With Achdut We Can Win the Fight (Ep. 178)

hi this is dominolowski and welcome to the robiolovsky show and whether you're watching with our friends over at tony time hi friends or your however you listen or watch your podcasts it's always exciting to have you along for this experience because we are a community i say this all the time but i just got this email i had to share with you raviolovsky crazies are everywhere on visiting day we discovered that my son's second cousin was in his bunk the counselor told me that it's crazy how boys don't talk to each other he then drops his voice and says i don't want to get into trouble by saying something goyish but you know how two men can sit together watching a football game for two hours and never ruby olavskaya interrupted he was so excited to realize that we were both crazy gevaldic isn't that great isn't that great that uh that we we're i'm i'm in this with everybody else i'm just i'm just one of the crowd you know um and uh it's so exciting to know that we're part of something this dynamic and uh we have a sponsor uh for this episode sponsored by the saffron family the eloise nishmaster of moshe schmolban saffron whose your site is huff test tammuz and the shama should have an aliyah and the family should have bracha and all good things it's a big squish that she's doing to be able to be uh far same this uh the messages we speak about and uh and i want to say a torah thought but obviously this is the raviolsky show so it's going to take me a while to get there but there is a there is is a madness to my method so wait reverse that yeah there is a method to my madness [Laughter] so i'll tell you a story um i was long island director and see his wife for nine years and uh basically there are chapters chapters are like youth groups usually in schools and they get together to form regions so i got started in the west coast region and then i became real director of the long island region i took the job and then i looked for the regional office there was no regional office i looked to find an event calendar there hadn't been any events for two years it was it was really it was dead in the water yeah i uh uh i was really surprised because i was coming for the west coast they had a big office on wilshire boulevard and i was region was made up of seven states and two provinces it was really very exciting you know for um winter seminar we went to san francisco for the uh for the uh spring uh convention we went to seattle washington we were in l.a you know it was very exciting it was very dynamic here i am with with nothing there was one member because she she had to be part of her region and so that was it and they gave me very little money to work with yeah but um but they told me that uh you know look it's not a lot of money but you know you only have one member so considering that it's a lot you know i said oh that's great we've really set the bar pretty low if i get one more kid i've doubled but when i was out in la um i was tricked into taking an ncsy chapter and so the first thing i did is i went to the regional office i had no idea what ncsy was and i read everything i could find every pamphlet every brochure every you know periodical now i didn't know that nobody does this yeah most people who get involved in ncsy do it the same way that we learned how to play risk in our house you know we started reading some of the rules and we said now forget about it we'll just make it up as we go along and i have to tell you we have a much more exciting game of risk than other people do because when you actually play by the rules it's pretty dull so uh we livened it up a bit because we just played it by ear you know we'll figure it out as we go along yeah you have a seder you know you got that expression here in israel yeah it'll be okay you'll see so um i didn't know that so i had no idea what i was doing i had nobody to talk to so i spent an enormous amount of time reading up on it and i found out that after this process i was the second most knowledgeable person about west coast ncs why first was lee sampson who founded the region and then me i had i knew history background all kinds of stuff nobody knew this stuff because i would just you know more or less made it up as they went along yeah so um but one of the things that every region has to have is a regional song so i come to long island and i do the same thing i start i try to find old files that used to be an office one someplace else i took them i read through i spoke to people i tried to get it down and one thing is it had been around for six years theoretically they had one director the first year one director the second year and then another director for the third and fourth year and then they went through five directors the next two years it does not help your position so i was i was uh coming in in year seven but there was nothing there we were you know so i i said they must have had a regional song someplace so someone says to me yeah i said how's it go he says it goes like this [Music] no [Music] [Applause] [Music] that's the original song so that's the only part anybody knows there must be more words to it but this is the only one that anyone knows so they play the whole song for like four minutes and then everyone goes ma mama look because it was the ma lot region yeah so i searched through the files i found the words i don't understand why nobody's saying this i think i may be the only person who knows the words because i think i met the guy who wrote the song he doesn't remember the words either rising together united is our cue reaching for the only one who never forgetting we must always learn to know that torah is our greatest yearn from the time of mitzrayim to this very day performing the mitzvos each and every way never forgetting um we have to not [Music] my load only through mitzvot can we remember a great kitten from the timer okay so the only point anyone knew was ma mama i wrote a new regional song and uh um but every region had a regional song and