Take 2 With Avi Schnall

[Music] welcome back to mr take two where we catch up with the people that you feel are your friends from the pages of the magazine rabbi avi schnell director of the goodies well of lakewood jersey new jersey director of argus style of american new jersey office there you go um is not only a friend to mr bachara readers at the clay so he's been quite prolific it's been a challenging few months half a year for people in the scottish industry especially people charged as rabbishnal is charged with juggling so many different things maintaining relationships in trenton taking care of the schools and the families of lakewood so you've seen a lot rabbits now in addition to carrying the weight of a large segment of the clay israel on his shoulders is also a guy who's always smiling and somehow gives the impression of being a camp counselor much more than being a client's oil diplomat fascinating always a fascinating mix abby thanks so much for being here thank you suli great to be here tell me we can start with hard questions i'm sorry tell me we could start with the hard questions right away let's let's also i made like a flyer introduction to like set you up that it's a friendly interview right and then boom um give me the best you got what uh what a traumatic few months this has been for people in classroom los contes right we've seen the everything turned suddenly there for years i might they were traumatic those were traumatic it wasn't dramatically challenging challenging it was a tough time from a lot of success stories i would never argue with very good if you saw a representative about semantics and i would i don't know a lot of the last things i don't mean it wasn't successful i think a lot of people walked away with tremendous gains okay let me tell you what i mean what took place i see you that you're going to be an interrupter already you're that type of guest so i'm going to ask you all questions you didn't give me the rules before they got away no rules the good away was always uh quiet chat london that means out of sight we don't take on politicians publicly we don't call them out publicly we go to albany or to dc or to trenton and do our business and our constituents lay low while we try to take care of them and this is an organization which is 100 years old and has a proven track record of success somewhere everything changed in the last few months um you can blame it on individuals you could blame it on decisions made by the government you could blame it on the panic of corona and what it did to all of us i would love to hear your thoughts on what happened over the last few months so i think that this idea how i coulda saw sort of like changed its approach to ask honest something that was never done before i don't think that's true by the way i think that yes things are done a lot of things are done under the radar behind closed doors a lot of things done publicly also we make a big dinner every year we have politicians like we do a lot of things in the public also we go to washington every year we used to go to washington and your grandfather's days to like 200 guys used to go it was a massive event that wasn't a small shake like oh the jews are coming in still light you know we're going to meet a guy and get things done 200 people came with the black cats the low clouds coats and they went and if you go back in time the famous you know the rabbis marched away when they went and they got shot out of the white house that wasn't a quiet thing they came in we're coming here we're gonna not a protest we're gonna come in but there's there's quiet gullies through submissive respectful and then there's quiet we're blocking the garden state parkway yay we shut it down which is which that's not a good i understand but that's where the film community is at now it's a very scary thing by all accounts now that is a very scary thing you're saying that that is on the record on the record shutting down the guys now shutting down the garden state parkway forget not be forget about the the the the health part of it or it's dangerous it's it's it's not a smart thing to do it doesn't accomplish anything um especially like the governor actually put a pretty much like this in new jersey like what are you trying to accomplish here he's not winning new jersey we'll see what happens go to pennsylvania go to florida go do it like don't do it here but even in general it's not a smart thing for us that is not our malek shutting down parkway shutting down bridges protesting demonstrations that never was that never is i can't imagine ever will be um no that is not our mahalak and what changed there were always you know people that did their own things and had their own mahakam they're always sort of people that protest okay but you saw it in brooklyn uh similar thing where you had unrest in the streets of barbara park which was again everything we saw before and they're going to condemn that absolutely now even a gooder and a good of leaders and people like yourself you're not in new york so you didn't have to deal with a hostile governor maybe but you saw them talking in ways they never talked before uh publicly challenging the governor in ways in new york never before that's this this is a change no i don't think so i think that we forgot a little bit of the history when mayor dinkins was the mayor we know rabbi sharok called him out on some stuff publicly there was it was a different world of public publicity than you didn't have the public world like it is today letters were written letters were written i meant this in rashere book i was sure even asked i think the governor of the time to specifically mention the crown heights rise unlike