The Eretz Yisrael Experience - Choosing A Yeshiva Part 4 (Ep. 245)

hi this is D lowski and welcome to the rabbi lowski show whether you're watching with our friends over at or anytime whoever you watch or listen to your podcasts as always it's wonderful to have you along and do not forget to like subscribe and share and apparently comment supposed to be a good thing too for the algorithm not that I know what any of that means but I know that's what they always say on these things and uh we have no sponsor this week um uh I want to thank all the people who have responded in the past when we said that we need sponsorships in order to be able to keep the show going and apparently they have dried up so if there's anybody out there who would like to see the show continue we're going to need your support and so please uh go on to my website rowski doccom and uh sponsor an episode in honor of somebody in memory of somebody or however you would like to do it just that we can cover the production course in order to be able to keep bringing you our different insights uh I would like to uh wrap up the yiva series that I've been doing and uh I wanted to end with uh uh some advice of how to maximize the time but first I have gotten a number of uh letters from people uh on this subject and I wanted to read them out to you but first i'm a longtime fan of yours way before your podcast debuted well we're in our sixth year uh I have an account on X at significant s i g n i f i c n t s CS I guess like seconds where I describe myself as a talud m of yours and post clips from your podcast and speeches I find particularly significant meaningful or humorous so there must be almost the hours and hours also ones connected to the time of year I humbly ask for a shout out about this account on your podcast so people will check it out and hopefully enjoy them and maybe even spread your wonderful influence even further than it reaches now regardless I thank you for brightening days when I fell down enhanced days when I felt up for making me laugh and think yours truly Schmo Rosenberg okay so those of you who have X which I think used to be called Twitter um and uh you want to go check that out in any event um always nice to hear that people gain from anything that I have to say so let's get back now to our uh um our concept where we're talking about yeshivas and I've gotten a number of issues over here I'm going to try to respond to the r mentioned that in many yeshivas the boys learn a few daim not very well I would S suggest that those yeshivas are not focusing on quantity of dpim nor on remembering details though of course it would be better with Kazar but the focus is on skills such as making a laning understanding and the skills and thinking of Lumis perhaps is more palatable to the r but there is also lus there are many and I know the r prefers one over the other my preference is ballots of lus and but I can respect oriented bris or any other I know the r did not intend to rip any Mahal but some of you listen it may sound disparaging uh it is so interesting that that you take the breast uh approach which is just to learn even if you don't understand it because whatever you learn you'll be able to access when you're up in Haba and therefore it's stresing Bas on goes very very slowly and uh and I don't know how you take the and the breast and put that together with i p don't understand what you're talking about yeah they're completely different when you say there's a balance of Lum and so when I was in the morning went very slowly with a tremendous amount of indepth Ian and in the afternoon we did Bas where we would do two blood a week in the in the afternoon to be able to cover Bia so I don't know why you think that anything I said is contrary to that that's not what I mean what I mean is that if you spent an entire Z and you did for do him and you don't know what you learned then I don't know what you gained so you say well maybe it's just they're trying to teach you skills how to make a laning no if you want to teach someone to make a laning you don't do for as that's ridiculous and if you want to say that it's there to give you the skills and and you don't remember any of it so that when I sit down with somebody afterwards and we go through the gamor and they can't say over what shot was in the toist that they learned then if the goal of it was to teach you skills it was not successful so if you if you if it sounds like I'm ripping on yeshivas that spend an entire man on a few dapim and the people do not know what they learned afterwards I am and so even though it may sound like I'm attacking them the answer is because I am so therefore if a person taka spent his time working on understanding a sugya and understanding the and at the end you could sit down with them at the end of the and go over what they learned and they know it CL then I understand that you were teaching them the skills and methodology to be able to learn but if they spent an entire on four five six D him and they don't know it then I'm sorry that's not uh that that's not called a d I disagree here's another one I wanted to share a couple of thoughts I thought you might agree that while a person should find a place that matches where they're holding they should reach for one lad rung higher whether it'll be in the learning depth or seriousness or total time we always put ourselves on a box I guess he means in a box and have