Meaningful Moments with Meaningful People

[Music] so first off we want to say thank you to a mood what's your name okay oh you wanna start off like that i mean we're talking to a whole new audience i know sure uh i'm jakob langer what's your name my name is nacho gordon nice to meet you and we're here to discuss our favorite moments the most powerful moments from meaningful people podcast yes which we host together and we have really incredible people but so first of all i want to say thank you to sv for being one of our first guests being so vulnerable and just talking about amudem and the organization and what they do it's it's mind-boggling do you remember uh yes i remember i know you're going with this i know i called him the garbage man of college no i wasn't gonna say that i don't remember that i was gonna say do you remember after just like looking at his phone like how much it blew up i i think that the statistics that you know they put out are just like maybe sometimes you think oh these are just numbers but when we were able to sit down with sweeney and discuss it with him each number represents a person in crisis it's really crazy and it's just wild so you know c says this all the time and we'll just echo it that the day that i moved them is able to just close down and cease to exist is going to be a beautiful day right but as long as they're not please uh give them money um so we want to go through a few of our moments we didn't have to we wanted to we want to go through a few moments um okay so we're gonna break it down this is i'm just talking from my heart so i have written down over here noiki roberts we had which i think was your first time ever meeting him right my first time meeting noiki you've heard about him a little bit happens to be somehow related to my brother's wife hassan family really originally from gibraltar so ah so um is everyone's related is it gibraltar or gibraltar gibraltar i keep forgetting i know i also thought your world talk you went to gibraltar yes did you land on water i did not okay but people do people land near there yeah i'm supposed to take off to leave from there but this unfun fact about revolter is that when you go there it's there's also like very often storms so i had to actually drive to spain and i you needed my passport it was so not worth it so i definitely don't recommend to land or take off from the water there like in a plane like a water no no no not like that that's what i'm talking about oh no oh runway next order the runway is literally next to the ocean and you could see morocco if i'm talking about like one of those water jet planes no oh no i did not no that would be so cool i know and i'd be so scared to do that no i think i think i think that maybe would have been safer because it's prepared to land in the water either way um so we had noiki roberts and he said a lot of things definitely check out the full episode but there's one story that i i was blown away by and i'm here listen to the story you said a lot of stuff to me a lot of stories and inspiration that strava says about you like i don't know five years ago yeah there's one particular story and i think it's it makes sense with what you just said now that maybe you could share i don't know if it's like a very private thing and i'll reference it hit me cigarettes oh okay i'll say it yeah i'll say it it's it's not a comfortable story to share that's why i'm asking you and maybe i'll offset it you're so kind for asking on the area and it's so cool i'm so cool you want to know something the more real this interview i think the more ill touch people listen and the more staged the more wooden it'll feel so i appreciate it and i will share it and i'm not comfortable it it irks me and i feel it wasn't even my place and so many times in history i've gone through that story in my head did i do it right did i not do it right and i really believe that hashem himself i think i did the right thing i was i was gibraltar to give this story some context is is pretty much like a duty-free shop in amer in an airport right there's no duty on cigarettes there's no duty on alcohol it's much cheaper um there than most places in the world and i wasn't in gibraltar very long i mustn't it could even have been in my first year that i was there and i got a phone call if i'm not mistaken it was late on a sunday night and a guy said to me hi this is xyz and i i said no not ringing any bells i don't know who you are he's like yeah okay it doesn't matter i know who you are that's never a comfortable thing to hear you know late at night yeah we're listening in we got and and he said is it possible you can come meet me now i said is it is it urgent he goes yeah yeah it's urgent that's where are you he was actually next to the runway in gibraltar the runway in jp is a cool piece of information there are like railroad barriers that come down when the plane has to land because the plane lands across the road that we drive through into spain so he said i'm right by the runway that's okay so i i have a little motorbike so i went down there and i met this guy and then i recognized him i know the family he married into in england and it pains me to say this but he was what you would call a from guy okay peace be shiva's right and if that's what qualifies yeshua's right but he and he said i need your help so i'm like getting getting ready and mode of course what can i do for you and he says i bought a campervan does that make sense like a you know yeah rvh type thing right and he says well there's going to be we're going to replace the bottom and it's going to be a fake and we're going to put cigarettes in it we're going to we're going to smuggle them across the board and i'm going to make a fortune i'm maybe 22 years old something like that and he looks me and says i just need someone to buy the cigarettes every day store it in a house i'll do the rest just once a month i'll come i'll take it out your house and he was offering me some exorbitant amount of money per month to do what i said five million dollars it wasn't five million but it was a lot of money it was it was well more than a regular salary a month to do his dirty work for him but maybe even legally i don't even know you know buying cartons of cigarettes holding them in boxes and then he can come and take them and legal or otherwise i just looked at him and instinctively something took over inside of me and i just looked at this older more established guy and i said to him do you believe in god do you believe in hashem and