In Conversation: Rabbi Larry Rothwachs and Chavie Knapp

you didn't have to come for me that was so kind of you thank you so much just wanted to it's to be supportive of you rothwax thank you [Music] you didn't have to come for me that was so kind of you thank you david it's been a while in a really long time good to see you likewise this is my sister javi oh wow a small world yep you're on you but you know okay you're doing good things david i see the things you're doing at the ou cola cavone um it's been a while since july and jerusalem i it's a public forum but i'd love to uh share stories catch up very soon very funny not in this setting yes i guess and things are yeah that was a very consequential summer for many people yes agreed talk to you soon just head backstage after the show thank you do you want to be a yucky 8 15 this is your show you tell me hi um i was once the rabbi of uh of a a yucky school that became a persian shoal enabled me to tell you you just had two hours exactly and you're good exactly two hours late yeah so um you know we could be generous and give to late 16 but unless you have waited longer in the past you know uh we probably should not not by choice okay yeah let me know i don't know if there's anything that needs to happen before i start or if you [Music] okay okay like i said i'm sure the makeup is ready and the lights okay okay okay it's 8 16. we're good 8 16 we're good so i just uh shabu tov to everybody a uh a happy uh i guess we're deep into good winter uh a good almost spring as is hashem uh welcome to in conversation um very excited uh everyone's here yet again um just wanted again uh to thank the idea havers the uh spear headers uh mr henry olinsky rabbi shai shakhtar ave arizat uh for pulling this together seven seven weeks worth of uh mostly shabbos programming um and baruch hashem been getting actually emails from other um people who are not part of the original seven uh you gotta talk to this rabbi i gotta talk to this would be great if you are one of these people who uh feels very strongly uh that the eighth program is really uh you know x y and z please feel free to reach out um to any of the aforementioned organizers or myself it's my last name pardo o u dot o r g uh in the meantime happy proud humble to introduce rabbi larry rothwax who will take care of the rest of the introductions if you have questions for rabbi rothwax or for javina please uh drop them in the um in the in the chat box they'll see them um and thank you very much david and to everyone at the ou and for all those who have organized tonight's event it truly is an honor and a privilege to be able to participate in this great series uh and it's a great honor to be joined this evening by having app it should be obvious by now because sort of the way this program is built that javi and i davin in the same shul as we have now for over 18 years but the truth is my relationship with javi and her husband stephen goes back well over 30 years at this point javi as you will get a little sense in a moment is an incredibly gifted individual she's an attorney a social worker homemaker and uh i would describe her i hope her kids would agree i'm sure they would as a supermom who's involved not only in her kids lives but really in helping them develop their careers as well which is a discussion uh and of itself for another time uh she and her husband stephen play an integral role in our community in many ways and we feel very fortunate to have them with us this evening we're going to focus on a particular event in javi's life which has impacted her as well as the members of her family most profoundly tonight's conversation is not scripted in any way but i for one am very much hoping that we will walk away inspired in many ways despite the very tragic circumstances which make up the subject of tonight's discussion i'm hopeful that there is a lot of positive messaging that we can take away from our conversation each and every one of us have been impacted by terrorism in one way or another over the course of the past several generations we have seen terrorism rear its head in every imaginable and unimaginable shape and form from up close and far and we have all seen the devastating consequences of terrorist activity and the cowardly acts of terrorism that have seared feelings and images in our minds and our hearts that are indelible as they should be but some of us have been impacted more directly than others and in april of 1995 was visiting israel as so many of us and our children have and will and on that particular fateful day her life was changed forever and at this point i would like to direct the spotlight if you will towards javi again thank you so much for joining us and hoping that you can share more with us sort of taking us to that day to that moment enabling us to gain more of an understanding into the background of this conversation that we are about to have thank you javi thank you for the beautiful introduction rabbi rothwax i'm actually used to seeing designing onto zoom and just watching you for hours on end so it's a little bit of a different experience being on the other side and also joining you so thank you and thanks for that introduction um thanks for inviting me i think one of the things that people have definitely approached me and asked me about over the course of this pandemic is um when you've been through something that's really traumatic the question is how did you get through it and what what kind of takeaways have you brought away from the event with you um and i think even during this pandemic people are constantly wondering how is this going to affect all of us what are the what are the long-term effects going to be on me on the community on the world at large um and i think that one of the things that i always think about is instead of asking that question in a passive way what are the effects going to be on me and on the world is those effects are really in our control um how things and events affect us and how the pandemic is going to be affecting us long term are that's really in our control we are the ones who are in control of of how experiences and events and a pandemic is going to have its long-lasting effect on us and so it's a really really important question not just to ask but to take ownership over that question how how we are going to actively you know how we're going to walk away from an event and and that's really in our control so it's something that's an important thing to explore and to discuss and to process so that the aftermath can can really be um less harsh and and more meaningful so i'm happy to begin the discussion if there's anything specific you want me to discuss or talk about or to start off with right so i actually really appreciate that i'm