Livenyomin Omar - New Season: Shliach in Basel Rabbi Zalman Wishedski lights it up

Interviewer: Hello, everyone. After the break for the holidays, which have passed in good spirit, we’re back with the “LeBinyamin Amar” podcast. With us is a special guest from abroad, the Rebbe’s shliach in Basel, Rabbi Zalman Wischotzki. Welcome, shalom aleichem.

Guest: Thank you. It’s good to be here.

Interviewer: So, if I’m calculating correctly, you’ve been in Basel for close to 25 years.

Guest: Almost, yes. Around Purim it’ll be 25 years. That’s right.

Interviewer: Let’s start with the most obvious question: Why Basel, of all places? How did you get there?

Guest: Usually, at a Shabbos meal, when someone asks, “How did you get to Basel?” the answer is a whole spiel. And then my children do me a kindness and laugh at the same joke every week. Every shliach knows that his family’s kindness is laughing at the same jokes every Shabbos. It really is a great kindness.

Why Basel? The truth is, in 576[?], we were looking for a place to go on shlichus. Europe interested me, because I’d previously been in Europe with Rabbi Teichtel[?] in Berlin. I studied there with a few friends—including your cousin Shmulik, the rabbi of Estonia, Shalom Pozharitzky[?], Chaim Barkan, Osher Krentchevsky—a whole group of us. Then I simply sent a résumé to Rabbi Kotlarsky’s office. Just like it sounds—the simplest thing in the world.

Interviewer: And you said you were looking toward Europe.

Guest: Yes, and he writes: What are you looking for? What languages do you speak? What direction are you thinking of? Let’s see. I was looking into it. I knew there were other possibilities; the world was more open then than it is today. There were more places around the world—the globe wasn’t all taken yet. At about the same time, Rabbi Rosenfeld, the head shliach in Switzerland, was looking for a shliach for Basel.

He approached that same matchmaking office of Rabbi Kotlarsky’s and asked, “Give me a few options.” He received several paper files—that’s how it was back then—on young married men who were looking and might be a good fit. I think he told me he’d received a few, and I was one of those he invited to visit. I came to Basel in the month of Iyar.

Interviewer: For a visit, yes.

Guest: And that was it. He told me he was considering a few others as well. In the natural course of things, Rabbi Rosenfeld eventually decided that we would come to Basel. I wasn’t familiar with Basel; I knew nothing about it. That was it.

Interviewer: Did you go on that trial visit with your wife?

Guest: No.

Interviewer: Alone?

Guest: Alone, for Shabbos.

Interviewer: A Shabbos when you got a feel for the place yourself, and he got a feel for you.

Guest: No, I stayed in Zurich—that’s another city. So I spent Shabbos in Zurich with the person who was looking after me, and I was with him in Basel for a day before and a day after.

Interviewer: How much can you learn about a place in one Shabbos?

Guest: Nothing. It’s very hard.

Interviewer: But perhaps that’s part of the test.

Guest: Not to see too much.

Interviewer: Why do I ask “Why Basel?” When I thought about it a little, I wondered whether there isn’t an inherent contradiction between the warm Wischotzki temperament and the measured, almost frozen pace of Swiss Jewry—much more restrained, much more reserved.

Guest: I once said at the Kinus Hashluchim, on one of the occasions when I was invited to speak before everyone, that one of the basic things every shliach needs to know is that the one who sent him precisely matched the shliach’s character traits to the complexities of the place he was sent to. It’s not only essential to believe that—otherwise you’ll ask, “What am I doing here?” If you believe it, you’ll also see that it really is something special.

And as in marriage—if I put on my marriage-counselor hat for a moment—there always has to be a match. It couldn’t be matched any other way. That compatibility is needed; it’s one of the criteria for creating what needs to be created. The joke people told me when I arrived was that when a Chabadnik comes to Switzerland, he arrives exactly one hour late—but exactly. I didn’t arrive late; I arrived on time, and they taught me a great deal. There are many very beautiful things.

And yes, it’s a process. If you want to get into it, I can tell you about the process you go through, from being a yeshivah bochur with your shirt untucked to... I remember that once, very early on, a woman who now lives in Israel said to me, “You’re not a real shliach.” I said, “Why? How am I not a real shliach? I straighten my tie...” She said, “We know Chabadniks. Their shirts are tucked in on one side and out on the other, they do this, they dance. You’re trying to be like us.” That was a marker for me: everything you hear, Hakadosh Boruch Hu sent you to hear. For me, that was a defining moment. I understood that she was right: you didn’t come here to become Swiss. Stay a Chabadnik.

Interviewer: I want to ask you for a moment about the period before that. You come from the Wischotzki family, in which, I think, almost everyone is a shliach. I count your brother Shlomi, my former classmate, who is also at Tomchei Temimim. In my opinion, he’s no less a shliach—perhaps even more so than the others—in his very important role at Tomchei Temimim in Kfar Chabad. And you married into the Gurevitch family, where everyone is a shliach.

Is that a kind of family and social pressure, as if there’s no other option at all, no way to escape it—your fate is decided in advance?

Guest: I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s decided in advance, because you have to realize that the world of shlichus is very broad. You don’t have to go to a distant place and run a shlichus on your own. You can be a shliach in education; you can be a shliach somewhere nearby or somewhere far away. The world of shlichus is so broad.

In my family and my wife’s family, there are shluchim of different kinds. Some work in yeshivos, some serve as community rabbis, and some combine several roles. I also have a brother-in-law whose shlichus is in the area of freeing captives—that’s a completely different matter. So there’s no pressure here to go in one particular direction.

I do remember that when I was in yeshivah ketanah, studying here in Kfar Chabad, at a yeshivah called “Rishon LeZion”—though it was already in Kfar Chabad.

Interviewer: Yes, it was in Kfar Chabad. They called it... Was it still the same yeshivah?

Guest: Right. And the yeshivah’s mashpia wasn’t happy with my diligence in learning—or, rather, with my lack of diligence.

Interviewer: So he called me in for a personal talk and said, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And the word that came out of my mouth was “shliach.” I remember being surprised myself that that was what came out, because it wasn’t so... Yes, I was surprised. It wasn’t such a clear path, because I had a lot of thoughts in my head,

dreams about all kinds of things—maybe becoming a wealthy benefactor, maybe a businessman, maybe... I have no idea. And “shliach” came out. Then he said, “And how can someone be a shliach if he doesn’t learn? If he doesn’t sit down and learn properly?”

