My Name Is Dovid Howard And I Approve This Show (Ep. 269)

happy birthday to me happy birthday to me happy birthday re alovi and this is the Rev olowski show thank you thank you very much and whether you're watching with our friends over at T time wherever you watch or listen to your podcast as always we're happy to have you around and do not forget to like share subscribe and comment as you may have guessed from my introduction this is is my uh Birthday Episode uh how do I know that because our episode is sponsored by T and hinda fredman if my calculation is correct this week's episode B should coincide with Row's birthday perhaps you have come to terms with your IM mortality but the rest of us have notem yeah in fact uh someone said to me when are you going to write your own book right there is a book out there with my name on it that I didn't write but uh I was going to write my own box so someone said uh when are you going to put it out and I said I don't know maybe it'll be printed POS humously so they said oh good I hope it's soon yes I have come to terms of my other modality but other people have notem please be healthy happy and able to continue incredible work for many many years and many birthdays to come thank you very much so that's why I started off by wishing myself a happy birthday and I have to say this is not the only birthday message I have received this is what happens when you make a podcast that's watched by thousands of people and you point out on para's bow that it was your Mitzvah par people figure out when you come around the bo your birthday must come out sometime around then and it is in fact true now uh that's not always true because uh um my son Yakov he was born number three I had two girls then I had Yakov then I had six more girls I only had one boy my father had six boys and um Yakov his bar mitzvah uh officially came out on par pares AEV because he was born on H on Mo shabas naku so he had a uh Mitzvah bom H we made a we made a suda and then he had a sudas in school and then that Thursday day he had alyah at the Kel and then um we did that shabus AEV but my family couldn't come in until par re and uh and so uh he prepared another bar mitzvah par was it worth it to make two Bar Mitzvah well my mother was taking everybody out to the Rada here in jush so the short answer is yes so when you ask when was his bar mitzvah it's a little more complicated oh and then he had an evening you know uh one one of those evenings that Rabbi shurin described as the Bas safer exchange they have this you sit down they give you a plate with a Berea and you give them a safer and we call it a wash so that's how we have a another B so he had an evening also so I said my father had six boys and made six bar mitzvah I had one boy and made six bar mitzvah but me I was one of the six boys so my bar mitzvah is actually pretty uh simple and it's interesting my father had a a a policy by the bitzas that except for my oldest brother Jason Shalom and my youngest brother Bruce um he let everybody choose what to do so one brother said I'll just keep all the gifts I want a small party and I'll keep all the gifts myself um my brother Galia and man said that he wanted to go to erel this was this was 1966 was before The Six Day War you know it was not very uh common for people to go toel but he had this love of her show even back then he chose to use his b mitzvah for that um my uh my oldest brother my father said I don't care I'm making a big party I don't care what you want and uh that was his first bar mitzvah so he was a florist he spelled out Jason in 2,000 roses so uh it was one of those Old Time bar mitzvah you know know starts with that those a little kind of fruit cup in the little uh little glass bowl and stuff you know so that was uh that was very exciting evening I was five years old I think and um and uh and for my brother Bruce it was an a sh so he had a the and then he laned in the heo there was no great synagogue yet so he would have been there so had his bar mitzvah and um and uh it was uh exciting me I didn't have much of a choice because my grandmother uh passed away just before my bar mitzvah so my mother was in schim so they said you can't have much of a bar mitzvah and I was like yeah that that's part for the course I more less expected that so my B MIT was on chabas and it was so they made like you know a lunch in in sh which was kind of ironic because since we were going to conser a synagogue so instead of having an evening everybody drove to sh in fact I had uh become shabas about a month before my bar mitzvah so I was walking to SCH and relatives kept pulling up offering me rides I said that's okay I'll walk out you know so uh it was pretty exciting I'll never forget that that shabus was in fact the closest thing that I had ever have experienced to a chabas because as I've mentioned before my father would come home Friday night whatever time it was my mother would light candles even though it was after shabas and my father would make Kish and he would wash for some reason only he would wash and then we' make hotzi on two kalas and uh we'd have chicken soup and brisket and then everybody would go watch TV but um but there was at least a semblance of you know of a shabas yeah but this chabas my father's father and his second wife uh came for chabas and um so my father had to keep chabas for his father and it was M shabas I invited over some friends from from school and it was just it was mind-blowing we it was probably the first shabas I had ever experienced uh in my own home it was an amazing thing and I remember Friday night as I was you know studying my Parsha you know there was Aunt Lena we didn't call her grandma we call her aunt Lena um was sitting there with her hair covered saying to hilum you know it was uh I never saw anything like this in my life it was it was such a dramatic