JNet Appreciation Event 2014

good evening it's great to see so many familiar faces here tonight for those of you who have not yet had our opportunity to meet personally my name is yeho the dukes and on behalf of [Music] on behalf of janet i would like to welcome you to this evening of appreciation i've heard many reasons from people as to why they would sign up or volunteer for jnet one of the more common ones seems to be i was harassed so many times by a janet coordinator until i agreed to do it but we all know that the real reason why we do this is first and foremost because we're siddhim and shlochim of the rabbah and so poison let us hear and be inspired in the words of the rava a short clip on what it means to be a shleak so as we see from the words of the rava we have all been appointed as shlokhim and the uniqueness of is that it combines our efforts with the power of the misaliach with the power of the rabbah and so it is a great honor for me to introduce a person that was appointed by the rubber to advance schlicher's all over the world janet's chairman and the vice chairman of marcus rabbi maisha kotlarski [Music] [Applause] [Music] maybe it's better that way you can understand china janet has called this as an evening of appreciation to all of the volunteers that give so much of their time but i believe it is my duty to and a pleasure actually to single out someone that take it lives up to everything that they're ever said in the secret and took janet as his personal schliches and is dedicated to it to an arbitra in the scene that sits in the chair and makes the calls and makes it and does everything that is necessary assisted by kaikohen who is doing it in spanish and champton who helps in general but i want to really give a yashikaya to them and especially to rabbi uni dukes who pressure this is his life [Applause] [Music] but that claw and lubavitch were not used to evenings of appreciation it's a very very rare thing that we should get together for evenings of appreciation so to speak is something that is i was thinking to myself what could i say it tonight and i you know last sunday by my nicole sidder party mendel brickman's alumni foreign spoke in the name of the parents and he told the story and the story was that and i actually repeated in miami on monday by the dinner of the landau yeshiva that there was a town so it came to see the guy and they applied for the position and they were impressed by the way it is ready to give him the job before they give him the job they asked him where's your kabola where's your certificate it says i left it home so he said we can't give it to you can't give you the job until we see the kabbalah that you have kabbalah it says i'll take two three weeks till i get it so he said no send somebody to get it we can't give you the job until you have the cabola two days later they come over to me standing in the stairs someone comes over to him and he says to him and they come over at mishlochus and they say we're missing our mulamid maybe you could become the mulamid for so he turns to them and he says the ottomans isn't you're not ready to trust me with a chicken and a cow without my certificate and here you're ready to take me to be a malamate for your children up check the night of kinder just on my looks and that was the end of it you are entrusted with bringing the rebels mithsa tata and in many many cases so the mavistance kinder was in the tinder people that don't have a background i told another story that i heard from rabbi kharkov many years ago that there was a love in north carolina in the 30s that he was the love of a city alone with a long beard afraid saita should have he knew at the basket he knew how to speak he knew i didn't have to answer it they were paying him 8 a week there came a younger element and they came in and they decided that he is no good and they brought someone from yu then and they were paying him 40 a week so rabbi kharkov tells me he says added he can't damn yid when he came to america in the early forties his dad rav amalgi comments on freedom and he met him so he tells me a story like this that sheboygan wisconsin was a lubavitch's nusa karish tattle at the turn of the century there were 22 nosakari schools in sheboygan all the farmers from shadri and gerson moved to move to wisconsin because that was the place for dairy farmers for egg farmers to raise cattle one of these old-time farmers went to visit his daughter in chicago came to visit his daughter so she took him to the museum took him to see a museum he comes into the museum and what does he walks around and he sees a golden chicken i get guilt at the chicken he takes a look and he looks so real so real he turns to the guy his daughter and his daughter turns to someone he says this will cost us how much does it cost so the guy says the museum paid in those years eighty-eight thousand dollars to buy it he takes a look at him he's looking he's looking and he turns to his daughter and he says may delamina by me on the farm i have a live one for 17 cents the picture of rembrandt with the bowl of fruit sold recently for 23 million dollars you could buy all of the fruit in that basket for six dollars and fifty cents and then a shoprite or even an empire closure which it will cost you six seven dollars the fact of the matter is like this that was the rebel kimont was the accident doesn't need a certificate why because other hottest in heartson and if he doesn't have it with his full heart he doesn't have it at all and we're not giving over something that's ki gild it we're giving over a word from rebin you're teaching someone olive base teaching someone opposing murder you're not giving over gilda tazaki you're not giving over