Zichru 1,000: A Conversation With Rabbi Avraham Goldhar

foreign [Music] goldhar co-founder of zikru together with our good friend Barry Leibowitz I think we've already discussed how we got to know each other it was in the last few weeks before all that was launching and they reached out to us with an idea about that could talk about that but we are just a couple days before their major event they have already come across come to a place where there are people who have managed to memorize 1 000 Simone and points on 1 000 of them which is something we could say probably the first time in history that has ever happened we we know many people that have phenomenal brains of phenomenal heads and are able to memorize we've known people throughout the generations who have photographic memories but to have regular people regular balabatum regular Learners who are able to stand in line at a grocery store or able to sit in traffic in case that happens where you live and just go over Daphne in their minds and constantly create new ways to memorize more than they're learning with zekru that is something that we could say truly the cliche word unprecedented so we want to talk about two things we want to talk about the event itself and what led up to the event the history of zakuru just a little bit and then some practical guides some DIYs and do it yourself if you haven't joined zikr yet you want to work on some memorization some Simone on your own but goldheart will spill the beans give us a secret sauce of how someone could do this on their own or by goldar how are you today I'm doing great Rabbi sweat and as I mentioned we're we're just a couple a few days away in a week or so away from the beginning of our fourth year in this stuff yomi maxor it's unbelievable um I have we I am very we both have tremendous accuracy of for all Duff uh you know it was zikr was a concept we you know thought about it you know we then we heard about adopt was starting we met with you literally the next day and you really put you know put the wind in our in our sails by creating the portal within the aldolf app and uh giving us the the exposure and so as always I just want to start with the carsatov to you and the aldov team for putting together a really a as everybody knows I'm not saying the obvious but a game-changing app for alumni dafyami and just anybody who's winning any blot anywhere in Shaw's the resources are remarkable and we're just honored to be a part of it so thank you so much and we're about to begin our fourth year so we should have continued so yeah so we're uh this Thursday uh is our zikru 1000 event celebrating the fact that lambeomi remember the Daft they have today and we've crossed that 1 000 block milestone so it is as far as an unprecedented unprecedented it's exciting and the fact that attorneys real estate developers so for me people just winning the dot while reading very busy lives like every person who learns the dove does but they've been able to hold on to what they've learned from January 5th 2020 to where we are today day after day it's remarkable so we're gonna have a fair at the event it's in Passaic New Jersey we're going to have the privilege of having the Lakewood Washington we have Rabbi from Shapiro coming up from Miami to speak but the uh peace to the resistance is going to be the hair where our members 20 of our members are going to be tested on a thousand block and that's 3 000 sugias and where suggests come up which stopped multiple dopping so it's going to be hopefully really eye-opening for everybody because he said it's not about having an exceptional memory it's uh you don't have to do something totally uh Beyond Norm it's within the grants of everybody and that's what we hope to demonstrate on Thursday night at the zoo 1000 event goldhar mentioned it'll be phenomenal to see a scene of 20 people getting tested on 1000 of them I actually had the opportunity to attend the previous event I don't remember how many dolphins but it was 25 percent okay of daffim and you had people that I've seen the diversity of the people getting tested and I know people we had someone sitting there who lives in Williamsburg who has brought zekru to the Yiddish speaking Community hell proudly say himself that English is by far his second language and he's much more comfortable speaking in Yiddish and we have people literally who are modern Orthodox living in Teaneck living in the five towns so bringing the worlds together I think is something which is incredible stunning there mayor Shapiro had on mine when he launched that yemi but seeing it in real time and in real life sitting together on one stage being being tested on this is something which is truly incredible and truly remarkable yeah the diversity is going to be very very impressive and as you mentioned we have now zikru and Yiddish it's available for the for yin-speaking world and uh the wonderful thing is as I say that I've had the opportunity to speak at a CM for bells uh a while back and when they asked me to speak I started by saying that you know there's many different types of yiddin and there's many different types ways to learn the blot but we all share the common frustration that we forget the same way the the pleasure and the enjoyment and the just the knockers people are getting from all together collectively remembering so much it really creates a commonality and it's exciting when they when zikra members people remembering the blood meet up each other they have the same same idea as a Torah they can test each other it's uh it's exciting wherever you are uh it creates a tremendous sense of actas okay so we're looking forward to being there and those who can attend seeing the video footage afterwards and we hope to make it available for all daf users as well so at this point I know we had discussed that you wanted to share a little bit about zekru how it works how the Simone is not just something which is a nice addition to your learning but it's really sourced in hazal and urban goldaka tell me on the spot probably we're in chass rifkista told us about Timonium we'll give him two seconds to think if I finish my sentence and the