Just Love Them (Ep. 139)

hi this is debbie dolowski and welcome to the robert rowlowski show and whether you're watching with our friends over at tour anytime or wherever you watch or listen to your podcasts it's always a pleasure to have you now uh i share a past personal thought i do that from time to time uh i've been speaking for many years and uh i know that a lot of my references are from things that took place before most of my audience had been born i one time spoke in a senior citizen uh community in florida and they got a much higher percentage of my jokes so i understand i make reference to things that a lot of people have no idea what i'm talking about um but uh listen what can i do i am i'm i'm a creature of decades yeah so uh so that's part of it but every now and then i'll tell a joke that i know probably no one's going to understand except myself and i tell it anyway and sometimes i laugh myself because um sometimes i entertain myself and uh uh when i sit down to say something or to do something i do take that into account i take into account the fact that maybe this is something that i will personally enjoy now i remember i was at a shabbaton i was faculty many many years ago and uh at one point in the program the theme was torah learning talk and at one point of the program they set up everybody in little corners of the room and kids would go from person to person and they were told take five six minutes and say over your favorite shot of art some idea in torah that has particular meaning to you and i said what about i said anything it doesn't make a difference the most important thing is that it's important to you i thought that is a fascinating idea i don't know how effective the program was but i found the idea fascinating the person saying over will obviously have a lot more enthusiasm and excitement for what they're talking about so uh sometimes people say to me uh you know must take a lot of time to prepare for this podcast and i say no not really you know i before i start recording i think to myself what do i want to speak about now the past six weeks have been pretty easy because i took one line from each pair of perky evos now i think you'll agree with me that's hardly what we would call an exhaustive study of pierre kiyobos pulling one line out of one mishna of each parrot so i thought to myself well the minute is to learn pikayamas all the way until rosh hashanah so maybe i'll do another cycle then i thought well maybe people don't want to hear it again but it's not really the same thing because if i pull a different line it'll be completely different topic than i'm talking about so i wasn't sure so the first thing i do before i speak is i print out the uh the sponsorship we have a sponsorship this week when i looked at it i knew already what i wanted to talk about and uh because of that i decided that yes in order to pull out another line from one mishna in the first peric of pikayamas i'm going to dedicate the next six shows to once again going through picking of us after that i have a different idea of what i want to do give it away now yeah you ever fall for that joke when you were a kid i did right how do you keep an idiot in suspense i'll tell you tomorrow anyway but uh no the the reason is not because i'm obviously trying to build suspense it's because i might change my mind like i told you i make the decision on what i'm going to talk about as i'm working in to do the podcast so in any event and by the way when i say six that doesn't include uh unless the googler comes which is what i'm really counting on but if the ghoulie doesn't come i guess we'll have to do it on the tishbell podcast that's uh that's not part of the uh that's not part of my normal uh normal cycle that's a unfortunate tragedy that comes up that i need to deal with so if i have to deal with it this year i will but uh that's not going to be part of my pre-k of a series so i want to pull out a mishna from right at the beginning now picky of us we talk about the messiah obviously and we go from moshe the yoshua's kanan manchester dollar and then we go to the zugos and we start going through the different pairs until we reach the last of the pairs the two pairs as the mishna in tells us one is the nasi and one is the of bastion and when we finally reach the final pair it is of course hilo and shamai and we did a quote from shamai uh when we did the first perk the first time it seems only fair that we do a quote from hillel now hello emir having me tell me the arrow the of the students of our own owen sholem varudev shalom love peace and pursue peace love people or mccarvin latoya and bring them closer what's the message here well i'm pretty sure again i'm not positive i don't i don't go back and listen to all my podcasts i actually did on the first year anniversary i started you know running through the different ones to pull out snippets and and lines from past episodes to make like a montage of uh of uh the first season i got halfway through and and i realized that uh it was too big a task for me because i had to listen the whole thing keep writing down what the time was where it was the video and remember it and uh i'm sort of an ideas guy you know but anyway um so uh i don't know if i spoke about this in the past i don't know if i spoke about this in the past but uh i thought it would be good to talk about the topic of cure for hokkien now uh i have worked in the field of kiribati for many years i've also worked in regular