What Our Prayers Can Do (Meaningful Tefila #4 - Ep. 150)

hi this is deborah olomski and welcome once again to the rabbi aylowski show thank you thank you very much and whether you're watching with our friends over at torahanytime.com or wherever you watch or listen to your podcast nice to have you along for the experience i was uh on a question and answer uh panel once and uh i was with the rev who let's put this way we agreed on one point and disagreed on another uh we both felt that he had a lot of worthwhile things to say we just disagreed with her that i did anyway but he was uh he had a very high opinion of himself and and not necessarily the highest menu of me and in his various answers he would um he would say uh you know little stucks to me along the way my my family was quite upset but i didn't care because i always get a kick at a balagaeva i find them so entertaining because the more you think of how important you are the more ridiculous you are anyway the last question uh we were almost out of time and somebody said um i like to uh watch videos on torah anytime you know when i'm cooking things that is there anything uh wrong with that now i knew already what this guy was gonna say so i said uh i think the rub should take this question and he says er internet is also in computers are awesome and phones are awesome and everything is also good i don't even have a computer in my house i think he went on for 10 minutes everything is awesome so i said uh okay well we're out of time but if anyone's interested i have a video on tour anytime about this topic so you might want to check it out so uh wherever you watch or listen to your podcasts if you listen or watch podcasts if you don't then you know uh there is one podcast i know that is in fact a podcast and not a vodcast as we pointed out this is as well you can listen to this on audio or you can watch it as a video however you choose to why one would not want to uh look at my smiling countenance which just shines forth is beyond me but hey it takes all types of people to make a world as my father used to say and we have a special sponsorship this week sponsored by josef and leia rod bell in honor of our son zev becoming a bar mitzvah he is an honorary member of the red bull rabigolowski show big big mazel tov what a what is course you know you get your yate sahara when you're born and you get your yetzera tov at your bar or bat mitzvah which means that until this moment you have only been evil and now you finally have the opportunity to be able to go and do great and important things i always find it amazing because you're not a bara dasa until you're 13 and i don't know they say that the vilna guyan i heard two versions either when he was six or he was nine you know uh in one evening knocked off's vacuum in menaches so he was uh he was a uh a clever child but um anyway welcome welcome to the community of claw yourself now we can count you as a member of the community uh it's such an amazing thing we we lose this concept of what an adult is the gemara says you're obligated to support your child until they're old enough to make it on their own how old is that five if the kid's a little slow six yeah after that you call him in you say son well it's time for you to make it on your own good luck to you so someone said to me well it's different today i said yeah now it's about 45 you know the only reason is because after that you're hoping there's some uruship for you to get that you're going to live off of but but when we say you're 13 you're now part of the part of the kahila let me count you in count you as a member of the community good standing so welcome on board and uh in case you don't know your mom used to come to my house when uh we first came to it's show about no no no years ago and uh you know what uh what of course that uh that we have been able to keep this uh connection all these many many years okay we're talking about tfila these past few weeks we mentioned originally that we are in a battle for our survival the final battle is going to be there's different the different final battles but the final goalless is that when we get territorial we will find ishmael waiting for us when we come back and they're going to claim that every show belongs to them and uh asav they're they're very happy being asav they don't want to be the jewish people yeah when that's when we talk about what happened it says uh in the haggadah we quote those sukim from yahushua and it says uh yitzchak uh had jacob and asaf and uh yaakov yarad mitsuraima and asa went to higher say laresha said he was going to inherit her say here because he understood that with eritsrel came uh gullis and all the obligations and they weren't interested so they were very happy to take over and be powerful and be a major kingdom yeshmael always thought that he was yitzhak and that's why uh when he's fighting with yitzhak he says to him i'm going to be yourish avraham my father because i'm the oldest son and what prompted the ikeda says rashi that yashmala says ah you had your breasts when you were eight days you didn't know any better i did it at 13 years old that's a that's a much stronger commitment trust me i uh i got it i have had this host to be involved in a staka um fellow rabbi kramer he does bris milam on uh russians now it used to be when they first came to itself they didn't have bushmills and after a while he would go directly to the former soviet union to provide brismila for people and um but uh i was i can't explain why i was deeply moved by this there was something about it that really moved me being able to get brisbane now you know when you reach a certain age you can't just sit the person on a lap you know you need an operating room and it's not covered by uh the health funds