Rabbi Jacobson's Life Story, Mission, Work, and Perspective on Our Times

the yeshiva.net welcome back to another thursday night live here on the jewish platform few times in my life have i ever been so awe awestruck by just being in the presence of such a great man as our guest that we have tonight and never have i had the privilege or opportunity to interview someone on this caliber let's welcome the amazing rabbi y yy jacobson rabbi why why how are you wonderful thank you and i'm really pleased and privileged to be here with you thank you for your passion and enthusiasm now you give dozens of shirum weekly to thousands of people and few people if anyone gives as many shiorim on antoine and stam inspiration anywhere near the amount that you give now we know it didn't start all of a sudden in 2020 there's a rabbi yui uh we have a picture actually going back to when you were 15 years old i'm assuming in the 1980s i know i forgot what they called it but you used to sit and listen to the shirm of the rebel and the rabbi the rebel and you had to memorize them let's let's go back let's hear when did rabbi y y and how did rabbi y y become rabbi while we're just going to put up that picture for you one second over here and then you're going to tell us what's happening and now you can tell us what's happening so my parents were born in the communist soviet union they suffered terribly there as jews religious jews my grandfather was arrested tortured they made it out from there because they hashem on false passports they ultimately came to the united states of america and they settled ultimately in brooklyn i was born in 1972 i grew up at the feet of the lava churaba and at a young age i was privileged to be summoned to join the group no one wow that's over 200 years over 200 years ago oh tanya became a rebel in tough zion that's 1777 that's the time of the american revolution wow so we're dealing way before 200 years ago and this was an institution since in khabar the focus was they called the balatanga de litwak the students of the market called him the litvak because he came from the area of lit of lithuania he came from lyajna which is belarus and lithuania right near carolina right which is also the litter i don't know if you know that the hasidim in those years a lot of them were called the karlinner all of them the carolina because they were in a goddamn of carlin so one of the institutions in chabad was the khai israel since the rebels would speak exit as barriers at length and elaborate and dissect of a literature stage right you see it in the bellatania and it's contrast but you also see it in all of his maimarum and all of his hasidic discourses so there was a group of hasidim who had great minds who were charged with the responsibility to you serve as human tape recorders well to remember and transcribe all the talks already of the balatanya well latanya had five six people who would do it we have this is rear for a few hundred years ago to have a rep a teacher of such magnitude and you'll often have a miami with six different manuscripts because of six different people and and were they trying to write word to word russia that's a that's a great question so the balatanya once spoke about three of the writers and he said my brother labelly had a brother label he writes what i say almost verbatim my zone battle the middle arab the second commandant i schneiderlin he understands what i'm trying to say and that's what he writes down oh my name is he transcribes both she always had different talents people obviously write the way they absorb it you know everyone has their own kishorenas their own towers their own unique way of helping of helping something so this continued literally for more than two centuries and by the most recent laboratory when he became arab in 1950 that system continued he would speak for shabbas and yamtif for hours you're talking about fabregas that can go from three to eight hours wow sometimes yom tiffany there could be four fabregans over two three days each one many many hours wow so from the first fabregan already and it wasn't it wasn't just speaking i'm saying it was deep deep you could say that again with the laboratory i mean the depth and the breath was was incredible i mean you can have a seven hour fabric or a five hour for blanket it could be an hour sheer and a rambam it could be an hour shear or see a massager another hour dissecting arashi another hour of kabbalah exodus education current events contemporary issues psychological stuff teres hanefes hashem and this was a tapestry of mamesh kolaterakula in orphan science and physics and and they came i i believe one after another it wasn't just yeah and also they never wouldn't say a lot of jokes and stories it didn't so it was it was serious you had to keep up with it was america it was intense it was intense very intense and he would call it from coloraturical learners without notes he didn't give before you know the mirror mcqueen was so we could hit the shear and uh i remember at the end of it i mean i still remember the end of a february and you were like you know like in a different world and like in a trance that took time to land so i had the source from being of that group was a small group and we this was our responsibility to memorize and transcribe wow wow incredible so at what age were you chosen to be from the choice room so my i had to have an older brother epsimena by simon jacobs who joined the groups of the housing back in the 70s when he was a yeshiva it started that roy shah israel was a jew is a jew's name is your biol khan shlita who was actually a harusa with rebel pawarsky from ponovich uh back in the old days when you came to america and from day one he became the kaiser of the lobby and he would bring in usually bakram that he felt were skilled so my brother was one of them so when i was when i was already pretty young he felt that i had a skill you had what it takes to memorize a three to eight hour who knows how many topics and say it over um well i can't say that i can memorize everything but i had hashem has given me the gift to be able to to be typhus to absorb a lot of the rebbe's words at least according at least to some degree so there was usually one mimer that was the part of the fabrega that focused on exidus and its application to life and the rest of the talks were called circus syphilis and those could be anything and everything in the rage of of color so during the week there were tape recorders obviously it's not the belatania's days so they recorded everything and uh a lot of our brains during the weekdays whether it's live you know just