the mitzvah was to keep shabbos and this week the mitzvot is to break shabbos get in the bus and go that's our mitzvah and they pause at a gas station and should hear this emotional did you see the video the emotional kiddush all the kids are gathered around some of the adults and this this kiddish like while breaking shabbos on the run these are not just old stories last night we have a series on tuesday nights and if you're part of the global world you you follow you watch you have the opportunity to listen um called rabbis on the run we've done people on the book for many years we've done great debates of jewish history and great moments of jewish history and great rabbis of jesus three and this year's our focus was rabbis on the run rabbis being persecuted who changed the face of torah scholarship while on the run so i taught about the rush who had to run and flee from france germany to spain and um you know other other stories like that so this was i thought about the mir the miraculous escape from the mir to shanghai and when i'm describing it again you think oh that's holocaust they ran from poland to lithuania lithuania through japan they were supposed to actually go to curacao that's where they had their visa but they ended up the transit visa and they ended up in shanghai but like these are ancient stories even the holocaust feels like so long ago again as time is moving on and we have fewer survivors but these images and stories of of the ukraine are not a long time ago they're right absolutely real tell you a powerful story i don't have permission to tell you who who said it but i just heard it where where someone got up and i was talking about the crisis in ukraine and about these orphans and these children and they said you know i really want to i really want to do something tell me and they called this individual said how can i how can i take one of these children into my home and they the person responds what do you mean like like temporarily or like adopt like what did you just you tell me what they need two other people heard this person say that and they said i'll do the same thing so you know you see people that are just you know okay we'll pass on the you know the then share it on facebook and the twitters and then you see people that are different and then the other people they're like you know what what do we need to do there's people in crisis right how do i stop it so if you have money you could either give the global campaign or to a tick to help of course people of ukraine give to the ukraine don't give to us but hopefully you have the ability to do both and we're so grateful to those who value shows like this behind the bema where you get to hear a report from ukraine where else are you going to hear this there's no thank david posey david posey thank you for your contribution dr daniel and hedy blum thank you so much for for your contribution got an anonymous from washington heights harriet brick thank you so much i don't know who boy gary is in honor of broadway josh brody but someone that's one boy gary oh it's a boy gary i don't know that is i don't know what it is rabbi gary butler thank you thank you uh deanna an appreciation of smith my husband has immersed himself in daily learning she writes so all those who've been contributing in real time through the show thank you so much brsonline.org global thank you for helping support enable all that we are doing so um rabbi brodie have you ever tried the daft before yeah it's a good question i've actually tried it twice i tried it uh probably about 15 years ago rabbi perry turtle was doing it and he told me come upstairs robert sugarman's teaching the daf so i i don't even think it was at the beginning of a cycle maybe they're just starting a number seven i gave it a god i did it for i might have made it through one visa and then obviously this last time around i got inspired by you i got inspired by by so many in our shul that are doing it matthew obviously you know with with his his you know updates on every miss after he's finishing right and i made it through i was doing actually pretty well i made it through i think three misses and it just it just petered out i don't know if it was an aravind it was you know it just got to the point where i was going through it but i wasn't really feeling it i needed something different i just need something to all right so that that's the perfect segue first of all again a big shout out to gilly's goodies our sponsor for tonight by the end of this interview you're going to hear that robert brodie is sending sherlock manas through gilly's goodies to ellie stefanski and to the whole duff that's how much he's falling alone i'm in you know what do me a favor just put david who's our our main main uh main guy we love david he's good he's he leaves his wife we didn't say how you find it online g-i-l-i-s goodies g-o-o-d-i-e-s dot com gillies goodies dot com goodies dot com put in bema bima for a special discount referral code send a gift to the soldier send it to ellie stefanski absolutely ellie from behind the bema okay let's flood ellie stefanski with shelf models for gilly's so he's got a story to tell how do you get from five people to ten thousand people here he is wait a second even before you go it's like it's just when you say that it's so mind-blowing if you would have said how did you get from five to fifty i would be you know excited just to hear five to two hundred would be ten thousand people could you imagine ten thousand daily listeners to anything there's no one it's amazing unbelievable let me just our new fact checker i may be related to him our new fact director pointed out when i was listing our amazing staff and you'll hear from him next week we're gonna do a marathon meet our new staff talk to us go behind the with trying to get my kids they're not watching right now so i feel safe saying this if you have their contact info push them and encourage them so it wouldn't be a great behind the bema to go behind the beam with rabbi's kids find out what it's like to be the children of a rabbi the good the bad the ugly what it's like rabbi's kids i got a big fat no well we'll keep trying but i uh i did not mention our news fighting rabbi robin magazines in it who is uh phenomenal we love robin magazine so he is amazing and the same fact checker who i'm related to by blood my father said that you know we bring out these guests i don't give enough of an introduction i don't give enough a biography so you'll hear in the in the interview we're not going into at least fantasy's background he's been on other podcasts our friends that meaningful people and elsewhere they talk all about that art school and actually had a whole interview with him as well you could hear his backgrounds his story how he got into it we're talking about how he created this community this movement of learners so without any further ado it's a pleasure to bring out ali stafansky we are so excited to be going behind the with the one and only rabbi ellie stefanski who is not only giving a daffy me there are people all over the world who are delivering daily daffy homies wherever stevansky is leading a movement of daphyomi a movement of total learning and thank you for going behind the with us absolutely thank you for having me it's great to be together it's great to be together the honors are so let's begin with this i was with a group of men last night we were going around it was a learning group we had just come back from a trip to new york it's a vaccine trip we went and met with russia shiva and rebellion and rebels it was an incredible trip i'll tell you more about it another time but we were going around and people were talking about the kabbalahs is what they take upon themselves and one individual sitting there i don't have permission to use his name he's about shuva he's a person who discovered observance and torah later in life and he says you know how many times i tried learning you know how many times i opened the gemara i wanted to do the daffy me i wanted to be part of that group part of that every time it failed every time it flopped this he volunteered on his own he had no idea that we were interviewing you today he says every time it got nowhere i just couldn't connect i couldn't relate to the people speaking it was another language they were from another world because then i'm on the internet and i scroll and i'm wasting time and all of a sudden i come across as a man of daf this guy stefanski he goes so i click because i'm wasting so much time i might as well make use of my time i collect is what he just said last night he goes i'm hooked now he just made a seam on muy cotton with you and he's going to make a siemens with you and he went from never opening a gemara not being able to learn not being able to cross that hurdle to being an observant jew he's making cumin and let me say what he loved about you he goes this guy is a business guy he's relatable he's like me and he said he told some off-color joke that's what he said i hope you're not insulted he said something irreverent he i'll i'll rephrase it he didn't mean he didn't know if call that was inappropriate he meant a reverend he meant he's relatable he's fun he's real so you you lit this guy up and you're not just doing it for this guy you've got ten thousand people a day on this definitely i'm just laughing about this off-color joke i'm so careful you know it's true you have to have that balance of being funny and and being careful you you there's so many people watching these children watching so i hope it wasn't awful okay yeah go on sorry he used those words but he didn't mean that he didn't mean enough color and i shouldn't have repeated that he meant it was irreverent in the sense that you were real and relatable and fun and fun loving and your props and all the things that we're going to get into today so forget that he he misused those words but but you got him going he's now making his second message it's incredible so what is it what is it that you're doing what is the magic how is it that 10 000 people a day are learning with you wow um well first of all we have an unbelievable team it's not just me there's so many people behind the scenes we have a cameraman we have a tech guy we have people in marketing and you know it's just it's just a team of people i actually have a colo a da fiomi colo that these guys four of them actually no shas inside out one of them scored the highest score in the dear show tesla in the world so he's the number one chass guy in the world in the call and i talk to them learning so there's a lot going on behind the scenes i come and i deliver it i try to make it exciting and fun accessible to everybody you know bring things to the sheer that i i