Interviewer: Let’s stop there. That’s the perfect high point. [Laughter]

Guest: But I remember that it surprised even me at the time. And you know, after our conversation I’m going on to give a lecture for Rabbi Mashan’s Colel Chabad, so I think that’s why this episode came to mind today. If I start—I remember that at the Kinus Hashluchim in 5757, during my year with the kvutzah, I was in what they called the “ultra”—no, I wasn’t in the ultra. So you see all the shluchim and everything, and it makes you want to go on shlichus. But it didn’t really grab me until I met a shliach who lived an 18-hour drive from some distant place[?]. He had come by car, partly because he couldn’t afford to pay for his family to fly, and partly because even the nearest airport serving that area was a four-hour drive away. So he drives 18 hours with his family. I had a conversation with him and asked, “Tell me, what are you aiming for? At what point, and in what circumstances, will you consider yourself a successful shliach?” He said, “The way things look now, even in 20 years I won’t have a hundred people in the shul.”

This is what he said quite openly: “Yes, I have a minyan—I scrape together enough people for it—and I put tefillin on one Jew, then another two. I’ll probably never be wealthy, because there isn’t enough money in my city.” But he was so completely at peace with the knowledge that he was the Rebbe’s shliach. For me, that was the moment I knew I was going on shlichus—and that was the shlichus I was looking for: a small place where perhaps I wouldn’t accomplish much, perhaps I wouldn’t reach great heights, but in the day-to-day... I don’t know if... At the Kinus Hashluchim [unclear], in the well-known sicha that people often draw on, about shluchim [unclear] who were shluchim and had conquered the world before then—the Rebbe says that real shlichus, the difference between a shliach and someone who only visits, is to come down to a person’s everyday life, to get a woman to light Shabbos candles and learn the alef-beis with her. And the shliach thinks, “What have I really done? I only taught her.” He doesn’t understand that it’s precisely this way, really...

Interviewer: ...the shlichus.

Guest: And that, in the end, is what struck me. I think it’s also what keeps me going today.

Interviewer: Very interesting. Let me—this really connects with something for me. I recently came back from South Africa and published a huge article on COL.

Guest: Yes, it was very good.

Interviewer: I met... Thank you. I met a great many shluchim. One who particularly spoke to me was a shliach, Rabbi Acht. He sat with me and said frankly, “Listen, here we... You have no idea what we’re doing, you have no idea what incredible successes we’re having...” No, what he said was, “Things aren’t going so well, they’re not all that organized, and there are lots of parents who don’t pay even the minimum tuition.” That spoke to me very, very much. It’s true.

That gave you... Still, I want to ask you about that first moment. I mean, a person going out—unlike the shluchim we’ve been talking about, the shluchim you saw, and of course those even earlier, who went out with the Rebbe’s blessing for the journey, received permission to travel, [unclear] and everything else, and went in—before that, they went into the Rebbe’s room during their shlichus. Where do you get the confidence to go out? Even though... When did you say you went out—in 5762? You got married and went out... I mean,

Guest: Nine years, eight years...

Eight years, yes, eight years afterward [unclear]. And what gave me the broad shoulders, the sense of confidence? Forgive me, I’m a person who thinks by association, and sometimes I’m looking for the connection myself as I speak—

Interviewer: Go with it.

Guest: You write—writers say, what’s a writer’s greatest inspiration? The deadline, right?

No, when there’s a deadline, that’s a writer’s greatest inspiration. There’s... You know, when Reb Yankel Notik left Russia, and the Rebbe asked that he go visit Rabbi Moshe Feinstein and the Torah leaders in America, so they could see him—and people asked him, “How did you do it? How did you live with mesirus nefesh all the time?” So Reb Yankel Notik said:

Interviewer: “Did we have a choice?”

Guest: “Did we have a choice?” It isn’t such an astonishing answer; it’s simply the most straightforward answer there is. What options were there, other than shlichus, clearly? I had no other option. And after that simple, clear knowledge, when you arrive and write, you see it. Now, I’ve told this only as an anecdote. I’m putting it first, though I also have stories of wonders. I related on another podcast that I got married on 11 Adar 5762—by my reckoning, I had an anniversary three or four days ago; I’m not exactly sure. Then, in 5762, as I recall, I was living in Nachlas Har Chabad, and my wife and I decided to write to the Rebbe that we were going to look for shlichus [laughter]. What could we do? We wanted to go on shlichus, so we wrote in the letter: “We’re asking to go on shlichus.” And we were going to approach Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky—who remains a legend to me to this day, but certainly back then, when I was a bochur, I had no connection with him. Rabbi Kotlarsky—you know, do you remember how they made him the voice of the Kinus Hashluchim soundtrack? Yes, and it was like...

Guest: I was in awe of him. I said, “I’ll write to him—I’ll call Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky and ask him to help me find shlichus.” We wrote the letter together and went to my father-in-law’s home. We lived at what was then the edge of the neighborhood, though today it’s deep inside it. My father-in-law, Rabbi Motti Gerlitzky, had a fax machine at home, so we faxed it from there to the Rebbe—our request, our decision and our notification—and asked for a bracha.

I left there and walked to the shul, the shul in Nachlas Har Chabad—and whom did I see? Moshe Kotlarsky!

Interviewer: Wow.

Interviewer: Now, what are the chances that Moshe Kotlarsky would be there, at that very minyan in Nachlas Har Chabad? Exactly!

Guest: Today I know—that is, I later learned—that he had come to comfort the Wolf family, because Berl had passed away that week, so he came for Berl’s shiva. But from my point of view, I was Zalman Wishedski, who had just written to the Rebbe on Jabotinsky Street, a five-minute walk from 149 Chabad Boulevard, where the fax machine was. I walked another five minutes to the Chabad shul in Nachlas Har Chabad, and there he was. To me, that was it. That was the sign: Rebbe, my request is welcome here, and I’ll continue on this path.

Like every shliach, I have endless stories, but let me say this first—it’s more important than the wonder: that clear, deep knowledge. And I probably got that from the family I came from, or the home I came from, or the mashpi’im who spoke with me.

Interviewer: That this is the path and there’s no other?

Guest: No, that this is the path—that it all continues and it all remains, and that’s it.

Interviewer: And yet, are there moments when doubt starts gnawing at you?

