Ask The Rabbis 3 Part 1

welcome back everybody for another edition of ask the rabbis here's our panel our very happy panel here this morning once again we have robert yolovsky with alaska from your chilean we have god who's joining us from the beach out in costa rica now from jerusalem israel that's how pretty it looks and of course our eighth luck feldman who uh is traveling but managed to find a space uh you know suitable for this ask the rabbi panel i want to apologize ahead of time to our audience because here i am sitting um i know my camera flashing and some type of background here but i am in b dude or quarantine uh for the next couple of days um so i'm not able to get to my office but of course i had a very nice setup but the torah learning's got to go on we're going to do it from this uh these confines over here uh roberto of gov right feldman pleasure to have you on once again or i've got you on youtube don't even uh don't even bother answering until you take yourself off of you again just okay uh today we're discussing um orthodox jewelry conservative jewelry reform jewelry all the different sects of judaism um there is a feeling amongst jews that are non-orthodox that somehow orthodox jews orthodox looks down upon them doesn't consider them to be as jewish as uh as we are it's we orthodox jews are etc and so we put out feelers a bunch of people wrote back with questions that they have and i try to categorize them in a way that will give our viewers the most organized way of dealing with this so i'm going to ask the questions there's there's a three questions here that i'm going to bunch together that are sort of on the same topic and then um just judging by the most charismatic and photogenic i'm going to start with you roberolovsky if you don't mind so we so we can get things started absolutely here we go okay question is the category of these questions is i am just as jewish as you are comes up a lot so the first question is why do the orthodox jews think non-orthodox jews are not jewish or lesser jews and that their movements that they're part of and the synagogues etc are not legitimate okay i'm gonna question number two in this category is is that do certain practices define me as a jew by keeping shabbos for example right if i do something that i'm jewish when if i don't do something that i'm sort of less jewish or not jewish and thirdly is this since this question bothers a lot of non-orthodox jews it's obvious that it reveals their deep desire to be good jews they want to be good jews so what is a good jew is a good jew defined by orthodox judaism what a good jew is or is it defined by certain rituals that they have to do let's define what is a good jew sir verolavsky is a category of is orthodox judaism the only way and somehow everyone else is less of a jew is it a certain practice that can make me jewish and thirdly i want to be a good jew what is a good jew if you could define that okay well i i want to start by saying that this is an issue that is particularly sensitive to me uh being i think the only balchuba here i think all you people have fees right yeah so uh what i haven't done silva yet okay so we have a um not f fb just like uh just a front this is a particularly sensitive point for me um i i have to give a little background my father uh grew up in brownsville his father was an orthodox jew but he knew nothing he was a simple jew from poland who uh knew what he knew kept what he knew but my father had no jewish education and if you know from that generation my father born 1925 you know you had to make it on your own and my it was during the depression my father had to drop out of school help support his family and uh he kept whatever he remembered and we did whatever we did we moved out to long island and my father was one of the founders of the east meadow jewish center which was a conservative synagogue i knew my father grew up in an orthodox synagogue and i knew that he that he felt uh a connection to that i was wondering why i was conservative and i spoke to one of the other founders and they said look we came out to long island the whole thing was nothing it was all built from scratch and uh it was all farmland that was turned into houses and um and uh we had to start so um we called down representatives from reform the conservative and the orthodox so the orthodox said we have nothing for you and the reform came down it was too much for us most of us came from orthodox homes you know and it was too much for us and conservative it was it had the feel of an orthodox synagogue my rabbi was orthodox the kantha was orthodox the sinner was orthodox but they had mixed seating and microphones and uh you know it was comfortable it was comfortable and he said and the united synagogue came down and said we'll give you a charter we'll give you seed money we'll give you names of rabbis we'll give you everything pre-packaged that you can start with so it was just too good an offer to turn down and so almost every synagogue that opened over that was conservative the point is though that reform and conservative have a philosophy that's what people forget most people were like my dad right i said to him once dad what are we are we reformed we're conservative or orthodox my father worked saturday he would come home uh friday night from work after shabbos and he would he would make kiddush and hamutsu and we'd have brisket and chicken soup you know and uh and i said to him once i said dad what are we reformed conservative orthodox so he says well we're conservative we go to a conservative synagogue so i said you know dad um conservative says you have to keep shabbos awesome he says okay then we reform and and i found that answer is so telling because it's a lot of ways that people define their judaism if you keep 30 your reform sixty percent of conservative ninety percent sure orthodox 100 you're hasidic you know that's why you can have terms like conservadox 75 you know reformative 43 you know and people define themselves not by what they believe but by but by their their level of practice um people used to ask me when i was younger is your father religious and i said no my fries not religious because my father had worked on saturday how could he how could he be religious and as i got older and i became nuanced i realized my father was what we would call a non-practicing orthodox jew his philosophy was orthodox but he didn't do it he didn't keep everything listen full disclosure i don't keep everything a lot of things i don't keep you know i i don't justify it to myself i know i should