A Conversation About Bullying (Ep. 275)

Hi, this is Dov Odolany, and welcome to the Rabbi Odolany Show. You'll be watching with our friends over at anytime or wherever you watch or listen to your podcast. As always, thank you for watching, thank you for listening, thank you for being part of the Rabbi Odolany community. And don't forget to like, share, subscribe, and comment. Sponsored once again by anonymous hippopotamus. I'm a hippopotamus from my top to my bottomus. We're not crazies, we just love your show. Liz Aish Nishmas of Yaisif Ben Gedalia. Thank you again. Wow, they sponsored two episodes. Isn't that wonderful? Thank you. Remember, we count on our sponsors to be able to make this this work. And um uh what can I tell you? Thank you very much. And uh should be a the show should have an aliyah. And uh for those of you who did not watch last week, and assuming that it's still no geia, cuz we are getting close, tick tick tick tick tick tick tick, to Pesach, I mentioned that uh I will be going uh this Pesach to the Nof Kinneret, not in any official capacity, but uh I am going on a trial run. If I'm satisfied with my Pesach experience there, then I will make it into a Pesach program, I hope. Yeah. Yeah, all all things all things going as planned, b'ezrat Hashem, if it's ratzon Hashem. But anybody who this year would like to come and join us, we'll have some we'll do we'll we'll march together a little bit, have some fun. So, if you'd like to come and uh and chill with the extended Odolany family, so um uh it would uh I can I can tell you that it certainly beats doing nothing at all. And we'll use that as an inspiration, hopefully, to to put together an actual program, assuming that like I say, everything works out. But just wanted to throw that out there again. So, if anyone is interested, they want to contact me, and I'll put you in contact with the right people, and you know, have my people call your people. I love that. Makes it sound like I actually have a job or a business. But anyway, um yeah, so I just wanted to throw that out there, too. Okay. Um you know, it's it's amazing to me how uh well, I'll do this in the reverse. I used to have kids in NCSY or other people used to come and speak to me about different things, tell me them in Yeshiva or in seminary or things. And uh they would speak to me about different inyanim and things. I'd give them advice, you know. And years later, we'd be discussing something, and I'd say, "Wait a second, but I thought" and I would remind him of something that they said. And they'd look at me and they'd say, "How do you know that?" And I said, "You told me." And they said, "And you listened?" I found that so fascinating because our default assumption is that when we talk, nobody is listening to us. And you read your Emily Dickinson, and I, my Robert Frost, and we mark our place with book markers that measure what we've lost. Like a poem poorly written, with stanzas out of order, couplets out of rhyme, and syncopated time, lost in the dangling conversations, the superficial sighs, the borders of our lives. The whole song is is about how people talk and it doesn't have any meaning. Yeah. Yes, we speak of things that matter in words that must be said. Can analysis be worthwhile? Is the theater really dead? Just talking. Just talking with nothing with nothing in in place, no meaning at all. Yeah. And then that's part of the existentialistic philosophy that everybody's alone and no communication. That's Sounds of Silence. That's I Am a Rock. That's all these kind of Simon and Garfunkel music to kill yourself by songs, you know. That there's nobody understands each other, nobody communicates. Tom Lehrer um who was a professor of mathematics wrote an introduction to one of his songs. He was introducing his song and he says, "So much of contemporary literature and and films and you know, music seems to be about how people can't communicate. And I feel like if you can't communicate, the least you could do is keep your mouth shut." What are you talking about how nobody's able to communicate, yeah? But um so I'm usually on the receiving end of it, but I have to say every now and then I'm I'm also amazed when people quote me back verbatim things that I've said on the show or in other shiurim uh that uh that they've basically committed to memory. I'm I'm very surprised when this happens to me. Uh even though I'm I've been talking for hundreds of hours on this show, you know. I'm still surprised when somebody will come back and say, "Yeah, I remember you said this or you said that." And I don't always remember what I say. You know, and um people say to me, "Why do you laugh at your own jokes?" I said, "Cuz I'm hearing them for the first time, too, you know." Said, "But you've told that joke a dozen times." Cuz I don't remember. I don't listen when I talk, you know. So, uh I'm experiencing it along with everybody else, you know. And that's why sometimes I used to listen to my sheer and my old sheer and publish sheer. And I spend 10 minutes building up a kasha and I'm like, "That's a great kasha." I don't remember what the answer was. And then I hear the answer. I was like, "Wow, that's great. How did I think of that?" I mention this because apparently I've mentioned more than once on the podcast that I very often walk into the podcast and I don't know what to talk about. Should I talk about this? Should I talk about that, you know? So, people submit questions and the questions and answers, but that's of course, you know, every now and then I'll make an entire podcast out of it, but not usually. But I received a um a poignant email recently that said, "Rabbi Lopianksy, you know, you mentioned that you're looking for things to talk about. I've got something very important that I wish you could talk about. And that's my kids getting bullied in school and how come nobody cares?" Wow. Now, this hit home because the difference between sympathy and empathy is that sympathy you sympathize with people who are going through a hard time, even though you may not be able to relate to it. Empathy is where you are feeling the person's pain cuz you understand it. Not just I feel bad that you're going through this, but I'm going through it, too. When I lost