Make your Impact (Ep. 141)

hi this is devin arlowski and welcome to the reverelavsky show all right let's address the elephant in the room i've missed a number of episodes this is true and people say you know there's no excuse of course there's an excuse there's always an excuse do you put your mind to it yeah i saw a bumper sticker years ago that said no problem is so big that you can't blame it on somebody else so uh so full disclosure what happened what happened is that my producer is in america for personal reasons family matters that he needs to attend to and therefore he has left it to my own designs to make sure that uh i do the filming for the ravioli show now i read all the comments i don't always address all the comments but i do read all the comments and uh and there's been a number of comments recently of people saying what happened to the quality of the uh production of the rubber elastic show yeah well full disclosure the rubber olofsky studio which is in macho's house is not open because he's away that leaves it to me to have to film this on my own little computer and uh that's why the quality is not the quality you've come to expect for the robert ellowski show what can i do yeah i uh i wouldn't know what to do i have no idea what happens anyway uh full disclosure we're doing this on zoom and uh mccall had to set up my computer so that i don't have to record it because i re i filmed the number of podcasts and i forgot to push the little record button and i had to do them all over again and it's really hard because believe it or not it takes a tremendous amount of energy to do this podcast to try to be able to keep it interesting i know it just looks like i just sit here in schmooze yeah but the fact matter is i have to rotate er an energy level that's not easy yeah i'm at an age now when yeah the uh the idea of a really good time is a nap so uh here i go and i do the whole podcast 40 minutes and suddenly boom it turns around that uh it didn't record it enough to do the whole thing over again so he said on my computer then it automatically goes right to him and he deals with it from that point onwards but until then he expects me to have to do it and that's what has been going on and at some point he said to me i have a organization i won't mention the name who has volunteered to come down to your home and film you so that we can go back to the regular high quality that everyone has come to expect on the radio ski show and i said okay and i waited a week and i waited two weeks and they never came and uh says i don't know what happened they said they were gonna come they didn't come so i was uh there was a poor communication and so i ended up missing a couple of uh podcasts you know how when you fall out of something it's hard for you to get back where you uh we were just reality you know that how many people have lost an enormous amount of weight sure that they're going to keep it off forever then at some point they fall off the wagon and they end up eating again but they're going to lose it again and then when they finally do you know they've gained back a substantial uh portion of the weight now i never did that whenever i would lose weight i would always gain it back with interest if i never dieted i would have been probably 60 pounds lighter than i was at the height of my weight loss program but uh you know it's uh it's a really hard thing and you start you say yeah i'm gonna tomorrow tomorrow the next day another week the time goes by and uh and so at some point i realized that weeks had gone by and i still had not done a podcast i said that's it ad khan now i i'm just going to buckle down regardless of any excuses regardless of anything and i'm going to sit down and do the podcast that was two weeks ago so uh so what happened all right well part of it is we went on a vacation i my family went on a vacation i i came along to drive i'm not a vacation person you know what could be more exciting than the actual life that i lived i got a nice bed i've got a great air conditioner we have good food and um and there's no mosquitoes and there's no flies and uh you know i'm i'm i'm completely uh on my own schedule i can go and get my duff yeah me in person yeah but uh okay but everyone everybody needed a vacation to go swimming i'm not i'm not i'm not a swimmer i never learned how to swim i went to i went to camp for like three years swim instruction they used to have first period in august when it's 40 degrees outside the uh the counselors all wearing sweatsuits we're supposed to well you don't jump in you first you take like a pickaxe and you chop a hole in it and uh you know but i i i don't know why could be one of my many learning disabilities but when you do the crawl and you have to like you know turn your head to breathe and put it back in and put it i i didn't have enough time when i turned my head to take a breath so i could only swim as long as i could until i ran out of air now i could do the backstroke the problem with the backstroke is you can't steer you end up in a completely different place than where you intended to be yeah and uh so uh so you know going to a pool yeah i would trade going to a pool any day for the hot mikvah that i go to on arab shops just sitting there hanging on them but anyway um so uh so i went vacation so i had to give my shirt on somebody's phone uh so i thought well maybe i'll film the podcast but if you think that the um that the quality is not so good now you know when you film things with your phone it's like a hostage video like help come and get me help i just couldn't see myself filming the ravioli show on a phone yeah um by the way if