Transcript
Auto-generated transcript. Not time-synced to the video.
hi this is david ololowski and welcome
to the ravrolowski show
thank you very much uh i got a question
with somebody they asked me uh is do you
have an audience
when you film the podcast
sometimes i'm not a very large audience
but we usually have a
smattering but of course
if you were at the live show in flatbush
that we did we had a much larger live
audience and we're going to be doing
that again
may 17th tuesday night 8 p.m
uh
america's ha simcha
in brooklyn
1898 bear avenue
so uh come early
bring a stick and beat the crowds
anyway that's a little joke there uh
i don't want you going around hitting
people this is not the oscars anyway so
uh uh but uh that's gonna be more of a
live audience so uh so we wanna see i
wanna see you there uh a lot of people
were complaining last time that uh that
they didn't have enough notice so i hope
you have more notice this time
and in fact it was interesting i know if
i told the story um i was uh i was at
the airport and i met a couple who said
they wanted to come but their kid was
getting married that night
so that's why i uh
first of all i think you have to
re-examine your priorities but besides
that
um that's why i made this before lag ba
omer before the wedding season starts so
that those of you
who are making weddings gives you an
opportunity to
inspire
and reinvigorate yourself to be able to
make their hasana all that more
meaningful
okay
and
maybe we'll burn something just to be on
the safe side so just to set that
preparation
okay
so that's uh that's what's coming up
um
what other bits of business uh the sign
up is up ready for the tela series by
the time you're seeing this we will have
had the opening shear
and uh
you don't want to miss this i i will
give you part of the introduction that i
plan on saying and that is
that the emphasis of this course
is not going to be
theory
i'm not going to be talking about tefila
i want to go through the davening
and give you practical insights into the
words that you're saying
so that your darvening becomes more
meaningful to you that's the goal
the emphasis is on
practical and as uh all of my online
shiurim the reason i don't just record
them and put them up uh as shiurim is
because it's interactive i want people
to be able to speak to be able to share
thoughts and to be able to participate
so uh that's why this is unique i like
to think that we're we're having a sheer
as opposed to a lecture as opposed to a
recording where people can actually
you know um
be interactive with me and so we can all
work together to improve our davening
right okay that's coming up
now
um
i remember the last time we did a live
show uh
we're doing it in brooklyn again i was
gonna do one in lakewood do one of the
five towns but i don't have people to
set it up and so i have my my brooklyn
people who are there and uh we uh we
love you
and uh i know i know that it's gonna
take place so uh working with the
talmudic principle if it ain't broken
don't fix it so i know that it worked
last time so when this location becomes
so full
you know then i'll we'll worry about uh
expanding so um
uh i remember hearing somebody used to
doven by robby reisman
uh he might still well i know but i had
heard the story from him many years ago
they was complaining that the bass
medrash isn't big enough
we should have an expansion
reisman said
when the seder before shabbos medica is
too full that's when i'll expand
[Laughter]
but uh so when this location is is over
full but you know
when you come
there are a lot of
uh rabbi yolowski show crazies right and
i i'm i look at myself as a participant
i don't look at myself you know as uh
you know it's very alaska i'm just i'm
just with you we're all we're all having
fun together that's the way that's where
i like to look at it
and um
there are people who have listened
to all of my shirum like all of them
going back years
and
they know everything about me
because i wear my heart on my sleeve and
you know
people meet my children go are you the
one who are you the you know
so i sometimes try to couch it a little
bit so people don't know who i'm talking
about you know but
i remember um
my son
when i had only one son you know before
i had the two little boys at the end uh
but i had one son i had eight girls and
one boy and he says abba it's not fair
whenever you say my son everyone knows
you're talking about me i said okay from
now on i won't say my son i'll say one
of my kids
so uh i was talking i said so one of my
kids was going to hate her
but you know
