Conspiracy Theories - To Believe Or Not To Believe (Ep. 282)

Everywhere that Mary went, the sheep was sure to go. I told you once why they do that for a soundtrack. Why? Because the first recording was Thomas Edison and he made a record and he that's the first thing he recorded. Mary had a little lamp. So that's why it became no that when you're doing a soundtrack you sound check you do Mary had a little lamp. All right showtime. Hi this is David Alowski and welcome back to the Rabbi Alowski show. And whether you're watching with our friends over at Torah anytime wherever you watch or listen to your podcast as always thank you. Thank you. You you you don't know how meaningful this is because there are a lot of people I know who would love to be able to do what I'm doing and they actually try to but they nobody watches them. So, you know, you don't have much of a podcast unless you have people watching. I'll tell you an irony. Um, I I I have to to a certain extent guesstimate how many people watch the podcast because we're on so many different platforms and a lot of people take it and put it up on a different platform and send it out or on a WhatsApp group or something like that. So, I I have trouble tracking it. The the closest number I can get is about 20,000. And I mentioned this uh during my podcast with Tuvia Singer about 20,000. And one of the many nasty comments I got was, "Who is this guy kidding? He doesn't have 20,000 people, you know, watching. I've looked at, you know, the doesn't have that many people." So, I actually responded this comment. I said, "Cuz we're on multiple platforms. This is not the only place where we are." And it turns out that the episode with Tia Singer on uh YouTube has 22,000 views. So, so burn baby. Anyway, don't forget to like, share, subscribe, and comment. And thank you to those people who sometimes just write comment because somehow that helps the algorithm. I don't know what an algorithm is. I don't know how it helps it. And uh I can't figure this out, but new. Thank you very much. And we have a sponsorship this week sponsored by Mosha and Dviri David. Hi Rabi Alowski. Just wanted to thank you for the last three years that you have been influencing us daily. Isn't that nice? Three years that I have had as to be a part of their lives. May you and your wife see loads of nakas from the whole family and may we share in simas with the whole Alavski nation. We're on our way. By the way, when he says nation, he's not talking about my family. He's talking about all of us. We we are all part of this of this thing together. And to walk all our children to the with gaz and watch our children walk their children to their kus. H isn't that great? That sounds so beautiful. Thank you so much. And in Hashem, we will. Okay. Um, you know, I'm doing this for uh a long time and uh I've mentioned this more than once that uh I um I'm never really sure what to say. Sometimes I do. Like I said in the the last uh the last episode, I I hadn't talked in a while. we had pre-recorded and so I had a lot of stuff saved up I wanted to talk about but sometimes I'm like I'm not sure what to talk about and people send me suggestions. It's interesting how cutting edge we are cuz for example when I did it someone suggested that I speak about bullying and I did an episode on bullying and next thing you know I see in all the different Jewish publications they're all talking about bullying. So we're always on the cutting edge. So um a producer Israel just pointed out he goes I don't know when you used to do your question and answer we used to do three or four in an episode and you'd give relatively short answers you know and now um uh you seem to be we get we're lucky when we get through one question an episode because you're talking much more I said because when I was answering questions like um you know what's your favorite Miami boys uh choir song or something like that that doesn't take a whole lot to answer when you have relatively short questions. Uh but when people ask very deep questions and every now and then we're going over the questions and I say that's an episode that that question is an episode by itself. So this episode is based on a question. So, if you sent this into the question and answer, it's not going to be in question and answer. It's going to be in the main body of the podcast. And the question was, do you believe in conspiracy theories? Now, I'm going to telegraph the punchline. If I didn't, this would be a very short episode. No. Yeah. Then it it goes very short. I was on a panel. my good friend Y uh who has recently moved to we wish him uh and his and his rebbitson an easy clea uh but um uh he was hosting an encounter conference in um Manchester and at the end of the program it was a question and answer. Uh the question and answer was um uh Rabbi Yoden Rosenlum and Rebbitson Heler and Rabbi Sinclair from Orame and myself and uh they would ask a question and everyone on the panel felt obligated to answer the question. Um and uh in fact I remember one time someone asked Re Sinclair, "Do you miss being in Hollywood?" And he answered the question and then Riverson Hela answered the question and then Jonathan Rose answered the question and then the MC answered the question and finally they come to me and I said, "How do I know if Ry Sinclair misses being in Hollywood? Why are you asking me this question? But they were all giving their own takes on on Hollywood and entertainment all kinds of things you know but that wasn't the question you know so at one point there was a question which was put to Yodas and Rosen Bloom since he you know writes about politics a lot you know um and uh they said do you feel the are doing enough to reach out to the secular and he answered the question and then Rabbi Sinclair answered the question and Then Reverson Hela answered the question and everybody spoke for a while and then they come to me and they say, "Rabbi Olowski, do you believe that the are doing enough to reach out to the secular