Shavous: Dairy Delight (Ep. 173)

hi this is david olovski and welcome back to the rebelovsky show [Music] and whether you're watching with our friends over at tour anytime wherever you watch or listen to your podcast as always thank you for joining us as we get ready for shibuyas ah shavuous isn't it exciting here in itself we have a two-day shrus outside of it so you have a three-day schwoes what could be better than that other than open heart surgery i'm just kidding i'm not a big fan of two days yet that's why i moved territorial in the first place but uh it certainly gives you a lot of opportunities and i remember hearing a story a long time ago about this greek um uh piano tuna and his name was zoltan was it zoltan i don't remember operating a strange name anyway so he comes to tune the piano and when he leaves it's even worse than it was before so they called him up and said i want you to come back and fix it and he goes upper nockity tunes only once [Laughter] trust me that's a very hard joke to work into anything but anyway so it's an operonicity having an opportunity filled with kedusha and opportunity so let's focus on one aspect um [Music] and i've spoken about this before and that is that judaism it definitely is is based on food that's one of the big things about us we jews we jews are into food it's just it's just true uh i found at least three places in sofa where he explains why we eat certain foods at certain times on certain things and uh the food that we eat everything that we eat has has significance why are we eating that and what we're doing with it so um uh when we look at anything right the there's a concept you show qudosham jews are holy people so if we do something there's got to be a reason for it we don't just do things for no reason so uh whatever we eat is obviously of significance now if it wasn't for the mint hug him shavuot would be just a shabbos would be nothing all right you go to show at night you'd have your suit up go to sleep get up in the morning in darwin spend your yard if as you usually spend your yant if you have a suit uh you learn grace take a nap yeah it's over that's another throw we have one day right that's what it would be of course the minhagem have transformed it leo schwarz staying up all night changes the entire nature of the day there's another aspect to it there's another minute and that's to eat milkings you eat milk now there's different ways that this minig is practiced some people actually do like the ramo where they eat uh milk souda and then they bench and they do kinora and wash out their mouth and then they go through a walk around the block like the erev pesach shabbos trick where you have to make some kind of a break between your meals then they come back and then they have a uh a flesh of a meal the idea being that they were mikayam having milkshakes for the minig and uh they also have a fleischer camille because it's a i met one person who did that most people uh have flagships i've talked about here in here it's now their flagships in the morning when they come home from shore they have a kid or they have a piece of cheesecake now when i grew up we had a regular milking soda shrews night we uh had lasagna and eggplant parmesan and blintzes and onion soup with cheese in it and you know cheesecake really a fine selection of milking products high in carbohydrates calories um and you could feel your arteries hardening as you were eating the food it was uh very special um so uh so that's what we always did we used to have the milking soup at night and then we would have a flesh consumed for uh for the day meal so i come to itself could say no milking meal yeah so yeah i'm playing so uh you know i was bullied as i often am and so i changed my family's minute and then at some point it was the diving upstairs in my building by the minion rubric cries worth and uh one of the family members mentioned what do you mean has milking's truest knight there's no deflation it's just as milks i was like what says yes so did the stipela they had regular milkings at night so i went back and uh re-embraced my heritage we had a milk uh dinner at night now the question is why yeah what's that where's the source of this minute and there's so many different sources and so much discussion on it that it really deserves a discussion each one of these reasons by themselves one of them is khal of bigamatria is 40. and just like it takes 40 days to get to torah milk represents that and in fact the gemara says torah is compared to milk the torah is also compared to uh honey the results compared to water there is compared to a lot of things but okay we're getting the torah so we we have milkings that's one reason there's a reason lo zachelo oven let's give him that says like this they came back from her sinai and uh they wanted to eat so if they were you know going to uh have fleischick they just got the mitsubishita they didn't know what it was so they're gonna have to kasha there caleb have to sharpen the knife you're gonna have to shuck the behemoth i have to soak and salt the meat and then cook it so instead you know take some uh you know take some cottage cheese and sit down and have a little soda the problem i have with this is that they were eating mun so i don't see why that should have made uh as much of a difference but okay okay those are but uh but that's the um that's uh another reason that's