Inside ArtScroll Episode 18: How Did Two Public School Kids Start the Largest Torah Website?

[Music] Hello everyone and welcome back to Inside Art Scroll. Today we are joined by two special guests, Shim and Ruben Kolyakov, the founders of tora anytime.com. Thank you Shim. Thank you Reuben. And it's an honor to have you here. And I want to start off by asking you about your tour that you just received of the Arch Bindery. You got to see behind the scenes here at Arch headquarters. What's your initial reaction? Uh first of all, thank you for inviting us over here. It's a tremendous tremendous zood to be here uh and to see what's going on over here. I I'll say what I what I mentioned to you in inside the that whole operations. I will never look at an arch scroll book the same way again. Uh we I was blown away with everything that's involved, every detail. Uh the whole process uh it was just something I've never experienced before. Uh so amazing. It was such such detailed organization. I've really never seen something so meticulous about every small every small thing and I didn't realize how much goes into it uh to make it and you see it in the bookstore, you're like ah an art scroll book, you know, barem but to see it like Shimon said, you're definitely going to see it differently now. Now, both of you mentioned when we first met and we're catching up a little that people comment to you that what you've done with Torah Anytime.com is kind of doing what art school did in print, both of you are doing online. Would you say that that's an accurate depiction of what you've accomplished? A very common statement that we've gotten since for the past 10 years is you guys are the next you guys are like the next art scroll revolution. what they did, like you just said, what they did in print, you guys are doing with with video video and and Shirim. I think that's one of the greatest compliments an organization could get because Art Scroll is is like the leader and and it made such it truly is the right word, the revolution in the Jewish world. And just to be put into that category, it's it's unbelievable. I you know, it's don't really have words to describe how Thank you, Hashem, for giving us such a to be part of this. Yeah. And and again, art scroll is a is a standard like you know people they know you're on a certain you know madrega once you hear art scroll if you're involved with art scroll or whatever it is for the past decades uh really really set a standard and uh and mistomataya we were trying to also kind of set a standard in terms of Torah and technology and and it's just been amazing for the past 14 years. I'd love to get into the details which we will the numbers and just the broad reach of Torah anytime but tell us who don't know your background where you grew up and growing up did you ever envision or dream that you would be spearheading such a project reaching literally tens hundreds of thousands of people all over the globe. So we're from the Bkharian community. Um I immigrated to this country when I was 3 years old from a country called Usbekiststan from a city called Tashkant and um and uh we didn't know much about Judaism or were what it meant to be a Torah Jew. There were some traditions but nothing uh more than that. And um we both went to public school. Um so Ruben was born here. He was born Yeah, he was born here. Yeah. I'm six years older than him. Uh we we immigrated in 1979. So we went to public school. Where was that? In New York. This is in Queens. In Queens. Yeah. Yeah. PS 2011. And um and in I remember in the third grade there was this incredible organization that still exists today, Queens Jeep, Jewish Education Program that found looked for Jewish kids in public school and pulled them out once a week for one hour. It was on Wednesday at 2 PM. Wow. And I remember um hearing about this uh and somehow they got in touch with my parents and they told me about it. And I remember being so excited about it, learning about the Jewish things and and and it turned into a situation where I was looking forward all week for this for this Jewish education program. It was the greatest hour of my my week. I remember and going over a year of doing this in the middle in December of my fourth grade, they finally convinced my parents to send me to a yeshiva. Uh it was a kiru of yeshiva called Yeshiva Institute at the time. Now it's called Yeshiva Primary, still run by Rabbi Zalman Deutsche. It's a yeshiva designed for public school kids. And um and I remember when my parents asked me, my mom asked me, "Do you want to go?" And I was just like, "Yes." Like, you know, like I was like 10 years old or something. I was like, "Yes." What was the level level of religiosity at home at the time? Did you have no shabas, no kash, nothing at all? Know about those things. We knew concept shabas. We knew Shabbat, but what it meant to be Shabbat Kush or nothing at all. And uh so I I I went in December of that year. I was in my fourth grade. I was around 10 years old. And uh I just fell in love and with with with with it. And next four years I was there. Now even though I was there, I still wasn't really holding anywhere because I was 10 years old, whatever it was. And uh also some of the things I brought home, my parents didn't really appreciate, you know, like this is not how we do things. This you know, you know, whatever it was. Uh and um but I got those four I went four years over there and it was it gave me a lot of education. Planted seeds. You planted seeds and then I then Rabbi Zman Deutscher was trying to get me into a high school but I didn't want to hear it for some crazy reason. I decided to go back to public school for high school but and he and Rabbi Deutsche, God bless him, he tried everything possible. He we hung up on him. He knocked on doors. Just go to yeshiva. But I I made my decision. But something very interesting happened in high school. Those seeds like my brother just mentioned that were planted. And at that at that year was the early '9s there was a mass immigration of Bkharian Jews coming into the United States. We came in when there was a little bit 13 years before 13 years before but mass immigration 9192 93 and I What was that? What was that caused by? The end of communism. Uhhuh. Okay. Right. Right. Once the fall diamond curtain, it was much easier for people to leave. Right. And in the high school I was in, Forest Hills High School, the thousands of these Bkharian kids were there and and they and we met and they looked up to me because I was here for so many years. Like, oh, an American guy, you know, and you you spoke the language well. I knew a little bit of the culture, whatever it was. And I found my and they and they knew a lot less than me about the Judaism. I had the concepts because four years I went to this Kiruhiva, right? And I found myself doing something interesting without even realizing. I was like I was being k with him in Forest Hills High School, you know, public school, public school. And I myself wasn't really holding anywhere yet, right? So, uh, make a long story short, there were other people in the community in Forest Hills that were doing Kiru. And one day I was walking and someone from the street pulled me and says uh would you like to listen to a lecture in the synagogue? It was Bet Gabriel. I don't know if it was Briel at the time, but it was that building and uh we're giving free pizza. I'm like, free pizza? Okay, I'm in. So I went in there. There was a speaker. It was I don't know exactly who it was. Maybe it was Rabbi Label Lamb or Rab Morai Becker, one of these famous gateway speakers. I went in there and I was in love with what was said and they said, "Would you like to come again next week?" I'm like, "Yeah, for sure. We have Chinese food. Okay, great. For sure." Now, long story short, after going to these lectures for all those years and at the same time interacting with all these immigrants from my community and and kind of recover them a little bit, I saw the impact that these lectures over the months was having on me and the change it was having on me and and the and and what it was doing to the changes of my life. I was actually becoming more observant. Mhm. And actually my brother was was the first person that I was working on as cuz he my parents didn't like I said didn't appreciate what I was bringing home from yeshiva. That's actually