the middle of the week yard sites special days yemen de pagra but uh but all shabbat says obviously nothing was recorded so over the years it was all oral scribes wow and and how many khai's room were there in my days there were like five or six and usually it was not more than that it was a very very intense uh very intense i have to say matteo shabbos when champions ends my wife knows i there's an anxiety that sets him well so maybe in the beginning she thought that i'm positive experiencing the departure of shabbos but i'm not so holy and lofty it's passionate because massage chambers those days those years i went into to high gear i would to stay up a homicide shabbos on sunday and sunday night it was incredibly hard you wrote it down to to put it all into writing wow before we wrote it down we would first go it over the chrysler would come together ready shop this afternoon and uh and say it over and there would be a lot of debates and we cooked them it was it was intense sometimes in the middle of the week we can ask the river some questions because i've given some of the circus for him to edit but there was it was an avoidage but it was also i felt privileged i felt like i'm really part of history when i stood there and there ever spoke and i knew that a genius like this comes around very seldom somebody who had such a pacquias and amcus you know he knew every perish of the vilnigan in zoya and mishra every line of ramakhal every taiswas every maram shiva bhaktive kabbalah you know every rashi and shasta every year xiaomi it was just and the combination and the unity and he also knew all the secular a lot of the secular branches of wisdom in terms of mathematics and and psychology and science and physics cosmology astronomy engineering so you know you have such a personality and such a mind i really felt privileged i knew that if i'm not going to remember this i'm going to be recorded it's going to be and this is precious precious material you know people learn it and it inspires a world you know thousands and thousands of tamid and hasidim so it was really a historical privilege to be part of it well and and how much of that do you think played a factor that you could give um i don't know 50 70 different lectures a week on every kind of topic the fact that when you were a baker at this age you had to absorb so many different topics how much do you think that played a factor yeah probably i would assume that it was the decisive factor or at least a majorly impactful factor in all of this uh it's also not just the ability to retain knowledge but it was also the approach the laboratory really helped me cultivate a new dish it's called the veltan that can synthesize paradox and can appreciate the infinite broadness of hashem's world in the vid he was very not parochial very not narrow my next question is going to be where you picked up your vocabulary i'm just going to put a pin in it so his expansiveness his concerned for every type of jew there were no labels there was no um it was just so inspirational and just an approach of how to also apply yiddishkeit in a very relevant and contemporary way toyota is not old it's not archaic it's real it deals with real issues of life you don't have to escape the real challenges of a person's mind in a person's soul so besides the experience in terms of the intellectual experience it just gave me such a powerful approach and a way of thinking about people and thinking about ideas and presenting ideas when i was a young child an interesting story uh i was standing there by the fabrega i am i was not listening i was a little kid mama i was counting the beams and the bricks in the middle in the middle i see there's a finger pointing at me and i see it's the lava character he's from from 6 000 people he decided to point to me and he says he wants to ask me a question this was the last thing i wanted to have in front of i was a shy kid i'm still ashamed i don't know you may not notice it but i did not know he says look at this he's pointing at me mama with this finger shaking a little bit how do you know that the universe exists i didn't know what to say how do i know the world exists how does anybody know the world exists nobody ever asked me such a question now six thousand eyes are looking at me i'm blushing all i'm thinking about is whatever should i live and let live yeah i didn't bother you i was doing my thing was why you bothering but the devil was waiting for nance and he was quiet maybe for 15 seconds which seemed like eternity mama's eternity and i didn't have the answer so they never answered for me he said entweeter this is what the child answers and he said well the opening of titus says hashem in the beginning created heaven and earth that's how i know the world exists when i grew up i went to check what was he talking about and i know that the rebel was talking about two ways of looking at the world we talked about moisture and iron one way of looking at the world is from the world's perspective and one way of looking at the world is completely from the terrorist perspective the only reason you know it exists is because it's basically welcome to shrine with science and as i grew up and today when i reflect on that i think that perhaps it was a stickle empowerment or a message that you'll travel the world and your ultimate message has to be do you know how you know we know the world exists but asia's borderline help people align their experiences of life with the divine vision of viresh's parallel communist members and that's what i try to do in one way or another way wow so let let's let's move the story on a little bit more you're kabatsuka and how did it um where did it go from there yeah so you know how often people will tell you you got to go to a coach and a guru and a life coach and they'll evaluate you and tell you what you're good at and what you're not good at and your constraint is on what you're supposed to do with your life and then you'll create a plan five years 10 years twenty years and a trajectory so this didn't happen in my life this was not part of the plan it was not part of the talk as they say it wasn't part of the dream you didn't know that you were going to be rabbi yui jacobs i was just doing my thing i would sit and learn to be able to to be able to be one of the heisman of the day but we have to sit and learn all week as a la shmoop it wasn't sunday night after you finished riding to miami now for the rest of the week good good after canada you just had to sit and learn and we often didn't know what he's talking about somebody usually figured it out but but so yeah i was sitting and