I’m So Chashuv I Go To Brisk - Choosing A Yeshiva Part 1 (Ep. 242)

hi this is damski and welcome to the robowski show whether you're watching with our friends over at tour any time whoever you watch or listen to your podcast as always we're happy to have you along for the experience and don't forget to like share and subscribe assuming that that applies to whatever form you're using and uh sponsor for this episode The Show Must Go On what what can I say doesn't that say at all sponsored as a for at the right time for the donor and for all of those in CL Israel who are looking for a well too bad you didn't give your name because anyone who sponsor the rowski show already has a large following of admirers and I don't see any reason why that shouldn't be able to lead to matrimony because basically we should breed among ourselves sometimes it's kada to bring in an outsider just to be able to expand the audience but certainly you know rowski crazies are meant to uh are meant to uh stay together and um okay I want to do something that I have been uh uh I don't want to say promising but I have been uh indic ating I would like to do for a very long time and I don't know how many people even remember that I spoke about this I know that's almost foolish to say to some people because you know I sit down with certain people and they start quoting me every line that I have ever said uh I just met somebody the other day who happened to hear one of the rowski show episodes and went back as people often do six years ago and start listening to the entire thing for hours and hours and hours and and I meet people say I listen to every show several times so uh you know they they know more about what I said than what I said you know you you know I don't always remember people say why do you laugh at your own joke I said I forgot that I Haven told it before I'm making it up all new that's one of the great things about getting old is you keep meeting new people and sometimes it's family members CU your memory is just completely shot you know so that's it I'm I'm one step away from Joe Biden but um uh so uh so I'm sure those those people remember that I've mentioned this more than once I'm sure they can cite me the actual reference but um reminds me a story of there was a a impressionist uh by the name of Rich Little very popular and he used to do impersonations and he said one time he was on a set and he sees um John Wayne and John Wayne says to him little come over here so when John Wayne tells you to come over you come over and he says yes sir Mr Wayne he goes I forgot how I do my walk show it to me [Laughter] again which is ironic because here's a little another bit of trivia for you um a bunch of uh of musicians got together to record a song to raise money for hunger in Africa called this We Are the World this was a major thing they brought all the the the people who were making a lot of money at the time um I don't know exactly how they chose who they were going to have and what the conditions were uh I know that John Denver was very upset because he had been working for real for years working on world hunger and they didn't invite him and he was a pretty popular guy at the time but um uh you know it didn't um it wasn't uh wasn't as successful as that everybody got involved but it was a very successful song you know what I mean so uh so they gathered together various uh music stars at the time and they brought out of retirement Bob Dylan at this point was pretty old right Robert Zimmerman is his real name became Bobb Dylan Jewish guy anyway he had a very dis distinctive voice um I know this because my brother used to play Bob Dylan um on his stereo uh his records stereo I was growing up and he would practice the harmonica along to his music and I would lie in my bed with a wet washcloth on my eyes and pray for death cuz I used do an impersonation for my wife and she was sure that nobody actually goes that way until I finally was some place where we found an old Bob Dylan record and I put it on she says I can't believe it how did this guy ever manage you know cuz I would not feel so alone Everybody Must Get Well you're walking and this is how he would sing with this kind of wine you know I remember there was a a song that I had heard on the radio one sung by some group called Quinn the Eskimo which I thought was you know pretty song When Quinn the esimo gets here everybody's going to jump for joy come on with that come on I said oh that's a pretty catchy tune so my brother says to me oh it's Bob Dylan I said no it's not he goes here and he plays the original come on without come on within you've not seen nothing like the Mighty Quinn I was like oh my gosh I'm glad they remade it but um he had this whiny anyway so he he comes there for you know this this is We are the world and he goes to sing his line and he's singing it like a regular person and they say to him no no no do it like Bob Dylan goes what do you mean I am Bob Dyan he goes no no no and L Richie has to teach him how to sing like Bob Dylan you know so he was finally able to do enough of an impersonation of what he sounded like when he was younger to do it so I have people who remind me constantly of things that I said that I have no recollection and that's why I uh always enjoy listening to my old shurm because I I you know I did a some of the ones that I give all the time okay I know but sometimes I just I used to give every other Moi shabas for 25 years sheir and I I don't remember all of them and then I'm listening to one of my old shorum and I set up all these questions I'm like oh my gosh that's brilliant I have no idea what the answerers and then I hear myself give the answer I say wow that's such a great answer I can't believe it so teach me my walk I forgot how it goes so I know there are some people who are very good at uh