most i just want to tell the star readers i'm like mostly good uh functionaries and workers who had to read the show book when they got the job avi schneiderlin for fun he did this 15 years old he probably finished that whole book this is in your blood yeah but um it i don't know if that's necessarily true that we didn't there's ways how to call out how good did it know how good the representative or employee or even a board member came out swinging governor cuomo is is bad no one did that we there's a lawsuit that's a civil way how to fight back i read in the magazine this week last week the question was have we burnt our bridges or are we burning our bridges and you're of course one of the people we go to another thing i have to say about every average now besides being insightful and experienced you understand the role of media unlike many others who either see themselves above it or or beneath it i don't know what they're thinking when they say i don't wanna friends or enemy the media is there uh you always got this from day one this was a big part of your success and being able to reach the people is by never turning down people who wanna who have questions for you so i appreciate that um back here keep asking so let's go back to this you go back to what you're saying about burning our bridges so you know you were saying a lot of this tell me a little bit why didn't we put it but let me ask the question why direct people don't like uh president trump in this country there's at least 50 percent of the country more or less is against it a lot of people love him the fact that there's a visibly from trump's support and they already don't like him it's not going to make them love jews any more than they ready to so looking back at the recent election the november election of 2020 do you think that uh maybe we could have done a little smarter found a way to support the president without being so in your face we should have we should have i don't think the parades and and and all that was totally unnecessary i'm a 501c3 so i can endorse the candidate there's nothing wrong with lacking a candidate giving to a good style right a good that has every year by its dinners politicians come and we honor them and we we give them accolades and we speak about them and we thank them nothing's wrong with supporting a candidate that's there for our community president trump he did a lot of good stuff he's with us in almost every big issue school choice israel our family the family frame so yeah we're going to support him but that we parade is it way beyond giving your relationship with governor murphy that your community and your constituents so to speak are so openly pro-trump no so i think there's a big difference there's a difference between being supportive of the president trump and voting for president trump and openly saying yeah we're going to support him they expect that to happen if we wouldn't support trump that'd be the question in their minds in the minds of a politician he moved the embassy he broke off the iran deal it would be the biggest question the other way around if we didn't support him so to speak as a community they'd be like how could you not support this guy they get that but they also understand that the same how you support him you'll support those that are maybe in other parties that also do well by your community that they expect yourself you have a very good relationship with the governor we have an external issue of the governor and he governs the democrat and the governor's progressive and the governor doesn't see eye to eye on a lot of issues and he knows that we've had conversations we respectfully agree to disagree on certain topics and that's fine but the fact that we support donald trump that's it's an expected action you um did you ever discuss with the governor with his chief of staff the difference between new york vis-a-vis new jersey what happened with cuomo and what happened oh sure he he he saw what happened oh absolutely and he's proud because i see they they the lakewood model they without it is the liquid model that worked it wasn't an incredible thing there was an article in political recently where they did a uh the tale of two cities or whatever that they because the media is important so by a guy sam sutton who actually uh is a good guy and uh we he did the interview and you see it's so bl in new jersey there was a problem the problem barak hashem has been resolved in a big way and the governor came out on top he didn't fight with anyone didn't have no lawsuits schools were open the stores are open but that's what stores open schools are open we're able to function there's no fights governor cuomo when this will be resolved in new york he comes out i think there was a failure in part of the askgarden i know you're not going to point fingers at your colleagues that's what do you think that this is the best thing that's got to predict a lot because that's just not good to think every fact every faction of clydesdale in new york they see them summer despite them everyone was trying to get this to be resolved no one was able to move the needle it was only that move because of course arrogance or i want to call him arrogant i don't know exactly that you know all the things but you're not there's no blame on the ass kind of they're organized you can you just look at what happened over here it just it was it was it was something that that makes no sense let me ask you maybe it's a difficult question you couldn't answer it or you could not answer it maybe you're aware that not everybody appreciates a goodness as well maybe you know this that sometimes really yeah i know i'm sorry because you're sitting there what is that like