there's a a lot of our
information is out there
in fact i
and my
something that
uh
i know you
who watch the podcast will find this
amazing but it was a little edgy you
know
they said i can get the trouble i said
anyone who wants to take me down there's
enough stuff out there already to take
me down you know if if if you haven't
got me don't worry about it
one of my brothers used to say if you're
gonna kill me you better shoot me with
the first bullet because you ain't
getting a second shot
so i've been killed at least three times
and i'm still here so
you know take your best shot anyway
but um there are people who rubbish
watch everything they they know
everything they're they're a part of my
life
so
we had in the audience uh
a couple of rubbish show fans you know
and i did a particular podcast and he
said to me
i heard everything you said before
everything you said you said before now
i don't know if that's true and i
started to show him i never said this i
never said that he always started to
agree with me but there are certain
general themes that are going to repeat
itself
uh rabbi dr twersky once said i wrote i
forgot how many books at the time 35
books 40 books but i really only wrote
one book 40 times yeah because it all
has the same basic theme
or as i once said to rabbi brown after a
sheer
by moshe shapiro i said i feel like he
said all these things already and he
said
an artist has only so many colors to
work with but he can produce endless
paintings
so yeah a lot of the ideas
i tend to repeat because uh they're
important
so people know uh
a lot of what's going on and they feel
like
i repeat certain things so i want to
tell you a story
that i know you've never heard
i know it's never heard because it just
happened to me last week so
brand new story those of you who say oh
he repeats stuff brand new story
you may have noticed
uh
if you're in any of my other shi orim
that i am a coke zero aficionado i am
not endorsing it
i drink it for the caffeine i drink the
coke zero because i don't want the sugar
but i need the caffeine i suppose
they probably make an israeli version of
nodoz which i used to use during high
school when i would save my reports that
were given to me in november
and one sunday night in june i finally
decided to start writing it the day
before it was due so i would take no
dose to stay up and type it
the only thing is that you know if you
take enough caffeine it wakes up your
mind but your body's still asleep so i'm
typing like this
i'm like okay we got to speed this up
somehow oh my body was sleeping so it
wakes up i guess i could just take a
straight caffeine pill but okay
i drink coke zero
it helps to wake me up you know
so i go up at night into the basement to
prepare i give a daffodil mishear online
as you know you can sign up for it
uh
at the website rubioski.com
along with the missiles of sharon shirum
and the tequila series yeah
so um i'm upstairs preparing and i have
my coke zero
so at some times it's uh noisy in the
basement edition i know there's nothing
wrong with being noise in the basement
noise in the basement doesn't bother me
the concerts bother me
there are certain people who it's not
that they're learning they're singing
but i mean they're literally singing
they're sitting in front of the
commander going
on
[Applause]
and i find that extremely disturbing
for me
i i i need
concentration so people who are learning
okay it's the sound of learning
you can you can consider that the call
the base measures but the people who
want to put on a concert i have no
i i i i it's difficult for me to learn
so i go in the back room
so go in the back room and i put my coke
zero
on a chair
and there's a stack of chairs next to me
these plastic chairs and i put my little
cup of coke zero
so i'm learning at one point i go to
refill my cup
and i didn't hold the cup
because i thought that it was heavy
enough
that it would be able to hold it but i
was wrong it spilled over
and the coke zero spilled
onto the chair
well i put the bottle down
and i started cleaning it up
but these plastic chairs that they have
in israel about in america these plastic
kettle chairs
they have little holes in them
so i said oh my gosh it must have gone
down the stack of chairs
and i was right by the way every single
chair had coke zero on it
so i lift up the first chair
without realizing that people had
stacked up svarim on the shelf sticking
out so i lifted up the chair
this foreign fell off
knocked over the bottom of coke syrup
which exploded all over the floor
so
i looked at the situation
