Oh, You? - Episode 7: Rabbi Yaakov Luban

hello everyone and welcome to the oh you podcast today we have an extra special guest from kosas from the beginnings of kosas here at the OU Rabbi Luan who's been with us for a couple of years right K started in 1927 I think yeah I'm not that old you're not that old you weren't here right at the beginning no okay but uh you've been with us for uh almost 40 years almost 40 years we're thinking about starting a new Society the lest Mala Society right Litas 39 years so far okay should be uh should continue to be with strength and um even moving on in life we know that you've been an important part of the OU we wanted to talk a little bit about that here today so thank you so much for joining us my pleasure we really uh we appreciate you we appreciate lots of good stories hopefully that will that we'll hear but first of all why don't you start by telling us a little bit about yourself where you from who are you so I till the age of eight I grew up in hok Massachusetts my father was the rabbi in SCH and hok from the age of 15 I was away in yeshivas i i attended uh Philadelphia Yeshiva for the last two years of high school and then I uh was in Bas magic in Philadelphia then I spent a year in the Mir in those days almost no but no Americans went to Israel surprisingly yeah I was the only one in in my class that went to Israel it was a terrific experience for me but I had the tend to to learn by who Wasa and I always felt that it was hash Divine Providence because at the time I didn't know I was going to become a rabbi but as a rabbi having been in in the mirror and seen and heard hising that had a tremendous impact on me you you had a personal relationship growing up not just with your family in the neighborhood there was another young young man who you were friends with Rabbi gak r g very same we were Neighbors played we played ring Olivio not sure the audience doesn't know what ring it's some kind of running game okay maybe you'll teach us we could we could have rallies here at the uh what's it called ring oivo ring oivo uh for any of our listeners if you can if you know what that is you can phone in you'll find out okay so you leave the mirror I left the mirror after a year I went to Lakewood I stayed 10 years in Lakewood and then um I 10 years then I became a rabbi but in between I spent three years in Pittsburgh and that was a very important uh point of transition for me because spent a lot of time working with people in the community delivering Shum and then became the rabbi of a small little sh inis in New Jersey which barem has grown and concurrent with that a year later I started working for the for the OU so you came back you started working in Edison small start as a rabbi I spent one year as a teaching in yiva I was a complete failure because I'm not a disciplinarian as I stood there staring at the Kids the first day they climbed out of the window they made a they tied a bunch of Rags together and they use it as a ladder to go out and I my stare wasn't scary so interesting that you say you're not a disciplinarian some of the stories that we'll get into being involved with ukas has forced you I think to become more uh a detective not a disar okay so when you started in 1984 correct um how many other employes were there in kous fulltime one one M gromberg the OU was uh tiny was it there were about a thousand companies but the staff was very small we when I started there were no computers so how did you keep track of all the ingredients and the companies and the pieces of paper with with enor yeah with paper so were you involved in putting together the structures and the systems that we have today one of the first things that that I had the the good for Fortune of working on was uh developing a computer system took us from horse and buggy to the Modern Age so horse and buggy to the Modern Age so that that's not just in one Leap right uh it was a long process walk us through What You Know What You Did In order to get us to to where we are today well the key was um organization it was there was very little structure when I came we had all these files and the file could have 500 pieces of paper because it it had all the correspond it was a very very difficult um experience to manage the casis without a structure was there a sense of what the casis was did we know did we follow the same yeah basic system for cases is simple you you you if you know the ingredients and they're ro kosher then you have a mash who visits the plant and make sure that they're using those ingredients and you know what products they're manufacturing so that's the whole system but but there's so many pieces and ele ments and the details that that make that up so but you have to have a way of of managing it but you also reached out to some senior abonim to ask them a lot of shilas in terms of laying some of that framework down right Sak hired the two POS were re bsk and re Shak I remember who came first and we started to have uh weekly meetings but with both of them together I created an agenda of shus like the olive Bas what temperature is yat how do you Casher this type of piece of equipment things that you have notes still from those uh conversations I I have some notes yes combined with your uh amazing writing skills that would be an interesting uh I actually I get we we had in the early days staff meetings once a week where we discussed policies and I I took notes at every meeting and I th those notes are very valuable I donated them to the archives here I don't know where they are but okay and we have thousands of of shos that are they recorded some of the some of theim are written by RAB bski or by RAB sh others were written by the by by R gon or his predecessors and that's a tremendous resource that we have now yeah so we we when I came we didn't nothing was in writing there was no nothing recorded it was just uh shooting in the dark so really you've had a chance to see the OU grow uh from original days of not so many employees not so many computers not so many systems and structures could you ever imagined you know sort of what's going on around us here even today with all the activ unbelievable we I mean there you know I I was heavily involved but there were a lot of terrific people R elephant joined the Lou um maybe 3 years after I came something like that so we we had a terrific team of different people that uh but together we we created an amazing organization that's uh and I get to be benefit of it we all get to be to benefit from from all of the incredible work creative work hard work that went in to get us here today we're we're so appreciative one of the things we do is we do a rap series of Rapid Fire questions um I'm gonna ask you a question based on today's uh because I I'm an Avid Reader um I know you know the answer but I've asked a whole bunch of people today um if and most people