The True Meaning Of Tu B’shvat (Ep. 270)

testing one two three one two three hi this is D olowski and welcome to the raber olowski [Music] show we got a big crowd here today I don't know if you can see on screen but they're all doing the wave it's really unbelievable so uh yeah it's uh it's a it's a real party over here and uh um people have ask me if you can uh uh you know come and see the live filming you know they want to come in from America everybody is entitled to come you can take your picture in front of the famous bookcase over here and uh you know I just hope it doesn't fall down because it's falling apart but uh you know uh should anything happen we're not covered anyway and don't forget to like share subscribe and comment someone just commented and said one day you'll get that down yeah I am because the producer wrote it out for me so soem we remember all that and we have a a sponsor for this episode sponsored by the dorin family in honor of RAB olowski thank you and mazeltov on the show's sixth anniversary wow hard to believe huh we're in our seventh year that we're doing this and um you know I uh I mentioned this last time that I go through this uh every single time where I just say what should I talk about because I had a lot of stuff on my mind when I started this thing but you know over seven years you know 250 episodes give or take you know you you you think okay what do I have left to say now I always have something to say but uh it doesn't always come to you off the top of your head one of the more frustrating experiences that I get is when people say to me oh rowski tell me a joke so I'm not a comedian you know um that would be an actual profession I I don't I don't tell jokes per se I say things over in a funny way and sometimes they you know I'll access a joke to bring a particular point but I'm not I don't have like jokes ready to go if I was on a talk show you know and they say all you know so tell me about your brother you know what I mean one of those kind of routines I don't always have one I I just have a certain level of credibility that what I'm saying over must be funny so that I can walk into an audience and go good evening and get a big laugh out of that you know in of itself you someone says tell me a joke good evening that's that's not so funny but um in fact my good friend Zev WIA who is lives in North Miami Beach and um uh he uh I I had to fly back after my daughter's surgery we were in America and we had to fly back through Miami so he says listen I'll pick you up and I'll I'll you could stay by us for the night and I'll take you back to the airport in the morning and you know we were originally just going to stay at the airport and get up at a hotel you know but like this um I got in my with a minion I got in Shak a minion I got supper I got breakfast ah galic anyway so one of his kids here said tell me a joke and and he said before you start I've listened to all of your material I know all your jokes so I said but you never heard my parrot jokes and he said that's true I never heard parrot jokes I have an unusually large collection of parrot jokes more than anybody would possibly imagine I'm not going to tell them to you now but uh just suffice it to say that if I ever get stuck I'm going to tell you my parrot jokes so I have uh certain certain categories of jokes par jokes I I have more than a person would think makes sense it reminds me when someone asked Seinfeld how many cars do you own and he said not the amount that you would say yeah that makes sense so that's how many par joks I have but anyway um uh so it's the same thing when I sit down to think of a top what do I want to talk about now if I was organized I would probably write down things as they occurred to me and I'd have a list of topics and I would probably research them and you know think about it beforehand but I don't I just sit down and say okay what should I talk about and whatever comes up so that's what I did and uh a member of our studio audience said well have you ever talked about tub bishvat and I said I'm sure I talked about tub bishvat I've definitely sung the English version of the tubish vat song in the past uh but have I ever spoken about tub bishvat so I did a quick search of past videos and granted I looked for tub bishvat so it could be it has a different title but I didn't see that I've ever actually talked about tubish I've spoken about Kaneka and purm I've spoken about sh and PES andus rash and yer um I don't know if I've ever spoken about tuba of but I've defin I I I'm pretty sure I spoke about aares I don't think I ever spoke about uh tubish so if I did well you're going to hear it again and if I didn't so this should be a first time for you and to show you how committed I am I put on a green tie and uh I had a different green tie which wasn't in great shape my wife found this brand new green toy and it came with a little pocket uh little pocket Chief which I have never worn in my life my father who was quite the clothes horse was always trying to get me to do things like that I never did he used to say to me you're a young kid why do you dress like an Undertaker you know and I did I I my father was always much cooler than I was he was you know he had all the cool clothes in the 60s and 70s and I wore dark Sombra suits and white shirts and called everyone my child yes my child I was planning I'm becoming a rub but anyway um so I actually that's that's how committed I am to this program that we have here that I would actually put in a pocketchief and on the subject of committed okay um we mentioned last time about the theme song uh Lenny Solomon wrote the theme song and he said the reason is that when he was on the show he said you know I should really write you a theme song and then uh he knew that uh you know a person should not say something unless they mean it he says so I said it even though it was in passing and he wrote me a theme song because of that so