Somachat Alayich Podcast - Episode 15 - [With a Special Guest!!] Explosions with Teenagers - What Do You Do?

00:01 Speaker 1 Take your position.

00:02 Speaker 2 I’m coming.

00:04 Speaker 1 You agreed to be interviewed, so don’t run away from me.

00:07 Speaker 2 I agreed?

00:08 Speaker 1 What, you didn’t?

00:09 Speaker 2 [unclear], it’s all good. Let’s keep going. Let’s keep going.

00:12 Speaker 1 Dovi—

00:12 Speaker 2 Don’t make me feel like it all depends on this. Come on, I’m kidding, I’m kidding.

00:17 Speaker 1 Okay, um, welcome to “Somechas Alayich.” Today on “Somechas Alayich”—

00:23 Speaker 2 Ready? I’m young.

00:23 Speaker 1 Dovi Levitin, my third child, twenty years old, um, the manager of the media, the website, the social media, the club. What else?

00:36 Speaker 2 What else? I don’t know, a few other things too. It’s all good.

00:38 Speaker 1 Among other things. Nice—

00:39 Speaker 2 Among other things.

00:39 Speaker 1 So how wonderful that you agreed to sit here and let me interview you.

00:44 Speaker 2 “Agreed” is a strong word, but no, I’m just kidding. Gladly, with love.

00:49 Speaker 1 Nice, nice. Dovi Levitin, how are you?

00:52 Speaker 2 Fine, thank G-d. What?

00:54 Speaker 1 D-describe your life at this stage.

00:57 Speaker 2 Describe my life? Mom, you describe your life at this stage.

01:00 Speaker 1 At this stage? A mother of eight sweet, lovely children of different ages, from six—almost three—to twenty-three, um...

01:10 Speaker 2 That’s a status, not a description of your life.

01:12 Speaker 1 Oh, sorry. A description of my life right now, um—

01:16 Speaker 2 Updated, right?

01:17 Speaker 1 Full of activity, between performances and running a new club and providing emotional support. What else? Come on, Dovi, your turn.

01:32 Speaker 2 Describe my life.

01:33 Speaker 1 Yes.

01:33 Speaker 2 If this counts as describing my life, right now I’m sitting here, looking at my dear mother. I also work for her at the club, among other things, and I’m studying for semichah, rabbinic ordination. Right now I’m at home. With Hashem’s help, next year I’m flying to kvutzah.

01:50 Speaker 1 Really? Next year?

01:51 Speaker 2 Yes, as time goes by, you—

01:52 Speaker 1 Wow.

01:53 Speaker 2 Get on a plane and whoosh.

01:54 Speaker 1 No, no, but what am I going to do? What—

01:56 Speaker 2 We’ll manage. I’m with you. Th-that’s not the right thing, Mom.

01:59 Speaker 1 No, I just need a moment to breathe. So yes, it is the right thing, it’s the right thing.

02:07 Speaker 2 [unclear]. Hey, I’m in management.

02:10 Speaker 1 I salute your decisions, even if they don’t line up with—

02:15 Speaker 2 What do you mean, don’t line up? I just want—

02:17 Speaker 1 I mean, I very much want you to go to kvutzah, obviously. My G-dly soul wants that. My animal soul—

02:23 Speaker 2 Wants someone to come sit here and film the episodes. And if you’re worried, we’ll—

02:29 Speaker 1 It’s okay, we’ll make lots of episodes and—okay, it’ll be fine. Dovi, um, thank you for agreeing to sit here and be interviewed. I think that for some families, for some parents, it isn’t a given that they can sit and talk with their children like this. What do you think?

02:48 Speaker 2 Like anything in life, conversation and openness solve everything. There’s nothing in the world that—once you put ego aside and the conversation is open, everything is open. Nothing gets in the way. That applies between people, between a boss and an employee—really, however much two people want to open up a conversation. Couples and things like that—

03:10 Speaker 1 But parents—let’s focus on parents and teenagers—

03:13 Speaker 2 Parents and teenagers. I don’t know if I said “teenager”; I don’t know what will happen with the boundaries, but it’s okay, we’ll keep—

03:19 Speaker 1 Some people say that men aren’t sufficiently, um—

03:21 Speaker 2 Never. We men are sixty, yes.

03:22 Speaker 1 Yes, exactly.

03:23 Speaker 2 It passes from a man to a woman.

03:26 Speaker 1 Okay.

03:27 Speaker 2 But with that line of dialogue, the most important thing, at the end of the day, is openness. There’s no—something about it. You sit down and talk. That’s the difference between—

03:35 Speaker 1 How do you reach that level of openness with teenagers?

03:38 Speaker 2 It has to come from the parent.

03:40 Speaker 1 How?

03:40 Speaker 2 It takes work on the parent’s part.

03:41 Speaker 1 How? What’s your tip for parents who find it hard—

03:45 Speaker 2 I’m not a parent myself.

03:48 Speaker 1 Right.

03:48 Speaker 2 But the main problem is the charge—I mean, the judgment. When there’s a sense of being judged—

03:52 Speaker 1 Judge.

03:53 Speaker 2 Yeah, by the way.

03:53 Speaker 1 You said “charge.” “Charge” means charging.

03:55 Speaker 2 That’s right. Charge.

03:57 Speaker 1 Judge.

03:58 Speaker 2 Judge.

03:58 Speaker 1 Okay.

03:59 Speaker 2 It’s okay, Mom.

04:00 Speaker 1 Yes, it’s okay.

04:01 Speaker 2 Don’t worry about it.

04:01 Speaker 1 You wanna speak in English? Let’s do an English podcast.

04:05 Speaker 2 For sure, yeah.

04:06 Speaker 1 Yes? Okay, so tell me why do you think that parents judge their children?

04:11 Speaker 2 Uh, because they have something in their mind, the parents. They think they know everything about the child and everything they need. If they do something, you know, anyone in this world—

04:22 Speaker 1 Let’s switch to Hebrew. Even though you’re excellent. You’d have to add subtitles; that would give you work to do.

04:26 Speaker 2 Okay, we’ll stop that.

04:27 Speaker 1 Okay.

04:28 Speaker 2 Everyone in the world has their own perspective, at the end of the day. Look at it however you want: a child—the parents may have had the privilege of bringing the child into the world, but they don’t know where the soul comes from. Every soul has its own path, its own purpose to fulfill in the world. Now the parent comes along and decides what’s best for their child. But that’s not necessarily right. Who says the child’s soul doesn’t need to take a detour, leave, make the rounds of fifty yeshivos, and gather things along the way because there’s something it needs to accomplish in the world?

