The Shabbat Show - Episode 18: The Healthy Body, Part 1: Keeping Motivated

[Music] hello everybody welcome to another edition another show of the shabbat show so great to be back with you again i feel like it was just a minute ago we were here together i don't know about you but like i'm getting used to the 5 friday time that we spend together thank you so much for those that are tuning in from all over wherever you're coming from it's such a tremendous moment i think for us as a nation for us as a people to know that we get to get together arab shabbos arab shabbat and just talk about things that matter and be together and wish each other shalom and see each other from all over the world and so it's an honor and i will thank you so much for joining us another edition of the shabbat show this week we're talking about health these next few weeks we're going to go into health physical health in the future we're going to have a whole show on on uh on mental health we're going to talk this week about physical health what it means to stay motivated to be healthy you know there's a concept in judaism called in hebrew words and what that means is you have to protect your it's not just your soul but it's also yourself your body you know judaism is fascinating because for a religion that has has as its mission to bring spirituality into this world for a religion for a a book of wisdom who is identifying things and showing the spiritual properties of things the spiritual property of the seventh day the spiritual properties of certain foods it's you would think that there would be a certain distance from the physical world and much like shabbat it's not spent in fasting the holiest day of the week isn't spend divorcing ourselves from the food from from physical life it's actually integrating it and so even with when we deal with our body we deal with our health when we deal with fitness when we deal with the the physical parts of ourselves we would think that the approach is really to distance ourselves to show no interest but it's not the case we have to take care of ourselves we have to be physically healthy the way we interact with food or interact with our bodies the way we deal with things is done in a way in which we grapple with the physical and spiritual that is the challenge of what god wants of us he wants us to grapple he wants us to take everything and find a way to make it as elevated as possible and one of those things is our health it's to make sure that we live healthy lives that we have healthy choices that we engage in healthy behaviors and so this show is all about that indulgence and uh abuse and all these things for material things is not sort of part of who we are there's a tremendous balance in which we live our lives food is a critical piece of who we are i mean food is how i was raised i'm sure how you're raised as well we like see the world through the prism of how to make it into a food but we have to deal with that it's funny before we begin i want to play with you a great clip i mean how could you how could you deal with jews and food and not find some clip from seinfeld right so we found this great clip about jews and food from seinfeld check this out remind ourselves of our love for food your skin and bones i don't know about you but my grandmother she should rest in peace i was skin bones to her and no matter what i was eating there was always there's always room for more we got a great show all about food all about fitness we've got some fun videos we're gonna have a lot of fun the show we're gonna really enjoy ourselves and really talk about health and really have a good time with it um we got miriam lee woods coming up on the show you're going to love hearing from her we've got rubber doper conan we've got the jewish iron man labels on jamie gellar we've got great videos remember to send your shabbos shout outs to my facebook page you can go to my facebook page and i'll be able to to check out some of the shabbat shaloms we got a great program coming on this week check out some of the programs going on in inspire this week mind flex is coming on this week check out the ad that is going to be posted by our superstar inspire producer team here you don't want to miss this why do we listen why doesn't the rabbis uh remember remember steve glucken was with us last week or two weeks ago so you don't want to see that we also have a cooking show coming up this week as well so there's a lot going on in inspire if you're checking us out for the first time thank you for joining us if you know people that would like the show please share it check it us out at the shabbat shabbat show.com if you go to shabbato.com you'll be able to watch it share it with people but also you get all the interviews we leave the full interviews on even though we only take clips for the show and you're able to see past shows so thank you so much and don't forget and especially now as we get towards you know as we're climbing our way towards rosh hashanah and we we're getting into a space where even we're getting closer and closer to seeing the need to get more uh active involved this is a perfect time for one on one you'd really check out the one on one um you can text one on one to 9 7 97 000 97 000 text one on one and you'll be here it is here's the ad for it oh maybe not so we'll be testing one on one to 97 000 and uh you really will get you a so here it is it's coming one on one nine seven thousand sign up you can learn anything you wanna learn about go online to our shabbato.com page you'll see the the ad for it it's really an opportunity to get involved okay before we get going to our first video to get rolling a little bit to have a little more fun before we get to our first guest i want to wish a couple of shabbat shaloms feel free to leave it on leave it on zoom or on facebook uh of course we're going to begin with rochelle and michael kersten from toronto ontario shabbat shalom to you uh thanks so much henry goldberg henry from toronto shabbat shalom to you