Guest: You have to make a decision; you have to know what to do, plain and simple.

You know, about—I don’t know—fifteen years ago, I got a call from Rabbi Moshe Shelt [unclear]. He said, “Listen, an important delegation is coming through on its way from Germany to Italy. They need to stop for dinner in Basel. Give me a good restaurant, because these are important people.”

I boarded a flight—back then there was a direct flight here to Basel; this was before COVID [unclear]. It took off at noon and was supposed to land at four, and in Basel the airport is ten minutes from my house. I had no suitcase, and they were due to arrive at six. So I had a little sense in my head, and I understood that if the shliach was telling me “important people,” it was worth having them eat at my house, forgive me, Moshe, rather than at the Jewish restaurant.

I called my wife and said, “Please, [unclear], make some cakes, make whatever you can. Put out meat, put out other things, whatever we have. I don’t know who’s coming, I have no idea who these people are, but I understand that this is important—it’s important that it be at home.”

I’ll shorten it a bit. They came to my house—they wanted a restaurant, but I explained this and that, and they ended up at my house. There were very important people there from the Litvish community, from the Chareidi world, truly at the top—yeshiva heads, philanthropists, the top. They sat with me, saw that I was someone they could talk to, and said, “Listen, can we start a conversation with you?” Of course; they started talking. The conversation moved between Hebrew and English, back and forth. And they asked everything. I said, “I don’t know you, and you’re leaving tomorrow”—and they asked everything: about maskilim, anti-maskilim, shluchim, attitudes toward Chabad after Gimmel Tammuz. And then they asked me this question:

Interviewer: What do you do when you have doubts?

Guest: What do you do when you can’t go on anymore, when you have doubts, when there’s a wall in front of you that you can’t climb?

Because they asked—we’re shluchim, shluchim for five years...

Interviewer: And then they go back to Israel?

Guest: Then there’s a deadline.

Interviewer: As you were saying.

Guest: Yes. To continue the story—why did the Rebbe say it’s forever? I told them that people used to say that “shlichus” was an acronym for “Here will be your burial place” [unclear].

Interviewer: Yes.

Guest: And sadly, there are shluchim who fulfilled that entirely, like Berl Wolf, who continued his shlichus to the very end. Why? If someone has started and run out of strength, let him go back; a fresh young couple can come, and he can retire.

So I told them: Sometimes you come up against a wall you can’t get past. If you’re in your final year, you say, “Excuse me, I’ll retire now and see how this turns out.” If you get what I mean, the wall is easy. But if you know you’re staying here, then you know: if I don’t break through this wall, I’ll spend my whole life behind it. I have to break through it.

Then they asked: What do you do at that moment when the difficulty is just too much, when you’re in doubt, you’re not sure, you can’t see a way out, and everything seems to be against you?

My wife came in carrying something she had prepared, and she said, “I’ll answer that.” She said, “He takes a carry-on suitcase, throws a few things in, and says, ‘I’m going away. I’ll be back in two days—let’s go to the Rebbe, and I’ll be back in two days.’” And that was the answer.

Beyond that, I don’t know what to say. When I get there, I’m full of excitement and emotion. I tell my children, and the bochurim who consult me, that you don’t always arrive at the Ohel and suddenly feel like you’re in yechidus, as they tell us in yeshiva. Sometimes you don’t feel anything, but knowing...

Interviewer:

Interviewer: There’s something you may not have thought about beforehand, and that’s the broader public aspect—everything connected with the rise in antisemitism. At one point, you were even directly affected, at your Chabad House.

Guest: I haven’t encountered antisemitism at all. Even what happened at the Chabad House wasn’t antisemitism. It was just a kid with a Jewish father who was angry at his father.

Interviewer: Did they throw something?

Guest: Nothing happened. We haven’t encountered antisemitism, and we still don’t encounter it today.

Interviewer: Do you think Switzerland is calm in that respect—Basel, I mean?

Guest: I don’t know if I’d call it “calm.” It’s certainly calmer than other places in Europe. But, you know, the Thursday before last I had a layover in Paris during a trip. We spent a whole day in Paris. When you open the Israeli news, you see the riots—but we walked around the streets and there were no riots. I saw bochurim walking with tefillin, people doing mivtzoim, and I went for a kosher meal. So no—though apparently things are developing much more in the suburbs now.

Interviewer: The suburbs?

Guest: In Switzerland I encounter it less. That’s not to say you don’t need to be careful, but I don’t encounter it. So I haven’t experienced antisemitism.

Interviewer: And you don’t make a point of taking precautions?

Guest: I try to say—at least, not from non-Jews.

Interviewer: At least not from non-Jews. Ah, but in terms of precautions—do you avoid looking visibly Jewish? After all, there are various instructions, supposedly, not to look Jewish outside, or things like that, from the Foreign Ministry in higher-risk places.

Guest: The Rebbe says that it’s written, “There was a Jewish man in Shushan the capital, and his name was Mordechai.” Why does it say “a Jewish man” before giving his name, Mordechai? [?] You could see from a distance that he was a Jewish man.

Interviewer: Before you knew his name was Mordechai?

Guest: From a distance, you could already see a Jewish man walking there. How could you tell? Because he wore Jewish clothing. Far from hiding it—I live opposite Basel’s charedi community, and the children walk around with payos and a kippah.

Interviewer: For those who don’t know, how many people are in the charedi community there?

Guest: The charedi community has existed continuously for about 100 years. There was no Holocaust in Switzerland.

Interviewer: It exists—but how many people are in it?

Guest: I’d estimate around 200 people. A wonderful community that maintains a wonderful charedi Jewish way of life.

Interviewer: Is it Litvish, by definition?

Guest: You could call it Litvish, because there aren’t many Yekkes left; they became part of the Litvish community. But they’re good people, people of kindness, genuine people.

Interviewer: Let me ask you about your work among them. Years ago you wrote something—look, I remember—that giving tzedakah isn’t just putting coins into the pushka before davening.

Guest: Right.

Interviewer: That for some Jews, giving tzedakah means actually doing real kindness. With all due respect, we shouldn’t stop giving to the pushkas before davening, but that shouldn’t keep us from finding a way to help. Do you remember writing that?

Guest: Yes, I remember.

Interviewer: And what do you see there?

Guest: People open their homes, give someone a sandwich every day—they’re extraordinarily kind people. You see people walking down the street, an older Jew going to shul on my street, children going straight to school on scooters, wearing kippahs. Completely normal lives.

