Art, Gabbai, Chabad & Mentsch: Reb Moshe Braun of Ramat Beit Shemesh

so welcome everyone to meaningful interviews i'm here today with a good friend and a student rep moisha uh braun from brahmat that shemesh inherits israel uh i came to heritage role in 2017 the summer i believe and um the stroll uh wanted to open a cola where not only will they learn but also and he asked if i would get involved and i said i would and barak hashem it's five years later and every day four days out of the week we have a skype uh type of uh shear half an hour to 45 minutes and we've been learning primarily the previous rebbe's my murder in the discourses which deal with a lot of psychological issues and maisha is really um you know one of the main students in this year uh because besides it being a a software and an artist and the the gabai in the uh h code issue in ramadan which is a very important show in the english-speaking community of bakshamesh he's a laboratory with a full beard as you see it's not a trend beard it's you know it's a longer beard than i am it's rolled up a little bit um but it's a full beard so he's a labancher raised raising a lumbar family wife's children which i know wonderful and um he has a a real good feel for the community and for the overall issues of balancing you know being chabad in a nonhabad world in a sense and also has witness and sees the struggles people and families have as a gaba in such a show and has been involved intimately with many many people and he's a go-to person and i'm not saying this to flatter him but that's just the fact of life i i know uh he's a go-to person for many many people in in that community and also people from chabad and other communities um you know he's been around a long time and he comes from chicago somewhere chicago or chicago itself or suburb so i thought that uh for our program meaningful interviews he would be a meaningful person to interview so um i'd like michael tell us just a little bit about uh your background and then we'll go from there sure sure first of all it's an honor to be here with you rabbit dolphin we've uh developed a very very special friendship uh i i would say a tamil cover if i could be so bold to say that um if we could use that lash on that language um it's an honor to be in just honor to share for for a little while um my background so i was born in the united states um i grew up in a i would say a traditional home and i used the capital t because you know grew up in that sort of type of a home where i went to public school all my life but went to hebrew school going through really through high school um brought up and uh then kind of family moved to the conservative conservative school but i became starting the end of high school started to become much more started to become more interested in my judaism which was really fostered at home and went to israel um for the summer after i graduated high school and there was really really i think turned on just in general to about myself learning more about myself i came back went to ann arbor university of michigan ann arbor for four years the school of art i have a bachelor's in fine art in product design industrial design uh in addition to regular fine arts background which was what i did really growing up my parents encouraged my art ever since i was a very very young child um and i because i'm interested in in in judaism when i was already going into university so i because we kept kosher at home and friday night we always said to be home for shabbos dinner so i did that at university and i met a beautiful group of people in the hill house there a wide range of backgrounds extremely tolerant warm genuine people to make a long story short i became observant during my four years of art school became uh you know to to keep to keep shabbos koshers and so forth that wasn't easy it was a tremendous amount of soul searching and really really really thinking about life and trying to understand my artistic gifts that girls brought who gave me um [Music] and how to try to use them i was struggling with that anyway left university went to chicago where my family was living at the time i grew up all over the united states in different different cities we lived in i was born in allentown pennsylvania we lived in new jersey naperville illinois denver colorado new haven connecticut ann arbor for university and then into chicago the chicago area northern uh the northern northern suburbs and um when i when i finished university so i would move back home to be with my be with my parents to be with my family um and i wanted to go to schule the closest shule that i could walk to on shabbos was a conservative shul four and a half miles away from my parents home which is which is what i started to do started to do and uh within six months a fledgling minion was started in wilmette illinois which became um soon after became officially chabad of wilmette and the shlochum there after i have to i can i want to say their names because a tremendous tremendous yiddish rabbi rabbits and david and rivke flinkenstein really really i was a been biased by them and it was there that i really really began to become introduced really to i would say to to not just but to be to be how does it look at the world and deal with all types of people i i was really really exposed to that in er by from with their example and others in chicago others in chicago there are other rebellion and mushma began to meet and so forth anyway to continue on um i was working in a startup company in chicago um doing doing industrial design and my partner actually um