The Shabbat Show - Episode 33: Heroes of Gratitude

[Music] and hello everybody welcome to another episode of the shabbat show everybody's doing well happy thanksgiving to everybody who is celebrating wherever you are thank you for tuning in from wherever you're coming in from what a great show we have for you tonight what an incredible incredible night this is you know thanksgiving is a big deal because thanksgiving is another reminder for us to be thankful for the things that we have i want to go back and remember learning about things given growing up in school the pilgrims came over they we think that like when they wrote when they showed up to america like it looked like this it didn't at all there was no food they came in from england the first time they got here i think they spent the winter on the boat they couldn't even get off the boat half of them died they came out they had to find food they had to harvest and after a year or two 16 20 16 21 when that harvest finally came through they had these celebrations of thanksgiving to thank the almighty for giving them a bountiful harvest this began a tradition uh in the shores of america that through abraham lincoln was then turned into a thursday and thing in november and here we are today and no matter where you're listening in from there's always a good reason to be thankful we don't need a reason to take a minute and be thankful for our bounty and even with the challenges that we've all experienced this year still credit incredibly important for us to be thankful for us to be to have gratitude and for us to be able to share that gratitude with each other so wherever you're coming in from today hopefully from your families and your meals social distancing appropriate wherever you are it's an honor to be with you right now to have a show about gratitude and this is like an all-star show we've got such incredible incredible guests coming in for you now i want to dedicate this show it's sponsored and loving memory of albert and miriam at maggid thank you for that sponsorship and we've got an incredible show coming up we've got uh naftali miller the founder of an incredible organization we've got steve berg of asia torah we've got elisa abrams konig and her famous pizza synagogue pizza brigade we got by wilderstein jamie geller there's so much going on in the show stick with us all the way to the end we're really going to explore the different aspects of gratitude different perspectives of gratitude and i hope by the end of the week end of the show be a little bit better first let's begin with our good friend michael who is on the streets in leeds uk hello i'm michael apfel i'm back from sunny england we're going to be asking people today about what gratitude is to them what they're grateful for maybe what they're not grateful for what they think people think gratitude is so right from the middle of the lead city center where i was born hello yeah here we go i don't know what that noise was by the way [Music] no we don't really have a name for this segment i don't know if it's man on the street michael on the street i have no idea define gratitude acknowledging the people presence and gifts in your life the blessings in your life gratitude is the feeling we have towards others and definitely towards god every day i feel like we're so so blessed in so many ways and if we turn around and recognize that we become grateful people the easiest way is if you wake up in the morning you're a certain age and you open your eyes and you're still breathing you've got to say gratitude nowadays welcome to leed city markets it's an institution so much of the tradition actually is still here it's just people just what we call grafting so just to clarify this is literally one of my oldest friends from childhood michael known each other since we were babies yeah yeah that's right if you see somebody needed help they're going to be gratitude for whatever you do to help to helping that person i used to get three packs of strawberry for a pound growing up one of those days you can't really describe the smell when you walk into a fish market so i think in 2004 we shot a short film up there on that thing and what happened was the police came up and they heard us yelling the police pulled guns and the police i'm not even kidding the police in england don't have guns they passed us down says nothing i said what are you doing here so we're just shooting a short film and there was a politician who was touring this place that day and it turns out that me and my friends we had picked the best spot to assassinate that politician that day and uh and then they literally went if you got permission to be here and i went yeah thank you very much and uh they said okay have a good day and i never had permission to be there what have you had to be grateful for in life being alive and coming to this country obviously with my mum that's gratitude she's brought you up i'm grateful for absolutely everything from my wife to healthy children i've got a wonderful community i'm actually new to this community absolutely everything i enjoy the fresh air i enjoy i enjoy when it rains that things grow so how do you actually express your gratitude or something i mean to my wife i would like to say thank you and i have some flowers to my kids i will say thank you and push them out the door actually maybe you shouldn't say that point is that the person feels appreciated okay said it before and i'll say it again i have no idea why we have the weirdest nature pubs proof the slug and lettuce what's the logic well mostly i'm grateful for having the opportunity to be on this show your wife your wife say that first my wife about four weeks ago my wife died my gratitude is i was married for 43 years and we did marvelous things together they say that a rich man is the one that's happy with his lot and if you're happy that's gratitude that's it for this week thank you very much charlie it's about gratitude what gratitude is to them what they think it might mean to other people as well so i hope you liked it i hope you got something out of it and uh i hope you're grateful for it i get it yeah yeah whatever we thank you michael for your reporting all the way from the uk and we thank you for uh your your humor and your ability to bring out the points in each and every person that's michael from our that's our man on the street in leeds uk um shout outs are coming out tonight if you are we're gonna pick different groups tonight a little bit so if you're coming out we'd love to see you on zoom and on facebook you can go to my facebook page of course it means a lot to everybody when we do shabbat shalom it brings our whole community together if you're coming out from out of the country please feel free to go to facebook we'd love to call you out if you're not from from america we'd love to to see you as well so don't feel so don't feel shy give us a chance to say shabbat shalom to you as well we thank you for everybody who's coming in with the shabbat shalom we got a great thing going on today because project inspire is a program of torah and asia torah is an incredible yeshiva that is situated in the greatest place on earth literally steps from the western wall and they have the best students and they have the best program and they're the best rabbis it's unbelievable if you have a chance to study just for one moment