This is Not the Time (Ep. 143)

hi this is debbie dolowski and welcome to the robert lafsky show you're watching with our friends over at tour anytime or wherever you watch or listen to your podcast it is as always an honor that you're taking out some of your time to spend it with me and uh with our entire raviolovsky show community and repeating what i mentioned last week we have an idea we would like to make uh event if we can a doing a little video of those who are participants in the ravioliski show just if you film yourself saying uh shonda tovah simatova happy new year uh to all of our listeners it's so nice to add faces to the hundreds and hundreds of people possibly thousands of people depending how you count it who listen to this show and we would like to uh you know start doing some things to bring everybody together we're almost at the end of three years that's a lot that's a lot of time anyway so that would be really nice and we have a sponsor this week it is sponsored anonymously but i know the name one of our regulars as a uh for him should be a tremendous course for him and all of his loved ones and um it's hashem this program should go towards saying only good things for you and all of those that you care about okay uh we're uh finishing up our second series of turkey avos and uh like i say i'm just pulling out here and there a line from a particular mishna there is so much to talk about we could spend hours and hours doing this and um we're going to take a line from paragravi fourth parrot don't try to calm someone down when they're angry bishops and do not try to comfort them when their dead lies before them don't ask him when he's making another if he means it or not the autistic don't try to see someone in their hour of despair when they're when they're in trouble so let's let's uh unpack this first just to understand what he's saying yeah when a person is angry don't try to calm him down at that point all it does is make somebody angry all right you gotta be realistic when a person is angry they are not in control there's uh cause i'll say that person who's very angry it's like he's being over devoted why because there's another force inside of him that has control of him he's not in control of himself that's not the time to try to have a conversation we saw solanta uh when he felt like he had to punish one of his children he would go into a room and he would learn musa for an hour beforehand to make sure that he wasn't doing something out of anger but only with a clear husband yeah when somebody's upset they always tell you leave the room count to ten calm down when a person starts trying to calm you down what are you so upset about why are you angry what are you upset you know it just makes a person angrier so don't try to calm someone down i'm angry don't try to comfort a mourner when his dead is lying in front of him sometimes people are not ready when a person dies that initial period you're called an o name o nein is is kind of frozen you don't sit shiva you also can't learn torah you also can't do mitzvos you're just like frozen and my father died on a road to shabbos and the way it was going to be sunday i set my alarm clock like i do every morning to go to shul the alarm clock goes off and i look at it and i said what am i getting up for i can't diamond can't put on phil can't go to school i can't do anything it was the strangest feeling want to eat something you don't make a brah you're frozen i'm not ready yet to hear anything the tragedy hits that's not the time to start calming somebody down and telling them it's all right and everything's going to be fine now is the moment where the person needs to process what took place it's a very hard thing i had a young lady whose father passed away during a year in seminary and she says look i don't really think i can go home can i stay with you over the summer she stayed with us and she said to me a few times during the summer i feel like i'm losing my mind i forget where i am i don't know what i'm doing i said it's called the veiless because i was very smart they gave you a year because during that year you're you're you're out of it you're crazy yeah it takes a year to be able to process it but there's a process involved don't tell everybo anybody everything's gonna be okay at that particular moment need time need time don't ask somebody if he's serious about anedder when he's making the nedda why because if you block out any possibility for the hakam afterwards to say if you knew this would you have made the nether if you knew that you would have made the nether a person could say no but if you say to him one second you're making another what about this what about that what about this you go through all the possibilities of us and of course in that moment of further yes yes yes you're going to lock him in now is not the time to ask him about his nether and don't try to see somebody [Music] when they're embarrassed when they've suffered a uh some sort of uh some sort of a kill call some kind of terrible things happen now's not the time to go and talk to them give them give them time a little time to to face it before they have to look at anybody else it was a poignant article i read once about this young lady who got hit by a truck in your shaline and she wrote an article she says i'm lying on the floor bloody the medics are cutting my clothes to be able to deal with it and people are looking around they're looking at me where's my privacy where's my no respect your curiosity is so strong that you the fascination of the tragedy is more important to you than might sneeze and my consideration it's a very poignant letter i remember reading it so all of these things are telling us a very important principle and that is there is a time and a place for everything and a person has to know when is the right time and when is that the right time timing's everything you can say something at the right moment can change somebody's life you can say something at the wrong moment it's going to drive somebody over the edge i was on a panel once with four tremendous and experts i was on a panel and i don't i don't do well in panels what can i tell you i