first thing i did was pick up the bottle
of coke zero it took me a few seconds to
do that i should have done that faster i
suppose
and i'm
in the back room of the base magic
this is a big mess
so i i really thought of the
you know the first uh encounter of the
marvelous meadows machine where the kids
spill the milk on the kitchen floor
and one of them says let's go back to
bed
yeah
so that's what i was thinking maybe i
should leave
[Laughter]
and just pretend i don't know anything
about it then i realized everyone knows
i bring a big bottle of coke zero
so i got no choice i go in the back i
find the sponger you know i start
spongering it up wringing out coke zero
into the bucket you know
hashem i'm not a yeshiva guy because the
yeshiva guy thinks
maybe i can still drink this
a guy told me he was in this d-ring like
this glass of jelly
fell and it shattered a jar of
jelly and you know when something
shatters like that you know there's a
million little pieces and they're
wondering how much of the jelly can i
salvage that probably won't have little
glass fragments
so uh
so
so i'm wringing it out i'm cleaning it
up and i clean up the whole place and
then i get to the stack of chairs and
each chair has a little puddle of coke
zero you know and so i get the whole
place clean yeah
now
this reminded me of an earlier story and
i'm pretty sure i never told this story
either yeah
when i was long island regional director
one of my obligations
was to raise
my budget
i'm not a fundraiser
i never have been
um
it's because of a poor renuk that my
parents gave me
my parents taught me
never to ask anybody for anything and
that's how i am to this day
very hard for me
if i'm in an uh
community
where i don't have a car
and i don't know anybody
and i'm staying a mile away from the
shawl
i will
walk that mile rather than ask somebody
for a ride it's very hard for me that's
how my parents brought me up
i remember when i was in elementary
school a kid invited me over his house
for shabbos and i asked my parents they
said they don't need you nobody wants
you just stay here
there's a reason i'm the way i am but
anyway but uh so i just can't and that's
why
fundraising i've had people when i was
running nc that's why they would say to
me i really like what you're doing stop
by and i'll give you a check i couldn't
do it
if they take a check and they put it in
my hand i'll take it but i but to go and
ask people for money it's just the
hardest thing in the world
regardless when's that sal who i spoke
about uh
during the first year of the podcast who
was nifter
um
he said to me he said you're going to
have to answer in shaman for this
because you have the opportunity to give
people nitrius by giving stakka to be
able to support torah and you're denying
them this opportunity
and i said you're right i'm not saying
i'm not defending it i have a problem i
have a problem i have a problem when it
comes to asking people for things it's
very hard for me yeah
so i'm supposed to raise money
and every year i would submit a budget
and i would show how i was going to
raise the money and i never did
i never did but it produced so much
results they couldn't get rid of me
but so
one of the fundraisers i made was this
thing called
loxbox um
i uh
i would go to elmhurst dairy which was
owned by from people
they would donate me quarts of milk you
know in america you know those cartons
you know quartz of milk they're all bags
there yeah quarts of milk
a pint of orange juice
and a uh a bar of cream cheese
uh
somebody else would donate locks
and then i would actually go and buy the
bagels and everyone did on the bagels
there's six bagels
and i found the perfect box
that would fit everything perfectly we
would arrange it and then we would put
like uh some little literature on the
top and fold it up made a perfect box
and we'd put a
sticker on the top you know from long
island then csy locks box and people
would send this on mother's day as gifts
that's what we did it was a fundraiser
it
no way produced enough money to justify
this if i wasn't so
um
you know psychologically injured i could
have just gone over to some guy and
asked him for a check and and this
wouldn't be necessary
but i'm i'm i'm a damaged individual
yeah
so
uh so friday we would collect all the
stuff
and uh i got special permission from the
show of shalom where they gave me office
space i just
mentioned give a shout out you know
when i came to long island ncsy there
was nothing there was one member in the
region because she was on national board
and there was nobody there was no
chapters there was no office there was