following everything I've ever said and ever done so to them this will this will not uh be a surprise but uh I have a good friend in pic and not just a good friend personally but a good friend of the show you know there are certain people who are um who are uh who see the show as a vehicle for uh goodness and righteousness in the world and they try to support it any way they can so uh wonderful fellow AR Edelman and uh he had me over I slept over his house and and uh and in my room it was like they had a signed welcome to the rski show the kids put up you know anyway at the time his son zman used to say to me all the time can't you did a a whole series on how to choose a seminary can't you do something for boys on how to choose a yiva and I said yeah that's a great idea um definitely going to do it and uh that was what 5 years ago but nothing ever disappears it rattles around in here until it starts to annoy you yeah my brother on his 25th wedding anniversary uh was uh saying speaking about his wife and he mentioned you know how it says in um in ases k you know more precious than pearls and he says how do you get a pearl he says a piece of sand gets into an oyster and it starts to irritate the oyster until it releases something beautiful to be able to cover it up so that that's how you get a pearl you get a pearl because there's something that's itching away at you bothering you you know so then he introduced me and I said I didn't follow that exactly but as far as I understand his wife irritated him until he bought her pearls but the truth is that that little colonel sits there and it and it rattles around until it finally turns into a pearl that's the idea so um so this is a pearl that has has been uh focusing for a long time now I I I I think I just answered the question that somebody asked me they said every now and then in the show you seem to Look Away what are you looking at I said well I'm sure I'm turning to my producer but then I realized no I'm looking over here that's what the guy says you're looking over here and the producer is not there I was like you're right that's because um let me uh we'll give a little background to this I was being imitated once in uh the perm play and impersonations and per plays are one of the most important ways of getting to get insight into yourself that you would otherwise never get cuz people see you from a perspective That You Don't See anyway this guy was doing me giving a Shear you know and he's laughing he's telling J and all of a sudden he stops and he goes like this and everybody laughs and then he goes back to the sh and that and he does it again and I was like what is he talking about I don't do that he goes rebby you do it all the time I said no I don't he says we'll point it out next time sure enough I was giving a shear and they said there you just did it I said oh I see that's because I always try to be gbed about whether or not what I'm saying is a humorous observation in order to bring across the point that I'm doing or if it's just lus so when I'm in the middle of a routine or something I stop at some point and and think is that enough you know should I go for another couple of minutes or did I make my point already so I guess sometimes when in middle of talking and and I'm trying to remember something or think something my my Goto is to look off to the left and slightly above to remember it so I'm just I'm conscious of that now so so whoever asked me that question also I don't know who you are oh my gosh but I mentioned that I think just in one of my shurm that I couldn't find any onzone lasagna noodles um and uh uh I don't know how I was going to make uh Shu because I always make lasagna and the only good lasagna noodles are renon that I've been able to find I'm sure there are others but uh those are the ones those are my go-to and I said there were none there there were only the Israeli ones which are basically like these rectangular little boards they're not like lasagna noodles you know anyway I I just mentioned this in passing I then gave my lasagna recipe of course but uh somebody comes in and says there was a bag hanging on the door knob to the house and there was a bag with froni lasagna noodles from America I don't know who you are but may the Lord bless you and keep you we had shers because of you you saved the holiday otherwise it would have been How the Grinch Stole sh and somebody came and just brought me lasagna noodles and just left it on my do I just can't believe it by the way I'm really looking for Alexis I just thought I'd throw that out there I'm just kidding I have a 10-year-old Honda I couldn't be happier anyway so uh uh but the but the the point is that whoever whoever brought those Las news thank you so much you know but um I decided that I'm going to start this series on uh how boys choose a Yeshiva now uh I I didn't have a I don't have an outline I didn't plan this out sometimes when I do a series I really sit down beforehand and I write what you know when I talked about the the dating and marriage series I had more or less a theme that I wanted to talk about on each episode I haven't worked this out I've never h full disclosure I've never talked about this before this is something new uh which is always enjoyable because you know I have certain people who sometimes come and join the studio audience and uh one time a guy was there and he says you didn't say one thing I haven't heard before all right mildly disconcerting but uh but I haven't really talked about this before I'm sure some of the ideas I have but this particular topic I've never dealt with so uh this is Uncharted uh territory for me and um what can I tell you I will if if having a podcast has taught me one thing is that I can talk for hundreds of hours without any preparation and so that's why I was just recently at uh my niece's