What a Wonderful World (Ep. 181)

Hi, this is Dovid Olshwang, and welcome to the Rabbi Olshwang Show. And whether you're watching with our friends over at TorahAnytime, wherever you watch or listen to uh your podcast, we're always happy to have you along. And uh what can I tell you? I'm always surprised uh that our audience keeps growing. Um I noticed a comment on uh my Tish'a B'Av video, someone said, "This is the first one I've ever seen." Well, there's a hundred There's over 180 of these. And people suddenly discover it. Every now and then I get an email saying, "I just found this, and I just started binge-watching. A hundred and 80 of these. That's a lot of time. That's a very strong uh commitment. But uh it's time well spent. It is. And uh this episode is sponsored anonymously as a source for the donors, and uh again, they should have bracha and not slacha, and uh all good things for them and their family. Now, you know there's uh there's a method to my madness. And uh people who have been um at the live recordings, and I know there are some people who've been coming to Eretz Yisrael, and they've been contacting me, they want to come to the recordings, and I tell them, "Contact me when you get here," and I never hear from them again, but um uh we um we've been doing this now for 180 shows, so and every now and then somebody, you know, is watching, and I walk in and I say, "What should I talk about?" So I said to my wife, "What should I talk about?" She says, "I I don't know." I tell my wife, "You know what you're talking about." You know I um because uh sometimes a lot of preparation goes into this, and sometimes, you know, uh I've had a lot of living under uh under my belt in the 63 years I've been here. I got a lot of stuff that I like to talk about. I mean, it's amazing to me how much I've got to say. Reminds me Tom Lehrer once said, you know, who was a professor of mathematics in Harvard University and is better known, of course, for writing funny songs cuz that's where our society is, yeah. So, uh introduction one of his songs once he said, "You know, so much of contemporary film and literature is talking about people's inability to communicate. Husbands who can't communicate with wives, parents who can't communicate with their children. And I feel like if you can't communicate, the least least you could do is to be quiet." So, uh um So, the the fact of the matter is that obviously I have a lot to say on a lot of different subjects, and I just have to try to focus in on what I want to talk about that week. And it hit me as I was driving here to the Orlovsky Studios from Har Nof, and I was driving through the Jerusalem forest. And I'm looking at the beautiful trees, and I suddenly remembered something that I have mentioned in the past. There is a minhag during the winter Shabbos Mincha to say Borchi Nafshi. Kapitel kuf daled. Uh some people are only familiar with it as the Shir shel Yom of Rosh Chodesh. And of course, those who are regular Tehillim sayers. And of course, if you have the minhag during the winter saying it, you say it then. And during the time between Pesach and Rosh Hashanah, people learn Pirkei Avos. What's the reason for this minhag? The reason for this minhag is that Baruch Hashem speaks about the beauties of the creation. How beautiful the world is. But it's cold and it's rainy and you can't really go outside. And you don't really appreciate it. So instead you say Baruch Hashem to remind you about how beautiful the world is. In the spring and the summer when it's warm and it's sunny and you can go outside. So you don't have to say Baruch Hashem. Instead you learn Pirkei Avot because since you're going to be going outside with other people, remind yourself how to interact with other people. That's the reason. Inherent in this is that during this time between Pesach and Rosh Hashanah, this is the time that we should be appreciating the briah without having to say a capital to hell and to appreciate it. And as I was driving through Jerusalem forest looking around, it suddenly hit me. A lot of people don't appreciate the briah. We don't take time to appreciate nature. Um one of the things I I can't tell you what it's like in a Bais Yaakov in America. I don't know. But my kids who went to Bais Yaakov here in Eretz Yisrael when they were learning science the first thing they wrote on their machberet on the top of their page was Elokim equals hatevah in gematria. Nature is a way to understand Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Mah rabu ma'asecha. Look how beautiful is your world. And we have an obligation to appreciate how beautiful this world is. Now, not everybody agrees with his approach, but uh Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, um on his way back and forth from wherever he was going once, uh visited the Alps. He said, "I'm going to get up to Shamayim and Hakadosh Baruch Hu is going to tell me, you know, I made these beautiful Alps. Did you ever see them?" And I thought, "What an amazing concept." Now, let's face it. There are people who've never left Eretz Yisrael in their whole life, not to go into the Alps. But okay, but Reb Shimshon Raphael Hirsch was living in in Europe anyway, so I guess, you know, the difference between the Alps and Germany and France, I mean, it's not that much of a difference, you know, where you're going to go. But uh the the beauty that you can see in the world, um a number of times