Constant Kindness (Ep. 175)

hi this is david olowski and welcome to the rabbi yolovsky show watching with our friends over at tour anytime or wherever you watch we'll listen to your podcast it's good to be back with you now let's be uh let's be honest they i haven't done this in a while because the last few podcasts were pre-recorded because i was in america and then we had schwoers and so uh i really haven't recorded a podcast in quite a while it's very exciting today was not the day that i was going to record the podcast i had a very difficult day yesterday was a long day i had an operation on my hand i have carpal tunnel on both my hands so they had to cut open my hand and i just had the stitches out and uh and a bunch of other things and i didn't get to sleep till very late and i said today i'm going to sleep i'm ready to sleep and i just have to go to put a check in the bank that's it the only thing is i come outside and i have a flat tire it's kind of disturbing because i just bought four new tires last week so i called udem which is this unbelievable organization here in nutshell and they come and help you and somebody comes with a compressor and fills up your tire and i take it to the store and i said i just bought this tire from you and there's a problem so they take off the tire and they put it into the big water thing he says there's no leak they look they look and finally they realize it's the little valve the little valve is leaking i said oh we have to replace the valve 50 shekels i said no you just sold me this tire a week ago and i'm not paying you now because you put in a bad valve i almost never win in these situations when they were like okay wow so the tire places across the tree from osha had so i had to go into hojard which of course you know can there are many people who still haven't left there from before schwarz it just it's impossible to get out of a shot so i finally get out and then i go and i put the money in and then i go to mukher to get my medicines and then it was time for milk and so i just said you know what this afternoon i'm going to go to sleep and mikhail said we're filming and i thought and i said okay okay but if i doze off in the middle it's only because uh i really am unbelievably sleep deprived and but on the other hand i'm highly motivated because i really want to tell you about my recent trip to america and uh this to me is particularly significant and i'll explain to you why this trip was particularly significant my wife was a nice normal girl from a nice normal family she was an honors everything she was she was you know she was being set up with like accountants and lawyers and you know professional people who lived in flatbush um warner earners they called them today you know and uh you know i said you'd have such a normal life you know your husband get up in the morning go to shawl and come back it'll have have breakfast with the family maybe drive one of the kids to school go into manhattan work at a desk and come home at night you know have uh have dinner with the family maybe learn with one of the kids and go for his night or you know come home it'll be like a normal life you know instead she married me and it has been a constant adventure [Laughter] which makes me think that there's just something really wrong with her i don't know why she did this i could be now she's stuck but anyway but i have reflected on my life many times and i look at people whose lives are essentially linear and they get a job and they more or less keep that job they more or less have a certain stable existence and i have never had that i have gone through metamorphosis after metamorphosis and so um i was the long island ncsy regional director which means that i was essentially a uh you know a youth director organizational type of a person and okay that's what i was doing going to shabbatanim every shabbos between sukis and pesach it was it was just lots of people in the house lots of things happening you know and then i realized i took it as far as i could now this is something that most people don't do at some point they realize that their life has been more or less maxed out but they stay there anyway so i said okay i i could keep doing this and i'm at the top of my game but i'm not being makadesh anything anymore i'm not i'm not moving onwards so i said that's it i'm i'm going to throughout let me sit and learn come back and go into rum bonus so i came back to his trout i want to sit and learn and suddenly i got offers to teach and eric swells so instead i went into teaching so it's very interesting that people tend to stay where they are even if they realize they've maxed out the experience and people said to me you're at the top of your game now why would you walk away right i knew it's right for the next thing so i come there suddenly i'm given options in uh and i start teaching and i get involved and fine so i'm teaching in seminaries in yeshivas and uh and suddenly i'm getting an offer to go and teach in north summer and they put me on the circuit and i start speaking in different cities and places around and i maxed out my potential uh where i was at that point nurse america and uh so i was waiting for the next place to come along i'm still waiting and uh so to fill the time i started speaking and i went on the speaking circuit and i used to have trips like this once a month and the reason i'm telling you this story is because when i would come home that shabbos after one of these trips and i would sit at the shabbos table i would review the trip with my family and there was one time i came back and i didn't say anything yet and the