04:47 Speaker 1 Wow, what a point.

04:49 Speaker 2 You can’t decide that. The one thing a parent needs to do is, first of all, put judgment and their own perspective aside. The way I see it, if I have children someday, souls will come to me, embodied souls—and I’ll have the privilege of taking part in each soul’s journey and the opportunity to show them my path. At the end of the day, the best education isn’t a father coming to his child and saying, “You have to learn Chitas,” because he’s a Chassid and so the child has to learn Chitas. The child sees his father sitting and learning Gemara on his own. That’s the best education: the example.

05:17 Speaker 1 A personal example.

05:18 Speaker 2 So if I want the best for my children, I have to set an example, to show them what I see as the best path. Because I’m an example. There are so many different approaches in Judaism, and everyone has their own path. I can show them what I see as the best way to serve and appreciate Hakadosh Boruch Hu, Who gives us His mercy and kindness, lets us live each day, and wakes us up each morning. After everything we’ve seen happen in recent years, it’s a wonder that we wake up every day. It’s unbelievable. For example, I saw a video of a girl who had some problem with—what’s it called? Something inside her, and she can’t use the bathroom on her own. And because of that she needs some thirty—every day she has surgical procedures and everything. It really is a miracle that every day we have the ability to do all these ordinary things.

05:57 Speaker 1 Right.

05:58 Speaker 2 It’s not a given. So...

06:01 Speaker 1 But parents—um, let’s offer another perspective for a moment, because I’m a parent, okay? I’m a mother. They don’t judge out of—

06:20 Speaker 2 Of course.

06:20 Speaker 1 Um, anger. It comes from a kind of self-assessment, a feeling that maybe we’ve failed. I mean, if the child chooses a different path or, I don’t know, doesn’t share things and isn’t open with their parents or something like that, it feels like the parent’s failure.

06:43 Speaker 2 One second.

06:44 Speaker 1 So it comes with a sense of failure and disappointment.

06:46 Speaker 2 There’s failure and disappointment, and there’s expectation too, at the end of the day.

06:49 Speaker 1 Right.

06:50 Speaker 2 There’s also that element of expectation.

06:51 Speaker 1 Certainly.

06:51 Speaker 2 Now let’s put it this way. If, as a parent, I know the path, I’ll set a personal example. The child chooses differently, okay? I’ll say, “I did my part. I showed him what to do. I gave him an education.” But first of all, all of that applies only up to a certain age. There’s an age up to which a parent has to be firm with a child. There’s no getting around it.

07:06 Speaker 1 Where does it say in the Gemara, until age six?

07:09 Speaker 2 Yes, no, I don’t know.

07:09 Speaker 1 That it’s...

07:12 Speaker 2 It also used to say—what’s it called? Some people say, all those who quote the early ages, “At eighteen, for the chuppah,” also used to say, “At five, for Scripture.” They only remembered “at eighteen, for the chuppah,” okay? So I don’t know if that age is right today, okay?

07:25 Speaker 1 Okay.

07:25 Speaker 2 Maybe six—I don’t know exactly what age—but up to a certain age, say until he goes away to yeshivah, until he becomes independent, with boys, for example, that’s an age when a parent needs to be firm with the child and really stay on top of him, require things of him. At a certain age you have to start requiring things, showing him, because at the end of the day he needs an education.

07:40 Speaker 1 Boundaries.

07:41 Speaker 2 Right, boundaries, all of it.

07:42 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

07:42 Speaker 2 And then there’s an age when there’s no getting around it: the child has made his own choice. You showed him—you did your part. From there, it’s up to Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

07:49 Speaker 1 Right, I agree with you. I wonder where you got these views, Dovi. Take me into the world of yeshivos for a moment; I find it fascinating. You know, I once had a dream...

08:02 Speaker 2 Of being a chazzan.

08:02 Speaker 1 Of being in yeshivah—of being a chazzan, of being in yeshivah. I feel like I missed out on that experience.

08:08 Speaker 2 Of being in yeshivah?

08:09 Speaker 1 Yes.

08:10 Speaker 2 In practice, it’s a boarding school. There’s nothing more fun than that.

08:11 Speaker 1 Right, I never went to boarding school.

08:13 Speaker 2 There’s nothing more fun than that. I see it a lot. I’ll give you an example: there’s a yeshiva really close by, and most of the guys in my class went there simply because it’s close to home. At first, I went there for exactly the same reason. But after I got to a yeshiva with a dorm, I realized what I’d been...

08:29 Speaker 1 Missing out on?

08:29 Speaker 2 The atmosphere. Yes. What I’d been missing out on.

08:31 Speaker 1 Wow.

08:32 Speaker 2 There’s no getting around it. It’s a different world. Much more fun. Bochurim need to enjoy themselves. Let’s start with that.

08:37 Speaker 1 But do they enjoy themselves there?

08:38 Speaker 2 That’s the ideal.

08:38 Speaker 1 It’s... because there’s this impression that yeshiva is, I don’t know, something parents are afraid to send their kids to.

08:44 Speaker 2 Wait, wait. There are two types of yeshivas. There are the classic yeshivas, where I was at first, and then there’s the one I went to where I could enjoy myself. Let’s put it on the table.

08:54 Speaker 1 Okay, and what’s your objective opinion, as much as you can be objective, of those two types of yeshivas?

09:00 Speaker 2 There are bochurim who... The state of the yeshivas in Israel is simply awful. Minus ten. Really.

09:04 Speaker 1 We know that—

09:05 Speaker 2 That’s the situation.

09:05 Speaker 1 And we’re not going to criticize them right now. Let’s hear your personal opinion.

09:08 Speaker 2 There are the two types. There are the classic ones, like where I was: Lod, Kiryat Gat, Bnei Brak.

09:15 Speaker 1 You’re talking about Chabad yeshivas right now—

09:16 Speaker 2 Yes.

09:16 Speaker 1 So it doesn’t matter. Classic in the sense that they emphasize—

09:20 Speaker 2 Learning.

09:20 Speaker 1 Learning. Exactly.

09:21 Speaker 2 Only learning. Now, take me as an example. I was in yeshiva, and boruch Hashem, I have a good memory, and...

09:28 Speaker 1 I never heard a single complaint about you.

09:30 Speaker 2 Yes.

09:31 Speaker 1 I mean, you were one of those kids who... I don’t know, you gave me nachas. I don’t know what you actually experienced there, with all that learning from morning till night.