was um i was he was a member of the community in chicago and um i was just growing i was trying to grow and i was starting to hit a glass ceiling because i really didn't have the background to really be able to learn the traditional learning as we say so one thing led to another and uh i let decided to leave the startup and i wanted to go and learn and i was already engaged to to my wife and in the middle of our engagement i left this promising startup and i went and i knocked on the door of skokie shiva um and they said to me look we don't have a program for you but we'll help you we'll make a program for you and they set me up with different reverses and for the next year and a half during our first the first part of our marriage while my wife was in university locally in chicago she went to the women's school ti which was in ti teachers institute the sister institution of skokie sheba i learned in the best marriage and i worked for ncsy and nights nights and of course you know shabbos and shisha shabbat and so forth in buffalo grove um also we know the the cats is rabbi um shmuel and honeycats from buffalo grove also had impact with us and anyway um when my wife finished university that summer then immediately after our first child was born and six weeks later we were on the plane a week after sinkholes torah um we were on the plane to come to straw to continue to learn in chapels in yerushalayim wife learned in the sister institution and we lived in the basement of ishiba in a in a tiny little apartment that was about the size of our living room but it was it was fantastic it was great for us there i was really really was really really felt at home with a beautiful hevra and they were a wonderful rebellion but i have to say that the the the influence and the seeds that were planted so to speak in willmet and in chicago through my chabad verbaium really which continued to be there and continued to germinate thought in my in my mind and um i had a lot of questions we couldn't came towards a stroll when you come to terence austral there's a lot of issues now there's a lot of issues everywhere but i was really really coming from you know a very warm supportive community in chicago especially community chicago and i would say the early 90s which of course is much smaller than it is now but nonetheless coming territorial you could feel like a number and even though i was in a very warm yeshiva but the moment i would go out of the yeshiva i really really felt a lack of just you know you go in the street and you're coming from the states you're coming from a certain you're used to being a minority within a majority and now you're part of the majority but all of a sudden you're you don't feel always so special anymore and so that that bothered me and i knew that i had to deal with that because i really wanted to live here i wanted to set a little settle in aaron's australia and um my wife um was not as interested as i was and it took us time to think and um uh one of the things that was very significant at sort of a tipping point for us was that um [Music] we were we spent shabbos in the yeshu which was deep deep in the shamron about a year after we've been in arts israel and i for some reason i don't know why i i told our host you know i want to meet the rub of the yeshu it's like a merkaza rav guccim and they said sure so i went and met him on the show this afternoon my host took us and he started sat me down he started to ask me so what are your what are you with your plans what are you thinking so i said i said well i said i really want us to stay here in arizona uh but if we'll stay if we find um a place to live and if i find the penalty and i said then we'll be able to do it he looked me in the eye and he said to me no i said it's not going to work that way he said no you're not going to work just forgive me let me just uh just close the email forgive me just just one second bear with me i apologize um [Music] and he said to me you can't be inaudible you're not going to be successful that way he said there can't be any ifs he said you have to put both feet here even if you don't have a place to live that you don't you know where you want to live and even if you don't have an idea of what type of panasonic you're going to do you have to put both feet here now i want to emphasize that we were i was at the time uh 27 years old and we had one child very young obviously our expenses were minimal but i left that conversation shocked and i felt very very unsettled and i shared with my wife and very soon after i realized you know what he's right i have to decide in my mind we have to decide that we're here in earth's throat and both feet and he was right because we did that and soon things began to develop they began to they began to develop now um let me give me a second close the window please please please please all right okay um [Music] so i'm sharing this and and basically basically to again to make a very long story short we decided to stay we decided to say we decided to make official alias so to speak which we did we went back to chicago we packed up all of our things we made a lift we came okay and i also at the same time was making a transition from full-time learning to really trying to figure out what i wanted to do every single one i i wanted to go into rabbanus or something of that nature my wife besides not really wanting that i mean definitely not wanting that um every single one of my rebeim and mashpeem without exception from across the spectrum said they said to me use your art find a way to use your art at the same time