a hard time imagining ourselves doing more than we presently do when I was going from 12th grade to first year I couldn't imagine learning three star a day if not for the fact that my friends were doing it I would have had a hard time imagining that it would have been a path of success for me to go to such a place I wonder if there's a reason you did not mention this idea to realize it is at all possible we don't know ourselves until we open the door to the next level okay um the answer is I'm a big believer in being realistic so therefore there is a basic uh structure to Yeshiva gadola there's no question I came out of the Hebrew Academy of Nasa County where we were doing an hour and a half of gamorra a day and I went into yiva where we were doing 10 hours of gamarra a day and there's no question that the first thing you have to learn when you make transition to that kind of yiva is zit fles and that is a tremendous skill if you want to be successful in learning you have to learn how to sit it's interesting um in the which we spoke about the 48 things that will help you acquire Torah one of them is called Yeshiva and some of them far mean literally you have to learn how to sit and uh person who obviously has uh ADHD is going to have a very difficult time sitting there for a very long period of time but there's just discipline by the time night s came around I was shot and I just sat in my seat staring at the clock watching the secondhand move very slowly yeah until until the Seda was over but okay that's a skill sometimes you need to learn just how to sit and there's no question about that but if you're talking about going to to a place that is above what you can handle again you have to be realistic because if you're going to go to a Shear where you don't understand what's going on and you say yeah it's above me but if I just keep going eventually you know I'll cop it or I could go to a Shar that's on my level and thereby understand what I'm talking about so be I think you have to be realistic I said this when I remember I was talking about shim and this uh girl had an opportunity to marry this guy who was like this super mmid and she was like I don't know if I can handle that but shouldn't I want to handle that and I said marry the guy that you think you want to marry not the guy that you think you should want to marry because that's not a a good uh a good uh recipe for Success next Point second for a person might think about going to a place that's geared towards the guys their age a place that focuses on getting the most out of the young guys keeping them from burning out by giving them the proper attention occasional outings and onig as opposed to a place where the young guys have their rebi but the Yesa a whole is focused on the older guys so this is what we call in yes terms a Ste on the one hand you say go and pick a place that's above where you are and then you say take a place that's catering to you I I agree with your second Point better yes uh person has to be realistic and if I go to a place that's going to give me the skills and attention and uh you know uh support that I need at this point I believe that's better than going to a place where you will not be getting that support and you're just going to be thrown into a giant uh place say you succeed yeah there is a very well-known Yeshiva and I told him this B was being lost and he says listen this is the sea we throw you in you're either going to either going to swim or you're going to drown but we don't do any more than that and I I I think that's a terrible approach lastly I think it would be good to mention regarding the th daram of gamari yiva their thought process although you might disagree Etc these things can be learned on your own with little to moderate difficulty as we pick up skills that learning gumar gives us we can take those skills and apply them to learning most anything again with little to moderate difficulty as you said by learning the bubas and nush which really exerise the Mind similar to how it's expected that one who learns gamor well for a number of years will be a able to at some point learn on their own other gor is not covering Yesa as well as so tooi okay maybe yes maybe no and a lot of that really depends on how much time you're willing to dedicate to mastering those skills I understand that's the there's no question about it they say just learn gumara and from that you'll have the skills to be able to learn everything else okay however most Jas have a misher in the morning or of some type most of them have a musor and many of them have aish here I mean brisk has aish here you know so to Simply ignore that I again I think is uh is a mistake I understand the logic the logic is if once you pick up these skills you can use them to everything else but that's assuming you're willing to give it the time necessary one final point those that did not learn how to make a laning in sixth to eth grade hope is not lost is definitely possible of picking the right yiva and researching techniques that help with this if the person realizes the importance of it and can be convinced that it is possible again not putting themselves into a box that could pick up the skills to make a laning even at an old age 100% I think I made that point the point is that there were a lot of guys out there who never picked it up and and therefore feel their only option is to Bluff whereas I maintain that you