My father’s stories (and jokes) that made me who I am

So this is a monthly lecture series we have at the bottom of the five towns. Uh we had a different topic scheduled but being that Thursday is the Schlesh the 30 days memorial of the passing of my father I changed the topic and the topic is lessons that my father taught me. Understandably I've never given this lecture before. I'm not even sure really I made some notes about what I want to cover but I'm really not sure how it's going to come out. I'm not sure if I'll get emotional. I probably will get emotional actually to tell you the truth. Um but what is it? It's it's lessons that my father taught me. Meaning to say um it's not about his life. It's not about um it's it's not even about like specifically Torah that he taught me. It's more like stories and interactions and experiences and just how I was affected growing up with him as my father. So I know that he always watched everything that I uploaded. Everything I put online he watched it. Uh he was I don't know if it's respectful to say this this way but I think he would find this respectful. He was my biggest fan and he would he would definitely watch this video. So I'm going to All right. So I'm going to do this. Okay. So I don't really have a structure for this but I think I'll start It's always good to start with a joke. So I'm going to start with a joke that my father told me possibly hundreds of times. This was one of his standard jokes. And at the Shiva I actually ended up to I told this joke hundreds of times because when people would ask me tell me something from your father I said okay I'll tell you one of his jokes. Okay. So just a little background before I tell you the joke. My father was a psychologist for many many years, for for decades. Per- perhaps I actually he never really officially retired. He was in semi-retirement in his 80s. He passed away at 90. So, he practiced really for 50 years or more. And he became increasingly religious throughout his lifetime, throughout his adulthood. And the the the older he got, not only the more religious he became, but he would literally spend a great part of the day just praying and meditating. He would go to the 9:00 a.m. minyan at free on Devon Avenue in Rogers Park. That's the latest minyan. I wish we had a 9:00 minyan here on the weekdays. And now that I'm saying Kaddish, but he would go there 9:00 a.m. He would sit with his tallis and fill until, you know, till noon easily. He'd just sit till till midday. And he would just take his time davening. And what would he daven? I mean, what would he think? It wasn't like he had studied Kavvanat ha-Ari zal, like Kabbalistic intentions. He would just think about the words. He'd go through Pesukei Dezimra, the verses the of of uh of uh praise. And it goes and describes different phenomena of nature and the the frost and the wind and the raven is feeding its children. He would just picture all of these things. He was very very visual. He was an artist, a very very talented artist. My brother Dovid, who's the creator of Itchy & Scratchy, is the one who inherited the art talent. I inherited a little bit of the art talent. But um he was an artist. He was very visual. So, he would like go through davening. He would just picture everything. And it would just take him hours. And he was in no rush. So, at any rate, he was a psychologist for many many decades. And um he became increasingly more spiritual and involved in not just Yiddishkeit but Chassidus, specifically Chabad Chassidus, learning Chassidus, the Rebbe's Torahs specifically. He He really felt connected to the Rebbe's teachings. And uh, so this was a joke that he would tell. I don't really tell this joke because it's like it sounds like a rabbi bashing psychology. But my father was a psychologist, he would tell this joke as his way of sort of conveying what he felt was lacking in the secular therapeutic approach. Okay. So, the joke's like this. A guy walks into a bar and uh, orders a shot of whiskey. So, uh, bartender puts the shot glass on the bar, starts to pour the whiskey. The guy takes the shot glass, takes a look at it, mhm, splashes it in the guy's in the bartender's face. Bartender wipes his face, he says, "Get out of here. Don't come back." Next day, the same guy comes back, same bar, same bartender. He says, "Get out of here. I kicked you out yesterday." He says, "No, no, no, no, I'm going to behave myself, I'm going to behave myself." "Okay, fine, come in. What do you want?" Shot of whiskey. Okay, takes the shot glass, puts it on the bar, pours the whiskey. Guy takes the shot glass full of whiskey, takes a look at it, mhm, splashes it in the bartender's face again. Bartender says, "GET OUT OF HERE. YOU'RE BANNED FOR LIFE. Never come back." A year later the guy comes into the bar. The bartender instantly recognizes him. He says, "You're banned for life. Don't step foot in here." He says, "Hold on a sec. How long's it been since I've been here last? A year?" He says, "Yeah, I guess about." He says, "Well, where do you think I've been for a year?" He says, "I don't know where you've been. I don't care where you've been." He says, "Listen to me, listen to me." Past year I've been in intense therapy. Intense therapy for a year. I'm a changed man. Can I please come in? He says, "Okay, for a year you've been in intense therapy. Okay, come on in. What do you want?" He says, "I want a shot of whiskey." He says, "Okay." He puts the shot glass on the on the bar, pours the whiskey in the glass. The guy takes the shot glass, looks at it, splashes it in the bartender's face again. Bartender says, "I thought you told me the past year you've been in intense therapy." The guy says, "I have been. And now when I do that, I don't feel guilty about it anymore." That's That's the joke. Okay. The truth is my father never explained it to me. He didn't give an explanation. He just told the joke. I had to infer the explanation. But what I inferred, which was what he wanted me to do, was he it was his complaint that a lot of the approach of therapy was instead of changing yourself, instead of growing, you just sort of create a new narrative where you can become complacent. And not saying that that's every approach and whatever. I mean, I'm not here to defend. It's just a joke, just a joke, right? But that was his complaint. That was his complaint. And he felt that really the approach of Chassidus and Avodah of working on yourself, that that became increasingly uh important to him. Okay. Um So I'll tell you uh some stories that he told me. Uh this is a story also connected to his being a psychologist. And there's actually a great recording of this story that I posted recently on uh online, on YouTube and on soulwords.org. Uh there was an occasion where we we we we had an opportunity to sit down actually together here in Cedarhurst in the Five Towns at my studio at the SoulWords Studios which some of you know is my garage, half of my garage. That's where God willing we're opening the SoulWords House at the Isle and we have a God willing we'll have the whole basement will be video production. We'll have a proper studio. What? That's where the cats are. Yeah, at the SoulWords Studios at the in Cambria Heights at the Isle. So, um we record my father and I recorded a little little about 3 years ago. We recorded a a podcast set down together and it was really great because I watched it after he passed and I was like really really uh comforted by the fact that I think it got it at like just the perfect sweet spot because it was like his maximum wisdom and age but was before any slowing of his sharpness. So, he has like his full cognitive faculties and he's making references very quickly and interacting in a very sort of swift way. So, it's a great recording but in this in this recording which I posted which is called that's not red. So, this is a famous story that I