How Not to Screw Up the New Year

0:00[upbeat music] Hi, welcome to Ask a Jew, where a secular, sinful Israeli speaks to her wholly religious friend. Yael here with Hilel. We have the goat in the house. Our, our rabbi. [laughs] My father, Rabbi Abba Pearlmuter. [laughs] Just kidding. He's Hilel's father. I still can't get over the fact that she introduces you as Haredi. [laughs] The Haredim have sent me numerous letters saying, "Stop it." [laughs] Okay? Stop it. Compared to me, it- you're- she's Haredi. Yeah, but for true Haredim, forget it.

0:39You know, you could think that she, you know, she grew up in Mea She'arim and, like- She didn't? I am an Orthodox Jewish woman. Okay. Some might say ultra-Orthodox. Ultra, ultra. Some. Some. [laughs] Some. Yeah. Very, very few. Oh my God. She's an extreme, extreme ultra-Orthodox. She's extreme ultra-Orthodox. Yeah, exactly. Ugh. Okay. You're... Wait, you told me what to say and I forgot. You're the co-host of Education, of course, our sister podcast. That's right. And what do you say, the senior rabbi at Shul by the Shore? Correct. Senior rabbi. Correct. Who is the non-senior rabbi? Levi.

1:16Oh, your brother. Okay. [laughs] He's a rabbi, too, but he's the junior. Oh, and what's Hilel's role in the shul? Oh. Senior Jewish educator. Oh, wow. Oh, I like it. Okay. That- that's- that's even less believable than Haredi, but- Yeah. No. Yael- She's a very good educator. Yael, Jay, our third co-host for Education, is very offended that he wasn't invited to this, uh- Oh... crossover episode. [laughs] So we'll have to do- Well, I mean, we love Jay, but A, he's not a rabbi. Yeah, it's true. Not yet, not yet. Not yet.

1:50[laughs] And B, he doesn't have the- the catalog of pop culture knowledge that your father has. And he- Jay won't make fun of you with me, and your father will, so. [laughs] Well, that's... Yeah, that's true. [laughs] Yeah, Jay actually respects me. Is that what we're saying? [laughs] Those are all good reasons. That's... Yeah. I need one person to respect me in this whole podcasting sphere. In this household. Yes, exactly. Jay definitely does. We're here today because I guess it's some Jewish holiday is coming up. L- I forget what, which one. I don't either. Something is coming up. All of them are together. Yeah.

2:26We have a month of holidays starting this week. If you're listening, it depends when you're listening, but we're recording this four days before the Jewish New Year, before Rosh Hashanah, and followed by Yom Kippur, followed by Sukkot, followed by Simchat Torah. So we have a whole month. Yeah, if you had plans to talk to anybody Jewish in September or if you have work with anybody Jewish in September, forget it. It's not happening. Yeah. Not happening. Yeah. It's not.

2:55It's not happening. Although this year- The irony is it's easier to get work off of a non-Jewish company- Yeah... than if you work for a Jewish company. I know. I know. I mean, unless the Jewish owner is himself taking off. The other guy's like, "What?" Yeah. "What's Shemini Atzeret? There's no such holiday." [laughs] "You just made that up." It's so true. It's so true. Forget it. That's the eighth day of Sukkot. What is Shemini Atzeret? It's a holiday. It's a Biblical holiday. Why d- why don't we get the seventh day of Sukkot off? Well. Well- [laughs]...

3:22the seventh day of Sukkot is called Chol Hamoed. It's called the intermediate days. There are... It's Hoshana Raba, but it's a work day. You're- you're permitted to work. The eighth day is actually a Biblical holiday of no work- Mm-hmm... Shemini Atzeret. Right. But, uh, the seventh day is a work day, even though it's a holiday called Hoshana Raba, and the sixth, fifth, fourth, and third are also called intermediate days of Sukkot, but they're work days.

3:48But day one and two of Sukkot are holidays, non-working holidays. Right. So you have a, you have a total of seven non-working days- Mm... in the month of Tishrei, and if you include the eve of Yom Kippur, which you're probably not supposed to work, then it's eight days. Th- this year it's a little easier because it's the weekday, so f- if you're working for a- Mm... you know, a real company, it's- Yeah... it's not, not as impactful. But if it's, like, Tuesday or Wednesday, [sighs]

4:15good luck. It's hard. Good luck to you. It's hard. That's when you see all the Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn in Central Park riding bicycles. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah. During Sukkot. Yeah. 'Cause they're off, but they can also do things. Right, right. You can... Exactly. Right. Exactly. Right. You can do things. Sukkot is really the best Jewish holiday. It's sad that so few Jews- No, it's, it's-... keep it or celebrate it We need to rebrand it. It's literally an orphan, I mean, compared to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. But I- But not in the Orthodox world. But it's the longest, too.

4:45It's a beautiful, it's a beautiful holiday. I mean, sp- I mean, in California- Mm... you get to sit outside, and it's beautiful, and you get to eat your meals together. Mm-hmm. It's an, it's an incredible, wonderful experience, but it hasn't caught the Jewish imagination of the secular Jewish world yet. That's true. Yet. Yeah. If you're a kid in Israel, the best thing about these holidays is you forget that they have a second part. [laughs] So you get a day off school, and then a week later you're like, "Oh, it's Sukkot again?"

5:13[laughs] "That's amazing. I thought I had a math test." Yeah. [laughs] That is so true. The, um... Okay, I wanted to start with a serious question, and then we can talk about the year in review, et cetera. But many people that I talk to are feeling very weighted down by what's going on in the world, and it feels heavy in politics and in people's personal lives. And just all around I feel a sense of heaviness. And you're a rabbi, and your job is to inspire all of us. So what... First of all, what do you say to people right now in this moment? Inspire us. Like right now, in the moment we're in, what do we need to hear?

5:54I don't know. No pressure. [laughs] I don't know. [laughs] I... But why don't we bring Levi? Why don't we bring the junior rabbi here? Yeah. [laughs] I'll tell you what we don't need to hear. I am not a big fan or a proponent of talking about politics on the pulpit. I don't think it serves anybody's purpose. I don't care if you love the president, you hate the president, you're indifferent to the president. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, people are coming to shul to get inspired. Mm. They wanna be uplifted.

6:24You going up there and bashing the president or lauding the president, whatever it's going to be, is number one gonna divide your congregation. I don't care how liberal or how conservative your congregation is, there's definitely gonna be a split in your congregation if you have more than 11 people there. If you have 11 people there, and they're all from one family, and they're from the Trump family- [laughs] By all means, go ahead. I mean, if Ivanka's the only one in shul- [laughs]...

6:48you know, with Jared and, and, and the three s- the three, uh- [laughs]... bodyguards- I don't know... you go, go, go, go for it. You know? Like, go for it. You know, talk about Trump. Yeah. But if you have a regular congregation where it doesn't matter, where you could be in New York, or you could be in Mississippi- Yeah... your, your congregation is gonna be split along. So I, I'm not a big proponent of talking about politics. Now, people could argue that Israel, talking about Israel is not political. I agree. I agree to that.