it's like this was not the setting for a muslims right and he looked at me like with disdain so to speak i said answer the question and he kind of shifted from foot to foot he said yeah i said do you also believe that on rosh hashanah who fixes exactly what you're going to make for the year he's like yeah i said then this isn't it this this this can't be right no i won't help you and i walked away and then a plane landed and hit his van you wish unfortunately i think he spent some time in jail for other smuggling offences and it just doesn't make sense to me it doesn't make it if it's if it's wrong and it's not right and it's illegal don't do it who are you gonna trick i understand people feel desperate at times and i get that bit but that's not the answer and maybe let's offset that story with a much nicer story i'll tell you yeah i wouldn't say for that one guy who's smuggling cigarettes out of gibraltar right now it's super awkward yeah he's like oh my gosh maybe i'll listen to music onto me yeah okay so i want to break down this story go ahead break it down so i i went to noiki in 2015 2016 and still i mean we had great chavez and i didn't know him that well but that story stuck with me it was so powerful to hear like in that moment noiki like had the opportunity to make a lot of money and okay just he and technically he wasn't doing anything illegal could have gotten away with that and still he's like do you remember the story i do obviously we just played it but i know but when we're talking to each other we're just talking exactly and we're not watching it so it sounds like out of context like something illegal but no i i were talking about that was really an incredible story and it takes a lot of you know just you know being planted and having knowing where your roots are and not and not faltering so as as a person that was really an incredible i think one of the best parts of hosting this podcast is is the ability to meet such amazing people yeah so true and become friends with i mean not all of them i'm not like friends a lot of them we have relationships with it's really cool um so who who who i'll i think the answers both for both of us who texts you the most or the messages you the most of our guests yeah like that i'm again i i've become friends with like probably benji upstairs yes me too dr benji is the man yeah he's benji i've seen but there are others there are others as well for sure something that you know we have is that we sometimes forget the the the episodes that we've put out and who we've done them with because there's been so many at this point yeah so i wouldn't even remember it but you know what transitioning into a really incredible moment that i loved i loved we were um we had the honor of of traveling one sunday morning to dale new jersey um awful rainy day i got a ticket no no no no that was different time that was different oh gosh um this is why we don't like traveling foreign and we went to schweiki yes it's an amazing amazing um episode we went to his house yeah we set up in his house and in a living room over there and he was telling us a story that i thought was so incredible and this is it we were doing uh a comes its album my first comes its album not talking about those were the days that i did lately and brought back a lot of the older jewish music that the youth actually should know what beautiful songs we had first comes this album my my manager and producer back then my dear friend joachim briskman who have a tremendous occurrence to talk to i was with him for 15 years and he tells me yaakov i found out all the songs who composed what because we want to give credit to the composer you know we're singing songs some of them passed away some older songs you want to give credit you want to write inside who composed what this is one song that nobody knows nobody knows who composed the song i said i gotta find out somehow i cannot show [Music] it's a stunning song that i sing in my house in this house every shabbos and we don't know who wrote it i get out of the studio i get a phone call from my aunt sarah malka who's at sadekis still living bor hashem my father's sister her husband passed away but she's still living and giving classes to so many people and helping so many people she goes i said auntie sarah why do i have this host that you call me at 11 o'clock at night she says my friend is very very sick with muscular dystrophy i sleep by her a few times a week and the one thing she appreciates is your songs and music would you about are you able to come ever to to visit her said nancy sarah actually i'm in brooklyn right now is it too late she goes no the whole family is here i'm here actually now the whole thing can you come all right i shoot right over i start singing this sheet i i proceed to go there there's a room and this woman unfortunately is laid out on this hospital bed and all the children around her all her children and she only can move her eyelids through the letters of the computer and tell and say abc olive bass and very hard to for her to get one sentence out but she tells me i told her i have plenty of time i want you to tell me exactly the songs you want to hear and i'll sing it she proceeds to tell me how much she loves mama rachel and how much it means to her start singing the song the kid starts singing along and you see her eyes even just a little bit you see the joy you see the joy even even if she can't move her body and show but you see in her eyes sometimes in their eyes you could see everything and you see that joy emanating coming through i start to get emotional and she gets emotional the kids get emotional start singing and i proceed to sing shama and a lot of the songs that i do finally i say you know what plenty of time she goes okay what were you working on today i said i did a medley i said you know what's funny i did a medley and i did one of my favorite songs and nobody knows who composed the song she goes what's that that's a back and forth conversation for a while i start to sing and the husband says it's funny that you mention it i composed that song i was 14 years i think he was 14 or 16. i'm not sure i composed that song and cam called rina when i was a teenager he is an artist today he's an artist for a long time i think uh a famous artist rabiona weinreip composed the song his wife unfortunately you know passed away after many many tsarists but that song that night that time that place hashem was able to take me by the hand through my auntie sarah who gave me a big hole to sing for a