09:45 Speaker 2 It’s not that I suffered or anything. But I didn’t actually learn from morning till night. Come on, I had a chavrusa, and we made an arrangement: he’d sleep during the first class, and I’d sleep during the second. That way we could make up the material.

10:00 Speaker 1 Wow.

10:01 Speaker 2 What actually happened was that we both slept through the first class, and then we both slept through the second one too.

10:05 Speaker 1 So how did you make it up?

10:07 Speaker 2 We’d get hold of notebooks and everything. He was this crazy genius. If you’re watching this, just kidding. Anyway, what we did was... what do you call it? We’d borrow notebooks from other bochurim and catch up on the material. He’d call me. Sometimes I was at home; sometimes I didn’t show up because it was so close. He’d call and say, “Dovi, what’s going on? There’s a test in three days. We have to sit down and study.” If it was a comprehensive exam, we’d start studying a week and a half beforehand. But for a regular test, it was three days. Then we’d sit down properly and really study from morning till night, and we’d get good grades. Because in a yeshiva like the one I attended, which was really big—there were a few hundred students; when I was there, there were three hundred—there’s no real way to keep track. There aren’t many staff members. There’s one supervisor for a hundred students. So how does he keep track? By their grades.

10:55 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

10:55 Speaker 2 If someone has low grades, they figure he’s skipping class. That’s how they looked at it. Today they have tablets and computers, and they can actually measure attendance. But back then they didn’t. Everything was on paper. I’d ask a friend to put a checkmark by my name, as if I was there, when I hadn’t actually shown up.

11:08 Speaker 1 So if someone was smart and passed the tests, he didn’t have to be there and...

11:15 Speaker 2 Exactly. They’d check whether the guys with lower grades were attending. And if they were there, everything was fine, but those were the guys they kept an eye on. I had another good friend who studied girsa with me for a while. He was the son of a famous rabbi—not just famous, a really famous rabbi—and you’d hardly ever see him in the zal. He spent all day in the library and places like that, but he never came to class. We’d still get good grades and do whatever we wanted. Since I lived nearby, I spent all day at home. The others lived in the dorm, so they stayed in the dorm. That was the only difference.

11:46 Speaker 1 Okay, and wait, at the boarding yeshiva...

11:49 Speaker 2 There I didn’t—

11:49 Speaker 1 The one with the lower academic level.

11:50 Speaker 2 I didn’t learn. The level really was very low for me, but I enjoyed it and got a lot out of it. Their approach was: it doesn’t matter whether studying comes easily to you; learning isn’t the main focus. Other things matter there. There’s a class, and you have to be present. Your academic level isn’t the focus. There’s a framework, there are people who influence you, and you have to be there. They paid attention to other things. They looked at me, not at my grades. That was their approach. Finally, someone was looking at me.

12:12 Speaker 1 I remember how strange you found it that the rabbis would say good morning to you with a smile. There was this kind of—

12:18 Speaker 2 Right.

12:18 Speaker 1 Atmosphere.

12:19 Speaker 2 You’d arrive in the morning, and the first thing was to say good morning to the rabbi and give him a hug.

12:23 Speaker 1 A hug.

12:24 Speaker 2 A hug. Yes, that’s how the day began. The rabbi stood there as everyone came in. They’d say good morning and hug him.

12:28 Speaker 1 What did that do for you?

12:30 Speaker 2 I really enjoyed it. I mean, we have to take into account that for about four years I barely studied anything. I did learn a lot, though. When I look back, I have certificates, I have things to show for it. I got a high-school diploma too. I mean—

12:42 Speaker 1 You mean that, given your abilities, you could have done more.

12:45 Speaker 2 I could have finished a degree.

12:46 Speaker 1 Okay, because that’s you.

12:46 Speaker 2 Yes.

12:47 Speaker 1 Okay, right. But it was worth staying there because...?

12:51 Speaker 2 For the love I received, for myself, for building myself up. There are so many things there that add to who you are. What does it have to do with how much a person studies? Your character, the things you experience, the guys you meet, different people.

13:01 Speaker 1 Becoming a mensch.

13:02 Speaker 2 Yes.

13:02 Speaker 1 Becoming a mensch. A kid—

13:03 Speaker 2 Those are completely different things. You don’t get them from a book, and at the end of the day they’re worth more. When I look at guys who have their heads in a book all day—I’m not putting that down—but at the end of the day, I, for example, can’t sit and study from morning till night. I have the ability to learn, but I can’t do it from morning till night. No matter what anyone does, I won’t stay interested all day long.

13:25 Speaker 1 Can I take you back to those days when you were unsure, and maybe even hurt that I suggested you go to that yeshiva?

13:38 Speaker 2 I was never hurt by that. I wasn’t hurt.

13:41 Speaker 1 I remember that—

13:41 Speaker 2 You know who was hurt?

13:43 Speaker 1 Who?

13:43 Speaker 2 Dad.

13:44 Speaker 1 Really?

13:45 Speaker 2 Dad. I remember what happened with him. When it was suggested to me, at first it was supposedly obvious: Lod and everything, a good bochur.

13:51 Speaker 1 What do you mean, “it was suggested to me”? That was—

13:52 Speaker 2 No, when you suggested it, we were walking past.

13:53 Speaker 1 I suggested it to you.

13:54 Speaker 2 No, no, no, but you’d suggested it to me a year earlier.

13:56 Speaker 1 Right.

13:57 Speaker 2 Then I remember we were walking past Beit Aryeh, the central shul, and Dad said, “What? Why on earth would my son go there? What is he, the kind of kid who belongs there? No way.” In principle, just look at my report cards from first through eighth grade. Exceptional. Boring report cards.

14:12 Speaker 1 Completely. Right.

14:13 Speaker 2 There really weren’t any low grades on them. Boring report cards—apart from handwriting. That really did need private lessons. I got that from Mom and Dad; nothing to be done. But other than the handwriting, wonderful.

14:23 Speaker 1 Okay, because you were born with a doctor’s handwriting. But wait, a year earlier you really—

14:30 Speaker 2 I wasn’t—I was in favor of the idea.

14:32 Speaker 1 Really?

14:32 Speaker 2 Yes, but I saw Dad’s face when he heard it.

14:36 Speaker 1 I’ll do a podcast with him about that.

14:37 Speaker 2 Do a podcast with him. I just remember the look on his face. He was really alarmed. “What, he’s going there? It’s not right for him,” and all of that.

14:47 Speaker 1 Right, right.

14:47 Speaker 2 I remember it so vividly. So I had this strange look on my face, and you thought I was saying, “What? Are you seriously suggesting that to me?” But I was in favor. My reaction was, “Sure, sounds good. Where do I go?”