change and um uh yeah so that was my Bitz for chabas and uh and so I had mine in uh had mine in synagogue Temple you know the East met Jewish center and I had one of those mimeographed speeches that I had to make you know I didn't say an actual jussa you understand I read a speech heavenly father today I am a man I stand here in the eyes of the god and of my relatives and of my heavenly father may you bless you okay I give my little speech and that was it I actually was so proactive that I asked if I could uh be the for Shak now we had a caner caner Caris and the caner did shakas and and mus and they let me do shakas this was an amazing thing they taught me the different tunes and things you know and so uh it's my birthday but um basically just to put this into perspective you know my birthday is gimat um I was born in shvat and I died on shvat uh I had my heart attack on gimat on my birthday it was a chabas just like this year it's a chabas it was during my grandson's Shalom Z and it was a bit of a downer because they bring in the stretcher in the middle of the party and carry me out and you know it's a little nerve-wracking and uh and the guy does the angiogram and he says I don't know why you're still alive you're not getting any blood to your heart you're supposed to be dead so I I basically you know decided that I died on that day and I remember as they were carrying out me out I I really felt pretty bad you know and I said to my wife oh no I'm going to die but only sadim die on their birthday and I've worked my whole life not to be a sadic it turns out I was right I didn't die but as far as I'm concerned I died I got out of the hospital on tub bishvat after I did bypass and the surgeon said he shouldn't have made it through the operation so uh so it was M FL and I finally got out of there uh I don't know why in America they kick you out pretty soon like usually before you know before they finished removing all the tubs they just send you out you know but here in Israel they want to hold on to you I had to really fight to get out of the hospital I got out on tub bishvat and um I remember um they come by with a brochure because after you have heart surgery even after you have an angiogram you're entitled to go to what they called now I don't think they have anything like this in America I'm not sure but they have it for women after child birth they sent them to a bet there's a famous One in tellstone h and it basically means that after you give birth you go straight from the they take the baby to the nursery and uh you rest up and you have all your meals you never have to get dressed you just wear your robe the whole time and um if you're they on chabas they have an arrangement that if your husband stays in tellstone he can walk over for shabas and have the meals with you uh they make arrangements and uh my wife said they give you liver at every meal to help rebuild your blood supply you know and it's a nice thing gives a little chance to recover so after surgery they also have a b and they're showing me these brochures this one's by the ocean this one's up in the mountains this one's that a beautiful scenery and my wife said I think it's better for the children if you come home because we were making a a wedding my daughter was getting married in another week a week and a half so everything's kind of upside down and then people are going to feel like they have to come and visit you and I said no no they really don't they just just leave me there in fact R centa called me up I used to speak sometimes by R centers and uh senta called me up and he says David I don't want you to go home and I said me too and he says I will pay to put you in the Ramada and have a nurse you know uh come in to take care of you the idea of me staying in a hotel with this nurse I don't know my wife wasn't so happy about that I don't think he meant that she was gonna stay in my room but anyway so I came home and that was tubish it was the night of tubish and we always have we don't have the official tubish vat sedor that they have but we always try to see how many fruits we can gather together for tub bishvat and um uh we usually get over 40 and it's just uh very exciting so I usually have my on tuat so I was born in shvat I died on shvat I got better on shvat you know now that doesn't always happen and the Lord of the Rings gandor died but then he got better you know so that's a very special thing um Captain America died and then he got better you know I only know this because I used to read comics when I was a kid and I have a friend of mine who still stays up with the com Comics you know so every now and then he fills me in on what's going on he says Captain America died I said what says don't worry he got better you know say yes Superman died I said what yeah don't worry he got [Laughter] better so I died but don't worry I got better so I was born in shat I died in shat I got better in shat came back which is sort of what tubish is about as we'll talk about when we get to tubish um and my father died in shatat and my mother died in shatat 20 years and six days apart so shad's a big month for me yeah a lot of stuff everything seems to be put into shat I was born in shat had my heart attack in shat my s in shat my father's y andat my mother's y andat shat becomes a very important uh uh month for me and so I thought maybe we would take a little opportunity to talk about the month of shat now we don't usually talk about uh the months sometimes we do but uh it's a good thing to do you'll find it in the the of course has something on every single month uh SE has something on every single month and the month have special significance to it um every month has a masle we spoke about this yeah mael uh does not mean good luck it means the zodiac sign and it means that there's certain influences in that particular month uh my friend