somebody one of my many uh my many Avid listeners uh sometimes they call themselves RAB olowski crazies um I don't use that title myself but I I just repeat what I hear so uh um so one of them pointed out uh that I have mentioned RAB olowski merch on a number of occasions and I've never made it available and they put together a compilation of every single time I said it and I have to say when confronted with all of that evidence I said to myself two things one is I shouldn't have kept saying that if I did not intend to make something available and also there are people who have too much time on their hands why are you collecting every time I ever mentioned merch on any of my podcasts but I guess if if I'm going to be a man of the word of my word and there is no evidence so far that I am but uh I guess we will have to look into actually making some merch available to people since I know there are people who have been asking me for the rowski mug that's why I didn't even bring it in for this episode maybe the next one I'll bring it out but uh just because I'm so embarrassed that I've been promising merch and I didn't have any so uh we'll see we'll see uh uh in fact um you know that I'm also a cartoon character Rabbi sitter in the Torah live um videos in fact Torah live right now is having a special offer for people who listen to the rowski show you'll see on the screen a special uh code that you can put in and get 10% off if you decide to join toor live and get access to all of their material uh so uh he made a rabbi sitter doll and I have been bugging him why don't you produce this because there are a lot of people out there who find Rabbi sitter just the most adorable thing in the world and um in fact I just recorded for Tor live a series of videos on health for kids and one of them is we're going to be putting out an exercise video with r sitter I remember at one point I said this is a little hard for me to do because you know even though I'm in shape the shape is square because I'm a sitter so it's a little hard to do this exercise but um uh so the the fact is that U I said to them why don't you make it and here I am giving somebody else advice that they should be making merch so that all little children can snuggle up with a rabbi citad doll and uh I myself uh keep promising to put out merch I not promising but I have offered the suggestion so Bine Eder um you can expect by the next episode that I will have thought about it anyway so more than that I can't guarantee but definitely it will be something that will enter into my general Consciousness okay so just throw that out so uh you know I I don't even manufacture it but you know when I used to do my PES videos I have this mat TI I've gotten people ask me where can I buy the matai I don't know I brought it in some Farm Store once upon a time so I guess we'll have to add that on to the rowski merch Etc so um very good all right that's uh that's our little bits of business um I didn't get any mean emails to read Because I can get a whole episode out of that but I keep getting all these nice ones you know I should really read them at one point just you know because everyone keeps trying to reassure me that you know we really like you and don't listen to everybody who says you're yucky and uh but I'm really looking for the ones that say I'm yucky because those are a lot more fun anyway so um uh as somebody once said the despair I can handle it's the hope I can't take you know so when people say bad things that's okay all right um yeah as you can tell I forgot to take my riddle in this morning also so I'm just wanding around but yeah so I said I wanted to talk about tubish vad tubish vad is a decidedly minor holiday what is tubish all about and uh ironically I just made some by consider videos about the topic of tubish so it's amazing that here on the raski show we've never talked about it so let's talk a little bit about tub bishvat what is the significance of Tu bishvat it's a mishna in rashash where it says AR Russia sh there four Russia shanas now we all know of Rashia sh being of course on the 1 of Tish where it's the day of judgment for the entire world when we say rash rashash is always a Yad it's always judgment why because call any beginning requires judgment meaning before you start a project you always have to ask yourself why am I doing this unfortunate thing that some people don't they just start doing something and they never ask themselves if they should do it I spoke about making decisions I definitely in an earlier podcast but I'll just bring the mushro that I brought when I was in camped which was a touring camp in erel I was there in the 19 early 1970s so they would bring along snacks now snacks are they have this in errell these enormous industrial siiz boxes of tasteless cookies they come in like three or four different shapes and they all taste like nothing you know the closest an American can imagine if they still make it I don't they still make it they used to make the stelladoro assorted mix cookies it's like you know 12 different types of shapes and colors of cookies and they all taste exactly the same like sort of like KL but not quite doesn't have the same same flavor but um um the only the only one people still know today are the Swiss fudge cookies you know because they put a little chocolate in them but imagine the Swiss fudge cookies without any fudging it yeah so that was what stelladoro made and very often you'd go to a sh for shalis and they would always put a box of the stelladoro um assorted cookies that were 35 years old they had bought it when the SCH first started and nobody eats them every now and then someone comes and tries one and they're like why are we eating this you know and that's why it lasts a very long time it's also very economical from that point of view you can keep putting out a box of cookies so secure that no one's going to eat it but anyway so uh so they have these giant boxes of cookies