coupon because it's not a medical procedure even though it is at that age medical procedure it's a major big deal so uh so you have to have an operating room and oh that costs money and uh so he does the mila and he gets doctors and he rents the operating room and he pays all the bills you know and he even has a little suda afterwards his hasidis so at the end they have a rakida they have a little dance it's a very slow dance after all these people have just had their breast mila but i i so he invited me one day to come down i was sondik now again when you're sandik in this situation the kid doesn't sit on your lap you know he goes on the operating table you scrub up you're wearing scrubs and you hold his head that's how you do it and i did it for a 16 year old boy um that was the youngest that day there were seven or eight meals that day and the oldest was a gentleman who was 76 who finally was zoyja to have a brisk meal so uh so uh it's uh really it's it's it's an amazing thing to be able to have this skus so uh you know when you uh become a certain age it's much more difficult and that's what ishmael has said he says i had made me when i was 13. yeah you were a little kid big deal all right he says what do you mean if a kobacho asked me i would give up my entire body so you see that yeshmael we're not we're not merely fighting for control of the world we're fighting for the control of erzel and the jewish people and yeshua el is hashem will hear his voice all right it's he has the kayak fila as well as we do so it's going to come down in the end to who can darwin better and who has more mysterious nephesh that's that's this battle so uh so i've been giving some insights into trilla that hopefully we can dive in a little better so i started by saying there are three things you can do with the tv you can do you can praise hashem you can thank hashem and the last one is bakosha as you can request and as i mentioned that's the one that would appear to come easiest to people it's the easiest and the truth of the matter is that if you think about it it's the hardest we all know the scenario a genie comes to you and says i'll give you three wishes what are you going to wish for all right you stop and you really think about it what would i ask for and you can't ask for more wishes that one doesn't work what are you going to ask for i'll tell a story about this uh guy finds a genie the genie says listen i don't know where this three wish thing came along you got one wish so you decide he says well i live in eric's trail and i have family in america and um i'm afraid to uh fly and i get um seasick so i want you to build me a road from arizona to america jesus are you crazy you know how big that road would have to be thousands of miles you know how much cement that's what it goes ask for something else he says all right listen i i've been married twice and both my marriages failed i want to understand women i want to understand how they think the genie said you want that two lanes or four lanes that joke fits into a different chair but i'm talking about making wishes right so um what would you ask for right fran tells an unbelievable story um he was meeting with the square rubber and you know when you meet with the rebber you know you can give him a covetable you ask him to dive in for things and he says i was sitting with my family discussing what should i ask for for this kid you know a foolish claimant for this person you know he's going through the list and he he wanted to be very careful because you know you're going into the rebel you get a chance he says and then i realized three times a day i took that kurdish parkour mustang he's got more pull than the rebbe but we don't think about it so when we talk about kosher what are we going to ask for and that's why in order to make bakasha meaningful we have to do the first two steps you first have to appreciate how great a kurdish baruch who is and what of course i have that i'm talking to hashem the second thing is to review all the wonderful things that hashem has done for me and now you sit down and you wonder what are you going to ask for what can i ask for now so i want to tell you khasirishi's story i might be hasidish i don't think i am i might be um i met uh i i met hasidim a few different times and they say to me you know where's your grandfather from i said van gruff he says van gruff everybody in vancouver was a guerrilla classic so the best of my knowledge i wasn't i found uh my grandfather's max arm they were in this they weren't sward so i don't know but could be certainly when i speak to a khasirishi crowd i i pull out my vengrav credentials uh it could be i'm svardy because my brother said that someone did uh you know like a little bit of a family tree and uh when i went with mesivo's tours to portugal he said to me oh are you looking up the family i said what do you mean he says well they when they did this they found out that we're really descended from the de silva family in portugal who escaped from turkey and from turkey they eventually moved to poland so the orlawskis are really the de silvas portuguese jews of svardic descent certainly when i speak to a safari crowd i bring that out yeah um when i speak to an irish group i say my name is really olofsky olofsky patrickolovsky hi top of the morning dear anyway but um uh i remember when i used to work for yeshiva or david so uh uh i would go to rent a car you know so they'd say what's your name i said dave david orlovsky he says and what's your company i said or david go oh that's clever it was actually the name from david leibowitz the founder anyway so uh so what do you want to ask first i'm going to tell you how story i mentioned i'm not question to the best of my knowledge but uh i'll do the best i can