there it'll inspire you and what they did for thanksgiving is a whole bunch of students got together and decided to send little small messages throughout this show to their friends and their family so check out we're going to sprinkle some of their messages throughout the show let's meet our first student jack nicolason hi my name is jack i'm coming to you from asia torah across the corner from the western wall thanksgiving is coming up this week and i wanted to wish everyone watching this including my family and friends back home in ohio uh happy thanksgiving one thing i'm eternally grateful for is the ability to spend the past year here in jerusalem at asia torah learning torah as we move into next year to 2021 i want to wish everybody a successful and memory filled year and i hope to see all of you here next year in jerusalem [Music] we thank you jack and continue doing what you're doing our first guest is an incredible man his name is naftali miller he's a founding director of has they laid and the national director of development for the good of israel of america now we'll be talking with naftali about this incredible organization he started called castelev before we meet him i want to play you a short video that gives you a sense of the magnitude of the numbers of gratitude that these guys have check out this video [Applause] [Music] and i want to welcome naftali to the show natalie thank you so much for joining us here thank you thank you for having me so so this is incredible and the the tagline sort of got me it it's the least we can do what what does that mean what what is has they laid what are what are you doing and why is that the tagline it almost feels like it's a movement based on gratitude like it's the least we can do right first of all the the show's about gratitude so thank you for having me on the show uh your honor um uh so so is the the name really reflects kindness of the heart um we looked at it and said the teachers who give us knowledge which is probably the most important thing that you can you could get in life those people comes the holiday and they struggle to put food on the table it just didn't make sense to us so normally a person gives something food to somebody and they feel like they're taking we wanted to turn this around and say instead of they should feel like takers we should feel like it's an opportune appreciation for their kindness what they do for the for us and how they give us knowledge it's our opportunity to pay them back and they shouldn't feel like takers but rather as givers and and and and you know all the you know all the good they should fail for it so you're delivering these packages which i'm sure is filled with food and other things that is um delivered to the homes of the teachers around the country it looks like all these different spots as a sign of gra it's unbelievable as a sign of gratitude like this is this is what makes our people like unbelievable what what i was struck by and maybe you can give us an insight on and and is that there were so many it wasn't like i saw you know hired help right they were kids they were it was like a whole army of regular people that was joining her how many people are a part of this there's probably i would say thousands of volunteers we have part of the organization we started the organization about 12 years ago we don't have a paid employee and we do per season about over 12 million dollars of sales for the amount of purchasing that we buy everything is done on volunteers and the people that are involved in an organization run the biggest companies um i remember a couple years back a guy pulled up with a brand new mercedes and uh someone left a case of chicken beans he said sure i'll take it and the case of chicken was dripping out of and he puts it into this trunk and he's driving it to the rabbi's house and he comes to the house and the the rabbi thinks he's a porter so he says can i give you a tip a dollar and he took the dollar and he said it was the happiest dollar he's making five hundred thousand dollars a year and he got a dollar tip and he said that dollar was the worst meant the most to him you know what what are you seeing you know we talk about gratitude all the time right and you know the gratitude is in our blood it's how god wants us to act like we say that modality is the first thing we come out of our mouths but what we don't i don't think appreciate as much is not what it does for the person that we're grateful for it's what it does for the person giving gratitude so now you're sitting you've got this incredible organization that's doing grateful thing you're giving gratitude to the teachers but you have this unique perspective of watching volunteers like you said the story of the man who gets into his new car and drives over uh the package to the rabbi there's still i'm looking i'm thinking the kids the jackets the the the the groups of people and i'm looking at like all these people lined up but on in front of trailers what does the giving the gratitude do for your volunteers so you know so typically on a saturday night when we stop bringing in the stuff in the warehouse we're unloading about 70 trailers and we have about 100 people offloading and these are all people business people and they stay up the whole night unloading setting it up for you know for about you know per area about 1700 cars that come in and they stay the whole night and they're there until sunday night late sunday night cleaning up and they tell us they come alive they work the hardest they ever worked the kids come and they say they wait the whole year to come and help and and and slept right they're sweating and they they haven't taken the shower in 24 hours but you see the happiness on the face if they did a coin just for somebody else that that is it's priceless when you when you light up somebody else and you give them something you feel you feel amazing yeah i think that's one of the big misconceptions that the more gratitude we we share the more we give we think in some ways it's gonna take from us it's gonna give us in ways that we couldn't even dream yes yes um you know there's a short story i'm just thinking about uh we got a letter last year hanukkah um from from a rabbi that bought stuff uh during the the circus time you know from the holiday and they they forgot that they had the stuff in their house and it was getting very tight in the in the house financially and he opened up the closet and he said it's a time of miracles and i saw that i had the extra product in my house and i was able to make it i have such gratitude to you wow for you know um so the letters that we get from from the teachers and gives us the inspiration to keep on going yeah and uh you know it's a tremendous uh you know you feed off each other and you know but i think i just want to give gratitude to one other person which is is really about 10 years ago we sat down with bruven feinstein and and since that time we've been in touch with him every single step of the way and you know the the foresight and also also more so every every hardship that we had that we had somebody to ask and get guidance yeah has has really uh you know allowed us to grow oh thank you so much uh it is such a great uh organization and may it continue to grow and thank you for uh doing like you said at the least we can do taking a step forward and being