that i was trying to figure and trying to really really think through this um i had started also a sophist class a friend suggested about a stop i was interested in cyprus back even back in skokie um and i didn't quite have the background yet to really really begin to learn but now i did and so i was really fortunate i was introduced to a course that was happening actually the ou israel center which then was on nicole strauss and um i was very fortunate because it was an excellent course that focused largely on and also on the practical um hashem i liked you know i worked with my hands and thank god i i was able to really pick up the ability to write and um i learned for quite some time um towards towards becoming a sofer and at the same time beginning to develop my art and just one thing led to another uh besides that besides passing my exams of vladimir um and beginning to write what happened was is just my circle of friends people began to ask me to to make things for them make them i started really making suvas you know illuminated kasuvas and so forth people asked me to begin to write for them miguela azuza my first mezuzah i wrote is gift give as a gift to my parents first then i eventually someone asked me to write the parapartist villain the first pair i i wrote i said i'm going to give as a gift to my father which um which thank god i did and that really got me too often in terms of writing uh especially writing writing i should say writing to phil and precious um and things just began really developed to develop in terms of my work which thank god is really um [Music] every day just i'm grateful i'm able to use my skills and and and and try to give to other people and help other people now with my work now i i i wanted to interrupt you please please please now you take a breather yeah thank you thank you drink a little water so on the parnosa issue um are you saying that uh may i don't think at the very beginning but throughout your life until now you've actually been able to have a solid partnership from your art so for work so is that is that is that a yes or a no i would say that i would say it's uh it would say that it's it's it's it's a yes it's a yes in the sense of um i've had to work very hard uh to make a pronunce and art safris is a different profession it's related but it's a different profession it was safrus i don't advertise um hashem it's um it's very much word of mouth and um i just think that i'm able to sit down and to write i try to dedicate a certain amount of time during my month to writing doesn't always work out that way but most of the time and that provides what i would call a stable base and then my art art is then i'm able to use the rest of time to work on my art now art is very the word the art world is not like other it's not like a regular it's not like a regular parnassa art is extremely turbulent tremendous amounts of fluctuation and i experienced that on a i'm on a regular basis let's put it that way but what i have what i learned is i tried to show my work over time and i thought i would i thought i would travel a lot with my work but uh having younger children a young family and it just it just there were too many difficulties involved and so i didn't i traveled a little bit but what happened though at the same time is that through so many different angles people you know and i tried to work with galleries i tried to work with representatives artists it was so difficult it didn't really take it it i and i looked all of a sudden at one point i looked a number of years ago i said you know what 99 of my sales of my work happen through word of mouth people meet me people make a connection they want to come to the studio either they live here in irish australia or they want to come there so they're coming here so they want to come to the studio i said you know what um i said it it began to click in my head um that going back to what my rabbeim said about using my art to be able to connect with people at about the same time there's been two at least two particular individuals in particular that i senior artists a generation beyond me that i went to for advice over time one of them said to me very bluntly he said you need to be able to represent yourself he said there's no there's no there's not going to be anyone who's going to be able to represent you better than you right you have but he said because you also have to teach people about your work you have to teach people you do this you use it a mode for teaching and i found that to be extremely valuable device it was extremely valuable to me to my wife to my family and so what i'm getting at is that it's things that for me in many ways things have sort of come like full circle in other words being able to use come into my own so to speak to be able to not just paint finding yourself finding myself to be able to give right and i think that and i think that that is the biggest message of all that i could share is that in life one of what i have learned is that life is so much about it's about giving it's about taking what a course has given you and you are entrusted with it and you have to make the best of it and you have to give many of my reba'm and also my my father said to me if they said to me that's your job what was supposed to give you he'll give you that doesn't mean i'm gonna have a three-story house it doesn't mean that i'm gonna have a yacht maybe yes but maybe not but but but but what i am supposed to have i have to have a moon that that that that's what we're going to have thank you please please i want to go back to something you you