given so um i always thought about it this way and this is my approach to the idea of of eating milk's unschools whether or not this concept of khasi lokhem and khasil hashem is really a thing do you have to spend half of the day eating and drinking and celebrating or could you spend the whole day sitting and learning it's not like but the gemara points out that even the one who says there is no mitzvah to eat or drink on the other days of pesach and schwarz there's for sure a mitzvah to eat on because that's when the torah was given well that seems slightly counter-intuitive when the torah was given which is a day of pure spirituality that's the day that you're supposed to eat and drink and celebrate so the messiles hashanah you know we have two online missiles for sure machine room it's not too late to join um one is in the kias and one is still in zareza's but um at the end you come to a level called kadusha the massive sushem says let me explain to you the difference between a kadosh and a taha atoha purifies everything that he does in this world and whatever he does he makes sure to remove the negativity of the gas mias and leave only the essential amount of gaushmias that he needs in order to be able to function so you minimize as much as you can the physicality that's a taha but when you reach a kadash it's a different level because a person who is a kadash and this is his lushen and therefore there is no physicality whatever he eats is a carbon being burnt on the mizbeh whatever he drinks is wine being poured onto the mesbah as nasahim there is no more physicality the physicality becomes spirituality the two of them meld together that's the power of torah so on a regular yantef when we say khasi lokham and khan hashem it's because we're looking at it from two different perspectives the learning and the daviding that's for hashem the eating and drinking that's for me but on shruis when we get the torah through the power of torah even the eating and drinking gets elevated to a level of spirituality there is no double message over here there's only torah and torah you know taurus compared to aish and one of the things about fire is whatever you put into the fire turns into fire has that ability that whatever you put into torah turns into torah it has to be real torah not that you're compartmentalizing on the one hand i have my torah on the other hand i have my physical pleasures and there are two different things but on shivers where i go through seven days seven times to take the entire world and purify it and then on the 50th day 50 is outside of this world seven this world is six sides and the point in the middle and seven times seven i take every one of those facets and i complete them and then i go to 50 50 is outside of this world rules don't apply there it's outside of time and space it's a totally new reality and that's why we've mentioned this in the past but the famous ghazal that says before krish paul gave us the torah he offered it to the nations of the world so he says to you ishmael you want the taurus it's what does it say it says uh lo signif he says how can i accept that the torah says the torah says i'm a thief he goes to asia and says what do you want to ah do you want the tiger he says what does it say it says loser what do you mean the torah says the torah says i'm a murderer i'm going to accept atari that tells me not to murder when the torah itself tells me i'm a murderer so it sounds like a good argument and it is a good argument the mistake they were making is that you think those limitations can never change but when you accept the term this is this is an amazing thing like murraying your vomits um two times in a row it is the similar question um you have a mitzvah period review to populate the world so what if this non-jew had children and then he converted does he still have to have children after all he populated the world says mach legislation says he's yotsei even non-jews have a mitzvah period and rich looking says you're right but when a person is magaya they become a new person all is erased you start over again there is nothing you're a different person than you were beforehand and so therefore whatever you did before it doesn't count and there's a similar discussion where it says why does it seem that gehrim have more tsarist than regular jews regular jews have plenty of tsars we tell that to a person before they decide to convert but says why does why does it seem that uh that a non-jew that a niger who converts has even more tsarist than a religion so the gemara first suggests maybe it's because when he wasn't jewish he didn't keep the six noahide mitzvahs properly and so now he we don't bother punishing it aren't you because uh you know give him whatever he has in this world who cares about allah now that he's a jew he wants to finish up the heisman and the gemara responds no you can't say that because when you convert you become a brand new person so i can't be held responsible what i didn't when i was a non-jew that was a different person so when yeshmal and asap say we are thieves and murderers you're right but if you accept the torah all bets are off you don't have to be who you were you become a new person it transforms you into somebody else and that's why in order for torah to work you have to let go of all of your other past assumptions and that's why people who go in and they say well i can't