Jews?" And I said, "No." To tremendous applause because I uh I hear myself talk all the time. These people should really get a podcast. Then they wouldn't need to speak to speak so much. I get it all out of my system which is good because you know very often when I'm with my family uh you know I don't really get a word in so this way I have an audience of over 20,000 nasty commenter on Tuvia singer and uh and I could talk as much as I want but um so uh so sometimes a question is you know like that and sometimes a question requires a longer answer. Um I was on a question and answer panel on a regular basis in discovery. Usually it was myself, Ari Khan and uh Mati Ber and Matyberger basically took the approach that every question was an opportunity for him to give a mini shar which he did. Right? When Ari was there it was a little harder when it was just me and him. Forget about it. I I commented once. I said, "Me and Muti agree on one thing. We disagree on another. We both agree that he has a lot of worthwhile things to say. We disagree as to whether or not I do." So there are many times I wouldn't even get a word in. He would just just someone ask a question and he would just give his entire share on that topic and I would just sit there and smile, which is okay because I don't I don't need to I don't need to speak. I'm okay. I'm I'm happy to be an audience. I heard this story. I never checked it out. As I always say, I'm not Pakron Zak should he should be well. Um uh where I I heard the story with very tights. I don't know if it's true or not, but this is what I heard. He was invited to be a speaker at Malav Mala and it was getting later and later and there was a a speech and introduction to the speech and then the speech and introduction to the introduction to the introduction to the speech. you know, I just went on and finally by the time they introduced him, it was 12:00 at night and he gets up there and says, "I was invited to be the guest speaker, but apparently I was really meant to be the guest listener. Have a good sh have a have a good v everybody." And he sat down to tremendous applause. So um I I I've told this story before um I'm sure uh I was speaking at the women's shmear halion for the first time as thousands of women come and they told us to speak for between 35 and 40 minutes and the first RV was a RV originally from Switzerland. He spoke for a full hour. The next was a mash. He spoke for an hour and 20 minutes. And I'm looking out at the room and the room is literally asleep. I have this with one of my kids uh where I always have to explain to them the difference between literally and figuratively. You know, um I was literally starving to death. No, you were figuratively starving to death. You are not literally starving. And they have a they have a son who's like five years old and he goes he goes, "Aba, I was literally I picked it up." Anyway, so I'm looking out and the room is literally asleep. So I had to wake everybody up and uh I and I spoke extra powerfully, very loud. I was leaning into the microphone and I was booming. I was like, you know, get everybody up, you know. And I spoke for 37 minutes. And people said to me afterwards, why did you speak for so short? I said, 'You asking the wrong question. I spoke for the right amount of time. The question is, why did everybody else speak for so long? That's the correct question. Um, I was speaking at the Ursak Shul in Toronto, Canada. I don't know if it's still there anymore. Um and I was speaking in between and they said speak between 14 and 18 minutes pretty specific and I spoke for 16 minutes and I sat down and the person came up to me in panic and said why'd you speak so short I said listen I may not be a man whiz but I know that 16 is in between 14 and 18 and he says when we tell that to any other speaker it's 35 minutes. This is something that infuriates me by the way. It infuriates me. Um I used to go to a minion and one of my great objections was let's say they would write down my is 610 and somebody would get up to speak in between and now it's about 6:20 and they all do the same move. They look at their watch. They look up at the clock. They look back at the watch and go, "Can I keep going?" And one person goes, "Kain." And everyone's like, "No, I think that's a you should write the time my whenever whoever's speaking decides that they finish, but don't tell people my is a certain time and then not do it." So on rare occasions they would ask me to speak and if my river is at 610 I could be in the middle of a sentence I would stop and I'd say well we're out of time have a good chas and people like you can finish. You can finish. I said then write a different time for you know so I don't like uh I don't like to go uh to go over you know speak speak what you're supposed to do anyway. So uh so when it's a short question I can answer it pretty easily. when it's a little longer one, I have to spend a little bit more time. I don't give an entire share. But sometimes a question comes up and I and I tell producer Israel, this is this will be an episode by itself. Yeah. And uh he reminded me of one of the questions that I set aside. The question is, do you believe in conspiracy theories? So, like I said, if the answer was no, it would be a real short uh episode. Um, so let's be mag what we mean by a conspiracy theory. Yeah. I remember seeing a bumper sticky years ago that said, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you." You get it? You understand? you're paranoid, but just because you're paranoid doesn't mean you're wrong. The same thing when it comes to conspiracy theories. Just because someone calls it a conspiracy theory doesn't make it true. I'll give you a very recent example. Yeah. Donald Trump said that uh the co virus came out of the COVID lab in Wuhan, China. And Dr. Fauci said, "No, no, it came from the wet market. People eating bats or something. I don't know what it was, you know." Um, there was a scene where John Stewart, who is a comedian, was on Stephen