Project Inspire Convention 2022 Complete Sunday Keynote

just this thursday i received an email i was debating whether to to read it but i figured on sunday morning rabbi steve berg who was supposed to be here the ceo of asia torah is not here i figured i would take a little bit of that spot just to read an email that we received this thursday some of you realized over shabbos it was a very special group that joined us for shabbos and in fact for many of the project inspired conventions a group from yala and more maybe more special than the children with special needs that they bring are the counselors that bring them and spend time with them over chavez [Applause] and so i we received an email this past thursday and it says like this the power of project inspire shabbos 2020. thank you to those who made project inspire happen for our dearest miriam allah shalom two years ago at this year's project inspired convention as this year project inspired convention chavez approaches i want to extend my akara satov to you i don't know if you realize the magnitude of the impact that the convention has on the people and i wanted to share with you one very unique and mind-blowing source that you have from the convention of february twenty twenty two years ago schwartz invited miriam aleya shalom to come join yala the project at project inspire chavez i was so good to accompany her on this shabbos as i had on many prior shabbaton through various organizations and somehow this shabbos had such a huge and lasting impact that i felt i had to share with you but by february of 2020 miriam had been fighting cancer for six and a half years and had since suffered many recurrences of cancer throughout her high school in the start of seminary she had been through countless surgeries many of them life-threatening as well as many challenging rounds of chemotherapy radiation and immunotherapy treatments with with each relapse she was breathing she was beating the odds with each relapse a medical setback miriam grew not just in her resilience but her connection with hashem her positive outlook on life and she gave speeches on these topics as well to many from circus of that school year until the project inspire miriam scans had been clear with no new tumors found thus miriam arrived to the inspire chavez two years ago looking as healthy as ever and excited to be part of the program as an 18 year old in remission albeit with less stamina than most ready to be inspired miriam also came to the shabbat shabbas with the knowledge that she was scheduled for her next round of scans a week and a half later she had no idea that just two and a half weeks later when the world would shut down due to covet miriam's world would be shattered as well she had no idea that this would be her last shabbaton to attend that purim miriam davind like she had never darwin before pleading with hashem that the first scan result she had seen received would be wrong alas it was not meant to be right after purim of 2020 shortly after the inspired shabbos miriam received the devastating news that her cancer had returned and with a vengeance her doctor told her there was no more options for her and she was sent home miriam responded by changing her name to hayemeriam and stated this is just an assailant from hashem i have to take the message and see what i can do about it she became infused with a newfound strength with the incredible amount of bitterness of her parents and family and that she had so worked on and writing on the heels of the project inspired shabbos miriam embraced that even more speaking to all about hashem's love for us the beauty of torum it's above all how to grow closer to hashem mariam graduated seminary began a college course and prepared to keep fighting she wanted to live in every sense of the word miriam went on to outlive her doctor's predictions and lived another seven and a half months as she continued to inspire us all she was naftaris on the day after israel a pure and holy neshama i give you this background so you can understand the magnitude of what this project inspired shabbos meant to miriam if this entire shop if the entire shop is in 2020 was worth creating just for miriam alone it would have been worth it i watched in awe as miriam literally drank in the speech as the inspiration it was like watching a child in a candy store only better miriam was receiving candy for her soul she was a malach residing on this earth and for someone so full of rochnias this was the type of candy that she needed just what the doctor had ordered rafal lefnay hamaka it came as no surprise to me when miriam leaned back while taking a rest over shabbos when she wasn't feeling well with the most satisfied expression on her face and she said to me this shabbos is just amazing it is so so much fun this shabbos where the main part of the was the inspiration and speeches she found to be fun and this was a girl who loved to have fun in every way and yet this was different a different kind of fun it was uplifting this was truly before cardinal lamaka because i had no doubt that it helped soften the bitter blow she was given just two short weeks just two short weeks later miriam told me after she came home from the from the weekend that she was glowing the combination of most of the most incredible program yala run by figgy schwartz combined the most incredible combined with the most incredible project inspired program being with the most incredible group of people was like a dream come true for miriam the message of inspire to inspire ourselves so we can grow as jews and then spread the inspiration outward spoke so much to miriam as she came from a family of kierov and loved to be inspired she was a ma ed and she was a master of inspiring others this shabbos we will miss miriam so much we will think about her and bring her memory alive as we continue to be inspired through the shabbos that she so appreciated and taught us how to appreciate even more may would be had to be reunited with our dearest miriam perel baso moroccan allah shalom very very soon with the coming of mashiach may the inspiration of the shabbos and may we continue to learn from her inspiration as well thank you for everything you do [Applause] it just makes the shabbos worth it to take us through this morning's program i want to first introduce to you rabbi mordecai trap an executive liaison to project inspire somebody that you've seen over shabba is someone who works tirelessly day in and day out for the organization not only to raise the funds needed but also to raise the funds needed for the organization to help grow and continue the work that we do for a special presentation at cole pond revenue [Applause] project inspire is about to undertake a major expansion into new cities and new places with new initiatives i'm sure that will all be part of it and all help project inspire develop the resources that are necessary to expand what we've seen here we've all felt this weekend careful can fly here in the future i just want to highlight this morning something that some of you are all familiar with but many of you may not be and you may want to be since september of 2020 we began an annual online dinner we're an international organization we have people all over the world who participate and the ability to follow our program online and to participate from all over the world is a great asset for our organization last year in september we honored charlie and robin myerson our arizona coordinators mark and michelle mandelman from montville new jersey and team queens under the leadership of toba begun and the main honoree was our own founding director rabbi khaim and johabit sampson to see some absolutely striking videos go to projectinspired.com backslash light l-i-g-h-t this year just a month and a half ago we had our second online dinner and we honored our core our volunteer coordinators of our uh five towns in long island [Music] group schiffy and morty edelman david and lauren moss the project outstanding project inspired brooklyn men's group led by yoni zakatinsky and you heard some of their members this this weekend igor and yosef speaking you see the mad terrific work that they do and last uh i'd like to focus this morning on our toronto coordinators miriam leibowitz is someone who began project inspire as a volunteer and her husband ellie leave with quickly joined and a few years back miri became our full-time our paid so to speak coordinator