Oorahthon '22: WATCH NOW - Live Interview with Charlie Segal

[Music] okay we just spent a beautiful shabbos here in upstate new york at the zone together with a longtime friend of the ura family charlie getzel siegel now charlie or ghetzel however you are more comfortable with can you tell us please how you found your family how you joined your family a little bit about your background well let me begin by saying that we're on our fifth meal of the day and i don't know if we're gonna have a six but everyone out there is missing this how did i get to auras an interesting story we used to live in um connecticut and we would go down there three and a half hour ride to go to services at chabad and my wife says turn to me one day and says that's crazy the khabad's all over the place so what we did was we ended up looking on the internet we found rabbi rabashkin in oneonta which is about 50 minutes from here we go there there's no sure so we're walking around and we're just standing in front of a house and the gentleman comes out it's rabbi rabashkin we asked him about coming to services and i made a mistake of asking him if i should wear a suit and tie to which he replies you should go to ura because this is a college town that doesn't mean he excludes us and we still go there but he says i'm going to put you in contact with someone named israel schwartz which many people may know and he got us here he either talked to the mints or the aura organization about 10 years ago and it's been a wonderful experience and my friend moshe who's over here also had the same experience through israel and we're known as the three uh levites from upstate new york okay amazing now have you ever joined any of the ura programs have you ever experienced of any of the um you know different things that uber has to offer absolutely one of the most important things about aura is torahmates um it's it's heartwarming you could be watching tv you could be on the computer or you could be learning with your torah mates and it's really a down-home experience for everybody and it's different because it's not just reading a text and you could be doing a navi or hamish or whatever but you're actually interacting with different people some of my torah mates are from up here of course moshe someone's from long island there's others from brooklyn so anyone who is out there listening to us right now it's a big mistake and a shame you don't have a torah made and you should call era and set it up right now well that's amazing you just mentioned a couple of torahmates how many terms do you have i actually have five torahmates again we do different things navi hummish gemara so it's you choose with your torahmate and ura really helps set them up for you they put you together with someone who can teach you or you learn with you that's a better way to put it amazing i know you've been to many events over here so can you tell us a little bit about the experience of coming to whether it's one of the kagim or the shabbatons have you ever spoke over here or been part of anything that what goes on over here what can you tell us a little bit about your experiences okay well the first time i ever came here a strange rabbi came up to me and says we want you to give a speech and i i must have given that look in the eye she says you can speak for under 30 seconds if you want we all were sitting inside the ballroom and they called on me like third and what i said to the people was have you ever known an attorney that can speak for less than 30 seconds everybody laughed that was the end of it it didn't matter what i said one of the things i did say was when you come here you're in hashem's country look around you people it's beautiful and if you look at the people here in the background you see everybody smiling and they're not smiling at what i'm saying they're smiling because they're having a great time that's right amazing and what about can you tell us a little about your experience about the actual events itself like do you have a favorite event that you enjoy coming to is there whether it's a rosh hashanah a sukkot a passover absolutely not and i'll tell you why i come from a different background i came here everybody's friendly they want to know what you want to learn no one is ever aggressive or in your face and that's one of the great warm things about ura so i've been to many of the events i like them all there's men's weekend women's weekend the holidays the shabbatons that we're at tonight everything is wonderful and well done amazing now i know by every event we have let's say an ask the rabbi session um is that something you can tell us about your experiences with let's say the ask the rabbi session well i'm kind of shy and i really never asked the questions uh i listened to the answers and the responses of the menses who have been very very very kind to me we also have dueling rabbis where we'll be told to be quiet so we can listen to them argue over some jewish lore of fact very very interesting stuff and i'm sure everyone out there would really really enjoy it so come on okay that's amazing now i know that you mentioned that you're from locals over here now but you also have made the trip all the ways part of the year you spend in um i believe you said florida you had mentioned to me earlier now you're over here now for the um you know for this for this shabbaton do you enjoy it up here in the mountains more or is florida better than this now answer honestly actually it's the best of both worlds um the difference for florida is i am within and i never knew this because i bought my place unseen off the internet i'm within walking distance of chabad so i can go there for every shabbos which is really really really nice that's amazing have you felt that this you know to the torahmate experience have you felt that it impacted your life in any way um you know i guess explaining to other people you know encouraging them to want to take it like what have you felt that you've gained or you know taken out of this program specifically that you know other people could really gain from well it it's kind of an embarrassing question because as i said i come from a different background we were never taught gemara or told about the mission or anything or the navies or anything like that so that's you know a great thing that uh and i said already that though you'll get hooked up with someone who you can learn with you'll find it's very very smooth within you know 10 minutes you'll you're going to be best friends and that'll continue forever for years and years and years okay amazing you mentioned earlier that you feel like this place is like hashems i don't know shem's country can you elaborate a little bit on that in which way is this place like hashem's country what what do you feel that when you're here like could you tell us a little bit about the um the experience and which parts of it makes you have that feeling well again we are there's three of us locals i put we all have beautiful homes with beautiful views i actually um look over a valley there are no houses to look at everybody has a minimum of 10 acres so it's kind of amazing i did live in the suburbs for many many many years and we just love it up here now of course florida's a different experience we're in a condo you can't go anywhere you can't go on the elevator you can't go in the halls without meeting and talking to people so here you're kind of like isolated it's the best of both worlds as i said before it's very very nice okay amazing well thank you so much for for joining us and it's really i'm i'm actually blown away with five tour mates i don't know that many people that even have that amount and that is something that's actually an inspiration to me and i'm sure to many many others and um okay we we appreciate you taking the time out for us tonight [Music]