grew up on. Again, he didn't give me an explanation. He just told me the story and this is one of these stories that we just heard or maybe I just heard. I I spoke with my brother and sister. I don't think they got the same stories necessarily that I did. But I got this story dozens of times. So, the story is like this. My father was teaching psychology at a community college. And one of the things he was teaching was he was teaching the students how to administer personality tests. And in order to administer the personality tests, they had to take the personality tests, administer the the tests to each other. One of those personality tests So, they were sitting around in the college lecture hall in pairs giving each other the tests. And they were all doing different tests. One of the pairs was doing one of the tests, which is called the Lüscher color test. The Lüscher color test is comprised of different cards with different colors on them. Sort of like if you go to a hardware store and you pick a color for paint. And you order the colors in the order of what you like. That's basically the test. So, my father says he hears like a commotion coming from one of the the pairs and he goes over and he saw that it was the Lüscher color test people. And who was doing the Lüscher color test at this particular moment? So, I don't know who the other person was, but one of the one of the people was an older student. He said most of the students were college-aged. Like traditionally the age of college students. The This particular woman, he said, was a she she had a job and she'd been out in the workforce for a while and she came back for schooling. And so she was considerably older than everybody else and she was getting into a fight uh about the Lüscher color test. So, he asked he he asked her, you know, "Step aside for a second. I just want to ask you what's going on?" So, she explained to him, "It's the Lüscher color test. I'm having a problem with it because I like red." He says, "Okay, great. So, put red." He She says, "No, no, no, but that's not red." Meaning the particular shade of red on that card, she didn't identify as being like the archetypical shade of red. So, she was at an impasse. She didn't know what to do because semantically she liked red, but this visual red was not like the exact red that she liked. So, she's like, "I like red, but that's not red." So, he says, "So, just react to it however you react how however you emotionally feel about that color on that paper." She says, "But I like red. I know that's supposed to be red and I would like to put red." And he saw she was like very entrenched. And I only remembered this part of the story. That's all I remembered. And I remembered the story as being basically about how people get bogged down in semantics. When we recorded this podcast um 2 3 years ago he told me the rest of it or he reminded me of the rest of it, which is that he recommended to her to study general semantics. And apparently he correctly assessed what her hold up was, why she was getting why was she getting so bogged down in this Luscher color test. And she went she study studied general semantics like just informally. She read a book about general semantics. He said, "Once that clicked for her and she didn't have that that's not red problem anymore." He said, "She completely transformed. She completely changed her personality. She was like a completely different person." That's the story. Okay. So, I always think about that's not red. When everyone when anyone is being like very pedantic or getting bogged down in semantics or really literal or very concrete also. A lot of times when people think of things Abstractions are fluid and and ideas are by definition abstractions. So, when you're speaking in terms of ideas, conversations are fluid. But some people think very concretely and they get stuck and they can't use the language and they get trapped in it. So, I always anytime we encounter something like that like that whether it's in teaching cuz I'm an educator. So, I might be like let's say teaching Tanya, which I do here Mondays at 11:00 in this very library. And if somebody will get hung up like on a term that's used one way, let's say in chapter two and used in a different way in chapter four, which is an actual example, it wasn't not a I made up example. But I'll think about that concept of you have to like be able to release yourself from the word and relate to the abstraction. Okay, and at any rate, that was a story that affected me deeply. Um another story which was also about a personality test, but this was not when my father was teaching psychology, this is when he was studying. This took place, I believe, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which is where he met my mother. And there was a professor, also I I I hadn't remembered his name, but my father reminded me when we recorded this podcast recently. Uh the name of the professor was T. Ernest Newland. And he taught educational psychology. And also he My father reminded me, one of the things that I remember my father telling me throughout my childhood, which made a huge huge huge huge, I cannot uh convey to you how huge of an impression it made on my worldview, uh is actually something from T. Ernest Newland, and I didn't know it was from T. Ernest Newland. And that is the following. Think of the craziest thing that you can imagine. Not only has somebody done it, somebody's doing it right now. That's it. That was the thing that T. Ernest Newland used to say. Told it to his class, my father was in the class. My father told me that a number of times. I cannot convey to you how much that has affected my worldview. You're going to say, "Yeah, must have messed you up really bad." Yeah, you probably think about all types of crazy stuff. Well, yeah, I have. And I remember when a number of times my father would tell me that and I'd they'll like, "Yeah, even whatever." And I would make up some grow gross or grotesque or like shocking thing. And he'd be like, "Yep, yep, someone's doing it right now." But it expanded my mind. Really, truly, it expanded my mind to be able to I I I think not in a in a positive way, in a positive not be shocked by human behavior. And I don't mean that by like to be ambivalent or apathetic. But what I mean is that if somebody's telling me their story, I have room for it. Like, okay, yeah. Crazy things happen. Like crazy things are happening right now. At any rate, so that was a T. Ernest Newland, but this that was T. Ernest Newland's adage, but I'll tell you the story about T. Ernest Newland with the personality test. So, and this this also had a profound effect on me. So, they took a bunch of personality tests, so maybe it was one personality test on a Friday. And then they came back on Monday. Maybe it wasn't even a Monday. It was like, you know, in college where there's like two classes a week. Maybe it was like 3 days or 4 days even later. And they're sitting around the class. They're students. My father's one of the students. And one of the ladies in the class says, "I was so nervous all weekend thinking about the result of my personality test, like what my personality test is going to say cuz they'd taken personality tests on Friday. I was so worried. What is going to be the result of my personality test that I almost drove my car into a tree." Um and I think the implication was on purpose. Like, she was that stressed about it. Um not she was distracted. Like she was like Yeah. So, as she says this, T. Ernest Newland walks through the door and it becomes apparent that he's been standing beyond the threshold listening to this conversation. And he says very Riley to this woman, "You just took your personality test." Meaning, if you could be so bent out of shape that you want to drive your car into a ditch because you're afraid to get the results of your personality test, those are your results right there. There's no better personality test than that. Okay. Um All right, I'll tell you I'll go back to a joke. I'll go back to a joke that my father told me many times. And I think this is also connected to what I mentioned a minute ago about he indirectly instilled within me a capacity to be able to absorb all types of stuff from people. He never sat me down and taught me this. He never said, "Here's how you do it." Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. Um but I I see now putting together the puzzle pieces that there are certain things that just affected me this way. So, I mentioned I have this ability to to hear people and to I don't know if I actually can help them, but I can listen. I know how I know how to listen. Um So, here's another joke my father told me. This guy goes and becomes a therapist. He goes to school and um graduates and he rents an office and he puts out ads. And his first day on the job he's got a full docket of clients and he he rents an office at the at the office park in a in an office building. And uh first day at the job he sits and listens to people all day. And at the end of the day he's walking out to the parking lot and he says, "I can't believe I've done this. This is the worst mistake I've ever made in my life and now I'm stuck. Now I got to do this for the rest of my life. I hate this. I can't do this. These people come to you with these problems that just the the the darkness and the stress and the and the misery. I I'm I'm supposed to sit there and absorb this all. How am I going to do this? And he can't sleep all night. And uh the next morning he comes back to the office. What can What can he do? He can't cancel his uh appointments. So he comes back the second day for the second day at work, but he's just ruining having to be there. Just dreading it. And as he's walking in, he gets on the elevator and um he sees another therapist who also has an office there in the office building who's a senior therapist, a silver-haired distinguished gentleman, a senior colleague. And uh they get in the elevator and the young man says I just started and beside myself and maybe you could help me. How do you do it? And the distinguished gentleman says, "Do what?" He says, "Well, you know, you sit there and the people they just they have all these problems and the stress and the misery and the and and they just dump it on you and it's so heavy and it's so dark and how do you do it?" And the distinguished gentleman says "No. Who listens?" It's a pretty good joke, anyways. We'll add it in a laugh track. Who listens? Okay. Um yeah. And he never explained that to me either, but I understood from that that I could have taken a lot of things from it, but what I did take from it was that a lot of people who are supposed to be listening aren't going to listen. And there are very few people, there are rare people who are going to actually listen. And he never told me that, and he never told me be one of the listeners, but somehow that's what I took from it. Um another great joke, classic joke. Also a psychologist joke. A lady comes into a psychologist's office, she says, uh "You got to help me." She He says, "What do I got to help you with?" She says, "Well, my problem is my friends think I'm crazy. I'm not crazy, but my friends think I'm crazy." He says, "Oh, okay." You know, he's seen this before where people say that, "My friends think I'm crazy." So, why why do they think you're crazy? So, uh she says, "Well, because I'm dead, and they don't believe me." So, he says, "Okay. Yeah, I hear that." He says, "Let me Let me ask you a question. Um do dead people bleed?" She says, "No, of course not, they're dead." So, all of a sudden he grabs her hand, he pulls out a needle, he pricks her finger, squeezes the finger, a drop of blood comes out, and he's holding her finger, and he points to the drop of blood, he says, "Aha! What do you say?" She says, "Oh my goodness. Dead people do bleed." Okay. Again, he never explained the meaning of the joke, but it made a huge impression on me. That when people are entrenched in their position, you're not going to talk them out of it. Now, what I've discovered, and he didn't tell this to me, what I've discovered is sometimes you could love them out of it. You're never going to talk them out of it. Sometimes, not always, maybe not even most of the time, you can love them out of it. But, you're not going to win the debate. You're not going to win the debate cuz people will just shift the axioms as they need to. Okay. Um tell you another story that my father told me. This is from before he was a psychologist. This is a Korea story. And this is my father was in Korea. Actually, I'll give you a a story within a story. My father, when he was in Korea, uh you know, that the there was the Korean War. So, he was in Korea right after the Korean War. There was still a draft. And um so he learned Korean a little bit when he was over there. And he said he remembers that one of the other guys was like harassing him, "Why are you learning Korean? They're not even such a powerful country. Learn Japanese. The Japanese are much more like a first world country." He said, "But, we're in Korea." "Yeah, but Japan is much more like they're more like us." That's what he They're more like us. He said, "But, I'm not in Japan. I'm in Korea." So, he learned Korean a little bit. So, I remember when I Now I Now I moved, but I remember in Pittsburgh when I used to have the Korean uh dry cleaner. So, I used to come sumida, you know, thank you very much. Um drop a few phrases which they seem to appreciate. Um and anyway, so my father's on the boat going over to Korea. And uh he sees a guy doing like knife tricks. You know, like they put You know, you get bored on the boat. So, this guy would like put his hand down on the deck. I think that's where he did it. And he'd take a knife and go pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop. You know, like do a pattern in between the fingers to show how he was like skilled with a knife. So, my father goes over to this guy, this knife guy. And he says to him, "Do you know how to fight?" I don't know why I asked him this. "Do you know how to knife fight?" Guy looks at him and says, "You're lucky I don't do to you what the man did to me who I asked, 'Do you know how to knife fight?'" So, my father says, "What did the man do to you who you asked how to knife fight?" He says, "I was just like you. Saw a guy doing knife tricks, I came over, asked the same question, 'Do you know how to knife fight?' The guy goes, slashes me right across the forehead. He draws a thin bead of blood, just ever such a thin slice, just to let like a paper cut, just to let me know the precision. And then I was in shock, and then he looks at me and he says, 'Lesson one, never ask a man how to knife fight.'" So, that that that stuck with me also. It's like, "Never ask a man how to knife fight." And there are a lot of applications of that, which is basically don't be a nudnik. Be careful, you know, when you get interested in something, just be careful who you're asking and what your question may open the open the door to, and just be judicious. And then, you know, in today's day with the internet, sometimes better just observe now, go home and Google it later. So. Um, yeah. Now, I'll tell you some stories that I didn't hear from him, but stories that I experienced with him. And this is actually a good segue from the getting slashed in the face, or almost getting slashed in the face. My father did not get slashed in the face. But, this is a story about getting punched in the throat. So, you didn't know what kind of a lecture you're coming out for here. You saw this title, Rabbi, says lessons my father taught me. He thought it's going to be warm and squishy. This is my life. I'm just telling you my life. This is Yeah, you want You look at