anyone is actually being held hostage made a hostage video please don't be offended i know that's the uh the order of the day everyone is offended you have to be offended yeah yeah jackie mason used to do that late jackie mason the end of a show would i don't want to hear anybody he's offended but he offended someone's getting up trying to make a living telling some jokes what are you offended trust me if you offended you don't have long to live let me tell you i have this routine that i do um about an owning shabbos and getting speakers from the champions and i talk about how like you know the after all gets hardened they brought someone in to speak about their recent trip to romania uh the synagogues and bucharest are are like um sort of like a muslim influence like with domes like my okay i've been i've been telling this joke for 30 years yeah one time i do this and this woman comes up to me and said i'm offended because i'm from bucharest i said what are you offended about what are you offended the trolls in bucharest have a muslim influence and they have domes but what are you offended about she wasn't sure she wasn't sure but she was offended you mentioned bucharest i'm from bucharest i'm offended yeah so if you are actually being held hostage i apologize i certainly don't mean to disparage the quality of your cell phone videos asking for ransom hey guys he was kidnapped and his father received uh instructions to uh put ten thousand dollars in a hollow tree in new jersey so he had no trouble getting the ten thousand dollars but he got a hernia carrying the hollow tree to new jersey anyway so uh so i i wasn't going to make it on my phone so eventually uh came back from vacation and i said i really have to sit down and do it but you know i have to well it just gets a little tough so but uh there are people who have sponsored uh episodes and uh they're waiting to see their episode and their sponsorship and i'm fully behind and i finally said okay i'm i'm going to bite the bullet and so that is the briefest introduction to uh the latest episode of the raviolovsky show and as always we're happy to have you along for the experience and we hope that you're enjoying it and i i'm always very moved by people who tell me how much they enjoy the show and what they gain from it and you know and it's uh it means a lot i don't always respond to to every letter because i mean to get to it but you know i'm you know i i get distracted very easily you know part of my add you know add that to my old age and uh add that to uh counseling i walk into the kitchen i don't remember why up in the refrigerator i'm just staring i don't know why um life is a constant surprise they say one of the nice things about getting old is you keep meeting new people and sometimes they're family members anyway so uh but uh the people who tell me that they enjoy this show it means a tremendous amount and i and i every every now and then somebody will write me and they'll say you know i'm sure you hear this all the time and you're probably tired of hearing it but it's so inspiring means so much and i'm like no no no i don't get to i know yeah i uh i received the gift from my parents that was a very special gift it took many many years to give this gift open and it was years of convincing me that i'm a little yutloch and i will never succeed at anything and they reinforced this over and over and over again so i i never internalize uh the fact that anybody listens to me or that anything that i say makes an impact it's my brain can't handle it so because of that i for hashem i'm protected from uh from the vicissitudes of this uh of this profession where you can start to take yourself very seriously somebody was getting involved in this field of speaker and they they said to me what piece of advice can you give me i said when you start believing your introductions it's time to get out of the field [Laughter] somebody was introduced with david cohen at the convention and it was really over the top and he gets up and he's visibly moved and he says i just wish my parents could have been here to have uh to have heard that my father would have enjoyed it and my mother would have believed it [Laughter] when i was looking at direct davinci is why somebody who was in the shawl saw the shabbaton and saw what the effect it was having on the kids and and how dramatic it was and and called up my father and said i saw your senator shepparton i want to tell you what an unbelievable job he's doing and my father said we wanted him to go to college so yeah i appreciate it very much every time i hear that somebody's listening and someone appreciates it and someone gets something out of it it's uh it's deeply meaningful and we have a sponsorship for this podcast for me a very special one it is from the krupka family a very famous family uh i grew up my father had a good friend mr krapka when we were growing up in east meadow and uh and of course you know i've had some of the krepka children as students over the years and i've had the course of working with a number of them and this is a particularly moving moving sponsorship for me it is sponsored by the krupka family in honor of rabbi krab government yitzhak men menasha may his nashamah amen i had the discourse of working with him and uh he was uh he was one of the unsung heroes of our generation you know there are certain people who you don't appreciate who they are yeah i was doing a chevaton once on ruby stafsky from columbus ohio was there and uh and i gave a special shout out and i said you know we take it for granted at this torah in america we have no idea what it means and uh and the fact is that we're