Interviewer: Amazing. People don’t know that. They think you have to walk around with hats and all sorts of...

Guest: Once a Gerer chossid came with his wife from out of town, from Petach Tikva, and he was wearing a baseball cap.

Interviewer: A cap like that?

Guest: Yes, though he still had his tzitzis showing. So I asked him, “Why are you wearing a baseball cap instead of your regular hat?” He said, “So people won’t notice.” [Laughter] All right, I smiled along with him. They live normal lives.

Interviewer: In the midst of all this, without any advance preparation, you and your family found yourselves facing a very difficult ordeal: your daughter’s illness. For anyone who doesn’t know—and I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t know—thank G-d, this story has a very happy ending. Your daughter recovered and is well, and she’s in Israel, so we can speak about it more calmly. And I think—correct me if I’m wrong—that early on you decided to share what was happening. You decided not to keep it inside your own shell as you dealt with it, but to share it with people who know you and follow you.

Guest: Okay, then perhaps I can do a kindness here for people dealing with things like this.

Interviewer: That’s why I’m bringing it up.

Guest: All right, I jumped ahead, but okay. [Cough] [Laughter] Sorry. The moment a family is dealing with something major—whatever it is, whether a child has a serious illness or it’s one of the other things that can happen—because cancer isn’t the only dangerous illness. There are mental illnesses. Recently, sadly, we’ve seen far too many cases involving boys or girls where we know how it ended—quite a few cases where, at least on the face of it, they appear to have tried to harm themselves. So there are probably many more who haven’t reached that final stage and are in other places.

Or a person is dealing with depression, which is a very serious illness. It could be the person himself, his wife, or one of his children. It’s an illness you can’t see, but it’s very serious, and perhaps even incurable; you have to deal with it your whole life.

There’s also a financial situation that a shliach—or anyone—can fall into: an unbelievably difficult financial situation that no one outside knows about. Ask in any community; ask the people who manage the tzedakah funds. They’ll tell you: “There’s someone in our community with a nice car and a nice tie, and he looks well, but in reality he’s drowning. They’ve taken everything from him, put him [?] in a pit, and strangled every part of his life.” Every person has something very big to deal with. For us, it was that my daughter was diagnosed with leukemia.

A person can’t bear that alone. He needs that simple thing called sharing—sharing it with others. In other words, a worry that’s divided among other people. And what it says in halachah, that someone who visits the sick takes away one-sixtieth of the illness—that’s real. Now, people on the outside don’t know what to do. As a friend of someone whose daughter is dealing with an illness, or who himself is dealing with financial trouble, illness, or something else, you don’t know how to approach him, right? You’re afraid: What should I say to him? How should I say it? Maybe he doesn’t want people talking to him about it.

Right. But if I want people to take some of the weight off me, to take away one-sixtieth, I have to find a way to do that properly. At the same time, publicity can also be terrible. You have to see where it helps and where it doesn’t.

At a very early stage, we chose to make two WhatsApp groups: one for my wife’s brothers and sisters, and one for mine. We told them, “Look, you’re here to make things easier for us. It’s hard for us to field questions. You’re saying Tehillim, you want to help, and we’ll help you help us. Every day or two, when there’s something to report, we’ll give you an update.”

Everything was with the consent and involvement of the three of us—whatever my daughter allowed us to share about what happened and how it went. We’d write about the hard things as well as the easier things. We asked them: no overexcitement, no heated reactions, none of that. That was the purpose of those two WhatsApp groups. We called them “Journey to Healing”—“Shleski’s Journey to Healing” and “Gorlik’s Journey to Healing,” the two branches of the family.

Interviewer: Was that still at a stage when you didn’t know...

Guest: At a stage when other people still knew nothing. We knew right away.

Interviewer: What didn’t you know?

Interviewer: Did you have any idea what to expect?

Guest: Seven months. That was if the treatment succeeded as we hoped—seven months. Unfortunately, it could also go the other way, Hashem protect us. For us, just going through that difficult experience—standing alone outside an operating room or treatment room for three or four hours, having to cope with all the fear, everything you’ve been through, everything you’re feeling—is not easy.

If you can now write something from your heart to your family, to people who want only what’s best for you, one hundred percent, who won’t judge you for a second and are simply there for you—your siblings and your brothers- and sisters-in-law; there’s no one in the world like them—it takes a weight off you. And, you know, he brings a sicha of the Rebbe’s, where the Rebbe said to write a letter, and he says that it [?] gives you something. That was the first thing we did. It really became our main anchor, and I recommend it to anyone going through something like this.

And it’s easier in the case of someone with leukemia, who hasn’t done anything wrong. When someone is dealing with suicidal illness, depression, addiction, or a severe financial collapse, the struggle is inseparable from it. People can lose their entire lives there. Not to mention shalom bayis, not to mention other things—there’s also shame. At least with cancer there’s no shame; you come out a hero. Here there’s shame, and there’s no choice.

You need to tell a few people close to you, so they can take some of the weight off you, carry it together with you, share the burden. That will make things much easier later on. We were already on our way out of it when she received a request from a newspaper [?] to write about it, because she had written for them before.

Interviewer: Yes?

Guest: To write about it. I jumped at the opportunity. I said it would be therapy through writing. I persuaded her a little, and she wrote it, and wrote it beautifully. And, incidentally, she brought healing to many people outside Chabad. People from other Chassidic communities would come to her, and to this day people are sent her way. They call her; she calls them. She calls me over each time—at least once a month, even now, nine years later. It’s amazing.

I call families and say, “My name is Wischitzky. My son was ill. I know where you’ve been”—though I don’t know them, because they’ve asked me to call. And the women meet one another, too. She helps them specifically from that place of shared experience. So it’s something you have to approach very carefully, but it really...

Interviewer: You’re saying there’s no avoiding it for someone who truly wants to come through this in a...

Guest: For someone who doesn’t want to collapse, doesn’t want to become addicted. You can collapse, and you can... Because ultimately there’s also a fact of the matter—it’s medical, it’s a given, and you can’t argue much with that. But then there’s your own state: how you experience the problem, where you find yourself years later. When someone in the family takes all the attention—whatever the reasons I mentioned earlier—there are so many invisible children whom you don’t see because you’re occupied with the central issue. But they pay a price.

Whether they’re five or ten, they pay a price. You don’t know what price they’re paying, and you need strength to deal with them, too. If you let a little of it out, then...