and you know these are teenagers out on a on a tour you know hungry because they bring around boxes of cookies yeah I've eaten some of these cookies and they're impossible they right away turn into powder they disintegrate into powder and you can't even swallow it it gets stuck in your in your mouth and you're like choking the only substance known to man that can wash this away is petal and that's why they serve petal petal for the you who are unfamiliar um in England I think they call it squash it's basically this sort of like syrup that you add to water and make you know think of Kool-Aid but made in um Chernobyl after the nuclear explosion and that was what petal is the stuff is like it just it's the it's one of the reasons Israelis are the way they because they drink pyin so it just does something to your brain you know so this is the only thing strong enough to wash away this stuff so you eat this stuff they're totally tasteless they're turning to powder in your mouth they're horrible but the guy goes around with the box of cookies when we have a you know a stop says you want a cookie sure people take two or three there's plenty of them you know everybody's taking cookies and the guy comes to me says you want a cookie and I said no he wasn't even able to process the answer so he just says again do you want a cookie and I said no and he said everyone eats a cookie and I said they are totally tasteless they turned to powder in your mouth and I choke on them why would I want to eat them and the people around me are all nodding yeah they are terrible cookies and the guy just shrugs and goes to the next guy want a cookie and the guy says sure and he just takes them because most of the time we do things mindlessly so sometimes we start on a project without asking ourselves whether or not this needs to be done or not why am I doing this and so that's why before you start anything you have to first ask yourself before I ask how I should be doing this the question is um should it be done at all is it necessary you know uh I live in harof if you've ever been to harof there's a street there called roin I used to live in Rin and you know most of harof is uh I can't really say hilly Arden Hills is hilly this is mountainous you need equipment to get from one side of the neighborhood to the other you know uh if you're in the bottom and you look up it looks like the Land of Oz you know up there on a mountain you know and you're counting going up to see the Gods on Mount Olympus it's just unbelievable you know um there used to be this staircase going from scholzen up to a guy CL where I lived I counted it uh 212 steps it's uh it's just you know amazing you know all the all the way up and the it's tremendous so on roin there's a flat place to make uh um to make a playground unfortunately though they built a giant ramp and put put it on there guess they figured the kids won't have enough exercise if they just go and play on a playground so we took the playground and put it on this enormous ramp so I asked why did they do that now I have a good friend of mine d Wilner who uh we were we were in La ncsy together out in California and when I first came he had already made Aliah and I was totally lost and he said to me I'll help you but let me tell you the ground rules you can ask where you can ask how you can ask when you can never ask why and that's the most frustrating thing when you first make alah is you tend to say why would anybody and he'd say you can ask when you can ask where you can ask how you can't ask why there are no wise K you know there's there's so many things that just don't make any sense whatsoever but uh you know get used to it so I asked the question anyway why would they do that and someone said to meou can ask where you're going ask why but I researched this and it turns out that originally roin which has only one exit and uh one entrance and exit when you come in from scholzen they were supposed to build an exit going out the other way so that for example when they built supol uh Supermarket which is now called y um they said but they trucks cannot enter through roin because it'll block the traffic when the trucks are coming and they said yes of course and what did they do they built the doing the loading dock for the trucks on roin so the trucks will block it so the idea was there would be another exit to it and they built the ramp and when they were halfway through building the ramp they said n forget it and they didn't build it yeah and so there's just a big giant ramp in the middle of the street yeah so um people didn't really ask when they should do it to me one of the most amazing things is route nine so now uh if you take Route nine in New Jersey it's pretty built up but as a road it doesn't make much sense when they originally built it in the early 70s it basically was a six Lane Highway going through totally empty land it was a totally unnecessary Highway that basically takes you from the Outer Bridge Crossing from Staten irand all the way down to a rundown Resort for a resort town called Lakewood New Jersey now it's a big giant place but back then in the early 70s when R iron found the Yeshiva he took it because he said no one will want to live in Lakewood New Jersey so the Yeshiva will be able to stay in a nice quiet area without any people around yeah as Dr Phil likes to say how's that working out for you anyway but that was the original plan right and they built this six Lane High super highway and as soon as it hits Lakewood it turned into a two-lane Country Road and they said why in the world would anyone have built this highway it made no sense so apparently what I read Once Upon a Time was they were actually planning on developing Atlantic City already into a gambling Mecca and uh they had built this giant highway to get there and after they had reached that far they decided to go with a different route so they built this whole six Lane Super Highway for nothing that's