do it i know i shouldn't speak lashinahara i shouldn't speak bad about other people but i do and i'll tell you who and i'll tell you why and i'm gonna name names just kidding but um but uh but the fact is i'm not perfect so so the goal is not the level of observance the goal is the belief system so reform it's very easy they don't believe that the torah was given by god they believe that judaism is a set of traditions and whenever i would speak to a reformed um jew leader anybody i always ask them the same question why should i be a reformed jew and they say to me because was it oxy is this an orthodoxy is that i said okay that tells me i shouldn't be an orthodox jew why should i re-inform you because it wasn't like i said okay you convinced me i'm out okay i'm done i give it up you know stan give me a ham sandwich now tell me why should we reform very hard answer to a question to answer they say well morality i said i can be a secular moralistic person what do i have to be a reformed jew for what if i go to synagogue what do i need any of this for it's a very hard question to answer and uh that's why conservative because i grew up in conservative and i actually know what conservatives believe in most people don't you know it the whole thing is set on a contradiction because on the one hand they say we have tommy scholars too and we follow the talmud the other thing is they have this concept that solomon shakhtar came up with called catholic israel which means the jewish people will ultimately decide what they accept so when it came to ordaining women so the talmud department of j uh jts said you can't do it hologram and they put it through a vote of the congregations the congregation said we want to but then so then you're not a halal movement you've got to make a decision either you're a halal movement or you're not a movement and there's so then you basically reform light and that's what ends up happening is they get caught in between the two of them so um so orthodox jews and at least conservative jews or reformed jews feel like orthodox jews are viewing them as lesser jews let me that's what i'm trying to explain to you you're not defined by your level of observance if you're a jew you're a jew right some jews do more some jews do less that doesn't take away from your judaism now let's be fair okay reform said we don't believe in the torah anymore and we're going to convert you to our religion now the protestants at least had the decency to make themselves their own religion when they broke off from catholicism i respect that and if the reform would not call themselves judaism they would call themselves hebraicism i'd be okay with that but you can't say i deny the basis of your religion i'm going to convert somebody to it and then demand that you accept them as a jew that's not fair you can't you can't just change the rules in the middle and then demand that we play by it and and and i have no problem with it i was speaking to a girl once in the discovery and uh you know she didn't have an orthodox conversion and uh she was she somebody told her you know her luckily you're not a jew and she was very offended and she asked me she was very upset she asked me and i said do you think you're jewish she said yeah i said so who cares what anybody else thinks she says well i want i want to be respected by all jews i said okay so then orthodoxy has standards the same standards judaism had for 3 300 years we didn't change anything we're still going by the same definitions that we've always used so if you want your grandchildren to marry my grandchildren okay so if you think it's worth your while but if you decided that i had a reformer concerned conversion and i'm happy with that i think i'm a jew that's fine with me but we have definitions it's not based on observance these i haven't been a perfect jew i've met a perfect idiot but i've never met a perfect jew yeah the person said to me once ah i feel like a perfect idiot i said nobody's perfect you know but you come close so uh okay so so you see a fall short that's why i said with my father you know my father uh became sugar shabbos at the end of his life he always wanted to he sacrificed to get his kids a jewish education he used to have a pastor with savior he kept the kosher home he worked on shabbos he was in the flower business he thought he had to go in on saturday you know so so what is he what is he compared to somebody else who keeps everything but never thinks about it grew up with it is doing everything from rote you know has made no choices and sacrifices so that's why there's god i'm not god yeah i don't like the hours i'm very happy where i am you know and so me to sit down and start judging this jew is better than that jew or this jew yeah there's only two types of jews there's only two types of jews and those are coming into rosh hashanah right we talk about the book of life in the book of death what's the difference whether we're pointed towards god or away from god that's it if we're pointed towards god then that's it we're heading in the right direction so you're over here and i'm over here and he's over there okay it's not a race you know i'm pointing towards god if i'm running away from god's okay so i'm running away from god by the way that doesn't make me not a jew doesn't make me not a jew so uh so those are my personal thoughts on the matter there's more to say but as far as i'm concerned i have any jew who considers himself a jew today after 000 years of exile of pogroms of inquisitions of a holocaust and you want to be a part of us i more power to you i don't think there could be anything better than that or greater than that what you do and what you don't do listen you know there's always room for improvement i have to tell you one last story and then i i'll stop talking at least at least for a minute but uh you know mark twain was having problems with his back so he went to a doctor the doctor said you have to stop smoking you have to stop drinking and you have to stop carousing so he does and his back feels better so one day he's someplace and he meets this elderly woman and she says i'm having back planes pains so you have to stop smoking she goes i don't smoke you have to stop drinking because i don't drink well you have to stop carousing she goes i don't care house he goes well if you don't have any problems how can i help you those are some thoughts got it okay let's go to you and so specifically again you know roberto is basically you know very very amazing point at the end saluting anybody that wants to be part of this