and now she puts her life into it as well as many other great things that she does so this morning i'd like to call on miriam and ellie to present them uh with a gift for their uh recent participation as honorees at the online dinner to see the beautiful videos for this dinner go to pi dinner dot com pi dinner dot com we're presenting you we're presenting you with a work of art by the famed artist jonah weinreb and it just happens to be total coincidence or maybe practice that this piece is called kenu call base israel it has the entire akenu our brothers the entire family of israel hashem should remove them from distress to relief from darkness to light from service redemption now speedily and soon let us say amen we present this to you as your paradigms of volunteers of workers or people who help with a heinous basis help bring back the jewish people you should continue to do so and be blessed and the organization should grow into your leadership [Applause] okay ladies and gentlemen to take you through this morning's exciting program as you know all you are smart enough to not be the people who call me tomorrow and say i didn't know sunday was actually going to be a good program and i left because the babies whatever you're all here and you won't be disappointed we have an amazing program this morning this program will the merch hashem end at 12 36 with minha that's the first minute and then of course lunch and i warn you that the takeaway boxes will not be ready until everyone is dismissed from minecraft so please don't stampede the kitchen for them they will come out when minha is over ladies and gentlemen to take us through this afternoon this morning afternoons program rabbi yoni zagatinsky who is our director of project inspire brooklyn of course and while might not be on the schedule itself the unofficial women's coordinator in brooklyn of course is his wife mrs shalamus zagatinsky true heroes i don't think my employees call me this many times a day let alone the volunteers but hashem the work that they've done tremendous many much of the work you've seen even over shabbos and the people that presented both here on the stage at the women's session and further shem many many more and so many more successes from you in the room as well it's my great honor to introduce to you take us through this afternoon's program rabbi yoni zagotinsky [Applause] good morning pleasure to be here what a great convention big round of applause for everybody problem is you can't read over here with these lights over here uh okay it's a pleasure to be here to share with you a few words and to introduce a few speakers one of the speakers who was supposed to be here was rabbi berg it was mentioned that he had to leave so um big round of applause for rabbi berg you're the ceo of asia torah [Applause] a few years ago my wife and i found ourselves in a situation with the family that um as we grow older so do our parents and so do our in-laws so we decided that for my mother she should live and be well we're going to do something that we're going to build a extension to the house and raise the roof in the garage and build her boutique hotel which we did and and we were deciding we decided we were deciding on a contractor and the contractor i'm going to use his name because maybe some of you know him was a reputable contractor in brooklyn new york a great contractor great name didn't skip a beat his name is scott mcguire scott mcguire has been used by many people in the neighborhood an artist great carpenter great craftsman and in the discussions that we had with him it suddenly became a parent and scott maguire is jewish scott mcguire's mother's jewish his grandmother's jewish but as we all know that's a story in the destiny of what's going on in america today obviously we came to a convention to understand as it's been said numerous times that we see an assimilation rate well beyond what we ever anticipate as children 90 percent of our of our brethren are marrying outside the faith and scott is just one of them so somebody came up to me today and said to me you know mention to the audience that taking somebody for shabbos is like a grand slam but there's little things that people can do like you had a shabbat you had a shot of moana's campaign and i wanted to echo it to say you know we all send shot money to our friends in the bungalow colonies and on the block and everybody we know but do we send the shahman it's to scott mcguire do we send a birthday card little things like rave means to bring them closer if you really care about somebody and i'm going to quote isaac gross who told me that in a conversation that he had with revenue weinberg zaczal was why don't people do it why don't people make an effort and by the way i wanted to tell you that the stories that you saw today with this weekend with yosef and with igor and with their wives anybody can do it if you really care if you really care a college worker gives you the tools so isaac said we're wondering if not say why does everybody do it because it doesn't hurt enough if it really hurts then you make an effort if you really care you make an effort and it's very very easy that's all i could say so the mission lenovo says to us the following mishnah says it talks about aaron okowing we read the parsha these weeks talks about the the mishkan talks about the vestments talks about the activities in the mishkan it talks about the menorah who wrote who lit the menorah as aryana cohen all right connie's mischievous says was oy vesa brios always shalom always have rios i want to ask you something did aaron o'connor never come to project inspire shabbaton i don't think he ever did but he was the quintessential kirov person that's what the mishnah says so look at the pasta that talks about how you lit the menorah and barlow start says kane our own and rashi says he did it with the same enthusiasm every day but let's play a spin on the words by yas kane with positivity you want to get close to somebody you want to bring somebody closer to you this kite your yiddish guide has to be positive you want to enhance somebody's relationship with hashem it's about positivity it's about connecting him with or her with the beautiful masara that we have in life as the little things that count it's the stories that you tell them it's the invites that you do with them it's the caring it's the connection and that's all with positivity and that we learn from obviously our ancestors and our families so i just want to say that the person who imbues positivity in all his speeches i know for many many years we go back i don't want to say how many years but uh he's loved by everybody he has a positive attitude i'd like to introduce to you rabbi david orlowski [Applause] i brought my own clock it doesn't work but at least as a prop it's very effective a quick word to the cameraman you don't ever have to give a side view of me we know what i look like i'm just saying i want to start off by saying what i think everybody feels at this point wow what an unbelievable convention i don't know if i inspired anybody here or if i'm gonna inspire any secular jews but boy was i inspired by this shabbos what the most amazing thing everyone is here i mean everyone and we don't appreciate it when it was said at the beginning of the convention that anybody here could have carried the entire convention it is by no means an exaggeration we had josef mendelovich here if you're not in my age group you don't appreciate what that means when i was a high school kid we used to go out demonstrating at the russian council in glen cove demanding that they free jose mendolovic 2468 let our people immigrate we were out there cheering um swaboda yeah we were we were out there praying that maybe they're refusing to get a chance and then i heard him the first time in the young as well with me in 1980 and he just came out of siberia i mean what does that mean what a what an unbelievable individual i discussed for the first time this shabbos just for a few minutes to meet tuvya singer he's one of the most famous people in the jewish world you can go online and see him debating every christian that ever lived you know i think he got 20 minutes over the convention you know um uh i i have to say on a personal note and and it's uh it's a little sensitive and that i had this course of having my rebbe ruby foyer here i had an opportunity to develop akesh with him he would come to our family simches