14:58 Speaker 1 Wow. Wow, wow.

14:59 Speaker 2 No, I mean, I didn’t care much about the yeshiva I was at. It didn’t interest me. I’d show up once in a while and get good grades. Nobody cared. I’d sit at home watching movies or something like that. I didn’t have any real attachment to the place. I said, “Fine, let’s switch.”

15:12 Speaker 1 What’s the strongest value you got specifically from that yeshiva, which is supposedly more open? Chanoch Lanaar was considered—back then, why was Dad alarmed?

15:25 Speaker 2 There are a lot of things there, a lot of rumors. But the fact is, they do a lot of good for many boys who really need it. Boys who come from difficult families, and they can’t leave them outside. They know that if they don’t give them a roof over their heads, they’ll end up on the street; they could go downhill. When they see a boy like that, they can’t say—an ordinary yeshiva might say, “What do I care? Send him away. He’s not my problem.” But the people at that yeshiva have heart. They can’t say, “I’m telling him to leave.” Now, they don’t go easy on those boys. Not at all. If he isn’t suited to it, can’t manage within the framework, can’t adapt, he won’t stay there. But they give them a chance to realize their potential.

16:01 Speaker 1 Wow.

16:01 Speaker 2 Now, it used to be more—

16:02 Speaker 1 And you came in as a kid from a good home, arriving from a top yeshiva. What was the first thing that—

16:08 Speaker 2 First of all, everyone on the staff was shocked that I’d come there.

16:11 Speaker 1 Right, because they—

16:11 Speaker 2 I think they were more surprised than I was.

16:12 Speaker 1 Like, “What are you doing here?” Here’s a guy with an unremarkable record, a chassidishe guy, from a yeshiva that hadn’t thrown him out. You’d simply taken yourself out of there.

16:22 Speaker 2 Right.

16:22 Speaker 1 How did you feel?

16:25 Speaker 2 About the fact that I’d left? Or about the fact that—

16:28 Speaker 1 That you’d landed on another planet.

16:30 Speaker 2 Absolutely. I’d landed on another planet, a whole different world. By the way, I was really an oddball there. I remember that in Lod, at the yeshiva I’d been in, I was considered one of the strongest guys socially. There were about three hundred boys in the whole yeshiva. I knew almost all of them, and they all knew me. With a word, I could get things moving. I was one of the most prominent guys there. At Chanoch—now, let’s put this in perspective—a second-year class in Lod had about thirty-seven guys. At Chanoch, when I arrived at the beginning of my second year, the average class had five guys, even though twelve were enrolled. The classes were meant to have twelve. Today they’re a little bigger; there’s more demand. But at best, we had five or six guys in a class. That’s the first thing. So you don’t have the same options. In Lod, if there were guys I didn’t connect with, fine—I had my friends. At Chanoch, you don’t have that room to choose. It forced me to connect with guys who were, supposedly, the complete opposite of me. And because I’d come there the way I had, there was a period when people were saying, “Man, that’s strange. Why did he come?” There was a certain aversion to me. It was strange; I wasn’t the most popular guy anymore. Suddenly my jokes weren’t the funniest, because they were in the style that pretty much everyone shared in Lod. And suddenly it was, “What’s that? What kind of jokes are those? What are you talking about? What’s the punchline?” Everything was the opposite. I remember setting myself a goal. I said to myself, “What? But there I could supposedly be

17:48 Speaker 2 cooler, do better.” I said, “Let’s make this a goal.” I challenged myself to do it by the end of the year. Now, you have to understand: every boy there is a world unto himself. Really. Each person comes from a different place, a different direction. No two are alike. There’s no such thing. There were about twenty-eight guys in our year, and I couldn’t point to two who were alike. Every one was different. And that was also what made it beautiful. I told myself that by the end of the year, by the end of my third year, I needed to find a way to have a deep conversation with every single one of them.

18:14 Speaker 1 Wow.

18:14 Speaker 2 To manage to have a real conversation with each one, to get to where I could talk with him comfortably. And three days before the end of my third year, I accomplished it—just before we finished. There was one boy who, for over a year, hadn’t been willing to talk to me, and suddenly I managed to connect with him.

18:28 Speaker 1 Wow. Wow. What made you want to—

18:31 Speaker 2 I said, “I’m challenging myself. I want to do this.” I think I can connect with anyone. There’s nothing that should stop me. I have the ability. Close your eyes and point to anyone on the street. I can strike up a twenty-minute conversation with him right now without missing a beat, about whatever I want. I told myself, “I want that ability.” I had a challenge right in front of me: guys I couldn’t communicate with. So I said, “Come on, let me try. We’ll see. [unclear]. I’ll manage to get past it.”

18:55 Speaker 1 Wow. Wow.

18:57 Speaker 2 That’s also one of the tools they gave me, one that I gained there.

18:59 Speaker 1 What would you recommend to parents who are facing a decision right now about which yeshiva their son should attend?

19:08 Speaker 2 My recommendation is that if they know their son is suited to a more open yeshiva and all that, they should start him in an ordinary yeshiva.

19:17 Speaker 1 Oh, oh, oh. Let’s get that straight.

19:19 Speaker 2 I’ll explain.

19:20 Speaker 1 What do you mean?

19:21 Speaker 2 Boys, by nature, say things aren’t good for them, that they’re having a hard time. They say the institution isn’t good. Complaining comes naturally. Boys are born to complain. It lasts more or less from age thirteen until—if their wives don’t sort it out—death. But basically, a boy’s nature is to complain. People in general can see themselves as victims, and especially at that age, with all the hormones and everything, a boy’s nature is to complain. So if a boy comes to a wonderful place that wants to embrace him and love him, but he thinks it’s just an ordinary yeshiva, that’s it—he’ll complain. He’ll say, “Um, I don’t know. Do they love me? I don’t think so.” He doesn’t really understand what he has. He won’t be able to appreciate the place he needs to be in. So to really give a boy the chance to enjoy it and get everything he can out of it—you can see this with our little brother, my little brother.

20:09 Speaker 1 Right.

20:09 Speaker 2 He went straight to Chanoch.

20:10 Speaker 1 Right.

20:11 Speaker 2 And he kept having blowups and things. I’d say to him, “[unclear], like—”

20:15 Speaker 1 “You don’t know what an ordinary yeshiva is like?”