grateful to our teachers and may you continue shining your light on this world thank you so much charlie have a good night have a good night that was incredible and it's such a such a great lesson to take on responsibility in the way you give you get so much more if you remember last week we met with the project inspire staff and we're talking about the upcoming hanukkah easy outreach campaign where you can go to projectinspired.com and buy a hanukkah gift for someone you care about and they will send it directly to somebody else check out this quick video about this program chanukah is right here did you know that the menorah might be the most recognizable jewish symbol in the world donuts latkes family and friends but maybe not this year project inspired has just the thing to allow you to reach out and share the light and warmth of chanukah the chanukah easy outreach gift is now on sale for just 11.99 which includes shipping we'll send your family friends or co-workers a beautiful hanukkah package that includes a menorah candles from israel chocolate coins and the card with detailed explanations of the blessings and customs and you can add a personal message just go to projectinspire.com and order yours today that's project inspired.com so while you might not get to have your aunt barbara's crispy oily drenched potato latkes or here little jakey's rendition of i had a little dreidel you can still stay connected with the chanukah easy outreach gift at projectinspire.com now limited quantities available that's projectinspired.com go to projectinspire.com now check that out it's a great way to stay connected today and to bring the light of hanukkah coming at us in about a week and a half so it's coming sooner than we think our next guest is elisa abrams koenig she's the director of alumni engagement at yeshiva university throughout eliza's career she has worked within a variety of areas within the jewish education and experiential education earlier in elise's career she served as an assistant principal at central sheet university high school for girls lisa has spoken worldwide in synagogues community centers and schools and is a sought after consultant on experiential education elisa welcome to the show thank you so much it's great to be here it is great to have you on and i've been hearing about this thing called a pizza brigade so can you please tell us that everyone was listening what is a pizza brigade sure well let me first clarify that there were no capes or costumes involved but it actually started purim i live in riverdale i go to the riverdale minion and uh riverdale new york is actually just a couple miles from new rochelle and new rochelle is where the first case of coronavirus had had been tested positive and because of that we were of the first communities to shut down just as perm was beginning and we had scheduled a big perm party and we had ordered you know 40 pies of pizza amongst all the other treats and as things were just becoming you know we were just getting information we said well it's not safe for us to have a party we're going to still have mcgill and everything else but let's just hold off on the pizza and at the same time a local day school was the first school to shut down all of a sudden all these kids and their families were in quarantine we didn't even know what the word quarantine really meant back then and so we just said let's keep the pizza but let's deliver it to them and so on perm day we went and delivered 40 pies of pizza and we called ourselves the pizza brigade because we just needed a sticky name you know something funny and i have to say though the rabbi was dressed up nobody else was in costumes but it was purim so our rabbi was dressed up oh is that amazing is that amazing so what what has that done for you well give us the the implications of those activities sure so we decided then was we were just going week by week again we didn't know what was happening at the beginning of corona so the first sunday or the first time we did a pizza delivery was purim and then we saw that there was a need the following sunday and the sunday after that and we turned to our community we just said listen if anybody is interested in receiving a pie please let us know we're happy to give it to whomever and it was actually fascinating to see how many people said i'd rather just sponsor can i just give you money can you give this pie to somebody else and it just kept domino effect and the next thing we knew um we had so much money collected because people were really feeling generous even though again life was shutting down around us we said let's give to our local emergency room we're right near the bronx montecure hospital and we connected with the hospital we have some of their doctors go to our synagogue and we delivered 40 pies there and then we decided to do it for the hatsella members who live in our community and again another 30 pies there and then we went to two more hospitals and we just kept delivering the pizzas because we we couldn't be helpful in any other way and and it was as we joked it was hugs in the form of pizza and it everybody wanted to do more and i was getting donations from outside of our community and it was just really incredible to see how the people who received the pizza felt and the people who were delivering the pizza felt it just it was this point of connection that everyone really appreciated because everyone was feeling so isolated and scared at that time wow and what an interesting concept that you know this idea that when you're giving you're feeling different you're feeling better the concept that people want when they're attached to giving when they're attached to gratitude it's like the expression of the soul it feels so much better than giving them the taking and i just it's such an interesting point that i want to bring out here which is the way you were you weren't helping let's just say and you said it it wasn't like you were jumping in in the r room you're like give me a scalpel i got this one right you were just like hey i'm here i want to say thank you and i just want to do something that is just a little bit better for your life like i didn't pay for your kids college tuition i'm just giving you a piece of pizza and that and we we i think we messed this up and i want to explore this with you i think we think that if i don't if i can't solve it if i can't really make the difference what's the point and i think this example is that's the point is that you don't have to solve it you have to just be willing to do something and that in itself can really change the game absolutely absolutely and it's actually interesting what happened from just our giving was we're working with a small local pizza shop here in riverdale who also bakes challahs and he was losing so much business and he said to me would you mind maybe just once could you organize like a big challah delivery and i will drop it off at people's buildings we live we're a lot of apartment buildings here in riverdale he said if you get 15 orders i'll drop it off at a building i said sure let me send out a google form let people you know try and buy chala i didn't know how many to expect and that first week we sold like five hundred dollars in holla and it's still going on today i still organize it every week and even just last week i got an email from a woman who said i can't