learning in yeshiva and um and you know life life moved on when i was in my low twenties they never felt ill and then two years later he passed away this was night 94 june 1994 gimmel thomas so i continued learning it was a difficult for me personally and for my havaidom obviously uh i continued learning and uh my father as a friend of raja was all of his life he was a journalist his whole life he was an interesting person he worked for you the attacker which is israel's largest daily newspaper he became their correspondent in the united nations his united nations he succeeded elie wiesel famous elie wiesel used to be a journalist he gave the job to my father they were close friends they remained close friends my father worked for newsweek for the herald tribune for a yiddish daily called the tug morgan journal the day morning journal was a daily yiddish now these were newspapers that were read by hundreds of thousands of jews immigrants who spoke yiddish in 72 that paper closed down suddenly that publisher jacobs he couldn't afford it remember the new generation in the secular world were in public so they were all speaking english yiddish remained only more or less in the siddhas unless you go to antwerp you go to antwerp you could see eden unbeared speaking yiddish but in america that didn't happen but in the 40s the 50s the 60s you had millions of american jews whose language was the idish even though they were secular well the farvettes had probably a quarter of a million readers and it was a socialist left-wing newspaper thought margaret's now was a little more right so my father worked for it everybody used to tell us that you know most employees were in their 70s and 80s he was the only young man when it closed down he opened up his own yiddish newspaper called the algamena i was your father my father in 72 the year i was born he created it from scratch later it went to english so he had a writer an old yiddish writer from varsha very famous name was hillel zeidman the old you the system will remember hillazam he would write a parsha column he was an interesting man and he passed away my father asked me if i could write a column on the parachute he needed somebody and i knew you know so we grew up in a very yiddish-speaking home so i started to write this column and interestingly one day i wrote from chicago i wrote highland park chicago where shanowitz phones me he says i read your column every week come first shabbos to my community speak here i'm like i i don't speak in communities i write for my father something on the parachutes i'm buying you a ticket you'll just come and speak to my show stay over from your article i said okay i'll do it i came and i guessed i love me doing them enjoy you enjoy it next shop is i get a call from another oven great like could you come to my cahilla in great neck they were speaking guinness at the time great neck was english chicago was english and i was taliyah shiva bhagas i guess how recovery is slay and then i guess after i got married a few years later it just started to grow and i started to get a lot of invitations it was really completely not planned people started to invite me to speak to their communities and then to schools and yeshua's universities jcc's cahillas um you know from various demographics of the jewish community and sometimes from the non-jewish community and it just uh snowballed stop over there well so we're gonna go we're gonna take a quick commercial break and we are going to be back [Music] momentarily [Music] welcome back okay rabbi y was i guess the arashem you you started writing for your father's paper the algameter is it still around still around um and then you were invited to chicago and slow but surely you got around now from there you've written i know thousands of articles and you give share them all over now here's the question don't want this taken the wrong way but by the firm community generally in a certain sense khabad sticks to its own i don't mean that there's any any um animosity anyway but they live in crown heights and and they have a certain culture between bells bobbitt and and the other places they're they're in borough park it's one big challenge and you know you have people in other communities and seldomly do we find that a rabbi from chabad speaks to people from the mainstream the rest of the other firm communities and somehow i think that you managed to hit every demographic in the firm community as we came just fyi as we came rabbi while i was in the middle of recording something in hebrew for somebody in israel how is it that you managed as ichabod rabbi to um get to everybody and and it it's even more than that you managed to bring the concepts of hasidis i managed to bring that into all other parts of from and on from the sky how do you think that that happened it's an interesting question i don't take it in the wrong way at all in fact i feel very privileged uh i have to say sometimes when you say hi on the boy yeah 2020 phrase i sometimes like really feel high when i i look back at the day and i said you know in the morning i had a sheer and curious yell in one row then that's happened yes wow later in the day envisionnets later in the day in lakewood yeshiva university and then the next night at a dinner in tels in cleveland and then in a completely secular community so i really feel privileged by the fact and i think really i'll tell you what inspires me there's a beautiful word from the school of cushima haskell of cozume yoga elaine was one of the great hasidic masters in poland he passed away 1856 tough race to zion he was a student of the kaiser of lublin he's the ancestor of the mudgets exhibition dynasty so as a nickel brings a word that he heard from abrasco and it really inspires me he says joseph tells his brothers after he reveals himself to them and they're going back to bring yaakov to mitzrayim he says the three famous words altir gazu badora literally it means rashi says don't get into a fight on the road you know who's guilty you did it that underrates let's put it behind us and let's move on i'll tell you guys about that another shot is don't get involved in too many people pull them on the road because you're going to get lost it's going to be dangerous the hat school of kuzma said there's another meaning i'll tell you he says don't get breigas on another yid because of his death yes have understood that the brothers understood that their argument was not just a superficial much like this about a shirt or about a dream there were different mahal there were different which this was discusses discusses a lot of swarm discussed there were two