One Soul Tisha B'Av 2009

A research they have done in the '9s. From 100 Jews today, how many Jews will remain in the fourth generation? From secular in the United States from 100 Jews in the fourth generation will be seven Jews only. Reform from 100 Jews will remain the four generation only 13. Conservative from 100 Jews four generation will be 27 Jews. Intermarriages we estimated around 40 45% the children of intermarages overwhelmingly do not marry Jews. Easter is coming as well as Passover. And in our house, we celebrate both. We were raised going to temple every now and then, celebrating Christmas, um once in a while going to a mass. Many of my generation were raised in households that lacked significant Jewish presence. And today, rough roughly half of all Jewish students on North American college campuses have only one Jewish parent. I fell in love and I married a woman who was not Jewish. The McMahon family is a mixed family. The father, Mark, is a Catholic from Ireland. The mother, Helina, is Jewish. Kind of think like I'm like half Irish and half Jewish. Half of me is Irish and half of me is Jewish. But it's really just like all mixed together. The Schubert family celebrates the bar mitzvah of their second son. He's Jewish. She's Japanese, Buddhist in origin. And here's another example of such a story. A support group for American Jews and Christians who decided to intermar. Once a week, they meet in a church in Washington. When this Jewish woman was searching for meaning, someone offered her an invitation, and she did it with a smile. And you know what? It worked. But the woman who reached out was Muslim. [Music] What What do you have religions before? I was a Jew. I was a Zionist Jew. A couple years ago, a young woman invited me to join the faith. I was in shock. I was so kind to her. She was so nice. I bought a whole box of thank you notes and I want to send my first thank you to her for inviting me. This woman who reached out, what if she would have been a firm Jew? [Music] Ask any child in the street why we mourn on tishabove and he's likely to tell you because of the basikdash. And ask that child why was the basikdash and he's likely to tell you because of sinam. It is one of the most famous mam kazal because of baseless hatred the b mcdashim were destroyed. Today's presentation is about the tick the correction of sinam and that is avasum and about the ultimate expression of aam and that is kiraokim assimilation intermarriage it's been called the silent holocaust every other Jew today in America marries a gentile 1.4 4 million Jews practice other religions. The numbers are truly numbing. 100,000 Jews a year are lost. That means in the last 40 years, we've lost approximately 4 million Jews. And that's just in North America alone. Not to mention Europe, Asia, South America, etc. It is truly a silent holocaust and a very painful one. Today's presentation is more than just a story about Kirkim. It is designed to ask you and to show you what you can personally do about it. Where America is right now in terms of assimilation, we are at the edge of the cliff and we don't have the next 100 years to get our act together. We don't. We have 20 years. Within 20 years, the assimilation and the intermarriage rate will be such that more than half of the Jews that are alive today will not no longer be Jewish. talking about when my father was in Awitz and he would stand there saying to him instead of breaking the rocks in the field and one of the German guards would brutally beat him and he'd say to my father, "Who you praying to? There's no God out there." And soon there will be no Jews in the world. You know why? We Germans, we're taking care of the Jews in Europe. Our good friends, the Arabs, they'll take care of the Jews in Palestine. And American Jews, American Jews will take care of themselves. They will disappear on their own. American Jews will take care of themselves. Indeed, we are watching the prediction come true. How tragic, how catastrophic. And you look at it like I look at it and you see the footage that you just saw and you wonder, "What can I do? The problem is enormous. The problem is impossible to cure. Can one person really make a difference?" It doesn't even pay to try. And yet, if you care enough, if it means enough to you, one person can make a big difference. What you're about to see is a perfect example of how one person cared enough and did something about it. One Canadian has managed to put the tragedy of child labor on the front page and keep it there. And if you're like us, you'll be surprised when you get a good look at him. We're talking about labor and the exploitation of children. When a child's forced to work 12 to 16 hours a day in Craig Keielberger is only 13 years old, but he's old enough to know the difference between right and wrong. Well, basically, we're told slavery abolished, you know, not 20th century. You don't find slavery in the world today. But it was really shocking was when I was just reading through the different research that I got when you find the worst type of slavery still still exists today. Slavery of children. It all started last April when Craig, then 12, read this newspaper story about a boy his age in Pakistan. His name was Ikbal Masi. And when he was only four years old, his parents, like so many others, offered their son's labor in exchange for a small loan. Ikbal