myself would have wanted to see when i was a baker you know when i was learning gemara and the every day to come up with some whether it's a story that's funny a joke not an off-colored one a funny prop a funny chart anything that would make you know the break that sometimes you know you go to sheer and there's a guy with a long beard and it's it's boring over here it's like we learn and then we stop for a second i'll i'll i'll make a little comment and the guys laugh and then we go on and we're doing the daf we're doing and it's real good shot real very very good shot rashi tysos not a whole lot of raid although if there's you know good rate i throw it in again anything that's exciting for the daf so if there's a if there's raid that's like wow i can't believe this halacha i'll throw it in but again just make learning fun and that people should want to come back and and get more so you went from when you lived in chicago i understand you taught adaf for eight years that had a regular three four people there so you're doing the research i did my research so so rebecca is the fan skill of ellie here's here's the question how did you persevere or not give up now again if you have a havrusa one on one it's already an achievement you learn the daff khabrusa one-on-one with someone it's amazing having three people's already a kabura four people it's a sheer so i'm not minimizing or or diminishing or i don't want to speak about in a derogatory way at all people who have a small group a little a little duff but you persevered you were you were an aspiring and successful entrepreneur businessman and for eight years you sat in front of three people you probably never dreamt that fast forward and you'd have ten thousand people so right now what what pushed you through even people right well the the main thing was i wanted to learn i always wanted to learn i liked the learning and i wanted to learn i needed that his javas and and giving this share in chicago was my hives at that time i was about a bus i was working all day and i needed something to give me that it was just me myself i wouldn't come every day if i had russo i would come up with an excuse but having this year by the way it wasn't three it was four guys no it was more like five five guys for eight years so you know having having that escavas pushed me yeah and i missed a bunch of days here and there you know there was always an excuse or whatever because it was only five people so i let five people down now by the way because of the size of the sheer i haven't taken a day off in over 840 days wow great shabbat and and i'm a very inconsistent person i'm more of the entrepreneurial guy you know i start project and i don't finish the other guy that finishes for me here i get every single day i can't take off i can't sleep in i can't miss my alarm because if i do i have all these people that i'm letting down how's your family built a skylist that i just can't crawl out of how does your family feel that you haven't taken a day off don't they deserve to go on vacation with you or spend time so when i do go on a vacation it's very very rare i bring them with me and i do this cheer on vacation i i gave a share from my son's wedding i gave a shirt when my daughter gave birth i was able to run back i held the baby for literally five seconds i said shaw malay him dropped the baby down and ran got a taxi and it came to sheriff 10 minutes late but i was there it's just that you have to it's a good that's the beauty of the daffodiome by the way i think that's one of the main main things that you only it changes people's lives because it's consistent it just gives you that every single day there's no days off and you don't want the day off you want to learn entire every single day in your life including young kipper including including shabbos sunday's not a day off from hashem sunday yeah if you could have a little bit of a downtime but you got to learn the daf you know it's all about being consistent i heard you say it was a great quote you said the daft yummy is not about the duff it's about the yomi it's about making sure that it's i love that quote as a matter of fact you know we're starting the new set let me just grab this um so we're starting vamas next wednesday and we have a special edition that art school printed for us and it's on the cover it's not about the dove it's about the yomi oh it says two quotes over there it's not about the dove it's about the omi so yeah i i talk about it all the time wait when did that transition take place from the five to the ten thousand like what well technology i did eight years straight and then we moved to um well i stopped giving the share in chicago and then we moved our distrell eight years ago and then uh once i came here i started doing like the a synopsis of the daf which morphed into the eight-minute daf which i sent out uh whatsapp every day uh like um just the synopsis the succumb of the daf of the day in under eight minutes and then they asked me to give uh that fiammi ship so i started giving that fiammi share and that was like four years ago four years ago four years in a bit giving this share and it grew it's a great gimmick is the headline they see the headlines they see the headline it's an eight minute off they don't realize that eight minutes is the synopsis of the deaf that's how you get oh yeah yeah click bait or whatever they call it we get them in eight minutes and once they're in like wait a minute this is not enough maybe this guy gives a share a 45 minute chair and then there's a nub again there's another guy in our community glenn golish also a wonderful guy balchu of amazing guy loves learning can never connect to gemara same story he told me he goes i see this thing advertised eight minute daffy says to himself eight minutes i have eight minutes and he clicks it he's so entertained inspired he's so connected he looks at his watch he goes like that's not eight minutes i'm 45 minutes into this thing i can't he goes i can't turn it off because then the next day i said you know what if i found the time yesterday i could find the time the next day so he's still like in his mind he's like it's just eight minutes even though he knows it's not eight minutes but you know somehow that so there's so many things you're tapping into about marketing psychology psyche and i wonder how much you would recommend first of all how much of it was premeditated plan strategic how much of it did you stumble on and trip on and you're figuring it out as you go and how much of it do you think that we can extrapolate and and connect to other learning can we connect this to school do we have kids who are disconnected and we can make it fun and engaging in props and and times in eight minutes and so so was it plan was it strategic did you trip on it and do you think this is a model for promoting learning of all ages so i i don't think you could plant something like this this is just you know the pure ash i literally every day i wake up and i can't believe what's going on here it's like it's incredible to me so many people seriously it's like it's really incredible so you can't i didn't plan it i did plan to make a sheer that's super exciting from day one i had eight guys on the first day and i said day one we're not gonna serve food because then it's gonna become too much about the food let's give amazing coffee i went out and got the best coffee machine you could buy in israel with lattes and this and that good coffee beans we started like that and uh it started growing and i was i was into the charts my father-in-law who's a surgeon he gives a a very nice daff yummy share every single week on on the weekends and he's very into the charts hand screw so i took that idea of you know making charts by hand i took it to the next step i did you know more graphics and more pictures from the internet etc and make it more interesting but that idea i got from him and then people started coming you know it started eight and nine ten and it started growing pretty rapidly to the point where we couldn't fit in the room anymore we had like 40 people and then we then i decided we have to build a building so we actually have the first vertex da fiomi the first building built i think i believe just for daphaomi it's a man cave for torah they have this tv screens behind me in front of me uh you know three amazing coffee machines and a hot chocolate machine and you know slurping machine you know just a man cave torah it's incredible so now about about the children that you're asking it's incredible to see we have on a daily basis so in the basement we have about 80 to 100 people every morning during share and a very large part of those people are children we have children 10 years old that are pushing their parents they want to come to share they want to come to share they get they get in trouble with the with the schools but they keep on coming we have kids with abd it's a share is very very good for add for some reason the add kids are like this the entire share because they don't know when the next picture is coming when the next joke is going and i ask questions once in a while i'll say only kids could answer and it's amazing to see how much they retain from like they get this visualization of p whatever it is the picture you know i asked i was asking these yeshiva guys and this wasn't doing just the other day i had some guests uh what do you have to do that yo me with e on this whole argument over shabbos so look at the guy i said hey mashiach is going to come this week you're going to look like i'm an amarette how many kerbanas do you have to bring on circus you how much you have to pay with from your pocket like one but the other guy says 26. so i said why don't we ask this kid that goes to sheer yeah no way he knows he's only and the kid knew he said three quarter buttons and i said which ones they started saying the kid knew so it was amazing so to answer your question yes we have i have a kid that they want to ship him out of the country to this special school because he got kicked out of school 14 times this year and when they told i couldn't believe it there's a kid that sits still in a seat he never misses a day his eyes are wide open watching so kids appreciate this stuff and so do adults so we're living in a time basically that that frontal learning like here's a text we're learning we're old we stroke our beard we're boring it's monotonous that in other areas of life they're seeing engagement multimedia it's it's entertaining and then you're bringing that into the teaching of torah not at the expense or corrupting torah but elevating torah and enhancing torah which is which actually is a question i have which we'll we'll get back to but i want to ask you a different one first i