gonna i'm gonna make i won't have to make a note of it i'm gonna make a mental note to come back because i would very much love to hear i think all of us would to be able to sort of draw from whatever inspiration you can provide us with your own personal experiences and apply it to a difficult situation in which we find ourselves right now i think each and every one of us could decide for ourselves after hearing a little more about your story you know how it ranks relative to to coming as close as you did to death uh in in just a horrific attack that you lived through but regardless of of how it ranks relative to that there's no question that this is a difficult time and i thank you so much uh for fulfilling that which i had said from the outset i hope that tonight we will be able to walk away uh with a sense of of sort of a positive message that we can take and learn and already to tell us from the outset that the short and long long term effects of things that we experience in life are much more in our control than we sometimes think is already you know a very a very inspiring and very empowering thought so without putting you on the spot but then again you signed up for this or you subconsciously agree i agree i should say maybe just take us a little bit back to april of 1995. i am not going to pro for more details that you want to share but just you know take us there give us just a little bit of the background so you know we can appreciate you know what it is that you lived through what you survived um and then we'll continue the conversation okay so just to give you a little bit of background i had graduated from stern and a whole bunch of us were not really ready yet to commit to what we wanted to do when we grew up so we decided to go to israel for the year and spend the year learning i was planning on going to law school and i just wanted to take another gap year just you know in addition to the gap year i had taken after high school just to you know really just enjoy and hang out with friends and do some learning before i went to nyu law school so i actually one of the um one of our fellow community members adina merefeld was my roommate that year um we got an apartment and um we we were joined in january by a new roommate elisa flado and we became really really fast friends with her um and we were having a great time we were having lots of you know lots of company for shabbos it was it was a really nice singles community there and a lot of us had come from america together to spend the year um so fast forward a little bit uh so basically um a friend of mine and myself not one of my roommates but a friend of mine and myself had decided that we're going to stay in israel for pesach that year or you're in israel we had come home and we really wanted to experience it in israel so before pesach started we decided to go on a little spa vacation together um to gush katie it was 95 so it was before gush katie was a dangerous spot and we decided to go to a spa for a couple of days and elisa was my roommate and a couple of days before i was going to leave with my other friends um elisa's plans had fallen through she was supposed to go to egypt with a friend before pesa for a few days and she asked if she could join our trip and we said of course you could join our trip so the morning we were going to leave elise and i um we went to the main bus station and we were supposed to be taking a bus that was going to take us to ashkelon and then another bus from ashkelon to gush katie if it was a connecting it was a connecting bus and we you know made plans to get on a specific bus and for whatever reason that bus didn't it didn't work out for us to get on that bus and we ended up taking the second bus that was going to be going to oshkolon and we watched the first bus pull out and we took we got on the second bus um and we traveled to oshkolon three of us traveled to ashkelon and then we got to ashkelon we had some time in between the next connecting bus and we hung out in the mall and we were joking around together we were talking about our families and then we got on the connecting bus from um ashkelon to gush katie and i vividly remember getting on the bus and i was putting our luggage on the bus and i got onto the bus and there were three of us um as most people most most women know there could be there can be ends up being a lot of drama when it's three girls together if two of them are leaving one of them out or if one of them is leaving two of them out and so i sort of like chose my seat carefully because i wanted to make sure that you know neither them were going to be upset at me for not sitting with them and so i let them sit together and i just sat behind them next to an israeli soldier it was a bus that was coming back from a weekend where a lot of the soldiers had off for this free weekend and they were all coming back to be back on base so it was basically the three of us an elderly couple and a bus full of hailim full of israeli soldiers and as the bus made a couple of stops along the way a lot of very happy very excited soldiers who were just coming back from um you know from a nice long weekend with their families or friends and they're going back to work they would be coming onto the bus and i vividly remember i had like my lucas bag my black and yellow luggage that we all used in those days that was in the in sort of in the um in the aisle and the bus and some of the soldiers were getting on it was a very full bus there wasn't there were no more seats and the soldiers were sort of just all standing in the aisle and laughing and having a good time um and i must have fallen asleep while the bus was going and all of a sudden uh we heard i just felt like a tremendous tremendous like crazy feeling and then opens up my eyes and just saw um saw like just gray particles like whizzing by um and all of a sudden i just saw elisa like fall over in the seat in front of me and everybody was just screaming and yelling and there was you know there's i looked behind me and i saw a soldier screaming and there was there was just there was a lot of like blood everywhere and and people were just screaming and yelling there's a war get off the bus and you know whoever could started um getting down and just crawling off the bus and we just crawled onto like a desert ground basically um and we had no idea what was going on i mean the first thing i could think of was i just i hope i'm gonna be okay because i don't know how my mother is gonna get through this if i'm not and um and and i you know we we we got off the bus and i was just really really worried about elisa and understand if there was a war going on what we were supposed to do and um and it was just it was it was an entirely like i mean we didn't there was