CHAZAQ's Torah Talks #79: Rabbi Chaim Levi Cohen - Don't Underestime Yourself

Tuesday night program with special guests tonight with uh we have with us a very very dear friend of kazak Rabbi Heim Levy Cohen Shalom how you doing it's great to be here with you Rabbi your news oh it's great to have you on the program my behind Levy Cohen is a mover and a Sheikh area he's very much involved with the kazak Revolution and we'll explain in a moment as our custom is uh kindly if you give us a little bit of a background about yourself and the great work you're involved with and especially with uh charity I could start from abracious or I just speeding up you're saying um anyway I uh I lived in New York for a long time where I got very much acquainted with hazak through my work at charity.com I started working at charity in December of 2014. since the Inception more or less no Neptune was the yeah was the end of 2013 so about a year a year after it started and uh it was just a dream in a basement in Crown Heights and we decided uh we got to uh spread the word and make sure that there's a tremendous this tremendous power of crowdfunding is being used for non-profits so uh it's incredible I mean to date charity raised over three billion dollars for nonprofits wow years and uh it's a tremendous journey and I have a a beautiful privilege to work with many organizations like kazak and others that are changing the world and not only not only help the organizations but I find that the biggest thing charity did for the Jewish world was besides forgiving many other people parnassa with their own companies I'm just saying besides for that it's the ability where you have so many young you have so many donors that are pushed giving more to DACA every single year because of the crowdfunding tool because of this incredible ease to give and the exposure to so many mitts of opportunities so that's the most incredible part of my job here at charity um more about that's kind of where uh do you hear me did it cut out yeah you got it muted for a split second so uh and uh more about myself personally I uh thank God live uh I moved out of Virginia I moved out of uh out of New York to Virginia beautiful family four beautiful kinderlock I come from a Chabad family and uh yeah that's about it there's some amazing phenomena great so tonight we're gonna be talking about uh tadaka uh Kazakh especially being that the campaign is happening full force bar of Hashem and uh so the the question is where crime is what's the connection with Charity fundraising and of course this is a Torah talk so and the Torah the holy Torah aha it's a good question um I think the tire has a lot to say about the midst of sadaka a couple a couple of things come to mind number one that Tara says we know it's only Mitzvah where God says test me it's the only books in The Terror God says and test me watch do it and Watch What Happens um the lab has a talk where he says that and when you make a commitment to give to Dhaka [Music] new pipes of bracha opens up from Heaven just a commitment so there are the stocks but you know make a commitment that makes you scared and then God's gonna make the commitment comfort for you so you know the the Tara says about sadaka number one about test me another element we find about tadaka is that it's because that tadaka itself is such a powerful mitzvos another message we find about is that that sedaka's yes the person who gets people to give they get more this heart and the person that gives himself so like that's what the tire says right this we all agree upon now if you want to bridge that to apply it to what's going on today in the world I mean charity is this idea of you have a you have an amazing organization that's changing lives you know everyone knows you pair that up with this tool this online tool of charity.com a a platform where we can go and you know make this thing available to the world an opportunity to support yeah you got you got everything Under One Roof you got people making commitments matchers building commitments and and every individual making commitments and God's going to give them is going to pass the test God's going to pass his test number two you have charity that's like this this phenomenon this like online intersection where everyone meets to support an organization in a short period of time and then you have you know kazak is really at the Forefront of if you pick a pick an area of need a micent like theoretically you need 10 organizations to do what hazard does like you have a food pantry something you hear of a food pantry it's not going to prevention you have a call out a Colo you have a after school program in another world every one of these organizations is its own organization its own CEO its own fundraiser and here you have one organization that literally covers everything Under One Roof I think I think I'm talking unbiasedly no you're giving us a lot of physical prime lady and I'll tell you one thing about charity I love there's a guy that's involved in charity with Mendel Jacobson so he's involved just for the world to know the behind the scenes a little bit he's involved with the messaging of a campaign so uh very very interesting you know had that we didn't realize until charity brought this to our attention but behind lady is saying how we're involved with everything right so the middle to letters the heart of the word in English is a and z a to Zach strengthening which means in Hebrew so charity was things acts out of the box and it's true we really try to strengthen the community from A to Z every way possible I bet he drives and cold little Sunday schools after school programs teens video programs yishima placement division today boxing we're in 2022 over 1 300 kids from public schools she she bought that's aside for the shearing with tens of thousands hundreds of thousands over the years millions of people have been inspired by Hashem through this in the women's programs and children program the teens programs and and the singles the programs and the couple's programs we're doing so much but we should never be satisfied we have to always do more you know why because the Google hasn't come in once the Google comes in we can take it easy people always say take it a little bit easy no no we have to do a little bit extra so you're sounding like a chabotnik talk about it okay yeah 100 it's 100 True kazak is a is an organization that's very unique I have the opportunity