colette franco shabbat shalom to you donna bell burkhart shabbat shalom from donna shabbat shalom from seattle shabbat shalom to you to roger and erica matloff shabbat shalom to you yosef to feral from passaic the novak family from toronto to helene shabbat shalom to you uh the popels in miami shabbat shalom to beverly more recent statesville north carolina shabbat shalom to arya mack from passaic yaakov shaolin from passaic the bagun the baguns and the bolton family shabbat shalom to you guys um to sandra weinstein from montreal shabbat shalom to stacey and alan levin grant delevingne rad from maryland chuck schulman thank you for your kind words appreciate it rivka starks bachelor from the bronx um and elisa mervis silver spring maryland okay swat shalom to you okay let's get going with our first video we wanted to kick it up a little bit uh get into the concept of health and fun and we found this incredible video about remember the good old days we used to run around and just have fun remember those days when you were a kid and you played games like tag and other fun stuff well check out this video that we just found that may uh start start us off in the right direction [Music] so [Music] i was like we were younger we used to play we used to get out we used to run around we weren't stuck behind a desk we weren't stuck in a house we recognized that health was just a part of our lives and being active and moving around was such a was it was an enjoyable piece of our daily activities we have a great guest on that's coming on right now her name is miriam leibowitz she is a registered dietitian with a nutrition practice in toronto she's been involved with team lifeline canada recruiting and providing nutrition coaching for all canadian runners running for high lifeline miriam has been featured in mishbaka magazine and currently writes for the cor miriam libous joined project inspired team in 2018 as a director of the toronto branch her along with her husband ellie has has led several momentum and j inspired trips i had a chance to catch up with miriam earlier this week talk to her about how do we deal with being here in the world of quarantine and getting fit and getting back into it check out this interview so thank you so much for joining us on the show it's really an honor to have you on thanks charlie so we've been living in the world of quarantine right like this is like the worst possible thing for like the usual get up and get healthy way of seeing the world um so what have you seen in terms of where people are at what people are thinking about vis-a-vis their health where we are in the world right now so um i think a lot of people right now are stuck in a bit of a rut um in the beginning of kobe when everybody was at home and in lockdown i think people actually it worked out better for a lot of people because i think people were eating healthier because they were just going out to buy what they needed there's a lot of people baking things and um you know doing a lot of homemade cooking um if you remember actually way probably a few months ago there was like a shortage of flour and yeast like you couldn't find those on the supermarket shelves because everybody was like cooking and making food from scratch which um which was excellent and really good for healthy eating i think over the past few months um you know some people have been experiencing stress and have been at home and a lot of people are just out of their normal routines and i think just like you know any routine it's important to kind of stick to a schedule for a lot of people i think with healthy eating and being active when you're not in a routine it's actually hard and you know stress causes emotional eating and i think people are at a point where they kind of want to go back to how they were eating before and how they were living before but they're kind of stuck in a bit of a rot where things may be seeming a little bit overwhelming for them i think that's exactly right i think when we it's so funny it's funny how when quarantine hit we i it was at least in other areas like we had all these plans and we're gonna do this and do that and like for the first few days it's like we're gonna take advantage of advantage and then like slowly the chaos ensues and then you have to like re-adapt so for first for many you're sitting around going i can't believe it's been so many months how did i get this together and um we have a chance like always to get better every week summertime you can get out more i don't know depending on where you are some of the restrictions have led up so what would you suggest like if someone comes in and says listen i'm in a rut i haven't been doing this for a while i i need like a jump start i need something to do to think about just to get going again how would you start it up again okay so and that's a great question then a lot of people my clients now that i've been meeting with so far via zoom but kind of have been experiencing that and i think the whole notion of taking something on something sometimes can seem actually like overwhelming and you don't almost know where to begin so i mean the most important um strategy that i find works with you know majority people and is actually a really simple goal is just making sure that you're eating actually three meals a day and at least two to three snacks and not going more than four to six hours um between meals without having something so that's sort of like the basic principle that i feel is important um that being said um it's actually really important not to overwhelm yourself and set like really large goals because that can be really challenging sometimes you know you want to just do something drastic to be like okay i'm just starting you know fresh the next day and you know away with my old you know eating quarantine eating habits but sometimes you know that can actually lead people to not be able to achieve their goals because it's so overwhelming so what i like to do with my clients is actually develop what we