Cobear's show. And Steven Cobear actually got his start with John Stewart when they were, you know, on uh on the John Stewart show. And he he went off and got his own show from there on Comedy Central until he he got it another show. But um he says to him, "There's a place in China, in Wuhan, China, where everyone agrees the virus started and it's called the CO lab. Now work this one out for me. Where do you think it came from?" And he didn't want to, you know, insult his mentor, but he's like, "Well, that's just a conspiracy theory." And that's what they call they call it conspiracy theory. Now, everyone agrees. It's it's even the New York Times came around and said, "Yes, Trump was right. It was actually there." So, the fact that people called it a conspiracy theory didn't make it a conspiracy theory, right? Um, sometimes there's a conspiracy theory that really is a conspiracy theory. It's it's based on a series of events which you can tie together, but if you look into it, you'll see that it's not true. One of my favorite examples Um uh Reagan bombed Tripoli when Gaddafi was in charge of Libya. They had done different things against America and he sent his planes to bomb uh Libya, Tripoli. Now they were flying from England. The fastest way to go would have been to fly right across France to Libya. But France would not let them fly over. So instead, the pilots had to fly all the way around the Iberian Peninsula and come down to be able to bomb. It took a much longer flight. Anytime you have a flight like that with uh a military mission, it puts the people at more risk. And they bombed whatever military targets by accident. They bombed the French embassy. I'm sure it was an accident. Reagan would not have on purpose bombed the French embassy, but there was this comedian and he said, you know, uh, hey, we just bombed Libya and everyone's cheering, you know, and he says, and we accidentally bombed the French embassy. Maybe if our planes didn't have to fly so far around France, their aim would have been better. The implication being that because France wouldn't let us fly, we blew them up on purpose. Not true, obviously, but it's um it's a confluence of events that makes it sound interesting. Um that was the uh uh the Russian um conspiracy where they claimed that Donald Trump was in cahoots with Russia to fix the election. There was no evidence to support it, but that didn't stop every major uh news outlet from reporting it over and over again. Um, uh, Congressman Schiff, who's now Senator Schiff, said, "I have secret information that proves it. It was all a lie. He was censored by Congress." He didn't have any evidence. It It was just li That's a conspiracy. That's a conspiracy. It was a conspiracy to um promulgate uh a story that clearly wasn't true. And it turns out that the story actually started from a law firm that was working for Hillary Clinton and spread this to try to um uh take away support from Donald Trump during the election. It was all a lie. That's a conspiracy, right? So just because something is a conspiracy theory doesn't mean it's not true because it could be. There's an actual conspiracy like to cover up the origins of COVID 19. That was a conspiracy and it was clear and anyone who tried to uh offer the truth was silenced. They were cancelled. They weren't they they were taken off of social media. Whatever they could do to stop it, that's a that's you. They called it a conspiracy theory, but they were lying as opposed to the Russia gate, which was a lie. And they created a conspiracy to spread a lie. So, um, so when you say, "Do you believe in conspiracy theories?" The answer is that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you. Just because it's a conspiracy theory doesn't mean the conspiracy is not true. So let's take one of the most famous ones which is the JFK assassination right the waring commission did a study wherein um they uh investigated and interviewed etc and they all concluded yeah nope uh there was one assassin he was in the book depository story. He's the one who shot it. But there were a lot of questions that were unanswered. There were people who were not interviewed. There were people who were interviewed and the testimony was not included in uh the Warren report. So um so that makes people very suspicious. How come these other people were not questioned? Yeah. So, um when you uh um when you look at it and then you see how could a bullet have been shot, go through him, go through this, hit John Connelly, come out this way, go out that way. How is that possible? And so the theory came in that there was another shooter. Um and um and he was on the grassy null and there were witnesses who said they saw somebody there and whatever it is they heard more than one shot when you listen to recordings. So, Lyndon Johnson, um, by the way, um, my good friend Joe Walsh, uh, had given me this very, very large book called, uh, The Power Broker about the life of, um, Robert Moses, who had a 40-year uh, reign of power in New York and did the most amazing things. A very very large book, but it reads like a novel. It's all his history, but it reads like a novel. And in fact, it won an award. They gave it an award of history as as literature. That's how good it was. And uh his next project, this guy uh Robert Carol was um was a biography of Lynden Johnson. And he has put out four of the five books. I hope he puts out the fifth one. he's uh he's in his 80s. Uh we'll see what happens. But all four of the books were leading up to his presidency. It didn't really encumber his presidency except for the first few months. And the fourth book basically Lyndon Johnson was the head of the Senate and um um and he was the the third book is called Master of the Senate. He managed to get the Senate to do what he wanted. And the Senate is unmanageable. It was designed to be unmanageable. And uh in fact, the story goes I it was definitely George Washington and I think the other one was Jefferson, but I'm not sure. But he says,"Wh