Disrespecting Our Elders (Ep. 219)

hi this is D owski and welcome to the rowski show whether you're watching with our friends over at toy time wherever you watch or listen to your podcast as always it's wonderful to have you along and we have a sponsor uh for this episode anonymously uh thank you and he honor of the greatest magic Shear you know it's interesting I'm going to be talking about my parents and uh my mother for my 12th birthday got me my first magic set that's how I started becoming a magician and it comes with a certain limited number of tricks and after a while people were bored so I had to go and get more tricks and that's how I became a magician and uh I wasn't that good at it that's why I I never pursued it but uh you know that trick where you you know saw a woman in half so I have two half sisters anyway that's that's a magician joke a bunch of magician jokes notice that my fingers never leave my hands that's a magician joke or um the uh my brother was also good with his hands he gets out in five years so uh these are these are stand the magician J they say the hand is faster than the eye that's why there are so many black eyes anyway the these are all terrible magician jokes anyway so thank you so much for the sponsorship um I'm in a interesting spot right now uh when this podcast comes out I just had my father's yard site and I'm about to have my mother's yard site and uh they died 20 years and six days apart the same week uh usually it's it's just enough that I can't get in one shabus beforehand that each gets their own shabas but it's like one right after another so that people really get sick of me as the old joke goes his father made him an Oren but he didn't make him a kazin now I I wouldn't go so far as to make fun of my uh my um musical talents but uh certainly um people ask me to speak much more often than they ask me to sing and uh number of my children who are quite musical so one of them said to me you know ABA you're very good with the tune you know not necessarily the [Laughter] harmonies so uh I always try to stick to the tune then if that's the case but in any event so I'm right in between my mother and my father's yard site and um and it's of course pares yro and in Paras yro we have the mitvah of kib aim that Hashem commanded us to honor your mother and your father now there's a reference in Theos to the fact that we're already familiar with this because in last week's paraa when they were at MAA it says they gave them they gave them some paros to learn and what did they give give him so the gar says there were four things they gave him paruma shabis uh mtim which is civil law and K and when Rashi says it over he leaves out he mentions the other three so the Mahal explains how to look at these Mitzvah now you know there's different ways to look at mitzvah uh what does the say at the Seder so you see he divides the the Mitzvah into three groups uh a people usually translate this as a as a law that makes no sense but that's not really true because you see the say and the r they all give reasons for the Mitzvah so to say it doesn't make any sense it's not fair rather it's a law you would not have thought up on your own a mish is a law that you would have thought up on your own yeah societies can come up with don't kill and don't steal but they wouldn't necessarily come up with don't eat pig and don't wear shess not that there's no reason for it but they wouldn't have come up with that law on their own they wouldn't have thought of it on their own K has to teach it of course even our MIM are not just Mish as the PK says also yeah our we didn't make known to the regular world we have a different way of looking at law than other societies do and uh there are exceptions different laws that apply and things that come in the fact that if you steal a cow and she it you have to pay back five cows and if you steal a sheep and Sh that you have to pay back for a sheep that's not something that a normal society would come up with yeah so even Mish are different but Mish are things that are considered more or less civil law that people would have thought up so you have you have aish and is aid for that is there to testify so shabis is clearly an adus yeah it's testifying that a created the world and uh that's why when we sayu it's two people saying it together standing up up because they're giving adus it's a testimony that Hashem created the world the fact that you have a 7-Day week is testimony that Hashem created the world there's no reason to make a a a week of seven days I understand a month is how long it takes the moon to go around the earth I understand the year is how long it takes the Earth to go around the Sun I understand the day is how long it takes the earth to revolve on its axis but there's no reason for a uh for a 7day week in fact nabo and bonapart who was uh in a um standardization mode he wanted to make all of the measurements standard based on base 10 and that's why he came up with the metric system and 100 th equal 100 th equal 100 th and that's how everything goes you know uh 100 you know thousand grams makes a kilogram you and th000 kilograms makes a metric ton so uh things like