no suicide bomber at the time so we didn't even think about what it could be we thought it was a land war um and we just there were probably about like five or six of us that were not badly injured and they quickly sort of whisked us away and took us to um the nearby uh community near gush katief and you know they let us make a couple of phone calls and i i was just really really concerned about alisa i just i called um i called one of my ex-boyfriends and i called my sister shashana who had just gotten married to her husband yitzi and i s they they allowed us these two phone calls and she said is everything okay and i said no i really don't think so um i think elisa's really badly hurt and i don't know what's going on and and i have to get off the phone i can't really talk to you i'm only allowed this one phone call and it's really i'm with these people who have no money and they just and um it was just a complete whirlwind i mean she basically went over to my parents house to try to explain to them that something had happened they don't really know what happened and we were trying to figure out like what was going on with elisa and you know i mean everybody i guess everybody knows like you know the story did not end well um alisa had been very badly hurt she had been hit by shrapnel and um and it was just you know there was a lot of to hillary that was said and and we were praying so hard for her and um and it just it did not have a good ending um so it you know it was the first suicide bomber who basically rammed itself into this bus specifically wanted to get a bus that was full of uh israeli soldiers and basically do as much damage as they possibly could um and we ended up going to the soroka hospital you know to see elisa and try to just help identify like who who she was and you know it was it was just you know i think back now and it was just you know you don't think these types of things are gonna happen to you it's just it was like living a nightmare i mean they happen to you read about these things in the news but you don't imagine that your little decision to go on a trip is going to affect you know people's lives and and and it's gonna have such such it could be such you know it could end in such tragedy um and i think you know there were there were so many things so many things to process about about all of this i mean it was you know the the you know the situation with elisa and and and the situation of feeling guilty that you know so much guilt about you know why did i walk off okay and and and there's not really a reason for that but you know the fairness of it all and and the bad things happening to good people and there were so many things that kicked in that you know in the past you know 25 years um since this event it's it's taken it's definitely taken lots and lots of turns of processing and coming to terms with it and talking to people about it and you know just um i remember picking my seat i mean it's one of the things that i still remember very very vividly i mean i guess you know memories are thank god i mean some memories are not as vividly remembered as others and i guess that you know god makes that happen for survival purposes one of the things that i remember very vividly is choosing my seat very carefully um and i i think for a very long time i was just trying to come to terms with oh my gosh like i you know was somebody trying to do that for me was there a str like some you know it was just such a very specific decision that i made and if somebody had said to me you know choose your seat really really carefully now because that is going to have such an impact on how things play out i i don't think i could have chosen a more lucky seat um so you know but on the other hand it's it's it's been it you know it's hard to grapple with but but why why did that have to happen to elisa and how you know god's where god's um actions you know come in and which part was our choice and which part was for some reason this had to happen and you know i think i think that um you know a lot of these things have been years and years and years of processing and getting a lot of support from family and friends and a community and i think you know the communal piece is so important here and i know that for myself with this pandemic i i look around and i i know from experience how important community is and how important family and friends are in getting in having gotten me through this and i and i recognize like the beauty of the community right now in all of us being there for each other in this pandemic because it's so crucial in terms of getting through it i mean some of the same questions that i've grappled with individually are being dealt with in the community now by our kids by ourselves by our schools why why is this happening like why why what what i'm pinching ourselves is this really happening like a year later almost a year later we're still in this situation and i think it's the same pinching feeling that i felt at the time like is this real i mean i still wake up even now with the pandemic and say wait is this covet thing real or is this the dream and i'm waking up and it was just you know like a dream that felt like it took a year last night and i think a lot of those same things that i felt i think we're all feeling now with the pandemic and i look around and i remember [Music] lucky i was and how lucky our community is that we have each other it's a process now and to get through this so maybe i'll jump in now not because i want to interrupt you if anything uh you know i think uh each and every one of us are are stunned uh not because you've told us anything that we we didn't know i think some of us know you better than others that lisa flado's name is a name that we all know i actually uh went to elementary school with at least i was not uh as close with her as you i do remember it was not even a month after my own wedding uh attending her leviathan west orange and the shul and obviously that's a moment that i will never forget but your story obviously is is compelling on so many levels and there's so much to unpack but since you've you've once again and i appreciate what you're doing sort of made the connection for us um which by the way i appreciate you doing because i would have had to do so much more cautiously and i would have been frankly i would have been concerned about perhaps even offending you i know that you're not easily offended but to just go ahead and say well you know you experienced this and we're experiencing this and you know can you help us draw an analogy but since you've done that already twice i i think it's important to mention the fact that two things number one you have had the benefit of 25 plus years to to process that and that's a word that you