uh one of my kids said to me um you didn't tell the hashikaka pratis story of your trip and i suddenly realized that was what i would share about the trip not i went here and i went there and i ate this and i ate that and i slept here or something what was what was interesting is that when you go on one of these trips you see tremendous siata de shmaya and uh i remember um it was a country western song i never heard it but i heard the name of it and it had a lot of meaning to me how can i miss you if you won't go away so if you don't have any problems how will you find any solutions yeah mark twain the american humorist was having back problems and he went to the doctor the doctor told him you have to stop smoking you have to stop drinking and you have to stop carousing okay so he stops these things and sure enough his back gets better so one time he's at a um a gathering and there's an elderly woman there and she says complaining about her back so he says well you have to stop smoking she says i don't smoke she says well you have to stop drinking she says i don't drink says well you have to stop carousing she says i don't carouse well if you don't have any problems how can i help you [Laughter] so if nothing goes wrong there's no story they used to say like you know the um uh every uh every book and movie in the old days this was a it was a common trope they would say you know that uh boy meets girl boy loses girl boy voids girl right now if there was not that middle step where there's some problem then you don't get to see the issue with hashem and when things really go wrong that gives you an opportunity to suddenly see that akushbaraku can do great things i've mentioned this in the past i saw a sign many years ago that said before you tell hashem how big your problems are tell your problems how big hashem is when you when you realize that because baruch who can help you right okay so um i haven't had a trip in maybe three years um i don't know what happened just all of a sudden my speaking career just sort of dried up and uh okay but because i've gone through so many different changes i figured coach barrow was getting me ready for the next stage of my life and for me this was particularly significant because when i had my heart attack and my bypass two major doctors told me i shouldn't have made it so i said coach barrical kept me in this world for a purpose and the only one i could figure out is to be a prophet my grandchildren's simchas that's the only reason i'm here and that's why when we started this podcast this suddenly you know gave me a new lease in life but it's basically an hour a week and you know most of the work is because during the week and i just sit here for an hour and i you know i talk and and in fact the one thing i've learned because we've now done over a hundred hours of content and i do absolutely no preparation is that i can just talk about hours and hours that was a new insight to me i didn't know that but anyway in fact you can sign up for our online uh to feel this year which has gotten started a lot of people are uh participating and are getting really positive feedback from it and i haven't had to prepare for a sheer in a very long time but i've never taught feeler i've always wanted to and so i mama you know have to really sit down and prepare it's something it's something really i haven't done in a long time so it's very exciting it's very dynamic for me you know so um so but the podcast you know it doesn't take a lot of time so i think i don't know why coach borrow who wants from me at this point in my life i'm going to wait and find out you know it's it's been a wild ride and he'll take me where he wants me to go anyway suddenly this trip came out of no place um i have an old friend mike ravinsky we go back 40 years and he's in st louis and he decided he's going to bring me out for a shabbos it's been a long time to go to st louis and say okay so basically i think i'm going to come in i'll go to st louis that's what i basically had you know i have uh uh two kids in america i think i have a little time to spend with them and that's more or less what i'll do that was that was my trip and then he he hooks me up with somebody in memphis uh robert frambowitz and um something i'm going to memphis i haven't gone to memphis a long time you know uh last time i was there was 24 years ago so you know uh i guess the next time i'll be going uh i'll i'll be a little older but anyway so um uh so okay city of memphis and then uh i get an email from one of my new best friends uh i edwin in passaic who says let's make a sharon passaic so i was like okay so we arranged that and then one of uh again good friend would go back at least 40 years and um i know that he listens to the rivalski show because i gave him a shout out once and he mentioned it you know of rumi khan in the youngster of west hampstead says let's do an event for lag by omar so suddenly boom i have a trip like i used to have you know i used to be a contender so this is very exciting so i want to share it with you not so much to tell you everything that happened but just to give you the the siata de shamaya um so uh mike has a travel agent in st louis uh murray murray travel and uh he says call him up and book it through him so okay so i figured you know how how complicated could things go so uh he booked me uh the international flight he booked me the uh flight to st louis and when memphis came along i think okay i'll book that myself i mean uh you know it's a straight you know um united uh there and back so be fine you know so uh so fine so i fly out i'm supposed to land and uh about 4 30 