spent the next 6 years chained to a rug loom like this one, working 12-hour days for pennies until he finally escaped and joined a crusade against child labor. But after winning worldwide recognition, Ickball's life was cut short when at the age of 12, he was shot dead in the streets of his village. No one has been convicted of the murder, and Craig Keielberger vowed to keep his cause alive. But what made you think you could do something about it? Originally, I didn't think I could really, but the only way you're going to ever find out is try. So, after doing some research, I just walked to my classmates and said, "Listen. I read this article. here's a problem. This is what I know, which at that point was not very much. And I asked, who wants to help? The answer, kids. Okay. All those in favor of this agenda that we're doing today. Craig started a group called Free the Children. The board of directors meet Saturdays in Craig's den turned command center. They're in daily contact by phone or fax with a host of international human rights groups. Craig has always done his homework to keep up on the issue, but he soon felt that homework wasn't enough. He had to meet the children he was trying to help. Chaperoned at each stop by local human rights advocates and armed with a video camera, he went from Bangladesh to Thailand and then on to India, Nepal, and Pakistan. Was it difficult to find children? I mean, could you get into these factories and places where they worked? The perception that I had was that in child labor, it's all in the deep, dark back alleys. No one can see it beyond public scrutiny. But the truth is, it's practiced in the open. The shock for Craig was to discover that child labor wasn't just in hidden sweat shops. It was everywhere. and a boy making metal cups to be shipped to hotels and restaurants, a girl bagging candy 11 hours a day in an overheated room, or a boy stitching soccer balls. Craig found himself staring into faces his age and younger. Kids who were missing their childhood, who were separated from their parents, tortured for small mistakes. Craig was able to talk to the kids in a way no other westerner had. as one child to another. Has he ever gone to school? One young boy who I met in a brick kiln, he told me how his grandfather had taken out a small loan. Now, that's two generations back. And he's still working along side by side with his relatives to try to pay off the debt from two generations. Two generations back. That work landed him in the center of a media storm when Canada's Prime Minister Jean Creten happened to arrive in Asia at the same time, accompanied by 300 Canadian business leaders who were eager to sign export import deals amounting to several billion dollars. The 13-year-old said, "Wait a minute." He wanted to talk to his prime minister about the plight of children who made some of those exports before the businessmen signed any contracts. But the prime minister turned him down. So Craig met with the people who would listen. He held a news conference. With two former child laborers at his side, he helped them tell their stories. He had been hit by his master with his a steel iron rod. The prime minister could not have anticipated the fallout back home. He upstaged the prime minister during Team Canada's trade trip and catapulted the issue of child labor onto the national agenda. Back in Asia, the prime minister changed his mind about sitting down with an eighth grader. Were you nervous at all meeting the the prime minister? Is anyone not? You have your neck out and you have a guillotin quite nearby. There's always a little bit of nervousness. You never can get over that. He may have been nervous, but he did get his point across. We in the Canadian government are open to looking at new ways to combat child labor through toughening our own imports restrictions. Hi. Hello. There's nobody Craig won't lobby. From the premier of British Columbia to 2,000 union leaders at their bianual convention where after hearing Craig speak, they spontaneously pledged $150,000 to his cause. He and his group Free the Children persuaded the mayor of Toronto to ban fireworks made by children. The federal government is considering a program to label rugs so customers will know they were made without child labor. The Minister of Foreign Affairs offered Craig an advisory position in the government and last month the House of Commons recognized his work. I invite all parliamentarians on both sides of this house to work together along with Craig and Free the Children to stop child labor. Let us all applaud one of the heroes of Canada. Thank you. And so with slides of Asia in his backpack, Craig goes from school to school across Canada sharing what he's learned, urging other kids to think beyond themselves. You go to Asia, you meet all of these kids. You get on a plane and fly back home. What did you think about leaving all of those kids there knowing the life that they would still have to lead? [Applause] It was really difficult from the way that you look at it as if you know I'm flying back to Canada. I'm flying back to this and yet they're still there. Now that that's difficult in itself, but when I return to Canada, I could speak to so many more people. Like even right now, the reason I'm going place to place school to school is to talk to people to say, "Listen, here's a problem. I've seen it with my own