reissell who was on the show he was talking about the book that he had written about Raa Shapiro uh if you'll no doubt recall so uh he he um he used the following Marshall ones he's English Americans can tell from his accent uh English people can't always tell because since his wife is from Memphis uh he's picked up something of a southern drw mixed with a English accent so it's like uh pleasure to meet you all you know like sort of mixing your metaphors yeah so he gives the following Marshall he says if you go into the underground that's the London's term for their subway system the underground and there's one part of the underground that's a loop you go around in the loop he says if you want to know where you are you can check the name of the station or you could get out of the station and look around and so you'll know so if you get out of the station and you see a bunch of people in bowler H hats carrying briefcases then you know you're in the Financial dist District if you get out and you look around and you see uh you know Buckingham Palace then you're pretty sure you know where you are it's aspect of malus if you get out and you realize a bunch of um I don't think he used the term hippies it's some kind of the term for people who are Counter Culture people you know you're in picul Circus so you can either look at the name of the station or you can look at what's around you and tell the same thing is true with every month every month has a name but the mael describes for you what the month is all about so shat is the dele it's kind of ironic because my English birthday is January 12th and uh according to my English birthday I'm a Capricorn and uh and somebody asked me who was into the Zodiac he says what are you he says the Capricorn he goes well that makes perfect sense and he went to I'm Spitz Capricorn I'm exactly a Capricorn etc etc etc and then at some point I realized in Judaism it goes by your Hebrew birthday so even though in January 12th I would be a Capricorn uh going by shvat it would be an aquarius which is the dele I said actually I go by my Hebrew birthday I'm an Aquarius and he says well that makes perfect sense you're such an Aquarius and then he went to whole gun Dr how I was at Aquarius this showed me that that masalas are obviously not set in stone you know if you uh there are certain aspects to it you can um integrate Etc although all these methods are very interesting because um Miriam ad hand had this book called uh um personality types and she based it on a footnote in one of Young's journals that everybody is either is there's four twetter sets I don't remember them all but either you're this or you're that you know so either you're um an introvert or an extrovert either you're this or that I remember them all you know and basic basally the idea is that you figure out a person's personality by giving them a four-letter code based on these four different aspects and then that gives you insight into the person there a short hand that you can always tell who the person is so my wife was going to some of these EMT meetings when we first came to Israel and she says you know be very careful not to um use these to generalize but she says at every meeting somebody would mention something about their husband or something goes oh that's of course cuz he's such a EB d i w whatever it is you know and of course everyone would label people and that's what happens uh when you create labels you're going to label people it's always a very difficult um system whenever you try to label somebody uh it's a limitation people are much too complicated to be reduced to uh a letter or to uh a type Etc the gamar says that a person is the entire world the entire world is a person is an everything that's in the world exists in a person said the world's a complicated place and a person's a complicated uh being you have to go into them and people are always filled with contradictions so that you can label somebody particular thing and then they will completely surprise you by going in the other direction I've had this when I had to make major life decisions and I wanted to go and seek orak from a and people would tell me Well if you go to re he'll tell this I tell go to and he'll tell you this if you go to this one he'll tell you this and I never found that to be true yeah nobody ever gave me the answer that everyone told me was their sha you know and um and I've had people who have told me things it's m yeah um and when I actually speak to the god of Israel they told me no don't make an issue about it and uh it's an amazing thing you know you have to know that people are complicated sugas are complicated and you can't just give a a simple answer to something it's it's too Pat and so you have to really go into it to try to be able to figure out what a person is but the reason I mentioned this is because at some point after my wife had been going for a while so I said so what's my letter she said it's very hard to say because in some ways you're an introvert and in some ways you're an extrovert in some ways you're like this and some ways like this and that she goes you're all the letters well that makes sense because you know I am a complicated individual you so I I I'm not easily pigeon hold so that's why when they were doing the Maas so when he tells me you know oh you're a Capricorn I was a Capricorn when he tells me you're an aquarius I was an aquarius it's hard to give a um a distinction now obviously it means that you have certain theas when the kazal tell us that there's such a thing as Maus then that means that we look at it and try to figure it out so um Aquarius um is basically in Hebrew they call the a bucket and there's a lot of things that you can get from a Del one thing is that Del is from aan Dal which is poor and the only time that parents get a glimmer of Nava is when they go to name their kids