5 o'clock in newark i have a rent-a-car waiting for me over at hertz you know and there's a storm like unbelievable thunderstorms newark is closed jfk is closed uh everything is closed they want us to keep circling until we can land but apparently we ran out of fuel and we were going to land much sooner than we had anticipated so the pilot says we're flying to boston [Laughter] we landed boston i was somewhat surprised and uh we have to refuel and we wait until newark says we can take off and go fine eventually we take off we fly um we land in newark we get there much later in the day get my car go to my daughter you know fine crash uh get up in the morning and uh i give a daffo me online through the rubriolovsky website and uh you know i give it in um eric's show we start basically about 2 15 but the people in america have to do it at 7 15 on the east coast now i had to do it at 7 15. that's a terrible hour to have to get up and go to a shirt and then i would go to darvan and take care of whatever else and so that first night then i was it was the second night not counting the uh thunderstorm um we had a rabbi yolowski live show in flatbush the second one in history um we had about 70 people there it was really very exciting so you can watch that of course uh on the ribulovsky website or attorney time or wherever you watch or listen to the show and uh it was really very exciting he's a fascinating fascinating fellow and uh he was on the cover of newsweek and uh his his adventures with the bbc anyway really very interesting and uh fine so the next day uh was er vlogba omer and uh that night i went to the youngest of west hampstead and uh they had a fire going and um uh they had music food it was very exciting and uh and i got up to speak and i didn't realize that i'm standing in front of the fire you know how they say like you know my back's to the fire you know it really was and i didn't realize as i'm talking that my voice is going because i'm trying it out people are bringing me cups of water but i had a great time i think was very nice yeah and uh you know my my parents and the last years of their lives they moved to west hampstead and three of my brothers uh living in west hampstead so it's sort of like you know the fact that they actually hired me to do something you know there's a concept in novi eero so very exciting fine so next day go to newark fly out of st louis i land it was a very rough landing and i found out why because there was a tornado i was landing while a tornado was taking place now if i had been caught in the tornado and actually made it to the land of oz this would be an even better story but that didn't happen i was just stuck in the airport the person came to pick me up was like we have to wait until the tornado watch uh goes i have to say that was the first time for me yeah fine so um we go and uh that night i spoke to the ncsy kids in uh in st louis and uh and mike kept saying something to everybody that he thought was absolutely amazing and i perhaps don't appreciate this so much he said um he talked to these kids for an hour and nobody checked their cell phone evidently that's you know a major thing with kids today but they just can't just can't not check their cell phone so the fact that i was able to keep them engaged for an hour i mean that moved me into a different a different status [Laughter] the next day i spoke in the in the girls school and then we had uh shabbos uh souda in the shawl and that was beautiful it was sold out and then we had an own egg and uh i'm speaking at all these things obviously the next point i gave the joshua shull robbie tendler um exceptional fell i'll tell you more about that later and uh his father was in there so anyway so um uh so he gave the dress and then we had lunch at the rabbi's house and uh with the the sponsors of the of the weekend and then they gave a lady shear and it was pouring it was pouring the shops and uh they set up 50 chairs they said look we never get that many people but you know who knows maybe we'll get a big anyway they ended up bringing in 70 chairs and there was standing room and it was a really large turnout so um [Music] fine so then we went and i gave another show sharon shaw and then we'd had shoulder shoulders you know and the next morning i spoke in another school and uh and then apparently there are a lot of fans of the rebellious show in saint louis which i found surprising of course when i went to arizona during the first year and i met a lot of people who said that they're fans of the raviolansky show i was really surprised but you know in st louis there were so many that they asked to do a live ravioli show we have that recorded hopefully it will go up at some point i interviewed rabbi tendler and we talked about rabbunis and about community and families and challenges and things it was very interesting anyway uh so that was another railway show i flew out of st louis to um laguardia so i landed laguardia and like i say one of my new best friends i edelmans who was sponsoring the sex share said do you need a ride i said look i was going to rent a car in laguardia and drive to passaic and then go from there to newark in the morning of a very early flight out to memphis so he says i'll come and get you and i'll take you to newark in the morning now i didn't realize what that meant on a sunday to go from passaic to laguardia airport is an hour and a half ride and uh he came and he picked me up he takes me home and i didn't realize that his whole family uh raviolovsky show uh uh fans well we don't call them fans we call them crazies so uh in fact the kids put a uh sign on my