why they actually help help push me to back to publish. How many siblings were you? Just two of us. Just you just you two. So they said my parents said you keep Reuben away from Yeshiva. We don't want them to this fanatic stuff now. It's a very happy ending. Don't worry. My parents are amazing people. Very happy ending. But uh but they're going to keep him away. But they couldn't keep it away because I knew this is the way of life. I knew this is something right about this about Judaism. And Barak Hashem, he was all in. Not a single day in any type of a yeshiva. And it got to the point where in our community, I was already, you know, 18, 19, that there was a group of us, these teenagers, that all the parents was working on Shabbat. We wanted to keep Shabbat. Wow. So we all got together. So you graduated public school. I graduated public school. Continued going to these lectures, going to more lectures, going to more lectures. It was literally these lectures were changing my life while going to college also. While going to college, right? And it came to the point where we got a group of 10, 15 guys, maybe even more, that we wanted to keep Shabbat, but none of our parents were keeping Shabbat. They were all going to work. So we made our own Shabbat. We got together at one time in this person's house, one person at that person's house. We made what we needed to make. We prepared as much as we can, as much as we knew. We went to the synagogue. We heard the rabbi speak. It was a bet Gabriel was just beginning at the time. There was Kiru speakers, Rabbi Israel from the Bed Gabriel Youth Minion. It was all just the beginning of it all. And um and it kept going and kept going. And this is what the late 90s now we're looking at. This is the early 2000s already. Early 2000s. And so you're about 20 in your mid20s. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you were 18, 19 years old. Early Yeah. early 20s, late teens. Okay. And it came to the point where these sharim these lectures of these speakers had it came the impact was so great that I said I have to capture this. Hashem just gave me the idea you you have to capture this. So it started with audio lectures and then it quickly went to video after my parents bought got when I got married at 24 they bought me a camera for the family use. I said, "I'm going to use this camera for lectures, mini little mini DV uh discs." And I started to record and record. Now, I didn't know what to do with these recordings. Internet wasn't so I wasn't so technical, but I was recording. And it came to the point people used to come up to me, "What are you going to do with them?" Like, "I'm not sure yet, but I just know I have to capture it." So, I'm like, "While you're thinking about it, do you mind making me a copy?" My wife couldn't make it to the lecture or I want to watch it again. I'm like, "Okay, great idea." So, I got this DVD maker. I put the file onto a DVD, made copies of DVDs and started giving them out and and often at least I don't know a handful of times people came up to me. Why don't you put on the internet? He goes, that's a great idea. I don't know how to do it. And Barak Hashem, God bless my brother Ruben. He was he's very technical. He was working at Turo College in the technical department. He said, "Shimon, you have all these recordings. I've been watching you record for years now. Can I can I can I borrow them, please? I'd like to do something with them." And he like I kind of like under the under the covers a little bit kind of like told him like can I have that binder of DVDs that you have back then there was DVD binders right? So he gave it to me and I kind of quickly put it on the computer and quickly put it on the site and he was kind of like what site were you putting it on then? Well this all right this is this is a little bit uh further now but so I was in Turo College uh 2005 I started and right when I got there what were you going for in No, I wasn't I was I was working there. You were working in the IT department in the computer department. Okay. you know, Burksham, we were taking care of the 25 campuses or so in in tri-state area and uh it was a great team over there and I was actually asking a lot of questions. I had some tech background obviously I worked there but I was asking some questions about uh putting content on the internet um how do I embed it? How do I play a video from a site and all these things that had a great academic department that helped me out a lot uh so then uh initially I'm like okay let's just uh let me just call it kolyakov.org you know, because we didn't really have our last name was like a play on words, but we figured it was very fitting, right? You know, so that's that was our first website. It started off as call.org. Okay, it's our last name. Let's just put it up there. And then it kind of meant the voice of Yakob, which made a lot of sense. Uh, also, so this was late 2005. You know, I'm I'm creating the site. Super super watered down, very primitive looking. It was nothing nothing like the way it's supposed to. But to start off, I guess it's just putting content on the internet. Nothing was streamable. Uh you could just download it, right? Um and everything was done manually. There was no automated process. I was just running the whole thing again. And we and this was late 2005. And early 2006, um it was kind of getting more in the completion mode. Uh Shimon was still recording uh lectures on his mini DV camera like five eight five to eight lectures a week maybe at the time. But that's quite a bit because that's like at least one day started to pick up a little bit steam. So So right. So then uh about February during my birthday time there was a new 2007 right? 2006 2006 a new hard drive uh camera came out. It was the first actually of its kind where no more tapes, no more discs, you know. It was now it was a hard drive on a like 20 gig hard drive or something like that where you record and uh it stores it in there. I'm like, "Oh, that's so great. That's so much more convenient because that's I don't want to make DVDs. I want to transfer it on the computer." And it was very good. Otherwise, I had to put it, you know, in a in a DVD and I would have to wait the real time. I have to wait a whole hour for a year to be. So then uh I put something online. Now I remember seeing the other day actually the way it looked like I'm like I can't believe it looked like this. And we have like our evolution of like the six different looks of how Tori time was over the past four years. Our parents also got that as a gift for him, that camera, right? So they're like they were like the source of the two first cameras of time, right? So late February during my birthday time, I kind of hinted to my mom. Uh she gave me the first hard drive ever camera JVC, right? And um I got it and we I launched officially or unofficially the site uh early March of 2006. Now nobody really knew about it. It was just was still very and again I got the content from Shimon. I'm like Shimon, can I have some of your stuff? I need need I have a nice site but I need some content. Was it still called kolyakov.org? Yes it was kolyakov.org. switched to Torah anytime on Rashashana that year when we'll explain afterwards how we got there to Torah anytime and you were just uploading random topics it wasn't organized by speaker or by topic nothing it again everything was done super manually so you would have a speaker page and under that speaker page you would have lectures there may be more about 15 20 speakers at most at that point maybe right so and all these speeches were at beta real or were they elsewhere as well in in for in the forest till most of them in beta real. Yeah. So, Barakam Shimon, I had some content. Now, you know, it's something to start off with. You don't want to start with two lectures. Um, so Bakam gave me the content. I put it up and uh March came along, end of March came along and I, you know, I'm like 50 hits. Wow, that's pretty cool. 50 hits to the website. Who's who's accessing the website? I didn't expect much. How did people even know about it? Just some announcement. I made announcement over over Shabbat. Okay, guys, if you missed last Wednesday's lecture, you could go online, go on collab, take very few people. So, 50 people and then word of mouth spread. And then in April, you had 250 people like, wow, that's