um uh it doesn't always seem to make sense to us but names tell you a lot about the person um barowitz who told me a story about the ma rabba the ma rabba bov was able to look at your mza and tell you things about yourself and basically tell you what you should do and give you eight Etc it's a it's a particular art form now he spoke ay Hebrew and he was in Brooklyn at this sh where everyone basically spoke Yiddish so they couldn't understand each other so bar Vitz who spoke both they asked him if he would interpret and he says he's a c lak he doesn't believe any of this stuff he says but he watched story after story after story where this guy would look at the mza and just figure out who the person was from the mza and tell him what to do yeah and he told me some of the most amazing Stories basically he walked away as a Believer that's what he said that he uh he he changed his position he saw the most amazing things you know story after Story and um um he says so he once called up to ask him about a somebody and um and he says oh he's a gar now if he called up and he said the guy's name was Abraham B Abraham that would be a real easy one but it wasn't he had a regular name and a regular last name I I know GM who sometimes change their English last name to a Jewish name even though it it's not their real name sometimes they do it the other way you know there was a period of time when Jews would change all their names to you know English names in fact Joey Adams who was a famous comedian you know back in the 50s so um uh he had a very Jewish name I forgot what it was and he says one time I was in in Boston and he says I see your name is Adams perhaps we're related I'm descended from President John Adams so he says are we related he goes I don't know what was your name before you changed it so so uh so it wasn't it wasn't a a name that you would associate with being a g at all and he he heard the name and he says oh he's a g now how could he possibly tell that from the name apparently you can tell a lot of things from a person's name now I was named doid um I probably told the story before um my name my name is pretty complicated you know um uh my name in in English is David Howard and uh if I told this before I apologize uh my name is David Howard so when I started in Hebrew Academy of Nassau County they said what's your name I said David Howard I didn't know what my Jewish name was when never used it so he says oh how it is so they told me my name was DAV I was okay with that um and then I uh I went to um had my B MIT I got called up as D yeah and for years I was D and then one time my uh my uh get called up fromia my father says to me who's I said I am dead says your name is HH that's why we named you Howard why would we name you Howard if your name [Laughter] was now that made perfect sense because they gave English names to match people's uh um to name people's uh Jewish names you know so my brother who was bended ofam they called him Bruce Adam you know and um my brother Galia label they named him Gary Lester you don't hear the name Lester very often you know so I said why would they name him Lester my wife said what were they gonna do name him Gary Larry I mean how many names are with L you know I guess they could Gary Leonard but I don't know that that's any better than Lester but um you know so I was David Howard obviously I must have been an H name that's why they did that you know so I asked shinberg and he said s s and HS are the same name just keep them so about a year before he died he says to me who's H I said I am dad says your name is hersel I said sorry there's no more room on the talls bag I'm done it's three her it is I ain't moving from that Hershel is obviously just hsh you know it's a dimunitive you know like um uh ra a daughter ra her name is is RA you know but sometimes people my my my I name my daughter Miriam from my grandmother my father said her name was really Mariam just a mispronunciation and Russian of Miriam you know I mean you know so her name was really Mariam you know when I uh named my daughter uh R RL yeah that was for my mother's grandmother my mother-in-law's mother she goes her name was really ra you know you know but uh The Only Name I ever got right was was uh I named for my mother-in-law's Aunt Minnie her name was mindle I wasn't crazy about the name but I said every name I named everybody complained it wasn't the real name I said fine you know I'm going to name him mindle so I told him we named him mindle for Minas she never liked that name and neither does my daughter you know so uh so there you go anyway so apparently you know mindle becomes Mindy and uh and and in America mind's you know not a problem but in in Israel it's mind mind mind you know so she doesn't like that name what am I going to do but you get a moment of inspiration when you name your kids so I was named David yeah for Uncle David Uncle David was married to Aunt Lena not my aunt Lena who married my my grandfather it was Lena was my grandmother's sister and um name him David so I asked my father once who is this Uncle David I never met him you know obviously I was named for him some drunk some Gambler yeah he had no name you know so we gave him a name you know now the thing with my father is you never knew if he was kidding or not it could be he was kidding I don't know but he would not budge his description of Uncle David So at one point I asked my mother said he says that he was a drunk and a gambler because he wasn't a drunk so he was a gambler yeah he was a gambler I said so you named me for a gambler you know so he says listen he only had one one daughter and she didn't have any children she hadn't gotten married and she says listen you have a lot of sons and there's no one to name my father for could you give him a name you know so they name me my parents used to give names as a um as a