105: Effective Kaballos

hi this is doug dolowski and welcome to the robert garlowski show and whether you are watching with our friends over at or anytime however you watch or listen to your podcasts uh it's great to have you along for the adventure certainly to welcome all the new people it's it's so interesting when i you know every now and then i look at the numbers and i see some of my older videos uh the numbers are suddenly going up all right so sometimes i you know i i have a title that i know intrigues people you know years ago i did a partial show on passion the spot and i called it harry potter and partially spotted and i basically talked about witchcraft in the torah yeah and then it was pasha shmini and at the time everyone was talking about pater patera mania because they're all onto harry potter so i called it pottery mania and um and i talked about the role of cle harris and uh in judaism and how it's different from everything else someone told me they literally walked out of the room they came to hear about something else so titles are almost uh you know you have to be very careful uh somebody told me they they uh once asked for tax to come and speak and he said sure he said could you send us some titles and he sends them a list of 20 titles so they said well what do the titles mean he goes nothing i i think they're interesting titles i'm going to talk about whatever i want but pick which of a title sounds interesting so titles uh are definitely an art form yeah my uh my friend ruby dan roth when he uh uh when he was writing his book on picking others he asked me to name all the titles of the chapters because he liked the way that i had titles and later we came involved in his uh program torah live which provides videos i am of course a cartoon character i i've always been a cartoon character but now i'm officially i was once in melbourne australia i was speaking in a school and i saw the kids all looking at the end one of them came over and said are you professor crumblycorn this was basically you know robert dan called me in and he gave me a list of types and consciousness he said just talk just talk and um and i did and they animated it they turned me into a character professor crumbling um i never saw i would love to listen to the original recordings because he had to edit it out it was for an english audience and they said it was too funny all right so it's like what for example what did i say that was true so at one point i was mixing together milk and meat and i said you know i can do this because i'm only if you haven't noticed i'm just a cartoon character above the builders in the next room of course i don't remember saying that as i established my last podcast that i remember what i say but um that was that was considered too funny but then i did a whole bunch of uh videos this is me um i guess if you can tell that i i play a character called rabbi sitter and basically we just wrote up all my messages and i say them over it's a cartoon character with animation come children let's discuss simpson anyway so uh so titles are always interesting and so i guess sometimes uh someone might suddenly see a title of one of my old podcasts and decide that it's really you know uh sounds very exciting and listen but uh i every now and then get um letters from people who tell me we stumbled onto this website or somebody played one of them for us and we went back to the beginning and we've had over 100 podcasts yeah that means that you're spending over 50 hours of your life just sitting there listening to me that's uh that's a frightening i do that but i don't have much of a choice you know i spend a lot of time talking to myself so but um that's not true anyway but um uh yeah here it is so uh so as i say all this is my way of introduction so welcome along for the experience those of you who are just joining us those of you who have been here for a while and uh what do we do here what are we doing you know we're approaching the end of our second year gadzooks that's uh that's a long time it's hours and hours of me just sitting here talking yeah and uh uh you know what we you know uh rabbi dr avram torski once said i've written one book 30 times yeah it might be more books by now but and that was basically the idea of self-esteem and building yourself up and you know he wrote a parish on the silver charm and it's basically seeing the silver charm through the lens of self-esteem yeah he used a lot of the same ideas and and a lot of the things and uh that's interesting um i remember once when i was in one of the shire and by remission shapiro and i said to uh robbie brown who had been with myself much much longer than i had i said i feel like he basically said this idea before and he said to me a painter has only so many colors to work with but he can create an infinite number of paintings so that yeah there'll be certain certain musicians their music will sound the same yeah variations of it but it's unusual that somebody completely changes uh their style okay schwecking you know sometimes he's smarty sometimes disgusted okay wait okay but for the most part you come up with a particular and uh that's what you stay to in that that particular direction that's how most people go so if i had to sum up what i do it's to empower people to feel good about the fact that they're from jews and to help us become better we're all struggling struggling hey hello nobody can crash like a gym oh yeah yeah yeah i may have mentioned in the past but one time jackie mason was doing a show and he says i'm going to ask the gentiles to please let the jews leave first because it just takes them longer you know gentile gets up and goes the jew goes something pulling over here there's something in my back i don't know