On the Table - Ep #1: Shabbat.com - Rabbi Peretz B. Eichler with Rabbi Benzion Klatzko

Huygens Paris Boracay clear outside the wolf in the land and upscale is coated with in restaurant well we've got a brand new talk show for you on the table fascinating personalities issues all on the table just for you [Music] hi everybody terrace for a fika welcomes you on this table where we put it all on the table issues personalities intriguing people and of course great food no word thought about food koushaku zina pores and a lot of food for thought my guest today is Robby Benson class Co the founder and CEO of Shabbat calm but first let's order and eat Jonathan Jonathan is our head waiter here at the wolf and lamb located on Coney Island Avenue Avenue L also at a location in the town Manhattan or the classic oh do you know even view ordering personally I'm a duck person you know it's a very humble animal that's full of goodness and underrated so I see you have a honey ginger duck breast now I have a question for does it come with crackers oh sorry about that okay very good I'll put it on the bill side okay we're both winging is actually is you got it's got it's made with Swiss chard butternut squash and parsnip crisps so that looks like a delicious meal and just because I have to offset all that Oh all that guilt with some righteousness how about a salad looks a little bit market salad arugula frizzy pear cranberry candy walnuts and honey vinaigrette Wow would you eat them and we love you that I'll share it all right okay okay my philosophy is like the soil surprises eat dessert first so obviously I just think I'll have the trophy cake first but actually could I just have the market salad look look okay well the dependent is it cost work the market is up markets down oh no off to productive until that one okay okay all right Jonathan thank you very much we'll be looking forward to see you in just a bit thank you all right our guest today is rather than see on class go he lives in Muncie but really his impact is felt around the world he is founded something called Shabbat calm welcome rather classical thanks so much for joining me at on the table thank you for having me thank you it's really our food you our personality and the Jewish world and actually meeting with president a chance to sit across the table and talked operatively say is really a privilege tell us about what is obviously your life's project is not your mission shabbat calm Shabaab the Gemara and they otamatea says that God had a treasure in his treasure house and he gave it to the Jewish people and that treasure is called Shabbat and Shabbat became just the cornerstone the treasure that has kept us going through difficulty in a Grauman Inquisition and hardship and today a lot of people don't know about this treasure so beautiful and it keeps families together reminds us that we have a goal in the world we have a mission so shabbat back home was created to give people the opportunity to experience Shabbat to give those who already know about you lots of places when they need and really to take care of the Jewish people one day a week where we can come together in love and in peace and in song and food who always makes area always especially but how did the idea come to you so I come from a large family and so does my wife and we've grown up having a lot of guests and we used to have guests after we got married we have large Chava tonin I became a rabbi in a college campus and we have 100 150 people each week from the college campus now that's a campus program that's expected to have a lot but where do they get credit for they do not get credit but we gave a lot of hogs and a lot of good challah when we moved to Muncie about 10 years ago people said to us you're never going to have guests because who's going to come to you in Muncie no colleges nearby the arvid now it's a commuter campus but sure enough that wasn't the case and we ended up having a lot of guests and we we averaged 60 80 100 guests each week and we love that master zarkan and they come to eat they sleep we put them up when we have a Shabbat on every single week well where did you get the gifts from how did they know about you and what type of gifts I mean where what's the them graphic look like I presume most of them are all over Jewish hopefully they are almost all Jewish sometimes if somebody was converting and they like to discover the beauty of Shabbat but how do they discover Shibata added how did you wind up getting 60 guests to begin with so before Shabbat that comment was a little more hand-to-hand combat as it worried you make a phone call you meet someone in the grocery store you meet someone online some of the things a friend I never had a problem networking and word-of-mouth was that a client's go Shabbat is worth going to so kind of like jiu-jitsu Wow yeah sort of you know the people felt wow I'm going to come here and I'm gonna I'm gonna have a great time and I'm going to come back to bring two friends so we were able to bring a big show so going to get a lot of people even before Shabbat calm eventually people began asking us or saying does we have our you've so many guests why don't you send us some of your guests mm-hm