no nothing i started from scratch i had
a 250 a month budget for everything and
i couldn't afford uh office rental
so uh i
remember erwin duffler and robert
wohlberg from oh shalom they said we'll
give you the old shule office and they
both came down with some other
balabatham they cleaned the whole place
out and gave me this office that's why i
ran into his wife from long island for
nine years
uh from that location
and um and they gave me special
permission
to store this
uh the materials for the lox box in the
flay sugar kitchen because really you're
not supposed to put milk in there you
know but they said okay we trust you
and you can keep the stuff in the fleshy
kitchen yeah okay
so uh then we bring together a bunch of
ncs wires about five o'clock in the
morning on sunday
and we would all get together assembly
line and make the lox boxes and then we
had people who would drive them around
yeah
and uh that was that was a fundraiser
anyway one year
this wonderful young man
wanted to come and help us schlep in the
things
and i have all the
cartons
of milk
uh on a dolly there must have been four
cartons stacked up
and he says wait i'll take that for you
into the fleischke kitchen
and i said be very careful yeah don't
worry about it
he wheels it in
and let's go
thinking like i did with the little cup
of coke zero that it would stay
so
the dolly moved to its
upright position and kept going
and it hit the ground and the cartons
exploded
all over the place the kitchen
i'm out of there over 30 years so if
there's anybody in the show and you're
still upset at me don't worry about it
you never knew
because there i am arab shabbos a few
hours before shoppers and there's milk
all over the
kitchen
who spilled the milk in the flashing
kitchen not me
and i looked at my good friend and
assistant director joe werfel oh shalom
and we look at each other like we got to
clean this up
what are we gonna do i hope i get home
in time for shoppers you know
it's uh
joe was often put into a position of
having to clean up these kind of messes
you know i remember when we made our
first
our second our second regional
convention it was in the um shari tefila
in lawrence
joe was about six five you know a very
tall fellow anyway somebody was supposed
to pick up the food for the entire
convention and bring it
from queens to
lawrence we were in charitafilo of
lawrence
and uh he forgot it
he forgot it
and he shows up and i remember joe
he's about six five he sits down on the
curb
his hands
his head in his hands and he's like
that's it we're finished we have no food
we have to take convention they said joe
go now
he says memorial day weekend on the van
wyck i'll never make it back and have a
shower i said joe you gotta go so he
goes off in the meantime i'm trying to
handle
you know crisis over here we had two
different buildings i'm down here i'm
done you know anyway i come back
the youth director
who was a very strong fellow because i
was probably about twice the size i am
now
i walk in and the kids are all showing
up for their housing assignments and he
takes me by the lapels and lifts me in
the air
and says where's the housing list
and i said joe has it
[Laughter]
well eventually we got the food and
everybody found the place to sleep and
everything worked out
but there i am with the milk all over
the floor and there i am with the coke
zero of the floor
and i thought okay
there's a message here who is sending me
a message
um what what is he trying to tell me
and i think he's trying to tell me the
following
it's nice when everything goes well
it's it's it's great
it's great
but that's not how life works
life is messy
when i say messy i don't just mean coke
zero and milk all over the floor
i mean
life is messy
um
relationships
are messy
when you have parents or you have
children or you have neighbors
or you have siblings
it gets messy
if everybody was reasonable which means
agree with me then life would be fine
but sometimes it gets messy
sometimes you forget to take care of
something and now you have a problem
and now you have to go and deal with
that problem and and you know
sometimes things just fall apart
the nature of life
now
here's what i don't do what i don't do
is sit down right away and beat myself
up
because that doesn't solve anything
all it does is make me feel bad but it
doesn't solve the problem
if there's a problem to solve i have to
sit down and solve the problem if
there's no problem to solve then i say
okay
i made a mistake
that's a mistake that you won't make
again
yeah
try to learn from this mistake and