thank you enough for this like it makes my life so much easier that i can just go downstairs to my lobby and i get my challah like something so small we don't even think about and meanwhile his business is still struggling but he truly every hundred dollars of chala rolls that we sell each week for him he is so appreciative and everybody who buys it feels like they're also a part of just helping him there's tremendous gratitude across the board yeah another thing that i love about this story that i want to just highlight before we move on is that you didn't get a degree in this right this is not what you do you're an educator you're you're you're someone who has a you have your expertise in other things but in in life you don't have to have a degree to step up and help and you become an expert if you will like you're you're coordinating so much carbs you know i'm saying you're the expert right now in carb coordination for riverdale like pizzas but you didn't you didn't have training in this and that's what's so great about this story is that it puts all of us on notice that if you see something you don't got to be the expert in the room to do it just go ahead and do it and it'll go where it goes but let just be god's conduit did you feel that along the way that like as if god was working through you to bring all this joy to people absolutely i if every time i even tell my community that i've had the opportunity to speak about what we did i just say i'm just representing all of us i absolutely didn't do this by myself and it was an idea my friend jordana osband and i we were talking about this and it was together that we came up with this idea and we just you know we knew that some idea had to happen and it just came to us and we absolutely felt you know that it was part of god's plan that we knew that people were isolated but we knew that we could do something to bring the community together and for many people you know that was the last time they even saw some people and it's still a memory that comes up from time to time and it's just this communal touch point for so many people and it's it's definitely something that's bigger than all of us amazing well lisa thank you so much for being on our show and sharing this with us it it brings so much joy to me and i'm sure everybody else continue doing what you're doing and shining your light on this world thank you so much have a great job it's happy thanksgiving have a great job as heavy thanksgiving i absolutely love that don't you i mean like that's what this is about this is about being a person that looks out into the world and sees a need and jumps in this is it there's so much of this story that is about our own lives that i think is such a great takeaway this week we've got such a great program as project inspire and every week we talk about this idea called mind flex right there's this popular deep dive series it's one of the great programs that project inspires introduced over here over the past few months it's a mind flex deep dive series they basically go deep dive into a compelling jewish topic they use zoom breakout rooms where small groups discuss sources and questions designed to promote stimulating conversations there's a real give and take to spice it all up they've got the great rabbi tv sitting from the village of toronto who is awesome who shares his wisdom with the whole group at the beginning in the end i had a chance to catch up with two of the participants they're actually havrutok the harusas they study together i caught up with them earlier today just to get their sense sometimes i keep on saying it but something i want to hear from the people that are actually doing it so check this out so thank you guys so much for joining us on the show it's thank you for taking the time out of thanksgiving i know that the both of you have been involved in the deep dive series and have been studying together maybe you know share with us a little bit about what it's done for you and the experience that you've had it's become a really important part of my week both uh dublin and i find time to learn just about every sunday and then i think it's tuesday nights we do these deep dives and it's been really consistent during uh kovid it's been one of the best ways to to reach out to folks over this medium that we're all using and we get the opportunity to to connect to to really really strong content and then use the advantages of being in our quarantine states to to to then actually hear the content digest it and then meet in 101 groups the format is working really really well amazing so david what's it like for you being able to connect this material as well yeah it's incredible let's talk about the uh the deep dive in my flex on tuesday nights or so so you know the the the modules are excellent really ideas that are main foundational principles of judaism um i think two weeks ago was as we have and then we had and in each case i mean i learned things i never i never really so many different angles different facets of these critical concepts i never saw before you know i was exposed to and looking at the material before we got together and then going through it together you know with the group on the phone everyone you know questions being asked everyone sort of reacts to the material in a different way um has a new insight to add and and and it generates discussion that just opens up new worlds of understanding these critical critical concepts of judaism it's just it's you know it's terrific it's it's a great program a great setup the modules are great and and and the format just really really works and you know you know and so good to hear and i think as people you know the hesitation people have to jump into these forums is uh maybe i don't know enough maybe i'll be uncomfortable if i learn one-on-one with somebody like will that you know let that mesh what has been your experience you guys didn't know each other beforehand right so you met in this virtual world so to speak and you've created this relationship so for someone who's out there thinking like yeah but i don't know anybody and like what if i come in and it's uncomfortable what has been your experience in terms of the the uncomfortability of it to get somebody who's new to say hey let me try this it's become this um recurring theme in each of our weeks to check in with each other we say there's a share just about every week where we'll find something that relates either the parsha or something in our lives or in the world that really relates to uh to what we're learning uh through perceivable so um we we enjoy it a lot enjoy that time with each other how highly do you recommend this and someone's out there going i'm not sure maybe i shouldn't maybe my background for a one-on-one uh kind of thing i think it's terrific because it really gives you time to deep dive into topics if you're if you're if you're focused on not not just um not just the the connection to hashem but if but the intellectual rigor that that learning environment brings on is really a refreshing part of a week where we all stay so focused uh your show another week we touched the these these moments of joy but it's really really refreshing to have those those consistent um uh academic philosophical intellectual dives totally true david darren thank you for who you are what you're doing and thanks for uh being a part