and he is one of the greats of our generation that is not tapped enough and the fact that we had this course to be able to have him here for shabbos that alone raised the kedusha of the event i once said this over at yeshiva where he was speaking from time to time and they never invited him back so he said don't praise me too much so make sure look at the fun of not only uh the unbelievable personality here everybody this is claudia's hell what you're seeing at this convention is the best in clientele our friends at tour anytime are here kazakh is here my good friend mendel berlin who puts out the tourist suites that was given out is here everybody is here it's just the most amazing thing and of course you've seen the staff but they have to stay in the background because there are so many other people here that they have to try to fit in but when they said that anyone could carry the convention they're also talking about themselves i remember seeing matt trop in a room with a thousand teenagers and the work that he was able to do you don't see that you see him running around with a walkie-talkie you know what i mean a waste of talent you know kaim samson so incredibly talented only invites me every five years because of the trauma that i remind him of when we went to england he had to drive me and they have roundabouts with 35 exits and we kept getting lost and whenever i see him he goes there's no roundabouts in stamford you know i was like i'm sorry i'm sorry i traumatized you he said that's not how you traumatized me when you got up and said uh kaim samson is still single will some nice girl please marry this guy that was traumatic so much talent and the most import i have to tell you and i'm saying this with everybody here the greatest part of this convention is you the people who came here this weekend is unbelievable people the convention is sold out i couldn't get a room i'm in a holiday inn in bridgeport i just you don't know that hallway keeps going you just keep walking and walking this morning i took a bus it was great there's no rooms it's it's completely packed you know why do you think they give away feldheim all these classes in the middle of the night he doesn't have a room you know i mean they keep them up till five o'clock in the morning so they won't notice and then put out the coffee you know oh which reminds me i have a little note here uh from rev goff please mention me okay well i have to tell you uh the the participants who are here i had a chance to talk to many of them many of them and i have to tell you that really worked out well because sometimes i go to one of these conventions and i eat so much i'm sick this time i didn't have a chance you know i said to my wife i'll go get your food i came back an hour later she says where's the food i said i was talking to people i uh every every two steps somebody else wants to talk to me and every person is more fascinating than the next what a a collection of unbelievable people you have people with canes and people with walkers and people in wheelchairs and people would sing eye dogs which is unusual because i always used to go to the mall and i'd see that sign that says no dogs except seeing eye dogs and i thought who is that for i i have confidence you i'll give that another couple of seconds to move around you see even the people who don't get the joke are laughing because they know i'm funny so they understand it's like they surrendering themselves if they didn't get the joke because nothing with me and such amazing people and i look forward to be able to maintain that i know that when i see you even months years from now you'll still have to be wearing your eye tags i'll be able to identify you you know i said oh hi uh fred you remember me yes of course you're from brooklyn no i'm not oh yes you are everybody's from brooklyn anyway so uh i do have some content luckily my clock's not working um everybody's been talking about here this weekend i want to take the negative approach i think it was woody allen once who said i want to leave you with a positive thought i don't have one so i'll give you two negative ones instead used to tell his bakram in yeshiva in eastern europe learn stark so the jews in paris don't intermarry what's meant it means that the stronger you are the stronger the balabatman the town will be and the stronger they are the stronger the next town will be and the next town and the ripple effect will be such that by the time it reaches paris they'll at least have enough sense of jewish identity that they don't intermarry and the message i think is tremendous and that is that at the end of the day the strongest impact depends on how much you work on yourself and the more you work on yourself the greater is going to be the experience that you can do would of course be invited to many hasanas and he would stop in and he saw there was a bakra from his yeshiva almost every night was adakasana so finally he goes over to the bakr and he says don't you have nightstater and he says yes rabbi brothers mitzvah i want to do the mitzvah he says your midst for now is to be sitting and learning so he says quota reshashima you go to weddings every night so he says i stop him for five minutes he says i'll also stop him for five minutes he says i could be miss america in five minutes because i spent all my night satan's learning if you sit down and learn you can also do that in five minutes the stronger you are the greater the impact is that you're able to have when i was talking in the class about how to answer questions i say the hardest question to answer is the one you can't answer for yourself and the stronger you are the stronger your shabbos table is the stronger your home is the more people come uh stephen covey in the seven habits of highly effective people talk about your circle of influence what does that mean the world is filled with unreasonable people right your parents are unreasonable your children are unreasonable your spouse is unreasonable your neighbors are unreasonable your boss is unreasonable everybody is unreasonable except for me right everybody is unreasonable and if my happiness is going to be dependent upon people doing what i want i'm going to be unhappy a lot the only person that i have control over at the end of the day is me and the more i expand myself and my sphere of influence so it was a time when my wife noticed that my daughters weren't really darving mentally so as you know children listen with their eyes not with their ears so what did she do she would go out instead of diverting milk she would dive and outside in the living room where all the kids were you know sitting on the couch waiting for someone to clean the house and um and one by one all of my kids joined her because they saw they saw she was able to expand that circle of influence and who she is and what she is so at the end of the day and uh will be afraid shapiro spoke about this friday night you know arvis supposed to be davening arvis a ravis what does that mean responsibility and that's really the point that i want to make here this morning we have to take responsibility and that's very hard because and i tell kids when i teach all the time you're at a disadvantage you've never seen an adult you've seen me and my generation we never grew up my parents went through the depression they went through world war ii you meet holocaust survivors you see all the things they went through you know and my generation didn't grow up dave barry who was a humorist with the miami herald wrote a book called dave barry turns 40. and he says now that i'm 40 i have to begin to realize that i have more in common with june and ward than the beaver now for those who don't appreciate the reference there was a tv show called leave it to beaver about an eight-year-old boy which means that at the age of 40 i have to begin to recognize i'm not an eight-year-old boy but until then it's it's obvious someone said to me you know am i obligated to to support my children so i said well the gemara says you have to support your children until they can stand on their own how old's that five they're a little slow six is that then you bring them in and you say son it's time for you to make it in the world good luck yeah so the person looked at me shocked and said well it's different today i said yeah today it's about 45 you know and that's only because they're expecting the urushi you know what i mean so you know but there