would you set up the Senate in this way where people can you know you know there's going to be backlogs and delays and you're not going to get things passed and why?" So he says, "How come you I see you poured some of your tea into your saucer." He says, "So that it should cool off." He says, "That's the purpose of the Senate. I don't want a rabble in the House of Representatives to suddenly pass a bill and then instantly be able to go someplace with it. The Senate is designed to slow it down and this has created backlog in government for many many years and um uh and he claims George Washington is the founders did that intentionally to slow things down so that you don't have America is not a democracy it's a republic without getting into all the differences over there but the idea is not just everybody could right away have a big vote you know push a button and say yes or no on anything. You have to take your time to consider it so that uh things don't happen instantaneously. It leads to it leads to uh um um frustration to many people that government moves so slowly, but the founders wanted that on purpose. They didn't trust government. Anyway, be that as it may, um, so Johnson figured out how to work the Senate and he was one of the most effective leaders. And then he decided to become uh Kennedy's vice president and they basically gmeted him. They treated him like a joke. They this, the Kennedy didn't know what he was doing because he didn't he wasn't a great politician. He was very charismatic and he had a lot of ideas, but he didn't know how to keep the machine of government going. And so all of his projects were getting stalled. Nothing was getting passed in Congress. They they Lyndon Johnson knew how to get things through, but they didn't ask him. So when Kennedy was assassinated, suddenly Lyndon Johnson, who had been nobody for three years, um, three and a half years, was suddenly pushed in as president. And he had six months to calm down the country because they assumed Russia was behind this, mafia was behind it, this one was behind it, that one, Cuba, the CIA. No one knew who was behind this. He had to calm down the country. He had to take set up a new there was only a half a year left to the presidency. Put everything back together, get everyone in um um put put the the government together, pass the legislation. He describes this in the fourth book. He did it all in six months. He got it all done. But he basically took former Chief Justice Warren and said to him, "You have to get this done and reassure the American people." So the goal of the Warren Commission was to tell everybody, "Yeah, there was uh Leah Harvey Oswald did it. He was the only guy. He had a gun. He had been uh he was a lunatic. He didn't have anybody helping him. There was nobody else involved. so that America could calm down. America was in such a tenuous state. In the book, he describes everything that Johnson was up against and and what a difficult time this was for America and how Johnson managed. He's probably the greatest part of his career was those six months. How he managed to to keep America calm and reassured and pass JFK's agenda and everything that he did was just just remarkable. It's it's it's good idea to read just the the fourth volume of it. Um in any event, um the uh so lots of questions were left unanswered. There was actually a court case uh where people sued the government. I think it was in Georgia. I might be wrong on that. Where they introduced new evidence And they wanted the government to take up the case again that there was more than one person involved. And who was behind it, you know, and and who was Jack Ruby who suddenly assassinated Lee Hoswald before he could talk and he said there are other people involved and he was killed before he could say anything. So how is this all going? What was going on over here? And uh um uh who made a movie about it? JFK um Oliver Stone and he he documents the case over there and the people a number of the witnesses died suddenly. So does that mean there was something that was being hidden here? There's a lot of different theories. We don't know. But um do I just automatically assume that the Warren Commission gave the full story? For a fact I know that's not true. So if you question who actually was responsible for the Kennedy assassination, so they call you a conspiracy theorist. But there's evidence. The evidence is amazing. Now whether it's true or not, I don't know. Yeah. Um, Princess Diana uh was the the official story is uh she was with this um this Arab businessman and they were driving and they were being chased by paparazzi and uh they went into a tunnel and suddenly they crashed and and died. There are speed there are cameras all around um Paris, but the cameras in that tunnel were off and there's a lot of other evidence that there were funny things that were going on. It's a whole study. The cautious are all cautious and the fact that you call it a conspiracy theory doesn't mean it's not true because like I say they called the co a conspiracy theory and it turned out to be right. Sometimes there are conspiracies and people work very hard. um this fellow uh Epstein from Epstein's island, right? A lot of high pro Jeffrey Epstein, a lot of highprofile people came to the island and he had a lot to be able to tell and he was in a jail cell awaiting trial when he hanged himself. The guards who were supposed to be watching him claimed they fell asleep. The cameras which were supposed to be filming him and the area were all not working. Um, in order to hang himself, he would have had to put the bed sheet and tie it to the upper bunk and and jump off and kill himself. And the uh coroner said the um the the injuries that he had did not correspond to that. But if you claim that somebody killed him, well, conspiracy theorist, is it? It's a conspiracy. So yeah. Yeah. It could very well be there was a conspiracy. It could be there were a lot of important people who did not want uh what Jeffrey Epstein knew to