person that was suffering and give them a little joy you know in their sorrow but at the end of the day he composed that song and i was able to hashem you're taking me by the hand you're leading me by the hand through every detail of life even when i'm searching for a composer of a song you're giving me a host to sing for his wife who's suffering but yet able to understand your ways and seeing that there is a path and there's a path for everyone there's a path everybody has to find not everybody's gonna do it through music or do it through the public stage but by why why jacobsen said a beautiful line one of the greatest lines i've ever heard and i heard this and i told him this by the way because i did i did a whole thing with him by the way this house through the coronavirus this room and that studio over there became like a a a concert hall and it was an unbelievable time for claudia stroll and also the power of music i saw it through the virus how much it had hundreds of thousands of people reached out to me around the world saying how they're they're thirsty give me something and music was able to be that food that spiritual food and i was able to to do something rabbi y why jacobson one of my favorites and he said something so beautiful he i don't know who he quoted but he said what is true love what is true love he said you know what true love is it says real true authentic love is finding the song that's playing in someone else's heart and singing it to them when they have forgotten it is sometimes sometimes people forget their own song but you have to be there you have to be there in a way especially with real songs and real music and awaken that spirit back up we've suffered a lot now we as a jewish people suffered tremendously and there are people not every single person knows a person that passed away through this virus and the 45 people in iran and and of course you don't want to sulk in the sadness but it's an emotional time but it's a time to sing within and find the song within and to sing it also to somebody else and find a way a wherewithal to unify as one and because when we sing that song together no matter what song it is you could be a sephardic guy you can be whatever whatever person you are whatever background you have but when we sing together that's when aka deja vu wants to bring us together in the basement to sing and everybody and by the way what is harmony harmony is a different song right harmony if you solo the harmony in a studio it's like what song you sing but when you put it together with the melody that's when true harmony come together everybody has a different song different background different in my own household my father's sphardic my mother's ashkenaz but when we sing that melody together it's the greatest harmony in the world so yeah just the amazing part of that story i just think is you see how protesters his aunt asks if he can visit this family um who love his music and that's all the while he's working on this album and this song kiata who who wrote the song who wrote the song and able to find who wrote the song and you just see how piece by piece by piece comes together and i think i said this the last wooden piece we did maybe but yeah if you like look at your life maybe i don't know i feel okay it's just so amazing yeah it's just so amazing how especially when you say stories and you're like well that's crazy that that happened and that's just like that's the life that's the life of a yidd who looks at their life and they're able to see like getting from a to b to c to d is not random it's just like it's so there's so much divine presence it's like in the moment it feels random but like you're like you're saying you look back back and it's like whoa that's like i don't know who said it but someone wrote every single person can write a book on a muna every single person if you're just saying look at your life you could write a book of a muna because every moment a lot of times in retrospect and that might be the atahara like in the moment you can't notice it you can't be like oh well this was right you know because then we yeah it would be too easy if we knew it that's a really beautiful moment okay another moment so you're talking about getting a ticket on our way you it wasn't with yakuzaki it was with reuven feinstein it was so i this is the next most powerful moment that i want to mention is is this moment yes my mother told me years later and i was not going to question my mother and father about the situation uh and they brought him because but somehow we went after my father was dead ready and we were talking once about lubanova town she said you know why he made a mikvy because the butcher came to him and told him that that he can't live without a woman he can't live with his wife and so he's going to go to the shiksa so she told him uh wait two weeks two weeks i'll have the mclaffey and he made the bath house in and they've tormek to chuvas about that and most of them done that extent but that's how he thought he did but he wouldn't use it himself in fact that i believe that not only did he use it himself my mother could have gone to the river and during the summer time right right but then people still think he went there wow eight years until they came to riga and then they got out and that's wow so in that moment um reuven like very sneezly like was telling us that the story about his father and mother that for eight years they weren't together um because there was mikvah issues and because and the crazy part was that halachically ramosha found a way to make that mikvah fine but just on the the the small chance that someone could see that red that is that ramosha and his wife that like oh they're going with the kula and he didn't want that so and like he said there was a river that that his mother could have gone to but still for eight years and that's why there's a giant gap between reb david feinstein removing weinstein and i don't know i just thought it was so natural and real of revenge no he was so the whole experience was was um well at first it was completely scary it was frightening yeah i was scared to death yeah pizza like i my my heart yeah literally most episodes i'm like nervous going into a little bit and then first two minutes i'm like okay calm cool everything i there was a point like i think 30 minutes into the red ribbon episode we took sort of like a bathroom break like everyone like walked away and now and when we got back from that that was when i finally was able to just like stay calm and