a five times growth. That's amazing. And then the next month, 500 people, you know, in May and then a,000 people and and we just it just kept growing and growing. Now, I was using um 10 $15 a month hosting, you know, because there's not really much there. So, um, and then summer came along and Shimon had a computer shop at the time and all his Queens on Main Street. Is that what you were doing for a living? Yeah, I had a computer repair shop. Computer repairs. And that's for the back of that store we made at the Tony Time headquarters at the time. Like a little section in the back. The back of it. Yeah. And um, and then Barashem uh, in the summertime, Shimon was more involved with uh, the activities of the website. He was he was involved primarily with the recording of everything. It's funny actually when I received the camera in late February, I would all of a sudden show up to a lecture with the camera to record and then Shimo would show up five minutes later and says, "Hey, what are you doing here? This is my job." You know, so uh I'm like, "Okay, I'm sorry. I didn't want to step on anyone's toes." But I just I was thought it was funny because I got so excited. I'm like, "Okay, now it's my turn to record, you know." So I guess he was the first recorder. I was the first volunteer right recorder. Um, and I remember he wanted to wait a little bit later. A couple of months later, there was um a Sony uh hard drive camera that came out. He wanted to get that one specifically because he was so mocked on quality and everything. And the one that I had was horrible quality. Uh but it was something at least, you know. But um yeah, I I remember standing up in Bed Gabrielle and making a very special announcement. I say, "My friends, I want to share some exciting news with you. We just recorded our 100th lecture now over 120,000 lectures. But I I just vividly very remember that and it was that was just incredible. Um you know but just to keep a long story short basically about a year later in 2007208 Hashem sent us a very big gift. I I went to Rabbi Olam in Queens. Yes. Yes. to record with Shirim and there was one of the one of the the boys there that he was speaking to uh I think he was like 20 years old teenager whatever young adult he came up to me afterwards and he says who are you and what are you doing I'm like I'm recording to spread this uh he his name is Yseph Davis he beam he became our he became he was so impressed with what the concept that he says I want to work with you guys he became our volunteer and barami turned her to our executive director He's still that today. Sure. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. It's the three of us. Such an amazing passion. Um and and over the years send us Mayor Summers who became our operational manager, Rahm Sev, and and a few years ago, um Kofile from Mitchkask. I don't know if you know who he is, but he's a lot of organizations. He saw what we were doing. We saw a little bit of what he was doing with some other uh multimedia website things and and we we joined forces as well. So also Mosha Sofur came in around 2007 as well. Mosha Sofur was very big in in in our growth and it's and the really without all these people and without you know Seattle Daya like we we get a lot of compliments. You saw we were walking around the office today and people are complimenting us and it's like so not us. It's nothing to do with us. It's just the fact that we're evolved gives hope for anyone to do anything cuz you know what's so special? We all have our job. We all have our our thing. But uh but Barak Hashem now it didn't it just started off as a website. But Barak Hashem over the years it became an app and then it became a phone system. We're getting around 200,000 minutes a day people dialing in. We don't want to promote the use of internet. We don't want to promote the use of smartphones and Barashem it turned into a newsletter. We have an incredible writer Elon Perik who writes stories from from uh Shirim excerpts right and puts it on our newsletter called the Torah any times and then it turned into a year and a half ago one of our latest projects called the daily dose. We realized that we have to evolve with the times and one of the things that is involving is people's um um attention span. Uh so so we said you know what many people may not watch 45 minutes to an hour or half an hour share sure but you know what they could do 2 minutes maybe so he says what are we going to what could we do for 2 minutes so we have so much content we have the greatest speakers in the world on we've have all these relationships with them so we go through Shirim we pick out the most powerful life-changing two three minutes that have a complete message a complete takeaway we add very emotional music to it by our music director is meant God bless him. Hashem sends us the most amazing people. We add this words in the end which is the the message of the thing and bar over 30,000 people or close to 30,000 people are getting it every single day now on WhatsApp. But he says it doesn't have to stop there because we don't promote these technology things. What if someone doesn't have WhatsApp? Barak Hashem in a few days we're going to launch the on the email the same the same daily dose on our email the daily dose email broadcast and um to to sign up to the uh to the daily dose uh you just oh if yeah if you're watching this and you're curious how do I sign up for the daily dose of course thank you uh you simply take out your smartphone if you have one please don't get a smartphone for this and just simply save the number on your phone it's 9293554268 save it as Torah anytime daily dose and message the words add me. If you don't do all those things, it won't work. So, just rewind this video and watch it again if you want to. And for those who don't have WhatsApp barem um very very soon, probably with hopefully within a few days, probably when they're watching this, it's already released, God willing. Uh for those who don't have WhatsApp or those who just getting away from WhatsApp because there's many people asking us, can we can we get it through email? Because the only reason I have WhatsApp is because of of the daily dose and I want to get away and now we have a solution for them. And you have those who have a group of hundred people sometimes who are getting it and who don't have so they send it through email. So uh now we're coming out with a daily dose email broadcast. And to get on that broadcast you just have to uh email daily dose email at tora anytime.com. Daily dose email to anytime.com with your first name, last name and email address and God willing we'll give you the um the uh the daily dose of email. It's pref the the preferred method is through WhatsApp. Again, those who don't want to get WhatsApp or those who don't have WhatsApp, anybody f friends and family members that don't have WhatsApp, email is universal. It's worldwide. It's every having it for decades now. So, just email daily dose email at toy time.com is that the sh will put you on. The daily doses are literally life-changing. And how do we know that? I mean, we're very biased obviously. We're making them. But the feedback we're getting, it doesn't end. They send us voice notes while they're crying telling us how that's exactly what they needed to hear right now. They're going through something and Hashem sent them the perfect message. Now, who goes through the shurum and the lectures to find that sound bite or those two three minutes of a powerful message? It's a great question. We're very very uh picky um you know in terms of what we use as a daily dose specifically daily dose. Right. Do you do you actually sit and watch the lectures? Yeah, it's a group effort. It happens to be majority of I do about 95. He does he does some as well but we're we're very meticulous. So I imagine it's very timeconuming. I've learned how to listen to lectures at double speed. Right. Right. You know um and obviously looking for something right. Yes. And it's so hard to describe what a daily dose is. It's like one of those things that you're listening and this like the light bulb just comes off. That's a daily dose. Right? You know, sometimes I have questions, you know, I can consult with him to decide which way to go with it because then we have things that don't make it as a daily dose but are still amazing. We