Interviewer: Then it’s much easier to make sure no one remains in the shadows and no one falls through the cracks. You can’t do that one hundred percent...

Guest: But if you open up, talk, look people in the eye—that’s okay. It’s tremendously healing.

Interviewer: Tell me, at some point you became—and today there’s no need to prove it—a sought-after speaker. In other words, you broke out beyond the borders of Basel to the whole world. How did that actually begin?

Guest: I don’t know if I’m allowed to say it was a childhood dream, because I was raised to think you weren’t supposed to want to be that. But first of all, from a very young age, whenever I saw a camera or a microphone, I’d ask myself, “Why am I not there?” Is that a problem? That’s the reality. A problem.

The first time I spoke before an audience and felt that something was happening as I spoke was when Rabbi Osher Eisenbach, who was my mashpia in yeshiva—the same yeshiva I mentioned earlier, “Rishon,” in Kfar Chabad—sent me on Tu BiShvat to do [?]. We went to speak at a shul in Jaffa, together with Rabbi Menachem Edrei, who was going to share something new about the Baba Sali. Today he’s a Rebbe. He opened the shul to me. He said, “I’ll share something new about the Baba Sali,” and right away everything opened up. I stood up to speak, and I saw that the audience was listening to a particular sicha I’d prepared, from Maayan Chai, what I’d prepared—thanks to Machon Levi Yitzchok [?]—and I saw that it was going well. I enjoyed it, too. It feels awkward to say I enjoyed it, but I did.

Then I have to mention the dear Rabbi Schneur Zalman Segal, who was a mashpia in [unclear] and also in Lod. Again, I’ll take him back to Lod—he taught a shiur in Lod, in [unclear]. That’s where I understood how great he was. He was the afternoon mashpia, for anyone familiar with that setup—a dear man. One morning, the yeshiva decided that every bochur had to present a pilpul. I didn’t want to; I refused. I was afraid. But Rabbi Segal sat with me, took me under his wing, and taught me how to write, how to structure it, how to do it. He really taught me—he was my guide as a teacher—how to build a talk around a particular piece and its explanation in Chumash. I was told to speak before the whole yeshiva—not that many bochurim—but there were five... Rabbi Pafner and Rabbi Segal, and Rabbi Schneur Zalman Segal sitting beside me, giving me support.

Interviewer: They were all sitting there? It was in front of that whole group you listed?

Guest: That group, and then the bochurim—yes, that’s how it was. Rabbi Segal wanted us to learn to present these pilpulim. At first I said it wasn’t for me, that I didn’t need to, that there was no reason to. I didn’t know how to say that I was actually afraid, so I used...

Interviewer: You used all sorts of excuses to hide it...

Guest: Yes. He said to me, “I’ll show you how to do it.” He took me by the hand... He wouldn’t let me off the hook, and I had to do it. So I did. I remember other bochurim speaking before the crowd: it would go on for a few minutes, they’d mumble a little, the bochurim would get a bit bored, and then it was over. The ordeal was over. But I found myself enjoying it more with every passing moment, and people were smiling. That’s when I understood that this was something I loved doing.

When I went out on shlichus, before Facebook existed, in my first year I would write up summaries of the Rebbe’s sichos as flowcharts, on a single page—the whole sicha, its questions and answers and its explanation, all condensed. I did that for two years, and they were sent to shluchim and spread like wildfire.

Interviewer: Did you later turn them into some kind of publication, perhaps?

Guest: No, not yet. But they really were flowcharts. When I read them today, I’m less proud of them, because I’d write them a little differently now. But that’s what they were.

And when Facebook came along, I was afraid of it, because, you know, people who like being on stage have to be very careful not to...

Interviewer: Get hurt?

Guest: Not to become addicted to likes and to the audience’s affection. The moment they don’t have it, their whole sense of themselves can fall apart; they can lose their footing. You can see what happens to famous people around the world: they turn to drugs and other things when they don’t have that dopamine. So that required [?]—but I understood that I had a tool here, and I started writing, then speaking, and then I was invited... I don’t know if it’s embarrassing to say that I set myself a goal of becoming what’s called a speaker within a few years. So I started preparing talks and approaching friends to invite me.

Interviewer: We sometimes say, “This calling chose him.” It didn’t choose you; you chose it.

Guest: And they invited me, and paid only my travel expenses.

Interviewer: And then they started paying you?

Guest: Yes. That’s how it happened. I believe a person should use all the gifts Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave him. And again, Kotlarsky deserves to be remembered with gratitude. Once, many years ago—I must have been about five years into my shlichus, so probably around 2007—he called me a week and a half before the Kinus Hashluchim and said, “Listen, do you speak Yiddish?” I said, “Yes,” even though my Yiddish isn’t the best. At least...

Interviewer: You must have heard Yiddish from your father?

Guest: Also, after I heard Dad speaking Yiddish with us, I said yes. He tells me, “Okay, listen. You’re coming to the conference. On Motzaei Shabbos there’s the central evening of the Kinus Hashluchim, and I need you to be the MC, the master of ceremonies—in other words, the chairman—for that evening.” Basically, you’re just the gabbai. You say “Mi Shebeirach,” “Mi Shebeirach,” and that’s all... I’ll give you the list of who’s coming up; you stand there and do that. My knees were shaking, because anyone who knows the Kinus knows that Motzaei Shabbos is second only to the banquet. All the shluchim are sitting there, and that’s the inner circle of the shluchim.

Interviewer: That was part of the program, wasn’t it? The meal was before, and then there was a talk?

Guest: All the shluchim... And I was barely 30. He was telling me to speak for three hours, to hold that audience for three hours—and in Yiddish, too. And I said yes, because it was stronger than me. I prepared a lot. Yes, Hakadosh Boruch Hu helps. I don’t know; I owe a great deal of thanks to many people for everything along the way.

Interviewer: If we look at those two hats you wear—you have others, but let’s focus on those for a moment—does this serve your shlichus? Does it run alongside your shlichus? Or does it perhaps tire you out and use up energy you need for your shlichus?

Guest: Let’s put it this way. I think—I’m making a claim, though who am I?—that in very many places around the world, a shliach’s main work is from Friday morning through Sunday night. During the week, he has work in the evenings here and there. During the day, on the other days, in places where you can’t just walk into people’s homes or offices in the middle of the day without an appointment and so on, you’re busy running the office and the whole operation, perhaps raising funds, things like that.