really something you should think about beforehand and that's why uh uh people embark on projects without really thinking about it but whenever you do something you have to first think about it before you do something think about it or what they call make a preliminary study before you build a highway see whether or not anyone needs this highway before you develop a new product figure if anybody wants your product because imagine how silly you'll feel if you spend all this time developing something that nobody wants and this has happened a number of times in recent history where they made something uh the one of the Prime examples there have been books written about it Ford made a car which he named after his son edel and today the Edsel is the by word for a project that is a dismal failure they made this car with everything that they thought people would want the only thing they didn't do is find out if anybody wanted it and it became a terrible clunker nobody bought it because nobody wanted it as first you should find out whether or not anybody wants it uh sometimes you develop something that is so expensive that it's just not marketable nobody's willing to pay that amount of money for it until you can figure a way to make it uh you know less expensive nobody's going to buy it so you have to first think yeah so every beginning brings with it din so a rashash is by definition a y so rashash which is the din for people that is the day when a has to decide is it worth making a world for these people and he has to look at us and decide so was this a failed experiment should I start over right like we did in the mobble or is this world worth saving is there something here that we can develop and that's why I've always said this you know whenever you start off you have to decide why I'm doing this whereas I like to say definitions and I've told this story before I was giving a VOD to guys in the mirror um about dating they asked me to give a vot about dating and the first question I started with was why should you get married and that one guy could give me a coherent answer and I said you understand you guys are already dating it's just dumb luck that you didn't find somebody you like already and get married and you would have gotten married and have no idea why you should get married and um don't feel bad you can ask people who been married for 10 years they can't answer the question either so why should I get married you know and when you ask those kind of questions uh when I used to teach in seminary I ruined a lot of girls because I taught them how to think and uh it's a disadvantage in our world today if you think you know so like a girl would go out on a date and the guy says I want to learn long term and she'd say why and he was like what why do you want to become aiva or mag good Shir do you want to do this for a certain period of time and then you know go to work do you want to just learn turma till the day you die and they would look at them and say because everybody learns long term I don't know nobody ever stops to think about it so um that's the uh Robert Frost home mending wall where he says the stone wall fell down between the two uh their two properties and they went to put it back up and I said to my neighbor why you my apple trees won't lean over and eat your peaches and he repeated what he heard from his father fences make good neighbors and this is the important line and he liked the way it sounded so much he said it again as if it was his own idea fences make good neighbors yeah and he says I think people are lonely because they build fences instead of bridges but uh but the point is that people just repeat what they heard without stopping to think about it so when a person says you know I just want to be a good person no problem what is that what is a good person you know people set out to live a meaningful life everybody wants to live a meaningful life but they have no idea what it is and that's why they reach a certain point in their life when they have a midlife crisis because I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted and I followed this through and it's not what I wanteded here I am I if you see people in midlife they suddenly Chang their profession you know they they thought they wanted to to do something and you know decided to go in a different direction Monty Python's Flying Circus which was a group of Highly Educated individuals who made a comedy show just tells you where we are as a society but I loved it but they have this guy who comes to a you know a career advisor and he says look I've been a an accountant you know my whole life and uh I decided I want something more interesting he says all right what are you thinking of I was thinking of becoming a lion tamer he says I don't know if that's a good move for you you know and anyway as the guy's talking realizes he doesn't really know what a lion is he thinks it's an ante eater you know so he shows him a picture of a lion like you know well this is a li and like goes I was like oh my goodness um maybe that's too much of a change for me I think I'll try going to become an actuary like that's enough of a move for me you know so uh so people set off on careers without asking themselves where is this going think it through so every R is so there's different russas and tuat according to Bas Hill B according to B hillo tuat is the r of the trees it sounds like a very strange concept A New Year of the trees I had a student once and asked me what does it mean the trees have a Rashana I said that's right it's a judgment day for the trees they dress up in white and they pray all day and they eat a human dipped in honey I'm just kidding about that by the way you have to always be careful when you say things you know I I was speaking about how um a lot of the pesak story revolves around Dam you know how the river turned to Dam how one of the signs was that MOS was supposed to take water pour it on the ground and