Transcript
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I would like to call
an individual today. We know that you
can find anything out in a few seconds
on an AI, but we see that as that's as
technology. I want to call upon a rabbi,
a person that you'll hear him speak. the
amount of information, the wealth of
knowledge that he's going to be able to
give over tonight is comparison to AI. I
would like to ask for Hillisber please
say
thank you very much for that. I don't
think in all my introductions I've ever
been compared to AI ever because this is
a crowd that does not measure time
emotionally and they measure it
accurately. So if I go one minute over,
I probably will hear radios and I go two
minutes over I will probably see cones
set up and someone calling to state
prosecutor. So, I'm not even going to
try. Here we go. I'd like to think of a
story
and I'm still going to go there.
There was 65 years ago two shoe
companies who decided to explore
investing in Africa and they sent two
executives to go explore the region.
They went around to the same cities.
statement and they both came back around
the same time. And one executive comes
bursting into the CEO's office. He's all
sad. He's depressed. He says, "CEO,
waste of time. Nobody wears shoes
there."
The other CEO comes running back, burst
into the CEO's office, and the
executive, he comes back, he says,
"You're not going to believe this.
Nobody wears shoes there. This is a gold
mine. This is right for the taking." And
lo and behold, they opened 10 stores and
dozens of stores and hundred stores and
today they have netted hundreds of
billions of dollars from that decision.
Two people saw the same exact country
came back with totally opposite
conclusions.
We live in a world
very similar to Africa without shoes. A
world full of problems. A world of
vulnerable people. A world of
unprotected people. a world of evil
lurking everywhere.
And most people look and say, "Too
difficult. I'm not interested. Not
enough money for me." And they heck off
and they go live to life making money,
chasing comfort. But there are some
people who see and say, "Hey, it's
Africa without shoes. There's
opportunity here. It's a gold mine." And
they recognize that at the end of one's
life, God does not care what you
accumulated.
He cares about one thing and one thing
only. Were you part of the problem or
were you part of the solution? That is
all I care about. Were you part of the
problem or were you part of the
solution? We are in a room of people who
are very much part of the solution.
We are living in a world that respects
the wrong things. We are living in a
world that conditions its children to
respect money, to respect titles that
are hanging on the edge of someone's
mahogany desk. We are conditioning
ourselves to respect the landscape of
somebody's lawn. We live in a world
where the CEO of a company who inherited
the job from his father who from all
metrics is a bumbling buffoon who
wouldn't know morality if it slapped him
in the face who cannot zip up his own
pants is given just as much respect and
just as much awe than the CEO who's an
immigrant from Romania who slept on beds
who ate rejection for breakfast for 20
years had to claw his way up to the CEO
position They get the same amount of
respect, the same amount of standing
ovation. That is the world we live in.
But here's where it's important for us.
Because that's the world we live in. It
means all the more for you.
All the more for the people who want to
be big when everyone else wants to be
small.
All the more for the people who want to
look into the face of evil and dispense
good and not wither away into their
bedroom.
Of course, it's hard. No one's saying
it's not hard. It's not sugarcoated.
It's not easy. standing outside a dinner
hall that's honoring a 26-year-old who
by accident invented an app at age 18 in
his college dorm room in his underwear
eating a meatball sandwich and then sold
it to Google for $75 million is getting
honored and I'm out in the cold making
sure that a woman doesn't get hit by a
truck. It's not easy. No one's saying
it's easy. It's not easy to wake up at 3
in the morning to go make sure this
woman doesn't get killed or that some
kid gets home safely and then I go back
to sleep. I wake up with a pounding
headache and turn on the radio. They're
interviewing someone who won the lottery
and is installing a $6 million fish tank
in his bathtub.
It's not easy. Of course, it's not easy.
But greatness follows people who roll up
their sleeves and choose good.
Precisely because so few people
chase good means the dividends for you
are greater. Here's another story. In
Wales
in England,
there was a heavy snowstorm and there
was a woman who was walking with her
baby and was caught in this sudden
snowstorm and she was going to a
destination and she never got there. And
the next day, people are starting to
figure out, okay, where's this woman?
People say, you know what? I don't know.
Probably found a hotel, a motel,
somewhere to stay. Not sure. Who cares?
But there was one man who said, "No, no,
no. That's not how I'm operating. I'm
finding this woman. We're talking 10 ft
of snow. We're talking visibility of 5t.
We're talking frigid temperatures." And
he goes down. He's looking for hours. He
goes the entire length of the road that
she probably was walking until she f he
finds a mound that shouldn't be there.
And he starts digging and he's digging
more and he sees a dead clothesless
woman. She knew she was dying. She took
off her clothes. She wrapped her infant
in it. He opens up the b the pile of
clothes. He's alive. That baby is alive.
That baby turned out to be David Lloyd
George. Went on to become the prime
minister of England. led the entire
World War I essentially became one of
the most consequential figures in
politics in the last 200 years. Who also
led the way to the Balffor Declaration,
paving the way for the entire state of
Israel, which can be traced back to one
no-name man who the world will never
know about, who went out in the night in
the freezing cold when everyone else
said no. And he said yes.
That is who you are.
Chasing a life where no one will thank
you, little money,
but dispensing good into a world
desperate for it. Which brings me to
Lakewood
specifically.
We have become slightly desensitized in
Lakewood. We think it's normal. We think
it's normal. Help is you're in a you
have trouble. Help is in the way
immediately. We think it's normal.
You're lost. Someone's going to come out
and find you. We think it's normal. You
know, someone collapses and ambulance is
in there in 90 seconds. We think that's
normal,
but it's not normal.
I was somewhere recently. I won't say
where because I don't know who's
connected to which state prosecutor
here.