was a time when you stood up and took responsibility my generation took responsibility and therefore they were adults when you're an adult it's an entirely different attitude and if you in my age group you remember would you ever call one of your parents friends by their first name it was unheard of it was doctor this and misses that and mr this you never called anyone by that first name today you know if one of your children's friends come in and say oh hello mrs so-and-so oh i feel like you're talking to my mother-in-law call me shawnee okay shawnee now what is the kid supposed to do at that point there's no adults i used to teach in seminary and sometimes the girls would bring their mothers and they would sit in the class to be fair there were some mothers they traveled a lot they had better attendance than their daughters did you know but i'd see them sitting in class and i always it was easy to tell because you know they were both dressed exactly the same way so you know so the mommy's roles are dressed like an 18 year old girl so you know at some point you got to suck it up and become an adult and it's very hard because our generation doesn't see those kind of role models we remember them but we were raised to be children our parents suffered and they wanted us to have everything and so they gave us a sense of entitlement and it becomes very difficult then for us to do something so the point is we have to start to accept responsibility don't you love that when people say why doesn't somebody do something and i always tell them i am if i have to save clients all by myself i will you want to help well it will be two of us you know what i mean but it means we accept responsibility it's not their problem it's my problem i have to deal with it i'm the adult in the room but we don't see this today i think one of the last adult presidents was president reagan yeah i remember when a car bomb went off in lebanon he got on television and said i'm the commander-in-chief the buck stops here i'm responsible when bill clinton who was the first baby boomer to be elected president was caught lying under oath he said it's not my fault they shouldn't have asked me the question if they didn't ask me the question then i wouldn't have lied that's reassuring but this is the problem you understand where is okay i don't know if you remember when i was a kid you know you walk down the street you slip you fall you break your leg this dog keeper comes out and yells at you stupid kid why don't you watch where you're going he calls your dad your dad said stupid kid why don't you watch where you're going takes you to the hospital the doctor says stupid kid why don't you watch where you're going after that you watch where you're going now you break your leg and right away you think who can i sue this has to be somebody else's fault it can't be my fault i can't be held responsible you know i give her an award each year in honor of the woman who sued mcdonald's because she bought a cup of coffee held it between her legs it spilled and burnt her and she crashed and she said it's not my fault they should have written that the coffee is hot and that is why to this day when you go any place and buy a cup of coffee it says caution contents might be hot did it end there no of course not every year someone wins an award a guy was driving his studebaker and put it into cruise control which in his mind meant automatic pilot and he went in the back to get a drink and of course it veered off the road and crashed and he sued winnebago because nowhere does it say you have to continue to drive the car while it is in cruise control and he won a new winnebago and now it says caution must continue to drive the car because you can't expect me to figure it out and that's why on a power saw i saw a warning label do not cut wood on your lap now that's a good idea on a lot of levels i saw on a hairdryer do not use underwater i saw a superman costume it was written on the supreme costume does not allow wearer to fly my all-time favorite is planters peanuts the jar is shaped like a peanut the uh mascot is mr peanut who is a peanut with a top hat and a cane if you look under ingredients it says peanuts and on the side there's a warning label caution may contain peanuts but everything's too hard for us it's somebody else's fault during a particular dark period of my life i was a mashiach talk about trauma ravi samson tell you about that if a victim owens victor miller once said i knew i'd be the doorman i didn't know i'd be the doormat anyway so i had this one boy in yeshiva who was much more mature than everybody else i know this because he used to tell me how much more mature he was than everybody else because everybody else came right after high school and he had spent a year in college and so he was much more mature so one time when he's telling me this i said you know maturity means responsibility davening starts at 7 15. you don't get up to 11. sometimes you don't get out of bed until 12 why do you think you're so mature and without meeting a beat he said maybe you should be asking yourself why you can't motivate me to get out of bed because at the end of the day this is your failure rabbi isn't dead so there's no problem that's so big you can't blame it on somebody else why should i take responsibility i heard where he said left the rubber motion of matasya once he was talking he says today people are willing to be mice in that fish for torah moisten their fish if you buy them a house you buy them a car and you support them you know then i'm serious now fish he said what's the mysterious nephesh they'll get up every morning and go to colell i said this over a few times to cola light and they said not every morning but certainly many mornings [Laughter] he said i had people who who used to learn by candlelight because they couldn't afford the electricity i knew somebody who had pasta every night because they couldn't afford anything else and i'm talking about in cleveland ohio i'm not talking about new shall i him this is mostly nephesh what does that mean mysiris nephesh it was a it was a great article once where somebody wrote this article in the in the paper about they went to yankee stadium or shea stadium but they made a mirror minion hundreds of people what a kiddush hashem and someone wrote in and goes i thought that was like dying for your beliefs not daviding minha like in a ball game you know you know such a kid is joshua you know but uh everything's hard for us everything is hard for us and that's why i'm i'm speaking as as a regular person i only speak about myself like i don't know if you've noticed that it is one of my favorite topics but anyway you know i wasn't really great at getting up in the morning we had a very late family yeah i was number five out of six all my brothers were older nobody went to sleep my parents were always working you know most second graders didn't watch johnny carson back then but i did i was up very late and so getting up in the morning was never one of my strong points you know and uh sometimes i'm up late because i'm just a late person and my wife says to me you know you should really go to sleep or you're going to whimper in the morning i said what do you mean because you don't hear yourself i set the alarm to wake up my wife like all husbands because i can't be expected to get out of bed i got my wife it's her job to wake me up and she says sometimes they wake you up and you go it's not easy getting out of bed you know sometimes i'm so tired i don't know how i get out of bed i go to the bathroom i wash up i get dressed everything takes forever i get my filling i open the door and i'm still in bed i dream the whole thing and my first thought was oh no no i got to do it again [Laughter] if you were in my age group did you ever hear your mother say i can't make pesach no i can't make money my parents made pay stuff and they both worked you know what i mean they had six kids all of them were dysfunctional you know what i mean and then you know you make pesach you make shoppers because you have to make shoppers you never heard them i can't i can't today it's hard for us everything is hard for us and i'm not saying that you know facetiously it's true we're generation we're standing up and taking responsibility is so difficult why can't somebody take care of this why can't somebody do this you know my father he he had to leave school after ninth grade during the depression