it would turn into Dum the Dum on the blood posts the Dum of the cor PES and the D of the Brisa uh the D of the Christian Child that we put in into our matzas anyway I and I I kept going and I I did this once in the and I see girls writing it down I was like no no no no that one was a joke we do not use the blood of Christian children in our matzas anymore at the last meeting of the Elders of Zion we outlawed that you know understand so she's writing that down I said no that's that's also it's a joke we don't have accounts so um so you got to be careful so no we don't the trees don't really dress in white what does it mean it is so incredibly unromantic it is so Technical and it means basically like this you have an obligation to take off Trum and misus from uh the fruit from from everything that you grow of this three of them are dear R there only three things that grow that are theice of and that's olives grapes and grain okay now M we take off on everything you have to Meer everything in fact when I learned here back in 1975 there were very few places that had a bat to it there was one philal place that you could go to for a big night out with your friends this was 1975 so you used to go and buy things basically in places that had a raban and uh a lot of people didn't trust it so uh they felt that they they weren't doing a careful enough job and it was a political organization and okay whatever so when they would buy fruits and vegetables or they'd go someplace with fruits and vegetables they would take off truma and misus themselves in fact you had to go down to the badat and get yourself a little coin of pramur that you used to be the M Shen that was in it and you'd have to put down your coin and the food and there was a little thing that you said you transferred the you designated some of this food as myeni and then you aod it by putting on the coin and you could only use the coin for X number of times I think it was like a five L coin and it worked for a certain number of times then you had to bring it back to the badat and then they had to transfer all the pramur out of it and you know and then you could use it again it was a very interesting process um and uh and people would you know take off their own truma and Meers now you're buying cucumbers and tomatoes you don't have to mice those things it's so now how do you figure when to take off the drum and myus meaning There's A din in the Tyra that you cannot take off from this year's crop for next year's crop so I harvest some of my grain and El I harvest some of my grain in Tish I want to take off truma and misus I cannot mix the two of them together and take off tumus and misus I have to take off last year by themselves and this year by itself therefore I have to know what is the date of the cut off and the answer is rosashana Al Tish that determines what the rashash is for each one of those there's a when I have to take off m one out of every 10 animals that were born this year um do I have to do it Ines eles argue so that's M so the animals that were born before rashes or after rashes I have to Meer them separately um what about fruit that grows on a tree and like I mentioned two of these are the arasa grapes and olives not to mention apples and and uh pears and peaches and plums all those other kind of things it does not go by rashash Shana because it goes by fruit regular regular vegetables that you pick grain that you harvest goes by the time of the harvesting meaning it doesn't matter when my tomatoes ripened it doesn't matter when my grain ripened it matters when I harvest it that's considered the year for truma and misus so for everything it goes by rash but for the fruit of the tree it doesn't go by when you pick it it goes by theot what is theot well if you've ever seen a fruit tree you know first they Bloss you of course know that because ones you're supposed to make a br on the fruit trees that are flowering and uh if you don't do it immediately ones Nissan you can do it other times if you subscribe to the hamoda in the picture section you'll always see pictures of various rebes and Rabon going out ones niss and making the on the flow ing trees those are the flowering trees after the flower falls off it forms a bud and the bud develops into a fruit which is known as the Abbot I'm just kidding that's Bud and Abbot Costello okay thank you very much I'll be here all week anyway but uh no that's called the little bud once it forms a bud the bud now is going to to ripen into a fruit yeah so um from the time that the bud forms that's where it goes but the cut off date by trees is not rodes Tish like it is for everything else it goes by tuat so if the fruit formed a bud before Tu bishvat they are considered last year's fruit if they form the bud after tub bishvat they're called this year's fruit so tubish rat is the new year of the trees in regard to when the fruit buds in order to um uh decide which year you take off the truma and meus it's got to be one of the most boring holidays I've ever heard of yeah that's it I mean tuba of the girls used to dress in white and G and dance in The Vineyards that's a holiday you understand I don't care if it's a big holiday or not that's a kind of holiday I'm looking forward to but uh but I'm celebrating when the bud took place and when it didn't so there's a lot more than that to it and that's because we're making a difference between trees and vegetables what's the reason for this because there's a difference between trees and vegetables yeah um from trees you get wine which is brought in the B Mikes from trees you get um uh oil which is brought in the Mikes from trees you get five of the shim which are BR as Bikur vegetables okay wheat is made into flour which is brought in the B mikash grain has a special status but vegetables tomatoes cucumbers lettuce carrots radishes they don't have any special status yeah they're important for good health they're filled with micronutrients particularly