Lost & Found Revolution with Dr. Josh Fox

well they got up on a rock and they screamed but this is the best evero that can reach millions of people not just 500 or 600 people it's rare that we can do a mitz for better than they could have done in those times good morning it is a pleasure to be here with two distinguished friends I have dror Josh Fox from the five towns and Rabbi Ezra sarna and the reason why why we are having this conversation is because we are approaching in CLE and peric alas is probably very well known to most those who had the opportunity to learn in Yeshiva I would say a majority of yeshivas begin learning pericas in fifth grade or sixth grade the first gumar that's learned for many many when they start learning is peras and it's a perak which is interesting it's exciting and one of the Prime topics primary topics in parus is about losing objects and what do you do when you lose an object and the first Mna begins there are certain objects which a person's allowed to keep there are certain objects that a person could return and someone who lives I actually live in Lakewood I live in a development I walk around my neighborhood there are bikes and all kinds of toys all over the place I don't know who they belong to do I have to pick it up do I have to give it back then you walk into sh and you see on the Bolton board that someone has their keys hanging on a pin or one of those um thumb tacks you know do these Keys belong to you they have a dollar bill with like six holes in it that has been posted there for a year these are some of the common shist that are relevant TOA then there's the Practical aspect when someone loses something how do they get it back so bar we're in a world where technology has helped us Advance this area and I want to introduce Dr Fox and he'll give us a little bit of a background but he is someone that the Mitzvah OFA has been on his mind for quite some time and we have Rabbi Ezra who I have the pleasure to work with at the OU he's a director of ala initiatives there are many different initiatives that are relevant to the Jewish world that he's involved in whether it is aov whether it is St some of the things are more in development stages but someone who's been very involved and he has been involved working with Dr Fox developing a platform that a makes it easier for people to post lost objects and find lost objects and also learn some of the relevant for this Mitzvah so that is a website aa.com Dr Fox why don't we begin with you give us a little bit of your background where you grew up where you're from and if you want to get right into how did has become a Mitzvah that you're passionate about uh it's actually I grew up in Dayton Ohio and my father started the day school there the the the the Hill Academy I was in the first class every year we grew and there was eventually my father started the high school for my daughter and uh in little town but big things can be accomplished my father was M of many people in the little town of Dayton Ohio um uh how I got passionate it's actually interesting someone asked me this question yesterday and uh for at least over the last 20 years I've been uh very interested in this topic I I remember one time I I I was on a date and I left my wallet in a thing called a phone booth and uh and then I realized it and I ran back to the phone booth and someone posted whoever lost something please call me this is in Midtown Manhattan and I went to the person and the person the young lady was so nice I offered her mondy she I made such an impression on me it was it was such you know my heart went up and you know you have so much in your wallet um and this was before the the day of cell phones and your whole life is there and you know it's uh it I I know that it was a tremendous to me and uh that was one incident as I was thinking back that really was memorable to me and I saw what and I see what Hashem made this Mitzvah to really bring sh excellent Rabbi sarna you want to jump in What was your first introduction to Dr Fox and what's been happening under the hood since then now every once in a while you you meet somebody and in the OU I I meet lots of different people and there's some people that just strike you as so genuine uh and so idealistic and so real you almost want to knock on them to see if they're real uh and so Dr Fox was definitely someone that I wanted to knock on but uh the truth is that I knew his kids already so I knew he was real you could see the Paris of the Elon already blossoming and and uh you know Dr Fox came in and he said uh you know there's this Mitzvah that that he feels that has been left uh you know part of it is that's hard to do part of it is that people don't know what to do and part of it is that we live in a culture where money's not and money and positions are not as valuable as people anymore you know they just drop things and and and it really something's lost and so for and so for the Mitzvah itself like Dr Fox Said the say you have to treat every Mitzvah equally you don't you don't know so who says that that has is not going to be the one to to take us over to the to now to bring us to to mhia we also we we as part of this process when Dr Fox mentioned the idea to us it's such a simple idea um to help col Israel we found that there were others who had tried uh you know attempted building websites as a central place for for uh for shasa and we reached out I found the contact information of a beautiful Jew named SCH Hafner uh and I reached out him he