misconception of how Simon work and lastly how to go about doing it yourself if you're not you're ready to join zikaru I know we can discuss people perhaps fine until they get used to it maybe the sentences aren't exactly their style because I could talk about how the Simone are they have to work in a way that gets your mind to think about something which is weird or different in concept from the general way your mind works so first we here in chass is there a reference to how Simone are a source to memory all right well a very prominent source is aravind and goes into Daphne and hay as well but there we have the famous mimer of his the inventory nickname Taurus only acquired with tsumanim and I I do want to underscore what you just had mentioned is that I think that in the Belton Zhang the the general culture of learning presently again it's a nice thing for people into it it's a good additive but you know you meet those types of people who are in doing some money you know once in a while and once in a year well maybe even you know but uh and I hope is really to show that it's it's not that in reality kazal really present a very compelling case because it says toys only acquired with Simone and we have a number of macaros the the most profound is the homage itself or kushboo who says write this song down and put it in their mouths and the Gamora says there and everyone else don't even put it there put it there with a cinnamon which means is giving us a mandate of how we're supposed to walk around talk to it is with Simone another very profound place is in Shabbos where we have the Gamora that talks about the olive face and the meaning of the ocos that went into creation itself off base Albina gimmel Dal gomodang help the poor makes and you'll acquire the Torah so they're bred into the very fabric of the Berea the creation is somehow say so it's far from a fringe activity or concept it really is core to what we all want which is to own our Torah to walk out of the basement walk out of learning and then feel it the riches in your hands that you can do hazora with so we're not there yet in the way we relate to it but I hope that we will get there and the fact that we have members who now have a thousand lot uh indicates that this is far from just a a good thing that's helpful somewhat but it's actually enabling a brand new level of achievement for wounded and if I can I can say this you know who in a million years would have thought that Dr yomi would be the uh the the thing to prove to everybody what's a comp what's a possible in terms of memory that the fact is it's it's really you know I don't say makhive but it definitely indicates that someone who's not winning adava day what they're capable of and everybody's capable of it so the first thing I just want to say Simone are core to our aspirations which is to acquire the Torah and it's the way khazal present to us that this is it and if you think about it just before we get into the the methodology which I want to share a lot of technique with you with the people you know watching is think of a Simmon this way imagine meeting people everybody you know family members cousins Community people people you know professionally and imagine a world where no one had a name they just didn't have a name I I knew the person I'm speaking to but I I don't have a way to identify them think about how absolutely maddening that would be because when you want to talk about something well where would you begin not to have an identifier a label to then say Oh I'm speaking to Rabbi schwein you know great now everything I know about him can be filed under that name it's just two words but it makes an absolutely a world of difference so similarly you know consider that a Simmon does the same thing it's giving a name an identity to a blot that you've learned and and therefore everything you can learn about from that bot can be then associated with it and the more you know that blood the more that name Will resonate so that's what we're doing is we're naming that's that's Point number one uh that I want to underscore uh the second thing is just even though our program is called zikru I'm not a big fan of memorizing this is not a memorizing program a lot of people you know cringe up when they think of their days in school of trying to remember Shakespeare or some other text and it's not memorizing this is organizing see money is a way to get material the Torah that you want you love you've learned in your head in an organized way and I do want to share if I can just one fantastic muscle that Rashia seidenfeld one of our members you mentioned from Williamsburg shared with me he was doing a demonstration for massipta and they were fairing them on maseka's Yuma at the time and boom boom boom any Topic at his fingertips so everybody was you know a gas it was amazing their jaws were dropping dropping and he said to them I know looks very impressive you know and it is impressive and it's going to be impressive to see people remember a thousand blood 3 000 ideas and place that topic like that to the daf but he said the following he said imagine going to the dentist and uh you get to the the counter and she says what's your name I say you know gold heart and she goes to the back and there's all these files back there and she goes straight to one row pulls out a drawer reaches in and pulls out my file when I say wow that's unbelievable like how did you do that so quickly it's not so impressive it's just organized so see money is about having an organized mind an organized mind that's the goal many people in the morning have what I call or end up with what I call like a child brain it's a challenge it's there it's percolating hopefully somewhere sometimes it goes to the top of the challenge sometimes it sinks to the bottom but it's not easily accessible we're just getting rid of the charm brain and creating a filing system that's what C mining do they give an identity a name like a person to a person it gives it to the blot and similarly it's just filing it so it's very very effective and that's why coach baraku is telling us to do it because it's going to make a world of difference um