my father my approach to paying a shiva call changed dramatically. Now, sometimes I go and there's a lot of people there and, you know, I nod towards the person, they nod towards me, and go back to the conversation. And so, that that's a very easy shiva call. Uh sometimes I go and the person asked me to please move up and actually talk about the person cuz they knew that I knew them or I knew the person who's going through this, etc. And they really they want the chizuk. They want the chizuk that comes with it, you know? And um and uh uh I remember when somebody lost their father, I would always say, "Welcome to the club." Cuz when you lose your father, it's it puts you in a different stage. And the way I used to describe it was cuz as long as you have a father, you can be a kid. And once you lose a father, you become the father. I'm sure I described this scene. Um my father passed away on Shabbos, and the levaya was on Sunday. And so, the last day of um of uh the shiva was Shabbos. So, of course, you know, it's only part of the day, but that Shabbos was a bar mitzvah of one of my nephews. And my mother said to me, "I'm I'm not up to going to a bar mitzvah. I just can't go." Uh when my father died, a part of her died. It was uh she just she couldn't handle it. I said, "I'll stay with you, Mom." Now, my father was old school. Yeah? Um and uh you know how there's a din you're not supposed to sit on your father's seat, you know, and um uh father can be mochel on his kavod. They weren't talking about my dad. He was never my holiest covenant. You never sat in my father's seat. Yeah, and um there were only two bathrooms in the house. One of them was in my um parents' bedroom. You had to be in serious situation to use that. You know, that was my father's bathroom. You don't go in there. But uh and you know, you the way you spoke to my father, where you behaved with my father, it was you know, there was a you know, there was a way to it. You know, he he took his covenant very seriously. And um and that Shabbos the sh- week after my father passed away. So, my mother sets up my father's Shabbos board and kiddush cup like she did every Shabbos. And in my father's seat and she says, "Make kiddush for me." I had never sat in my father's seat. This was a This was an amazing situation. And I'm sitting in my father's seat, using my father's kiddush cup, my father's you know, challah board. Never in my life. Never in my life. And it drove home the point to me that when you lose your father, you Yeah. You you become your father. You have to now take that role. And who will be the zayde of our children? Who will be their zayde if not me? Yeah. So, uh it's a different thing. So, before that time, when you go and you pay a shiva call, you know, I remember when I was sitting shiva for my father, somebody came and they said, "So, tell me something about your father." They must have had like the little, you know, sh- you know, uh make a shiva call handbook, you know. Just tell the Ask them to say something about their father, you know, I was like, you know. So, um uh but uh when you're when you're part of the experience, it's it's a different story. And the story of Guschman he had his Yeshiva in Sha'arei Hesed. And uh there was this uh I think it was a professor who used to come to his shear. And his son was in the Yom Kippur War and his plane got shot down. Now, there's a sense of protocol. You don't you don't go right away to the house of Shiva, you know. That's only for like very very close people. Otherwise, you wait a couple of days. When he came back from the Levaya, just lost his son, pilot. And uh and the Israeli Air Force got shot down and killed. So, he sits down on the floor, a broken man. And Reb Guschman sits down on the floor next to him. And he says, "Rabbi, please, I just buried my son. You know, I'm I'm not ready to hear anything." And he says, "I just wanted to tell you that I'm jealous of you." He says, "You're jealous of me? I lost a son." He says, "I also lost a son. Nazis killed him. He took took him out of my arms, shot him, and gave him back to me. I was holding my dead son in my arms. And I don't know where he's buried. I don't know where he's buried. And uh um I don't know why he was killed." He says, "But you you know why your son died. He was defending the Jewish people. And you know where your son is. He's in the highest levels of Shamayim for dying as Kadosh Hashem for defending God's people. And I know my son is up there in Shamayim someplace, and I know your son is a higher up in Shamayim looking down at my son. Reb Yochanan lost 10 sons. He says he used to take a tooth one of his babies and carry it around. So when he would pay a shiva call, he would say, "This is the tooth of my 10th son that I buried." Then should understand, I I I have a little bit of a sense of what you're going through. That's empathy. So, when it comes to the topic of bullying, I'm not sympathetic, I am empathetic. I was bullied terribly. I was bullied terribly. I was uh nebbach as a kid. I still am uh deep down. I have never changed from being that same nebbie kid that I was back then. Um when I say I was a nebbie kid, so you know that in elementary school there's a caste system. There's the really cool kids, and then there's the cool kids' lieutenants, and then there's the next tier down, and then there's the hamon am, etc. And then there's the um undesirables. And in the caste system in India they would call them the untouchables, you know, the the lowest strata of society. In my class there were two kids. One was a chubby kid, nose sort of went up like this. He had a little you know, sort of a he was chubby. His uh shirt didn't quite reach his belly button. The other kid uh looked like uh Pig Pen from uh the Peanuts cartoons. There was always sort of like a cloud of dust around him, etc. I'm the kid they picked on. I was under them in the caste system. Um Today, I don't know why this was important to me. I don't know why. But in elementary school, it was very important if you couldn't be first in line, then to be second. But the further up in line that you were, yeah. And of course, you can't cut the line. So, I never made it to be first in line, but many times I got there to be second