i think two of them were i'm on the rabbi team i happen to be a rabbi i'm a rav right um so i love rabbanam i love my day i love her about him i'm on the rabbi team but but you i i think maybe i don't know the i don't know the data on the stats but it would seem to me two of the more if not most popular daf yomishiro in the world today are taught by balabatim you and shirley bornstein very learned balabatam extraordinary balabhatm phenomenal teacher balabatim but but people whose careers are not in rabonas clay kodesh what do you make of that what do you think that tells you that today two of the most popular daffy homies on the planet at a time in which dav vyomi is being taught we have three daily daffy yomi's in our show alone there's daffy me all over the place it's incredible hashem it's a beautiful thing what do you make of the fact that two of the most if not the most popular daffodils today are not taught by muhammad but are taught by quote-unquote balabata so it goes back to the same thing you know people ask me all the time why don't you have a beard halachically reprimanded he says this and this one says that and it's about me being relatable i want people to know i'm about a boss i'm a real estate guy i shave like you guys i'm just like everybody else and i think that's one of the reasons people relate a lot of people had a bad experience in yeshiva with with a rebbe with the russia shiva and they associate the beard and the and and also the the thing is like that guy is way up here you know he knows all of torah he knows i'll never be like that here's a guy i don't have a good memory i stumble i make mistakes like everybody else once in a while i make a really bad mistake during share and it's okay you know what i mean i'm not i don't claim to be a learner or or a mass med or i'm about a boss and a bible gives a cheer and that they relate to that and it's very interesting i have rasha shivas that watch this year we have russia shiva's we have i have two two call guys that just took a test on a thousand dollar gemara they like it it's entertaining it's relaxing and it goes and they have the guys that haven't opened up the safer like you're mentioning in 10 years and i literally i kid you not i get an email like that at least once a day because one of the things i do i start every share with emails you know i read like i show pictures of the guys just to get to get the kabura together to it's not just the online chair where we're in space i said okay here's the guy from boca raton there's a guy from miami and here's the guy from here and here's this picture learning with the sun here's this picture learning it in the delivery room etc but one thing i get i'll show you pictures if you want we're very big into learning on the plane on so but one thing i get every day i haven't opened up a safer in 10 years yesterday a guy came over to me says you know you changed my life da da da whole thing my dad made his first cm and he's 76 years old 76 years old yesterday so yeah i i that's one of the reasons it's like it's a combination of things like you said the multimedia today uh we're learning the suggest of tomontahara i need to make it exciting it's a scary sugya so i i took i took a friend of mine i went to the mikvah and i said if we do it like this and we tell you like that and how come it's okay and i'm gonna show it tomorrow on the screen you know a little bit of multimedia use use the technology that's out there that i know people are fascinated the glue to the tv screens let's use it for tyra it's fantastic so you're famous for your visual aids full-size mizbaya zarika saddam your incredible creativity goes into so i imagine part of your prep is not just the daf like the tai chi what is the translation of the words and what's the raid what are the insights to offer but how can i make this come alive so first of all i'll come back to halawa i'm sure they do and they deserve our praise and acknowledgement our educators and teachers of children should put in the same energy creativity effort planning to bring in those aids and to engage them what are your two or three favorite visuals you've ever used what are the most outrageous or the most outlandish you're most proud of that your favorite visuals that you ever brought into the deaf okay that's a good one i got to think about it one that comes to mind i don't have it with me or any picture but i had a full-sized mizbaya and i said that when i was doing the uh demonstration i got up i said i want to show you how you smear the blood of an animal on the mizbear i said i worked really hard and i got real blood real blood for this demonstration so i took blood and i smeared it on the mizbaya and i said okay first he puts it on this corner then he puts it on the next corner and when i was done i said you know this is it's user to drink blood but for ratings maybe i would do it get extra ratings but you can't do it if it's animal blood so i want to show you where this blood came from i go under my desk and i pull out a salmon that's like two feet long a massive salmon and i mean and i took a lick from the blood and they were there there they went nuts they couldn't believe this disgusting was gross like you you have to do this anything for ratings i said you know if i show you that the blood is from a fish then it's mother because i'm fish blood and i'm telling you where it's from and i said okay let me do it again and again and then i told him they said it's fake blood don't worry about it i showed him how i made the blood but get that i brought a real fish i'm holding this fish it cost me 200 in israel and it's oozing blood it was it was great that was one great one this week this week alone i don't know if this is one of my better i have a picture right in front of me i brought a live-sized lion to the sheer just why because it was one of these soogies that was it wasn't going anywhere you know there's no jokes there's no story it was like but the gemara mentioned lion is the king of the animals so i had this lion draped it cost us maybe five hundred dollars to get it to this year uh it's one of these prop places for movies we got it and i undraped it i and i i sat on it first i got on and sat on it and i said this is and i andrade this is the king of all that i got emails how could you do that in the basement it's terrible and then i get emails that was the best thing i've ever seen here's a picture [Laughter] where did you get these ideas from i don't know what you're looking at i think i really think it's maya it's like i don't know like i'm doing this but nothing's coming like what's gonna be today today and then all of a sudden hashem throws an idea sometimes the crazy wacky ideas yesterday yesterday i i i was i was excited about it and it backfired it it ended up not the best maybe this is what the guy was talking about the gemara says the word alexa i'm like wait a minute alexa we got to do something with alexa so i read the word i said alexa was nifter and this is literally how the the the art scroll um puts the nakudas it's literally called alexa i go you know this is interesting and i stopped at middle china go alexa who gives the best da fiom share in the world and it and all of a sudden from the speakers of the base manager he goes this is alexa m d y is the best sheer in the world and you know the guys are laughing and then i said again alexa who gives the best in the world she goes again the same thing and she goes do i need to repeat myself like a parrot but she said a word that wasn't appropriate not a curse word but she said freak i don't want to say the whole word now so the editor bleeped it out but it almost sounds that he's bleeping out a curse words i got these emails you don't understand how people were i put them on trust me i understand but i thought it was funny the guys were on the floor and and it just it wakes everybody up you know it's early in the morning at 7 15 in the morning they get up oh it was a funny they don't even know why they said you know we had a great time in cheer it's because of this joke that i think i think and in between i stick in the learning we finish the death and it's great so part of what you're attracting people because they don't want to miss like what outrageous thing is rev ellie going to do tomorrow i gotta check it out i gotta see what the visuals would be that's part of it well obviously it doesn't happen every day sometimes it's two days in a row sometimes not but yeah it's amazing and you're also famous for your visuals right how who who prepares those visuals who imagines them how long does it take to put them together you have one there you mean like the regulars like uh how about this one i'll tell you about this one this one i learned from a gemara that has the kudos i said this story a bunch of times and i got to tell it to you the a guy in chicago came over to me and he goes i don't understand you you actually use a gumball with kudos i go yeah you know my sister has nikudos nobody ever said anything about that muhammad says my mission even has the kudos so my gemara has yeah but the yeshiva is and then he goes like this he says bish loma if you're i'm a ritz i understand but you're not amaritz and i'm scratching my head i think there's a way whoa this guy needs the kudos because he doesn't even know how to say i'm art he's such a moharet he doesn't even know how to say i'm alright so from then on i started calling it amharitz and i it goes it goes with this you know anytime i have a suggest i do this amaritz and then check this out if i can find oh a guy in new york sends me this this is real hang on i'm just signing up for this daffy me right now and give me a second it became a thing like don't be amazed do the daff you know something like that it's really amazing so who puts those just another thing real quickly i was in los angeles a few months ago with my wife they were sitting outside in this cafe and all of a sudden this this uh pickup truck starts honking its horn like looking and he's like like what he's going crazy like he's showing me something i don't understand he gets out of the the pickup truck and he says you got to see my license plate and he literally had a drill he pulled it off and he gives it to me as a gift here it is eight minutes yeah so that was that was pretty cool every minute of torah is is important so a six minute dot for a three minute daff review or versus a 15 minute off how do you settle on eight well here's the thing the main thing my focus right now is 45 minutes off okay in the 45 minute that's when i do all the can i get on the table and i this and on the line the eight minute daf which by the way i haven't done in a few weeks i got out of i have to get back into it but the eight-minute daf