need to make a Seder and how to make a laning even if you never picked it up okay hi you were talking about the idea of ego driven motives for choosing a Yeshiva I would like to add that the basic concept applies even once you're in Yesa sometimes you feel social pressure to be in the of or learn with theusa I regret certain choices I made my Yeshiva days how I wish I could go back and tell myself I know that right now these things like being the smart sheer seems so important to you but believe me 10 years from now no one will remember or care who was uh your Kusa uh or which sh you were in but the progress and growth you missed out on because you wanted to be in that sheer that you didn't really belong in that's will remain with you use this precious time you have to the fullest by not caring what anyone thinks and just doing what's really best for you as you actually are don't fall into the pretending trap it's so shortsighted okay that more or less is the rejoiner to the person who wrote earlier and said go above where you are this person is saying be realistic as to where you are and who you are and make sure that you shoot to achieve that hi rski I'm ABA learning Yeshiva and have been following the podcast since the time it started I always enjoy the humor insight and your brutal honesty and quest for what is right and true firstly regarding the new series how to choose the Yeshiva I just want to mention that England I guess that's why he's from England he likes the brutal honesty which is where I'm from does not suffer from the same cultural pressures which you discussed in the first talk namely that potential father-in-law only think about taking a guy who learned in brisk that in England is close to non-existent okay in fact I don't know about today but there was a time when the standard model in England and like I say I haven't been there in years uh but back then was you would go to a uh high level Yeshiva you would learn Stark for X number of years and then you get a job and that was people who sat and learned long term that was definitely the exception and not the rule so uh so I guess maybe that's still the case my question is if there are problems in society of which there will always be how can this be resolved today in this age I've heard you mentioned in a talk on answering basic questions that people just don't care if that's the case what can we possibly do to affect change and resolve problems I'm not asking this as an attack on any level I'm hoping for an answer that I'll be able to affect a change and make the world the place it is meant to be so my son who is just too smart for his own good uh was seeing the various flaws in the system and it took him to speak to M shapir and R echoed everything that he said and he gave a scathing critique of uh the Yeshiva World and the way the yeshivas are being run so at the end my son said so what am I supposed to do so said what do you mean he go you don't have a Yeshiva system you don't have a you don't have you don't have a re he says when there's nobody around you have to rely on yourself so the way that you change the world is one person at a time would always say was one person and he changed the world was one person and he changed the world one person can change the world and so when you see all the problems in society and as you probably have picked up very often when I speak I speak about the various problems in society and people say to me why doesn't somebody do something and I said I am if I have to save the world by myself I will if you want to help me there'll be two of us but I'm not going to give up because one person can make a difference and so therefore when you say look at all the problems that are in society we can uh affect change in ourselves and as Steven kovi speaks about and The Seven Habits of Highly affective people you then have a circle of influence and it extends out into your circle of influence and you can make more change in that way okay I'm not sure what the r meant by saying that we must know how to make a laning by seventh grade maybe in it's different but in the US almost no Yeshiva starts laning until the end of ninth grade most during 10th and 11th perhaps the RV meant being able to read and Translate g that was taught in Shir that day okay I don't know what you're talking about could be things have changed you know I did graduate high school in 19 75 so uh a lot of water under the bridge maybe in the past 50 years they changed the way it was done but when I was there when you started learning gamarra in fifth grade so by fifth grade by sixth grade at the end of that you were expected to sit down now and prepare a piece of gamarra maybe into seventh grade but after that the Assumption was that you know you give them a gar to learn they'll be able to learn it if that's not the case anymore I just listened to your first episode of TR Yeshiva in it you seem to address the Bim as the ones that don't think they are up to learning and to give it a try for a few years and then the ones that are aiming for brisk I wonder if you could address the mainstream l a boy who unfortunately I feel like the situation resembles the Seminary experience that you spoke about they're not fighting with their parents who want them to go to college but they come to for the independence maybe a little learning thrown in most of these boys are here two or three years uh until they get married or end