don't i've never played well with others i remember they wanted me to be on a panel once or something and i said i i don't wanna i don't wanna be on a panel he said no no it's a good thing i said take a look you can find it on youtube i was on a panel at the project this bike convention i i it's not a good form for me uh one of the finest pictures of me yeah was taken by uh my dear friend mary popco it was when i was at a particular event a number of speakers and they have he got a shot of me i'm sitting at the table on the dais pouring myself a cup of water and i look like this it's such a great shot i used it once as a for a poster i i was giving a shirt called from burnout it's not it's not a good form for me you know i i don't i don't do so well and one of the reasons is that uh you know when you have a paddle so everybody knows more or less how to how to play together i i'm i'm bad at this i really am i have a big mouth and well you know that if you're watching this anyway the question was asked the kid comes home from school and says that the rebbe or the mora did something that was wrong and and they're right the teacher was wrong what they did was wrong what should your position be and all four of the professionals said the same thing you don't want to undercut the teacher you want the kid to you know to know that you're supporting the school you have to tell them listen you know you have to understand her there could be the rebbe was this could be the more was that you know like this and every four of them right number oh said the same exact thing then they came to me the good old days i used to teach uh gemara in your shoes i gave certain certain uh rules to my tell me them one of them is whenever your rebbe asks you a question the odds are there's one of two answers that they're looking for it's a much like yes well it depends i would say over 90 percent of questions that rebbe has the kid can be answered by those questions those two answers it depends yeah so when they came to me and they said you know the teacher does something that's clearly wrong uh what do you tell the what do you tell your kid and i said it depends because sometimes teachers do things that are so bad that for you to justify it will undermine your relationship with your kid forever so when the sun comes home and says the rabbit got upset and smashed my head against the wall what am i supposed to say at that point well i'm sure you had a good reason i'm sure you deserve that either grab you there that whatever it is no what you tell your kid is that's a terrible thing to do that's bad when a mura embarrasses your kid in front of the entire class makes fun of them you tell your kid what she did is an issue the ariza that's a terrible thing that she did she had no right to make fun of you and embarrass you because kids have a keen sense of justice of ms of zedek and if you teach them that the world is a bad place with bad people and they're bad because of what the bad people did and you deserve to be victimized you're doing a terrible disservice so the first thing i would say is that was bad what they did that was wrong they should not have treated you that way then we could try to figure out how to solve the problem and how to deal with it but when a mother calls me up and says my little boy had to go to the bathroom and the and the teacher wouldn't let him leave and he said i really have to go i really have to go is it too bad and he peed in his pants in the class the teacher says well next time he'll know to go to the bathroom beforehand humiliate a kid like that for the rest of his life no no you don't tell your kid well i'm sure the teacher dude was right you deserved it that's a terrible thing to do so all the other people slowly began to backtrack on what they had said because you know people give the give the answer you're supposed to give i never do and what can i tell you i've had any number of horror stories i mean i have 11 kids so you know you have a lot of different stories of people who did terrible things terrible things i'm supposed to justify it i'm supposed to explain it my son had a teacher who by the way was was a good rebbe it's just he was psychotic it happens you know not all teachers are exceptional there are exceptional teachers but the very fact that you say this teacher is exceptional means that most of them are not exceptional otherwise they would all be exceptional and uh he said siri mood you have to speak in learning and he wanted the kids to scream out the answers and scream out the tsukimi with paige and my son was uh sent by sean very smart he knew all the material but he would not scream in class and i come in with my wife to the teachers you know to the parent teachers meeting and he says listen i've warned him i've warned you now you have to punish him i said he knows all the material goes so i told my son the man is crazy [Laughter] you don't have to scream in class it's okay you know and you just have to get through it go through i do occasionally draw from secular sources and i apologize for those who are more sensitive um but uh i do i do what can i tell you i have a pretty wide range of information so there was this woman jk rowling wrote a somewhat popular series of books called the harry potter series and uh no one knew where it was going but at one point there was this very bad teacher a snake he was very mean and somebody asked her in the forum why does dumbledore keep him if he's such a bad teacher and she answered because he's an educator and part of education is you have to know sometimes you're going to have bad teachers now the answer happens to be brilliant because i've told this to my kids sometimes you get a bad teacher some teachers are threatened by my kids you know it's just a reality so i say listen you have to get through the year no you have to handle this parenthetically what's the end of the story the next year the class goes in to the next wrapping and they start learning and all the kids start screaming goes oh what are you doing what are you crazy what are you all screaming about and my son was like yes is that vindication yeah what am i supposed to say so when someone has