of this program and sharing with others i'm sure it's inspiring people as we speak and i hope that you continue to learn together and grow together um and shine your light on the world thank you thank you charlie good time so check out that program is taking place each week this week we've got a special one called israel in greece the clash of civilizations usually we're going to have as usual we're going to have to be sitting or open and close with words of inspiration we're going to split into pairs it should be very interesting for those that want it of course always remember one-on-ones you can text 97 000 one-on-ones uh it's like we just saw can literally change your week before we go to the next program i'll give a couple of shabbat shaloms i've been trying to hold out because i'm watching them grow over here um but i can't hold that any longer to shabbat shalom to henry from toronto shabbat shalom to rochelle and michael kurzner from toronto and happy thanksgiving to you and to everybody here the silver family um shabbat shalom in highland park new jersey shabbat shalom to ed leland shabbat shalom to you and thank you for your kind words rafa rivka tyler patriots rock shabbat shalom to you to jerry and goldie tauber shabbat shalom to you we got jamie's family tuning on here thank you so much for tuning in shabbat shalom to janet michael from calgary canada shabbat shalom um to uh fran from milwaukee shabbat shalom to eliza mervis and the mervis family in silver spring maryland before let me just go down to a couple from facebook you know what let's go to the student uh our next student video and i'll go back to some more afterwards so i want to go back to uh asia torah jerusalem for the next student to say a couple of words for thanksgiving hey guys i'm jake uh wanting to wish all my friends and family back in america a wonderful happy thanksgiving i know it's been a really rough year but we have so much more to be grateful for i know personally i'm so grateful and thankful to be right next to the western wall for thanksgiving i know all of you back in the states are going to have a really wonderful day as well keep on being positive keep on being grateful and we're going to bring all this positive vibes into 2021 have a wonderful thanksgiving thank you very much uh don't you love these students uh now it's time for the moment that we all love kahoot for those that are joining us for the first time we play a competitive video game every single week with each other go to kahoot.it if you want to join in you can do it on your app on your phone or you can just do it on the computer go to kahoot.it let's go to ku right now to my project inspired production team let's go to kahoot and here we go type in the code six three two seven three one eight six three two seven three one eight here we go as the kahoot team starts to jump on over here uh let's get rolling here six three two seven three one eight as you that i want to go to facebook and just wish a shabbat shalom to um debbie laufen from boston leron hirschkorn shabbat shalom rana rona adler from fairlawn shabbat shalom to you vanessa crackton from melbourne australia shabbat shalom ruth perez from west orange new jersey the popels in miami uh to laurie polanski mccroson shabbat shalom to you i think they're currently in natanya um or they're in west hempstead one of those places wherever you are shabbat shalom eliezer brought from toronto shabbat shalom to you elisa nussbaum shabbat shalom to you and shabbat shalom to all those that are tuning in from all over let's give it another minute or two someone just jumped in as me in kahoot i hope that i hope they win but i'm not playing but whoever jumped in as me um good luck good extra luck over here let's go another one minute or two and then we'll get ready to roll uh let's do one more shabbat shalom before we go um to robin meyerson of scottsdale arizona shabbat shalom two okay let's get rolling team let's get let's get kahoot going okay here it goes at the first thanksgiving meal the tribe of indians sat down to eat with the colonists this tribe is the seahawks i say that right wampa juan panog the cleveland indians and cherokee who was the tribe of indians that sat down to eat with the colonists in that first thanksgiving meal shabbat shalom to helen from toronto marilyn bodner fairlawn new jersey shabbat shalom the novak family from toronto shabbat shalom 2 again and here comes the answer the answer is the wampanoag the wampanoag family uh tribe they were the first ones to make peace with the colonists okay let's go to the next one let's see how we did rachel cam cheese mervis john and cs where's the charlie hirari guy okay here goes the indians brought five of these as an offering turkeys deer bow and arrows or woven baskets what did the the indians bring as an offering shabbat shalom to rachel s from providence rhode island to leia from montreal quebec john from oxfordshire england shabbat shalom to you here comes the answer the answer is dear how about that i was going to go with woven baskets if you asked me that's what i would have guessed but apparently the answer is dear cam cheese chmf family rachel s and mervis family i hope i'm saying that chemistry is right or is it chemicals i don't know but you're they're on top here we go next question how do you say gratitude in hebrew you know hebrew is coming up gratitude to dharaba vivakasha akaratha tov to the minsters in cincinnati shabbat shalom to the birminghams in birmingham alabama shabbat shalom juliette of boston shabbat shalom throughout the city shabbat shalom to you the answer is that was in a quick lap around the bases for our contestants the cam she's still on top chm family rachel s and mervis i don't think there's a move look at that okay let's go next the final question anything can happen in the in the bottom of the ninth thanksgiving day as canada is celebrated on the second monday in october on june 5th no matter what day it is depends if the groundhog sees his shadow on the same day as the us this is i guess unfairly favoring our torontonians and everyone else that comes in i see tons of canada that are coming in here so they may have a little bit of a uh an advantage here but that's okay freeman shabbat shalom rosen family from far away shabbat shalom to you okay let's see how we did the second monday in october and that's i guess a lot of how people see let's see how we played out over here cs comes in third the chem she's in second place and the number one place goes to the m family congratulations m family mer the runners-up mervis and rachel thank you so much for playing kahoot and i hope that wherever you are playing this game i hope that you're at least competing with each other our next guest is a mentor of mine his name is by zachary wallistein he's the founder and director of the oran navas women's center in brooklyn new york he has become an icon in the jewish world of fearless vision deep conviction and unfailing warmth now celebrating on over three decades career in teaching this dynamic educator with his trademark passion clarity and love has touched the hearts and souls of thousands of students from all shades of the religious spectrum he's the author of the book let there be rain a lesson in day in making gratitude a part of our lives which is found on amazon rabbi welcome to the shop thank you thank you