Meaningful Interviews 3 - Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet of YU- Rav's comment on Rebbe- Chasidus needed at YU

to our program called meaningful interviews with rabbi siam dolphin um it's wonderful to see you bright and early and uh we've known each other for quite a while and i want to focus on a few things that you've shared with me over the years i really would like you to talk a little bit about it now ask you answer you know and uh your style of honesty integrity has always uh been something that uh people look look forward to you know because there's so much bluff out there and we're not gonna go into that but uh everyone knows with it was a talmud music of the roads uh that they'll get the truth whether they like it or not but they'll get the truth and uh my program here is about it's a no holds barred type of uh interview and we talk from the heart and uh let the chips fall where they fall so i want to begin with i want to go back to your youth in the bronx just for a few uh for a few for a few minutes tell tell me tell me a little bit about uh your upbringing uh in the bronx uh you have to remember i grew up in the bronx uh there were over seven hundred thousand jews and i don't know if you had ten families that were serious shabbos i had uh the fortune that uh my mother gotta remember i'm a third generation american my parents were born in harlem and my mother was one of six children and she was the only one that really cared about yiddish kite i can't say that she understood or was totally observant at that time but uh she sort of with that already when i started public school first grade i went to haida that year then i had a lot of hashtag meaning the teacher as i write about in my seventh book which is i call it a scholarly memoir the teacher always had a problem with me i would be wild and she called for my mother and told her that look there's a third irish kid's a third italian and a third jews and your son is too bright but he learns in a half hour takes the rest an hour a week to learn so she suggested that my mother transferred me to a parochial school where there'd be a duel curriculum mr mime zikuni that solante yeshiva was five little blocks from my house the only parochial school day school uh call it what you wish in the bronx and beginning second grade i was in salata by seventh grade i had another great miracle and that we owe to symbol sudhihara who saved the mere yeshiva and uh in 47 part of the mir came in aliyah and part went to america and they many needed shidduchim and then they needed panasonic so all over the yeshiva day schools the few that they were picked up a lot of mirror the shanghai crowd we called them so in seventh grade my review in the morning was in yonko love it she didn't speak a word of english and i didn't speak a word of yiddish in eighth grade my rebbe was repented fishman and uh i intend to dictate my next book to the clinic's memory he had a great great impact on me uh i was 12 years old i was bar mitzvahed in this class and he treated me like an adult by that time already basic yiddish i knew uh and the citizenship and then the next mine heist he lived near my house as well uh he lived on walton avenue i lived washington it was a 10-minute walk i was there many friday nights and he introduced me to the problems of shanghai of going to shanghai going to kobe japan the whole question should you should you listen and take the false visas from simple sukihara introduced me to that problem introduced me to the problem of uh international decline how some of his friends were worried about jim kipper and they didn't want to leave for fear would they have to observe one day two days the whole mahlikers which i've lectured on extensively and uh they died afterwards they stayed behind and by after circuit you couldn't get out the nazis had come in and that was the enemy he and then i wanted i was a very bright kitten and i was accepted in bronx high school of science that's uh you know at that time for every jewish boy and girl brunch high school of science and he said to me [Music] yeshiva said you're not ready yet to go into the big world and i said but uh why mta why you the high school was already after interviews he'll arrange it and a week later i was sitting in front of mendelssohn son-in-law i write about it in washington and a fellow named berman who later went on to become a principal in a bachaca he was waiting for buckingham to get into the ravshire and he leaned over and said to me rabbi zaks means rashi it be good came and i read rashid i got him to the second year actually and i always was a year ahead of myself in other words when when i was already in fourth year high school i was in a college year with northbourne was always a year ahead of myself at northwestern and uh as they say the rest is history i also have to mention that the binet kiva also had a big influence me in other words uh i'm not about chivalry in that sense because from the age of 11 i was totally from and i didn't i always say about chivas to destroy your world and rebuild a new world yeah my my my world was always torah but the yeshiva