to help support his family you know and he used to have an expression and he'd say do you need a hand person say yeah look at the end of your arm one of my brothers when he says that over today he starts foaming at the mouth he's so he's okay how could he say that to me because that's what he did nobody helped him you know and the idea is we have to take responsibility and we look around and we say it's that one's fullness that one's fault and why isn't anyone doing anything what but you understand that's us we are them whether them that we keep talking about so let's talk about us that is the challenge of our generation to be big to grow up to set examples and it's not easy my kids used to get a big kick out of it you know because um i am you know at the time when i was teaching and things like that and i was considered you know a rabbi or some renown you know for people who didn't know me you know and like they get a call and they say he's a parent on the phone so one of my kids said use your rabbi voice hello yes this is rabbi olofsky yes yes and all my kids are giggling and i said one back and hold it down there's a real person here yes it's hard it's hard for us to be responsible of us to take care of things and to feel that sense that we are in charge and we have to teach it to our children you know somebody had asked a question about kids going off the dark why do kids go off the direct i'll give you the answer i think it's very simple i started in the hebrew academy of nassau county in which was 20 years before i was born according to my revised biography i figure if superman can have three reboots so could i anyway and i when i went orthodoxy was dead in america everyone knew orthodoxy was dead and when i went they made you feel like a hero because you were going to an orthodox school they couldn't throw you out there weren't enough of us you know so if you were really bad they'd send you to the office and rory fendell would sigh he says i'm so surprised i know you're family they're such nice people go back to class and i hope i never have to have this conversation with you again now every kid gets a message yeah sometimes explicitly and sometimes it's implied we don't need you here step out of ryan you're gone i got three kids waiting to take your place yeah and so everybody feels like nobody needs me people walk around scared when people tell me my kid is he's not off yet he's he's he's on the edge i said get him involved call the people at project inspire say i have a teenager i want him to learn with somebody i want to get him involved i want him to do something let him stuff packets let him feel like he's needed in a world that says we don't need you somebody once said to me you know what do we need all these bali chuba for we don't have enough places in our yeshiva's eyes they are there's no parking we need more from jews where are they going to park something to be said for that halifax that'll be our problem we'll have so many people that we won't know what to do with them we have to open up most those and most of us practice inspires school network all around the country you know that there'll be so many people coming in demanding a jewish education we we have to we have this out but it's up to us we say we say it's a problem yeah we have to take responsibility we are after the reaction what does that mean first you have to love yourself first you have to make yourself into somebody you have to be somebody that somebody wants to be like does anybody here really want to be a role model yeah i was a role model once for an onion roll but that's a different story it's a long and very complicated story i don't want to go into it but you know but the fact of the matter is you are from jew everybody's watching you and you know it whether you know it or not you should know it you know they see you and they and they right away they they know that you're from jew and they're thinking and i always make an effort when i see somebody i say hello to them i try to share a thought i i you know i i was in a supermarket with checking out you know and it was it was just a mob scene and then you could see the cashier was stressed out and i said wow you're doing such a great job can i get you a coffee would i be you know cause i have a few minutes she's like no no that's okay i'll have a break coming up i said it's it's a bad house over here i don't know how you handle it you know that was it the whole thing took me two minutes she walked away feeling better than she had before i got there and that's all that's that maybe all i can do you know all i know how to do is talk but i do that pretty good so talk to people say a nice word a smile doesn't cost you anything yeah we have to build ourselves and we have to share it with others and i want to end with a great story and uh uh i i'm under the impression i may have said this at a project inspired convention eight years ago now that's not a problem for most people but people tell me that they watch my videos over and over again i know how they feel i do too so um it could be you've heard this story already but a good story is like a good song you know and uh when uh burke uh and my good friend review was singing last night everyone was like i heard these songs already boo [Music] a good song is a work of art what a beautiful beautiful thing so um i share the story uh i was running ncsy and i took over a year to go learning eric's trail when i got married and i used to train uh advisors leaders and i used to tell them this story the agora convention 1929 so the train got up and said everybody has a fear of to do ki revoke him this was in europe in 1929. you have to reach out to people you have to work with people fine later in the convention he said i want to speak again now it was packed it was packed almost as packed as the project inspired convention it was there almost you know so they told you you know uh you know you know you could you move off to the side here because time wants to speak again you know um sorry and he gets up and he says people said because time didn't mean me when he said everybody he didn't mean me i'm not smart enough i don't know enough i'm not that interesting i'm not this so he says i'll give you a muscle he says there was a nobleman who drove around investigating all the little villages in his tract of land in his area and he comes as one village they order from a drink of water he spits it out he says it's sandy you can't you can't drink this it's definitely because but that's how the water is here because i'm making you an edict not to use any water until you boil it fine a few weeks later he sees in the distance of fire gets into his wagon he runs out and the village is burning down he says why don't you put out the fire he goes we're going to we're waiting for the water to boil he says when i said to boil the water i'm talking about for washing and for cooking but when there's a fire you take any water that there is and you throw it on i knew the story so after i got married i took over here i went there to try to learn and the learning went better than it ever got and i was on leave of absence from ncsy i was supposed to come back and i didn't want to go back i wanted to stay and learn so i went to maisha chait who was uh i was learning khabichain and he says look um i'm the guy i'll send her a scheinberg like with scheimer's going to send me back to nc as well yeah i was there for a half an hour on the one hand clow yourself on the one hand toyota on the one hand glass finally he said if you don't have anybody take your place you have to go back so i went back to retreat he says now we go to rebel yoshif now rebel yoshif doesn't have time for this you know he has hours everybody lines up there's rosh yeshiva sitting next to him as a woman with a chicken you know i mean and me and we're waiting online and we go into rebel yoshif it was less than five minutes he says is there anyone to take your place i said not now it could be at some point he says mitzvah ev shall be refined ef you have to do it and larry chad's got by was with him and he said would you say that he's so religious says merusa yeah it's the right thing to do and people kept asking me what do you want to do and i said i don't know i'm really torn because there's my obligation to clay yourself but i really want to stay and learn now that purim which came after this story they had just come out with kosher french wines when