I went to speak in South Africa. And uh the time was split between Johannesburg and Cape Town. This happens uh often when I go to a particular place. When I went to Australia, I spent better part of the week in Sydney, and I spent a long weekend in Melbourne, and I spoke more times in Melbourne than I did in Sydney. Uh there was a lot of Avakshim who wanted to hear what I had to say. Uh both places were absolutely fascinating, but the difference, contrast between them is so interesting. And so, you you have to figure out all the time how to be able to balance it. So, most of the time I was in Johannesburg, and for a short period of time I was uh I was in uh uh Cape Town, South Africa. I think somebody asked once, um I don't remember where it was. Maybe it was my son on the on the uh forum uh the forum video that we had that time where they just asked me a whole bunch of questions, uh couple of my kids. So, one of them I I think was What was the best steak you ever had? So, there there were two There were two best steaks I've ever had. I had one in a restaurant called Levana in Manhattan. It was in this blueberry peppercorn sauce. It's very good. But, the absolute best piece of meat I ever had was in Cape Town, South Africa, in a restaurant called Marrakech. Uh this just melted when you put it in your mouth. I never had anything like this in my life. So, um uh just since I mentioned Cape Town, I figured I should mention Hashem. But, uh I went to speak in Cape Town. And if you haven't been to Cape Town, South Africa, there's a giant rectangular mountain called Table Top Mountain. It's It's rectangular. Very large. There's often a cloud on top of it. It's called the tablecloth on top of Table Top Mountain. And the city is built around this um mountain, and then the sea goes around the city. So, you have the mountain on one side with this cloud, and the water on the other side, and I tell you it is hypnotically beautiful. It It takes your breath away. And I pointed this out, and they said, "The Kiruv movement always did better in Johannesburg than it did in Cape Town." Because the people in Cape Town felt like they already had spirituality. Just looking at the beauty of the briah that took their breath away. Um my niece and nephew uh the Khans Zalman and Tova, for a while they lived in uh Miami Beach on Tower 41. Nice day by them once. And I went out on their uh we would say merpeset. I guess it's a porch, a veranda. I'm not sure exactly what you call it. And I'm looking out over Miami Beach. And there's the ocean on one side and the bay on the other. I probably sat there for an hour. Just looking. The it was so beautiful. It it just it takes your breath away. I one time had to take a train from uh London to Manchester. And you're taking the train through uh rural England. And it looks like a storybook. There are these little houses and little farms and the grass is so green and the trees and the shrubbery and everything is so gorgeous. And you're just looking out the window and it it's breathtaking. The world that the Kodesh Baruchu created is so incredibly beautiful. And you're looking at the briah and you're saying to yourself, "Wow." Wow. By the way, that's yiras Hashem. You know, we we translate yirah as fear, which is a mistake. Yiras Hashem, when you think of it as being fear of Hashem, so you think of it in terms of like the same way as when I walked through Manhattan today and I'm afraid I'm going to get killed, you know, or beaten up. You know, that's that's the type of fear that we have, that kind of a yirah. That's not what it is. Yeah, it's more appropriately translated as awe. Awe, wow. Wow. Today, the word means something completely different, but that used to be the meaning of the word awesome. It was awesome. It filled me with a sense of awe. It took my breath away. I use this to describe what they call a transcendental experience. Now, for me all these things I've described are incredibly beautiful. I grew up out on Long Island. And in the autumn you would go outside. And the days were getting shorter and the air was crisp. It wasn't cold yet. And the trees were a riot of color. Oranges, reds, scarlet yellow, gold Yeah, all different shades. And you're looking at this Ein Sof Elohim kein od Elohim Ein Sof Elohim kein od You could not paint a a painting this beautiful. I know cuz I I've had paintings of of autumn pictures. It just takes your breath away. When I moved to Israel, that's one of the things I had to give up. Is we don't have we don't have autumn here in that sense because we don't have deciduous trees. Deciduous trees change colors. That's not the here. They're mostly evergreens and um it's it's something that's so amazing. The first snow when you look outside and everything's white. If it would then immediately melt, I'd be okay with it cuz I can't stand snow. It's wet and it's cold and it gets in my shoes and it There's nothing about it that I like. But But when you look at it, uh when I used to run NCSY, so I used to make every year a ski trip. It was a good program to attract kids who would not normally uh come to an Orthodox youth program event, but they're going to go skiing. And it was great cuz you had 3 hours in the bus there and 3 hours in the bus back. So I brought a lot of advisors along to schmooze with the kids. They had no place to go. They were literally a captive audience. Gives you a lot of time to talk to people. And when we