but i've also worked in habits of satire and at one point i was teaching the kirif component of rabbanim who were going out into the field i was the one who was teaching the cure part of the aspect when i got up i always said there are certain things that everybody knows about and that is uh parenting and that is education because everybody was a kid and everybody went to school so everybody's an expert on these topics so uh before anybody says anything your first question has to be what are your qualifications my brother jason overshawn he eventually was nifty because of problems with his heart he was hoping for a heart transplant and they told him first that he had to get his weight down so he went to meet with the nutritionist and the first nutritionist came in and uh she was relatively thin and fit and he said sorry this is not going to work because you can't understand what i'm going through you don't understand so uh so he went to get the second one the second one came in was also truman fit and he says why do i you think you have anything to share with me about my condition in life she said because i have a weight problem i've been battling it my whole life my entire family have weight problems and we have all been working together to get control of our weight he says okay let's see what you have to say my son now when i had eight daughters and one son my son used to say uh you know albert's not fair when you say uh one of my daughters no one knows who you're talking about because there were eight of them when you say my son everyone knows you're talking about me i said you're right next time i tell a story about you i won't say my son i'll say one of my children and so the next time i spoke i said one of my children was on his way to finger give away but now that i have three sons that's one of those jokes why i entertain myself anyway um uh one of my sons just started working out with a trainer and uh he says to him why should i uh listen to what you have to say he looked pretty fit and trim he says because uh he showed him a picture of what he looked like beforehand i forgot if he lost 100 or 150 pounds something like that he says i did it through diet and exercise and i got my life together and you can too so my son was very inspired he said okay let's hear what you have to say yeah so uh so when i would get up to speak about kira if i'd say okay anybody can talk about your coke so what's the person's qualifications yeah when does when does a person know what to say i feel like i just told the story i'm not sure but i think it was diana bromski who was uh called in as an expert witness in a case in england and the judge says to him well rabbi what are your qualifications and he said i'm an expert in the talmud and all of its commentaries i'm an expert in the shogunate code of jewish law and all of its commentaries i'm an expert in maimonides code of law and all of its commentaries so the judge was slightly taken aback and he says doesn't the jewish religion say you should be humble he says what can i do your honor i'm under oath so what are your qualifications before a person goes goes to offer an expert opinion okay this is not what we're talking about directly but i i feel like i just have to mention this yeah an actor has wines written for him by a writer and there are some actors who are in films where they're absolutely brilliant and there are other ones when they're not because nobody wrote good lines for them so there's nothing they can do about it if you write poor lines for me to say that's it it's not me i'm playing a character i'm going to read what you wrote and there's a director standing over me saying no no say it like this say it like that stand this way stand this way so at the end of the day the guy stands the way the director tells him to and reads the lines that the writer wrote for him and everyone says the man is a genius give that man an award okay that doesn't bother me so much but then he's suddenly an expert in politics and every dopey actor suddenly their opinion counts what do they know about politics what do they know about morality what do they know about the world what do they know about science what do they know about anything other than standing there and saying what somebody else tells you to say the way that they tell you to say it and somehow we think actors celebrities sometimes you could be a celebrity and i even be an actor you have absolutely nothing going for you except your celebrity yeah and uh suddenly your opinion counts on anything who cares what you think all players is there any indication that a person who plays ball has any more intelligence than anybody else but he knows how to hit a ball with a stick very far well you know how to throw a football across the field and suddenly this man is an expert in society politics religion science anyway i i just going over that but my point is that whenever anybody is offering their opinion on something who are they what are their qualifications a person calls himself a rabbi or for that matter a person calls themselves a therapist now i don't know about today but when i was still in america for many years you could call yourself a therapist or psychotherapist and you didn't need any degree whatsoever it's a term that doesn't mean anything so uh what are your qualifications why should i listen to anything that you have to say my father i remember when linus pauling came out and was extolling the virtues of vitamin c and how vitamin