call smart goals and smart um is the acronym specific measurable attainable realistic and time specific so i'll just give you like a practical example so as opposed to saying like okay um every day this week i'm gonna eat healthy which sounds great um you would basically take that overall goal and break it up into something very specific so an example could be you know for someone who let's say doesn't eat breakfast every day i'm gonna eat breakfast sunday wednesday and friday i'm gonna have steel cut oatmeal at 7 30 in the morning so that's a really large goal that now we've taken and actually broken apart to be something that could be very attainable hopefully now if you're able to do that five days a week well that's great but the idea is that you're not setting yourself up to fail from the beginning because the goal is very specific and hopefully manageable to you wow this is exactly right i think you get going you build momentum and then you know you sort of build off that momentum how would you suggest in terms of exercise in terms of um you know the the fitness what would you suggest in terms of getting going in that world um especially in this new world that we live in right now you know it comes out from home you know sometimes i work from home during days and like if i ever like exercise like the middle of the day i feel weird like i'm used to exercising like outside business hours so like you know how how do you see how do you you know recommend somebody start to put into their new normal day some level of exercise right so that's a great question actually i'm personally someone passionate about physical activity charlie i ran team lifeline with you a few years ago so my husband and i are big runners um back in toronto um it's been hard for me actually being in new york out of my schedule i'm not used to you know i i run actually every morning so that's just been a personal challenge um and it's especially difficult when you're working from home because you're just kind of like out of your element and it kind of seems strange like oh am i just gonna go for a run at 12 o'clock in the afternoon when it seems like you should be home so it's a little bit shifting what the new norm is like but also using that same kind of acronym of smart goal setting is that just doing something that really is practical and that can work for you so he may not be realistic to like run six days you know five days a week or to go to the gym but even it could be something like going for a walk around the block you know three times a week after dinner finding something or sometime in your day that actually works for you doesn't have to be what we call normal you know if 12 o'clock afternoon you're home and you're working from home then go out at that time or go out early in the morning or late at night as long as you're getting it in it will make a difference you know you want to try and at least aim for at least between 3 to 60 minutes you know in total throughout the day even three three days to start but anything you do is going to be better than nothing so as opposed to saying like oh forget it i just can't fit the time in like even if you could just do you know twice a week one week and the next week build up eventually you'll get there but the key thing is to just get off the couch and just to start with something small amazing well thank you so much for your time appreciate it and i am sure we put these in into practice we'll be able to be better and better every day which is really the goal and both in our souls but also in our bodies thanks so much thanks perfect a special mazel tov to the holy sweet lips family she's actually they're in town now for the in the marriage of their daughter and if you remember for those of you who are shabbat show uh old timers which was like 10 weeks ago if you remember we had mordechai shapiro on do you remember we had mordechai shapiro on singing to a really cute bar mitzvah boy well that's their son we did it from toronto so it all comes full circle and thank you so much for being part of our show um let's go to a couple more shabbat shalom to the apparel new york city shabbat shalom shiryasha from mountain view california rivka tyler patriots rock from baltimore shabbat shalom to looking forward to your kahoot game today um to linda from anandil virginia shabbat shalom to you uh lisa black medding's friend family from toronto the fallon fallon levin and family from in detroit uh to the silvers and highland park spotulum carol drucker on the upper west side shabbat shalom to you to lilly indio quebec shabbat shalom to you uh shabbat shalom uh took paul a rabbi sampson's backyard neighbor that's some real yiklas shabbat shalom to you we are doing good in a little bit for the questions that are coming in suzanne myers from rockland county jay inspire shabbat shalom to you and to the blooms in brooklyn to ruth and moshe sussman shabbat shalom to you okay our next video you know many times we stereotype jews and rabbis and assume that if you're a rabbi you are typically out of shape well that's not necessarily true on the next video we see one rabbi in particular who is breaking those stereotypes check this out [Applause] little props the rabbis out there can your rabbi do this i would suggest that just from didn't come from me that you should speak to your rabbi this weekend and maybe suggest that you know could he do that i think it'd be nice to us for us to start to uh flood into ninja war american ninja warrior we have a great guest on now i had opportunity to catch up with a great individual who lives in israel who really has a perspective on physical strength and spiritual strength his name is dove bear cohen after spending six years living in asia delving deeply into eastern philosophies partaking in several silent meditation retreats extreme martial arts training hiking in the himalayas and around the japanese island as well as spending time volunteering orphanages dover moved to israel where he discovered the depth the beauty