is i work on it really hard i take the whole sugya it's the bottom line of the soyuz it's not the shackle of attire it's not the back and forth it's the bottom line the halakhas that come out that you have something to grasp and that that only takes five to eight minutes and that also comes we edit it and we put my charts in the background but you're not gonna have the jokes you're not gonna have the stories the hashkafa and all that can i ask you a little bit of a personal question you could yeah anything you want so so you know i did a little research to get to a little bit about your background you could share it with our our listeners and our audience because there's a lot to learn from that how you grew up the issue is that you went to psych uh brisk mere chicago yeah ponovich married living in chicago catering business first of all milika felix weddings flagships flagship hashem what was your signature dish what was the best thing that you you made the the stuffed kishka people love that stuff that's good stuff that's especially the women no i'm just kidding okay you went from catering to to real estate and i've heard you tell the story about the opportunity that came your way and the courage and the guts it took to take that leap and to make it happen today you're a successful real estate uh entrepreneur so successful that you're really learning full-time so if you weren't and again i'm not going to be presumptuous in saying this i think you've said it but if you weren't independently wealthy if you didn't have this real estate successful income would you have the courage to use these props and be somewhat irreverent and give the duff in this way meaning is it easier to get all that hate email and dismiss it and not care about it because i'm independent i'm doing this because i love it i'm putting my own money and time into it do you think if you were paid to give the daf if you were in rabbanus or kodesh you're worried about your career in aparnassa you wouldn't be able to have the same courage or boldness to teach in the way that you are i never thought about it like that i i never thought of the money i do i know that i have a backlink you know i have a lot of people behind me that are pushing and they're they're they're rooting for me and they i could tell i say okay this lion they're probably gonna like it there's gonna be some people on the fringe there are a lot of very serious people there's a lot of people different personalities a lot of people don't like my jokes i don't understand why they watch the sheer so they watch the share and then they complain oh well this joke the lion i got you know one of the complaints you're in middle of a sugiya of shruff and vegas and it was one of these suggests that literally i don't understand anything about it's all kabbalah everything and that's why i had nothing to say about it so right before we went to the highs and i i said this is not what is up there this this lion is just a muscle that the gemara calls it a lion but this is not it let me show you what it's not this is it and then i gave a little bit of a a twist i explained why the line like it's a psychology thing a little piece where the lion is not the strongest animal in the jungle the elephant is way stronger than a lion could probably pop him in a second it's not the quickest animal so why is it the king of the and i went on to explain it it's in the head he acts like a king he thinks he is you know we have to come out we have to so to answer your question i i don't i never thought about it that way i think about it more like okay i'm established i have a following and if that guy doesn't like it but i was i always had a husband to me and i you have to use your whatever kaikas you have or castratus it might be a hazard in this hotspot and use it in channel in the right direction right it's a holy god i don't think i don't view money a lot of people tell me you know it's interesting this is the first time somebody used it like that but i get it all the time hey it's not fair you have all this money so of course you're learning all day so to that i tell them you know how many millionaires i know from chicago i lived in chicago you know for 15 years i was i was the poorest guy in the show there's multi-gazillionaires there i don't see anybody none of them are learning but they have all this money so money doesn't translate to learning there's many people that don't have money at all and they're learning you know crazy hours as people have a lot of money they'll learn a word one thing has nothing to do with the other but yeah i mean i could that's what people they right away start associating you have this so that's why you do this but i don't i think it's in here it's more of a an attitude are there are there other things you enjoy learning besides gemara like if you if you're not doing the daf what else would you be studying what else would you be learning i mean i i love gemara i love gemara i have others dharm i do mishnays i do you know mikra i used to i love mr brewer i you know went through it a few times i don't do it now but probably mr brewer would be the answer maybe which i don't we'd love a mission of brewershire online maybe that's next uh yeah but i don't have time i don't have time there's so many people are asking give me a comment share give me this you know everything takes time you want to i want to deliver it well i want to be good at it i i can't just give a mishnay share not all right put my all into it to prepare i'm saying you're 45 minutes sure are you putting 45 minutes into that or four hours into preparing this year it's literally all day long all day long all day long and i get up very early before shear and i just go all day all day yeah robert brody he's not telling you that he he learns until 1am then he sleeps till three he gets up prepares gives the duff and he takes a nap in the afternoon and that his life is i don't know this stuff his life's not good but it's kishka stuff kishka stuffed chicken you just say they're not really they're not saying that about me or some of the other people right you divide that in half it went from chicken with kishko which by the way i'm getting hungry for lunch dinner and uh chicken to real estate to learning all day it's it's geshmaq it's really unbelievable rebellio the thing we haven't touched on yet which we'd love to talk about a little bit is your daf is more than just the sheer right so you're using all these um tools we'll call the tools and instruments to get people's attention to hook them and and the diversity of the people that you have is extraordinary russia yeshiva to beginners we've spoken about in our own community who are believers and who are hooked um but it's more than the daf you really created a movement i know there are these stefanski groups what's app groups they have watch parties and they have local cu mem and there are 10 000 people networked and connected and you know that you're a brand there's a brand of your daf where even people doing and helping and volunteering one another and like i said these watch parties and these relationships and they pass each other yeshiva week in disney world us the fans guys the fancy guy like you know that's all they have in common but now they're like brothers so you created this whole movement beyond the daf if you could comment again did you see that coming did you work on that did it happen on its own but i'm more curious to know is there a negative to that an unintended consequence how do you make it about the daf you know in this age of influencers you've become a torah influencer does that ever go to your head do you have concern that it goes to your head you have this jewish celebrity status does it does it how do you keep it about the daf and the torah and not about promoting you and the kavod did you see it coming and how do you manage that part of it so i didn't i hope i get all of them i didn't see it coming but i definitely worked on it you know i i push it i push the camaraderie and one thing that i want to touch upon which is almost something that you were talking about is we have something so unique and that is that we have diversity the actress and the sheer is just something you don't you don't see if you go on zoom because we do live zoom live youtube on zoom you'll see the united nations you have hasidim that barely speak english with the paius and everything next to the mizrahi guy that's wearing his sandals and open toes or whatever the the the child and the the the the the zucken you know the seventy-year-old eighty-year-old and it's just everything the spartan ashkenazim lubavitchers some of my best friends i'm litvish some of my best friends are chabad and lubavich on from the sheer people the gesture that goes on between the two the the the beaker hilum between the babbage and lit fish and lit fish in the babbage and the the the nikoma velem it's literally i i believe that alone is bringing mashiach just thousands of years that are getting together and they feel comfortable with each other because the gathering to learn torah they have a common cause they're gathering to learn torah so yeah i i push that aspect and we talk about it a lot talking about talking about um and i and all that so yeah what else did you ask me asked me about the guy beginning to my head yeah i'm not suggesting it does i don't know it's me very humble in fact you know this there's a joke in the sheer there's a whole debate am i about am i in honor of and i i feed them you know i let them go with it and i say guy vidalia i said i saw in the safer i made up my own savior guy vidalia funny he's a book no he's he's such an honor that he says he's a guy but nobody's about guys that he's about guy because he said he's honored anyway let them debate it my my idea is that i'll come on a program like this i'll do you know meaningful people whatever it is i'll go i'll be on the the cover of a magazine what if i could get two more people to join this year then it's worth it i'll take the risk of being about iva i'll take the risk of people say that i'm haughty and this and that i want more people to to learn tyra whatever it takes so sometimes i'll talk about myself i'll say hey i did this and we should i i was on a plane and i learned from i didn't i never said this in sheer actually but i'll tell it to you i learned from from the time i left ramachamish the time i got to chicago i did hazara on 60 i said this once in private on a zoom meeting that we have 40 people and because of that one time saying it this guy mo landy from muncie he finished the entire message my cotton for traveling for months entirety israel so if i was an inspiration to him so yes i spoke about myself and i i learned sixty that you know what