this leg this leg is bothering so i i give he's gonna show every other motif shabbos and and i heard more than once people say i come to this year because it's the only place i go where i work out feeling good that i'm a firm jew and and that's what it's all about let me talk about one of my favorite topics of course myself um i i used to teach on the jerusalem fellowships in asia tower and more than once i got a comment from a secular participant they said you know rabbi you're the biggest challenge to my secular lifestyle i said really which class did i give he says not any of your classes i don't listen when you talk i was like oh okay i don't always either anyway um but uh i did okay anyway so um uh so i said so what is it it goes i'm living this secular lifestyle i can do anything i want that i do and i can't help but get this uncomfortable feeling that you're having more fun in life than i am and i said kills you doesn't it that's right from jews we've got the party and that becomes the goal the goal is that we have to be we have to celebrate if there is hashem simcha huh it's got to be it's going to be that that that that life is a celebration right kurdish baroque loves you let me just i'm sure we've spoken about this many times ello says isaac's i am for my beloved and my beloved is for me he says isaac share the evoda of elo is to spend an entire month focusing on the fact that hashem loves you now that's got to put you in a good mood because i don't know about you but i don't have that many infinite friends who like me and if i've got one i want to work on that relationship and protect it because i think that's a good thing to have so um in any event uh that's uh that's what i try to do here and if you have been listening so then you know we're here to talk about life and i i would like you to walk away you know with a smile on your face donald trump you know have you ever heard of him he's been president for a while but uh he says he says people pretend people complain i'm not presidential i'll do that again people complain i'm not presidential he says who would want to listen to me if i was presidential we are here tonight to try to i said the same thing about a rabbi who wants to listen to a rabbi sounds like a rabbit i have to say that is one of the hardest one of the hardest things i have isn't when i get an introduction when i speak someplace people ask me how should i introduce you i said ladies and gentlemen robert ellowski he said no titles i said listen anyone who knows who i am they don't need an introduction and anyone who doesn't know who i am an introduction is not going to prepare them for it you know and that's why the best introduction i ever got is the guy gets up there and says and now ladies and gentlemen a man who needs no introduction and he sat down i mean people have said that but nobody ever actually did it you know so uh so sometimes they give you one of these introductions and it's like the worst he is so funny every time i listen to him i just i just start laughing i i think i just even think about him and he's already funny i'm already i'm laughing already in fact i think his name should be rabbi or lafsky anyway you'll see for yourself i dare you not to laugh so by the time i get up there the whole news was like there's an angry crowd like okay okay we'll see we left and it's like oh my gosh you know so uh so i always have to um always have to uh try to uh defuse the crowd and i said there's probably nothing more frightening in this world than to hear it's a funny rabbi because most rabbis are not funny and when they try to be funny it's really so sad it's very sad i don't know what it is you know you have these people get up there's a humorous story told about a gentleman who once upon a time like oh yeah yeah we're really rolling down yeah so i would get up there and i would say you know you're a funny rabbi it's really frightening i mean most most rabbis don't know how to tell a joke a rabbi came to me once and said you know i heard this joke and i told it over and i and i didn't get a laugh i said well tell me the joke and he tells me the joke and i say you're telling it wrong he says well how does it go i said it goes like this three people are on top of a building and the first one says to the second one you know these buildings are so close together that they form an air pocket and if you were to fall the air is so pressurized it would bring you back up second guy says that's impossible the first guy says i'll show you he jumps he's falling he's falling and whoosh he comes back up second guy says that's amazing he jumps he falls he dies the third guy says to the first guy you know you have a sick sense of humor superman okay now whether you like the joke or not i don't really care but you know it has to be in in absolute terms it's a funny joke so the rabbi told the joke like this superman is on top of a building with two people you see you see like that's not gonna go you know so uh so so people say to me you know they say listen you know you are rough you know you keep sure you finish us just conduct yourself with a little more uh and a little more uh presence that's not the right word a little more gravity trust me at my age gravity's done everything it's going to do to me gravity's thinking it's total but you know you should have a little more you know respect for yourself so what for there's so many rabbanim who are out there that you can go and listen to any time there's a gazillion rabbis with more of them lining up every day just begging to get on to turn any time there's so many of them lots of serious rabbis out there yeah i'm trying to fill a gap yeah where a person listens to torah and walks away and has a good time i have a young man who joined