104: Fearless

hi this is david rolofsky and welcome to the rabbi yolovsky show whether you're watching with our friends over at tour anytime or wherever you watch or listen to your podcast it's so nice to have you along once again and uh this uh week we have a sponsor for our podcast it is sponsored by shlomit and ephraim chambray nishmas [Music] and uh we should uh we should only know some good things now uh full disclosure my um my memory is not what it used to be and it wasn't anything to brag about when it used to be either um i think i think probably it's genetic uh my father uh when he was my age most people's names were uh uh uh uh anyway so um so i sometimes say things no that's not really fair i often say things and i don't remember having said them in fact sometimes i listen to recordings of old shirt of mine and i am fascinated and and i ask akash and i'm like wow that's good i wonder what the answer is you know when i hear it i'm like wow that's that's unbelievable how did i come up with that but uh but it's an interesting thing that uh sometimes i really forget and i have to see from someplace else so for example um i used to uh i used to teach in a seminary and one time i saw the girls had a bulletin board for their own personal use but they put up meaningful quotes from different rabbis and they had one up there for me that i never remember having said and uh it was brilliant it was the same um i'll share it with you now and it really belongs in the context that's part of my message but uh but it says most people live the life that happens instead of the life they want so whenever i say that over now i always quote the board rather than quoting myself because i don't remember having said it i saw it someplace else so uh so sometimes the most interesting things that i see or i read or that i hear are things that i've said in the past that i don't really recall anyway somebody wrote me a letter recently on the topic of aliyah and i know that we're officially finished with the series but um i'm i'm actually reading it for a different reason and they wrote me a letter and i wrote a response and i read it over um and i was uh impressed with the way that i put it so i would like to share with you what i wrote okay this is more or less the uh the letter after watching all five episodes i need to know if you genuinely think the situation in america is hopeless my father tells me and my mom that we are getting sucked into immediate panic and american history has shown many times how people mistakenly believe the end was nigh he says no way are we moving to israel then again rushmore says the situation is indeed frightening and that it'll be worrisome if trump loses do you think america is comparable to the roman empire debatable i think my father's main argument is that no godolam have said unequivocally that we need to be prepared to hide tail it out of here yet the writing is on the wall i mean not so many jews praying holocaust were worn by the dom to leave so why will the aliyah talk and shouldn't we just hold on to our amuna if you are still living in the states would you leave and when after biden's win most importantly why in heaven's name would anyone perceive israel safer do you i'd be terrified to live here jews won't be safe anywhere should world war three hit you really think israel is a safer bet so here's what i wrote in response i'm less worried about nuclear apocalypse a reference to world war three than i am about the deterioration of jewish rights democratic congressmen make openly anti-semitic comments and the congress won't even censor them the media and many cities and states are buying into the blm propaganda which is openly anti-semitic if someone says something that is anti-black they are immediately boycotted or fired but anyone can make anti-semitic comments and it is excused you could just go and and and look at the news how many times this has happened recently new york city and state are becoming increasingly hostile the state board of education tried to take control of the curriculums from the yeshivas the supreme court just possibly do can't discriminate against trans people so schools may be forced to hire them orthodox jews were being attacked in the streets and the police done didn't care but they show up to arrest jews at a funeral while people protesting the street without masks and the mayor praises them now they want to defund the police former police commissioner kelly said the jewish community should think about protecting themselves new york city and state have some of the highest taxes in the country and they want to raise them even higher the judges are mostly minority and discriminated against jews i heard this from a jewish judge this is a fact now there are riots and looting there is no bail someone commits a crime and is back on the street immediately predators are being housed in neighborhoods near schools that's besides the high cost of tuition which is minimal in israel also the medicine is socialized so it's much cheaper if i felt i was serving an essential function in america then i would stay otherwise i would do whatever i can to at least leave new york that's what i wrote back there was somebody who was a major person in genoch who was uh in johannesburg uh i went to speak in south africa um [Music] really when the crime was uh at its height i mean i am i'm saying that in recognition of i don't know what's going on there now but it was terrible i didn't meet one person who did not have themselves or relatives have their car stolen of them at gunpoint everybody i met had either themselves or a relative and it was terrible and i said to this fellow why are you staying