said the whole the whole world the entire Bri now created a world that was that was close to perfect and then it went away from that and so the whole Tas the whole reason for all of our existence is to bring the world back to bring K's world back to him so uh so we got to start somewhere um so so we got involved AR Fox had this idea and uh it's just been I've been trying to help Dr Fox get there and I think we're there and we're excited to to bring it to the world I I would just add to that that um you know we think of Y going back for and and those panim you know that's everybody's lost object but with the things that they were left behind you know the worry the so he went back as that sadik I think Rashi brings down for sadik his his every object is so to them because they know it's all part of the ronam uh everything belongs toon so hope this will eventually spread to to every to every city to every city in the United States to Across The Globe around the world translate into Spanish translate into Italian to be in in many around the world that's what we want so this mitvah will be accomplished but we but we have to Value little objects we have to realize everything's from the ribon Shalom and and and and this Mitzvah is such it's a Mitzvah Thea like like Rabbi s said that's being trampled upon and uh I I view it comparable to the mitz of shotas 30 years ago you know it was it was sort of resurrected and and and and and established and now who would think of not getting their their suit checked for shotas right and I I I think if you take a look at the website pages on the website have guidelines and some of these ideas that we're sharing I think is really what makes it relevant because I think people it's one of the mitzvas as you mentioned people walk around they don't really know exactly how to treat the Mitzvah and how to deal with the Mitzvah and like I like I mentioned at the outset you walk by you see a bike on the floor you see you see a dollar bill on the floor you see and it really depends where you are you know sometimes you feel like you're only worried and car about the big things you know you see someone lost their thin and people are worried how how to get his thin back but I think it's important to bring out the panim aspect you know the way people treat other people's property and these are all um um outcomes of of this beautiful Mitzvah so um if you want to discuss um either Rabbi Sara and or Dr Fox What specifically um did you add to this website I see something which is seems cool to me in today's technology you don't even have to come check if someone found your object you're going to be notified automatically you may talk about some of the technology that's been in place to move this forward okay sure so so I I think the fact that we're able to post by category and uh in the initial phase one it won't do an automatic match and because we want to be able to see the logic of how people think before we make the automatic match so that it will match the way people are thinking but a after phase one eventually it will send back a message to the person to know let them know that there is something on their object that it's already been posted or that are that are that uh someone found it or they that they're they just lost it whatever the story is it does it by location it does it by by category it does by the specific object so that we should be able to develop matches so that we should be able to let you know if if if someone lost a black hat in in in Woodmere it's different than losing a black hat in Inwood and and that would help us make a better match and bring them together and of course we have to do it Al so that we don't want them to say on the site the S you know oh yeah it's got a little tear up in the right hand corner because you can't put that on the site and everything should match the way it was done in the time of the second Bas of mikdash with the Evano where they got up on a rock and they screamed but this is the best Evano that can reach millions of people not just 500 or 600 people depending on how loud you could scream so I I think the site brings it to much more modern and much more it it it enables us to Adit even better better than they could do during it's it's rare that we can do a Mitzvah better than they could have done in those times so I think this is a one of those opportunities where we can actually do a Mitzvah better than they could do during the time of the bdes if I could share a personal anecdote I had the couple weeks ago to be in and we also had the to do for somebody and we brought a full suitcase for somebody to so all our suitcases were coming around um the baggage claim area on the belt and my wife says oh I see the suitcase I think it's ours and so I picked it up and I put it down on our cart not realizing that she wasn't sure it was ours I thought she was sure it was ours surely enough we get back toim and we look at the tag and it is not ours it has someone else's name on it so it wasn't hours and the suitcase we were missing wasn't hours either so the first thing I did was I posted on my status do you know the name of the person whose tag was on it um I opened up the suitcase I saw there were packages for others in there with phone numbers and I started that whole procedure and bar we Tracked Down the person and my wife had to go back to the airport and get our piece of luggage they didn't want to release it until they were sure the other person had their luggage which is a separate story