but i don't know there was something about being in front of a goddale and especially because he looks like his father yeah he looks familiar he looks like he looks like ramos but this voice i didn't anticipate his voice to sound like that you know i don't know why i don't know what i'm random i know but i don't know why like you see like we have the opportunity to see pictures of good idea all day that are no longer with us rarely do you have video footage of them probably you know hashem and whatever in 50 years 100 years people have videos of good idea now but like i don't know the bobby sharer has a lot of videos of him but like i don't know much of feinstein if there are videos of him like i don't think they're him talking right or even shirum like we don't remember victor miller we have so i just found it very interesting i'm like i wonder if moshe's voice sounds like ruvain's voice it's interesting there are happens either are like and there is footage online of ramosa i think md armistice i'm gonna say is he harmish because i'm the armistice we have to get him on meaningful i know he's awesome emily armits is responsible for that but there's some like incredible footage of moshe putting on it's filling promotional learning and it's it's like it was a different world you know they lived in the lower east side of manhattan you know it's just like the total world was coming out of the lower east side like that's and today what is what is the lower east side there's still people there but you know what's interesting i i think that's one of the most popular answers that we ask everyone who's one person from history that's no longer with us you want to sit with very often i think it's the most common answer people say rip motion feinstein that is interesting that is interesting right i think that i think i think you happen to be right i think most people do say that it's interesting do you have a moment or something okay next moment it's funny i think yaakov before this you get kind of prepared moments and like as i'm speaking right now and like everything coming up with them i'm trying i'm like going through a gallery in my head of things that happen i'm just sifting through and no not that that anyways there was an episode we did with naftali horowitz i okay do you think do you think we use the same moment i'm gonna take it i think no go for it i know um naftali harwitz who is a financial advisor with jp morgan right yeah and an amazing episode i think one of the most popular he he's just so again so much wisdom and people just loved his story and what he had to say and he was a great book you revealed yeah you revealed an amazing amazing amazing book he said this story that really really touched me i i'm hoping it's the same thing as me well give it a listen guys very very sad story it really is it's one of the saddest that's in my book in fact a very clutch of rabbitson who read my manuscript said that i should take it out because she was crying after she finished the story and i did take out parts of the story because i didn't want to make the reader actually cry we could have those parts and now we can we can give it to you now so i had a client she was worth three to four hundred million dollars okay and she had an art collection that was worth 25 million dollars just the most magnificent paintings you've ever seen she was the most unhappy person you've ever met she didn't have a happy day in real life she had two children one was killed in a car accident the other one she was estranged from and all she ended up with was one grandson who she couldn't stand she had no friends no friends nobody wanted to have anything to do with her okay this woman could buy whatever she wanted she had homes all over the world she was a client of my former firms that nobody could work with she was absolutely impossible to work with i get a call one day from management and they say we'd like you to meet with will collinger susan in the book you're her last chance if she can't work with you we're getting rid of her we're going to kick her out of the firm with all her hundreds of millions of dollars she's just impossible she comes to my she comes to the office i'm told in advance by this associate of the former advisor she likes strawberries you better have sliced strawberries don't make them too thick don't make them too thin or she will eat you for lunch so you could imagine what we're talking about here i walk into the room and there she is and um if you didn't figure me out by now there's no errors about me i'm just i am who i am i sit down with her and we start talking and she's wearing glasses very very big glasses and they were full of cream from her face face cream my mother alea shalom used to always have makeup and cream on her glasses and i would always wash her glasses because i'm meticulous about having spotless glasses i'm glad i'm wearing my lenses now glasses are always healthy a little bit i'm not sure this i would have watched so i'm about three minutes into the conversation and i say to her susan please don't take offense can i wash your glasses what can i wash your glasses why do you want to wash my glasses i said it must be difficult for you to see out of them and quite frankly i can't see your eyes she started to cry i mean it and she said that since her harry died nobody has ever washed her grasses her late husband used to wash her glasses and i went to the bathroom and i washed her glasses with soap and water and i brought them back and i gave them back to her clean and she couldn't get to herself it was unbelievable how moved she was that i took and washed her glasses and then out of nowhere she started talking in yiddish this is not an orthodox woman by any stretch of the imagination and i said to her you speak yiddish and i said it in yiddish and she said of course i speak yiddish long story short i became very close to this woman very very close and we had very very deep conversations about spirituality and she always talked about hashem and hashem and she loves hashem and she loves hashem i say it's very nice that you love hashem but you have to show hashem that you love him look at how much money you have what's going to happen to all this money don't you want to leave a legacy don't you want to do something with you with it one day and i always talk to her about this and i did it because i really i wanted to save her in the sharma i mean this is a woman she was she i used to bring a little of an asterisk and i used to bring her matzos and she became part