nation that has gone through what we've gone through you know without judging where you are on the on the totem pole but i'm sure you've come across this where people feel that they're judged by the orthodox community as being a lesser jew because of their movement whether it be conservative reform et cetera you know what what's your take on people being lesser or more of a jew in these categories i first just have to share with you that i am thoroughly surprised by the holy rabbi's response he went soft over there and i'm very very impressed the way that he responded at the end it was beautiful if you want to be part of it that's great and i agree with that but i was expecting it with the knockout at the end and i'll explain what i mean by that there are two things that are going on there's something called being a jew these are impossible can't you care exactly you say something nice we come at you you see something straight up we come at you uh don't forget we're just fbs anyway so and we're just getting started exactly we're just from births um there's two there's two factors here one is something called judaism and there's another something else called a jew a jew is a jew if your mother is jewish or you convert to judaism then you are jewish uh then there's something called judaism and this is a question that like lake roberto asked his father so what are we i like to ask this question when somebody says they're jewish they say what does that mean what does judaism mean forget orthodox conservative reform define judaism and when they say religion i say oh christianity they say no no no it's a religion i'm like oh buddhism well they're like yeah i'm like oh so it's the same thing they go no i'm like so what's the difference what is judaism and and by the way i i challenged also orthodox conservative reform and constructionist and 43 and 75 in between right everybody to answer the question what is judaism and essentially when did it become what's known as the jewish people we were known as hebrews right we were we were traveling and i don't mean the actual term yehudi because that's that's a different concept but i mean what do we call this essentially when we stood at mount sinai and we received the torah god gave us a book and this the book is is if you've ever watched any of my shirt you're going to see also different ways of defining this but i'm going to use it just for all intents and purposes right now to say he gave us a guide of how to live our life which is a mandatory yet optional and what i mean by that is you have to do it but you have the option not to it's mandatory yet optional which means just like a red light you have to stop there but you have the option not to and the difference in red light in god is that uh you know god is at every street corner right so you're not getting away without some sort of consequence for better or worse in everything we do so this is really what it comes down to a jew is a jew is a jew if you feel like realizing you feel like you're jewish so what do you care that's a discussion of that girl's self-esteem and why she feels she needs everyone else to care what she is but the reality is just because you feel like you're jewish doesn't mean that you're jewish if your mother is jewish or you convert to judaism you're jewish then there's something called a practicing jew one who practices judaism i have judaism i have a jew and i put them together and like the holy rabbi said it's foot you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who's doing everything i think there are a few out there good you know great great people out there um i am not one of them but the way i like to say it is am i trying to do the right thing and sometimes i fall to my desires or am i not even attempting to do the right thing and sometimes i accidentally do it that's really dude's direction are you headed and just uh i guess just to keep this a little more succinct and short-term hold on to my to my holy holy brother of yitzhak feldaim i want to just uh end with a little a little story although like always like you know these are sound bites each one of us i don't say probably i know have hours on this alone but but here's here's the deal there's a rabbit named robert i said everything i got to say yeah you're right yeah i believe that like i bought the bridge off you last week but anyway so rabbi again i want my money back anyways there's a big there's a big rabbi named mordechai gifter when i mean by big i mean stature he was a stat he was a great great sage he actually wasn't that big but rev gifter who was what most would call an orthodox or perhaps even ultra orthodox jew wearing the whole monkey suit the black the white the you know the beard the whole thing the nine yards the hat and the whole thing and he once came to speak to again he's an orthodox rabbi coming to speak to orthodox jews and he comes into the shul to the synagogue and when he comes in he gets up and it's quiet because you give honor to the rabbi totally quiet and he starts by saying i just want everyone here to know i'm not orthodox if if you are orthodox you'd understand the shock waves that went through the shul everyone was like a little there was a what he goes relax i'm not conservative i'm that reform i'm not a b c i'm not conserving dox i'm not any of these things he said i am a jew who is trying to keep god's book the term orthodox is a term which came into being because you had to define groups it's relatively new there was no such thing as orthodox judaism it was judaism and most for the most part it was practicing judaism and unfortunately over the years people fell off for whatever reason the rabbi mentioned many of them put grums and holocausts and who knows what's and all the terrible things that happened and traveling in inquisitions and exiles etc but at the end of the day there's something called a jew who practices judaism it's not orthodox a former conservative so the question at the end of the day is do we know what the book is do we know what the book says and are we attempting to do that if at the end of the day we're not succeeding everything okay we're trying at the end of the day we have to at least put in our time and that my friends is how i would define this concept it's not that are better or worse about about just defining our terms okay rabbi feldham i'm glad god gave save some time to you here but um i'm sure you have people from different sects and movements of judah who want to be good jews right what what defines a good jew is it only people who the category of