different mahalam of how to serve hashem if the vision of yiddishkai is ultimately supposed to be more insulated we have to be rayed science shepherds or the vision of yiddishkait is universal the sacramento you have to realize that hashem is infinite hashem is in safe entire is infinite and encompasses endless diversity don't allow diversity to deter you to destroy you to confuse you and to turn you into a tribal person who can only speak and connect to a certain schnitz a certain hat a certain certain shoulder certainly don't become that person embrace who you are with tremendous passion and gusto and off but don't reduce hashem to one finite experience and for me that meant in my life it meant that if i could only speak to one demographic that looks like me or grew up like me or shares the same culture like me or wears the same type of hat or david the same ultimately i am not connecting to the kinemius of yiddish i'm not connecting to the elokus of to the godliness i'm connecting to culture which is nice i'm connecting to my tribe which is fine but if you're really in touch with the rebirth shall islam malay hola it's quite the abrasive such a deep thing and and i'll explain to you why it as you were saying it i was like wow this is really deep because you're saying when somebody's only see this my cahill in my community um we're the ones you're connecting to culture you like your culture and in order to really be able to connect on like you said ella cos if you can't accept every single yid yeah he's a kabatka beautiful he's from satmar beautiful he's an heir to israel he's part of the mit nakhlim or or whatever kozman you follow the shogunato and you have one god yeah you're connecting with them well and i think it's something we have to work on frankly says he says the first day maisha came out and he saw anti-semitism an egyptian beating a jew he found the nate sir he says there's two casualties of golovks there's the casualty of anti-semitism and there's the casualty of inner infighting the first one is an identifiable enemy people hate us we have to stand guard the second one is a much more subtle cancer and it it erodes us from within india it's called the khrumadinas you know it's it's the crew of the knowledge you know so there's a few that's how you know that it's light enough to be able to say kriyash motion one of the that i think i hated if my friend is one foot away from me even at night i'll recognize it but if he's six eight feet he's out of my dala namas and i could recognize him then you know it's light enough to say shmai is you go to the mikvah with them you drink coffee with them you eat challenge with them you eat sushi with them you're part of their khabura like you say you're part of their culture then i'm not sure you could say krishna is the one who's outside of your dalai lamas you could recognize him as your haver you wow wow wow that was very powerful very inspirational and i think that it's a message kozman klyosaurs and golos over here um we need some we need that message stronger you know frankly i don't want to and i don't mean this in a sharp judgmental way sometimes religion can also become somewhat egotistical i say god god god hashem my ego i need to feel comfortable and and you're challenging me so i'm really stuck i'm stuck in my own small orbit a person who doesn't look like me challenges me to transcend myself and go into a much deeper place where i can create space for you and you can create space for me i think it's also the essence of shallow bias really this is this is what creates marital harmony to expect that your wife or your husband is going to agree with you about most things today the most progressive research on marriage shows something interesting they used to think they're doing a good marriage and a bad marriages and a bad marriage they're always fighting in a good marriage they agree about 90 of the things modern research shows 69 of agreements between husbands and wives and good marriages that they had in the beginning of the marriage they will have 60 years later when he's 95 and she's 93 they'll still be arguing do we keep the window open or close the lights the lights of the bedroom on where the lamp has to go off that we go to milkshakes or flakeshits we go here for pesach and bigger arguments the quality of a marriage is not dependent so you have a chance you're saying it's not depending on how many arguments it's how you argue do i look at you arguing with me as a way to dismiss you and i feel that you're betraying me and all my life i'm busy convincing you or can i really create space for your position and never ever think that just because you disagree with me you don't love me and i can't trust you we can disagree with each other among jews but we have to trust each other we have to be able to be here for each other we have to be able to support each other we have to be able to lean on each other and where do we have a better example in the whole gemara talmud bavli thousands and thousands of pages there's not a single ahmed that is not saturated with much like us after mahalakas after much like us about everything is small things big things diet food history culture everything of course but everything from the greatest it's a culture filled filled with arguments and yet they love each other and this is this is the ingredients the ingredients of jewish existence thousand percent i once heard uh i forgot from where i saw that that there's this fact anybody that's a little bit more so conservative than you is a fanatic anybody that's a little bit more liberal than you is completely off the derrick yeah and if if we want to coexist with each other it's the challenge today in america what's happening in america you know joseph and his brothers la havdal the tragedy begins i don't have to agree with you but we have to continue talking to each other and listening to each other the moment you cut somebody off from your life i'm not talking to you ever again that's the moment that tragedy begins well so let me ask you now that you said that you believe that there's no time that somebody should cut off ties with another unit you're asking a sweeping and heavy question i would say this i would say i can't say that there's no times you should cut you shouldn't there's no times your color connection but i say before you make that move make sure that every other alternative has been explored number one make sure that you got advice from real people who understand the situation who are empathetic who are big people they have vision to have wisdom and they want to see people unified they're not part of an ego game