touched upon very very briefly in passing and i'd like to for a moment if you're if you're willing to share sure you mentioned that you you uh really got involved with chabad in chicago and buffalo grove and you know and and no and knowing uh knowing you you know you you you were you went that direction your wife i believe did not come through those doors to yiddish kite and this is a question that people are going to want to hear an answer to or an explanation or a thought how did you get along in in other words here you are you're a lebovacher you know about to shove in a sense she is not you're together that itself is already an accomplishment and a beautiful one and an important one let me let me just jump in rabbi dolphin my wife my wife and i are both balichuva in the classical sense yeah my wife comes also from uh she comes from a different background my wife grew up in chicago in the chicago suburbs and buffalo grove um [Music] but i'll go ahead okay i just wanted to clarify that yeah okay but again right you would say i'm right that you you were more about the babbage yeah for sure you know even in the beginning even at the beginning in your journey that then she was she came in i think through he told me either a chatura or sameach or uh that's a different orientation yeah for sure so so um you get married that's a great accomplishment you know how do you then you know you know around here in brooklyn you know the the wife follows the husband you know they've been hugging this at that i i don't know i don't think just like the way i see it i don't think that was the the case you know you're both coming from a different place you know why follow the husband i'm just saying so so but yet you need to work you're having children you're developing a family you know and and you know now it's years later so just for just for uh a brief brief few moments please um because time is of the essence here uh address this please yeah i think that i'm i'm glad you asked the question rabbit dolphin it's a question that i s that the more i have more more experience with other people i think this is probably one of the biggest challenges that a couple could face that when is one is growing in a different way or in a different pace or both than the other i've seen it with my own eyes in different situations with other people a tremendous amount of experience listening to others and observing and interestingly enough recently i was listening to a different podcast and there's a very known uh rough very spiritual deep person who is in the [Music] is in the uh new york area leave it at that who was asked kind of a similar question and he gave a big sigh and he said ah you're asking the most challenging of all the challenging of issues so but i want to address it because it's so important okay and and what i want to say is the following there were times in my life when maybe i you know my fervor of interests of of hasidis of dark cities of trying to give something over was probably done and not always the wisest way and there were certain points along the way that i went to different of my different rebellion of mine for advice the advice that i got which was so helpful probably two or three three or four times at least maybe five times over many years from different people both within both chabad hasidim and nan some were other some were litvish yeah all people that i trusted what came down to sort of a common theme was they said moshe you have to treat your wife better than yourself you have to be really really honest about that and i have found that over time that when i do that that the relationship between a husband and wife is such generally that if a husband is really really putting his wife above him how he treats her day in day out she will appreciate him in turn now that's also we know it's very comes from a very deep place as well in terms of the husband being the no saying the wife being the macadam cabela's okay but i think that's very true uh i've shared this i think with you that i had a very very special interaction with the the love rabbi dr abraham twersky oliver shalom i've run towards a number of years ago he was in ramap i tracked him down for a little over an hour here in ramapan a number of years ago and i spoke with him this was the advice that he had gave me and he was we all know it was hasid and he told me not at all to negate any element of of me being hasid but that's for me but to put my wife and to treat my wife better he impressed upon me and it was it was a it was a life-changing moment for me and every time if there's ever time that i feel myself slipping back to be a little more selfish i i'm i'm i i'm reminded of it pretty quickly [Laughter] but i think though that um in addition just to talk about from uh from a chabad perspective one of the things that also made such an impact on me is when i heard the story about the about the rabbi he said it was said of him that his time of putting on to fill in the time that he spent with the rabbitson was is of the exact same importance as different putting onto phelan right dr weiss said that right right the reps right that's correct that's correct and i have tried very hard um one of the things because i'm an artist there are many times i work alone a lot there are many times i'm able to listen to when i'm doing certain types of work i'm able to listen with things in the background and i try so hard to find very very um genuine um individuals to listen to to gain this type of a hashgaffer of how does a real how does a hasid how's the hustle supposed to treat his his wife