c can cure the common cold and vitamin c can do all kinds of different things and there were other experts who took issue with him and my father started taking large amounts of vitamin c so i said dad there the science isn't in on this yet he says to me linus pauling won two nobel prizes in two different fields that's good enough for me [Laughter] what's your qualifications where is it coming from we had a pediatrician with two pediatricians here in our north one of them was dr matar and uh he he has a lot of strong opinions not just about medicine he he left madison got his smile and became a rub he graduated from harvard medical school and every now that he would say something and i would say who says he goes me and harvard medical school [Laughter] i remember i went down and i said uh um the kid has strep i need uh antibiotics he says oh do you want me to check him or just write the prescription i said you can do whichever you want but my wife said to get a prescription and i'm not leaving without one so it's really up to you if you want to check the kid or not i just want that prescription because okay i found the prescription socialized medicine anyway so um uh that being the case um [Music] what are your credentials so i ran the long island region of ncsy for uh for nine years i took of a region that had one member and i built it up at the end too thousand twelve hundred kids were involved in different programs that we had we had sports leagues we had publications we had all kinds of things yeah all of our different activities um we before that i had a chapter in la i built it up from six kids to 60 kids yeah so i had a little experience um i came to israel i taught in the veil shalayam i taught north samaya i taught nation torah i thought of discovery and eventually i began training rabbi in the field so i feel like i have a little bit of background when i speak everyone's opinion like i say is valuable yeah but at least at least you're entitled to know when a person speaks on a subject what are their credentials right when we spoke about covid uh even though it turned out that some of the things i said turned out to be correct um people were very upset at me and they said you're you and i qualified to speak about copen and i said you're right i'm not a doctor i'm not a research uh scientist but based on the information that we're being given these are my questions these are my caches yeah uh david gottlieb who is a professor of philosophy as well as being a rope he said once that a guy who uh comes out of a few years of learning issue with dola he definitely is on the level of a master student for sure the amount that he learns and he knows and his um ability to ask incisive questions because uh while most universities today in the soft sciences and humanities tend to indoctrinate students with a particular point of view and yeshivas we spend a lot of time trying to get people to think who says how do you know where does it say it where'd you get it from yeah ask akasha here bring a raya there right so a lot of critical thinking which allows people to ask questions about every area of life they may not be experts in the field but at least they know what to ask so uh so that being the case right i feel like this mishna is basically a uh a roadmap as we know and we read recently in the torah when aram died all of bane israel cried because he was an oh shalom and a real day of shalom he made shalom he made peace he brought people together aaron had a particular gift to bring people back and make them feel good how so the officer reverend says he would not seek out only the aleph olive students for his where he'd say we only take the best boys no he would go after the not best boys and they'd say i remember what he what do you want from you know he's on level with moshe robino what do you want from me he says i want you to be my talmud because i hold your roi and because aaron believed in them they became taka tammy always show them the road they show them love peace pursue peace oh it is love people um and bring them close to tiger you know you bring people close to torah you love people it was a rebbe they asked him once what the secret was to reach out to people and he said a sincere smile i said this to somebody once and he quoted me back groucho marx who said the most important thing is sincerity once you can fake that the rest is easy it's not so easy to fake it people can usually see through you i was uh part of my course because i would answer the basic questions of judaism and uh we uh you know go through say the different questions different sections so i can't do a section on women's issues and i said the following i said listen closely if in your heart of hearts you are a male chauvinist and think women are inferior do not answer questions about women's issues because even if you say the right thing they will see right through you because people can tell if you mean it or not let somebody else answer those questions so uh somebody tried one of my answers later on in the course and he says you know this woman asked me the question i gave your answer and she said you're patronizing me i said you know why she said that to you because you were patronizing her she says but you say it i said i mean it don't you get it i was a booker invited over to shabbos tables of married people and my mother always her theme song was it's the maid's day off and i would get up to clear and i would get up to surf and the husband would