use them as something called to any time clips. Mhm. They're like I don't want to say like leftovers because they're amazing also, but they didn't fit the genre of the of the just wasn't it was just missing something to make it that daily dose. And we put those clips onto our anytime that can be viewed and baram we're up to around 620 now. daily doses 620 daily doses. So it's every day the week other than Shabas obviously mo Shabas Shabas twice on Thursday and twice on Thursday because we have something called the error of Shabbat double dose right it's double the time which usually means 5 to 8 minutes and double the impact usually those people look forward to all week they can't wait for the double dose because it's usually and it's just such a to be involved with all these amazing these speakers I can't believe I know these speakers these are like people that literally save people's lives They they give people what's the purpose we're all here to grow to get connected to Hashem to have impact and these are the the rabbis these speakers who do that and for us to be part of that chain thank you I'm I'm taken by the irony that your inspiration to the path of Yiddeshkai was triggered by speeches right and now you're the conduit bringing these very type of speeches to the masses I mean that's an amazing coming full circle. Not only are we the president, but we're also clients, right? So, now getting back to you kyakov.com or transitions into Torah anytime. How did that happen and where did the name come from? This was about a month or two before Russ, right? And then Shimon came fully on board on the on the website aspect of it because he was on the recording aspect of it. So he transitioned a little bit more uh on the website aspect of it and and Shimone he's just site after site after site checking out. We we realized that if we were growing and it this might become something bigger than we ever imagined. So it's we we thought we should maybe make a more universal name. Was there any other site at the time providing video shiu? Uh that's actually one of the things that uh I was looking for when I was making the site. I'm like is there anybody else I can sort of copy? There was uh I think it was 613.org back in the day and they were the only video site that I could find. You had you had other audio sites like H audio and you had some other audio sites but there's nothing that I could majorly copy you know so that was uh you felt like you were a pioneer doing something that hadn't been done yet. My when I was mccar my brother when I had the zak to be mkar my brother he he was so hungry he wanted more you know he had the we have the nishama that we just were very interested I think in general like the the bkarian community a lot of young people a lot of the kira professionals sometimes focus on that community because they consider like lowhanging fruit they have something in them that there's an interest right still trying to figure out probably tradition right but anyway he he just wanted more I was teaching him as much as I Mhm. And you know and he was already doing everything without a single day in any yeshiva and he's like I want more. So he was looking and that's you know that was another inspiration catalyst right as the site was growing you were growing. That's really what it was. I tell people a secret. We really made touring time for ourselves. We just let the world use it. You shared it with us. We just We thank you for sharing it with us cuz you're changing our lives as well. So that's that's incredible. But again the name Oh the name. Yes. The name. We were actually looking for all types of names. I don't remember all of them right now, but they were all taken. Uhhuh. This is taken. This is taken. So I think number picked number 10 or 11. I forgot. I figured how about Torah anytime, you know. So we put it in. I'm like, Reuben, it's available. Get it. Get it. Get it. So you bought the domain name. Yeah. Tora Anytime. And then you just switched the name on the site. Yeah. I mean, both both went to it for a while. Both work for because people knew you called Yakov. So we can't just, you know, uh disconnect it. It's right now actually it's still forwards. Oh, it still forwards to Oh, it does. Pretty cool. Oh, see that's good to know. That's for sure. Fun fact. And then what what what when was the next step where it really just exploded to where you brought in the number of speakers and the style of the site where it's very easy to find, you know, very once Shimon came on as as part of being part of like the website and just filling up content, it just went to a whole new level. Like I I'm I guess I wasn't so much of of a people person talking. I was more on the tech side, behind the scenes side of things. once he came on just exploded with speakers and obviously the more speakers you have and the more announcements that are given and the more marketing you do right on the shoestring budget obviously the more it's going to be used so I I would say the first explosion uh was when Shimon came fully on the website side of things and just blew it up and obviously he got Yseph Davis as the volunteer and then Mosha Sofur I want to record this guy I want to record that guy and so were you seeking out the speakers or were the speaker seeking what in the beginning when we were not so popular uh when I used to go to a speaker and they used to see us with a camera I'm like who are you why are you recording me where they were paranoid kind like time like toy who what like what are you talking about it wasn't so simple they're like do I know you do I trust you where you going to put this and it was a little bit of a convincing situation um so we used to chase after speakers and not always they agree because they didn't know who we But uh over time, you know, we just keep going at it and no matter what because we were on a mission. We we we're obsessed with spreading Torah. And I don't know any other way to say it. So, and then the speakers would contact Shimon and say, you know, this person saw my share. That person called me. They said they saw my share. Like, what's going on? They had no idea what they were getting themselves into. Right. Right. We but over now now fast forward you know 14 years from us chasing speakers to and convincing them to be on time now it's become like a a problem like a big problem like now you have let's break over 950 speakers you have 950 trying to get on you have 600 speakers over a thousand regular speakers now we're recording about 5600 sharim a week now you eventually shut it shut it down right meaning you're not accepting Am I right about that? Officially at this point, we're not taking on new speakers. We do make exceptions. We found that one of the big challenges is that there's a very famous 8020 rule of life. 80% of the viewers of the people watch using are watching 20% of the speakers. Got it? So, we're not YouTube. We're not just everyone under the sun is going up or every corner every rabbi of every corner shul we have. We want to make sure that if we're going to get someone on, it's going to be someone that's really going to create an impact. So do you get flak for either diluting it too much by letting so to speak everyone on there at one time? Um and in within the same platform you have gdeladar giving shirim and very fine tyidden but we would call regular people. You ever get flack for that? Like you're kind of diluting it and it loses its you lo you're you're you're diluting the standard at all. We're getting on now about three four new speakers a month maybe. Okay. There was a time it was much more. There's some people who are grandfathered in from the time where we were trying to get more speakers that maybe we necessarily wouldn't have taken. I don't know, you know, but because we can't, you know, once you get someone on, we have a relationship with them. It's uh um but uh no, again, we're trying to be a little bit picky about it. We're trying to make sure it's someone that has like I cons we consider ourselves like scouts, you know. Sure. We want to we like we we see like there's certain speakers that were really not so popular but we saw something in the kind of have an eye for talent you know. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever it is it's just so we saw he said this person there's something here even though they're not known but I I feel like this is something that the mass population could I'm curious about that because I I've analyzed speakers public speaking. What do you think makes someone good? Is it the content? Is it their demeanor? Is it their delivery? Is it the charisma? Sometimes you could have someone who's too overeager and it's like calm down. And sometimes someone is not energetic enough. So what do you think? It's really all all all of the above. It it has to be one of those like package deals. It's also someone that when they got get on board with us, they're part of the Tory Time family. Okay. Like they're become like a representative of Torah. They become an ambassador to any time that they're going to go out and let people know their Shirim, their Torah is on Torah anytime. Sometimes the tries to come in with a trick. Oh, I can't promote myself. Uh Giva. No, that's a trick. It's it's you're promoting Hashem's Torah. We have to get it out there. You have to let people know about it. And when I say that to people sometimes, oh, they snap out of it. You're right. You know, do you ever offer critiques to the Midashir and the speaker? you know, maybe look at the camera a little more or get more into it or be a little more under control. Change to the type of language you use. We've known over the years what works, what gets hits, what's popular, what what creates the most impact. That's really all it comes down to. What's creating the most impact and uh yeah, we we give them some and some people some speakers love it. I mean, obviously they want to create the most impact. Um so we definitely do it. Um, also th the list of of criteria that you mentioned like what who do we choose? Who do we be okay with that? We don't want to those who let's say are on the waiting list or that that are not yet on you know we it's not really even the waiting list necessarily right so we're not we're not saying that uh they don't or they're not good their Torah might be amazing it's not the u there's another reason why we can't flood it so much is because we have to think about the end user the person who's clicking on to anytime.com and they're looking for a certain speech if it's too much it will defeat the purpose very overwhelming you know for example I know there's some sites out there that learn your habits, learn what type of speakers you like, what type of topics you like, how often you come back, the length of classes that you like to watch. So, you know, that those algorithm of of learning what's what's what you like. So, we don't have that currently. Uh, which means everything is just thrown at you and it could be a little overwhelming. You might look for a speaker and you have to scroll down a few seconds or a few minutes before you get there. Uh so God willing, you know, once we evolve, you know, this year, next year, etc., uh we're going to make the smart a lot more uh the site a lot more smarter to be able to learn from your learning habits who you like to access. If you like A, B, and C, you might also like D. And you'll start making those suggestions. Exactly. Almost like on Amazon or something when you buy something and start suggesting based on your prior purchases, something like that. then it won't be so much as overwhelming even though everything there could be a lot more le uh speakers on the site because again everyone has something to say everyone has a different angle on things you know who are we to say no or yes right so obviously when we say no or yes we're not thinking about ourselves we're thinking about the user how's it going to impact them the most so right now if we just throw everything at the wall like if we had the same mentality that we had in the beginning we we wouldn't have a thousand speakers on the side probably right so that was uh uh you know we'd probably have a lot less. Now as far as vetting the content, this is a question I always wanted to ask. You obviously can't watch every lecture or shear beginning to end. Are you ever concerned because of that that something controversial will seep in or something will get by you that maybe you wouldn't feel comfortable with? Is that a concern at all? Um occasionally sometimes things fall through the cracks. uh but generally speaking when we when we deal with organizations that we know and trust whether it's the GDA whether it's art school or or many other the Kazak organization or or Nava with Rory Wallstein to Masur so many or project inspire or a whatever it is we we kind of trudge their judgment of course things could fall through the cracks like I said and sometimes we've had that and we had to we have a you know we have advisers that that we we go to Rabanam uh different things they because it's technology and internet they don't necessarily want to be like mentioned like who they are because it's it's a it's a big uh just the whole technology internet thing is a whole thing um but uh but generally speaking that's that's what it is but we have so many users barashm that when something is when there's like a red flag uh we get notified we get notified to look into it because everyone is watching and most people are paying attention have the right hashkafa and they see that you know we do the best we can, but occasionally sometimes we have to like double check something and make proper adjustments, but overall like we try to do the best we can in terms of to make sure it's like hashkoffically everything is appropriate, which is a little bit of a challenge because you have all types of situations. So we try to find that lowest common denominator. Sure. Sure. Which I wanted to ask you about. We were we were I'm sorry. You want to go? No, I'm saying you you asked before um it was such a broad broad uh spectrum of speaker. you have gdollum and then you can have the average. So we used to have a a slogan, you know, from the from the baseball cap till the strim, you know, we from the baseball cap to everywhere in between, right? So it it's everybody needs it's not just learning Torah, it's learning Torah values, you know. So even if somebody who's uh completely not affiliated, somebody who's like Mameish learning, you know, Dimi and he has autel and he's he's driving from into the coal, you know, and he has to listen. We have something for him too. Mhm. You know, so we just we want to make sure that we we can't really discount anybody depending on their status. You know, you're right. We do have gdollum on the site like gdollum and then we have somebody who's maybe who just who speaks in a local sh some knows how to give sharim who's knowledgeable. Now we were talking before I think you told me an astonishing stat that you had in the last year 1 million unique users. Correct? Is that the number? This upcoming this year. This year we're about to break. You're about to break a million unique users. That means there are a million people that some point during the year sometime during the year have logged onto your site. Obviously, we're talking about a very broad range of Juda Judaism background and that also even by the way really. Yeah. We want to learn more. As a matter of fact, over the years, there's been at least a few dozen of converts because of Shirim that they started to watch on to any time. Mhm. Which is not what we're looking for, but that's what happened. And that's amazing. Now, most of the Shiran lectures are in English or majority majority. We have about 10 12 languages or so, right? Are are you are you thinking of broadening the other languages, let's say, to reach out to more people in Israel and things of that sort? If we show you the list of what we want to do ideas, it's I'm telling you, it's unbelievable. Hashem just doesn't stop giving the ideas and when and and in reality it just the way good things usually happen works in slow motion and it's like so frustrating cuz we have Yes, that's one of the ideas we want to do to make a a Hebrew only thing or Russian only thing or Spanish is really taking off in our site or Portuguese. And I want to I want to bring up also you you spoke about technology before. I think it's important our community the Tyra community has paid tremendous attention to awareness regarding technology and making sure that our online experience is consistent with our ashkafas tremendous awareness people are very careful and somehow Torah anytime is consistent with that and I want