My own work with the Jews in my community—giving them a shiur, inviting them over—takes place more or less from Friday morning through Sunday. That’s the main part of my work. Rabbis, as you know, work on Shabbos; that’s when our work is at its peak, because Sunday is a day off. There are shiurim, activities, meetings. And Friday is all the Shabbos preparations and so on. Friday night—guests; Shabbos—guests, kiddush, davening, and so on.

During the week you can give shiurim in the evening, but during the day, for many of my friends, and for me too, your day isn’t full. So what does fill it? The need to run the operation. Some people like that, and some suffer from running the office side of things. So you bring in people to do it for you. Nowadays there are even agents...

Interviewer: I recently wrote an article, about a week ago, in my group called “The Right Moment” [?], an internal group for shluchim. I encouraged the guys to look into using an AI agent.

Interviewer: You haven’t stopped him from doing that? Some say—some are already, some are already there.

Guest: And many others wrote to me, “You opened my eyes.” Several have already contacted the person I recommended, who knows how to set this up for shluchim, because we’re not computer people. But what do I know—I don’t know how to do it myself. Someone built me an agent that talks to me on WhatsApp. I have a “person” on WhatsApp who manages my website. So...

I want to tell you—in writing, for example, I can relate to that from miles away, to what the creative work was. I wasn’t talking about the creative work. I run the Chabad Basel website; I have a site on Chabad.org. I spend an hour or two on it every week. Between one and two hours on the visual side: there’s a new flyer that needs to go on the site, the calendar and the times need updating, some activity or other needs adding. The usual things that go up on a website—that’s about one to two hours a week.

This week I was here, at a student’s wedding. I got up in the morning and said, “I don’t have time to deal with this.” I wrote to my website agent—whom I call “Lipa” [?] so I won’t get confused—and said, “Listen, I don’t have time to deal with it. Can you take care of it for me?” He went into the site, took care of everything, arranged it all and did it in my place. He simply saved me...

Interviewer: In minutes, in just a few moments, presumably?

Guest: In just a few moments. The first time, I had to explain what I wanted. I sent him a message: “I need another flyer on the site,” and sent him the flyer. That’s one thing. I have an agent for email and my calendar. I’m talking with Binyamin Lipkin, and he writes to me in his colorful way, “Let’s put a meeting in the calendar.” I forward that WhatsApp message to my email agent and tell him, “This is Binyamin Lipkin. Put him in for Sunday, such-and-such, at 10 in the morning, in Kfar Chabad.” He puts it in the calendar instead of me doing it—and I can tell him that while I’m driving or walking.

The same goes for email. And I have another agent for finances. If I’m out shopping, I photograph the receipt and upload it, and he links it to my Excel spreadsheet, as required in Switzerland. In any event, the point is: I don’t collect papers, I don’t collect receipts, I don’t carry all that weight in my head. That’s the reason today to bring someone in—two things: it frees up your time. That’s the first.

Interviewer: Second, you said something very true: when a person’s life is full, when he feels good, when he’s busy, he’s worth 200 times more. You can see that a great deal with the Rebbe. I think Rabbi Steinsaltz, Even-Israel, once mentioned that he came to ask the Rebbe what he should take off his plate, and the Rebbe told him what to add to his load.

Guest: On the days when I’m busier, I’m much more productive; I’m much better. A bit like... Someone studies with someone else, [unclear] Wischitzky [?]—sometimes his strength... No, that’s not a figure of speech; I wasn’t speaking figuratively. You can look right now at the people in Lubavitch who are truly busy, and then look at your friends who aren’t so busy. The ones who are truly busy get much more done, and they’ve also learned how to focus on one thing after another.

Interviewer: With him, during a sicha of the Rebbe—what, that one about [unclear], right?

Guest: Yes, about [unclear] and so on. He seemingly makes a distinction, and that’s the sicha—people wanted to catch a flight, to meet someone, and so on; whether you pay attention to the wording or don’t pay attention to the wording. So it really gives you tremendous strength, tremendous energy. And it’s not for everyone.

When someone comes to me for advice, as a coach for shluchim, I help them and recommend that they find an area—whether within their shlichus or outside it—where they can make their own contribution, somewhere they’re full of passion and joy. It might come from their personal shlichus, or from something outside it, or something like that. A person like that is full of passion, full of joy. Passion is a kind of [unclear]—being filled with something like that. Suddenly his day looks different, his marriage looks different, his parenting looks different, and his work as a rabbi, his shlichus, looks different.

Because when people meet someone whose spark has gone out, they don’t feel like connecting with him. Someone who’s full of energy—it doesn’t matter why; perhaps he’s just come back from a run—it doesn’t matter.

Interviewer: You touched on this subject of consulting, on how you’ve become a kind of mentor. And honestly, let me ask in down-to-earth terms [?]: how far can you convince me that this whole world of mentors is real? And yes, this is also an opportunity to address people who are skeptical [?]. People often say “as if”—no, that’s not right. They say “kind of”: she’s kind of this, and I’m kind of that.

Guest: Yes, Binyamin Lipkin, [?]

Interviewer: Yes. In any case, the question is: is it really genuine and sincere, or is it selling illusions [?] in lofty, flowery language? That’s what I’m trying to find out from you.

Guest: Let’s take the simplest route possible. We won’t get into... You mentioned a mentor: a mentor is simply someone who guides you, a mashpia, a coach. Say you want to learn how to invest in stocks, in the capital market; you want to look after your future. You see that, despite everyone who thought otherwise, the Israeli stock market is jumping. Someone who put money in a year ago made 22% on their money.

You say, “I want to do that too. I have 30,000 shekels, 40,000 shekels—let’s invest it.” But you have no idea what you’re doing. You can say, “I won’t trust anyone, because this is all a fantasy world”—or you can go to someone who knows what he’s doing, an expert you trust, especially someone you know also manages money for others. You say, “Listen, I have 40,000 shekels, I have 100,000 shekels. What can I do? What do you suggest?” You sit down with him and do it—and lo and behold, after two years you’ve made 20% on your money, 15–20%. That’s incredible. But 10% is the sort of thing—today, seven... It’s certainly realistic. And if you want to do it but have no idea how, learn.

Right? You went to someone. You want to invest in real estate—that’s important; I’m in favor of investing in real estate. I say: invest in real estate. The first thing I did in Basel was invest in real estate for the Chabad House, a building for the Chabad House. That building is also an apartment building that supports us and our staff today, for the long term.