get it wrong uh and the the question is what's the braa on a mushroom shahak shahak and why is that because it doesn't uh draw nourishment from the ground I'm not going to talk about people in the room you know who may have been making for you know a couple of decades maybe more than that and uh I don't know if I learned that before I may have but I think I was uh zero days old when I first really saw good thing I got that right when was the OU established 1889 1921 1898 1901 1901 98 you're close that was right off there where did the OU previously have an office Italy Ukraine Ukraine Russia France none Ukraine Ukraine yeah like in the early 2000s in uh kov when did ncsy begin 1940s 1960s 1950s 1970s 1950s yeah you got it you must have some I mean I know you have some incredible stories over there there's the the Famous Pizza Story uh I don't know if that's the one you want tell but can you share with us so I was I was besides being the uh working for the I was Rabbi in Edison and there was a pizza shop under our supervision and the um I I would go there in the evenings I came home from the O I was there almost every day there was and I walked into the refrigerator there was boxes of cheese um cheese all the way up to the ceiling and everything seemed fine and then after probably about after a half a year I uh I I took we took over the the local VOD took over the the pizza shop after re Raymond passed away he was my predecessor so I walked into the store and there was a um one of these large industrial cans called number 10 cans that had no label and um like a silver can a silver can yes so the first thing the quality you you need to be involved in Consciousness you have to be suspicious if you accept everything as it's probably okay then you get get a different job so by Nature I'm very I mean that's try when I'm dealing with people in my sh I'm not suspicious but when I'm dealing with kous I have to be very suspicious so why is there no label so probably the the possibly the owner took it off because he didn't want me to know what was in the can so I asked the owner what's what's in the can he said it's green beans and I I knew it couldn't be green beans cuz engraved on the can was said product of Spain and I don't remember seeing green beans coming from Spain so I asked him to open the can it was plums so um is there a cous issue with Plums there's no cous issue with Plums but he thought obviously that I wouldn't allow him to use cam plums without a so he took off the label okay so I was upset that he it was already I knew that he was a devious person but it bothered me as well I I had gone through the whole inventory there were no other cans and you don't buy one can you buy a case where was the other can so across the the street from his from the store there was a an office that he had and uh in a basement and I thought maybe maybe he's hiding the the rest of the cans in the office and who knows what else he has there so I said I want I want to go to the office so he took me to the office we went down the stairs well uh and as he was fumbling for his keys to open the door there were bags of garbage underneath the stairwell and the best place to get information is from garbage wxs you really are a detective that's right I started looking the garbage and all of a sudden the guy Springs up he sees I'm looking at the garbage he runs over grabs one of the bags of garbage slings it over his shoulders and darts up the stairs and he's running away with a G bag of garbage what do I do I have to run after him obviously so I was in Hot Pursuit I ran up the stairs I was much younger so I was able to run as fast as he could and he starts running down the main street in in High Park which is Reon Avenue and um eventually I caught up to him and he when he saw I was almost next to him so he he darted behind the truck and he tried to stop the the garbage under the truck and I took it out and going behold in in the garbage bag were empty boxes of hard cheese and it was obviously they weren't kosher it was like George's cheese or something so he said oh we we we we don't use that the garbage has been there for 10 years it's not my garbage then why were you running away with it but I checked the expiration dates on on the boxes and it it was like 6 months hence so it was obvious that it was it was his uh his garbage and and it was recently brought into the into the into the basement so he was using is there any truth to the rumor that somebody timed you running after him and you set a a world record for but I wish that they if they had cell phones then they could have made a YouTube video of me running after holding on to my we can recreate it if you want we can come we could that's right we could have a movie so it turned out that the um I I I afterwards I I spoke to I mean immediately I went to the store and said the supervisions terminated but I but I spoke to the distributor and they had to decrease the amount of Che of cheese they were buying from H by 50% the last year so they were using half kosher cheese and half trfy cheese W the question is how did how did they get into the store where was it how come I never saw it so after some investigation which wasn't so easy because he he threatened to to murder me along the way but that was only the first time I threatened a few times it was threatened so he um what he did was when in a pizza shop they when they buy hard cheese they buy blocks of hard cheese and they grate it and you use it as needed but when the customer comes to the store you don't start grating the cheese you have it available so you grate it and you put it into tubs so at at night when the store was closed he came in uh late at night with boxes of trit cheese and he grated them and and he had them in tubs so and he made a mixture of kosher kosher grated cheese and non- kosher grated cheese so it taught me a very important lesson of um how never assume anything when you're when you're giving hash you always have to be suspect the worst and you can't trust anybody I mean I thought he was a an honest fellow but uh obviously he wasn't we do a section called turn the table where you get to ask me any question that you'd like okay what what's your vision for the OU for the next 10 years it's a it's a great question it's a deep question it's a lot um I talk a lot about internally anyway our culture communicating with each other and coordinating and collaborating in the three C's and it's something I think that's not just for the workplace for our headquarters for our staff for our participants but globally we have a representation uh opportunity and we have a support opportunity for Jews and Beyond where community unting with them sharing messages some of the messages that re Hower has been sharing recently that that everybody really that a lot of so the is is really an organization for clol so that's my question