come out just like they didn't want what Lee Harvey Oswald had to say to come out. But is there is is there enough evidence to definitive prove it one way or another? No. Um just because there's smoke uh doesn't mean there's not fire. Could be there's just smoke and no fire. But the questions are very legitimate questions. And me, I am by nature a skeptic. Um my son uh who's much more involved in Israeli society than I am. He said to me once, I live here in Israel. Most people have no idea who I am. Israelis have no idea who I am. It was interesting. I mentioned uh in the last podcast when I went for Pesak. So um so I went up beforehand to meet with Mark the manager about the hotel said when I went to speak to him at the end of Pesak he said to me I had no idea who you are and I said I didn't want you to. I said I wanted to have the experience as a regular guest not like to get special treatment so that if I try to make a pesak program here I want to know what the average guest is going to go through and I want to know you are. So, um, so my son says to me, "It's a good thing Israelis don't know who you are." Or there'd be poshavillas up about you every week. Posashkavilla where they put up those signs where they come out condemning this or condemning that or attacking this, you know, says, "But nobody knows what you say. So, you're under the radar. You're just an American and no one knows." You know, in America, they don't they don't hang up Pashkavillas the same way. you know, they'll just maybe write a blistering editorial on the yetate against you, you know, but uh but for the most part, you know, I stay under the radar, but uh but I'm by nature a cynic. I'm a cynic when it comes to uh the firm community. I'm a cynic when it comes to science. I'm a cynic when it comes to any of these topics. I say just because a scientist says it, just because someone with a bunch of degrees after his name, yeah, says something doesn't mean anything. And uh um I remember uh Ben Shapiro was doing a question answer once on a campus and he made some sort of statement and he goes, "Did you ever study this in college? Do you have a degree in this? Do you have that?" He goes, "I don't need to know go to college to know when something is nonsense. I don't need a degree in it. I don't have to study it for years to figure out what you're saying makes no sense." And um and I've mentioned this in the past. You know, there people who hide their lack of intellectualism and honesty behind jargon. They use fancy words to be able to say things. I've encountered these people where you know a person says to me oh so Judaism is anthroentric so I was able to figure out what that meant and I responded to him or they'll throw around terms like well from an epistemological point of view and okay so I happen to know what that means you know but every now and then I remember once I was answering a question and someone says oh that's a very simplistic answer I said so you know what do you say I can't explain it to you it's too involved complicated I said try me I'm a bright Okay, let's let's see. No, no, you you wouldn't understand it. I said, give me a shot, you know, explain it to me. He goes, "No, no, I can't put it in layman terms." So, I just I just laughed and I said, "Listen, if your idea is so brilliant that you can't explain it to anybody, then it's really not worth anything. I don't feel like I have to respond to it." So, if somebody comes ask me a question and says, "I have a brilliant answer to what you just said, but you can't understand it." Okay. So, I don't really have to respond to it. Do it. when you figure out how to put it into terms for us simple layman then I'll attempt to answer it. Uh Shia Cohen once said the hardest question that he ever get he used to run arim seminars in in America. He said the hardest question I have to answer is the one that the person hasn't thought of yet. He says, "I get this a lot where I present all the proofs for Torah." And someone says, "Okay, I can't respond to what you're saying, but maybe there's somebody smarter out there who can." Says, "Okay, when you find him, have him come talk to me. But how am I supposed to answer a question that you haven't thought of yet?" You know, brilliant. There must be someone might have an answer. Uh I remember once we were in discovery doing question and answer and uh and someone says uh asked the question to the panel they said okay we heard what you have to say but when are we going to hear the other side so I don't know if it was Matthew or I one of them said you were here for two and a half days did you go to college they teach you the other side in high school In college, you've heard everything else. Nobody there taught you Torah. They taught you every other thing in the world. You've heard all the other arguments. This is the first time you've heard anything about Torah. And you're like, "Well, let's hear the other side." Mati says once he was teaching Mati Burger in uh in an says, "Okay, I heard what you have to say here in the Jewish quarter, but there are three other quarters in Jerusalem." He says, "That's true. The Christians, the Muslims, and the Armenians all agree that God gave the Torah to the Jews on Mount Si. The only one who gives me any trouble are the Jews. Everybody else believes it, you know. Um, somebody told me that there was this Christian woman on a plane and said, "I I can tell you're Jewish." She says, "Yeah." He goes, "You know, I'm here with a Christian group and the Christians believe that the Jews are the chosen people and that God gave the Bible to the Jews on Mount Si." He says that's right. He says how come Jews don't believe that? So all Christians believe that. He says because you can believe it and do whatever you want. If we believe it, we have to keep kosher. We have to keep shabas. We have to have lots of laws. So if you're objective, it doesn't make any difference. I used to say in I used to say you have to keep the Torah. The Torah is true. Torah says you