would get there, I would go to the lodge and I would get a hot cocoa and I would look at the window at the beautiful snowy slopes. It never occurred to me to actually take little pieces of fiberglass, put them on my feet, and fall down a mountain. I I I I don't believe that was what God intended when he made the world. And almost every year I brought along my own car because I had to drive someone to the hospital. There was always somebody broke a leg. Yeah. But uh I sat and admired it. It was beautiful beautiful when you're inside of the ski lodge and you don't have to actually be out there. Richard Adams, who wrote uh one of the best books in my opinion that has ever been written, uh called Watership Down. It's about rabbits. If you can get over that, then trust me, it's it's worthwhile. Uh it's it's such musar in that book. It's It's unbelievable. But anyway, um So, he's he's sort of the narrator of the story. And at one point he says, um "People say they like the cold weather, but they really mean is they like being protected by the cold weather. They like being inside by a fireplace and looking at it outside the window. Not so for wild animals. They have to live out there." Actually, I think the way he put it is, "Wild animals and the poor." To whom uh to whom the cold inclement weather is not is not an an enjoyment, not something to enjoy. But um certain things you see. So, I'll tell you a story that I heard many years ago. Rav Kook was in England, and he was traveling by train as I just described, from London to the north. And one of his talmidim said, "Rabbi, do you see how beautiful this is, the countryside?" And he glanced out the window and he says, "Yeah, beautiful." And he went back to learning. Well, eventually he returned to Eretz Yisrael. And the boat uh docked in Haifa, and he took the train to Yerushalayim. And the whole time he's staring out the window. Have you ever read Mark Twain Innocents Abroad, where he describes what Eretz Yisrael looked like at that time? I mean, it was already a little better by that point, but in the 1800s, he says, "You could look in every direction and not even see a tree." I mean, the fact that there are forests in Eretz Yisrael today took so much work on behalf of people to be able to plant tree by tree by tree. That there are today forests in Eretz Yisrael, it's an amazing concept. It was it was nothing. It was The land was denuded. It was it was uh uh terrible. Terrible. Uh everything Topsoil was blown away. It was terrible. Part of that was uh the Turkish principle that you could not buy land. Uh you could only lease it for a certain amount of time. So, a guy has no motivation to invest in the land. He's going to strip as much out of it as he can. Cut down every tree, dig up uh whatever's in the ground, do whatever he can do, work it to death, and then put it aside because uh what does it make? It's not mine. That's why I'm always amazed of people who buy rental cars. Have you ever rented a car? Do you know what people do to their rental cars? After all that, you're buying it? Anyway, that's just a personal thought. But, uh you know, so they they the land was You can see the lithographs of what Eretz Yisrael looked like at that time. Anyway, he's on the train and he's staring out the window at these barren hills. He's staring out the window. And finally, one of his talmidim saying uh you know, "Rebbe, uh this is nowhere as pretty as um as England." And you wouldn't even look at the window. He says, "What can I do? These hills talk to me." And the truth of the matter is that there's a certain beauty in Eretz Yisrael that you have to be receptive to. Now, today today it's a different situation. When when Eretz Yisrael was swamp and uh and all the terrible things that uh that used to go on over here and and how rough it was. Uh that's all gone. Right? It's you can go to the Kinneret and look how beautiful it is. You can see flowers, farms, trees. It It's absolutely beautiful. But there are certain things that are innate. Um sunsets. And I'm biased. I I'm biased. I'm living in Israel now 34 years. But the sunsets in Israel, I mean, the colors in the sky are just so beautiful. I spent a lot of a lot of money once to take my wife to Miami Beach during the winter. So she could be by the My wife loves water. And um and I thought she'd really enjoy it. And afterwards she said to me, "You think this is as nice as Netanya?" We just had our 40th wedding anniversary. So I knew what she would like to do. We drove to Herzliya. We parked. We walked along the water. We'd stop to get a drink, you know, cuz we were dying. The heat was uh pretty bad, but and the humidity, but but the water's so beautiful. Rabbi Shapiro said once that the reason one of the reasons that people picture as the most idyllic scene that they can is grass by water, by a lake, by the sea. He says part of that is because of the colors. You know, I had a guy in my shear in Or Sameach who was a had his degree in industrial psychology. Industrial psychology is where you use psychology to help you sell things. So, supermarkets spend a lot of time figuring out how to set up the supermarket. That's why things like bread and milk are all the way in the back of the store. Because uh you know, they want you to go through the whole store to be able to get the stuff that you actually need. And a lot of time is spent figuring out what kind of impulse items to put at the checkout