i grew up the only wine was extra heavy malaga came in a gallon jug you had to cut a slice of it and put it in the cup it was like when the gemara says i drank the arbicosis and i had a headache till schweins it was extra heavy malaga there's no question about it so they came with these french wines you could actually drink it and i drank too much and i actually became tipsy now i didn't know it but the mashiach for me can eric saw me crying i didn't know it there were tears coming down my face and he calls me up he says david what's the matter i said it's not fair because i can help other people i can't stay and learn from myself so he says to me david i'll tell you a story and he tells me the story with the khmer saying at the convention which i had told already a dozen times so i wasn't that drunk you understand i was able to follow the story and i was already ready with my punchline with my zinger you know and he says when there's a fire you take whatever water there is and you throw it on and i said rebbe but the wood is still not fit to drink ruby can eric escape with the mirror from europe he uh he was in shanghai he came to its shell he looks up at me and says rip david halaway we just put out the fire and hashem we are the ones to put out the fire thank you very much thank you rabbi erlovsky reaching out to people has a little bit of a sense of a byproduct and the byproduct is is what we do for our families and how it enhances our families our children and let me leave you with this and i'm going to introduce the following speaker topic for the next speech is finding family i would imagine i haven't heard the speech but maybe that's something about family that's lost because it says finding family i would venture to say i just say what keeps me going as a human being one of the reasons why i do this i feel a sense of ahris responsibility but i probably will never meet my great great great grandchildren i don't think anybody in this room is going to meet their great great great grandchildren a levi that's the mathias a dover but we live in a very turbulent world so how do you know that your children your great-grandchild your grandchildren great-grandchildren your great-great-grandchildren are going to go in the derek yashar so it's that that the sofa said hashem says to the jewish people when you take care of my children i'll take care of your children let's be a barakah for all of us when we embark on the mission of project inspire the next speaker to close the convention an outstanding speaker who's come many times to project inspire i want to thank you for coming no further ado finding family rabbi farci [Applause] so it's always a very scary moment when you stand up at a podium and realize i can't see my notes i think i know what movadia wore sunglasses i'm very grateful to robert olofsky because now i know i don't have to try to be funny because however good i do i'm never going to do as good as that so i can just retire the sneakers and get on with what i'm supposed to say thank you so much for your wonderful words so inspiring so genuine so authentic oh my gosh not an ounce of condescension you are a master of your craft a tremendous tremendous educator and it was an honor to witness you coming of age and growing up very special i also had the side view so while everyone saw you from the front i think i was the only one that got the role model joke let's begin my grandfather used to love telling me interesting jokes almost always they were not so appropriate he was a survivor of the war they kicked his door down when he was only eight years old on kristallnacht in born in germany and when he came to america after having gone through the war effectively as a child on the run with his father through england and eventually to new york and eventually to south bend indiana the one thing he thought of to himself is the last thing i want to know or be identified with is from judaism he joined the reformed temple in south bend indiana and i think mostly that was a way of not being that identifiable thing that he was once hunted as as a child it was a remarkable journey in the last couple years of his life when he moved in he wasn't well with us to see someone finding yiddishkai for effectively the first time in his adult life going to shul in a wheelchair saying kaddish it was a tremendous honor to our family to have him with us for the last two years of his life but i don't know if he kind of got the gravitas of synagogue she would always tell me jokes that maybe we're not so shull friendly and always in jewel but i want to share with you a joke that i can't say at the project inspire convention because i see rabbi sampson is very nervous right now someone tell him this is not the nun from weekend just have a no for you rabbi it's a joke that um he would tell me uh he told us growing up and i heard from my father as well there was a mashulich he came to somebody's house he needed a handout he needed some tadaka needed some help so he knocks on the man's door and the man says i'm not interested he says but sir please give me one minute i have to tell you my family my kids my wife the hospital the bills it's so difficult it's so difficult i'm not interested but if maybe you could just i can't but if you don't have any much you could do this sign that no today they've elevated it to an art status i don't know if you've ever got their jab in the ribs during davening and now they don't ask you for money because you say um they hold out that credit card machine and it used to be like now it's uh nfc it's touch they just start touching your pockets it's amazing anyway so he the man says i'm really sorry i'm not interested thank you very much you know no thank you uh the fellow's name was mr man m a double n uh any connection to any uh characters that you know by the same name is uh purely coincidental i'm nervous about getting sued after that speech and the bashuloch this raw of your xiaomi yid he says to him mr man i give you a broke that you should have the bloche of avrom un soro the guy he's about to slam the door now now he's curious he's never had that response before the bracha of avraham and sarah wow he says why he says he gave them a hated the name he added it became avraham so i became sorrow i add you a hate to your name from man to hormone it's a tricky job this uh adding and subtracting letters to people's names but it seems to make uh a feature quite a few times in the torah and we just read one such example not avram not sorry not yoshua but we find in this last week's parsha an example of this subtraction of a letter the positive says and the naseem brought their gift what did they bring they brought avne shaham they brought avni and they brought the stones for the shoulders of the korean goddamn they brought the stones for the breastplate for the haitian that they would use with the uranium tomb that would guide claustro and what was remarkable about what was remarkable about this these nisseem's gift is that the torah seems to look down on the gift and it's fascinating because in the list of all the things that you could have brought for the mishkan the most expensive things were the avni shoham and the avne melum and the torah says er i'm going to subtract the yud from your name and in the torah it's not written behind the scene with the yoda it's written sin alif mem they lose ayud rashi says why is it that they lost the ud omar ravanasana permit me to quote to you arashi it's coming from the madrid how come when it came to the chanukah um that thing where you see over and over and over again like rob yolowski's videos that was remarkable by the way i actually know that i remember that first tape do you remember that first tape that you put out about shidduchim that was unbelievable it was like the very co all the bokram dearest and now it's a stroll when i was in early stroll they had it on repeat they're like oh this is the part when you go it's amazing such fans again and again and again we hear about the gift of the necessity and they're the first birth people to come forward rashi says how come then they were first um they didn't come forward in the beginning they had a beautiful line yes let everyone give what they gave um we'll fill up the rest by the way every single fundraiser every single fundraiser in the history of time would love a donor like this look i want to build the mirror yeshiva whatever you guys are missing at the end of