shabas Shas um and uh and my brother-in-law says to me I forgot to ask you uh to speak can you speak and I said I only do one thing I better be able to do that if you become a plumber and you don't know how to clean out a toilet you really should find an another profession all I know how to do is talk so I better be able to talk not that uh there are people who require preparation the first time I went with my kids to visit pesak cron one of my kids said I hear that you have a whole system when you prepare a drer so he says yeah of course you know and he brings out a file cabinet with index cards for those of you who remember index cards these 3x5 paper things and all of his stories are on index cards you know and um and what he does when he prepares his draa is he writes the outline and he wants to tell a particular story or a ver he puts a number on the index card and a number on his notes so he knows to refer to that index card to a to give across the story and they say wow that's amazing he says well doesn't your father have outlines goes no he just talks says well doesn't he forget things yeah all the time sometimes he sets up a whole Shear with a whole bunch of questions and forgets to answer them they headend to the share and people come and say you never answered the question I was like oh that can we get everyone back together one of the joys of ADD but I find that's one of the reasons that a lot of people find me engaging since a lot of people are suffering from uh add today we all just go off in different directions together so um I told this already that when I used teaching or so there was one person uh whose job it was to um jot down what I would go on a tangent that was his job because I would go from tangent to tangent to tangent tangent and I would say how did we get here and no one could find their way back I was like Hansel and gret and the birds had eaten all the breadcrumbs I had no way to find my way back you know so uh so he would say no on the Rock and I would go back so um so yeah little sense of free association so uh so let's get started there is a dramatic difference between a um girl choosing to go to Seminary and a boy choosing to go to Yeshiva and that's the following a boy has a ofor a girl does not so that theoretically a girl who's had a really good high school education should have enough um background to be able to carry her on from there there are girls who either want more or just want to be in erit because I have such a love for erit that was once upon a time you know when there were only a few seminaries in ell catering to that small Cadre of girls who wanted to continue learning Torah on a higher level and also wanted to be an ell and when you came in the good old days to a seminary in ell they did not give you Creature Comforts you got the regular what they call Sak beds those are the little metal frame you know about ye high with the wooden board and a little you know sponge mattress I gave you the the horse blanket and the pillow that has gone through various iterations over the years and have all the stains to show it and uh you know the the the food was somewhat sparse and it was very simple people didn't go out to eat people didn't you know people came to enjoy the erit shell experience and now it's become diur to go to ER shell and um people go out girls pass on to their friends a book of of fun experiences you know you want to go toas here's who you can call H you want to spend a shabas with a blind couple here's who you call you want to be in the old and it's just different experiences that you can have and of course a lot of time is spent going out to eat and other kind of things like this um there are seminaries that are specifically made for girls who do not want an intellectual experience now granted there is an inspiration that one can get from Seminary as well and could be a girls are going there to become inspired and um you know that's uh that you know but all of that is more or less seen as an extra there are certain people who need a year in aell there are certain people who want to year in aell but most people go because most people do what most people do because that's what most people do right and that's just the that's just uh that's just how people make decisions I'm going toel because everyone goes toel you know I've had girls from different seminaries over at my house and I said how did you pick this Seminary most of the time they can't give me any answer they can't tell me why I chose this Seminary over any other Seminary it's just that's where I got into or that's where my friends were going Etc it wasn't a focus of I want to go here I want to go there and accomplish this and accomplish that so uh so okay so if you've got the money and uh you don't have any other better uses for it you want to go to sell and you know go out to eat and uh hang out and do all those kind of things okay a lot of worse things to do with your time and your money so okay but there's not a there's not a of if it's for okay you could argue there's a um there are certain seminaries where they say we we want to give the girls high level Torah classes so that when they go off to University and they study in University they'll take Torah as seriously as they do um their secular studies and understand that there's tremendous amount of depth to it as well so okay but a person wants to a person can and so therefore the considerations that go into choosing a seminary is different than a boy choosing Yeshiva because a boy has a Mitzvah of tal now um I remember when I was teaching was a young man who uh had to fight his parents very much to go to Yeshiva because his parents said you um you already had a Yeshiva High School education that's enough so he says what do I tell my father so uh oh actually was after one year he gave him one year