oh yeah yeah yeah this sort of levy yet and uh it was called nidre night and of course the whole town is in short everyone has their white kittler that they're wearing everyone is holding them the special uh special prayer book that you use for yom kippur i'm just adding this in because i know we have all kinds of people who watch the show and i i don't like to throw around terms that uh people don't know somebody once spoke in a day school was a day school at the end you know he gave his whole russia and at the end someone said you know he said any questions and someone said yeah who's this abstract you keep talking about that's a that's a term for god anyway so they have their maxer they're wearing their kettle and it's getting late they're waiting for the rabbit to give the signal to start and finally the gobby goes over and he says listen rabbit's getting late even for hasidim yeah we uh what are we waiting for he says jesus is not here he scans the room and sure enough he sees the seat of yosela the taylor is empty so he says rebbe you want me to go and get him he says yeah go get him so he runs through the town to a little shack on the outskirts of the town and he knocks in the door and jesler comes to the door and he's in his pajamas he says yes what are you doing it's it's it's him kipper it's called nidre he says i'm not coming so what do you mean you're not coming he says i'm on strike you're on strike because people are going to strike you this is your kipper you got to go to show he says all right i'll go to show in one condition tell the rubber he's got a promise to give me a moxa okay get dressed he runs off comes in breathless into shoal everybody's looking around what's going on with that he says jose says he's not going to come unless honestly you promised to give him a boxer he says tell him i promise okay he runs back justla's dressed he grabs them by the arm they run into shull goes up to the rabbit the rebbe hands him a moxa he goes to his seat they give a clop take out the supreme torah and they start okay so everybody's looking around and they know there's something going on i mean they're looking at the rabbit they're looking at yesterday what's happening and they dive in the whole year called the dream night you'll keep your night governing and it's over and there are certain things that only the most pious stay behind to say that year everybody was pious they all said the experts fearless and at the end nobody's leaving they see the rabbit they see yesterday they know they're in the middle of khashoggi's story and they don't want to miss the ending yeah so the rebel calls over yesterday says yes what was that all about and he goes and the whole town goes he says all right all right you guys all know me here i've lived here my whole life me and my wife we brought up three boys oh hashem they all got married they moved away they have their own families and uh i said i've had a good life i had a a good living i lived uh my house with the taylor shop downstairs i did good work over the years i had managed to put away money for when i got old and i had my savings i had my wife i think i'm going to enjoy the golden years then a few years ago my wife died and i was devastated i didn't know how i could go on i said okay listen coach brocco's been good to me i still have my health i still have my business i still have my house i have my savings i'll be okay and then i developed arthritis and it became very hard for me to sew i couldn't i couldn't keep up with the work and uh other tailors moved into town i lost business but i was still making a living i didn't want to check touch my savings because i was going to need that for when i couldn't work at all then my eyesight started to go it took me a very long time to just thread a needle and between my eyesight and the arthritis the work really dropped in quality and it was taking me much longer i lost everyone except my most loyal customers and they said yes take your time don't worry about it before rosh hashanah i was very backlogged i was taking i was working day and night but i was very hard for me and then there was the fire before rosh hashanah burnt down my house in the tail shop i had to pay everybody back for their clothes from my savings and i was practically destitute so i moved into the abandoned shack at the end of town and i said okay listen you know there are people who have it worse than me and i found people even poorer than me and i invited them in for my rosh hashanah suited to share what little bit i had and i got up this morning and i realized i didn't have a moxer i lost my master in the fire and i said a kurdish borough you won't even give me a maxer that's it i'm going on strike and when the rebels said give me a moxa i said okay and i agreed to come to shul and the rebel let out a terrible sigh ah yes yes you had god by the throat and all you asked for was a maxer you could have asked for the goola and you would have gotten it but we think so small i don't think big that's why when a person will sit down and make up their list of requests trust me yeah um the second half of schmoyer yesterday do we really believe that arathilas will bring mashiach in spite of all the avraham freed songs yeah do we really think that we can darven and bring meshech do we really believe that we can darvan and change the world no if i can pay my bills if i can uh if i can uh see my kids get married uh see everybody have a place to live and get through the week that's good enough for us we think so small what do you want to ask for if you understand the greatness of a kurdish barricade that's the shevach i may have mentioned this in the past i saw a bumper sticker once that said before you tell hashem how big your problems are tell your problems how