that was what was all about so i don't know how it came up recently but i mentioned um midwest region had a song i don't know the first part because that wasn't the part that everybody sang you know it was their version of ma ma love right so um it goes like this all right this is the chorus part of it cause i'm feeling good about yiddish kite with actors we can win the fight the torah is alive we must survive till mashiach does arrive course i'm feeling good about yeah this guy now this is an amazing thing because you're in the midwest and you have all these kids like from farms and stuff like that every year you know country i'm a country boy by uh by a.b rottenberg and vegas you know that those are the people who came the whole bunch of public school kids they're all going i'm feeling good about yeah this guy but that's not the part that i i wanted to focus on i'm feeling good about yiddish kite with actus we will win the fight i don't know if people who make up these words really give a lot of thought to it yeah um sometimes people put in words and you know when you have to rhyme yearn and learn you know that you're stretching you know i have to just say this for a moment because you know i've had this huss to have a cashier with a.b rottenberg for almost 40 years and that his music is so brilliant there are other people who can write brilliant music his has this particular time to it but he has a gift for lyricists as a lyricist let's try that in english but he has a gift as a lyricist that he finds words that amazing and that's why if you listen to country i'm a country boy there are words there that you wouldn't find except in country western music you know if we keep ourselves pristine no one uses the word pristine you know it's like that's a country western word you know so uh he hit a an unbelievable way so his his words were always very gechezband yeah um i don't know that every regional director who either made up the words or got someone to make up the words put that much thought into it most of these have never really survived this classics but um uh but that phrase with actus yeah we will be successful we will manage what does that mean so if you remember when i spoke about shavasavatamas i spoke about the power of breaking now shivaz with thomas is all about breaking and breaking things down and that's really part of a process because we break down the walls of ushalayim and on tish above we actually destroy the base of mikdash and claustro goes into gullus what does it mean when you're in gullis it means you're not where you belong and it's an amazing thing we for the most part haven't experienced this right not since world war ii i i i shouldn't say that in the in the svardi countries they experienced this in in 1948 around that time of just being thrown out of your homes to a certain extent right we understand this the people who built the communities in gaza experienced this they were literally thrown out of their house and people don't always appreciate what they're doing when when uh sharon originally announced the date for the uh hit not kut the way that they called it the gerush was the way the people who lived there referred to it the explosion they picked as the date they picked the secular date it turned out it was tishbob i guess they realized the optics of throwing a bunch of jews out of their house on tisha i was like in israel i could probably wouldn't go over so well i think you have to have a certain modicum of of sensitivity you know so uh um that's why when when we have days for commemorations they're always significant and that's why the fact that the state of israel shows as yoma a day in nissan when it's forbidden to have any public mourning is one of the reasons that you find that that there are people who have mixed feelings towards that celebration so timing is really very important and the fact that tish above is the day of destruction and exile so how many people are kicked out of their community yeah neighborhoods change and you have to relocate and businesses change and things like that there was a time in america where there were so many small towns that had a sure an orthodox show in the jewish community and things like that it's all gone now there's nothing there's remnants you can go through places in brooklyn east new york and uh and brownsville and you see these big churches and if you look at them you can see mug and david and the stained glass windows changed you can go to places in the muslim quarter and see in the doorway where there was a mezuzah okay things change things change people move but but the explosion so you take the jews and you say out everyone leave what they today call population transfer that's uh um it's an amazing thing just take all your stuff and go so um so the idea of being in exile means we're not where we belong now i live in nhl august will be 34 years that i'm living here in arizona but there's no base in big dutch and if there's no base in mikdash then aids trail is not eric's show in order to be able to be the place that it's supposed to be with the ashrae the place where as it says hashem is watching it from the beginning of the year to the end of the year that sense of of god being in the land so eric's fellows also goes you could be in goal is in itself chanukah was the story of the greek gullis and we weren't kicked out of eritsel so we're jews all over the world we're not together and even the people who are living together are not together you know there's uh i live in harnoff and can i know her people have large families people are busy a wonderful woman by the name of este yarmisch lives in my building and she's been working tirelessly to try to unite the community and bring everybody together it's very hard someone said to me you know they the if you know everybody in your building you must be the vad by it you know the head of the condo board who collects the the the money every month you know there are people who cut through buildings and elevators not every building