and the wisdom of his own religion he made aliyah and along with learning in the yeshiva he set up his own social justice organization it's called all for the kids which raises money and awareness for orphanages in india africa and israel 2009 he set up self-discovering organization running workshops seminars and short trips for young jewish adults to help them tap into their inner power and potential he is now a senior lecturer at asia torah co-founder director of authentic jewish meditation retreats we had a chance to catch up check out this interview give us a few can sort of a little bit of this journey of yours thank you so much i grew up in england normal uh sec hilary skye lots of sport and music and partying and i went to university and i started looking around me and i saw that not many people seem to be living with such vitality and joy and death and meaning in life so i decided i really want to work out what it's all about what am i really living for and i started looking in the east eastern philosophies and lots of martial arts films and bruce lee films and and started meditating so after i finished university i went to asia for six years and just did martial arts and lots of silent 10-day silent meditation retreats and hiking in the himalayas and taekwondo aikido and kung fu i just immersed myself in basically trying to train my mind and my body in order to live a healthy happy meaningful life wow so how'd you end up in israel i actually was not going to come to israel i was going to go to south america i wanted to canoe down at amazon but i just thought i'd stop for a couple of weeks to see some friends and that was 12 years ago so what was it about israel that made you stay it was really two things firstly someone said to me why didn't you study judaism after you know i was teaching buddhism in universities in thailand and what you know why they study judaism and i said because it's not very spiritual it's it's nice i like the rituals it's okay but it's not really a path to enlightenment or well-being so someone said no come and come and come to this class i went to a few classes and i really very quickly saw the the judaism that i thought was judaism and i didn't like so much isn't actually the depth of judaism and i saw that most of the ideas that i'd learned in the east we have in judaism in a very very deep way and the other factor really was i'd always ask people how do you know this is true because i love buddhism i love the other religions and the practices but i always wanted to know you know everyone says a different thing how do i know which one's actually right which one's true and then i've done philosophy at university and the only way you can really know something is is evidence really what's your evidence do you have rational empirical evidence so i'd ask my buddhist masters and my hindu masters and my muslim masters and i'd asked everyone and they just said because this is what buddha said or this is it feels right or my meditation i never got a good answer until i came to israel and and i thought i'd stump the rabbis i'd say come on what's your how do you know it's right and they said well we have evidence that there's no way a human being could have written the torah so i started studying here and because i didn't want it to be true i want to go south america but i saw the evidence and it was very compelling so i put it on atheist websites and atheist forums because i as i said i didn't want it to be true i said i want to oh you know i want to refute this and well while i was thinking about it there's a trail in israel called the israel national trail it's a thousand kilometers i think that's about 700 miles so it's a walking trail from the north of israel to the south so i took 40 days and i walked the whole length of israel in 40 days but really thinking about the evidence and arguing and getting atheists and at the end of it i really couldn't refute the evidence but also as i said that scene that is also beautiful and spiritual and deep and sweet and so it was a combination of of intellect and and spirituality and emotion and once you walk the whole land of israel you really connect to the land it's the holy land the land i really felt is my way my ancestors kind of lived and and lived their spiritual life so i chose to be here wow what a great story um let me ask you a question because even as you're speaking the the concept of spirituality especially i guess through a western mind could very much lead to something that is not physical so health and fitness could be like non-spiritual things like you can go out and work out but that's not spiritual what's your perspective i guess from especially your background and seeing it from different perspectives what is your perspective of the torah and spiritual perspective on staying healthy being fit eating well uh and really the the body that you know keeping your body at a certain level yeah it's really always to do with your intention why are you doing what you're doing why why do you want to have a good and healthy body so is it because you want to show off and you want people to think you know look how strong he is if you're getting your sense of self based on your body look at look at even your clothes and and my muscles then that's that's not the jewish perspective on body but we believe that true spirituality can only come through embodied practice and what do i mean by that in the east it's very uh to be spiritual you have to separate from physicality separate from physicality so i fasted once for seven days for example we had had two cups of water a day so it wasn't a whole fast and three of the days i had a small slice of papaya in the east it's don't get married and don't eat a lot of food and don't touch money just get rid of because it just detached completely from the physical world and england where i grew up and i guess america it was the opposite it was all physical and eat all you like and it's all get my sense of self based on my money and my body so judaism i