Meaningful Interviews: Rabbi Yaakov Homnick #1- Rabbi Hutner, who, what and how - Inner Look

welcome to uh meaningful interviews i'm dolphin the host of the program and today we have a very special guest someone who i've actually been uh hoping and waiting for eagerly to come on the program and you'll hear why in a moment and this is rabbi jacob hamnick it's the first time that i'm meeting him but his brother i know from borough park crown heights and the family and um he's told me about you and recently a friend of his had ordered my book on rabbi hutner rabbi homnick's father was a talmud moovet a prodigy student of rabbi hutner of high in berlin and our rabbi rabbi rabbi hamnick here uh i don't know if you were talent music but uh was also a talmud of rabbi i believe of rabbi hutner and knows a lot about rabbi hutner and being that i wrote this book the book was sent to uh to rabbi hamnick here and um he's been reading it and commenting and has thoughts and um i wish i would have uh spoken to you before i wrote it but uh like you said to me uh there's always another chance and every you know redo and things like that and let me get right right right to the point and uh i'd like you to address this because you know i've written many many swarms many books are just a few by the way rabbi hamnick is a bahabas foreign so um an educated person so i must say and all the books i've written the only uh book and group that gave me a kind of a hard time uh were the heim berliners and uh i was told before that they're very secretive and um you know trying to hide things or or that's the way it seems and that's felt and indeed um i met rabbi uh rabbi shakhtar's son i think mordechain i met him on the street i was putting up some posters and he didn't know who i am and i know he's like i said show me he looks at the posters says what's this i said it's a book about it and what's your name you said carol no no no no no sorry he said his name is hookner i said hooker you know he was playing with me but uh he right away you know gave me the money ordered the book and then uh i sent him i'm sure he read it but um i i got tremendous amount of orders from the biggest the most famous names of higher berlin which you and i both know and it's no we don't have to you know divulge that and it's private of course and um they all read the book you know uh i can't say that they're probably all happy although i believe i presented what based on my research and what i know that the fairest case i wasn't coming there as a you know laboratory hot head i don't write that way uh although i'm a full-fledged laboratory cousin but um you know i really try to be as objective as possible and uh um [Music] was in my humble opinion a good friend of the rebels although they had a disagreement at a certain point and they wrote back and forth letters about certain issues but at the end of the day there was a dead credits from each to the other and was unfortunate that you know my poses were torn down over and over so so um rather than you know kind of you know fighting the system and they also blackmail the threat in some bookstores i don't want to go into it the point is that i never had such an experience so my question to you is rabbi my question is where is this coming from and and why is this i mean you know before i get into the book i really just want to you know talk it out so that uh it it's all open and hear your opinion well let me give a little teeny hacked over okay and that it had a sheet which is an interesting shita because he uh and he used to he sent him when he would say it over to people i heard it from people who heard he used to say people have kindness on me they say yeah you see me out of the herbicides fire that that it's counterintuitive a man's a goddess so that that's it makes a head-to-head but he said that he held there because of the fact that it's like a political type of thing you have to know who to desire them off and you have to know what their level is and then later on the cosmicist letters came out and indeed he had he writes that in a letter and he says claudius throws that coilo das me hamburger that clydesdale has a right to know who to condemn them so so uh sir was very excited it came out and saw people say i was saying it's yes and they were mocking me and and now you see the cousins said it now it's good anyway so i'm sort of forced to follow that here because i want to have a policy of complete honesty you know and and here and there for a person's name it doesn't need to be said i could leave it out but basically i'm not gonna uh like cowboy sarah the light purpose am i going to put makeup on and i'll tell you the way it is there's my list that people don't don't know this is trying some people don't know you know i'm going to try to answer your questions as honestly as possible now it went in time belind it was definitely a culture of uh protectiveness i wouldn't call it secrecy but it would protect us a little bit was cultivated by foot itself as you mentioned i think one of the footnotes because he used to tell people that he so individually and deals with each person to free their indian that he said that anything i tell you i didn't tell anybody else so man it's a sheckle to say over that i said it because it's not again anybody else so that standard uh you know he never said it to me if he said to me maybe i would be powerful but he never said it to me i heard it from others so i i have to believe but but i do think that at the end of the day you know that's our job we collect what we have for different topics and we can some of the things you can tell yourself when you hear it that it was individually based and some things have definite general lessons even if they are individuals so so my policy is i'm not going to hold anything back i and i i recognize a certain amount that is secrecy within the issue my father himself didn't observe it too much uh my father was very open about things but doing certain things he didn't tell because my father unusual relationship with your father has a similar relationship it seems like where when they used to marmish talk to him about buffering and what he thinks the problem is barca has and why he's dealing with him a certain way he he would take him into the discussion then later he encouraged my father to become a psychologist so if you