to work with hundreds or some hundreds of organizations even take big ones like Terra massore these things are just adamant they're incredible but what's their what's their Avenue right here you have an organization it literally touches every element of a community and it's not just local it's all over so yeah expanding so finally people are watching their think themselves okay I already gave it to the campaign I'm going to be giving to the campaign so besides forgiving okay whether it's the 100 person or the ten dollar person or the thousand dollar person ten thousand dollar person besides forgiving for their own Pockets what else can an individual do with regard to the topic of Sedaka what else to do um listen tadaka is about money but stuck is also about lending your influence abilities to the same cause and you have people that you know they're everyone has a circle of influence I think you know at the same the same part we said earlier that God alham that you can give as good but you know I think when it comes to an organization like Kazakh there's no limit the more money the organization has the more good directly gets translated into the into the community so if you're if you're saying what can be done I believe what could be done is people should take on teams and raise money just to raise money that means you have to raise a million dollars yeah why not but you know whatever you raise 500 a thousand say I'm giving 500 to the organization or I'm giving 100 organization I'm gonna raise an additional 900 for a total of a thousand dollar gift a 500 gift a 360 raise but take upon yourself epis episode something and I think that um it's not that there's some rabbis sitting in uh Grace and queen somewhere that I have to worry about the budget everybody that they say a line it's a line that uh says you can eat an elephant one bite at a time so we let's just for kosher reason we'll say a cow you can eat a whole cow one bite at a time you could one bite at a time so everyone in the community take one bite that's all we're asking one one mouthful that's all whatever it is for you and I think that's another thing that could be a tremendous uh boost to the organization and kazak is you know at the Forefront of of of doing good in the community so there's there's no there's no better opportunity and opportunity for chadaka than I think that everyone should do something amazing amazing everybody should be doing something whether it's contributing whether it's taking on a team pageq.org uh spread the word you know getting the word out to others is also very very powerful and amazing we've seen tremendous Seattle and success when people get the word out to others I'll tell you the story of the first year five years ago we did a kazak charity campaign it was just a few minutes left to reach the goal and we had the operations room and people were calling in and we're gonna be having it we have it also right right now for our campaign uh and we got a phone call two minutes before more or less I like to make a donation for I think it was ten thousand or Twenty Thousand I remember the exact details and we thought of a Spam or you know sometimes but it was actually a real thing and when we spoke to them they said oh this this individual reached out has told us about so that person that reached out ever since that individual has been getting involved in more involved Hashem so I believe usually these talks so much longer but because it's campaign season there's so much to do so many people to reach out to give an opportunity to be part of the khazak Revolution we have them in Hager custom one final message for Torah talks with kindly the final message for Torah talks um I hope I think I think I think that I think the message is I think it ties into the message of of khazak and charity and this campaign I think I think it's the it's the power of the individual but I think the the the one takeaway is the meditation to think about about the power of an individual how much we can all do now you're gonna say what am I gonna do it's like it's like voting me whatever yeah if I don't vote what's gonna happen the tire doesn't look at it that way everybody takes a little bit but that means everybody doesn't matter who everyone have to give a half a shekel doesn't matter anything you're rich you're poor you gotta do you got you gotta we're all have the power of the individual an organization has an as an army of people that have benefited from the organization one way or another I think the the message is don't underestimate what you can do step up it's uncomfortable to ask do it anyways just do it and I think there's tremendous good that's done in the world when people get together amazing phenomenal great no one could do everything everybody could do something everybody should get involved doing one thing or another we appreciate your time of time maybe not just for today's talk but in general all your help with the campaign and all the other campaigns that you're involved with and charity.com is really risen and grown tremendously uh helping so many most done so many institutions so many organizations to uh make fundraising fun fundraising and uh we feel the energy we're really excited to be able to visit Jim raise a certain amount and once we raise this demand position we want to continue getting uh and doing to do more because we have very big vision for kaizak we have a tremendous amount of work that is being done but we wanted to do it as well we want to hire more people more manpower there's a gym where we receive business maybe we want to remind all of our listeners every single Tuesday night Eastern 8 30 P.M Eastern Standard Time because October talks with special guests amazing amazing program uh we want to give a shout out to uh charity of course from time leave once again thank you very much shout out to our friends at touring time for hosting this podcast along with all the other platforms too many to name uh we want to give a shout out to uh dailygiving.org a dollar a day goes very far away everybody should check that out as well we're mentioning them even though we have a campaign coming up but they're very helpful throughout here for not just because like all the most not all the organizations and please everybody please get involved charity.com c-h-a-r-i-d-y.com slash c-h-a-z-a-q charity.com make a contribution spread the word take on a team reach out to us I wish you only hear facility