that's why
i know i have uh
quite uh
an array of young people
um who uh
like to listen to my podcast every now
and then they write me and ask me for a
shout out and i just remember a young
lady um
who i forgot her first name so i don't
want to just say her last name because i
don't think that's
appropriate or she asked me for a shout
out so i'm thinking of you if you know
who you are
i'll mention it please don't mention
your name next week but um you know i
have i have
elementary school and junior high and
high school and seminar in yeshiva
people who watch as younger people
so you don't have the same um
you know the same perspective
when you get to be my age yeah and you
tell time by decades
and you understand i'm a better person
now than i was in my 50s or my 40s or my
30s or my 20s and i don't have to be
perfect tomorrow
i make mistakes
i can spend my time regretting those
mistakes
i could spend the time beating myself up
but that doesn't help
doesn't make the world a better place
does it make me a better person
i i like to think of it in these terms
um
in high school i was taking biology
and towards the end of the year i
probably had based on
assignments and tests an average
somewhere in the 30s
maybe the 40s but more likely the 30s
well that's not a passing grade
[Laughter]
so my teacher said to me
take the regents
if you're not from the new york area
they have these standardized tests
called the regions
and whatever mark you get on the biology
regions
that will be your mark for the year
well i got myself all the region's
preparation books
and i crammed
i studied like crazy
to this day
i still
know about malfigian tubules
a piece of information that has never
helped me
as most of the things i learned in high
school has never helped me when i was in
geometry they teach you proofs
so i know three ways to prove
that the base angles of an isosceles
triangle are congruent
a uh isasi triangle means that the two
sides are equal the base is not
and so the base angles are equal i know
three ways to prove it
i'm 63 years old
never once has anyone ever asked me are
the base angles of an isosceles triangle
congruent
yes but can you prove it yes i can
three ways
the one that i like to use is the
identity postulate
which says line a d is equal to line a d
because that has got to be the dumbest
thing ever i forgot to write it once and
i lost points because i have to say
something is equal to itself and you
have to write it down because these
geometry people can't figure it out
understand
that's what the acon said when he grew
up geometry
but anyway
i worked for all ages
but uh okay so i studied and i crammed
yeah and i got a 90 on the biology
regions that was my mark for the year
so um
so
as i was sitting there taking in the
back they have a whole bunch of of
regions from past years you take the
test
i was getting terrible marks
but i wasn't upset
because
this isn't the final test
this is just a practice
got to get it good so by the time i
reached the actual regions i was up to a
90 that was pretty impressive
yeah
um
the uh
life
is the regions and the final test comes
at the end when you get up the shemaine
and until then you're practicing to try
to get
better
sheva
sadiq atsadik fails
that's just reality
you're gonna spill the coke zero
and then you're gonna have to clean it
up you're gonna spill the milk and
you're gonna have to clean it up you're
gonna make a mess of your life
sometimes more serious sometimes less
serious
and you're going to clean it up
and by the end of your life you're going
to find that you're a lot better person
than you were when you started
that doesn't mean the things stop
that doesn't mean you won't make
mistakes
you'll make mistakes
you'll do things that are petty and are
venal and are are selfish
and are mean
everybody does
not me but i'm talking about you
i would i would never do anything like
that
i have to tell you that's part of the
appeal of the raviolowski show okay just
just for a moment yeah i used to give a
shirt on harnoff every other mutsu
shabbos for many many years and more
than once somebody said to me you know
why i love coming to your shirt because
you're so ordinary and i feel like if
you can do it anyone can
and that's exactly we're all in this
together you know
yeah you have uh we have a question
about this uh in our question answer
series i'll go into this a little bit
more but uh yeah
yeah few and far between are the people
who are perfect
and um um
life is messy
and so we're in serious ima
where every single day counts
and we have to try to put our lives into