very often so um and my second name came from the dubers uh I once sat down with my father and I made I got down everybody's names cuz we didn't know what the names were I got down all the names my oldest brother to this day insists that I got his name wrong yeah and I definitely did not because I asked my father specifically you know was Jason Seth and he calls himself yahushua schmuel that's not his name yeah his second name is shepel because I did a little bit of check into the family history there is no SCH on either side but most of the second name came from the dubas my my father's mother was a dubna and most of them came from dubna a who Bruce's name for was a dubna both Galia and label with dubas um uh and there was shepel shepel the cab driver he was a he was a dubna and um and you know that that's where the name came from and my mother's father died when she was a a teenager so it makes sense that her first son she would named for her father and they called him Shia that's what they called him Shia so when they said they named M they named him Shia the mo did what he said but when he went to Hebrew school they fig Shia was um it was yahushua but it's not shui would be yahushua Shia is isay and in fact I saw a picture of my grandfather's Mata and his name was yesu no so they called him Mia so his real name is yesu sheel and he insists that his name was yahushua shoel but he passed away his wife passed away when I light a ysai candle for him I say y yes yo sheel I at least have the name right but I went over my father what all the names were and then I went through theas to find out where they all came from so but David I was for Uncle David and it was done as a yeah and um but obviously you know that means that some of my uh some of my uh attributes are going to be in my name so what's doid what's and David so David means is related to the word do which is friend right cuz David was a friend of a he was his buddy right San hedin says that there are two Thrones one for and one for David that was his that was his goto guy was David and uh the word d the doid is d v is a connector it means total connection to Hashem and he remains D no matter how great D did he always remained lowly D like the the of shvat so the fact that I was named David in shat obviously the Del and the doid of David and the do at the end of d by the way this is the idea of Yehuda also it's hashem's name YK with a do in it to be D to be lowly so um soat the Del makes sense on on a certain level for the fact that I'm named D yeah and I have to say that gave me a tremendous to always help me um remain D first of all I've never won the lottery even when I was sure I was going to win the lottery and the last time I was in America and the Power Ball was like a billion dollars and I bought a ticket and I was so sure I was going to win you know I was wrong by the way I did not and frankly if I did I would not tell you with destroy my life anyway but obviously he did not feel that I should um be fabulously wealthy I don't have to worry you know I have as Jackie Mason once said I have everything I need uh unless I want to buy something anyway I don't need many money unless I want to buy something so um so but okay um but uh but my father from the time I was little he would tell me you are a l and you will never succeed in anything and if I don't take care of you you will starve to death and I have integrated that message so it doesn't never matters somebody said to me you know I listen to your recordings from 30 years ago and I listen to you today and you sound exactly the same well first of all I haven't developed any new material but besides that um I sound exactly the same because I've never picked up any heirs because anytime I try to think you know oh wow you know I got a lot of people listening to me you know is that so first of all I read all the negative comments so that always helps keep me grounded but besides that all the nice things that people say I just hear my father saying don't listen to them we know better you know you'll never succeed so uh so it always helps to keep me D keep me humble which is very good keeps you grounded and that's was what did with because he knew that he's going to be the Mel he's going to have power and when you have that much power power corrupts so therefore there was a rumors that he was a mser um his father yesi thought he was a m the whole story of how that happened but besides that doig told sh you know you don't worry about him he can't be king he comes from moav he's not even allowed to be a Jew so um so they always thought he was a moi and then there was always the the Sha camp and the doid camp and then of course the Sha Camp morphed into the um camp that was angry at him for marrying Beva and killing uiti and there were people who would uh condemn him till the day he died says he'd be in the middle of giving a shear and suddenly somebody would raise their hand didn't matter what it was about and say uh what's the punishment for someone who sleeps with a married woman says he gets the death penalty but he has a place in alaba but someone who embarrasses someone in public doesn't have a place in alaba this is what he put up with and until schlomo built the base of MDES and the doors would not open until he said M it says then the enemies of doid their faces paled and they suddenly realized uhoh I guess we were wrong about him but it took a long time for that there were people who opposed the rambam right up after his death still they opposed the mission the Torah rabo Yona wrote um sh Chua for having opposed the rambam and you know history Bears us out the ramal was persecuted during his lifetime it was only afterwards that people realized who he was so um yeah so so the dollars but but Lee is something else also and that is a pale is there to be able to fill with water and to distribute it