in line. And the entire class would do frontsies backsies. Because you know, I can't I can't uh I can't let you cut in the line, but I can let you go in front of me. And then I'd say, "Okay, now let me go in front of you." It's called frontsies backsies. The entire class would do this until I was in the back of the line. Now today, in retrospect, I think, "Why didn't I just go to the back of the line to start with?" Recess really held no uh pleasures for me. Nobody played with me. Nobody talked to me. Um I would occasionally find a book if I had a book, I'd sit in the corner and read. Yeah, you had to go outside. You couldn't stay inside. You know, in the freezing cold. So, if you're running around, it's not so bad, but I wasn't running around. It's kind of silly just to run around by yourself, you know. So, sometimes I would sit in the overhang, and one of the teachers would yell at me that I was listening in on their conversations. I really wasn't. I was just trying to stay warm. And uh I was made fun of. I was insulted. I was occasionally physically abused, and it was just terrible. Nobody intervened, because what were they going to do? You can't make anybody like the nebbie kid, and I was a nebbie kid. Nobody would be my friend. Oh, how I wish someone would be my friend. And accept me for the way I am. Yeah, forget about it. Yeah. Um and I was totally alone. Uh that's how I was through fourth grade. Um to the point I was so picked on, and you know, I was such a neb that I actually tried to kill myself. But being a neb, I did it like everything else. It was really a nebbie attempt at killing myself. I couldn't even get that straight. But my life was just one endless misery and horror. Yeah. Now, that's kind of funny when you talk about people being kept in captivity by Hamas, you know. So, I don't mean to be over dramatic, but when you're a kid, and your world is basically school, and nobody likes you, and no one has any need for you, and nobody has, you know, I didn't succeed academically, I found out later because of all my various learning disabilities, between my ADD and my dyslexia and my focusing problem and retention problems, etc., I wasn't going to become a great student. Yeah. I was creative. I could be funny. I had a lot of interesting things to say, but nobody would talk to me. Nobody would call on me. Uh you know, I was publicly humiliated by my teachers. Yeah. Um This continued through my entire career, not only when I was a kid. I'll never forget in French class where the French teacher decided to dedicate the beginning of the class to explain how Orlovsky is like a submarine. He's moving along and then he goes under sea level. She thought this was so clever. And um at the time I didn't know what to do. I I didn't uh I didn't say anything. I didn't do anything about it. Um I have a lot to say now. At the end of fourth grade, um we uh we did a trick a trick across the country. Now, to be fair, the status that I held in my house was not much different than the status in school. Nobody in my family had any particular use for me. Um uh nobody really wanted to talk to me or have anything to do with me. I was I was just nothing. Just a nothing. Um And uh so we one summer at the end of fourth grade, um my parents took us on a trip across the country. Now, I One of the advantages of having ADD is that um you're very easy for you to escape into a fantasy world, which is where I lived. I lived in a world of make-believe and uh I created you know, superheroes out of my fingers and I sometimes play little fights with them, etc. You know, I I would draw pictures of things I And I could just sit there and just go someplace. Into Into a world of make-believe, you know? Which was especially easy for me because since my parents both worked until late at night, um I would come home and would turn on the TV and sit in front of it the entire day. So, you know, I where I always say, you know, when other little kids were remembering Mishnayos, I was memorizing um television theme songs and commercials, which which I still know to this uh to this day. I pepper my talks with them, obviously, because I still have them, but um um this is this is where my life was. So, we spent 2 weeks driving to California and 2 weeks driving back. And my brother Gedaliah, the time, of course, he was Gary, uh he was uh in a um uh an educational program in Georgetown University uh for the beginning of the summer. So, he flew out and joined us in San Francisco. Now, we had this enormous Chevy station wagon, and um uh there was uh going there there were four of us. So, for the most part, the four of us crowded into the backseat. You have to remember that this is the uh 1960s. Um people were not marked down seatbelts. So, we were more or less crowded into the backseat because there was also a backpack. But in the backpack, you didn't get the air conditioning, and this is the summer, and so nobody wanted to go in the backpack. Occasionally, somebody would, but for the most part, nobody wanted to go into the backpack. But once Gary joined us in uh in um San Francisco, and there were now five of us, so you know, it was too crowded. So, Gary said to me, "Come sit with me in the backseat. You know, we'll be able to watch the sunsets." Cuz we were now driving from west to east, and so if you were it was a back-facing uh station wagon the backseat, you could watch the sunsets. That's the that's what he said to me. And he said to me, "What's going on? Why are you so unhappy?" And I started telling him about what's going on in school and what the kids do to me and everything. He says, "So, why don't you answer them back when they make fun of you? Why don't you say something?" And I said, "I don't know how." And he says, "I'll teach you." And we spent that It was less than 2 weeks by this point, but we had spent that time with my brother teaching me how to insult people. And how to answer people back. Now, as it turns out, I had a latent talent that I wasn't even aware of. Turns out that this came quite naturally to me. And I slowly learned how to, you know, say something back just as sarcastic and just as as insulting and more clever than the things they were saying to me. So, it gave me the confidence. So, when