was the yeshiva where do you get an atmosphere in shabbos and i used to walk um i didn't walk my walk was like 20 minutes at the other end of crotona park i mean you have to know the bronx these areas you can't walk in by day today let alone at night and um at the end of katana park was killed israel was a big rabbi doctor and that's where the neighbor met and beneath was a tremendous influence i i can mention you have no idea what idealism there was in banaya kieva at that time also i have to say i got to know brooklyn we would saturday night during the winter we would on tuesday we would go to the ken we'd meet them the week bring money for coffee leave it there and when there was a lawn mozzarella chavez we went to williamsburg we went to crown heights crown heights then was lubavitch was just beginning it was then a rabbi a kind of top ski rabbi baumo and oh what an experience replacer waldman was the same age as me the same shave it we became friendly he was brooklyn i was a bronx it was a wonderful experience the greatest gift i got was my wife uh she worked very far to come to the negative she lived further up in the bronx more north in a better area and uh as he stamped on on our father's side from belzer her father was a jingle in bells with pious now the works and and and have grandfather they went to the usual story they got to america after world war one and uh her grandparents remained showing shabbos 100 and her mother's family is in america from the 1870s in queens and mount evro mountain has great great grandparents buried there you can imagine what i'm talking about and and they were 100 from not only that part of the family with malachim the famous delicatessen that rabbi gifter said i would go to hear a dipstick says mrs schwarzen when he was in america on the east side not to hear him because after this year we used to go to the songs delicate present for the bush you know for for the salami and he was a mother and that's malcolm's great uncle malcolm's great is named after his sister manka and his sister also married a rabbi she was malcolm barish monk of stone parish malcolm's mother was a son when she married she became a grund and and she was a soul from her mother's side on her father's line she was brilliant i mean it's it's unbelievable i thank you i what i want to ask you now so then you meet the rov you come to to the rev to i want to i want to really talk for a few minutes now about that experience i mean in in in researching my book the love and the rebel which you so kindly endorsed it opened up for me i i want to tell you uh it opened up the new world and and i uh i banged myself that i could have gone to listen to some of the shiren because you know in the 70s i was i was a young bucker but uh you know no one told me and uh i missed out a great opportunity but uh i learned so much from researching him and and you had the source of being a talmud movie of his okay i want you for a few minutes to give our listeners and viewers uh a picture of what who the love was what it meant to be in a sheer and his vision his world vision and then and then i want to get to the the real issue that we we have to for you know talk about is why the right wing orthodox world uh didn't you know did not accept him even though in my humble opinion i think you'll agree he was probably the greatest potato scholar uh in in bomb in the last hundred years more than the biggest russia ship and i and i interviewed people i interviewed men who are not you know necessarily graduates of why you know that and then they agreed you know with their head to the right or the left you know but that of yasha bear's mind and house butter and articulation is is phenomenal and i just i just listened to a tape of this they have online and i'm mesmerized like hours and they just listen for hours to him and that's his dresses and you research not only to the russians but to his people in the scholarship so please address that right okay so let me begin at the beginning leave the torah and uh to me uh to learn that afghanistan was the greatest joy and remains the greatest joy of my life i mean we're talking now at uh 7 16. i can tell you four o'clock this morning already my camera was open and that's every day i before i dive in and everything so i really wanted to go to lakewood lakeland with the tremendous attraction and i have to tell you i uh became quite close to a baron cutler i have many stories it's not for now and i was learning in lakewood and i wanted to stay and my parents were hysterical that i won't go to college so i made a deal you know one of those deals look i'll give why you would try and if i don't like it i can go back to like what my parents should read i write about this in washington the first college lecture september 55 is the young man his first lecture in nyu [Music] feldman professor louis feldman and i come into the lectures that isaiah fatigue lebron miriam great great great people i come into the lecture and it gives out sheets about the hammurabi code and uh is can we prove the torah scientifically what's what do we value more tradition science and i looked at it i figured