me. You wonder how's a guy come out like this? I'm giving you part of the formula. This is how a guy This is how a guy comes out like this. Okay. So, we were at a Bulls game. Now, you should know we went to Bulls games before before the Bulls were good. In fact, before Michael Jordan. Before Michael Jordan's Michael Jordan's rookie year was 1984 when I was 10 years old. I was born in '74. Um I saw the rise of Michael Jordan. I'm going to talk I'm going to tell the famous Michael Jordan story in a moment. And anyway, so we're at the Bulls game. And I get up and probably go to the bathroom or something, but I get up and I'm on my own. I'm by myself. And I see like a commotion. And I look closer and it seems like an adult man screaming at an older woman and another adult man screaming at him. And I realize it's like this guy like screaming at his mother in public and she's screaming at him and the brother's getting involved and the brother's getting in between It seems like the brother is getting in between them. Seems like maybe she's screaming at him that he's drunk cuz he's acting very drunk. And I don't know. I just Actually, pause. The way I should have told this story, I should have started like this. I got up to go to the bathroom. I came back 45 minutes later and my father said, "Where have you been?" I said, "I just walked around the entire stadium." "Why did you walk the old Chicago Stadium, the old barn on Madison Avenue? Why did you walk around the entire stadium?" I said, "Well, cuz I was scared to walk back the direction that I came from." And I'll tell you what, then I told him the story. Then I got up and I saw some guy screaming at what appeared to be his mother, and another guy screaming at him who appeared to be his brother, and he appeared to be intoxicated. So, I don't know. I'm just a helpful guy. I'm trying to be nice. I don't know. I I think I can be helpful. I don't know why I thought this. And I I I don't know how old I was, but, you know, it was in those years when we were going to the game. So, maybe I was 10, maybe I was 15. I really can't remember how old I was, but I was a young kid. I go over and I say, I think can I can I help you? I think it was an innocent can I help you? And bam! I got punched in the throat. It's my first time ever getting punched in the throat. It's guys who know how to fight, they know that. They know that the first punch should be in the throat, cuz it's very stunning. It just your eyes tear up, you you you black out, you don't really see anything. And it's it's it's incapacitates you. And as I'm sort of coming back to uh consciousness, he's I hear him screaming at me, "You got a problem, man? You got a problem?" And I'm screaming, "NO, NO PROBLEM. NO PROBLEM." And I just walked around the entire stadium, so I wouldn't have to see the guy again, cuz I didn't want to get punched in the throat again. So, I told my father this story. So, it's very interesting how he took that moment. First of all, he saw that I was okay. Like, if he was worried that I wasn't okay, it would have been a different reaction. He saw that I was okay. He said, "Well, you see, that's a game. That's a game they're playing. It's a game of three roles, of a victim, uh a persecu- uh a victim, persecutor, rescuer. Yeah, victim, persecutor, rescuer. It's a three-person game. It's like tag on the playground, but it's like three parts. Victim persecutor rescuer. And and that's a game that they play. And he says, "I'm sure these people play this game often. I'm sure they're very good at this game. I'm sure this is one that they spend a lot of time with this activity." Now, what you don't realize is when they're playing this game Oh, and by the way, later on I looked it up. What's later on? Like a year ago. So, like 40 years later, I looked it up and I found out what it's called. It's called the Karpman drama triangle. The Karpman drama triangle. There's a Jewish psychologist, but you know, I repeat myself, named Stephen Karpman who came up with this concept called the drama triangle. And he was into transactional analysis, which I'll talk to about in a minute about transactional analysis, cuz that was also very very very very influential upon me. But Stephen Karpman was one of these guys into transactional analysis. He came up with the drama triangle. Drama drama triangle basically means you have three people. It's a three-player game. Why is it called a game? It's not fun. Because it's a distraction. Because basically it's an activity that's very intense that people can kind of kind of sort of get their energy out and feel like they're doing something, but no one has to express their genuine motives and no one has to actually pursue their genuine goals. So, it's a way for people to feel engaged and busy and like they're and I'll get to my commentary on this in a minute, but so he says, "When they're playing this game though, you have to understand that the roles are fluid." The roles are very fluid. You're not permanently assigned to these roles. Usually there's a default role that one person likes to fall into, But, if there's any change, they will adapt and they'll change roles. So, he said, "You walked in and you sort of introduced a new factor to the game. And so, immediately what happened is basically you walked up to them and you said, 'Can I play?'" And they said, "Sure. You're victim. Bam." Oh, and I should Now I Now I remember. Wow, coming back to me. That when the guy punched me, his mother screams, "STOP IT." SO, NOW she's she's rescuer. She's rescuer. No, I wanted to be I thought I was rescuer. Apparently, I was victim. Okay? So, at any rate, I learned so much so much from that one incident. I've saved myself so much misery and grief. Even when people are baffled, when they're baffled and they're like, "Why won't you get involved? Why won't you help? Come on. They want to talk. Will you sit down at" I have a nose for this, okay? It sometimes it looks earnest. It's not. It's a game. And all that's going to happen is you're going to be extended an invitation to join the game. And you could either join it and then have to be subject to the rules of the game. Or if you're not going to play it, I trust me when I say if you're going to be "Well, I'm going to bust up their game and I'm going to call them out and I'm going to let them know this is disingenuous." They will get rid of you so fast cuz you're not playing the game. We're We're here to play uh tag and now you're you're telling us why you're running around chasing each other. Nothing will happen if they catch you. So, I learned so much from that. Just about don't be fooled. Don't get sucked into the drama. Don't get sucked I I I to tell you how many meetings I've avoided because of this. We're calling an emergency meeting. Whether it was like at a workplace or wherever or whatever. We have to get together and solve this problem. It's like, you guys are enjoying this way too much. Knock yourselves out. I'm going to sit this one out. Okay. So, just sharing it with you. It is a superpower if you can perfect it. All right. Now, um I have two directions I can go right now. One is transactional analysis which I mentioned. The other is Michael Jordan which I mentioned. I think I'm going to do the transactional analysis first. Maybe save the Michael Jordan cuz seems to seems to be a crowd pleaser. So, my vaudeville intuition is telling me save it for a closing act. Okay. Um You should also know, by the way, if you like all this stick, this is so the opposite of my father. My father was very quiet. Very quiet. Very deep. Very, very intelligent. But very quiet. Soft-spoken. Slow in a lot of ways. Just like energetically slow, deliberate, methodical. Um like he would like, you know, at a at a family simcha he would get up and he would he would speak. But he wasn't a performer at all. He didn't do that. I get the hyperactivity I get from my