20:16 Speaker 2 “No, you don’t know what an ordinary yeshiva is like.” And he would complain. I know what an ordinary yeshiva is like, so I’d say to him, “What are you complaining about? Don’t you understand what they’re giving you here? They’re treating you with kid gloves.” I said, “Take whatever you want. Just make the most of it, enjoy it. They’ll give you every tool you want.” And he didn’t understand, because his immediate reaction was to reject it. If he’d spent two months in an ordinary yeshiva first, he would have appreciated what they gave him there so much and really enjoyed it.

20:37 Speaker 1 Wow. That’s a golden tip. A golden tip. Let’s talk a little more about adolescence. What really causes blowups between parents and children?

20:55 Speaker 2 Blowups? What kind of blowups? Just shouting? Shouting can always happen. What do you mean—what starts it?

21:01 Speaker 1 Okay. I mean blowups where the conversation has already become unpleasant and then... Or you know what? There’s no conversation. Bang, a door slams, and there’s no conversation. I know it’s less common in our—

21:15 Speaker 2 Yeah.

21:16 Speaker 1 ...home, but it happens. It happens in...

21:19 Speaker 2 What do I think causes that? I said this, basically—we talked about it earlier.

21:28 Speaker 1 Right, we did a sort of—

21:30 Speaker 2 Yeah, the beginning—

21:30 Speaker 1 ...podcast and all that, yes.

21:32 Speaker 2 Yes.

21:32 Speaker 1 There was a bit of a problem with it, but—

21:33 Speaker 2 We’ll come back to it.

21:34 Speaker 1 Yes.

21:35 Speaker 2 Basically, what happens in a situation like that comes down to communication. At the end of the day, if a parent is judgmental, and the child knows that if he opens up to that parent he’ll immediately be judged—or that the parent might even use that information against him; there are lots of cases like that—

21:53 Speaker 1 Wow.

21:53 Speaker 2 When a parent uses that information against him, the child has opened up about something, told the parent about something he finds difficult, and then suddenly the parent throws it back at him in an offhand remark. Precisely because that’s what he struggles with, and that’s exactly the point the parent brings up when he wants him to do something. What is— And by the way, you’ve done that once or twice too. You have, and it happens.

22:12 Speaker 1 Yes, that’s true.

22:14 Speaker 2 When that happens, there’s no openness, and you don’t feel comfortable enough to open up. We said that, at the end of the day, parents have a lot of expectations about what their children will become.

22:25 Speaker 1 Right.

22:25 Speaker 2 And then I said that—

22:26 Speaker 1 Expectations the parents have of the child.

22:28 Speaker 2 No—the parents of the child. Exactly.

22:29 Speaker 1 Yes. And if the child doesn’t turn out exactly as they want, they feel guilty and like they’ve failed.

22:33 Speaker 2 At the end of the day, when a child comes into the world, the parents have the privilege of being part of it. There’s the body—thank G-d, the baby is born healthy, with fingers and a face that resembles Mom and Dad—but not the soul. Every child comes into the world with a different soul, and every soul has its own journey. If his journey is to get on people’s nerves, move between yeshivos, leave religious life, come back, go through that whole cycle—there’s nothing you can do. He has something to accomplish in this world, and he has to do it. The only thing a parent can give a child is an example, to show him the way the parent sees the world and the best way to live. But no more than that. At the end of the day, the child has his own journey to go through. The parent won’t go through it for him. The child has his own life. That doesn’t change because he has parents and they all live in the same house. Sometimes a child can feel as if his life depends on his parents. That feeling can develop, but at the end of the day he has his own life, his own purpose, and the things he needs to do. Now, you can’t expect the child to do all those things and then suddenly there’s a clash: the parents’ expectations up against the feelings and experiences the child is going through. That’s when the blowups start. There has to be room to understand that, thank G-d, the parents had the privilege of bringing him into the world, of bringing that child’s light into the world. At the end of the day, every child is a light. Every person is someone’s child. Anyone you can think of

23:55 Speaker 2 is someone’s child, and has a father.

23:57 Speaker 1 And a child of the King, so—

24:00 Speaker 2 Right.

24:00 Speaker 1 ... Wow. A song would fit here: “I have a father, la la la.” Dovi, you’re a source of nachas. You know that, right? Every one of our children is. And I enjoy talking with you. We could keep talking for hours.

24:13 Speaker 2 You can keep going.

24:15 Speaker 1 Okay, we’ll keep going. Tell me something else about teenagers. If there’s a mother listening now, or a teenager listening, what could be a key to restoring a good relationship?

24:34 Speaker 2 You mean if their relationship is really bad?

24:36 Speaker 1 Yes.

24:38 Speaker 2 At the end of the day, everyone is human. And sometimes a child might not see that.

24:45 Speaker 1 See what? That he’s human?

24:47 Speaker 2 At the end of the day, this is your first time being a mother, and my first time being a child.

24:50 Speaker 1 Right.

24:50 Speaker 2 The one advantage you have is that you were once a child yourself.

24:52 Speaker 1 Ah.

24:53 Speaker 2 That’s your one advantage.

24:54 Speaker 1 Powerful.

24:55 Speaker 2 That’s the one advantage you have when you’re facing me: you’ve stood where I’m standing. So the first thing is to think: How would I have wanted to be spoken to as a child? Because sometimes you can forget that, at the end of the—

25:06 Speaker 1 Parents can forget they were children—

25:08 Speaker 2 They were children.

25:08 Speaker 1 And how they wanted their parents to speak to them.

25:10 Speaker 2 So first, think—

25:11 Speaker 1 Wow.

25:11 Speaker 2 How would you want to be spoken to in a situation like this, if you were the child in his shoes? Because sometimes I hear about these blowups between people. “He said this to me, and he did that to me.” And I’m like, hold on a second, guys. Why did he do that? I see it in productions, too, and in things going on in your world. People say, “But she replaced this actress, and she replaced this actor.” Wait a minute—she lost the actress. Why would she be betraying that actress? She needs someone to fill that role. She isn’t betraying anyone. People have a way of seeing everything as this huge thing, blowing it out of proportion. There’s no need to blow it out of proportion. At the end of the day, people aren’t necessarily trying to hurt someone else. They’re more concerned with looking after themselves. That’s the way to see it. There’s no—

25:43 Speaker 1 In other words, we’re not against anyone; we’re for ourselves.

25:46 Speaker 2 Yes.

25:47 Speaker 1 Okay, is that all you wanted to say about...?

25:49 Speaker 2 No, but for this round, yes.

25:51 Speaker 1 About how the example applies. Okay.

25:53 Speaker 2 But when it comes to the child—

25:54 Speaker 1 And how do we translate that into...?