been hurt that's not the time to start telling them maybe you did something wrong maybe this maybe that that is the time for understanding stephen covey in the seven habits of highly effective people uh one of the levels is seek to understand before being understood yeah you have to work to understand where the other person is rather than for you to invalidate their feelings when i was growing up there was no such thing as validating feelings you know every would say knock it off stop acting like an idiot there was no you know i learned that oh gosh maybe 30 years ago i was i only taught boys you know and first time i have a substitute in a seminary girls are different i can tell you that i taught many years in seminaries but this was the very first time so i asked someone a question and that girl gave an answer and i said no that's wrong she said how can you say that to me you just invalidated me what are you parking me up put in another quarter well well that was the wrong thing to say i lost the room completely you know how girls you know i can't believe he said that he's so disgusting he's supposed to be a rabbi look at that i said okay okay i'm sorry it was too late i lost the room it lost my credibility you know so uh validated you know okay fine so i have learned there are times when you need to validate very sensitive sense of time when somebody's angry you know the most worthless thing worthless thing you could say you don't have a right to be angry you have a right to be angry it's a god-given right to become angry is it helpful it's not helpful should i work in my meals yet but by telling me that i'm not allowed to be angry yeah okay you know you see somebody they just just suffered a tragedy already lived a long life don't you love that one lived a long life my rebbe who was my chiropractor by jacob whale his father passed away he was over a hundred what the very should we call i was a kid i said i well it must be easier because you know he lived to a hundred you know he had a very long life he burst into tears it took him a while to compose himself and he said when they reach a certain age you don't think they're ever going to die ah it's very important lesson there i get asked this question sometimes how do you explain the death of a young child i said so you're okay with the death of an old man right that doesn't bother you at what age is it no longer a moral dilemma when someone dies 90 80 60. how old does it have to be that you're okay with it because most of the time when people die they're not really okay with it very often i found that their relatives aren't okay with it either that's not the time to start explaining to them why it's really okay no no okay you'll see had a good life you know it was in pain nobody wants to hear that when the tragedy hits so you have to understand where a person comes from so he has this step in the seven habits called seek to understand before being understood because everyone wants the other person to understand them you ever see two people and one of them says i gotta tell you something no i gotta tell you something oh okay you go first they're not listening they're just getting through it so they can say what they wanna say and it's so important for us to make other people understand what we want i'll tell you a story [Laughter] i had a job for a number of years and someone joined the staff and wanted my job now i figured this out right away within the first week i figured out that he was going to spend the rest of the year undermining me and trying to get rid of me which he did in the end and i had no choice but to leave and i told the russia shiva i said i made a mistake i think i told you he wanted my job he wants you a job eventually he he took over the issue from the mississippi anyway the man was a master manipulator he was he it was a gift it was a gift that he had he told me once how he manipulated his rebbe he told me with pride now why would you tell this to me if you're working to get rid of me you know somebody who came in the next year and then crossed him and he fired him too you know so uh he he told me he says i was really surprised that you left i know you were an institution and i said to him you got rid of arlovski and he says he doesn't know half the tricks i played on him but i saw it right away i saw it immediately uh there's nothing i could do about it but uh you know it was it was uh yad hashem and i was supposed to obviously move on to something else but it still hurts i'm not gonna tell you it doesn't hurt but anyway so uh so after he realized that i was on to him remember his whole his own kayak is manipulation he says come let's meet let's discuss the problem so we sit down for a meeting and he brings out a sheet of paper and he says this is what i think and this is what you think and this is what this and this is the problem this is like and he talked lee guzma for three hours straight now you know i have a little kind of twisted sense of you spoke for three hours about the importance of good communication and me i didn't say a word i sat there quiet i said let's see how long he'll talk before he notices that i have not said a word in our discussion of good communication and um and so he he spoke for three hours straight at the end he says to me sir d you understand what i'm saying i said well it's kind of strange you just spoke for three hours but the importance of good communication and you didn't realize that i didn't say a word for three hours don't worry about it take the paper read it over think about it you know you'll see that i'm right full disclosure i didn't see that he was right but if i had any suffix my suffolk was confirmed as to what the guy was doing and i was 100 right exactly what i predicted he undermined me with the guys he undermined me with the rush of shiva he had it was horrible horrible horrible i moved i ended up moving on from there getting a much better job but but uh it was horrible and i could see it right away that's not called communication i know somebody whose wife left them and somebody went to speak to him and i can't believe she walked out on me you sent her divorce papers he said well that was