If I Were a Rich Man (Ep. 136)

[Music] hi this is david rolofsky and welcome to the raviolovsky show and whether you're watching with our friends over attorney time wherever you watch or listen to your podcast it's always a pleasure to have you along for the experience and uh we have a sponsorship this week anonymous this host for the donors are hashem they should give a big score from participating in being able to uh to be market store and goodwill and uh and and just good feeling for our clientele there are people who uh watch this ponte cast for the little bits of toyota that happen to sleep in and there are those who do it because it just makes them feel good you know puts a smile on their face what could be better than that yeah so uh uh that's wonderful i i want to continue the series that i've been doing which is picking out uh lines from the schneier's at random and different program of perky evos and like i say when i run out i may just start again there's so much to say my gosh i i haven't even scratched the surface and uh we're up now to perignality and i thought i would start with the first mishna and i'll tell you why uh after i read it for you benjamin who is why someone who learns from everybody his county and who is honored he who honors other people okay four aspects uh strength wealth wisdom and honor and in each one the mishka gives a definition and the definition seems slightly counterintuitive because i would say like this who's rich someone who has a lot of money you want to pick a number in today's numbers 40 billion 50 billion i said doing okay that's i would say that person's rich you want to lower it yeah 100 million 10 million whatever it is just say if you have a certain amount then you're considered rich the mission to discuss is what's poor poor is anybody who has less than 200 zoos a year then then you can take from stockholders if you have more than 200 zl's then you are not considered poor not because of the rich so give us a number what's rich someone who knows of tanakh all of vishnayas kim or uh rambam no no or the mishnais whether you show me that's a smart guy um he's a who keyboard guy who can bench press 400 pounds yeah give me give me a definition everything here seems kind of like uh you know a little sketchy who's smart somebody learns from other people okay so the answer is that the problem with being rich or strong is that it's relative uh i lived i grew up we were in a small school there weren't too many giveram there was one guy one guy had a successful business he was the kavir he wasn't wealthy by what we would talk about as being wealthy but he was he was the gevir you know why because he was the richest guy there yeah um every now and then this happens uh i i would like to mention the community but i always get flack afterwards with people saying you could have been mostly lives in an entire community okay but there's we know what we're talking about like a secret but there are certain places where there is a concentration of wealthy people and when you go to one of these shoals in this area so you pika you're worth a few million people there worth hundreds of millions of dollars you're nobody the show i grew up with you would be the biggest clear around so sometimes these younger geviran go off and make their own shawl so they could be somebody important than the issue then they're the ocean so who's rich which goes by the situation you're in it depends compared to who yeah if you add the uh you know collection of uh godeli torah you may not be that smart but you go into a different venue you might be i mean although it tells the story about this guy who went to uh age a short period of time and he went back and he was in his reformed temple for rosh hashanah and the question came up uh should the person who's been blowing show for all these years continue to blow the chamfer after all he has a kazoka but he's getting old and he doesn't blow so well so there's a younger fellow who blows much better should we give it to him or should we keep with the older person the rabbi had no idea right uh in in the reform movement rabbis learned very little judaism it's mostly more like social work and things like that so you don't have to know those things i think it's a few hours of talmud that you're obligated to learn if i recall correctly i if i'm making a mistake i apologize i have to admit that uh you know i haven't really studied the requirements to become a reform rabbi in a long time um but um so he didn't know rabbi had no idea so he turned to this guy he says well you were just studying any yeshua in israel you answer the question because you are the most knowledgeable jew here that's uh that's a scary reality but it's a reality and the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king so how do you how do you give a definition of what's rich and what's and what's smart and what's strong there's variables it depends on the situation now the reason i mention this is because i would like to focus on one of these um i was in america for a quick trip my granddaughter's school was making a virtual dinner and they wanted me to be there live virtually i'm not sure i said why can't i just do this on zoom he says no it'd be a much better quality if you're actually there and so they flew in me and my wife so that we could film a virtual dinner in person so uh okay