things that are that are gold-plated and gold coated or even pure gold you're giving over divar hashem was in that the abyss that gave unseen night to marshall so i want to give you the broker that is in this week's posture this week's posture we find that i'm sorry nobody ever calls me in this week's partial we find that after the michigan is standing and everything is in its place israel may it be the will that the divine presence should rest in the works of your hands still when would you want michelle maynard to give up when you go out to raise money you need a brock information you need a broker from the rabbit no broker for maisha rabino when you're going to make the plans for myself you have to build it it should come in on time construction should be on time it should be to the specifications that there was it says in departure this week i think 23 times key kashatseva here the michigan is standing in its entirety and all of a sudden moshe comes and he says i'm going to give you a block of a very close salvation the only time in the theater in which we find that mushroom gives a bracha the claudius roll and we'll talk not about this it doesn't say that i'm giving them a break build me a michigan and all rest we did everything the way you wanted we brought money till you had to scream say you know it's a good look singing look we built it it was built according to your specifications now you're coming and you're saying here that's a shitty this is what you're saying to us now this is what we deserve after everything we did according to the way we you wanted it now the answer to that is it says he wrote in the abuse wasn't talking about the abhishek he turned to claudia's role and he said taki you built it it's beautiful everything is beautiful now you hear us may it be your will that the divine presence that the shrine should rest in what you build so you put in time you put an effort you put it you did everything but now what is going to come with it now i give you each abraha that each one of you has one j net conversation you could maybe have two you could have three the j net should be a vehicle not for the amount that there are now but for shisham ribri me israel and that each and every one of you that are investing so much time into this if them come down the ashoka for doing whatever wants them you accomplished it's a thing that is with that i don't know where it comes in the word appreciation for but the way you do it on the ib given kite with which you do it and the follow-up that there is the only bracket that maybe i could give you is may it be the will that in each and every person that you invest time that each and every person that you put in your heart and your soul and your best of your capabilities to bring him to a life of traitor to a life of mitzvos to advance interior to advance the mitzvos tillman with robert mountain parties vayaka because they're the last option in base the last week before comes on another amazon senior then some will come now before gimmel thomas not what you see them do everybody should be mushri on 20 people in that which you're doing the should rest and the rebels should be part and parcel of the lives of each and every one of the people that you're making to him dave saw yemen in a personal way gesund to and from all of your loved ones those that are bokram and each other should find them and they should have naka and those that need on the on the women's side that nietzsche dukkham should find them on the ricket is you should have a lot of money to be able to dedicate your whole life to janet and to me when he makes a phone-a-thon the teachers should be the first ones that are donating even though you're giving so much of your time so that we cover a good part of the budget but judy covers a good part of the budget also and dave she should give you yuri you should be mad and you should see that thank you all very very much [Applause] thank you very much robert kotlarski and thank you very much for giving me the privilege to be able to do this lithus we all also um we we owe a great achara satay as well to the rohr family for giving the grant which started janet and to robert katarski for ensuring for working hard to ensure that janet continues thank you very much [Applause] but that brings me to the reason we're here tonight and like robert katarski said and that reason is you thousands of people are affected every single week on all the continents of this world yes we actually had a harusa in antarctica at one point [Applause] all of these people are affected because you pick up the phone or get on the computer and do your part in being the rabbishlyach to affect your kavruza zevolun brewer a rice farmer from sakonakon thailand can now read hebrew thanks his cavrusa ely hanover sandra a college professor in manhattan developed a beautiful relationship with her with her havrusa and hamadina zurkin and recently unfortunately she had she actually went and had to visit her for a shiva call and uh sandra recently took upon herself to start doing satora every day so it's a uh it's it's it's amazing the effect that we can have been sian gottlieb oliver ashalam said that the most meaningful part of the last two years of his life he was suffering from parkinson's lailenu was the the time that he spent learning gemara with his harusa rabbi israel rosen and richard singer civil engineer from new jersey recently celebrated his bar mitzvah at age 65 due to the dedication and he read as after in the show rabbi gurkov in wayne new jersey uh due to the dedication of islam yasi goldberg not all of you may have experienced such amazing obvious results from the learning but it's important to recognize that every conversation that