and I would think drezel once you find your own guests they are coming to me because they want to come to me but as people still do come to you you still host oh we still owes the same amount now most of them come from the website and we actually have to close registration by Tuesday Wednesday because we throw up and if we just left it open till Shabbat you would have you know more than we can handle if you're out in our house so we closed registration for our house but it actually people said we want guests and I realized most people just don't have a way of meeting people and finding guests there's just no conduit for people to find people especially people who want to discover Shabbat but they don't know the first place is that now we know that there is Chabad out there and very often people go to a kebab center but the whole experience the lay person the Jewish doctor the Jewish lawyer the local rabbi the simple person who simply chance to show their children what it's like to invite beautiful guests for Shabbat there was no there's no way to connect them using that anybody can come and be against absolutely anyone can be against on Shabbat calm it's a safe forum when you go out to Shabbat sicom you put two two references you put in who your friends are you put in the body yourself there's feedback in the same way that eBay gives you feedback except that every Shabbat people write what the experience was with you and there are a few other safeguards then make sure that your mother come is a very very safe environment but we have every kind of Jew on Shabbat come we have reformed or that I've been conservative and renewal and a calcium and eggs Kassadin and converts and pre-conference old young everyone can use it it's a social network for every Jew every denomination every affiliation it sounds magnificent enter have you had some success stories and troubling stories oh my goodness what we have between five and ten thousand people each week of I fit once let me hit with five to ten thousand people each week with and this is hosted throughout America throughout the world throughout the world how many countries we're in 131 countries now Wow and so we're literally all over we're very popular in America of course and Canada and France in Switzerland in Brazil is all number two but Americans without a doubt number one but what we say is the most remote was the most exotic place idea oh there are some places that has one or two people on them yeah oh wow come on it is this it thank you wow that looks delicious thank you what we're gonna come back with rather than seeing fastball I want to hear the rest of this is terrific but just for the moment let's just take a look at world and eating it looks like we have a pair over here sliced beautifully they have arugula and it's got these candied almonds and cranberries and I'm sure a lot of other surprises in there it looks good and it really smells good very very pungent you think the owners by saying first bracha all wonderful so we have two Broncos here we've got hot aides because this is separate this is how aides and comes from the tree comes from a tree and they're also not so we're going to kite barakatuh I don't know Elena McCallum alright three Heights coming to work at Illinois when you live alone very create some name we'll get back into the whole idea of making Broca's kosher food and look at how they actually make some of the superb dishes here at the wolf and lamb as well as other great places around the world but this is a particularly upscale deliciously wonderful I think that's an understatement and I also want to be flattering anybody with you'll see for yourself but let's get back to our conversation now was rather venting on class code so we were saying that today we're in 131 countries and people invite each other the host can find a guest so it's not just that the guests can work for a place but if you're a host and you say I want to have guests so you don't have to wait for people to request an invite you can go on the site and find all sorts of people singles or even married people who want to experience Shabbat and click invite invite invite and in that way you could create your own little shava tone by inviting even without them asking how does a person get to be a host and give us an idea of the dynamics the cross-section the type of host that you have sure so one of one of the philosophies of Shabbat calm is that Judaism works and the Jewish people are kind and they're giving people and therefore we don't want they have one kind of host we want to have a cross-section we want there to be a second Azam and fry them old and young kibbutz Lee Kim Young Israel yeshiva SHhhh from everywhere every stripe as long as people are kind yet thoughtful they're considerate and they make good hosts and imagine that they themselves are shown motive Chavez I would presume the dog yes you have the hose fresh on my Shabbos each host puts on a beautiful Shabbos display with kiddush and with sha Malaysia for a lot of people it's their first time witnessing seeing so much beauty and so much unity with the father blessing the children with the hands on the head I will tell you that a few weeks ago a young man wrote