somebody out there is going to say you know this ballot bus instead of watching movies which i used to do the entire flight i opened up the gemara and i learned 60 deaf maybe i could do it also maybe not 60 maybe i'll do 20 or maybe i'll do one if i'm an inspiration for somebody else and it's worth it and i see that it's working people are related and they say hey he could do it why can't i do it there's a lot of haters out there and often they're jealous they're insecure but you know look at what you're building and the torah that you're inspiring and i just told you you know what they might have they might have merit to their every title the line has merit i agree there's always and it's a fine line and a lot of people would say you know i'm not going to talk about myself it's not important they'll come by their on their own but i want to give that extra push you know so i risk it i'll take the risk but i'm bringing somebody else to tara there's a lot you know we don't want to get distracted by this conversation but i want to ask you specifically to you there's a lot of being produced right now surrounding the daf and people are employing all kinds of tools to be able to get people to talk about language of the deaf do you ever worry that you're crossing the line maybe you're using too many gimmicks or too cute or too irreverent and and maybe you know where are the boundaries of what you should stay within in terms of the mesora and showing the sense of uh aim and rest as for torah versus that we need this excitement and this massive and this joy and this geshmaq in order to get people do you wonder where that line is and again i'll ask you a personal question you don't have to answer who's your rebbe who do you turn to who keeps you in line who do you go to that is the gut check because as the world is pushing behind you 10 000 will become 11 000 become 25 000 because something goes viral doesn't mean it has value because something has a wide appeal doesn't mean it's right so in this case obviously it is look at what you're doing and we believe in it we wouldn't we wouldn't have you on if we didn't um but who who's your go-to is there a rebbe are there rebellium or the chaverum who help keep you within the boundaries so i think one answer is the other actually so first of all i just i want to tell you where i come from my father is a very big learner huge mass made where's thousand fill in all day long and it's been like that since i was born so i i grew up in a house where my father didn't learn in colo he he didn't have a job he once he was once a rebbe in chariot for a very short period but he's always a huge mosque but i always saw him with the gemara learning learning learning big urushimai and he's my go-to if i have a real question or whatever he's he's very popular here in there's 12 people coming in for broncos et cetera so i think and he knows her cooler crime consciousness sort of how can i stand up for my father so i go to him if i have a big thing but in general this color that i learned and i learned in the color for an hour and mike russo knows collateral cool about and that's my i'll give you an example just from today because i was going to the mikvah i said you know i have a great idea in my mind this was a great idea and i've done this in the past i thought it was a great idea and they they chopped it down right away i said hey how bad would it be if i go into the mikvah with my clothing and i have a gemara and i'm learning and then a guy comes up it'll be so funny a guy in the mig for learning they said no you're not doing it okay if they they didn't give me the the stamp i'm not going to do it but that's how my brain works i gotta i want to push the envelope and they keep me in check so i'll most of my stuff most of my jokes or stories i had a story i don't want to even say it now it's just a story about sorry manu and and a guy got really upset how can you talk like that and i i i went through it with them and i said could i say the story they said yeah it's inspiring it's brought down in in the statement of safer he asked the question he says the story sure but people got upset nevertheless so but anyway my point is almost everything that i do besides if it's like on the spot kind of thing i try to you know go over with them and say how do you think it's okay and most of the time you know they're open-minded even though they're cuddle guys and everything they're open-minded i trust might trust my caruso i call my rebbe he's younger than me much younger but he knows a lot more than me and he's much smarter and i trust him it's so important to have people around you like that what yeah i'm wondering you know one of the one of the people that we always have to get one did you sign up yet i wrote it i have to push enter i'm too intrigued by this whole conversation but one of the the people in our lives that we always have to contend with you know certainly is our it's not just our obey him and it's not just the community that we're trying to teach or inspire houses spouses so like many times i hear this and again i i do love my wife and this i've heard this many times where she'll say why can't you just be a little bit more normal why can't you just do what everyone else is doing why do you have to try push you get that kind of pushback also internally and you say listen i don't know if i you know is it worth the fight is it worth the i you know because i'm i'm extreme i'm really extreme and my wife is at sodegas she really is that she puts up with me because i'm not a i'm here i built this room that i'm in this is where i sit all day long and it's in direct you could see my wife could see me all day long because i did it purposely so that my children should be able to see me learning i have i could go upstairs and you know it's a lot quieter but i want them to see me but we don't have much contact she can see me but this is where i am and i go to sleep late i get up early that sort of thing so she's sacrificing a tremendous amount and yes i do have pushback but i have a vision and i have a dream and i know what i'm doing is important and i have to be considerate to her at the same time i have to be firm for what i'm doing you know and it's a balance you know i see a lot of people i can't do that my wife doesn't let this that i get it but at the same time you know she'll come around and my wife is my wife is proud my wife is behind me 100 does she appreciate i used to take her out every week and we used to go on vacations all the time you know i'm a big snowboarder i used to go snowboarding three four times a season i haven't gone in three four years and to take her out to a restaurant i think we went once this entire year once and it's a tremendous sacrifice for her i get it but she sees what it's doing to me and uh and that and i tell people the guys i want to talk about this for a second if you don't mind because it leads into this the daf is not about learning torah i learned this now as as we're going along the daf transforms people's lives literally transforms lives how do i know because i get hundreds and i can show you every email i read i print i have stacks thousands it's changed my life it becomes so like everybody everybody's saying the same thing every day it's changed my life no i promise you ready it changed yeah i know it changes lives why because tara does that and i i bring out the hashtag in in the death i show where it's relevant to us on a day-to-day basis you know have us hashem you're as hashem anytime there's a rashi that hints to something about torah about hassan about this hashem i bring it out and i say a story about this god all that thing and it changes lives literally people are diving better and going back to your point the relationship with their wives is much better everything i point out the the respect you need to have to to to women to your wife [Music] [Laughter] i was wondering what you're watching by the way here you played the good morning rabbi said what's interesting is people are playing that in their homes and children are saying i repeat i just play the videos one you know instead of watching uh reading an email i played a video somebody sent me this is two daughters like six years old they're saying good morning rabbi good morning and then he catches them fighting over is it ah or is it e no it's not i it's so funny but my point is kids are growing up with tyra it's a whole different thing watching your father watch netflix or watching your father do the daf going on vacation and the guy is schlepping the first thing he passed in his suitcase is his archwimara versus you know what it was a year ago he didn't know he didn't care and now they see before we go on a trip daddy's going to open up the gemara do the for 40 then we're going to go and it changes everything the wife has more respect the children have more respect they grow up differently i'm telling you that daf literally changes lives it's it's an important conversation because you read a letter recently from a man who said that his wife challenged him i think you love the daft more than you love me and i'm sure you're aware that led to a whole conversation online offline about what happens when you're on different religious trajectories and and what happens when a person seems more in love with their their torah and their mitzvos than they are with their spouse and like you said it's supposed to make you a better husband a better father a better friend and so on and not the opposite it led to an important conversation do you have so are you surprised to hear some people watching you do you have any feedback are there women watching you're deaf how do you feel about that have are there non-jews watching your daft that have found it and are entertained by it do you get feedback about people that you wouldn't expect who are in the greater audience yeah yeah there's everything you mentioned we have a lot of non-jews that watch there's a lot of people in the process of converting that are watching you know they have the black cat and everything but they're they're not jewish yet um we have i just read an email from a guy that was in jail and he's jewish and he has tattoos all the way down his face and he sent us a picture i showed the picture you know he's on zoom every single day he's very serious he has doyle pictures in behind him but he has the tattoos that he had they got in prison and you know transformed his life the whole thing we have women but i don't a lot of women i don't go that route because i don't want to talk about something that's going to stir the path and i'm going to get emails why do i have to bring it up so a long time ago a woman asked me is it okay if i watch this year i said it's online you can do whatever you