to ask you what have you done to allow that is it does the site work with most of the filters that people use and also talk about the fact that you started which you alluded to before a phone line where the entire site is fully accessible right through a phone line for those who don't have access online or don't want to have access online speak about both of those so in terms of the filtering um the tech side of it uh Barksham over the years usually I guess what an organization or company has to do is to call up all the filters individually and say can you please whitelist us sure um Barksham the users have done that for us already they've gotten enough complaints all the filter companies that they already know us like back you know uh for years now and whenever we call them in case there's like a you know one certain instance where there was a one-off situation. So the only reason that a filter would block us is if the user actually put our domain in the block, you know, in the blacklist, which nobody does obviously, but uh so the filters already know even if we use certain uh content delivery network companies that usually are blocked. Um the filter companies know that if it's coming from our site, not to block it. You know, you could have some sites that the less known Torah sites that use the same, let's say, video delivery company onto their sites, it might get blocked. You know, they call us and say, "How is your content not blocked?" Because we're using the same exact thing. So, Bar, we built a relationship with the different filter companies without even having to speak with them through our users. Um, and in terms of the um phone system, the phone system, right, you a big a big thank you to Mosha Sofur. He was very instrumental in getting that that phone system running and we knew it's going to be used. How complicated was it cuz you had all the material uploaded online which by the way what does it cost just cuz you're hosting all your material, right? It's it's a treasure trove of you said 120,000 and growing by 500 a week at least. Just the cost of hosting it before we got to the phone. Right. Well, it's not complicated. You ask how complicated is it? It's it's more of the cost. We pay for every call. Oh, we we pay for every moment someone is on it. And as as you know, all of our content has is free. Always was free. And Brazat Hashem should always be free because we're very we're not into anyone paying. If if one person less will not watch, then the whole thing is not worth it to for for money because this is not about money. This is about bringing people back before Msiah gets here, which is so soon hopefully. and and through this massive distribution, but there's a massive expense. Um because every time a shear is accessed on tour anytime or on the phone system or on the anywhere, it's we're paying for it. Mhm. So, it's like when we saw the the art scroll behind the scenes, if anybody came to this place and saw what goes on behind the scenes, their mouth is closed. You know, there's nothing else to say. You're paying for every page, every piece of ink, every dot on the top of an eye you're paying for, right? So, the same thing. I mean there's borushm so much that goes on behind the scenes. So much don't want to bore with details but uh it's the storage it's the delivery it's the web hosting it's it's the it's the it's the developers it's the storage fees like my brother mentioned constantly new features and features that aren't out at all on any site. You know we want to be innovators of features to make it so comfortable for the user. Again, we're trying to make it as as convenient to learn Torah as as um you know, Torah anytime, play this lecture, please. No thoughts, no fingers, no no nothing. Anywhere you are, as complicated as possible, anywhere you are right now, your staff, you have a staff. Yeah. Technical staff taking care of all different details. You two are involved 246 in this. Even spread the word. We spread the word and you're probably thinking of ideas. Sure. Um, how do you how do you finance such such an undertaking and support your families at the same time? I I can't give an answer because there's no answer that makes sense how we're survived because it just really in reality doesn't make sense. Um, we're not like very good. We didn't even know that we're going to have to fund raise when we started this. We didn't know of everything that has happened. I I think if we knew I don't know if we would jump into it like this, but there's so much money uh for technology because technology doesn't end. It doesn't there's always constant Bitbean is the company we work with in Lake. You might know them. Sure. The Arnstein. Yes. Yeah. Amazing people. They saw our project and they're they're helping us non-stop and it's already been 2 years 2 and a half years and we're at the end of Bazadashm of redoing the whole site and making it something that Bazadesm you know going to be amazing revolutionary revolution as well big time. Uh so we're working day and night with that but the funding it's a big zoot for someone to see our project and to step over and say I want to be your partner. I want because everyone every person who gives sodaka wants to give to what's going to bring the biggest return. Sure. It's a smart businessman. You have to be smart with Sedaka as well. So anyone who hops what's going on over here to be a part of this organization. Our budget by the way is not extreme. It's for it's 1.5 million a year and most of it is technology. I I would have thought if you would say I would have thought it would more than that with a million users a year. You have sh that are three four five million. God bless them. But here you have an opportunity. You know, a few guys at 100,000 a year, whatever it is, like as we say, you're getting you're getting a lot of bang for your buck non-stop residual. You wake up in the morning, another few thousands of mitzvot in your bank account. So, I want to mention Rabbi Gladstein, who's one of your top Midashir. Absolutely. Was here at Artsko for a interview several weeks ago and he credits both of you with kind of putting him on the map. He was a successful RV and magir beforehand but the reach he told me when he woke up in the morning and his sh were online and he would see just overnight 750 people watch this year he he was incredulous he couldn't believe it and then as time has gone on he's uploaded numerous yumm every day he started one once a week and now he has over a dozen a week unbelievable he understands people are hungry so he's providing the content he's he's brilliant yeah so if anyone's out there you know that hashem has blessed them with with type of money like reach out to us you know it's just uh for sure it's a big it's a tremendous thing there's a lot of to because learning Torah is equivalent to everything else and it's people want to hear people want to learn there's like you said there's a huge thirst yes I want to tell you also in the in in on the arts side of things I don't know that arts has ever sold more books than now wow so people would say that people aren't reading, aren't learning, people want to learn, people want to read. Which leads me to my question to you about Corona. Oh, the the response to Corona to you must have been off the charts because people were home, they couldn't go anywhere, people were locked down, some people are still locked down. What was the traffic on the site like during that period of time? Rabbi um Yossi Benushan, one of our good friends, amazing speaker, the Benushan brothers, God bless them. He made a joke and I was a little bit nervous of that joke. After he made it, we had a live show. He said, I think Tori Times started this whole Corona thing. They wanted to get all these users. The the the the increase in traffic was something that we were not prepared for, right? Uh it was it was it was an amazing problem to have. And and did it cause you technical issues? Did you have to do anything special to deal with it? So March, mid-Marchch was the lockdown the thing, right? Uh and in a three-month period, uh before that there was I'd say about there was about between 8 to 10,000 people accessing the site a day, right? Okay. Just on the website. Uh from the moment of the lockdown, where are you going to go now? You can't access any share. You can't you can't go to any