25:56 Speaker 2 Acknowledgment. Like with any person. When two friends have a fight, what do you tell one of them? “Tell him, ‘I’m sorry I hurt you. This affected me this way, and this way, and this way.’” So a parent needs to come to the child and say, “I know you’re feeling X, Y, Z. That was my mistake. I was wrong. It was my mistake. I’m human too. It upset me because of this, this, and this.”

26:15 Speaker 1 Does a child like hearing that?

26:17 Speaker 2 Whether a child likes hearing it—I mean, whether he likes it or not, he finds comfort in it.

26:21 Speaker 1 Beautiful.

26:21 Speaker 2 In being understood. Whether he likes it, I don’t know. Nobody likes seeing their parents angry.

26:25 Speaker 1 No, because in the club, I also—

26:27 Speaker 2 Yes.

26:27 Speaker 1 I teach how to go and apologize to a child, and you know that’s something—

26:31 Speaker 2 Yes.

26:31 Speaker 1 We do at home too.

26:35 Speaker 2 Beautiful.

26:35 Speaker 1 You can count up how many more times I’ve apologized to you. So, again...

26:41 Speaker 2 And by the way, most importantly, when there have been apologies and things like that, there’s room—with respect—for the child to bring things up too, if he feels comfortable, once he sees that there’s a conversation. I’ve done it a few times myself. I’ve said to Mom, “Listen, what happened—X, Y, Z—didn’t sit right with me. I don’t think it was right.” And you can have a conversation about it. The child might be wrong too.

26:58 Speaker 1 Right.

26:58 Speaker 2 And the child might be right.

26:59 Speaker 1 Right.

27:00 Speaker 2 And you have to put that in its proper place. At the end of the day, the parent’s role is to educate the child. But say the child needs the parent now. The question is whether the parent is above the child.

27:12 Speaker 1 What do you mean?

27:13 Speaker 2 There’s a way of looking at it like, “I’m the parent, so I’m allowed.” At the end of the day, every relationship involves respect. But you’re a person and I’m a person. I’m grateful to you for the part you played in bringing me into the world. That deserves recognition. But being above me doesn’t give you permission to do certain things.

27:38 Speaker 1 No, it doesn’t give permission. Of course it doesn’t excuse unacceptable behavior. But a parent will always—

27:45 Speaker 2 No, right.

27:45 Speaker 1 Be above the child.

27:46 Speaker 2 Right, but I’m certainly not saying that I’m above the child. Let’s take an example from work. A boss might make whatever changes he wants, and the employee simply has nothing he can do about it, because the boss is above him. Here, even with all the respect, with the parent being above me, and with the gratitude for everything you’ve given me throughout my life—and all of that has its place—at the end of the day, you’re not my boss. Do you see the distinction? You’re my mother. So even when we talk about the parent being “above,” it doesn’t mean being above me in a way that leaves me no room to ask questions.

28:20 Speaker 1 No.

28:20 Speaker 2 As though everything the parent does is sacred and there’s nothing to be done about it.

28:23 Speaker 1 I think it’s like, you know, they say you’re supposed to show your parents reverence and respect, as you do for G-d. Not that the two are the same, but our relationship with G-d isn’t that of a boss and fear. It’s one of partnership, of love, of reverence that comes from love and not from fear. So...

28:49 Speaker 2 No, what I’m really saying is that there are times when people say, “Well, it’s a parent,” so you can let something go. Let me explain that a little better, especially when it comes to mistakes. There are things you really do have to let go. That’s the parent, that’s the situation, that’s who this person is. There’s nothing to do; you let it go. But in other situations—

29:10 Speaker 1 You mean the children let it go.

29:12 Speaker 2 Yes, they let it go.

29:12 Speaker 1 Okay.

29:13 Speaker 2 But in many cases, you don’t necessarily have to let it go. You need to know how to approach it properly, and you can only do that by creating a conversation. A child can’t just blow up at his parent. There’s no justification for saying, “Because this happened, I can do that.” But does being a parent mean that all your mistakes are automatically forgiven? No. And that’s the beautiful thing: the child doesn’t get that either. We’re human. Everyone makes mistakes. No matter what happens, we simply have to acknowledge it. At the end of the day, even when a couple sits down to talk, so many separations and things like that happen because of ego. It all comes from a lack of communication, of conversation. When there’s a conversation on both sides, two people who chose to marry each other—or a parent and child—have a shared goal. Each wants the other to succeed. It’s exactly the same thing. It’s a relationship. It’s all the same, and—

30:03 Speaker 1 Bottom line.

30:06 Speaker 2 I talked more. No, but it’s all the same thing. One second, I’m getting to a point here. It’s all the same thing. So when there’s conversation and everything is out in the open, nothing should get in the way. There shouldn’t be ego, there shouldn’t be “he said this to me,” because at the end of the day everyone has the same goal. A parent wants the child to succeed just as much as the child does.

30:21 Speaker 1 Right.

30:22 Speaker 2 Okay? It’s the same thing. It all comes back to the same thing. Once you understand that, you have the talking, the conversation. It helps everywhere in life, with everything.

30:34 Speaker 1 L’chaim, l’chaim.

30:34 Speaker 2 L’chaim, l’chaim. Are we done?

30:38 Speaker 3 No, we still need to talk about self-confidence.

30:42 Speaker 2 Oh, there’s a question here about self-confidence.

30:43 Speaker 1 Okay, Dovi, where did your self-confi—what’s this?

30:49 Speaker 3 Questions from the audience.

30:49 Speaker 2 Questions from the audience. We have a segment here: questions, questions from the audience.

30:50 Speaker 1 Questions from the audience. How did you develop your self-confidence?

30:54 Speaker 2 A whole lot of living in a fantasy. Just kidding, just kidding.

30:56 Speaker 1 What?

30:57 Speaker 2 Where did my self-confidence come from?

30:58 Speaker 1 Let’s ask that again, because I didn’t understand what you said. Dovi.

31:03 Speaker 2 Yes.

31:03 Speaker 1 Where did your self-confidence come from?

31:05 Speaker 2 My self-confidence? Well, it started with living in a fantasy. But honestly, my parents built it. Come on, let’s be honest. What?

31:15 Speaker 1 How, how, how? Tell me. Not that I’m fishing for compliments, but what? Can you put it into concrete terms? What was it?

31:22 Speaker 2 She’s fishing.

31:23 Speaker 1 Right. So how? How? What?

31:27 Speaker 2 Let’s take an example. Oh man, we’re going back to videos that are absolutely awful. Really, the embarrassment of generations. If those videos ever got out, the Jewish people have seen better days.