they're called hazard like uh like with yesterday what's going on well this man works in a harvard graduate had taught in trinity college before and he gives a lecture that lecture on the shovel mitzvah what he showed i have quoted that lecture at least one thousand plus times in my 62 years of teaching torah so with that lecture i was the happiest person in the world in you here i had in the morning of schmuel lays the vote tells and two years later i led a petition that we want to learn by the rev we were quit spanish we were kids how old was i a a a sophomore in college but no rebbe is good enough for me we gotta have the rub and the rubbers then only teaching post-graduate smika so uh i give rav shmuel belton credit he sat down with the rough you know they had a relationship going back to to the ref's first day in america basically because misha button got here 28 29 28 to canada 29 to new york and the rev got here in 32 got i mean to american 32 and raphael belkin actually taught for him in boston so uh the love agreed to give a college class and that's what he did for many many years there was a sheer tuesday wednesday the first year with the college kids who at three o'clock went to college and there would be a sheer afterwards in how the rav had all that energy was still in his prime and uh i i have to tell you where we learned from heaven with the rubbers the famous son hidden shame that everyone talks about that's the deal he basically taught what he didn't know that's what he taught me to do and all my life i've taught what i don't know he said it doesn't matter what to tell me to know or don't know whatever you will teach them will be new material but for you you got to keep on going and conquering and new material now he thoughts on hatred miss davis called me over the dean of the yeshiva the man who ran at the menachel and the legendary mr northern b abrams the son of the lamb and he changed his name from pakhta to abrams in honor of his father and it's a better name in america abrams than pasta so he called me over he says to me arnold that was my christian name arnold do you know that reshishima complaining to me they never learned sanhedrin in films and slap vodka and now they've got to give sharon because the rub if he's teaching slander and that was an eye opener for me and all my life the rebbe rebbe told me later again always teach what you don't know you will gain an autonomical gain if you teach what you know they will gain but you won't gain so it was an experience as you know it's legendary he could teach the same thing 20 years apart and it was the mccolecus with the kazoni shinsure 20 years later he gives the hazoni by the way professor brown writes about this in his true fabulous doctorate on the hazon 900 plus pages so at time it says rebbe 20 years ago it's reported you differed with the kazonish that's what i thought then now i've rethought it and this is my approach and if i agree with that he's wonderful and and the intellectual honesty was overwhelming what was interesting about the classroom was there was tension he demands he was not boston boston we got accomod joined the class from boston it's reuben happens to be where we're like this until today he's my own talmud he's from the day he retired he hasn't missed this year in 15 plus years in greece and the day he retired uh can you hold on one second tina i'm being interviewed for the states i must talk with you later okay oh i'm leaving for the dentist 11 30. okay bye bye honey bye bye family responsibilities i have grandchildren and great-grandchildren and mass coming over today um so uh yeah there was tension in the classroom because it's very demanding in new york it's reuben comes from boss that he was a maimonides graduate that plays a different role he says i can't believe what's going on here but in the classroom he had top minds and he wanted you to be tops to the second power very demanding and as rabbi norman lam said in his eulogy of the rav he said it's not the way to teach but somehow it worked now i have to tell you in my classroom it's just the opposite and one time an old-time talmud of the love you're i i i hope he's the life of you smoke cone if the name means anything to you he was from south america his father was a reverend south america he was older than i am and he came in aliyah much earlier when i when we came 53 years ago he was working for the misrata that taught already here a number of years so he came to my classes many years ago because he heard why you was beginning here gross and at the end of the class he broke into tears and he said can i say a few words to the students and he said you don't know how lucky you are he says you just heard a beautiful sheer but the rebbe there's no tension here he says he broke into tears he said why couldn't it be this way when we studied by the rub so barak hashem that was the rub and you had it you didn't walk in unprepared now what was beautiful about the rav and i've told this to my commitment many many times over and i got to know the rough person we remain very close till he took ill and alone was able to function we had a currency from