of notzramas if you have export explored every alternative you have consulted people who are objective guiding you on the issue number three you really really examined yourself if this is not driven by your own traumas by your own insecurities by your own narcissism by your own toxicity and you can with the help of real men to say this is what hashem really wants from you if you have to face god panama puna this is what he really really wants from you the depth of your heart then perhaps perhaps it's a consideration i think that that's the key if you remember you're doing whatever you're doing is for hashem so if you really think that hashem wants you but but i believe that most people when they get to there will think maybe hashem really doesn't want it there is the situation unless people are so traumatized and they're so indoctrinated and if you're brainwashed that this person is you know the russia of of the century and if you can bury him alive clyde strong will be saved some people can be indoctrinated that way and that's why you always have to be humble and remain vulnerable and always ask the questions you know where is my thinking coming from is my kashiva coming from a place of broadness like you say from a place of lacus or it's coming from a place of deep deep fear and insecurity you know am i am i somewhat in a cult these are the courageous questions that authentic people ask themselves what's motivating me what's guiding me well um especially with family you know i it breaks my heart brothers don't talk to each other sisters don't talk to each other uncles don't talk to nephews cousins don't do you don't go to hasanas and it's usually because of money are you russia from the father or a potential father's alive but in 10 years or 20 years and a hundred and so on secure what's going to be and look at it so already now i could fight with people don't realize these things last generations cousins don't get to know each other they can't come to each other's husbands but mitzvah brothers it's a tragedy it's not worth it you have to think bigger you have to have godless don't become petty in life even if you're right and the other person is wrong in life don't try to be right try to be happy when there's somebody you're not on speaking terms with your soul is miserable don't be right be happy and i've heard you say the difference between kids and adults that comes with grandchildren writes er a terrible precious ember i think he says why is it that children they don't harbor grudges every one of our children says tati i hate you you're not coming to my birthday party you're not my friend anymore ten minutes later your best friend especially if you give them some ice cream adults they harbor grudges you don't like if we would live for centuries we would hold on to grudges for sale and oftentimes they didn't even remember their original cost and then the children have to harbor it and then the 8 o'clock because we maintain the messiah by us the messiah is very important my father hated you i have to hate you and your kids the zombies why is it children are less mature we would expect children to hold on to grudges the answer is children choose being happy over being right and adults choose being right over being happy sometimes i'd rather be miserable but i'm gonna be right and children say i don't have time to be miserable life is short we got to make the best of it i want to be happy i don't want to be miserable open your heart be happy ethan of the hearts don't some of us sit with with bulletproof vests you know our hands around our chest not allowing anybody to come in and we're prisoners we're prisoners to our own insecurities and our own wounds and our own traumas and inside we're miserable and then you come to darwinis accept when it comes to make peace with my brother-in-law or with my sister wow let's get back to rabbi why why for a second we went off tangent a little bit over here beautiful and inspirational you have been um i don't know if the word is a pioneer but i know for example you were the first rabbi that was invited to the pentagon to speak for the chaplains of the military i believe and of course we know famously last year uh we're gonna everybody has seen that clip but we're gonna put that clip on when the president president trump came to speak for uh the jewish benefactors or donors or whatever uh you went ahead and you were the one chosen to introduce him going to put that clip on right now my dearest friends it is my deepest honor to introduce to you at this historic moment of gratitude as billions of god-fearing jews turn to the president of the united states of america and say thank you mr president thank you and fear mr president fear not fear not to continue the fight for the good and the fight for the just for god is with you my dear friends i present to you the leader of the free world this excellency the president of the united states of america [Applause] [Music] gevaltic we had a clip so you've spoken and lectured and been all over the place where do you think was the most impactful or biggest they may be two separate things the biggest or the most impactful event that you've presented at well i'll tell you you know i have i've really come to learn that it's very hard to answer this question authentically because there have been events i spoke i was once in yerushalayim i was invited to a yeshiva that was created for teenagers who are challenged who are struggling with yadishka which you deal with so i know your heart is there and there were ten guys there and one of them was very anticipated to me it was attacking and criticizing you're a hypocrite you don't believe what you say you just made a career out of this you're gonna inspire us he was really really tough with me and i tried you know to be very non-judgmental the worst thing you can do is become defensive which we become because we are weak but really to try to tune into his soul and then connect person to person then after sure and i just spoke about you know the fact that even if you're struggling with your faith in god you must never ever stop believing of god's faith in you even if you think you don't believe in god which i'm not sure it's true but never ever doubt that god believes in you and it's really the sifri the cephei says on the possible kale and moona the novel literally it's translated hashem is a god of trustworthiness and there's no evil by him he knows what he's doing says believed in his world and created it wow in the world because look at our world i'm a sugar in a melt between capitol hill between the right and the left i'm a sugar novelt you look