door you know this is the raviolsky show oh we had lovely uh lovely did it together and then we go to the aguda and we had a sheer uh getting ready for schwooz and uh very nice turnout that was wonderful and then i get a message from united that canceled my flight now i didn't book this through murray but i don't know what to do so i called the united number and after an hour i hung up and i couldn't get through to anybody i don't know what to do they scheduled me for the next night at nine o'clock at night at nine o'clock in the morning flight to put me nine o'clock at night the problem is i was speaking at two schools and giving a lecture during the day so that wouldn't have helped me very much so i call up murray and he says look i didn't book this ticket i said i know but i'm stuck he says there's one seat on an american flight to uh from philadelphia so i'm trying to figure out i'm going to get to philadelphia so of course you know i arranges to get me to philadelphia i get my flight and if you've been flying these days you know how crazy things i've talked about seattle dismayed next to me there was another flight someplace i don't know what it is and the women on the on the loudspeaker keep saying we need 11 volunteers to go on a different flight she says it over and over again and finally she says look this we were supposed to get a plane that holds 77 people and we got a plane that they sent instead that holds 66. so we need 11 people 11 people are not going on this plane i thought to myself like what do you do i mean i got the last seat on this one flight from philadelphia to memphis what would i do otherwise i got there my fromwoods picked me up wonderful hospitality and i spoke in the boys school i spoke to the girls school and uh and then i had uh dinner with another old friend also 40 years ago brad karasik from long island and um him and his family they hosted me for dinner and then i gave this lecture in memphis very very well attended and the feedback i've gotten has been very well received and uh and the next morning i had a flight out at six o'clock in the morning and that night i get a text that's canceled i can't get through to united i try it again hour on the phone so i said look just take me to the airport and i'll try to get on a different flight now happened to be united had another flight at 11 30 but they said there are no seats there's nothing you can do they booked me for the next day i said i can't go the next day i have to have to take care of things in new york i have to go back to israel no flights so the lines were enormous i waited online for you america right no nobody had anything so i waited till about eight o'clock in the morning i figured he was up by then i called murray and he said there are no flights i said i can't stay i gotta get out can you fly me through a different airport or something so types of me the computer he says there's i got you on to a seat on that united 11 30. i said they said there's no seats i asked everybody says you have a seat have a seat i said what do i do he says just go up to the desk give them this number yeah so i get up the same lady who's chased me away three times you know she said there's there's no seats on anything i said i have a seat on this flight because there's no flee there's no seats i said check the numbers she text the number she says this number's not there i said please check it again boy did i darpan i mean i took we talked about the happening and i said you can do anything don't tell hashem how big your problems are i tell you problems how big hashem as i said hashem there's no flights out i want to get stuck here i have to get back to my family you you got to work this out you got to do this for me i'm amish was daviding and she talks to somebody else she said hashem you can do this i know you can you can do anything she comes back with a boarding pass for a first class say no questions asked and uh i flew back quite comfortably i mean this plane first class did with two seats on one side and one seat on the other side i had one seat i had a very comfortable flight i i got to new york later that i planned it was most of the day was over you know and uh got my got my car uh went back to my daughter's house the next day i did some quick shopping did some quick shopping and my daughter packs up for me you know and uh we went out for dinner uh and the next day i had an afternoon flight out of newark so packed up the car drove down to newark now you know usually you have to do a covet test and then you have to bring it to them you have to show it you can't get a boarding pass it's a whole big deal when you have a rental car you have to bring it back to rent the car and then take your suitcases and put them onto a like a little cart take them on the train up the elevator it's a major deal but now united has this thing called um bag drop if you have a boarding pass so because you don't need the test anymore i was able to get a real boarding pass so i pull up take my bags drop them off go to the uh go to the rent the car take the train back get on to the get onto the plane and by the way i had to change the flight because when the memphis thing came up there were no seats and maury got me a seat i had a a window uh right up in the front and a bulkhead and uh and i came back i forgot one more detail as i was going i usually take a suitcase with uh so that i have suitcases in america to bring things back etc my wife says listen you used to just take a uh a carry-on when you went by yourself just take your carry-on you don't have to wait for luggage you know it'll be easier for you because we