here he says well i asked uh remember weinbach and he said to me when i used to grow up in brooklyn and i used to go out my mother used to say to me just be careful and that's what i say to you so i thought that was very interesting and i sent this back to uh to river mendel and he's so i said so so he was offering me a job in south africa should i consider it and he goes of course not i said but you told this guy because he grew up there he's part of the society so sometimes things are bad but they're not bad enough for you to have to leave can you survive you can survive you can survive uh do i think it's gonna be a nuclear apocalypse no do i i think that it's going to be very difficult yes yeah what does that mean in real terms the murder rate is going up in new york uh tremendously it's uh it's definitely frightening definitely frightening so um uh does that mean it's hopeless does that mean that we're helpless and i'm not saying any man but before a person has to make a decision the person has to be well informed you have to be well informed to know what's important and that's what i really try to do i want before a person um makes a decision they don't do it impulsively but if i was in america looking at the situation today would i leave well i was obviously i'm i'm somewhat biased because i did that over 30 years ago and the situation was nowhere as bad as it is today so um uh so what does that mean right now when i get married um one of the many many many reasons that my wife didn't want to marry me there was it was a long list but one of them was that she wanted to make aliyah and i didn't and i explained to her it's not that i don't want to make aliyah i for sure want to move to itself yeah ever since i i went there uh went to camp there i went as a kid i always felt more complete more whole over there but i felt that a kurdish borough who had a role for me to do i was running ncsy at long island at the time and i felt that it was essential this by the way was born out when i came to learn for a year after we got married and i didn't want to go back and both of scheinberg and rebel yoshi told me i have to go back so obviously i was under the category of as we say in covert times an essential worker yeah so uh uh there's no question that the golem who stayed stayed because they felt that they needed you know to take care of uh the jews and huslars not because they didn't want to yeah um i remember that uh hannah cleveland always wanted to come to itself he felt he couldn't he felt he had his tummy to him and he had to shoot us and he couldn't but a number of times he picked up the entire issue and moved the tears so for you yeshiva married couples uh people with children there everybody just picked up and came man because he's so wanted to be in its job so uh but as i said at the time you don't uh you know i i want to be where han kurdish baruch wants me to be i want to do what what the code of article thinks is the right thing for me to do and if the situation changes so then i'll uh so then i'll act accordingly but uh but it's a uh you know um i i even back then felt unsafe so um so why is this my introduction since we've finished talking about ali already yeah partly it's because i wanted to read this fascinating letter that i wrote because i thought it was so brilliant but besides that yeah um it's hello hello and this week's parasha is shayft and there is a fascinating idea in this week's parasha that is an introduction to elo and the yom narayan and basically fits in with the topic that we're talking about i'm reading from davarim he says when you go out to battle against your enemies for isis foreign and you see a large army loser mayhem don't be afraid do is going with you to fight with you don't be afraid don't be afraid don't be afraid don't be afraid right four different terms don't be afraid don't panic don't be fainter but it's all the same thing don't be afraid why four times so says rashi because there's four things that they do the the armies when they want to come and attack you yeah as he says that you'll panic full disclosure yeah um when i was a kid i grew up with a tv in my house uh it tied into the fact that my parents weren't sure shoppers so i guess you know telling them not to have a tv because those bad influence didn't seem like exactly the area to concentrate on but uh they used to have on channel seven wabc these are the 430 movie and there was this movie called zulu and he used to come out on thursday and friday and it was always like november time and uh so because of that i only saw the first half i never saw the second i never saw the end but there's this little group in south africa and they're under attack by the zulus and they're in this little encampment and they're waiting and they hear rustling in the grass and suddenly they all jump up with their spears and their shields they bang them together and go zulu zulu and they go back down and they creep a little closer and they jump up and go zulu the looks of the faces on the people i always think of that when i hear this [Laughter] yeah i would find that quite terrifying i would find that extremely terrifying that's one the roam symbol uh and they trample their horses and they blow chauffeurs these are the four things they do and yet when rashid darshan's deposit he doesn't put it in that order he changes the order from the cry of the horses altiro mag officer from banging the shields bazoo we call kronos and don't panic from the chauffros yo to arizona from the people yelling if destler points out all four of these things have one thing in common they're just noise sound and fury and signifying nothing just noise and why is there