counter. And that's why to the best of my knowledge, uh there's this uh this I don't know what to call it newspaper magazine uh rag uh called the National Enquirer. And nobody subscribes to this thing. They sell all their copies at the checkout counter cuz you're online, you're stuck, and you're looking at it, and you're saying, "Biden's an alien." Well, makes sense. Explains a lot. You know, I was like, "I I get that." And then there's a picture of him with a UFO, so it must be true. And then you get home and you're like, "I bought the National Enquirer. What's wrong with me?" You know, it's an impulse item. Nobody has on their list the National Enquirer. It's not It's not something you think about. So, uh so the guy told me, interestingly enough, that part of psychology is figuring out which colors to use. So, red and yellow um make people nervous. And they sense danger. That's why a stop sign is red and a yield sign is yellow. Those colors tell you be careful. Colors that relax you are blue and green. That's why it's the most common colors for bedrooms or for institutions, hospitals, you know, schools. They make it those colors cuz those colors relax people. And that's why when they were designing the first McDonald's, they made it all in red and yellow. Cuz you go in there and it makes you nervous. And when you're nervous, you want to eat. And so you order more food than you normally would and you eat it quickly because the red and yellow colors are making you nervous and you want to get out of there. They also tip the benches slightly forward so you can't relax. The idea was to get people to come in, buy as much food as possible, and get out as quickly as possible. That was the logic behind it. Um so, Reb Moshe Shapiro and Shira explained red and yellow represent din. Right? The sun represents din. At the end, remove is the shemesh mean article. You'll take it out of its holder and all the will die. That's the colors of din are red and yellow. Which are the colors of gold. Right? Uh it goes out and you bring the para aduma, red and yellow make gold. So, these are these colors represent din. Blue and green represent rachamim. That's why the tcheiles, which represents the geulah, is blue and green. That's why the next time a little kid asks you, "Why is the sky blue?" And you say, "Well, because the sun is uh red, yellow, it's pure din. And if we had to face the sun by itself, there'd be nothing. That's why in outer space, it's surrounded by blackness. It's nonexistence. So, we have the blue of the sky, which is the midas of Rachman protecting us from the midas of Din, so it doesn't doesn't come to get us so much. Interesting. Um the moon represents Rachman. It's silver. Kasep. And gold is Din. Kasep is Rachman, and that's why um you don't need to have a blue sky around it. The moon itself. And Klaussner represent is represented by the moon. The Muslim represents by the sun. So um uh There were those ideas. The blue green relax you. So when you go to a grass by a river, by a lake, by by the sea, and you feel relaxed, partly it's the it's the colors that are that are inspiring. Um You go into Tanya. And uh we've gone in the past. We have an occasionally spent a Shabbos in uh the Galitzin's. And when you're up in the shul, you look at the window, you can only see the sea. You just see the beautiful blue sea going on forever and ever. It's just It's the idea of of yum is the yum is the idea of of ain sof. At bash is where Kodesh Baruch who goes from the aleph to the tav, and we are responding from the tav to the aleph. So occasionally they meet. So from us, it's mem and yud, which is me. Me Baruch Olam. And Hashem's response is yum. Look at the sea, and it'll give you a sense of ain sof. You have a chance to appreciate the beauty of nature. When the fruit which is mostly citrus fruit, and apples and pears. I enjoy them. But, in the summertime, peaches and plums and cherries, you know, so many different types of such sweet fruit. The Yerushalmi Brachot says that if you would used to save up money to buy every new fruit that came out. He says, "Cuz the Kadosh Baruch Hu is going to say, I made all these fruit for you to taste. How come you've never tasted it? How come you've never enjoyed the things I made in this world?" So, this is the time of year for me, when I used to be in America, I'd drive up to the Catskills, and it's green, green, green. I'm living in Eretz Yisrael 34 years, we don't have that kind of greenery. We don't have that kind of water. It's It's just not the same. Things are so much smaller and more limited here. But, you're just looking at the mountains filled with trees, filled with, you know, flowers. I went to sleepaway camp up in the mountains, so I used to remember you'd look around, things were growing everywhere. So lush. You drive up north to go to the Kinneret, look out the window. It doesn't have that same amount uh it's not as verdant, but it's so it so speaks to us because it's Eretz Yisrael. Something so special. So, like I say, when we go to Netanya and we go to Herzliya, you could argue that it may not be in absolute terms as much as Cape Town or as much as Miami Beach, but it has a certain level of kedusha to it that you just can't get anyplace else. And that gives it an inner beauty in addition to the outer beauty. So, there's an old expression, you know, take out time and smell the roses. Make some time now. Go to a botanical garden. How