cerous vegetables like broccoli yeah so uh they give you a lot of nutrients that you should be having does it sound like I'm spending too much time on the topic of vegetables yes I am why is that that's because um I'm pretty sure I told the story already but since it's such a part of my life I don't mind repeating it um about 11 years ago I had a heart attack and a double bypass and about a year and a half ago I had uh three Sten put into the other artery it was a very long procedure and uh and then one of them closed up and I had to go back in before sukus and have another procedure and afterwards when I met with the um the uh Doctor Who had performed the angioplasty he said look I'm running out of options we're not going to open up your chest again um there's no more room for any more stance and the other two Sten I can't operate on so you better do something yeah you know you better change the way you're eating get your diabetes more under control and do something alternatively don't start any long books so uh so I had been on uh I had been on a diet um some years ago on a dare my personal trainer basically dared me to do it and it's called the Dr Ferman diet where you basically eat vegetables nuts seeds and beans legums and a little bit of fruit that's it no meat no chicken no dairy products um no uh fish no oil no salt yeah and he claims that he has studies that prove that it actually reverses arterial sclerosis it can actually clean out your arteries so I went on it on a dare and I stayed on it for the summer and then rashash came and I was like I'm not gonna have a not gonna have all the rashash foods please there Simmon you know for br so I ate all those foods and then I continued eating them for the next several years and without any break anyway so I I've always said to myself I mean to go back onto this diet much as I say you know a person sent me an email it says I miss going to the gym today that makes four years so I mean to go back on it but this was desperate and I went on this diet and uh he stresses the value of eating vegetables particularly cruciferous vegetables because of the micronutrients and he points out that very often people who are overweight are in fact starving because the garbage food that they're eating doesn't have the nutrients their body needs and so their body is starving that's why it tells you to keep eating because they're hoping it maybe just by mistake you'll have some broccoli you know what I mean it might go in the beef and broccoli that you had in the Chinese something and get some veeg get some nutrients into your body so I I went on this diet and I lost 25 lbs and um it doesn't make any sense and like a relatively short period of time and uh I think it's because my body was listening when the doctor was talking and the body says listen between me and you I don't care if you're fat it's inconvenient for you you have trouble tying your shoes you have to buy your shoes your clothes in the big man's Department I don't really care but now I'm going to die uhoh we better get serious and so I think my body just decided on its own listen you eat the vegetables I'll take care of the rest so uh so I have this it's interesting the Rami says that you're not allowed to live in a town where they don't have vegetables have to eat vegetables you know and um one person said to me look animals eat vegetables and I eat the animals it's just more an efficient system you know but doesn't really work that way you know you have to actually eat the vegetables so they're healthy for you but you don't find that they have religious significance trees have really just significance let's take it a step further the ran asks why was Gan aen called Gan aen when there were only trees when you have only trees it's called The Paradise an orchard when you have uh vegetables it's called a Gina that's a garden why is it called Gan aen and he says because in the good old days um trees were not planted in rows they just grew w ever you can see sometimes when you go around aell and you come to an olive Orchard the trees are just all over the place I saw it in Spain as well they they just wherever they grow they grow you know they're not planted with uh with that kind of forethought but vegetables which you're going to harvest over and over again you plant them in Rose right and um uh so Gan aen even though it was a place of trees was called a gun because it was planted in Rose so um you see that ganeden is all trees and interestingly enough Gan aen which is not only a term that we use for Paradise where Adam and were put but we also refer to olaba as Gan Aiden isn't it interesting that olaba is described as a place of trees as was Paradise in this world a place of trees wait it gets better there's something else that's called a tree it is a tree of life to those who cling to it the Torah itself is called a tree there's another thing that's called a tree because although is referred to as er a land flowing with milk and honey um it has another designation in pares [Music] AEV right it is called the land of the shiv erel is defined by the seven species now granted two of those are not trees per se right wheat and barley but uh the other five are of course um fruit and that's why the shivas amum are wheat and barley dates and figs grapes and olives and it's amazing how often people forget the seventh because it doesn't have a here you understand wheat and barley they're both grain you understand uh grapes and olives are both used to be squeezed to make stuff out of uh figs and dates they sound alike Tamar you know people sometimes even need have to remember so you say I remember Tamar is a date because I went out on a date with Tamar so that's how I never went out with ta you know but fig kind of thing but people forget pomegranat doesn't have a doesn't have a buddy you know remon laav deal it's the same problem when they try to remember the Seven Dwarfs you know so remember dopi and