Amudim - Unite To Heal 2

yes hello um and i'm here with um my good friend rabe maisha yarmisch the famous legendary photographer of great rabbinic leaders gedaili israel and i want to thank you amudhim for the great opportunity to be back here at the special emotion event it's great to be back for a second here and if i move them invited us back for a second here then i guess uh it's it's an even more cause for uh excitement um and it's really a privilege to be here together with the photographer legend moshi amish uh for about the segment behind the camera part 2.0 so we had part one last year which was very well received and um it's still archived on the amudham website i believe so if you remember it from last year and liked it or if you're curious about we had some fantastic stories about these really amazing pictures and the history and the personalities associated with them um and uh we're here for part two it's mostly new material there's a couple of personalities who might be familiar from last year but there's new stories a new angle and mostly new person mostly new gadoli israel all together the stories and history behind these historic pictures of great rabbinical leaders is something that can be seen through pictures the the cliche goes a picture is worth a thousand words and it's not just a cliche it's actually true and it's worth far more than a thousand words so i'm happy to that you'll join us here i'm yehudi gebber a historian tour guide and host of the jewish history sound bites podcast uh together with um legendary godzilla photographer moshi yarmish and we're all happy that you're here to join us on behalf of amudhim as we embark on a photographic and historical exciting journey together so what we're going to do is the the pictures which are worth more than a thousand words because they form a historical record they are able to tell a story they make it more alive more relevant they give it context and the there's all kinds of associations with each picture and it adds so much more color than any text in the world could and that's why it's so it's so much better to tell a story through a picture and why so that's the answer why we're doing with pictures instead of just reading a text but why moshi armish that's that's the next question because there's many people who have photographed uh great rabbis great torah leaders great cadillac over the years but there's a certain uniqueness to the images that you have captured especially in the pre-digital age i think that's what's most uh important about your work in that it was it was more focused and it was more um you know you you i remember you describing last year about how you'd go out on specific journeys to obtain certain pictures at certain moments and therefore your stories more than others perhaps have an even more exciting and fun story to tell so i think we're ready to go um and we'll we'll go right ahead with the first picture so let's start with um this picture uh rabbi victor miller one of the greatest rabbinical leaders rabbis uh uh in the united states scene over the 20th century lived a long and fruitful life and uh his popularity seems to grow following his passing as so many people listen to his audio uh lectures on every conceivable topic the man was a genius who literally covered every facet of both torah and the scientific and general knowledge so what do you what can you tell us about the picture that you took here okay uh victor miller um there happened to be a safa torah um i think it was given to his sons yeshiva or shmuel miller he used to have a son who passed away i think during covet recently but um it was written uh uh they were writing it in the house by somebody named feldman it happened to be uh on right here in flatbush and he it's interesting because he used to walk a lot um his yeshiva was i mean he was like i think an avenue r in ocean parkway and i think he used to walk almost every single day like miles he was like i think the destination was pretty much his son's uh his where his son used to live which was pretty much close to like a mile away and there was many pictures i'm not the only one who took pictures of him on the street there are many people on avenue jay in flatbush i don't know if these are familiar with people who are listening um you would see him many times just walking the streets uh he would uh you know he would take a long leisurely walk is picked his famous picture of him looking at there used to be a a new york times uh stands on on one of these corners and he's like there's a picture of him like bending down even just to see the latest uh whatever but he he happened to take a tremendous amount of a lot a lot of walking it happens to be that he was coming from this satna cevita where he rode an ice into the secretary and he was just walking to wherever he he was walking to um i captured his um you know walking on the street he happened to put his hand up it looks like he was like waving to me it wasn't i just happened to capture the moment and uh this picture has been very you know wildly popular for a vic the miller fans it's just you know it's colorful it's nice he's smiling it's outside it's just uh um just it was so-called one of the best sellers what can i say yeah and i can see why also you know a few things you said um especially the last thing about his smile he was in many ways a very serious individual he took things and topics very seriously and when you hear him speak he has a very you know a certain intensity to him um and and uh not to make light of things he everything was a topic was a sugiya with something to dissect and uh and analyze and therefore to get that lightness to him to that smile that warmth which brings out the other side of his personality because he was an incredibly fatherly individual like i emphasized um although he did serve as a masjid yeshiva in high balloon for about two decades for close to 20 years for most of his life he was a pulpit rabbi he was arriving in chelsea massachusetts for a couple of years and then for many many years in brooklyn rugby and then in flatbush um and he was a leader of of people of families of uh and he built them up so this is someone who who definitely had us you know much warmth and much of a smile to him and uh to be able to get that uh uh uh um on on camera was i that's that's what i like best about the picture also about the walking the thing other thing you said also you know it resonated with me was the walking he's someone who was somewhat known for his walks both because he put such an emphasis on a health aspect of it about his exercise and how important it is and be out of the fresh air and he made his life's mission to live the char habrina of the salvation looking around the world around us the natural world the physical world the animal kingdom the the you know astronomy then the place of iran to look and see god and and see everything about it the the marabou hashem and he sort of the simplest things so even on his daily walks he talked about sunlight and air and water the things that we really take for granted and you know not just uh how an ant builds a colony uh underground um and and but beyond that uh he was a student of slovakia he was someone who grew up in baltimore um went to new york to learn in yeshiva surbani insight in which became yeshiva college university at the time he was there and then he gets exposed to her of isaac sher who's the rashiva in slovakia and he comes to fundraise in the united states during the interwar period and uh gets enraptured by him and goes on a boat and he's off this american boy to learn in lithuania in slovakia stays there for six seven years becomes uh an incredible student there very close to through isaac's share and he personified the godless adam the greatness of man the aristocracy that nobility of character and bearing of slavka throughout his life and that also comes across in the picture and it's also related to his walks because supposedly this story is true i didn't actually check you know this specific one but it really matches his personality but he was once asked if he was if he had if he one day he uh merited after his passing he was be brought back to life for one hour after having seen the world of truth and seeing where what what goes on in the next world need one hour to be back in this world what would he util how would he utilize his time would he would he study torah would he davin would he study musser like a real muslim and supposedly the answer he gave was it really depends if it was seven o'clock in the morning i would be dominating if it was eight o'clock in the morning i would be eating breakfast if it would be at this and this time i would be taking my walk and if it would be like this and this time i would be learning in the basement and he basically was conveying that he believed that his life was so in order and so scheduled and he had worked it out that he's doing the right thing at any given moment that everything he was doing was awaiting hashem everything he was doing was the right thing to be done at that moment he never wasted a moment and therefore his walk down ocean parkway that you described and captured in this picture is the same available hashem as far as he was concerned as his learning in the base measures so i think that's what's brought out as well in this picture very true let's move to number two this picture of rough palm was taken um purim 1987. um although the picture looks like he was posing for me for a picture it really wasn't it was as they say i captured the moment um interesting thing about this picture is um many years after i took the picture turbidas in um honored rough palm and he was like the guest of honor and this picture was on every single lamppost in flatbush all over the place and he was like whatever it it i i got a lot of grief from it but uh whatever um you know he wasn't he was very very uncomfortable not because he didn't like the picture because he just you know he didn't like it you know his picture all over the place placed it all over the place uh this picture was uh chuvu uses this picture as you know because true was representative so they they almost like so-called inherited this picture but no i took the picture it was taken on puerto 1987 um we i learned by rapam for uh six or seven years but um when i uh i got smith from upon but this was you know in his clair for every purim for his class he would you know they have like a little messiba and uh across the street from the yeshiva in the basement cotton as that was called uh or the the the elementary school i'm sorry and um look this picture captures who rafam was always with a smile always how can i describe her phone i mean you know the glare i mean whoever remembers with the glasses and the smile and and and this was in his good years you know later on he was like not well whatever say look but this was rafam as they say batok fight who rappan was i mean his his essence his kindness and everything you know comes through in this picture i'm sure you can you give a little historical i think who reform was before the historical thing he he he was describing it he was essentially your rebbe your palm was my rabbit he was my massage and he was one of my kids baris he wasn't sondik because i happen to have the skull and rebel was the sondik but uh yeah i learned where a palm asked me for a palm i learned by him besides the two or three years that i learned the year there by him i used to go to his humashir and i recorded his homoshia for six or seven years i used to drive him all the time so i guess you want to call it i'm a replacement yes i'm a comfortable phone so beyond this beyond this as you're taking it as your hobby is taking pictures of everyone uh every guttle this is much more personal this is someone who felt personally connected with and and and to have captured it you know that like you said the s [Music] hello um and i'm here with um my good friend yarmisch the famous legendary photographer of great rabbinic leaders gedaili israel and i want to thank you amudhim for the great opportunity to be back here at the special emotion event it's great to be back for a second here and if i move them invited us back for a second here then i guess uh it's it's an even more cause for uh excitement um and it's really a privilege to be here together with the photographer legend moshi amish for about the segment behind the camera part 2.0 so we had part one last year which was very well received and um it's still archived on the amudham website i believe so if you remember it from last year and liked it or if you're curious about we had some fantastic stories about the these really amazing pictures and the history and the personalities associated with them and uh we're here for part two it's mostly new material there's a couple of personalities who might be familiar from last year but there's new stories a new angle and mostly new personnel mostly nougat daily israel all together the stories and history behind these historic pictures of great rabbinical leaders is something that can be seen through pictures the the cliche goes a picture is worth a thousand words and uh it's not just a cliche it's actually true and it's worth far more than a thousand words so i'm happy to that you'll join us here i'm your hoodie gabriel a historian tour guide and host of the jewish history sound bites podcast together with legendary good island photographer moshi yarmisch and we're all happy that you're here to join us on behalf of amudhim as we embark on a photographic the thing i think is doing was away yes i mean yes i was very close to a palm um in yeshiva every single day with him so it's i happen to catch the capture this picture but yes i was very close it wasn't like my other pictures were happened to be a paparazzi and i happened to capture the moment this was you know every day i saw a phone you know you see you you were still like this was when you were still younger you said you were by his parents you were like i mean this is before you you were taking these probably one of your earliest ones before you were taking um not the earliest ones i would say i started taking pictures the eric in the late 70s with a little camera i was like a little kid um and then and this was like more like around 10 years later when i was like so-called adult this is before i was married but i got married in 1991 so this is 1987. i was uh you know i didn't get married very young but i was a good you know 20 something years old amazing now that's his full name um he actually was very proud of his that he had a is as a kind and he said that his parents his father had a uh mcgill a lineage of of of their accurate good family of kahuna all the way back to rna which was lost during world war one unfortunately but we take his word for it so he was he was you know he had that real iris of a kind um he again that radiant face that it's it's it's it's really it's an incredible to capture an image like that and that light on camera because so many people described him like that so many of us tell me even described him like that and here you see it and if i'm not mistaken it wasn't just used for shuvu it was also used on his biography it was used on his biography it was used in shuvu it was used rabbi uh shalom smith wrote a bunch of svarim i think uh odd school translated it or someone i translated it and that was on that cover i mean it became like you know as they say it uh got a life on its own so uh yeah it was originally mine as they say uh all right you keep on saying originally i hope you didn't lose out because of it you know went into the public domain yeah whatever you know it is what it is you know some people will be very proud that uh this is the picture that if you want to picture a poem this is the picture of raphael so many 99 percent of his talmudim have this picture on their wall prominently displayed in various sizes this is who rafam was and uh as they say i i've sold many over the years of this particular picture why did it you said it caused him grief when they used it on the shubu dinner uh why did i see it because it was on the lamppost and then it was torn off the lamppost when you know the garbage man came it just it became like i don't know he was like a little uncomfortable with it but uh you know he did it for the yeshiva and she even needed for you know to raise the money and then you know he he went with a smile and he you know he didn't really say but i know that it like irked him a little that uh it was there nothing was my fault but uh you know i guess you know he never even put it to the other oh i was the one who gave him the picture that was you know all over the streets but uh you know i just know that that was his personal feeling regarding that particular uh event where it was it was really it was all over the um place but uh hopefully i didn't cause them any grief uh much and i'm sure that the the dinner was uh you know fabulously successful so i guess like i did the ending to right it interesting because i think that that that brings about another point um the story of the picture about him not being so comfortable that it was all over the place is that that's kind of his part of his biography is that he never wanted to be thrust into the limelight he was very comfortable being a rebbie and tara vidas to tell me them like you and not acting on the world scene as a world torah leader and he was almost forced into it he described a phone call that he received from her back of kaminetsky when her biako was getting older and he you know rebecca was was coaxing him to take an a more active leadership role take more initiative and rapam was very reluctant at first and riakov basically didn't take no for an answer he hung up the phone on him and he like basically forced him into it and water of palm uh you know he didn't express resentment he took it on with the full responsibility and it was amazing how he emerged as the public leader during the last two or three decades of his life once uh rabiacov and other other senior torah leaders were getting older and so he took it on fully but he was he had this reluctance he he had this simplicity and modesty he never wore a rabbinic frack he didn't want to be in the limelight but he did it anyway and here the picture itself you're saying it becomes part of that story that that here he needs to be in the limelight his picture needs to be all over flatbush in order to help raise funds for terror with us and he's even willing that like you said the garbage that are tearing it down right he's literally being torn down for teruvadas and he's that's also