of my family whenever we would bring my kids i i would tell her she has to cover her paintings because she had nude women all over her her office all her paintings were like you couldn't look at them but she she had a yiddish in the shama but she could never give away a dollar of her money and the story in the book ends where i went to the hospital and she was dying and i sat there i said you might see hashem soon i said let's just take a million dollars a million dollars let's put it into a foundation and let's name a school after you when you're not here anymore and she couldn't do it and she died and she had nobody at her funeral it was a great side funeral it was me my associate who was was from her grandson his rabbi and i ran around the cemetery and i found a bunch of chabad boys who were there for another and i paid them to come and one kaddish was set to her for her she was the most unhappy person i ever met how how how could that be right that's just one story money doesn't solve anything when it comes to fulfillment and happiness some of the poorest people i know are so fulfilled and so happy and some of the wealthiest people i know have no friends they're they're they they don't get along with their family they're divorced their kids don't talk to them and everybody around them just waiting for them to die so that they can inherit their money how sad is that on the other end i have clients that are extraordinarily wealthy that don't waste a minute they're retired they're sitting on the board of this they're helping this one with that and they get calls all day they are the happiest people it has nothing to do with the car they drive or the house they live in this is what our obama told us we didn't believe them take it from me i'm surrounded by wealth i see people inside of jp morgan who earn 30 million dollars a year and nobody wants to go near them so so obviously this story was about one of his clients who had millions of dollars and he and he towards the end of her life he wanted the glass of story the glasses ah i wrote that down yeah well guess what i didn't no it's good i mean i think that's very special that we each went through all the past episodes and we both didn't plan this out this is one of our most powerful moments it was first of all the delivery he's great he's great he's great at speaking he has just like these first of all the way he pauses and the way he says yeah you guys just watch you're gonna tell me that i shouldn't like that's how he talks yeah it's it's awesome it's awesome but but that story is just like wow yeah wow it really goes to show i mean obviously there's so many lessons but it really just goes to show like just doing little if i could call it little dumb acts of kindness like he just he's like no this is he had this lady her glasses on a t-shirt yeah he has like the glasses are dirty like that's and it's the most stubborn lady in the world and he's like oh you know could i clean it like just showing that extra care like these things really do make a difference i know it's cliche but like you're by a supermarket and someone needs help with the bags and you help like okay it's a little dumb thing and you help them and because he did that obviously he got her business and was able to make a lot of money for her but maybe even more importantly as he mentioned they they were you know gave her a jewish burial and he was there and she had some people there which maybe she wouldn't have had it's that it's definitely amazing and he was like to be able to have a breakthrough with her and you just mentioned that there's so many uh opportunities that we have to do um hashtag dumb little dumb little what is it i don't remember what i said well i don't know i don't remember either but that's funny anyways little moments no i don't know i just use the word tom i know that yeah um do something dumb today yeah do something yeah but dumb kindness dumb kindness i don't know exactly okay um another moment that i wanted to share this was a story incredible story uh we have a lot of people share stories i think i had this one also you know who am i mentioning harry rothenberg no okay awesome uh he has great stories also i know no it was with hannah teller ah and here it is this is a very dramatic picture i don't know which which cam would hold it up straight here so this picture is a picture that was shot on the day that auschwitz was liberated it's a picture of many many many children this is just a zoom in of several and uh this is the actual picture this is not too short soldier it's a bunch of kids it's in black and white for those of you who want to go ahead and google heroic children untold stories and the the main the i guess their focal point child has color so what happened was is that question now i'm going to put you guys in the hot seat but it's not a hard question is it a history question don't worry okay i'm very worried you did well in history in high school oh gosh yeah what is the most famous story of the holocaust it's a fact or an opinion it's a fact famous famous story picture the most famous story fame the most famous story gotcha anne frank okay okay okay like that's your question i think you're saying like we all know the punishment like i don't know something like within i'm like okay anne frank yeah that makes sense yes ann's story is not a reflective story she wasn't the ghettos wasn't the camps right move over had a modicum of food but yet it's a story and that's i think we became so famous so my tour nyad vashem the reason why it's so popular is because no one can deal with all the facts it's amazing you know there are hundreds of tours going on at one time and yad vashem is a large museum and there's a very large staff of tour guides and it fritzes my brain they're tour guides that are unspooling data that no head can absorb so what i always do is i tell personal stories or i tell stories about individuals that connect that way that's how i convey the information that's why people appreciate the tour okay back to the book we needed a cover now so the copyright holder of this cover when you publish a book on the cover you need permission from the copyright holder right the copyright holder is united states holocaust memorial museum in washington so i made a request for the picture and you have to fill out an affidavit and saying that you'll make no changes or alterations so i said i'm going to make this change in this change and now changing this change in this change in that change and the next day i had permission and