orthodox judaism and it's the letter of the law guys or or doing some type of practice or ritualistic thing what is a good jew how would you how would you describe you know the guy coming to see being a good jew so i think the first thing to get cloud i mean i agree with everything that they both both batman did a pretty solid job over here but i i just want to give a turn a good way to think of it is this distinction between good and evil and right and wrong and a lot of the questions get resolved when you when you argue out the difference between those two approaches what does it mean to be right and wrong and what does it mean to be good and bad so in this week's pirate show we have chauffeur judges and policemen there are two different jobs one job is the judge what is correct what is the proper way to live that's an intellectual process of is there something called correct once we determine what is correct then is an emotional struggle to live up to my my personal value system while while we all can differ in what our beliefs are as opposed to what is right in regards to what is right and wrong what's correct and incorrect in the intellectual struggle the chauffeur the judge the judgment part of life the struggle of goodness is really the same for everyone goodness is the emotional struggle for me to adhere to what i already believe so you can technically be a very good person and at the same time be wrong you know you imagine that is a crazy metaphor but imagine this kid growing up in a nation of cannibals you know and and the mother says you know like mikey i made your favorite supper you know and like he says i'm not eating it whatever you know and because i worked so hard because i don't care you know so it happens to be a french explorer so so mikey is 100 right in not eating the french explorer because you're not supposed to eat people but at the same time you have to eat french people they give you indigestion well i'm sorry french people give you indigestion we call them freedom explorers now anyways so so but at the same time the kid could his courts predict to his mother and he's disregarding everything that how hard she works for him and a person could be can be right and be bad and can be wrong and be good and it's important to separate to make those distinctions i i i i'd like this like i started like started off i used to do a lot of debates with reforming conservative rabbis and i would make the exact same point is that i would start if i was saying i don't know why we're having a debate i don't know who decides these things people like to see people fighting each other the truth of the matter is is that we're all exactly the same we all believe the same stuff if you get into the ideologies the right and the wrong of it the orthodox believed that god gave the torah and therefore we believe we have to keep the whole thing we have a hard time when people want to do things that are forbidden we have to be strong the reform have the opposite program problem they believe that god didn't give a torah so you don't have to keep any of it the problem is then is they have to justify why they have any laws why you can't intermarry why you have your kipper the conservative found this place in the middle where god sort of gave the torah so you you should keep it when you can when it gets difficult you don't really have to it's a little hazy but what i said in my what i always started my debate with is bottom line is of you are shocked to hear that your movements don't believe in the torah you don't you don't know that you thought they have some kind of explanation how the torah is true but we don't have to keep it today for some other reason no the reason why they don't require it is because they don't believe it was given so you none of you are really reformer conservative you're all non-perfectly practicing orthodox that's we are all struggling the good and the bad is difficult you know in anything in life everyone agrees that you have to be welcome be loving and respectful to your parents but it's a struggle how you know no one gets no one has a right to be insulted if you say you're not a good son if you uh if you don't call your mother you know you don't visit once a year mother's day you send her a card that's not called a good son all of a sudden when it comes to religion people have a problem with these terminologies listen if there's something real there's something called being a child and parent then there's something called being a good child and a good after some if you don't believe in in if you believe into something called judaism then there's a barometer of what's called what's called jewish okay so that that's that's my first thing so good and i i'm going to show you let me give you two tools this is to sort of again we're not just answering the questions we're asking sort of how to communicate these ideas so let me give you two quick anecdotes that will explain my approach to this the first thing is to be able to show someone this distinction between good and bad and right the torah has real rules it's a fun story i had this great guy in my neighborhood when i was a rabbi a little bit irreverent but fun i love those kind of guys like he would drive by on this he'd see me on my porch pull in with his cigarette and go rabbit how are you doing can i have some challenge you know whatever i love thing i'd be a lot of fun i like it's a challenge you know he wasn't uh a wallflower he called me one day and i figured i could play with a guy like this so the guy calls me up one day goes rabbi i get a mazel tov my wife had had a boy i said mazel tov he goes can you give me a number of a real moell i said i most certainly can't give you the number of them all because what do you mean because if i hear that you gave your kid a bris i'm calling the police because what are you talking about what's the matter with you i said don't you dare give your kid a risk he goes oh gosh i'm reformed i'm not a jew but you're as jewish as i am so he goes so why are you not giving me moles number i said because it's child abuse sexual child abuse you know what happens to people like you in jail what right do you have to to cut your kid make him bleed and film it and throw a party because well you don't give your kid a wrist i said every one of the boys every one of them because so what your bet i said it's very simple i believe that god gave us a torah that commands us to give kids a bris you don't believe that god gave the torah you think it's all hogwash so what right do you have to cut your kid in public and