What does it mean to be an Orthodox Jew?

[Music] Shalom and welcome to practical spirituality here in Asia tour in the old city of jerusalem overlooking the western wall today the question at hand is where do we get the word where do we get the word Orthodox from and the answer is well not from the Jews because word Orthodox means literally strict and Jews who keep Judaism are rarely strict they're actually probably more on the lenient side and the only thing that observant Jews do is they align themselves with their tribal heritage and the tribal heritage of Jews includes all kinds of details which includes Shabbat and kosher and blessings all that stuff that does not make them strict they may actually be the most chilled out people you've ever met so don't call them Orthodox so then where'd the name Orthodox come from the answer is it came from those that stopped keeping Judaism now when you stopped keeping Judaism what you're doing now is you're living in organically you have basically betrayed your people and you have gone against a got against the traditions of three thousand three hundred and if it's twenty twenty three thousand three hundred and thirty one years of Jews keeping the tradition and you're obviously a grandson or granddaughter or a great grandson a great granddaughter of someone who did actually you know risk their life and limb to keep it and made all the necessary sacrifices for something they found was beautiful and the fact that you're not interested in it which is probably because you've been fed some kind of left me millennial high you know patriarchy you know like like hierarchy scrapped without the s just a rabbi so as a scrap and so you've gotten angry at the hierarchy of course if you needed a surgery you like the hierarchy because you're going to choose the best surgeon but let's not discuss surgeries and the but you you somehow hate hierarchies and therefore you're gonna have to just break down all distinctions including right and wrong Jew and Gentile and everything will be just okay until eventually you're not sure if your now the word Orthodox was created by those who stopped to keeping Judaism now by the way you may think I'm judging them I'm not judging them you know they either you're raised not keeping Judaism or he got turned off or he had a weird uncle Yankee who couldn't keep his hands to themselves and so your Judaism got poisoned you know but something went wrong and so there's no blame at all something went wrong but the fact is that now that you got your you know your device that can google anything in any you know and get it I'll get all the you know get all the fat on reality here and you can and should investigate the truth and and slowly but surely align your lie will probably take a few years but you can slowly but surely align your life with Judaism and live Jewish life that does not make you Orthodox you could be the most chill person in the world and still be keeping Judaism all it makes you is aligned all it makes you you're amongst the faithful to our tradition that's all you're just faithful to it you're not Orthodox but they call this Orthodox why well think about it if you betray the tradition you feel horribly guilty and now you what do you have you always have in your face the people who make you feel terribly guilty ie people look like me yeah so they're like I I can't help but make Jews feel like there's somehow and not the ones who are observing because they know I'm just part of some cult called a citizen but the ones the ones who are secular see a guy like me and they just immediately feel uncircumcised and so after a trip to the bathroom and the you know the airport lobby and realizing they are circumcised they they then come out and usually bagel me right there in the lobby I get bagel you know what begging is beg Ling's when you're a secular Jew feel a little bad about it especially in the presence of a Jew is clearly observant and you say something Jewish to them like Shalom at which point you know we know we're getting bagels we're getting bagels so we're just like Shalom how are you I've had people bagel me in the funniest ways and it's it's it's great I'm happy to get bagel you know they I had a guy cross the street once in some random town across the street and comes up to me I mean this guy for sure was didn't care when Shabbos comes in but he comes up to me says so when the Shabbos come in this week I got burned plenty of incense but I made sure my batteries I don't think that's what I need right now yo what's up what's interesting is that people who feel self-conscious about their secular dis when is the presence of an observant Jew they don't realize that the observant Jews feeling feeling subconscious because he's feeling like he's got to somehow apologize for his observance in the modern world and and that is that is so lame that's so lame you don't apologize for nothing yeah you got yeah you're holding onto a rope that you know usually if you're holding on a rope like in a gym you know it's whipped up to the ceiling this rope goes straight through the ceiling it goes all the way to Hashem it's Jacob's Ladder in rope form you know it's it's going back thousands of years it is it is the key to your stability hits your ticket out of any midlife crisis that's for sure you know like you don't have to have an affair by Harley you know you're connected to all reality and so the fact that when you turn mid-40s you start looking at your life and saying like you know this is not my wife there's no my kids like how did I get and then like you know your whole life just goes enough total tailspin none of you know what I'm talking about yet right here when you're up see when you're young like you guys