listen i've been getting some comments recently where some people are noticing that perhaps the production level of uh raviolaski's show is not up to its usual high standards and that's true because with the whole pandemic i've been forced to turn to my own resources and full disclosure i've been filming this on zoom yeah which has advantages and disadvantages one of the disadvantages is the quality is not the greatest and so therefore people are starting to notice what can i tell you pavarotti the famous uh uh opera star said if i don't practice for one day i notice if i don't practice for two days the orchestra notices if i don't practice for three days the audience notices so i guess it's been going on long enough that people are starting to say hey hey i don't think he's really standing in front of his bookcase [Laughter] is that is that like it's like a green screen yeah so um no i was not i don't know why you would think such a thing anyway um so uh so it's uh it's it's everything everything is based on uh you know i mean if you go all the way back every now and then i get a letter from somebody who discovered the rarioloski show and goes back to episode one episode one i was like sitting in a corner in my bedroom you know with a little camera being filmed you know and someone said to me it looked like a hostage video [Laughter] please come and get me help when i was a kid my parents had this dish child that said help i'm being held prisoner in a chinese laundry [Laughter] that was funny but anyway um so things about this i wanted to focus on these things so i go into america and uh you know i have uh i have a soft spot for science magazines and um so i picked up a copy of scientific america and um and scientific american sorry i know the fact checkers will be after me and discover magazine and psychology today even though it's uh let's call it more of a pseudoscience but i've always considered perhaps uh going into psychology um but it's going to take a lot of time you know when i was working for samaya they were writing up the biographies of all the speakers remember wine went first two days later it was uh dr gottlieb and uh two days later it was me and i said well i'm married and i live in jerusalem and i work at arsenal said anything else i said that's about it so he said well you have any degrees i said yeah i have a ba in psychology from queen's college i'm very impressed i said yes my wife she's not using it she said i can have it so one of the russians she returned to them and said what what do you do with someone like this [Laughter] that has been the question that uh has been asked many many times yeah another weinbach one said to me you are so effective but what can we do about your big mouth anyway so um [Music] so okay so uh [Music] so psychology has always interested me so psychology today you're not picking a copy and what's the the cover of the of the magazine the good enough life and it's an article going through different aspects where you say it's good enough i don't have to be the perfect parent i don't have to be in the perfect marriage i don't have to have the perfect job i don't have to be the perfect person [Music] you could have good enough and this obviously was a tremendous critic because there it's a cover story and psychology thing so i want to say deeper than that though than just that whereas it's true that you don't need perfection but it's it's more than that as well and that is whatever you need you have you you have everything you need in your life and if you don't have it because you don't and there's nothing that you need that you don't have yeah all the tools are available for you to be able to accomplish what you need to accomplish in this world not ed everybody is the same i've pointed this out many times batman will not fight a kryptonian that that man is essentially um psychotic sociopath who lost his mind when he saw his parents murdered in front of him and uh since he's a billionaire he's got enough money to buy himself all kinds of gadgets and he runs around dressed up like a bat you know but he got people okay issues i would say yeah but you put him up against somebody with real superpowers forget about it he's just a guy dressed up in your bat i mean what's he supposed to do i shank superman superman wouldn't go up against the joker superman would fly at super speed pick him up drop him in prison and i'll be the end of it all of his stupid little tricks so joker is good for the batman because he's a nut dressed up uh in a costume fighting another nut dressed up in a costume so uh who is superman who is fighting general zod from krypton broke out of the phantom zone yeah so superman fights another kryptonian with superpowers that makes sense and the iron man will fight other people in iron suits because you get all of the skills that you need to do what you need to do i have to be the best at everything i have to be the best at what i can be the best at and it's so sad that people don't appreciate where their own skills lie and they so often would like to have somebody else's life yeah rabbit left said on the puzzle do not covet your neighbor's house your neighbor's wife your neighbor is a donkey so he says why are you comparing coveting the wife to the donkey is either something very wrong with your wife or something very good about the donkey he says if i