Doc one smart one stupid you remember happy and grumpy right there the Opposites you remember Sneezy and sleepy because they both have serious conditions and people forget bashville he's the remone of the seven dwars anyway so um uh so it's defined by these fruit now what's different about trees and vegetables I had a vegetable garden almost nothing that I planted grew the only thing that I ever grew successfully were radishes because you just throw them in the ground and they grow and uh you pull them out of the ground and there they are the radish now you could pull it out of the ground like in a couple of days and there'll be a radish it'll be a very small radish if you leave it longer it'll turn into a bigger radish and the same thing is true with carrots throw in the ground you can get a little carrot leave it long you'll get a bigger carrot yeah the same thing is true with lettuce after you plant it you'll get a little lettuce get a biger lettuce yeah know same thing with tomatoes if you plant it you'll get a little tomato eventually get a Big Tomato unless you plant the cherry tomatoes then they won't get much bigger yeah but uh vegetables are basically the same and they're really not high maintenance tomatoes are a little hoty you have to put a little stick there so that the vine grows up on it Etc but most of the vegetables you just TOS them the ground and they grow yeah if you don't want to have a bunch of bugs in it then you have to spend a lot more time keeping the bugs out of it you know and using uh pesticides and stuff like that but for the most part they'll just grow you know same thing with herbs all these things that grow in the ground let's say you want to plant a tree um so you take a um an apple seed and you put in the ground now of of course you're not going to do that the reason you're not going to do that is because those of you who have children know you don't know what you're going to get every kid comes out and you're like where did this kid come from doesn't take after me or my wife you know or anybody else that I know really they seem to be an alien from another planet you know they just they just or you see that oh you know I have I have black hair and my wife has blonde hair so by statistics a quarter of our kids will have blonde hair and the rest of them will have black hair and then I got this one red head where did that come from and we have to go back in the family and hopefully we'll find someone with red hair otherwise we have to check the neighbors but uh you know where they come from why because there's all kinds of genetic possibilities and all kinds of recessive genes so they never plant uh apple seed because you don't know what you're going to get they're constantly cross breeding trees till they get uh fruit that's going to have the right taste the resistance to disease so when they want to plant another tree they actually cut off a branch and stick it in the ground so it's basically cloning the tree that's the way that they do it right so some people are thinking about that so I'll have a kid I could just clone myself and all my kids will be just like myself and that's just too frightening for the entire world to consider you know as it is it's bad enough that there's one of me but uh you know but you never know you're going to get but let's say Johnny apple seed you're going around throwing seeds in the ground So eventually it's going to sprout and you're going to get a sapling there's nothing you can really do with the sapling you have to just take care of it and eventually the sapling will grow into a small tree and a seits so you think oh I forgot what kind of a tree I planted I'll take a little bite from it and you'll find that it has a distinctive Woody taste it just tastes like a piece of wheat of wood a peach tree the wood doesn't taste like a peach a plum tree doesn't taste like a plum that by the way was one of the things that K Bar was upset with the trees I told you that the trees should taste like the fruit this way when I plant a bunch of trees I know what I have there instead I have no idea what's there I just have to keep taking care of the tree until it grows to the point that that it produces fruit that's a long wait it takes a lot of effort to get fruit off of a tree forget about the gamorra with um honle where he sees this guy planting a carob tree and he says it takes 70 years to get fruit from a carob tree and the guy says I know but when I was born there were already carab trees which means somebody planted it with me in mine so I'm going to plant this for the Next Generation so honu goes to sleep and unbeknownst to him he wakes up 70 years later yeah somebody asked me a question once who's the biggest and by the way eventually he goes to the B magish and nobody believes that he's because lived 70 years ago and there's nobody alive that's on his level to you know uh to learn with so he doin that he should die and he goes back goes back to sleep and passes away somebody asked me once who's the biggest Yeshiva guy Kon or ar ainu I said I don't even understand the question it says um it says AB rinu uh you know toured all around erel so that's your typical Yeshiva guy you know he's always running around on TM or is itel who slept for 70 years got up went to the Bas magish saw his Kusa wasn't there and went back to sleep I said this is a very profound question I have to think about it so I said it over to my son and he said it can't be AO it says Vash he got up early in the morning so that's for sure not a Yeshiva guy you know but uh uh so he comes when he wakes up and he sees somebody picking fruit from the tree he says how you picking fruit from the tree you know you just planted it and the guy looks at him and says I didn't plant this my grandfather planted this 70 years ago and now it's finally giving fruit so um it takes a lot of effort in order to be able to get the fruit of a tree much more than vegetables but what you get is