have to go to town every night and get drunk and party. I said, 'You would all be ultraorththodox. You understand? But uh you're too invested. So when when I hear something, I'm skeptical. So uh I'm fertile ground for conspiracy theories. When I hear something, I'm like, wait a second, that's a cash. It could be the Kasha turns out to be nothing, like when we bombed the French embassy. And it could be that there is something behind it. I don't know. But am I automatically going to dismiss it because like they said by the COVID 19 leak, Wuhan lab leak, ah, it's a conspiracy theory? No. Just saying something as a conspiracy doesn't mean anything. I want to see what the evidence is and I want to examine it. And there are very often things that are dismissed as conspiracy theories and nobody answers the caches. Okay, so let's take one example, right? Um uh there was um what was it called? There was a movie um Capricorn 3 or something. I don't remember what it was called where basically they realize that the rocket to the moon is uh is not going to work. And so they want the astronauts on a sound stage to pretend they're on the moon. We'll use special effects, etc. to make it look like you're on the moon and you'll act the whole thing out. And uh and they do. And then uh what are you going to do? You have to keep these people quiet forever. So they announced on re-entry the rocket blew up. Now the astronauts didn't know this because obviously it meant they were going to kill them. So the three of them escape and they track them down, you know, and kill two of the three and the third one manages to come and and expose the whole thing. Based on this, there are people who say the moon landing never took place. It's a hoax since it could be a hoax. So, so we'll say it was a hoax. And they bring a whole bunch of different riers, you know, and uh and I remember I looked into this once. I looked at all the cases and I looked at the tutim and the the answers were excellent answers to all the questions. I don't remember all of their proofs, but one of the proofs was if you see the flag that they put on the on the moon, it it's waving. Now, how could that be? There's no atmosphere on the moon. Why would the flag be waving? And the astronomer who answered up all the cautious, he said, um, it it's not waving. It's extended on a pole. And they didn't pull it the whole way. If they pulled it the whole way, it would be standing straight. But they didn't. Um, and they point out other different kind of things that uh that they ask all kind of cashes and they answer them all up. So from my point of view, that's fine. That's that's wonderful evidence. you the fact that you want to ask questions that's great but then you have to listen to the answers and you can't just say well you know it could be I remember seeing a cartoon once where these two people come to heaven and they say okay you're in heaven now what do you want to know says who killed JFK so God answers them and says um it was Lee Harvey Oddwell there was only one shooter and one guy turns to his friend and says I told you it goes all the way to the top which is of course ridiculous but but the the idea is that you know if there are caches and you can't answer the caches then you leave it as a I'm not saying it's a I'm not saying that you completely disproved it but you haven't completely proved it either. And so uh um you know when when questions are left unanswered like this so uh where's the evidence? What happened? How do you explain it? So um so that's why when you when you use a term like conspiracy theory, it's too much of a catchall term. Doesn't tell me anything. you know, the the fact that there's an official story, as Napoleon Bonapart said, history is the series of events um agreed upon by the victors. Um so that if the British won the American Revolutionary War then uh the Continental Congress would have been remembered like Guyforks. They were a bunch of rebels who tried to rebel against the crown and were all hanged and they would be seen as traitors, you know, and terrorists and you know, I forgot who said it that one one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. It all depends how you tell the story. and um and who the heroes and who the villains are. So um so yeah, it's good to be critical. It's good to go back and examine and and see where the facts are. But uh just the fact that someone decided to call it conspiracy theory, you know, that doesn't do anything for me. When uh when a person asks a question and someone goes a cursus, I'm not impressed. Maybe it is, maybe it's not. But can you answer it? You have to know how to answer. You know what's what's the answer to the question? Forget about name calling. You know what what is it is? And if you see a situation where you see a lot of questions, it's okay. I'm not prepared to erase the questions just because someone calling conspiracy theory. Okay. I hope that clarifies it a little bit. And that brings us to the actual question answer portion of our program. H my good friend Yol. How is a person on this physical world able to affect and generates for an that has passed on to MS? We are taught that right the actual quote is today you do tomorrow you can't do today you do and tomorrow you get your how can we change the result of one's judgment on yadin mitzvah are not normally transferable one person to another you have to earn them on your own does this concept apply only to a child. As always, thank you so much for all of your amazing Torah words. This is a fascinating uh fascinating area. There is definitely a special ability by a child as the Kazal say a child can give to a father. We have more than that. The garra says that if you're messiah, if you help somebody do a sin, you um get responsibility for that sin. and says says the Garra. And so too, if you help somebody do a mitzvah, you get the for that mitzvah, which is uh something that I find um comforting because it means all the years that I've spent in where I've had a