appreciates this because people abuse it so this guy is waiting for the elevator and someone says uh um who are you visiting he says i've been living in the building for six months the guy says oh welcome [Laughter] you know the only time people get you know interested in someone is if they're moving or dying because then they can get their apartment you know they want to know that it's available it's uh it's sad we don't feel that sense of need that's what ghost says god says that we're separate we are separate entities we are split apart tish above is a time of ashes you know ashes don't join together there's a din of being able to need dirt to be able to make it into mud you can't do that with ashes ashes are by definition separate particles they have a past with no future and tish above when we talk about a day of ashes sitting in the ashes taking the ashes and putting it on the egg we're talking about total separation that's what goes is and that's why the way we celebrate tishbab is alone we sit down and eat the sudama suckers by ourselves off to the side with uh you know nobody else around the tish above is about being alone it's it's it's about recognizing the fact that everything's been destroyed it got broken on javascript thomas but it got destroyed on tish above and therefore in schweinsteig all together then we can talk about building the base and make dutch and setting up the sanhedrin and you know and having the go but first we have to get everybody back together and that's not easy it's not easy but actors we can win the fight as they said in the american revolution gentlemen if we do not hang together then we will surely hang separately and if claudio had a sense that i need everybody this this there's a sense of desperation it's not that it's not that we're not fighting but do i need you to be part of my life yeah you see families everybody's living their own life this one's going here this one's going there's that you have those families where everybody sits down together for supper and then how was your day and they all talked together you know but those are usually in norman rockwell paintings now from family this one's going off to share this one's in yeshiva this one's going this one's going to a class this one's busy there now to be able to just focus on ourselves that's as a family what was the community i grew up in north america long island it was not a jewish area merrick was a jewish area yeah it was it was upper middle class and uh and jewish i lived in north america it was low and middle class and um and uh mostly catholic irish and italian for the most part there were jews there too um but not many nonetheless my street all that house on the street it was like uh it was a semicircle had to be 20 maybe 30 families a few times a year they'd have a block party all the neighbors came out they made a block party everybody brought a dish everybody put on the table they had music they spoke there's nothing it was amazing because we're we're this is our block this is our block we're together i have a sense of act a sense of responsibility and then there's a sense of of my neighborhood in the sense of my city sense of my country it's something bigger than me and the more people are locked into themselves i don't need anybody i don't feel like i need anybody i'm not a part of anything that's goalless that's the ultimate goal this is everything is all over the place it's all in pieces it's ashes it's particles you know the famous you've shown me that everybody quotes yeah so what does it mean call yourself ray from zelda if i'm cutting a piece of meat and i accidentally cut my left hand it never occurs to my left hand to grab the knife and cut my right hand back because we know we're we're one goof the client's row is supposed to be one organism we're one being we're one we're one group and that ideally is what we're supposed to have i uh we have a men's schmear selection we do in harnoff uh the week before tish above and i say over something almost every year i try to say it over you know there's a panic of tissue above to make sure that i eat enough and it's hard because it's milks and yeah i always feel like you're not full so this year it's shabbos okay yeah but uh you know another piece of lasagna you know another piece of bread and uh and and butter another cup of coffee another piece of watermelon you know you're always nervous at the last minute how much time have i got take another drink of water you know because you can't eat a drink but you know you also can't greet i always said are you careful on air of tish above to say hello to people because i tell them i'm not going to be able to say hello to you tomorrow so i want to say hello to you today or we just focused on whether or not i'm going to be hungry and i'm going to be thirsty but not whether or not i'm going to miss out on human interaction i'm feeling good about yiddish kite with actus we will win the fight that's why i'm so glad i started with that email because i feel like you know we we we all come together i'm just you know one among all the other people who enjoy getting together uh once a week and sharing ideas and sharing feelings and you know we meet each other and it it makes me feel so good that there's that there's something that's bringing people together promotion shapiro said to me if you can do anything today that gives people who used to do it and i know people get physic from this being able to come together and if we bring everyone together right kibbutz gullius that's the first step to the ghoul that comes first first we have to bring it together the the gullis is separated as human says yeah um they're separated everywhere there's no connection between them so if we bring them together then that's the power and the sad thing is that the power of fire is that fire turns everything into fire fire brings everything together i hope we can do that with just the fire of excitement because i'm feeling good about yiddish kite and i'm feeling good about yiddin and so