how is he supposed to treat his family how is he supposed to interact with the community and how is he supposed to view his responsibility in this world right and so now i want to transition now from there over to so you move with your wife you know and i know there's a lot of details but we'll just we'll get to the point where you're living in chemist right and um you meet uh i believe the rebbe right rabbi uh and i've seen him in action and uh i'm very impressed you know and i and i've met a lot of people i've seen a lot of people including the rapper right many people the way this rav this rabbit roof himself from the shul is is unbelievable i mean in the middle of david he'll come sit in the back and you know acknowledge people if he's allowed to make a hefstic i've seen him shopping and bringing in the the bags of food to the shoe i mean i i've seen such humility and conduct and and and that's why the people who are listening to this interview need to know that the school has several hundred people on shabbos and you know they're not considered mostly you know or that you know and and many clean shaven people from bali chuva and from and there i met some kind of belitters and you know what are they darkening in a shoe of a person wearing a spottek a rebbe whatev you know the answer is tell me if i'm wrong because he doesn't come with that you know arrogance and i'm the rebbe and you're my students and he's like one of the guys one of the boys you know of course he's the rev and the rebbe but and there is this right that's the right word and he brought this edelkite and refinement and you and um and and you know as much as it would be worthwhile to talk a lot about it but we have to talk about you and your life and things that we want to discuss you became their agave very early on and uh probably 20 plus years that you you've been in that community and you've seen its growth from its infancy you've been dealing with issues so what do what's my question what what do i want to hear what i want to hear from is the following as a communal activist that's really involved what advice do you give to people who say um i came there to throw tried i raised my kids ups and downs my nurses ups and downs you know how do i fit in into a world of hasidism we're not talking yet now about just the world of hasidism because you're not selling khabad there and i know that you know and it that's not the point right you know this isn't a chabad shoe okay nevertheless when they look at moshe braun that bishop wrong with his full beard and his capota they know he's a labancher and i've seen this in action so what i'm asking is how does this impact and what what can others do who find themselves in all above its shoes for whatever reason how can they balance and bring respect to who they are and at the same time for people to learn from them so that's what i would like you to talk a little bit about now right okay okay that's um i i appreciate that question so much um i want to preface by saying that uh we lived in ushalayam for about four and a half close to five years and we live first in beta karam which is where the yeshiva was we lived in kierat moshe gibacho that area we lived in harnauf yeah um and we reached a certain point where um we realized that we needed to purchase a home really try to put down some roots that we we just we're at that stage you shalom was um i was very interested in i personally as an artist and just sort of you know my certain elements of my character were very interested in my wife wanted something that was a little bit much more a little more um stable and normal yeah yeah i mean i'm not not that not that i don't want it much that's a much better way of pushing yeah well basically a number of things few things happened kind of happened together but uh we had some friends that were starting to move out to our map and shamans was just the very very very beginning very very beginning how many years ago were talking about we're talking about 1999. okay 22 23 years okay yeah yeah yeah um [Music] at the same time i felt shalom i was going to a phase where i was just i just felt like a number at that point i just felt like a number i had nothing to give um i had my work which was beginning to develop but i felt like such a number and i said to my i i there was a voice inside me that said you know what if you're gonna the only way you're gonna be able to stay here and eric's australia is you you find somehow a way to give that was album at that point was still a little bit more of a subconscious voice but it began to get louder and louder we we came out to remember chamesh a few times and um we we realized you know what this this probably would be a good idea i was just immediate but the neighborhood was just starting thank god we found a home and we were able to thank god we were able to purchase the home and um we came out the community was fledgling the chabad presence in ramapajam at that point that was the summer of 2000. presence was one minion it was like a shabbos minion it was fledgling from this house to this house and when it wasn't stable just because the whole neighborhood was so brand new but i realized very very quickly and part of it was my wife helped me to realize it but i realized quickly that we needed to have a stable what's called a form of a shul and so i you know tried out different schools we still there were not many again things were fledgling i tried out uh bialyshul from the alarbe from who was lugano at that point switzerland had some hasid in the kentucky which you're familiar with which then was