want i i addressed it to the to the crowd i said i'm not passing us now we're we're online uh share what people do with the share and how they do that's your business i'm here and then you know once in a while we reach a gemara like like that that talks about teaching your daughter torah i bring the rambam it says it's it's mutter and this one says this and you know i go into it and and we move on that sort of thing surprising to me where the rasha shivas that watch this year this is rashidus there's a regime from lake with the watches every day and he asked me of course not to mention his name you have rabbi kalish from waterbury who doesn't mind that i mention his name two days ago somebody told me about his roshi it's funny a guy mandy irbach is uh is you know it's here i'll show you a picture of what he looks like you know a real yeshiva guy um this one right over here so he he tells me that a guy walks over to him in show the other day this real serious guy oh i just showed you a picture that i want to talk about but okay anyway this is me uh demonstrating kriya and i literally got on the table and laid flat on the table to show them what they did kyrim and you know prostate or whatever it's called in english anyway he's in shoal and a guy a guy comes over and says ha mark ashkenazi is in from america don't say anything so you watch the sheer you don't have internet wait don't tell anybody every day yeah yeah so yeah it when i hear that shiva watches it i get all excited it's it's cool you know um but yeah it goes from the reshiva to the to the non-jew and literally so in india we get from korea you know all these interesting emails yeah as public a person as you are first of all thank you for your time we're gonna we're gonna wrap it up we can talk to you for hours on end as public as a person as you've become and there's still i would love to continue this conversation there's so much to learn about your transformation from this private caterer to a breakout real estate successful whatever you want to call it the giver culture person to a uh you know to the biggest maggots here in the world you probably have the largest year going in the world daily today which is really extraordinary so with all that the world has come to learn and know about you what's something about you people don't know snowboarding i didn't know you like snowboarding what's something about you that people don't know i think everybody knows i'm a pilot i used to own a plane um they they know i'm crazy they might not know i'm very very sensitive i'm i i feel for other people maybe that part i really when i get an email about uh somebody that that's sick or i literally cry so don't send me these hate mails it hurts me i'm a sensitive guy i think that's part of it also like because i'm sensitive i come i have this tough exterior but i they see me crying i'm not embarrassed to cry and i cried many times during shear i mean especially in the you know when i read the email about something uh you know uh just recently i the famous i spoke about my son and we were learning tightness i don't know how much time we have left i'll just say real quickly um i spoke about my son who mastered massachusetts tinus and it was the first day of ms afristinus and it hit me i said wait a minute this is my son so i went and looked for his notes and i had pictures of him all the notes he wrote in the masaka and i said you know my son even though today he doesn't wear filling but he always has his muscles tightness with him it's true he slept with to california and i burst out crying i'm about to cry now um so i don't want to cry i you know so i got such feedback and people were you know we're gonna dive in on this but i don't have a problem crying in public like that if it's if it's gonna you know be myself but yeah the the sensitive part i think they might know that what else don't they know about me oh i used to dunk i was very proud of that wow um i'm not a very good basketball player because i i grew up in israel i had three years that i did in israel in that kind of room but i was afraid back in the day what else i don't know that's impressive how much coffee do you drink oh i just discovered coffee is my lifesaver i just discovered it now in my 40s i didn't know about it like i was i'm very i don't want to take any medicine any tylenol i don't want any coffee in my body but coffee once i discovered it it added hours to my day so it's two cups two cups a day what gives you the energy do you exercise do you work out nope unfortunately i don't even play ball anymore i just stopped playing ball i used to play basketball every every week here in ramapa challenge and because of covert i stopped and then i think i need a new hip not i think i just went to the doctor unfortunately i had knee surgery from basketball i had all the good stuff and now i got to start working out yeah the dunking days are gonna find time fine time unbelievable you're spending your time doing incredible things right bro you have a last question yeah just one last point here for everyone stevenski you get your hate mail i get the hate mail that says how come you don't ever let brody speak how can you learn exactly i don't know what he's going to ask so if i know you you can let him speak more right see i would be good on that eight minute daff or the 45 minute you just don't know what's going to happen next let me ask a question look i don't want to mention the competition but naki gordon from meaningful people the entire interview i'm like bugging so are you going to do the dab i'm going to do the dab i don't want to and and he's been doing that for like a half a year now no he didn't commit this that's the question i'm on the website how do you sign up because it says i went to the free gemara but then it says are you currently learning or do you plan oh i'm gonna they're gonna kill me i didn't say this yeah join daf yomi.com you get a free gemara join.com i hope i'm allowed to stick that in people have you hold on we're getting even headed here nobody but which did we i went to where am i am i in the right place america america's daffy almond yeah america's so which one do i go to watch live on zoom subscribe to full da fiom you join the eight minute whatsapp subscribe to the eight minute duff how do i get everything how do i how do i sign up for this i don't know i'm nutrition when you go to join oh beautiful join davio.com and over there you sign up they're gonna send you you get a brand new gemara here you if you want it in hebrew it's in hebrew you want a messifta check this out you're not going to believe this the front page it's part of the art scroll it's printed with our names with our the donors a picture of the that america's me in here it's just incredible you get one of these for free here in arizona this is like a 50 value i don't know what it costs in america and uh you go to youtube i'm on youtube i'm on aldaf um uh torah anytime call is shown you can get the whatsapp over 3000 people get whatsapp every day the share just goes right into their phone just click watch it later it's amazing youtube is probably the easiest tour anytime all that so you have to sign up or you don't have to you could just watch it on youtube no you don't have to sign up but if you sign up you get a free tomorrow got it okay don't sign up we'll save a good marriage it's much better this is a good chance to plug we're finishing um cedar mode you're going to start your vomit soon that's right i should have said it all the way in the beginning huh how do you feel about your vamos i want to tell you something this is this is incredible this is not even a plug over a hundred people are flying in from out of the country towards this world to join us for our cm uh march 12th it's incredible i it's i'm overwhelmed with emotion thinking about it the amount of people that want to come and be part of this amazing season a it's a big accomplishment we're finishing cedar mayan we're starting a brand new oh i gotta show you this this i i didn't have a chance i i wish this thing would be two hours long we're doing something involved that's never been done i hope we got cartoon characters this is a real guy this is yussi klein a guy who's dedicated and spent over 200 000 and he's not a millionaire he's a plumber and we made characters out of these people and we i have something called the bald men brothers the four guys from our share that are completely bald here's one of them dr factor and these are and we're going to have animation and i'm going to use these as the the guy the obama now i want to show you i'm not going to show you the whole thing but we have women that are unbelievable sneeze but they're going to make you laugh one of our women by the way is like one of those shaw ladies she's completely dressed in blue just her eyes peeking out like that and she's wearing pink cracks it's amazing this one i'll show you she's uh your xiaomi ladies i don't know if you remember being a narcissist role you know how they have the phone stuck in their tickle yeah yeah okay so here this is what she's gonna look like she has two phones she has a kosher phone and a non-kosher phone that's great you know so we're gonna play around with it a little bit and we're gonna have a lot of fun in your bahamas amazing you're all geared up you're all ready how far in advance are you prepared zero every day for the next day it's crazy i'm not normal i do i should be it's really i was losing this really boring thing he's like you got it i used to be there you got to get out of this you know and he's right i it's it's something in the head i could only do one daft at a time i could never be a couple weeks ago i was too deaf ahead and i fell behind right away it's like i have a mind block i do tomorrow's stuff right now i'm working on tomorrow morning that's it that's all that exists that's all that exists in the world i wish it was different but yeah reveal you're revolutionizing the world who who knew that daf could still yet be revolutionized like who knew there was still more to add to the daf but it's a whole movement it's beautiful and i want to personally thank you for the people who i know who you've inspired the people in our kegel in our community who thought that they never had an entrance into gemara they thought they were done and and you've invited them in and and you've invited them to be part of your we're going to have robbie brody very very soon all right let me ask you a question this is an important question would you recommend that someone start from barakas if they're just jumping in and just do it do it on their own this is what i recommend great question you start today and this is one of the things i i talk about one of the reasons why we have a