At the time, what was I supposed to do? Who would I go to? I wouldn’t go to you—I’d go to someone who had already bought buildings in Basel, and I’d say, “Reb Moishe, Reb Yitzchak, sit down with me. Tell me what I need to do, how much I need, who the good bankers are.” He’d teach me how to do it. Is that a fantasy? No, it’s simply a mentor.

When I want to know something—I’m on shlichus, I’m dealing with some... I have several friends I know who are shluchim in different places around the world, and, as the saying goes, they have “a coin in their pocket.” They have money, they also give tzedakah, and they know how to do it. So what do I do? I go to someone who’s already doing it successfully. And that’s what the Rebbe said to do at the Kinus Hashluchim. In the sicha at the Kinus Hashluchim, the Rebbe says that surely they’ll sit together, and those who already know things will teach the others.

Interviewer: Teach—teach others.

Guest: From their experience, what the others don’t know. That sicha gives a practical approach—that’s what we do. I go to someone who’s already done it and say, “Tell me, what should I do?” I have a community member here, he... You know what, how do I... Do I just come and ask? How do I learn from him? And he teaches me how to do it.

And what happens if, say, I have a community that’s taking shape, but something isn’t working? I’m clashing with them too much. It happens a lot. Shluchim come to me and say, “I argue too much, I get hurt too often, things aren’t working out with my community—what should I do, sit by myself?” No! I’ll call someone who knows about this, and then I’ll sit and listen to what he says. And maybe—maybe he isn’t all that wise, but maybe the questions he asks will stir something in me.

Guest: When I turned 50, my family collected 50 birthday messages from friends and acquaintances, as people do. It was a surprise and all that. The first one, Chamil Zimov [?] from Cyprus, quoted something he’d heard from me and said he felt it was true.

Sometimes the other person—the other shliach, in this case—just needs to sit there and listen to him. So I’m not doing anything special here; there’s no magic. I listen, the person feels heard, and I ask questions that challenge what he thought and make him reflect. And then, with Hashem’s help, that alone means you’ve already done half the work. Once you unsettle where he stands, things move forward, something changes, and the fighting stops.

Interviewer: I want to ask you something. You touch quite a bit on the world of Chabad education in your columns, your lectures, and other appearances. I want to ask specifically from your perspective—as someone who grew up in it and went through it himself, but also encounters it from other places and viewpoints: Are we in a good place in Chabad education? Or is there room for improvement?

Guest: I don’t really deal with Chabad education all that much. Once I was invited to speak at an educators’ conference, some conference organized by Rachel Bolton and so on. And people complained: “Have you ever been there? Have you ever sat in a classroom with 30 kids who aren’t on Ritalin, that you can give us advice like that?” They’re right. I haven’t been there; I haven’t taught in a yeshiva. Broadly speaking, I’d say we’re in an excellent place, because we’re still producing—the system is producing people.

Interviewer: Producing leaders, you mean? Yes?

Guest: Producing people, not just leaders. Leaders in their own homes. It produces good people, sensible people, normal people. If you look at the overall picture, you have to compare it with something—so let’s compare it with education in general. Let’s compare it, say, with secular education, religious education, charedi education, chassidic education, Litvish education, all the different kinds of education out there. Let’s see what measure we’re using. In my opinion, we’re fairly healthy.

On the whole, the direction is healthier. There’s more taking responsibility and less placing burdens on others. That’s the general direction. Do we have room to improve? Certainly. That’s in general. Specifically, we have one built-in problem, and it’s simply a fact: right now, everyone goes to yeshiva, and I don’t have a solution for that. I’m not saying there is a solution, but it’s a reality that didn’t exist in the past. I mean, it’s like this...

Interviewer: You mean even those who aren’t suited to it [?]...

Guest: To take 100% of the children from the outset and have them sit in a chair for 18 hours, or even six hours—to me, that’s inhumane.

Interviewer: Yes. Although there are alternatives today. You know, within the...

Guest: They don’t really exist. They don’t really exist, because your son doesn’t want to go there, and you don’t want to send him there, because you’re afraid for his spiritual life—it all goes together. And I’m not saying we need to create an alternative. I’m not going to break up and dismantle the system. I’m just saying this is the situation. The situation is that a person is expected to... I think about myself: today I couldn’t sit over one thing for 12 hours. I have issues with attention and concentration, and a million other things that wouldn’t have been recognized in my day.

Am I supposed to take a 14- or 15-year-old boy who’s a good-hearted child [?], an open-minded Jewish boy, a bright boy who loves all sorts of things—and sit him in a chair for 16 hours? He has no choice but to fall apart. And here someone did me a kindness personally—after his passing, Itzik Marton a”h. We were fairly close friends because we once worked together at Colel Chabad on the bar mitzvah project, and my son-in-law is a good friend of his son Yanky, who’s also a friend of mine. Yanky told me—and perhaps I’ve got this wrong, perhaps not, but it helped me—that Itzik did his children a kindness by encouraging them. My apologies to the Marton family if I’m not quoting him accurately: “Follow your talents, your passion, what you love. Work things out with the administration when you need to. With apologies to the administration: You love playing music? Play at an event. Even if you get fined afterward—pay the fine, pay the price. If they won’t let you memorize Tanya because you came late, because you missed something—pay the price. Go for it. Go where there’s room for you.”

Do that—simply give them the space. In my words: Don’t close them in; you, too, should help them open up. Now, children are different, and from the moment I started making room for that in my parenting, I saw blessing. Only good came of it, not the opposite.

So we have a problem—but it isn’t a problem with Chabad education. It’s a problem with education throughout the world: once everyone goes into the same system, even though not everyone is suited to that system, and the system isn’t built for those at the extremes—it’s built for the mainstream. But at the edges there are 20% here and 20% there. That’s a lot of people, and each one is an entire world. Those people have no place; they have no way to find a place for themselves. When they come home, who will tell them they’re good? Where will someone see them? Who will tell them they’re all right?

Interviewer: I don’t know if you remember—about a year and a half ago I published a story about Nachum Zelchkovsky [?].

Guest: He told him, “Kum vi du bist”—come as you are. Yes, yes. Years later I met him, the man himself, at the Ohel [?].

Interviewer: At the Ohel?