at yourself i look at myself we have so much issue every one of us with our traumas and stresses and anxiety shaming by lama yubara ibanez believed in the world wow so yiddish is based on hashem but even deeper than that means yourself in your world in your life and when you're in your abilities in your relationships and your potentiality to light up the world and light up your life this is what i was talking about and this guy was sitting and looking at me like i fell off mars you know with this cynicism and i remember i got up and i left and i'm thinking to myself what a flop this just did not work i'm quitting this job you know when something doesn't go well and you're right you're regretting that you haven't gotten why am i doing this what do i need this for this just citizen this mockery or my criminal why don't i just become a mechanic i'll work in a gas station nobody will speak to me like this maybe i'm wrong maybe you do speak to your mechanic this way but other things around 10 or 15 years later i get a call from somebody he introduces himself he says you remember me i said no he said i'll remind you you're once in your shalom and this and this place you spoke about so and so you mentioned your own struggles and how you overcame them i was giving you a hard time but i want you to know that that speech saved me from suicide wow wow i was antagonistic because i was miserable i didn't want to live but you were genuine you were real you held your ground you were vulnerable you were not dismissive of confrontational judgmental and i said you know what i'm gonna try to give my life a second chance and then i said to myself rabbi why why you don't know what a successful speech just said sorry sometimes it's schmack standing ovation five thousand people i had that stand up give you a centimeter thirty i can't tell you it's like not schmuck for a few minutes my self dismiss the next day doesn't help me the next day but for those minutes it's kashmark but in terms of an authentic impact on people we really don't know we mummies don't know so i see my job really as wherever i go plant a seed plant a seed where the tree is going to grow i don't know how it's going to grow i don't know when it's going to grow i don't know what type of fruits it will have i don't know that's not my job my job is have seeds and plant them seeds of your shamayim seeds of ava sasha ava ava sister seeds of shahaman by lama yubara just planted planted there is what you ask i'll talk about one memorable moment was back of that speech to the chaplains it was a pentagon it wasn't independent it was arranged by the pentagon it was in hilton head south carolina uh the us army of course it's a huge army and its chaplaincy is huge these are all the spiritual ministers who are there for all the soldiers and not necessarily all jewish very few right for some reason most jewish youngsters think that real estate is more exciting than going into the us army for whatever reason you'll analyze that elsewhere so you're dealing with hundreds of thousands of troops who are not jewish mostly christians whether catholics or protestants episcopalian mormons baptists you have a few jews futurist chaplains not many at that event there were maybe 15 jewish chaplains but thousands of christian chaplains i think there was a few muslim chaplains a few buddhist chaplains a few hindu chaplains mostly christian christian chaplains from the various branches of christianity they meet in hilton head south carolina for a week to inspire each other as a convention of physic in their own way not like the slurken of the chaplains the chaplain chief of chaplains and really they're responsible for all the soldiers from a spiritual party's perspective this was a middle of the one of the war in iraq and afghanistan a lot of casualties among the chaplains themselves because they they go they go to the front lines with them they have to train and usually they always have billy graham who just died last year as the preacher you know he was the top christian preacher billy graham and he spoke the ibrs defeat developed during the first iraqi war bush the father 1991 yeah 1991. before i was born shabbat shannon i believe right january 91 norman schwarzkopf was the commander-in-chief by the name of the ankle goldstein the only american soldier who got permission to have a long beard he's been in the army for more than 40 years he wrote a book but he was a shocking of mine growing up on montgomery street and he ended up in baghdad it's interesting they thought they're going to be there for months he told me before he went he told the rabbit that he's going to bag that so he's planted here because mcgill and everything he needs put in pesach into the forest take the minority with a shop i think and he looked the candidates right the candles and he was saved yeah yeah so it was the opposite my side he says in any case he was in baghdad the chief of chapels was a man named douglas carver a baptist and douglas speaks to all the chaplains and all were not jews besides goldstein she turns to goldstein he says who are you going to sleep with who are you going to share a tent with because usually people stick to that cabinet you know culture he says i don't have anybody she says you'll be with my in my tent so for six weeks still above it and the baptist chief of chaplain slept together hanging together for a good few weeks in baghdad 20 years later 20 years later carver is the chief of chaplains of whole army he was promoted and he's now running the conference and he says to himself you know we have billy graham every year let's get a jew we come from jews christianity comes from judah let's see what the jews have to say so he calls goldstein he says who's the jewish billy graham who's the jewish billy graham so goldstein calls me that night he says are you the jewish billy graham oh my ganker was meshed what are you talking about he says i need to know who the jewish billy graham is can i give you smita and make you the jewish billy graham i say gazunte but don't tell my mother-in-law he says okay you're the he calls carve he says i have for you the jewish billy graham he gives them my name no he says they'll call you probably next week they'll invite you they're going to start the process i thought it's going to be in a few months they invited me two years ahead i realized it's not a jewish function jewish function you get invited a few days before at best a few months before and it happened indeed and it was a historic moment for most of them was probably the first time they heard a jew you know those who come from new york they're already you