you're like a question mark right now you're like Gumby you're just this human question like like where am I gonna live Who am I gonna married what's gonna be my succession what how's my life gonna go where what city was like if you're female what's gonna be my last name like it's just question marks everywhere and and then and then what happens in your 20s is you until 20s to 30 is you make exclamation points out of everything you're like this is who I'm gonna marry and there's gonna be my profession this is what's gonna be my last name and this is what's gonna be this and this one's gonna be that and this is the city I'm living in and this is gonna be like you make all these exclamation points or just like boom you just straighten out the question mark but God has God has a funny sense of humor and what he does there's a standing spot right over there we're doing standing room only right in the corner you slide up a teeny bit by the window I think you just give her the standing spot behind you slide up a little now don't be nice please also these these SEM girls don't talk to boys anyway anyway do you think we should start having separate seating should we just call a spade a spade you know we're either of you guys racist we took a poll earlier were you a raisin every reason so we got out of you know had about 45 people in here we had we have three so they're over there and maybe we should just start separate seating how about him a pizza how many would have come if this were going on in town okay there's a good pull how many are coming because you were coming to the ace cinema flex but if the cinema Plex was going on I don't know in town like near the shook ben yehuda anywhere look if this cinema Plex took place in town would you have come just as much okay now I'm taking it that everyone else is here because you want to come the old city in come to age is that right okay little pulls over anyway but you find a lot of observant Jews feel self-conscious you know in front of secular Jews and and that's better that's just that's just lame and and you should be so proud now a lot of you look pretty modern but this really runs rampant in the Hasidic world where you look backwards you just look backwards and you look like you're from some painting version like I was talking about before you're in some Judaica museum no no I I went to a Judaica Museum it's in LA it's called anyone familiar it's called the your mobile and drive I can't remember its date but anyway it was a seven in those days seven million dollar museum the day they opened it was the day that the Orthodox community who was not yet rich now it's like Hancock Park like big time but it was the day that the the Orthodox community had no more money to serve hot food to the kids in the in the schools the day they opened the seven million dollar museum about Judaism which is every single picture was someone who looked like me in the museum you know it was all about the shtetls and everything but what is all that it's the same as begging is it's it's it's secular juries dealing with their guilt and in fact Hollywood made a whole genre about this one of the most famous of the first of them all was spin around the roof we ran an absolute ignoramus with a bunch of daughters watches his family assimilate you know and just like no tradition he's saying tradition but the character they put his not a Torah scholar he was an idiot named Tevye who like you know didn't know his need from his elbow and and but then there was movie after movie after movie there's a one of the more famous ones in motion picture was something called the jazz singer where the final scene has the jazzy was telling you he's up there it's oh who's the famous singer that it was Neil Diamond you know he's up there singing what's a famous Neil Diamond son anyone know I don't know he's not like that's for Springsteen and he's singing his song and in like I don't know if you saw the jazz and you probably do anyway but they're in the tenth row they're in the tenth row is this father in a long coat just like when I wear in a black hat with a long white beard like this laughing with the meeting he made bow movie was the war of him saying I need to live my American dream and the father saying no you must live in the dark ages and then the father comes around and this is there were MOOC there was movie after movie after movie made up like this and also many Jewish writers had to put in you know the little Yiddish references and their films that are just little ways of saying I'm Jewish they're bailing out of their movies you know even in blazing's Mel Brooks has been lazing saddles which was a Western you know you have at one point these there's a whole wagon when you hold a line of a when chair and turn care of it wagon where these you know these black slaves are moving across the plains of America in their wagons and what happened was a group of banded Indians come you know with the feather and the headdresses and they're chasing that they're gonna go rob the wagons of course there's nothing in the ragams it's black people were slaves and so when they get to the wagon equipped so they stop the wagons to rob them in the head cheap Indian it was actually Mel Brooks dressed up like media he looks at the Indians and he says he says he says sponsors okayed enough which means black people they're darker than us and then in Yiddish for a Hollywood film that's a slapstick Western he says in Yiddish which means let him go and they let them go and they but like no of the millions of people watch that movie they had no idea what that was supposed to mean but they'll just slide it in there to feel better about themselves and so that's where the word Orthodox came from