so now how do you do it so I'm going to tell you the way we do it at zikru uh when we started zikru rubbish web we had no idea first of all how many people would be you know into doing it you know I would like this concept and whether they'd want to use RC money we figured my partner might Barry Lee Woods we felt that making some money is an effort and let's make it at least available that will create c-money for our members they can use them but by they don't at all have to use them at all they can just take the concept and run so I want to encourage you you know to those watching I'm going to tell you the methodology that I use in coming up with the Simone and you can use it if it makes sense to you right away and start to see a Mr sham a big difference in your ability to retain review and hold on to what you've invested time in learning so the way we do it in zukuru is every doth gets a standard seminar title an anchor so it's a the core to it so dot bass is advises a house and gimbals of Gamal is a camel and dalid is a Della does a door and a haze a haystack and above is a sword because it's above is straight like a sword it doesn't have to be awesome but those are RC Monument I mean we use these pegs as a standard thing for every what meaning the bass in braces is a bias the base in the dharim is a bias every doth is a uh is a um every dot is standardized and then what we do is we take three ideas we chose three ideas because we felt we don't want to make a cumbersome in terms of people having too much loaded up but at least and you know ideas from amidal if I'm a base we highly recommend that you do because when you make a Simmon just like when I think of Rabbi schwed I think of different elements of them when you think of a blot you want to think of Ahmad Alf and I'm a bass and having elements from both will help you see for those who are visual more of the broader remember what you've learned from the bot so we take topics and then what we do once we choose those topics we weave them into a story using that anchor for Duff you know base or get more Dollar in our in our uh our methodology so for example as an example uh noon in zikru is now a non-stop flight a non-stop flight an airplane a non-stop flight and uh the topics on Daft nun whereas the whole background how Ruby Cuba became very very wealthy one of the stories being with the mice with Rocco and uh Cabo sebua and the head and the hedger for the Nether and so on so that's you know topic number one we have the story and the mice of the bus quesar the Caesar's daughter saying you know how contort being such an ugly vessel and he demonstrates that yeah then why it makes sense and thirdly we have the whole mice with Barca para the unusual sort of barcapara and uh not being invited to the customer you done and uh uh and his responses and then being invited so those are our topics that we chose uh that we want to focus on and I want to mention that the gova Simmons not to put everything from the dove into the Simon it's just to be a home base for the ideas more material will Clump on the more concern you do the more you'll associate to that just like a name to a person you remember more to that name so that's what we do and now the cement happens to be for Deaf noon it's a non-stop flight so here you have a first class section and there's a revi a rabbi that became very very wealthy because of the smear sitting there and he's being served by the uh Steward there with a some very expensive wine from the climbakura from a clay vessel to remind distribution and opposite him is another passenger very upset sending an email you know to about not being invited and what he said and remind us of about kapara you know and the and that incident there so that's it so we take the three topics we create a story it's enjoyable it's fun and as I mentioned in the previous time we met I showed that you know in memory weird works the weirder something is the better it is you know if because you want to be able to create something which doesn't compete with everything else that is going on in your life so weird works and what we subsequently found and that stuff that stuff done that's our definite and the beauty of this is is the pay the the return on investment because here we have a semin now if nuns non-stop flight rivet key there you know but wealthy because of the smear the steward with the wine and the clay thing and and the rabbi you know sending an email very upset it wasn't invited that's it it takes 15 20 30 seconds to review which means in a minute review two blood at least and then 10 minutes ago 20 bought and the the magic is in the numbers because once you can hold on to that if I can say I may is that at the end of the day it will take for a mastecta that's 60 block half an hour to do hazora so you know nine the dime is 90 Baht so it's going to take 45 minutes of khazura yes I may have overstepped my bounce here but I brought on a Live member here so we'll have to believe it by gold I wouldn't have to trust him you know he's here selling his product that he created we have repsia zeinfeld here from Williamsburg and he could attest to exactly where everybody gold are saying so I was unexpected and I was like okay he's coming to do it I was like I didn't know what I'm going to join but yes great to see you so we have we're we're discussing 1 000 past that already it's gonna be a major celebration a major event in the next couple days Rabbi Goldberg said he's gonna have 20 people sitting there are going to be testing a Fajr on 1 000 I had the opportunity a few months ago to meet Rabbi gold Rabbi sidenfeld in Williamsburg I'm also stepping my bounds any person who's in Williamsburg they're there for a wedding or they're stopping by be in touch with her by herbsia he's happy to sit down with you talk to you show you around Williamsburg give you a tour anytime the best tour guide has been there from the day he was born so Rabbi Rabbi tell us from your perspective someone how did you get to this these weird sentences with his weird simonim give us in a couple minutes from where you heard about this and where you are today okay I'll try to make a very