want my neighbor's house and i want my neighbor's wife and i want my neighbor's animals it's because i want my neighbor's life why would i want to be me when i could be somebody else and the answer is because hakushoba who gave you abilities gave you gifts things that you can do that nobody else can do and so isn't it worthless to sit around and wonder what if i was somebody else is rich i'm happy with what i got because this is what i need if i had more than this who knows if i'd be able to handle it oh yeah now he sees this really poor person and he says that good morning why is this guy in poverty he's such a wonderful person and he says okay you're smarter than me yeah here's a magic coin give it to him and he'll become rich so he gives him the coin and finally takes the coin buys himself a new set of clothes people look at the clothes they pay him four times the amount of what he paid for it because they think they're the nicest clothes he goes and buys more suits before you know it he's in the garment business then he buys a house he's selling houses back making lots of money and as he becomes wealthier and wealthier he hasn't got time anymore for his voter session and he becomes a not nice person because broccoli says elio what do you say it's smarter than me says well apparently not he says okay get your coin back so he asked the guy for the coin bag and bit by bit he goes back to his life of poverty and as he does he becomes much more of a year of shamania many davidson's princes i i'm not jealous of very wealthy people i wouldn't mind being a little wealthy i think that would upgrade my lifestyle a lot or not i think i told this story already i bought a powerball when it was at 640 million dollars and my son bought one too and i said ah don't waste your money i'm winning and he says to me abba why would a coach borrow who give it to you what would you do with the money so i thought right away i said well the first thing i'll do is fix up my car he says you see what i mean didn't even say i'll go and buy myself a fancy car i'll fix up my car that's about as big as you should even go he says come let's play you boy all your kids apartments you buy all your kids cars now what um he said i said you could spend it goes oh and a heartbeat [Laughter] why because i basically have what i hate would i change my lifestyle dramatically i grew up with a father who grew up during the depression there was no food throwing out food was the worst sin you could possibly commit in my father's house second only to walking around the house in your socks i never understood why look around your socks my phone would scream at us what do you want me dead i didn't know the house of chevy you wear socks and my father associated walking around his socks and a house of shiver you know gosh there were other things that were you know a little more important than that there was you know like punishment by death that we weren't so careful with but you know things like that but throwing out flu my father went hungry he knew what it was to be hungry my father most people don't know what that means to be hungry when i say hungry i mean there's no food we live today in an age where there's safety nets and things like that that some place can go so uh possibilities exist but you know so i walk around my house and i see like my grandchildren i'll take an apple and take a bite out of it and just leave it there so i cut it up and you know i'll we used to go out to eat i never used to order anything i knew i would eat everybody's leftovers i'm gonna go and order something and then uh the rest of it goes in the garbage my kids to this day you know i mean gosh like a bunch of kids in their 30s you know i mean they still remember we would go out to eat and you weren't allowed to buy a soda now the reason you were allowed to buy soda is because i know you would order a can of soda you would take two sips and leave it over and it would kill me they're wasting it drink water so like one of my kids was like married you know we went out to dinner and she's like can i buy a soda that was like as extravagant as you could possibly imagine because that's how i grew up when i open up the little foil on top of the coyote cheese i scrape it off when i crack an egg i go with my finger inside of the shell to make sure that i get out everything that's in it i can't just throw it away just throw it away just waste it that's not how i grew up so i guess if you have like 500 million dollars you know most people like that aren't worried too much about what's left in the egg but uh you know every shabbos we have some leftover challah slices put into a plastic bag and put it into the freezer every now and then we have to clean out the freezer because there's no room anymore you know and i gather together all the little bits of bread and i say the bread collection from jcpenney he says well you know no one's actually gonna eat this stuff i can't throw it away but no one's gonna eat it i'm gonna take out slices of old challah you know put it out for everybody fine we're gonna make french toast at this point i can make like 600 700 pieces of sliced toast of french toast with what's left but it just doesn't happen i could take it and make it into croutons breadcrumbs i could uh you know make it into stuffing but nobody ever does those things uh listen you know it's not