share, right? So everything is online now. So borushem we became a lot closer with a lot of our organizations who were now doing sharim online and barrage we were the platform that hashem you know put in place to be able to host everybody. So from 8 to 10,000 a day we were going 30 40 even 50,000 a day. Wow. Yeah. So you could imagine that we weren't really prepared for that number. Ban were growing over the years. crashes. There were so many crashes behind the scenes and we were putting so many band-aids and that's when we realized that we really have to push our new site out. We can't just, you know, linger like this. We really got to finish it up because look what happened here. And the Bitbean was working non-stop to trying to fix all the technical issues. All the organizations came to us as the go-to place for virtual lectures. Now, so I wanted to ask you about that as well because at some point Torah Anytime went from just doing video shim to tons of live streaming whether it's conventions, dinners, events. You started live streaming many events. What was that like? Cuz that's really a a whole separate type of operation where you're doing lot in real time. You're do you're doing live stream readings. There was there was some events where we had 50,000 people at the same time. So do you have to have someone on site at the event? Do you have a point man that you send out or is it a representative of the organization? How does that work on the past five six years live has become more popular because that's just how the world is, you know, towards live. There's so many people watching. I want to be a part of it, right? Um and obviously from March now everything was live. Now everything was was just watching online. So uh there are some places obviously with the whole corona thing you we have to have our staff with masks go to the you know rabbi's house sometimes a big challenge also at the time everyone was so scared and nervous especially in March April right they they would know they wouldn't let anybody in their house they like to any time okay you can come in stay on the corner over there get the camera rolling so uh bashm uh the numbers have been huge had they been astronomical nothing that we could even imagine Um but in terms of we had to increase training with people going out. We had to increase our technology to be able to handle all this to be the site. Just the site alone had to be able to handle that many people on at the same time. It it doesn't just work like that. When you're going from page to page there's so many things happening by somebody thinks okay I'm going from the homepage to the speakers page. There's like 30 different p you know links that they're actually going through to go to that one page. There's a lot going on behind the scenes. Speaking of the equipment, when going back years when someone was approved to be on the roster of speakers, did they provide their own equip? Did you provide the equipment? Did they get the equipment? How did that process work? In the beginning, since we really wanted, we were convincing them to get on our time. Sure. We don't ask them, you know, we we took care of everything. So, you bought them the camera and you taught them how to use it and record. Well, we used to come ourselves to record, but I'm talking about on at a later stage. Oh, later obviously to the point where they began to see the value. So we tried to they tried to find one of their students to to be the volunteer or they some people record themselves. Some people that are really like uh superstar speakers. We still like we really like make sure we want to get their content so we make it easier for them. We still like follow them around like we're like based on Cone or right you know Shapiro you know some speakers. They might they might have some people in in their community who would sponsor a camera or a camera kit which we would send to them and then we would train somebody to record it properly because quality is everything and you don't have good quality you know especially audio quality audio is is more important than video right now on your site you provide video and audio as everyone knows everything you've always done video and everything in video we have uh audio version as well and you could download the audio you could download right now speaking by the way just about the camera equipment Um, that's also if someone, you know, understands the power of Seducka, they want to sponsor 10 camera kits. Each camera kit is about $1,500. We try to use the really good equipment, a good microphone. So, that's something else someone could do. Could you imagine one camera kit you $1,500 indefinitely, you get the all the merits for that. It's just unbelievable. Somebody watches it 10 years from now, you still got it. Right in the middle of China, whatever. Now, one of the uh kind of uh unique identities of Torah any time is that every shar opens with one of my favorite people, Rabbi Pesron, and you hear that very recognizable voice. Whose idea was that? When did that happen? And how did you choose Rabbi Cron? I mean, how did you choose? You chose you chose the best. But how did that come about? So, initially, um we have two versions of the website. one that started in 2006 and we with the help of uh Henry 2012 we came out with version two is that Hashem with Hashem's help we're going to come out with version three very very soon very excited about that so on the first version of it we had no database we had no nothing we simply uploaded it and you have your you have your your dinner right so and when version two came out we're like okay let's make it a little bit more professional so we had a database of users now. Oh, we have users they could sign up and they could have following and they get um and we're like let's also have some sort of branding. You know, we had the watermark branding all the time, but we want to have some sort of an intro intro branding. So, what we did was we thought of an idea uh let's get some top speakers to intro the the Torah anytime. Uh you know, uh and it happened to be Rabbi Cronin was the first one we went to and we never actually followed through with the other. He's one of our biggest fans. Uh, you know, he always gives us honorable mention and most of his cheer him and he loves what we do and how much more popular he became. He was always popular. Can't take it away from him. Sure. But how much more popular he became. So he's really good friends with us and it just Yeah. It's great. But it kind of, you agree, it became part of your identity. Oh yeah. And people recognize the voice now. And Sure. Sure. You hear that voice and it kind of puts you in in the mode, right? They know you're about to experience something. About to experience something something. This is for real. It's about Right. Right. Right. Now, it's a great question. What What's What's the um I guess what's the next step other than I know you have tons of ideas, but other than the new site, what is the next thing that people could look forward to? Uh something tangible. Um re really with the new site, there's going to be a lot of new things where people can interact and and and leave um their feelings. comments and feedback. Of course, everything's in get moderated and uh and not only that, we we have like I said over 120,000 in growing Shirim. There's gold mines in in there that people don't know about because it's you can get lost in it, right? So, we we we are creating a way that when people are looking for something specific, they'll go to a year from 8 years ago or from 12 years ago and those are even more holier closer to her, you know. So, people think, oh, the latest stuff. No, just the opposite. the old stuff is treasures, right? So, we want to be able to utilize everything. That's another thing. And not only that, um like like we said earlier, uh like the clips in the daily doses, if you don't have a chance to see the full thing or maybe you just don't know who the speaker is, everyone could watch a two-minute share or or a two-minute clip. So, they say, "Wow, this is an amazing speaker. I never heard of him before." So, that's one way to to kind of like bait to get people in the door. Right. Yeah. Great you mentioned that. That's what the daily doses are because I tell new speakers that we we get in like the occasional speakers I that the ones that I feel like