you have can have a tremendous impact on someone's life an example of this it was a young man from california was backpacking through peru met a couple of marcus who said you know you if you're interested in why don't you try janet he signed up he was he was matched with bachara here in crown heights they had one conversation and that was it about a year later i reached out to him and asked if perhaps the reason he hadn't gotten back was because it wasn't such a great connection with taharusa or something like that and he said on the contrary at the time he was his life wasn't so settled he wasn't really ready to sit down and learn regularly every week but he said that one in conversation that he had with that bachr he had grown up with a modern orthodox background and dropped everything in yiddish kite he said that because of that one conversation it inspired him and he decided to start putting on film every day again so it can be just one conversation every single time you pick up the phone every single time you connect with someone you never know how much of an effect this is going to have on your havrusa and it does have an effect and so i want to thank you so much for volunteering and i'd like to ask everybody to please give yourselves a big round of applause for all the amazing shlokas that you do [Music] [Applause] hashem janet has been growing and flourishing we just completed our first venture into online class into online courses and the feedback has been amazing and we plan on offering more online courses like these in the future we also initiated learning campaigns for for for special hasidic days throughout the year to connect many more people to the rabbistera we also started this year a monthly volunteer for a monthly raffle for the volunteers and congratulations to zaldi namanov and to zusha griezmann the first two winners this year fill out that survey this month and you might be the winner this for this next month's raffle i would like to thank very much um our coordinators mushki shantov our our women's coordinator who has been doing such an amazing job managing our women's division and uh a lot of the other amazing work that needs to happen behind the scenes at jnet [Applause] [Music] our spanish coordinator who has been doing an amazing job now we now have over 220 people learning every week in spanish and he's also now working on he's also now working on off on on providing classes online in espanol as janet volunteers we're always looking to make a greater impact and so we decided to turn to an experienced educator who has also been a very dedicated janet volunteer uh to offer us his insights into how to improve our and enhance our harusa experience and so without further ado i'd like to introduce rabbi leifke kaplan [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay it's a humbling experience here so on your tables you have a little card to take along with you that was drafted which uh from it those are my notes basically so if i get stuck anywhere you'll help me out so i just want to begin that generally speaking when we talk about torah the the feeling that's connected to learning torah is love while mitzvahs are something that requires kabbalah soil discipline commitment dedication torah is a different type of experience it's one that we we should enjoy it's one that we should love some of us are raising children and some of us are observing others who are perhaps struggling and raising their children and one of the challenges is learning and if we think about the fact that during the teenage years or also during in other words the adolescent years and the teenage years what happens in the child's life is that we spend most of the time learning versus kim hamitzvis later on in life our focus is more on kim mitzvis while in the beginning of our life we spend much more time learning and that would make sense since as young children and teenagers sometimes we're not very fond of rules which is what mitzvahs are mitzvahs are rules they're procedures but learning is something that everyone enjoys so if we could find a way to have our children enjoy learning then that balances out the limitations or perceived limitations that mitzvahs bring i had the good fortune of teaching for a number of years at mesifta in ole torah here in crown heights and at the end of the year there would be a great mesiba a great gathering where all the bakrim who the talmidim who learned by heart all of musaf the sukkah which has learned legersa in yeshiva would be they would be there was a test a little bit of a you know over an overview of the maserta and then the prizes would be given out and they would bring a speaker to present at this event uh through the years i would always ask myself how is it what is it about certain people that i met in yeshiva teachers bakrim that they loved learning and i i thought to myself at a certain point that no one's born with their love of learning it actually it has to be cultivated and so in effect whenever you see someone who enjoys learning there's someone else behind that that nurtured and developed that ava to learning torah and in my mind by this point it was something that was made up i like i knew that that's the way it was any booker anybody younger it doesn't matter so here we are we're sitting at this event at the end of the year and all the time you know the talmudim will learn palpate they're sitting on the deus and then there are the magi shear sitting on the other side i'm sitting among them and the speaker that's brought in to speak that night is rabbi wright portrait of ichira wrightport from boro park a well-known london event that ever writes about him some layless kyomim who learns day and night mahabharat