that he wanted to do the same thing with time he wanted to make a 10mon year and a 10 uh day week didn't catch on you know but uh but that's what he was trying to do is to standardize everything uh metric thing but if you have a seven-day week it's because you understand that created the world in six days and rested on the seventh and that's how we have uh a week shabas is adus and paruma is of course the ultimate and it's in Paras for exactly that reason it's a it's uh it's something that one struggles to understand and uh which is M that's that's all the laws that go in that's one way of looking at it there's another way of looking at it this is what the maharal says and that is depth and bread means what shabas has a lot ofas right when you come to Shas shabas has its own M and aravan is basically also a shabas m and almost every M has some chabas sugas in it and it pops up all over the place there's a lot of laws of shabas as we all know there's a lot a lot of Halas that are associated with it and how it goes and what you're supposed to do and and that's complicated so that gives you the breath of Torah um denan is all uh the depth dep of Torah it's the it's the understanding the gar says if you want to become uh smart want to sharpen your mind learn Nim the Zin um it doesn't say Kim today a lot of Yas they like to do kajim because the brisk is the kajim and everybody wants to pretend that they're brisk you know all these different I had a couple of guys from one of these brisk shivas at my house for shabas and it was pretty cold they were walking home and I said this is good weather for you they said why I said it's brisk Get It Anyway unfortunately my tea is not lipin which is brisk yeah Brisk tea but anyway so um uh it's the depth of learning depth so one teaches you do the breath of Torah one teach you to do the depth of Torah and uh and paruma teaches you the concept of the secrets of Torah there is a esoteric area of Torah that is not based on how many laws there are how deep it is it's just Secrets it's secrets and you understand that Torah has um has a different level to it somebody asked Shapiro how do you instill amuna in people today and uh he said cab says when you show him the secrets of Torah the depth of Torah it has his power to really inspire people with h with a sense of auna because they understand that this is just not normal this is there's something very very special here going on on so that's the three categories so why did Rashi leave out K he says Kim is a different category he says it's what he calls a Mitzvah tivis what does that mean natural Mitzvah it means that if there was a Mitzvah to breathe you wouldn't really have to learn that one because that just comes naturally you know that's part of your nature and he says is a mitvah people want to be their parents that's what he says and [Music] um uh it's a uh it's a Mitzvah that listen what the gamar says the gamar says that this man overheard his wife talking to his daughter who was being promiscuous and he said she says to her you should be more discreet look I have seven sons and only one of them is from your father now they didn't have DNA testing back then so when he died he left uh his entire estate to My One True son so how do you know so they go to the Bon he tells them um your father will answer you go down to his grave with sticks and bang on the grave until he gives you an answer okay so they're banging they're banging they're not getting any answer and they come back he says I don't understand you went to the Grave he says yeah with sticks yeah and you beat on the grave yeah everybody says no not yanle he didn't think it was Co he says that's the real son he had no way of knowing any more than the rest of you but somehow on the inside he understood that your father it was it was part of the of a person so for that you don't have to tell anybody that's something that a a person should uh have as a natural thing now when we talked about chalas we mentioned how if you eat shalas you're protected for GOOG and what's gogogog yeah so the gar bras that we quoted at the time said that the capital of tum chapter of tum that talks about of shalam is right next to the one that talks about um gogogog why because in case you say go all the nations in the world are going to go up against God that'll never happen I'll show you that a son will turn against his father I heard from Shapiro says it's the Mah say to want to honor your parents and the fact that today we find children rebelling against their parents now understand in Europe during the haskala people rebelled but it wasn't against their parents it was against Judaism I still remember a generation where um the parents were from and the kids weren't and they would drive to the old neighborhood on chavas Park a block away put on a yamaka and drop in on their parents I was in the neighborhood they had that much respect it it wasn't about their parents they used to say about the mafia people you know they might be a Hitman like this but he was good to his mother good to his mother Harry Houdini's father was a RV or's R in Wisconsin he obviously went off and married a shik best but um um but