look at me in shock and say oh no my wife does that and i said i'm sorry i wasn't brought up that way [Music] i was taught to get up and help i was one of six boys we didn't have any gender appropriate jobs and who does mama teach to so they can sew and fix preparing me to marry whoever papa picks the daughters yeah we didn't have any daughters so six boys didn't work out well with the rooms there were only three rooms and we were always fighting so people had to just pick up their stuff and move to another room and switch around if you have girls it's impossible i remember my oldest son you know there were eight girls and just him so he had to get a room to himself all the other girls we had to triple them up quadruple them up but uh he got his own room yeah so there's only boys evidently frogs if there's a group of all males some of them turn into females so that they can have children but that's what in my house i became the girl and i learned how to cook and how to clean and had a shop and well listen i've given recipes out on the podcast on a number of occasions because uh my mother taught me how to cook and so uh you know household chores to me were second nature better do it so i don't know what it is to sit at the table and give a clap and say woman bring forth the food because i was taught that there's nothing demeaning about it i guess that's why god gave me eight uh girls i have an overwhelming number of grandchildren who are boys because everything has to even itself out but evidently i had uh i had more of a skill of being able to give over to my daughter's uh home economics than i did to give over turret to my boys but uh how do you view somebody so if you don't really like people then you should not get involved in caring for hogan because people will sense that you don't like them and if you really like people then you can be much more effective i um [Music] i give classes to different people from all walks of life i strike up conversations with people from all walks of life to be sitting next to them on a plane on a bus uh we could be shopping i find people fascinating and i basically like people i'm not crazy about everybody's actions but i'm basically basically people people they were a lot of fun it's uh i don't know if i ever told this story i probably did a guy came to me with me he had just finished my uh the course the biblical training course he was going out to a community he came to ask me a question he said should i divorce my wife now or when i get to the new city i said why are you divorcing your wife says oh she's terrible she's this she's that so i did the first thing that i always do i said tell me three good things about your wife and he stood there a very long time and then he said can't think of anything i said you can't think of anything you live with this woman she cooks for you she cleans for you she does your laundry she gives you children and you can't think of three good things about her i can meet somebody on the bus and tell you three good things about them do you want to go into kira for hokkien are you crazy you can't find good in anybody you have to love people if you want to bring them close to torah the most important thing that we have to do is always in our mind that's the greatest preparation that a person has to do it's a mindset my mindset is i like people therefore when i strike up a conversation with somebody i'm trying to encourage them two have a relationship with me not because i want something from them i want them to become from at my schedule i used to love this when i used to work and people would say to me how many people have you made from i've made 35 people from i would say interesting i never made anybody from it says really i said nobody i have spoken to people over the years and at times something that i said inspired them to make changes in their lives but i can't make anybody from don't you understand if i make somebody from i'm a cult leader i expect you to get from by my standards my time schedule i meet somebody i have no expectations of them whatsoever and i can have a fine conversation with somebody whether they're jewish whether they're not jewish whether they're observant or not observant whether they're old young i've had some fascinating conversations with small children i've had fascinating conversations with teenagers with young adults older adults elderly people i find people fascinating that's the first step so i had uh nc's white child my first since white chapter was in la la and i had no idea what i was doing i had been in yeshiva i lived a pretty sheltered life granted i was about to but i got from uh when i was 12. so i didn't have too many exciting experiences you know to share and uh and i it was really a whole new world to me and it took me a while to figure out what's going on yeah i mean i i'm not stupid i just just uninformed so at one of the first meetings uh you know i mean i don't make a big deal about smoking but i can't understand why everybody had to share the same cigarette passing it around and of course my dear dear friend joel betlin who was the chapter president and walked me through life on those very occasions when i see him he still does this for me yeah he lives in muncie he's the person who is an expert in constitutional law was able to get curious joel recognized as an independent municipality religion and state issues and you know he just really anyway he walked me through that like held my hand like a like i was a little