7:17If you wanna talk about the importance of supporting Israel and what's going on in Israel, yes, but you have to also make sure that you're not taking one-sided here. Because if you take a very, very strong support of Netanyahu, you're also gonna get into trouble- Right... because there's gonna be a lot of people there that criticize him- Right... that don't like, that don't like Netanyahu. So even your support of Israel should be nuanced, and say, "I don't care who's in the government, whether it's Likud or whether it's this guy or that guy.

7:46Our support of Israel should be above everything else." I mean, that, that I think is very legitimate. You can criticize Israel. I mean, there are people in my shul that are heavily critical of the government now in Israel and of how what went on in the past three years, but they all support Israel. Right. I mean, we, we're supportive of Israel. We're Zionists- Right... in a sense. So that's one thing I don't think that is very productive, to get up there and talk politics during Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur. You mentioned two things.

8:17People are feeling heavy because of the political situation. That, you know, we-- Again, we've talked about this a number of times on, you know, on our other podcast. You're not going to be able to defeat every single antisemite out there in the world. Every time- What?... some guy comes and says, runs by and says, "Free Palestine," it's not my job to chase him down with my car- [laughs]... sit him down over a kugel- [laughs]... with chicken soup, and explain to him, "Yes, it's free Palestine from Hamas," and go through 80 years of, you know, of, of Jewish history. It wears on us. It dilutes our energy.

8:56It takes us away from what we're supposed to do. So number one, trying to defeat every single antisemite out there is never going to work because they've been around for, I don't know, th- two and a half thousand years. Yeah. [laughs] 2,000 years. Right. I mean- What about yelling at them on Twitter? Is that helpful? I, I, I don't know. I don't know. I'm not a big Twitter-- Yeah, but, you know, why not? [laughs] But most of them, first of all, half of them are not real. Right. So, I mean, you're screaming at something that's not even real.

9:24You know, like, okay, so it's a bot said something, and you're so upset that the bot said something that's nothing. What does scare me-- 'Cause they, they don't scare me. I mean, the antisemites don't scare me. I mean, I don't think Israel is frightened because some schmo here in America, you know, screamed, "Free Palestine," you know, you know, in Lincoln Park or whatever. I don't think Israel is too worried about that. But what I am worried about, and this scares me, and this is something that I will talk about on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, is that after a survey, it's about 40% of college, Jewish college students in America have backed off from participating in Jewish events.

10:03Right. That scares me- Yeah... more than any Hasan Piker or Hasan Schmiker, whatever the guy. [laughs] He doesn't scare me one bit. Right. I mean, you know, today he's here, tomorrow he's gone. But this statistic that 40% of Jewish students on college campuses are backing off from participating in Jewish events, that scares me. Yeah. That scares me alive. That scares me. It's because they're scared, or it's because they don't wanna-- they don't like it? I-- Well, you know what? They've-- A lot of them, for different reasons.

10:35You know, it's become very heavy, you know, to be part- to, to participate in Jewish life right now. It becomes very political. Everything is now with a war, and a fight, and a struggle, and a confrontation. So a lot of these kids are not, just not interested in even doing it. It's not fun anymore. Yeah. It bec- it became too heavy. Mm-hmm. And some have bought into this idea that, you know what? Israel has been, ha- they, they've listened to the story their whole lives, and they now are finding out that the story that they've been told is not so. Right. It's not so. Mm. Does that happen in your congregation?

11:10Do people come to you with this question about their children? Not, not in my congregation so much, although, although their children and grandchildren, yes. Yeah. But not the congregants because I think this is a generational thing- Yeah, yeah... you know, where kids have been going to college, and they've been hearing all of this stuff, and go through their professors and all of that. So that is a certain percentage of kids who feel that the or- the official organizations on campus, take Hillel and Chabad- Yeah... these two organizations are Zionist and pro- and very Zionist, you know?

11:41And they don't find a home in this kind of a milieu- Right... where they don't feel that they're getting a fair shake. No one's gonna listen to them if they come with a different opinion. So that's a big problem. I, I'm not talking about the small minority of Jewish kids that are actually marching with- Right... with the Palestinians- Right... and the Muslims. We're not talking about those people. That's a different- Mm-hmm... that's a different element. That's a lot of them. We're talking about just a average kid- Yeah...

12:06who's in class and that has to deal with these people, and is hearing from his friends, and is listening to the media, and he's hearing on Twitter, and he-- all of that stuff, that Israel is not the Israel that they were told when they went to summer camp- Right... or where they grew up in Hebrew school. That it's, you know, it's this friendly, wonderful place, and it's pluralistic, and it's da, da, da, da, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. All they hear about is that Israel killed 75,000 Palestinians, and that, uh, there was 25,000 children there, and it was indiscriminate, and Israel is performing a, a genocide. Right. So that statistic scares me.

12:41And that is something that I will talk about because that affects the Jewish community. Yeah. You know, I mean- It's true... the Orthodox community, I'm not worried about because vast majority of Orthodox kids that grew up in Jewish day schools, even when they're in college, they're gonna be okay. They- they're gonna be, they're- they're gonna be all right. I mean, I- I'm not worried about them, you know. But it's those other, other kids in, you know, in college, in Cal State Long Beach or UCLA, San Diego, other places, you know, that I do worry about because this is gonna affect the Jewish people long term.

13:14Do you think most people come to SHUL and wanna hear, um, inspiration about their personal life or do they wanna hear inspiration about, like, the broader Jewish world or their connection to God or, like, are more, or spiritually seeking something? I think both. Yeah, both. I think, I think I- That's fair... I believe both, that they do wanna hear something about the general Jewish community of how we're fairing- Yeah... because, uh, community still is a very large part, you know, of what we do, and certainly community is gonna be a major topic- Yeah... for many, many of the rabbis, you know, around the world.

13:49Gonna talk about how not to be isolated and not to- Yeah... you know, not to be lonely and all, you know, to par- come and participate. But I also think that there are a lot of people in there that just want to be a little bit inspired. Yeah. You know, like you said before, them were coming in. It's not been an easy year for the Jewish people, whether you've yourself experienced antisemitism or have just read it online- Right... or, you know, just keep hearing about it or whatever the circumstances are.

14:14There just seems to be a malaise, you know- Yeah... just a feeling that, you know what, it just wasn't a great year, you know, for Jews around the world, and it wasn't, uh, maybe a great year for me personally either. Mm. So they do want to come and hear some sort of inspiration, bringing the community together, giving them a sense of comfort, telling them, "Hey, look, you know, we've, we've been here before. There were... This is not our first rodeo. I mean, uh, we're Jews. We're resilient. By nature, we're very, very, very, very stubborn. We're not going every- anywhere.

14:45And, you know, so we just have to, you know, buckle down a little bit." And you have to also encourage them- Yeah... to sometimes make some changes- Yeah... you know, when they're... You know, not major. I, I, I, you know, when I first... When I was young, I thought that I could conquer the entire world. I came out of seminary. I was a Chabad house rabbi on fire. I mean, I railed against all the sins in the Torah- Mm... and I just was, whoa, just fire and brimstone. And then I realized I'm not changing the world. I could hardly change my family, and barely changing myself. [laughs] So forget about changing the entire world.

15:21But I do think that people are looking for some sort of inspiration where they can, you know, walk out of Rosh Hashanah, out of Yom Kippur, and at least reflect on- Yeah... something that they may do in the upcoming year. What do you, what do you say to a parent that comes to you about their kid that went to college and all of a sudden just, like, came home with a keffiyeh and, uh, l- listening to Macklemore all day, who I know is your favorite artist?