landed in boston by the time we landed in newark there was no luggage when i came out off the plane there was no no luggage there was nothing there was nobody there there was no there were no customers nobody and everybody's sitting there waiting to see what's going to happen except for me because my wife told me to take a carry-on so i walked right out you know when when i realized how everything went and everything that i go through on this trip first of all it's a tremendous research borough who allows me the opportunity to be able to go and like i say i used to do a trip like this every month be able to go and speak to people and connect with people and to be mashpira they say that the reason the reshishiva don't have money is because they have to go into gullus to be able to collect money and so people get to hear them speak it's also true about our speakers you know we go out there uh to have a chance to speak and the fact that i had an opportunity to be with so many wonderful people to be able to speak to people i can't tell you what a chaser is and that is tremendous yatadishmaya so that's what i wanted to tell you but there's one other thing i must tell you as i'm on the flight back this young lady comes over to me and says oh you know we met once upon a time you're sure yeah i'm rabbi stolper's granddaughter and i said ah robbie stopper you know i when i started working in ncsy in 1979 he was the director of the ou and i had this he had started ncsy originally and uh it was uh such a source to be able to talk with him and and to be a part i mean i was one small part of this enormous thing that he created i said so what are you doing here he says he was just nifter we're going to tear itself for the levia my father's on the plane you know i'll tell you a story i was doing a shabbos in a hotel up in the mountains and it happened to be ruby stafsky was there with his family for those who don't know the name and many people don't ristowski was uh the rev of columbus ohio for many years he built the town there were certain people who married built orthodox communities he was one um emmanuel feldman in atlanta there were people who went and created torah scratched in the dry earth of america to be able to plan torah it was very rough um rabbi mayor fidel stark he should be well he came out to long island started the hebrew academy of nassau county he wrote a book about his life the title was taken from an ad that he took out in the local paper called looking for nine people to start an orthodox minion yeah and that's how he started the youngest of west hempstead and that's how he slowly started to build torah and uh and eventually he convinced my father to send the three younger boys we went to hank and uh and as a result of that my parents who are no longer around but they have almost 100 great-grandchildren who are all being brought up with torrent mitzvos so he came to one of the family centres and one of the grandchildren one of my nephews says to me who's that guy i said that guy is the reason that you're a firm jew that's who that guy is [Laughter] so ruby stafsky was there he was retired at that point nobody really appreciated who he was and i said i want you to appreciate the fact that we are in the presence of greatness it was people like this who ruby wine tells the story when he uh came to america he wanted to buy excise and the guy in the judaica store laughed at him and said there will never be a concise sold in america he says when i got a copy of the first one i sent to them i sent them a copy of it when the first one was published you know but it was like no one could believe it and there were people with yeshmahain who created things out of nothing and among the greatest was rabbi stopper who created ncsy it was it was kirif we didn't there was no cure this was back in the 50s there were different synagogue organizations but he came up with this comp of using the synagogue organizations because orthodox shows there were there was no day school movement yet to speak of so these kids all went to public school and they were all disappearing even though their parents were diverting into actuals so he started ncsy as a youth organization that would get together and we'll have youth activities and use that as a means to be able to teach them about torah and he changed the face of america and uh he should be emailed to you shafa's and for kaiser i mean there are people who have vision and there are people who are doers and sometimes the two of them come together in one individual and that was in my opinion rabbi stalper and uh we we can just it's just amazing when you see what people did in the old days heroes okay so that brings us to the question and answer uh portion of our program anonymous asks can you explain the khazal that says torah can be assam or assam hamadas it can be a poison or an elixir of life how can learning torah have a negative effect on someone oh it's very easy i'm sorry to say yeah you know the madrish isaiah levonnon about the asarahuge malchus it starts with the roman emperor got someone to teach him torah and when he came up to the part that says if you sell a jew as a slave you get the death penalty so he called in ten and he said doesn't torah say that kidnapping is punishable by death they said yes he says so where are the ten brothers that sold yosef into slavery they're not here but the debt has never been paid and you're going to pay that debt the measure starts with because he uh um he learned torah um you can use torah as a sword instead of a shield and you can learn torah and come up with ways to use it to abuse people like