of many sforum and as he's walking in the door i'm thinking to myself who is it that gave him the avas toyota that he has and it's obvious that he loves learning you start talking to him about learning and his eyes light up he gets so excited you know he's no longer tired he becomes animated so he walks in and out of courtesy he's a busy person immediately the program is stopped and the menial gets up and he says we have this russ rabbi wrightport and he calls him up to speak and rabbi rayport gets up and the first words that came out of his mouth he said my my teacher rabies of goldberg in bruno who was a noted magicir and he was a true ayat of terror and all his talmidim literally every person who sat at his table walked away with a love of learning so there was my answer so we have this tremendous achrayas to share with our chavrusis and truth in truth it really is a chavrusa because you know often mahadusa says to me oy i appreciate your time and i feel so uncomfortable and i know you're busy and so on and so forth and you're teaching me teaching me this teaching me that and i always my response is always the same it's a havrusa it's a partnership i am benefiting from this more than you know and more than you are and that in truth the way it is it's not just something to say something to repeat so we have this great opportunity to share with someone the love of yiddish kite in a way there's no angle so to speak in yiddish skype that's that brings more joy than learning terra i want to share a little madrish before we go to our points that we have on the cards and talk about some practical tips that we can apply to our havrusa sessions so the measure says like this and it's a mysore so you'll bear with me here for a few minutes so there's a myself with rabbi mahal he was walking traveling encounters a person who looks very impressive so amulet abiana says to him can i invite you over would you come to my home for a meal um he replies in absolutely so he brings him into the house he fed him he gave him to drink and through the conversation but qabimikra he starts you know putting out feelers if the person knows hummish and unfortunately valois mata he didn't find the person to know humish and then it continues he tested in the mishnah and then valois was very disappointed here sits an ignoramus and in a final moment before the end of the meal he turns to him and he says at least bench for us and the guy turns around tayana and he says it's your home you bench in other words i can't says to him can you at least repeat the words that i'll say say he says sure he says say after me emir say after me oh a dog ate yanai's meal the guy jumped up and he grabbed yanai and he called him a thief he says you're a thief you're holding back my inheritance rabbi says what are you talking about he says i remember i was walking by a haider i was passing by a base suffer i was walking by a haider and i heard the voice of children and they said and he said they didn't say kehilas yanai they said so you have what is mine and so yana is taken aback and they have a you know a little exchange and he says well you know tell me what you do and the guy says he describes two of his traits he says i've never heard any lash and hara about someone and gone back and repeated it to the person and i've never walked past the fight without bringing peace between the two people and abhyana is very impressed and he says on this person the possum the son derek a person who appraises his path a person who's careful about what he does and he says soggy chavez has great value so many you know many many who read this madrish what they take from the madrid is you see not everything is learning here you have a person who has other great qualities that are not to be dismissed but on the other hand what we should also not forget is that this person with all his qualities he turns to janae and he says toyota's mind too i am not satisfied with my proper conduct there were many generations in the world before toyota was given so there is the indian of chesad before torah but still terra is my right no matter who the person is no matter what kilmattara is and it's important to note that the outer ebba has a unique approach to toyota learning that is particular to the altar and the rabbit quotes this many many times in the torah whereas other paiskim say that a person who's a russia should not be taught tyra so lest they might use it for a negative thing the altarebit on the contrary says that we should teach torah even to someone who is a russia etc because the moyu shiba the light will bring him back lumutov so we don't judge where our chavrus are holding akira mater of mitzvos the only thing we know is that they want to learn and we are the ones who have this khus to bring them the torah and hopefully we bring it to them in a loving way so i want to share just a few points that we can use and of course we always go back to our old habits but if we keep them in mind at least one or two of these enhancements as they're called on the card hopefully we'll have a more pleasurable experience so the first thing is when we learn we have a chavrusa we should have a goal um setting a goal not only in that i'm not talking about that particular session but overall what is it that you would like to accomplish we heard earlier about someone who read the master in school someone who wants to go through a particular text and it's important to guide the decision many times during the summer i had this host for many years to work for the national committee at the ivy league tara study program and we had an elective course which at the second week we had one slot where the students would choose what they would like to learn