specifically is what what what in what way do you envision um having more impact on not not only internally but I mean obviously the stronger you are internally the more you could do externally so what what how what way you you they all use involved in so many different and uh all the 18 different programs but what what new things do you envision for the OU moving forward is to elevate the programs that we do have and the participants that we do have and to make them get them people closer to KES elevating their religious experience there's no question about that and to advocate for those who we haven't yet been as involved with there certain segments of the population that we we haven't focused enough on and to create new programs and new departments that are focused on those on those areas and and those needs so that's it's sort of a dual responsibility both to grow the impact we have in the current projects and to and to get to the areas where we have not yet uh been able to reach so I'll tell you just one more story of how how you have to be always have to think about what possibly could go wrong there was a when I came to the OU there was a ice cream company that we certified and they one of the products they made was cookies and cream ice cream so the the the manager of the plant called me and said he wants to um you purchase Oreo cookies to make Oreo cookies and creams in those days Believe It or Not Oreos at one time were not koser they were um I'm still I'm still upset we didn't make a yff on the day Oreos became kosher that should have been that should be a day in everybody's year that we we recognize correct greatness of the OU for making Oreos kosher you could still do it okay but in any event so you probably have the record somewhere of what day that was no so the Oreos were clearly non kosher because in on the ingredient panel it said large so I said so he wanted permission he said he has a customer that wants to make Oreo cookies and cream ice cream and he said he wants to buy Oreo cookies he wants to bring them into the plant for for that product so I said very nice but how are we going to know that you're not using the Oreo cookies in the kosher ice cream so he said it it that's a absurd we would never use the Oreos for the kosher brand because the cookies that we use now for the kosher brand are are uh that they don't have they're not a brand name and they're not expensive but the Oreos because it's a brand name sure like triple the price so he said we would never substitute them so that sounded like made a lot of sense right makes sense to me Mak sense to me Case Closed that's it so what but what happened was about a half a year later A A lady called me up and she said I'm eating my shoppr right cookies and cream ice cream with an OU and there's an Oreo in there now fortunately Oreos you could tell they're Oreos CU it says Oreo it was a Oreo piece it wasn't a whole Oreo it was an Oreo piece so I immediately called the company I said the lady told me that she found an Oreo in your ice cream they said I don't know probably one of the workers grabbed an Oreo cookie off the shelf someplace and and then he only ate half half of it and threw the other half into the into the vat so you know so much for that the health concerns I guess right yeah we went down to the plant that was in Phil in Pennsylvania and we came into the plant and we uh asked them if they have any uh OU cookies and cream ice cream in in stock and they said they do we didn't tell them why we're asking so they I said I'd like to see them so we went into the cooler they had a whole section with oreo with with regular oo cookies ice cream he said we want 10 boxes so we took 10 boxes we we want to go to the laboratory so we went to the lab we opened we tore open the boxes put turned on the hot water and we melted the the ice cream and every single box had Oreo cookies and cream ice cream or Oro cookies so the question was why what about that they would never do that yeah saving money so nobody wanted to talk to us they they knew they were in very hot water but we spent a few hours till we we eventually found out what happened was they um the customer that was making or cookies ice cream they lost that account and the they were purchasing the Oreo cookies themselves for the customer and they when they lost the account they had $25,000 of Oreo pieces that they couldn't use so they waited a month or two and then there was there was going to be the expiration date was coming up the cookies would get stale they didn't want to lose all that money so they started using using them in the regular ice cream who's going to know the difference so it this it taught me a tremendous lesson that this is Murphy's culture law that anything that could go wrong when it comes to culture will go wrong and so how do you comp compartmentalize on the one hand you're a loving Rabbi amazing family and you can't be suspicious of everybody around you everybody you work with everybody who you have as your balaba and people in your family and yet when you come to work you have to guess and second guess and triple guess and how do you compartmentalize and not let that seep into your general that's an excellent question and I I I often have spoken about this um at different presentations that especially as a rabbi you have you you promote being and give people the benefit of the doubt but when you're dealing with cashes you you have to think differently you don't know but in every thousand cases of apples there some ones so there are people that are dishonest and there's there's numerous stories I mean we we I've been I spend the whole day telling you a bunch of different stories but there are there are people that that are dishonest so you you know when I'm dealing with a regular person I I know I don't have that's suspicious that they're but I have to have in the back of mind that how do I know that and unfortunately even sometimes even people who are T observant are uh have have done terrible things when it comes to kasas so you just you have to think what how do I know that this is true who said that what they're telling me is true I I I have to independently verify whatever they're saying so that's a a great Braha for us to learn from you as we as we close to uh to remember the good and look for the good but also uh you know make sure that you're uh you're checking all the details in the places that you need to when you need to be need to be so careful it's a great braa from for us for you as a as a role model as an Exemplar of this to be Mahalo to praise all of your incredible work that you've done here but also to be Moda to acknowledge to you know to to thank to thank you for uh for all the stories and for teaching us and for building this incredible edifice the structure the people and the Nish thank you and you're doing a fantastic job as well thank you so much