for you to be giving 20 hour days and i know your schedule you know when you're available and i i know that you work hard and at the same time the people are going to shut up okay this is this is now this is not a new thing this is how she says but it's not easy because the appreciation is not really there there's a lot of they should have done differently if i would how do you deal with that so i'll tell you two things what would you tell them i'm sorry and what would you tell those people the guy sitting in the back of the shell saying i gotta drop the ball the guy's sitting in the back is like good to drop the bull you know it is what it is i i i it's it's we have to do we have to accomplish we have a lot ahead of us if we're going to spend our time for anything to every single person why we didn't do it the way how he wanted us to do it the bottom line is i could talk for lakewood for new jersey in lakewood new jersey the schools are all open that's the bottom line there was a tremendous opposition to the plan that we had we had a plan to do mass testing i'm sure you know about this there was a heavy opposition heavy opposition do you understand the opposition the opposition really was based off of things that have no merits to it very scientifically not not science first of all scientifically for sure politically and politically also to promise that those that they were opposing it were unaware of the political part of it and people are naturally nervous people just get nervous also there was we're right across the river from new york people were like worried about but new york they shut it down but over here we're not shut down but new york shut down there's a lot of that fear of that we're gonna follow in new york which we which we knew wasn't happening because if it was happening it would have happened so there was a lot of some some of the people were not involved in the process and if they made assumptions and you know you could sign a letter daily tyra says it's us some people believe it or not there's a lot of opposition much harder you know you ready to have a shower book you said ask them dealt they always had a certain uh degree of separation from the people merchandiser was not in the whatsapp generation you're dealing with something well you put out a letter within an hour there's going to be the whatsapp parade plus 20 other forgeries correct of again you're dealing with in real time opposition that nobody ever had to deal with and there were real time voice notes and things coming out and i know what people watch what do you do and then you where do you react we move on how do you know about them you have people so those are people sent to me i wanted something why are you sending this to me like i asked like what why do i have to know that that guy thinks i'm an idiot i didn't i didn't because it's good to know that you know you no i think it's because if i know it you know it yeah exactly so people do send it over and i see you take it personally so generally not generally not your wife and kids don't my wife for sure doesn't my kids get a kick out of it my kids actually i have little kids they they get they get like a kick out of it but um i i generally don't take it personally generally not you know one guy called me a certain name call me a couple to me that stung a little bit you know why not because of the person that said it because that guy wrote all the articles about me i didn't care what's a cop i know what the capos were you know my grandmother was there with the kapos you know what i'm saying don't call it get a couple you're not that you can't it's a collaborator you can't a couple with a couple of the guys that with the with the people that ran the camps you know what i'm saying the nazis wouldn't hang around in auschwitz the couples ran the camps don't call a guy that was like one thing a little sting over there but i'm sure you're my club yeah we might move on we move people if people make bad choices of words bad choices actually you move on here's the bottom line i gotta call the first day of this month first day of yeshiva opening after circus uh uh manal called me up and it says avi i want to come down to shiva and when they come to you today there's 800 boys in my achievement sitting and learning come and see it this is yours come and see it which one now i'll if he wants me to mention his name you could say it's okay that's a very fascinating it's medium i understand it's me and i have a lot of viewers it's not interesting i'm not not even sure i'm affiliated with at all i have no affiliation answering my kids there i don't donate to the yeshiva zero affiliation he called me and says i know that you've been i sick with this you gave up your helmet you give me your view you had all this all this you know it was not easy getting this done come with me that's very nice so you're saying you're focused on you see you're focused on the end result the bottom line is look when you shoot that day i'm not saying it was to me of course everything that i did throughout this throughout this parasha was together with commitment mayor lichtenstein we worked we we spoke every day a dozen times a day we're still speaking every day come out we did it together it was a tremendous amount of seattle there's no sort of derek ever how this happened the numbers were crazy high the governor wanted to shut us down we had a few phone calls that hashem put the words in our mouth we knew what to say they were willing to let it they were they didn't say okay we're not shutting down they never happened we never got like okay we're not going to shut down the schools we got a commitment let's see how it goes but you need to do x y and z and