the time i came in aliyah we corresponded in letters i went to see him when i was in america a number of times the rev remained the rub then i did my research and i even got to know the rub much much better and uh you see what characterized the love in lakewood it was liquid nothing else i once spoke i write about this i once put in new york times i have a student sitting in front of me who left lakewood and came became a comic book of mine and um he just told me that he the story i tell about i left the new york times on my bed on friday after the morning cider afternoon was off i wanted to look at the new york times it was 1953-54 and we come back it's ripped up in the garbage he said he was kicked out of lakewood because they caught him reading the new york times it was the terrible terrorist attack in israel talking about 20 years ago when low elena it was terrible here with buses blowing up and he wanted to read and they snitched on him to the rest of shiva so you see with the rub i'll characterize the rub very simply he was a brisket giant who happily lived in the western world there was no conflict you felt totally at home this year ended you went upstairs to college no contradiction totally at home it's the western world whether the rev would have believed this was absolutely necessary all right i make a living out of my lectures i'm comparing the rubs of future full tears that god commanded thorin derek harris a jew has to live and conquer the world and torah will succeed in every civilization i'm not certain the rub held like this look at my second volume where i quote rebbe where he explains the difference between himself and raphael the rev was a brisker maybe in an ideal world we don't have to step out of the tent of torah but the rav said it is a necessity it is reality today we have to live with dignity read it and there was no contradiction you wanted to be a rav you wanted to be a reshiva fabulous you wanted to go into medicine fine you wanted to be a lawyer no contradiction you wanted to go into academics but the basis is terror and europe shamayim and i remember when ravaged yosef came back from the first time he visited america and traveled kila tequila he told me but wherever he went there were people professionals lawyers academic people medical doctors and they have sharim on the highest level in shasom paiskim and he said that walter middle around soloveichik so see this is the rug so do you believe that the rev believed that his tell me them were on par with the slabot the love used to boast that i have come with him that would have been famous even in volatility uh okay i don't agree with him but but but i have to tell you uh there's look the proof of the pudding is i give sheer ingress people are listening to me in lakewood in near israel and you name the yeshiva i'm not talking why you why do i have the least following because they have barack hashem people i was honored by lakewood i don't tell you what chabad thinks of me label grown as late franklin uh my so it shows you we're on a level now i want to go back to a remark you told me that i i i still my head's spinning for them um 1967 that i've lost i think i believe three of his closest people his wife his brother and his mother you're going in the wrong order his mother his brother and his wife and yeah um and um the representatives a group of hasidim i think rabbi yeah jacobson a few elders right and you told me you were there at the time and uh when they left that i've made a comment i'd like you to repeat that because it's a phenomenal comment and a great insight no no the love first of all i was the only one there it was early the story was i already was arrest yeshiva nyu from 62 on until i came in l.a on 69. i'm still a teaching on the reach faculty but then i taught joseon pricecam today i teach myself caller tarakula on sunday and i play games with torah history on monday but i must be doing well in the games because i have a lot of wonderful students all over the show so why was i there so early because i had because i was teaching kids from that i had i gave 11 30 i believe it was 11 11 30. so i i told the talmidham look it's i'm going across the street the rubber sitting shiver in his mother's house across the street amsterdam avenue and he said i want to be menachem of my rebbe and you said so i went across the street and i was there with the rub it was nine o'clock actually and you know it's america not israel in israel nine o'clock already is a little it is the middle of the day in america it's still it's early and there's a knock on the door i say i'll get it i'll get it i run over to the door and i saw two jews with the longest beards i ever saw in my life later i learned that i became very close to robert gordon's son of shalom bear gordon we rabinated together in in the newark area and they came in and they said to to the rub this was all in the edition he said to the rav rabbi the the rave the eastern 770 the you know the rebel doesn't leave and where he is and he broke into a big smile and they started talking about the outbachem and the love in his experience and khaslovic and khabad and