mother's side. For sure, definitely. Um So, I'll tell you about the transactional analysis. People think that I know a ton about psychology. And I want to tell you something. Yeah, they think that. But you know, you don't know? I thought you know me. I don't know anything about it. People will ask me, "What about this modality of therapy?" I don't know. Why would do know about it? "Well, don't you study? That's No. no, I don't. Um I never was schooled in any type of field of mental health. I'm for sure not up-to-date on anything from the past 40 years. Literally, the last stuff I really know, I should say 35 years. The last stuff I really know is stuff that like my my father's books that I read when I was a teenager. Like books that he had in the house. And specifically, what did I get into because he was into it? Transactional analysis. So, the really the only thing I really know is a few books about transactional analysis that I read when I was 15. And that is really the end of my schooling in any type of psychology. But anyway, so transactional analysis was from uh another Jewish psychologist, Eric Berne. And there's a lot There's so much from My father really, really liked transactional analysis. But one of the things in transactional analysis is about games. Games people play. Had a book Eric Berne had a book called Games People Play. And he would sort of call people out on the games. Um games are like social interactions that are disingenuous where there's a lot of moves and counter moves and it could even seem very serious and dramatic, but really it's all to avoid genuine intimacy. And if people play these games often enough, then it becomes elevated even to what's called a script, a life script. And and I I you know, my father taught me about this and I read read the book and I really for better or for worse, that became very much installed in my in my psyche. This idea that What? No, not a mind game. Not that they're playing with your head. They're playing with their own head. They're not gaslighting. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, it's not a mind game. No, games means instead of a genuine interaction, like where someone would say what they really feel, and then just be vulnerable and see what happens, instead, there's this intense activity of, you know, like I said, like a lot of meetings are these games. Like we got to call him, we have an emergency meeting. We have these issue. We got to solve this thing. We got to intervention. We're going to solve the problem. We're going to We're going to make him stop and we're going to talk some sense into him. And it's all just distraction. It's distraction, distraction, distraction. And nothing honest is going to come from it because they won't allow it because the whole purpose of the intensity of the interaction is to avoid any possibility of getting real. So, this concept of games people play, scripts people live, became very, very like installed in my psyche and I see it so clearly, like it became I have because of this I have a very strong sense of when an interaction is genuine and when it is not. And I have a very low threshold for disingenuous interactions. But that's for other reasons, nothing that my father taught me, but just for my own own other issues that will maybe be a lecture for another time when I'm burying myself again. Um Another thing about transactional analysis, I'll just tell you in case you're interested in it, is are the three ego states, parent, adult, child. So, I see how true this is, so true, that the parent See, parent, adult, child are not different people. They're one person. There's one person they go through life with these three ego states, parent, adult, child in their own head. So, when you're in a moralistic position, I told you so. Why did you do that? You know, that's the parent mode. Okay? The child is like the insecure little kid. Um oh no, they're going to scold me. They're going to reject me. And then the adult is sort of the clear thinking objectivity. So, transactional analysis is a lot about like being able to call that out and being like, "Hey, we're talking here. Are we Are we two adults talking? Is this a real adult-to-adult conversation?" Or for instance, and this is way before people were talking about trauma, but it could be like maybe I'm doing something that's making you react like you're a wounded child reacting to an authoritarian adult an authoritarian parent. But really, I'm trying to talk I'm trying to bring my adult, you bring your adult. And if we can each bring our adult, then we can have a real interaction. Um yeah. There was also part of transactional analysis was the the different positions. Arba midos, like it says in Pirkei Avot, arba midos yesh ba'adam. There There are four basic positions. And you might have heard this phrase because somebody else, not Eric Berne himself, but somebody else, I think Thomas Harris made a book with this title, I'm okay, you're okay. So, one position is I'm okay, you're okay. Another position is I'm not okay, you're okay. Then another position is I'm okay, you're not okay. And then I'm not okay, you're not okay. So, I'm okay, you're okay is obviously the healthiest position. Where it's like I'm good. There's I'm not I I'm not lacking anything. If I'm interacting with you, it's not to fill some type of missing piece of me. I like I'm I'm just I'm here showing up as a as an adult. And you're okay, too. You You're not broken. I don't have to fix you. I'm okay, you're okay. That's like a healthy interaction. And then like I'm not okay, you're okay. Save me, right? My hero, my in shining armor. So, that's, you know, dysfunction, codependence. Uh I'm okay, you're not okay, right? So, I'll save you. I'll fix you. Another type of codependence. And then there's I'm not okay, you're not okay, let's burn down the whole city. Like, just, you know. So, um yeah, that affected me deeply and I'm just I told you the shloshim is Thursday, so I'm just processing this stuff now. I'm not even sure not even sure to what extent this affected me, but I'm just telling you. Um okay. So, now No, but I'm going to save the Michael Jordan story. Okay. I'll tell you my father's approach to marriage counseling, the couple's counseling. And I realized the brilliance of it when I was learning to say this in trying to understand what Chassidus says about the difference between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Cuz Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are both part of the series of make chuva, the 10 days of repentance. So, my father told me that anytime a couple comes to their first session, every time they're going to want to dump. They're going to come to you with their list of complaints and it's going to get dirty. It's going to get real dirty. They're not They didn't come to therapy cuz they're having a good time. They come to therapy cuz they're frustrated. And they're going to both start dumping and they're going to get defensive and they're going to say, "Yeah, but this is what you did to me." And it's going to get dirty and it's going to get combative. And he says, "Here's Here's Here's what I do." He says, "The first thing I ask them is I want to know from you, are we trying to save this marriage? Is that the goal? Are we trying to save the marriage? Now, he says, "Usually what they'll say to me is we don't know. That's what we're trying to figure out." And I'll tell them, "No. No. You tell me first are we saving this marriage. We're not going to figure out if we can save the marriage. I promise you, if you want to save it, it can be saved. And if you're not sure you want to save it, probably can't. So, you tell me first if you're going to save it because I'll tell you He says, "I'll tell you why. Because if you want to save it, then maybe we can slowly, civilly start talking about your complaints and work through it and