you've used um you know through i'm sure many many different channels and with the assistance and support of many people in addition you have had sort of the benefit of of being embraced by a community that didn't necessarily um have to deal with the treme the trauma and the impact of what you did um and to a certain extent you know that that's that's very different than than all of us yourself included in terms of what we are experiencing right now uh notwithstanding the fact that again that the the experiences on a certain level have to be compared you know with with a lot of you know a lot you know they are very very different but we are all experiencing this together we don't necessarily have that natural support of the other and it certainly hasn't been 25 years so um so i i you know maybe i think actually it would be helpful for all of us to just sort of hear from you uh without necessarily going through all of the details but the sort of the stages of of recovery if that's the right word or just being able to sort of assimilate and learn to live with trauma over the course of of years i'm sure the first few days were different than the weeks that followed in the months that followed in the years that followed and sometimes we don't appreciate how time can be you know an incredible healer as you said you know memory is a gift um and it's i can't call it a curse but it's something that could you know could can keep us keep us tethered to experiences that you know we really want want to be freed from so so remind us all with for whatever it is that we are holding on to this looking right now there are 189 people listening i'm sure that some of us have experienced trauma outside of this pandemic that we are still living with in a very very real way remind us if you will through your own experiences you know how much hope there is for people to be able to recover and and how maybe to access that um if it's not if it's not necessarily obvious to each and every one of us at the moment yeah no that's a really really important piece um one of the things is just to be i one of the things that i've learned is just to be to try to be forgiving to yourself um and just you know i sort of always have this reminder in my head um that like you know instead of being hard on myself for certain things if i'm dropping the ball on certain things where i feel like i have a perfectionist tendency so if i'm not doing everything 100 i'll say to myself but it's okay like you've been through a lot and like it's it's it's enough even that you're just standing here let alone that you're you know not cleaning up the house as well as you might want to or or not doing 100 with your kid one day the way you want to i think that if we're if we can learn how to be more forgiving um and less sort of competitive with each other in that way and just accepting of who each other is i think it's really really helpful um i i've also really tried to i i consider myself to have grown a lot in terms of not being judgmental about other people i think that i really walk around with a sense of like you don't know what the person next to you has been through even if their facebook posts look amazing and perfect or if you ask them how they're doing and they say great and you're having a really really bad day you know and you think oh everyone else is having a life and everything's perfect it's not i think that people carry things with them that you really don't know unless you're very very close with them and even if you're close with them a lot of people don't share things that they that they think will pierce your feeling of you know thinking that they're perfect or um i think that if as a community we can learn to be more accepting and less judgmental of each other and just a little bit more you know sweet and understanding that like the person next to you might be going through something really really really hard and you know just a smile or a welcoming how are you could really really pick them up on a hard day um i think that's something that i really try i think just you know unconsciously have have have worked on um and just through the experience i just feel like i've grown a lot in that way um you know especially in our community where i mean generally it's so supportive but i think there's still a feeling of trying to keep up with the joneses whether it's religiously or socially um or academically and i think you know some days i just feel lucky to be alive like it doesn't like i don't really matter it doesn't matter really like the like little details of how we differ from each other it's just we should feel lucky that we can have friends and have a community like this and then the details can come later so that's something that i think could be like a helpful takeaway um i've also i think i've also tried to like just live life to the fullest as much as i can like things that might think people think i'm doing with my kids might be crazy but for me it's like you only live once and if they're they have a passion for something then i'd love for them to be able to do it and be happy and and feel good about themselves and just i feel very privileged that i was able to like you know not lose my life that day and be able to raise a family with five kids and um and and just have happy kids it's just like so meaningful to me so i think like that's something even with this pandemic for the community just you know like a lot of people have not made it out of the pandemic and have gotten sick and you know just appreciating that we're healthy and that we're there's a light at the end of the tunnel and once we come out of that hoping that you know we can continue working on feeling grateful that it's over and that we've had the support through it and we haven't been alone and and and if there are people that are alone that we should reach out to them and help them through it also um you know but there have been times that i've you know committed myself to doing something that i wouldn't have done otherwise to sort of just you know help myself feel like i've got at least i've gotten something good out of it there must be a reason that i've been given a second life and and i think that you know when you do something that's out of the ordinary it at least makes you feel like something positive can come out of like a real tragedy or some really harsh experiences for myself one of the things that i've you know been trying to do during the course of the pandemic is reconnect with friends like very very good friends that i love and have and we've been there for each other over the years i've been really making a concerted effort to get together and take walks or just go for outdoor coffee and just share what we're going through instead of just saying how are