he wanted to come back for a second year and he says no that's one year is definitely enough so I said okay then you only have to go for one year of University because if one year I assume they gave you a secular education in high school so you only need one year of college right no you need four years of college cuz there's more to learn and not by [Laughter] it's different it's it's there's an obligation to learn now there are certain people who say I'm not cut out for learning sometimes they're right they're right the famous story with the NV where the NV apparently did not have such a good head and he overheard his parents saying listen we don't have the money to pay for a momit for this kid he's just not smart enough you know let him learn a profession or open a store and you know go on with his life so uh so he heard this and he pushed himself and pushed himself until he became the NV so after he wrote one of the his which he wrote many he told the story over and he says imagine that I didn't push myself so hard so the end of my life I would have gotten up to shamayim now the way I heard the story is he would have been a kma would have been a shopkeeper somebody else said he says I would have been a shoe maker I've heard different version of the story and uh he says K would say to me so what you do with your life he says well I DAV three times a day and I was K etim I always had a Seder every day I raised my children to go and you know and learn tah and then married them off and gave them good jobs and you know and I was a good husband I ran my business with honesty he says that's it he says where all the you were supposed to have written the reason I say shoak is because my my brother-in-law ofans when he was in brisk he says Yeshua told over the story he says they going to be certain people have written SPM that when they get up to shayh will say this is it where were all the shoes you were supposed to make so yeah there's an argument to be made that not everybody start being learning I told this story years ago that a fellow died and he had a big box of and he said I want them to be buried with me so the family came through isfeld and said uh listen maybe there's to here for cl that we should uh we should hold on to and we should save so uh he says all right we'll take out one piece we'll learn it and we'll see so he takes out one piece and it was a question of of and says yakob sees the m going up and down the ladders so he says why were they climbing a ladder they have wings they could have flown says must be that they were young Mal and they hadn't grown their wings yet so said it's no problem you can bury it so uh right I don't know who said the original adage but not everything that you think should be said not everything you say should be written not everything you write should be published yeah so uh so apparently there wasn't anything left over here that was considered important enough to uh to hold on to but there are definitely um uh people who maybe maybe they don't have a head for learning maybe they do uh sometimes you meet a boy who says yeah I'm I'm not going to go to Yeshiva I don't have a head for learning gamarra I said what are you going to do I'm going to go to law school I said law school you can handle but you can't handle gamar why because it's too legal ease for you people have to be honest with themselves so what I tell people is the following there's a Ste in noo and it says the leim begin their aod at 30 and B says it begins at 25 so what is it 25 ver 30 so Rashi says at 25 we bring him in to see if he can learn the aod and we give him five years and after five years if he doesn't see a Simon BR so then you know he doesn't have uh he doesn't have what it takes so I say the same thing if you give five years in Yeshiva and then you see I taka can't make it okay so go off and do whatever you want I learned the the would call over guys after certain period of time I don't know if it was 5 years I don't know exactly and say listen you know you're a very fine person but you don't have what it takes to make it in learning go to college learn a profession get a job go out to work but uh this is not for you you you don't have what it takes and um you know okay but if you but you have to first give it you have to give it a a real solid chance um if somebody contacted me and said that they were writing a book on dyslexia and he has evidence that there were certain GD Torah who suffered from dyslexia he he has evidence he says can I quote you in the book because to the best of my knowledge you're the only RV who ever admitted he had dyslexia so okay but between the dyslexia the add all of my other different uh difficulties I was not successful in Yeshiva I wasn't and I remember after three years I went tohen and I said uh I'm not making it I really tried I really tried everybody else that I went to said you're not trying hard enough no one knew about learning disabilities said you're not trying hard enough you don't care enough if you cared you would do it you're lazy you're you're this you're don't trying you know so I went to RH and I told him the whole story expecting to get some you know go back to the Bas mag and hit your head against the gamor again and he looked at me and he says wow I could never spend three years doing something that I didn't enjoy and wasn't successful at you must have an unbelievable drive like that made me feel like a million bucks brought me back we didn't know what self-esteem was back then we didn't we didn't have a word for it but you know suddenly returned me myself and so he says but you should go into H could do something because you're a talented guy and uh I stumbled into ncsy and suddenly found out I had a talent and after years I um I went back to the Bas medish nine years 10 years went back to the Bas medish and