boy he walked me through it he says to me that's not tobacco i was like oh my gosh marijuana is drugs what do i do no you know so i thought quickly and i said okay uh i'm pretty sure this is what i don't do hey kids drugs bad scene just say no so i had to think fast and i have found that over the years sometimes a uh a [Music] answer that does not involve getting involved religion is much more effective than trying to get into a whole gansai pill so i said listen guys we got a lot of great events planned this year we're going to do some exciting stuff but if anybody from the synagogue walks in and finds you guys smoking that we're out of here so let's make a rule no drugs or alcohol in the synagogue it was like no okay i was like i can't believe that worked i can't believe that worked but you know i was tested this way many times this was 1978 at the head of the disco craze ha ha staying alive stay in the light the movie had just come out and there was a guy in the chapter who looked exactly like john travolta probably better looking anyway he wanted very much to have a discovery and he came down with his non-jewish girlfriend to show me their routine so i said i think that's a great idea i said i think that's a great idea but let's wait until we're more established because if you make something like this and it doesn't take off it'll kill the whole the whole thing you want to make sure before you make a major event like that we have enough people committed and they both said oh that makes sense and i said wow eventually he became for me what if the yeshiva became a rebbe anyway i i found myself in a lot of situations where i had to you know think really fast uh to be able to solve problems i i've used this method a number of times i had a guy who yeshiva decided to start wearing a hat and he says uh you know i'm going to go home you know and i have this aunt who's anther religious and she's going to start making fun of me she's going to say why do you wear a hat so i would say it looks cool it's a stetson i look like indiana jones i think it's cool so he said well she'll say i think it looks stupid so i said well you know andy i don't think everything that you wear is in the finest taste but i would never say anything because judaism teaches us to be tolerant of other people and their views are all secular people as intolerant as you are are they unable to understand that maybe somebody might like something better or different than they do it was like i was going to go into a whole speech about come to rush i said no keep it simple i had a young lady whose parents never went to synagogue only her mother and russian shannon kept and then went to a conservative synagogue now through her involvement in ncs why she started going to an orthodox synagogue but came russia shot her she was her mother was so excited because she had a daughter who now would actually go to synagogue with her and she says oh i can't wait for rosh hashanah you'll come with me to our synagogue so she says how do i explain to my mother why conservative judaism is wrong and i'm not allowed to pray in her shawl and i said for the love of god don't say the following mom i don't like that service it's too big it's so crowded and they have a canter i go to a small synagogue where the congregants leave the service it's so much warmer and nicer she says i'll try it so she calls me up and she says i told it to my mom and she says that sounds great i'll come with you [Laughter] anyway so you gotta know what to do right you gotta know how to be smart yeah be smart not right yeah so um the uh i had one guy who was in the chapter who was going to a conservative day school and when i figured out more or less what i was doing so i pushed awards i think awards are great because people will do the most amazing things for a photo standard piece of paper with a couple of signatures on it that's presented to them while the band plays some woodland music it's absolutely amazing i said we're going to be chapter of the year we're going to miss we're going to that you know and joel said to me no we won't we have six kids here at the last regional convention at the last convention we didn't even get our own table we had to share it with another chapter we're not gonna i said we're gonna be chapped of the year we're gonna have the most kids we're going to the most amazing anyway we were trapped of the year by the way thank you very much so regional chapter of the year a national chapter of the year so and i would just push them so i would tell them we have to go to the regional champion because we get points for that now these i brought in a lot of kids who were not uh with the program i remember there were these two kids our first uh opening membership dinner the caterer was sponsoring it and uh there were these two guys bending the silverware back and forth until it snapped and dropping it in the water picture and i went around and said hello to everybody and they said we hate this synagogue we hate the rabbi we hate the hebrew school we're only joining this group so we can destroy it within i said the japanese membership they said yes great to have you along we had some good tough kids tough kids fairfax high anyway so i had this one kid who was like i said going to a conservative school and i had a policy i'm not doing kirib with these kids i'm going to be their friends we're going to have a treasure hunt we're going to have a you know a scavenger hunt we're going to go to magic