heroes like rumustovsky who came out to columbus ohio and built the turret community and nobody appreciates it nobody nobody appreciates what these people did [Music] at uh and one at a family bar mitzvah here in edsel so we were honored by the presence of mayor fidel [Music] and uh who was the founder and dean of the ariana of nassau county and one of my nephews was there and they asked her for that to speak and he says to me who's this guy i said who's this guy he's the reason you're a firm jew today that's that's what this guy is everyone came out to long island and uh started the even country of nassau county there were no other ex kids mostly conservative kids i mean overwhelming and he and he built them into benay toyota it's just an unbelievable accomplishment that he made and one of those families was the olafskis my father he convinced my father to send the younger boys and uh that's the reason that our whole family became from and you know i think my parents are up to 90 great grandchildren at this point who are being brought up in tournaments and uh well that's close away from them so uh rabbi krupko was one of those people he was a builder in the old days in the in the greatest sense of the word he knew how to make torah meaningful and i did some with him and i did programs with him and he's just he was one of the greats of our generation and uh if if this course of whatever we learned today has uh has power all that power should go for him moving up even higher in harbor yeah there's there's a limitless amount that you can go up yeah so uh every krepko we love you and the whole krepka family and uh just great things great things for everybody okay we're we had a break but we were doing piercing of us as i mentioned there's a minute till rosh hashanah to do perky almost and i said i would get through one more cycle so uh i started the second cycle with paragolith we're now off the parrot base and i i flipped through the broken and i love learning turquoise and there's a minig that we adopted in our family i heard from a good friend of mine michael kaplan that his father-in-law of iron wine should have a foolish flamer um he would every shabbos between pesach and rosh hashanah go around and have everybody say the mishnahs now we don't go around i read it but i will i leave out the blanks and i let people fill them in yeah because by this point we've been doing this for years now a lot of them they know so one of my kids pointed out there are certain times when you don't even read the mission you just go like this so they know it's a song yeah em ain't none action toy [Applause] that goes like this it's an oldie [Applause] [Music] you don't have to finish it but neither can you say i'm not going to do my part what's the message the message is profound and it's something that i say all the time i have certain x-rays yeah that that i say certain expressions i mentioned this that on my 60th birthday my children wrote a song uh incorporating a lot of my classic catchphrases and uh they put together a video it's a lot of fun i have another friend of mine i was a redmond on his 60th birthday he made a cm on uh you do entirely rochelle xiaomi similar but anyway i'd love to tell that story anyway uh but uh i have certain catchphrases one of them is just because you can't do everything doesn't mean you can't do anything when you finish uh learning a safer flemish [Music] many years ago where he says when you finish a safer there's two attitudes one is okay i know that i learned that he told the story once uh where um somebody asked what should he learn to him let's just say that all the time was very serious about the musician we used to uh er every afternoon at three o'clock and then uh after we finished milk until four o'clock you said went muslim and they they took it very seriously somebody said once uh you know most yeshivas when they have muslims said it's the hillary mission [Music] he says it's kind doing bishop to say that they turn it into moses so i said this over once and he says i saw the greatest muslim in the mr pearl the other day it's funny you mentioned that art imitates life a life of a dayzone but anyway um so uh she says there's a certain people saying that so he says what should i learn during what's the seder he says missile shashar let me chase it and the young man said i finished it and then jake he used to used to have his reading glasses and this uh this movie going ghost you finished it you finished the mestillis you're sure the villagain couldn't find one extra word in the first 11 practicum and you finished it so some people like yeah i finished that who's that uh when i teach kumara so give out maya mccombs and guys who come to me after i have an hour and i said what should i do now i said you finished it she says yeah i said you know it says yeah yeah i know i said let's tell you saskatchewan i i i didn't say i know every word you know he gives three answers do you know what the three answers are ms let's just go read it again yeah when i was writing sweet koscielevsky he put down a milk hashem that's ramban and obama and that's the raw and uh i couldn't make heads or tails out of it yeah i could i couldn't understand i pushed it couldn't couldn't figure out what they were saying and my father went to him and i said i can't understand what's going on he says to read it again i said i said i did it six times he says six times i'm a promise somebody did it 50 times 80 times how many times then tell me that is six times now to be fair you see kosciellowski has a reputation for being an eloy for being a genius and uh you know how many times has he gone through them and