think actually this is why israel's in the middle of the east and west says there's a balance and the balance is moderation so we see in everything even with with money in the east don't have money this is big uh generalizations in the west is a lot about money jesus says you can have money it's okay but what are you using it for using it to help people so the same with the body so are you improving your body in order to just look good and feel good are you improving your body because you want to live in this world with vitality and you can't have vitality if you're if you're not healthy if you're smoking if you're eating too much if you're not exercising you're not going to be able to live a spiritual life so we we say that the body serves the soul it's like it's like the space suit we're really in essence we're a spiritual being ourselves and the body is the space suit that we need to be in the physical world and judaism says we should uplift physicality not detach from physicality so all of the ministers for example are really physical acts lighting candles giving charity putting on to fill in all of these are physical angst but we're we're using the physicality to be in line with our soul and therefore you want your body you want to be healthy you want to have energy to to do to get up early in the morning and to a passion to live a life of passion if you're dragging us out of yourself out of bed at 11 o'clock in the morning and you don't have energy and fitness is not going to work so so our body is our car you it's the car we want to go fast you want to have the best car you can get to get where you need to go um but it's it's it's not the purpose the car is in the process the car is taking us to our purpose so the healthier our body is um the better we're gonna achieve our spiritual purpose which is really connection to divinity to hashem to god to ourselves um the other if i may carry on it's very good for your mind going to the gym is just very good for your mind to have some physical uh focus as well to ground yourself often spirituality is very like very nice and hippy like meditating and floating around all day but for judem says we we need very physical grounded spiritual practice as well so we need strength and health and body to really achieve that amazing well doper thank you for the time thank you for the uh the light that you bring to the world it's much appreciated thank you charlie and that was just a small piece for those who want to get more i actually as you're watching it you may be thinking what i'm thinking he fasted for seven straight days on a little papaya and two cups of water i'm like how is that humanly impossible he's jewish and he also stayed quiet for 10 days which is i think even harder for a jew um so i asked both of those questions if you want to see the full interview check it out at the shabbat show.com there we have the full i don't know if it's up now but we will have the full interview of me and dober including the full interview of me and um mira leewitz who had other a very important suggestions also check that out okay it's kahu time for those who are ready for kahoot this is it let's get rolling um i know my mom is out there ready to play 84601 get ready for kahoot let's get everybody on you go to your app or go to kahoot.it get everyone rolling for kahu here they come while we get all our players going all patriots rock is in est is in see everyone's lining up keep it going uh i'll do some more shabbat shalom's while we get to people rolling in here uh ruth and moshe sussman shabbat shalom rm from toronto shabbat shalom uh the hess family from fairlawn shabbat shalom ann patolski from waterloo ontario shabbat shalom the dahl family in minnesota recent brian wolf from oak park michigan shabbat shalom terrific mansour shabbat shalom to howard anna phillis leuserstein from chesterville missouri shabbat shalom to lori hafiz in manhattan shabbat shalom to the halpern's in pasadena shabbat shalom to jamie geller's mom from ballet kenwood shabbat shalom to you continue knock us from her okay here we go i think we're up to our game are we ready i'll give it one more second okay we're ready okay here it goes kahoot let's do it in 2016 rio summer olympics israel won a bronze medal for both male and female in what sport bobsledding basketball badminton and judo you can just knock out one just because they're jewish bob sledding basketball badminton and judo while we're doing it a shabbat shalom to the burkheld family shabbat shalom to barry wall from jre largemont new york and thank you for being who you are and joining us every day on the daily boost you can always check out the daily boost every morning here comes the first answer judo judo 2016 judo good job let's see how we place let's see who's going gibbs putney patriots rock ginny and pmg okay next one how do you say healthy in hebrew healthy how do you say healthy in hebrew rahmanis fabio bari or gibor yeah meet lifer from baltimore shabbat shalom tammy from jerusalem visiting bethesda maryland shabbat shalom to you rochelle and michael sullivan from baltimore shabbat shalom to you okay here goes the answer is barry barry gibor means to be strong barry is healthy putney continues their lead edison adlers gibbs hillary and chosen frozen all right let's go let's number three let's see some of your old trivia this israeli-born fitness personality is best known for his longest running fitness show in the us bodies in motion which is really has the show gilad janklowitz shirahas leoraz or gene simmons shabbat shalom to yonah baum shabbat shalom to leia silver mark hoffman shabbat shalom okay seven seconds left shabbat shalom's bringing on who's left karen levy from toronto okay here goes gene simmons got a lot of votes jean sims got a lot of votes let's see what happened with this gibbs diamond sarah zny estidae and cherry okay we've got some new leaderboard up here gibbs is climbing up the fourth one anything is possible at the end let's go let's see how we do here how