film it because because it's fun he goes well my grandfather did it and my father did it my grandfather i said someone's got to stop the cycle of abuse you know what's the matter with you it's going to go on forever you don't have a right to cut your kid because it makes you feel good because your family did it people have to reassess their ideas this isn't a feeling i do it because i believe that god said so i believe it's right and therefore when i do it moral you're it's the same thing as as jewish mothers secular jewish mothers who don't want their kid to intermarry you're a racist you should be proud of your kid that he grew up in a racist home and he's going to marry the best girl he could find and overcome his appearance and biases and prejudices i don't we don't interact with that god said so but if you don't believe that god said so on what grounds are you separated between races so people need to understand this it's not a difficult thing to get clear to them once you iron this out it's very enlightening and i could say you know so now that you have an ideology now we can talk about how good you are okay okay right i'm gonna i'm gonna tell you i'm gonna give you a chance afterwards to get to your second point but just to really really obsess what you're saying is that you're saying is if you believe in the book and have you alluded to this also if you believe in the book and you believe that god gave this torah so then all of a sudden you could start to judge levels of observance based on the book and that belief but if you don't believe in it to begin with and we're on two different playing fields it's no longer a level of where you're holding on the total rule is that correct but but you can i want to show now but you can be a good person you don't believe in the books you have a different stamp no you could be a good person so what people say if the book is real you may be wrong i want to show that now but let me say by the way this guy i gave him the number of the moe but because at the end he says to me he has to say the magic words maybe i do believe you're supposed to give i said good make sure your kid knows that you said that when he has a brisk he should know because his father believes in something it'll change his life got it that's like that's like whatever lafsky was saying about his father right he believed in orthodoxy he just wasn't necessarily you know doing everything but he said believe it right so robert last thorough riolavsky there are people who um there are people specifically non-orthodox people who have a big complaint because they say look you know at the end of the day even orthodox jews you know you guys have to deal with like modern issues you know there's things called shabbos clocks there's a rooms and stuff there's there's there's contemporary issues and you took the torah and what the rabbis back then had said and you you've been able to modernize it to be you know to be contemporary so why is that different than our rabbis you know making making judaism more contemporary within our communities yeah a arab was one of those newfangled notions that was introduced by king solomon i mean let's just just keep a perspective over there but i i always find arab as a as a uh a wonderful example because um i i i urge you to go to uh find a clip of this video from the daily show where um they send this correspondent out into the hamptons to because there are people who are opposing them building an arabs and you you look at this and goes you can see how terrible it is can't you no yeah little no that little string this is this tiny little string you know and uh and the idea is now my mother said the same thing to me that's why i find it interesting she wanted me to open the refrigerator on shabbos and i said i can't because the light goes on so she says what if we put one of those strings up around the house then could you do it yeah right but the the famous one is when this guy comes by he sees a guy putting up you know you guys sees a guy carrying on travis he says you know why are you carrying on travis he says well you see those things you know on the side we consider that to be you know door posts he says aha and what's the thing on that well we consider it to be you know an idea of letting you know that you're crossing territories in there why don't you just consider today's sunday and it'll be much easier you know right so uh so it's a good example right you know so so in this video the guy has an a-ra pad he has a hat with like a bunch of poles and strings around and he goes rabbi now if you wear this can you eat the ham sandwich so some people say look god said you can't carry and the rabbis were the wink of the night they said yeah put up some poles in the string and then you can carry no yeah they said you can't carry an irish robber which is a public thoroughfare you can put up strings and sticks from today till tomorrow you still can't carry there because god says you can't carry there except what there's a place that's not a public thoroughfare it's it's not considered or it's just a wrapping right and you could carry there but the rabbi said don't carry there because if you carry there you might end up taking it and carrying it into the richest around the public thoroughfare but if you set up these strings in the and the sticks then we know you'll remember not to carry out so the rabbis are the ones who forbade you to carry there unless you put up the strings but you can't just magically make something in the door go away poof yeah so so uh shabbos clocks it goes back to the mishna the question is could i put on my water mill that it's going to grind uh going into shabbos so the answer is i said it before shabbos it's my possessions it's not me it's not my animals it's not my children it's not my my workers it's just my property is doing stuff i can continue to do it because i'm not doing anything it was done beforehand and it's doing it but so to speak my my uh my possessions are working but not me that's what a sharpest clock is based on but you will never find you know people and the great term they use for this is called the evolution of yes there is an evolution of as time goes on it gets stricter and stricter mostly because we become dumber and dumber right so for example how do you make a matzah there's a recipe in the mishnah take flour and water make it into a ball slap it on the side of the oven and then peel it off today we call that a lava yeah and you can make a schwammer those big those big flatbreads that's what it was like and then we said