everything everything everything is a is a tool right there's a big issue now in america about gun control right and people on the other side point out that look at how many of these shooters were stopped by people with guns the guns shot the shooter who was shooting the other people if he didn't have a gun and so that guns aren't inherently bad just like a car isn't bad when a guy in wisconsin drove his car into a parade and killed a bunch of people it's not because cars are evil it's what you do with them you know planes aren't evil but 911 when they drove them flew them into the twin towers and destroyed them that they turned it into a weapon so torah has the ability that if you misuse it you can use the wisdom that's why it says you you can't teach uh talmud someone who's not proper someone who's not appropriate you have to know who you're teaching and and if it's worthwhile to teach in this torah or what they're going to do with it so i i think that's what it means anonymous asks how do you gain self-confidence how could i not let other people affect me for example you once spoke how you let people make the same joke about the matzatai every year and you didn't care thank you for making the podcast and especially the question and answer segment i really enjoy it thanks me too um i had no confidence i have no confidence my parents brought me up with the belief and they believed it and they and they made sure that i believed it too that i as a person am i yolo yutzla i will never succeed in anything and if my father doesn't come up with some way to support me after he's dead then i will starve to death and i can't do anything and i integrated this message and i really believe it on a very deep level and it used to freeze me there was a point in my life when i couldn't do anything i just i just felt that i i couldn't do anything and uh it was a friend in yeshiva who really helped me at one point he said okay so you're not happy you know and it's very hard for you do it anyway and that's what i did when i got involved in ncsy in los angeles so at a shabbaton at some point during the ruach so a person gets up on a chair and does some kind of shtick and does some funny songs and and uh you know we'll come up with something to get the crowd going i said he makes the very best s-h-a-b-b-o-s shabbos is the day of rest yeah you get the idea and those kind of things um t-z-i-z-z-i-s put them on and then get dressed like everyone's chanting along you know when i was in high school i went once to a yeshiva seminar or yeshua university and richard joel and this uh fellow khatul yeah they used to do this and they had the shtick the full ebola rubber you know and they would do these crazy songs and things and and everybody was just sitting on every word it was it was an amazing thing anyway i was in los angeles i was tricked into taking an nc's white chapter i knew nothing about ncsy and the the guy who tricked me into doing it says don't worry i'll stand by you sorry to walk you through this and uh and the next day and the next day the next week he resigned and uh i didn't know what to do so lee sampson who was the um oh you director but it started ncsy he says okay listen you know we'll we'll just have to keep going i don't know what i was doing my first shepherd tone that i ever went to i'd never been to a chapel town they asked me to be program coordinator i said i thought maybe i would see a chamotone first before i coordinate the program by the end of that shabbos they offered me to be the la coordinator i said i've never run a chapter this is my first shopping tone i don't think i'm ready to become the la coordinator yeah so i really i learned it as i went along so at the first major chamber tone big shot of tone they asked me to do the shtick get them in the chat they're sticked i've seen people do it but so i had to get up in front of hundreds of kids and do funny songs do bits i'd never done this before i i it was from reports okay because i'm i'm not very objective from reports it was unbelievable it was it was great i have to tell you i went on to become long island director of ncsy i had that job for nine years i was very successful but in la i was a god i could have started my own religion this was la in the 70s i'm down here we could have all put on white robes and you know it would have been amazing you know the magic that was going on in that room and i got off the chair and i was literally i went to the back i was literally doubled over in pain i was so humiliated i felt like i was just made a big fool out of myself an idiot and i just but i would force myself to do it even though it was killing me first time i had to do like a real lecture for adults it was in england i was staying with the franco family and uh hendon and i was speaking at the menorah grammar school dinner and i was i was doubled over in pain getting up to speak i was and uh they were saying to my wife because he's not serious he goes yeah he's serious it was devastating for me and i had to take a deep breath and jump in there and do it because i knew intellectually i could do it but it was killing me it changed to a large extent when i got married and uh when you get married it changes because when someone says i believe in you enough to spend the rest of my life with you that's a big thing that's a real confidence booster and uh and i try to build it from there but i will never be high on myself because i always hear my parents telling me you're a failure you have always been a failure you'll always be a failure which keeps me very grounded you know if if if i ever stop to think of the reactions that