the dinner tonight come to me that's my favorite guy but the turtle doesn't see it that way kivan shi shlimut zebra sakol they had there was nothing they could give amillah saddam um they brought what they could do therefore they came first they didn't want it to happen again and since they were lazy in the beginning nexra ois mishmam a letter was missing from their name the hannesian xiv i asked this question on shabbos and ashir how come if you're going to miss a letter from their name it's only the yud but i see my son is saying over to my wife he's saying an answer i was like oh you know the answer is say it out loud say it out thinking i'm going to get nakas from this kid right now i only have one son so i need to milk nachas from the right i have lots of daughters i get knockouts from but i got the one boy right anyway so look at this kid which is very much out of his farting either way i look at this i look at this one kid and i'm like go ahead you have the answer tell them tell them he said if they took another letter you would just ask how come they took that letter i said he's gonna be a rabbit he writes something unbelievable he says what is the main feature of judaism tolui it is dependent on alacrity it's the only time we have used that word that here and scrabble no alacrity yes okay because the icker the main element of judaism is zurizus an energy in excitement to do the will of akarash baruch and through their laziness that's the word that the madrishan rashi just said to us through their laziness they lost the yud and it occurred to me that perhaps the reason why we take a yud out of their name is because if what was missing from them is resource doing something quick the fastest letter to write is the letter yut that's what was missing something that you do instantaneously on the spot with great devotion with great emotion you feel so excited to do something you jump you do amazing my friends the suffering muster it's amongst them and seeks moses says that it's a strange thing to say that the reason why they did this was because of laziness because there was a reason why they did this they had a husband they would make up whatever was missing so what do you want from them they had a good reason what do we say no no no lazy why and i want to share with you an amazing story of richelle salanter there was a question that came to mistral solanter they had a problem with the authorities and there was a big question and they came to bring the question to bistro solanta should they try and deal with the problem locally through their connections with the local government officials or should they make the very long journey all the way to st petersburg it's long it's far it's freezing etc etc dangerous maybe and if they walk in and they say we want to talk to sorel solante about whether or not we should travel to say petersburg or we should try to deal with the issue locally if you saw salaam says grabs his coat heels let's go they're like we haven't he goes let's go we're going okay i guess he made a decision they get on the train it's freezing it's a long arduous journey it takes them a long time they finally get to saint petersburg they sit down in the first school they get next to the to the uh to the uh fire they're warming up a little bit after their long trip and if you also have to turn to the group and he says okay so what was the question again they're like the question was whether we come to saint petersburg i kind of feel it's hard to get angry with raw solander i'm sure he didn't do that just my imagination they said the question was whether or not we come here the question was whether we should waste the time the energy the money to come here we're here now there is no question arabic solante said to them something that i think is so beautiful and my friends i think this is one of the things that most people seem to forget in this study and in their practice of judaism almost always the torah is not talking about what it's talking about it's not about avraham or sarah it's about you and me wherever israel solanto was talking to his students to these people not just about the question at hand but an orphan of understanding what a person's responsibility is always if you're sitting in kavanaugh trying to figure out if you have to make the journey of saint petersburg you know what you don't have an honest conversation because one side of the argument needs travel money freezing getting all the way there leaving your family behind so what do you do you figure out a million reasons why the other answer is the right answer review it's about the education of our children let's go now we're in st petersburg now where laziness is not a factor travel money comfort now we're here now let's figure out if we deal with the problem in st petersburg or in kavanaugh what an unbelievable lesson what we're seeing over here is that it is true that the naseem had very good reasons why they should not give money in the beginning but says ghazal exposes the deepest darkest understandings emotions feelings that are going on in the human heart and while we would like to pretend that this is the reason says the torah no this is the reason it was atlas my friends it was only last week when i had a couple sitting at my shabbos table and it was a couple this young girl she did not grow up religious at all she'd never had shabbos growing up in her home and everyone at the table was sharing something that they were grateful to hakaris boroku for something that they were happy that they were great they had gratitude to hashem for and different people share different things their business this person was promoted the wonderful this person out of shirok and she said i'm grateful that i'm here i'm grateful after never having shabbos in my life that i'm at the table very nice beautiful it's so wonderful it's so uplifting and i couldn't help myself and i raised my glass and i said i want to share something with you it's not only that you're happy that you're at the table there's something else here i want you to imagine you live in borough park you live in lakewood for some of you that might not be so difficult to imagine i want you to imagine one of the kids in the family goes off to daryl maybe a second maybe a third it's hard every week you see these empty chairs at the shabbos table four five khasholm right no one's marrying into this family six kids one off the dirk eight kids nine kids is missing 9 out of 10 kids if there are roughly 15 million jews in the world and there's about one and a half million from jews maybe it's two now nine kids are missing who comes to the shabbos table shalom [Music] and who's there only one of his kids i said you were grateful to hashem that you were back at the shabbos table and hashem is grateful to you that you were back at the chavez table we have a lot of reasons why we don't do the things that we've been encouraged to do over the last 36 hours but if the torah was yaw ridley saif dayton are those reasons really the reasons why why aren't we acting why aren't we connecting what's going on here my friends i want to share with you this concept of finding family the driver of maisha feinstein once took him to a wedding and ramaisha told him when he arrived at the wedding he said look you know i'm going to be here for a while the driver was used to it maisha leaving right away so he says you're going to be here for a while oh why why what's up he said oh it's a it's a car of mine it's a relative he said oh okay i'm surprised i didn't see it in the diary real which i'm not sure but she says don't worry we'll be here for a while then we'll go home he comes inside he's introducing himself shalom alaikum everyone wow maisha feinstein is here standing up they come over the meku the father-in-law the huss and wow ramaisha ramayana maisha what are you doing here he says oh i came to him really unbelievable he says yeah there there she's a the car is a curve miner she's we're crying him you cry of him we wish we knew before we would have given you sidokinushin we would have had you under the hoop i can't believe it was so sorry no no it's fine i only i had a very important meeting i came straight from the meeting and he dances with the huss and he dances with the father-in-law unbelievable before the end of the wedding he asks to be taken to the other side of the majita he goes to the corner and he says mazotov to the kala masala makarov everyone's