four different noises so he says that's what the eight sahara does when you start to get to use to one thing he switches to another thing and to another thing into another thing don't be afraid don't be afraid so there's a cause of niche it doesn't mean you're gonna win because we know that the jews lost battles what's the point of being afraid yeah what's the point of being afraid gotta do what you gotta do it turns out all right it'll be all right is that not all right i went to school with the with the fellow whose father had been in auschwitz and he and a couple of other inmates uh managed to escape and they were hiding out in the house and the nazis were searching for them and in this house he found the yarn and he started to knit himself a pair of mittens they looked and they said are you crazy the nazis are going to find us they're going to kill us and he says listen if they kill us they kill us and if they don't i'll have a pyramids well the nazis found them they beat them they brought them back to camp and until liberation he would always look at the other guys and go listen there's no there's no guarantee of the outcome but being afraid doesn't make things any better if you're gonna make it or you're not gonna make it yeah all we have to fear is fear itself and very often that's true i forget who said the quote but there's a fascinating quote most of the things that kill us are things that never happen things that we worry about things that might happen yeah uh when association says what's called uh foolish fear and you're afraid of what might could possibly be happening but a lot of words then mcgraw says there are no extra words the beginning of myself and he's repeating it over and over again because people always work don't worry he's worried so should i say that people should be afraid should people panic no says isaiah kodesh any time the torah mentions muhammad it's always talking about the mohammed sir we spoke about this before and that is the idea that anything that happens in the physical world is just a manifestation of a spiritual reality and so uh when you um when you see something happen it's because it's it's a reflection of a spiritual truth so the reason we fight physical wars is just because we have to fight the spiritual one so ultimately everything has to be understood in that context and there are people who when it comes to making changes in their life are afraid whether that change is i think i should move to it so whether that change is i think i should change my job whether that change is i think i have to work on a particular media whatever the change is people are afraid we're comfortable we're comfortable where we are change is always is always an uncomfortable thing so uh so coach bravo says don't be afraid when you fight it to her and rashi as i mentioned changes around the order what's the first thing he does he tramples their horses because when faced with a situation you say i'll run away i'm not going to face you i'm gonna i'm gonna avoid the eggs are and he tramples the horses you can't get away from me i'm faster than you so i say okay then i'll fight you and so he bangs his shield you can't defeat me so i say i will ignore you it blows the shelf chauffeur is a primal scream it's something inside of us it awakens that nephesh behind us that part of us that's an animal and then says you're just an animal oh by the way we all every one of us have uh have a physical side to us it's timeless yeah the idea is to control it but is there an animalistic part of ourselves sure and it's awakening that animal in us saying you know what you want you know what you are so what do we do next we say i'm not an animal i'm a human being and then he calls out to us in a human voice the famous quote from the old comic strip pogo we have met the enemy and it is us and at that point we're just we're just broken what am i supposed to do the eight zahara is bad hence yates are he does not play by the markers of greensbury rules bad guys never do that's always been the argument for gun control this is if you put in gun control the only people will give them the guns are they honest people the criminals aren't so uh you know the the yetza tov he plays fair so when you say i don't feel like getting up this morning the asantov says yes you do and the aid sahara says no i don't pronoun trouble yeah so uh it's supposed to be no you don't but the it's a horror speaks with our voice that's damn why that's so deceptive so you hear a voice inside of you and it's telling you i don't want to get up in the morning i don't want to do this i want to do that and you hear that voice and you're sure it must be you it's your voice the russian girl said what's the best way to rob a bank this is what put on a mask and go in and and then hold up to tell us it says no the best way is to go in tie up the bank president and sit at his desk take over the bank that's what the enzo wants to do he doesn't he doesn't want to tell you what to do he wants to be you so at that point we're like okay i don't know what to do and coach brooke says don't be afraid because i'm here with you i'm working with you does that mean anything's going to turn out great yeah maybe yes without unfortunately jewish history has had too many incidents of not happy endings uh my unpublished book which every now and then people become very inspired to try to publish it it's called the last book you read before you assimilate i basically wrote it as a book for people who need to read a book about judaism but don't want to so i tried to make it fun enough that they wouldn't realize it yeah and uh has different sections so one section is on jewish history and