he was always M his mother and the fact that he got involved in the spiritualist movement is because he was desperate to get in contact with his mother and he went to one of these people and this like ghost appears and starts talking to him and he says that's impossible my mother only spoke yish so Harry Houdini whose real name was Eric Weiss by the way um you know he was always M his his mother and this was this was normal p p you know people would uh my father had a lot of issues with his father but he was always M him and always took care of him and used to tell us you know your H your grandfather we sawed from my father today my I don't have to tell you you parents tell kids things and they say no I'm not going to and and people in my generation were like didn't you get the memo like I am the parent and I tell you what to do and you do it because that's how it works it's worked for thousands of years but not in this door saysa that's the r that we're in gogogog because the r of gogogog is children turning against their parents for no reason people turned against religion but they didn't turn against their parents and the fact that we see that going on that's the Rah and so when I teach missil Sharm and I uh I come to the point where it says you have to love Hashem like a child loves his father they don't know what I'm talking about I had kids who said to me I don't owe my parents anything they decide to have me they owe me I don't owe them a thing yikes so here I am in between my father's yard site and my mother's yard site and uh if I could live my life over again I would definitely do it differently on a lot of different levels one is I would have bought Amazon as soon as it came out but okay that's uh that's a that's that's water under the bridge as Ted Kennedy likes to say but um the uh the fact that I um I could have been a much better son to my parents no question about it I wasn't appreciative they gave me life they took care of me you know were they perfect no I no perfect people did they make mistakes sure had a guy said to me once am I if my parents are I said didn't they pay tuition to send it to a Yeshiva day school and you think they're a sh you don't you don't know what a Russia is we we can't even imagine such a thing today but uh uh but where's your appreciation where's your to this is a this is a big problem and you know ad marish the first thing that he did wrong he was a kuo to he says oh the woman that you gave me that's why this happened says that's how you react the fact that I I gave you a wife I I I made you a soulmate the the lack of appreciation lack of HOV and the fact that people today um don't want to be M their parents that's a that's a sign that um that we are mamish in serious trouble this is goo MoGo This is the End of Time it means we're not people anymore you understand the part of The Human Experience that's what you find in midst of K aim in a very strange Place chase away the motherb bird before you take the babies because even an animal understands you know our parents parents care about them it's uh it's something that's TV it's something that's natural to us so I look back that uh lost my parents now so many years ago and uh remember I lost my mother I suddenly hit me I'm a yome which you don't appreciate until like Yan comes around and you want to call your parents say hello then nobody there okay so you know find other ways but um but I felt like it is so important especially is I'm in between two y sites to speak about the hakar that we owe our parents my uh my father uh his father came from venro Poland never learned English worked in the Garment business and uh the way my father tells it he was not uh he was not that concerned about providing for his family he bought himself nice clothes um my grandmother had to hide money uh in order to uh buy milk for the children it was nothing there it was uh uh he liked to play peanuckle and he wasn't particularly good at it apparently and um my father knew real hunger he dropped out of school after 8th grade to go to work to help support the family cuz you know my grandfather wasn't doing it you know and um and uh he would always describe his mother as a saint you know who did everything in fact is very interesting because my grandfather wanted to marry my grandmother because her family uh owned a dress Factory and he figured he'd get an easy job but she only wanted to marry Tam and my grandfather was many things but he was not but he had a brother yov who is a and he had her him write letters to her and he signed his name with and things and she thought wow this guy's you can only imagine the surprise when she married him olski have not really changed in thousands of years anyway so um uh so but she was I mean you know the children loved her like uh you know the the the dubna family and I have Theus of being in touch with some of the dubas to this day and um you know they uh they they came from vishk they were you know very classy family andem you know uh they they were from family but like I say if you wanted to work back then you work chabas my father worksh was and he had no Ed Jewish Education my my grandfather didn't get him any