we can bring him together with that fire of excitement then hopefully we won't need anything else and that brings us to the question and answer uh portion of our program okay anonymous asks does the rev listen to acapella music during sphero or the three weeks what music does the roof listen to in general so uh um the role of acapella music is because there are people today who are addicted to music i'm not of that generation the isurim of playing music is because music leads to semra and uh and today when thomas edison came up with the with the record player and then the radio and then the cd and yeah and people can listen to music all the time so no one knows how to go without it i know people go to sleep with the music on because they can't they can't handle not having music so acapella music i think during the three weeks was developed because people can't go three weeks without listening music it's too hard for them i i i can do without music yeah um i don't have that same i don't have that same need i enjoy music uh so what music do i like to listen to um i don't know that i can give it a uh a specific name but it's uh labor deck uh jewish music music that when you listen to it uh it just makes you feel good lifts you up [Applause] music like that you get the idea in fact there's one beautiful song which i i want to turn into a uh a short promo no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no you know the song yeah and i heard it the first time and i said oh my gosh this is the rabiolovsky show uh a jingle it's a show it's a show it's not a sheer it's a show it's a show it's a show the only way to go it's a show it's anyway i don't know it just came to me in a moment of of of recognition and i said yeah anyway so that's the kind of songs that i like to listen to ones that pick you up yeah okay do you have a favorite way to refer to hashem and why abhishta ribbon yeah hashem because it's you know it says it all hashem the name of hashem yeah in english i say god you know a lot of it is how you grow up i love how you grow up this is how i grew up we said hashem we said god and those are the ones anonymous asks how can we stay motivated to go to sleep on time and wake up on time oh boy this is tough this is tough i'm a night person um i'm number five of six boys so uh [Music] there's a nine year gap between my oldest brother and me so as a little kid i was growing up my parents worked very late long hours and so i was basically uh hanging out with all these older kids i was the only first second grader that i know who watched johnny carson which came on at 11 30 at night and uh i'm not a morning person you know those people are morning people they get up at 5 30 in the morning or six o'clock in the morning it's just comes naturally to them i have to rip myself out of bed so let's start with getting up in the morning getting up in the morning the way you have to do it is no longer say to yourself how am i going to feel at 11 o'clock when i finally climb out of bed am i going to feel good about myself or bad about myself and if you can tap into that feeling of how i feel then you push yourself now there was a tekufa when i had to change this to get up in the morning i would set like three different alarms always put them far away so you can't push the snooze i have to get out of bed to turn them off yeah and you have to reset your uh your internal clock and help yourself get up and if you are careful to get up every day and live a life do stuff you'll be tired at the end of the day so put on your pajamas get into bed yeah find something that can uh relax you me i find the for me personally yeah one of the easiest things that i use as a technique when i'm i'm too tense to fall asleep is i have uh the new york times crossword puzzle uh the books of them and you start doing these clues and too much brain power for late at night it just knocks me right out so you have to make yourself a comfortable sleep environment yeah as much as you can jonathan m why does judaism have so little to say about big issues facing the world today such as gender dysphoria or lgbtq issues does judaism have a place for this large community okay judaism has something to say about every big issue facing the world today and forever gender dysphoria is not one of them it is 0.00 something percent of people who suffer from gender dysphoria now the number has gone up in race and years why because of all the attention that was given to it until that point boys who thought they were girls and girls who thought they were boys was less than a fraction of one percent of the population and the fact that we turned it around that somehow they're a major force in the world is because we are crazy it's crazy and people suffer from gender dysphoria which until very very recently was recognized as a condition that needs to be treated to help these people go on and live meaningful lives now it's embraced now the government embraces it now they encourage it in school to teach your children maybe you're a girl maybe you're a boy yeah maybe the opposite and confuse everybody for what yes little boys have sometimes dressed up like girls and little girls or sometimes dressed up like boys yes so what sometimes they think they're an astronaut sometimes they think they're a fireman so now we have to develop firemen affirmation care for these kids make sure that they they can embrace their fireman or their astronaut's side no it's a little kid they have imaginations they play it's it's a it's crazy it's just crazy i'm sorry i know this is not politically correct but hey welcome to the club that's what we're about here so they suddenly turn it into a major thing so what about the lgbtq community so the torah deals with it yeah homosexuality is user period you have a tyver hey welcome to the club many many people have a tyver for adultery they see a pretty lady just because she gets married you know they still think she's a pretty lady the fact that you have a tyver you have a diaper but the tour says don't act