I had the confidence and I developed enough ability to try to overcome my learning disabilities andem I was definitely Marly successful you know but I understand that a person who stays in yiva and isn't producing it isn't getting anywhere okay but a person has to First give themselves a fighting chance and you have to be realistic you have to be realistic you have to know who you are and what you are what you're capable of and what you're not capable of uh for years I used to quote uh the line from kolan Luca until one of my Avid listeners wrote and said it was really from Dirty Harry okay yeah what am I going to do yeah a man's got to know his limitations so I didn't know my limitations because everyone kept telling me how smart I was I didn't know there was something wrong with me that I couldn't see the words and that I started reversing I was just learning with somebody and I did it just now I reversed the you know I'm 65 years old and I still them reversing letters and stuff um and I I just didn't know so I had to to be able to go and Sol for myself but um you know I'm going to share with you now uh a dirty secret and um it's uh I don't know I don't even know if it's such a secret but it's a a definite reality the reality is that you have a 2year window to learn how to make a laning on a piece of gamar it's only two years um depending when they start Kamar it's from fourth to sixth grade or from fifth to seventh grade that's it after that they expect you to know already and if you turn around it's like imagine in fifth grade you suddenly show up and you said listen I can't read Hebrew every was like what you can't you can't read Hebrew how's that possible that same thing with the laning certainly by seventh grade it the assumption is you already know how to make a laning yeah and if you didn't pick it up at that point you're going to Bluff in learning for the rest of your life and I've seen it Time After Time After Time people so what do you do you do a trick like I did you know you get a Kusa who knows how to make a laning but is n as smart as you so you can wow them with your lumus and your and your intellect Etc um even though you don't have the skills I went to in 1975 in and I was supposed to be in for a year and my re mha Harris he moved me up after a month and uh and he says I can't keep him here because he's M to every re and I know he's MAV to it cuz he can't read it cuz the guy can't read I can't keep him here cuz he's just too smart you know so they moved me up into the next year and I couldn't read but I'd get a Kus who could read and then I would play around and one time my Reby just said to me goes you only got here because of mental gymnastics but you don't really have the the skills necessary to sit and learn and I knew that but I didn't know what to do cuz I don't know how to solve this problem and no there knew about the learning disabilities to be able to help me so I was kind of stuck so there the amazing thing I found is there are lots of guys in Yeshiva gadola sometimes in higher levels who are sitting there doing lumus Andis but don't know how to read and that's why when I sat down and I remember there's a fellow who's a r Colo and uh I was speaking once about my ADD and my dyslexia you know and comes over to me making sure nobody can hear and he says you're lucky the kids with ADD they sat him in the back of the class and you just spaced out he says I had ADHD we were the ones bouncing off the wall we were the ones who got beaten so consider yourself lucky that you had the add instead of the ADHD yeah and uh that's true yeah so um uh so for whatever reason oh so he said but I'll tell you this much I had to work much harder I have to read that that rashba 40 times before I can understand what he's saying but then when I when I speak to the Kyo nobody can argue with me because I've seen this rashba 40 times they've only had to seen it once or twice because they know how to [Laughter] read I that's a brilliant observation and so I have to spend an enormous amount of time going over it in order to cap what it's saying just to be able to see the words just to be able to read them you know and because of the dyslexia I don't store things in Hebrew that's why you'll notice sometimes I tend to quote things in English that's because when I learn something Hebrew like I'll go to and uh whole thing will be in Hebrew I can say it over to your verbatim in English but I can't I can't access the Hebrew because my brain doesn't goes the other way you know but uh but a person who can't make a laning is going to be handicapped in learning for the rest of their life it's just you reach a certain point where you just can't turn around and say I can't make a laning there too much of a busha yeah um and I was amazed how many times I meet guys in Yeshiva I'll tell you a story um maybe it's better if I don't say the name of Yeshua but it's a very famous world class yiva and I happen to know there's a bunch of guys there who um fit the description so I offered for free to come to the Yeshiva and give a shear and to teach the guys how to make a laning and the basics Etc you know and they told me no thank you and I pressed them a little bit and they wouldn't they wouldn't budge so I spoke to one of the reim and they said you don't understand we can't admit ad MIT that we have those guys Yesa because if people find out that Yeshiva on our Rama world class Yeshiva has guys who can't make a laning you see then it makes us look ridiculous and we can't admit it which reminds me of the story that I heard about this fellow who had a Rolls-Royce and he was driving somewhere in rural England and his muffler fell off and uh he pulls into some service station and they say we don't have parts for roll Royce so they call Rolls-Royce and they say we'll deal with it and a short while