much newer which began to start and those were kind of the two main places that i that i that i was at um i learned in uh in the um the grass shul in the grassroot they had a morning cola from alabama i learned there actually in the colo there for uh in the morning then i moved to another cola that was on uh which the bottom line is what i'm getting at is that um i sought out just stable environments with some sort of a sense of a love or community um and then at the same time we moved to the neighborhood the rivkaman menachem shapiro and his family moved from had moved from benebrach to the neighborhood and one day not long after we met moved in i was at a minhan shabbas and i saw this rabbit in this show of like type in someone's house i saw this rabbit standing there in the back you know with a beckisha and spudic etc but such a warm warm smile and we just our eyes connected and he smiled at me and i smiled back at that point i wasn't wearing a hat i was wearing like a like a short jacket with a gartel i had a beard but not a full beard but a beard but not not a not a un you know like not a not a full full beard and the person was standing next to him came up to me and said to me the rabbit sort of would like to invite you to his house for sure so i didn't know he was making a shoulder i didn't even know him but i went and i took our our oldest son at the time who i think was five or six who was in ghana we went to his apartment he would made a public shoulders whoever wanted to come could come from the community and um and we started to become regulars and he had a minute besides sharing some you know some deeper torah he he he had he asked the children to get up and to give it to our torah i'd never seen that before i wasn't used to that nobody almost nobody that i know i saw that i turned to our son who was like all of five or six years old he was six years old and i turned him i said tell me avraham would you would you like to share something and i thought for sure there's no way he's going to share something in front of people he's never seen before he looks looked up at me and said sure abba sure so okay so he gets up this the the rabbit shapiro puts him up on his lap or stands him up and he shares whatever he learned in god anyway this this began a relationship of someone who really became a mashpee of mine or someone to speak to someone to ask questions of not a laboratory obviously but someone who was very sensitive person someone who was had an ability to listen and who was khusidish which was mine obviously was my direction um one thing led to another and and i knew he had told me over time that he wanted to start a school remember chemist so in the summer of 2003 about um in of of 2003 he called me up when they said moshe in mirza shem in about two weeks we're going to start the shul the house that he had purchased was finally ready for the shul and he asked me if i would come and help and i said sure i said i'll be there and i even was able to my family donated a little bit of money to help which i found out later was used to move the furnishings from his father in tel aviv to the map right so i started going now i thought it was just going to be a shabbos minion because in those days in ramaphichemish most of the minyanam were just you know it was still a growing fledgling community growing but fledgling but we had all three fellas and the end of mozashabus all of a sudden everybody after marv said well what time is chakras tomorrow morning and that was it it became from this the first shabbos which was rosh chodesh ello it became a 24 hour day seven day a week shul and it was in the tiny salon of the house and it had the old furniture from tel aviv and between min hamar he would get up the red would get up after telum he would get up and say ashir and mishnayas and it was this warm really warm communal feeling and all different types of people mainly not mainly not hasidim and mainly anglos and here you had an israeli but he was warm he was sensitive and i quickly learned as i quickly began to get more involved because he asked me to one thing led to another that i started realizing everybody from the neighborhood different types all different types people are coming to speak to him and ask his advice i mean i'm talking about excuse me i'm talking about all types all types and and and and i used to say said everybody in this show is welcome doesn't matter if he's wearing a strymol or he's wearing blue jeans it doesn't matter but that was the truth now because we had learned because we'd already been living here so it's our heir to struggle for some time i had learned about arya levine that's what they call you know who's known as the tsarjak of your shalom right and i learned about him and and i saw like this is like this person is shapiro there's a lot of similarities like this person was for real and um [Music] i began to get more involved not because i wanted to get more involved but because i just there were needs there were needs being a you know and i got drawn in anyway the person who was the main guy by that we'll call him the guy by richon uh for various reasons uh left the school a person his own personal reasons and family and so forth and right immediately there was like a need for me to basically sort of step in and help and um and that's what happened and the next thing i know it's like you know it's it's and i'm not talking about being a gabba in like a formal synagogue when you're a gaba and a steeple you're doing everything you know what you see and everything what people don't see behind the scenes