it was a way of basically saying that they're strict and were normal but that's not the case let's flip it through a reality here we're normal in that we're keeping our tribal traditions I'll give you an example of like where it really is you see that irony in the hypocrisy real irony is is that there are a lot of Jews on the board of National Geographic and various other things that help tribes in F in the Amazon and one of the things they do is people who live in the Amazon when they get wind that there's like cities around you know there's like gosh what are the names of cities in Brazil that's that's in San Paulo Rio de Janeiro's in Argentina I think or is that when a serie is where what's in Colombia the main city booga-booga so when they when the tribes realize there's like a whole other world out there some of them actually go and assimilate into the streets of Rio de Janeiro and there's actually bodies there cure of efforts there's bodies of you know meaning there's organizations that try to get them back to the jungle to their people because now they're already like strung out on crack and you know selling themselves in the night - you know just to get by in these cities and like no go back to the jungle so there's so National Geographic with Jews on their board will actually do whole articles on them in the whole efforts to like get be true to your tribe men like life's not better in the city get back to your people but meanwhile you understand these same Jews are like yeah the they should get back their tribe but we should you know we should just enjoy our SUV drive to Costco so anyway so that if you want to use the word there's two words to get out of your vocabulary as the second one part to religion religion we do deism is not a religion and so you should frighten just like you should not go orthodox that you're out of your vocabulary you should knock the word religious out of your vocabulary because when you use the word religious or were of a religion so what that connotates is that you're that there are you know all these religions which are all just different narratives of people throughout history and and there's all these religions and we're one of them we're just one of the religions and you know anyone been to the synagogue in JFK you never been in that synagogue and Joe King so you're walking by and it's like there's all the chapels and you know there's the Greek Orthodox and there's this one they're just you know they're all empty you never seen anyone in any of them except for the Jewish one but you know there's that there's the the Hindu one and then this one and then the last one in the corner is the Jewish one which actually has people in it for usually praying learning or whatever and and the but you understand it just looks like we're part of a lineup of conflicting narratives of people over history and we're like just like they're random they're right they have a random narrative we have a random narrative we're all the same we're all just part of these random narratives and that's what happens when you use the word that you're religious or you use the word really Jun around the word Judea around Judaism so you want to get those out of okay Bueller you're not religious and you're not part of a religion because if you're part of religion so then thank God you were born into your home because because had you been born in you know in Iran you would have been what is around simi Sunni or Shiite she had been a warning around you'd be Shiite if you were born in Syria what's Syria probably the same no I think they're also shared that's why they're so friendly if you're born in Saudi Arabia you're Sunni and if you were born in Rome you'd be whatever they are are they I don't know some form of Christianity I'm sorry to not know much about it and you understand that that you're most people are just victims of their upbringing and you may be too but at least Judaism you can hold up to a microscope and test it you can actually test it you can see what's really there which is unique it's unique you know it stands up you know like we got random stuff in there like for example Oh God I can't exactly look this up right now with my phone doing the live feed what was that number you know what hold on one say I'm just doing this oh great I looked up for him I guess I should look the Megillah I got a list of boos that had by 12100 it's just such a crazy one okay going back to our live feed how do I do that here we go I sorry about that when I say twelve thousand one hundred eleven so twelve thousand one one one 12100 eleven yeah so so check this out when you look in the Megillah the Megillah was the Megillah was written you know 2500 years ago where's Arcturus 3,300 years and the McGill was written 2500 years ago and and something amazing about the Megillah is that is that the the word I'm lake in Arturo is who is you know hummons from the tribe on the lake and he's out to destroy the Jewish people and if you look at the word I'm a lake in equidistant skips it should be many of you go like skip ad letters I don't know skip 100 letters so you have iron skip on the letters men I'll show you what those letters look like so you have a skip here of 1,500 letters 100 letters if you just look for how its coated with equidistant skips so like 100 100 so whatever if you look for the skipped you would find obviously it's only four letters so you should find tons of mountain lakes throughout the tour because it's only four letters and obviously it's gonna hit the equidistant skips quite a bit so you should find it and also any book you translate to Hebrew you'd find you should find on the lake a lot what you want to know some mentioning if you translated the