was very interesting um someone said to me when did you decide to become a rabbi I said as soon as I became from I'm an extremist by Nature I said if I'm going to do this I'm going to do this right and my father who wasn't necessarily happy with my decision to become from he says you know you don't have to become a rabbi you you could do a lot of other good things and I said but I want to help people I want to use my gifts to help people and by the way um that to me I believe is one of the most important missions that every person has in this world is to ask themselves you know how can I help the world gave me I've told this story already about how this agent offered to represent me when I was living in LA and he he felt that I could really make it and and in the comedy clubs and then get my own show and I said okay lots of people hear that yeah that that was the theme of the song um uh um Do You Know the Way to San Jose yeah and and all the stars that never were are waiting a parking cars and and pumping gas yeah so I'm going back to San Jose yeah I came to La I thinking I'm gonna become a big star you know so first of all I said listen everybody thinks they're going to become a star um I said but besides that if I if a k actually gave me so I can spend them on myself or I can use them for cl so I chose to to use it for clel but I made that decision where it came from it was so I was tested at that point but uh but I knew that's something going to do so uh when I went to I had a learning director from so so basically he convinced me that you know gonna go to for 15 years and okay but I was clearly not cut out to become a Rua so I figured okay I I'll become a Elementary School Reby you know but I def definitely did have the personality for that that requires a tremendous amount of seder and self-control and maturity none of which I have to this day so instead I stumbled into ncsy went to kir of suddenly I found I had a gift for that so I went into that field you know but um but I always interesting didn't know anything about the Maus but I always saw myself as a bucket to be able to be a conduit to be able to take and give it to other people through whatever means I could find available um I've mentioned this many times that I've had tremendous in my life and my my first uh job that I had which was uh you know an ncsy d uh adviser in La I was tricked into taking and then I was offered regions all around the country and I took Long Island not knowing that it was dead at the time and uh I was very successful and then I came to erel and my friend R granowski encouraged me to start teaching in nor D and aric KH pressured me into teaching on Discovery and I was pressured into teaching in a seminary and I was pressured into this and pressured into that and I never looked for a job people always came to me and offered me jobs and when I finally left you know whatever a job cuz I would leave a job when I finally maxed it out and another one came its way nothing ever came its way so suddenly I started getting offers to speak in America so I said okay I'll become a speaker and I traveled around I used to go um I would have a trip every two months and for anywhere between a week and two weeks I was speaking all over the place and then it suddenly just stopped just stopped nobody offered me anymore and you know I I I once in a while have a trip but you know it's unusual so uh so it just dried up and I said it's sobering especially it's going to be my birthday I'm 66 years old it's not as old as you'd think you know I tell people I retired early but I didn't plan to I just didn't have any jobs so it was my m so I said uh it's um it's sobering that K threw at me you know I'm done so someone says no you have a podcast I said yeah for an hour a week I sit in front of a camera you know says yeah but how often do you get an audience of between 10 and 20,000 people that's hard to fit into a room so K is using you as a means to be marbit toyra or whatever it is that we do here um through this so you reach a lot more people uh in this means so uh so okay you know I recognize that but maybe that's the ma dele and why the month of shvat so much of my life focuses around it I'm almost positive I told this story before and you'll forgive me I know I know there are those people out there who listen to every single show and and committed to memory and they say oh oh I've heard this one already so I'm sure I must have said this story beforehand but there are these things called value clarifications where where you present people with a no- wi scenario just to see what they would do so uh there a whole bunch of them so one of them is like you say to a group of kids um you're a doctor and as a doctor you're sworn to preserve life and they wheel in this old man and you recognize him as the Nazi who is in charge of the concentration camp that killed your parents do you operate to save his life or not so it forces you to make choices there are no right choices uh and those of you who are star Star Trek fans will probably recognize this as the co kobashi maneuver where there is no correct answer nobody ever won the Kobayashi maneuver I think that's what it's called the trekkies will correct me if I'm pronouncing it incorrectly where basically uh there's a hospital ship and it's in Klingon territ and if you go in you're violating you know their territory and if you don't then they're going to be destroyed so no matter what you do it fails the whole point of the test is to uh is to just test your reactions and a no- win situation no one ever passed it except for Captain Kirk and someone asked him finally how did you do that and he says I reprogramed the computer so that I I could be successful so they said you cheated says I don't believe in no win situations yeah so uh but these are value clarifications are those where there's no good answer