then he started talking about the rubber in in berlin in their relationship when they left the love turned to me and he he was very emotional you could see uh you know when the rev told the story he relived it he i i quote the rub in my published works on him that people don't have to have image memories and their people have event memories image memories they remember dimly an event memory is something you relive he spoke about the difference between a man and a woman when a man talks about them my daughter just called so she was a little girl he dimly remembers his wife will tell you the shoes she was wearing in this picture when she was two years old where she bought the shoes how the daughter reacted where she got the that's an event memory the rov relived the berlin and then he said to me there was a big difference between us no one knew who i was he says you know you come i was dressed i look like everyone else clean shaven and the chirp yeah they're pictures of the rub a young man in the prime of life western dress the rebbe everyone nuki shemashem the love it was just beautiful his dress his deportment his heritage his ancestors it was overwhelming to hear the rub describe who he was married to his father-in-law as everyone knew who he was now then later we learned that the rub was one time that i became to visit him in his apartment and the rub offered him yeah you know uh luck and a drink and the rabbit didn't and it wouldn't take and wouldn't take and then the rev learned that uh twice a week that ebba was fasting and these were days that the that he didn't eat or drink monday thursdays i would imagine and he'd rather later learned that the rabbit had a key to the mikvah that he could go and be tougher to go every day and there was a a a beautiful i would say emotion of the feeling between two individuals who became the greatest representatives of torah of the hasidic world and the literature world in modern times so so go back that's what i asked you earlier you didn't address it yet why didn't the right-wing orthodox yeshiva world embrace thereof look the right-wing yeshiva world has made many hashgraphic mistakes along the way the state of israel would be very different if we had made the right decisions a hundred and twenty hundred and thirty years ago when uh other people criticize the state of israel i smack their face and say we have these problems because you're not here if you'd be here be a different state you come your ballot is your bullet everyone can vote here vote properly i personally uh don't care vote vote i vote miss rocky but vote properly vote for a party that will guarantee that this will be a jewish state i need not tell you what we're suffering right now within government not that bennett is the kiddish hashem whereas the kippah puts on twilight every day is a shame in chavez we've never had a prime minister that was a total shomer like naftali bennett his wife and children but on the other hand he created a government where you have to reprieve every other day you know the panama churro of good israel wanted him to head the ticket of aguta and he said i'm not rich enough to be in the knesset what do you mean what are you talking he says to be in the knesset and hear me speak for instance you got a refree you're on the spot i don't have enough money to buy a new suit every day so had we made the right decisions it would have been a different israel to say look with the rub it's the same story i you've heard me speak more than once i plead with my students i plead with my family my grandchildren my great-grandchildren are ready not to have them that people's the charade we have a terrible problem in israel the army i don't have to elaborate now if you're really a from jew you should walk with black gods kick the mahala shabbis out of the army the gemaran saita the rule membership out of the army but we know the problems i but i explained to them look the kharadim so-called it's uh a non-prejudiced term today non-pejorative term uh hurray them are worried stiff they look at what became of the ashkenazic jew left the ghetto look what became of us millions of non-jews including many that have been in in the american government look at the government today look at biden's family all married to jews these are jews look at the secretary of state look at the ambassador to israel the chutzpah the picket ambassador who's into married and is proud of it proud of it children and non-jews god have mercy the charade were frightened rav shark used to say privately about the rav rav shah couldn't deny he was as he said the greatest little shigon in the 20th century but rafael now this is why the in america you educate a kid don't go to college don't go to college well out of the world the living panasonic dignity all right why you they do it but we can't we can't risk it we can't take the chance in israel the problem's much greater because number one it's a jewish state if we're not going to be the doctors the dentists the nurses the army the professionals the bankers etc who will be number two you got to remember you're living in brooklyn when you take off your trill and