it worked it ended up working the numbers went down berkshire people are not sick you know what what they were at all you know what it was like so it worked so when you look back at corona after seven or eight months you say there was a success by uh by the s got them it was a success meaning it was a difficult time and laila new families lost people right that's why i was live that's why i was a happy time right it wasn't a happy birthday do you think that's that successful time we came out a better um even though you would you could argue that when there's an like a goddess you saw we shouldn't need to not not never really know there's 20 notes in the rub on him and doctors and doctors on our bottom why didn't they go to still make it clearer and quicker and why didn't why wasn't there messaging so that's a whole different kind there were so many questions that's a that's a completely different okay that's the question you asked one question let's do that let's go to the first question how do we look back at this at this ordeal look back at the deal we we had a sorrow and we prevailed as a as a as a as a community in the in tessa taking care of each other where they met the pivot you know the taishanas pivot i forgot his name yeah but it was it was what being pulled off in those three months was incredible everybody everyone it was true okay now let's go to the next question i i didn't want to get to that next question it's a good question that means we we have a you have the cadillac you have the us got them to tell us do we have indominus do we have anthony should we be doing should we not and there was not a lot of clarity so here's the answer there's never going to be anything that will work for every community in clarisol because what works for lakewood doesn't work for flatbush doesn't work for baltimore or for cincinnati or chicago so to have that expectation that the answer is gonna put out a letter and every community is gonna listen to it that's not how it works it never it never worked like that by the way it never was like that there never was a time that you had like an authority that everybody listened to there was guidance i could have put out a very clear guidance and how to reopen schools adapted it some communities were you i'm not going to ask you to to expand on that tower but ultimately push comes off if you're caught listening between a rav and a doctor that's a tricky thing and you're going to go with the problem you're going to you're going to use what the doctor's information of course another side was there must have been a hard time because there was a little bit of a minor it's not a secret there were 20 civil wars the mass and not massive yes and in every community in my community too there's there's it's a nice that people still talk to each other and the trump should get us through this you must have been caught in the middle of a lot of a lot of debates avi you can't let this happen you have to let this happen yeah so how do you how do you navigate the father we foul tyra tyra tyra is tyrone tyra is is the light you follow whoo so workshop where we have in the hill of lakewood there's there's a there's a there's a sort of a an infrastructure there's the shiva there's the rashidus there and that was it that's otherwise you you can always find another other member of another person in your life in my life you're not asking me personal questions [Laughter] who's my robbie yeah i was lucky to learn by himself who today's a market share in lakewood i learned by him in baltimore about almost 20 years ago and uh we learned every single week till today 20 years later you learn with him alone they may not know could i say this secret oh boy this is anybody who struggles like garcia myself with a little bit of adhd yeah i can't even imagine this yeah this is a very big thing everyone right told me you're talking about clyde swallow gotta swallow babies nice and obvious now joined his minion i think with practice emma they leaned in one shot all the patches coveted started part of the aircraft outdoors i think that was indoors this is something i'm amazed i can't even imagine that yeah so kudos to you uh does it mean anything to you i know you learned in philadelphia uh dominated philadelphia shiva right yes does he mean anything to you that there's an anumi isis kadai terror and that the son of your shiva values son joined the mantis does that mean anything to you personally that your faith is now a member of the governing body of the goddess israel i tell you this is you know and over the past few years a lot of members of the meetings were getting very we're getting older now we lost a bunch of numbers the rapper was never about him needed sort of a recording so to speak and and and it happened so it's it's an incredible thing i don't care i don't look at the metaphors as being an a good i think the masses belongs to kaiser you know what i'm saying this is a client sort of thing and that now that we're going to have 15 members of them on the merits active vibrant of vibrant meowthis is an incredible source of climate soul and that uh of you know who whoever zander says have you met them do you get introduced to them how does it work you know not not we haven't because of colvin's tell me a little bit i'm sorry like there's a supreme court confirmation the whole everybody knows exactly what happened in the whole america is watching what's going on how does this happen yeah i have no idea i have no idea what's the question like a secret process it's a raffle i don't know the the 50 the truth really is i never asked that question could you talk about it for me i would love to know i'm probably not able to find that either because