later they hear a helicopter and the helicopter lands and a technician comes out with a new muffler and reattaches it says you know good luck and takes off so the guy's thinking wow you know this the repair bill here is going to be tremendous and he waits a week two weeks doesn't say anything so he calls up Rolls-Royce and says listen I'm waiting for a bill for the repair it goes what repair says well I was driving in Su or rotting to talking to whatever little PL Village it was and my muffler fell off and I pulled into a you know a garage and um and uh you sent a helicopter with a muffler and you know and a technician and he reattached it goes I don't know what you're talking about he says yes I'll tell you where it is give the guy's number you can call him he said sir Mufflers don't fall off of rolls-royces said I'll send a helicopter with a technician at new part and I won't charge it for it because otherwise I have to admit that Rolls-Royce a muffler fell off so imagine you're in a world class Yeshiva and you have to admit the fact that there are guys who never learned how to make a ling and it's very hard cuz it's dunky work that's why if you do the work when you're younger you memorize your list of vocabulary words and you know what I mean and you go over you know all the different you know all the different things and and and figure out and how to do it and and pick up enough Aramaic that you can make your make yourself understood you know I mean and get through most the r granowski said I think there's about a 100 words you need to know to get through most of gamar and the other words you can either figure out from the context or look at Rashi or look it up but you know there's a hundred basic words you have to memorize to be able to to be successful so that's the big underlying problem that a lot of people have when it comes to learning because if they don't have that essential tool they're not going to be able to move on so what's my point my point is you have to be honest in your evalu when my son was in eth grade so here in Israel after you finisher in eth grade you go to Yeshiva Katana and uh and we went to a meeting about Yeshiva katanas and the manahel told the following Story the principal he said there was a father who had a solid Bay student right he was a solid B student he wasn't an a student but the father had protexia right he had connections and he could get his son into an alif alif school not just an olive school and alive alive Yeshiva and um he was going to push his son into this Al of Al of Yeshua and the principal and the rebi said don't do this to the boy he can't handle it he's a solid B student put him into a b school where he will be successful ful and the father said I can't tell my friends that my boy is an a be school I have to say he's at a double a school how am I going to how I going to face my friends so unfortunately when it comes to choosing yeshivas very often people go for status what school is going to be good for what school is going to be good for my reputation and that is in my opinion a terrible way to make an educational decision but that's how it goes we go by reputation we go by name you know um I heard the story I did not confirm it as I always point out I'm not P off Crone I don't check out my stories but uh today there are a whole bunch of brisks Once Upon a Time that was just brisk yeah once upon a time it wasn't a Yeshiva you know the presar I think give a she around his D table you know but uh his son rerel took over the Yeshiva and actually built the Yeshiva and uh and then his son of Yeshua took over so there were a bunch of other brisks and brisk like schools Etc you know there's enough of the Mish around to open all kinds of different schools but the main brisk could only accommodate a limited number of B obviously because the whole point is to go into the shear to hear of Yeshua tell over the brisker R's to you know maybe the Bas of Ley you know occasionally we Barrel you know and uh if you're not in his Shear okay so there a couple of shum that are there to get you ready for it but for the most part that's the purpose of the Yeshua but brisk had a name it was called the Harvard of the yeshivas apparently it was anti-semitic but uh so this is the story I heard a delegation of Rashia Yeshiva came to meet with abam Yeshua and said you are destroying learning in America was haste why what did I do he says if a boy wants to continue learning he has to find a father-in-law who's willing to support him and father-in-law is are only willing to support boys who went to brisk waste my money on a on a on a second R boy he says so you're not taking the boys even boys who are R you to go to brisk so uh they don't go to brisk so they can't get somebody to support them and they can't stay in learning iua basically said this is how I heard the story again I I don't have any aidm this how I heard it said over you know me I hear something and I repeat it um he says okay I'll take whoever you send me so a whole bunch of people came to brisk and they weren't going to get into sheer for years but at least they could say they were in brisk yeah scarecrow there are people with no more brains than you but they have something you don't have a college degree here's a college degree and now you're a genius yeah so now everybody could say that they learned them brisk uh this is the story I heard I could be it's totally not true I don't know but I I do know for a fact that suddenly brisk are taking a lot more students and I know from guys there that they wait many years to be able to get into Shear so so the circumstantial evidence certainly supports uh the story but is that the best place for your learning or are there other considerations and so um uh this is this is a big question that people have to ask themselves so therefore as everyone