on every tyver you can't eat everything you can't sleep with everyone you can't do everything you're right that's what judaism has to say this is not right and we're not embarrassed to say it so a person says well you know so they have a gay parade a gay pride parade what are you proud of what is that to be proud of because i like this kind of a person so so we can have a blonde parade you like blondes let's have a parade everybody likes blondes have a uh a straight parade i wonder how that would go over i have straight pride i'm proud that i like to be married to a regular person in a regular marriage in a regular situation could you imagine if they had a parade what would they say if there was such a parade oh it's that's anti this and then why how come it's okay for you to flaunt your personal choices and it's not right for anybody else to plan for to flaunt their personal choices the answer is there's nothing to be proud of this is not pride yeah you decide you like this person okay so you say well i don't want to be thrown out of my apartment okay so i want to be fired okay but you should march for the streets and demand that everybody recognize your decision as legitimate no we are not going to the torah says it's wrong so okay so you love people people who make mistakes but i don't have to turn around and say to uh a boy who thinks he's a girl that he's a girl he's not he's a boy but he really thinks he is okay okay so this uh this guy over there thinks he's napoleon bonaparte but he's not his facts his reality judaism is very big on reality that's what judaism has to say on the topic and the fact that there's this craziness in society because there's a desire to break down everything and i alluded to this in the shavasa matamus uh shir i did it in a more oblique manner but since all the cards are on the table i'll put it right out there we think this is wrong and we think this is destructive for society and we condemn that lifestyle i'm not going to condemn the people but no i'm not going to say eating tref is good i'm not going to say being michael chavez is good and i'm not going to say that this kind of a lifestyle is good so people say to me you know well why does the torah frown upon it i said because god gave the torah and god said you won't find your fulfillment this way you don't believe in god you don't believe in torah do what you want you have a problem with a brother and sister getting married why who says that's wrong how about a parent and a child you okay with that i mean we're we're just we're just right next to that now anyway when was that that that point you know we break down and amish any barrier that there is and the last time we broke down all the barriers it was a historical occurrence it was called the marble what happens if you break down all the barriers so because baruch who breaks down the entire world and all turns to mud god set up the world with certain barriers and if people don't like it that doesn't change the reality i got from the early 1970s when everybody was apologetic well judaism was apologetic and everyone said well the taurus says this and it fits him with that and it could fit him with some of that you know my rebbe who was makari of me rabbi yak of will you know when i was 12 years old he came in and said this is what the torah says and if you don't like it it's still what the torah says and i was outraged and i fought with him and my said my goodness this guy is right this really upsets my world view and all everybody else in my class said ignore him who cares if he's right but there's right and there's wrong and that's what makes a jew and if you can't tell the difference between what's what right and what's wrong what's true and what's false what's good and what's evil then there is no judaism you don't make judaism to figure i always love when i hear these people say things like well god would never i don't believe that god would oh yeah that's right you're a prophet and uh you're in a personal connection with him or you're saying a vodazora means i have to make god fit in with my image of him yeah i'll make a god in my image that's called the vodazora so i'm sure god would never reject the uh the lgbtq lifestyle based on what how about the fact that he wrote in the torah yeah uh you don't believe in the torah okay so don't talk about judaism if you reject god and you reject torah so then what do you who cares what you think so come up with your own religion it's called the vodazora but don't try to take it and stick it into judaism don't say well judaism no it does not it says there's a boy and there's a girl now there is something called a uh androgynous no they have male and female characteristics and the halo discusses what to do it but that is uh uh a difficulty in nature where we're according to one sheet it's a brie before it's it's nothing it's its own creature something that's been created that's totally out but you would take that and use it as a basis to be able to develop an entire philosophy on life doesn't make any sense um i'm sorry if i came on a little strong about this but i just when you watch the world go crazy there's got to be somebody and i always said i'm the little boy who notices that the that the king has no clothes and and this this uh this focus on less than a fraction of one percent of the population and and trying to make this somehow normative sorry not on my watch well anyway i i didn't yeah i don't you know i i never like to speak in strong terms i'm so easygoing anyway that's it for this show uh if you want to find out more about the show you can go to my website rubyalaski.com you can make a comment you can sponsor an episode uh you can download the uh the theme song someone just asked me recently where i can get the theme song i said go to the website it's over there um you can uh uh see other shoe room that i have you can access so much material so many exciting and fun things and uh that's it until next time i am david rolofsky and this has been the rabbi olavsky show