short even short it will be almost probably about two hours so it'll make it extremely short but like I want to correct you what you said that the room is selling this program he's not selling a program this is a program it's free for everybody and it's just if someone starts tasting it they're never gonna move away but the reason is I mean I was obviously she will learn but I never remembered only a little bit about um when the filming was that Arabic test I think it was almost like two years ago I saw like a ad something like you remember the death and I was like yeah it's never gonna happen but I figured you do not let me try it so start trying and it started I was talking of static tests and the first day I was very excited I'm going to remember the dove like yes like I always say it's like someone's telling me that I'm going to learn how to fly yes you claim you have to fly I never connect but yeah I'll try it and I thought it has become a cheater to be honest I didn't know what a cheetah didn't understand what he's saying I started Googling I did a Google I could cheetah okay fine I don't want to cheat sheet of the animal the animal all right but I didn't have a clue I'm familiar's work okay so I started the three points I didn't know what to put them I had three points okay then we keep for the monkey I got stuck if Alice was cool a bird called I was like a bird cool a car a cool a Google even Google didn't know the answer the bottom line is I figured I'm going I'm committed I'm going to do it till the Finish because like the room said always the beginning gets hard but you get used to it and then he said that it's gonna uh it's gonna be the python by the side there when you sit by the side you remember the whole lot of circles about 21 blood and you know three points in each but I was like yeah but I did it every single day was very very tough because it's coming from Williamsburg learning in Yiddish and then flipping it in English which was a little bit conflict but I would say that Pfizer I was sitting by the side there when I ate by two muscles it took like whatever the five minutes I did the whole zoo and then I knew that this is going to work because if I know 20 blood it's going to work it's for all shots there's no reason why not they just have to do the hazura and like I said everybody it's not a vaccine that you take a vaccine and you're going to remember everything you don't have to learn you have to learn you have to Hazard this is just a small tool but this is going to make all the difference not a little bit not a little bit more it's gonna be everything is change your life your family's life your friend's life everybody amazing so very quickly if you have two more minutes tell us you stay there using and I understand we we're gonna tell everybody not everyone could do this not everyone does do the same way if she does it but I think you could get an example of how he's able to use the crew for his saddaram and his cedra and everyone can take it and use it their own way whoever is possible and again I will tell you what it is but I'm really if anybody has questions since I want to do how to set up in the beginning it's different and because once you have more and more death and you have to change it a little bit around I'm always available there's a lot of different people that are available to help I also got a lot of help from the room and other people so I was in the same boat as everybody else so basically what I do is I I do in the morning I'll do the blood I learn the blood it takes me about an hour to learn the blog after I finish the blog I listen to the bedroom it's about 50 minutes because five minutes about 15 minutes then I have another 20 minutes that's after that's another 20 minutes 10 minutes of the last 20 Bloods blood that's for example this week I learned every day from ma'am Alice till summer by some of them that's the new 20 blog and then I do a 20 black hazura of the last hundred blood for example I have the form exhibits that uh every day 20 blood so it's like all the old 100 and the new 20 because you always have to put in more work on the new ones until you get like it gets like engraved it takes not more than 10 maybe 10 minutes each 20 minutes this is what I do every day then the end of the day I have another 10 minutes I do the blood for that day I make sure that um when I go to sleep I know that blood the trees that's like a short amazing amazing group Chia thank you for your time maybe I want to put just a small thing because this is something that is different they're above room all all people that were rumors and surrounded they're like happy with three points when it comes to the facility I have no idea why everybody has the same questions oh I want to remember three points I want to remember everything so always asking okay no problem what are you learning the Durham okay what's on those memo oh um no uh so so you don't know anything but this is I can confirm to you it's not only me it's a lot of people if you do the three Simon and you do the hazura you will remember 95 even 98 from everything that you learned like it will be 100 500 600.7 on the Block absolutely she it's great to see you thank you so much thank you looking forward to seeing you on the panel with the 20 people uh uh so in terms of the the the Sim and I just want to point out that for people should realize that some people are more visual I mean they see pictures in their minds more readily and some people are more auditory they they hear they hear things I happen to be more Visual and it's interesting when we started I remember that when we started zikru for this moxor rabbit sweat asked me are we gonna have pictures of these stories and I thought to myself like pictures wow I've never made a picture person that's that's kind of childish that was my that was my gut reaction and we didn't do pictures but then members kept asking us what about doing illustrations pictures and so on and eventually I said okay listen let's give it a go send some pictures and sure enough the pictures were remarkably helpful uh and then I and for myself I'm more visual the pictures are like terrific