positive impact on people's lives and people tell me something that you said changed my life or changed my daring or changed this or changed that. So when I get upstairs, I intend on taking credit for all of that. All of that. But once the person isn't here anymore. So what's the concept? The concept is the following. I remember when I was speaking to Amenda Weinbach about this Zatal the the Shiva of Orsame, he quoted Julius Caesar. He says, "I can quote it to you, but these college kids have never heard of Shakespeare." He said, "I can't quote it. These kids know nothing. It's absolutely amazing." I used to say this when I taught in Orle Gula. I said, "You understand college kids know nothing today. You know, you're you're sure that these are all brilliant. They know nothing." And a guy who later went to work on UCLA, he said to me, "When you said that in class, I didn't believe it. But now that I'm working on campus, I can't believe how little these people know." you know, um I uh when I first started teaching in Discovery, they had two one and a halfhour classes responding to evolution. By when I came on, they had gotten rid of them. They said, "We spent most of the first class teaching the theory of evolution because these college students didn't know what it was and then the second class explaining why it wasn't a problem, so we just cut it out alto together." And while I was there, every now and then somebody would ask a question to the question answer panel. What about evolution? And one of the rabbis would say, 'Y yeah, it's not a problem. And they say, okay. It was amazing. Yeah. What about dinosaurs? Yeah, what about them? Were they dinosaurs? Yeah. Oh, okay. Anyway, that was it, you know. So, it's amazing a little. So, he says, I can't I can't do it. But it says in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in um uh Mark Anony's uh hespid you know the famous scene goes um the good that men do I I may be misquing so um the evil I for which was it starts with the evil that men do live on uh after them but the good that they do is forgotten with them. He says we believe the exact opposite is not real. Like we say we say that all evil will disappear like a puff of smoke. Evil is sheer. It's not real. It has no of its own existence. And that's why when we die and we go to the next world, all all the bad things that we've done, it's not us. It's not really us. That's why there's um you know a little cute thing that they say the two pariosim after death everyone's holy. What does that mean? That means because the bad things that we do aren't real. They don't represent who we really are. The good things represent who we really are. So we do things in this world and those things that we do continue on but that's as a result of the decisions we made when we were alive. So let's take a simple example, right? I establish a Karen that will generate a certain amount of money every year to give scholarships for kids to go to yeshiva. I'm dead 50 years and I'm still giving money to kids to be able to go and learn Torah in yeshiva. And that kid who goes to yeshiva is going because of me. It's a continuation of the action that I did. I um I encourage someone to become shorter and mitzvah. And that person goes on and keeps Torah and mitzvah because of me. And now they go out and influence other people because of me. This is this is pyramid scheme. You understand? This is this is Amway, you know. And and they have children and grandchildren who all shares because of me. So up in Shmayim, my account keeps clicking because that's all because of what I did down in this world. So I decided to have children, you know, a lot of people today are not, you know, people decide they children are too much of a hassle for them, you know. But people have children and it's not easy having children. Um I'm not talking about the actual delivery that wasn't so bad. I got through most of the deliveries with just a mild amount of uh of medication, but um uh but afterwards raising them and and the amount of time that you invest and and the money that you invest and all the things that go into it, that's that's tremendous. That's tremendous. My wife had a friend who gave her a phrase that became our byword while we were raising our children. And that is the goal of is not to raise good kids. It's to raise good adults. And I take a look at my adult children who are all out there doing things for clout Israel. Yeah. Some more, some less. All of them are having an influence on the world in a positive way. That's because we chose to have these kids and to raise them with a set of values and all the sleepless nights and all of the meals and all the, you know, when when it's an hour past bedtime and the kid comes in and says, "I have a report due tomorrow I forgot about." And you're up writing. I've definitely done more homework since I became a parent than I ever did when I went to school. and you know and all the things that invested the fact that these kids are going on. Yeah, you'll forgive me but everyone knows who I am by this point. I'll quote Dan Fogleberg. My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man. I'm just a living legacy to the leader of the band. Yeah. We we bring our kids up with values. We try to send them off. Sometimes we're more successful, sometimes we're less successful. But what those kids are doing, they're doing because we gave them life. We worked to bring them into this world. We did something. And so that goes to our credit. And so therefore, when a kid does something down here says to us up in Shimay, that's because of you. So let's take a simple example. Simple example, pretty well-known fellow Rashi. Yeah. Every year on his yard site, Rashi gets called up because the yard site is a yoma. Even for the the people who have passed away, the yard site is a yadin for them. What are you judging them for? They're dead. So they say, "Okay, Rashi, what'd you do this year?" He says, "Well, a lot of floating, you know, basically goes, "Yeah, well, let's