but if there be a.com which everybody knows about the first place this would be is on.com missing suitcase benorian airport date flight and um that would be that would be a go-to location for this type of situation people ask us you know why do you need a website aren't things working currently so the we tell people is right now when somebody finds something the best they can do is they post it on WhatsApp like R did they put it on a status or they ask their friends but very often your your your WhatsApp circle is very limited you know especially there are people who travel all over the world there people from LA and New York there people from who are in uh you know Florida traveling to Idaho or Canada or across the world you can you can lose something so easily and uh just because somebody finds it and has a few friends on WhatsApp doesn't mean they're going to find it um so this is really the challenge of this is to get the word out there so that everybody knows that it exists and then then the Mitzvah could be accomplished fairly easily um you know one story one of the reasons why I was when I always love this Mitzvah is because there's a story that really touched me I heard that the rim Ina there were they were murmuring amongst themselves that they were finding the kids weren't taking to Al it's hard you're young kid they start learning in fourth fifth grade it's challenging you know they why don't we teach them why teach them concept as they're more familiar with and that way the learning the beginning ofar will go quicker so apparently heard that there was discussions in the Rim's room you know between between their B and he called them in and he said CL has been learning for for hundred hundreds of years and we're not changing that we're not changing the curriculum of of of and if you want to know why we start with it's because if you learn you learn you learn about mitv that a person does in his home so he can think I'm I'm a y I'm a from Jew in my house when I go into the street so when I do business and I interact with other people okay so then maybe there's a different set of rules different set of Standards if if the first thing a kid learns when he's learning the the is that you find something that's worth a PR that belongs to somebody else that a k is watching and it's your responsibility to give it back to them right when it comes to even though it would look very feel very nice in your pocket right you've got to give it back that the you're yid everywhere you're you're a sh ter everywhere and and the coach BR is always watching I always love that story and always stuck with me so when when Dr Fox mentioned this I think that it also resonated here's an opportunity for me to get involved to to help CL out this Mitzvah just getting back to what we started with this could be a Mitzvah that people are d by it's not so well known it's not so um well kept properly with the proper um just to plug our own work we did we still haven't finished yet we were going through it's fascinating most people know a couple of his a couple of the more well-known s that he was involved with and some of his we see his and CH that come out different placesi wrote many on mitz that he writes himself at the beginning in of farum the reason why I'm writing these farum is because these are Mitzvah that people aren't either aware of they're not careful about and he writes he writes he write a saer on the Mitzvah of arua or write a saer on the Mitzvah of kak tattoos and how it's relevant today exactly where it's relevant he'll take a Mitzvah and spend K's time lots of time going through it and writing the safer so Hasa is also something and perhaps we'll have a safer we'll put out a safer one day all the so many interesting on the website and their shist that come up you know this this could also be a repository of people they could send in Shas that they have you know certainly will know um where to send the where to send the Shas to and I see Dr Fox wants to comment on this also right right so one of the things we're doing is as part of the the out the beginning the inaugural we're having about 10 different raban from the five towns Inwood Woodmere Cedar Hurst far Rockway GI sherim on the topic of hasab saeda and the topic of has many different subtopics you know you know what are the exceptions what are the rules How about if it's a go how about if it's in Yesa how about how about what you know the the Mitzvah of hash also according to manyon has to deal with the it's it's it's the it's the Mandate for a doctor to to do RAF you know some some some say it's some people say it's the Mitzvah of uh it's also the Mitzvah of Kim so I'm saying the Mitzvah is really pretty expansive and you know let's start off with the basics and let's and I think it will I think it will cause many Jews to come back to yish as Rabbi cron tells in many stories in several stories where the Mitzvah of caused the Jew to come back to yish kite Dr Fox you want to tell you want to tell ra a little bit about the uh the videos um that you're making sure sure so um so I thought if we're doing this project you know we always start with the youth you know many times the tail wags the dog so if the kids one are excited about this Mitzvah the parents you know we're parents we're jaded a little bit so we need to get excited so we need to get the kids to be excited so uh I I reached out to tor Rabbi Roth and he's made for us so far I think three or four videos and eventually we'll hopefully have 11 and you