up going to Lakewood I would love you to discuss why should these boys y know be coming here what are the dangers what should parents know before allowing them to come and what should be put into place to ensure they gain from the years talking mostly to the parents here I am writing this from the perspective of a wife of an a that works in a yiva a very firm place and yes as someone who hosted these boys for shabas the past 10 years I definitely see a huge decline these boys think it's normal for an average B to put in four hours of learning an hour and a half in the morning an hour and a half in the afternoon and one at night and like Seminary girls are busy buying food sleeping in Raging shabos in Maron andas apparents just naive as to what's going on here or do they realize and say look sending them to work will definitely hurt their sh plus the outside world is even more scary than Yeshiva away from home so this is our best option now first of all I think I did deal with this because I said there are those yeshivas that are designed for people who want to come and learn for a year or two and there are those Yas for people who want to go like you know brisk and Mir and then there are the prep schools right they're the ones that are are not M people will come and learn for a few years and then go back uh to school get a job whatever it is and uh and in between they're doing their time now that's mostly what I wanted to speak about today so I'm going to finish up this letter and then I want to get to the topic I wanted to deal with personally whenever people ask my husband his opinion is don't send them 6,000 Mi away where you have no idea what they are doing I've always had this question because when I was learning here it was 7,000 mil away has it gotten shorter I know today everyone says it's 6,000 Mi away but when I came here to learn it was 7,000 miles away I'm just saying that stick with the yeshivas in America or at least you get to see your son every few weeks and keep your finger on the pulse it's true 20 plus years ago my husband my brother and all their friends gained tremendously from coming here the independence the learning the Der Al my husband picked up from RHA areli now okay if you're going to Rasha areli you don't fall to the category of the boy that you're describing so that's not fair but today he just doesn't think it's worth it again we are not talking about the Nutty stories of boys sitting in uh deer as glued to screens 247 or Worse the average boy is just not taking advantage pretty much wasting his time I wonder if you could address this thanks okay um so again to review uh the categories because we talked about this the are people who are coming to Israel for one year with a two-year option there are certain Yas that are designed for that those are guys who come out of high school they're doing their year in Israel you know maybe there's a shanet option and then they go back to college or to get a job or whatever it is right that's one category and then there are the guys who are coming to Mir and brisk usually those people have learned for a number of years in Yeshiva gadola in America and are now coming Terell for a further experience and then all the middle schools of guys who are coming to do their time in errell uh two or three years and the experience is uh not dis similar to what you are describing and as long as we have raised this issue I would like to raise the issue of people quote unquote learning on coo these are the people who come to Israel to learn for a year or two after they get married and it is really just an extended honeymoon um generalizing here but there are two types of people those who generalize and those who don't there is a whole sug of people who come here and they get themselves an apartment through an agent in rades in malna in um Isaiah in malal um and uh they have somebody who I know because this person does it for a living I I met them they uh outfit the apartment they don't want to go in old furniture and old things and they sell whatever was in the apartment and they buy new furniture new dishes new this new leners everything for the couple and uh and he's learning in Yeshiva and she's looking for a job walking up and down pan drinking iced coffee I'm I'm I'm I'm generalizing generalizing yeah waiting waiting to find a job right and then they have to go out to eat you know couple times a week am I generalizing right burwitz years ago said that he was working on getting a good for restaurants because these American of if they don't go out for dinner it'll Mish be a problem of shom bias I had a friend of mine in Yeshiva who was about Chua his wife was a BAL Chua they both went to ivy league universities and they both became from and he was staging away and his wife complained that she never saw him he went to his Rabbi and uh and said listen my my wife is complaining I spend time with her he says she's right you have to spend two nights a week with her you know one take her out to eat and one night uh you know take her for a walk or you know you know some kind of activity so he says does the rabbi take his wife out to eat he says my wife's Yi she's never been in a restaurant in her life she wouldn't know what to do if I took her there understand what it is you know but uh coming from where you're coming from so it's Mish an issue of shom bias if you don't if you don't go out to eat so people come here for