the person like the few guys that know probably may not tell it maybe they're going to ask you to be on the mat even though i learned once a week you know and i did the lightning i'm not sure if it'll be enough okay i have a whole new question another one of robert schnell's many hats is a key or personality or you worked in uber for many years i think he's totally still totally pivotal go into the summer do you still do that do you try to come back for the summer now i i decided to spend and the mandate to reach out to people who weren't maybe didn't merit to go to yeshiva somebody's yacobs and see orthodox life being an orthodoxy during covet and the pr which not a lot of it we didn't do to ourselves some of it is always self-inflicted a lot of it is media inflicted um what are you thinking here of uber-wise how does that play to the non-affiliated jews who you have to reach so i i think about an answer question the cure of wise i think about it from the from the political end meaning i thought about it a lot of how we're going to answer up all these questions like the first wave months ago why don't the jews where are you gonna wear masks more than that when you had all those arrests every wedding every time there was a uh ten people in lakewood somehow the police were there it was like an incredible phenomenon you were working i asked i asked someone i said i said i can i can walk home friday night from my house to my show every friday night that i live in range street it's a dark neighborhood not a lot of street lights i've never seen a police officer all of a sudden the minute you have 10 guys gathering for a bar mitzvah the caps are there and i go on like the whole force comes like how does that happen but it was it was it was a trying time because yeah every week every day almost you in the news again another party in lakewood another party in lakewood that definitely didn't do good for us so there was a particular there's a particular politician that's not in liquid he's in south jersey that we have a relationship with and at the time you were working on a pretty big piece of legislation the whole thing i put on hold right now because we didn't expect this no one expected this to happen but at the time we were we were in the middle of a piece of legislation and then covered broke out but we were still working on it but like very you know not so involved and i was worried that this guy's gonna start reading all the stuff and like he's may distance himself from trying to help us out so i called up a common contact the two of us have that i say like where's where's he holding with us like you like try to send out your feelings like where's the up took i was nervous about this and he says you know he did he did what he had to do he got back to he says you know something you look at it because you live in that world of every day you see yourself you see yourself but you have to remember also there were a lot of other parties also that happened newark was having many more incidents than the lakewood was and so was so you get uh completely obsessed with them let's take a step back there are many other things going on yes 100 those living in ocean county were focused on lakewood but if you're living beyond ocean county what are you going to answer you have to deal with ocean county you know your neighbors as well who don't understand the community either from a key or point of view or from a political point of view what were you did you have your talking points ready and what were your answers the talking point says i mean we can go back in history sort of so to speak but there's two real answers there's the cure of answer and then there's you know other answers but it really is what really happened it was a it was a it was a crazy time it was a crazy time when the the enforcement level was beyond what was what needed to be happening as as as a as a example but this is really an example of many cases a guy in my shoe his kid was getting by midfield there's nobody he didn't make a bar mitzvah i video i still have the videos because we saved it for that the whole banter for this reason and a bunch of the the uncles and aunts and the cousins of the vampire subway wanted like a drive-by this is the beginning of the height when it was really you know everyone was nervous about it and they drove to his house they came out of the cars everyone's by their car everyone's socially distanced and they're dancing and they're singing and he's on his front lawn with his sons and he's dancing with them and there's a guy 10 feet away you know the grandfather's at 10 feet away and the cops came they gave him a ticket for child endangerment and for disruption of the of of the of of the community they they hit him heavy he did nothing wrong he did absolutely nothing wrong people were in a very it was like i want to use the word uptight but a lot of there was people were frantic people were nervous people frantic the police were nervous everyone was nervous they were just wanting to shut things down so the minute there was any infringement we got it i got it we got it so if you take a step back and look at what really happened a wedding so the person had went in the backyard they had 10 people in one backyard at 50 50 feet away 10 people the other backyard it was 100 legal police came could it be this was inflated a little there were people it's not a secret within the firm community who saw this as their mission to report document and share every violation taking out their own phones and tipping off the police estimator terrible they could they contributed to this they made their own distributed 100 desire to whatever i think that they're going to one day be asked a lot of