wow unbelievable ramon feinstein they leave they get back in the car and the driver of ramosh's car closes the door very carefully because he also heard that story and he says my hi what was that ramoisha says she wasn't really a caravan he says i know he says but the kala came to visit me rabbis i hear hear this and she told me that she is from a family in heritage i think she was an armana she was a usaima my family is there to stroll we have no money i couldn't afford to even bring one member of my family they have money they have egos you know i'm getting married over here in a foreign country i have no friends i have no family and she says to ramosha i feel like i haven't contributed anything to the wedding i feel humiliated i feel like i'm a guest in my own hasana i feel like they feel that i'm so lucky to marry into them but never they had to settle for someone like me he says i hear i hear he felt a pain he says what would you like me to do she says please could you come to the wedding and tell everyone that we're related can we just stop for one second hit pause how desperate is this girl that she's even making that ask of rahmaja ramasha says i'd love to help you but i've never told a lie in my life she looks at ramosha with big eyes and she says are you not a grandson of avraham are we not related this the nishtakar of miner might says you're right i i am a grandson of mitsuka you are you are my cousin the driver said so why when you went in and told them that how can you ask to go speak to the go to the college side it's not something that a goddamn door would normally do you did what she asked you to do he said because since it was a firm wedding i didn't know if the kala would find out that i'd come and told everyone that you were my relative until the end of the night and i didn't want her to have one extra second at a wedding feeling the way she felt when she came to see me in the first place a car of mine and i'm feeling this especially today i'm feeling this especially today because i remember reading a story and it escapes me now who it was i think it might have been the son of surely diskin but it might be someone else don't hold me to it he was crying at the funeral of his father and someone said why are you crying your father accomplished so much he's going straight to galilen he could not have lived a better life and he says i'm not crying because of that i know my father's fine he said so why are you crying he says i'm crying because i lost my father and i feel what that feels like and all these years when someone else lost their father and i felt i was being mistate of bizarre with them i was with them sorrow i felt their pain i realized today i didn't feel a drop of their pain because now i know what it feels like and i never felt like this before i'm talking to myself here about a week and a half ago my cousin's son five-year-old boy jakobi stroll ben jacob and tamara malka was run over by a car five years old he is still fighting for his life he's in a coma in the hospital the whole world is dominating for him how many times do we encourage people to darwin how many shurim did i dedicate to his refuge how many things did we ask people to be michael one another hundreds of people have put their fights to bed and been michael almanas that this kid should have a reformed shalema including the non-jewish nurse who could not believe what she was seeing as the texts were coming in i forgive i forgive i forgive i forgive what is this she says she walks out the room comes back and says i had a fight for such a long time i could never and i'm doing it also and i don't know if she knows how to say this but what i wouldn't do for my cousin's son and i who have led a career in working with him for claudius role trying to feel and trying to understand and trying to call them a car of miner i realized this week that i'm an imposter because when it was my cousin what wouldn't know what didn't i do my friends i want to read you the words of rabbenu bache please put on your seatbelts i got goosebumps when i learned to survey from here we learned from here we see that if a person does a mitzvah but they don't do it right away they do it later there's an ornish for that i remember reading a piece in pakistan asked this as a question and the gemara says on that you should guard don't just guard the matches that they shouldn't become comments guard the mitzvos and you read in yeshiva like oh that's so cute i see what you did there nice so convenient for that toyota that there's no nakutas in the torah it's it's cutesy estravan how are these two things related if you wait on the matzo what happens to it it becomes comets if you eat it you get chorus if you waited for a mitzvah you have the mitzvah you just don't have zurizus no says you had a mitzvah you didn't do it you did it later oinish what yeah the yud gets taken from the naseem the naseem that it was their job to raise up everyone around them that's why they're called to see him became the same word without a ud um and they were lifted by others claudius showed them how to be they weren't the leaders perhaps that they thought they were until they got the message you have spent the last 36 hours hearing all and sundry all the ways that you could change a person's life forever with an invitation to a shabbos meal with a mishlachmanness going on a trip being on one of the retreats unbelievable talking to someone in the office there's so many different ways you've heard all the ways but my friends what are we doing now right here before we leave where you know what we'll come up with a million reasons why we can't and why we shouldn't and they'll all be firmer each reason will be firmer than the one that came before it so what do you do you jump when you hear it you think of that person and you commit you travel to saint petersburg and once you're already there you're comfortable being uncomfortable we need to get comfortable being uncomfortable it's not easy to go and invite this person for shabbos it's not easy to ask them if they want to learn you don't want them to look at you like that annoying religious person in the office travel to saint petersburg once you've taken that out of the equation then all of a sudden you realize i can i will i must i hope and i pray that we each and every one of us should be zaika to feel in our heart of hearts that yud that yid that's missing that doesn't have his connection he's our family he's our cousin what i wouldn't do for mine what you wouldn't do for yours to heal him groups all sorts of programs alice for that one nebucha yeah my cousin they have someone they are your cousin they are my cousin they are our acharyas if we take this seriously and we jump we learn one other lesson from the mishkan and that is even if you don't know how even if you don't have any training even if you never went to a seminar you never took aisha's or or somehow whoever's training seminars that had to be a key roof professional you're a key of amateur you have no idea what you're doing it doesn't matter klaus left egypt without a single skill and what did they find when they came to do the work they showed up to say petersburg and suddenly matsu bittivam says the ramban they found that the answer was already there they knew what to do they knew what to say they knew how to act and they were able to bring a tiny bit of the amistral back to the table my friends moshiach is going to be the time when all of claudius roll is back at the table and i always say there will be people that when mashiach comes they'll run up to him and take a selfie poor guy is trying to get away but all he's got is a donkey some people will say oh i'm so glad you're here and some people will be able to come to moshiach and say i'm so glad you're here i'm one of the people that brought you thank you [Applause] okay ladies and gentlemen before we say goodbye i want to thank you all more than all the presenters and everyone every one of you who came here to be inspired to be part of this amazing shabbos i want to thank dr stewart and andrea hyman for making not only this possible but everything we do possible thank you so much and hashem should share with you with all the bronchus in the world ladies and gentlemen michael will be taking place here right now if you'd like to exit exit quickly lunch is being served and again the takeaway trades will be after minecraft is complete thank you very very much for coming