what is for all intents and purposes a long honeymoon with no parents or in-laws which I think is a very unhealthy way to start your marriage unless you have problematic parents and In-laws in which case it's a very healthy way to start your marriage but otherwise you cut these young couples off from any support and they end up making decisions and behaving in ways that they never would if they were still in America and had some type of supervision from their family uh ready to say pished but here there's nothing and one of the local raban in one of the communities I mentioned had somebody contact me if I would give shum to these uh young couples about how to behave like a m because two or three of these young couples would go away for a weekend together and uh hang out together go on TM together and there was nobody to say this is not appropriate there's no adults around and uh that's the problem so a lot of these people are not even under any illusion that they're actually coming here to learn that it's basically a long honeymoon uh I question whether or not that entire model is a successful model and for clus if we should be uh keeping that going or not that's that's my opinion but in any event um boys who are coming here for or three years and they're just coming like you mentioned for the and is that a phenomena absolutely so a lot of these Yas understand that that is their mission just to try to be M the boys in their Y and yay and uh do the best they can yeah they're going to go out to eat yes they're going to go and have uh you know parties and kumit say okay so in a normal World should these people be here no there should be home and having their mommy and daddy watch over them and is that an advantage sure there is the question is if there are Yas in America that are geared towards being able to help these people develop or just a place for them to sit and keep busy until they I don't know like you say get married or whatever else get their sh so uh so that's the idea of these yeshivas to be able to provide it uh having said that right and uh I think that's a legitimate social concern that is being raised uh having said that I want to uh turn my attention to the guys who have decided to come for a year for two years for three years for four years I saying once you're in in a position where you're considered a an Al and a responsible person and you're life is basically inside of the Bas mag I'm not talking to you anymore right by then uh you are what you are but when you first come here uh the erit experience you need a a idea of how to maximize my time so let's start at the beginning if you are learning inel and the odds are that means jush um first of all appreciate the fact that you're in yusim we take it for granted there are so many people who come toel for vacation maybe for theim and they don't appreciate the fact that they're Ines as kad's the mishna says the first one is erel second one is cities with walles around from the time of Yeshua the third isus it's a different level of kadha and then comes the harabas and it keeps growing from there but yush itself is considered a holy city you don't just come toim you can't behave in Yim the same way you do any place else I heard from somebody and I didn't check it out I'm not pesak yeah that the Baba Sali who was based in Beva um I don't know how often it was so I don't want to mess up the story but from time to time would have his driver drive him toim and he would just sit in his car and learn and then go back home just to be able to be in y and there was a there was a kadus that obviously someone like the babaali was able to s sense but not everybody can so when we come to Y we should understand that this ises that's been lost to a large extent by the fact that there are so many places of entertainment so when I come toel I have to know my mom is my Yeshiva and uh it's not it's not my married sister Ines that I'm going to go and hang out at that doesn't mean you can't go and visit her for a shabas but that's not that's not my mom um it's not uh going out to eat you know cuz uh uh I'm not thrilled with the food in yiva you I'm again there's different levels of Yeshiva right there are some places where the food is mishin edible there are some places where the people say the food is inedible because it's just acceptable when I was in ncsy I used to buy from a uh posit caterer it wasn't uh wasn't an expensive caterer but the food was fine real people go to this and as a takeout place to buy the food that's where we were getting our food and at the shab everybody would make fun of the food and they would make it's disgusting it's terrible you're not fine so uh we had a conv mention we had a banquet and I hired a cerer who does weddings guy we had stay stuffed Capon and apricot sauce we had this we had that and everybody made the same comments about the food oh thisg that I was like okay I don't have to spend money to have you complain and you realize there some people just like to complain about the Yeshiva food um uh is it as bad as people pretend it is no it's not again if it is then it should be brought to the attention of the hanala yeah obviously an Israeli Yeshiva has a different standard I had a nephew who was learning in Yeshiva they were going through financial problems and they started serving of zaken I never even knew there was such a thing and if you uh realize I never realized it but after I heard