and we slowly learned that the students don't really know what it is they want to learn they hear they have these things in their head and at the second we could say oh what would you like to learn oh i want to learn cabola i want to learn safer yet i wanna you know something that they have no idea what it is so obviously depending on who our chavrus is and we have a discussion and guide them to really you know yes avert under parsha is nice but sometimes having a fixed goal of something that they'd like to achieve can be extremely rewarding and that's all part of the avas toyota to really feel a sense of accomplishment a sense of achievement and of course it's part of the illuminati liberty to give a person a choice would you like to learn this would you like to learn that they've made the choice and so on another thing which i think is very important and not emphasized enough in yeshivas we have this uh a saying in gemara ain't based below it's a very strong aim base it's not a base measure so we have sometimes things are repeated in toyota so we have this rule whenever things are repeated it's for a dover shanishadesh ba something new was shared it's not just repeated the way it is you know i uh i sing sometimes and when you sing you repeat words so you're taught in singing that when you repeat a phrase it should never be with the same dynamic as the first time so when you repeat that phrase something has to be different it should be softer it should be stronger it should be phrased in a slightly different way so every time you get together to learn there has to be a kidus there has to be something new and this really leads to the next point that today we live in a world where many people know a lot they know a little bit about many things we almost never find someone who knows nothing about a particular subject that's the nature of the world today we know little bits of information about everything and so when we sit down with the harusa and we're talking about a parsha and we give an overview or we give an overview of some uh oh you know some other you know of uh a certain safer or a certain topic chances are that our havrusa isn't really learning much because they've heard most of what we're saying means that we should have this intent that we're going to say something that's new and we can understand why it is that in the litvisha world a pill or a sheer why it is that the russia yeshivas make such a big deal about their khidus because without the then what is it so it's really a key when we sit down to learn that there should be some innovation something new that's being said and if there's something new for you if there's a hidden that you've just discovered it will come through and that excitement will touch your havrusa another thing which you know part of the khidus is also being focused um tell me all the time that when they get up in shul and they talk about a parsha without preparing or they give a shear on a topic without preparing what they do is they exhaust the topic once said to me the worst thing i ever did was speak in shul i gave a speech the first night of reish hashanah unprepared i spoke about every aspect of rosh hashanah without really getting into it but mentioning everything and then the next day i was left with nothing to speak about like anything i would say i was already oh i mentioned the bardicheva's name and i spoke about the fish and the tashley and the round and the honey and i covered everything and that was it the soya can the abba everything was covered in the first you know in that first we zero in something specific one possuk an overview of the parsha one puzzle one mishna one area you focus on one thing and by the way when it comes to preparing a shirt like that it's much easier when you look at one thing you know you're not all over the place and for us when we spend just a few minutes preparing a mishna or looking at a few sukim and looking up maybe uh you know a ramban or whatever it is depending on what we're learning then we have we could speak for an hour we already have we have information it's not like uh you know when we have to review or start scratching our heads for what we remember from when we went to haider so really that's focusing on a detail getting something specific is really something that i find very effective in general and especially when you're talking to someone over a phone where you have to really zero in and focus balance is very important as well as adults we really don't like to do any rudimentary work it's hard to to sit with an adult and practice evil reading you know i was learning with the with the havrusa we at that time we were using skype and i sent him gemara linear translation and i really insisted that he should read the text inside and he had very little practice reading hebrew and it was very challenging so i knew that i can't demand that all of whatever we're going to read he should be reading inside and then i'll just explain so we said you know what what will it be how many lines how much of the text but have some of it so you have a little bit of time that he spends you know working reading trying to gain some kind of skill focus on the inside and then the discussion so you have the balance you have a discussion question perhaps then you have ideas that you share you have a story but there's a balance not just you know discussion discussion discussion without any grounding so however you feel comfortable dividing the shear for me usually it's in thirds you know 20 minutes or 15 minutes spent spread through the class on working on the reading you know like just being in connected with the text 15 minutes of discussion outside and then 15 minutes of that grueling exercise of