eyes. This does exist and you're in a perfect opportunity to fix it. Everyone's in a perfect opportunity to help. A lot of people say it's it's a lot easier to be ignorant and say, "I don't know the problem." But once you know that problem, once you've seen it in their eyes, then you have a responsibility to do something. I think that's why people say, "Why are you doing it?" Cuz I have a responsibility now. Why you? Why not? And if everyone in the world could say, "Why me?" Then nothing ever would be accomplished. Why me? Because I've met those children. Because I've seen them. Because I read the story of Bbama. Why not me? I'm pretty lucky. What else do I have to worry about? If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? You take a look at Craig Heielberger and you say, "Wow, 12 years old. Look what he accomplished." The truth is there's a little bit of Craig in all of us. The difference is he really cared. He wanted to do something and he went out and did it. But each one of us can do something too. We have our own individual skills, our own individual talent, our own individual personality. And if we cared enough, we could do the same thing that Craig did. We can answer that. We can't turn a blind eye to assimilation. Not when we're losing so many. You don't have to be anything fancy. You don't have to be a great speaker. You don't have to be a celebrity. You just have to be yourself. Regular people just like you and me, you can do something and it can really matter. Take a look. You know says, he says, "You go down the street and you see a guy drowning. You got to go in and save him. You don't know how to swim. Poor guy. He drowns. But if every day you go and you see people drowning, then you have an obligation to learn how to swim. I live here in Muny in the Muny area and I teach in Yeshiva Ouinski's Yeshiva. Two years ago, the Gidim came here for Shabbaton and they were looking for a nice peaceful Shabas. The air conditioning went out, the air electricity went out, everything went out. And then when the electricity came back on, the air conditioning did not. They decided to go across the street, they knocked in the door. They heard a big party. They said, "Hi, can you please come and turn the air conditioning on?" The guy turned around, said, "Ai, they realized this is not the right address." And they came back and told me the story. This is where my life totally changed. I literally broke down because initially I thought, "Okay, it's a nice cute story." However, then I realized there's an Israeli Jewish man across the street and for some reason I'm not running to go shake him say shalom. I have the most incredible treasure treasure that I would like to share with you called the Torah. Please listen. And at this point, I decided I'm going to go across the street and do that. And it took three or four times. You could ask my wife. I was literally going crazy cuz each time I went there was either no one at home or his wife answered and each time I messed up by either not taking the number and giving my number doing all the mistakes a non-professional Kira person would do. However, never give up. That was my motto. As uncomfortable as the experience was each time going there, literally shaking, my heart beating as if the guy's going to come out with a gun and shoot me. I finally got there. Fourth time I went with my kids. We decided we'll invite them for sukus. We knocked on the door. This Israeli avi was there. He with a big smile. He took us in and it was like we were brothers from the first day. So this is where we live. And right over there, the second house is where my friend Avi lives. From then on, Bo Hashem, we got friendly and the experience has literally changed my life, changed my kids and my wife's life, changed their lives. Certainly, the average Hisha person wants to do Kiru and knows Kir is important. The missing piece is they think they can't do it. And I say you can do it because I'm the standard person. I wasn't the Baltua. So, I didn't grow up with that. I grew up in the regular circles like everybody else. And I never lived out of town. And I don't have therefore some special tools to know how to talk to somebody. But I just try to be natural, try to be myself, try to be pleasant, and try and make that one step to initiate something. That's all. [Music] Kira can be done if someone wants to do it anywhere. It could be done on your block. It could be done in your office. It could be done in Shaw. It could be done at the restaurant. It could be done on the subway. It could be done at the bus stop. If you know that someone is Jewish, you got yourself a potential client. I work as a landscaper in Muny. This is my 22nd year and I'm constantly out meeting people, clients and uh new prospective clients and I'm always amazed how many people are actually Jewish. Uh the people here directly here in my are mostly from observant Jewish people, but when I get to the outskirts, it's always surprising how many people are Jewish. And the only way I'll know is by them saying something to me. Like they'll say a a Hebrew word and I'll know, oh, this is somebody I can talk to and try, you know, try to say something about uh try and invite someone for shabas. Just try to just get to get them to identify with some type of observance. When I go to a house or meet a client and they have a last name uh that sounds