Guest: So on the one hand, I got pushback from various authorities. One said it didn’t happen, another said it did; people started looking into it. Whether it happened or not is one thing—fine, that’s not what I’m getting into. Then there were those who said, “What do you mean? This gives everyone permission to come as they are.” But the overwhelming response from people was, “Listen, there are kids living in New York who haven’t been to the Ohel in a whole year...”

Interviewer: After they read that?

The guest: Because I’m not worthy of coming to the Ohel. After I read that, I went to the Ohel. When I meet a shliach, it moves me deeply. A father of seven, who has been on shlichus for fifteen years, came up to me and said, “The Rebbe made a mistake with me. He missed the mark. I’m not worthy of shlichus.” And I said to him: Why do you say the Rebbe—like I said earlier, the Rebbe doesn’t make mistakes. The Rebbe sent you. He knows you’re suited to this shlichus. Why would he have missed the mark? He said: I can’t keep up with Rambam and Chitas.

“And in yeshiva they told me”—the mashpia in yeshiva said that someone who doesn’t study Rambam isn’t a chossid. They do say that in yeshivas; at least they said it in yeshivas when I was that age. They said it irresponsibly. So imagine a person living like that—what do his children encounter at home? What does his wife encounter at home? What do the people he brings close encounter? A person who has to say every day, [sighs] “I’m no good, I’m not worthy, but now I’ll go do my work.” How does he get up in the morning? How does he go to sleep? What terrible suffering. Who knows who said that? You know what, let’s get this straight. Let’s go through Toras Menachem together and look for a sentence like that.

The interviewer: Was there ever a statement like that—“Someone who doesn’t study Chitas isn’t a chossid”?

The guest: Let’s go through JEM, the personal stories, my own story, all those places where the Rebbe encourages people to say it—[unclear]—endlessly. I told this to a good friend of mine, a rabbi and shliach from Oslo[?], who said that in the early years—actually, it’s known that for roughly the first ten years—at Yom Tov farbrengens, there were farbrengens on the holidays five or six times a year; he probably knows better than I do—Sukkos, Simchas Torah, Rosh Hashanah, Pesach and Shavuos—the Rebbe would mention Chitas. That was back then, before another 300 people had left Russia, when the main community wasn’t there yet. There were a few Chabad chassidim then, already about four hundred people, sitting there and hearing it all the time...

The interviewer: And the Rebbe would remind them again and again?

The guest: Of course—Chitas. He said: Right away, they said the blessing, and afterward—at every farbrengen—whoever hadn’t said it should say it. Of course, [unclear]. Then the shliach suddenly said to me...

The interviewer: So why did they tell me that?

The guest: I said: That isn’t the problem. The problem is that you didn’t realize it was said with a wink. He said it, and we move on. But not everyone takes it that way. Some people come into the world with a deep sense of truth, and they’re destined to suffer in a world of falsehood. Those are harsh words, but that’s the reality. The more genuine people are, the harder it is for them here. They see the falseness—in their father, in their mother.

The interviewer: Koheles said, “The more knowledge, the more pain,” right?

The guest: It’s not knowledge, it’s... As the saying goes, “Truth will sprout from the earth”—throw it onto the ground.

The interviewer: There you go. Good. Because then, then there’s work to be done here. I think we’ve also... we’ve covered this a little—it sounds like a positive thing, that people are making changes.

The guest: A tremendous revolution.

The interviewer: A tremendous revolution. I understand their salaries need to improve a little, too, and that...

The guest: Give that expression.

The interviewer: Give that expression. And I don’t know the system well enough to know, to say...

The guest: And it seems... it seems a revolution has taken place there, and things are happening. I can’t judge; I’m not there. As I said, I’ve never sat facing thirty children without Ritalin, so I don’t know. The system is excellent; it needs some renovation. And we don’t have a system-wide answer—we don’t have a system-wide answer for the broader system. It’s the same with the girls: among the Litvish and among the chassidim, there are already so many options in college—architecture, photography...

The interviewer: Many more tracks, you mean?

The guest: Lots of tracks, within their strict chareidi framework.

The interviewer: Yes.

The guest: And with us, they’ve stayed with teaching. I’m not here to judge; I’m not expressing an opinion—honestly, I live in Basel—I’m just saying there’s a fact on the ground. Not “the time has come”; there’s a fact on the ground. I’m not saying the time has come. There’s a problematic fact on the ground; deal with it. It’s not a matter of... For example, I live in Basel. I have one daughter at home now; all the other children have spread their wings. We came here for a few days, so she stayed with my nephews’ children in Elad, where there are children her age—because I’m the youngest in the family. So she was with them. We picked her up yesterday, and on Friday she went to a Chabad school, without a uniform[?], sat in a classroom with thirty girls and said: I’m not the only Chana! There are loads of Chanas, and loads of Mushkas. She simply loved it.

The interviewer: That’s a school... No, it’s a chareidi school?

The guest: Uh...

The interviewer: And she came back saying, “Mom, I don’t want to”...

The guest: And she said: Mom, I don’t want to. I want a school where everyone is Chabad. I want a school where everyone is like this. Why do I have to be in a school with Litvish children or others and so on? I want everyone to be normal, ordinary. Right, I can’t solve that. It’s a fact on the ground; it will develop. When she turns fourteen, she’ll have to study in Israel—wherever there’s a place. That’s the situation. I can’t solve it; the question is only how I make the best of it.

So here, too, there’s a fact on the ground. I’m not solving it; I didn’t come here to—that’s not my job. I’m just saying there’s a fact on the ground. The fact is that we demand that 100% of boys, from ages fourteen to sixteen, sit in a chair in a way that’s inhuman. Let’s acknowledge that; then we’ll see what comes next. We demand that all the girls go through this and that and study just one track, instead of opening more tracks for them. I didn’t say to open them—that’s the situation. Let’s acknowledge it; then we’ll see what to do. First we have to recognize what’s lacking.

The interviewer: Yes.

The guest: That’s a very interesting point, very original. I thought it was an original, sound and healthy point.

The interviewer: Thank you very much for the hour you gave us. You surprised us with insights that were very enlightening, original, interesting, even moving. This is also an opportunity to thank Yosef David Suissa, who conducted things like a master craftsman, and to thank Yossi Rivkin, CEO of COL. We’re glad to be back, and we’ll meet again, with Hashem’s help, in the next episode.

The guest: Thank you. Thank you very much.

[Music]

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