many calories are in one pound twelve thousand twelve hundred thirty five hundred three fifty how many calories are in one pound you get extra points for speed rift commands or shabbat shalom shabbat shalom to marty and deborah cohen in macon georgia shabbat shalom to you how we doing nine seconds left all the answers are ready oh they're getting in now let's go let's see who wins shabbat shalom to serena baum 3 500 3500 let's see how we do this let's see who wins edison adler's third place putney second place and the winner for this week's kahoot goes to sheri congratulations shiri please check out email project inspire dot com for your gifts the next video we have a special nachos is going to be flowing from balakinwood right now because we are up to our partner the one and only amazing jamie geller check it out hi everyone i'm jamie geller and today i'm making one of the most popular recipes on our site broccoli coogle but this ain't joe bubby's broccoli coogle this is broccoli cocoa 2.0 there are two things that make this stand out above all the rest the first is loads of fresh herbs now not typical on a broccoli cocoa but what this does is it makes it feel so bright and fresh and springy and the second thing also not typical in broccoli cooking is onions but we're not just putting in onions we are caramelizing our onions because everything is better with caramelized onions let's do this chop up some onions and we're gonna heat some olive oil in a saute pan over medium-high heat always colavitta it's the best for cooking and baking add them to the hot pan and saute them until they're golden and translucent and just starting to caramelize while they're cooking roughly chop some beautiful bright green frozen broccoli florets or you can go half and half and chop up some cauliflower florets as well and now we chop some gorgeous fresh herbs we'll start with some dill it's got such a great grassy and earthy flavor and it is so fragrant and then parsley which brings a bit of spring and freshness to the dish crack and lightly beat three eggs unless you're doubling the recipe like me and then beat six everything into the mixing bowl broccoli cauliflower dill parsley you can use oats you can use quinoa flakes or you can use potato starch add the cooled caramelized onions [Music] eggs and pepper give everything a really good mix liberally grease that pie plate with your colavita olive oil spoon in the kegel mixture pat it down so it's nice and compact and bake it at 400 degrees for one hour until it's golden on top slice it serve it taste it yummy it's divine and everyone's gonna say where did you get the recipe and you're gonna tell them jamiegaller.com so then brian you're going to put facebook instagram twitter pinterest youtube right okay bye-bye until next time oh hi there i'm back just just a couple quick tips before i sign off this week okay so truthfully this is the healthiest coogle that you can make but if you want to reduce the fat you can saute your onions in water and you can replace the three eggs with six egg whites okay so i want to wish you an amazing shabbat and kick it back to you charlie thank you jeremy every time she i gotta tell you every time i see jamie i'm thinking i wish i'd have seen her when i was younger i'd be so much more helpful in the kitchen because like it makes it it's so much fun it looks so much fun pushing the music in the background thank you jamie again for an incredible recipe for more great videos go to jamiegaller.com facebook instagram pinterest youtube twitter tick tock jamie geller at jewish by jamie okay we got a great guest right now waiting for you right here right now live we've got lei bole he is a former pulpit rabbi turned venture capitalist and serves as president and ceo of the arizona israel technology alliance labe is an avid athlete who sees all aspects of his life through the lens of achieving greatness through incremental progression and discipline labe is a recipient of the 40 under 40 award by the phoenix business journal and was selected to the national list of influential young executives by the national by the 2009 business journal's influencers labe has played in a number of competitive sports from childhood and has realized that it is the journey that is the ultimate reward rather than moments of winning and losing laid but welcome to the show great to be here charlie so so talk to us about going from pulpit rabbi to an iron man like how does that transition what are you thinking how is that journey how did that journey happen you know there was a comment beforehand that there's a stereotype of rabbi with a big belly um i think you know prior to becoming a pulpit rabbi i've been an avid athlete all my life playing multiple sports um and you know even because you know when becoming rabbi i was playing sports and um once i moved from israel i lived in israel for about six years i moved to des moines iowa and coming from team sports going to a place where i didn't know many people at all um there was about a six month phase or so of where i was uh trying to work out what sports am i going to do are there clubs i'm going to join and i tried a couple of things and consistency was a huge challenge and i i knew i was putting on pounds and there had to be something like that you know to get me back into shape and i was looking at different sports started running a little bit and an opportunity came up for a fundraiser someone asked me to participate in a fundraiser for uh for a non-profit and i thought a great idea why don't i choose something that i can raise money for uh specifically for that so what i did was um sorry my apologies and uh so um it was a triathlon race going to come up there was a sprint triathlon which is one of the shortest uh triathlon distances and i decided i'm going to go ahead and do that so i signed up for that uh had a fundraiser and went from a sprint triathlon rate did a fundraiser for that and then went on to olympic distance then went on to 17.3 which is a hop iron man then