and you're forced to make a choice the gamarra does this very often where it presents a scenario where you have no choice but to make a choice and uh you know two people are drowning which one do you save you can't you save them both like Spider-Man did in the first Spider-Man movie where he managed to save Mary Jane and the uh the car full of people that were being dropped from the Roosevelt Island no you can't save them both you're not super so now you have to make a choice you know so this is a value clarification and it's called Crocodile Island it says there's a um Romeo and Juliet and they love each other desperately and they want to be together but Romeo is on Crocodile Island it's called Crocodile Island because the uh river is filled with crocodiles and if you try to swim it you'll get eaten by the crocodiles the only way to get across is with the fairy men and Juliet is so desperate to see Romeo uh that she finally says to the fairy man please please take me ac cross and he says yes if you sleep with me so she doesn't know what to do she definitely doesn't want to do that and be disloyal on the other hand she wants to be with Romeo so she asks why is Ivan and he doesn't want to get involved so she figures she has no choice she agrees to the boat man's terms she comes across when Romeo realizes um uh how she got across he tosses her aside and wants nothing to do with her and now after she made this tremendous sacrifice out of Romeo she's so hurt she goes to her friend Sluggo who then beats up Romeo within an inch of his life and as the sun sets Juliet is laughing and the question is who's the worst person in the story there are no good people who's the worst person in the story some people say Romeo because what everyone else did they did out of love and he just did it out of hatred some people say The Boatman because he took advantage of someone in need other people say hey he was a capitalist he didn't force her you know if you want to pay the price fine if not not some people say slogo he's the only one who resorted to violence anyway some kind of answers so the guy who was running the group he he has presented this many times and he he as soon as he presents it he looks at me and says' whatat do you say I said wise Ivan and he says what I said wise Ivan he's the worst guy in the story and he goes no one picks wise Ivan why would you pick wise Ivan I said because he's the only one who could have prevented this and he refused he says that's fascinating so in your value system if you could help some somebody and you don't that's the worst thing you could imagine and I didn't realize that you know sometimes there are moments where you come to a realization I didn't realize that's what I felt just like I didn't know I have all these learning disabilities but when I was already teaching they brought down a specialist to uh give a presentation on um on uh learning disabilities so they put this slide up which was basically like a mosaic and they say does everyone see what this is and everyone says yeah the letter and they say right a kid with this learning disability won't see the letter and I'm staring at it I don't see anything which should have been a tip off to me but I I didn't realize that that means that I have the learning disability I just like oh that's weird I don't see a letter but um uh because I hadn't realized it but yeah in my value system being able to help people is not that's a dele a dele means that you are a bucket to be able to be used as a means to be able to be a conduit and so as H I approached my 66th birthday um I uh I think to myself uh that the greatest thing that anybody could do in this world is to be able to use the gifts that gave you to be able to help other people as no weberg used to say you don't have to know everything whatever you know you can teach and that's true everybody today is an ambassador everybody has to you know teach what they know to people because there's always people who know less than you and there's always people who are uh waiting to gain from your knowledge and everybody stood it everybody's a letter in the sa Torah which means that everybody has a of Torah that only they have and only they can give over that V and should bless all of us that gives us the means to be able to help so at the end we can turn around and say that at least if nothing else in my life I tried to be able to help other people find their way back toes and now we come to the question and answer portion of our program first question is by Anonymous I find that you uh basically submit the majority of the questions what's the meaning of how is it possible for to say that the happiness of Yanti can only come from food that sounds very materialistic yeah it is what's your problem now to be fair this is a m in the gamar the phrase that I'm sure all of us has heard isem I say that all of us has heard even though I know that after my podcast with tvia singer I have picked up more non-jewish listeners um to the podcast there were always some but I've get emails that there are more non-jews who are watching now so you probably never heard this phrase yeah and that is uh shabas is completely for God it's completely for it's all holy and that's why there's no of on there's only right which is spiritual pleasure um but by we say half of Y is for you to enjoy and half is for Hashem the half that is for Hashem well that that's uh learning and daving and there's no Mitzvah to eat sudas on y that's uh that's what that she holds you don't have to and according to the other one half of the day is spent in spirituality and half of the day is felt spent in physical Pleasures eating and drinking and having good things so isn't that uh just physical Pleasures yeah mm that's right because uh you is not an angel you be half of an animal half of you is human and the human part of you Delights in