okay at some level because um you know he understands that that's what needs to be done even if it's it's not the most ideal thing to do and what's even more interesting is his legacy because here's someone who was so modest and quiet on one hand and so reluctant to be in the limelight on the other hand and correct me if i'm wrong and this is more contemporary than history so i could be wrong i'm never wrong in history but it could be i'm wrong that um that reform has probably more tall medium than anyone else who have taken active roles in communal leadership of organizations of schools of yeshivas of national organizations of international orthodox organizations what we would call but good asconen left and right everywhere you look at their almost almost always are very often terry with us tell me them and specifically students of rappan so it's it's incredible i mean someone who is he was he was so he was so beloved it's it's beyond comprehension they loved him it was it was they just loved them and they they would do anything you know to help him and to make him happy whatever it was uh you know those were and there's a certain thing that when you see automotive palm you could tell tell by the person what he does that this you know that he's a tommy rapon it's just a certain amount of mo or vena breasts not aloof just um nice guys it's just nice each one mentioned and that's what he inculcated into his domino you know right i mean there's many many many examples of it but you know but uh you could tell a talmud rough palm is stands out you know unique as his product yes amazing okay let's move on to number three so here we have the blue javarebba um ruby stroll spira the great and holy rebber of belugev in galicia he himself lived in lava for many years i gotta say and i said this about a lot of your pictures last year and i think this about a lot of your pictures in general but this is one of my favorites and and and just from everything about it and i i i want to elaborate on what you know about the blue java and and all that but first i want to hear what the when you took the picture how you took the picture i'm just curious because it happens to be that i happen to have a friendly with a few bulges but to see them and they go crazy it's like i like you know i've taken many many pictures but for some reason i i'm not exactly sure i assume every person has what they like about this picture but they go crazy about this picture uh abolishing tells me he says the way the rebels fingers are that's how he has etched in his mind i mean i don't know if you ever saw the blizzard rebel but this was their memory of him and and the picture it just captures the way they remember him but you're the third person who told me that this is their fame their favorite picture um this picture i think was taken in 1986 or 1987 i'm not 100 sure it was taking hashana rabba and hashanah rabbit was rather happening for me i would run from one place to another because not everybody was on the same schedule and in bar park i would run to baba i would run to amsterdam or whatever and happen to be there i happened to run in here apparently it was the time that they were either it was a shyness time you know going around i don't remember exactly what time was but he was sitting there it was open and i just took the picture and i just it was this one picture that i took and then that was it um i mean i guess you could see i guess historically i'm sure the yamaka that he's wearing is probably from the bernays if nobody is hustling somebody from his i'm not exactly sure who is from i'm not sure either but it's one of those that you said yeah yeah it's probably one of those um and it's a shandarabha as you know as holy the time as as it is i mean i guess he was taking kipper but i guess i couldn't picture the name kipper and this as i said before captures who i guess who he was and uh and more than that i can't say it like you said it's a great picture and i have to be there at the right moment yeah it's really amazing and and this is like i'm not even familiar with the whole bar park scene there's like a blue jersey stable that's where he is on 57th street uh or 58th street between the 13th and 14th uh between 14th and 15th avenue a little small steeple over there um i mean the steeple in my mind is famous because if you remember there's a famous picture of the samurai black and white picture of something but walking down the stairs in barrow park that was coming out of the blizzard vestibule it happened to be the blue rebbe's [Music] grandson's pigeon haben and the sami rebel was there and the famous harry trained a picture of him walking down the stairs but that was the pleasure of steeple i'm not even sure if they're still there maybe they just threw it down and they built something else over there i don't know there's a few blush forevers today uh grandchildren whether it's the ribotic blossom i don't know what they call themselves but that's the steeple that i took the picture and it was never a big huge one no never oh they have it and they had blizzard foresee them whatever they had a hundred people and then it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't a very big jewel and he was happy with that he didn't need he didn't need you know he was happy doing good whatever he was doing he he also was not interested in and then you know people running after him or whatever he did what he did and not interested in the fanfare or whatever and uh that's where i captured the picture so it is amazing i mean he's someone who who passed away at age 100 uh two or three years after you took the picture so he lived for a full century the pictures when he's 97 98 something like that and he besides for living through a century he lives through the jewish 20th century which is the most momentous and in many ways tragic century in jewish history and he goes through all that he's someone who probably more than any other famous rabbinic personality went through the war and the holocaust through six full years he was in poland he was not in hungary or any other place so he went from beginning to end and the miracle of his life and his rebuilding on a small scale like you said he doesn't make a place of big meisters a lot of his institutions and thousands of see them in a huge way spanish but the that rebuilding there's so much to see in that picture itself those sunken eyes and the yarmulka of of his ancestors of either the uh or um or or this or whoever it was i always i'll tell you what like personally when i think of this picture is i tried to think what is he thinking of what's going through his mind there's something there of this holiness this concentration what is he you know what's what's what's going through what's going through his mind is his holy mind at this time on ishana rava you know with his kittle and the garthel and the talus and it just gives this whole scene he was he was in lava at the war's outbreak he goes through the level ghetto which was a terrible place he's later at the anovska road camp itasca road camp which was you know in in in holocaust historiography there are researchers who dislike referring to yanovska as a concentration camp because since so many people were killed there it's not even fair to classify it as a concentration camp they want to reclassify it as a death center a death cam and that is a gun's dream that's how horrible yanovska was and he survived zanusky he was even on a train to belgius which was a real death camp where no one survived but he was sent back from belgium to sort the clothing of recent victims he was in the furnace of death itself he is then transported to other camps ends up in bergen-belsen towards the end of the war he went through it from beginning to end not only that he loses his wife and family after the war you mentioned that his children and grandchildren became rebels it was his second marriage uh he had adopted children he had real children from his second marriage his wife was a survivor who had lost her husband and her family and and it's like i don't think he had children from the second second wife it was just the adopted children yeah well yeah it was his wife's children his wife she never i mean you have to understand i mean he at the war time you talk about he was in his 50s right that's another yeah most survivors are were either child survivors hidden most survivors of the camps were in their 20s teens 20s maybe 30s and here he was in his mid 50s during the war um and he he somehow survived and uh and some of the greatest uh holocaust and inspirational holocaust stories that i relate over to groups in europe is um is about him um i think uh jaffa elias interviewed him yes yaphel the late the great holocaust reserve survivor herself interviewed him personally she he granted her big hasidic enthusiasm granting holocaust interviews to a female holocaust researcher and she interviewed him extensively in other words she sat for several sessions where she went through his whole story with him um she therefore they are from the most accurate stories and hasidic tales of the holocaust which she wrote some of the other stories and they are a bit questionable but his stories are impeccable they come straight from the blues of arabia's mouth and and of course many many other ones come from his his wife is second robinson um a few in particular that that stand out by me is when he in yanovska wrote camp sadistic asses one of the things that they did to them there um at one point they were forced to jump across a ditch and uh and and it was it was it seemed to be physically impossible to jump across for a healthy man maybe for an olympic sprinter and here there's people who were starved who were male you know malnutrition diseased beaten tortured broken and they were expected to jump across this ditch and the they're standing there anyone who would fall in would be shot and this would there this would be their way of basically carrying out a celexia who's still fit to work because if they're physically able to get across the ditch then then we can keep them for slave labor for a short time longer and the the fellow is standing next to the blue gerva before he jumps he says how are we going to make it how can we jump we can't jump so he says i have no idea i don't know how we're going to do it we just have got to try and jump and close our eyes and rely on hashem and we'll make it and he like says or he says or he says something and he makes the jump the next thing is he opens his eyes and he finds himself on the other side of the ditch he looks around and he sees his partner the one who started off with him also still standing next to him and and and this and this fellow says to rebecca how do you do it and he says i closed my eyes and i held on to the coattails of my great ancestors of the two of my father of the tsila sadiq of the banaya saskar of denver of the namely mello of legends all my great sadikim ancestors i held onto their coattails and they schlepped me across and that's how i ended up across how did you get across and this the guy standing next to him says i held on to you that's how i got across yeah and that story is it blows my mind each time because that's jewish history how do we get across life how do we get across our 2000 year exile how do we get across the challenges of raising children and making a living and collectively as as the jewish nation how do we get across history and we did it by holding on to the coattails by we're not letting go of our past not letting go of our ancestors not letting go of our sadique as far as his partner is concerned not letting go of who are near and dear to us of everything that we come from and we hold so strong onto our past and that gets us across the dish we don't fall into the ditch when we hold on so tight and don't let go so that was uh a great story there's uh um another one it's quite a famous one it was towards the end of the war when he's in bergen-belsen um and in his in his barracks a few broken jews come together they try to light hanukkah hanukkah candles on the first night of hanukkah and they they like i think they took either shoe polish or some margarine from their starvation rations and they made a wick out of their sleeve or something and the and and they are they honor him in lighting this this this wick on the first night of hanukkah and he recites the first bracha says then he stops and he turns around and he waits a few seconds and he doesn't say anything and then he turns back around and he says the third rafa for the first night and they light it and a few minutes later of course they put it out because the ss might come and they're nervous and they and and life goes on and someone approaches the blue javerev who's it irreligious through not affiliated but he knows knows who the rebbe is and he says rabba i respect that you wanted to do a religious act and you wanted to maintain a religious identity because that's preserving our humanity and our identity and our jewishness in these terrible times and the nazis are trying to dehumanize us and we're showing that we're still alive we can do it so i have no even if i'm irreligious and i don't believe in it i respect that you did it and i'm happy to participate and i even understand how you made those first two blessings your bless your blessing about the mitzvah you're making another blessing about the nisim the miracles that were once done to us but how dare you make that third blessing you're happy that we're alive today we're five and a half years into this terrible war we've all lost our families we're going to get killed we're for sure not going to survive what are you happy about and the blue japanese tells them i agree with you i did not want to recite this prophet either i don't think it was appropriate and i turned around and i paused because i knew there was a rabbi of a town in hungary in our barracks and i wanted to ask him is it even permitted to recite this because no one's happy that we're that we're here and alive today just like you said but you know what i saw when i turned around i saw hundreds of pairs of eyes looking at me with anticipation with the histychicus with an excitement that even in bergen-belsen even after everything we've been through even after everything we lost we're still waiting to light a hanukkah candle and i said it that's i'm excited to see that the jewish spirit has never been crushed and and again that's when i see that i think of this story also um and the last thing is is that you went into base magician borrow park bar park is in new york city in the united states of america he when he grew up and he was in his mid-50s like we said when the war broke out and he grew up in the old world of galicia in the world of the divine sons of the bane of of of of the old galician polish casitas he never imagined that he would one day be in this urban american materialistic environment attempting to rebuild the facilities with a new family he would never have dreamed of it but when he was pulling into a ship new york harbor in 1946 he was one of the first groups of survivors to arrive as refugees after the war and he comes into new york harbor and he's standing on the deck alone with just a shirt on his back no money no family no anything there's someone who had a community of hasidim before the war someone who had so much and lost everything lost literally everything it can't even be described how much he lost and there's an american sailor a non-jewish sailor who's standing on the deck and he says to him rabbi you see that's the statue of liberty and there's that's a that's that's a welcoming to all immigrants to refugees there's even a poem authored by a jewish woman emma lazarus at the pedestal of of the statue of liberty give me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to be free and so on and uh you're welcome here rabbi you can start again with everything you was destroyed in your life you can start again in the united states and the beluga rebels starts to cry and he says thank you mr sailor for welcoming there's one place in the world that will allow jews to come that will welcome jews in but i have to make one correction huddled masses there are no huddled masses anymore there are a few individuals and it's up to those individuals to go ahead and rebuild what was lost and he saw himself as one of those individuals that here there is no more huddled masses but these individuals are yearning to be free and to rebuild the yiddish kite and he did he did and he remained it as individuals he didn't build the big masses of casinos he did it as individuals but his impact was on so many individuals even if well well beyond the world of lujan so many people were touched by his life and his actions and his leadership i believe that the see of hashas which is till today dedicated to the memory of the six million uh of kadasha who were lost or killed in the war is because of his initiative he pushed for that that the cms should be in their memory it was one of many things uh that that were his impact so he really is is someone special and and i think that uh that hundred years of history that he lived is is is written on his face in that picture that you were able to get on that let's go to number four so here we have the uh previous skeletal now it's too previous the right the old old scholena rabba of alien portugal who was the rabbi in skeleton in in romania um so what's the story of this picture later we soon we're going to show a picture of his son who's who succeeded him as the rebel of israel of ram portugal so it's the father and son duo who are the skeletal rappers leaders of romanian jewry both in romania and later in the united states what is your connection to skeleton and how do you come to take these pictures of the father and the son okay so first of all this picture was taken by a grandson's wedding in williamsburg uh wha what year did he pass away 82 um this was like remember it was it was in it was in the 8283 yeah so this was like 81 whatever um and uh this is under the hooper he at the end of his life he was pretty much blind he could not see and usually when i take pictures with the flesh it just happens to be i get a lot of people who are screaming at me whatever and you know for him it didn't really bother him he didn't see it anyway so nobody really said anything um this was by a grandson's wedding and and i was just you know lucky to i took a bunch of pictures over there at that time it was like the first time that i really had a good camera and took you know very nice pictures of him uh my my er so-called relationship with scalene is