you doing everyone i'm fine everything's good i think to really have reconnect with friends that we could talk to each other and say what's hard because things are hard it's not it's not easy right now nobody has it easy even if you know it seems like they do they don't and so it definitely helped me to do that and i think people are happy to reconnect during this time you are very difficult to uh interrupt i have to say i'm not a professional interviewer but uh i have been trying to jump in sorry and uh no no that's okay that's okay you know uh as a rabbi i often process things that i hear and read uh through the lens of hmm this is good russian material uh you know in your past response i think you you basically you basically ran through probably seven or eight yom kippur yizka russia's and i i i i can literally break it down i'm not going to do it the recording is available if you want to go back and listen to that very very profound answer but you know really bulleted you know incredibly inspiring points uh points that were not obvious i'm not going to take you back to the question that i asked you but i was actually asking you to talk more about your you know how you personally have processed trauma but every response that you gave are really reflected outwards just in terms of perspectives on on life and the gifts that you've been given and your interactions with other people and not being judgmental and putting things in perspective and making the most of every day which which which is really really amazing i mean it's literally sort of turning your your fate into destiny and saying you know i'm not like you said when you when you started which was amazing i'm not going to look at things in terms of what are the effects i'm going to determine you know what what the effects are going to be which is which is really really amazing um i'm i'm curious first of all kavi and i spoke for about three minutes yesterday and she said you could ask any questions you want so i mean that was basically our prep for this interview um so i don't think this is a deeply personal question but i'm just going to state for the record please don't answer anything you don't want to do you uh process um news about a terrorist attack differently uh than you imagine i would i i have never you know experienced first-hand um you know an act of terror my father was actually in um in the world trade center not on 9 11 but in the first bombing in 93 that was sort of the closest you know that i have ever you know felt to terror like many of us i know people you know at least it was one of them and others uh who unfortunately were were killed or seriously injured in a terrorist attack so obviously when we hear of an attack here in arts israel it affects us a certain way uh some of us naturally are just a little more you know um we're just more compassionate um uh you know towards the suffering of others even from a distance but what what happens to you you know when you hear um and i would even go a step further if i'm gonna ask the question already if you hear about a terrorist attack in another country in a country in which we other than the fact that you know we're all part of one you know global community we don't really have any connection with people who you know we would we don't interact with people of different faiths different um you know people speak different languages some of us sometimes we hear you know news of a terrorist attack a bus bombing and unfortunately goes in one ear and out the other it just it doesn't it doesn't impact us at all um i'm just curious you know what happens when you hear those news so i turn off the tv if i'm watching tv because i can't i don't like to watch it on the news um and then i will generally read about it in the paper or go online at like three o'clock in the morning when i feel like it's my safe zone um it's very hard for me to read the news right when it happens when when it's um when it's like a terror event i also am a part of a group called strength to strength which is run by sari singer which is extort like extraordinarily helpful to me um there are a lot of us who get together once a year um and basically have one long weekend of support groups and conversations it's about it's a lot of 911 victims it's israel terror victim sari singer runs the group it's an incredible group i mean i highly recommend it for anyone who's watching this who's been through um any terror events it's it's it beca it's become a family we're all one family we have a really big whatsapp group and it's a very very supportive non-judgmental group um that is so meaningful and so therapeutic and generally when something happens on the news one of the members will inevitably whatsapp the group and then we'll end up in a conversation about it and it's much easier to talk about it and process it with other people who have been through similar things who understand the trauma of like reliving it and so that generally that's what i'll end up doing i'll end up processing it with one of the members of the group and talking it through together um and sometimes we'll end up reaching out to the victims the new victims and you know sort of welcoming them into this group it's not a group that anyone wants to be part of but they become part of it because of the incident and we've actually gotten very very close with you know oklahoma city bombing victims and and lots and lots of the boston marathon victims and you know as each event happens unfortunately the group grows and that's how we all work through it together so every time there is a terror event that strengthens strength family becomes bigger and i guess that's how everybody ends up processing it together even with the new victims um and that you know that's something that has been really really helpful when when a new you know some kind of new event happens that creates a lot of like difficulties with processing so are you uh more protective as a parent specifically i mean not only regarding travel to israel but are you able to parent your kids as objectively as you think one should be very careful i'm asking the question because you're not all parents agree in terms of how much independence their kids could have but knowing as you pointed out knowing how sometimes you know you know if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time you know your life can change forever uh does that does that influence uh your parenting choices good question um yes it does i get very very nervous sometimes i mean for no reason like my kids um i mean my kids know they have to text me when when they're walking to school themselves or you know even now well and they didn't ever walk themselves before they were teenagers but still i get very nervous sometimes if all of