many different types of things there are there? People look at the flowers. They're so beautiful. Breathtaking. Give yourself a chance to see them, to appreciate them. Take a fruit. Look at the fruit. Smell the fruit. Eat the fruit. Enjoy it. This is the time where we're not locked into the house because of the snow and the rain and the cold. This is the time for us to be able to go around and appreciate the briah. So, that's my uh that's my message for this week. Yeah, Kodesh Baruch Hu made the briah. And you can see how Kodesh Baruch Hu in the briah and appreciate the beauty and everything that he gave us. Now that we have that time, let's not let it slip away. And that brings us to the question and answer um portion of our program. Anonymous asks, "I know this is a weird question. If Hashem isn't bound by time, why can't we dive in for the past if Hashem is there now?" Because you are bound by time. So, let's say you dive in that Kodesh Baruch Hu about the past. It doesn't make a difference. You are not going into the past. So, I don't know what you gain. It doesn't It doesn't help cuz the Kodesh Baruch Hu deals with you in your limitations. You are limited by time and space, and that's how Hashem deals with you. Anonymous asks what brocha is schnitzel. I recently heard that it might be mezoinos, but I always thought chicken was shaha kol. Can you please explain? The answer is it depends what you mean by schnitzel. When I was growing up, we never had schnitzel. We had a chicken cutlet. A chicken cutlet is half of a chicken breast that would be dipped in egg and matzo meal and lightly fried on both sides. Delicious. Now I understand there's a method. I have actually tried it and it is more effective. First you put it in the matzo meal, then you put it in the egg, and then you put it into the matzo meal again. That's supposed to help it hold better. Okay. Uh but then you lightly fry it. Delicious, juicy, terrific. My mother used to make that with spaghetti and you'd have that with spaghetti and it's still one of those great treats. Yeah, to this day. Now, if you take that piece of chicken and you beat it with a metal mallet until it's four times the original size, and then you put an enormous crust around it and deep fry it. So, you could take it out and wring the oil out of it. That's a schnitzel. And so, the answer is is there a reason to make a mezoinos on it? Yeah. If it's mostly breading and only a tiny little piece of chicken. My chicken cutlets, there's no question about it. You make a You make a shaha kol. But if it's mostly breading, um Osem used to make two types of soup mixes. Chicken soup mixes. One was parve and one was basari. By mistake I one time used the basari one and I asked somebody what the what the din was and he says, "You don't have to worry about it. There's not enough actual chicken in that um instant chicken soup to make it really basari. They just wrote that for marketing purposes, you know." If you take a pulke and you tie a string around it and you dip it into the soup, you know, like a like a tea bag, that's not really enough to make something fleshy. So, the same thing over here. I'll give you an example. Um when I finish making my schnitzels, I usually have some egg left and some of the breading left. So, I put the two of them together and I mix them up and I add a little salt to it. I mix it up and I make them into patties and I fry them. And uh they're really yummy. You got to make sure that you cook them through and you got to make sure you don't cook them too much so that they come hard, but otherwise they come out these little matzo meal pancakes. They're delicious. Clearly it's mezainous. Sometimes in the breading there are some little pieces of chicken left. You still make them mezainous. Cuz the chicken is is really toffel to the to the breading. So, it's uh that's the that is the story uh with the schnitzel. Anonymous asks, "If the Rav could meet anyone in the world, who would it be and what would you say to them?" Uh it's an excellent question. Okay. So, I'm going to remove fantasy, right? Gedolei Torah and uh you know, Rishonim Acharonim, people from Tanakh. I'm putting all that aside. I probably wouldn't know what to say. I don't I don't know what to say to a Gadol b'Yisrael today when I don't them, so what am I going to do then, you know? But I'll tell you who I am interested in meeting and having a conversation. It's somebody that I knew but I didn't know that I knew them. Yeah. Uh it was my great uncle Yakov or Jacob they called him. Um Jacob Rudin. So he was a wedding relative. In fact, I when I saw the list of the people who came to my bar mitzvah, I saw he was at my bar mitzvah. Uh so what's his story? My mother's grandfather was in Vilna. He was a big rav. Avrum Fishl Rudnitzky. He was written up in the papers. He was a khashuv a fellow. And uh because of the pogroms and everything, he sent his children to America where unfortunately they did not maintain his standards, needless to say. My grandmother in fact married a guy from Odessa Hershenhart. His name was really Gershengart but the the G in Russian looks like an H and so they changed it at Ellis Island to Hershenhart. And I my mother told me he didn't go to shul on Yom Kippur. My grandmother grew up in a home with a a rav and talmid khokhm. But back then she said, "Oh, you were lucky to find a Jewish person to marry." Anyway my grandmother had a brother Yakov. Now