Jewish, a Schwarz, you know, someone way out on the outskirts, I'll try to find out. I'll look for a little muza on the door. Uh sometimes I could tell and if so I make it my best effort to speak with them more, try to find out more about them. I try very hard to plant a seed and give them a positive experience with the with a from person and then I hashem will send the next person to do the rest of the job. In landscaping I can't do anything all in one day. I've got to plant a seed. I've got to water it, fertilize it. This is how I feel that reaching out to people is the same way. In other words, I'm planting just little seeds and I pray to Hashem and I, you know, give it over and I wait for the next person to come and water the seed. There'll be another person that cultivates it and fertilizes it. There'll be another person that trims the bush, another person that plucks its flowers. And it takes all of us. We all have to do it. That's why it just can't be left up to a few professionals. If everybody in America would be involved in care of, it would be great because everybody they touched so many lives. Kingston itself has a a very large reconstructionist congregation in Woodstock, New York. Um, and so there are many Jews in the area basically, but the the vast majority are, you know, are not, you might say, called Shom Shabas, but what I see basically is knowing that without my doing something on a personal level, the chances of them being Jewishly connected are very, very small. During this period of time, I would have contact through my office, which I think gave me a unique ability that they were either personal close friends or of course they knew me as physician caring for their children. And I think that gave me a unique opportunity to basically um during normal conversation to either discuss Jewish concepts and ask me questions and sometimes the questions were much more specific to circumcision and ma. What do I think about it? you know, can I suggest them oil? Giving books out or I'll recommend books, whether it's be Harry Kaplan, I'll give them tapes on Jewish holidays, on Jewish parenting. Uh they get to hear some of this Jewish wisdom and the source where it's coming from. Many of patients who became friends and acquaintances at that point would at least try the shul out and whether they became members or not really didn't matter. The fact they would be there on any given Shabas gave me the opportunity then my wife and I to invite them back to our home you know for Shabas lunch whatever and spend the day. They see your children. They see the sim the happiness in the home. They seen the restfulness. Uh they see the interaction you know whatever. And of course it helps to have a wife that's a really good cook. We can be miso wherever they are. Whatever we do, invite someone for a chabas, speak to someone nicely, friendly, that brings us together. When we moved to Miami Beach, um this is a pretty intense Orthodox uh neighborhood and there wasn't a lot of kira going on and even though we moved here for our kids, we missed that opportunity to do outreach. Wasn't part of our lives until the CL program. I remember kind of getting, you know, an invite one night, you know, to come, you know, for a Shabbat dinner. And I was like, "Okay, great." And uh and someone said, "Yeah, we're going to go to a family's house. You know, it'll be great." I'm like, "A family's house?" Like, it's tough enough going to my family's house. I want to go to someone else's family's house. when um I started dabbling on a Friday night one time and everyone was singing and uh you know everyone stood up and you know I followed everyone else and they turned around and I was in the back row. I just remember like, "Oh my gosh, like they found me out." You know, at first you think that uh you know, it's very intimidating because you realize you don't know that much about what's going on, but once you come in and and you get welcomed into a family's home like the Gold Losters, you know, they're so warm and welcoming and and they want to help you learn and they they teach you [Music] I had a different way than Stefan of confronting the not knowing prayers. I just came I just came extraordinarily late for Davin and uh got here about 5 minutes before dinner started. Josh is into creative solutions. Kira can be as intense as having 20 people around around your table on a Friday night or u as simple as going and get a yamaka for somebody going up and saying hi how are you my father taught me yeah says [Music] if there's nobody else doing the job you've got to do it you've got to try I live on this very picturesque, father knows best looking block uh here in Pacific, New Jersey. We had this mailman that would come every day. Uh one day it was after or right before a trip to Israel and he asked me um you know he said, "You you were away." And we said, "Yeah, we're going to Israel or we came back from Israel, whatever it was." And he said, "Oh yeah, it's been a while since I've been there." So I look at him, "You've been there?" And I kind of suspected, you know, he's probably Jewish or maybe Jewish. We start talking. found out his name is Art Lavine. Um, so I didn't think he was Roman Catholic at the time. Uh, we fig we figured out I'm a Ley. He's a Ley. We're both uh we're both of that tribe. Uh, and the next time around, I think it was a shabas or something. You