uh but they said it's low resolution it'll take three weeks to get it in high resolution three weeks i don't know if i had three days but you'll pardon me for being an israeli and i figured the connection the way what has to be done here is patexia having the right connections and i have a friend very powerful individual rumor has it that in his cell phone he has the private phone number of every senator and congressman he lives in baltimore and i figured baltimore washington he must have connection united states holocaust moral museum you know you're not asking him to switch a vote in the center and yeah i just need a picture and fortunately his son learns in shiva right next door i know who you're talking about okay so i run to yeshiva and i said arya again i thought this is a rhetorical question i said are ya your father is connecting nice holocaust memorial museum he said no disenchanted crestfallen melancholy i'm walking out of the room and as i'm about to cross the threshold he says to me but my mother is on the board i'm about to ring his neck he's very classic are you he's my guy his mother is uh judge hi friedman so i send her off an email said i say that's why i need your help and here's the picture it's this lot number this pick number this thing i need it yesterday hi-rez now you have to realize united states holocaust murder museum is a large bureaucracy 300 employees they don't just turn the picture over overnight but she's on the board and the next day i got the picture attachment gmail there it is then i cursed me yeah yeah yeah yeah i in sync with my methodology of teaching i wanted the picture is sepia i wanted to color one child to highlight the individual so i write her back said i'm sorry one more thing i need you to get me permission to do to color one child that's that's a significant change in the picture and she wrote me back she's very busy convening a murder trial and she has no time so i prevailed upon her said hiya i said this is killing me and uh she you know i prevailed upon her so she writes me back the next day yay i made the request i cannot tell you they'll agree to it but i made the request and i'm thinking to myself come on this is the holocaust this apple pie this is mom the flag no one's gonna say no uh and so we have i'm gonna use the technical term i'm almost done the technical term is called the prescue and the largest press in israel 10 o'clock at night arguably the largest press in the middle east and three hours for press queue or to be accurate 2 hours and 48 minutes i get an email from the head archivist united states holocaust memorial museum says dear rabbi teller regret to inform you you may not use the picture if you wish to use the picture in its pristine state without zooming or any alterations or coloration you may but once you make a change and particularly this boy which you want to highlight spoke out recently and our legal department said unequivocally you may not make any change to the picture shrek and a half you know we're two and a half hours to prescue and so but i'm not such a pushover and uh i dash off an email and said please give me his phone number and his name i want to speak with him one hour and 34 minutes before press q she sends writes me back we don't know his name we don't know where he lives i said come on you just told me that he spoke out and he's sensitive i think it was like 41 minutes to prescue she sends me an online clipping of this picture and those people who were in the picture were still alive obviously in the grip of old age when back on the 70th anniversary of liberation and now she went to point to themselves in the picture according to this clipping this fellow's name was it wasn't clear apparently this guy's name is hirsch and he's from europe i'll use the shivaji term it was mashma his name is hersh and he's from europe and now i have 37 minutes to find hirsch and europe wow so sherlock teller is thinking where in the world her first name or your last name i don't know oh gosh i don't know i'm gonna find this guy i got 37 minutes to find hersh in europe you have an exciting life yeah so sherlock teller is thinking where would this guy now if you look at the picture the guy looks pretty good so i knew he couldn't be a pole can't be a pole to look this good you got to be hungry shout out to the polls can't you happen because hungary's listeners are very upset no no i'm going to explain hungary was invaded in march 1944 to me this shape you'd have to be polish 39 i mean he looked like he was like well fed yeah he was much better shaped yeah the other ones look hot so he had to been a hungarian so sherlock teller is thinking where would hungarian survivor of auschwitz live in europe today so i discounted uh england russia eurasia israel so i only have around 28 countries to go in about 24 minutes and i conclude it's going to have to be belgium or banjo ben belgium or switzerland and i have a really good friend moshe loser who lives in uh sure i'm sure he's a good guy he's yes he's about what why is that manner no because they lose her his last name no no oh okay so much i say i said loser he lives in zurich and he works for ibm what a you know this guy's gonna find him for me so i called now we're uh 11 minutes to prescue i said my loser i need you to find me hirsch in switzerland he said would that be his first name or his last name because it could be either name he said i don't know he said to me is he religious i don't know he said what does he do i don't know he said what have you been drinking i'm not drinking anything i got eight minutes i gotta find this guy you must lose again so he said to me you gave me his name i got ibm my fingertips i'll find him i said you know what you know what i'm sure he's hungarian that try gavor or tibor hirsch governor tibor is hungarian for mike or steve i hear him typing he says gavor hirsch 84 year old engineer here's his phone number six minutes to prescue i call him up and my hoify deutsch i speak to him i asked permission he gives me permission and i fire off an email to united states holocaust moral museum i have permission here's his phone if you don't trust me it's nine o'clock at night in switzerland now i wouldn't call him at this hour he's an elderly gentleman and i have at home a beautiful picture of uh gaber holding the book that's amazing governor passed away this summer right but uh i took that as i just want you to know that it'd be harder for me to parallel park and to get this guy in one call that's why you're late to this