I came back in fifth grade, and the people started up with me, I started cutting them down. And they were like, "Whoa, what's going on over here?" So, more of them would come but it didn't turn to physical violence cuz I really wouldn't be able to handle physical violence. I He didn't teach me self-defense techniques, you know. But I would show this um acerbic wit. Yeah, I think the term they use is rapier-like wit that I had to be able to defend myself and stand up for myself. And um and uh and we reached a detente. People left me alone. And slowly some people started to realize, "Hey, maybe this kid has something to offer." And I started to to raise my social standing a little bit. Yeah. And uh W- This continued fifth and sixth grade. Academically, I wasn't doing any better, but at least, you know, I I was becoming less of a social pariah. In seventh grade, I finally realized this was again the '60s, end of the '60s, early '70s, you know. I suddenly realized that I could become antisocial behavior, and that would really help. So, I grew my hair, and I wouldn't get a haircut. Got myself bell-bottoms. Think I had beads. Might have gotten beads. At one point in seventh grade, one time I was burning incense in the back of the class. Whatever, you know, I I was I was using my antisocial behavior to raise my social standing, and it was working. To the point that in eighth grade, I was in the top tier. And, uh, I was running for, uh, for student council president. We called it the GO. Yeah. But, in eighth grade, I became frum. And most of the kids in the class, the overwhelming majority were not. And once again, I was reduced to social pariah. And nobody wanted anything to do with me because I was, you know, that frum kid. So, even though nobody was actually picking on me, I was no longer socially acceptable. But, at that point, it was kind of mutual because what they were engaged in, what I was engaged in, were really two different things. And I wasn't really interested in being a part of that, but I was still socially acceptable. I just wasn't I wasn't in the mainstream, you know. A Sternbach has a beautiful vort where he says, in parshas Balak, it says it says that in order to bring the Leviim into the Avoda that you had completely shave them. Their hair, their eyebrows, their payos, their beards, their mustache, so that they look like a baby. And um everybody had to go through this, all the Levi'im. And Rashi says why? Listen to what Rashi says. Rashi says because the Levi'im were there to replace the firstborn, because the firstborn served the Egel. And the Egel was like Avoda Zara. It wasn't exactly Avoda Zara, but it was like Avoda Zara. And Avoda Zara is called uh Zivchei Meisim, offerings to the dead. And a Metzora, a person with what's defined as leprosy, it's not leprosy, but it's defined as leprosy. Yeah. Uh a part of his purification process is that he has to be totally shaved. So, the Levi'im were totally shaved. When I was in Yeshiva, we used to call this like this, you know, scratching your like this. Yeah. Um Metzora is called Meis, Avoda Zara is called Zivchei Meisim, the Egel is like Avoda Zara, the Bechoras were disqualified because of that, and therefore um the uh Levi'im have to be shaved. Says Rav Shternbuch, Rashi doesn't really seem like a really direct connection, if you think about it. And he says cuz Rashi is trying to give us a concept. The concept is, forget about how you get there, forget about the whole equation. The Levi'im shave their heads and and all their hair like a Metzora. Why does a Metzora have to shave his entire head? Cuz have you ever see somebody who looks like an eggshell. It's a uh uh It looks unusual. It draws your attention. And everybody stares at them. This makes the metzora very uncomfortable. Nobody likes to be stared at. Yeah. When I was learning Koi laws one time, you know, I had a Harusa was a Hasidisha. And I said to him once, why don't you this, why don't you get that? I've got to wear this. He goes, I don't like to stand out. I said, you're dressed in clothes from the 1700s. You already stand out. But nobody wants to stand out, you know? He says, but why did he get tzaraas? Cuz he spoke lashon hara. When you speak lashon hara about people, so then everybody's whispering about them. Oh, you see over there? And they don't know why. They just know that they're being treated sort of like a pariah. They're being treated strange. And nobody knows why. Yeah. So now let's see how you like the treatment. So um So Hirschbach says, the Leviim are being chosen for a position of leadership. If you want that position, then you have to understand you're not going to play to the crowd. You're not going to be what's considered socially acceptable. You're going to go against the grain, and you have to be the one to stand up and say this is wrong, Rabbi Say. And that was often my role. Um My class, we were the second high school graduating class, and we didn't have a yearbook. It was a three-year high school when I was there, Hank. So you're graduating after 11th grade. So my class on their own decided to make their own um yearbook without really any input from the staff. And uh and at one point I saw that they were including this picture of a bunch of people during lunchtime, bunch of the students who went down to the local Jack in the Box. If you're not familiar with that, it's like a McDonald's. And they all took their picture in front of the Jack in the Box holding their meals. And I said, "I'm not prepared to be in a yearbook with a bunch of people eating treif. I don't want my granddaughter to see that." So, I said, "Mister Khainin, I'm a safer kosher keeper. Erase me from this book. I don't want to be part of it." And they said, "Okay." Now, somehow at some point my actions got to the attention of the administration, and they suddenly found out about this whole yearbook thing, and they made them take it out. It's interesting. On the little square where that picture was, instead there's a little drawing of this worker nailing boards onto a doorway where it says censored. And in the corner there's a little Jack in the Box. But, uh as you can imagine, this did not do anything to increase my popularity. I didn't care because