i get from people and what they tell me the effect that i've had on their lives i would just i wouldn't be able to i wouldn't be able to do this luckily no matter what anybody says to me i can hear my parents saying we know the truth so the answer is you just have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going and i will tell you the following and this is what i try to focus on everyone's going to have service in life sometimes it's going to be health problems sometimes it's going to be financial problems it's going to be problems in your marriage problems with your kids all kinds of problems the best problems to have are humiliation it's the best so someone makes fun of my tie you know i got off really easy people make fun of me people call me names you know i i've been killed three times on the internet if you've never been murdered on the internet it's really an exciting thing and apparently there's life after that but three times they killed me they they schmidted me you know and yet i love to tell the story you know but i remember one guy was attacking me and he says you're nothing but a third-rate seminary teacher i said that's not an insult that's a job description like what that's what you're going to say there's nothing you're going to say to me than my rebate haven't said worse did i be like you know i'm not impressed so you just have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going yeah um you've mentioned in the past how other mahava symbolized the ideal marriage one man one woman if so why are men holocally allowed to have multiple wives and once you've answered that by the same logic why can't a woman have several husbands okay when i say the ideal marriage is one man and one woman that is correct and that's why the torah allows you and that's how they the the medici learns it out it allows you to have two wives but if you read over there in the medrash the the progression is if a man marries two wives it doesn't say he should he can if he marries two wives and one is beloved and one is hated he says that's the next step and then comes the parsha of ben soro mower because it's it's not going to end well not going to end well so why is the possibility there why do we have the possibility possibility is there because let's take uh abram and sir they married 10 years in their child they couldn't have any children i remember there's a misfortune he has to take another wife so now you're sorry and you have an option you could tell your husband take another wife and and keep me around or get rid of me and take another wife so i preferred to stick around with a co-wave than to be sent away sometimes these things happen yeah um in yemen almost all of the men were wiped out they were left with 600 men and a lot a lot of women and they put a harem on benjamin they couldn't marry anybody outside of their shaver talk about a shuttle crisis only 600 men so women wanted to have the opportunity to get married and have children i'd rather be a second wife than never to get married yeah so the option exists it is not advised and and that's why why why did abraham have two wives because one of his wives couldn't have any children why did you have two wives he was tricked i switched them when you wake up in the morning of your wedding and you find out that you got your wife's sister by mistake it is so awkward trust me you don't know what to do [Laughter] so i could sparkle arranged that that was that was yad hashem but as a rule with the exception of a melech where the torah tells him he can have more than one wife because he's not getting married for himself he's getting married for the people he's the late he has to unite all the different parts of clay israel maharal says he's allowed to have 18 wives why because if you think of the world as a cube there's four sides and up and down is six and if you measure the edges that's another 12. so you put those 12 edges and the six sides together it's 18. that's the maximum possibilities within this world and he has to have the ability to bring together all of the people now took it further he figured i'll marry a woman from every nation and that way my son will be the heir to the throne of every kingdom and i'll spread god's word that way he made a mistake not because the heisman wasn't a good because hashem said no that was the mistake that he made and but now okay so that's why it is not advised but it is possible so now why can a man have more than one wife but a wife can't have more than one husband a lot of this is about the nature of men and women men are and we've spoken about this in the past if you go back to the shidduch series men are external they do things externally they relate externally they have to take hashem's name and tie it onto their head and tie it onto their arm you know whereas a woman can experience that internally a woman reaches inside of herself if you find relationships um with men there tend to be a lot of different people involved when there tends to be a relationship with women there's much less i'm i'm speaking obliquely uh but i'm even oven yeah so uh so men are able to relate on their level on that external level they can externalize a lot of different people and things whereas women internalize that relationship and so they can't internalize two different people it's going to be one or the other and so uh that's the way coach burke who set us up okay one more and then uh and then i'll have to call it an end for this for this time we've got more to talk about but anonymous asks i have a question about evolution of the rabbi yolowski bookshelf is it a real bookshelf in