interview right that's why he's late wow so you have a coin to park so at the end of it you got the book to him and you got you got him it's incredible so yeah we always have wild stories but there's no story why don't you want to say one thing and i'll let you continue sure you know how difficult it is right now for us to be recording this the way we're doing i know we're just talking straight i know the people are watching are going to watch us talk and then watch a story and then talk and watch a story i know we're just talking straight as if we just watched it but you know which story i'm referring to yeah it's a great story and um yeah just just it's one of those things that the lesson i took out of it was if you really try hard enough you could do it i don't think you could do anything i think that message is like crazy like oh i want to fly but like no he had a mission he said i really want to use this this picture and i think it's going to be good for the book and he didn't give up and literally to the last minute he wasn't sure if he could get it or get permission and he did and it's a great cover and and by the way uh shout out to all jewish publications i 100 judge a book by scarborough before i buy it maybe that's just me i think a lot of people are like that so i definitely look at the covers of books yeah covers do make a difference yeah i i think they do i think dumb it shouldn't but add that to your dumb whatever actually like it's all like brand like dumb stuff do something dumb yeah so you're mentioning carrie roth how are your authentication he said this amazing story that really i i i don't think i've been brought to tears at um at all very freak very infrequently in these episodes i don't even know if i was brought to tears in this one i definitely felt emotional although after you're like i wasn't brought to school many times even this time i wasn't but you could have but this potentially right would have made me emotional and this is the story we see sometimes the the um the differences between people who um lose faith even including people in our world who just who unfortunately are just not able to to move forward um to people who have more faith in their in their pinky than than you can than you can imagine um and you know they're they're gollum they may not be dole in batora but they're golem and be talking ramona so for example i represented the the estate of a young boy who was in an accident i i would tell you what it was but i don't like to do that because i don't want to identify particular clients a and b you'd have trouble sleeping tonight because that's how horrifying it was when i eventually read the report of the forensic pathologist that we hired to go through like the boy's suffering before he eventually succumbed to his injuries i said to myself i do this for a living and i got to make it through this i think i made it on to the second page before i started crying and i do this for a living like i've seen it all but that's how bad it was so he was in a coma for a day and a half and um eventually the doctors called in the um his mother and his father and said you have to go say goodbye we're losing him like we could see from his vitals they're going it's time to say goodbye so it just happens to be happenstance that there was somebody there who was close to the family with whom i happened to be close so he watched this happen otherwise i wouldn't believe it so his mother went into the room and starts screaming at her son this is the last minute that he has a life she says the torah says you have to honor your father and your mother i'm your mother so you have to listen to me when you go up to shamayim when you go up to heaven you have to pray for all of us you have to pray for your grandparents you have to pray for your father and for me and for your brothers and your sisters and your aunts and your uncles and your your cousins and your friends and the jewish people in the world you'd figure she'd be screaming at god saying how can you do this instead she's screaming at her son saying you have to listen you pray for us because god's not gonna be able to say no to you where do you see faith like that i mean it's a it's like it's like the only places you see stories like that are out of the out of your books about the holocaust um and that's what it's like like some of these stories are are are um not to diminish but it's it's a it's a mini um um i don't want to use that and use that term again um but it's that's definite it's that devastating to the family to lose a um to lose a loved one wow i think you know we were doing this episode on a sunday afternoon harry comes in all like in his nice blue suit with a hat and fedora he's awesome yeah he's cool but that story was so touching what when she screwed when she was telling him to like scream at hashem or whatever not scream at hashem whatever it was talk to hashem but i thought he's gonna say that like look at the sacrifices that i've done like it wasn't even that direction like totally different direction i'm like the amount of the moon and these people have it it's really wild it's wild and it's also i think what's interesting about that is that you would think that an episode with a criminal uh not a criminal a injury an injury lawyer you think of ben robbins um we're mixing up our lawyers yeah yeah but you do an episode with a personal injury personal injury lawyer like okay what what what stories are gonna come from that right they got that case and won millions in that case with millions but you know here here's a situation a from yid in a competitive industry where there's each week each day there's hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in different different cases and to be able to you know witness these things happening i think it just highlights just like from jews and business how like i think it's like everyone we have to have a lot more you know i mean obviously we always want robotim and organization heads for meaningful people but like yeah like you're saying we we have a corny catchphrase something along the lines like everyone's meaningful we'll still figure it out wow that's like super unique yeah it's terrible but but the point like to your point like yes there's there's so many people out there that like just have good stories to share and just really showing how they have hashem in their lives and for the listeners like you could be an accountant you could be a lawyer you could be a janitor you could harry would only the only reason harry was able to