really comes from my grandfather rabbi sv rancino they call him harry branson he was very big-ass you know askin uh he went many times to russia he had an organization called altidome he was a mayo but he was very instrumental in taking out the scalena reba and his son from romania uh he was in jail at that time uh it it's it's very how it came about my grandfather i mean my grandfather used to sell on the side he's to sell carmel wine this may sound insane but you sell caramel wine and at that time romania produced um schlitterbitz one of these brandies or one of these things and uh at that time oh okay so they had something that they produced over there in romania and at that time romania was not didn't have a certain status in the united nations or whatever so my my grandfather helped and and they they they brought romania to uh uh uh something status um they gave a certain status that you were able to import things from romania so because of that it was very involved with a lot of different things but anyway so he escalante rebel was in romania it was in jail and my grandfather sent matsis over there there's a whole story how how this glennareva how he was in jail as a matter of fact this glenareba every he's every hamish by uh by a tuba of every year he makes him alka it's called the sur and every year i'm talking about from the old scholar to the past one who passed away you saw the rama's son and even this many skeleton rabbits today every sudden they talk about my grandfather because my grandfather besides the fact that the rebels said he sent mapses and sugar it was just something they were like dying for but he felt that the biggest the biggest major nace that he saw was the same person who was torturing him actually torturing the skull under ebba he was forced to give him this matzah and and the sugar so him was like a big thing so every sunday by uh they would speak about it as a matter of fact by every sader by pesach knight by the sader they all of the rabbis they all spoke around my grandfather herschel brownstein how he helped them and and they never forgot which is amazing as a matter of fact every yard site where my grandfather is the arts of utah nissan for the last i don't know 20 years after he passed away i would go over the scholar to get a broker and he would like talk about my grandfather whatever uh my uh it happens to me that my sondik was this skeletal rabbit that uh my son sadik my son sv who's named after my grandfather his sonic was the pastor of the story so i i will call it that the my grandfather helped this glenda even when he came to america he helped with his apartment he helped them you know getting you know a new immigrant coming you know he helped him a lot so he exclaimed has a lot of accursed types to my grandfather and um i guess so i felt always a connection to the scholar um so this picture was saying like i said by the fastener and um and of course you'll see the next picture is taking up the sun but uh so we do have a lot of strength discipline amazing it's beautiful it sounds like a a good close relationship and and to understand what your grandfather did it's worth noting that uh the scleda like i mentioned was in romania so he was a talmud of some of the regional branches in romania's uh something gary you know really in romania a real romanian and he's the rabbi of skullen he was not from you know he wasn't a hasidic dynasty he was a husset of big rebels and then he was the rabbi in scholan and he emerges as a rabbi so he's i guess we would call it an authentic rabbi he didn't inherit it he he really really becomes this leader of khasidah and and he's he's one of the only people the reynolds rep also not many very many people who are hasidic rubbers who remain behind under a communist regime after surviving the holocaust going through the holocaust as a survivor and then staying in eastern europe in the place where the holocaust took place but more so under a communist regime an atheist anti-religious communism where preaching religion and teaching it to the youth can be a crime um and he stays and he and he is the inspiration for romanian survivors who stayed behind in romania he has an act of based madrish and i know about children and grandchildren of other romanian survivors who stayed in romania after the war who though their only way of continuing any form of yiddish kind of any judaism behind the iron curtain it wasn't technically in the soviet union but it was behind the iron curtain in the communist sense was their affiliation with the scalenu during the apparently he adopted he only had this one son who was the last one who passed away but he adopted many children a lot of the women took care of a lot of yeah he took the level of things yeah yeah but he was like their father as a matter of fact many years later when it was there they married themselves and they married off children scaling up used to come to all their weddings and because they were like children amazing they were his father's children yeah and the um very uh very very beautiful songs were composed by both of the last travis and uh one of them he composed during the holocaust um about uh you know a whole long thing which i of course don't even know the words and and and definitely would not sing because people are supposed to be enjoying the amudham event not being you know upset at it so but it was it was a very haunting song very hunting tune very powerful words um and the uh and and it included the the cry of the imprisoned the encas us here um in during the holocaust and that then in the 1950s at one point he was romania was romanian government allowed a jewish delegation to visit romania to to see that jews are not being prosecuted there's no oppression of religious life there's no suppression of of jewish life in romania and was all a sham because any meeting of this american delegation was with with local romanian jews was with communist officials in the room right and they knew they would get punished if they said everything was censored and the scalenorev is one of the leading one of the leaders of romanian jury in the 1950s was chosen as a member of the romanian delegation and he was racking his brains how am i going to convey to the free world this is a one-time chance we're going to have this meeting how can i convey to the free world that things are really really bad and what he decided to do is he asked the communist officials if he can sing them a song in hebrew that he had composed under nazi oppression during the holocaust okay nazis are bad right you know so you're singing no problem see he sings that song but he changes one part of the song the words encase us here he changed into this cry and see he like screamed it almost until today when they sing the song of the sklenareva it's again i'm not going to sing it because i'm just going to mess it up but it's it's screamed and sir the cry of the oppressed and the american delegation understood right away that there's an encase us there that he's screaming out for help because it's not easy to live as a jew in communist romania and that leads uh hello everybody uh this is danielle corrupt and i'm speaking to you from toronto ontario i'm the rabbi at the buy it uh of thornhill and it's wonderful to be able to uh engage with you once again for a very worthy organization amudim which is doing such important work throughout north america and beyond for claudia israel especially helping the most vulnerable of our population it is a tremendous honor to be able to engage in a conversation with dr david pelkovitz who was no stranger to amudim nor is he a stranger to anyone most likely listening or watching this presentation dr pelkovitz is the strauss chair in psychology and education at yeshiva university um he is uh usually one of those go to voices that our community goes to when we are facing issues of crisis or tragedy god forbid we typically turn to our health care professionals and dr pelkovitz really represents uh the clout that seabor in helping us heal and helping us cope and come to terms with some of the very very difficult issues facing our community and society in general dr pelkovitz welcome it's really an honor to have you here with us uh for amudin thank you it's an honor to be here and especially an honor to be here with you given um how much i've always learned from your role uh and leadership and then um addressing all the concerns that we'll be talking about in this program thank you um i uh we are going to be discussing a topic that i believe is dear to your heart which is uh putting things in a purse in perspective in a polarized world going from fomo to jomo could you dr pelkovitz please uh elaborate on this uh on this theme please yes sure um there's been a real shift in the world um in recent years it's been going on for a while um but it's it's basically a feeling that um social media has become especially in younger kids has become such an incredible um force shaping everything from self-concept to anxiety levels to one's core sense of identity and more and more i've had parents and adolescents and kids even you know approach me and ask um i feel that i'm too dependent on facebook i'm too dependent on instagram on um on tick tock and yet i can't seem to get off of it it makes me sad it makes me anxious um and yet i feel pulled into it can you give me some strategies for trying to uh to get better better control over this all right and and what are the um besides besides the addictive behavior what what are some of the what is some of the negative fallout that we're seeing when people become when people's realities are defined by what they perceive themselves to be and others to be on social media well it's it's it can all often be a false superficial um kind of identity that's based on everything that we know is um is is is superficial and cannot be associated with an enduring sense of well-being as an example even going to the point of what what do adolescents or even younger kids fantasize about nowadays they often fantasize about being famous they often fantasize not necessarily about being good and giving people but about you know what do i need to do in order to um in order to get the most possible likes on um you know my various social media accounts and it's not surprising that um you know in in in studies that have been really getting much more publicity just in recent months um you know we're finding increases in um serious kinds of emotional disorders especially given covet you know so you have that as well so there's a rise in um in depression a rise in anxiety a rise in kids especially girls having poor self-concepts and even to the point of increases in suicidal ideation and even suicidal attempts all right so um how do you as a as a therapist as a guide um um you know the type the topic is going from fomo to jomo going from fear of missing out right this this need for celebrity this need for being part of this the popular group um and you you say joma which is going from joy of missing out and uh especially with young people how do how do we change that perspective given that so many of our kids are using social media and many of our adults as well yeah so so for both because adults you know i i these these programs are designed to maximize getting that dopamine hit they're designed to addict us so what we need to do is is we need to come up with some strategies for mindfully disconnecting for increasing awareness and i have some specific recommendations that i think it probably makes sense for us to um um you know uh talk about some of the strategies i'll i'll start with uh just as an example um let's talk about strategies for uninterrupted socializing so strategies for uninterrupted socializing with some of the authors on this there's a wonderful book um called the distracted mind by gazali g-a-z-z-a-l-e-y and rosen and what they break down which others since then have um have talked about also is just as an example uh the following approaches okay so number one is the goal you need you need to know what's what's your goal if your goal is to be able to talk to people in an uninterrupted way you know with our eyes bouncing off of our our the person you're looking at size our hearts bouncing off each other you know um so the the the goal in this case might be to keep your phone in the pocket when in when in one-on-one conversation with another person um kids and parents tell me that this is something that they would love to be able to um to focus on and to and and to work on having that goal go from the unconscious to the conscious um makes a big difference it says in proverbs it says initially without that vision thing you kind of fall apart and um that's that's number one okay it says to put it on and in fact when certain communities have had programs to to foster um getting better control over this topic of use of phones and social media uh this was one of the main things that kids very much appreciated and wanted more of when when whole communities made up their mind to make this into something that's front and center the second area would be as an example is clarity um which is basically it's called metacognition which is um the need to which is a fancy way of saying why why is this important you have to get to the emotional get into the into your heart why is this important to you to recognize that these devices can reduce our own empathy um it according to research it not only reduces our empathy for others it reduces our perception of how empathic others are to us which is an incredibly important kind of thing to keep in mind social media tends to sort of objectify other people does it not yes and and and it does um it does it in a way that is really uh very alarming you know it tends to polarize things so we see the other as being evil and horrible and somehow uh you know there's um some very recent research that shows that it's tracks things over time and they find that families are now spending less time at thanksgiving dinner than they used to because there's so much tension over differing political views so you're bound in any typical family to have democrats and republicans in the case of the united states dining together and it's fascinating they've actually tracked it and show a pretty significant dropping in the amount of time so that the meals kind of um end earlier than um that than one would expect and it's amazing that they have this data now so that's just one one simple uh example of it well if i could if i could just follow up with that for a moment before you get to the next point you know recently facebook was accused by a number of people who came forward and said that they were creating deliberately polarized communities on social media because their their marketing data told them that when people get an emotional rise off of reading something on social media they tend to become more engaged will stay on longer and may even buy things that they see in the ads because they're so emotionally riled up uh this is a this is very uh disconcerting of course if it's true we're not gonna convict facebook in this discussion but um this is certainly something that we have to be careful about if people are deliberately manipulating me emotionally to get a rise out of me and to start hating or disliking somebody else that's probably bringing out the worst in me is it not yeah look all of these um you know social media sites their financial model as i understand it is partly based on maximizing hits maximizing time on the site and maximizing in many ways the negativity and the polarization that keeps things going it's it's it's part of what um you know it's like and i'm sure any rabbit somebody in your position what do you you you how would you maximize the likelihood that you're gonna grow your membership and grow the passion of people attending your show half it's probably going to be by really reaching them in their hearts you know and giving those kind of classes and having those kind of programs those kind of speeches that's that's what they do and um i don't think it's coming necessarily from an evil place um but it's often coming from a place of um really not necessarily um you know um prioritizing what's best what's best for um their their their customers and again i don't want to you know i certainly have no right to and no expertise to but certainly what that whistleblower has shown in those congressional hearings um has made that uh very clear let me just uh just because i didn't i didn't talk about it a second ago let me just take a second to review with you some of this stuff um here's just a quick summary of some of this stuff is um is that the echo chamber on various social media platforms it it it's designed in a way that it empowers status seeking extremists so that um you know people who aren't extremists people who are just talking in a very um sort of um in much more moderate kind of way their voice get tends to be drowned out and they tend to become quiet because if you become too vocal on these sites people come after you yeah and they may threaten your safety so there's a tremendous tendency for the discourse to become not only not only filled with personal attacks but sometimes real threats on the safety of the person listen to this those who deactivate their facebook accounts uh report feeling happier okay that's great okay not surprising but in the case of millennials in the case of people who were born into a world where they already had their iphones they typically reopen their social media accounts very soon after they find they just can't they can't do it they can't they can't do it it's so much a part of their identity and how they deal with um with with with their their emotions and how they get their news that it becomes something that there's a true addiction to so you know when it comes woven into the fabric of their identity and is their main news source um and and to just expand it a drop um there's evidence that our political discussion networks have been shrieking shrinking in recent decades this is before you know the the the you know some of the elections the recent elections in the united states but it's been shrinking and um which means that um you know there's uh there's all of this uh sense of polarization but um there's a fascinating new study there is a book that just came out a couple weeks ago that um is amazing because he makes a very strong case that much polarization is false social media exaggerates the polarization and people when they sit down and really talk to each other and hear each other out are much more likely to be able to maybe change their views and be open to others