my da field me since you know schools are closed and things um because of the coronavirus i don't know if you heard about this anyway so uh he joined my dad feel me you know and i can see that he seems to be having a good time you know because that's how i give a my daf yomi is no less entertaining you know than anything else that i do because gemara is it's a lot of fun anyway one time i look at him and i say you know eventually you're gonna have to go back to school and it's not gonna be fun and i told this story over to somebody and they said why i said because most people aren't talented you think what i part of the gift that i have is that i make it look easy yeah because uh you know that's that's the key barishtakov one of the most famous ballet dancers of all time i heard him once in an interview they said who is the greatest dance of all time and they said fred astaire fred astaire was a you know he used to do musical comedies in the 30s and the 40s you know tremendous dancer you know and they said why because because he makes it look so easy makes it look so easy it's so smooth and so uh you know listen i try i try to share this time with you i share my life people meet me they know all about my kids they know about everything's going on in my life you know i've got so many emails of people apologizing for the people who called me bad names i said listen i'm used to it don't worry about me but the fact that so many people are worried every night thank you so much thank you so much for the concern and for letting me be a part of your life and uh you know that's that's one of the frustrating things about my zombie europe is that like you know people turn off their windows i'm not talking to anybody i i want to feel like i get to see the people yeah pesach crone i i've i've spoken with him a number of times and um for the large uh shamir salaam event thousands of women come and the first thing he does is he says turn on the house lines i want to see the people i'm talking to amazing thing amazing thing there's this to have that kind of contact so uh the fact that you've invited me into your life is a tremendous thing so that's all my introduction and we have a sponsor this week the sponsor this week uh the sponsorship uh reads sponsored you know as a squish for uh the family of the donors anonymously and i will respect that but i have to tell you an old rabbi joke yeah um there's certain rabbi jokes and you could tell the quality of them from the fact that i called them rabbi jokes anyway um this uh rabbi part of part of your uh job is you have to be must people that you don't know you know a congregant's mother or father passes away and you're their rabbi so they have you perform the service but never met the person you know so uh rabbi knows how to speak you know in very general terms uh about people and he's talking about what a wonderful person this was and what it is you know he looks down and goes oh my gosh i know this guy so uh this is an anonymous donor but i can tell you that this is a person who has been an important part of my life for decades and i mean an important part yeah um and uh i want to thank my wife responsible i'm just kidding but somebody who has literally i think is about 30 years has been involved in my life involved in my professional life uh you know we've uh we've shared good times and bad times and the fact that they're sponsoring is a particularly meaningful thing for me and uh as as the um as it says it should be a big squish for the entire family um husband and wife children yeah parents yeah every put everybody in there geraldine so uh so what do i want to talk about with my remaining time it's almost l it's almost double and this is a time that is set aside for hajj means to sit down and look at your life and review how my life has been going and plan for the for the next year now the reason people have a problem with judgment and nafesh and i talk about this in my messenger sharm sheer in greater detail is because they think if hedge fund and effort means looking at all the bad things that you do it's not you have to look at all the good things you do it also helps to remember that rashi tells us that every good thing is worth 500 times any bad things and you don't even realize how many times you were going to do an average you didn't you know that's worth that's what we do we remember all the times we spoke in hara but we don't think about all the times we wanted to speak english and her and we didn't we think about all the times we lost that temper but we don't think about all the times that we wanted to lose that temper and we didn't we think of all the nasty comments that we made but we don't think about all the times that we could have said something and we didn't so uh so those are important considerations not to mention the change mr medius every time you think that there's a god every time you you think oh i love god or oh i'm in or of god or anything like that you get a mitzvah just for thinking about it how many times does that happen the course of the day well you know we don't keep count we don't think about the good things that we do we plan ahead now i don't know if this ever happened to you this happened to me once i was driving and a little pebble hit my um windshield for my european audience my windscreen and it made the tiniest tiniest little hole so what am i gonna do go change my my windshield for a tiny little chip like that and anyone to whom this has ever happened to you know what happens it starts to grow take on a life of its own it starts to stretch yeah until eventually you really have no choice but to change it that's what happens so often especially if what you're doing is extremely important because you know when they're shooting