we didn't know how to make sure it was cooked through so we make it really thin we put holes in it we burn it so that the box is tastier than the matzah and then we charge 80 a pound but that's the evolution of malacca but you'll never find a case where the torah says oh you get your you know you you uh you could certainly allow something that the torah forbade the other great example they always bring is ebook it says that if your brother dies and doesn't have any children you marry his wife and then today we say that's not socially acceptable so do halita instead a whole ceremony with the shoe and whatever right but the torah gives you both options all the rabbis are saying is don't take option a take option b but they didn't say option a doesn't work and they didn't say option b does work or we invented option b both examples were there so uh so that's why when they when they whenever you find a loophole and you take a look at the loophole nine out of ten times it's going on a rabbinic law that the rabbi said you can't do this unless you we built into it a certain statement where whereas whereas why why you know many reform and and our rabbis are also making you know reforms and evolutions to what was halacha right as long as once you move into the realm of the torah says you can't do this and we say you can that's where that's where you shift that's that's the guideline you know so uh so you suddenly come up and say you know well the torah says you're not allowed to do this but the torah says you can't make a fire that's a that's a verse in the torah but that's because back then they needed a flint they needed this they had to get that they had to do this all big thing now we just you know uh we turn on the oven no you just made that up out of thin air just don't make a fire no you you came up with this whole thing you know says why is it saying kosher well you know uh pork isn't good for you and it's just this problem refrigeration no it says don't eat pork it's really very pretty straight forward robert rabbi feldman how do you how do you break down for people the concept of how we we're logically saying that you that we as long as you don't cross the line of making something the torah said don't do into a do you know that you can evolve you know jewish law into things into practices today and how that differs from what you know how or our conservative reform rabbis might be taking the letter of the law yeah i i'll tell you i think i think the way we're talking about it misses the whole point you're going to sit here and defend every single rabbinic law and show you how it works the issue is a much more simple issue is people are under the impression that rabbis bless things and they go poof and this is how it is and just because you're some some artificial spiritual level you have power to change things people just need to understand what a rabbi is when i was a kid and i went to israel i went to mir so i i always we grew up was the leader of the generation there was a menachem and he was getting older and uh i wanted to hear him go on it oh my rebellion would all tell me stories of this and you know and sort of like you know your your growth is capped by the greatest person you ever saw you know your conceptions conceptions is what caps your achievement you can't become better than you could ever and you imagined so the greatest thing you can do is expose yourself to greatness so i i left i determined it was worthwhile leaving yeshiva one day traveling to binebrak just to hear a share from and it was hard to get in my stuff was the russia shiva of the pandava shiva which was the harvard of israel the elite eva he had 2 000 of the sharpest smartest kids in the jewish people literally on their game young on fire shock at the time was 92 years old and he was giving a and this is this is what i watched you walked into this room shaq was on a stage 92 years old standing by the pulpit and he would give the the shear had four parts first he would give a list of questions then he would give a principle that he would use to answer the questions then he would show how the principal answered all the questions and then he would bring proofs to his principle that was the order of every share except that at the end of each stage he didn't transition to each stage he finished saying the questions and the room would erupt in shouting two thousand sharpest minds screaming about the validity of his questions and i was watching them everyone in their little groups in a loud room and one by one the questions would resolve themselves and a few questions are made the guys whose questions survived the internal debate they made their way to the front of the room under the shah's pulpit and they screamed up the roshach their questions and he screamed down at them and they fought it out if rashad succeeded in keeping his questions and his questions survived he was able to continue then would say his principle the room would erupt in screaming again they would come up to the front he would have to fight down these 20 21 22 year old young sharp guys i'm sure he needed to take a nap in the afternoon but he fought them if his principal survived he went further then he showed how his principle answered the questions the whole way fighting these guys and you know what happens if one of these guys would succeed at stumping he would have to close his book and walk away that could happen once and this guy would be the hero of the yeshiva he's the fastest gun in the west he's the man he's the king if it happened once it would be great if it happened twice everybody would by the same guy everything everyone would be quiet and eventually would have to retire we treat him with all the respect but the guy on top of the room is there because he's the best there's no magic there's no inheriting a position you're there because you're the sharpest and the smartest there's no place in the world where there is greater scrutiny and debate and intellectual honesty than the base measures somebody writes a halachic ruling it needs to be published we have shelves we look behind rabbi korlowski half of those books are called shiloh's troops responsible because nobody can write a hawaii position without writing it down that every young whippersnapper has a chance to rip it apart because you'll make a name for yourself and you'll be the star there's a big incentive to taking down you do it with respect sometimes but when you apologize afterwards for not having respect but but more often the second you know you're just getting the fervor and the rabbis