he goes pretty fast i know because i saw him on the bus and he pulled out exuberance and he says we're going to do subas next month so i want to just quickly chase over this the next day on the bus this was his bus station next day on the bus he had gone to about 60 dollars he's a smart guy so guy was uh uh collecting england and the other night off nothing to do and uh he had the room next to him three who was also collecting a banter and he hears three learning through the wall and it was one of the gemaras and one of the bubbas that everyone's done in yeshua from the time they went in uh sixth grade you know and read slowly the tomorrow and then the ration and the tasters and again the same kumara rashi tastefus and again the rashi and tasters for three hours the same piece of goodbye just going over it over and over and over again so you finished it and then there are people who would say to me after sheer rebbe i didn't understand anything i said do you understand anything she says no that's what's it maurice question okay what's in my answer right what's the commerce proof right what's this question on that what's this answer what's the second answer i don't know i said okay so you know the whole sugu but you didn't understand this is the second kasha a second terrorist and you say to me i don't know anything because even though you don't know everything it's not true to say i don't know anything people ask a question i don't understand the question but i never understood the question how come rosh hashanah comes before yom kippur why don't we have your kippah first and then get a you know uh get a kapoor and then go in for the judgment can you get a kapoyra until you have a den first you ever did then you can then you could try to change it then but you know how can i ask you to pardon me for for a crime that i haven't committed yet when trump was running for president him and clinton uh hillary clinton went to some dinner where he was supposed to say funny things he says i was walking into the room i bumped into hillary she said pardon me and he says i have to get elected first that was the only nice point and then he started saying nasty things but anyway that's nice to hear no there um parenthetically i got a couple of comments one person wrote me a very unpleasant email very unpleasant where he's saying you know why do you say nice things about trump do you know what he did on january 16th you know what he did this and he did that you know and i wanted to answer but i couldn't because he wrote me from some anonymous email and there was no way to respond to it you know so if you're watching this what i tried to write you was i said president trump was the most pro-israel pro-jewish president in history that's true you don't like everything else that he did you don't like his medos you know like the fact that he says nasty things you know like this i don't care a president who looks out for the well-being of the jewish people is going to have a big place in the world to come that to me is much more important than whether or not he said the right thing to the to the idiots wearing horns who went into the capital and sat in pelosi's seat armed insurrection nobody had any guns an on protester was shot by a policeman if that was a black person at a at a uh at a blm rally it would be a major scandal but i was a trump supporter you can shoot down it doesn't make a difference i don't care he was a tremendous oe israel he supported and he gave muslim to the jews he says i don't understand why why don't they why don't the american jews care about israel he said anyway i don't want to talk about this i'm just you know if you're going to write me a nasty email then you have to give me the opportunity to respond okay as i often do i'm not so good at answering the ones where people actually ask real questions but nasty ones i use again and sometimes i shouldn't you know my wife always says to me just just just don't answer it you know i can't help myself i you think by this point i would realize that you know most people don't don't really care people who write nasty emails don't really care about what you have to say they're not engaging in a conversation anyway i'm digressing yeah so uh so people say you know i don't know anything i don't know anything you don't know anything just because you don't know everything so oh that was how i got into this why is mr come before him different so one of the reasons is because as much as you can resilient but then you should be sorry and i always say just because you haven't done everything doesn't mean you haven't done something and you deserve to get a course for what you did in din for what you deserve for what you actually accomplished and that's that's what rosh hashanah is yeah so then we fall short we need yom kippur to make up for it but but the fact that uh that is something i did so that's where jade said shot it says to the people who think they know everything to the people who think they haven't learned anything and it's jose can strengthen yourself and go back and learn some more yeah learn some more keep growing i don't have to do everything but just because i can't do everything doesn't mean i can't do anything it's the story of the original chicken soup for the soul but this guy look walking along the beach picking up starfish and throwing them back in the water so someone looks at him and says what are you doing what are you doing uh he says well if i don't throw him back in the water they'll die he says but this is there's thousands of starfish and this is happening on beaches all across the world you can't make a difference he throws in