know, he's coming by with a male. I said, "Art, you know, you want to come in? We're having some chollet now." So, he said, um, you know, let me just finish my rounds and I'll see. And I really didn't expect him to come by. But then boom, the door knocks maybe 20 minutes later and Ashley came in. He sat down. He knew what Cholant was, which was already an indication that he had some connection. I think it might have reinforced some warm feelings that he already had. Uh he talked about his bar mitzvah and it brought back some of those memories. Art apparently liked the uh experience so much that on subsequent weeks he would come back. [Music] I was raised in a, you know, a home that considered it important to be Jewish, but really didn't give me any specific direction as to why I really should be Jewish. I was dating women who were not Jewish, who were Jewish, but not religious or anything. And I happened to have very coincidentally met who the person who is now my wife. We became friends. You She introduced me to Jonathan. I'm not uh I'm just a regular guy and I'm a Bella bus. I didn't have any curve training and they didn't prep me beforehand and uh we didn't have uh you know mentor classes. Well, we would meet uh anywhere from one to two times a week. Um and we would go over generally a portion of Kish. These are very much lessons of life. Jonathan made them very much alive for me. and seeing him and seeing him with his fiance at the time um you know was a tremendous uh influence on me as to how I proceeded. you know, here he is. He's Jean Chavez and his family and you know, uh, you know, it's the very fabric of his life. You know, that's who he is today. He's a from Jew. I gave him a gift before my wedding, as I did with all members of my wedding party. I think it was a hagada that I wrote an inscription in. And I I I told him, I absolutely would not be where I am today, getting married, being religious, if it were not for him. Dear John, I give you this hagada with my most sincere thanks for being my usher kusa adviser and friend. A a little less than a year ago, I met you in Lincoln Square and you yelled at me for not wearing yamaka. Then I told you I don't wear fillin and I'm sure you thought I was hopeless. Well, today I'm getting married. I have taken a veil to observe Torah, not just for us, not just for me, but for my children and my children's children. So on behalf of them and myself, I offer you my deepest thanks. [Music] And I only hope that you, Myra, and all of your children attend my children's wedding. Debbie and I love you both and Myra and we hope you are a part of our futures. Hashem just wants us to try. That's all he wants us to do. So we both tried and you know successful. They're dying for meaning. Everybody needs meaning. They're thirsty. You say uh good chabistas to somebody, he says, "Oh yeah, good chabist to you." They they they're just afraid you're judging them. Yeah. Invite them to a suka. They're fascinated. As long as you're not you're not threatening to them. Yeah. One time my parents had a family over and there was a girl and she was and she was wearing jeans and she looked different than me. But I took her up to my room and I showed her my toys and she looked at my bed and she saw all the shas and she said I never had that much candy my life on a holiday. So I gave her some and her friend and I made her feel good. I live in New Square. I teach in Bis. I teach as a Rebi. I'm a Rebi. Teach uh kind of we learn from the Reba. The warmth that the Reba has to every single Yid. I just smile. And many times people just come over to me. I look different. I have a beard. I dress different. People come over to me who look totally different and they start sch smoozing and they want to they want to start a conversation. So many many people out there who today have beautiful families if they wouldn't have had that touch that warmth they wouldn't have been between Cliso. They would have been gone. How many times do we hear from Balachu that they just didn't have the vague they had no idea what Yiddish is all about until someone invited them for a meal for Shabas. A whole world opened up to them. As you can see the Kir revolution has begun. People from all walks of life are doing Kiraov sometimes for the very first time in their lives. a doctor, a landscaper, a psychologist, a financial planner, a nine-year-old girl, a kasid, people from all over doing kirav and finding it satisfying. It's an amazing experience. And you're worried, what if I say the wrong thing? What if I don't know what to say? What if I mess up? These are people's lives we're playing with. The answer is is that just wants you to try. It's not up to you to finish the job. My Rabb always remind me that if you try and if you do everything you possibly can, you are 100% successful. Not 95, not 98 or 99, 100%. Cuz that's your job. Do everything you possibly can. Leave the rest to the reburn. And besides, never ever forget that you have no idea and can never measure how much of an impact what you did, what that interaction meant to the other person. You may not see it right away. It could take a day. It could take a week. It could take years. But remember that every single thing you do matters and really can make a difference. My wife accepts an invitation and she said, "We I've accepted lunch with this rabbi, Rabbi Deutsch." She left her