check your account." Oh my goodness. Look at how many people learned Rashi this year. Look at how many people learned Nvi with Rashi this year. Look at how many people learned Gumarra with Rashi. Look at all of the Tory that you spread in the world this year. Even though you're dead for a thousand years, all of that gets added to your account. We move you up another level. And Rashi says in French, "Cool." Yeah, because it's an amazing thing. Look at Look at what I'm continuing to accomplish. And so we do things and we have no idea what we're doing. We don't we don't I I've told this story more than once. Yeah. Jonathan Rosenbloom told this story about these three Hollywood uh screenwriters who were having brunch in the Pico area on a Saturday morning. Saturday brunch, whatever brunch time is. And this family's coming back from Shaw. the mommy and the daddy and the children and everyone's dressed well and they're all talking and they're speaking and they're and they're smiling and they're having and they walk past these people and they watch them walk down the street and one of them says to his two friends they were all Jewish you know we'll never have what they have and the three of them decided to go to the Asia Torah branch they started taking classes and they all became from and they started using their skills to make educational materials to teach Torah. So the way Jonathan Rosen puts it is imagine this family gets up to Shmayim and they get this they're looking over their account they know what they did they do here they did this they get stuck and suddenly there's this whole stack of says where did this come says well you made these people from and so you get credit for their actions and their children and their grandchildren also they did k and they reached hundreds hundreds of people and they you know dozens of them became you get full of them. All we did was walk down the street with a smile on our face and we changed the world and all of those go to us and to our account. Um I was by no means the worst son in the world. I was by no means the best. And if I was honest and I looked at myself, I would have said, if I could go back in time and say, "Dad, I don't know why you're having these kids. We're all a bunch of [Laughter] ingrates. We're miserable to you. We complain. We this, we that." Let's face it, you know. Um, somebody said to me, you know, it used to be in my generation, parents used to save up money for college. Today you save up money for therapy, you know, and you'll see if if you're already at this stage in life, but once you start having a bunch of kids in their 20s, one of their favorite activities is sitting around the shabas table saying how you destroyed their lives, everything you did wrong, whatever you said, you did this, you did that, you said this, you know, and um complaints, complaints, uh why would you do it? And I am keenly aware of the fact that everything that I do is because my parents made a number of choices. One is they decided to have me. When I was getting married, somebody said to me, "How many children do you have plan to have?" I said, "Well, as money as the Lord blesses me with." They said, "No, you can't do that. You have to decide." They said, "Okay, what's the right number?" They said, "Four." I said, "Well, I have a little problem with that because I'm number five in my family." And even though my brothers might argue they would have a happier life if I wasn't born, I like to think I've made some mild contribution to the world. And my younger brother Bruce, who's number six, feels even stronger about it than I [Laughter] do. Some people say to me, "How many kids do you have?" Shel them go. That's too many. I said, "Okay, pick out two and I'll kill them." So you can't do that. I said, "But that's what you're doing. You're saying don't let them be born." So from their point of view, whether I have them or I kill them, it works out the same. They never get to live a life. So everything I do is because my parents decided to have me. And then at some point my parents decided to send us to the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County even though they had gone bankrupt and they didn't have the money and get me a Jewish education or I definitely would not be from today. And the fact that there was a Hebrew Academy of Nassau County only because Rabbi Fendel decided to go and dedicate his life to being Marbet's Torah and he went out to Long Island with nothing and started to build a school. Well, I wouldn't have had a school to go to and and on and on and on. So when I do a mitzvah so there's no question my father my mother Rabi Fendell Rabbi whale the person who was actually mccary me in angular you know all these people are getting points up in Shmayim because I'm doing it but they were the catalyst they cause it to happen so a son has a special ability to do this but so does anyone else if someone says I was inspired by what you do or what you said to do something says clearly the person can get for it. So brahma aba that's that's that's the says in perdal that's called din that's not even it's den but den it makes sense that a child can be able to give that to his parents but anybody who feels that they've been moved by someone and uses that ability to do something good in this world to do it elo nishmas than the person in the next world it goes to their account and that's it for this episode if want to find out more about the show, you can go to my website, rebiolski.com. You can uh um ask a question, sponsor an episode, please, we need sponsors. Uh sponsor, question, answer, sponsor paran 5. Um sign up for one of our online sharim. That's it. Till next time and until then, I am David Olowski and this has been the Rabbi Olowski show. It's the Rabbi Orlovski Show. Torah and Sima, ready to go. The Rabbi Orlovski Show. Knowledge and wisdom will help you grow. Lots of fun in every episode. And we don't have to rhyme, no we. 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