good to see you again charlie well it's so good to have you on i i i for all the audience i got to tell you you know in in the time before rosh hashanah that whole that month the rabbi and his team launches a series called called avinu malcano my father my king it's a it's a tour around the world and this year they didn't and i'm blessed some years and to be asked to be part of that and i got to tell you if you're in a city where this with this speech takes place you got to show up it's packed and it's amazing and it's one of the highlights of my year and every every speech the rabbi gets up and delivers a killer and i'm like how does he keep on doing it but he keeps on doing it rabbi thank you so much for joining us and i know that you wrote a book on gratitude so i mean you wrote a book on it so so give us if you can your perspective on what is gratitude and why is it so critical for our lives okay we call it the attitude of gratitude it's a whole it's a whole different attitude interesting the day is called thanksgiving not thanks taking um you have to you have to have gratitude that you're the giver uh and that you don't have to be the taker and you don't need to be taking so that's the first gratitude is even in the word of you know thanksgiving that i'm able to give that that um you know the first word that you say when you wake up in the morning you don't even have to wash your hands you don't have to have your yarmulke on your head you don't have to be clean it's moda ani the first word that comes out of a human being's mouth every day is thank you first word before anything and and what are you thanking hashem foreign i i'm i say this it's it's a word from which is amazing we know that god doesn't have anything extra in his world not even not even a blade of grass extra so if you wake up in the morning means you're not extra if you were extra you wouldn't wake up in the morning so we thank hashem that for some reason your world god today is not complete without me that i want to jump on that because that's we can spend a a night on that one principle it is so big that i i we have to slow down the recognition that i am a critical peace and god handed me my soul for other day and he believes in me right puts us in a state of expected explosives it's mind-boggling it's mind-boggling how could you be how do you have anxiety and be depressed if god decided today that he needs you his world cannot exist without you because if he could you wouldn't be here he has no extras there's no extras in his world there's no duplicates in this world there's no one else like you so every you know a lot of people didn't wake up this morning so so you woke up which means god gave you the greatest present that exists in the world which is potential potential is life now you have to look in the mirror in the morning and say whoa whoa god needs me now you gotta look mirror and say why wha what could i do today why why am i here and and that answer many times will be like all these things i saw before this the pizza and all the other things um and i know the organization that helps throughout them i know who's behind it and i'm not allowed to say who it is but they're they're they're absolutely amazing people the whole thing is is absolutely amazing and and you've got to look in the mirror and i tell the girls in my school and then my wherever that that you gotta come here and say okay i'm not extra so i'm not extra what am i supposed to do today and and and you know how cursed i thought i saw that i wanted to play the game i don't know i couldn't get in there um and i would i would have also said baskets for sure for sure right i would have gone basket and i know how competitive you are rabbi because i know we've been talking about the whole game now right and dear i was sure that wasn't dear where did that come from i'm with you and i thought they were cherokee indians i would not have made i definitely a very very you know done very well but the interesting thing is what is that so the one that the one i would get right did get right is that kara satov what does that kara satova actually translate what does it mean recognition of good now it's very important to be thankful for something that's definitely good there's no great feel if i come over to someone in the street and i give him a hundred thousand dollars he says thank you of course you're going to say thank you so hakarsatov really means to be able to find the good in the things that don't look good recognizing the good oh i see open to you that's good it's not recognizing good of course it's good so so recognizing in your life right that even the hard times you're going through that's real recognition and be able to see the good in all the struggle which me and you talk about all the time struggle muscle and that you become who you are because of what you know of what you go through so a curse have told it's more than gratitude it's the ability to recognize the good and the best example i could give you is moshe abbaenu was not allowed to hit the water because he was saved by the water really he wasn't saved by the water he was put in a waterproof basket and that basket would normally float because that's what water does so the water did nothing for him the water acted like water it's not like the water split from kaioshina it didn't it didn't go outside of its nature so so why wouldn't he be able to hit the water the word did nothing for him if if i put a boat on the water and it floats that's what water does and the answer is that occurs atov you have to recognize the mundane though what they call in the world nature right is super good so that even though the water was doing what it was supposed to most people would not thank the water for it you can't hit something wow the end of the day was doing its job and i always tell my kids that when you you have to be thankful to the waiter who's getting paid like what do i have to help why do i have to clean off my table if there's a guy that cleans off the table and the answer is you're right he's getting paid you have to appreciate when people are doing what they're supposed to be doing for you and it doesn't look like anything special that's that's the third eye that's the recognition of good even though it doesn't look like it's doing me it's doing anything good and then you find god in in nature which the whole world no it's nature it's normal gravity and the ocean and the sun and it comes up every day there's no right there's no thankful if something like god stopped the sun for yeshua whoa that's amazing you got to thank hashem but that the sun comes up every day that's nature hakar satova is no no i recognize the good in things that are mundane that i take for granted it's a different level that's that's the tremendous point that i i i don't think i've ever sort of thought through that concept that which is really the hebrew version of this is there's there's an action here that's called recognition and that's exactly right that the recognition is no big shakes if someone hands you some obviously good thing then well you don't get any points for recognition and i think it's good for spelling that organization that gives the rabbi in right so so he's a teacher he's getting paid from the school like kids don't think that he's getting paid it's a job right they came along and said no you have to thank them