put it together it seems like he thought my father had a good intuition of where buffalo holding it's my father knew a lot more and he would reveal more but he also if a person was still alive or his children could be damaged by the information you would withhold information right so so in continuation of that what was rabbi hutner in the mater in the islam of good island in the literature world let me know let me let me start with something else would you say rabbi hutter was more of a lead fisher a litvak or a hussey well he was definitely part of his uh mystique was that he tried to be a little bit of everything for everybody so so you know if he played it that he wants to engage with all of chloe israel and uh and so yeshiva itself is a literature in the sense that yeshiva is here for different terror and to grow as a mentor and uh and other things like that anything with a hyphen the way he used to say you know i'm a i'm a jew buck with a hyphen crossed it half of something he's not in the hyphens he's in the in the in the center he's doing the job trying to build these sugar buffs and build a bento and and and stay within that but he also uh was very respectful and wanted to cultivate respect for all kinds of other movements and and in a way that was part of his critique against the world was that he felt they were they were too uh central centric egocentric egocentric mean underever no one else only them and no one else well they played a role of being like that rama vino being the nice guy who's going to help other people but it's condescending i was really really really really in the tent spheres with the top spirit and we also helped the people below us okay so but didn't he in a certain way do it in his style where he created a um he created kind of a new genre of of tied a scholarship in it within a him wearing a spotted and having these uh you know fabregans or titian whatever you call them it didn't he kind of create that and really uh wanted as many people to join that yeah no question but that but we sort of went into kind of 12 spot tomorrow though this is our shave and you and we and we invite you to join um but i'll give you an ex i'll just give you an example nothing to do if you see them that i experienced was i grew up in crimea my father learned to happen i was standing with my father once on the street corner on lyndon boulevard and we lived in rockwood parkway and we were we had worked here your life for sure uh so we were let's say at that moment i remembered i envisioned it that we went back lyndon in 96 925 something like that and we were waiting for the life to change and i asked him he's reporting to your rebbe you know about his football sounds a little kid that is over and he said yes and then he you heard you could hear a little bit of crying in his voice and he said and it's my dream and my wish that it should be your everything so you know it's a very powerful moment and it sticks with me my whole life so when i got to learn a shock when i was very proud that for myself but i was also proud i was able to live out my father's dreams right so why are you saying that what's that remember what i was saying uh no so okay so tonight i wanted to share with you a thing that happened to me that really so yeah i was very uh localized in that sense that a group of times and my father had the spinning guy follow it we would go one day to the barbecue chakras and one day to start with chapters every column because he wanted us to appreciate the whole spectrum of classroom and uh and so and i grew up very much in that mode that's with my mode of thinking i think it is told today to a logic extent so and i went to learn in another youtuber that's in a different city i don't even want to say that but but uh i want to learn this other stream in another city and they guys over there were so anti-reported they used to mock it and they did it in front of me they they didn't stand there like like they said tell us but they were doing in front of me and i said to them rabbi you don't understand there is only one issue hashem has one issue but has branches his branches hashem needs a branch with a certain flavor that's where it is so that was that was my my you know i mean i said it's my tendency i never heard that i came up with it but i think it expressed my feelings you that's how i was taught to look at the world that there's all kinds of players everyone does his failing there's 12 shorts and then sometimes there's the ice defense challenge for the other lemon schwartz to accept it and they have to forget how to you know how to digest it like this but that's how i always was taught to look in terms of cholesterol was rabbi huckner taken seriously by his contemporary javed and daily what was their real feeling about rabbi hutner well he was a member of the good sisters man schedule and they didn't show up too often but in in in certain key moments like what you i mean it's a little disrespectful to say this but like you could say in a uh what they say in in like in politics uh a photo op when there's a photo of like when for example nacho bacon came to visit the godzilla in america and they went to moisture feinstein's house so what was there yeah he came with he came with strong lists yes and he and he said and told people that it's because also in stock with play rush and to me i would i was i was a loyal top everyone but i i was really put off but i mean i i i couldn't digest it then i still can't digest but he did that it was a little theatrical it was a little theatrical i mean there's no question about it but so so i think that should you know sort of condone were open to him and the other good island and they were open to him and he was always invited to the meetings but i think they also had a little bit of awareness of him as as being a character a little bit of a character but he was definitely in there ravanan shafted sleep they told me a story yeah i was sitting by him and kept mars at maybe 35 years he told me this story that he said he that they were going to a myasthetic term and they were bianca's kamenetzky and so he was driving ravine trust was driving red foot they went and picked up for bjergen feminists so now he's driving before in the past you see through viacom coming in the backseat and and they they were supposed to go somewhere in manhattan they would