everything you do is not a mitzvah i'm living in israel everything i do is billion eric israel according to the rambam one of the kayak mitzvahs of eric israel so we have a great challenge i say the you world people like myself like my children my grandchildren many of my students we have to set the example that one can leave the ghetto as if to speak and be a gong exotic a husset and contribute to the big world living dignity i'll give you a simple example what we're talking about i'm sitting here in my office in gris you see here a picture that my uh that's it show my finger that picture that's uh my gra my grandson who's an artist a graduate of betsalo and a fabulous young man just married this masonic audition this past year and did a picture for me of his the army and it's like the mafique is talking to me that he's proud that he can combine the army with torah and uh it's not easy and it takes a long time for the world to adjust now let me just say one more thing in america you're adjusting you've come up with so many different systems how to go to yeshiva and go to the computer take a few college courses and get a degree at one time near israel was unique they had a deal with johns hopkins uh rebellion tray was not happy with net israel not happy with the bjack of weinberg today every last yeshiva is doing it i had a town that heard me speak must be 15 years ago it was in mia yeshiva very prominent lakewood family very prominent shane dove i don't want to mention the name but ashamed of lakewood and he heard me speak made up his mind is going to be my talmud you got to know who we're dealing with he made up his mind he's going to conquer the world so uh he calls yu he wants to go to griscolliff they say do you have a college degree he says no he said bruce kohler you must have a college degree one year later he has a college degree became my talmud move studied with me many years then after that sleepy went back to mir and i went to i i went to visit him in here and he showed me around and there were many time with him there who listened to me via why you torah and then i get a gift a cup which is on my desk the water i drink when i give share and there's a picture of my dear talent and yours truly standing in front of it says you shiva near you to shalin the entrance and on the cop he quotes the mission in makkah ha but you know it's a it's a play on words because when i work in tamir fishman he's alive he's there i it's what what a wonderful experience mark and i can tell you more than that i have prepared sherm i've been teaching torah for 62 years after rapunzel would be kind to me i need another 60 years what i have prepared for the monday class on eastern europe and uh it saw the result of rab geshen yankolovich my seventh year rebbe and my eighth year ebby i want to know first now i want to go turn now to an another issue so um [Music] over your years we've spoken about this i don't know if it actually happened but you had a very strong uh passion and desire that they start teaching somehow the citizens at the uh yeshiva university um you told me about this and then uh rabbi moshe weinberger became a master there i don't know if that's a result of your efforts but uh or not but i i i wanna i i think you once told me that like you know have one you made such a comment to me once like and and but you know you're you're a deep person you're not a shallow person so what is it that you see in hasidis and and it's not just about this it is um what is it that you see in it that you feel can be helpful uh to today's you uh students and and even from judaism and students today and how does lobovich play a role in that okay i i have to tell you you're touching upon something that motivates me very deeply and let me uh go back to my earliest years i get off the bus on amsterdam avenue in washington heights coming up from the bronx and i walk uh for three four minutes and uh here i am an american kid is english baseball joe dimaggio ted williams then usually barracks and they open up the door of the yeshiva and within a second manspracht [Music] with the tel sarashashiba's son rabbinovich with pine rabbinovich's son at one time he said that he was calling up time says that manic reprimand i said the pine brisk he cut my head off i am blessed it was a different world and i loved it and that's what attracted me the love of the learning tell me would that attract the youngster today and we're talking by the way israel is much more important to me than america obviously yeah we have the same problem would that attract the youngster today so i'm going to give a big talk on this on april 4th my talk is entitled it's a special event bmt the institution that changed the anglo-torah world and you have to know david shove okay how do we reach out now today in my humble opinion you must have emotion you can't just depend upon intellect and learning and more than that not everyone has such a deep intellect we have to reach out to them to to israel and you get to barack hashem this we have thousands upon thousands tens of thousands of students i'm talking in in in the torah world and i'm talking in my torah