you know, I I was prepared to say that. Our English class was going to um I think they were going to Stratford on Avon, I don't remember exactly, to watch a Shakespearean production. And the teacher, who was not religious, Jewish but not religious, she says, "We're going on a class trip, and I don't want anyone telling anybody what to do. Yeah? I don't I'm not there to supervise what people are buying, what people are eating. We're not in school. And if you feel like you can't keep, you know, your opinions to yourself, don't come on this trip. So, it was me and one other from kid but we look at each other and we're like, okay. And we did not go on the trip. We didn't go to the Shakespearean production. And everybody boycotted or did whatever they did. So, the two of us sat in the library and we learned that day instead of going on the trip. And I find out came in and said, you didn't go on the trip? And I said, no. And I said, he says, why? I said, cuz I was not invited. You know, cuz the teacher knew that if I saw somebody buying treif, I would say to them, you're part of a yeshiva, you're not supposed to be buying treif. And the teacher did not want me doing that and so therefore they uh they told me not to come. Well, the uh fallout that the teacher got afterwards uh for this decision and this policy, um did not help her position in the school. And she got taken to task and she was very upset with me. But I said what had to be said and I didn't care because I was the weirdo. I was the kid who anyway was being made fun of and being insulted and on the outs. And I was prepared to take the position that other people would not take. I made the mistake of trying to become socially acceptable at the very end of the year when I should have just said, I want no part of you. Yeah? When when the two malachim come to turn, you know, your class upside down and drop the fire and brimstone, I want to be let out by the angel. But at the very end of the year, they said, look, we're having, you know, they sent a couple of the nicer kids, you know, say, "Listen, the whole class is coming together. We're going to have an end of the year, you know, party. Please come. At least one last time. We'll never see each other again, but at least one last time, let's let the class be together." And I let down my guard. And I said, "Okay." And they took us to the Cafe Baba. The Cafe Baba was doing particularly the Kufur in the early 70s, where there were these Israeli nightclubs, where it was under the OU. The food was kosher, but it was hard for Yavo to go to the actual club to eat in, because there was uh Mamish Isurei Deoraisa going on. Yeah. Now, I didn't know this. The party was in the Cafe Baba. And I go to the Cafe Baba, and um I'm sitting at a table, maybe another kid. And uh this woman singer comes out. Now, I was just out of 11th grade. I was 16 years old. If I If it was today, I would have just picked myself and pushed my way through the crowd out the door. But I was still all embarrassed. Yeah. So, uh she's dressed in a way that Ruach Chachamim Lo Nocha Boi is the expression that Chazal use. The sages would not have been happy with her presentation. And she sings a song. And then she says, "Is there anybody here who's Polish?" And the kids in the class helpfully say, "Orlovsky." And she comes up to me and sings a Polish love song. And something inside of me died that day. And uh and I learned my lesson. Be Shaved Levi. Don't mind if stares at you and says, "Weirdo." Yeah? You You be true to yourself. Um postscript to this story, 10 years later, they had a 10-year reunion. And uh they were making a big barbecue on Sunday on a Sunday at somebody's house. And um uh I was married at that point with uh with a kid. Uh probably a couple kids already. Yeah? And um And again, the same couple of nice kids called me up and asked if I would come to the reunion. And I said, "Thank you very much. I have a previous engagement." Um and in fact, my friend Itchy Lo and Brown, all of a sudden was being honored at a dinner in Baltimore. And I said to my wife, "We're going down to Baltimore to the dinner instead." Took an Amtrak train down with whoever was the baby. And I gave my other kids to my in-laws. Went down to the dinner. When I came back, this one other frum kid in the class who also fell for the trick a second time says, "My boy, were you smart that not to come?" Yeah, all the stuff was like questionable conscious. They were blasting rock music. Nobody was dressed. It was just the whole thing was a disaster. And I said, "There's an old expression, 'Fool me once, shame you on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.'" I I made that mistake one time. So, I'm sharing with you the hindsight of my bullying experience because it made me the iconoclast that I am to this day. I'm able to be an individual. I'm able to stand up against tides. When everybody's doing something, I don't feel the obligation to do it. And I found the strength and it came from and it allowed me to stand up for a lot of my beliefs and situations that I normally would have had a problem with and I stayed strong. Because I was not the cool kid in the class. I was not socially acceptable and I realize in retrospect that had I been a cool kid still when I became from, I probably would have given it up just to be part of the in crowd. Now, obviously this isn't an exact example for a kid who's a firm kid in a firm school already. And a lot of this does not apply. But the bullying does. People pick on people. People make nasty comments. Where's the Rebbe? Where's the mora? And can I tell you from my own children's experience that sometimes they participate in the bullying? And I've seen it myself. And my kids come home in tears. Not just because of what kids said, but because of what the teacher said. That's vicious. So, what do you do? So, the first thing you try to do is talk to the teacher. See if that helps. If that doesn't help, then speak to the principal. See if that helps. If that doesn't help, get your kid out of that school. I survived that kind of a situation, but not every kid does. To be able to be subjected to that kind of abuse. And sometimes it's physical abuse, sometimes you see kids and and this is just