a sudden i feel like oh i don't know if they got to school okay there have been times that i've actually called y and j and so i just wanna make sure my kids are in school um i do have life 360 on my phone which my kids do not love that i have that but it helps me tremendously because now that amalia's driving um you know and once in a while she gets to school and forget to text me that she's there and i have my life 360 telling me she's at frish it really puts me at ease and my kids don't they don't love that i have it but i said to them too bad like this i'm doing it's a parent decision and it just makes me feel better that i know i don't need to know every single thing they're doing but i need to know they've gotten to their destination otherwise i get very very nervous um so yes it does you know make a difference when amalia went to israel and yad biad after 10th grade amalia's my oldest she's 17 now when she went to israel it was very very hard for me um and steve said you know we have to let her go so the way that i actually dealt with it was i i i had to i didn't look at her schedule on a day-to-day basis i knew where she was but if you asked me where exactly she was at any minute of the day i couldn't even tell you because i felt like the only way i could keep calm about it was not to know every second what the itinerary was and as funny as it might sound to some people for me it just worked because otherwise i would have been like frantic the whole summer and it actually helped me so i feel more prepared for her to go to israel next year for the year knowing that i you know that i made it through that summer with her there and not knowing every single second where she was i think it's amazing it's an amazing point to highlight because in general we we're all better off if we know what our triggers are if we know what makes us most afraid and vulnerable and if we can acknowledge that and then come up with coping skills that work they're not going to be the same for every parent or every person i imagine there are certain parents who if faced with the same experiences that you have perhaps for them they would need to know exactly where their child is at every time and there's no right or wrong it's just you you need to know what works for you and again i i don't want to come back to it again you know it's just inspiring to listen to you because uh we wouldn't judge you just as you said you don't judge others we wouldn't judge you if you said listen um i i can't allow my children to go to israel but we would feel bad for your children because uh they would unfortunately sort of be suffering you know the the consequences of your experience but instead you know you've made the courageous choice to figure out how how i could make it work for them while not you know being miserable myself and that's amazing that's amazing and you know that that ability to sort of adapt uh is something that we can we can all learn from um there's a there's a question here which i wouldn't have asked but someone else has and thankfully it's directed to you um this is a question that sometimes people ask rabbis but in this case um you're being asked to comment many of us question why so many good people were taken from our community during this pandemic and many of us feel a sense of some level of guilt would you want to comment on this so i'm actually a listen i'm not going to tell you what to say but i'm just going to start because i can't help it by saying what what i don't think javi will do and i don't think she should do although she may if she wants and that is to even attempt to explain things that we can't explain you know explain the things that don't really have an explanation that we can't understand uh the question of why certain people die in a pandemic and others don't obviously we can look at specific cases and there may be you know very clear situational scientific explanations as to why someone died and another one didn't but when you take a step back and you look at the staggering numbers of people who have been uh taken from us uh within our community uh within the country and around the world so clearly you know this is in the realm of what ghazal says you know we do we just don't have access to this information which is um which is designed but the focus uh over here the question is one that i think is one that you can focus on and that's the guilt factor because um you know there's something known as survivor's guilt you alluded to it earlier but maybe we can come back to it right now you survived and a very close friend of yours did not um some of us may not even understand what that means um actually i'm going to go back to my father again the closest i ever got to survivors because my father he's talking about nine lives he was also on a train you some of you may remember this incident um also about 25 years ago more or less around the same time there was a train um that um was derailed near hoboken new jersey and um there were two fatalities uh one of whom was a member of our community uh in fairlawn new jersey david stern all of a sudden my father was on that train he was not seriously injured but also you know suffered for for a long time afterwards of you know as having the survivor's guilt um we are all survivors right now we are all survivors because there are members of our community um who have died in the past nine months um who were living life uh healthfully freely comfortably and and things changed for them you know just like that so maybe as the question coming from aaron r uh is this directed to you maybe how you can help give us some direction some thoughts as to how you know how to manage that and how to survive uh not being you know held back by guilt but being able maybe to you know to feel like you said sort of a sense of purpose maybe you can share you know some of your thoughts um and perspectives on that okay um yeah that's a really really tough one um i mean there's two pieces to it one is that um one is like what you said that at some point when we just don't have answers to these questions we just i i guess i just turn to myself and say so then i must have a sense of purpose like there must be a sense of purpose not not that somebody else did not deserve that extra life to live but that the fact that i have had that gift to be able to continue living what do i do to find purpose in my life to to really make meaning um of being given that gift the first piece is a lot harder and at some point you know when i think about it i just have to stop thinking about it because we we don't have the answers to that and nobody will whether it's the biggest love in any community whether it's the biggest philosopher or whether you know whether it's the best writer i mean none of us