mountain we're going to go to disneyland we're going to go to knott's berry farm we're gonna go on a ski trip which wasn't really a ski trip it turned out to be debugging which actually turned out to be uh floating down the hill on inflatable tires but it does make a difference we had all kinds of cool activities and i just kept making more and more activities and it was so exciting and i never did care of because they don't want to scare anybody off i want to be their friend so my goal was to get them to the regional shovel tonight and let the other people make my kids from not me so uh so i was uh we'd go to the shop at noon and i would only give uh the educational classes to other people's kids never to my own kids and sometimes my kids would come over to me and go ah this is so boring i want to go outside i said yeah go ahead because they told me i can't leave myself go ahead and i'll cover anyway years later this guy who i mentioned who went to a conservative school um ended up becoming firm and going off the issue and i happened to be in a car with him one day and some other people and they asked him how did you decide to go off to yeshiva and he points to me and i said me i never told you to go to yeshiva he goes i know you never told us anything but you were our friend we could talk to you about anything we had a great time with you and we wanted to be like our friend and we knew that you went to yeshiva so i wanted to go to yeshiva too it was such a moment for me speeches are not what matters i did this during parenting kids watch i should say kids listen with their eyes not with their ears they see who you are and what you are and if you can oh it was a breast love people then you could bring them close to the top and that's what we have to work on we have to work on loving people now full disclosure some people are unlovable at least do you it was one kid who was unusually obnoxious he had a very hard life you know i had somebody else work with him and he became from and became a big machia and margaret's toy but uh i didn't i didn't have what it took for this kid now if you have that for most people like i say consider a different profession maybe run the kitchen at the champion but uh but if you can love people you can bring them close to talk now what was my inspiration i read you the uh dedication for the sponsorship for this uh show [Applause] just two months shy of his 100th birthday that to me always hurts it always hurts i mean it hurts anytime somebody dies but like you know when there's a milestone there my father died very close to his 50th anniversary my mother passed away she was 89 and uh we went to hospitals the doctor said listen it was a woman doctor and she said look we did everything that we can and uh that's it we can't do anything more i think you should look in the hospice but basically that's it you're gonna die my mother says well you're a real ray of sunshine and i said look my mother's birthday's in november she's gonna be 90. we're planning a big party can you keep her alive till then and then that really goes it doesn't work that way i said i know but you know maybe you got something you can give her you know some kind of experimental drug or something you know i don't want to miss the party uh that's what i was out of my mind but uh i my father-in-law's first activity every morning was to sit at his desk and write numerous checks to assorted stuccus he was very proud of his son my husband for his accomplishments for the jewish people this was sponsored by robertson pack house rabbi and mrs packhaus were forces in the kirif movement that are legendary anyone who is familiar with the cure field no you might be familiar with uh um her husband wrote the book how to stop it into marriage they they worked for years tirelessly and uh she's dedicating this in honor of her father-in-law because good people come from good places yeah i have until the robinson's parents very well uh when i went to yeshiva they were the directors i discussed eating meals over at their house and just very special people and obviously her husband also comes from very special people so it should be an alia from the summer and all of us should draw inspiration from people like this for us to do cure in our own way we don't have to join an organization but the next time you're on a bus next time you're on a plane next time you're in a hovercraft yeah next time you're jogging with somebody assuming you can talk when you're jogging i can't but uh you know strike up a conversation a few nice words work to say well this person is a good person because if i can see this person as a good person then i can be makari of them to torah okay that's it for now next time i'm going to do a little snippet from perrick base what about that i hate to be predictable and that's it if you want to find out more about the show if you want to leave a comment if you want to download the podcasts if you want to download the music video from the olavsky show theme song if you want to sponsor an episode so uh that's the place to do it and until next time i'm debbie dolowski and this is the rebellowski show it's the rabbi orlowski show tauren simra ready to go the rabbi orlovsky knowledge show wisdom will help you grow lots of fun in every episode and we don't have to rhyme though it's the rabbi orlovsky show on rabbi orloxy.com [Music] show till next time till we meet again throughout my orlovsky show it's the rabbi yolowski show it's the rabbi orlowski