this is the story that I've heard. Now Rudnitzky when they came to um America so they changed it to uh Rudin. The branch that went to Canada changed it to Rodney. But, he changed it to Reuben. He was such a talmud chacham that a family in St. Louis brought him from Europe to marry their daughter and they would support him to sit and learn. This had to be 1910, 1920, something around there. His wife died in childbirth and the family threw him out. And he took his daughter and moved back to New York where his sisters were. And uh now he needs a parnassah. He became a milkman. And this is the story I heard from my mother, from her sister, and from her brother. They all used the same exact lotion. He says, "And he had a little daughter, so he married the first person who came along." He got married. And that's that's the story. Yeah. This guy was at my bar mitzvah. He learned in Europe and was such a big talmud chacham that a family brought him across to marry their daughter and support him in learning. And this is my great uncle. Uncle Jacob the milkman. I only heard this story obviously after after he had passed away. I would love to have had a conversation with him. Where did you learn? You know, what were you thinking? What What happened with your life? I mean, to me, this is such an unbelievable story. And uh you know, when parents name a child, that's the only time that you really get uh nevu'ah. So I had two daughters and then a son. And then another six daughters. So, this was the son. And uh I decided to name him for Reb Yaakov Kamenetsky. I remember my Rebbi very well said, "Why not Reb Moshe Feinstein?" He had also passed away around that time. And I said, "My father is Moshe Yehuda, and my father was Moshe Chaim, so that's not really an option." So, I named him for Reb Yaakov. And, in fact, his son, Reb Binyomin Kamenetsky, to the great shame, yeah. And, um, and that's why I picked the name Yaakov. And it turns out that I had a great uncle Yaakov who was a big talmid chacham on my mother's side. That's not all. My grandfather, Orlawski, um, was an am ha'aretz. Um, he he was not interested in learning. But, he wanted to marry my aunt, who was a Dubner, I excuse me, wanted to marry my grandmother, who was a Dubner, because, uh, family owned the factory. You got to be pragmatic, isn't that? But, she only wanted to marry a talmid chacham. So, my grandfather had a brother, Yaakov, who was a talmid chacham. And he used to write letters with divrei Torah for my grandfather, and he would give it to my grandma. She was like, "Wow, this guy's a real talmid chacham." You can imagine her surprise when she see what she ended up with. Yep, the Orlawskis have a long tradition. But, anyway, his name was Yaakov, also. So, I had two great uncle Yaakovs on both sides of the family. And, uh, who knew that when I was naming for Reb Yaakov Kamenetsky, it ends up that I had two great uncles named Yaakov who who either one of them would, of course been a tremendous loss. So, I would love to have a conversation with with Uncle Yakov and Uncle Jacob. And see what his life was like in America. Anonymous asks, "Why is it whenever there is some sort of crisis, for example, 9/11, COVID, Russia invading Ukraine, etc., someone finds a or safer that says these exact details when Messiah is coming. Don't we believe a Why is everyone getting so excited about a war?" So, the answer is, yes. He could come any minute and any time. But, there are certain times that are for him to come. For example, the I say after the defeat of Sanhedrin, Messiah could have come right then if a would have said it. Once it was set up in such a way that the possibility was there for it to come. Uh the Rebbe famously said in 1948, "The gates of opened." And only the Zionists took advantage of it. And we could have taken advantage of it, too. We missed out. So, there are certain times that are more for him to come. He could come anytime and any way. But, at some point the clock is going to run out. Ready or not, time's up, here I am. That will be a lot less pleasant. Because he's going to drag us into the Messianic era kicking and screaming. So, it's a lot better to do it on our own when the opportunity presents itself. G asks, "You mentioned some people who are traumatized from the story of the Netziv. I think I may be read for sure am one of those people. Now, for those of you who are not familiar with the story, the Netziv said that when he was younger he didn't have such a good head. And he pushed himself very hard and he became the Netziv. And if he didn't, he would have been a from balabos and he would have gotten up to shamayim, felt like he lived a pretty good life, and Hashem would say, "Where were all those s'varim you were supposed to have written?" You were supposed to be the Netziv. I heard this shmooze when I was 17 years old. And for many years I would hear Reb Shayit and that shmooze was saying, "You should have been the Netziv." It took me a long time to realize, no, I will never be the Netziv. You just you got to, you know, man's got to know his limitations, you know? I've just It's just not me. I'm never going to do it. Yeah. So, uh, but I have met many people who have been traumatized by this story cuz they always feel like that they're supposed to be the Netziv and if they're not the Netziv they don't succeed. Chana G continues, "The attitude that I can always be living life better than right now