who knows me knows before you can answer any question you have to Define it yeah people say I want to live a meaningful life what is a meaningful life people say I want to have a good marriage what is a good marriage people say I want to have good kids what are good kids and that's and everything you know how do how do you run a good pesak seder first Define what a good pesak seder is and and I I want to I want to have meaningful doing okay just tell me what your goal is what is it you're trying to accomplish and if people don't have definitions then they never they never are going to AC well I shouldn't say never but the odds are against them accomplishing their goals because they um uh they they don't know where their goal is or as the old expression goes if you don't know where you're going any road will take you there know someone stops you and says can you give me directions I'm a Long Island Boy you some can you give me directions so where you going I don't know I said in that case you know take the Northern State Parkway instead of the LI it's more Scenic you know I don't know where you're going either but if you're looking for a nice Road it's a nice Road might not take you where you want to go so that's why when we come to the essential question of choosing Yeshiva the first thing is we're going to have to be realistic and figure out what it is that I want to accomplish so next time inem we'll go over some of the considerations that you need to take into account when choosing is and that brings us to the question and answer portion of our program Dina asks how can I make everyday activities meaningful this is such a wonderful question um there is a uh a girl I knew when she was in high school she loved to learn Torah she enjoyed it very much in fact you know in the room very often the husband gives the his new wife a piece of jewelry uh what she wanted was a mishna mueres that was that was a room present you know she loved learning anyway they moved out uh he became a RV she became a rabbitson and most of her time was now involved with domestic obligations as opposed to intellectual Pursuits well they came to erell one summer and uh he was running a learning program and she was taking classes at the advanced seminary in and she comes to visit me and she says I'm so alive when I'm learning Torah this is what I really want to do and I feel like my life is nothing you know or as one Israeli woman said to me once Filipino because that's who usually comes by to do domestic uh uh activity here in in Israel people from the Philippines cuz my Filipino that's what I do so I'll tell you what I told her in a second but I'm interrupting the story for another story um I've I've mentioned him before and I I really need to have him on the show and uh that's uh um Dr MTI Stern uh and he's a tremendous and he's a dentist and he specialized is an implants one of the world leaders in implants you can often see his ads in the Jewish Publications and uh and he said to me once you think I'm a dentist I don't look at myself as a dentist I'm a baled people come into my office they haven't been able to eat an apple in years and I give them new teeth and for the first time in their life they can eat an apple and I thought what a a brilliant way of looking at things I mean that that's how he approaches business in fact when he would have people in you know Israelis are always looking to hle Etc he's he would give him a card and he would say I'm I'm not charging you it was like one of those donation cards like they have uh at YCO you know says turn up the flap whatever whatever you think you can pay he said the bottom one was Zero you one 100 whatever it was click you know fold over whatever you could pay most of the time people ended up clicking off what I would have charged them anyway but no one ever took zero I said what if they did says then I would have charged them zero if a person tells me honestly you did all this procedure for me and I can't I can't afford to pay for it okay because I'm looking at this not as a business I'm looking at this as a what a brilliant Insight yeah so what I said to her is what did a Coan do in the Bas of mcdes housework right he sifted the flour and kneaded the dough and baked the bread and roasted the meat he did housework in fact says they even did sponger you know I mean uh afterwards they would they would stop up the stream and bring it in and have it wash out the the Azar you they were doing Spong says what made it significant is they knew that they were a Cohan in the Bas Mikes she say so how do I have that cavana when I'm looking at a Sing full of dishes and I said why do you think a Sing full of dishes has any less caduca than washing the innards of a cow in a bucket if you know you're in the base of mikash every Jewish home is a mishkan and the and the lady of the house is the cohain working in the Bas of mikdash and I've met women who say I look at what I'm doing as uh um I'm supporting my family yeah I'm I'm giving them food I'm giving them clothing I'm giving them you know I'm providing for them like provides for us that's my job here is to be able to give a to be able to make my my house into a home and my family to have their needs uh taken care of when you look at it from that point of view everything that you do in this world if it's worthwhile uh can be filled with meaning now as the expression goes something not worth doing is not worth doing well you know if you asking me how do you find meaning in playing Candy Crush I have no solution for you yeah if you tell me uh uh you know I'm doing something that's worthless I I always share the quote from Minnesota Fats who was considered by many people to be the world's greatest billiard player uh the film The Hustler was based on him Jackie gleon played him and he had a quote that's just galic