views the name of the book and again i can't emphasize enough how it's totally changed my perspective on these things because it's a it's a a man by the name of dr chris bale b-a-i-l and it's called breaking the um social media prism and what he shows was very very well done research and all kinds of uh you know a large team and um you know very respected kind of ways of getting to his uh you know getting to his conclusions is he comes up with specific ways of trying to help us see things through the eyes of others without letting the false polarization that happens with the extremists online take over so that's that's great for a person who's going to read that book but you know getting back to the you know getting back to how we solve the problem you you you correctly identify this this idea of fomo that millennials who uh uh sign on sign out of their account can't they're polishing they they have to get back on so how do we how do we address this with you know you and i remember what life was like before the internet but so many of our who are our children's ages and are certainly our grandchildren's ages how do we uh how do we get them to unplug so you had mentioned the importance of keeping the the phone in your pocket and things like that what else what what else can we do sure sure so um so we already talked about the power of goals the power of clarity um the uh the next thing is a very simple um behavioral intervention you know there's nothing quite like it you know the talmud tells us that if somebody has a gambling problem sometimes um the best thing you could do for it is break the dice this is going back over the millennia break the dice amazing how how topical you know that kind of wisdom is so uh here on the accessibility end it's um it's removing all phones from areas of interactions so you could set tech breaks for checking your phone every 15 minutes you families can have tech free zones um and i know this is this is trite but it's it's it works you know so you have you have a very clear rule in at home that parents and kids recharge their phones every night in a public part of their house and if there's an emergency that comes in which is what kids are very worried about um you know they'll be able to check it you know at another time but they have to once they keep it in a public place they're going to start to get a lot more sleep and they're not going to be so hooked on to uh you know what what becomes this overarching need to check um over and over again the next thing has to do you have to have a strategy for dealing with boredom sherry turkell psychologist at um at mit a brilliant brilliant woman she um wrote a book called reclaiming conversations and what she found is that nowadays the kids who came of age after the iphone was developed they have a very hard time um um with their anxiety about simple conversations there's a high level of social discomfort in adolescence and young adults um and she calls it a flight from conversation and she says sometimes in extreme cases you know parents could really help their kids just do the just to review the basics of social skills training how do you start a conversation how do you continue a conversation how do you show that you're really listening and paying attention you have to build up that muscle you know many kids who um came of age after covid was already in full force um never even developed if you look at preschoolers the ability to have the give and take of conversation um here many kids who were born um you know who were you know millennials they um they have to in a conscious way developing you don't have to turn into a social skills training expert but it might be helpful to be able to just talk to your kid about it model for them you know how to do it model for them by talking to your other family members about this stuff um and that could be helpful and then the final thing is um anxiety which is um you know um there's a tremendous amount of anxiety over how are others gonna see me if i shut off my account for a couple of hours a day let's say i'm driving you have a kid who's old enough to be driving um they get very nervous that if their friends are texting them or in a crisis that they don't answer them right away um that they're going to be viewed as not being a presence so there are simple strategies um for the cultural change that can educate kids to know that you're not you don't have to always be on call you don't have to answer texts immediately i find that um that you have to really teach kids that you know i'm available you know i i you know and you could put it on your away message and it can make a difference and i think i'm finding the kids are beginning to be more and more open to that because they're exhausted from always being on call at amudim we give people hope we help people [Music] at amudim we don't judge [Music] at a mood and we give people a helping hand at amudem we listen adam mudem we're going to care about you and help you get the best treatment you can [Music] adam we strive to make others lead a healthier life you truly understand [Music] at amuden we adapt to the ever-changing needs of our community [Music] at we provide the light that guides you through your darkest times [Music] let's unite to heal let's unite to heal let's unite to heal [Music] we save lives and build futures let's unite to heal let's unite the hail let's unite to heal aramudem we make a difference every single day let's unite to heal let's unite to heal [Music] let's unite to heal [Music] i i want to get back to that anxiety issue in just a moment but i i guess i have an overarching question that i've noticed of late um my upbringing uh uh is very different from the way and the way that i brought up my children is very different from the way that i see some younger parents bringing up their children today and i'm wondering if if all of these strategies you know assume that a parent takes into consideration the fact that i am the parent you are the child and i will guide you and show you what is best for you um and i hope this is not too far off topic but it's certainly something that's been gnawing at me i see so many parents today who show so much their inherits to their children that they feel that their children should be in control of their emotions of their behaviors and put their child on such a pedestal that they don't feel that they can or should interfere in their in their children's behavioral patterns let me just give you one example um there was a parent who brought over one of their children to my house the other day and i was taught that when someone comes into your guest comes into your home the guest is supposed to look you you as a guest are supposed to look at the host in the eye shake their hand say hello make eye contact all of these things that i was taught as a child and today it seems like some parents feel that no we have to be considerate of a child's feelings and if the child doesn't feel like making eye contact because they're moody or they're in a bad mood we have to respect that in the child and let the child go off into the corner and when the child is ready to come and make eye contact and to be engaging we allow the child to do that and and so part of part of me is is concerned that if if these solutions that you're advocating dr pelkovitz um they sound like wonderful solutions but they assume that a parent is going to be uh sort of laying down the law for their children and saying this is what is necessary and this is what you should be doing and this is what you shouldn't be doing and part of the concern that i have in part i believe perhaps part of the anxiety that children have today is that they haven't been given specific parameters or sufficient parameters to know the difference between right and wrong am i crazy or no i'm not crazy at all i think it's actually it's the challenge of our generation you know kids um you know what my understanding of healthy parenting is about it's exactly what the talmud tells us you find the balance between the left hand pushing away while the right hand brings closer right between small dojo and mimikarevas you know you need you need the balance between love and limits and that's exactly what modern psychological research tells us and what the wisdom you know the ancient jewish wisdom tells us um and kids can't thrive without that balance so all love and no limits kids grow up to be totally s spoiled and over indulged and you could kid like that they're not going to be ready to function in the world if you have an extreme like that all limits no love rules without relationships equals rebellion okay so you need to find the balance and that's the art of parenting and it's going to be different for every one of your children because every kid has a different temperament and um parents um i think um you see the the part of the challenge is many of the parents that i believe you're referring to they're already um they were raised this way so so they hadn't necessarily had the role models that you know that people who grew up you know in a less complicated world um you know um had is a matter of course and um and it's interesting if i could just stay with this for a minute um i think that um there is um um something i hear often from people who i saw in my practice 30 years ago 40 years ago i've been doing this for a long time and now they're parents you know sometimes even grandparents they come to my office and they'll turn to their parents and say why did you let me do this when i was a teenager why did you let me go into manhattan um when you knew that there was a crazy uh club scene there why did you let me basically you know have a you know a limit limitless american express card why do you do all of this and they get angry about it and you know there's a beautiful thought in the medrash that says the following it says this is from mishla from proverbs put limits on your kids there's always hope and don't pay attention to their yelling and screaming and going crazy when you do the limit putting on them so listen to this ancient wisdom it says moses the more parent puts limits on his or her child the more that child will love the parent and that's so true but parents you know there needs to be a real by the way one more thing i find that when there's a massive community effort to address this parents are open to it because they they themselves recognize that something has to be fixed you know something that there's something off here and i think i think they're they're nervous about it and yet you know we can we can quote mamare to demonstrate that parenting requires us to place limits on our children and and show them where the lines are and yet a lot of a lot of very from the young adults who are parents are not going to the age-old wisdom of ghazal to derive knowledge about how to parent they're going to the conventional wisdom that they're watching on social media and in the books that they're reading about how you have to validate your child's feelings and give them the emotional freedom to be able to learn about themselves and to appreciate themselves um and to me there's this represents a major disconnect because we look at the torah for guidance for all areas of our life except for the parts where we don't look for guidance uh for those things which we feel we've advanced beyond the torah and this just it's sometimes quite um quite frustrating um for someone in my position as a spiritual leader who sees people sort of cherry-picking um the lessons that we can draw from the torah and then the parts of the torah that we've moved past perhaps um i mean obviously there are certain things that are anachronistic about the book of michele which talks about not sparing the rod and we don't we don't exercise corporal punishment anymore we recognize that that's not helpful and not a not not the best way to parent so we've learned to reinterpret it and to to reframe it as not literally a rod but rather as a as a way of disciplining sometimes sometimes harshly disciplining when necessary but but how would how would use and i perhaps i'm putting you in an unfair position this is really more a rabbinical question than a psychological question but how do we impress upon our young young members of our community that the torah is a holistic guide for how we're supposed to live our lives yeah um yes it's it's an alarming uh development to hear what you're what you're seeing in the front lines over there um you know um i i think that um that um it's let me tell you about a program that took place in um cleveland and in chicago and since then it's been replicated in different parts of the world it was on this topic the um rabbinic leadership who were behind the um citibank i'm sorry citi field of cifa in the mets stadium number of years ago where they say we have to ban the internet very much to their credit recognized we blew it we flew that's a big mistake you can't this is here to stay we we have to find the balance like refersh said between isolation and inoculation so the community got together and they had some generous funding um and had in the case of chicago which was the first community that they brought in the two leaders behind the the original um internet asifa and they brought them into chicago they invited the whole spectrum of the community from um you know the more modern to the most uh yeshivish and swedish etc and um they put up a massive massive site just for that day and um it had um an incredible response because what they talked about was small steps very small steps you know you're talking to somebody put your phone in the pocket um you're having dinner find you know x amount of uh interruption free time you're you know just simple simple things but they made it a community effort and it was a community effort where not only did they bring mental health people to come in to speak but they bought rabbis to come in and speak who had you know some deep insights of their own and were known to be open to the realities of the outside world and a totally unexpected thing happened the kids who were there um loved it so much that they asked for another meeting and they wanted more they said you know something we've been dying for this we've been dying for this now to get to your specific question okay but what do we do about the fact that people are are are sometimes um you know even people more to the yeshiva gender sometimes saying seeing um the world is um changed in a way that uh you don't necessarily have to pay attention to uh you know to rabbinic wisdom instead of pay attention to um you know people who are coming more from a scientific or parenting experts or whatever i think the best way to um to change perceptions is it needs to be done i think in in a massive community level so here you had the whole community involved a tremendous amount of work went into it they did follow-ups they um [Music] they were still doing things that are tied to this and for the last i heard it made change that really lasted but it was partly because what it came with was respect for the viewpoint of everybody they didn't go and criticize the people who did the internet asifa okay in in citi field instead they came and they showed like wow these these men have a tremendous amount to offer you know you know these are the leaders of the yeshiva world the leaders of the hasidis world and um it was there's nothing like modeling modeling and showing people that things are more complicated than you think you know and the world isn't in black and white the world is in gray and the truth lies in the gray and i think i know this is sounding a little bit not directly responsive to your question but it was a cultural change that took place with all of that effort that i i think does that a little bit address it yes i look i i think it does i don't think we're going to be able to fully uh to fully resolve this issue about the steady erosion of what we call das torah or the erosion of rabbinic authority and people who look to rub on him for guidance um based on timeless torah wisdom um and and you say you said something very profound that we hear all again and again especially in today's very post post post-post-post-post-modern society is that we live in the gray and it's a very uncomfortable position for so many younger people to be living in because there's a craving as you had started saying earlier in this conversation for younger people to have uh parameters and boundaries and to know what's what's okay and what's not okay and to live in the gray is something that we learn to do as we get older and older and and you also had talked a bit a little bit about anxiety and i and i want to try and bring this all together if i can um is you know uh one of the things that um we are perceiving is that there does seem to be a greater level of anxiety part of it has to do with this fomo the fear of missing out uh the the feeling that i need to respond right away as you had mentioned before part of the anxiety is due to covet and the the fact that because we're social animals and we haven't been able to interact um we've there's been some there's been some damage to the our collective psyche because we haven't had the social interaction that we actually crave that's hardwired to our to our very being um this anxiety has manifested itself in a number of very unhealthy ways and i'm wondering if you could just talk about um you know part of this anxiety manifests itself in this polarized vociferous yelling at each other on social media like we talked about before but it also has to do with social interactions at the marketplace where everyone is who's i don't know is a stranger and an enemy potentially um and um and and the fear of the unknown because we don't know what's just around the corner with covid what the next strain or the next iteration or the next shutdown when that's going to be god forbid um what do we do when we have anxiety and how how do we deal with anxiety um uh is there a way is there an easy um pill that we can take to help us when we're dealing with anxiety what you know we're not advocating escapism we're not advocating taking a drink or uh smoking a joint is there what can we do that's natural to help take a little bit of the edge off of our lives yeah um so um if i could just give a simplistic answer but it's i think um you know we at least start um the way uh mental health people try to address anxiety is um on three channels okay one channel is the cognitive you try to get a hold of the thoughts that are feeding the anxiety often in the case of anxiety around covert it might be uh you know an awfulizing feeling like you know