can be tormenting and robs me of my yishuv hadas after every big decision. Maybe I could have uh, been more. Maybe I should have chosen that path. Maybe when I get to shamayim everything I did do will pale next to what I could Maybe if I was a better person I could have been zocheh to a more holy job, family, friends, hadrachah. And I'll be chayav for all the lost opportunities. The thoughts are not constructive and yet I cannot let go of them because aren't they true? How can we be honest about the fact that we are imperfect and have much room for growth and still have an attitude that inspires growth and not anxiety and despair." I remember hearing my father quote the Rosh Yeshiva Reb uh Leibowitz, Chanoch Chanoch Leibowitz, Alter Chanoch Chanoch Leibowitz. If it's bringing you close to Hashem, it's the yetzer tov. If it's bringing you further away, it's the yetzer hara. But it's hard to fight such a religious yetzer hara in me. This is a really big struggle for me. Any practical tips will be appreciated. Yeah. Sure. Um I told you I was traumatized by that story. Because there's always the possibility that I could have done more. How do I know? How do I know when I've become complacent? And how do I know when I'm driving myself crazy with things that I can't achieve? Which of course will make you depressed. As someone told me once, I feel like I'm walking a greased tightrope over Gehenna. No matter what I do, I'm going to fall in because there's no way that I can win this game. And that's why so many people give up. Uh not all, but you meet off-the-derech kids who tell you it's just I'm playing a game that I can never win. So why should I bother playing? Why would I play a game that I can never win? So um uh I it made me very depressed. I was depressed to start with, and this of course was just the guilt was impossible. So at some point I turned to Hakadosh Baruch Hu and I said, "Okay. I don't believe you want to burn me in Gehenna. I'm going with that. Yeah. And uh I'm definitely not perfect. And I'm going to mess up more times than I succeed. You know that cuz you made me that way. And all I tell you is I'm going to try. Somebody asked me once, "What do you want it to write on your matzeiva?" I said, "He tried." If they could write that about me, I could say, "Well, that's the best. I don't have to succeed. Just have to try." He says, "They get paid for results. We get paid for trying." You spend 2 hours trying to figure out, you know, a Ramban al Chumash, and you never figure it out. You get 2 hours for learning Torah. A shoemaker spent 2 hours trying to make a pair of shoes, and he didn't. He's not getting any money at all. No one cares about the effort. It's only the success. So, you have to say the following. The Kadosh Baruch Hu is rooting for you. Rooting for you. Will I ever know whether I did the best that I can? No. So, but how do I know? If it makes me unhappy. If I'm If I'm unhappy, then I know that can't be what is Hashem. We say in the Tefillah Hashkiveinu, "Vehaser mimenu Satan milfanenu u'me'achareinu." Okay, so we know the Satan in front of us. He's the one tempting us to sin. Who's the Satan behind us? He's the one pushing us saying, "Go faster, go faster, go faster." Cuz either one will cause you to crash and give up. So, there is nothing in your question that would seem to indicate that you're a complacent person. And therefore, uh and I'm guessing from the fact that your name is Chana, although gender is fluid, that you're probably um a non-male. Uh how you self-identify, I don't know what it means. But uh if that's the case, girls are great at ripping themselves apart and eating themselves up alive, literally. So, why women get all these eating disorders and they just eat themselves up inside? Yeah, I have to say I'm going to put one foot in front of the other and I'm going to walk. Recognizing the fact that it's going to take me decades to achieve anything in this world. When I used to teach in seminary so, girls would make meetings with me in November. Now, the girls would come in September. You had a week of orientation, then you had 2 weeks to try out your classes, then you signed up for your classes, then you had Rosh Hashanah, then you had Yom Kippur, then you had Sukkot, and then it's November and all the rabbis and teachers go to America to recruit for next year cuz they already have your money, you know? So, now it's the end of November and they make a meeting and say, "I feel like I haven't grown this year." I said, "You mean like in the 3 weeks you actually had classes, you feel like that you haven't grown?" It takes time. It's a process. And that's why when you try to having been a perennial dieter fat people who are dieting, they weigh themselves three or four times a day. It's not going to get you anywhere. So, some people weigh themselves once a week, some people don't even do that. They weigh themselves once a month. I just get yourself crazy. It takes time. And that's the best that I can do. I wake up in the morning, give yourself a round of applause. I do anything today, that's great. Celebrate your successes, not your failures. Make note of all the the you succeeded and all the good things that you did, and all the things that Kadosh Baruch Hu is Rashi says every good thing you do is 500 times whatever bad thing you do. Yeah. So, the good things that I do are so much more valuable and that's why we're very good at focusing on all