make and come to an understanding. But if you don't want to save it, then we're here to create an amicable separation and why should we fuel the flames of the fire by like talking bad about each other? Let's not Let's just skip all that. We're not even trying to fix that stuff and let's just figure out how to amicably amicably separate. So, uh which is it's it's ingenious. I don't know if it was his theory he came up with or but Chassidus says that Rosh Hashanah is really about the commitment of deciding we want Hashem to be king. Which really means we want to be in a relationship with him. It's not until Yom Kippur that we deal with atonement, that we deal with our wrongs that were done. We air the dirty laundry. And Chassidus explains, "Don't air the dirty laundry until there's a commitment. So, first establish are you in or are you out? If you're in, we'll figure out how to deal with whatever outstanding issues need to be dealt with. So, if you have a Rosh Hashanah where you can commit to Hashem and say, 'I'm in,' then we can do a Yom Kippur and we can deal with the problems and make everything cleaned up. But not the other way around. Okay. Um So, the last time that I was able to have a conversation with my father, meaning the second-to-last time I saw him, because the last time I saw him, he was not able to interact. Um Baruch Hashem, he was comfortable, and he was surrounded by all of his family. We all made it there in time. I was actually in this very room. It was right after the Tanya class, and I had scheduled right after the Tanya class that a a group of high school girls from Bais Chana, Delaware, came They were coming to the ohel, and they wanted me to come They wanted me to speak to them about the ohel here. So, um after the Tanya class, the ladies from the Tanya class left, and then the girls from the high school came in, and my mother called, and my mother knows my schedule, so she said, "Did you finish your Tanya class?" And I said, "Yeah, I finished." She said, "Doctor says that they don't know how much time is left. Could be hours, could be days, but you should get over here." So, I was standing right there at the back of the back of this room, and I thought to myself, "My father would want me to speak to these girls." So, I don't know how he did it, but I sat down, and I said to myself, just to myself, I didn't say it to them, "I don't know how long they think I'm speaking to them, but I'm speaking to them for 7 minutes, and I'm getting up, and I'm going home, and I'm booking a ticket, and I'm going to my father." So, I sat down, and I spoke to them for 7 minutes about going to the ohel, and what it means, and I said, "Okay, I have a family emergency to attend to," and I calmly got up, and I walked out, and thank God I did make it there on in in time, and all, you know, all of the siblings were there in time. We were with him in his last moments. We're all there together in his last moments. Um so, that was the last time I saw him. But, the second-to-last time I saw him, so, he was already in a hospice, and I visited him in the hospice, and then, uh, uh, so, cognitively, he wasn't always so strong in in the in the last days. My mother actually told me that he responded very well to my visit, and he was like more lucid than normal. Um, more more lucid than he had been in those in those days. So, I, um, I spoke to him about a lot of things we learned together. He loved to learn. He loved to learn. He loved to sit this, especially the Rebbe's teachings. Every Shabbos, he had something on the parsha from the Rebbe. That basically that was what he lived with, the Rebbe's parsha, you know, that's that was his inspiration. So, we learned a little, we learned the the Hayom Yom, and some basic things. Um, and then, I asked him, I don't know why, but I said, "Can I just check something with you?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "You know that model, that psychological model that you have, you told me about self-to-self, self-to-other, self-to-environment?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "Is that yours?" He said, "Yeah, that's mine." And I looked at my mother just to make sure, like, "That's his?" She said, "Yeah." So, I I tried to get him to talk to me a little bit more about it. He couldn't really talk more about it, but I'd spoken about about it with him previously, so many times. So, I had I have enough of it to form a semblance of it. My father created a psychological model, um, of three parts. Self-to-self, self-to-other, self-to-environment. And it's also it has many applications. It's also, for instance, a model of developmental psychology. For instance, these are three levels of maturity. So, a child, a baby, I remember him telling me, you know, when a baby experiences anything, it's only from their five senses. The only reality they know is what they can touch, what they can put in their mouth. For a baby, if Mommy leaves the room, she doesn't exist anymore, because if I can't experience it right now with my five senses, it doesn't exist. So, for a baby, it's self-to-self. It's all self-to-self. And then you grow up a little bit and you understand that there are other people. And that's when you can have empathy. And that's called self-to-other. Which is a higher level of maturity. And then the highest level of maturity is self-to-environment, where you're not only thinking about relating to an other person, but you're thinking about the world around you, whether it's in your most the most immediate context, let's say, of your community, or even literally the world. Trying to have an influence on the world. So, and he also spoke about this in terms of like when people interact, you can sort of identify within them what mode they're in. Like, how elevated of an approach are they taking? So, any interaction you're having with someone, you can look at it and you can identify, is this person right now in self-to-self? Like, sometimes a person will be interacting with you, but it's not about you. It's totally self-to-self. Other times, they're in self-to-other, where there is some capacity for altruism, empathy. And then the highest level is you see someone in a mode of self-to-environment. And he he explained to me, he said, "Self-to-environment is the Rebbe." That's how he explained it. He said, "Self-to-environment is the Rebbe." He says, "That's the most elevated state." He said, "When the Rebbe would give dollars, the Rebbe would meet somebody who so he would give the person the dollar, but the person the person's supposed to get the dollar to turn around and give tzedakah. And the Rebbe would say that when two Jews meet, it has to benefit a third Jew, right? So, there's one interacts with two to the benefit of three. And it's not just limited to three. Three is representative of everything beyond everything out there. And that was the Rebbe's whole approach of of shlichus and of really transforming the world. So, like my father gave me an example. He said, "I'll give you like a very down-to-earth example of self to environment from the Rebbe that's not like shluchim and starting communities and a simple thing. He said, "It's a story. It's a fairly well-known story. Um I think the Rebbe was coming from 770. Um and there were two girls playing uh jump rope on the sidewalk. And so, they saw the Rebbe coming. Out of respect, they dropped the rope so the Rebbe could walk across. But still, the Rebbe would have to walk between them. And halachically, he's not supposed to do this. He's not supposed to you know, you're not supposed to walk between them. So, um what did the Rebbe do? He could have said, "Hey, get over there so I can walk through." Right? That's not what he said. He said, um "Say hello to your friend for me." So, the one girl went over to the other girl. Might have been even Shabbos, although in that case, I don't know what would be with the