can ever have an answer to that question of why some people and not others and i think as cliched as it is i think that you know we or i'll speak for myself like i just don't i can't see the full picture you know whether it's god whether it's god and the world whether it's god and the choices we make we just we don't we don't we see like our little piece of it we don't we're not capable of seeing the entire picture and why things have to happen the way they do and why if something hadn't happened something worse would have happened if that hadn't happened it's just these answers are not humanly possible and so we can think and think and think and think and think and sometimes i just my head gets tired of thinking and i know i'm not going to come up with the answers and so i have to just turn into myself and say so what do i do with what i was given um and and and how can i be nicer to people or how can i be less judgmental of people or how can i you know what can i do to make the most of what i've been given um because the rest of it we can you know we can come up with possible answers but we'll never know what the reasons are um and i you know i honestly i had a really really really difficult time one of the most difficult times that i had was when everyone was saying to hillary alisa because i it was really really hard for me i mean i still have a very hard time with to helen because you know to me i just felt like saying tim was asking for a miracle like i saw her get hit and but but like i had no choice but to believe in sevilla that's the only thing we can do sometimes is to say to helen because you know there are things that god can do and god can change with the power of prayer that we just don't understand and as much as i didn't understand it from a human perspective but i saw her get hit and how is the healing going to help sometimes prayer is the only way to go because that's all we can do is to pray and hope and and sometimes there are miracles and things turn around and sometimes there aren't but i guess you know praying whether you believe in god or you don't believe in god prayer is you know like helps us because it's the only real thing that we can do that we feel like will help us feel less guilty afterwards because we tried and so i think you know prayer whether it's in shul or saying a prayer to ourselves or to anybody i think is our human way of dealing with it to feel like we really tried our best to to change things around and if we can't then we just have to live with how can we make ourselves better there's a there's an atheism kid with russia right there by the way um i have a comment and then another i would say maybe a final question although you know the floor is still open if anybody wants to uh submit any questions first of all i i mentioned earlier uh how how much you know we need to admire and commend you for your ability to parent as objectively as you can and allow your children you know to have the the benefits and the opportunities and the experiences that you would want them to have despite the fact that you know it's so difficult and challenging for you and i failed to mention uh i'm looking right now my screen you know shows your sister right next to you uh right next to them are your parents uh who are here with us and i know your parents well they're very very fine special people but really i would say before we admire and commend you you know we should also recognize the fact that your parents um and i can't even imagine how difficult this was difficult for them they you know allowed your siblings to to go to israel to continue to go to israel i'm assuming that is the case even after your experiences and that's again you know speaks to their strength and your strength as a family and it's just an amazing amazing thing to be able to you know to to do what you need to do to be able to to manage you know very very very difficult and and painful emotions you know while at the same time protecting people that you love easier said than done i can i can only imagine not more than that um i guess my the last question that i want to ask you just curious your insights i it's it's also an opportunity for me to sort of make a statement that i want to make uh just the reflection i i already said and to a large extent it's true that i myself have not been um the victim of trauma um that being said i i have experienced things that have been traumatizing um and while i i don't um i don't think that you know we can necessarily compare every trauma to another and every person's trauma to another person i do um i do think that many of us don't fully appreciate you know the impact of trauma that we experience um perhaps just as importantly that other people do this past summer i was having a conversation with a woman i don't want to go into any of the details right now but um she was talking about the trauma that another person in her life had experienced and she said rather casually or flippantly you know he just he just just get over it you know everybody experiences trauma you know and um i'm not gonna you know talk right now about how i you know responded to her then and in conversations that we had thereafter but i think many of us um sometimes even if we know better but certainly if we don't know better we'll default to that sort of thinking some of us will think it we won't say it some of us will say it but we won't put in writing and some of us may put it in writing um my guess is you know you want to go back to the pandemic probably even now certainly within the realm of social media um people experience things differently one of the things that we've learned over the past um generation or so maybe some have known it longer than that is that the impact of trauma can be very very real there's actually a book if i remember correctly it's called the body keeps the score it was recommended to me about a year or two ago and i read it which talks about the physiological impacts of trauma and it's really really really important for each and every one of us to know and to be sensitive to the fact even if we don't know from personal experience we should be grateful for uh that people who have experienced trauma um you know really really can be impacted impacted in very very serious ways in in some cases in the worst of situations they they can't recover from it and um and that will have a very very you know heavy toll on their life and people who they live with so you know javi again you you have been you know an incredible inspiration to each and every one of us uh for those of you who are meeting you for the first time tonight i'm sure very inspired by you know who you are and how you present your story but hoping that maybe you can you know just maybe add add to this a little bit