this is uh horrible things will never go back to normal how am i ever going to get used to it um and a lot of self statements that we're saying on the cognitive level that are either awfulizing or turning of the shoulds you know it shouldn't be like this you know why can't i have a normal life what happened to the you know things that um that that i always took for granted so that's the cognitive that's um the vascentos you want to know where the person is look at where his or her thoughts are so that's on the comments channel on the physiologic on the physiologic channel which is you know what happens to our bodies when we're anxious our hearts will will race a little faster we different people feel in different parts of their body you may feel in your gi system you might feel a tightening in your neck you might get a headache or whatever but the physiologic is basically the natural response of the body to perceive threats and there um you know this is where um smartphones are um you know incredibly helpful because there are amazing devices now that really teach you mindfulness um there are two wonderful books on jewish perspectives on mindfulness which are amazing written by psychologists who are also rabbis and there's there's uh but a number of apps so you go onto commonsensemedia.com which is a non-commercial site and you just put in for the age group let's say you want to have anxiety management techniques for your kids you can do it that way you could um find some basic mindfulness exercises for yourself you know the most popular one um has been calm c-a-l-m which has a relatively small fee attached to it but um is excellent you know and gives you specific um mindfulness techniques for the specific issue that you're having you know what's your is your problem with sleep is your problem with worrying about work is your problem with parenting or whatever and it gives you um mindfulness and it's a skill it takes a while but just a little bit at a time simple breathing normal breath in slow breath out can make an enormous difference and then the final channel is the behavioral channel you know where you actually um [Music] respond to the anxiety by avoiding avoidance you face what you're afraid of you're nervous about going to show because you've been away from it for so long you push yourself to go back or you're nervous about getting together with friends or even if you're nervous about your anxiety about being too tough on your kids um you you do that behavioral kind of um uh intervention and uh that that could be um extremely helpful at all two other quick points so you just could you just review those three once again yes number one yes so number one is cognitive you think you think in a way you catch the thoughts that are making you anxious and you hold it up to the light of day in a rational in a rational kind of way and that that could really make a big difference um physiologic is in terms of the um normal breath in slow breath out mindfulness techniques and there are all kinds of wonderful apps out there on it um that make it more doable but recognize it's not going to work right away it's a skill that you have to do with time and then the final is behavioral which is to uh push it is to push yourself to avoid avoidance etc um and then the other two points that have been found to really help with anxiety during covid are ancient wisdom and this is this is in every religion has this one is the power of gratitude to figure out a way to focus on um what we have and to be thankful for what we have and anytime we're able to be grateful that way um again this is consistent with the torah readings we have around now um you know it's the essence of being jewish you know to be thankful it helps us um in it helps us in a very basic way with our anxiety you know so because you may not have control over you know what new variant of the of the um of covet is coming but you always have control over um you know being thankful for what you have in terms of your community in terms of your family in terms of friends or whatever you have and when you have that focus it literally helps with your immune functioning but helps mainly with anxiety and another especially is to be able acts of loving kindness for others makes such an enormous difference to be able to um respond to everything that's going on with um you know with with less and it's the antidote to the negativity of social media is you know social media by the way could be a wonderful source for doing hessa you know we now know about the suffering of people who may never have known about in the past right right yeah yeah and um those last two items are so powerful the ability to count your blessings and to recognize i always try to tell my wife as often as i can we are so blessed um even when we're going through perhaps challenging times but we are so blessed and then just reminding oneself about all of the brachas of life are is just so so uplifting and of course emulating hashem is to emulate the ribbon of shalollam by helping others is extremely empowering and this idea of imitating god as being a way of lifting ourselves up and alleviating anxiety i can't think of a of a more powerful method than that um we we are coming up close to the end of our discussion but i i would be remiss if i didn't ask you about one more issue that i think does contribute to some of the anxiety that especially our young people are experiencing today it's no secret that from time to time and i'm rabbi pelkovitz the amount of years that you've been in this line of uh of profession you've seen so many iterations unfortunately of communal scandals having to do with people in leadership positions uh abusing that privilege and exploiting others and uh because of their position and this of course has created a significant amount of anxiety as well especially among our youth could you just share with us a few thoughts on on this topic and and how we can uh restore the the the sense of joy and somehow in our lives yeah um you're talking about like when leadership fails that that that that yeah so again without um you know um without in any way identifying a specific person because this is something that um something that we're sometimes faced with what how how do we talk to ourselves how do we talk to our kids when there's um um when when our leaders who should be our moral leaders disappoint us and might just make a couple a couple of points um the most important one in terms of talking to our kids is um to be understood first understand you go to your child and you ask him or her you know um you know what have you heard especially if you're in a neighborhood where um you know there's been some kind of a scandal and unfortunately there are multiple scandals in different parts of the world and if you're struggling with that now you just ask them what have you heard you know and again we don't necessarily know anything for sure in any sometimes there are situations where a person has been actually convicted and it's still something that communities might be struggling with but you ask your child help me hear and very often they'll answer you in a way that'll give you will lead you towards what you need to uh what you need to talk about you know what you need to understand so that's um that's that's number one um number two is um is the idea as a general rule of thumb to um help them um uh have have permission to talk about what's on their minds don't automatically um reassure them this is along the lines of what we talked about before you know there's the uh again the thought of another moment of the very torah lmk mitchell we can't master anything in life without struggle and this is something that um you know may bring with its struggle because people who um we've looked up to are supposed to be the source of protection now may be in a very different kind of place so um we just need to let them know that um it's okay to talk and it's not it's it's not disrespectful to talk uh you know the hebrew word ashrae which is the highest level of happiness is tied to the hebrew word ishur to validate you know to validate what somebody's saying we do that for our children it makes makes sense and to name the monster to talk you know to the extent that you could allow them to talk about it and to talk about whatever anger and also to to talk about um how imperfection in general is something that is very much part of um part of what we um are sometimes faced with nobody's perfect and i'm not saying this in any way to be an apologist for anybody who might later found be found to be abusive but just the the the idea of being able to to to give voice to values and to allow it if people underestimate the power of that i have a colleague dr bessel vanderkolt who wrote a book that's been a best-selling non-fiction book over the last year called um the body keeps the score one of the things he once showed me is um he showed me uh the picture of the brain of one of his um patients who was caught in the stairwell of the world trade center on 9 11. and he had an fmri a picture of that man's brain as he was reliving the worst moment of his life he was being crushed by the world trade center miraculously managed to survive what he showed me is that the part of the brain that shuts off when people are faced with overwhelming kinds of stress is broca's area the language centers of the brain but then what he showed me in subsequent scans over the coming months that as he gave this patient words for his pain as he helped him light up the language centers of the brain he helped him name the monster that's where he was able to eventually come to a place where he was able to digest the meaning of what happened that's using an extreme example but i see it all the time you know how much good we do for our cells and our children when we allow ourselves to name the monster and to see the area of growth that can come from these kind of struggles and i'll just end with the following beautiful words of hazal which i often quote because it just makes me feel great from the madrish to hillam it says like this it says if i never fell down i never would have gotten up early if i never sat in the darkness i never would have appreciated the light those are those are beautiful words um i i think there's always going to be a tension between the importance of having heroes and role models in our lives and at the same time recognizing that even those heroic figures in our lives are are human beings with flaws i remember that one of the difficulties that i had as a as a booker in yeshiva was having a rebbe who i held in great esteem and i thought he was like the person that i wanted to be and then i saw him do something that i that sort of shattered my faith in him it wasn't something so horrible but it was just a flaw in his personality and it was difficult for me as a young man to learn how to process that and put it in its proper context and as we get older i think we we learn to live in that gray of recognizing that everyone is complex and no one is perfect it's very difficult i think uh when we're younger um when we're teenagers or perhaps even younger than that to know how to deal with people who were held in such high esteem who provided us with such either inspiration entertainment torah education and then to learn that these people are are not only deeply flawed but perhaps uh possess a degree of evil that we could never see in ourselves um and we won't be able to resolve that issue but as as you say uh the importance is uh the important thing is to open that discussion with our children allow them to know that their voice is being heard that it's okay to be disappointed but that they should their their belief in heroes should not be shattered because of one particular individual that we should try to um uh hold people that we feel are admirable that their behavior is virtuous we should use them as role models with the caveat that even the greatest of people the greatest of godola israel will sometimes have flaws and foibles just like any other human being yeah well i i just want to i i i'm always i i learn so much more uh in any time i spend with you dr belkovitz and i know that this has been very very helpful to so many people who might be watching or listening um thank you for being so generous with your time thank you for uh everything that amudim is doing is including offering these special video seminars for people during a perhaps a very challenging time for the jewish people and for the world as a whole as we begin to see the light emerge at the end of the tunnel let's hope that talks like this will help us emerge as more healthy individuals and please dr pelkovitz please take the last words well just uh thank you for um for helping me think and helping me clarify i always learned so much from um your your depth and your ability to talk about this and thank you to my wounded i my mother is an organization that i have um i just keep getting more and more involved with hamudan because it's um it's an organization that's involved in saving lives on on a regular basis in a very real way uh saving lives and they're always there and um there's an ability to uh to somehow uh keep keep growing and keep serving more and more people and um uh so that people don't have to feel alone um uh in in their struggles so um so thank you thank you and thank you amudim goodbye everybody [Music] yes hello everybody here we are again with the unite to heal program of amudhim amudhim as we all know is one of the premier providers of help mental health and otherwise to our jewish community they also last year figured out the best way to raise money from yidden is to make sure they're having a great time and last year the first united to heal they put out an incredible array of speeches and lectures and music and incredible interviews and they're doing it again this year back and better than ever so welcome to the amudim unite to heal i very rarely get the opportunity actually no no i never ever get the opportunity to interview such incredible luminaries as i'm interviewing today i'm deeply appreciative to them for giving me the opportunity i have been a talmud who has been zoha to learn both from the torah of rabbi simon as well as rabbi jacobson and i believe that i'm not alone in that at this point pretty much the jewish world whether you're a yeshiva bucker in muncie whether you're a secular jew in california you've probably been learning and listening to the torah of one of these two great brothers and we have an incredible opportunity today to talk to them on behalf of amudim so we're going to start with a very simple question and uh it's more a little bit about your upbringing the jacobson household must have been an incredible place to bring up people who are so dedicated to spreading torah and hasidis to the whole world what do you think your parents got right what inspired you to do what you do today and if you can try to break it down to something that your parents did but we can all do on a more a lower level as an air on pin a miniature biteable doable thing that we can all do like your parents did peace first of all it's my honor to be here with you as i'm with him with our dear host and with my dear brother we are blood flesh and blood and yes we grew up in a very unique and special home i uh it's always humbling to hear such accolades but i will say in the spirit of my father oliver shalom and my mother may should be well many healthy years one of the things that jumps out at me this is completely a knee-jerk reaction to your question was my father particularly as well as my mother which i'll speak about in a moment was absolutely comfortable in his own skin he was extremely he didn't have that self-consciousness and extremely know why he's here in this world and what is his purpose and even though it was not stated in words but it was stated in actions and that was what exuded that was the spirit that was the environment that exuded from him i remember him sitting shabbos at the table he could be quiet for hours even though he was a conversationalist and a very charismatic figure but he had that inner peace and i think when you have that it just translates into bringing up children that are also comfortable in their own skin and are focused not on trying to necessarily impress or entertain but really living up to what their mission is now i want to say it very clearly a big disclaimer i'm not saying i'm on that level but i definitely was exposed to it and my mother as well completely committed to the cause you know you know everybody has their egos everybody has their stuff they have their phobias their neurosis and uh by no means is anyone perfect but i think when you have as a parent a mission-centric life that your life is not driven by ego and by conquests and by money and by control and by power and influence that you know you're here for a reason and that is uh not just taught but actually fed and nourishes children from the youngest of age to me that is one of the most critical elements that all of us can learn for success because then your children grow up having that same type of attitude i'm here to serve i'm here to bring something to the world in our case we grew up in uh i speak we grew up in a obviously a very observant jewish home and of course emphasizes this idea of serving illuminating nerius lahayer to be flames that illuminate and warm everyone around us so it all fitted in in that context that's one of the ingredients at least by no means is it the only one but that's what comes to mind and based on that what you're describing what would be like in a voda like something people would want to work on to be able to achieve that sort of sense of mission and sense of inner peace and comfortability with their own skin what types of things could people do if they want to be able to get to that level so they could experience that and of course give that over to their children as well what is like something that a person could work on themselves on a regular basis to do something measurable like a real avoda i think it really comes down to how you look at the standards you know a business cannot function without a mission statement every business no matter what for-profit not profit organizations schools every entity must have a mission statement the first question you have to ask yourself is what is your personal mission statement and it can't just be a platitude like i want to be happy i want to have uh make a lot of money i want to bring up a healthy jewish family those are general generic and general they're beautiful things but a mission statement means to put it