accept this or uh i don't think hashem would say that you know now i may not be doing everything but if i say no then i'm not ready to accept and you're not a guy who says i accept 612 mitzvahs but not 613 not again you have to accept everything whether or not you keep everything as well or not but you have to accept it a person has to to say yes this new reality is going to become my reality and uh that's a big challenge but the torah transforms things into something completely different when a person allows the torah to transform them you can become a person of kadusha and you become a mishkan and a mikdash and a mizbayach you become an altar to hashem and everything that you do gets filled with kedusha automatically there's no more physicality the line between physicality and and spirituality has ceased to exist and everything becomes katosh okay hierarchy of foods what's important bread that is called the staff of life bread is what you need to um to survive the gemara says you're not a bharadas until you can eat bread wheat bread if you can't eat wheat bread then you're you're not you're not an adult yet you're not a bar dust so bread is essential meat somebody pointed out if you just go with numerical halachas the most is about shabbos the next most is about taras mashbach the next most are the halakhas relating to preparing meat to be eaten the soaking and the salting in the shrita and the traebering and all the halals that go into that meat has a tremendous power to give you strength and to get to give you uh ins et cetera wine wine there's a side in the gemara that you can bench on wine um [Music] wine is uh hilula you give praises with wine we make a kiddush with wine we make up duller with wine we get married with wine wine is a very special one fruit of the tree when they were created in ghanaian they ate fruit from the tree that's where they ate everything grew on trees and fruit has a certain level of uh halakhas more than anything else there's a den of orla for three years you're not allowed to touch the fruit of the tree the fourth year it's kadosh the fifth year can eat it but you see the fruit itself has a special level of kedusha to it of all the foods we've discussed probably the lowest that we deal with are vegetables vegetables have a din of tremors and mice only with their bone well i'm not i'm excluding grain with the erysa truman myso only applies to the five grains um the uh grapes and olives nothing else as trim of the eraser all the other vegetables we miserate there's no you know it's not a kind of bikurim bicornum comes from trees and and grain all those kind of things are are don't have that same status vegetables at least have something there's only one thing that has no significance in judaism and that's milk milk cheese milks when i was in south africa they don't eat milk there's just no milkings there i landed in cape town and they took me for breakfast to the pie shop where they served flake sugar pies meat pies chicken pies yeah it was like nine o'clock in the morning i said do you have anything is that flay shake so we have apple pie okay i'll take a piece of apple pie you have a coffee like uh i guess i can make an instant coffee for you and i said do you have any milk it's like a fleshy restaurant i give you one of those little packets of powder part of a powder you could sprinkle in you know it clumps up on the top and it's uh an unpleasant drinking experience i it was one meal i was there for over a week there was only one meal that was milking it was a fascinating experience [Laughter] some people like milkings more than flagships yeah but uh from a religious point of view think of your will where does milk and cheese have religious significance two times both of them are before women cut off a guy's head they give them milk and cheese they get thirsty and then they uh they they drink wine and then they pass out and then we cut off their head that's about it you know talk about lactose intolerant [Laughter] so in general milk is not something that we look at from a religious point of view of having significance except on choice because us even milkings can be holy even the milk and cheese which normally we wouldn't give any particular significance to takes on a different takes on a different level there is one milk dish that is described in the gemara it's called kutak it's made with spoiled milk moldy bread and salt and it was used as a very strong dip the main reason it existed was to be able to create as many halachic problems as possible it's milk eggs it's humid it's got salt it's double kharif what happens if it touches this touches that you know oh kutak exists just to be able to warm the heart of a basic [Laughter] i have to tell you i i never found that particularly attractive but neither did i find brie so it could be that that was what kutak morphed into was uh brie as jackie mason says why do people eat breed it's only status nobody likes the way it tastes disgusting so they say we have to develop a taste where's it written that i have to be nauseous for six months do i develop a taste your sister-in-law you have to develop but hey she's family [Laughter] keen insight but um but milking says no but even the most humble milkings takes on significance on choice even that can be lifted up and i would like to propose that the reason we eat to milkings able to show the significance it could be