then that's how I I do because we have illustrations of it and I highly recommend when you come up with the SIM and a prison comes up yours to your story your way of connecting it you don't need a fancy artist to do it just take a little scratch Pad we had people making stick figure illustration just a little stick figure but if you're visual that will do a remarkable amount and show you how easy it is to retain it other members are more auditory and in fact we have a uh khaburra here in Passaic on Shabbos before Minka uh on Shabbos shabba's day and uh so we do a round robin of you know music remembers you know sing the blot and uh we usually about 50 for 40 50 60 bought in an hour before minha and we had a member from Queens come who was there for Shabbos and when you just say the topics we see most of us are visual we see the topics and we say them but um the members other men this member said the actual Simon he actually says the entire story because he's more auditory so if you're auditory you know come up with a good story and you know use the words and you'll that'll help you so play to your strength at zikru we try to play it both both we create a story that can be pictured but that's the uh that's the the the main effort is to come up with a story all you're doing think about it when you're making a cinema is you you finish the blog you finish winning the duff what's something I'd like to retain from this blog what's the basic idea is and the goal is not to get every Prat from the blood in there even on that topic just rushing tables just what's the general thing and then write it down write it down I'm a big fan of note-taking uh but write it down so you have a record it's easy to read easy review and again because of efficiency you write it down so on one single page you could have 10 block right there and just pull it out and there you go wherever you are waiting for a doubling to start you could do khazur of the Simone that you've created for yourself so it's it's all about efficiency so all you're doing is taking the amount of time you put it invest it and to learn the plot to say okay what am I going to come back to and if I cannot if I can I want to underscore something that vashia mentioned you know many people and I just met someone recently who was like an All or Nothing type person I have three points I don't know but what about the entire body so I I say to him I said listen if you could consider that the All or Nothing strategy might be at Yates O'Hara All or Nothing then think about it is the Yates are hard does the Yates or hard really want you to have all is he really presenting you with a choice it's either All or Nothing absolutely not the Yates or her wants you to have absolutely zilch nothing cornished so he says it's all or nothing and we know that there's never a limit a ceiling on what all is so whatever you do it'll never be enough so it gets you to eventually walk away with garnished so with three points on the idea again it's not the sum total of what you're going to retain you'll remember more but you don't tafasa maruba with simunting the magic is that you choose a couple points three points Max to say put it in it's very manageable and uh and you're good to go and the mind is an endless palette it's an endless palette you can just you know whatever Association connection Works you're good to go so it's you're not constrained this is not a schwitz type program this is a remarkable return on investment that you're going to be able to do and remember Chris bark who's telling us this is the way it should be in our mouth Seema am with some money if a Coach marker wants us to talk to her it has to be pleasurable it can't be a heavy load so see money didn't give you that pleasure to talk tour wherever uh and that's what I would you know the the main things I would keep in mind in terms of making some money okay excellent by goldhar we are looking forward to the event probably people will see this mainly after the event that as we started at the beginning we'll be able to share video presentation for people to actually see in real time people real people from all over the place from all sects of Claud Israel who actually have memory we don't like calling a memory have organized 1 000 in their minds and Rabbi goldheart mentioned she is Idaho who we just had on with his muscle with the dentist basically I remember Europa gota telling me this way back when we started it's like a filing cabinet you have to set up your brain like a filing cabinet organized you can just open drawers and pull out files and that's that's the goal over here so continue the amazing work anybody out there certainly give it a try even if you give it a try and you fail try it again like everything else in life there's certainly something you'll be able to gain from this and whether you're able to use this program or any other type of memory program it's certainly something that is worth giving a try and who knows you may be sitting in your car instead of getting frustrated with the traffic just thinking about nadarim daf memsay and who knows right in fact if I can just tell you one final story we actually uh she had told me this that someone actually made a mistake on the date of the event and he came the week before Hanukkah from Williamsburg to Passaic for the event and it wasn't going on but he wrote an email but it wasn't a problem on the way there and subas on the way back so it's it's really remarkable you can do it and by all means if you go to you know learn from the RC Monument you can see how I've crafted to see money and you'll pick up a lot of tips along the way so you can do it on your own for whatever you're learning I want to wish you a tremendous amount of it's welcome thank you everybody and the aldaf team it's just a wonderful privilege and pleasure to be part of the aldof platform thank you for the kind words and again as Rabbi goldheart just underscored with that story it's not only about knowing more daphim and feeling good about that other aspects in your life may feel better as well when your brain is focused on hazarding Daffin so thank you very much have a wonderful day