What's R' Orlofsky's Favorite Shmuel Kunda Tape?

Hi, this is David Olowski with a question and answer series. What is Rabolowsk's favorite work of Ribul Kunda? Every now and then people say, uh, why don't you only deal with serious questions? Because, uh, I'm not a serious guy and my audience aren't serious people and so I deal with whatever questions come my way. But this is to me a particularly uh, important topic and I'll tell you why. [snorts] because um many years ago uh is it 20 years maybe 25 years ago I don't know uh the English Hamodia asked me to write a column on it was very interesting there was somebody who was writing and they wanted to have another perspective then they added a third person when they added a four fourth person writing I said then I'm not really that important so I dropped out but um uh but at the time it was just uh two of us writing So I wrote every other week and uh uh I would try to find topics that I thought would be relevant to people lisa not just theoretical and in fact I have a whole folder of half finished articles that I had written because I was halfway through and I said this sounds trit. [laughter] It's not edgy. It's not edgy enough for me you know. So uh so at one point I wrote a column on children's tapes because that was in fact something that was important to me. Um I had a lot of kids and they listen different tapes and not all the time do I feel like uh proper Torah values are coming across in children's tapes. Right now I I'll give you a little example and I don't mean this to be in a bad way. Um uh country yasi had the uh ki and tuki series. Now he has some brilliant work. Deaf man in the is is is a masterpiece. He has some really wonderful things. But what I didn't like about this is that Ki who's the good kid and uh Tuki who's like the troublemaker. Tuki is a lot more fun and kids relate a lot more to Tuki than they do to Ki. So whereas Ki I remember there was one part where Ki says, "Well, I learned today and I ded and and Country is like, "Oh, okay. Okay, that's that's enough. What about you, Tuki?" you know, and he says all kinds of crazy stuff and that's the fun part. So the kid who's the nice, good, smart, decent kid is tolerated and the other kid is like, you know, the the troublemaker was like, what? You know, it's like it's so much more fun. So I don't think that's a good value to give across. That's that's personally. But I was always impressed with Kunda tapes and a lot of them. So what I wrote that in my column, I wrote that I feel like not only does he have wonderful content, but uh some of these tapes are things that can be enjoyed by all ages. And that's really the key. The key, you don't want to do a children's tape that's only for like really little kids. You want something that's going to be fun for everybody. Um I bring as example the Purim story uh by the two fellow there in Cleveland. It's not PUM in any of my children's houses and they're all in their 30s and 40s unless they play the PUM tape. They grew up on it and it was fun. There's jokes there that kids can't possibly get. You know, you want to make that call Persian to Persian. That's personto person. They don't even have that today. You know, it was a it was an old kind of thing. There were a lot of old jokes there that the parents got a kick out of. And it was fun for the children, too. So, there was something for everybody. That's really the key to a Jun's day. So I said that the overall I thought was the Zade is young series especially, you know, the first two. They're so much fun and they're so educated and the whole family can enjoy it and all the values are wonderful. And that was what I had said what I wrote is what I wrote. The English and had just started. I don't know what the circulation was. It was it was very very new. I don't ever know. It's sort of like, you know, when I when I make these videos, at least I have some way of figuring out how many people watch them and for how long. And some of them I I can track down some of the numbers. But um uh but when you write an article, who knows? Yeah. Anyway, I get a call from Schmal Kunda and and this is the Musah skill that I I wanted to bring out. He says to me, I want to thank you so much for your column. I made a copy and sent it to my mother that she should have some nas. Now I'm some young guy writing in a brand new English publication is an institution in CLA and he said to me, "No one ever acknowledged what I do. No one has ever publicly pointed out that I'm prepare that I'm making materials, you know, for for that are enjoyable. I I was blown away. Who could guess that with just some nice words that you make an observation that that it could be so meaningful to somebody? And then he told me something that that I found uh um especially interesting. Um he said if you w look at all my early stuff Barak's braas and things like that all of the songs were basically songs that I borrowed the tunes and changed the words. Um but I realized he said that I have to make my own tunes and I know nothing about composing. So I asked to give me that ability. So the songs on Zetia is young, you know, I am the mayor and you know and here comes the street the trolley here comes the trolley all those songs he just wrote the music himself. I said how do you just compose? I've never figured it out. I I have two sons who compose music but I don't know how to compose music. He says, "I asked the kaj for the kayak and he gave me the kayak." And uh and then a few weeks later, um one of his uh kids apparently dropped off all of his CDs in my mailbox. So that was an extra. But I wasn't asking for that, you know. And obviously a lot of them are fun, you know. They're fun characters. It's fun routines. You know, the talking coins and the longest pesak and you know, these kind of story things. They're fun. the the test is whether or not it can uh you can listen to it over and over again. And uh that's how I felt about a lot of them I enjoy, but the zadei is young. The the first two are just I could just listen to them over and over again. The music's great. The songs are great. So that's my kundari. Thank you for listening.