robertolovski's house when did the shelf become a green screen does raviolowski travel with the backdrop of a bookshelf if robioloski got a new bookshelf would the green screen change as well this are such wonderful questions um if you go back and watch the special episode with producer mccoyle about how this whole thing started um the first episode if you look at it which looks a little bit like a hostage video it was in my bedroom in the corner and i'm you know it wasn't too exciting and people wrote in and said why don't you do it in front of a bookcase with like you know a dining room chair and we said okay so i took my dining room chair and i sat in front of it and every week mohawk would come to my house with the lighting and the microphones and the cameras and set everything up and we'd film it over there and of course we'd have to keep stopping as one of my kids would walk in or the phone would ring or it would go on like this you know so after a while he said look this is this is really not tenable i'd rather set up more of a you know recording studio in my house with a green screen and he brought in a professional photographer and took pictures of my bookcase and that's what goes on by the way you can use my the rebel rolovsky bookcase as a backdrop if you write in we will send you a copy of it that if you have a zoom or something like that you can put it in yeah and you can also have the raviolowski bookcase as back in fact when i was doing some zoom meetings with project inspire um rev gov who evidently is a lot better at playing with the zoom than i am i don't really know what to do you know and uh i forgot it was in one of the shirum and i said uh um i don't know uh mikhail wants to do whatever it is you know and i said listen if mccall gets upset at me then that's it it just you know that's the end of everything you know he says no we can still have the zoom i said no i don't know how to use the zoom if he turns off the circle that's it i just sit in my room and talk to myself which is what i did for many years so uh so uh so he uh he sets it up he took pictures professional fishing because of the bookshelves and those go on the backdrop on the green screen and that has become iconic i've had people come from america to take their picture in front of the bookcase now does the bookcase change yes it does in fact one of the things mccullough had to do after he set up all the lighting and the microphones and the cameras was to clean up the bookcase which was a big mess and he would take over all the books that were there and the little cards that my kids would leave there you know i mean little toys you know and you know little suffrage that i might have been reading them like everything to get up and then he would hang the raviolsky uh show sign if you remember that whole exciting thing and that's how it went so the bookcase is real the pictures are frozen in time the bookcase is constantly changing but the pictures are not and uh it could be that at one point if we get new bookcases because if you look closely at the picture i don't know if you can see it when you get a big picture one of my bookcases is leaning and it keeps tilting a little bit more and the my family is really concerned about this because these things are pretty heavy and if they topple over on somebody it's going to be bad so i decided to be proactive and i found some loose coupler and i pushed the bookcase and propped it up on the bottom with copper so i think i stopped the tilting but i don't think that that's what we would call a long-term solution so at some point we're going to get new book cases and then i guess at that point we'll have to take some new pictures and anything can happen but if you come to herzel and you give me a call and people have done this you can take your picture with me right in front of the bookcase or you could just get a picture of the bookcase and put it on your own backdrop and take your own picture and do whatever you want right so that's the story of the ever-changing evolutionary bookcase and that's it for this episode if you want to find out more about the show you can go to my website bibialowski.com you can leave a comment you can send an email you can sign up for one of our online shure and we have two basilisk shiram we have uh daphyomi which is every day except for saturday and uh we have uh the new fila series which has just started and i always stress it's a standalone i understand people may be hesitant to join with silicon even though whenever you come in we can catch you up in a few minutes that's not a problem but um uh but the tv series each one is a standalone because if uh we explain eloqua abraham you don't have to know anything else that we've said until we get there right it's a standalone thing and you can have that kavona when you're dominating for that so uh you could sign up for one of the online shiram you can sponsor an episode we haven't had sponsors in a long time yeah you could sponsor an episode and uh you can download the ruby alaska theme song so you will send you a picture of the bookcase ravioli could do your own show yeah it'll be very exciting yeah and uh and that's it and uh until next time i am devon lavsky and this has been the rabbit alaska show [Applause] it's the rabbi orlovsky show tauren [Music] knowledge and wisdom will help you grow lots of fun in every episode and we don't have to rhyme it's the rabbi orlovsky show on rabbi orlovsky.com torah anytime youtube and more it's rabbi orlowski show torah till next time till we meet again throughout my orolowski show it's the rabbi orlowski show it's the rabbi yorlowski [Music]