15:45Yeah, my favorite. He's from Seattle, where I spent some time. Mm. What do you s- what do you say? So for those parents, they need, number one, to be educated themselves. Mm-hmm. Like, a, that is another big problem because we probably are facing maybe the most ignorant community ever. Yeah. And I don't say this lightly because it... even in the days where, let's say, you know, in the Enlightenment, where Jews already were leaving the shtetl and leaving traditional Judaism, there was a sense of learning. Learning was part of it.

16:17And in Europe, learning, whether it was in a yeshiva or a college or whatever it is, you know. And I know that there were shtetl that were ignorant Jews. I, I get it. I understand that. But these Jews were isolated from the world and, you know- Right... they were pious and religious. But American, the Jewish American community, I find is the most ignorant, not, but not because by choice. It's because we never put any big emphasis on Jewish education. Right.

16:41We put tremendous amount of emphasis on secular education, and we have the greatest scientists and the doctors and the lawyers and, and, and, you know, and the businesspeople and tremendous amount of stress on secular education. And Jewish education, we created a Hebrew school. So compare. [laughs] Okay? So compare. Which again, not very fun, like [laughs] No, not very fun and, and not very successful, to be honest. I mean, yes- Right... people went through it and they were bar mitzvah'd, but it was a jailbreak. Mm-hmm. So number one, for the parents whose children are coming home with those ideas, educate yourself. Get a book. Read a book.

17:18There's no excuse today in, in the world. Years ago, you'd have to go to the library, have to check something out, have to find a friend, have to explain it to you. What is Zionism? What is Zion? And all of that stuff. Or who was Herzl? Yeah. You know, all of these things. Today there's no excuse. Right. Everybody could go online. There's, um, tons and tons of lectures talking about the history of Zionism, what Zionism is, what October 7th is, what it meant to the Jewish people, what happened on October 7th.

17:47And if you educate yourself and you feel confident- Mm... then you can have, you know, a decent, normal conversation with your child- Right... and try to explain to them that by joining the enemy, we have seen historically what happens. These people will be erased from the Jewish n- people. I mean, that's- Mm-hmm... that's what happened. I mean, there were people who voted for Hitler. 7,000 Jews voted for Hitler, and they're gone. I mean, we- Right... we all know what happened to their families.

18:13The secular Jews that were at the time of the Maccabees, they disappeared. They integrated themselves with the Syrian Greeks and were gone. Right. So if it's important for your child to still remain Jewish, and they claim that it is important for them because they're not converting, then you have to have conversations with them and- I wanna-... serious conversations... I wanna put forward the strategy that you used with me when I was growing up. When you almost became an anti-Zionist? Eh. Yes. [laughs] When I would argue- She was a big Macklemore fan.

18:46That's why. When I would argue- She had posters of him. Yeah, exactly. No, when I would argue- She would be-... about something or say that I knew something that- I obviously didn't know anything about. You bluntly told me, "You don't know anything about that, so why, who cares what you think? You're an idiot." You didn't say it in that way- Yeah... but it was close. [laughs] Well, don't make me sound like the- It was close... the worst father ever in history. No, or the best. You idiot. [laughs] No. I think that there was a certain...

19:14I remember clearly with my grandparents, I would fight with my grandparents about Israel. I- it was the mid-'90s when, you know, Oslo and all that, and I remember sitting with my grandfather, and I thought I was so sophisticated telling him, you know, the Palestinians, this and that. And he didn't say to me, "Oh, let me discuss facts and this." He was like, "You don't know anything. You're 14 years old. You're stupid." Right? And you know what? [laughs] He was right.

19:39And so maybe we need to bring back some of that, a l- a little bit of that. We do. One of the things, one of the things we, that we're facing now, among man- many of the other, you know, crisis, you know- Yeah... mental health crisis and this crisis, is that adult children are cutting off their parents. I, I know. I mean, this is- Yeah, that's a thing... this is a- I know... this is another crisis in America that I'm struggling- Yeah... with whether I'm going to talk about this over the holidays or not. I probably will- Okay...

20:08even though I, you know, I've been s- researching and I've been reading, and there's no good real recipe for reconciliation, but one of the things that the kids are claiming are that their parents never listened to them. Or if they listened to them, it wasn't really listening to them. So I'm not sure if by calling your kid a dummy or, you know- [laughs]... then you could say, you could say, "Listen, I think that you're uneducated about this issue." Yeah.

20:34That I think you could say, but I think that our tone of voice, because the rhetoric out there in the world is so unbelievably high, you know, like you can't even- Yeah... have like a normal conversation. I know. And even if, if there was a true antisemite, a true Nazi out there, I would like to have a conversation with him, but a respectful conversation- Right... and ask him, "Tell me, explain to me why you hate Jews." And he would say, "Because Jews are the cause and root of all the problems in America." And I would say to him, "You're absolutely right." [laughs] "It's the Jews and the bicycle riders." Why? [laughs] And yeah. Why?

21:11And then he would turn to me, and he would say, "Why the bicycle riders?" And I would say to him, "Why the Jews?" [laughs] Hmm. You know, so that, you know, so I want, I, but I- You might be right about the bike people, though. They're very annoying. The bike people are terrible people. They might be more terrible people. That's why I brought them up. They have too much control over government. I, are you kidding me? They just- They have too much funding towards bike lanes. But I would like to have, but you, you can't. Yeah, you can't.

21:34You can't. In today's day and age, there's no such thing as a, as a civil- Yeah... conversation. Today it's all about, you know, what, what is it, 147 characters on X- Yeah... or something like that. Yeah. You know, you get into- Who's counting?... screaming, shouting and all that stuff. So- Could you picture your parents in this milieu that we're in right now? No. Like, how would your father- No, my parents were Holocaust survivors. They could not, they, they could not even imagine the wildest imagination- I know... that something like this could, you know, it could happen.

22:00That's true. But I, I, I wanna be optimistic. Right. And I wanna say to myself, "Look, we, we, we've seen this before. We've seen this." Yeah. You know, there are trends. Mm-hmm. There are a lot of trends. This, this is trending right now. It's a bit different now with social media than it was in the past. Right. But I have, I've told a story a n- million times about the silversmith that came to King Solomon, who was the wisest man ever to live in history, you know, like the greatest, the smartest.

22:26And for his birthday, he brought him a piece of silver where he engraved three Hebrew letters, Gimel, Zayin, Yud. And he gave it to him. Mm-hmm. And King Solomon asked him, "What is this?" He said, "Well, you know what? You are the smartest man in the world. You should figure this out yourself. Gimel, a Zayin, and a Yud. You figure this out." Well, he thought and thought about it and thought about it, and he just couldn't. So he called back the silversmith and he says, "Okay, please, I give up. Tell me what it is." And he said, "This is an acronym for Gam Zu L'avor. Gam Zu L'avor. This shall also pass." Mm-hmm.

23:02Meaning that you're the king. You put this on your bed stand, 'cause every time you wake up in the morning, I want you to think about that. Because when you're higher than high, and you're sitting at the, um- Hmm... the epoch of your kingship, and everybody is, everything is going great, know one thing, Gam Zu L'avor. Yeah. This shall also pass. And when you're down and you're feeling s- blue, look at that, Gam Zu L'avor. Hmm. And the Frieda Kareba, the previous Chabad Rebbe, had a cane that had a silver band around it with those words, Gam Zu L'avor. I wear a ring every day that says Gam Zeh Avor also. There you go. Oh, look at that.