absolute evil. Sometimes a kid will pick on another kid and the kid will fight back and they both get punished. I don't know who's responsible here. I'm sending you both home, etc. But this kid is the victim. Why are you victimizing the victim? Why is that okay? Sometimes my kids um some of my kids some of my times they were among the cool kids sometimes. Not everyone all the time, but cool kids they would make an effort to reach out to the nebbie kids. Not because their dad was a nebbie kid, but just they had it in their hearts. I brought them up with a sense of look out for the downtrodden If you can find somebody who will take an interest in your kid and stick up for them and defend them. Yeah. And bribe these kids if necessary. You know, you know how how sad it is when uh um I had I had one of my kids she was not having uh easy time socially. We said, "Okay, we'll make her birthday party and invite friends." The teacher found out about it and said, "No, no, no, you can't make a birthday unless you invite the entire class." 35 girls. So me and my wife sat down and we made a hashbon and we said, "It's kedai to do it to help our kid, you know, raise their social standing." So she took a little pet deck inviting everyone to her birthday, entire class, and she put it up. The teacher saw it and called the principal and the principal came and took it down crumpled it up and threw it in the garbage and said, "No, no, no, we don't we don't have birthdays here. Invite your family." My daughter said, "My family's in America. I don't have relatives here." And she walked out. That's that's evil. I'm sorry. That's bad. They're going to have to give a hashbon of an air fish in the next world for that. A a thing to do. When you have an opportunity to build somebody up and to help them and help their position in the class? And a teacher can go a long way. Because when you have a nebby kid and a thing like that, and you know, and you can ask them a real easy question, the kid answers it, and then you praise him to the sky. And make the kid feel good, and the other kids will look at them a little different, maybe. Spend a little time in them. Yeah, sometimes the kid doesn't have any social training. My My I went to school before my parents were up, and I was asleep before they came home. Nobody taught me. You know, basic hygiene, uh change my clothes. I've told this story before, but kind of tell her who is, of course, one of my heroes. He told me this story that I just think is just so unbelievable. He says his his son had a rebbe who he thought was a very effective rebbe, but he had not mastered the art of personal hygiene. He says, "It could be that his uh uh obviously his parents never taught him." So, kind of tell her came at the end of school, waited till all the kids left, and he said to him, and and the reason that uh that this story is so incredibly impressive is cuz how many of us would put ourselves on the line to do this? And Chanoch says to him, "You're such an effective teacher, and it hurts me that your effectiveness is being limited by something as silly as this. So, this is what I've brought you." And he takes out a bag. "This is soap. This is shampoo. This is toothpaste. This is a toothbrush. This is mouthwash. You know what I'm saying? This is deodorant. Uh I'm going to explain to you what to do with everything." And he gave him a primer in personal hygiene. I don't know the end of the story. It's a literature story. He just told me that he did this. And I thought to myself, what a what a beautiful thing to do. You see a kid who doesn't know how to how to dress or how to how to talk or how to do certain things and you reach out to that kid. One of the reasons I was an ugly kid is that I was not coordinated enough to really play sports. And so I was always the last kid chosen and it was like all right, fine. We'll take our last kid, but you have to give us somebody else. To compensate. When I was in camp, they invented a new position for me called deep center field. You know, by the time I got out there, it was time to walk back. And sometimes I wouldn't even bother walking back, you know. It was uh No one had any use for me cuz I couldn't play sports. If I would if I had been born in ancient Sparta, they would have taken me up to a mountain to die of exposure. It's So, I wasn't I wasn't sports-like. I wasn't cool. I I didn't know how to dress. I didn't you know. I was smart. I was charming. I was funny, but no one knew it cuz nobody would talk to me. And uh have anything to do with me. So, don't let your kids go through this if you can help it. And any school, and I know I have educators who listen to this, you know, you have to make this a priority. And if you see a kid is being bullied, then you figure out how to help that kid. And if you don't know how, then go to the principal, you know. And if that doesn't help, then you go to the parents, but do something. Yeah? As Winston Churchill says, all it needs all evil needs to succeed is for good people to do nothing. Don't let kids be bullied. Don't kid let kids be hurt. You know, trust me, if that was your kid, you wouldn't want it to happen to them. And you know, um as as Rashi says in the Gamara in Sanhedrin, yeah, um banim talmidim kebanim. Your students are like your children. And if you wouldn't want that to happen to your kid, then you don't want it to happen to your student. Stick up for them and help them in any way that you possibly can. Okay. That brings us to the question and answer portion of our program by Anonymous. What is the role of a munich chachamim? If a rav advises that a particular school is better for me without explaining why, but I disagree, am I obligated to follow his guidance? Okay, there's a lot of details left out of this question. If a person says, "I don't think your kid should go to that school." And you say, "Why?" And you say, "Stum." "I have spoken." Yeah, um unless that's a navi, that's not going to work. You are not just within your rights, but obligated to say why. Because obviously, um a posek can only pasken based on the information that they have. If they don't know, they can't really tell you. I heard this story, terrible story, where this husband uh goes to uh Rebbi Elyashiv