just to shake her up he says but not everybody sees it that way maybe you need to work on your communication he says our communication is fine i tell her exactly what i want you know the difference between amira and dibor is that amira i can say without anybody else but your melon came by or there was there was nobody there to talk to it was in a mirror but the adaba hashem el moisha d-boy is a two-way street communication means that there are two people involved so he says instead of you trying to convince the other person that you're right take the time to understand the other person i don't know if i told this story it's a great story uh this young lady wanted to come back for shauna beth and her mother said absolutely not absolutely not so uh she says you know you should talk to one of your rabbis to help you accept the fact that you're not coming back so she says well maybe you can explain to one of my rabbis why i can't come back so she says fine she says well you bet rebellowski when you can't talk to her you're last fine so she calls me up she says i told her she's not coming back for her second year she signed a contract that she wasn't gonna ask for a second year she knows my position on this there's nothing to discuss and i said okay so she said to me but she's so unhappy i said listen as a parent sometimes we have to do what we think is in our children's best interest even if they're not going to be happy and she starts crying and says but i don't want her to be unhappy and i said every parent has to make a choice between doing what they think is in the best interest of their children oh what's right and we talked 20 25 minutes and all i did was validate her feelings i hung up the phone my wife said what did you do i said seek first to understand before being understood i wanted her to know that i understood how she felt then the second phone call we could talk about where to go from there but that was the first phone call so the young lady calls me the next day says i don't know what you did but my mom said i can come back for a second here i didn't do anything all i did was listen and and validate her feelings and that was enough for her to be able to move out of where she was she wanted to be heard she wanted to be understood so important so important to understand where the person is instead of you trying to sell them something trying to get them to be what you want there's a uh psychologist here in the neighborhood who does a lot of work um with people of all ages and we used to go to vermont shapiro shira together sometimes we would share right like the reinfeldt and i said listen i've been in the field for a lot of years working with people what do you do when you know what the problem is you see it right away with the properties and you as a psychologist can't say anything he says that is the hardest part of my job i have to wait till the person realizes it on their own now i learned this the hard way because i started working in the field when i was young and somebody would come to me and they'd ask me a question or deal with a problem and i'd say here's the answer this is the problem they said me no no no i see why you might say that but no no you're wrong so at the beginning i was surprised really i really just thought it was right and they would come back to me sometimes hours sometimes days sometimes months sometimes years later and say to me you were right i wasn't ready to hear it yet and i slowly started to learn it doesn't matter whether you're right the person has to be able to hear it it's the famous story of arya levin it's not the narrative i might call it stayed open into friday night pearce shoppers oh demonstrations people were yelling at him and that health so i levine who is beloved by everybody is all dressed up in can i get you anything he says no no would you like a chair he says okay he sits in the chair and it's look pension and it's past candlelighting time and it's past sundown and the my colleague is open and uh he stays home for several hours later at the end it's finally getting ready to close up and this didn't happen in old jerusalem this was a this was a new development and he says rebbe what what were you doing here he says i heard that somebody was opening their store in chaves i wanted to know what the person was going through and there's terrible poverty in usual iron i understand during these three hours you have the market to yourself there's nobody else open you probably made a lot of money during this time i wanted to see how much you were making how many customers it must be a terrible messiah to stay open on shabbos for you because of how much money you're gonna make he says rebbe you're the first one who tried to see it from my point what should i do and my living said i don't know what to tell you shabbos of shabbos but i wanted to see what what you were going through and he said because of you all closed down because you took the time to understand where i was you have to know where a person is so teaching in seminary once and a girl asked me a question and it was clearly us what she wanted to do she says i spoke to this teacher and this teacher told me i'm not allowed to do it but i really need to do it so i went and i spoke to one of the rabbis and the rabbi told me i'm not allowed to do it but i don't know what to do because i really need to do it so what should i do and i said it's a very hard question i really i really have to think about it i'm going to look into the sources uh speak to her come see what i can do and throughout the year she'd say to me did you find an answer yet i said no but i'm going to go speak to this one and see if i can imagine so one time there was another teacher there and said what's the difficult question and i told them the difficult question is why is that difficult it doesn't why is that a hard question i said it's a hard question because she can't hear the answer if i tell her no so then she'll just do it anyway but then she won't talk to any rabbis i have to keep the door open i can't tell her it says of course it's us her but she can't hear it you have to know where a person is i had a dear friend frisky goldberg [Music] very special fellow but he came to eric's shell when he was 18 years old and he's going to go to asia torah because he wants to learn the proofs of torah sinai hashem give the torah to the jewish people he's very determined and he's there for months and after a number of months he comes by for shabbos and i said so how's it going he says i don't know i'm not sure so i said listen they have some very good arguments a lot of proofs do you have a question on what they're saying i just don't know if i'm convinced i said you know always says be a judge not a lawyer of course i can always argue but judge the evidence do you have a question on the evidence you can't sit as a judge at a at a trial where they present all the evidence and then go nah i'm not convinced in that a lawyer says do you have a problem with what i said is there a question there i just i don't know you can't do that he says i don't know i'm just i'm just not i just don't know so i said the problem is you don't care whether god gave the torah on mount sinai 3 300 years ago between me and you nobody does that's not your issue in life your question is how come i'm not happy he stops and he goes you're right i'm not happy how come i'm not happy i said that's the question you should be addressing he says you knew this from the start and i said sure he says so he just wasted four months and i said yeah but you weren't ready to hear it you were so sure that that was your question there was nothing i could do i couldn't prove it to you you were sure you were sure you were right so what do you do what do you do how do you how do you deal with a situation like that you have to wait the person's ready timing is everything so when a person's angry that's not the time to try to discuss with them how they should calm down and when a person is shocked because of the tragedy that's hit them is not the time for you to explain to them why it's really it's all good so it's a hashem don't worry one person is making a nether and then a moment that's not the time to try to reason with them when a person is suffering disgrace don't try to see them now let them have their privacy and when they're ready to come out and face the world then you can tell them how to look at things from the positive points of view so you know they were dabbing and milk was running late because uh and it was early after shikiya and uh the boy who was diving for the army didn't know if he should say or not yeshiva the halal and all the police come in the yeshiva to leave the mizrah we have a new reshashiva sean chadron he says i froze so i wonder if i can ask the nurse yeshiva to bring me a mr brewer hailing base he says i don't know how my feet move and i brought him the mr and he reads that if you're not supposed to say after but if you're running late like on a tightness then you can say it i went back to my room my part i pulled blanket over my head and i stayed there for days that's why i got a message that mashiach wants to see and i didn't know if i was more frightened to go or not to go and i decided i was more frightened not to go and i came back mishker said to me you know why i did what i did thank you tomorrow and sit down and learn and he said like a surgeon he's stuck in a knife and cut out half my guyva i'm just sorry he left the other half in but one aspect of that story was that lady cosman knew he needed time to sit and feel sorry for himself now is not the time to give him that muscle moves he needs a little time to lick his wounds parents especially feel like i have to say something right now you don't have to there's time it's time someone just asked me for the main uh kind of tip i could give and i said don't say 90 of what you want to say because studies have shown that 90 of what parents say the kids are negative only about that 90 there's always time to point it out very hard to take it back you have to know when the right time is jakob says the swollen lady look what you did you know you the whole country is now going to rise up and destroy me i don't i don't have the power to fight everybody and they said should we let our sister be treated like a zoina says nothing ruvain messes up his bed to show his displeasure jacob says nothing for decades it was on his deathbed and said you remember that conversation we were having reuben remember what you did now let me explain to you the consequences for leaving remember that conversation we were having let me explain to you the consequences i don't have to say anything now i have to say something i'm going to say it now this time don't have to be this moment you have to understand when the right time is to say something i mean olive wick tells a story and if bowman was a rav he had a girl in his community who married a very good manchu and it was years i don't know if it was later later but it was definitely years later she got divorced and she called him up and said rebbe i want to come home remember olawick says on that story the brilliance of bulman was and he made her feel like she had a home to come home to look at the same thing now time to say things later so it's important it is to say something sometimes it's just important not to say something certainly not now wait wait until the person is ready to hear you don't have to say everything that you want at this moment and that's what i wanted to point out for the show you want to find out more about the podcast you can go to the website at alaska.com you can leave a comment you could uh put up your recording of wishing a shanna television happy new year to the rabiellowski audience family out there um you can [Music] sponsor an episode and that's it looking forward to hearing from everybody until next time i'm devin dolowski and this is the radiology show it's the rabbi orlowski show torah and simba ready to go the rabbi orlovsky showed knowledge and wisdom will help you grow lots of fun in every episode and we don't have to rhyme it's the rabbi orlovsky show on rabbi orlovsky.com torah anytime youtube and more it's rabbi orlowski show torah show till next time till we meet again throughout my orolowski show it's the rabbi yolovsky show it's the rabbi yorlovsky sure