went on to the full ironman which is 140.6 miles incredible incredible so you know in your journeys you're living in these worlds right you're you're you're learning you're studying you're growing um and at the same time you're learning and growing physically so take us through the the the connection how does religious thought how does uh spiritual ideas influence the physical work that you're doing there's a lot of synergies um a lot of comparisons with sports and health and with torah the way we live our lives the discipline involved the regiment involved who you surround yourself with you know you want to be with like-minded people you want you want to be with people who are achieving things who have aspirations and who are going to keep you on course as well so you know in terms of all of those dynamics uh there are so many different synergies involved that you take from a jewish lifestyle and from a jewish culture and from the torah and you can apply them seamlessly into really all aspects i believe if you know it translates to sports it translates to business it translates to all different spectrums of life and being able to take those fundamentals and being able to apply them and you know we're going to go of course and we have challenges and we sometimes take a couple of step backs and we regress but we take those things that we learn and we'll be able to you know through the surroundings that you have and the people that you are with and surround yourself with to be able to meet those goals and accomplish those things you know it's funny as you speaking it reminds me when i was younger when i when i i used to play sports like crazy as a kid growing up my whole life was that orange basketball like that was like the center and i remember going to israel after my high school year and finding judaism was not as exciting as as a great five on five and i remember speaking to my rabbi and he said to me you're missing it that there's so many things that you've worked so hard for that's very much in line with how you grow i'm like what are you talking about he goes how are you restricting what like you see how you're eating certain foods you see how you're willing to engage in a certain amount of physical discomfort what you believe in you see how when you're engaged in the physical world teamwork oneness when we look at the world with very physical eyes you see a division you see there's physical and there's spiritual but if you look at the world with spiritual eyes you see that wait you're really doing things that are they're low-level spirituality i'm not connecting you know running a race with learning a talmud page but you're still on the track to controlling the physical world growing from the physical world and that really stuck with me that i felt like i was already on the way if you will to developing some of the skills that are more spiritual and as you're speaking it's bringing back those memories of of of how i also was grappling with it you know back when i was uh and even even to now so from your perspective do you do you see it as a priority that's not in conflict with someone's spiritual growth we're jews we're not greeks we don't believe that the center of the world is in the middle of a stadium we don't worship the body we worship the soul so do you believe and feel that even in the even in our perspective which is really spirituality at all at first and only do does the does the physical work fit right into that from your perspective absolutely you know while you're talking it takes me back to a memory probably of my worst race but my most uh proud race that i ever did i was racing in uh iron man uh boulder in colorado several years back and um i came down with strep throat i didn't know at the time that i had strep throat and you in in in iron man races you have hours to to finish the race 140 miles which consists of 2.4 mile swim 112 mile bike ride followed by a marathon and halfway through the bike i knew that i wasn't able to contain any fluids any nutrition and i knew things were looking very bleak and by the end of it i knew that it was really really challenging i wasn't sure if i was going to finish the race and i landed up walking and crying the entire marathon and my official time was actually uh 15 hours 59 minutes and 59 seconds slow as i ever done um and the one thing there were multiple things i had my wife actually running or walking by me for a lot of the way which was great but those little incremental steps of saying i'm not thinking about the end goal i'm going to take one step at a time and i'm going to look at that land post in front of me i'm going to look at that garbage can in front of me i'm going to look at that car in front of me those are the little places that i need to get to and that's just one example and i can give you dozens of examples of being able to get to that place that means so much that accomplishment it's really about that journey of being able to get there and the goal itself if you finish it's great but it's that journey is what defines that person so going back to your question 100 it's really about there are so many uh you mentioned conflict there is so much harmony i think is the best word to describe in being able to take a sports aspect or a healthy fitness aspect yeah being able to mold it into your life i i couldn't agree more and i think and i thank you for that because that's really the point i think you brought it out nicely because you tied back earlier guests miriam lee would spoke about getting started and and and dover spoke about his his work but i think he brought it out nicely which is it's not about winning the race we're not that's not really what we're after here it's not about being the the most fittest or witting some metal it's really about engaging in an activity that is more than self that brings out the best inside you and that allows you like you said to journey in a world where you're growing where you're pushing yourself or you're not being controlled by the physical