and accounting and maintenance and then i became you know you you become a an ad hoc you know social worker and a psychologist but i i like people and i always wanted to be help help people but the next thing i know it really was you know i was developing wonderful relationships with people but trying to help people and very soon also soon after someone else came in joined the school who became the guy by risho in terms of calling people up and i but i was like the god by cheney but but still i've i've so now for like since that time i've since 2003 i've been i've been the goblin it became what we call what if you wanted to call it the the main in the sense in terms of helping to run the school and doing a lot of things behind the scenes um [Music] but i think the overall message though of everything that i'm trying to share is that when you it became very at the same time as i it always all this is happening with my work growing my work god by my my inner dimension also i wanted to grow in terms of my yaddus yiddish kite hasidishkai learning more hasidis and i did and i looked in different places looked aggressive as i mentioned before learning more litvish environments i kept coming back to chabad i kept coming back to chabad and one of the biggest issues was that i had living in arizona you can't help but have big questions big questions about how are you supposed to relate to each other how are you supposed to relate to this land um [Music] how are you supposed to relate to yourself and as i asked these questions the more i learned i'm coming back to chabad to the answers of the rebellion of the rebel in particular the derek of the shem tov but of the rebellion and the rebel in particular and in particular how the rebel looked at eretz israel how he viewed that when you're living in ancestral you have an obligation to be on the one hand you are a hussed but you are completely connected to giving and to helping people in the most real of ways so i want to go now from here the next five kind of last minutes or so we need to wrap up pretty much um hashem it feels like it's just been a few minutes but it's almost an hour so not to sure yeah right so we started this uh kylo and you've been learning citizen i think we could say um you've been learning uh serious see this this isn't just like what i've always said call it couch potato learning cities you know and we do a lot of dialoguing and it's really we have a great camera so what i want you to for a few moments just to talk about it kind of conclude the interview with is how learning considers almost on a daily basis in a serious way together with a teacher and a group of people is so helpful and important to to not only your avalander your activity as a yid but to the to the to the ex to others and that others who you don't have to be khabad or hasid to benefit from the teachings of siddhas so what you spoke about before that obey him and the rebel you know in general i i want to hone in now more on the learning of siddhis we're talking about malik and we're talking about concepts of nephesh and the and gulf and the interaction and the seifer tanya which um we're always pointing to how this is how this is for judaism and jews of all kinds and how it is so helpful to a person with their family issues with dealing with teenagers dealing with paranosa issues i think that we have explored this in our shiite and our discussions so i want you as a student and as a recipient of this where you've come from you know a a non-chabad yeshiva which is wonderful the chappelle's yeshiva and you've gone through the betsheimer which you're still part of as we not a part of you you are a mainstay there and and and to to how do you see being able to share what siddha teaches for the betterment of the community that's the final segment of our meaningful interviews program sure sure uh that's a great question it's a great question every dolphin i i um i think that the more person learns hasidis the more the person realizes that we you know we talk about pacific concepts first first of all i want to let's let's just go back for a second uh the first thing is uh it's important to note that our sheer it's like for me it's like oxygen for my neshama there's no question about it it's in the middle of my day it's kind of a crazy time for me because you know you're you're above you you're in new york and we're here in ericsson most of us and [Music] uh and it's like it's like right in the middle of the afternoon and like when i tell people when i tell people what time we're learning like in the afternoon people look at me like like what like that's like in the middle of your day like how do you do that like but for me i've been able to build my day around it it's a motivating factor for me to get in and get work done and work and really apply myself and then in the middle of my day like we've spoken about let's talk about but just the idea of it's not a concept but it's we spoke about time i'm able to i take a break and 2 45 boom whatever i'm doing and i'm always in the middle of in pretty i'm in the middle of like the most intense part of my day but it's like it's but it's it's such a beautiful feeling because when i get on and i see our chevra i feel like i'm with i feel like i'm with like it's my my my inner circle sort of inner speaker earnest inner circle of like like a brotherhood right we've spoken about that buddha shaft yeah gosh and it's such a special feeling to be able to just listen to be able to get in to really really learn in an intense way and the concepts the more we learn it's like if it's real