world the mizraki torah world you have different institutions but you the western world is such a challenge the computer it's a global village the the woke society what i call direct regressives i don't want to use the word progressives we are being hit so hard statistics show that litvakin who survived the holocaust have a much higher percentage of assimilation than the hasidim who survived the holocaust i can tell you what you may or may not know but malta's relative my wife's relatives told me they went to the pier to greet the sixth rebbe when he arrived in 1940. there were advertisements that represented the six trevors coming etc and when remember he was in a wheelchair and when they wheeled him down the gangplank and he reaches the shore there were a few thousand people there people started to cry and they struck up in one of the rivers negan's from the alberta one of the ten and they signed my my wife's cousin told me this with tears in his eyes and later i read it in in memoir literature and people americans who were raised from chabad shabbos they became sean ray shapis on the spot that amazon america we have to become good users see that's the emotion that they have from hasidis now i want to make a comment this was told to me to the women when they came home and told their wives i responded they're not going to work they said you do what you want but we're not giving up on 10 o'clock uh uh every shoppers we have at the hairdresser saturday night they used to go out to the movies you don't remember that america there was no tv and no computer you went to the movies the palace the ikea palace etc and and they have to have their hair looking nice they didn't go you know when they gave up the appointments when their kids were going already to yeshiva and the kid came home mama were embarrassed what a wife will do for a husband is a lot less than she'll do for a child that's when that is so you see that emotion now i want to tell you something in my research i came across you know that was the first real hasidishi yeshiva not just princess and kleisman lawrence you know from haifa here and there it was it was it was desolatory it was an organized this was real organization organized was 1897 i believe by the rashad but he saw it times are changing so what what it meant the first hour they learned hasidis then it was a regular yeshiva give me a name of the graduate some of the graduates know rabbi issa fraser the rocket shepherd what he couldn't learn that nishiki kemplarinen you follow he was a graduate i knew a rabbi nathan zuber did you know rabbi nation friendship um i met him once yes uh i sat with him but they did him he was good friends from my types and i wrapped my pipes with my role model remember i'm in the wrapping that i was being into wrapping it they're shots and by the way he used to boast that the rashad was very upset with him because he wrote a shiver and they they wrote it to me that you're allowed to shave i wish it took me he says to me when i first met him he says my greatest compliment i ever got the raf shop said to me karen in lane and ken still over a shake it's pissed and by the way great grand family of his have been in touch with me that's correct he used to vote for everyone so i told my commitment i had the same thing in in the 50s i set as far in class and the rebels had to be response to a reform rabbi and the whole class was laughing it came up on the tape i played the paint they sent me the tape and i played at the hearing class and i said i'm very proud that shows the rough thought of me daddy enough to put me down but if he doesn't think of you why should he put you down you're nothing to begin with this night you're a former rabbi but i said my classmates laughed too much because later in this year there have no if she come in i say cry you know he sort of backed off a little bit that what i said had a little force but uh this is why i feel you has so many different divisions frankly i'm not happy with all the divisions uh kids while they're around on campus without key pot this has already been public knowledge i saw with my own eyes when you brought me back and honored me a few years ago but kids wander around without the part that come why you they come with israelis they're french and it's been commentators written about it imagine in an addition to the yeshiva program and the basement risk program and the jewish studies program so we had a ton program one hour you can take other classics from but that's what's widely studied i can tell you in israel and uh have a division you'll have to build the mikvah where i'm sitting right here and next door is makong lev you know mahon left yeah sure you know that they built the state of the art mix for do you know why because they have hundreds of them coming to makong lev and they have to automate for every day so why yield the buddha make for the new york times can choke uh let them write about the mikvah let jewish week write about the mikra why you builds a state of the art mikvah i'm sure they can get a donor within minutes and and i hold would add a lot to the campus and if they're sitting they'll be