just because we go up the depression it's also my palace of yin that's how we all are let me tell the story of this payload he's on his deathbed he's surrounded by his families he says show you here he says yeah says yes yeah you here says yeah then who's in the store my uh my cousin who knew my grandfather you know well so uh she's closer to my father's age you know so she uh she said she it was a snowstorm once and he was taking the bus and she says papa why don't you take a taxi and he said because every click of the meter is like a knife in my heart so yeah okay what would i do with 500 million dollars you know would i buy a new car it's time to buy a new car give my other one to one of my kids that's what i do with my last car yeah but uh my father his dream was to wear a new pair of socks every day that was like it's wild so when he got older towards the end of his life my mother would go out and buy boxes of socks he'd wear them one time and my mother would wash them and give them away and every day he put on a new pair of socks i said that's what they call saknas yeah but there are people always unhappy with what they have if only i had this if only i had that if i had more no then you are a poor person it doesn't matter if you have 500 million dollars if you're always feeling like i'm i'm deprived so you're a very poor person and if you're happy with what you have the more you own the more you worry [Music] i was learning once with an outbreak and we left the house and he didn't clear he didn't lock the door i said you didn't like the door he goes what are you afraid of someone's going to come in what are they going to take i i hope they break in they feel bad for me they leave something behind you know but there are people always i didn't get this i didn't get that or what was this what that's what's happening here which people got to eat no time they're looking around every other table what do they have what is this what's going on yes sir oh i could have had this i could have had that i could have done this i could have done that you know is what you should have smacked with coco what i have is what i need and i'm happy with it you'll see people circling around for a parking spot the tests like three parking spots but it's not as close as it possibly could be let me get the best one go to the supermarket and get a get a cart the wheels not exactly you know you should take it back switch it get another car they spend the whole time worried about what do i have and why is it not good enough i'm a very poor person because you're lacking that's in honey is lacking you make do with what you have and you celebrate it yeah i told this story but uh but it fits it over here to it thank you i was online in the drugstore and there was somebody a couple of people behind me it's pretty crowded and he says to me how are you doing i go back hashem he says really then why are you in the drugstore i said hashem they have medication for my diabetes medications my high blood pressure and all the israelis are dying this israelis never say a word about anything and they're like you know what to tell everybody yeah i'm very happy i had a bypass operation um my brother gedalia had a bypass operation mitchell had a bypass operation my brother jason had a bypass operation but by the time my mother passed away he he already passed on and uh were there we were six boys one of them was nefter you know and my son was there and he said to me you realize that if this was taking place 50 years ago there'd only be two of you left because they didn't have bypass operations three years ago 50 years ago that's it my friend david wilner came to visit me when i was in the hospital after my heart attack and bypass and he said my grandfather had a heart condition he had a heart attack they put him in the hospital they let him stay till he rests up they send him home he has another heart attack and this keeps happening until he dies there was nothing they could do they couldn't unblock arteries they cut you open and take out a vein from your leg and then cut open your chest and they re-routed around to get blood to your heart science fiction and the medications that we've come up with and the things that we're able to do how many kids used to die of the measles and diphtheria and uh you know it's unbelievable we we have we have so much but there's this attitude today that we're always lacking i don't have this and i don't have that and i didn't get this i didn't get that tell the story it was and tells but she was about to make kiddish pushed on the cup walks to the dining room he sees this one of the bakram already took a piece of cake and put on his plate he says you need daft good back piece or you're just afraid you won't get a piece of cake put it back i guarantee you'll get a piece of cake i don't like to stay for kidushim as a rule because people attack it like they've never seen food before in their lives it's it's mafrid when senator lieberman was running for vice president of al gore so he was in a shul on shabbos in miami and afterwards they're having a reception for him so they took him out before the end of davening they brought him upstairs to the kiddush the secret service people you know uh you know took care of the room uh secured the perimeter yeah yeah we have the uh we have the present candidate over here yes i believe i