know michelle uni they know what a bagel unlocks looks like but those who come from kentucky those who come from montana wyoming you know a lot of most of them they they never saw such at sierra on board with pears they didn't ask to see if he had horns right but it was actually it was an incredible experience i have to tell you i saw at that conference the power of a jew to impact the world positively i mummish so with my eyes that the non-jewish world respects jews who respect judaism they're embarrassed by jews who are embarrassed by judaism i have to tell you that i got the most invitations that time to come the next sunday to their church wow i probably got close to 100 invitations to come give the sermons at their churches on sunday i declined gracefully but it was it was a very powerful moment it showed me how with the proper approach this is a time in history where we can impact not only our own we can have a tremendously positive moral impact on the world well but le misa for you on your scale saving that teenager from suicide was so much more crush of than introducing the president at the donors event saving the whole world wow so we're gonna we're gonna take a very short break over here and we are going to come right back [Music] welcome back now we're living in unprecedented times in so many ways now rabbi yy you took advantage of the times you have yeshiva now which you're the founder of where you have hundreds of thousands of people listening to shirum daily you have whatsapp groups where you have um insane numbers insane amount of people that get your clips on whatsapp groups how many how many groups do you have we have our own i think around 25 or 30 groups 25 30 minutes all full to capacity with 250 people per group yeah approximately and then uh but i know you know those groups then send it out to their group so i don't know exactly how far a clip clip reaches but i do know and this was so moving it was two weeks ago and there's a lot of aids i give a tuesday morning women's class on the yeshiva.net this is a weekly shirt on the yeshiva.net since corona used to be live before corona and now it's on the website on the yoshi.net and people come on zoom people come on they shoot with.net people come on youtube at the end they do questions a woman comes on on zoom and she introduces herself and she says i'm tuning in from lebanon beirut beirut lebanon i'm like i have students in lebanon she says two years i don't miss a share of yours two years from the ballet i'm like she says i come from a christian family we're in beirut i said i didn't know i have students in here she says you have not only me wow i'm like what what i said how do you how do you find me she says a clip you sent a hanukkah clip and somebody sent me a hanukkah clip of yours two years ago and i saw it i was in love with this message i said i need more of this and she said you know i grew up in a family of faith but i lost my faith in god but over the last two years you brought me back to god i'm like why did you want to come back to god he says i want to do but i couldn't it was it didn't make sense there were too many questions on christianity but i listened to you constantly you gave me god again in my life so then i said did you know your grandmother your she says yeah my mother's mother happens to be jewish my mother's mother happens to be jewish my mother is a christian my father is a muslim but my mother's mother is jewish so at that moment i said listen let's continue this by email we'll have a private conversation which we did at that moment again i realized that we never know our impact wow it's a clip a clip goes to aida shemadel who grew up in a christian clip in beirut and now slowly coming back to her people well so you utilize the times that we're living in for good to be able to send the clip to a muslim christian woman living in beirut thought she was muslim christian a special person wow and and personally i've heard speeches that you've given to kids throughout covert to bar mitzvah bakram to women okay those my wife have listened to um to men but we are living in unprecedented times and because of technology and the speed of everything and of course today's days with corona i'm saying and and the left and the right and we don't know who's the president but now we do know who's the president i don't know if he knows that he's the president but what what is your message to somebody today's days what should be his how to utilize the days for good i would say first and foremost two messages that i've been sharing with people over these months um i initiated all these programs because i realized that children are stuck at home teenagers are stuck at home and youth need a social life we need friends and the more physical and entertainment and inspiration we can give to that demographic the more better because it's vital it's sometimes hasana fascist i want you to know that we made programs for teenagers week after week and there were weeks 400 500 questions came in from teenagers about everything from children dozens or hundreds of questions in fact the late rabbi sacks rabbi jonathan sachs bridges chief rabbi shortly before his death which came unexpected he got sick and fast he was initiating a new program where he wanted to engage with teenagers about their questions so his office reached out to me what would be the most pressing questions so i sent him a link to the website with those programs that he'll have for four hundred questions by sex we'll have what to talk about for a couple of months unfortunately he was taken on shabbos valeria i would say two very powerful messages one message comes from shleiman schlemmer was automative aaron hagar of carlin colin this is brought in base iron patches by eight say on the possibility it's a special vert it says says from the free i was once in an airport before corona i was stuck couldn't get to my destination i meet the kalina and he says why does rashford use the word in america's with the space you are in life with your position in life with your makkah people often sit for years and say if i would only be in a different bucket geographically or existentially they'll only be married to a different person and have different kids and have a different family in a different community and different constrainers and different money and different business and different vocation if only i would be in a different markham life would be wonderful quarantined the first year we have to be able to make peace with our makkah realize that our problems in life are not standing in a way in the way of our success they are the way the mocking