Jewish Education whatever he grew up with he remembers he remembered in Brownsville you know carrying the chalant home from the baker you know they everybody would put their chant in the baker's oven and You' carry home your chant for chabas you know he remembers that he remembers singing in the choir with the great Kim who would come to Brownsville you know for shabas to uh I would say Davin but probably to perform my father was in the choir and his Uncle B and and his brother Bernie they would sing and my father had a Kaz voice and he'd love to sing Kus and he would love to play kazha records for me I I think if I go to heaven it'll be because of that that I sat there and listened to his kaz's records which to the this day I hear kazus and I want to just eat my arm chew it [Applause] off yeah [Music] anyway so um so he had one goal in life and he wasn't shabas he wanted to marry a Jewish girl and bring his children up to be Jewish not from Jewish that was that generation my mother came from a much more assimilated family and and it's kind of ironic her mother was the daughter of a Big R in Villa um rudnitzki Aram ficial red nitzki he was written up and um and he uh he was um it's a big time and when the pagum started he sent his kids to America my grandmother came to America she was a teenager she was on her own and uh she married a fellow from Odessa who my mother says did not go to SCH onum Kipper that's how assimilated he was but he was a hardworking fellow he bought himself a bus and there were no city bus lines back then all the bus lines were private and you would drive around and make your own route and he got another bus and another bus and he built it in into a bus line and um uh and it turned into a company and then he brought his brothers over from Europe and put them into the business and so my mother grew up in at the time laurelon was considered a fancy neighborhood and they were much more well off my father was dirt poor my mother came from a comfortable family she went to art school she was uh you know my grandfather died when when she was a teenager and uh his bus lines turned into the Green Line bus company in Queens and um and when he died it was suddenly pneumonia they didn't have antibiotics yet uh his brothers all squeezed my grandmother out of the company for years whenever I would go to Queens and I'd see a green line bus I'd say that's my bus I should have had a bus company instead of a Rabbi I could have been a babus but uh you know the they uh things got a little strapped but she still had some stock or whatever they're managing but uh it was she grew up in a house with very little and uh my father met my mother and they got married and my father said I'm going to have a a Jewish home so my mother didn't know exactly what that meant but she was like sure go along with whatever my father wants my parents were married almost 50 years and they were always in love now that generation they had a good expression they used to holler they didn't yell they hollered what are you hollering I'm not hollering you're hollering it's better than yelling today people yell back then they would holler and they would argue and they would fight and they were crazy about each other except when my mother was in the hospital having a baby my parents were never apart they were always together when my father was in the hospital my mother was by his side the whole time when my mother was in the hospital my father went to work you yeah I'd visit her but uh my father wanted a dozen a dozen kids when when my brother was born Bruce was the sixth he brought her a mink stole he says give me another six and I'll get you the hook coat but uh it was unusual back then to have six kids we were we were the Talk of the Town you know six boys it was very unusual but uh my father wanted to have children and he wanted to provide for them and he had a business and he worked and he worked and he worked to be able to provide and uh and then at some point he went bankrupt cuz he had a bad accountant so he says how could I be bankrupt I work day and night and he says well you have too many trucks you have too many workers you he said but that's your job as my accountant to keep track of the expenses he goes well anyway I took my last bill and you're on your own and my father had to literally rebuild and I was at that point that one of my brothers was considered too smart for public school and the school said to a private school now my father left school after 8th grade he grew up in Brownsville what's a private school me to Yeshiva so he looked up the local Yeshiva the Hebrew Academy of nassa County and he sent uh this brother and R fendel convinced him to send the three younger boys and uh we ended up in Yeshiva and my father didn't have the money for this I said to my mother once how did you manage so I didn't buy new dress so we didn't go on vacation we managed it's a little less I often talk about how in life it's often one decision that makes all the difference in the world and uh and that's what when the gar says all Beginnings are hard yeah so T says that's what it means when it says gasa takes away one 500th of the light of your eyes