another one and says made a difference to him so just because i can't change everything doesn't mean that i can't change anything identical used to say this all the time abram vino was one person the vistro salon there was one person and they changed the world when people talk to me about the different problems in society and they say why doesn't anybody do anything and i said i am i'm i'm i'll save the world by myself if you want to help me there'll be two of us otherwise i'll do it myself i just keep trying i keep working i don't know i don't know where it's going to go i don't know what my impact is going to be hello what's up benjamin levi tell me that i i got to do something gotta try i don't know where uh the effect is going to be but uh whatever i can do i have to do i can't just sit back and say i i can't make a difference i can't make a difference every time you do something in this world you're changing the world you're making it to a better place my hebrew is not so good but no one makes the first now i mean it when i say the word anyway fine i'm just listening to my uh jewish english mix it's like country boy a.b rottenberg yeah people appreciate his music but i appreciate his lyrics he has such a gift for writing lyrics yeah there are so many people who write lyrics that are sort of like forced english you know and that is what he had come while he had been to come he really cared some and that's why it was to come [Music] he comes up with the most amazing things you know so i guess this country uh country boy you know about this uh this jewish kid in kansas doesn't even know he's jewish and he finds his way back you know and and he managed to capture the vocabulary of the country western song and i was like and how our lives have meaning if we keep ourselves pristine nobody uses pristine accepting cooking western songs but anyway that's brilliant um my hebrew has a country twang right maybe that isn't um so uh but i make an effort in my own way to smile say hello say a nice word yeah i appreciate it thank you yeah whatever i could say to to try to make things better do i make a difference i assume i do all right i i might not be able to do everything that doesn't mean i can't do anything so you can't sit back and say listen what am i going to do the uh my tenure on uh the mission of pika was called the rover mice says it is better to give one dollar to ten people than ten dollars to one person though it could be argued that you'll make more of a difference to that one person with the ten dollars than the ten people with the one dollar that's not the point the point is you have to give it stuck up you have to make the world into a giving place you have to try to help people and uh just because i can't do everything i can't solve all the problems that doesn't that doesn't free me from having to try within whatever opportunities present themselves to me to try to make a difference in the world so i can't do everything i can do something i can do something yeah um i remember when uh i i ran ncsy in long island for nine years i moved to itself so someone said to me what about clay so i said i saved clay's already i don't know why there's anything left to do frankly didn't we take care of that already yeah there's always more to do and i can't do everything but just because i just because i can't save every starfish in the world doesn't mean that i can't make a difference to these few that i'm throwing it and every time you give someone a smile or a kind word will you have them over a shabbos meal or you help them out with something you change the world you change the world change the world for the better and that's what we have to do that's what we have to do we have to know that coach barrow who put us in this world to do something just like there were six hundred thousand jews at har sinai there are six hundred thousand letters in the turk to tell you every jew is a letter in the term so rebecca shiro pointed out there are three hundred four thousand seven hundred and something letters in the torah not 61 000. and 600 000 doesn't count the women it doesn't count the children doesn't count the people over over 60. motion iron aren't including the 600 now so the answer is you have to look at it from the point of view of what's the message the message is that you are a letter in the safety you might be the big ayan in shema yourself you might be a little above some place doesn't make a difference without you say photography is puzzled you make a difference in the world and you have an obligation to do it [Music] go out and do something great and that doesn't mean that you have to like i say start a national organization it could be a smile it could be a kind word it could be uh helping somebody whatever you can do you can do and like i say just because you can't do everything doesn't mean you can't do anything so we're back i hope to have the next podcast out shortly in the meantime uh if you want to find out more about the show you can go to my website every alaska.com you can leave a comment you can um you can sponsor an episode you can download the song you can write an email um you can have it your way [Laughter] all the pickles all the lettuce special it is not upset anyway all the garbage that i had pumped into my head when i was growing up but anyway so uh that's it everybody uh everybody should have a wonderful time so nice to be back with you and uh that's it for this episode i'm devin dolowski and this is the revenant lobster show it's the rabbi orlovsky show [Music] show till next time till we meet again around my rolowski show it's the rabbi rolowski show it's the rabbi yorlowski