questions on this i mean why what was what was the intention to save lives i i don't i don't bother like i said those in the medical profession who yeah out there at the front lines all day they see things differently but it was it was it's a it's a big question on those that did that it's a very big question so to wrap this up we're looking back at the last seven months march 1st 2012 2020 up up until november 2020 so to speak um a lot of things happen a lot of things happen but you're looking back from your role as somebody who's so to speak a middleman between the people and the and the authorities the political authorities your look to goodish troll of like what a good result of uh of new jersey uh because of new jersey and uh which by the way that's another award because in addition to a good issue stroll you know your people are going to take pot shots at you you also live in lakewood lakewood which is a tough town so it's not like we're going to sell in cleveland we're in cincinnati where they send you charlotte is or they say thank you for your hard work so we have directors in like you know in baltimore and florida like sometimes like you know maybe you should say what's up you want some some songs you have like your one day school over here you have your board of members and your va like that's all thank you guys come play good for a week you know let me know how it goes it's tough you're looking back at seven months and you're saying the from community and the people that i represent proudly did a great job absolutely doers there were challenges like no other in all aspects and all facets you can't you can talk about this should be books there should be books written about what happened i'm game who's pig we'll find the sponsor we'll find spiders but they think about it which moment makes you proudest when you look back at the last half month say this is when i was proud to be doing what i was doing this which moment or which accomplishment which achievement which what happened that you say wow that was really something that we managed to we set up a hotline we set up a hotline in new jersey for people to come and ask questions about ppp the ppp loans the new unemployment it was it was a whole new world for everyone we are gonna agree yeah we stopped by how long we had people volunteers that were answering calls what did the volunteers know that so we found people that were limited to this stuff that they took it and they invested a lot of time because no one really knew anything voluntarily all volunteers and we set up an email address you have a question send an email someone will call you back that's what was we answered every single guy in lakewood calling up if they could buy and sell uh we had a few of those you know those i have seven million pesos but um but buying large was people that that were totally at a loss that they lost very very fast i actually was a guy that uh a mutual friend of ours garcia tress that gave me the kick in the pants that they were what i said or something let's do it let's do it loves a good uh so uh we set it up and we have thousands of questions who are your volunteers what sort of people yeah accountants people that were hr directors they did a willingness with you they were more than happy that they were home how many cars and we had we had we had a few we had we had in total about 2200 calls wow 2200 individuals that we helped across the state and there was a guy that lived in teaneck he was a caterer he called me up and i wanted to know something i'm small caring business i was out i'm done i had nothing there i had no business going on and i'm wondering you know i'm putting i'm going i'm putting food on my table because of your guidance like what sort of guidance on how to get the loans how to get the loans so they get the eid on loans the ppp loans the the unemployment the self-employed there were so many new rules out there it was a total loss see you know a lot of times about the big stuff you know forty thousand kids we got the yeshiva's open we we got this done we got that done federal washington this is the yojado so when you help you hear a guy bottom line a regular guy he's trying to make a panos defeat his family he got hit by this culvert he was out he was out he was lost he had nowhere to turn you were able to walk around and we walked him through it and the bottom line is he survived he survived he got through with the embargo now that was an amazing it was a kaiser moment it wasn't just a me moment that yeah everybody think this is what you look at about i was on the call i was on a call with a few askgarden and liquid that um they knew about this hotline and they wanted to raise the current account for people they knew people are going to go broke at the beginning so first of all we saw the visionary of the people that they knew people are going to need money let's now wait then let's do this now i'm on a call there must have been let's say 30 guys on the call and they said let's do it within that 20 minute phone call close to a million dollars was raised there was no dinner there was no honorees there was no fanfare no one will ever know after those 20 people who gave this money how much they gave me and they just gave it was an incredible experience incredible experience okay so a few things one is we really i'd love for you to talk more about this we have to do this again maybe next time take three right take three next time in a tie um and you gotta write these things down you gotta keep a diary even for yourself okay this that monster should help us to go past this whole thank you for coming again and it's a pleasure sitting with you thank you thank you very much and keep going you