he says it's just the first step because you could go on a Thousand Mile Journey but it begins with the first step and that's why people make certain decisions in life my parents if they were alive would now have a 100 great grandchildren all of them being brought up in tan Mitzvah you look at other branches of the family there's nothing left because they took that one step that one pagasa they said I'm going to sacrifice and get my kids a Jewish Education that changed everything and so all the things that I do in life all the to my father and my mother and the sacrifices that they made yeah I I would think to myself you know I'm speaking about myself I was such an ingrate I didn't appreciate what my parents did for me um my my father had all these children and worked hard to support them and to take care of them send them to school pay tuitions you know my father would help when it came to buying a house and he would always say my greatest pride is that all my children have houses that they can live in they can afford a house yeah it was uh it was amazing he got older like all people of a certain age they lose they luse contact with reality you know my mother would send me shopping I used to do the shopping you know come back and says tuna fish what are you talking about they're five for a dollar my mother would be like no not for 40 years Dad yeah the price has [Laughter] changed and they were very mid that my mother don't talk to your father that way my father don't talk to your mother that way they were there parents it was uh it was the kind of thing where there was a sense of covet he always had a covet r on him he became from when he was 67 and uh you know spent his uh his last years but he always wanted to do it it was such an interesting thing at a certain point he would go away to from hotel for PES he went to the earliest manim he went to every Shear he went you know there was one time I came in to give a class and uh someone says to my mother not knowing that my mother says oh isn't he isn't he wonderful and she says yes he speaks very well you know she goes I hear his parents aren't from my mother says you can never tell these [Laughter] days and it's such an interesting thing I remember I said to my father once I said what are we reform conservative what are we he says we're conservative we went to conserv synagogue when we went to sh we're conservative I said dead but conservative also says you have to keep shabas he says okay we're reform I thought that was so interesting that labels really have no meaning there a lot of people who say they're reformed Jews they don't know what reformed Judaism believes in they don't know anything about it you know it's just uh I know I know I'm not doing anything so I must be reformed but uh if I had to label my father what he was when I was growing up he was a non-practicing Orthodox Jew but all hasas were Orthodox I never forget one Russia sh we were in the conserv synagogue I was a little kid and my father says to the rabbi you know I come rip I really should make more of an effort to come on chabis it's so hard you know because Saturday is the biggest day in the flower business and the Rabbi says look Marty you know you give a lot of Charity you send your kids to Yeshiva you know you do a lot of good things and my father got angry he says you're the rabbi you're supposed to tell me I'm doing the wrong thing I know I'm doing the wrong thing don't try to convince me I'm doing the right thing h y black and white is right and is wrong you know and uh and that's why when I started coming from at 12 and I started making changes everything was a fight everything was a fight but eventually you know there were certain kasha's problems that I was aware of they they right away decided they would keep a kosha home because my father's father said he wouldn't eat in the house was with kosher but I mean they kept kept what they knew you know there were problems so uh I started getting like my own pot and stuff you know because I was a little nervous you know about things my parents were Furious and luckily I wasn't home the night that my brother burnt down the kitchen cuz they were sure I was behind it but what H in my class uh lost her father and I got on my bicycle cuz my parents worked you know and I rode like five miles to go and pay a shiver call you and I came back and I see uh my brother you know scrubbing the soot off of the ceiling and the whole kitchen burnt down what happened cuz I was the token girl we had six boys and you know when you have uh certain reptiles if they're all males some of them turn into females so that they can continue the species so this happens also sometimes in families so I my mother worked and I became the girl I did the cooking the cleaning the uh the shopping and the laundry those kind of things anyway so my brother didn't know how to cook so he wanted bles so he took a frying pan he filled it up to the top with oil he turned it on high and he went to watch the game and at some point he saw the whole house was filling with smoke so of course he threw water on it and the oil exploded all over and the whole kitchen went up in flames and and my mother