physical Pleasures those are called tanim and we make bras on the physical Pleasures because uh we enjoy them if you see something nice you make a Braha if you see something or inspiring you make a Braha if you eat something if you smell something if you get a pleasure in this world a physical pleasure in this world you make a br on yeah there's no question about it that it's physical pleasure having said that um I have a friend of mine who's a vegetarian and he says that's not what the gamar meant on y there was a special Mitzvah to bring two types ofon A Corb which was an Ola which is completely burnt on the M right the thean don't eat it the owners don't eat it everything is burnt on the m and that's why when you move to Israel is called making alah and you become an Ola because this country will completely eat you up until there's nothing left but ashes but that's the carbon and then there's because you don't come to God empty-handed and then there's Corbin which is a schl a special schl you're supposed to bring and by eating Corbin on that is because it's a carbon and you eat it and that's why a person who's in morning is not allowed to eat K yeah so it's that kind of a however there are others who hold plain and pit B eating meat and drinking wine having said that if meat and wine make you sick then you'd not to make yourself sick over it if it doesn't make you sick but you just um you you know are not a fan so okay now full disclosure and uh I know by this point uh uh people will be shocked that I might say something controversial but um um when I uh uh I'm not a fan of fix I sure was when I was growing up I I was always having fix but uh as I got older I can't digest uh fix you sit down to a shabas lunch with chant and coule and kishka and chap liver and a lot of Kala and cold cuts I'm sick for the next three days I can't digest it you reach a certain age where the list of foods that you can't digest becomes longer and longer and I have to decide if I'm going to be sick what I'm going to have so I have to psych myself up before I have a Falafel I happen to like falafal a lot I know I'm going to be sick for 3 days but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and do what you got to do uh I happen to love frank Footers it's one of my favorite foods and I know it's going to make me sick my mother too you know my mom would ask me to get her Frank foot is you know my brother Bruce who was watching over her because she had everything in the world wrong with her she was in terrible health she's my inspiration by the way for you know for the sponsors who say we hope that you stick around my mom made it to 89 in the worst Health she had a heart failure for 20 years diabetes everything in the world was wrong with her and she made it to 89 so I'm hoping that in spite of all of my many health problems I will rely on what said has nothing to do with Gaz you don't have to be healthy to live a long life you could live a long sick life so that's what I'm looking forward to anyway so um so that way I don't think I'll die I'll just [Laughter] linger well that's all part of reaching a certain age as a friend of mine said if I wake up in the morning and nothing hurts me I know I'm dead but um uh so uh so uh my mother would like so she would say to me could you get me a frankot I say sure you know and my brother would say did you get Mama frankf for I said yeah goes you know she can't eat that I said I know but I'm going back to Israel and she's your problem so you know I'm just well I'm here I'm just here to make her happy and I hope that'll move me up in the standings for the inheritance it didn't but it was worth a shot but anyway so I see my mother I say how was the friend she goes oh it was great I was up all night throwing up but it was worth it you know so to eat that kind of a shabas lunch is very hard so we have milkings for lunch yeah that's uh that's what that we do because that's more of an on for me but on on y we bite the bullet and I always make buser not chicken you know we might have chicken but I'll make something with meat in it you know so we may be having chicken for the main cause but I'll make my mother's meat simus I have given the recipe or we might be having chicken but I'll make my mom's Chinese rice which has chop meat and egg and scallion in it soy sauce I've given the recipe and uh you know or I'll be having that and I'll have cabbage soup which has flankin in it I've given the recipe so um I'll have something in it that has buzer in it and I'll have a I'll have a glass of wine um I never learned how to drink I don't really know how to appreciate wine um but uh I have I have a glass of wine at a suda um you know something that's uh little easier for me to drink you know the real fancy dry wines but that's yes it is physical and that is the concept of Y that if you hold and the half that is for you is to enjoy it with physical pleasures and that's it for this week until next time you can check out my website ri.com you can sign up for one of our online sh you can sponsor an episode and thank you to all of the sponsors you keep the show going uh you can sponsor a question and answer uh you can sponsor a par and five you can um ask a question make a comment um you can uh download download the rowski show uh theme song lots of stuff to do there and that's it for this episode until next time I am olowski and this has been the rabbi olowski show it's the rabbi orlovski show Torah and S ready to go the rabbi orlovski show knowledge and wisdom will help you grow lots of fun in every episode and we don't have to rhyme no we don't it's the rabbi orlovski show on rabbi orlovski dcom to anytime you two and more it's Rabbi orlovski show Tor and ready to go the rabbi orlovski show till next time we need again it's the rabbi Orlowski show it's the rabbi Orlowski show it's the rabbi Orlowski show