specifically how are you going to use your life and the unique skills and tools that you were given your unique opportunities to somewhat improve better and beautify the corner of your world so that's the first question you have to ask if you're not asking that question which means that you're basically just running your life either as a product or victim of circumstances then you're never going to get to that place so obviously as children if you can pick that up from a young age great but wherever you are in your life that has to be a pause that we all have to take if not on a daily basis at least on a weekly basis a monthly basis or an annual basis and we actually have muridani mauidani you say what are we saying think about the words thank you god for returning or you don't say even the word god thank you for returning my soul to me for making me indispensable for giving me a mission for renewing my contract and my mandate and that i absolutely need to fulfill that mission that you have given me and renewed every morning so that would be my opinion one of the first things that you begin the journey in that sense right and it's true because so many people are living life without having a sense of mission statement right life happens to them as opposed to them creating the life they want so just even setting for yourself a mission statement is step number one to it's getting there okay beautiful why why in addition to the beautiful eloquent words of my dear brother i would add very briefly maybe three things that i uh felt in my home uh i don't know always consciously but now looking back i think they're all really part of our the reality of our family number one my father was an extremely colorful human being very universal he had like this universal consciousness first of all nobody knew geography like him right simmon i mean he knew i don't know every river in russia yeah every river in russia exactly and he really knew it he knew how long it was he knew how hot wide it was and he had a real interest i once saw him reading my father used to read approximately he was a subscriber to around 30 magazines and newspapers and he would read about the economy in japan and i asked him does this interest you because i don't have an interest about the economy in japan it just doesn't fit into my brain and he says yeah it's the world it's part of god's world you have to know what's happening in japan it was very interesting so it was really there was no tunnel vision there was no narrowness there was no judging people based on the community they come from based on their lifestyle he actually allowed himself and he taught us to celebrate the world for what it is because if you have tunnel vision you reduce god's reality into your own stereotypes and preconceived notions you know into your own issues instead of really breathing the world the way it is and enjoying the full variety of god's creation that was one thing i think very powerful until today you know i meet jews from all backgrounds jews and non-jews just a certain freshness like really be open to to tune in to where people are not where you want them to be or what you think about them the second thing was uh the evanesville writes that mushroom had to grow up among non-jews in a palace why didn't the first jewish leader grow up in a jewish environment and he says that as he writes this it's incredible that if moshe would have grown up among jews he would have developed a slave mentality he could have never staged a revolution he had to grow up in an ambiance of aristocracy of loyalty that's how he can overthrow egypt and liberate the jewish slaves my father grew up in stalinism stalinist russia his father was tortured and almost killed he had a very very difficult life very as a youth like like so many of that generation but he had a vision of royalty he was uh and he taught this to us he was broad he had a fearlessness to him he was a warrior he was a fighter he wouldn't allow himself to become a victim in circumstances so that was very very refreshing and empowering the last thing i would say something i once heard from him we were walking to shalon shabbos and he told me that he once asked why he's getting involved in a very controversial issue that was just controversial and it's basically taking away supporters from him people who would support him was something to do about the future of israel and he said what do you need it for just stay focused on humanitarian good things you know spreading mitzvas and what do you need this for so he told me that the rabbit told him and it says by maishna menu when he saw the egyptian beating the jew says moishe looked everywhere he saw there's no man and he killed the egyptian and he saved the jew and everybody asks there was somebody there because the next day the informer is informed on myself so there was somebody there so allah bashar ebba said one interpretation is not that there was nobody physically present he saw vayaraki a news that there's nobody who's going to stand up to the tyranny ish there's no man there's nobody who you know who's going to make this discourse everybody was just looking around and saying there ever says he had to make a choice will he join everybody else and say there's nothing to do we're in egypt we're in exile or he's going to take a stand and that's what turned him into the eternal jewish leader and then my father told me the rabbi continued he says and this is what my father-in-law embodied he attributed to his father-in-law this is how he's who is explaining his involvement what i learned from my father at that moment was that in life you know you have to be able to make that choice constantly whether you're just going to be a bystander maybe write a check you know give a sigh give a crack or to say no god put me here and he gave me my unique purpose as my brother just said and it's my opportunity to make the difference that i was chosen to make beautiful it's interesting the first thing that you said is basically you're describing your father as a cohes he was like an aggregator of information all around the world and there's that gemara that talks about some of the the early tanayam and how they they recognized they knew the language of foxes and the language of trees and the language of birth and you're like what does that make a difference they're in hanoi they're sitting and learning you know hillel and and and shanghai but the answer is when you have that that breathness and that ability to just take it all in you also have the ability to put out something that's just so much more comprehensive than when you're living with tunnel vision so that's a definitely beautiful and uh a very special household that we get a little bit of a feel where the the jacobs umbrellas come from so my next question is you know a mood and deals with mental health dysfunctional elements in our home that's going to be that's going to be the bonus material at the end and then you got to donate a couple extra hundred dollars and you get all the dysfunction from the jacobson home too so um amudim really is known for their work with with mental health and the jewish people and you guys are both such incredible eloquent speakers you you command such large audiences wherever you go and you go and people sit and rapture when you speak and there's sometimes you know when when people are in the crowd they look at a speaker just nails it and they really understand and they get everything just right and there's almost like a halo effect you know so there's but the reality is we're all people you are all people as well and obviously you too have your own struggles at times and there's the the mental stresses that we all go through and what weighs heavily on all of us sometimes it's helpful for the audience to be able to recognize that the speakers are humans and they go through their own stress stresses so my question to you would be what grinds you down what really wears you down and how do you find like where you need to like save your own mental health sanity and keep yourself on the straight and narrow what grinds you down and how do you respond to it how do you deal with it to keep yourself above of it okay so we're already entering into the dysfunctional zone now which is uh the things that get to us and cause as you said grind us down or stress and so on it's a it's a great question excellent question i appreciate it because i'm usually not asked this question either because of the halo effect or i don't know i respect but i think it's a a very powerful question um i will just again speak what comes to me i mean i have been blessed and i say this with all humility i have been blessed not through work not to avoid this hashem and not through yogiya and effort i guess by part of genetic makeup and dna as well as that we discussed the environment of my father to have a certain inner calm even among the storms so even when there's a tornado there's the eye of the tornado but there's an endocrine i actually to be honest i'm speaking openly here i become i'm at my best when there's stress because for some reason i'm able to enter into that zone that just gives you a certain i guess like almost like an oasis you're like you're like buffered but i'm gonna tell you the halo is getting brighter right now i'm sorry is that the halo is getting brighter right now no no god forbid no no no no no that's uh halos are are actually quite dangerous um so there's that inner sense of peace which really arises when there's a lot of tension around me and that is what i do i'm starting from the second half of the question but as far as the things that grind you down i'll be honest sometimes for me um even though i think i'm a royal optimist i always like to look at to see the positive in things the light at the end of the tunnel and but at the same time sometimes you feel that as much as you do are you really making an impact yes you can make a momentary impact and there's a certain uh apathy and even mediocrity that surrounds when you see people who get cynical or petty you sometimes see people fighting over nonsense but they fight like it's world war three and that can get to you you know um and sometimes feel am i really making a difference it's i wouldn't say i get depressed by it but i definitely am impacted by it another thing is and this is uh a very personal note when you see a lot of pain and people share with you you know things that have broken them tragedies mental health issues suicide you know the list goes on unfortunately and you're with a person of empathy there's no way you can just immunize yourself and be indifferent i remember when i was younger it was very difficult because i always felt as my brother earlier said that you have to rise to the occasion you have to do something i always felt like a certain they're coming to me i must do something it took me a long time to discover i can't solve every problem and there's some things that maybe practice has to lead someone else where but i would really i remember the first time i heard about abuse you know real abuse serious abuse i couldn't even believe it i thought it was i thought the person was making it up because i never experienced it in my life you know a father beating a child with a with a baseball bat i mean i even want to repeat some of these things and it gets worse i mummish i it it like overwhelmed me i mean i remember i was saying to myself why am i being told this like what and i'll tell you the truth the only way to go is to dig deeper i had to dig deeper and i said to myself if hashem created this world and he gave us a toyota and he gave us hasidis he also marked him the full la marco he gave us the healing before the illness there has to be an answer even for the most horrendous and horrible things in this world and it was years ago i remember this i would read and try to understand you know it's very hard to go into the kishkis of a person who's suffering something i never suffered and i have to say it it took a real toll on me i mean emotionally it took a serious toll and then you start saying it's so unfair children innocent defenseless people who did nothing and they're being hurt and you have to you have also an extend existential crisis crisis of faith you know what does god want we all know we don't understand god's ways these things have always taken a very strong effect on me even till this day and ultimately it comes back to the eye of the tornado that you have to say light at the end of the day is stronger than darkens and that hope is stronger than any type of despair and as a as a person in my position i cannot afford to become part of the problem so i have to rise to the occasion to do the best that doesn't mean you have answers you know like one rebel once said i don't have answers for you he told someone who suffered a tragedy but i can cry with you i can hold your hand i can walk with you and that's a strength that gives strength that consoles that comforts us all so that is uh the human condition can be quite beautiful but also quite painful you see things that are you know i've i've fortunately unfortunately witnessed and experienced and heard things i never wanted to hear and it takes a toll but you know what at the end of the day you have to become stronger casayano asa it says as the as the as the jews were oppressed it says in israel they that in direct proportion to that they thrived and they flourished i like to believe that our challenges my own and the ones that i've heard and the ones that i've absorbed have only caused us to be to be a catapult us and be a springboard for me personally to become a greater person and to realize how more important it is that we need god more than ever as holocaust survivors say when they're asked where where was god in the holocaust so how do you believe in god after the holocaust and they'll say who else do i have to believe in after the holocaust not humans look what humans did how they betrayed their own humanity so we have nothing but god and that becomes our greatest strength of all that when you're bound above you don't fall below and that's the eye of the storm at the end of the day the runner's home yep okay rabbi why why it's interesting i was just thinking as my brother was talking you know jews suffer from guilt they say that if you're a jew if a jew doesn't feel guilty he blames himself and correct me simon if i'm wrong i never felt that my father had any guilt is that true i agree i never thought you know what our mother didn't didn't always like that my father it's interesting all jews that i've ever met have deep guilt in them sometimes stronger sometimes weaker my father i never saw girl then i was surprised how that happened you know especially rosh hashanah jews are stressed out and how about you how about you and actually i think my brother simmet also doesn't have guilt i don't know you'll have to correct me never seem that way i was not blessed with that i have i also have anxiety from a young age and i also have i struggle with self-consciousness so when i speak or lecture these are some of the struggles that i have to work through in the past and also in the present and um [Music] there is i started to speak very very young age so in a way it's always a struggle for me like who am i you know not to make sure that the eye is not the eye that gets projected but there's a deeper eye there's a beautiful teaching from the market of the magnetism of mizritch that i think is for me it's very relevant personally he says that it's elisha elisha wanted to prophesize but he felt he's not in the mood of prophecies he said bring me a singer a composer a musician hashem as the nagging started to be minagain when he started to sing so he felt the spirit of god and he asked what does it mean kanagain nagin it's a strange sequence and he says when the men again became the when the when the singer becomes one with the song with the melody that's when the divine energy can flow through him like a violin doesn't have an ego violin doesn't have insecurity violin is just a channel for the music so he says when the men again becomes the nikken we become one with the music for me that's always a challenge you know when i speak when i lecture when i communicate to people either individually or collectively in larger groups for the menage to be able to transcend my own fear my own insecurity my own traumas my own wounds and become a channel for the and when that happens the miracles occur around me and inside of me i'm asking each and every one of you to please take a few seconds to hear what i'm about to say i'm coming to you on behalf of an organization that means a great deal to me personally and should also mean a great deal to each and every member of our community a modem is an organization as so many of you are aware that responds to all kinds of crisis whether it's personal familial communal whether it's in your own community whether it's in your own state or across the world once a year we have an annual campaign in which the proceeds from this campaign comprise the overwhelming vast majority of our budget the entire year every single one of the services that we provide and every drop of assistance that we provide to those that are struggling or facing a crisis we don't charge a single penny for this is the time that once a year we're coming to you to please open your minds open your hearts and open your pockets as much and as generously as you can because if you believe as i do that the issues we're dealing with are critical and need to be worked on further and that we need these resources readily available for when people do face a struggle or a crisis then please contribute to this campaign and please partner with us so together we can unite to heal [Music] beautiful okay so we're going to switch it up now we're going to actually give our yy an opportunity to answer first um both of you speak a lot and engage with a very broad audience however your audiences are a little bit different at times obviously there's like the venn diagram there's some crossover over there but for the most part rabbi yy is speaking to a yeshiva world crowd uh across the board so seedish lit fish yeshivish modern but more within the folds of a torah confined so to speak who already are already involved in torah learning and torah lifestyle and rabbi simon is a little bit more engaged with the broader islam i mean it's a beautiful beautiful expression of yafutsumai and this is a very big thing in the khabar just be able to get it out there and put it out there to everyone who can hear and everyone can listen um there's there's obviously things that and and