encyclopedia into a ver and they look for how many times Alex encoded an equidistant skips between letters you'd find tons of them because it's only four letters and they're fairly common letters so you'd find tons of well guess what in our tour it's the weirdest thing but the equidistant skip is is 1200 111 letters from the ahlian to get to the mem and another 12100 living to get to the eleven and another 12,000 111 to get to the coop just like it's a Jenks Kevin it shouldn't be that way and also something else really interesting is what I mean is it the word on the lake so weird I like when it's talking about the descendants of a sub there's there's a mention of a lake there in Genesis and then you got all the letter skips pigs get and no shorter skips which is weird and guess what the coop is at the very end of the Torah where you get the last skip guess where the coop is the coop of let were nomally it's really bizarre not only that but mortifies hinted a when in the book of Exodus when they're talking about the the the spices in the temple and it called more drawer which sounds like mortified and the same thing his name comes out Mordecai comes out in a skip of twelve thousand one hundred eleven and the same thing happens with with the word with the word Hadassah for Esther Esther's name was Hadassah and it's also that's that's just bizarre but here's the coolest part is that the Megillah Esther has twelve thousand one hundred eleven letters in the entire book has twelve thousand one hundred letters inside of them and here's this it's encoded right there under I'm awake inside the Commish now you might say well you can probably pull that off you know like if you're a master of Torah somehow you encode it like that and then you write a megillah' and make sure it has twelve thousand one hundred eleven letters impossible that it could be done that way and get mortify in there and Esther in there and have it have the whole thing leaving like that of course who in the world would ever know and the fact that we knows just because there was some miraculous rabbi who liked to figured all that out but but then you still wouldn't have an explanation for why come on who's the the you know the the sinister evil you know bad guy in the porn story when it talks about his ten sons being hung in one suicide which was his daughter you still wouldn't have you know after they were killed by the sword and then hung the Esther said to hang them the following day there's no way a human being could have known that 2500 years later that the Nuremberg trials that you would have eleven Nazis one commits suicide and tenor hung and in the actual names listed in the Torah is that year 5707 is actually listed in the meaning the names of hummons kids the first name Harshman deucey has a small top and her mushed as a small shin and by Zasa the last name was a small sign which spells out right top shin Zion which was the year of the Nuremberg trials and so like yeah you might have been raised into the narrative of Judaism but but you can see through various and I'm only mentioning two and there's all kinds of wild stuff of how you can verify it and on top of that we ourselves are recognized amongst the world's tribes as a tribe we're seen as a tribe and we're not seen as a religion and I even just recently I speak on behalf of the our tribe I've been somehow recognized as as a spokesman for our tribe and when there when the tribes of the world get together mostly for preservation of the worsts and stuff is just educating the world on their cultures I'm asked to speak on behalf of ours and I've asked them each time I'm asked to speak I asked them are you going to have any religions there and every time I get a text back from the organizer and say no it's only tribes and they will not allow religions to be represented there no man-made no man-made narratives allowed here and and he's and it's always like don't worry rabbi you know we know what Judaism is and I've spoken to some of these I get to meet the tribal leaders and I've spoken to some and they're like yes when they meet me they're just like why they said because not only do we have the tribal background that they have but they said that our tribes we don't have prophecy your tribes surely prophetically base our tribe to either built on our understandings of the Kabbalistic universe and the parallel realms and they know this stuff they know all about the parallelism they know these things and as much as a revelation they get would only be on some plant medicine like uh like mescaline or ayahuasca is one of these jungle medicines they they take that that teach them you know these are these plant medicines our our plant teachers and they've taught people they've taught tribal leaders for thousands of years the secrets of creation these medicines but when they come to us they're just like whoa you know because plant medicines are not prophecy prophecy is prophecies way beyond plant medicines prophecy makes LSD look like vitamin C totally different round you know you could go do their plant medicine you still come back normal the next day prophecy you'd be you be put your soup into your forehead you know you'll be brushing your teeth by your ears you know you just you'd never get back to yourself you wouldn't you'd never be able to come back from prophecy and that's why that's why it talks took so much to finally get prophecy like meaning if you were living in the times of prophets it took so much alignments and so much personal work and so much cleaning out of ego until there until you got it's funny that people go for Eastern traditions you know if you look at Jacob's Ladder no that's the ladder you're climbing up the spiritual ladder so in in in