23:38So I'm hopeful that this is, is, is a truism. Right. The Gam Zu L'avor. Now, when you're in midst of it, you know, like when, when you're drowning and the water's coming into your lungs, you're not thinking about how you're gonna be able to, you know, like in two hours- Right... you're gonna be okay. All you're thinking about is you're drowning right now. So I understand that it's, you know, it's a bit maybe Pollyannish, but I wanna believe that this is a truism, Gam Zu L'avor, that, you know what? Things will change- Yeah... in the Middle East.

24:07The governments will change in the Middle East. Things will change in the Middle East. And as they change in the Middle East, they'll change here, too. Mm-hmm. And, you know, and, and, and, uh- And even our personal lives... all of this, all of this rhetoric that we're finding- Right... right now will, will, won't be. Will, will, you know, it'll just disappear, and we're gonna, you know. And also things will change in our personal lives. If someone's struggling right now in something difficult, you can have hope that this too shall pass and there could be a new day. We're having a new year starting. Maybe there'll be better luck this year.

24:36It's easier- A lot of, a lot of luck. You know, you need, you need the blessings from Hashem. Yeah. I mean, that's nothing. I know that's what you meant by luck- Yeah, yeah... that, that you, you are gonna be blessed. But the key is to any circumstance, to any challenge that we have, a plan is needed. Mm-hmm. Now, we talk about Jewish hope, and Elie Wiesel, the great Jewish philosopher, always said that when a Jew has no hope, what does he do? He creates hope. Mm-hmm.

25:01Which is very fine, and I love the statement, and a great, but hope is not a plan. Right. Now, hope is hope. But everybody, if you're facing a challenge, the first thing you need to do is realize that we are in a world of action. Mm. And if you looked at the Torah, the vast majority of mitzvahs are not centered around thinking- Right... and, and believing and, and feeling. Right. Most of the mitzvahs are action-oriented. Even Rosh Hashanah, there's prayer, you're actively reading the words. There's the blowing of the shofar. You're actively listening to the shofar. You're eating the apple with the, with the, with the honey.

25:38There's actions. You're going Tashlich, you know, to the river to throw your sins into the river, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So the first thing you gotta know, when you're in a position where you're facing a challenge or things are not going your way, you need to sit down and create a plan- Right... of how you are going to overcome this. Sometimes you may need some help. Mm. You may need some financial help. You may need some spiritual help. You may need some me- you know, mental health. But you have a plan, and you're going to execute it. Right.

26:09And execution is the main thing that Judaism has always... E- even so people say to me, like, you know, we have this campaign about g- harassing people on the street to put on tefillin. And people say to me, "Eh, I'm not religious," but that's not what I asked you. Right. If I asked you if you're religious, okay, then you tell me you're not religious. My question to you was, "Are you Jewish?" You said to me, "Yes." Then I said to you, "Would you put on tefillin?" And you said, "I'm not religious." But I didn't ask you if you're religious. Do I care if you're religious? Just give me your arm.

26:38That's all I need. I need your arm. Right. I don't need you to tell me that you believe in Maimonides' 13 principles of faith. [laughs] Who's the weirdest person you've wrapped tefillin for? The weirdest? Oh. Oh, I don't know. Some Scotsman probably- [laughs]... that wasn't even Jewish- And-... but just to get me off his back. You know, like, you know, he said, "Okay, I'll just do it. I'm not even Jewish." I said, you know. No. No celebrities? No, no, no. Oh, wow. Well, if, if, um, this is more of a question for Chaya. If Mandy Patinkin came over- Oh, man... and said he wants to wrap tefillin, would you? Would I? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

27:13But just do it really tight so it hurts him. I w- I would, I would, I would wrap tefillin on him, and I would say to him, "You know what? This is, this should be an atonement for everything you did to the Jewish people." Yeah. "And this should be a new start in your life, and recognize that, you know, that by kissing up to the enemies of the Jewish people, you haven't helped us much." Right. [laughs] "So p- maybe putting on tefillin will enlighten you just a little bit to turn your life around. And the f- few years that you still have left on this world, try to make amends." That's good.

27:40Just do it really tight. Like, make it leave a mark. [laughs] Yeah. [laughs] Um, Chaya, do you have to forgive Mandy Patinkin this Yom Kippur? No, I'm not forgiving him. He has to ask forgiveness m- more than me. I, I can't forgive him. Are people still doing those mass text messages to everyone on Yom Kippur just saying- Ugh, I know. Cringe... like, all their WhatsApp contacts saying like, "Sorry if I hurt you this year. Bye." [laughs] I know. Yeah. It's so cringe. That's nothing. That's just fake. [laughs] And that's just fake. And that doesn't count. First of all- That doesn't count, right?

28:12You can't forgive Mandy Patinkin anyways because the damage that he did was not to you personally. Right. Mandy Patinkin has to ask permi- f- forgiveness from the Jewish people- Right... not from Abba Perlmutter or Chaya Leah, you know. I mean, this is- Yeah, we all have to get together and vote... it's way beyond a personal affront- Yeah... for what they did. You, you could forgive somebody for what they did to you, and you may say to him, "Look, you, you hurt me by whatever you did.

28:36Yes, fine, but there's still 50 million other Jews that you need to run around and ask, you know, forgiveness to, so good luck." We put on- He should invite, um, Dani over for a nice Yom Kippur feast. [laughs] Yeah. [laughs] Exactly. You see, we, we, we give these people, to me, my personal opinion, we give these people way, way, way, way, way too much coverage in the Jewish press. Well- God, this is our whole brand. Don't r- destroy our whole brand right now But it's our, A, it's our whole brand. B, I would actually disagree with you. No, no, no. But- [laughs] I... No, I understand.

29:08'Cause I think it's so important to not normalize it. It's, we spend so much energy. Like, you, you talk about Macklemore. You brought up Macklemore. When I got onto Facebook and I see people, I want my money back because Ed Sheeran invited Macklemore. Now, did you think that Macklemore is gonna get up there and he's gonna say, "Yichi," uh, or- [laughs]... "Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu"? What do you think? Macklemore has a long history- He should do a Miami Boys Choir song... yeah, Macklemore has a long history of being anti-Israel.

29:36I mean, if you can't take that, don't go to Ed Sheeran's concert. Right. I mean, he was advertised. It's not Ed Sheeran just flipped the... He said, "Hey, Macklemore, you're in the crowd. Come on up here, Macklemore." He's advertised. You know what he's going to do. If you go to, uh, the, tho- those idiots from, uh, from, from, from Ireland, the g- those guys that keep, you know, every concert is a genocide, or if you go to, um, a, a, Roger- I mean, you'd have to narrow it down a little bit.

30:00Yeah. [laughs] You know, you know, like Roger Wan- Yeah... take for- Thank you. If you go to a Roger Waters concert- Yeah... and you get offended, you're the idiot. Right. You're the idiot. Yeah. Not him. Yeah. We, we know what, we know what he stands for, so if you're giving him your $150 for a ticket, and then you come, then you say, "Well, how are you? I'll hunt you, Semite," shame on you. Right. Shame on you. I mean, with it, it, it, it doesn't take much. You know, now you wanna pressure Ed Sheeran to get rid of him for the rest of the con- good luck. If that's, if that's what you wanna do. You don't like Macklemore.