will will have like something big could come out of it. I said, "Listen, I know that you're not so known right now, but I'm just warning you now. You know, back out. Warning you now. You can start getting calls for all types of speaking situations, shabatones. Give it some time." Mhm. And it's amazing how it's happened to so many people. What's the most inspiring story if there is one other than your own story which is just extraordinary? Is there any one or two stories that you've heard from users who have said and I know I walked around the office with you where everyone's telling you thank you thank you I listened to you on the way to work on the way home but is there is there any story or two that you could think of where people's lives have been changed through your work it's not only people's lives have been changed uh actually people's lives have been saved you know like mamish saved uh we get especially from the daily dose because it's using WhatsApp which is a communication app easy for people. It's very easy. It's going into people's pockets. Really? Exactly. And and we hear and we see dozens and dozens and dozens of feedback. Not just people writing great or amazing. They're writing paragraphs and paragraphs of feedback of how it's changing their lives and saving their friends lives because they were about to do something and then they heard something and it and they said, "What?" We just we just got one that this is a person that really enjoyed watching shows, shows on Netflix, everything else like that. And it was a big challenge for them. They knew they shouldn't be, but uh whatever it is, long story short, they went into detail, but long story short, they don't do that anymore. And they're and they're they watch Torah any time and to save them. They they told us straight out. We know that pil Torah is one of the worst things a person could do. Just doing wasting time. When someone could message us or let us know when we go to conventions or shabatones when they tell us things like I stopped listening to the news. I stopped watching TV or shows or internet or YouTube. I got rid of it because of Torah any time. It's literally priceless. What's more important there's that's they got it. It helped me with my relationship with my spouse with my kids. It helped me become happier because I'm going through like what's bigger than that and to and us to be for us to be a part of that to be that mailman the delivery is just uh but you know what like even though so much has been accomplished we're not satisfied. There's so much more to do. Our motto is we're just getting started. When you say there's so much more to do, do you mean as far as the content that you're providing or the number of people you're reaching? Both. Actually, even more than that. There's so much more to do in terms of distribution, right? There's so much more to do in terms of uh making it more convenient, making it more accessible. You know, we we we like to say some people might not be happy hearing it, but we want to make sure after 120 nobody has any excuses on learning. We're gonna have we're gonna be in their faces in every aspect in the written word in the in visually audible just we're we're in front of them with them not even knowing about we want to make an a car you know easy access in the car just talk or just tap old age homes even we get feedback from prisons of Jews are there or sit other situations we want to make devices there's like a lot of ideas I don't want to give everything away we're working on underground labs you know working on things but Uh there's a lot to do and we h and and you know what everyone all the Jews in the world they all have a part of something. We all we all have a different part of this the bigger picture. Some parts are big like art scroll and some parts could be smaller but they're all important. Sure. you know, whether it's on a community level or a global level, we all have to do something or find that thing to make ourselves have purpose and meaning and and and joy and and to to connect to the people, connect to Hashem. We can't be selfish about it. There's really not much time left. Hashem, Mashiach is so close. Also, very important, um, Hashem didn't just make Jewish people. Hashem made all people. And there's a such thing as Torah values, you know, the right way for anybody to live, anybody in this world. So, Barashem, you know, not through us specifically going after it, but many uh non-Jews are also finding the value of just improving a way of life. I mean, it's it's not just gimmar or a talmud or trying to trying the pill. It's just the way of life. It makes so much sense, you know, resting one day a week. Okay. I have to recharge for the following week or eating a certain type or acting a certain way or respecting certain type of people different dogs. Right. You're saying a lot of the a lot of our values and ideals are universal. Sure. So there's a benefit to humanity not just to the to those who are to be Jewish and that's part of us being a light onto the nations you know these these values to get spread out and they do get spread out all over the place. Now you're able to track every speaker and and every lecture and cheer, how many views and how many listens and things like that. Is there one or two particular shur lectures that you saw was was accessed numerous numerous times for whatever reason? Anything come to mind? Um well there are very popular topics that people go to. Uh you have dating and marriage, you have Msiach. Everyone loves to hear about Msiah. Right. Right. everyone wants to hear about afterlife you know it's it's those uh you know uh more and depending on the speaker you know they would speak about these things so um there are uh not not specific speeches per se but just uh certain topics people love to love to run to I guess they're universal topics that again not only Jewish people that the whole world might find more value in not not just that also um a lot of the Kiru lectures I've gotten over the years people who are from from birth. They told me that it helped them as well, right? Because we're we we were raised, like I mentioned, not religious. So, we're very passionate about it, right? Uh but I we could see how in in other situations where someone that's the only way of life that they know. It might not be the same passion because that's the way their life is. They take it for granted and they're it becomes a little bit like someone once said like robotic Judaism and it's somewhat of a challenge now, you know, of people, you know. So uh they say a lot of this stuff that the cure of stuff it helps them also recharge in their connection and there's more meaning on what they've been doing their whole life. Sure. Sure. And something that u really everybody should know the Torah any time is really a hallway to them growing meaning it's it's great all aspects of Judaism from the beginner to the super advanced we have something to provide but we ultimately want to get everyone to the level to keep growing and growing and stiging and and learning more. you know if somebody's learning half half an hour a day you know and they're safer you know and their art scroll safer so now after hearing a to time sheir they got inspired to learn another half an hour so it's not only about learning onto I have people that are learning in col now and they don't use story time at all but they said that it was those years in the beginning when I really wasn't even firm that's from to got me started and and nothing makes us happier when we get a letter from someone a handwritten a note of I I got rid of my internet because of sharim I watch on Torah anytime. How ironic is that? We're we're okay with that. Great. That's the goal. We want to keep people growing and growing. You can never stay straight. Life is a downward escalator. You have to constantly grow, keep going up. Well, we thank you for bringing meaning to so many people's lives. Thank you for sharing your personal story. I'm inspired by it. I'm sure all our viewers will be as well. Continue. looking for the next higher and higher levels of growth and greatness from to thank you for this opportunity. It's such a to meet you and to be here and and I feel even more connected to art school than ever before even though I have so many in my house. Thank you. Thanks to both of you. Thank you. [Music]