big hashem is so you understand he can do absolutely anything what are you asking for a car that's it what you came up with when you realize what i could do what i'm capable of what a courageous parkour is capable of we don't think about what we really want what do we really want like i said you have a genie i'll give you one wish or even if we'll give you three wishes what are you gonna ask for no money power to be able to make a real change in the world h.d wells had a story i forgot what it was called about these these heavenly powers give the power to uh to this one guy he was like a clerk to be able to change the world and what does he do with it he builds himself a palace he you know he he he focuses on himself doesn't think about about the big world on a lesser level there was a film with uh jim carrey the same concept where lava deal coachbar who gives him the power to be able to do anything he wants and he uses it for himself to get even to settle scores to make his uh his uh career better but not to help people not to be able to change the world so when we look at the world the way it is uh if i can quote john f kennedy who stole this quote from somebody else so it's not really a problem but some people look at the world the way it is and ask why i look at the way the world could be and ask why not you're limited by your dreams you could do anything you want you sit down and say to a kurdish borough what do i want and so we sit down and the first thing we ask for is which is what asked for and then we realized because of we've grown distant from hashem bring us back and then we don't want to have to live with all that guilt and then we ask for the good ullah and for refura and for paranosa for all of clai israel and then we ask for justice no he asked for keyboards goliaths bring all the jews back to earth's shell and then we say weaken the bad people and strengthen the good people rebuild yerushalayim bring back mashiach who's based of it let's change the world and make it the way that it could be now how many people think that way i mean we say it three times a day when we dive and but how many of you really believe that when you say those words might feel is going to rebuild yerushalayim bring the mashiach solve all the problems heal the sick give parnosa to those who don't have it solve all the problems in the world do we believe that well if we spent our time on shiva understanding how great hashem is and if we spent our time on appreciating how much good hashem has done for me and what an amazing track record then trust me what you asked for would be dramatically different so you have to really think i'm writing the little pet deck i've got the genie what do i want what am i going to ask for what's important to me i will continue with this next time more about tefila but we go now to our special question and answer section of the program anonymous asks always nice to hear from anonymous this question was from my 10 year old son how do we know judaism and torah are the ms we have torah they have the quran of the new testament etc i've heard this from jews not just 10 year olds there's really not much of a difference between judaism and christianity we have hanukkah they have christmas we have a rabbi they have a priest we have a synagogue they have a church we get to the sabbath on saturday they keep it on sunday you know we have uh the torah they have the new testament but it's all basically the same right so so let's address this straight out no absolutely not there can be no question about this we'll explain it a little bit more but let's start at the beginning either jesus was the son of god who was sent down to earth and only by allowing him into your heart can you get fulfillment and and forgiveness and if not then you will be cast into the pit of hell for all eternity or as the gemaran gittin says he's up in chaminade burning boiling in excrement but that's it there's only one of two possibilities not both it can't be either either jesus is the son of god and it's true and if you don't accept him you're gonna go to hell for eternity or he's not that's a fact that's not an opinion so either we're right and they're wrong or they're right and we're wrong and that's it there's no two ways about it so there's no way we're both right so the question is how do you know who's right i'm going to give you a simple answer first i'll give you a simple answer first i was uh i was doing a uh program in cape town south africa and a jewish school and the jewish school uh by law had to allow non-jews to attend but the idea was that most non-jews wouldn't want to attend a jewish school but some of them did especially if their uh teachers if their if their parents were teaching there so then they got it for free tuition so it was certainly worthwhile so there was this catholic teacher who came along on the program and her daughter was in the school anyway at one point she comes over to me with a few of her jewish friends and she says rabbi can i ask you a question and i said sure why don't the jews believe in jesus and i said don't ask me this question she said no i really want to know i said no you really don't want to know be a nice catholic girl go to church have a communion you know live your life don't ask me this question says no no i really want to know i said you don't really want to know and then her jewish friend said we want to know also because she's discussed this with us now i have no choice so i said to her jews christians and muslims all agree all of them that god gave the torah to the jewish people on mount sinai that's clear all of the monotheistic faith believe that they all believe that god started with the jewish people abraham was the first monotheist and he gave us the torah unmount sinai