Eastern traditions the top of the ladder is enlightenment in the word enlightenment or they should say I guess the Hindu word for it would be Buddha means Buddha means the enlightened one so that's the top is that's the goal like to become enlightened what does it mean in light it means you're no longer selfishly involved you know so so like meaning when someone steps on your foot on a negative us you know and he's still on it so you're like you'd be like can you get off our foot yeah there's no you it's just like I can get off our foot so that level you know where that is that's right in the middle of Jacob's Ladder enlightenment and the top of the ladder is prophecy some Jews spell prophecy with it in prophecy so in that that's prophecy is the top of the ladder there's other levels there's rock on kodesh that's like what Rashi and prophet enlightenment is just like it's a Heckscher limit so you know it's uh how do you say that eight requisite to go higher on the ladder just to get to selflessness that's just a big part of a work and that's why we have musters far is to kind of knock the ego out of you and it can go to the you know muster program I actually run a I run a seminar that's actually coming up this week I have flyers perfect time for a plug possibly use so so I actually run a seminar that that basically get you were you take your actual personal narrative about your whole life just becomes uninteresting it's not even something you defend anymore like suddenly you can walk into a wedding and just be totally relaxed and be yourself in public and stuff and the way you deal with business people you know I just I just I just met a businessman who who's asking me what it would I think about his partnership no it's just like you know he said got a partner and I'm like well it's a terrible partnership he's like what do you mean I'm like I'm like you just found someone who would make you feel smart and it's a joke and if your investors had any idea that you're up to this with their money you know Kim but can you imagine partnering with someone who is a little under you intellectually you know could you see that and so so I actually I run programs on letting go of your narrative which puts you right here in that used you stop being so vigilant for your cupboard you stop being so vigilant for your own ego and so suddenly like the brain starts networking and you're like tasting apples I'm like because our brains are so busy protecting ourselves that we lose out on the experience of life which is really the goal the whole goal of the center is to get yourself back into life being vibrationally cleans pretty good - very good for business and stuff anyway it's quite miraculous I'm holding these I'm only holding on because I I was such a nice man that I went in picked up my amazing wife at OSHA rod to help her with his shopping and turns out the printer was right there he handed me this on my way there send this up to men just taking the pest take one of this anyway but for those listening with this I have I have Thursday nights gonna be in do schinsky with a aunt a me teach or not one of those lame Jones yeah there's an acting being do schinsky at 9:00 it's on shinobi 352 that's an introduction to Sunday's seminar which is men's and in America I have coming up in Brooklyn the 16th of February for men with an intro on the 13th which is a Thursday and then the following we have an intro in Muncie on Thursday with the seminar starting for men on the 23rd and the women so my only women's summoner in a long time is gonna be a Muncie on the 24th there'd be a women's seminar in Muncie so please join me for that you will not be sorry in whatever reason you think you may not be able to come that you gotta speak to me privately don't bother I will convince you so just come save me the conversation just just kidding if you really think you need to break through something to get there I will help you break through a button just know that I will help you birth - so you might as well come in here okay me so the other word is religion and we are not just some narrative ladies and gentlemen brothers and sisters my dear children we are not just some random narrative like all those other conflicting narratives of all these religions on earth that's not and so therefore you want to knock out the word religious as well get rid of the word religious and from now on just say you're observant yeah and when trying to weren't observant it's right to go observe observe observe and what's cool about observant means doesn't mean you're conservative everything because like how could you according the puppets I am if you keep Shabbat but it never learned all the laws ready for this and you're constantly reviewing them he says inevitably you're doing something wrong in shows so like we're really just observant and we're doing our best to be observing none of us are minimis are really perfect where we make a lot of mistakes that's one of the reasons why we're involved in learning and review because we're not we're not their religious sounds like you're there observe it means that what you know you observe what you know you do and now that we don't fall here haven't the people fault but what you do what you know you do okay it's gonna measure so I haven't been back in here it's this one and I'm here growth agenda for the next month so exciting for us and great classes everybody Oh Shalom if you enjoyed watching this well watch some more send it click it forward it join it subscribe to it you know keep coming on in joining me in this amazing movement to make a big difference in the world and the biggest thing you can do of all is to join the yom tov media club calm please go online yom tov media club calm