jump rope. Say good Shabbos to your friend for me. But you know, give regards to your friend on my behalf. So, then the one girl went over to the other girl to give regards from the Rebbe. And as they stood together, then the Rebbe walked past both of them. And my father gave that as an example of how somebody who is on the highest level of human evol- evolvement is even in an interaction with an other, their interaction with that other is getting the other to be an influencer. So, you're not just influencing one person, you're influencing somebody to be an influencer, which by definition means there's a third person and beyond beyond beyond being influenced. And he was very into this concept. And God willing, I'll probably revisit it and try to think about it more and develop it more in ways that he would appreciate. Okay, fine. So, I'll tell you the Michael Jordan story. Michael Jordan story was unknown beyond my family for close to 40 years because when it happened, I was ridiculed. Nobody believed me. And it was so traumatizing, I never told it again. And then, I have to give credit where credit is due because since then, many people have gotten me to tell the story, but the first person who got me to tell the story publicly was Chaim Marcus from LA. And he had me on a podcast, and he asked me to tell the How did Chaim Marcus know the story? He heard it He heard it from my brother David. Why did David tell it to him? I have no idea. So, Chaim got me to tell the Michael Jordan story. And since then, I've repeated it in other places as well. I'm going to tell it again now. Michael Jordan story is like this. And I was thinking about Did this happen before my Bar Mitzvah? And for sure it did cuz I was thinking about just tonight that at my Bar Mitzvah at my Bar Mitzvah, my father actually referenced this story and mentioned that oh, and Michael Jordan's your friend. Okay, so, um here's the story. The Bulls were practicing and Michael Jordan was already like the star. This is you guys don't even understand. You guys from New York, you didn't hear of the Bulls until they were winning championships, okay? There were a few years there where the Bulls weren't even making the playoffs, okay? So, you just have to understand. You know what it was it's it's like the Knicks, okay? Basically. Was that nobody laughed at that? You're like looking at me like that's not funny. Okay. All right, fine. All right. So, um They were really, really bad. And but Michael was a star. And he he was rookie of the year and he had the shoe. The shoe was a big deal. So, and then his second year he broke his foot and he was out. Then he came back. I think this was at the beginning of the third year. That's what makes sense to me. Cuz '84-'85 was the first season. '85-'86. So, this must have been '86-'87. Yeah, this is this is '86. It's like fall of '86. My Bar Mitzvah was summer of '87. So, exactly. That's this is when this took place. So, he's getting into his blue Corvette. Air 23. Blue Corvette. And all the kids run after him and they're giving him stuff to sign. He's signing it. And I'm like kind of a misfit. I'm like I don't know. I was the last kid. And I reach out. I don't even know what I wanted him to sign. Whatever it was and I hold out the paper and the pen or whatever. And he's trying to get in his car already. He's in his car. And he's like, "Get your hands away. I'm going to chop your hands off in the door." But come And look, really he was probably probably trying to avoid chopping my hands off in the door. I was probably being spacey and just sticking my hands in a car door that was about to close. Like knowing me with no kinesthetic awareness. So, basically the man in the world with the greatest kinesthetic awareness in history interacting with this 12-year-old Jewish kid with probably the worst kinesthetic awareness perhaps in history. And we're having this interaction and he's like, "Get your And now come to think of it Michael Jordan is so aware of his body and its movements and physics and I guarantee you when he said, "Get your hands away from the door or they're going to get chopped off." That's probably what was just about to happen. And he probably saved me from getting my hands chopped off. But I didn't take it that way. I took it as he was being mean to me. And I came home and said, "Michael Jordan's a jerk." So my father could have just said, "Okay, Michael Jordan's a jerk." Or he could have said "No, he's not. Don't say that about Michael Jordan. You don't even know him." He didn't say either of those things. He found out where Michael Jordan lived. Yes, he did. Now people are like, "Oh yeah, he lives in that big mansion in on on on Route 22 and where is it? Lake Forest with the 23 gates?" No. This is not when he lived there. And this is not even when he lived on Windy Hill Lane in Highland Park. This is And Michael, if you eventually see this, do you remember when you lived on Essex Court near Plaza del Prado in Northbrook off of Willow and Finkston? Okay, remember that? The corner of Willow and Finkston, Plaza del Prado. He I think it was called Essex Court. He lived in a townhouse. He's a It was his third year. He was not rich yet. He didn't live in a mansion. He lived in a little townhouse in Northbrook. And my father found out where he lived and he wrote a letter. And the letter said, "Michael, you're too much of a class act to lose even one fan. Do the right thing. Here's our phone number. Call my son. Make it right." And he didn't want to mail it to the Bulls cuz you know what they would do. They would just give you a uh you know, a the do you call it? An 8 by 10 photo with black and white with the stamped signature. No, no, I wasn't going to do that. He already knew I was traumatized from Ronald Reagan. You guys don't know what Ronald Reagan did me. Oh, you guys don't know about this? Well, when Reagan got shot, I sent him a a a card and in a package of jelly beans cuz they said that he liked jelly beans. Yeah, and I got a card back and it was very evident from the card it was just a form letter and they they didn't receive the jelly beans. Probably they threw the jelly beans away, which is probably understandable that they don't serve the President of the United States food that strangers are sending through the mail. Makes sense now in retrospect, but at any rate, um so he didn't send the letter to the Bulls office cuz they would just send it, you know, send some form letter back. He brought it to Michael's house and this I didn't know at the time, but I found out later. He He knocked on the door. I guess he was prepared to talk to Michael. And the door opened and it was not Michael. It was Deloris. You guys know who Deloris is? Jordan's mother, that's correct. So Deloris answered the door. She was living with him. He was having a hard time. Um again, you guys don't realize what it was like those first years the Bulls were so bad and Michael Jordan's whole life was about winning and he was really stressed out and his mother came to live with him cuz he was having a hard time. I never saw the documentary everyone tells me to watch. I won't watch it. I lived it. I don't need to watch it. I don't know if they talk about it. I don't know if they tell you how difficult of a time he had when they were losing. I don't know if they tell you that his mother moved in with him, but that's the reality. So my father hands the letter to Deloris Jordan and says, "Please make sure that your son gets this. It's very important." And she did. And a few days later, I get a phone call. Uh my father says, "Michael Jordan's on the phone for you." And I said, "Get out of here. No way." He's like, "Yeah, Michael Jordan's on the phone for you." And I answered the phone, "Hello." And it was his You can't mistake the voice. There was no AI back then. It was He's like, "You're still my fan?" I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." He's