and asks for a heter to use birth control. And he sets up the shaila in a particular way that Rebbi Elyashiv says, "Well, I I don't see where there's a tzaddik to use birth control." So, he tells his wife, and his wife kills herself. And he goes back to Rebbi Elyashiv. And Rebbi Rebbi Elyashiv says, "You're a rotzeiach. You're a murderer. You didn't tell me that your wife was suffering from depression. How was I supposed to know that? How could I possibly give advice? One of the worst stories that I've had in all my years that I'm working in the field. I was in America with my family and we had a whole day planned. And my good friend Pesach Krohn, should have a full shleima, calls me up and says, "Listen, um this woman said that her son is having hashkafa issues. Uh that's not really my field. Would you mind coming down and speaking to the kid?" I said, "Well, we're on vacation right now." He says, "Well, ask your wife." I asked my wife and she says, "Well, I'm going to be stuck here in my parents with all the kids in this very small house, you know." I said, "Listen, I can't say no to Pesach Krohn if I can go and help this kid. I I Yeah." So, I go and I'm meeting with this kid. And um and uh the kid's extremely negative. And he's saying, "What's the point of life? Why should I do this? Why should I that that that?" And I'm trying to explain to him the mitzvah of teshuvah, why we're created, why we're in this world, but and he just keeps going, "What? What's the point of that? Why should I just kill myself?" So, so I said, I I I kept trying to deal with this from a hashkafic point of view, you know? And um and uh and you know, finally I said, "Don't you understand if you don't think that life has any purpose, etc., then why don't you just kill yourself? Life has no meaning. You know?" I said, "But even in the secular world, they understand that a person wants to kill themselves has a mental issue. Then you need to see a psychiatrist." And he says, "I am. I'm being treated for depression." So, I look at Pesach Krohn, he looks at me. I said, "Did you know?" He said, "I didn't know." Okay, so I tried to backpedal as best as I could cuz I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm not there to deal with these kind of issues. I was told there's a kid who has hashkafa problems, who has questions on Judaism, not someone who's suffering from a form of mental illness. Anyway, I called Pesach Krohn afterwards and I said, "How did the the story end up?" And he says, "Not good. The mother's very upset, you know, etc." Okay. What could I do? I did the best that I could. I didn't know who the mother was. But a year later, I was giving a shiur in Queens, where obviously these people live. The mother comes up to me in public and attacks me. "What you did was a train wreck. You ruined my kid. You messed him up. You made things worse. That Who are you to start talking to a kid with depression? You're not a psychologist." I said, "I know I'm not a psychologist. You didn't tell me that this kid has psychological problems. You told me he has shalom bayis problems." You know, but I couldn't get a word in because she came with a friend and the two of them were just talking and talking and attacking me and I just Wow, talk about no good deed goes unpunished. That's one of the worst things, you know? But I Well, I was So, the thing is, this kid was already depressed. You had him before I did. So, if the kid is depressed, it's not because of me, it's because of you. And now that I meet you, I understand why this kid is depressed cuz if you were my mom, I'd want to kill myself also. You know? So, if someone told me there's a kid who's suffering from some psychological problems and has depression, "Will you come and speak to my son?" Of course not, I'm not a psychologist. So, you gave me the wrong information. So, I would say, "Why? When you tell me my kid shouldn't go to that school, why?" And it could be because you don't have all the information and all the facts. Let me hear what your reason is. But not just Oh, the rabbi said. The rabbi said. What do you mean the rabbi said? Why did the rabbi say it? Um Paysach Krohn tells a story that he was trying to decide between two chadorim and he asked Rav Dovid Cohen. And he this is um one of his uh one of his shiurim that he recorded. So, I feel comfortable telling the story. And he says to him, "Don't send your kid to that um to that place. He goes, "Why?" He says, "Because you're not allowed to teach there unless you have a beard." And Pesachrom didn't have a beard. Reason he didn't have a beard, I think, and he never really spoke it out. The reason he didn't have a beard is because he did a lot of bris him for um uh not religious people. And if you're coming with a big beard, they look at you as a rabbi as opposed to a professional. And he would come in and he would wear like a doctor's coat, etc. And you know, he uh he conducted himself with a lot of professionalism that made secular people feel comfortable. He says, "You don't want to go to a school where your kids might look down at you because you don't have a beard." Okay. Now I understand what your logic is. I understand what you're thinking is. You know, so so of course you you it's not only okay to ask the rabbi why, I would say it's an obligation because it could be the rabbi doesn't have all the information in order to pasken the shaila. And yes, of course, you can ask them why. And David asks, wonderful name, if being zocheh to olam haba and bringing mashiach are some of the main goals for us, how can we know so little about what they will actually look like? That's a good question. Part of it is because there are so many different ways it can work out. We say at the Pesach seder, Hashem chishav et haketz. Kadosh Baruch Hu figured out the time of redemption. Now we all know the Rashi. Rashi says it in a number of places. Avraham is told Yadoa teda ki ger yihyeh zar'acha be'eretz lo lahem ve'avadum ve'inu otam arba me'ot shana. They knew it was going to be 400 years. And we know that the 400 years gets counted from the birth of Yitzhak. And Yitzhak when Yitzhak was born um he had Yaakov when he was uh 60. And Yaakov was 130 when he goes down to Egypt. It's 190. We were down