that when you buy a chicken it says chech did when I don't know after six months or something I know doesn't get very big but the ones that lay eggs just keep growing and growing until they're too old to produce eggs and then they sh them it's called an O Zak you get a py like this big and it tastes like rubber all you can do is like make a soup out of it or something you know and that's what they started serving because they didn't have any other money but that was an Israeli yiva American yeshivas were charge tuition as a rule that that's not what they're serving you yeah um the mirror which was often known uh to give uh very simple food choices people there tell me today that they they serve very nice food yeah they understand times have changed um it's it's not even like when I came here yeah there yes have real beds when I came everybody had the S beds the little metal with the sponge mattress you know and the horse blanket I mean that's that's how everybody in Yeshiva used to live it's changed you know so um uh so that being the case does that mean that on occasion I shouldn't go out to eat yeah occasionally I can go out to eat with some friends but it can't become the uh the the regular part of your life regular part of your life isn't yiva that's where you belong that's where you have to learn to adjust rans tells the story that he took his son to the sty to get a his Mitzvah that he's going to become a so the styler said I'll give you a but tell me what's your plan to become a how you going to become a poor 13-year-old kid in front of the styler what's he supposed to say he says I'll tell you to become a you're 13 years old he says you need working with the ROM yeah you need uh um two hours a day to D you need two hours for eating and bathing and things like that that's uh that's four you need eight hours a day to sleep either at night or seven hours at night and an hour nap during the day that leaves you with 12 hours you learn 12 hours every day from now until you're 20 and I guarantee you you'll be a tam the point I want to pull out of that story is the fact that you have to sleep eight hours a day that's is what the styple said yeah and uh and it's a big problem in Yeshiva that they don't because people go back to their dorm rooms and they hang out and they have scho sessions and uh they end up going to sleep late and they either then end up getting up late or they go through the day half awake and they certainly are not maximizing their time um there's a uh time I was giving a Shear in Yeshiva and uh Sedar was from 9 till 11:30 and sheer was from 11:30 to 1 had a lot of guys who were half asleep Shu night I gave Shear 1:00 in the morning everybody was awake it was Perpetual jet lag you understand and that's a big problem and so people uh who don't get enough sleep are not going to be maximizing their experience with pinkis tells the story that he was in yiva and he was in charge of setting up the guys setting up who they were going to eat the meals with I guess there wasn't one dining room who they were going to eat the meals with and then where they were going to go to sleep right I guess there wasn't a dormatory so people were going to go to one house to sleep one place to have their meals he says uh so he says well you only have to set it up for the meals because during the meals people are going to talk learning Etc but who cares where you sleep you you go to your bed and you go to sleep and I said no it's more important where they're going to be staying for the night because people are going tooo when they get back to their rooms the meal is not such a problem you just go in there and you eat and you leave he says and I looked at him like he was out of his mind and he looked at me like I was out of my mind but there was a time that you understood that you know when you finished learning you went to sleep and there wasn't you didn't have to chill this word did not exist in my generation even in my generation nobody had to chill I'm reminded of what mosha CH said that he heard from D lebouitz when he was in he says he used to say to us you guys don't even know how to bottle right you guys don't know how to waste time when we wasted time at least we did something you just do nothing just chill you know um I remember and again I'm going back almost 30 years there were guys who would just sit and read novels they love to read novels and uh they couldn't wait there was a break and they would run up to their room and and read another chapter you know they just enjoyed reading uh whatever their choice of novels were that they were reading you know not some not something inappropriate you know action novel whatever it was you know um but uh but but they just loved losing themselves in that so here when you're supposed to go to sleep you see these guys you know sitting sitting in the uh in in the hallway with the light you know just keep reading until 3:00 in the morning of course you're not going to maximize your time you have to use the time available to sleep and if you're in a room room where they tend to party then move in with the Nerds who go to sleep at night you know you have to get your sleep very important um people won't tell you this you have to exercise I don't mean that you need a gym I mean that you have to get outside and walk and get some fresh air I don't care if it's a half an hour a day I don't care if it's in the morning uh after breakfast