30:30You want to get rid of him. But I think we give these people much... So it reminds me of that story of the two fish. The two fish are swimming along. Two little fish are swimming along. An older fish swims by and says- Yeah... "Hey, boys, how's the water?" And they move on, and one little fish looks at the other fish and says, "Hey, what's water?" Yeah. Now, everyone who hears that story thinks that the next thing that could come out of the rabbi's mouth is explaining what the water is. The water represents everything that's near and dear to them. Mm-hmm.

30:58Their whole existence is the water. They just never thought about what's really important to them and never thought about the water, and the same thing happens to us. We get caught up on these tangents that, yeah, ugh, now that this guy... What's this other guy in Hollywood that everybody's been talking about? Again, you're gonna have to narrow it down. [laughs] No, no, no. This- there's this guy everybody, he's been talking about the, the, the, the- Oh, Mark Ruffalo... Mark Ruffalo. Mark Ruffalo has never gotten more publicity- Yeah... in anything that he's done. In anything- It's true...

31:28in any movie, he could win 42 Oscars, he'll never get this kind of publicity- [laughs]... because he- he- he bashed the Ellison family. Every second story in the Jewish press was Mark Ruffalo. He doesn't deserve this. Yeah. Right. He doesn't deserve us to even look at him. Say it, but we're not gonna give you any credence whatsoever. Right. Now, you wanna invite him over for Shabbos, good. Invite him over for Shabbos. You wanna give him chicken soup, give him chicken soup, but he does not deserve the amount of publicity that he got for saying this.

31:58He's a nobody, knows nothing, not a friend of ours, and why are we, why we, why are we engaging with this guy? We have so many problems in the Jewish community. Our kids are not going to Jewish day schools. Our, we're losing this, we're doing that. But what is, what is... Ah, Mark Ruffalo, Mark Ruffalo said- I'm laughing because people, I don't know if... Did we explicitly say that this is my father? Did we start this episode by saying that- Yeah... this is my fa- Oh, I didn't, I don't remember that part. But it's just funny because you're ranting the same way I rant, so it just, it's similar. No. But anyway.

32:30Maybe a different topic. But no, but here's my, here's my issue with this stuff. This has nothing to do with Rosh Hashanah. Doesn't matter. But, but we're talking. Yeah, go ahead. The Macklemore thing is a really good example because the way it's being presented is he's pro Pa- I tweeted about this today. Everybody's saying his pro-Palestinian remarks, his pro Pal- And, like, nobody cares if somebody's pro-Palestinian, but he's not pro-Palestinian, he's anti-Israel. Right.

32:55And he does it with lies, and he does it with incitement, and he does it with stereotypes, and he does it with, you know, just, like, using all this, like, filth that's out there against us that's not even true. So when, when Jews kinda cry and say, like you said, "I want my money back," it makes it sound like we're whining because he doesn't like... He likes the other team. Right, but that's not it. Right? But it's not about that. I don't care if he's pro whatever. It can be, you know...

33:24To me, it's, like, the ideas that he's building this on, and the kind of information that he's putting out, and the propaganda that he's putting out, and the, the, you know, being an, an apologist for a lot of the violence that's going on, and also spreading, uh, a lot of misinformation about us. That's my issue, and I don't wanna, like... I understand the need not to get upset, but I also, I don't want this to ever, ever, ever be normalized, something we just shrug off.

33:50Like, the fact that anybody who was offended by that even went to that show to begin with- Mm-hmm... is an issue to me because we're like... I'm like, what were you... You know, I mean, u- unless you didn't know he was gonna be on, but I think you should never have supported him in the first place. Right. Again, to me, Macklemore is, is Macklemore. I mean, there's gonna be a Macklemore, and there's gonna be a Roger- What's your favorite Macklemore song, or your favorite Ed Sheeran song? Oh, I don't know any Ed Sheeran songs, and I know no Macklemore songs.

34:19[laughs] Ed Sheeran seems like a nice guy. I don't know what I've read about him in the press. I don't know, but I didn't li- I don't listen- He's a, he's a redhead, though. I don't listen to his music at all whatsoever. It's not my genre, is Ed Shearing. [laughs] My genre's more, more- How do you know if you haven't listened? Maybe you'll like him. I don't know. I, he doesn't- [laughs] On the stations that I listen to, they don't play Ed Shearing. Sheeran. Sheeran, whatever the guy's name is. Now for sure I don't wanna know his name.

34:44Now that he has Macklemore, why should I know his name? [laughs] It's true. Why should I care for his name? But Ed Sheeran. Is Ed Sheeran Irish or English? I think he's English. I think so. I think he's English. I wonder if Baruch's family likes him. He's English. No. No. I guarantee they don't know a single Ed Sheeran song. I, I, I don't know. I don't know. No, but they do know a lot about William and, uh... Not William, uh, Harry and Meghan. [laughs] Oh. They are very in tune with that here. They're definitely English. They're definitely English. Well, she's not, but yes. Oh, the- The royal family... he's English...

35:14they ran back to England, those losers. [laughs] Sorry, I don't like them. Anywho. Again, again, uh, you know, we, we- I know, who cares? Who cares? We get it all out before Yom Kippur. I know. We get this, we get this out. Get it all out. Why do we care about celebrities, actually? Why, why is it a thing that people... What is it about them? Because we give them, we give them importance because, uh, we think they know things. Right. Because they act as if they're, they know things 'cause they can give a good speech in a film. Yeah.

35:41Makes them sound smart, like they're psychiatrists or philosophers. You, you- They're-... couldn't stand how much we followed. You, we used to sneak People magazine. Do you remember? And Us magazine. We used to go buy it for Shabbos, and we would literally hide it 'cause if you gu- if you and Mommy saw it, you would be upset that we bought it. Nah, it's, it's- It was... 'cause it was silly... it's, it's harmless. It's harmless. Yeah. But we, we give them a lot of, of credence, and these are people that don't really know much. Yeah. I mean- Right...

36:08this is, this is the, the, you know, this is the problem here in the United States. Look, we do the same thing with sports figures. Yeah. We're big sports fans. We, we put these guys on pedestals. Yeah. These guys are good pitchers. [laughs] They're good quarterbacks. They're good basketball players. Yeah. They're... Some of them are horrible people. Right. Horrible people. Mm-hmm. People you'd never wanna be friends with, people you'd never want in your family. Yeah. But in America, the culture is we put these superstars on- Yeah... on pedestals. That's just the nature- That's true...

36:34that's the nature because, again, it, it goes back to the same thing. I mean, if you ask anybody, "Name me four philosophers here in America"- Four people that have had a profound impact on philosophy. Nobody, nobody- Tupac... in America. Yeah, Tupac. Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan in the '60s, the early Dylan. Not the later Dylan, but the early Dylan, and, uh, Schmerel. That's it. [laughs] Miami Boys Choir, and for Chaya Brad Pitt. We, we, this is, this is not a culture that appreciates it. We, we don't appreciate, we don't appreciate- I know... physicists. We don't appreciate educators.