order and we have to try this is a
microcosm
of uh of a year
all right the gemara says
you read the clothes and kisavo before
rosh hashanah
and you read the clothes in because i
before schwes
tickles
which means that from pesach to us is a
year
it's it's a it's a microcosm
and it's more than that it's a time
where we come out of mitzrayim as a
cotton and when we stand at our cni
we're an adult
i have to grow up
have to accomplish a lot a small period
of time
but that's just a small life
just an example
every single day you're supposed to be
going up i may have mentioned this at
one point
um
oh of a yesh
right a person who lives their life
properly oh of a yesh what's yeah means
you have
you have you have something you have an
existence you have a life
of a yeash
[Music]
so most people explain once
he didn't say this this is an al-shakh
i'll throw in
says it says unto him a person lives 70
years
and we see in the torah we don't start
counting you until the age of 20 which
means a lifetime is 50 years it's a yeah
so if you count
your years with shimitas and yavlos at
the end you reach a point where you're
out of this world
and that's versus ahmed you count seven
days seven times and the fiftieth day
schwarz you're out of this world
let's have you to live your life
we count every day because every day
counts
huh
put that on a bumper sticker but anyway
so uh so these are these are important
ideas
don't lose hope
don't beat yourself up
when it spills
just have to clean it up and start again
or at the end of fiddle on the roof
rabbi wouldn't this be a good time for
the messiah to come
yes but until he does we'll just have to
wait for him someplace else
it would be nice it would be nice if
everything went the way that we want but
it doesn't all you can do is pick
yourself up put one foot in front of the
other and keep going
once there was a little old ant
tried to move a rubber tree plant
everyone knows and ant can't
move a rub a tree plant but he's got
high
hopes he's got huh okay you get the idea
i haven't sung in a while so i thought
that was important okay that's our
sphere of message for this uh podcast
and now we go to the question and answer
portion of our program
uh i'll start with this question chris i
just alluded to it anonymous asks
with all the discussion about requiring
kanyevsky's hasmada
finishing shots every year etc
isn't it discouraging
i'm just a normal guy and probably will
not finish shas even once in my lifetime
how can we normal people hear such
goodolum stories and not be discouraged
first of all you can finish us
you just have to join the raviolovsky
taffyomi program
that's my advice you don't have to there
are people online
who
give you that daf yomishi for free
and uh some of them will even send you a
free gemara
and you'll have a big party
you know and uh and uh it comes with all
kinds of you know uh you know treats i
don't give you any treats i'm the treat
[Laughter]
but you can do it one page at a time
so uh yeah you can finish shas but
forget about that doesn't make a
difference let's say you you haven't got
the uh
such a great word i feel so youtube you
haven't got the hairless to to get
through shots yeah trust me i'm doing
you vomits right now
so how do you hear about kanyevsky and
not
feel discouraged the answer is because
let me tell you a story i may have told
this story my rariolonsky show
hasidim will tell you whether i've ever
told this story
it's a famous story with the native i
heard this when i was in khabib sky my
first year from my shirt
they say that native
uh
wasn't particularly gifted
and he overheard his parents saying we
can't really afford to keep hanging a
malamate for a kid who's never really
going to make it in learning
and he heard this and he pushed himself
very hard
to be able to
uh succeed and he became the native
and he said once what would have
happened if i didn't push myself so hard
so i would have gotten up into shamayim
and they would say so what'd you do with
your life and he says well i i was a
shoemaker and i ran my business with
honesty and i raised my children to be
from jews and i you know i loved the
good life
and they would look at me and say
where's all the sparrow you were
supposed to have written
you should have been the native and i
have to tell you for years
i would see robert shade going you
should have been the naziv
and at some point in my life i realized
no
i should not be the native
[Laughter]
i will never be in a tip now i'm not as
uh i'm not as
sharp
i'm not as harif as uh
the the the brisker of uh
um
yeshua
where he told this story and he says