both of you are deeply involved in the khabar community as well so the sabbath community is an enigma to a certain degree to everybody outside of it it's such a powerful community you know you have the canister with thousands and thousands of people sitting in one ballroom and everyone obviously looks at it with an incredible amount of admiration russian wherever i travel in the world the first thing i always do whenever i go anywhere is look up the combat house and engage with them so my question is going to be is like where can there be some cultural diffusion and where should there be so we'll start with with rabbi y uh what is the most important thing that the yeshiva world needs to learn from chabad and what should chabad be learning from the yeshiva world so you know it's it's it sounds like a great question and to make for an exciting answer but the truth is i think that today we live in a generation where jews are so much exposed to each other that to put it frankly somebody who may be called a yeshiva a yeshiva type of guy is often saturated with a lot of the energy and the wisdom of khabad and sometimes somebody who grew up and calls themselves may actually still have to learn what the essence of khabad is so you know i don't see it as color where there's two teams they stand for this they stand for this and i'll let them learn from each other from each other i think when you're dealing with deep psychological spiritual and emotional truths when you're dealing with avoiding hashem things are very very intimate and very very personal and as hashem told shmol you know there's the guy who's maybe a lit for i don't know 30 generations but his entire persona and behavior day-to-day is a living embodiment of some of the great ideas of the poshemtov and sometimes conversely so i really would not address one community versus another community i think in any community and in every individual and collective there are great virtues and there are great flaws i would rather talk more about ideas and i think some of the ideas of chabad hasidis that are really ideas that i think deserve to become the passion of every single jew in order to really help us become the nation and the people that we need to become and bring a google consciousness to the world is i would say two of the foundational teachings of the bolshemitiv and of the balatanya number one this was on the death bed of the balshemative's father he was five years old and he told his son he said hystralik don't fear anybody or anything but hashem and number two love every jew with every fiber of your being and it became the two fundamental teachings of the bolshemite number one a nightmare meaning there's no division no real division in the world no real division between people if the doors of perception are cleansed everything appears as is a flow of divine infinity to be able to transcend fragmentation and dichotomy to be able to realize that all the wisdoms of the world is all part of oneness part of integrated divinity and infinity and that includes science and physics and psychology and mathematics and biology and medicine the rebel would always say the torah desire says that madrid says is a blueprint for the world the whole universe is a manifestation of terror spiritual oneness is everywhere and therefore you don't have to be afraid of anybody or anything because within every reality you could find the divine and number two is that ability to really see the souls and people to really be able to love every single jew and by extension it means loving humanity it's never using god as a crutch for our own religious insecurities and turning god into an excuse for judgmentalism dismissiveness ocd anger religious sense of superiority sometimes my religion could become the greatest obstacle to experience god because in the name of religion i could become judgmental i become full of hate and anger and vengeance and it's all blamed on god and i think the ba'shempt of the altar and were real embodiments of showing people that it's not about you know how religious or not religious you are it's really when you live with hashem in the deepest way so then whoever you meet you know you have one mission to help them find the godliness and holiness within them and i think this these are two very powerful ideals that when we live with them all of us those who call themselves i think when we live with them we change ourselves and we create so much light in our environment among our children among our students and uh you know i think that we're today we live in a world of cross-pollination and what does the world of ghoula look like it's a world where you don't look at this jew and say oh you're a bubba there you're a visionary you're a lit you're a lubavitcher you're a breast liver you're a modern orthodox you're this and right away i'm stereotype you and that's not the real world that's not the real world of of yiddish god the real world is a world in which of our souls shine and when our souls shine we realize that we are all one collective soul a manifestation of divine infinity whether i wear strangle i wear a baseball cap or wear a barcellino chicago hat or i wear a different type of yamaka and you know there may be some differences of nusa and distinctions and this emphasis or that emphasis but in that ultimate oneness of hashem we're all part of hashem you know stop chopping up god into so many different groups and pieces all right okay through this uh there are obviously i think i i'll give an example of something for example where i believe like the illuminati shiva so to speak could learn from ability to really just share whatever is valuable in terms of teaching other people like if you open up a chabad house in in any any city i'm not sure what cities there are not yet house so let's just call it if you open up one on the moon you can have immediately like all your educational components and you have like all the beautiful graphics there's an enormous amount of sharing of that information that that's the kind of things i was referring to more or certain um things but obviously you're you're going way deeper than that you're going to the the levels of like the the nishama level where we all come back to kuch vishal my brother and i my brother even more than i because he's told her i've heard this following statement by the laboratory i heard it maybe 200 times he probably heard it 900 times he quoted his great-great-grandfather altered the balatanya who would always say these words siddhis is nishiken which means never allow hasidis to become party politics don't turn it into a political party color war where the red team they're the green team we're going to win if we want colorway look at the kenosha oh but look at this event but look at that event you lost the plot you now went into a color war eco insecurity place which we all have we're human we're human we all have it whether you call yourself this type of jew or that type of jew his point was if you're really tuning in to the eloquence to the godliness of yiddish every person you see every jew you meet when you could cleanse yourself from external perceptions you realize that there is a deeper spiritual truth that really really unites us and that we are all part of okay so i'm going to do i'm going to take that answer and that answer is basically saying we're not we're not going to go into the divisions we're just going to go into the holy coast to the root level i really appreciate that i'm going to ask simmon one one question then we'll conclude with a final sort of a last remark from both of you so uh i want to talk to you a little bit more we're gonna delve into the mental health area mental health challenges are on the rise prior to covid the cdc reported that in 2019 about 20 of americans were receiving mental health treatment and at least 16 of them were using medications to help with their challenges obviously after a year of being isolated people literally having almost no outside human contact uh having the media on all sides trying to hype up the fear and the sense that large powerful groups are trying to harm you the mental health crisis today is far greater than it was before and while the numbers are better in the firm world and indeed my friend dr david rossmarin who's a psychiatrist and a professor at harvard medical school has published many articles showing that living a religious life having a belief in a bore and a creator and living a more community-based life as we do brings down the incidence of mental health crises significantly but we don't get a free pass and as a mood can well describe we have a lot of real challenges to mental health in our community the rates of anxiety clinical depression ocd even suicidal ideations that would shock most viewers who are tuning in so on behalf of all those who are suffering how does the person react with debilitating depression to the point that it's a massive struggle to get out of bed how does the person with such great social anxiety that they can never eat in public and can barely muster the courage to utter a word at a simcha how does the yeshiva boy battling ocd who's washing his hands 40 times a day to the point where his hands are raw when he goes back from seder to check that he didn't leave his jacket on his heater in his room 12 times a seder how does that person connect to hashem who obviously gave them these challenges challenges that they can't speak about to almost anybody because of all the stigma challenges they're afraid to talk about because of the of the ruining their own shidduchim with their families how does this person relate to the rabona shalom creator of ocd and creator of generalized anxiety disorder i i can't control myself from asking how how much time do i have for this answer i don't know asking you asking you're asking me or you're asking us to answer a question that really would resolve every possible problem on earth i mean we have 8 billion people and some people say 8 billion neurotics or or other forms of uh dealing with whether you're describing some of the conditions there are many others that you could include into the lot so to avoid getting into uh the generalities and really try to focus on a few key points let me pose the question a bit differently now you say god is the creator of ocd he's the creator of uh i guess uh schizophrenia of uh bipolar of depression all other types of disorders let's pose the question this way since god did create the human race and every human being and that's a a cloud that's a what does he expect of us he created us imperfect with the possibility of having different illnesses both physical emotional and mental so what does god expect of us you know to put it back go back to the idea that the toyota is the blueprint for life it's not just a blueprint whether the chicken is kosher or not kosher or what time shabbos begins or this is uh comets or not comets it's a blueprint for every aspect of our lives and and perhaps more relevant than anything is our personal well-being so how does a jew look at this if you ask a secular person they'll say okay that's why we have therapy and we have medication and you know what the world isn't perfect and that's it people are not well and god bless them whatever but tayden yiddish says we have answers we have healing that the world before khattei saddas was a healthy world and mashiach comes and the ula council be a completely healthy world so how do we integrate that i can tell you i've always asked ask this question to myself if the toyota has answers it shouldn't just have answers like i said in the what are the lamitas malachis or other technicalities in halakha the answers to the biggest issues that plague us are just talking to our parents who just had a down syndrome child and they can't get out what should we do this is a lifetime sentence so we're dealing with something that affects us all some in some ways more severe than others so the answer briefly is that the same abrasive that created the human being with all these challenges also created answers and solutions this doesn't mean that we can heal everything there are illnesses you can't physically hear heal but this doesn't mean we can't do anything about it we're not victims so the tater provides us with elaborate instructions let's just start with just eliminate one element dabrister says nitinus teaches us the gemara says maybe we can heal if god causes someone to be sick who are we to intervene there is a there is a havamina like that so tata says no but i beat up i've god says i've given permission which means i've given strength i've given medical wisdom my wisdom god is the healer i'm the healer but i've given the ability to human beings to figure out some medicine to figure out solutions whether it's physical medicine whether it's psychological medicine so that's one thing if a person's in a situation you don't go and say if god forbid a person is suffering from very severe anxiety you don't just say go learn tater or do a mitzvah yes in addition to that you have to go to a doctor neighbors to say so so that's critical to remember that going to a doctor is part of god's mandate it's not like saying that taylor doesn't have an answer that's the tater's answer the traitor is saying that a mr gave power just like he gave strength to a person you go to in any given area that's a matter on the other hand let's be honest like the rambam says israeli hagoof there are things that are indeed spiritual maladies that medic medicine alone and doctors alone and surgery and therapy is not enough you do need an element of godliness because remember the most important principle is that atamat vacant that when a person is aligned with their physical lives are aligned with their spiritual lives that's how you draw down energy what is health health is seamlessness a flow and a veda come is come from the word aveda means removed it moves away mitzvah means connection when a person does a mitzvah you're aligning your very physical life when a person is loving when a person is kind mitsuha it's not just you're doing another person a favor you're doing yourself a favor because you're feeding the chesad and the abba within your neshama aligning it to the way the abrasive created you you become a healthier person when a person rahman al-islam has sinned in their heart it's not just an aveda they're removing they're misaligning themselves so terra and mitzvahs and the whole jewish approach is also about healing tater it says me via the fool so coupled with any any of the medical interventions that are necessary we cannot ignore them we also look to create healthier children and healthier adults by being spiritually healthy my brother mentions some of the elements i'll mention a few more the idea of is not just a nice concept of monotheism that there's one god it means there's one reality that when you align yourself with that oneness within you you what do you do you counter fragmentation you counter all the different voices that drag you in many different ways so though that alone may not be the total solution to a mental health issue but it's definitely a big part of it so if you if you combine when necessary medical intervention psychological intervention with toyota intervention it's really a holistic picture that creates a a healthier person you know i'm taken by the name amudhim what does ahmudin mean pillars so of course we talk about the three pillars of three things that the world stands on what are the three pillars so most people say okay nice the whole because the british israelis is the basis of them holds up the world it's a lot deeper than that i'll translate it now into simple english which often is necessary to appreciate it think of it as cognitive emotional and behavioral conditioning the tata aligns your mind to think healthy you think transcendent you think about things that are beyond the material what's what's avaid available prayer it's emotional conditioning work in getting emotional intelligence becoming more empathetic to god and to others and what's happening behavior actions it's not enough just the mind and the heart you have to act in a healthier way i have an expression i use is you have to immerse yourself in a spiritual spa just like a body gets comforted as soothed through a physical spa what's what's a spiritual spa study prayer action sba tera of 80 mil so we have all that we need to address the issues now let's be honest i wanted to say with this and a final note we had the the bottom line is we can't always say we have the answer to all problems we are given the tools to try our best but we learn how to navigate and we learn how to grow and frankly if we did what we had to do many problems would disappear and many would definitely be alleviated but the abusers decide to do even after our efforts is up to god but the fact is there's no question in my mind and this is what i find valuable about our moodyman about all our efforts is we can bring a lot more healing to this world than we can imagine and definitely that we shouldn't be part of the problem but be part of the solution wow that was that was beautiful and especially the way you broke that down cognitive emotional behavioral and how we really we have the whole picture here we have the whole picture here quite beautiful okay so we are now down to our final question it's going to be a quick one uh so the the total answer time for this one is 60 seconds so in pirkei avos often it says which of course means he used to say but also in the hussitus they say his his in essence would tell you this when you watched him who are you i mean if you watch the way he lived it would scream out to you this message so we're now uh in our final question and we want to ask if there's a huhaya oyama that you would want to be to be known for god willing like you know what what is this not not what should be when someone's tombstone someone asked me yesterday what do you want they should say about you in your funeral is it i'd rather they just say i'm the guy who just wouldn't quit let him die wouldn't give up he's somehow breaking all the medical miracles but i'm saying what is the whoa mayor of rabbi simon what is the who i am of rabbi yy jacobson in 60 seconds or less because we do have to fit it somewhere i'm kidding shimon peres's son said at his funeral president of israel perez that he asked his son what do you want me to run on your tombstone and he said here's the man who died prematurely he was 94 years old uh and the huawei mate is a very uh very intense description but i'll tell you one message that i find when i communicate it to myself and to audiences and to