know yeah and we're doubting ends and they hear this thundering on the on the stairs i don't know what's going to happen so they come over form a phalanx around their man and all the people who run into the room go right past them to the food senator schmeder this chap liver so sometimes when i am at a kid is your buffet you know everybody runs runs and uh and my host whoever i'm with will say you know aren't you gonna get some food and i said no eventually people will take enough that they're satisfied and almost always there's enough food on rare occasions you know they run out of something but there's almost always enough food and i can go after the mob as uh you know has settled down to uh to eat the spoils of their victory i'll go get a plate do i really need to push and shove someone for some cold cuts okay cocktail franks that's that's a different story okay maybe i would kill somebody for that but but uh you know most of the stuff where are you going what are you worried about you'll get don't worry you'll get people get so nervous i'm not going to get couldn't be left out don't worry there's whatever you're supposed to get in this world you're going to get and sometimes it's mazel i've met some people who are not among the brightest people i've ever met who are very wealthy i know some very smart people who are not kumar says when it comes to wealth it's muzzle do you know how much is enough israel shared not someone with 40 billion dollars someone's happy with what he has if he's happy well he has it what am i driving myself crazy for the famous story of this guy who had big villa on the beach and he sees this guy with a little fishing boat and he's uh he pulled it up onto the sand and he's lying in the sand stunning himself the guy says what are you doing there's still plenty of hours left he says yeah i caught enough fish for today he said so work a little harder you'll get more fish and then what will happen because then you can buy another boat hire more people and then eventually you'll have a fleet of boats you'll have a whole fishing company [Music] and then then you'll have a lot of money and then and then you can sit around all day and do nothing i figured out how to do that already ah i i i think i said this over in the past yeah 1973 i went to stay ahead of the night's show and uh on the plane back you know ella used to have these big screens and they used to show films and uh you know our flight didn't have enough courage to actually cover it over with blankets so yeah so the film was playing i hadn't put on my earphones but there were subtitles you know anyway so uh so robert redford wants to do the big sting paul newman says listen we're going to pick our mark we're going to figure out how much we're going to get out of him and that's it and i don't want to hear anybody afterwards saying it's not enough because that's all you're going to get you're going to be happy with it you're going to get what you're going to get and you better be happy with it because that's all you get all you can do is complain i didn't get enough why can't i get more why wasn't i given this why didn't i get that why because you're given everything in this world that you need and that's it you have to do the best you can with the tools that you have to be able to manage mention this many times i have many many learning disabilities i i basically i was written off as a kid and one of my rishi yeshiva once said to one of my employers says he effective says he goes i never thought he'd amount to anything i don't blame him i probably would have thought the same i did think the same surprised myself i wasn't prepared to let my limitations define me and so if you say all the things i don't have and you're a very poor person you know what a wealthy person is a person who recognizes i have everything i need i'm fine couldn't you have more i could have more yeah well i like a new car sure i'd love a new car yeah it's dented it's scratched it you know when you first get the car has that new car smell and then after a while it has the you know grandchildren being sick in the back smell to it you know yay but obviously if i was meant to have one i would have one because the kushboroku will give you everything that's coming to you and you won't miss out on anything in this world if a person could understand that they'd have a much better life and psychology today just figured it out they said you know if you're content with what you have and you can have a much happier life and everything doesn't have to be perfect and you have to get everything that you want so uh we should know what it is that we need not what we want and uh if we work to get those things be a lot happier a lot happier in life people who need who want who are always feeling uh like disadvantaged doesn't matter how much money they have poor people lord who made the lion and the lamb you decreed i should be what i am would it spoil some vast eternal plan yeah probably so you are who you are when the words of popeye i am what i am and uh take everything gives you and use it well use it well hashem everyone will go on to have a happy happy life and that's it for this week you want to find out more about this show go to my website for realestate.com you can leave a comment on the episode you can send me an email 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