37:09It's true. We don't, we don't appreciate these people. That's true. We do appreciate titans of industry. Yeah. Everybody will know about Elon Musk- Yeah... and everybody will know about Warren Buffett and about Bill Gates because those are people that we emulate- Yeah... and we would love to be. We love, you know, superstars in, in, in, in the film industry and in this, but, um- Yeah, it's true... but that's it. But it, but it's, but it, it, it- Like, who cares? I mean, I... It's true.

37:33It embarrasses me that I care what Brad Pitt thinks about Israel and Palestine. Who cares? Like, what- I guarantee you he thinks nothing about any of these topics. Nothing. I know. He doesn't- I know... he could care less. It's embarrassing that I care. He could, he could care less. The, and the thing is it's also changing, I believe. Yeah. I think it's changing because when, when, uh, years ago, when, when, when we were growing up, there was what we would call rock stars. Yeah. No rock stars today. Right. There's no such thing as a rock star. Right.

38:01There's no such thing as The Beatles today. What about Taylor Swift? She's the last of the Mohicans. [laughs] That's it. The last. True. There's nobody else. Nobody else kind of brings this kind of aura like a Michael Jackson. Yeah. Michael Jackson could unite the entire world. Yeah. It doesn't matter if you were, or you liked country, whether you like this, whether you like... You had to say Michael Jackson was- Was talented... phenomenal- Right... and he was universal. Mm-hmm. Right.

38:27The Beatles were universal. And he still does, by the way, as much as people hate to admit it because of everything that happened with him, but his Broadway show was a smash. His movie was a smash. Americans love him. The man was incredible. His, the movie that just came out now about him, you know, made hundreds of millions of dollars, but there's no one like that anymore. There's no one like Kurt Cobain. Uh, the, the, the Nirvana. You're never gonna get a band like Nirvana that superseded anything- Yeah... anybody ever thought, you know, about them.

39:01I mean, these three yolds from Seattle who hated being in the spotlight, and this guy was just tortured, was universal. Yeah. Everywhere you went, it was for Nirvana. I mean, he tells the story. Grohl, Dave Grohl himself says he wanted to get tickets to a concert. It was sold out. He says, "You know who I am? I'm Dave Grohl. I'm the lead singer of the Foo Fighters." And the guy said, "You know who I am? I'm Ralph. The, my father is a checkout art- [laughs]... k- guy from Vons." So then he says, "Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. I'm Dave Grohl, the drummer of Nirvana." "Oh, why didn't you say so?

39:34Here's tickets." Oh, my God. [laughs] Okay? He tells the story himself. Really? The lead singer of Foo Fighter couldn't get in, but when he mentioned that he was with Nirvana, oh, you know, says- Wow... you know, this. They were amazing. Elvis. You're never gonna get another Elvis around. Right. You know, you don't have these- Mm. You don't have these super iconic- So Yael and I are never gonna be The Beatles of podcasting? Is that- You could be The Beatles. Oh. You could be The Beatles. Maybe. But not The Beatles from Liverpool. [laughs] The Beatles from Manchester.

40:00The cousins of M- Art McCartney and Lennon, who went on to have a very good career. Maybe the Backstreet Boys. The V- [laughs] Yeah. Or the Spice Girls. But today. Not even. Not even. They at least have a show in the Sphere. Yeah. The Backstreet Boys have a show in the Sphere. Oh. Ooh, we should have a show in the Sphere. Oh, my... Could you imagine? Yeah. I'm intimidated by a video of me that's two inches big. Could you imagine me, my face on the Sphere? No. I mean, we did Jackson Hole. We might as well. That's the next step, is Vegas, right? Yeah.

40:30[laughs] You never know. You never know. I think I, if I went to the Sphere, I think I would get, like, motion sickness. I know. I do wanna go, though. I really wanna go. Yeah, me too. I heard it's cool. But not to see you two. Maybe that's gonna be my Rosh Hashana prayer this year. Well, that is, that is a price. I'm not gonna ask- No... for health or- No, no. [laughs] I'm just kidding. No. I wouldn't wanna do that. I am not willing to pay. So okay, let's get back to Rosh Hashana for a second.

40:55What do you suggest to people to do if they are not involved in a community, they don't have a lot of Jewish knowledge, they don't know how to pray, but they have a feeling that they need to do something this year for Rosh Hashana? What's step one, and two, and three? Like, what should they do? Lis- listen to our podcast. [laughs] Listen to this podcast. That's for sure. Yeah. N- number two is every c- that you were talking to, and we're going to reach- Has these places that are open for everybody. Yeah. I'm biased. I'm Chabad. Our shul is open to anybody. Right.

41:28No membership, no tickets are needed. Anybody could come. We have prayer books both in Hebrew and in English, and every city in America has these kind of- Mm-hmm... institutions. So I would say at least try to get involved. Mm. You're not going to... You don't have to sit there for two hours. You don't have to sit there for three hours. As long as you go there, you open up the prayer book, and you find something in that book that's inspiring to you, a sentence- Mm... a paragraph, a thought, just anything.

41:55That itself is a valid move on, on your part if you want to. If you don't want to, there's nothing, you know- Yeah... there's, there's nothing anybody's gonna be able to say to you- Right... you know, if you're gonna sit it out. But sitting it out is, I don't think is really an option. Mm. I think s- c- getting together is gonna benefit both the community, strengthen numbers, and it's gonna strengthen you. And you never know, you know, who you meet in shul. You don't know what the circumstances are going to be.

42:20Maybe the one person that you're gonna bump into, maybe the people that you're going to meet in shul are gonna be people that are gonna be able to help you- Right... in your challenge. Right. So if, I would say you have to get involved somehow. Yeah. Even at the very, very basic minimum of going, you know, one day of Rosh Hashanah to shul and participating. Mm-hmm. I mean, other than that, if you wanna stay home and watch, there are a lot of people who do that. You know, Zoom has taught us- Yeah, but... that you could stay home and Zoom into...

42:46There, there's services all over the country, and you pick a congregation that talks to you, but it's not the same as being there in person. Yeah. It's like going, going to a concert. Right. I mean, you could see a concert on, on, on Zoom, but it's not the same as being over there with- Right... you know, with people and participating personally. So I would not suggest doing the Zoom thing. Right. But if, God forbid, you're sick or whatever and that's what does it for you, okay, fine. But I would say number one is try to get involved. Just try to go there.

43:15If you're Israeli and you feel uncomfortable, uh, most of the people in shul are Americans, and your English is a bit off, there's so many, if you're living in the big cities, New York, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, Houston, there is, there are tons of Israeli shuls that- Right... you know, you could go to. Then, you know, just make a little bit of an effort. Yeah. Everybody needs to make an effort. Now, we sometimes think to ourselves that people are, are, are, are helpless. They're not helpless.

43:40Right. It, the, the same person, if they had to buy an airline ticket, would they be able to? They know how to buy an airline ticket. They know how to go on Kayak. They know how to go on Orbitz. Yeah. They know how to call, call somebody. They know how to, they know how to live. Right. If you know how to live, and if you know how to maneuver yourself and manage your daily affairs, you can find a synagogue that's- Yeah... that's gonna be appealing to you.