every every christian believes that the only question was did he change his mind at some point and decide to reject us and take somebody else that's the only question so the christians say yeah the jews weren't able to make it so he rejected them and that he sent down his son to die as a sacrifice and if we allow jesus into our hearts then we can go to heaven and if you don't then you won't he changed his mind so i said i got a problem with this because throughout the torah it says i will never abandon you i will never forget about you even if you're very bad even if you go to the to the corners of the world i will follow you i will chase you i will bring you back i will never abandon you and if at some point someone appears and shows you signs and wonders miracles and says don't keep the torah anymore kill him now that's a really bad thing to write if you're planning on sending your only son down with a new message that means abandon the torah you told us if a guy comes like that we should kill him what he should have written was stand by for further announcements or put in an expiration date this torah expires you know in the year zero of the common era yeah and when my son will come and he's got other things to tell you why would he write that and she thought about and she said thank you and her friends came to me the next day and said she was up all night crying she said i asked this question to the priest and the priest said no jew can answer this question why they don't accept jesus i didn't know there was an answer that's that's the to my mind the simple answer the truth is if you want to go into christianity in greater depth there's all kinds of questions how could jesus be the son of god if god was his father then his yikas is to god it's not from david and there's a whole bunch of questions like this now usher wade who was a baptist minister who converted to judaism i started asking him a whole bunch of different questions and he looked at me and said you don't get it you're looking for the christian talmud there is no christian talmud you don't ask questions until the reformation it was punishable by death for a christian to read the new testament forget about the old testament the new testament why because you think some priests wanted someone coming in and saying state in john 2 16 like this upper and luke 4 17 it says like that is a steroid how do we answer it up you think that's what they're looking for trust me not so uh they didn't want anyone studying this so i said so what happens when you have questions so he tells the story he started having questions and he and he went to the to the higher up in the church and he said i used to have questions like that and i said to him what did you do he says i prayed until they went away because if you have a question in christianity it's a crisis of faith it means the satan is testing you you just have to have faith i met this girl who's conferring to judaism she told me she was part of a fundamentalist christian group and she kept asking questions until finally the minister said sister god wants you to cut off your head and come to him with your heart that's when i sought out a rabbi and i started asking him questions i had the opposite problem they talked too much i ask a question they say ah that's a good cache but you could ask better it's like this like this like this says yeah yeah but i just ah that would be good according to the round bomb what are we going to derive it i just have to like do something like this and this you know oh but the case admission says i'm going to get like this okay [Laughter] the uh the quran considered it an insult when they called us the people of the book because we're intellectuals you know how christianity got started jesus showed up and said uh yeah i'm the son of god ta-da i'll show you watch i'll walk on water you believe me great paul takes over the church why uh jesus came to me in a vision on the road to damascus normally take over the church okay maybe anybody else there nope just me okay how did islam got started uh muhammad was on the road from mecca to medina and allah appeared to him and said starting a religion and this is what i want you to say and he says okay how did the mormons get started joseph smith says that an angel led him to a mountain in upstate new york where he dug up golden plates that jesus had buried there after the resurrection after the resurrection instead of going to heaven he went to upstate new york it must have been the summer and he made these golden plates and in the book of the mormons a number of family members testify that they felt the plates under a cloth well gosh now either you believe joseph smith or you don't but that's it nobody ever saw it and then afterwards after he transcribed it the angel took the plates away which is too bad because i bet that would have been a great piece of evidence that's how you start a religion you say a god spoke to me and this is what he told me and you're like okay believe it or not ivor avinu started teaching about god at the age of 52. god did not appear to him until he was 70. for 18 years he said there's an all-powerful invisible infinite god and this is what he wants and i figured it out through pure logic intellect what's the most important i told you in in christianity you were not even allowed to study the bible what did we say as contrast talmud tara connect coulomb learn it the more you know and and every study has shown this the more educated a jew is the more committed they are to torah and people who leave torah it's because they don't know it's because it's because they have too little torah ruby left has such a beautiful shot he says uh uh shimbakai is in the cave and when he comes out he starts looking around and burning people up