like, "When Next time you come to a game, I want you to come down to the locker room. I'll sign anything you want." Okay. So, for years, I told you I stopped telling that story cuz nobody believed you. "Yeah, Michael Jordan called you." I really hope I mean, the the internet is big and I almost have 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. It is not impossible Michael Jordan would see this. Michael, if you remember that, could you please verify this story? Okay. At any rate, um And by the way, I want to tell you something. Since then, people would say things like, "Michael Jordan's not a good guy. He's this and he's that and he's he's he's nasty and he was mean to his teammates and he gambled and he would have And I want to tell you something. I would be You don't say anything about Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan called me on the phone. Michael Jordan is a mensch. You do not speak bad about Michael Jordan. Okay. So, What? That You remember that. That's very good, man. Okay. So, for years, my lesson from that story was basically, it doesn't matter how big and famous you are, you can take a minute to do something kind and it will have a lifelong effect. And and Michael did that, to his credit. And that was the lesson that I took from that story. He said your father could said So, I didn't get that until a few years ago. When I started telling the story, cuz I didn't tell it for years. When I started telling it again, it hit me. The story is not about Michael Jordan. The story is about my father. He could have told me, "Yeah, what do you care? He's a basketball player. Don't worry about Or he could have gone the other way and said, 'Hey, don't talk bad about Michael Jordan. He's going to win us a championship.' He didn't say any of He just took care of it. He just took care of it. And he didn't think to himself, "This is not possible. How are we going to do this?" If it's for your kid, it's possible. And I want to tell you something. This is one of the lessons that my father taught me, and he never ever ever ever said these words. And if if he had said the words, it may have made it less impactful. But he never said these words. But this is how he lived, and it made such an impression on me. For your kids, anything is possible. If there's something you can do for your kids, even if it seems completely unrealistic, you do it. You do it. You take care of your kids, even if it seems completely far-fetched. There's nothing far-fetched there. Your kids, you do it. That's how he lived. That's his whole life. He was just looking to take care of us, to do kind things for us. Someone was asking me, like, "Tell me memories of your father." You know, I had to shiver. And I said, "You know, I remember him driving us around a lot." "Driving you where?" "Everywhere. I don't know. Like, anywhere I needed to go. He was just driving me." "Did you have conversations?" "Sometimes. Sometimes you'd have conversations. You know, probably the thing about imagine the craziest thing you can ever imagine, someone's doing it now. I'm I'm remembering that. That was probably something he told me in a in a car ride. But other times we would just be in the car and we didn't have car we didn't have conversations. He just drove me around like like a chauffeur. Like literally and there was no guilt he didn't like guilt us like, "Oh, how much I do for you?" It was just understood. And he he worked hard and he worked hard and he was not a morning person like I'm not a morning person. Like I'm struggling now with the every morning having to be at the minion. It's very hard for and he he worked hard and he had to go to a a job and he had to get up early and go to that job. He worked hard and and he could have just said, "I guys guys, I'm working hard. I'm paying bills. What do you want from me?" But, I never heard that from him. And to the contrary, whatever we needed really at any time day or night he would just do it for us. Oh, you need to go to the store drive to the store. Like literally like a concierge service. And people might hear that and be like, "Well, that's not how a father's supposed to be. You should command respect." Oh, I want to tell you something. This was not my father's calculation. I I don't think he had a calculation. I think he just did it cuz that's what he believed to be right. But, what he did for me in being so selfless in his parenting is he instilled within me the belief that it's that it's possible to be a selfless parent. I'm not saying I am one. I'm not on his level. I'm not a selfless parent. But, just the fact that I believe that it's possible that it's something to strive for. And because of that you know, I I I I when I was sitting shiva, a friend of mine Avi Fischoff sent me a text Nechama Velam to comfort me. And I said he works with a lot of parents of kids at risk, kids in know, And I said to him, I want you to share something with the parents that you work with. Cuz he he's a he's a he works a lot with the parents about taking relationships with children that are like really really broken and sort of restoring the relationships and he encourages a lot of love and and and I said to him, please it's the shiv of my father right now. Please tell the parents that you work with the following message from me. And that is that my father was completely selfless in his parenting approach. He never demanded anything from us. He didn't expect anything from us. He only looked for how to be helpful to us. And perhaps if he had demanded more from me, I would have been a better son. But because he demanded nothing and he was selfless, it made me a better father. I'm not as good of a father as he is, but a better father. And I think about that. I think about it. You could do both. You know, you could play it both ways and you could weigh them. You know, which one is a better approach? He could have demanded more covertly. He could have demanded more, you know, honor your mother and father and and I would have been a better son. But I don't know if I would have understood the selfless type of parenting to to to to to watch him as a model and to So, think about it like this. If I would have been a better son, that's going backwards in time. So, who's that benefiting? That's going backward. But because of his selfless parenting method, what he gave to me, I turn around and intuitively I give that to my kids. That's going forward in time. And that means hopefully with God's help, that's what because they're raised that way, that's what what going to give to their kids. And because their kids receive that, that's what they're going to give to their kids. So, it's like Rabbi Rabbi Lau, Chief Rabbi, you used to be Chief Rabbi of Israel, used to say a great line. When he would hear people talk about Yichus, about their pedigree, who they're descended from, he used to say, "Don't tell me who your grand Don't tell me who your grandparents are. Don't tell me who the zayde who who was. Tell me who your grandchildren are." He said it regarding Jewish continuity. Like, don't brag about who you're who descended from, tell me who's descended from you. I think it's a similar thing. That because of what he put into us, the selflessness and the devotion, and he did it completely without any fanfare, without never a mention of it, not even a hint that he was doing it. But because of what he put into us, I'm able to turn around and give a fraction of that to my children, which they can give to their children, which they can give to their children. And that's the older I get, the more I appreciate what an investment that is, and what a proper approach that is. Anyways, it should be everything you heard here, if you heard any Torah, if you heard anything inspiring, if you heard anything useful, should be uh and l'iluy nishmas should be uh zchus for his uh for his soul. Thank you.