because i'm speaking more from the outside than you can and just you know inspire us and remind us and maybe sort of reinforce this idea not just in the general sense as you said already don't be judgmental but to understand and appreciate that that that trauma is real it's not just an idea it's not just a thought it's not just a feeling and it's not just something you can go and go get over right for right i mean a thousand percent um that's something that's just really really really important is to validate um i think that to validate feelings because feelings are real and whether or not we agree with someone else's feelings or um or we don't agree with someone's feelings i think that validating another person's feelings are really is so important and so vital in in a treating each other with respect but b helping someone through their processing i mean i know you know i mean i'm not you know i'm not saying this just because you're interviewing me but i know that like i i mean we feel so grateful to be part of the beth aaron community just um this conversation is is nothing new to me because we've had conversations with you um our rabbi that are so real and so meaningful and our concerns are never dismissed and they're always validated and processed and i think that you know being part of our smaller community of beth aaron where it's a community of really really a non-judgmental community where there's so many different types of people and congregants and of all ages and there's so much respect in the community there's so many different religious levels and i don't think one time in the past 18 years have we felt you know looked down on or judged and i think it's such a special um almost like a special like haven in this in this larger community beth aaron it's such a gift to us and i think along those same lines just as any individual in any of the schools in this community i think all of us are going through a lot of trauma on many different levels through this pandemic just trying to deal with it whether it's the guilt as somebody asked or um the processing or trying to understand how our kids are going to make it through or you know cooking all day and not having any you know i'm just on so many levels and everyone's experiencing it in their own way um and i think being able to talk about it and articulate what we're feeling is so helpful and not judging anybody because we're we're having similar trauma but we're processing it in such different ways because we're all coming into the trauma with different experiences and different family um situations and and different job situations and different personalities that you know just to validate each other's feelings going through it and and for sure afterwards i think is something that's really really important for us to continue doing as a community um you know i don't know if you feel that way too as a communal leader just even i'm sure as a leader like all the leaders of the community are going through trauma too on their own levels and you know i think that you know if we recognize that then it's almost comforting um because we're not alone i don't think anybody's alone in dealing with the guilt and dealing with the trauma i think we're all going through this together and just you know the details of how we're how we're affected by it are different but but it's it's you know such a communal sharing that can be really really helpful in getting through it thank you thank you thank you thank you i know that uh we're out of time i can't help but get on the last word we haven't spoken any torah tonight that being said i think is a very worthwhile conversation but since this is uh you know we're all gathered together in what's a shabbos i'll just say the following um if you haven't had a chance yet to review parshas medicates it's not too late prasha's meek aids vayigash and certainly the end of parsha where the torah describes the um the passing and the burial of yaakov avinu you can read it with with uh with the you know through somewhat of a new lens um after tonight's conversation um we have to be very very careful not to reduce uh and trivialize stories in the torah but i think it's fair to say i don't think anybody would disagree with this on a most simple level yosef experienced trauma yosef's brothers experienced drama you know they were coming at it from different perspectives and the way the torah records in a very very dramatic way with a lot of detail you know everything from the the reactions the thoughts the tears um really with with a lot of detail and today's parasha practice me kate it's by egash you know reveals a lot again just goes a long way in terms of the validation of what of what trauma is but also we could learn a lot in terms of the the recovery the perspectives i was actually thinking a lot about the the ideas that you thought that you shared i don't know if it was consciously so but yosef's you know clearly is his his intent to you know not to get stuck in the past and the ability to sort of recognize that listen things happened mistakes were made uh acts that perhaps on a certain level were unforgivable but i'm i'm gonna i'm gonna move on or move forward perhaps that's the better way to say it and i'm gonna and i'm gonna take you with me in a good way and we're gonna we're gonna move from this we're gonna grow together and we're gonna strengthen ourselves and we're gonna be the better for it you know it's really there are there are many many examples that the torah gives us to remind us that uh you know life is a journey you know sometimes as you know you could never have imagined or dreamed you know in uh in april of 1995 you experienced a nightmare the likes of which we can't imagine but clearly uh in the 25 years since and we hope and pray you know for many many years going forward it has shaped you and allowed you to form in an extraordinary way we hope and pray that you continue to have a lot of knockouts from your children we hope that amalia has a great year in israel next year a safe here together with uh please god all your children in the years to come um and uh thank you all for joining us uh thank you david once again for hosting us this has been uh really meaningful and enjoyable and uh looking forward to more conversations in the future thank you everybody have a wonderful week goodbye vote see you here next week at 8 15 p.m oe.org conversations next week our sorry next week is rabbi yakov trump with dr henry abramson on false messiahs and their impact probably a little bit different than tonight but uh but who knows uh thank you rebecca thank you javi uh for this incredible program anybody who wants to check it out later it's up on oh you torah have a shabu-tov oh i owe you torah okay thank you for having me