world but you're in control of it and sometimes the pathway to this sometimes to deeper spirituality is through that physical work thank you so much for joining us we really appreciate it continue your success in your physical work but more importantly in your spiritual work and continue being a light into the world thank you charlie have a good time good job especially that was awesome and that's really the point here i think that's really what we're after um it's it's really not about this race or that race it's about a perspective of how we see the world that we're not controlled by food we're not controlled by substance we're not going to take our bodies and lay it waste because something tastes a little good or it's a little hard to get up in the morning we're going to turn our bodies into the cars that will drive in the most efficient way to enable us to do good in this world to enable us to experience uh godliness it's it's really that's the point that's the elevation point it's and don't bear said it it's the intention we're not advocating health so that we can become professional athletes some of you may i mean my mom who i think is watching sat me down in 11th grade and explained to me that i'm a white jewish boy the chance of me you know playing in a basketball team um is a lot higher a lot lower than owning a basket with him like i might i should really focus back on my studies and try to be a lawyer like a lot of you know not to say that we can't do it but a lot of us don't really have professional athleticism in our minds you know bdw church is going for it god bless her that's not what we're talking about we're not talking about that also we're also not even talking about turning health and fitness into the center of one's life we're talking about a perspective in which whatever we have needs to be controlled and elevated food that we eat should be healthy because it's going to make our bodies healthy it's going to make our ability to live longer but ultimately it's up to god but to live healthier to be more vital have more vitality it's just a way of living your life and it's important and we have to talk about it and we have to think about it and it's it's holy it's holy that's the beauty and the grandeur and the greatness of judaism is that this stuff's holy toe it's amazing smiles are holy food can be holy fitness could be holy there is no place where judaism doesn't apply where spirituality can't be brought out and when we take it seriously and we stay fit and we stay healthy and we enjoy um it it brings us back to who we were when we were younger and it brings us up to who we can be before we end our show i want to show you one more fun video we're having so much fun with these nike videos right look great it brings us back to when we were kids and we played tag and we ran around and we had fun well there's another game we play when we were kids where when the music stops you gotta find the chair remember that game well there's another great nike video we want to show you just to continue the theme of having some fun and and playing some games so this way we can really enjoy the health and fitness that we've been talking about check this out [Applause] [Music] [Applause] remember those days musical chairs ah amazing well i hope you guys had enjoyed the show and it's really a time for us this is a time where we have to balance the joys of of being a kid a little bit and and the way we were we had the vitality we had in life and how we we played games and we had fun it doesn't mean being less serious doesn't mean being less introspective it doesn't mean striving for greater spirituality it doesn't it means understanding that we have to have joy in our lives we have to have vitality and enjoyment and we have to live a life in which we are elevating everything we touch which is really what shabbat is about right shabbat really is about this concept of recognizing that the holiest day like shabbat is a day in which we engage in the physical world we we have good food we drink good wine we spend time with our loved ones we we we don't pull back from the world because there's something wrong with it we pull back from the world because god wants us to be in control of it it's really critical that that distinction is clear in our minds that we need to be in control of it it's not the food that controls us it's not the sleep that controls us it's not the desire for comfort that controls us it's not it's this recognition that this world is going to either control us we can control it we can and by controlling it we elevate ourselves over it we don't have to eat that we don't have to say no to that and when we take that seriously not because we want someone to look at us not because we want someone to to to turn their eyes when we walk in not because we need to identify ourselves with our body our bodies our spacesuit it's because it's a way of life it's a way of life it's a way of life which is whatever's in this world i want to use it at the appropriate measure that it makes me grow in the best way it's very jewish to look at the world and say i want to understand the properties of which i can use something so that i can get the most out of it so the torah does the torah gives us the recipe how to use the world so we get the most out of it that's what shabbat reminds us as we slow down as we look into our week as we look into the week into the future so on behalf of me and mine to you and yours i wish you a healthy wonderful a joyous shabbat filled with vitality and happiness connection to spiritual elevation of the physical and i hope and i pray that the next week we do this it's going to be live from jerusalem but if not i look forward to seeing you again hopefully next week with god's help here another show at 5 30. shabbat shalom good shabbos have a great weekend all is well shabbat shalom to all of you we together regeneration they take one raising [Music] we may go there is only one place we know falling [Music] you're down [Music] is [Music]