on traumatic on I just found out I'm Jewish I've never done Shabbat before I heard beautiful things about it I'd love to experience him and instantly by putting that on the site because you could put a status update so you put that as a status update instantly 2530 people reached out to him we were lucky enough to host him for that very first Shabbat and he had such a great time he wrote a beautiful letter that he put on the front page of Shabbat calm and not only that but he came a few days later on Purim and he celebrated perm with us and that's so beautiful I and that you know this is not some type of magical mystical swirly take somewhere one day over so I don't know why we're wakin to Judaism now great of it there must be some really interesting stories with people of struggle were encountered something and then just decided to take a step well what are some other interesting stories and reactions of both people out of attended and maybe some of the impact on hosts as well okay I'll tell you two very that actually three very fascinating stories one is it quick when by Hurricane sandy it was just alert for the Far Rockaway neighborhood everyone should abandon their homes leave their homes evacuate because the water was expected to overflow and there's going to be flooding and is dangerous so there was a radio show at that time knocking siedel and every five minutes now consider that get onto Shabbat come and find a place for shelter and thousands of people from the areas that end up being flooded in the hurricane ended up finding place to Shabbat come in the same vein when there were fires in Haifa and just recently last summer also fires in Israel people wanted to schemata come they have to evacuate and we put a special alert on Shabbat calm anyone who is engaged with the pliers exactly gone fish Martha calm and we we asked the host to be even more that's one amazing story that's pretty interesting for a number of reasons not to Lisa which is that shavon shavon is a refuge it's an oasis in the week it's a refuge and here you became that that's actually that oasis for jews that were displaced exams that brought them home exactly beautiful second story there is a a feature on the site called a proximity search where one person can you can say I want to invite guests the Shabbat I want to invite all guests within a five-mile radius of my house or I want to see all the guests that are available so I do that once in a while just to meet new people and I said show me everyone is looking within five miles and I randomly invited a lot of people and there was this one young lady maybe twenty twenty one who came answered then she came to Shabbat and after lunch she came over to me and she said who told you to invite me I said nobody really I mean I just did have to be honest it was approximately should search she said no no somebody must have told you really nobody why would you take that she said well I'll tell you my story I'm going through a very hard time my father unfortunately is in prison my mother is dysfunctional and very clinically depressed and I have a brother who unfortunately is struggling with doing hard drugs and I've been keeping the family afloat on myself and it's been crushing me and I have decided that this weekend I'm going to end it I'm going to end my life suicide I can't go on and then I got your invitation I thought wow somebody cares so I accepted and I figure okay suicide can wait until Sunday so I looked at her and I said are you having a good time here she said very much so I said are you going to do something to yourself after Shabbat she says are you gonna invite me again I said if that's what it takes absolutely yes what I want and not only didn't she she became very close friends my daughter she is now married with a few kids of her own and an invitation at the right time of course I shall knows what he's doing but that limitation at the perfect time is what literally saved this young lady's life how about that how about that so obviously shabak income is much more than just inviting people to have a pleasant Sabbath meal and joint experience it can be transforming in a lot of ways and ways that you or anybody else might never have anticipated absolutely for example you had a negative story about another woman who had some serious difficulty in a marital situation and somehow what you did through Shabbat come was transforming yeah it was it was a quite a remarkable story we received a I received a phone call after Shabbat once a fellow told me the following story he said he was stuck on the road I didn't know what to do when he went out to Shabbat that comedy found a place in a certain community and the host ended up being the rabbi the community it was on Friday night and he saw the rabbi looked a little bit down so he said to the rabbi is everything okay I see you look a little bit sad but the rabbi said that the situation in my community there's a lady and she's been in a goona for 15 years she hasn't been able to get again from her husband and it has very sad effect on the community it's a very heavy situation so this guests from Shabbat calm he said can you tell me a little bit more who what's the name of this lady and the