love when you when your hooks predict with truth that my greatest compliments were like good line fell down but like you know like a with a little smack you know um but but but this is this the people don't people need to see this anyone who would go to a sheer from 92 years old would never ask a question let me just show you the flip side one second i did a debate against the conservative rabbi once the shortest i did a lot of them but the shortest debate i ever had the conservative rabbi got up and he goes rabbi feldham is going to try and portray himself living with a fealty i wasn't sure what that word fealty meant at the time but uh but uh i looked it up afterwards i i guess i guess right revelling is the only one living with a feet that he lives the orthodox live keeping and they have sources and he wants a claim that we he he's assuming that we don't believe in alpha we don't we don't use sources we also have halacha and so i'm gonna challenge you i felt him on his own terms rabbi seldom what do you say about the maharashtra on and he's about to say somebody said wait wait rabbit before you say let's before we get personally getting into a fight i just want to clarify one thing i'll let you go further you didn't say anything objectionable yet so let's get this out of the way you're about to quote me a maharisha and which uh ostensibly from the way you described it is going to say something it's gonna be a halachic source undermining some position that we have in orthodoxy and you're trying to say that you also believe in halacha so i would i'm i like that and it would be beautiful if that was true and i'd gladly answer the maharishal that you're going to quote i just want to make sure that you really are living with a feel t and you're not just pulling out a marshal out of nowhere that's convenient to you so here's how i'm going to establish it i would like to know any one of the next 10 questions is maharsha a name or just an acronym for a name if it's an acronym do you know what it stands for do you know where he lived do you know any other book he wrote besides the one you're quoting do you know even the book that you're quoting what it's called can you tell me any other thought of the marshall from any of his books anywhere else in the talmud besides the one you're saying because if you really live with you i'm sure you know who he was when he lived what he wrote should we know something because i can name you something that martial said in every attractive talmud i live in the marshall you're trying to say you're the same so i'll gladly go on with this video you can answer any one of those ten questions but if not then this is a lie and it's exactly like ice like you i didn't even say it like you said we live with halal and you live masking compromises you can make compromises there are needs sometimes compromises but don't claim to have a feel to it answer any of the 10 questions how long the debate last it didn't go past that of course there's no end we know the truth look at rebellions books most reformed rabbis i meant can't even read them it could be hebrew but not without the vowels not not not not not and it's not an insult they weren't trained in that they went to a different school they don't believe in the torah so we can debate whether it's true or not but don't expect from them something that is not on their under uh you know okay just admit it just admit that's all i want just admit that you're not keeping torah you don't believe in the torah and most of the confidence will be shocked so a lot of a lot of what we're saying is i'm going to start the next question with you but a lot of what we're saying really here is on the basis of that that means if you really believe in the torah and you believe in its laws that's the starting point for being able to evolve etc but if the starting point is i don't really believe it and i could pick things out that show that i that's why i live my life the way that that's not the whole picture that's a starting point there regard i want i want to go to you on this because there are a lot of people who believe that orthodox jews are living robotic lives and are are in this thing for blind faith you know this is sort of what we we dive into not seeing what's around us two questions to that orthodox people seem to lead a very severe narrow type of life isn't it all isn't it all based on blind faith and if it is based on life then is that what judaism is all about without judaism and secondly doesn't science and the modern fields of psychology and philosophy make religion obsolete that means come on at this point in time when not in the in you know in the stone age we can figure this out in our own isn't orthodox judaism and even torah a crutch that you can let go of at this point yeah i see those as uh two very separate questions but that could be that the other esteemed rabbis see them as the one and the same i'll we'll just do it uh aloe vera and the first question was uh is it true that there are i don't remember you said the word orthodox and uh orthodox jews that are living their lives robotically like living only that is what it seems that orthodox judaism is blind faith and it's sort of robotic this is this is what you know this is what you got to do this is what you do it's a very narrow type of life yeah um okay so it's funny because i hate to be the guy i really don't hate to be but that's just my self-esteem and my projection to be the guy to repeat the same idea about how is it true is it not true that's the that's really the question but in terms of my relationship with it it might be that that's the case there are many people out there that live their life a blind faith this is a true statement whether they are religious whether they are secular whether they are jewish whether they're christian many people live their life and this is a a actually a mission of my own personal life and one of the things which i very much enjoy speaking to both sides of the spectrum about and i'll and i'll you know somebody said to me once like okay we're going to talk to a secular crowd what are you going to talk about i said i'm going to talk about the same thing that i would talk about to a religious crowd i'm just going to say moses instead of moshe right just going to translate but it's all truth so let's get down to what is the truth i'm not going to butter it up for somebody who's not observant and i'm not gonna you know do something more real for somebody who is right um is a very big uh pet peeve of mine to get into conversations about having