was sure I was I said I wasn't here you know why weren't you here I said I went to B sh I rode five miles in my bicycle go B Sho get my clothes but you know now uh I have some suggestions for changes I think we should maybe have two sinks I think maybe two [Laughter] dishwashers that is what we call gor in kras yeah we we use real as and uh and as things turned around one by one all the brothers became from and uh my father would say I'll I'll pay for your kids to go to Yeshiva I want I want the children to go to Yeshiva I want them to be from and uh it's just absolutely amazing when you look at other lines of the family many of them have have totally disappeared or certainly disappeared as Jews and my parents have a 100 great grandchildren being brought up and T Mitzvah is a testimony to the decisions that they've made my life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man I'm just a living Legacy to the leader of the band that was Dan Fogelberg anyway so it should be a uh should be an aah for my parents the shamas all the good that they did in their lifetime continues to do it your side is a yadin because we take a look and say what did you do over this past year what did I do I was dead yeah but look at your children look at your grandchildren look at your great-grandchildren look at all the things that are taking place because of the decisions you made that you were alive and they're still producing uh dividends and they should continue to be up in sh as a m for us and uh the extended family and for the extended clo because my father always cared about clo he always cared that was always the top of his list okay and this brings us to the question and answer portion of the program we have a sponsor sponsored by the kumas family I hope I pronounced that correctly k l o m p a s clampus for inspiring CLA during these challenging times oh wow thank you so much you know it's only because of nice people like you that were able to do all this first question is by CK I thought you were uh cancelled how many questions are in the que and what percentage of them do you answer and how do you choose um there's probably about a hundred alog together I'm guesstimating 300 there were about 300 yikes there were about 300 questions um how do I closer to 400 there's closer to 400 think if I keep waiting they're going up even as we speak yeah that's a that's a lot so um you know sometimes I have a podcast where I just go too long or I'm doing something else and we don't really have time for uh for questions so obviously the backlog it just keeps coming you know if you ever remember that famous I Love Lucy where she and Etho go out to work at The Candy Factory and you know the candies are coming by and they're trying to wrap them and they're going faster and faster and they just start eating them and sticking them in their pockets and like you know so that's what we're doing with the questions so how do I pick them so I try to make a little bit of a mix where I take questions like this which are just like um you know uh what's your favorite this or what do you do just just sort of personal questions or questions about the show and things like that with uh you know deep questions so full disclosure sometimes I get a question and I just don't know as you remember when someone said to me we say YK VK why do we substit substitute the hey when with K you know and we do that also in elim but for example we also say shakai the doll you know so I gave the best answer that I could I call a few of my friends sometimes they know sometimes they don't know so sometimes I don't answer the question just I have no idea you know sometimes the questions are a little too involved or too specific so I try to find questions that are going to be shovel a nees that will be relevant and meaningful to everybody so what I do is usually usually just before the show I go through the list of questions and I pull up a few that just happened to tickle my fancy uh that particular uh day and I put them in and uh sometimes I look at a question and I feel like I've answered this one already or at least in some form and so I skip over those so uh some people make the mistake of sending the question directly to me instead of to the question and answer uh on the website and so I have a whole bunch of them in emails that I really have to forward to the producer so he can add them to the list so if you wrote me personally didn't get an answer that's probably why uh sometimes I try to answer you back when I have the opportunity okay and the next question is by Anonymous how do you relate to your animated Torah live character Rabbi sitter you you'll be surprised how many places I go and people know me as Rabbi sitter and sometimes a parent will say to a kid this is Rabbi sitter and they look at me and they say Rabbi sitter you know so I put on my hi kids how's it going so nice to see you here today let's talk about amuna whatever it is now I'll tell you the truth I've thought for many years years and years and years that I was always meant to be a cartoon character because in real life I'm also something of a cartoon character there's something about me where um you know