husband to our Shabba table, which we thought was beautiful. So, we're going to go to him for lunch. Lunch. Okay, fine. We'll go have lunch. An hour, an hour and a half. It's tennis. Is it two? No problem. Right. Well, David Chern David Churn had the most miserable experience at our Shabbath table. Well, he'll tell you about that. Well, this was excruciatingly difficult for me. Here I am in this house just filled with children. Nobody that I know um drove there, parked in front of the house, and people are peering out the window. And um well, I walk in now. I'm so completely intimidated. And then the rabbi starts asking parha questions. And all of these little kids are jumping to answer these para questions. And I'm petrified that he's going to look to me for an answer and I'm going to be shown up by this four-year-old. And um this lunch would never end. It just kept going on. And I'm 2:00, of course, comes and goes. And he drove back. I didn't know this part of the story till many, many years later. We get in the car to go home. First of all, we're walking to the car, my two little girls, um, in like second and third grade, and one of Rabbi Deutsche's young children, who is about to graduate from Tamima this year, walks with us to the car and she goes, "Is that your car?" "Yes." "Well, are you going to get in it?" "Yes." She looks and she goes, "Why?" So, I get in. We're driving home. I I'm banging on the steering wheel yelling at my wife. Don't you ever accept an invitation in this neighborhood again. They shot. Look what you've done. I think it was 2 weeks later we were at the Halperns for lunch. It was my wife that really got the ball rolling. I remember one Friday night. It was it was before the Friday night, but Renee said to me, "I want to make this Friday night chabas. I want it to be chabas. Fine. What does that mean? Well, I don't want us to watch television. I don't want to turn turn on any lights or, you know, just fine. So, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. And Renee made this just absolutely beautiful meal. Started off with this chicken soup that um I still I long for to this day. And um and I made the mistake or the unmistake of saying to Renee, "If you make this chicken soup every Friday night, we can make every Friday night shabas." For a year and a half, this seduckus I have as a wife made this chicken soup. [Music] Where do I start? What do I do? What are the practical steps that can get me on the road to doing some kind of kirav? Well, the first thing you need to understand is that it is not that hard. It's not nearly as difficult as you think it is. And the second is that it is not terribly timeconuming. It won't take over your life. And thirdly, and perhaps most important that even if you think that I don't really have many cure of opportunities, who do I know? Look what's around me. The fact is is that it's not so. If you take a really good look and if you think real hard, you will find that there are plenty of opportunities to reach out. How many times do I sit on an airplane and I get the bag of peanuts and I'm looking and I'm looking and somebody next to me says, "Oh, you're looking for the OU. Look over there behind this there. This is there there's the OU over there." And what they're really trying to tell me is not look at the bag of peanuts. There's an OU. They're really trying to tell me look over here in my seat. I'm here. I'm a ye too. I might not always look for the OU like you, but really I'm in the same ballpark as you are. And I can react two ways then. I can say, "Oh, thank you very much." and eat the peanuts and go back to sleep on the plane. Or I can say, "Oh, I see you know about the OU. Where you from? Did you go to Hebrew school?" "Oh, yeah. Yeah." They'll start telling me my grandfather was this and my mother was this and I didn't really go to yeshiva and I don't really know and I'm not sure, you know, I was bar mitzv, you know, and that starts the conversation. Focus on the person that you know in your job. You know, you meet him every day at the at the corner by the bus step. Just focus on one person. It's sometimes very overwhelming. There are so many non-religious Jews out there which is Nebuch. But you just focus on one. And once you'll focus on one and you'll be successful with one, you'll do more. Show them the product. The product is your Shabas table. The product is your six children sitting around the table singing these murals. And if you're proud of that and that's all you have to show them and the rest will be internalized. I'm one of those guys who's uncomfortable meeting new people um because what am I going to say? What am I going to do? etc. Right? But if if all you do is when you meet a new person is find out a little bit about them that and someone is interested if they see someone's interested in just engaging them and goodness gracious an Orthodox Jew is interested in engaging me or a rabbi is interested in engaging you know having a dialogue with me. That's it. You've broken the ice. It's not a mitzvah of organization. Every person every is to be Israel. It doesn't say that a person has to only love someone if he has a beard, if he has pis, if he has a yamaka. There's love your fellow Jew sincerely. And if you could be sincere about it, then you have to have no training at all. Torah sells itself. Nobody has all the answers. I mean, you can speak