before morning Seder I don't care if it's at night after dinner before nights Sater you have to walk around and breathe if you're such a super mmid it's not a problem get yourself a a walking kabusa and you can talk and learning while you go walking but you got to exercise there are more places today that recognize this it's good for your health it's good for your learning it's good for your clear your head it's good for your digestion you just have to get get up and get out and get moving you can't just keep sitting I forgot who it was but there was one GLE whose doctor told him he had to exercise and he says I do he says what do you mean he says ask anybody I'm standing the whole Seda pacing up and down I must I must walk miles during a Seda another helpful point I don't know who said the phrase first it's been quoted many times for many years a mmid is not somebody who learns 20 hours a day a mmid is someone who learns 60 minutes an hour make an effort not to bottle if you have a Kusa who is too good a friend and you end up schmoozing get a different Kusa preferably a nerd someone who's boring someone who you're not interested in talking to yeah um uh don't keep going out for cup of tea or a cup of coffee unless the type of person like I say who doesn't have the attention span and you have to keep taking a break but you'll find that even just standing up and stretching and then sitting back down can often be enough of a break you don't have to Mish go to the coffee room and make yourself a coffee and sit and smoo while you drink it yeah um now having said that and I don't know the rules in every Bas Mages but I always advise people especially you know they come for Elman um it's still pretty hot here in yush and because it's not humid people don't realize that they're becoming dehydrated you find this very often when people first come toel you know they start getting these terrible headaches and this fatigue and sometimes nausea they don't know what's wrong with them and I said they're dehydrated you can you can die of thirst without realizing it you can't die of hunger without realizing it but you can die of thirst without realizing and therefore you have to make sure and drink keep a nice bottle of water and I don't think you should take a big bottle of water and drink straight from the bottle I don't think that's that's for benra but have a little cup and pour yourself a cup of water or in my cas case I keep a big cup because I don't want to keep filling up the little tiny Dopey cup and fill it up and drink from the cup like a mench and keep drinking it's good to stay hydrated and in general it's good it'll make your body function better people do not drink enough water during the day if the regular Israeli tap water is too rough on your system because it has a lot of uh um extra stuff in there besides water then you could buy bottled water if buying bottled water is too prohibitive buy yourself a Brea pitcher with a filter and just keep yourself enough filtered water so that you can keep drinking but you have to drink drink exercise people don't tell you these things they are important snacks less important unless unless you are supplementing the Yeshiva diet with fruits and vegetables which might be a good thing to do but uh um The Salty sweet snacks that people tend towards is not going to uh increase your um General Health the healthier you are the more clearheaded you will be the more clearheaded you will be the more successful you will be at learning learn how to take notes if you never learned how to do it in high school yeah um get yourself a notebook and do the best you can to write down what you're hearing in sheer um if you've got some extra time and extra motivation write over your notes because most people will read their notes after the shear and realize that whatever they wrote may not be comprehensible so you might have to ask somebody one second what did he mean over here what he mean over here and then write over the shear clearly you will see that it'll help you get Aisa on your learning um people talk about a coming to Israel for an experience I think what they're describing as a is different than I would describe as a meaning if you have a little time off go to The Old City yeah obviously go D into the Kel but just go and look at some of the old shoes look at some of the archaeological sites see the fact that you're in yusim with the a walked where the first base of MDES was where the Nim walked where the second Bas of MDES was this is just to be able to have this experience um again I wouldn't miss out on learning time to do that but if you got time that you're going to kill anyway so you might as well use it by enjoying the fact that I'm in yush irod dash get a Casher with a Reby and uh it doesn't have to be your Reby you might be in a Sher where you don't have a cat with the Reby it doesn't speak to you but you got to find somebody that you have a ceser with and that you can talk things over with um you might supplement the Yeshiva schedule with you know additional schmoozing there are certain people who are known to be able to I don't want to mention names because I not every holds from everybody but you know you go and you hear AO from this AO from that you know this this ad God tremendous opportunity there are a lot of people in y who or in that you're not going to get any place else and take advantage of that right you're here anyway the