know things that bring the Mitzvah to life some talk about Hala some talk about tikun some talk about you know many different aspects of the Mitzvah and um you and it'll be it makes it brings the Mitzvah to life for children and makes them see uh and I think for adults too you know you know adults get inspired by these by these type of um presentations and and also there'll be study guides for um for children in Yeshiva there'll be um also be quizzes so it I wanted this to be more comprehensive Al there'll be a children's section on the site which will allow you know our children to become more excited and I think when children get excited about a Mitzvah adults get excited you know uh we should get you know uh kids get very excited when they go by Lula V esrog you know then adults get more excited I think it works both ways I'll add one more thing you know one of the things that Dr Fox and I have discussed and I think this is one of the things that really motivated Dr Fox it's hard to remember everything that motivates you when you're on camera but but there's so there are you know cholesterol is is large and we have different groups of cherol different families and different uh different cultures and it's it's rare that there are spaces and Mitzvah where we can all share and we can all come together and be together and a shaba is one of those areas where it doesn't matter it doesn't much doesn't matter what you look like where you're from what language you speak this is an area that all can can can meet and join and be together and how can we not take that opportunity to to capitalize on that so the goal like we mentioned is for this to be an international central place for shasa we have to start somewhere we're starting right now in the five towns because again this the concept only works if people know about it and and we need people to know about but we're focusing right now um on on getting the word out in the five towns and the hope is that we'll prove the concept in the five towns if you live in if you live in uh Thailand or a Israel or or LA or South America you could still post on the site and they'll still take it and maybe somebody will find on it but but the Focus right now is going to to try to focus on the five towns that people can know about it and and we can see if this works I want to thank every Sade for his uh offer to to to to publicize this because the more we publicize them Mitzvah the more we publicize the Mitzvah the more people will do the Mitzvah and they and and and when you do I think says if you do it's multiplying so I think this will create it's not just that this is aah that we have to do I think this when when you learn about the Mitzvah when you're going to see sh about the Mitzvah on our site many sh from around from the OU from Wu from from all around um from um Torah any time from all around all different sh and from the five towns and Etc and eventually mem to to uh to to all you know from we we'll see it in in in all the different communities um this will cause a a greater creation of more the Mitzvah we do not just.com is now live and you could go on.com and see what's available but I think even more importantly because Rabbi SAR has mentioned that the actual um lost and found part of the site is being focused now on the five towns but the other areas of the website the Torah shim and the Torah outlines regarding this Mitzvah are available for one and for all wherever you are if you're in Thailand or Isel or Lakewood or five towns or Florida or Croatia wherever you may be one last thing I'll say is that is that since alas is the first lwood that uh the children do in in uh in in yeshivas the hope is that a the will become part of that education when when the reame are teaching and and the kids are need to need to close the garas so the re can say Okay aa.com you should know about it and and they'll take it home and they'll take the magnets home and they'll let their families know about it and hopefully this will become part of the regular education of K Isel that this is where you go just like the time mikdash when they would teach the kids say okay you found the Neda during the Char you go to the EV we're g to tell everybody about this AA you lost now they'll say okay you're learning alus from now on aa.com is where you go with your AAS on our on our on our poster that we're going to be posting up in all the shes we will have a sagula about uh what you can say if you want to find a lost object so that's going to be on the that's going to be on the poster that that we're going to M be putting up in all the sches and hopefully it'll be in every SCH in America at one point fact that is so thought thoughtful and the more I spend time with you I see that you are really the creative driver behind all the different aspects of this project because that's also something personal we have this I know it's a measur somewhere I can't tell you exactly I think I got most of the words right you want to find something you say it one time three times I don't even know could be there's something clearer about it and this could be part of the educational material and the signage that goes up that's that's brilliant brilliant actually my I have to than my son rosha do fox who's been helping us out in I also want to thank my son-in-law yako baldinger who's been helping us out also on this project okay so thank you very much Dr Fox thank you RAB sarna and blem we should come together again for for the good of CLA [Music] [Applause] isra