an understanding have a basic understanding of yiddish to know the truth of judaism to know what it is to understand what's going on to what degree that's debatable i'm not going to get into the nitty gritties of this but to be able it's not just i believe somebody who says i believe has uh i think walked into a different religion judaism is actually you have to know and it's a verse which we say every single day versus every single day in the prayer called eleno where we say vio data you must know today and place it into your heart we've got two things going on we have to know and we place into our heart now the reality is the reality is when it comes to kids what are you gonna have they're gonna know how are they supposed to know they don't have the intellectual capacity to understand what's going on which is why here is the basic rule i before e except after c intellect before emotions unless you're a child when you are a child it is emotions before intellect because it's just the nature of the beast there is no intellect so what we do when our kids are young is we brainwash them like crazy i mean teach them like crazy i said the word oh no he said brainwash chill what's the definition of brainwashing it depends if you like it or not if you don't like something called brainwashing if you like it it's called education right so at the end of this what we do is we teach our children what we know to be truth and then as they grow we start to give them the understanding from the intellectual capacity and there's different stages and so we have something called six years old that's around the age of 13 years old at the age of education at six years old you start educating your child you start to push them a little bit more tonight a kid who's one years old do you really say a kid's born and when they're born you go no you're nursing make a blessing shake hold why aren't you making a blessing he says he's one what do you want from the kid right or not even one okay two three or three years old we start to whatever by six according to most we say education start to push a little more we should start doing 13 bar mitzvah now we have more 20 another level and it starts to grow it starts to grow and we have more and more but it's a shift of understanding it's a very important point that it's not just a matter of what we do we have to know and then we place into our heart now it's very very crucial because it could sound like a contradiction there because one second but you're teaching them everything so this i'm gonna i'm gonna refer to an example we gave when we first spoke about this a similar point in session two or session one i like to ask secular crowds or even religious guys to say at what age do you plan on giving your kid his first straw and line of cocaine and and sometimes people answer that question but most people say never and i say why you right wing close-minded brainwashing person the answer is no because you understand what's right and what's wrong so you shut your kid away from running in the street and doing cocaine and then as you get older you try to give them an understanding of why that is so the answer is it's not robotic are there people that live that way certainly is that the way it's meant to be absolutely not okay good so it means we're separating with separating the torah and judaism versus some jews that might robert yolovsky there are people out there that feel that yeah yeah the book i get it the instruction book once upon a time that's all we had people didn't didn't have the technology we have today they didn't have the research we had they didn't have the science the philosophy come on do we really need this book that is it or or is judaism or even the torah a crutch at this point we can sort of figure out all the concepts ahead on our own so first of all you picked the two worst areas to ask psychology and philosophy philosophy has been around for thousands of years it didn't start today it hasn't really gotten much better you read modern philosophy as opposed to like no no philosophy philosophy and video games i'm saying it's a different level so uh but psychology is always changing the understanding of the and and the more the psychology grows the closer it comes to the jewish understanding of the human mind it's absolutely amazing i won't bring you a bunch of examples now but but the fact matter is and this goes back to the point that the other rabbis have been saying throughout if you don't believe in this thing then you're right i don't know why anybody's doing it if you don't believe in it you know you like your filthy fish you can fill the vision huh but why would a person keep it if god gave this book then this book is telling you eternal truth people don't change technology changes people don't change what people want happiness fulfillment spirituality family love all these things they don't change in thousands of years they stay very stable so so god says listen here's how you achieve it this is what works you know so so so so they used to uh they didn't have matches so they didn't have natural gas lines in their house and they didn't have running so what that doesn't change anything about people that only changes technology but people are people so you're right so it's a lot easier now to do the laundry than it was back then when you had to carry the water from the river and boil it up and put the clothes in and rub it on the you know on the uh where'd it go at the washboard you know yeah much easier now to throw in a washing machine that change people don't change anything about the essence of who we are about spirituality about about search for meaning i i was on a plane sitting next to a middle-aged israeli businessman who was on his way to india to join his wife they were in an ashram studying buddhism and spirituality i said did you ever consider judaism he says what does judaism have to do with spirituality judaism is about mitzvahs things that you do so so okay so he doesn't understand what judaism is not his fault he never got an education but but the spiritual pleasure and the thrill and everything that goes with that that's an unbelievable thing you know technology has taken us that much further they did a study that took a thousand college kids off of their um technology i'm not talking about jewish ones across the world they suffered the same withdrawal symptoms of people coming off of crack and cocaine so so suddenly shabbos has no meaning of being able to move away from the technology instead of letting it control our lives i i don't hear it got it you