another reason because someone gave me a copy of an article that appeared in the journal of coffee drinking there is apparently a journal i have the article at home someplace they say that the minute began around the same time that coffee became available throughout the middle east so isis the reason you eat milking chives night is so that you can have milk in your coffee i assume that's it you know it never occurred to any of them cobalamin's fast to get that part of a powder and drop it in and then it clumps up on the top is this guy anyway but uh it could be that's the reason yeah in any event however you want to look at it um this is uh this there is this medic dev milkings and like i say whatever your minute is whether you're eating a regular meal i have one neighbor eats milk both meals one choice only eats milk and i other people have felicity both meals and just have a piece of cheesecake at the kiddush whatever it is whatever the reasons are that will be meaningful to you and i always say you know you have to find uh a reason that makes sense for you that works for you so hashem we go into sures this much is clear where mccabell the torah and the torah has the ability to create a new reality for us to remove all of our limitations and to allow us to add kadusa holiness into everything that we do in this world and now questions interesting uh all the questions were asked this week by anonymous anonymous asks is there a real future for jews in america i feel that we live in a time when there is not only a spiritual decline but a spiritual decay something that is rotten deep inside everything might look nice on the outside but there is clearly no passion and real devotion to yishkeit can that change or is there no real future here well clearly there's no future because everyone is supposed to come territorial and you know mashiach is going to come and this is the future there's no future in america i think i may have told this story during the aliyah series probably my someone was speaking um junior high um and he not only is a big rush yeshiva he's also a has a phd in physics so someone asked him in his role as a rabbi scientist when meshech comes now that we have satellite communication we'll know instantly when the base then declares rosh kodesh do we still have to keep two days here in los angeles so myself and said well michelle comes you're not going to be in los angeles you're going to move territory horrified the young man said what give up all this so yeah the future is obviously here but i told the story that i heard from rabbi zevloff who was a roof in miami and he was offered a job as a rov in a small moshav in israel moshe matasio and he says he asked both of moshe feinstein and riakov kaminetsky and they both told him the same thing the future of yiddish kite is an arts show and if you have an opportunity to get something grab it don't hesitate so that's what they said many years ago i can tell you that i didn't travel much during corona but now when i go to america it gets harder and harder to recognize the america i knew and uh things are just falling apart faster and faster as you describe it so is there a real future in america no whether or not uh a person can be successful there now under those circumstances that exist like i say with each year it gets harder and harder because the deterioration is happening so quickly anonymous ask when a person leaves this world it's nice if they can leave behind something that can inspire the next generation this could be books or in your case podcasts and recordings which will continue to influence people you should be well and healthy and happy to 120 and live to see many more grandchildren and great grandchildren on maine what else can a person leave behind in this world that will help future people i would also like to leave something down in this world for even one person to be inspired by i don't think writing a book is for me i don't know who it is for but do you have any other ideas elo told us says rashi told us noah and it says he was in east sadiq because there are two things that we create in this world children and myself so if you invest in your family and you invest in doing good things not everyone is going to go and start a major organization but everyone can help maybe you're the one who sets up the decorations you know at the chevy brachas maybe you are the one who's a good friend who listens to people who need an ear but uh the idea of leaving behind statues and uh and uh great accomplishments you know it's the maison tovim and the family that we leave behind that ultimately akash baruch who looks down and says we left something in this world so as much as you can do work on being the best person you can be not everyone is saying to go out and build big organizations i'm not i always wanted to start a yeshiva i never did there's lots of things i wanted to do that i was never able to do anonymous asks why did hashem make teenagers so reckless what use is there in that and if you want to go there why do they physically mature at the same time it seems like a recipe for disaster and orphan is there's an important idea a girl becomes a boss mitzvah at 12 a boy at 13. and yeah do not kayak until you're 20. what do you see the 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 if something happens to you it's not a punishment minister might hashem does not hold you