very high retention rate is because of this brilliant idea and that is you start right now when you have inspiration we're holding that's today you start right there in the middle of it doesn't matter if it's middle of a so you just start let's say b when you learn the daf what happens is you miss a day every time without fail you're going to miss a day you're going to miss two days three days and people try to make it up on shabbos and go through the whole thing so the idea is you'd never make it up you always do that day's daf and whatever you miss you missed you write down nicely in a on somewhere in the front of the bar that you have to make up these da you'll eventually make them up but if you try to make stuff up that's how the it's a heart gets you every time it says make it up but it's impossible to make up three dots in one day for that so it starts growing and growing yeah i'm 10 daf out forget it i'm done so to answer your question do not start in brachas i've had people actually a kid just wrote to me a 14 year old kid i'm doing with you every single day but i want to make a scene on seder might so i'm also doing the shabbos as we speak that's okay if you want to take on added learning that's good by the way it's not 45 minutes you go on youtube you put it on one and a half speed good to go so it's 35 minutes you know what i mean it's unbelievable unbelievable bobby brody start today trust me start today you're going to be calling me and you say hey we didn't know what we're doing when we interviewed you you changed my life ellie i'm doing the daf now since you told me that that's what's the next email from you so i hope so i've got to be honest i've tried i've tried the daf twice already i tried it this last paragraph everybody said you wanted to show your email that says those words those words i read today i tried it out five times you're the only time try it because it's entertaining and it's fun it's different than the daf you tried you went to that some of them are great and they work for some people they don't work for a lot of people and that's why people want to have fun they give it to you you want to be entertained and it's tyra it's the same torah we're learning the same thing and even on a better level on a more shot is it's real it's good shot it's it's it's there plus it's fun so what's wrong so i show a puzzle every possible i read almost i show it and i show what's highlighted this word you see compared to this word it's boring it's just words but it brings the pasta out to real life you know what i mean it makes all the difference this is the best time to start i always tell people i'm in my second cycle of daft learning guy but i learn every day and for me it's a little bit different as a rub i'm i give a lot of share my week i'm learning something i don't teach so it's my own personal limit and it's and it works out wonderfully um but i tell people who start in the middle you have the upper hand you know the people who started the beginning of brachus it's exciting to be part of a worldwide cia massachusetts but it's okay the whole world's making semester it's like it's comes it's gone you know it's not a big deal when you start in the middle you're gonna send an invitation three weeks before you're gonna say please come to my cma show exactly and everybody's going wow i see my shots unbelievable yeah yeah you know whatever i'm just please come i'm making you see my shots then you're the only guy in town it's like super exciting it's an unbelievable shot so now's the time to start i started my share this year that i'm giving now about zara interesting is a middle of nowhere there's no mishna there's no two dots it's the middle of nowhere and that's the point because that people every day sometimes i i stopped saying it but sometimes we start a new mission i go this is a brand new message because it's just a whole new topic who cares what happened happened broke has happened your shah starts back off you go around the circle when you get to your test you made it that's it it's unbelievable it doesn't matter what everybody else is doing met life stadium it matters what you're doing right it's too late you can't start from broncos right now that's two years ago you you want to make up two years and a month what do you want to do start today one day at a time unbelievable rabbi brody you're gonna start the rabbis the fans keep what's app group you're gonna do the watch party in boca you're gonna do the same party in boca give me the list of the other guys see what's gonna happen i'm telling you guys fly a guy flies to los angeles they never met each other this guy picks him up from the airport we're brothers we're mdy guys we're from the same spot what are you talking about it's amazing revell you're doing a great job together get togethers i love it thank you for all the time why don't you guys come fly in fly in for the seal march 12th you'll love it you'll see something you never saw before in your life you'll be inspired people will be crying about oh life changing my my my sean vice is better my this is better everything try it march 12th is my wife's birthday so if i fly in my her shoulders better yeah really amazing you're not leaving her you're doing it for her oh that's right that's right no but you bring her it's for women also amazing thank you for your time we'll let you get back to your learning you're preparing you thanks for having me really appreciate it and uh we know you're going to give behind the beam a shout out in the absolutely absolutely rabbi brody when you listen to tomorrow i want to make sure you hear the major shout out from behind the bema that'll be my second off already so that's how we'll know we'll know if brodie listens if brodie comes back and says what time is it live it's broadcast live also 7 15 a.m is real time what time is that here that's like three i don't know where you i don't know what time it is right now in florida i have to find out okay we'll figure it out 7 15 asks ask alexa when's 7 15 am in israel actually where's the best daffy yo me at 7 15. you're not gonna get people are at people sent me oh my kids are trying to get that answer did i get it because one of the tech guys he sat up at night i called him up at 12 a.m 12 10. i said this is what i want to do could you please make this happen he said well i have to give he said and he made it happen unfortunately that that word slipped in there i wasn't happy about that but the idea was cool i think it was a good idea keep the great ideas going thank you for your time continue teaching tomorrow it's really really great to be together thank you for letting us go behind the bema thank you bye-bye brody talk to us okay so first of all i am i'm like way deep right now in this next uh second day then i'm i'm loving it unbelievable you're on your way that's it i'm on my way i'm signed listen and i can't think of a better way to begin adar right utter shane what better way of enjoying the simcha of a new month than than uh the dot can we should we be marking our calendars seven and a half years from now rabbi josh brodie seems like that's it i'm telling you i'm just taking one day at a time i want a calendar invite you you're you're invited but already i'm invited i'm on like 15 different whatsapp groups now with this with this program unbelievable i got invited got a bunch of emails in the middle of the interview saying i'm you know i'm part of the movement i listen he's amazing he's changed my life got an incredible text from a dear friend of behind the bema with a picture of behind the bima and his gemara said took it off the shelf i'm going to give it a shot i'm inspired i'm going for it incredible he did say any swag that we have he was talking about anyone's stuff he says send it over he gets meister on everything so it's unbelievable one thing major uh my dear friend chaga goldeners good friend shiraga elia miriam levian family anonymous gift laurie barnea marilyn norman palagon anonymous sheila nelly zimmerman schreier's the great shrire family the shrine has always been the heroes behind the bema of the global campaign the shriekers have made their presence felt sharon and michael glass lane sam levy khalif and atara minsky very generous okay we love you you should everything you do it's so sweet wait a second is that your that your credit card that's that that's a good question i'm gonna have to go on the back end of the campaign and see which credit card they use david posey daniel henry bloom we already acknowledged thank you to all those who are supporting the campaign huge thank you ellie's the fans a great conversation really inspiring we're we're praying we're donating and we're praying tikvah odessa the orphans the community of odessa so grateful um rabbi brodie gilly's goodies deliver a gift are you sending me that you're saying off monastery i once i was in israel and i needed a ride i needed a ride to get somewhere and i don't even know how it this even came up but he picked me up david picked me up this guy's like the biggest men she showed me hold on hold on there's justin the brody scene will take place august 4th 2029 the 20th of uh five seven eight nine somebody already can you ask your guy how old i will be at that point well i you should be able to do that math seven and a half years buddy your cm will be you'll finish with kygiega 19 august 1 2029 20th of 5789 our original fact-checker is telling us we also have everybody telling us robbie stevenski is live on youtube 12 15 a.m eastern time if you want to hear them live and you stay up tonight or when you wake up how do i get the zoom link i'm watching him on youtube now you want to join at zoom light you haven't been awake at 12 15 a.m in the last 10 years i text you at 8 o'clock at night you're already sleeping this is the latest you've been maybe tonight we'll probably get there right this two hour behind the beam is the latest you've been up in ten years i don't know rabbi brodie said gilly's goodies everybody send a gift to a soldier we love you guys your loved ones here let's close out with this question this friday big game ncaa tournament division three big berth yeshiva university they're playing your alma mater john hopkins right who's a no-brainer i'm all in on johns hopkins how can is it johns hopkins or john hopkins i'm obviously a while you guys it's johns hopkins john's weird it's it's like why is it johns hopkins it should be one of johns hopkins yeah it's a strange name yeah johns hopkins so so you're all in first of all yeah i'm going for a hop against my alma mater i'm going to put on my sweatshirt my hopkins sweatshirt you know what sport they'll be playing no i don't even know who you said they're playing against what do you mean they