in Mitzrayim for 210 years, as we know Gematria would do. And uh and that's the 400 years. Kishuv is Ketz means if the Geulah was supposed to come earlier, Hakadosh Baruch Hu could have worked out the predictions anyway he wants. Don't worry about it. How the numbers will work out? He's fine with numbers. He can make the Ketz. And that's why when it says 430 years, Rashi says, "We're going back to the Bris bein haBetarim." Which means there's a lot of different ways of being able to count it. And that's why the original Galus didn't have to be in Mitzrayim because it never mentions Mitzrayim, never mentions Egypt. It could have been when Yaakov went to Lavan, that could have been the Galus. It's a prototype for everything that happened in Mitzrayim. And uh we could have been I How do you work out the 400 years? Don't worry, Hashem will work out the 400 years. There's plenty of ways of working out the numbers. Yeah? So, that's why when you have these people who make these calculations, Mashiach's going to come this year, Mashiach's going to come that year. Don't worry about the predictions. God can work out the calculations any way that he wants. Hashem Kishuv is Ketz. There's also different ways Mashiach can come based on what we deserve. Whether he's going to come in a normal fashion or in a supernatural fashion. There's different ways it can work out, different ways it can play out. So, to specify, this is what it's going to be is this is how Messiah is going to come and this is how it's going to work out. I think the most important when it comes to this is it says Messiah is only going to come to us. When you're not looking for him. Yeah? Um There's a scene in one of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books where Ford Prefect who's this alien and he's with uh this guy Arthur who's the last Earth man left, you know. And he says, "One second. I think there's a spaceship." And he keeps looking through the corner of his eye and moving around. He says, "What are you doing?" He says, "Um it's surrounded by a OPP field. An OPP field is makes it invisible. An OPP field is other people's problems." He says, "You could have something with an OPP field and you would walk right over it and not even notice it." That's really The only way you can watch it see it kind of just catch it out of the corner of your eye, you know. So, uh so if you're waiting if you expect Messiah is going to come this moment, he's not going to come. That's not how it works. Yeah, it's going to it's going to be what you don't expect. So, if I tell you, "Yeah, he's coming at this time and in this way and etc." Because Jacob Legolas has a case. Jacob wanted to tell the time of the final redemption, I shall stop him. So, we don't know for sure. There are aspects that we don't know. And therefore, let's say I knew that Messiah is coming in 4 years. Okay? So, I'm drifting till then. But I know that he can come today. Messiah can suddenly appear and I don't know how it's going to work out, but that's okay. There were a lot of things in Jewish history that I didn't see them coming. Oh, Purim is an example. Nobody saw the way it was going to play out in the end until Mordecai came out in the Levush Malchus. Nobody understood it till he came out in the royal clothes, and they suddenly saw that was Haman hanging on the gallows and not Mordecai. Until then, they couldn't understand it. Cuz we think we know and we don't know. The Geulah is going to come in that way. As far as Olam Haba, you can only use Mashalim because it's a place that's only ruchniyus, and how do you explain that to somebody who's gashmi? A person who's physical has a limited ability to understand spirituality, and therefore, I can only explain it as much as I can bederech moshel. And so, all these things have to be used in I remember Reb Moshe Shapiro said once, "Why are so many midrashim written in a fantastical way with really tremendous exaggerations?" He says, "Cuz I'm trying to give words to something that you can't understand." So, I have to try to find things that I can give you that you can use as a basis for comparison and for understanding. So, uh there's an interesting Maharal that also says, "You won't find Olam Haba mentioned in the Torah. It's only alluded to." Why? Cuz I want you to keep the Torah for this world. Not just promising you Olam Haba when you die. I'm telling you that you can get the ultimate pleasure here. As the Mesillas Yesharim says in perek chof vov, holech ba'aretz hachaim odenu po ba'olam hazeh. When you reach level of kedusha, you are walking in the lands of the living in this world. That's the ideal. That's what we're supposed to try to do to a to to get the spiritual pleasure in this world and I'm not selling you, yeah, this world is nothing and give up everything and when you die it'll be good. No, it's going to be good now. By Yom Shmuel, you keep the Torah, you'll get all the bracha now. You see all the bracha in this world and enjoy it. And that's why we can't really describe it because until you've been there, how are you going to experience it? Uh what's your what's your frame of reference? You're not spiritually developed enough to be able to understand what an Olam Haba is. Okay, that's it for this episode. If you want to find out more about the show, you can go to my website rabbialovsky.com. You can leave a comment, you can ask a question, you can sponsor an episode, sponsor parsha in five, sponsor a question and answer. Um you can sign up for one of my online shiurim. Um the uh the t'fillah shiur, the um uh ladies mesilas yesharim, the men's uh daf yomi, and im yirtzashem we're working on the question and answer uh class. If you're interested in that, please contact me and hopefully that'll start after Pesach. And that's it for now. Until next time, this is David Orlovsky and this has been the Rabbi Orlovsky Show. It's the Rabbi Orlovsky Show. Torah and simcha, 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, though we are. It's the Rabbi Orlovsky Show. rabbialovsky.com Torah anytime, YouTube, and more. It's Rabbi Orlovsky Show. Torah and simple, ready to go. It's the Rabbi Orlofsky Show. Till next time, till we meet again. It's Rabbi Orlofsky Show. It's the Rabbi Orlofsky Show.