responsible during those years you see from this that the torah created a concept called a teenager why because when you were born you every year to her you don't get your yater tova until you bar by mitzvah as such there is nothing in this world as evil as a small child all they have is evil yeah now i don't mean that they're damien you know i mean you're walking around with the night you know you don't need that all you need is the fact that they're not able to move outside of themselves they're completely self-centered and they just have a tendency to see things from their own perspective and they can't be any more than that that's uh that's ra tov is to be able to move outside of yourself so when you become 12 or 13 you suddenly have this new thing come into you called the it's a tough but you're not used to it therefore teenagers are capable of doing wonderful deeply religious spiritual motivational things and the most nasty horrible things you can possibly imagine sometimes at the same time why because when you watch somebody learning how to drive the big problem they have is the turns they exaggerate all the turns you know and they don't know the key to driving is smooth easy movements but it takes a long time to get there most people need time that's what teenagers are supposed to be doing there these changes have taken place in their spiritual reality and they have to learn how to achieve a balance and therefore since the physical world always represents the spiritual world all of a sudden you're a cute little kid and then a kurdish brother who pumps you full of hormones and you never start changing at the same time so you have some kid who is in one of these pure choirs suddenly he's like your voice starts to change and suddenly you break out in acne and suddenly only your arms grow or suddenly your legs shoot up and you go through these emotional mood swings yeah why are you so upset i don't know okay okay i don't know you're happy i don't know i thought i don't know what do you want for my parents like i don't know do you know understand no because he's crazy because he's going through these wild emotional swings and physical swings and spiritual swings so hopefully by the time that you're 20 you've established that equilibrium so is it a difficult time sure that's why in the time of the gemara people used to got married at the bar mitzvah even in europe it wasn't unusual mayor says i got married at 14 if i got married at 13 i could have spit the saturn in the eye it's a good way to grow up with teenagers you know married much healthier but uh now we create this artificial period that's uh that you're right creates problems but the way it was made was so that people could spend their youth married take all that energy and put it into something positive anonymous asks what do you do when you're bored you know that's one of the great things about add i'm never bored i could be anywhere you know my mind takes me every place i could just be sitting there and uh life is is always an adventure for me so i don't i don't know what it's like to be bored like sit around like hmm i'm looking for something exciting my mind is so exciting and one of the things i like to do and none of my children who are more normal than i am i won't go as far as that normal but they've picked this up with me where you know you look at somebody and you say what do you think his story is you see a couple and you say what do you think the shotgun was thinking with this it drives my wife crazy so me and the kids we we do it like you know secretly like we just look at like you know [Laughter] but i i just i find life and people so fascinating i'm never bored i just look around and i see a world that's filled with beauty and excitement and filled with such interesting people and every person is interesting and you just look at them and and you can develop a whole idea and story behind them and and background and you know it's uh it's amazing it's an amazing thing and sometimes i make these comments to myself uh out loud and people over here they were like why i said nothing nothing i'm sorry i was just speaking to myself but my kids are also like so like i said i don't really get bored and besides there's so many important things to do so many people to talk to and so many uh uh emails not to answer and somebody she roamed to prepare for that uh you know like i say um i don't really get bored sometimes i just get tired when i do a lot of physical exertion i need some time down just to like space out but even then like i say it's uh all part of the adventure okay that's it for this episode if you want to find out more about the share you can go to ruby alaska.com you can sign up for daf yomi you can sign up for massilsharm you can sign up for the villa series which is going just grandly you can sponsor an episode you can make a comment you can ask a question send an email and that's about it uh have a wonderful schroeder and until next time i'm devin dolovsky and this is the raviolovsky show it's the rabbi orlovsky show torah knowledge and wisdom will help you grow lots of fun in every episode and we don't have to rhyme no no it's the rabbi orlovsky show on rabbi orlovsky.com torah anytime youtube and more it's rabbi orlowski show torah [Music] show till next time till we meet again throughout my orolovsky show it's the rabbi yolovsky show it's the rabbi orlovsky [Music]