that rocket off to the moon um i'm dating myself we used to send rockets to the moon yeah sometimes with people in them to go up to the moon so uh there was uh you know if you're off by just a little bit you know you know here's the earth and here's the moon you know and they're pretty far away 250 000 miles you know if you're off just a little bit you know and that's it you're on your way to the asteroid belt so uh you know small things make tremendous differences and that's why we don't think about all the good things that we do why because the azara wants you to forget that i want to share with you a schmooze from the altar of slobodka he says like this slovak says you develop the whole picture you know the entire world was created in perfection not the world that we have the world that we have today is a destroyed world of the destroyed world of a destroyed world but you go all the way back to ghanaian there was no death there was no decay there was no need to work you didn't need clothes you know everything grew on the trees including bread everything was there for you uh they were so spiritually developed it says they saw it from one side of the universe to the other uh the malachim started saying shira to them they thought they were kurdish and just imperfection yeah and they were put into this world for one purpose to keep one mitzvah and i was admitted for those housing so i don't know if you realize that you could be mikayam a mitzvah losa i'm not just talking about uh you know man goes for a haircut right i forgot what rosh hashima was i heard the story about her from my good friend robert garnovsky who's been on the show before we hope to have him on again yeah he would go for a haircut like this cut off everything don't touch my face and that's alosa [Music] and i was with a fellow who came with us on a couple of tours a a very very special individual and we were walking across this uh big um square it wasn't far from our boutique hotel that we went i used to go with uh with the freeze to europe and we work with this giant square it's where that giant uh clock tower is you know anyway so we came once the the tour was a little later um and it usually is usually due at thanksgiving weekend it was a little later closer to the to the uh the major holiday that the nine jews celebrate and much of europe anyway so they had this entire pig cooking on a spit it tastes really on he says come come yeah give a smack give a smack ah smells good right now it wasn't all that appealing to me you know but uh but the truth is that uh that's you mccain mitzvah if you're smart and you say oh it smells really good and i'm not eating it i was making a mix with lusa say that was the entire world the entire world was created for one mitzvah it says do you understand what it is to do one mitzvah you know how much it means so uh so the custom during this time is to take on cabalas they can compose now i i point this out there are three areas in your life there are things that you could change easily there are things that you could change with effort and there are things that you just can't change now you just can't do it got to be real i'm a big believer in being real you can't do it now and um and for some reason when people take on cabolas they always take it from the third category things that i know i just can't do now and they take them on and it's impossible for them to succeed and so of course they fail and then they feel bad about themselves and it reinforces the idea that i can't change i knew i know it couldn't change that's a it's a very very uh mistaken approach yeah whatever kabbalahs you take on for this next year and it should not be more than three it's me talking yeah they should be from the first category you should write down your three couples for this coming year look at it and say that's nothing right that's nothing so you know what's going to happen you'll succeed you know what will happen after you succeed you'll be a better person you know what else will happen you'll have seen that it's possible for you to change now everybody has their own level so let's talk about a goddamn israel so uh he told someone that his kabbalah for the coming year was to bench from adventure on shabbos during the week i mean listen he knows my heart most jews who've grown up with this know it by heart if you uh grew up in a proper jewish education you grew up singing it from that extremely annoying tune that's only my own opinion i know that people really enjoy it but to me no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no we got to know that we just gave up all together there's a i mentioned this last year you know that there's only one real tune for uh harajuku no such as dublin no fullest it's almost circus and i and the the challenge is still out there yeah we need one that's a little bit more you know uh a little more to it no no no no no no no no no no no no you have to sing it because there's no other you know sucker song that's specifically for circus yeah so uh i don't care you could write an experience if you want something something anyway so uh but be that as it may yeah um people have to uh have to have to look at something and say right so what does roshah say i'm gonna bench from venture i know they're benching already very high but i'll make the effort of looking inside the bencher promotion writer-wise i heard him once still the following story he says everyone knows this his brain was he would talk to you have a conversation and write two separate chubas to two questions with one with each hand at the same time so he says i heard this story from somebody who was there now slicker from all around the world would come to he was considered the godzilla door of the world and everybody would