i forgot which story i talked about but it was like and the jews lived happily ever ever after you know whatever story it was i said which in jewish history means 20 years we say we show them that's what happens over and over again people come to attack us and destroy us yeah so uh it doesn't mean doesn't mean we're gonna win ultimately we'll win in a meta historical sense but for me in my own personal life my own personal struggles where i succeed there's no guarantees because the coach borrowful is you know looking at you and deciding how how should you handle this what would be the best thing for you and sometimes the best thing for you is not best in absolute terms sometimes uh you know we we look at our lives and we're sure that it should be different yeah i don't understand why a coach probably decided i shouldn't be very wealthy because i i think i have uh all the trappings to be very wealthy i think i have i think i have what it takes but my son of course makes fun of me we both once bought a powerball ticket i was like don't waste your time i already won because you it was 640 million dollars what would you do with it you don't you don't even have the shave to figure out what to do with it i said you do he says i already got spent twice [Laughter] my father grew up during the depression i didn't have any food when i crack an egg i make sure i scoop out a little bit of uh egg that's still inside of the shell when i open up the little foil off of a cottage cheese i'm putting i have to make sure i need to scrape it over lick it off because i'm going to throw that out it's not how i was brought up you know so uh okay there must be a reason that i i guess broken lord who made the lion and the lamb you decreed i should be what i am would it spoil some vast eternal plan if i was a well-known yeah definitely yes yeah yes it would because barb has worked it out and he's decided what you can handle what you can't handle what's the best thing for you and everything has been arranged he knows what he's doing so when i go into a battle i go into a situation i mean i'm going to come out of uh intact no i might get wounded i might get killed no guarantee happens there's no point to be afraid because either will you want nothing you can do that's how we go intelligent we're going to l and we say don't be afraid life is full of challenges and i have to go in there and face what it is so if it's in the cards for me to stay in hustlers if it's for me to come to a child and whatever you do obviously you have to do it sickly you do it intelligently you have to think about it but being afraid doesn't get you anywhere yeah either well it won't and uh when you see the riots that are going on in america now people getting beaten up people business people getting shots all kinds of terrible terrible things not frightening frightening yeah but being afraid is not going to change anything so we have to embrace what life stands our way we have to keep trying and of all the things that we could do that's worthless being afraid is the most worthless of them all says the redact if i'm strong what do i have to be courageous for the fbi surrounded the house throw out the kid threw out the guns and come out with your hands up the kidnappers say we'll throw out the kid but let's keep our guns and let us get to our cars the fbi said throw out the kid throw out your guns and we'll let you get to your cars kidnappers said we'll throw out the kid let us keep our guns we don't have to get to our car the fbi said keep the kid because of this one thing that we have learned from living in israel all these years is just being able to have the strength doesn't help unless you have the courage to use that strength you have to have the courage to use the strength and you're stronger than you realize i must have told this before but when i was yeshiva cheat the refuge of uh this is when i was a kid i went to the zoo and this lion roared i got frightened i said to the zookeeper can he break out of that cage and he says yeah but don't worry he doesn't know it and looked at us and said that's every one of us we could break out of the cage we just don't know it because we're afraid and fears don't do anything for you so all of us will be of good strength and good courage be strong be courageous and strengthen yourself during this time i can't tell you what does rosh hashan young kipp are going to be like in this crazy upside down world that that has been created for us my goodness a year ago a year ago i i'm sitting and showing rosh hashanah could i have anticipated what this year was going to be like oh my goodness so many things such a craziness no way i could have anticipated so if the unexpected can happen the unexpected can happen the other way too and everything can admit such i'm clear up things go back to normal uh we have to do our buddha that's what we have to do it would be nice if everything went the way we wanted to but it's not going to so let's take this opportunity to make this hello this rosh hashanah the most meaningful that we can meet and that's it for this week if you want to find out more about the show you can go to my website ruby alaska.com you can leave comments you can uh you can write me you can sponsor an episode and uh until next time i'm devon dolowski and this is the rabiolovsky show it's the rabbi orlovsky show torah and simra ready to go the rabbi orlovsky show knowledge and wisdom will help you grow lots of fun in every episode and we don't have to rhyme no it's the rabbi orlovsky show on rabbi orlotsky.com torah [Music] till next time till we meet again throughout my orlovsky show it's the rabbi yolowski show it's the rabbi orlowski