there are certain people going to get up
to shamayim and hashem's going to say
you know
look at all this farm you wrote where
the shoes why didn't you make shoes
[Laughter]
okay so you got to know and i have to
tell you how many people i've met who
were traumatized from that story and i
said to them no you're not the native
i don't have to be the native i don't
have to be rich i'm kanyevsky but i have
to look at him and say
on my level i have to try to achieve as
much as i can like he worked to achieve
what he could
now if my dad was the stipler instead of
a florist
if i grew up in bernay brock instead of
north merrick long island
you know then maybe i might have turned
out a little better if i had you know uh
at least a normal head instead of a
collection of learning disabilities
maybe i would have done better but even
then there's only so much that anyone
could have expected for me
yeah
that's why one of my rebellion once told
one of the people i was working for i'm
surprised he ever amounted to anything
i don't have to be reclaimed cutting
ascii but i look at from kai and
kanefsky and i say of a yash
that's a person who has a meaningful
life i could have a meaningful life
and that's what i have to shoot for
anonymous asks why can't women be halal
witnesses
so
the short answer is god said so okay
everything else is speculation whereas
we say in hebrews speculation
getting easier for me to speak hebrew
speculation yeah we don't know
hashem said so that's the answer
this much i can tell you it has nothing
to do with nehemiah's has nothing to do
with running out you're believed this is
rebel khannan wasman's famous khakira
there's two reasons why people can't be
adam
either because they're not trustworthy
or because they're um they don't have a
ticket to based in that's the way all my
ruben was used to explain the rebel
conan they don't have a ticket to get
the bastion
moshe and our own are very trustworthy
but they cannot come and give aid this
together because they're relatives and
they don't have a ticket together based
in so they can't give adus and so to a
woman can't give adus
that's the
that's the correct answer
but if you want to speculate and i like
to speculate
you know i like to try to make things
meaningful for me i say the following
all of torah
is about a conflict of values
and that's why very often the gemara
will create a scenario
where two values come into conflict
for you to try to decide which one is
more important in that situation
what's more important to see or to hear
i could make a good argument for either
one
i think it was uh
evan custer i'm not sure
but he says to him because how would you
like to die
old age
but there's another scene where he goes
i want to be hanged when that tree was
like little tiny tree goes that'll take
years it goes i'll wait
[Laughter]
would you rather be deaf or blind
so you say well what does it make which
was almond
had to have a procedure there were two
different procedures one had the risk of
him going deaf and one had the risk of
him going blind
now you got to choose
so the gemara creates conflict
so
testifying is a very important value
in fact if you know adus and you don't
give it there's a special corbin you
have to bring that's how serious it is
if you didn't testify
but the king does not testify
even if he's the only witness
why
because it's not lafique photo
it's not it's not
considered
covered for the king to go into court
and testify
yeah
so
that being the case
um
you see that giving testimony is a value
but it's not the most important value
some values are more important
i've spoken to girls
who went to co-ed schools
and sometimes they had to give a
presentation in front of the class
and i said
junior high high school whatever it was
i said did you sense the boys looking at
you as you were speaking
they said yes
said how did that make you feel not good
so to make women stand up in a public
forum
when we say coke vudubas malespinima
that's a more important value not to
devalue somebody by dragging them into a
courtroom now that's my own theory i
haven't seen it in any place
but to me it makes sense so if you like
it good and if not
make up something else i don't really
care
okay
uh we have time for one more
anonymous asks could you please say the
story about how your brother burnt down
the kitchen
this is a perfect example what i said at
the beginning how people are intimately
involved in my life
i don't know when i told the story or
what form it was but i'm more than happy
to share it with you yeah
um
i got from a 12.