come to fill him in on what was going on in the world so tenshley came from all over the world so he looks up and he says okay let's hear so i said who first everybody everybody it's a little tender they give the report at the same time because he goes back to whatever he's doing and and reports my wife says and he benched from adventure was that he benched from adventure so jacques says it's a good thing to venture adventure i'll do that on shabbos that was his cabola usha so you look at the three changes you say that's nothing good that means it's easy and you think it's not anything you go to the moon yeah you move a little bit you'll you'll you'll hit the you'll hit the sun instead which will be a nice thing when the shell comes right because take the shemis out of its covering and the sun will be and it's full bloom so that'll be a nice thing but uh you can make a little change and it creates an avalanche yeah so so that's what we have to do that's what that's what each one of us has to do coming up now and i'm i can't give examples because everybody has to look for himself but when people ask me of examples i say things like get it stuck a box put it on your night table and every night before you go to sleep put in a coin i say to people can you say krishna mita it's too big can you just say the first part of shma some people say yes other people say it's too big i say can you say just the words first line schmidt social media yes that's your kabul i used to see this was an asian torah people would uh who weren't religious would come to uh north weinberg and they said listen i want to take on something but i you know i can't take on too much he says um can you keep shabbos no i can't keep shows can you give up driving on travis no i can't give up drug ninjas can you just not drive to the mall on chavez says yeah that's that i can do that i can do yeah so i'll say to someone can you keep kosher no you give a pig no cheeseburgers no shellfish yeah okay except upon yourself i'm not gonna eat shellfish amazing thing it's an amazing thing it's it's it's little things but little things breed success no longer they breed success but they have a ripple effect and it spreads throughout everyone knows the famous storytelling where he told the talmudim to learn stark in yeshiva wherever they were in poland yeah so that the jews in france don't intermarry because if you're stronger than the jews in the next city will be stronger and the ripple effect will continue until at least there's enough of a sense of jewish identity that jews and friends wanted to marry that's how far it goes stephen covey in the seven habits of highly effective people called this your circle of influence the only one i have any control over in this world for real is myself and the more that i expand myself the more i expand the world that goes with it so give some serious thought look at it and say if this sounds if it even sounds like it's hard don't do it only write down three things maximum three less than three and you look at it and you say i could do that i could do that yeah call my mom once a week once every two weeks once a month yeah i could do it all right as opposed to like these girls who come to seminary and they're on the phone three times a day with their mom you know it's a little different thing you know i used to tell a joke i say you know it's too hard to say i'll never speak election hours so i'll take two hours a day from two to four why one speaker question right two to four i won't speak english another two to four a.m i did this once in a seminar the girl was like that's prime time [Laughter] but whatever it is you make these little changes and this much i can guarantee you and and this is a question i've been asked by people where they say i'm going to go into young kipper i'm going to tell the coach miracle i'm sorry i did all these terrible things and i'm never going to do them again but i am i said that's not what you're telling gekkos italian country is i'm a work in progress and i can tell you i'm going to be perfect but i'm going to be a better person next jim kipper than i was this young kipper might only be small things but small things have ripple effects small things come and expand yeah you take a wedge and you start to bang it in and the deeper it goes the more it splits things open so that's some thoughts here during the month of ello uh make sure and write these things down don't don't delay write it down i'm gonna have to come in and and haunt you in your dreams which i can do i can project my astral influence anyway but that's it for this week uh if you want to find out more about the show go to my website rubyalovsky.com you can make comments you can sponsor an episode you can listen to lady solomon's unbelievable theme song get the get the uh get the lyrics get the music get the um uh karaoke version and uh you know they sent me an email i get back in my email i just answered a whole bunch of emails i uh i i pulled together all of my my ruby olowski uh emails you know and i started from the bottom of the list like people wrote me like two years ago and something was starting to get answers to their questions so every now and then i get inspired start to work yeah so uh that's my kabbalah for this next year is that every now and then i will line up all my emails anyway i'm not even gonna say when i answer them but at least i'll line them up anyway that's it for this week i'm devin norlowski and this has been the rabbi yolovsky show it's the rabbi orlovsky show knowledge and wisdom will help you grow lots of fun in every episode and we don't have to write [Music] show [Music] show till next time till we meet again throughout my orlovsky show it's the rabbi yolowski show it's the rabbi orlovsky