which of course it is real if a person looks if a person is intellectually honest they'll be able to apply it they'll be able to think about what we're learning and apply it and think how to how to integrate it how that should permeate your life the concept of bitter the concept of let's say being the merkava well if you really learn then you know that you're in this world to do what wants you to do what does that mean it means he gave you special gifts and skills everybody has special gifts and skills he wants you to use them in this world to refine this world that means you have to be the best that you can be it also means that you have to look and find where are you needed what are you needed for i don't think i'm needed to go build i mean it's a beautiful thing but i don't think i needed to go build a 10 million dollar you know uh four-story chabad center that maybe that's not what i'm needed for maybe i'm needed to go be here and remember chemist and to be in my work and also at the same time to give other give to other people and see what are the needs in my community and if it means that i'm functioning and doing that in a non-chabad environment okay all the more so and and you you actually see right that they respect you for that has anyone the people say you're all above your uh and you know we have some issues with khabad and and therefore you're not we don't want you as gabba you know that no no and it's it's interesting that you say that you're bringing up an excellent point one would think that right one with that but that's why i'm having you on because you are in a living example that it's not that way so so it's the opposite the opposite happens now i want to make something very very clear i don't go and wear my chabad kite on my sleeve what did i mean you don't you don't flaunt it i don't view it it's not my job to go and make some of the clustered it is my job to be the best excuse me to be the best that i can be which means giving to others and helping others and it not a day goes by keema now the day goes by that someone from the school comes up to me and asked me a question i mean it could be on a number of topics breadth depth depth you know and and but people respect you because you respect them and they see that you don't you're not trying to when i sit down when we have we have a beautiful kiddish beautiful chevron that after shabbos morning we sit down we make a kish we forbrang it's really turned into a forbidden and i never spoke at that before even though i get i get up in front of you know 200 people on shabbos you know to make announcements um which by my nature before that i never was such a public speaker at all right now it's transformed me to be able to get up but i was never a speaker a speaker so to speak in uh like to give a sheer that's not my thing but we have this beautiful condition and we sit down and and different people speak and one thing led to another and i started to to share something you know at this condition it generally ends up being a story but something with a a message and people respect me because i i think people respect me because it's not i don't have an agenda my only agenda is just to try to help people and help help people and and and and to be real to be truthful we have to stop now as much as we can go on and we should go on at some other time but um we do have to stop now so first i want to thank you for the time that you've given and you've shared some very important messages for claudius role for jewish people and particularly anglos valley chuva people inherit israel and otherwise people who um you know came from somewhere made something out of themselves are who they are and um i i i cherish uh the the interview and i also cherish the fact that we're friends and that we've had we continue to to to deal with these issues and at the same time i want to encourage all of our listeners to really you know if you're if you're in america you could make you could make this year is getting on at 2 45 in the afternoon for us it's a quarter to 8 in the morning in chicago it's a quarter to seven whatever you know uh we do have it on youtube uh but you know the interaction live uh between ourselves and the dialogue um is very important uh we we covered this week for example some very very important uh issues uh which i have to just forgive me i have to i have to forgive me for interrupt i'll make very fast yeah i have one thing i must though share yes which is the if there's one of the major major things i've learned from watching and observing countless interviews with the rabbit interviews interactions people had with the rebbe and all of my mashpeem in khabad and rabbayam has been a common denominator common denominator and that is that hasid is is secure with himself and he and he's like his his security being secure with himself it's like the back of the chair it's a support and so because of that he or she can go out and interact with anybody anybody it doesn't matter who they are jewish non-jewish it doesn't matter right because you find a way to connect with people and it's it's the obvious astrology but it's that ability to connect with with everybody and i think that that if more than anything i want to share is probably one of the biggest ingredients for success in life is particularly to be able to live here in erits as well thank you for those last beautiful words they should help you should have a kosher flavor you know your wife and family and we should only meet sempress and we will see each other very soon again a good adventure tug and only pursue this type of