rabbi said her name and the guest said no it sort of remarkable because I know that lady I even remember her wedding there was about 18 years ago I remember I was at her wedding and I always remember that wedding because there was something strange in that wedding that always stuck out in my mind and the rabbi said what was it my man said you know when they called up the witnesses they ate him I knew one of the aadum I know one of the women and I knew he wasn't shomer Shabbat and I was a little bit surprised that they called them up as a witness to the wedding for the condition at the rabbi nearly jump out of the seats and said are you sure he said yeah I'm quite sure after Shabab they track down this witness he admitted that at the time people thought he was showing me Shabbat but not only wasn't he had eaten a non kosher restaurant dad Friday night they sent two letters one to reveal Yasha one third of Avadh Yosef and they received back to Juba that she was never officially married she is not my guna and she is allowed to remarry immediately home free home free after 15 years our world amazing story and past only your life and your family isn't even doing this for how many years now it's been seven years now there was Shabbat become almost at six I have seven years are you coming up on the shmita year exchange about a country store event the impact on you your wife your children family what impact is it had on what I didn't see on classical example it's a great question I'm a Mormon Jewish outreach and jewish outreach has the ability to be very exhilarating but at the same time a little bit depressing to be honest i'll i'll explain to you why there are so many jews that are disconnected if you go onto a college campus today there are nearly a half a million Jews in the United States on college campuses and a tiny tiny fraction on are involved in anything Jewish at all two of the largest campuses in the world Gainesville and Orlando seven thousand Jews each we can't even get a minyan so you think about our region and and and the capacity for an outreach rabbi to touch people in a way that's transformative and most outreach rabbis cannot reach more than perhaps a hundred students on a real deep level so on a campus with seven thousand Jewish students when you just hit a hundred you know that 6900 are not being touched and you begin to question and wonder whether you're building castles on the same maybe it's hopeless and then when I realized it's absolutely not hopeless that in reality we just have to rethink how we're going to reach people we were given the blessing of a social network which actually comes from the Gemara it comes from the Gemara Mark Zuckerberg did not think of of the concept of social networking it comes from the Gemara bukka's people came over the column came over to David ml and said David I'm Alec King David he said I'm Clarissa Susan bonanza the Jewish people need sustenance and he answers back to who finest Izumi's ooh go make a living from each other oh it's an answer who else were they going to make a living from well governor Malick was really saying was you have your sphere of influence your circle of friends and that's limited to 20 or 30 or 40 and your friend has their sphere of influence 20 30 40 and that that's how many people you can reach but imagine if you could tap in to my sphere and I could tap into your sphere so then we've just grown exponentially and imagine if you could happen to everyone from my sphere all of the sudden my influence is not twenty thirty forty but each of those friends who have twenty thirty forty I can also reach an entity stratosphere into the stratosphere a dense social networking that's what mm Elsa answer was you each have enough people around you that you should be able to make par NASA so social networking genuinely works how did it affect my family it gave us a much larger mission we suddenly went global it's no longer just about having 10 people for Shabbat it's about reaching a hundred and 31 countries five thousand cities ten thousand people a week and not just for Shabbos Shabbat calm now does matches matchmaking and we are averaging a shilling a week that means an engagement a week every week some weeks are two engagements we have jobs on the site you could actually say I'm looking for a job to intern by a lawyer show me every lawyer on the site it'll show you a thousand lawyers select all message all and you could send a thousand people your resume like that you can't do that in any site that exists in the world certainly a great impact not only for you but everybody else would have come back with some final remarks rather than see on Glasgow but right now let's continue to take a look at what we're going to be eating here I'm here at the wolf and lamb on on the table Jonathan would you tell us what we're looking at over your is maybe a later book we put the salad aside for now okay that's another boy thank you okay can you describe to us what this is Jonathan get up we have a seductive this walks like a doctor booklet but doesn't look like a dunk anymore that's where honey glazed duck breath that the bonus customer side the chips on top it's really good guys I mean we've covered a lot