the times that we speak lashon hara. But, we're not very good at focusing on all the times that we wanted to speak lashon hara and we didn't. Cuz we don't Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's nothing. Who do you think is telling you that's nothing? That's That's the HR. Because the HR can get you to believe that if you make a bracha or you davening, it doesn't have any meaning, then you're not going to do it. But, if you say when I make a bracha, even though I'm not making it with the most kavana, I'm not. Up in shamayim, all the malachim are listening. I'm shaking things in the briyah. I'm changing the world around. We live in a world where the HR has got a lot of representatives saying, "Yeah, it's nothing. It's nothing." Don't kid yourself. It's a very hard door. We're very weak. I heard a story over Tisha B'Av. I'm still shaking from it. It It was just unbelievable. This fellow brings his father, who had survived the Holocaust, um to camp to visit their granddaughter. And as they're walking, there was another grandfather, an older little fellow who came to visit his, and the two of them pass each other. And he saw his father made eye contact and nodded and goes on. So, he says to him, "Tatty, who's that?" "Not important." He says, "No, but who is that guy? You obviously know him." He says, "Nothing. I don't want to discuss." "No, come on. You got to tell me." He says, "Before the war, he was my best friend." "He's your best friend? You didn't say two words to him. He says, "I was in Hungary. They were already starting to do the transports. And I got an exit visa for me, my wife, and my two children." And I see my friend. I was so happy. I told him. He said, "You got exit visa?" He says, "Yeah, for your whole family." He says, "Yeah." That night when I came home, the visas were gone, and so was my friend. My wife and children didn't survive the camp. He says, "You nodded at him? He killed your wife and children. How How do you How do you not say anything?" It was a different time. And I can't live my life if I just keep focusing, you know, on all the wrongs that everyone did to me. Somebody parks in a parking space we want to shoot them. You understand? We're so weak. Everything's so weak. Did I ever hear my mother say, "I can't make Pesach?" Never. Did I ever hear her say, "I can't make Shabbos?" Never. You hear it today all the time. It's too much for us. Everything's too much for us. So, whatever we do is worth so much more than past dollars. Past dollars were so strong. I've said this before, but I've I've played this through in my mind many times. If I was being rounded up to be put on the trains to be sent to the camps, they'd shoot me before I got to the train. I wouldn't be able to I wouldn't be able to handle the trip to the train. They would shoot me before I got there. Cuz I'm not I wasn't made for these kind of things. This is not This is not I'm not a hero. I don't have a lot of stamina, you know? Like half the time when I stand up, there's someone to help me up. I like to someone older than me. Jackie Mason said once we can have an intermission. I'm going to ask the gentiles to please let the Jews leave first, you know. There's a gentile that gets up and he goes and the Jew goes, "Oh, there's something pulling here. There's something I got something with this leg." It's always something. It's so hard. Everything's so hard for us. These people that they they did what they had to do. My mother said once because you think you me and my me and your father wanted to go to work, but it was that or it was stuff. You know, you worried about whether it was fulfilling or what this. You went to work because you needed to make money and support your family. So, when you start hearing that little voice inside of you, you're not good enough, you're not doing it well enough, it's the yetzer hara. It's not it's not coming from a good place. Hakadosh Baruchu is rooting for you. He's cheering for you. Every time you do something good, the malachim stand and give you a round of applause. Well, of course they stand. They don't have any knees. They can't sit down. But, uh you know, up in shamayim everyone is applauding you and celebrating your success. If only we spent more time celebrating our success than looking at all the regrets and things that we didn't do, we would do more. Because we feel better about ourselves and that would strengthen us to go on and do more things. And that's it for this show. You want to find out more about the program, you can go to my website rabbialusky.com. You can make a comment. You can sponsor an episode. Um you could uh uh sign up for one of our online shiurim. You could uh download the um the uh the jingles. They they the theme song. Rabbi Alusky theme song. Yeah. I mentioned this at one time. My mother always used to say to me when I would say certain things like, "Oh, that's going to be your new theme song?" And now I can say, "No, I have my own theme song." And then that's about it. You can submit a question, whatever. There's lots of stuff to do over there. All right. So, that's it for now. Until next time, I am Rabbi Orlofsky, and this is the Rabbi Orlofsky Show. It's the Rabbi Orlofsky Show. Torah and Simcha, ready to go. The Rabbi Orlofsky Show. Knowledge and wisdom will help you grow. Lots of fun in every episode, and we don't have to rhyme, though we don't. 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