and rapunzel was nervous about the address so i could have told them how to go and go ahead and rebrand famous that he started the map in every city he learned it up from the gemara told ramon exactly how to go and put them was sitting there edgy and then when they put there was like a long red light with a cop directing traffic and putting this in if i asked him how to go you made your bar in yes direction to the cops and the cop gave the same directions as rubiaco could so after they pulled away everybody said when as the guys lose the goods they gave a little dick you know you couldn't trust me i told you okay now you got it from the guys but so so you know it gives you a little bit of a flavor there was there was a little bit of tension between without the dough and you know but but they they it was one of their that he would it was an equal so they they dealt with it well um would you say that he he he understood a piece of mother russian texas and and the fortune and as well as they did did he have a good husband or the when he when he when he went into the world of marsha et cetera he kind of um he had less time and interest to focus on a hardcore piece of good mother would that be a true statement or not well one of his tell me that who was my age but who was much closer to him than i was uh told me that i was maybe 23 years old let's say i'm now 64. so that's it's a while ago but else it takes 40 years to be angry right now exactly well one of his who was closer than me was more involved to keep your relationship said to me he said it he said there's no question that since he was being isaac in in vista he was putting less time in kai for centennial so he wasn't holding something that's what he said to him uh but but on the i mean i'm i'm not doing like the mishna says i'll reach and reshoot because my memory is not as good i i tend to answer the listing first i'm good that's right the first and the first question that's your point that you made in general in in terms of his learning so very very interesting i think in this respect first of all it was a pretty solid london but it didn't really uh and and a little bit similar to laboratories this kind of a respect it was a solid line of but a little bit with his own fluid so he you couldn't really nail him down to a category um i it was among all my call before that nobody thought that he's giving over adair because there were certain restrictions she was through famous state if you go to them you get it there are some right he said nobody felt that they're getting from him now the fact but he would the fact is i'll tell you my own experience i was 17 years old but i was also three years out of high school because i was a little bit of a prodigy rushed me to us so 17 years old my fourth starting my fourth year base mattress reporting that came back from rancid's role because he had the muscle and base of tom and he came back for a couple and then what year you took about 78 75. 75. i would run a 58. okay and he's uh and the announcer he's giving we're learning cool and they announced he's giving shannon the fourth part so i and i was starting towards the end they said stop you have to be 50 in heart so i put my name on the list to go to make an appointment and uh and they said what was the appointment about i said i wanna uh share a secretary with the rashiba and and i wanna ask to be allowed into the because i was a year below and and i used the word that he really loved this word i said i have a histogram to go to the so that was it that word was a real selling word and he does he makes a buzzword it was a buzzword but it made from the response so that it it hit home so what he did for me was at that time was that he and i'll tell you the story later in a different question but just he let me into the so i did hear a from him for a year it was already known 1975. he was nifty 1980 yeah but he he uh this year was very good schmuck but it wasn't it wasn't uh south in this you know it's like reborn chef this year with his only shower i mean it used to be very hard to listen to him years ago then he get his body got better over the years that's the whole interesting history of itself you should live and be well it but but rebirth chef to share was always solid and and everyone knew if you go to remind chef this year regularly you're going to become bigger lobsters no question about it it gave you a way of approaching things of thinking about things there's no question and and he has produced how many of them that are bigger ones but what knowledge produced something that would be but not from him it was like he got you to sort of find your own pith so there's a little bit of a different type of thing but uh reporting issue is very good and and i'll tell you like we'd go down to every spanish influence and guys would be screaming about it for two hours back and forth yeah and uh and so in terms so i always felt people would ask me what she was like i always said if if to my torah of a is to train you how to think it wasn't doing that but if my torah version was to put really interesting intelligent creative ideas out there in the circuit that were worth talking about worth knocking around and then in the course of knocking around you're going to get to understand the sticker better and you're going to you're gonna your own mind is gonna be better yeah you know skilled at debating deep things that that was sort of the goal of the share and i felt that it was accomplished thank you so he talked for a moment about his uniqueness that he brought to the yiddish world to the toyota world and something that i i i still don't have clarity you know i wrote about it but i'm still thinking did he truly understand the maharao better than anyone else that learned in the last hundred years or is it open for interpretation it seems to me and from some of the tell me them that i spoke to him so far that he felt and and led everyone to believe those that were part of this marshava classes in schmoozin that he was the biggest greatest understander of mahara i could be completely wrong what's your opinion i never heard him say anything like that after you know i'm the greatest living expert on tomorrow i i never heard him say that the implication yeah but you know it's uh i i've written uh 20 and uh and i'm not going to go sandy but i mean but it's definitely