43:59Do a little bit of research, but, but the minimum, participate. Yeah. You don't have to stay for the whole thing. No. No. You don't have to stay for the whole thing. Yael was with us last year. That's right. I'm sad you're not gonna be with us this year. Right. I know. Aw. It was lovely. Does that mean I don't have to go this year? No, you do have to. No, you do. You do. Yes, yes. I'm going to dinner. I'm going, a friend invited me to dinner. Is that good enough? Nah, that doesn't count. That's- That's one, that's a different part. That doesn't count. That's a different part. That, that's a different story. Yeah.

44:26But you should go for a little bit. I'll go for a little bit. The, the thing I wanna add is that, uh, on the dinner thing, I, I mentioned this on social media this week, that lots of people sit around and feel sad for themselves that they weren't invited or they didn't get invitations or whatever. You invite. Like, there's no reason that you can't invite people. I don't care if you live in a hovel. You can invite people over. You can meet at the park. You can do something. You could get takeout.

44:52You can make a simple meal. You could get it catered. You could make whatever, mac and cheese, a soup. I, I just think it's important to be together with people, and don't wait for invitations. You be the person that gives. It's, it, you cannot imagine how amazing it feels to give of yourself. It's the best feeling in the world, and people don't realize. They sit around waiting and waiting and waiting and kvetching. No need. You become the person that reaches out. There's so many people waiting for an invitation.

45:18I can't tell you the messages that I received 'cause I posted, I don't know if you know this, my father is not on Instagram. But I posted a little video saying- I'm sure... you know, "You don't have to be fancy. You don't need a tablescape." You can't imagine the messages I've received from people say, people saying, "I'm a single mom with kids. Nobody ever invites us. Nobody opens their home to us," or, "I'm single. I have never been invited." This is not okay. The Jewish community has to do better. We have to do better, and when I say the Jewish community, who am I talking about?

45:46Each one of us, every single one of us has to participate. And even if y- by the way, for our non-Jewish listeners, same thing around Thanksgiving. There's no excuse. You can invite people you d- you know, who you know from work who are alone, neighbors who are alone, people in the neighborhood, high school friends that you haven't seen. We have to be better about hosting and inviting people over. That is my rant for Rosh Hashanah. That's... [laughs] Is she like this all the time? Is she, is this- Yes, she is. Yeah. She's like 24/7. Poor Boruch.

46:16You know, that's her husband. But, but also on the other hand, on the other hand, I, I know a lot of people are waiting for an invitation, but also sometimes it's not by omission or, you know, like- Yes... you know, you're, you're, you're just- Right... you know, if you're not involved every day in a shul and with, with, with people, people- Forget... tend to forget about you. That's right. So you have to make a little bit of an effort as well. It's true. There's, there's gotta be a meeting somewhere along the path. Such a good point. It can't be just one way where- Yeah...

46:42we're putting the burden on the hosts. Yeah. Now you gotta go through every, um, person that follows you on, uh- Instagram... on Twitter- Yeah... you know, and invite them or everybody that- Right... you have. You know, I got 5,000 friends on Facebook. I'm inviting them all over to my house. [laughs] You know? But- No, you're right... but it also has to be where people need to take a little bit of initiative, just a drop of initiative- Yeah... to, you know, to come to shul- It's true... or to, you know, to say to the rabbi, "Hey, Rabbi."

47:06Well, I had shul this week, you know, like, on, on Friday. We used to always host a Rosh Hashanah dinner. Right. We always had a Rosh Hashanah dinner till we moved into the new building last year. We just don't have the space for it in the- Right... and then, then the, and the same thing as this year. We thought that the outdoors would be finished. We'd have a beautiful patio. It hasn't. It's not finished yet. So a, a couple came to me and said, "You know what? We know we al- we used to always come to the dinner, and the last year we said we were invited to the dinner. But this year we, no one's inviting us.

47:33Do you know anybody?" And mom, you got them. Right. Immediately my wife went and got other people to invite them in, and we got them a dinner. But they took the initiative. Right, right. They said, "Hey, you know what? Do you know anybody that we could have dinner with, you know, with, on Rosh Hashanah?" Yeah. So it, it, it takes two to dance. Yeah. They basically put a- Who invited you, Yael, a friend? Uh, yeah. Oh. Somebody, a, a mutual friend, actually. Oh, that's nice. Good. Okay. More importantly than Rosh Hashanah Tell us some embarrassing stories about Chaya Lea when she was a kid.

48:00Oh, no Em- embarrassing stories about- I never did anything embarrassing... about Chaya Lea when she was a kid? No, I never did anything embarrassing. Or when she was an adult. I was the perfect child. [laughs] Chaya Lea was, Chaya Lea was always, like you could tell her on the podcast, she was always a challenger. Chaya Lea, since she was a little kid, never had friends her own age. I know- [laughs]... um, even from grade one or grade two, she always was looking and befriending kids in fourth grade, fifth grade. Really? She never had- Yeah... friends her own age, and she was always challenging.

48:32The, the teachers in school- [laughs]... wouldn't know what to do with her because they'd say, you know, like- Oh, gosh... whether it was the abortion issue, whether it was- It's true... politics or whether what this. Our children went to a very religious Chabad school, and some of the teachers, the secular teachers, were at least equipped to answer these questions. [laughs] Many of the Judaica teachers went, "What the heck?" [laughs] You know, like, "What- what- what are you... Is this... Your father's a rabbi?" [laughs] You know, "What, you know, what's wrong?" But Chaya Lea- It's true... always stuck to her guns.

48:58You know, she was never shy to give her opinion and- Yeah, that's true... you know, which was not always right- [laughs]... you know, in my estimation. But that was her from early on, and we say, "Butze butze mekatza yedide" is an expression in Talmud. You know, you know the, the, the kid from early on. You see what they're gonna develop into, and so we always knew that Chaya Lea is gonna be an opinionated person, uh, regardless of what she's, what she's gonna do. And, um, and so that, and, and that's what, who she is.

49:28Yeah. You know, she's not gonna, she- But probably you expected her to grow a little bit in height from like first grade. [laughs] No, no, no. I tell you- I peaked in first grade. [laughs] I tell you honestly, you know, that was not one of our main things 'cause- [laughs]... height was not blessed upon our family. No, no. You know, it's... But we've always said good things come in small packages. Yeah, exactly. It's not the size of the fight of the man, it's the size of the man in the fight. Yeah. No, the opposite. We've got other gifts. [laughs] The opposite.

49:52Not the size of man in the fight, the size of the fight in the man. You know, it's all of those accolades. What do you need to all be tall? You wouldn't have room for anything. All these flights you take all the time would be very uncomfortable. That's true. Yes. That's true. You know, like- We, listen, I grew up, I, I, we ne- I never really spoke about this much, but we grew up, I mean, I grew up, my father was an adult already, but I'm the oldest of six kids.

50:15And for the majority of my childhood through s- my senior year in high school, we lived in a very small house, and it was six kids, two parents, and I never realized that it was small. I don't remember ever thinking like, "Oh, our house is so small." We had so many guests over. People slept over. My grandparents would come for sometimes a month or even more. Bubby, your mother, would come, you know, in the winter, and we would sleep on the floor for the whole time. I never noticed that it was small.