say this is because he felt it and the only reason he felt it is because he's someone who's who has depth right it's so true and uh shout out to you know suggested that uh harry for us no i don't it was robbie center shout out travis center okay so um the last moment that i have that i want to discuss is this one i went from like being amare stadimeier six-time all-star future hall of fame guy to plan now for her poi arusha line from traveling you know private jets five-star hotels to now taking the bus ride to standing a two-year-old bus ride you know 70 thousands you know seated arena you're playing in 10 000 maybe 5 000 sometimes so from a basketball standpoint it's very humbling being able to know all right i don't have everything i need i don't have my top training staff i don't have the code plunges and all these things i need physical therapy that i'm used to but it's okay and then from a learning standpoint it's like i don't know half of this stuff i'm like i'm taking notes these kids are 17 no more than i do i'm like man this is i just stuck with it i think i didn't get i didn't get beside myself i didn't feel like i should i belong to be here i was like i'm at the beginning stages i'm learning it's okay you know and that's that's the approach i took okay so so yeah i kind of left it up for finale unless you do you have a moment or we'll end with this because there's a lot to say on it so there so you just heard of maori stodomier um and the what i there's so many moments when we discuss little of those powerful moments that what he just said now was like incredible because like really think about it he was the top or one of the top i'm not saying he was the best basketball player but he was you have no idea let's call space hold on hold on okay knock is clearly the sports person in this relationship but i i do hold on i did hear of him before his whole like you know talking about him in judaism like in one context that he's a very good player and he was on the next like i remember that i do remember that and that says something that means he was a good player because if i heard about it it also means you had a pulse yes no no because i'm a non-sports guy but um so he was at the top he really was and to go to israel so from a basketball sense of basketball sense like he's going to israel he was living in the nba so like you know taking like an egged bust to go to try like practice and try out like that's crazy and then also on top of it he he was a real deal celebrity he was a celebrity and now all of a sudden he's like studying the torah and he's starting at you know level you know i don't know like pre-1a kindergarten level because he doesn't know you know how to read at this point he does but he really went back that's like a really humbling thing to think about like okay we always hear amari like oh you just got like it's nice but how often do we ourselves like like go back to moments and say like okay i'll start over i'll start fresh i i'll be the the the person in the room that knows the least about this but i want to get better i want to connect hashem or like it's really beautiful yeah i think it's like it was it was one of the most impressive thing is how someone of his stature and where he was holding in his in his life and he had mentioned like as a celebrity was able to sort of humble himself to start at olive you know like he throwing himself into something that okay you know you know nothing about you really are are not holding with everyone else in the room and you may be this big star and you walk down the street and everyone's trying to get an autograph and a picture with you but to put yourself into a world and throw yourself fully into it where you know nothing about it takes a lot of courage it takes a lot of like uh you know yeah a lot of guts and i think that was something that was super impressive i always think there's so many moments in our episodes that if our listeners just stop and say okay well how can i apply it to my life you definitely can apply these things to your life it's so true there are things in your life that you're not doing because you are scared from starting from scratch so be like i'm already starting liar in that way just do it so it's true so we're we're towards the end of our segment so we're gonna anyone listening if you want to check out more of these moments that we have you can listen to the full or watch the full episodes on uh go on youtube type meaningful people podcast or any podcast player or not he has an app on meaningful minute download the app and you could watch and listen um and if you're watching and you didn't yet donate to amudem here's your this is your moment this is your moment like we said before that like there's these little dumb i think little dumb moments make a dumb donation like a dumb donation but really like it doesn't i i think with sadaka and giving like it doesn't we're so you know it used to be like oh the poor person in the town comes to you and you say okay and you could see like okay i'm really helping them like right now with the old money being digital and like okay you give money you feel like okay like 10 minutes later it doesn't even feel but i just want you to think like you're actually really potentially saving someone's life your mood them is doing life-saving work helping people get the right resources or just get the right help in that moment that they need yeah you know it's it's when you're when you're watching this right now and on this page that you're watching this there's probably a countdown above yes a donate button i think they saved us for the like the finale i don't i don't know but we're like 3am whatever but it's definitely there's a donate button somewhere near us just think about this after i finish speaking you're gonna hit that button i want you to think about this one scenario there's someone who's from america who went to seminary where they went to issue in israel and their whole life they're struggling with something their whole life their whole life and they were scared to get help they're scared to become vulnerable they're scared to do it and through a mudim in israel they went ahead they went ahead and they got the help that they need and it's only possible because you're making that donation the help that that person is going to get or the hotline that someone's going to call or the crisis intervention that a family needs is only possible with that donation that you're about to make and that donation only so make a dumb donation yeah [Music] you