that i'm in that is the place where i can flex my muscles and maximize my deepest potentials it's not easy to embrace i always compare myself to other people i get jealous of people i would have his kids and his house and his car and his mahalo and his disposition and his character but that's not the reason you know came into the world you even hear very often people saying today's generation were worthless it was the previous generation this is the makkah you have to find your bonus what does hashem tell myself we are all in a specific mocking today we've all been on lockdown not all but many many people have been unlocked on everybody's life changed everybody's life changed in one way or another financially emotionally socially psychologically never mind the people who have suffered losses everybody's life was transformed people lost their businesses people lost so much of life and it's difficult we have to be here for each other we have to empathize with each other we have to feel each other's pain but we could never ever surrender to the spear i have to be able to say this is the makaim i'm in this is where i could shine well this is where i will discover my deepest light if i tune in with courage and fearlessness and resilience to be able to face what exists in the small company not in spite of the circumstances because of the circumstances and again it's not an easy thing to embrace there is pain involved and we have to be able to grieve but this is what i'm taught and he says yaakov avinu was running away from his father and mother he had no shoe no community no environment no yeah it just became dark and he gave that's when he had to encounter the initial islam who's in this space where you are right now that yak have taken phyllis arvis he took his knight and he turned it into its villa to fill the milotian a toyful connection from his darkness he built a relationship with hashem he took his adversity and he turned it into a deeper relationship it became an opportunity for unprecedented growth so you say we're living in unprecedented times yes and that's why it's an opportunity for unprecedented growth well that's how it is i think another very important point to make is that the laboratory would always quote his father-in-law's one of the last talks of his father moderates he said four words five words every individual is a community what do they mean can't have him with a minion there's a jachin what he meant to say there comes a generation in jewish history where you can't look at yourself it's just a small tiny individual that's not the case every yogit has an incredible kayak of influence and leadership everyone in their own way this one through his money and this one through his mouth and this one through his pen and this one through his heart and this one through his public work and this one through his private work in today's day stop seeing yourself as a yogit and stop passing the buck to leaders who are supposedly supposed to lead no you see a challenge you see a problem you see teenagers struggling you see youths youths alienated or depressed reach out make a difference don't try to save the world but there's one person who lives on your block whom you can touch there's one girl who you could be makirav who you could bring over for shabbos there's one teenager there's one adult young adult older person younger person man woman child who you can embrace who's the shama you can inspire you're not a yacht you're a rabbit you can impact you can influence a rabbit today every single person every one of us has a tremendous huss and acharas to reach out be a leader be a leader i know you look at yourself in the maze say me you got the wrong guy i'm shy i just do my da viewing me i go to minhamaidev and i try to make ends meet but as smallham says to show in atabay in my mind in your mind you may see yourself as cotton but the fact is there are people whom you can touch and only you can touch so think big think broad think leadership today claudius roll needs today people who care people who reach out and if each one of us can cultivate such a mindset we will never be able to appreciate the impact that we can have far beyond our immediate reach well you know devoid from such a powerful verb right the daughter of pari sends out her hand so the gomorrah says insite yoda amma's heartbeat right her arm extends 40 feet 50 feet until it reaches the tape and i want to ask you a question if you go to a sea and you see a basket and there may be a child there and your heart your arm extends 50 feet what would you do i would run away this is a horror scene this is this is a overwhelming dreadful scene i'm out of here let somebody else take care of that basket what are the ghazal trying to say and the helicopter says something beautiful he says batya was doing something that was essentially beyond her reach her arm could not extend to that table not physically mentally there are things you can accomplish in life there are things people tell you you're dreaming at about you're hallucinating your arm can reach till here your arm can't reach so far you're going to take a jewish kid and bring him to hitler's home to adolf hitler's home he's going to shoot the kid and shoot you we often think in life this is not practical i have limits thank god she didn't think that way she knew her job is you do what you can extend your arm and you know what happens to your bueno shalilam provides you with an invisible arm that's far beyond your imagination and you'll save him that's the attitude of greatness which one gentile woman not a jewish woman an egyptian gentile woman the terror tells us the story to know that the whole motion event which means matantari it's here's minnesota i am claudius alts bismusher it's the credit of one gentile woman well who said to herself i'm going to extend my arm apathy is not an option indifference is not going to be part of my vocabulary i will extend my arm you know what happens hashem does the rest wow wow very powerful a beautiful message thank you so much for being here with us thank you so much for everything that you do for claudia stroll thank you all rabbi are on yeshiva.net it's beautiful it's mind-boggling or rabbi huawei does today's days and it's not just for the demographic of you know for the adults that are going to be donors he went he extended his arm now during corona for kids for for teenagers for everybody thank you so much rabbi your real inspiration and again yes i'm awestruck [Music] this class is brought to you by the yeshiva.net please help us continue the classes make even a small contribution at www.theyshiva.net donate