31:36 Speaker 1 What, the videos you took of me?

31:38 Speaker 2 No, the ones you took of me.

31:39 Speaker 1 Oh, the ones I took of you. Okay.

31:40 Speaker 2 When we were kids, we used to have a singing competition every Motzaei Shabbos.

31:44 Speaker 1 Riiight.

31:46 Speaker 2 Now, me—my connection to singing, listen, maybe I—

31:50 Speaker 1 Purely coincidental.

31:51 Speaker 2 Purely coincidental. Maybe I’m a musician. I don’t know if you’ve seen my statuses. I play guitar.

31:54 Speaker 1 Dovi plays, and you taught yourself, which is...

31:56 Speaker 2 Right, I taught myself to play guitar and piano.

31:59 Speaker 1 But being able to play an instrument and being able to sing are two different skills.

32:01 Speaker 2 Right, exactly. Maybe I have a musical ear and all that, but singing didn’t come with it.

32:06 Speaker 1 Maybe we should give them a little demonstration. Sing something?

32:09 Speaker 2 That’s where I put in a censor beep. I’m the editor. It doesn’t matter—even if I demonstrate for you, you’ll be the only one who suffers.

32:12 Speaker 1 Okay.

32:14 Speaker 2 Only you’ll have to suffer. I edit the episode afterward.

32:16 Speaker 1 Right. So, okay. And...?

32:18 Speaker 2 And I really sing terribly, but a lot of times they’d even give me high places. I remember coming second once, and I think I even came first once. Without, you know—it was—

32:26 Speaker 1 Without any propor—without—

32:27 Speaker 2 Without any sense of proportion. No proportion at all.

32:29 Speaker 1 The results had nothing to do with the performance.

32:30 Speaker 2 And they’d give me a song—everyone would choose a song—and they’d give me time onstage and applause afterward. Even though I sang terribly. Now, maybe [unclear], but it worked. At the end of the day, they always gave me a platform to try things. I always got applause, no matter what I did, how badly I messed up, how awful I was. They’d tell me—well, at a certain point they realized that the artist here was developing into something a little scary. So they said, “Listen, you’re not...” And they gradually started to balance things out a little. But the basic principle was that even when I tried things, I got a platform, I got room to do it, and there was room for feedback at the end of the day. When I was a bit older, there was a little more room for criticism. Just a little. I believe that was a bit harder.

33:17 Speaker 1 Already after half an hour.

33:18 Speaker 2 No, but that part is open. I opened it up more afterward.

33:20 Speaker 1 Oh, great.

33:22 Speaker 2 Uh.

33:22 Speaker 1 Okay. Yes.

33:24 Speaker 2 Um, I opened it up. What do you call it? So every time, I was simply given a platform for the things I did. If I stood up to sing, if I stood up to tell a joke, if I told a story, there was room for it. They wouldn’t say, “That’s boring.” They’d tell me, “Well done.” A little reward here, a little reward there, “Nice.” There was room for silliness. That’s...

33:41 Speaker 1 I’m speechless.

33:43 Speaker 2 Yes.

33:43 Speaker 4 One last thing. What’s your story with the club? How do you see the club?

33:48 Speaker 1 Okay, Dovi, what’s your story with the club? How did you push me into this, and what do you see happening with it?

33:55 Speaker 2 Uh, if I start talking about how I pushed this, I mean, what am I—listen, there’s the question of how it started. I saw a certain demand. We were trying to figure out what our next big move would be, because we saw that things were progressing, the shows were progressing and everything, and we needed something else to bring to the table. Both to fill the time and to offer something of greater value beyond the shows. At first we started working on something that, with Hashem’s help, we hope will come out soon. She’s had an audience for years; it’s already there. But for many years she hasn’t sold tickets, which means the only way to see her is if you’re invited to an event by friends. The public can’t really come. So we started wor—said, let’s work on that. And then I saw there was huge demand for more value in this area from her followers, on the subject of raising children. There was always this longing for something more. Now, it took me—

34:43 Speaker 1 Raising children.

34:45 Speaker 2 Yes. And it took me over a month. I think we spent about a month and a half going back and forth in chats, day after day. “What are we going to do with this?” “No, I’m not sure about it.” Day after day. I kept saying, “Just put up a poll on your status. Who’s interested?” Day after day after day. Finally I said, “All right, let it go, I’ll do it, it’s fine.” I mean, okay, I was already convinced.

35:06 Speaker 1 I really have to thank you for that. You really stayed on my—

35:11 Speaker 2 That comes from working with you. I know you; I know how it goes.

35:14 Speaker 1 What you need.

35:15 Speaker 2 Yes, you need someone to keep at it. Otherwise it won’t happen. So we kept at it, and then she posted it—and boom, two thousand women joined the groups just to hear the details. At that moment, suddenly—

35:29 Speaker 1 I realized...

35:30 Speaker 2 She realized what I had seen, the way I was looking at it. All right, never mind.

35:35 Speaker 1 Yes.

35:36 Speaker 2 Now she sees me as less good-looking. That’s okay, it’s all good. I am who I am, I look good, it’s all good. I don’t need a background picture, it’s all good. Um...

35:44 Speaker 1 How do you see this in six months, a year?

35:49 Speaker 2 How do I see it? You mean, where is it going?

35:51 Speaker 1 Where is it going?

35:52 Speaker 2 Ideally, every woman—listen, there’s so much there. Now, women often have one, two, three children. There are so many tools there that can ultimately help so many women with their outlook and their approach. I’m sure that if a lot of women heard the conversation between you and me right now, some of their minds might be blown. And for others, everything we’re saying is perfectly normal in their homes. Maybe those women don’t need it. But the approach is to bring laughter and humor into the home. Being a parent isn’t supposed to be a difficult task. If I’d felt that being parents was a difficult task for my parents, maybe I wouldn’t want to be a parent myself. It’s supposed to be fun. I hear people say all the time, “They’re always going out, flying off left and right. They really don’t care about their kids; they’re always flying somewhere.” Listen—

36:36 Speaker 5 How do you feel about the fact that Dad and I really do go away a lot?

36:40 Speaker 2 I’m happy for you. Enjoy yourselves.

36:41 Speaker 5 Really?

36:42 Speaker 2 Yes.

36:42 Speaker 5 Nice.

36:43 Speaker 2 Enjoy yourselves. What? They work hard. Let them enjoy themselves, have a good time, take a few days and celebrate. It’s all fine.

36:52 Speaker 5 Yes.

36:53 Speaker 2 Now, I—

36:53 Speaker 5 It’s nice to see that you’re genuinely happy for us.