for even though they're getting paid and doing their job we recognize perfect that was a perfect example you come home to your wife if you made supper what do you mean she's supposed to make stuff but she's my wife oh it's my husband he's making a living he's supposed to make a living so i don't have a special thanks no thank you for making supper i'm not taking it for granted thank you for making a living i'm not taking it for granted recognition of the good when it doesn't seem to be anything special wow rabbi as always such an important lesson for us to take in the ability to recognize regular things that they're not regular at all there's nothing in this world that is regular and or and or is natural and if there's ever a thanksgiving and maybe in the modern era that we can remember where we have to stop and realize that even the smallest things are really extraordinary like being with other people without putting cloths on our faces like that to think that we went we're there but just to be thankful that we can be with other people today do i have one more second yeah of course one more second so i i love to talk to holocaust survivors i just like to understand how they made it how do you have any questions there's a 96 year old holocaust survivor that i prayed next to and i went over to him two weeks ago by a kiddush and i said i gotta ask you a question but you gotta tell me the truth i'm not i don't want i don't want rabbi stuff i don't i want to know did you he went through auschwitz he lost everything did you have any questions after the holocaust but don't make me feel good tell me the truth this old 96 year old man looks at me and he says rabbi you want to know the real truth i'm like yeah he goes yes i did i had one question i'm like ah we got we got you know he's normal listen this is this is my end it's very important for tonight and he says to me i had a question when i got out of auschwitz and i went back to my town everyone's dead my town's dead my family everyone's dead and then i found out only a few months later that six million people died so i had a question to hashem why did you let me live well what do you know about me that i don't know about myself this is what this man told me he didn't have a question about the 6 million so he said to me and rabbi after 120 i have children and grandchildren great grandchildren obadir hashem this guy said kylo you're showing off he's getting quite a little this guy's a rebbe this guy gets to talk to that he said when i come up to shamim after 120. i want to be able to say hashem i did good didn't i thank you what a great perspective that was his question yeah why me so every morning moda ani what am i doing here today you know like why me thank you rabbi as always it's great to have you on and good to see you what's up thank you you look good i'm making thank you man should continue thank you rabbi good shabbos and it's exactly such an incredible point um asking the right questions being grateful for the right things taking nothing for granted recognizing that the things that may not look like good are really good it's time to now go and give gratitude to our partner on the show someone who has inspired many in her way i'm the one the only jamie geller thank you charlie so so so much i am so thankful today i'm just like in that gratitude mood hi mom okay just like i feel like i have to do that now every week no matter what all right now it's very hard to get controversial when it comes to food we've managed to ruffle a few feathers now and again and this next recipe has done just that now this either looks amazing to you or very unappetizing i happen to love this i want to see what you think and more importantly i want to know charlie what do you think about this recipe you always say nice things so it was like a trick question because i know it's going to be good all right enjoy your thanksgiving leftovers and shabbat shalom [Music] [Applause] so [Music] amazing as always jamie it's how do you make leftovers look good that was phenomenal for those that didn't get enough on thanksgiving you could always count on jamie to keep it going thank you jamie for what you do for more on jamie yellow go to jamiegala.com facebook instagram pinterest youtube twitter tick tock at jamie geller jewish by jamie we thank you for being stupid part of our show and we look forward to many many many more shows together our next video is another a student that we have here as we continue showing a couple of clips from the different students that we have in the wonderful tour yeshiva check out this latest video hey guys what's up my name is ariel and as crazy as it sounds we're coming to thanksgiving um and with that i just wanted to share some things that i'm grateful for it's really amazing that here at extra torah every morning when i wake up i have this amazing view of the hotel i get to daven and learn with the amazing family i have here between the rebate and the students it's just it's really all incredible um so i just wanted to wish everyone back home an amazing thanksgiving and god willing a great 2021. and thank you for that and now we have the opportunity to have the ceo of asia torah global coming on now whereby stephen berg is the ceo this incredible organization and all of that which it does in addition to urbanite coordination and a masters in medieval jewish history both from yeshu university ryberg has completed management courses at the harvard business school at the kellogg school of management at northwestern university following his ordination he embarked on a 22-year career at the ou and was appointed as the international director of ncsy the youth women of the u most recently robert berg served as the eastern director of the simon wiesenthal center a global jewish human rights organization that confronts anti-semitism hate and terrorism and promotes human rights and dignity stands with israel and defends the safety of jews worldwide rabbi berg welcome to the show thank you charlie nice to see you oh it's so awesome to have you on now give us before we start you the your travels and i know that israel's shut down but where how where have you been these past few months back and forth back and forth just give us a sense so that we could sort of follow you around the drop because i know that you're always on the road yeah i actually i feel bad because i know that so many people are struggling to get into israel and it's been really difficult i'm actually on sunday going to be taking my fourth trip since the summer to israel gosh i've been back and forth a lot and thankfully yeshiva's packed uh you know we've got millions of people you know on h.com it's just got so many programs all around the world so uh we're just just a lot to do thank god even through corona so we we just saw a clip of just a few of your students um project inspire this program is a program of asiatora um give us a sense in terms of what gratitude means to you you're always running you're always doing all the stuff so to speak on your head how does gratitude play into your life where have you seen it and how does it really affect us and affect you look i think i'm like most jews i mean the ultimate gratitude is to almighty you know the almighty created the incredible world uh but he also gave us challenges and the challenges that he gave us are there to have us step up and