so kushbacho says go back to the cave so if your left says you're sending him back to the cave that's where all the problem came from so he says you see that if there's a problem it's because you have too little torah not too much tor if you have more torah you'll be a little bit more uh sanguine in the way you approach things so uh uh that's what we say what do we do with the seder we teach children ask questions and the more people ask questions that's how we learn it and why because and how come yeah okay now what do we do with this and how do we answer that and how do we this as the old story goes someone said why do you jews answer every question with a question and you responded why not we want people to think other religions don't trust me i've spoken to many christians it is a problem if i know more about christianity than they do and when you hit them with these various uh questions they can't answer it and that's one of the reasons the pope came up with the infallibility doctrine which means if the pope says something it's true because the pope said it you're not allowed to argue with it wish i could get away with that that's a great move i said it and it's true can a parent even do that today because i said so no but why why why is it fair i don't have to listen and i went there because i said the pope can do it otherwise he can excommunicate you you know what excommunication is it's not like in judaism what they say you put you in a hay room excommunication means that the pope poskins you don't get to go to heaven he did that to all of england ones so you got to go back and uh you know you say could you please let me into heaven you know it turns into a little bit of a problem especially when there were two popes one in france and one in italy and they excommuted everybody else's followers which means that at least one pope out there says you're not going to heaven so that's why what we say judaism there is no religion that can provide the evidence that judaism can provide because we are teach people think ask questions look at it how do you know it's true where did it come from ask the questions and uh they believe there was mama garcia they just said yeah god changed his mind decided to do away with you people even though he said he never would so again i didn't go into all the proofs of hiersenai and how do you know how to senia and all this stuff i'm just saying if the question is christianity and islam they both agree that mohammed arsenal took place shia cohen says a christian woman once said you know god gave the torah to the gave the bible to the jews on mount sinai he says that's right he says every christian believes that how come jews don't because they all know everybody knows that god gave us the torah the problem is that he says i'll never change this and i'll never give it up that's why how do they get around that they say well we're really israel we're the new no israel gave up on you but he said he'll never give up on yours he says don't never kill from israel poof where israel now what are you gonna do all right that's a short answer to a very important subject that can be discussed you know when the ramban discussed this he was in a debate with pablo christiani at the end the king who is a christian king said i never heard anybody wrong defend their position so well he wiped the floor with him that's why he had to run away around there itself to uh to hide out because they were they were coming after him people don't like it when you show that they're wrong we ask us questions look at it examine it challenge us but most religions are not like that don't make that mistake and like i mentioned and the and the main question is was jesus the son of god who came down to die for our sins and only if you allow him into your heart will you go to heaven and otherwise you'll burn in hell which the famous response to christian missionary it's been used a number of times by people that even i know and they said uh if you allow jesus in your heart then you go to heaven this is right and if you don't you go to hell and the missionary had to admit yes so if hitler allowed jesus into his heart before he killed himself he's in heaven he says yes and the six million jews who died saying shema israel are in hell yes i'd rather be in hell with the six million than in heaven with adolf hitler all right that's it for this show if you want to find out more about the show you can go to my website rubyalovsky.com you can leave a comment you can ask a question you can go to the question answer series you can send me an email um always enjoy hearing from everybody a lot of people i haven't answered and that's because i had to make room on my phone and so i came up with this great idea of erasing all my emails not realizing that they would also erase it on my computer so people were saying why hasn't he answered me because i lost your email that's why i'm working out to try to get it back i'm uh i'm talking to the cloud please please can i have the best anyway you can sponsor an episode you can listen to the theme song uh you can uh all kinds of nifty stuff you can do there articles i'm just putting up now some new shirim uh that i have been giving in harnoff that i have the recordings and lots of great stuff so uh uh that's it for this week uh i'm david rolowski and this is the rabbi olavsky show it's the rabbi orlovsky show torah and symbol 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 no it's the rabbi orlovsky show on rabbi orlotsky.com torah anytime you two and more it's rabbi orlovski's show torah and simple ready to go into the rabbi orlowski show till next time till we meet again throughout my orolowski show it's the rabbi orlowski show it's the 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