deeply invested in the morale and and after he was nifty when when it when they put out the book of his letters it just wasn't in the letters this was in in the uh biography that his daughter wrote right she she has there a a little diary entry after he went to the morales cover and he talked about all his emotions as he stood at the morales yeah yes so and so it's very powerful that you could see clearly and and i'm saying i said i knew that more afternoon from reading the diary but it clearly that he you've definitely felt that he had a special question to the delivery of my life and uh i heard from a fellow thomas i didn't add from him that he said that the morale had a different view of carbon at that result that stuff is over my head uh that's gonna comment but that's he said that some that's why i was told that he said something like that uh and i will there's no question that a lot of times uh when you're learning if you learn critically what's that this it's either my strength and my weakness that i learn everything critical i i don't give anybody a piss and uh and i'll tell you later about my relationship with the obama tribester in that area but the point is uh if you read it quickly sometimes i think like wow it really hit the bar he got it yeah sometimes i'm like well i am cabelli in the cable i don't see the doors but he's saying something that's very interesting so uh you know i think the partner we could all agree on is that he worked very hard under my world it was a very you know it's a big time of husband you try to try to get the assistance out of morality put a lot of interesting uh analysis out there that's worth investing in trying to follow it and uh did he mommy tomorrow right on the head was it with him around the top of him i never got that exact feeling but you know maybe more or more of his talmudim impacted by his marshava or by his uh hardcore the murderer you know etc well i heard that back in the day uh in my father's time let's see so he was more available to come in and talk along with him and uh i also have a tremendous thing when revival conan schlitzer put out his first body of shelter i was living in chicago at that time i was 22 or 23 years old and uh and i saw were you you were tells yeah yes i got married i moved to chicago and to be in it worked out so i if once i'm in chicago i'm in town i didn't go to towns i went to chicago and i ended up in chelsea but i'm just being honest but the point was uh so i helped him sell a bunch of copies of father the first volume that came out and then he said to me uh listen i have a course to tell you what can i do for you to be made to you for a five or six so i said i heard that you have letters from robot learning oh by the way that's also very valuable everybody should know they'll say this is a good opportunity for that revival calls first safe is called das coin [Music] i actually have a list on the inside title face i can send you a a scanner he has 11 to 12 pieces in report his name and where he is very interesting i think you get more sense of what this ability to learn from those pieces than almost anywhere else it's well worth looking at yeah but and so what revival did for me was he said all right it's a turtle but i i want to be made to be so he went and he photocopied all the letters i wrote to him so i have saved up about 30 pages of letters and learning from the term fireball i don't know how many of them are included in because they put out a safe and then and to say for the current to put out a a letters learning field right i don't know i don't know how many of them included but and you you could definitely see you know some real long-distance skills you can also see a little bit every once in a while a little bit of a polished edge to it and but it's it's someone who knows how to learn as a way but learning could really get a sense of him through those pieces so what's the answer to my question who who who who did his machover impact mortal need them or is nigler yeah so i would say no question myself and much more and not even close and uh and i would also say that the ones who were impacted by neglect it doesn't seem like from through the shearing because i never had the experience not even one time persona told me that we're putting this germ on the wall put me on my feet and that's my whole dash i'll leave it i never ever heard that from any high balloon of anything if but as i said with revival so you see that he had this relationship when he's telling where if i was asking him to shakasha said he's telling him very interesting and uh and he had this relationship now my father himself told me that revival was the govaldica london and my father had a big ability to answer consciousness but he didn't have it he didn't even feel that he had an ability to ask us because he didn't have the instinct to stop there's a problem so my father told me that he def my father used to sit in the very spanish a table away from her father and every time five what is sabaru sakasha my father would eavesdrop so you know sarah five who was very good at conscious apparently and and she'll even be oil and and he would he may he established his relationship with you know he got him to talk along with him on the conscious sometimes to write a letter but i'm saying that was pretty rare well sort of gets accelerated who i haven't spoken to in 30 years a tremendous goal uh he told me also that uh that he had letters from the footnote uh and but i know tori used to talk library but he also had a learning kind of relationship so i think we're putting that but this is mine has asked me a bit more that the way before they came to it was that he really he was mainly concerned with each buffer to relate to them some kind of way and to a certain buffer where he decided the way i need to relate to this don't worry that's where it'll work but however he got to that conclusion we have the benefit of at least we have these right letters and things that give us a nice jerusha of his ideas which were very interesting very and and pretty solid you know as far as that goes yeah um we'll end for now the first part of our interview and uh mr shem will talk in them uh we'll talk soon about our uh your connection to uh to the lavish or experiences with lubavitch and also uh rabbi more about rabbit and thank you very much my pleasure