they hit it it's the only duck basically hassle people fight a lot and this is great for a diet they say hey I wrote a classic oh I heard that you have a new initiative now for Pesach or Passover that's coming up tell us about that okay so the new initiative is called seder calm and it's also the Seder appids can be an app and a website as EBE are and it's really powered by Shabbat calm but it's a stripped-down version and very Pesach centric so uncommon screener there and how much free absolutely and you can turn it on when you're doing the Deacons coming they're not coming for the holidays besides no absolutely not we always get the most requests before Pesach and 93 percent of all Jews go to a seder or have been to a seder so it's really disheartening when you don't have a seder to go to me and we wanted to create a portal that a person can go and without all of the bells and whistles that Shabbat calm as which is the social working and the friending in the status update just go on the app say find me a seder and boom everyone near you who's hosting on me a seder and and it'll go right to it it goes right to it and we hope that not only will people and it's used in that state or calm to find the Seder but it will teach them how easy it is to interface through our technology and then use it for Shabbat and matchmaking in jobs and even total partners which we have on the site as well I didn't mention before we have total partners ravager novellas tapes lots going on and the portal could be feted akka our next project and I'm speaking to our audience here who's who's listening in and interest in materials right now we are only in English and we're we're what's called local local is great but if we really want to be the powerhouse and to connect the Jews in the four corners of the earth it's imperative that we speak their language that were in French for the people in France and Russian and geebo and Spanish and German it's incredibly important currently we're only in English and it's a big chunk of technology not just translating but to make the side flexible even right to left left to right is a challenge in terms of languages so we are currently looking for somebody wants to sponsor the language of their choice and I always think to myself wow somebody wanted to write a check for their own Olam haba they would sponsor Hebrew because you know how many soldiers end up in ashrams in Tibet they end up in Tahiti they're looking for a Shabbat and maybe they find how bad maybe they don't but they speak Hebrew we would be able to take care of our men who just came from Gaza our menu on the front lines in the West Bank we'd be able to take care of those people who had just spent time serving Israel and now invite them Shabbat showed them the honor that they deserve those Jews who came from Russia teach them about Shabbat so that's my challenge to the listener languages it's about two hundred and fifty thousand to change from local to flexible and that is how I how I think we're going to change the world and speak to every Jew regardless of where they're from and what would you like every Jew to know regardless where he issues from in terms of the open invitation to participate enchiladas come okay I would like every Jewish person to realize that we are people of cus it but we have to know that we can't just talk the talk and it's great to say well it's a good thing to do asking of us often but not for me not for my family not for my kids I'll finish with the words of a very very smart rabbi and Israeli Alaska and he used to say that in it by the time of the goal was a very end of time the great challenge will be Ishmael not ASA you smell Islam but he said not because of suicide bombers and advocates of Isis but actually because they're fighting a spiritual war with us they say what do you have over us you fast on Yom Kippur we fast a whole month of Ramadan you eat meat that is Schachter that's quarter wheat how your women are theistic their modest or even more modest you do circumcision we do circumcision you pray that we found that we pray five times a day and all of the sudden our spiritual chops get pulled away not because what they're doing is correct but it's because it gives they accusing angel the ability to say the Jewish people aren't as special as you think but we turn back and we say you know we are with the B'nai Avram with the children of Aram and we invite guests like I've loved it and they ever say well so do we and this must be able to say we do it better we do it the way our drum are being and wanted us to do it and it will be - ourselves Arkham that gives us that validity and that credibility to say that we are the children of our drum bring the Guru love bring mashiac the final gulls will will end when we open up our hearts and invite people and schemata combi it's very easy to download if you have a smartphone just download it it's very safe all the fuses are gone let's do it let's create a world of love and test it it sounds like you're a major player in doing I want to thank you a little soon class don't care and thanks for joining me here on on the table and thanks for joining us here on the de bruit paregoric i put on the table just for you you