people both individually and in groups it has i find a very very transformative impact and that is really you know as my brother just said every single one of us has challenges many people who call on buddhim suffer very severe challenges whether it's mental illness mental anguish whether it's serious abuse or not serious abuse but sometimes you know benign abuse can have the same horrible impacts and i can't always go back and you know replay the scenes of my life certain things are just facts but i think one of the profoundest ideas that yiddish teaches in such an incredible fashion is how i frame my experiences it's all about framing you know you can have the same piece of art but if you use a different frame it looks very different we call it reframing and the first one who taught us to do that was my original namesake joseph joseph endured one of the most difficult lives in history on so many levels and through people who were supposed to love him and yet instead of falling into the spear he became one of the most charming and enjoyable and beloved figures in the tamar he saved the world from famine and he told his brothers how he did it he said you did not sell me god sent me and what he was telling all of us is that any circumstances any mental pain mental illness challenges from within or from without and i'm confronting i could look at them in two ways one is i was sold i'm just a victim of other people's horrible choices a victim of my nature or my nurture my genes my epigenetics trauma of 2000 years or trauma from or i could say i was sent god sent me into this place i am an ambassador of the divine i'm ambassador of infinity charged to bring light into places that nobody else can but only me by the power of my infinite soul which is a manifestation of hashem in this world it doesn't take away the pain but the reframing of it transforms everything wow beautiful okay and rabbi simmons for the final word it's hard to define your own huhaya emer but i'll say this the abyss to create it god created each one of us with unique song within you that you and only you can sing another way of putting it i put it in my book toward a meaningful life birth is god saying you matter absolutely unconditionally you are indispensable so if i were to say one message that i would want to be remembered for and it's not my message it's a message which is ingrained in the very essence of terror is you were born an original don't become a copy you have songs inside you don't die with your song still inside you discover your unique mission and discover the courage to express it and you're fully capable of doing that we too many of us are conformists and we choose the easy path of just following the herd mentality you have a song you have many songs inside you i mean i'll quote michelangelo even though he wasn't jewish but he studied by jewish scholars when he was asked how do you carve those beautiful angels how do you sculpt them in the marble and his response which i'm sure he heard from the kabbalists in venice and in florence in italy in his time was this i see the angels trapped in the marble and i carved and carved and set them free we don't need to find beauty out there it's not in a book it's not on a shelf it's not in a product and it's not in botox it's right here inside you your song your angel your flower but it gets trapped in marble and concrete and other substances discover it let it soar spread its wings live up to the unique calling that only you you and only you can accomplish in this world wow okay this has been an incredible incredible discussion first of all to to talk with both of you people who clearly are here on a mission like rabbi y wise mayor and clearly are not copies of anybody uh and are really bringing out your own unique songs in the world so thank you so much for giving your time to amudin thank you for everything you do for clay straw and as we wrap we just want to say thank you so much to amudem for their incredible and never-ending 24 7 support of claudius in every way shape and form will give you continued success and and you should you should be able to thrive until we no longer need you and hashem with the coming of the messiahs rabbi levy yes say something yeah can i say something absolutely and i just think it's important i wanted to say it before but it slipped my mind and that is you know i think it's so so important for everybody hearing this this session this program or any of the other sessions may pass it on to others whether you're listening or watching live or replay whatever it is just to realize that we as a community and as individuals we have to eliminate the stigma of not allowing young men and women to feel comfortable to speak about their anguish and suffering and pain if you're suffering from depression if you're suffering from other forms of internal psychological and emotional suffering trust me you can ask my brother you will certainly agree with me all of us in every single family there is dysfunction the only families i know that are perfect are the families i don't know the only people i know are perfect other people don't know each one of us is dealing with a lot a lot of stuff this this myth of the perfect froome family is non-existent it never existed it never will exist until mashiach comes from arabia there are people you can trust not everybody but there are people you can trust open up because there's a lot of help out there i mean beautifully spoken and uh i think we still have to go back to and here's the shame with me she has to call them harry minutes that's how we have to always rap so thank you so much again and we look forward to continued success and and continue learning the wisdom of the jacobson family yes thank you thank you thank you [Music] it's an enormous close it's a great privilege and pleasure once again to have the opportunity to have a conversation with muriel varabi with your shefter shlita and we're so grateful to reby for this opportunity and for this time and to have a conversation that i think so many people would be curious about that can be both instructive for how we live our lives and asking shailas and getting sack and following a certain mesoara of and to also understand behind the scenes the mind of a posik and what goes through the process of trying to answer asha'allah and serving in that role um reshectors not only russia shiva rebbe but rebbe is also a postdeck of the ou rebbe is a post-sake of claustro who receives calls from around the world on a on a regular basis and claudius so benefited i personally we all benefited from rabbis had raha rabbi's direction rabbis throughout the whole corona pandemic the sheila's that came out the chuvas that came out that gave us clear concise relatable real directions on what we should be doing communally and for different yamuna tovim and in our own personal and our own practical lives and i know that even those who had not considered themselves talmidam students of rabbi previously from different segments of the torah of the orthodox world read and learned and followed those pisces and found them to be invaluable and among the many reasons we are so grateful and indebted to rebbe was rebbe's tremendous hard work during that period and now to continue to give us guidance in that area and more so it's an honor to have this opportunity to have this conversation about the system of halacha and the system of saks so pascal halacha means original shilohs that come up um maybe during corona is an example or medical ethics or technology is changing discoveries innovation so there's original sac but then sometimes there's a machlokis in halacha and a person is not necessarily pascaning but they're choosing between two different sakkan that exist so for example can you open cans and shabbos a person learns the suggya and a person looks inside and sees rasam and held this way and must show this with a hazard this way can they decide which one makes more sense to them i learned the suggya i see it's a mahlokis of the post kim and the the argument that this one made resonates more for me i think it's more correct so i'm going to open cans or i'll choose not to open cans it's not an original sock someone's making they're taking the existing suck him and deciding which way to go i don't think that's right either if not if a person is not on the level that is able to push and he's not really on the level to choose which one of the different postcommittee thinks makes more sense either you have to know so much there's so much outside information you have to know in order to know which of the three sheets let's say makes more sense over here i don't think so that's the common mistake now the boys all learn new shivers till they get married and they think they know how to read a mishnah bird therefore they know how to how to pass them whatever it says mishna i don't think that's right they don't know how to pass we don't always follow the mishna brewer and uh and even if you do always follow you may not realize that there is more to the shadow than what you saw at first it could be that it's more complex than more aspects i don't think it's a smart idea to uh any every bachelor who learns in ishiva he should be macri on his own which which of the post committee should follow it could lead to to actually following contradictory succumb because maybe you like roshaman over here with moshe over there but it's an inconsistent and ends up being a contradiction so what does one need to do one has to have a rebbe one has to have a dedicated post sake and then go through all the areas of this casual and say in any area that's my rebbe or my misora how should i possibly in that area that's the mishnah it says you have to have a rebbe and the days of the immortals who will tell me the mother of my father the shaman those that's the main thing you follow your b mover the torah tells us an institution of zelka and mamre whenever there's a macholic is in town rivers that definite means is causing friction it's not causing friction so and more so they should follow the rabbling wars and vilna they should follow the rabbit on that prerogative and follow the rabbi and prague you don't always have to present all the shadows to rabbi yoshi you don't present all the shadows to the best not gold if there's no friction you leave everything the way it is and say eliminate that every community should follow their rapper if it's causing friction then you have to present the shadow to the best not go and then everyone is obligated to follow that suck so you have to take every question in every area of halacha and have one rebbe that you turn to one rabbi mavak and ask all those questions so internally being consistent sir more correct is that you have to have one rebbe mover can you follow everything that that rebbe says because really everything is interconnected and you may be observing contradictory ishitas maybe that everything hinges on how he read a certain gemara so you think that absalom is almost suck makes more sense here in the house attack main parts over there but they're contradictory because how do you deal with the other gemara so you have to be consistent you really have to pick one ready i'll say the rav so people who are aware of let's say certain leniencies or stringencies of rasalaveichik but they only keep what makes sense or is convenient a person has to be consistent or of or over a shechter somebody knows a certain sacrifice in a certain area and wants to invoke or quote that but is ignoring astringency in another area that's not correct that is correct that it is not correct yes a person has to be internally uh consistent yeah can a person have different rebellion in different areas of al-aqha the tires of i speak to this rebbe when it comes to castras i speak to this rebbe or even in across areas of allah one day i think the khazanesh has a little essay called the munabi tohansa that little essay written fancy style hebrew poetic so he writes that years ago before the industrial revolution he would have one rabbi who would pascan on nora day in a venezuelan he would give hash coffee he would give on pillpool and marcotte the same rebbe was the rebbe and everything after the industrial revolution so everything is you divided the labor so one one person sews on the buttons on the right arm one person sews and the buttons are left and one person makes the packets inside there's a doctor for the left foot and the doctor for the right foot so we divided everything so that khazrish was an expert in in arrogance there consulted him when rabbi mung from paris said to shyla in the middle of the war second world war about the arab and paris so he sent a letter to the hazarisha where he lived in eretz israel and then whenever isa had a shia language migration so he sent to charlatan brother who was an expert on mick voice hashtag as well also but apparently crime also felt that america realized that brother was a bigger expert than poscaning and he'll cosmic was and the tribal was written in the broadway central hotel in new york that's what he writes there so after the industrial revolution everything is divided so every yeshiva has given it gives musa then they have a poster coupe and then you have the rebbe who says that pull them out we divided everything and then sometimes this person is an expert in everything he's an expert in tarasam the other one is an expert in hillary because each one is an expert in something else we live in a generation where it's hard to have one person be the expert in all areas and we hope that they're not contradictory when we follow the expert and arabian there the other one is the expert in tarzan we hope that they're not contradicting each other but really more correct would be if i say look around one rebbe or it's hard to have one ready move books and maybe if you have a group of rabbi mo falcons and then you follow the majority the consensus of the group and you'll consider your every movement by the ashkenazi and by the spartan probably let's say each group has let's say five hundred of one of the folk we all follow the rambam and rashi and rabbit and the rea and the ramban the whole and then the ashkenazim followed them i don't even know the names so it comes out each group has five hundred rabboni mafum that they look up to and each group follows the consensus so the consensus by this is going to be in one direction and census by the ashran assam is going to be another direction because we don't have really one rebbe movement we have a group of rabbi daniel marcy who follow the majority opinion so coming back to the question of what are the criteria to be a post sake so no i'm calling tarakula not just being an expert or not even just being knowledgeable illiterate in one area having a certain heck of having a certain understanding of kola tarkula but let's say a person learns and and is literate and called tarakula and they're coming to a different conclusion than the standard motion what right do they have to argue well right do they have to put their head between these great mountains between these great people maybe they should say if if i come to a different conclusion it must be because i'm wrong what what makes them entitled to tapaskin for themselves or for others that's a very serious question how does a person know whether he's we have they keep on printing kiswayad from the days of the bali artists the tankis we had some of them are utterly ridiculous just like we have people putting out swarm today that are utterly ridiculous and these are the ballets of the tamidim are writing things that are ridiculous uh you have ukrainian i remember once someone gave me a martina a set of charleston childress and we were on vacation in the mountains so one night after i finished learning with the boys on a thursday night so i was looking at the safest and my wife see my wife was knitting uh something and she asked me what's so funny i'm reading at you and said what's so funny so i said that yankel abstinent gave me this montana set of sort of it's entertaining it's humorous silly there's spicy wrote true are utterly ridiculous and every generation their people are out so that's very difficult how does a person know how to judge on himself that is every generation there were people who thought that they were god's gifts to the world they were not exactly their gifts to the world idea okay but not in that's a very tricky thing that's uh not so easy to decide on your own that you're not everybody has smith not everybody who knows how to how to read gemara is a conference yeah you have to have more than that and and to have a right to disagree with those who came earlier ramosa how did emotional he could disagree with those who came earlier that was uh right yeah there was after uh after ramosha published all this his friends there was a certain prominent new york area who published uh say for attacking ramosha they such about how does he have the hoods but to disagree with that and the beer agro so moshe was very hurt and he said i don't think i'm bigger than them those who knew i knew emoji a little bit he was so humble he was ridiculously humble he was so friendly with everybody he wasn't arrogant at all he was unbelievably humble but he said he thought he was entitled to an opinion and he said if he's entitled to an opinion he's entitled even to disagree with the others he said maybe he's not a title therapy but he says he didn't he didn't want to give his opinion but people pressured him robot and were insisting they want to hear his opinion so i said okay if they want to hear my opinion i'll give him my opinion i have to give my image to give your honest to goodness opinion even it's a disagreement but the other says there is not been that because that some surfer was a bigger genius and he knew more than me i have no right to disagree maybe i'm not entitled to an opinion at all but if i am entitled to an opinion if i'm i'm entitled even to disagree with those who are greater than me so we could turn to rebbe a little bit there are russia yeshiva and magi desire who are not post kim there are postgame who are not giving shir in the yeshiva they're not russia yeshiva rebbe of course i think was one of the youngest if not the youngest appointed as a russia shiva is a magazine and continues to serve in that role uh today russia shiva rasha yeshiva and at the same time is a post-sector classroom for the ou any consumer of ou products anywhere in the world is is atom that is relying on rebbe's sock because that's what's guiding the ou and in so many other areas so when did rebbe who was giving sheer at a young age and and was giv