much sweeter you just can't compare the sugar content to fruit in fact they talk about the Paris ginisa where they would get drunk from the suar there was so much sugar in the fruit that they fermented on the tree so you actually got drunk from eating the fruit that's how high the sugar content was now you can get find yourself a sweet tomato or a sweet pepper but come on you're comparing that to a to a date you know you're comparing that to a to a sweet fruit there's no comparison at all so it takes a lot of effort but the payoff is much better and that's why if to put it into a fancy term the fruit of the trees arein with effort with pain with struggle say that is only acquired through sufferings when I made alah um my as I mentioned my good friend David Wilner said I'll help you through the process other people just quoted me the kazal from why am I going through this I said yeah but they don't have to add to it enough already you know I don't need a she as they say you know an extra large Shear of it but to be now the truth is that today you can't compare it you know there were people who walked from Russia to erel um there's an unbelievable book about the founding of mus carat baa um and the struggle these people went through to be able to keep shita and the late 1800s and the starvation and disease and the difficulties there was no water supply in our show you know in y you know if when it rained you filled up your sistern and and when it ran out you had no water now ER NN to be now it's not so bad you know a guy I know had to go for for a procedure with his wife to uh someplace in Oklahoma of all places and comes in the doctor and the lady says where you pe where where you all you people from they go we're from Israel and she goes Zeke you hear of that they're from Israel he was reading his paper he put it down he goes but do they have a Walmart he says no we don't he goes picks up his paper no we do not have a Walmart smart you know and uh um but we do have an oad in fact we exported that to America that's Bingo it's really OSHA so there you go but anyway um the uh uh somebody said once at a bris says how do you go into a bris or dressed up carried on a pillow surrounded by friends and family it looks so nice and this kindly old Rabbi comes up to you with a knife you assume it's for the bagels and how do you walk out of the bris bloody bloody and crying he said K he says and he told the story about this little boy is walking with his father and he sees his rabie and the rebi says to the little boy do you love the Torah and he says no rebi I hate the T Torah and his father got upset he says no no he's right when we start out the kid we put a little drop of Honey on the page but that's the last time yeah as it said in it's hard it takes effort it takes if a person says I struggle withar with effort believe them but if he said I got the Torah without effort don't believe them it's not possible and Haba is only by y why are we in this world says yeah for that we do all our lives all of our struggles all of our efforts so Gan aena is a place of trees and you're cona it with effort to is a tree you con it with effort and uh you cona it with effort things that are very sweet take a lot of effort vegetables you can live on vegetables you can live in you don't have to learn T you go to a rabbi and ask what the is and you don't have to go toab but anything that is sweet is compared to a tree and we're in this world world to celebrate tubish we're in this world to understand the value of trees and a person is compared to a tree right a person is a tree that we are in this world to produce very sweet fruits but that's only going to come with effort as I've said many times people don't choose to live meaningless lives it's just easier to live a meaningless life than a meaningful life so as we begin budding yeah why is tub bishvat the cut off point says the banura because the ground begins warming I know it's kind of silly you know those of you who live in uh in temperate climates it's still freezing cold there are no leaves on the tree someone said to me once how come on tubish does a minut to eat dried fruit I said cuz there is no fresh fruit all the trees are dead you know what I'm saying you don't see anything and if you look at the average tree there's not a leaf there's nothing but on tub bishvat the ground begins to warm and the sap begins flowing through the tree and the tree is starting to come back to life whether you realize it or not and that's the challenge that we have we have to get that sap flowing to be able to work to produce those very sweet fruit you know uh one of the things you do when you have a tree is you have to Cull the fruit you have to remove some of the fruit why because the tree has only so much energy and if it's going to put it into making all these little fruit you're going to have very small fruit but if you remove them so they can concentrate on the larger fruit the fruit will come out larger and sweeter so too we can only concentrate on so many things and if we concentrate on the most important things then we will have a much sweeter better more meaningful life well that's it for this episode if you want to find out more about the show you can go to my website ry.com you can sign up for one of my online shm uh if you want to see me as an anim ated character you can sign up with a discount code in Torah live uh you can sponsor an episode you can sponsor a question answer you can sponsor a par and five uh you can uh as someone asked me last week you can download the theme song um there's a way to make it the ringer on your phone but I don't know how uh you can I have articles there you can get access to past jum you can ask a question make a comment and that's it for this week until next time I am de olowski and this has been the rabbi olowski [Applause] show it's the rabbi orlovski show Torah and S ready to go 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