certain people just have trouble taking me seriously and uh that works to my advantage because um there was one time when I uh was giving a sheero and someone says they went to some really Stark Ritson she says how does he get away with saying things like this if I would say that and I'm pretty from if I would say that I would get killed you know because it's so Stark so the person asked me and I said because I'm funny when you're funny you can say anything you want because then people are like H he's probably joking no I'm not my Reby re Yak of whale was The Fanatic of the school and I basically say over his things only I try to say it a little funnier so I can get away with it and get out of trouble you know so um uh so it does it does give you a certain ADV Vantage but um uh I don't know if you've noticed this but they drew Rabbi s to look a little bit like me my hair is not that white and I don't think my nose is quite that long but uh it does have a certain rabar olowski kind of a feel to it in fact T live is in the process of making um uh r s plush dolls that are going to be available for sale so uh I'm sure everybody every little kid would want to Cozy up with a with a rabbi citad doll before they go to sleep you know but um uh I will tell you this I haven't seen a lot of my videos because I don't know how to access the website my grandchildren watch them all but I I don't I don't really know how but um uh they sent me once a clip as a email attachment so I can watch it right away of my sheer on patience this is based on a sheer I've given many times most of the rabis S of videos is me sitting in a room in front of a microphone and just talking and they animated it and the animation takes everything I was saying to another level that I was n spoiled from how incredible the message that I was giving I felt was so much more effective because of the animation so um uh laavo um I saw an interview uh with JRR Martin who wrote a very popular fantasy series A Game of Thrones which I of course I'm not going to read because it's got too much off color material in it but apparently there's this character there Tyrion uh who's supposed to be very uh clever and witty you know so they said which of your characters do you relate to the most and he says Tyrion just not that fast I just can't think of all the things that he says so I look at R sitter and I say gee you know one part of me would love to be rabby sitter but it is only an alter ego and uh it is the fact that I get to inspire children in this way and sometimes adults who also enjoy it a lot of it I mean like the imuna series is just by classes onil shashar you know animated you know but it's basically just me and and and a lot of my normal material and the animation just takes it into a new realm so kudos to uh Torah live by the way they have a brand new studio I know they give tours certain times you know and have uh different things and you can film yourself in a rabbi sitter video and things so next time you're in y and you want to do something with the kids you check out the Tor live Studios by Anonymous do you approve of your she was promoting competition between the boys to get them to learn better Ken cim Kim the gamar says is is a good thing to encourage people one of the reason we make a big party when you finish a cm is so that other people will want to make a see him I am now in my third cycle of daf yomi and uh the reason I got into it was because at they finished the daff yomi and they asked me to come speak and to see him and I said I don't feel comfortable I don't learn daf yomi and they said no no nobody does nobody comes to speak so I heard Rie Fran one say he says when your friend is having a you participate but I feel I I I felt kind of hypocritical coming and praising daf yomi when I myself won't do it so I said okay I'm going to do dafi and and uh so I'm in my third cycle now and uh and one of the things that definitely inspired me were all those uh the all the suum all the big parties you know you go to the metal ANS tens of thousands of yiden and dressed in black doing the wave I mean it's just just something incredible you know I mean black wave that never happened by the way full disclosure but um uh but the good friend of mine who was doing the video he included ma daf yomi here in the video you could see it for about um maybe a second just there I am so uh uh so that's why um these things spur people on and competitions help people to push themselves to try to be better now um an ideal competition is one which lets everybody accomplish something on their own level I'll give you an example when I was M we had a problem and the problem was that uh we finished seder at 1 and then there was lunch in free time and 3:00 was and people were not showing up at 3:00 they were straggling in so I sat down to try to solve this problem and I said I got an idea I'm going to offer optional mnas from 2:30 to 3 and anyone who comes I will buy them one of those little paper mnas and after each M we'll have a little seeum you know cake and soda and if you finish the whole s Mo I'll take you out to a restaurant that's what I did and uh I remember when my father was nft