he says now I'm a pool player there's probably nothing in this world less important than a pool player but for the record books Let It Be noted I'm the best so if you're doing something meaningless and you want to know how to make that meaningless I don't know but if you're doing something like you're eating uh lunch and you understand I'm doing this to have the K to be able to do what I need to do or I'm taking a nap so that I have the strength to go on and do whatever else I need to do that inherently makes it something more worthwhile okay next question by Anonymous why do we not talk about mssiah at all in the Lish world we simply throw it in only as a way to end speeches and so why are we leaving mhia to be discussed only by kabad so of course mhia is an underlying uh important concept but the question should be much broader than that I asked raisha Shapiro at one point I said I've heard people say that the Muslim movement is dead and he says yes yes he agreed um which means how come people go to Yeshiva and they don't learn anything about mid or derit or as M says and he wrote this um 300 years ago um there are five areas of aus Hashem that's listed in order to become a complete Jew and we only deal with with one of them keeping Mitzvah he says what about [Music] AEM yeah what about all these other things how come we don't put any emphasis on this how come Yas we don't teach people how to Davin I'm not talking about the I'm saying what they're saying how to make the meaningful in their lives people spend so much time in in yes's um Ding and they have no idea what they're saying and it doesn't become meaningful to them on any level how come uh we don't teach basic hash and you see there are certain organizations and certain individuals who go around the yeshivas to answer basic questions on on yish kite you know when when I became from at the age of 12 and I had to answer all kinds of different questions I was being attacked constantly I found that when I came into Yeshiva gadola I knew more Hasa than any other guy in the Yeshiva cuz nobody teaches this they don't know what it means to be a yid nobody understands what what you know the basic Torah hasf are so I think it's a mistake to say why aren't they teaching about mssiah why aren't they focusing mashia why aren't they focusing on Mid why aren't they focusing on mus why aren't they focusing on hash why aren't they focusing on anything uh other than uh Hal and uh and gar that that's the real question and the answer is because there was a time when this was part and parcel of being a Jew you didn't have to teach about a and your relation with K because everyone lived with it you know deal to to bring it in but like you know in uh in the in the story sh tevia the Milkman that they based f F he's always talking to in Europe always spoke to he was a part of their life you don't have to teach people how to D in or relate to everybody did it you have to talk about mhia everybody lived with a sense of mashiach you know had a suitcase packed ready to go there came you know it was um uh it was part and parcel of who we we were as a people and now so many things that were so fundamental to being a Jew have been lost I say this story over all the time from every calman I heard him say it once in a Tish he said my parents may not have been as Mitzvah observant as many Jews are today but they were proud Jews and you find a lot of Jews who are Mitzvah observant who aren't proud Jews they're who keep Mitzvah but their hash is a and their approach is go and the way they talk is goish and you know one of the examples I always bring is is drinking in the fir Community a go you never found Jews who drank and now you have a problem of you go to S and there just tables and tables of booze and people get themselves drunk you never saw this before because we're losing that feel of what it means to be a y so I think the main reason is that it's not why aren't we talking about mssiah why aren't we talking about anything else and why is everything being lost in the process I think another reason is that we have always been uncomfortable with Messianic movements they've always proven uh to be problematic in Jewish history going back to yoska you know shab TI you know uh Frank all these all these would be Messiahs throughout history have caused a lot of problems and that might be one of the reasons why we don't talk about it as much only because people are nervous about um about uh that idea um whereas in kabad since they hold that the rebba was Messiah then of course they're going to speak a lot more about Messiah because that's that's their Reb's Mission they hold that he's that he is Messiah uh and therefore they will some places not every place add in you know that uh that that they're adding it in because that's part of it it could be that in the Yeshiva World it's a it's a sort of counter reaction to that okay well that's it for this episode if you want to find out more about the show you can go to my website RAB ali.com um I'm planning to be in America at the beginning of July if any anybody's interested in uh you know um booking an event I am available and uh if you want to sign up for one of the online shum if you want to sponsor an episode if you want to sponsor question and answer and uh you want to submit a question you want to send an email all of those things you can do and more and that's it for now so until next time I am de olski and this has been the rabi olowski show it's the rabbi orlovski show Torah and S 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 don't it's the rabbi orlovski show on Rabbi ori. comom Tor anytime YouTube and more it's Rabbi orski show Torah and S ready to go the rabbi orski show till next time till we meet again it's the rabbi Orlowski show it's the rabbi Orlowski show it's the rabbi orlovski show