a little bit of outreach what's wrong outreach we need it so why haven't they accepted your idea unfortunately some of the key faculty members have a very different opinion about hasitat i can tell you i had a big argument i don't want to mention names that people i grew up with and love and their you know intellectual friends and we share a lifetime together so right here in the basement must be 20 years ago they were i don't embarrass cabaret i don't want to quote what they said and they argue with me and we had a big argument all the students hurt and um then they go back to america and i hear uh they lost out so my students said lost out on a communal level not in yuyu they control they're the the thrill there and uh so i said rebbe you won i said gentlemen i didn't win anything kessif so they looked at me what do you mean i said gentlemen they went back and it reached the oh you kashrut that they have a problem with the messianists so they were told this is what i'm told by raphael nakamura if we don't accept masking from the hasidic world meaning namely khabad you can close the yoyo down all right as they whiteness you follow yeah it was that far that's why they can't go but i want to tell you it is very affording and frustrating to me i spoke the new president is my own talmud rabbi berman but with all the respects to rockefeller he doesn't carry influence in washington heights and uh nothing has happened and i think i think by the way in a financial level it ultimately will bring in a lot more funding for yeshiva university well let's let's conclude we have another uh five minutes let me conclude with um the question and issue what do you see labavich today you you've seen la bavich chabad in its infancy i mean um you know what i'm saying uh you're from the 1930s uh 40s 50s you don't even start to understand what's been going on from this very office the last few days uh i think you know uh again i i get very upset that people call my monday class and it's hear me sunday shout outs places it's a world going on there but the monday class is more attractive because you don't need a background the sunday class if you have a thousand dotham or under your belt it's a lot easier to follow me but the monday class every time dick and harry can can come in and be atoned with so right now i'm in the history of touring the modern world it's about the 12th in in in the western world it's about the 12th year and i'm on soccer now so uh i'm about this coming uh monday i'm actually going to quote the satmar from the all moshe where he quotes the rashad and and it's well known that we're exactly anti-zionist like satman so i made this statement more than once that the chabad may be anti-zionist it's true they don't sing for no one has really changed the formerly the position of the rashaba 120 30 years ago against zionism i said but the rebbe is the greatest zionist in the world and a talmud a talmud of mine a dear countless son of a talmud very prominent in israel he takes issue with me writes to me once i speak twice he's on screen but no one can talk while i'm teaching it's only after but he's on screen at the the zoom and how can you say in khabad is that so i answered and a combovic listening from i guess your area of brooklyn that's the whole thing with emails you don't know where it's coming from but he's been in touch with me listening he sends me a link to a talk that yohuda avner conference it must be 12 13 years ago i think it was 208 if i recall and you know by the way i told his daughter i'm not a stranger to the family and he was the ambassador to england and he's an english jewish i'm a torah mitzvah but a fine english jewish gentleman living in israel many years and he was very high working an advisor of begin and barack and robin you named him he was involved an ambassador to england the queen said to him i can't understand how someone who speaks the queen's english cannot live in england you know how you choose israel over england and in his talk at uh the schluthem conference he gets hysterical yes chabad is technically not zionist but the greatest zionist we ever had was the seventh rebbe and he goes on to tell stories that even yitzhak rabbin was blown away you ever have been he took rubbing rabbits what am i going for what i have to do with these black-headed people and he walked out of there i can't believe what that man knows what they says the average coverage in israel doesn't know what's going on israel as well as the rebbe and i don't have to tell you today about it around the world ukraine russia israel chabad it's unbelievable what one man the seventh rabbit created about it i'm gonna have to stop i do want to continue at another time it's a sham because it's phenomenal phenomenal and bar hashem that able to bless you should be young and energetic and your your mind should work be sharp and your memory because you have what i what i hear you and i talk to you i i you know i love this stuff as you know and i write about it extensively so we have commonality there and it's it's it's it's csv gold you know speed is gold so thank you very much and we'll be in touch thank you