And I walk out to my car. I see all four
doors of my car open. I go inside my
car. Every single valuable thing I own
is stolen, gone. I was in the middle of
moving from place to place and
everything was in my car. laptops,
money, clothes, shakeles, scarves,
filling, gone. I'm standing there. I
start calling everyone I know. Nothing,
zero. Health, zero. Jump in the lake. So
then I feel I see that this community
has a community watch. Okay, this is
very far away. A community watch. Great.
I called the community watch. I say, "My
car, that thing was stolen. Help me."
"No, sorry. We don't do that." I'm like,
"You're a community watch?" You don't
You don't do So what do you do? We
mostly have missing cats. I'm like,
"What? We mostly help with missing cats.
Give me a break."
And then I realized
that's what normal looks like.
That is what it looks like when people
in your city aren't big enough to step
up and fill in. I was in Hanoi, Vietnam
a few weeks ago. I don't know if you
ever been to Hanoi. It is insane. It's
chaotic. It's crazy. It makes Manhattan
look like the Cascus. And I'm walking
there. It is hotter than hot. I'm not
sure if it was 175 degrees or 176
degrees. I'm not sure it I wasn't sure
if I was walking on a street or if I was
swimming in a crockpot. It was that hot.
There's air conditioning companies who
are filming their advertisements there.
I'm walking along with my wife and two
kids and I see there is a woman on the
floor at the theater of Stroke. Now,
guess how many people did anything?
Zero. Now, this wasn't like a little
quiet street. in Vietnam. This is the
most jam-packed place probably you'll
walk. I wasn't sure if I was on a street
corner or if I was in a can of tuna.
Nobody. So, my wife and I run over to
this woman who's on the floor literally
passing at diet. And my wife, who's a
nurse, says she needs juice immediately.
Get her juice. Quick, quick, quick,
quick, quick. So, I look around, I see
that there's a guy who has a a crate of
oranges who's sitting on the side of the
road and he's squeezing the oranges to
make orange. So I run up to her. I say,
"Guys, sir, Mr. Dude, she's dying. She's
literally dying. Can you put us a couple
of orange juice?" "No,
no, she's dying." "No, you pay me." I'm
going to pay you. You charge seven
Vietnamese gong. That's the equivalent
of like 4 cents. What you like Starbucks
charge you $19 for a lavender infused
rosemary oatmeal? Frap in your shook
squeezing oranges. She's dying. No
money, no juice. No money, no juice.
I walk, I go collect money like a
beggar. Uh, the American terrorist is
collecting money for the Vietnamese. Go
figure how that looks. I go, I get juice
for this. We save her life.
Okay, I burn my food now that I
would anyone in this room act like that?
Would anyone in this room even think
like that? Would anyone in this city
even think like that?
No.
Because we're not normal. Because we've
developed a culture where there's a
problem, you step up and you fix it. I
want to conclude with a story. One final
story.
A few months ago, I went to check out a
school that I was considering sending my
son to. It's called Laura Stein here in
Lakewood. The first time I'm ever there,
I walk into the parking lot and all of a
sudden I'm walking to the administration
wing. I see 15 cops come running through
the parking lot. There's 12 room members
just running through the parking lot.
Okay, that's one way to introduce your
school to me. Very nice.
What happened was there was a hit and
run on the corner street over there and
the guy ran through his parking lot and
they thought maybe he was armed and
they're coming to check out the
situation. Now, this was in the middle
of recess. There's six or seven million
kids who are playing outside and for a
moment the show members, the police
officers huddled together to sort of
like regroup and 3 million 8-year-olds
come running to gang up on these police
officers and show members and start
belting out with confidence. They know
exactly where the guy went. He went
left. He went right. He's on top of the
bus. He's under the bus. He's wearing a
blue shirt. I thought he was wearing a
black shirt. He's bald. He has a
ponytail. He's wearing an afro. What's
an afro?
With complete and utter confidence.
>> And the show remembers the police
officers just look at the kids, get a
little smile, and they turn on their
radio to listen to their chief, and they
run off into the direction.
Life is sort of a microcosm
of that parking lot where there's a
million people pointing in a million
different directions who are essentially
children dressed up like adults who are
saying go this, go that, obsess over
this, cancel this guy, follow that guy,
do this, donate all your mental space to
this, that, and the other.
Lucky are the people who can tune them
all out. Lucky are the people who can
say I want to do good. I want to be a
solution in a world filled with
problems. So instead of just me being
here to tell to wish thanks to you all,
I want to personally tip my cap because
when I was four years old, my father was
climbing up a flight of stairs and he
collapsed. He had a category 4 cardiac
arrest, which basically gives you a 4%
chance of survival. Not 24, not 14%
chance, 4% chance. And it is only
because of people like you who step up,
who run towards chaos, who run towards
the problems. The only reason I am not
an orphan is because people like you see
a problem and choose to fix it.
I leave you with the following quote.
There's a quote that was very popular
amongst soldiers in World War II. It's
become very popular amongst Navy Seals
right before they head out into their
missions, before they drop from those
helicopters. The quote is the following.
The only thing necessary for the triumph
of evil is for good people to do
nothing. Yeah. The only thing necessary
for the triumph of evil is for good
people to do nothing. Evil in this world
does not survive, does not win because
it is strong. It is because people get
too comfortable and get too weak, get
too complacent and chase the wrong
things. Triumph will be received by good
when good people dispense it. So, we tip
our cap and I represent all of Lakewood
and the surrounding towns to thank the
people who are never thanked, to thank
the people who never get awards. To
thank the people who prevent crimes
whose victims will never know about. I
tip my cap to the people who are living
in a world filled with problems very
much stand tall and become the solution.
Thank you very much for listening.