to the biggest robot in the world and they, you know, I'll get back to you. And they also have to look in sparum and they have to speak to their about him or you know and uh there's nothing wrong with that. I was working in the public schools and I had a kid come up to me after pes and they were so proud of themselves and they said you know what I went to McDonald's over Passover and I didn't eat the bread. And I had to hold back at the time from laughing. But afterwards, I started crying because this kid did something so huge. We have to realize that for everybody, you know, each step could be the one that sets them on the thousand-mi journey. [Music] Now, on the campuses, there was there was supposed to be 400,000 Jews. Now, they say there's 200,000 Jews. We're shrinking. It's do or die. The Jewish people is is disappearing. Yeah. It's not a matter of whether this is an opportune time. This is the only time. If it's not now, it's not going to have another chance. This whole group of unaffiliated Jews aren't going to stay unabilated for the next generation. For the next generation, they're not going to be Jews. This is the only time to do it. Awand was in Hungary and he sent out messages to the whole world. He made a deal with Aishman to save Jews. Yeah. and they didn't send him the money and he went back to Iman and he bluffed him and he got out one train and he went back and he was dealing with life and death. Yeah. He failed in the end. He never got discouraged. There's nothing to be discouraged about, man. We have no choice. We got to fight. We got to bring back our our children. [Music] If I were standing on a train platform and people were walking into the train and these were cattle cars and the cattle cars were on their way to Awitz and I have the ability to pull people off of that train. I can pull them off. Would I be worried about my honor? Would I be worried about being ashamed? They'll think I'm crazy. No, I would go over and I'd pull them one, two, three, four. That's how I look at it. And every person who I can pull off of that train is another person who will have life and of his children and their children and their children. And if I am silent, I'm just letting them walk on that train. And that's not what Hashem wants. We can't fail. The Almighty is with us. If he helps us, we can't fail. And he wants to. We have a Torah which is beautiful beyond compare. We just have to present it the right way. We have a people who are thirsty for meaning, who are thirsty for truth, who are idealists in every way, who are the most charitable, the most active for the poor. They want truth. They want meaning. We have to do our job. We can't fail if we just make that effort. When when you pray to God, what what do you say to God? I say, "Almighty, I know that you care about this much more than me. I know that you want me to succeed. I know that if you help me, we can change the whole world. I know you want to help me. I know I just have to want it enough. Please help me to want to feel this pain the way you feel it so that you can help me do it. That's what you got to do. [Music] You saw the problem. Assimilation into marriage spiraling out of control. But you also saw the solution from Jews reaching out wherever they go. It's happening and you can be a part of it. What I'd like you to do now is just take a moment, think of someone, one person who might appreciate you reaching out to them. It could be a co-orker, it could be a cousin, it could be someone living on your block, it could be anyone, but there is someone in your life guaranteed who has not been touched yet. You could be the person that can reach out to him or her and it can change their lives. Just take a moment, think about who that person could be and then decide today I'm going to do something about it. It may mean calling them. Doesn't have to be. You could just send them an email. You could just send them a link to an article that you saw. You can invite them to a class. You can give them something, a gift of some kind. Whatever it may be, the point is is not to leave here today without deciding that you're going to do something. This magnet is a great example of an easy outreach tool. It's simple. It's free. It's available wherever you are now. Just pick one up, give it to somebody. It's non-threatening. You don't have to be afraid to give somebody a message that everyone will appreciate and it'll get you started on the road to doing something related to Kira. What a wonderful opportunity. Second, there are cards available. Perhaps you'd like to do a home kira training seminar. Just get a few friends to your house. We'll send someone down and we'll teach you. We'll show you the ropes. We'll make you not afraid. We'll give you tips on how to do kirav. A wonderful opportunity available to you. And third, kirav.com. www.kira.com. That's your home for a plethora of information and opportunities to be able to use tools to be able to reach out in a very easy and non-threatening way. We have opportunities for every part of the year for Pesak, for sukus, for shvas, for tishab kaneka purim. There are opportunities for you to be able to get a gift. Just give it to somebody. They love it and it gets you started. Together we can actually make a difference. Together we can change the tide of assimilation into marriage. And together we can build the bayishi mira. [Music]