and do incredible things and i think that with noah weinberg's got solid foundation torah he understood that he understood that you know we need to give people the opportunity to give you know because when you give as has been said i think by every person has been on the program today when you give you receive so much more and you know and we're still doing that you know we just set a 10-year goal uh of the next 10 years to get 3 million people jews learning torah that we're not involved in torah before and you know every single time that we get someone involved in that goal and giving and supporting the almighty and supporting the fellow jews you just get so much more in your heart yeah yeah and i'm sure you're seeing it in terms of your students and your the participants as well do you find that you know as people are benefiting from these programs there's some kind of cycle going on of the gratitude and the giving that just continues to move absolutely you know we have you know we have a a theory about theory but really it's more of a hashtag that uh when a person learns olive they have to teach olive and and all the torah that we give in isha torah is on condition that people give it over to other people and so therefore right from the first day there's no such thing as just a take or a nation torah the second you take anything from us you're basically under an obligation to give it over to someone else meaning you know we give you know classes all over the world in all kinds of different languages but it's all predicated on the fact that everyone needs to become a giver yeah and it's it's interesting you say that because i remember hearing that from noah as well this concept of stop waiting until like you're perfectly poised you'll never be perfectly poised god's running the world anyways and just start giving and i wonder if that's really underlying a lot of the of the fire if you will under aish which is this idea that we don't have to be we don't have to be ready we have to be willing absolutely i mean i think it's one of the big things that people go through like who am i to give is my shop stable good enough and all those things and and you know the bottom line is you know when you look at the gemara you know it talks about the four people never sinned because you know yeeshai and then and they were wonderful people but but really the heroes of jewish people were people like moshe people like david these are people that sinned you know meaning no one was perfect that's the whole idea of judaism other religions you know people in prophets can be perfect no one's perfect here and it doesn't matter you just do your best that's what god wants the end of the day yeah i want you to do your best yeah what's what's the message we can walk away with you know that you're the last guest that we have on the show today um and in many ways before you go let me show my gratitude to you and to the whole organization here asia torah like we said is the global organization which encompasses so much more but also is a project inspire which is my partners in the show um and thank you for for for your support and thank you to everyone who's involved in this show which we'll get to another time but everyone who's involved at all levels um but what could be a message that we walk away with so that each of us can put something into our hearts and minds um with what we have to do and how gratitude can really make us a bigger and a better person look at the bottom line is that project inspire is not just a program that they should tolerate really is the philosophy of asia torah it's about being a giver you know and and as i've said many times you know a baby is born there's no more selfish being in the world than a baby when a baby is tired of cries when he goes to the bathroom he cries when it's hungry it's cries and at some point as you get older you transform from being selfish to being selfless that's what god wants ultimately that is the ultimate test of a jew is can you become selfless can you become a giver and that is asian that's why so many millions of people around the world gravitate to asia torah and i think projects fire has done a good job of basically you know espousing the torah philosophy and getting it out there that you know you have to give and and i would say the ultimate gratitude to almighty is that he has made us a partner he is a giver and we're also a giver he has given us the ability to give that's the ultimate gratitude amazing rabbi thank you for what you do for the world thank you for what you do for us personally and uh may you continue shining your light on this world thank you chuck thank you that was rabbi steven berg an incredible individual who i've had the pleasure of knowing for most of my life and watching and really admiring someone who's so dedicated to the jewish people and to aisha torah and all they do for the world and allow me to give my thanks to the team um that's constantly pushing us here and to obviously to yasi nyakov and lauren the entire team that's producing this show every single week um it's there is in tulis of course and to lisa as well and and there's there's so much more going on every single week into doing um to doing all these all these pieces but i want to just sort of end with this idea that really at the end of the day it's it's the gratitude that makes us who we are it's the gratitude that allows us to fully express this powerful soul that we have what i've seen throughout the whole show which i think and i hope that you've seen as well is that the people that are the most grateful people that are the most recognized that can recognize the good in everything they're the ones that have the most it's an amazing way god creates the world he makes it look as if taking is what accumulating is the goal actually it's the gratitude and the recognition and the giving that gives us the greatest lives and isn't that what shabbat really is isn't that shabbat the moment where we look up and we realize say my world this ain't my world i'm just here for a few days a week trying my hardest but every seventh i stop and go wait a second there's something more to my life there's something more to my existence and i got to make sure that i bring that out and so what could be better than thanksgiving to shabbat because that's really the transition because when you're in that state of mind there's no better place than you belong than shabbat so on behalf of me and mine to you and yours i'd like to wish you a shabbat shalom it made this be a shabbat filled with gratitude and thanks perspective wisdom patience may we realize how lucky we are like the barbara wallistein said may we wake up in the morning every day and go god needs me wow feels amazing to be needed for humanity may we like robert berg said may we just go out there and do do do don't worry just give like we saw from the famous pizza brigade and from those great people in has they live and everything else that we saw tonight may this be a shabbat that we realize how powerful we are and how much we have to give to this world i hope and pray that next week we do this show live from jerusalem but if not i hope with god's help to see again next week until then have a great weekend happy thanksgiving good shabbos and shabbat shalom can't wait to see you next week [Music] like oh outnumbered [Music] together [Music]