you know just learning the form and practicing the words and so on and so forth and i just mentioned this um you know i taught in 8th grade also for a number of years i'm always looking for the age you know what's the right age so different years different classes you do different things so at a certain point i i took the gemara of the week so to speak you know the gemara of the week and i put it down and this was an amazing story just to share with you what happened to unders it's just amazing i was out of bar mitzvah and the rebbe's capital that year was kov gimmel and the father of the bar mitzvah turned to one of the kids in the class and asked him to come up and say the rebels capital and i was there and i was devastated it was it was very embarrassing was terrible and this was a student who i had never noticed that they were weak in korea they generally they would doubt them for the um loud i didn't realize it was all memorized and i was so bothered by what happened i decided the next morning i came into class i distributed cards that had the rebbe's capital on the on the back you know i had a picture of the redma on one side that was capital and that was it every morning the kids you know we would say it going through the desks i would start at a different point every day pasuk by pasuk by pasuk a kid said the puzzle everyone repeated the next the next maybe three weeks into this practice literally three weeks four weeks i look up and i see that the kids are no longer looking in the cards and for those of you who are not familiar with capital gimbal i ask you later tonight to please look inside that is difficult and it's not a shortcut pittle and i turned to a kid and i said why aren't you looking at he says oh i know up by heart i said really since when he says oh for a long time already look i i knew when the bar mitzvah was it was just you know a couple of weeks and really in a short while in a few weeks by just very simple practice of reading the word and the po and you know and repeating it the kids all knew it by heart and i tried it the next year and i tried it the next year and it worked every time long capital in a few weeks less than a month the kids knew it so when i realized that i started with the gemara i did the same thing i took the gemara i made it like sukim with nakudas and every day before we did anything else a kid would read the word and everyone would repeat read the line read by the end of the week they were singing it according to the shot and it it was amazing just one week of reading the gemara inside so for us the greatest challenge is really getting the chavrusa or the student to look into the words we're so intimidated there's there's such reservation we don't want to look in just tell it to me talk to me tell me by heart i don't i'm too old for that other no it's really it's it's not like it's not so far away and it's so rewarding and finally the greatest joy in the world is what is when we could share something and when we summarize a sheer and we say here's a takeaway from what of what we learned today and that's something that could share with a family member with an aging mother with a child that is the greatest joy of learning when a kid comes home and they could tell their parents what they learned today i learned this i learned that that is the greatest joy sharing is the greatest joy in the in the litvisheveld they have there's a habura practice which i haven't seen here where bhakram get together on thursday night and they have a time where they sit together and they discuss what was learned and really that's the goal that the friends share it's without gamoras they share the things that they learned it's the greatest joy possible in learning is to share ideas you ever notice you walk in and you see you see two people sharing you know they learn to sikha and someone says oh such an amazing so beautiful says yeah and this there's such joy when you share the ideas and the torah that you learned so that's really the great gift that we end up off with and again all of this with the intention that we're able to instill the av toyota in our in our students and the aviation should help that we should have great hats i thank you for the opportunity to speak to you and thank your beauty and should be with much much asap [Music] thank you very much everybody kaplan i know that uh i will definitely benefit from some of these tips in my my javarusa experience as well so thank you very much for sharing them i just wanted to thank everyone who helped make this event tonight uh a possibility rabbi schallenberg baumgarten from from the jewish children's museum uh torah cafe and yesterday for the video um mr al silman um and um danny franklin from from gem and a very special thank you to uh to have namdar who put in a lot of work into making sure that this this event tonight would be a success thank you [Music] there is a special gift for all the volunteers as a token of a of appreciation for your dedication it's the uh the new book from gem seeds of wisdom um you can pick one up outside we have we had i don't know if you saw before we had uh yasi doing uh interviews uh if you have a minute to just say you know a little bit your name and your the person you're learning with and why you do jnet on the video camera that would it would be very beneficial to help get other people to be inspired to be involved in janet as well so please feel free to pick up for all the volunteers one of these books on your way out feel free to also stay and have have a little more food if you didn't have a chance to eat something yet we hope you enjoyed the evening and we hope that we will complete our shlekhos and bisayeka suzanne without [Applause] [Music]