flip side is as I mentioned a number of times when I used to give my beginners she I used to get guys from the Mir and the brisk who would sit in on my on my sh um because they wanted to supplement what they were getting in Yeshiva with uh other classes in hash or classes in Kish or other udas that they weren't going to get any place else so um look into that experience and uh you don't need friends you just need a friend right canel even if you have to pay money right get yourself somebody who is going to help you through the experience do not be alone and uh if you have a safe haven like I told you your sister in rades SK might be a good option but if you don't have that so then there should be a family that you feel close enough to be able to call up and go for shabas where it is a healthy atmosphere and uh and uh you feel like that you're gaining from the experience and you know you get homesick it's nice to have that here's what I would discourage there's a minig that parents come from America to visit and they take everybody out to dinner it's a lot B involved you should be spending that time in Yeshiva and not running around to restaurants because then when the next parent comes they also take you and the next next parent comes they also take you and then when your parents come they have to take everybody too so you don't need uh 15 dinners you know um there was a story ofman would show and he would for 15 minutes he would he would time it so he came doing the dancing and he would dance with the and give a mouth to everybody and he'd leave and he would come to these kasas and he saw B in the Yesa who was at every so he finally says to him what are you doing here say he says that's not your aod now you're missing night s or night after night your aod is in the B medish sitting and learning so he says Thea goes to kasas every night he say I come in for 15 minutes and I leave he says okay so I'll go for 15 minutes wish Ma and leave said when I was your age I sat in the base MERS learning that's why I can be in 15 minutes you talk you'd have to stay the whole night to do what I do in 15 minutes but if you stay in night seder and you set and you learn then you'll be able to be 15 minutes also so it's a good point there's another [Laughter] phenomena what's the he the heav is that people come for suus and they have fancy apartments and they stay in these fancy hotels and they invite the boys from the Yeshiva from the neighborhoods and uh they go to these uh they go to these hotels and they have uh you know uh a lot of wine a lot of alcohol uh lot of um tvas a lot of uh leonus a lot of kalis Ro that's not the way to be spending a yff yeah so either go to relatives or to a family at their home or eat your sudas in yiva but don't spend jbas on him running around to the different hotels and the different things like this you m you have no Yan and that's why there are Yas that have been working on trying to solve this problem of what happens during sukus and these B man when all the people coming from America and the hotels and the and the things it's it's it's going to take away from your general thing that's it so come in get some sleep get some exercise make sure you drink yeah try to apply yourself as much as you can during the times of learning don't worry about adding extra learning that that should be for fun right go to a Shmo here go to a class there that's on the side but if you're if you're make sure you're doing the ier make sure that the 60 Minutes to the hour of the learning take advantage of that have a keser with a rebi have a yeah uh get sleep keep the the the the silly sessions uh the middle of the night to a minimum you know and uh you know enjoy the fact that you're learning in ell and that what a it is for you to be able to do this and hopefully this will help you maximize your time if your Yesa is in America like I said you know this is how to choose Yeshiva it could be that your best option is in America everything I said applies except for going around and enjoying um South you know what I mean I've never been to South band but you know uh Baltimore you know enjoying enjoying the sites of Baltimore enjoying uh enjoying the sights of Lakewood you know you don't need to do that yeah um that's a special idea of being able to get that but if you're learning in in America everything that I said applies and uh just make sure that well you're going for a walk you're going exercise but your spare time doesn't have to be spent uh touring and that's it for this episode if you want to find out more about the show you can go to my website row.com you can sign up for one of our online shurm uh you could sponsor an episode and like I say we need sponsors if we're going to keep going so please consider sponsoring an episode you can sponsor a question and answer session you can we don't have a sponsor so we went a little long today so um uh you can sponsor par 5 uh you can download P shm you can submit a question you can make a comment and that's it for this episode until next time I am deav olowski and this has been the rabbi olowski show it's the rabbi orlovski show Tor and S ready to go the r 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 ori. comom Tor anytime YouTube and more it's Rabbi orlovski show Tor and S ready to go the rabbi orski show till it's time so we meet again it's the rabbi Orlowski show it's the rabbi Orlowski show it's the rabbi orski show