won the championship they got to make birth in the ncaa tournament and there was an alley-oop there's an alley dunk two jews that doesn't happen uh-huh now it's just like what is the championship game where it's just a regular season no now you're in the tournament the big dance so depending how you do each round you know you go up and then how many rounds are we away from winning this tournament uh the truth is i've exhausted everything i know so far now you're making me look bad ncaa tournament big dance but it's john's hopkins his first name was an old family last name name for the great grandmother margaret johns the daughter of richard johns johns hopkins is the first name is based on the old family last name so i now know more about your alma mater way too late i don't even i don't even know what that is let me let me ask you a question is are there any jews on the johns hopkins team uh that's a good question i don't because then i don't feel so bad rooting for them my my buddy in muncie david samett says there are 64 teams that make the tournament division three i guess operates the same way as division one division two and sixty-four teams they're brackets you pick your team this is actually an old west wing joke an old west wing episode everyone's picking their brackets their their picks and someone makes a joke about having yeshiva university in whatever bracket and it was like hilarious because whoever heard of you why in the west where they're talking about why he's basketball team but now that joke is real it's it's for real they're in the tournament i was just at the the atlanta scholars cola and they have these brackets they have these big boards up in there up in their shule in beth jacob there it's called mishna madness and what they do is they put they put two guys against each other and two guys are vying who can learn more and then whoever won like you learned more mission than the next guy you move up so by the time you get into the final two it's like out of control because these guys are just getting 24 hours right well big shout out you may be rooting but i'm rooting for our former guest on behind the beam i texted him after the big championship win coach steinmetz ryan tyrell um you know we had a whole discussion what's the kit of hashem versus jewish pride we concluded especially ryan terrell plays with his yamaka it's a men she talks about hashem davin's on the game ali steinmetz understands the context and doesn't see it more than just a sport um while he's teaching me those oh you know i saw it after he pointed out behind the bema you you could see it's unusual but if a player falls down the yu team picks up a player on the other side in the nba you know what they do they step over the player there's actually like famous footage of like stepping over the player on the other team the why you guys meet us their hair it's cudd molotov so um we're rooting for the you max all the way um although last time right after we were behind the bema we broke your 50-game winning streak and actually on twitter we were accused of being the i first so we're not going to say anything we're not we're not even saying who we wish for what we want for them we are not weighing in whatsoever or weighing in is learning torah at least you know what that's another reason to support behind the bema and support the global campaign because oh nice how many people right now do you think have probably said to themselves you know what i'll give this thing a shot yeah and i never would have heard about it i didn't know about it i wouldn't have heard about it unless it was from from from behind the beam on the global campaign so also a big thank you to fried my friend frida in denver big supporter of the global campaign brs everything that we do but um yeah i know it's it's amazing i got emails from people who are like again in love with his daf emails from people doing the deaf i got emails from men and women doing the daf with him who are loving it and and that text you got to see this picture i posted already but you guys see this picture you got behind the bema on the big screen and then on the desk is the gemara and he says you know i got these delivered a year ago they've been on a shelf but i think i'm motivated i'm inspired i'm going to give it a shot i'm starving i love it i love how he has his logo on those art squirrel gumaras it just shows it's a real force to be reckoned with like they don't put their logos on on just any you know any any program so it's he's built something special i love it i don't know if i'm frozen or you're frozen but um not sure if i should just keep talking hmm don't know support the global campaign is that me let me check hmm who's frozen who is joseph i don't know hmm i guess it's me okay i'm gonna keep spoken okay so okay welcome to uh behind the beam i'm josh brody i'm your host and i'm here actually tonight let me get on one block here just to tell you to support the global campaign you know it's actually nice not having robert goldberg here for just a few moments because maybe i don't want to say it in front of him but he's pretty good he's actually very good i think everyone here knows you know he's um he's really one of a kind and the fact that he not only goes out of his way for our jewish community locally right here in boca raton and every one of us are zohan and so excited to be able to have that opportunity to speak to him interact with him on a regular basis because he's local and he's here what a privilege what an incredible opportunity that is but now all of you every single one i got knocked off the internet but i'm back i want you to i would like to introduce uh my special guest tonight i got knocked off i don't know what happened to the internet i don't know is the shule programmed 11 pm the internet goes off i had to actually this is evidence this is a live program i use a hotspot from my phone to come back with you i gotta thank benny michelle with that because he said you're frozen i should keep going i didn't know which one of us was frozen so i didn't know when i came back whether you'd still be there i'm happy you kept going that was awesome you might have said some nice things you know did you all right well anyway the global campaign if you enjoyed it right now night light tonight at least afansky rafael crisco ukraine where are you going to get all this we get whoa big donation thank you for helping somebody growing their avodah 750 dollars anonymous huge huge happens you know what maybe another minute let me take this we officially hit 25 of our goal we are a quarter of the way there but we need your help to get all the way there so if you enjoy if you read listen watch laugh learn inspired cry if you enjoy what okay global do it do it right now i want to tell you what ellie stefanski's like like really made me think tonight and i'm sure he made all of us think like what are we doing that we could be doing a lot better you know i'm thinking that on friday night live okay how do you take it to the next level you know okay so there's a bunch of people sitting around and we have a great thing he had four people five people and now look where he is you know yeah you do your class on on on you know whatever you know weekday morning okay it's great it's a few hundred people but maybe there's something okay next year could be ten thousand people that's not to take away the top it's not about doing the difficulty by the way i already got a text people think that i just faked that i got knocked off the internet so people will give to the global campaign to pay for our wi-fi i want you to say i wish i was smart enough to think of that i wish there's no plan i wish i was smart enough to think of that oh you know what let's make it this would be hilarious we'll make it like i got knocked off and then no way i wish i wish we were smart enough not smart enough for that but uh please give to the global campaign we need everybody's help difference that you make to help us get our torah out there uh brsonline.org global well we gotta delete some stuff right now i don't know what that's about um big shout out to uh gary boy boy gary i'm sorry i found out who it was so i just want to give a big hey now thank you yeah yeah all right we're gonna wrap it up this was the short edition next week as part of the global campaign we got the long show let us know you can comment here on youtube or you can email us be in touch with us uh let us know what you like to see next week on behind the beam we have amazing guests lined up but as part of the global campaign we want to take you behind the bema so we're going to do a another marathon episode with our staff and may have some surprise guests come back and um maybe we'll get the goldberg bro brody children what do you think could we get yeah i'm not even going to be in florida next week again i'm going to be out of town you don't live in fl you can't even do you register your taxes in florida are you a resident of florida barely be pre-corona i think we were in israel four months out of the year i'm not even sure that you're a resident of florida right it's a question it's a question so would the brody children do it would they go behind the bema rabbi's children edition you know who would do it i think ayala and jake would do it i think yeah but they i think they would be excited to do it they're doing some good things in israel idc jlic you're doing great stuff what it's like to be a rabbi's child yeah maybe you can get one i can get one it's a fight i got seven kids i can't none of them they're screaming at me in capital letters on text right now that i'm even thinking about it suggesting it considering it wondering about it so maybe nine years old come on we should we should just bring another random kid like people won't know it's not your kid let's just pay them to be your kid behind the bema you know you really want to find behind the beam but you get like i don't know if you ever have like a part-time housekeeper anybody who helps you at home get them on behind the beam what's really going on the babysitters you know they're the ones who really know what's going on they're taking notes they know they know the truth yeah we still got a lot of people list with us thank you for listening it's a little marathon session and uh for the last time again thanks gilly's goodies if you want to send a gift to a soldier in israel you want to send the gift to ali stafansky you have kids in israel ghilliesgoodies.com promo code bema bima again help tikvahodesa.com relief need all the support they can get and our global campaign help us pay for decent wi-fi help us pay for decent technology we can continue to bring you behind the bema until next time stay happy stay healthy stay home