so I started doing it as for my father and uh and people would show up and my ostensible reason for doing it was so that I'd have people there is a base for M who are already there and uh so it was a if you will uh that not so much a competition but they um have in yeshivas I know Renta does this and other yeshivas do this where like they're they do a trip to Poland someplace in Eastern Europe and um they have certain things if you um if if you make it to minion this number of times if you you know come in for extra storm if you come this Etc there's a point system and you get points for everything and then as many points as you have at the end you can cash them in for cash for the trip so you could get your whole trip paid for if you participate in everything so that's not so much a competition as much as a I guess the word is again Mi an opportunity for people to to earn points but when you have a a straightforward competition right who's going to write the best of our Torah I've seen people work very hard in order to try to be able to do it now when I uh was building my chapter in Los Angeles of ncsy we were a very small group I think there was six kids at the regional the year before we couldn't even get our own table we had to share it with another chapter and I wanted to motivate people so I decided to use competition I came in the first day and I said um I said we're going to be chapped of the year and Joel pin who is my uh my president and my good friend he says no we're not we're never going to be trapped of the I said yes we are we're going to make this program we're going to make that program you know and and we started pushing pushing and all kinds of programming all stuff and we would make use the competition and then we would go to a regional and we would be in everyone's face and we were unusually obnoxious now I don't know why this is but both my chapter in Los Angeles and my region in Long Island had a tendency to be unusually obnoxious to other people and I don't know where this came from because I always told everyone to be warm and loving and caring I guess I guess I did but anyway so we'd go in there and we'd like you know uh um you know uh you know be very in everyone's face and my kids love the competition they loved it it pushed them on to do much more than they ever would I had kids who came to shim not because they wanted to but because it would help us win chapter of the year it it was brilliant it was absolutely brilliant the competition to be able to get it going and uh when I took over Long Island I right away started a whole bunch of chapters even though you would say why don't you combine these two because I want to make a competition and have the them you know going after each other and I felt that that would be uh an impetus for people to do better I remember the First National Convention we went to I had a bunch of punk rockers in my region who who were coming and uh they're supposed to do a regional song and a regional skit and we didn't have any of those things you know and the kids were like hey we'll have a song I said I told you you have to make a song nobody was interested so now you don't have a song this one guy said uh I wrote a song could we do it I said uh what's it too psycho killer sure go ahead ity wrot Lan Brown zal a good friend of mine he was Seaborn they had like 50 kids up there they were singing a song to like halleluka we are Seaborn we're the best we learn Tor like all the rest we we love toor MIT seabo region we are going high or whatever it is you know that kind of thing like this you know la la la it was great my kids get up there dressed in denim I remember this this is 19 1980 I still remember it I'm tense and nervous and I can't relax I find it hard to work up to the facts this here convention is getting me down prison Warden chasing me around town psycho Jew who are you and I was like I never understood what the chicken was but evidently they had already made a takeoff of psycho killer called psycho chicken so they threw in the chicken you're going to run run run away ba anyway the judges it was the sh and two secretaries uh and the secretaries were like horrified and Y says I like it we won most original song but uh you know competition's good it gets people going you know so uh so yeah I think that's a good idea all right I think we're out of time and uh that's it for this episode if you want to find out more about the show go to my website ry.com you can um sponsor an episode you can sponsor a question answer you can sign up for an online cheer uh you can hold the lce special orders don't upset us all we ask is that you let us do it your way and that's until next time I am d olowski and this has been the rabbi olowski show it's the rabbi orlovski show Torah and S ready to go raavi show knowledge and wisdom will help you grow lots of fun in every episode and we don't have to rhide no we don't it's the rabbi orlovski show on Rabbi ori. comom T anytime you two and more it's Rabbi orlovi show Tor and S ready to go it's the rabbi orski show till next time till we meet again the rabbi Orlowski show it's the rabbi Orlowski show it's the rabbi Orlowski [Music] show