50:45It wasn't only when we moved into a big house that I was like, "Oh- [laughs]... that's what a normal size house [laughs] is." Like we had one bathroom basically. I mean, we had a small little like powder room off the kitchen, but it was fine. It never bothered me. I don't know. We just all got a... It was fun, right? Or was, was it fun for you? Well, now we're going far afield. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [laughs] But, you know, growing up pretty much alone, I had one sister, but she was- Right... you know, older than me, so she moved out of the house pretty quickly. Yeah.

51:18I always wanted to create an environment that would be happy and joyous. Yeah. You know, my house was not happy and joyous, you know, growing up. My parents were Holocaust survivors. My mother did have a good sense of humor. Yeah. She liked to laugh, you know, a little bit, but my father ready, was a- already a broken man by the time I was born. Mm. So I always wanted to have that environment where people are just having, are just having, are happy. Right. I just wanted them to be happy, and that was my, my mo- most important thing.

51:47And so, you know, you did a little better in school, a little worse in school. Yeah, no, it's great. That wasn't, that wasn't really- Yeah... that wasn't really where we were, we put our emphasis on- No... you know. And, but we wanted to raise just good people. Yeah. Just people that would care about other people. And to me, I've had over the years, people have, you know, praised, you know, my sermons and praised my s- sense of humor, ba, ba, ba, shma, ba, ba, ba, you know, all of that. And it, look, does it feel good?

52:13Yeah, everybody sh- needs significance, but there's nothing like when people say to me, "Your children are great." Oh. That is, to me- That's nice... the greatest compliment that could be- That's nice... because then you know you've done something correct. Yeah. Yeah. You've done something right. And y- y- you know, you still wanna continue to, to produce, you know, no matter what age you are, you wanna con- still continue to, to do good things in life.

52:37I've heard a wi- a wise man once said, and I'll probably use this again, "It's better to die with memories than with dreams." Mm. Mm. Wow. Okay? Yeah. That is the truth of the matter. Wow. So when people say to me, "What should I do?" I say, "Create something. Do something." Because at the end of the day, when you're gonna play, when they're gonna play Taps before you, you're not gonna be thinking about how many hours you could have spent extra in the office. Yeah.

53:05You're gonna be thinking about how many opportunities you missed to do what those two fish said, "What's water?" The very, very most important thing, your family, your friends- Mm... your community, and you. So when you're thinking about Rosh Hashana, which has always been a time for reflection and renewal, you know, it's, it's, it's a start over button. The year's ended. A new year is beginning. Uh, you can make a good resolution. It doesn't have to be changing the world. You don't have to run for president. You don't have to run for senator. You don't have to become a PhD. Know what?

53:39Just, just change courses on your dial when you're sailing one degree or two degrees. Yeah. That's all it is. A- I've always said, "A person never gets lost in the forest by getting dropped in the forest. A person gets lost in the forest by taking small little steps- Yeah... outside of the main road." Next thing you know, you're lost. All we need to do is just to change courses one or two or three degrees and we'll be okay. Yeah. But that takes a commitment, that takes a decision. That takes, you know, execution. Yeah.

54:10So that's, you know, what, what Rosh Hashanah is really, really, really all about is just taking, you know, taking a little bit of inventory into where you are, where you wanna be. And I know that people, most people, most people, I'm not saying all, most people wanna live lives where it's purposeful- Mm... and meaningful. We wanna make a difference. Mm-hmm. I wanna know that at the end of the day when they do play Taps for me and they put me down, I wanna know at least that I made some difference in somebody else's life. That's all.

54:40I love how you assume we're playing Taps at your funeral. I mean [laughs] Well, what are we- Yeah. I'm taped. Really? [laughs] But I'm not saying- Playing Miami boy- We're playing, uh, Macklemore. [laughs] Anybody but not him. [laughs] I wanna say something about you, 'cause I often make, tease you. We tease each other, make fun of each other, but one of the things that I've noticed over the last few years that I really learned to appreciate is that my father, who's very wise, and you could hear him here and you could listen to his podcast and hear his speeches in Shul, it doesn't come because he sits around pondering the world and it just, like, falls into his head.

55:14My father works very hard every day with, uh, so much discipline. Starting the day off learning Torah, sitting. He has his desk in the corner of the room, a table with his lamp. I- it's a little old-fashioned, but it's so incredible to watch every single day. And I, I'm happy that my kids see it, that every day, no matter what, we could be on a trip, we could be traveling, we could have, uh, things going on. Every single day starts with studying Torah.

55:42And he has a pile of books, and you read through them and learn and learn. And that's how you become a wise person. I sit on, scroll on Instagram, and I wonder why I'm not wiser, right? [laughs] Like, I mean, I'm being honest, right? And if I wanna be like my father, which I do, it takes a discipline to sit every single day and learn and learn and learn and learn. And I just- But start with one... Le- let me merge your advices here. Like, uh, start with one thing and, like, do it for five minutes a day. Yeah. Not for, like, an hour. Right. Yes. Exactly. Absolutely. Exactly. A- absolutely.

56:16Just like I will go to Shul for, like, a minute on Rosh Hashanah. [laughs] Yes. Baby steps. [laughs] It's fine. I tell you, you never know. You know, people, you know, like, you know, I know you, you were saying that facetiously. But you never know how life changes- Mm... in a minute. It's true. Yes, true. Very true. I mean, we, we often talk about... I've- I, I tried to get through that book called The Infinite Jest. Mm-hmm. Remember- Well, that's where that's from. So that's what- That water- So what the- That's David Foster Wallace. David Foster Wallace. I know.

56:44You told us last time and you said the wrong name. [laughs] I know, I said... That's why I didn't say the name this time. That David- David Foster Wallace... David Foster Wallace. In that book- Mm... it's, it's 1,100 pages. I've gotten through 700 pages. [laughs] I'm s- I'm gonna make it one day. [laughs] I'm gonna make it. Instead of studying Torah, that's what he's doing. I'll make it one day. [laughs] But one thing he says there that has just stuck in my mind is that many of the major changes in life that come to you come unexpectedly. Mm-hmm. True. And he brings a- he brings his brother.

57:14His brother was a, was, was a kicker for the college, for his college football team. How did it happen? 'Cause his brother was one day walking home from school and he made a shortcut through the football field, and the football was laying there. And the coach said, "Hey, can you kick it back to us?" And the guy booted it 50 yards. He never played, never did anything. Wow. And that's... And so things- Yeah... it's like the fate, F-A-T-E, not faith, but- Yeah...

57:38F-A-T-E is lurking around the corner, and it's going psst to you, and you have to pay attention. So even in your minute in Shul, that one minute being in Shul may change. Who knows? Might change your life. May change your life. So never take anything for granted- Yeah... and, uh- It's true... underestimate the importance of minutes. It's true. All right. Okay. Rabbi, thank you so much for blessing us with your time. This was, uh, such a pleasure. I was gonna ask you why I'm your favorite child, but I figure we'll, we'll save that for one of our therapy sessions- You better-... with all the kids.

58:10[laughs] You better save it because I only talk the truth. [laughs] Top, top six for sure. [laughs] One of the, definitely. What top six? [laughs] This is definitely the top six. Yeah. [laughs] One of his favorite daughters. Yeah, exactly. Thanks for taking time for talking with us. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Anytime. Thank you. Shana Tova. Shana Tova. Thank you. Shana Tova. [upbeat music]