and uh
and
my parents
sacrificed to send me to a jewish day
school
they did not have the money they'd gone
bankrupt it was a very hard sacrifice
for them and uh
and it was pretty good because i i
totally ignored everything that was
going on until uh eighth grade and so i
didn't have a problem i i we never had
any conflict
[Laughter]
in fact ironically in seventh grade i
wanted to leave yeshiva and go to public
school and my father convinced me to
stay in yeshiva
anyway
then i became from and i was what is
known as an fbt
so most people know bt is about shuva
and ffb is from from birth yeah an fbt
is a flaming beljuva
you carry around the spear looking for
someone to stick it in i was i was real
intense
anyway my parents kept the kosher home
because my grandfather who was
kosher said he would not eat in my
parents house unless it was kosher but
they kept what they know
like my father would
say to me if it says 100 vegetable
shortening then it's fine
and i didn't know then that you could
say 100 vegetable shortening and include
four percent
of non-vegetable shortening now if you
know you're
that means it's not bottled shisha so i
slowly had to make changes in the house
and we fought about everything
to put in a shabbos urn was a big fight
because it says why what's the problem
we had an instant hot water you know
every time you turn on a force it's
somewhere there's a pump that's going on
there's something that's happening i
don't understand there's not what the
big deal is i had to fight about that i
had to fight about the light and the fan
and the refrigerator the tape up the
uh you're gonna burn out the motor you
know a black you're gonna burn down that
i mean every we had to fight about
everything and listen there were certain
problems that were sort of inherent
that i just i i could not solve
so i had a girl in my class
who uh who lost her father
i live if you know long island i live in
north america she lived in levittown
that's pretty far
i had a bicycle
and i would
i could
ride pretty far my bicycle this was four
or five miles
and uh i headed out one night
and uh went to page of a cool
unbeknownst to me
my brother
who stayed home
does not know how to cook
i knew how to cook
all the brothers used to go into the
store with my father i did too and at
some point he said to me do me a favor
stay home and help your mother instead
i evidently was not cut out for business
to this day i find business absolutely
fascinating but i can't figure out what
it means or how to do i don't have a
head for business but i know how to cook
i know what to clean i know how to shop
my my bicycle i had a big basket on the
front business on the side i would do
the shopping eventually i reached the
level of my brother gadalia yeah not
quite you know because i i figured out
how to pull a shopping cart filled with
groceries behind me
on the bicycle i say not
not my brother could die he's level he
could do two shopping carts and just
steer with his feet i wasn't on that
madrega it's cottonwood darus but i
could bring back uh i know how to do all
those kind of things
my brother didn't
so he wanted to make blintzes
so
what do you need you need oil so he
takes a frying pan fills it up with oil
and he turns it on high
and he goes to watch the
basketball game
and at some point he sees that the house
is filling with smoke
and he goes into the kitchen and he sees
this bubbling oil all over the place and
he did what most people would when they
see a fire he threw water on it that
doesn't go well with boiling oil and the
boiling oil flew all over the place and
the whole kitchen went up in place
and uh eventually i come home
and i come into the house
and the whole kitchen is burnt down
he's on a ladder
trying to wipe the soot off of the
ceiling and my mother looks at me
and she thought i was behind this
now
i'm smart but i'm just not that good i
mean i just i i i don't have those kind
of plans you know and she looks at me
she was trying to figure out how i was
responsible for this and she said why
weren't you here
i said i went to pay a shiver call to a
girl in my class she lost her father you
know
she was in uh 10th grade ninth grade you
know i thought it was appropriate you
know
she goes well now a whole kitchen burnt
down so i said you know
if we're going to redo the kitchen
already i have some suggestions
[Laughter]
now if you know anything about cashews
that's what we call liben gumbo
[Laughter]
you've heard of self-cleaning ovens this
was called the self-cleaning kitchen
[Laughter]
and we replaced it and they put in two
dishwashers they put in two sinks
and we solved all of the problems
and uh to this day it was mama caste
hashem
and i cannot take credit for it but uh
but
always looking out for us i assume that
was the message of the story
all right that's it for this week
don't forget the live show in flatbush
on may 17th
if you want to find out more about the
show you can go to my website
rabrialovsky.com you can leave a comment
you can send an email
you could uh sign up for the new tv
series
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sign up for one of the two messily's
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uh you can sponsor an episode you can
have it your way
that's it for this week i'm debbie
dolowski and this is the rapper alofsky
show