36:55 Speaker 2 I’m the official babysitter, after all. They’ve brought me back from yeshiva for that more than once, by the way.

36:59 Speaker 5 We don’t have to reveal everything here. True, but—

37:05 Speaker 2 Uh, no, it wasn’t during studies. I mean, it wasn’t exactly about the studies. He had to leave.

37:10 Speaker 5 He had exams.

37:10 Speaker 2 Yes.

37:10 Speaker 5 Right.

37:11 Speaker 2 I’d already finished my exams at the beginning of the year. No, he was a year ahead of me; his material was harder. But wait—

37:18 Speaker 5 How sweet of you to make excuses for him, but we brought him out a few times too. Don’t worry, it evened out in the end.

37:25 Speaker 2 It evened out in the end. No, but in principle, it’s supposed to be enjoyable. It’s not supposed to be something bad. If it were bad, Hakadosh Boruch Hu doesn’t plan bad things. He’s not supposed to give us bad things. He doesn’t—

37:36 Speaker 5 No, I don’t think people think parenting is something, uh—

37:39 Speaker 2 Suffer, suffer, suffer.

37:40 Speaker 5 They think it’s some kind of trek.

37:42 Speaker 2 It should not be.

37:44 Speaker 5 Right.

37:44 Speaker 2 Like, it’s not supposed to— Now, by the way, there are treks and there are treks. For example, at the yeshivah I went to, we did five-day treks in the desert, with forty kilos on our backs and minimal food. Really, each person got maybe half a cup of rice a day.

37:56 Speaker 5 Yes, I remember you coming back starving.

37:58 Speaker 2 Now, uh, no, really, for breakfast you’d have tahini and bread, or oatmeal. The oatmeal was great too—meaning it was disgusting, because there was no milk; it was made with water. In the last year they added sugar. And the bread was just a lump of dough and water. Make yourself a pita out of it, and there you go.

38:13 Speaker 5 What did those four-day survival treks in the desert do for you?

38:17 Speaker 2 The feeling was, “I can do anything.” That was the feeling. I came home, and after a trek like that you’re supposed to be completely exhausted, like, “Dad, pick me up from the bus station.” But I got to the bus station and home was about half an hour away. I said, “What’s half an hour?” and walked. I didn’t call Dad. I got home, saw the air conditioner, put my duffel bag to the side, took my bag, did the dishes, got things done downstairs, and went to sleep. I went straight to sleep. I mean, by then it had all just become routine. Every day you walk something like thirty or forty—really, twenty or thirty kilometers all day, uphill and downhill. And on that trek, there’s no point where you can just break down. The dorm director looks at you—he was a Maglan commander in his spare time—and he drives alongside you in a jeep. You look at him with your eyes popping out of your head, completely spent. And there he is, in his air-conditioned jeep, having a great time.

39:03 Speaker 5 And you’re staggering in the heat.

39:03 Speaker 2 Right. So I tell him, “Listen, Shmulik, let me make this clear: I’m quitting. I’m staying right here. Let the crows eat me, okay? I’ll call a helicopter. I’ll break my leg. Get me out of here.” And he says, “Okay, sweetheart, all good. Let’s see you do it.” You’re stuck; there’s no getting out of it. You have to know you’ve got to keep walking. Now, on this trek, you’re divided into squads. They stick you with five guys you don’t like. It’s still more ideal that way.

39:22 Speaker 5 Wow.

39:23 Speaker 2 And you’re not allowed to split up. There’s group equipment, and you have to stay together. In the evening, you have to make food for the whole squad. Explosive arguments. I had a friend I fought with, and we didn’t speak for three days of the trek.

39:32 Speaker 5 Mm.

39:33 Speaker 2 A very good friend of mine. We didn’t speak during the trek, or for about two weeks afterward, out of principle. We dug in over that blowup. And that was the point. You have to deal with hardship and extreme situations. That’s the point: they leave you in an extreme situation, and you deal with it. By the way, I’m in favor of things like that too. There are so many things that make people soft. Being soft—there’s no reason for that. I mean, there’s no reason to hurt anyone, but there’s no reason to shield them from every hurt and cushion everything either. What was that conversation you had with your brother-in-law on—

40:01 Speaker 5 Shabbos.

40:01 Speaker 2 On Shabbos.

40:02 Speaker 5 Right.

40:02 Speaker 2 About that, about the kids and the parents. I think, for example, they should introduce this into education: parents who won’t cooperate with the teachers and won’t listen—the poor teacher barely gets paid to teach thirty students, and every parent has their own craziness. The teacher studied this; you didn’t, with all due respect. Okay? If parents won’t cooperate and don’t know how to listen to their child, the child shouldn’t come home until the parent goes through a parenting workshop. You should need a license. That’s how it should be.

40:25 Speaker 5 No, listen. First of all, a parent who was chosen to be a parent was chosen by Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and so on. As for the system—

40:31 Speaker 2 The system, yes.

40:31 Speaker 5 There’s no question that parents need to work together with it.

40:34 Speaker 2 Yes, parents who don’t know—

40:35 Speaker 5 I mean, you heard what I said at the end to my dear brother-in-law, who’s a school principal. I told him this: I believe a school is an institution you should take things from. I teach my children, anyway, to take the good from it. Take the good. What isn’t good—don’t let it touch you. It amazes me, really, that the education system today, as I see it, needs to be torn down and rebuilt. But since that isn’t going to happen anytime soon, and I don’t intend to make that change myself right now by building my own institution—because if I had the sponsors and everything right now, I’d build a new Ministry of Education—but since that isn’t happening at the moment, there are plenty of good things you can take. Okay, I’m not thrilled with, I don’t know, public transportation either. So what? Does that mean I don’t use it? I take what works for me. So children also need to know how to go to school and take the good from it: the friendships, the values, the group activities, the subjects they enjoy. They should invest in what they enjoy, and all the rest—

41:43 Speaker 2 That’s another thing. Private tutors shouldn’t be for a child who isn’t good at something. Today, if a child is good at math, you get him a good math tutor. No—wait, that child isn’t going to be a mathematician. If a child is good at English, get him a good English tutor. He’ll be the best in the world; he’ll give lectures in English all over the world.

41:56 Speaker 5 Exactly.

41:58 Speaker 2 There’s—

41:58 Speaker 5 “Educate a child according to his way.” Meaning, what is he—

42:01 Speaker 2 Children don’t need—

42:01 Speaker 5 What is he drawn to? What is he strong in?

42:03 Speaker 2 Right.

42:03 Speaker 5 That’s what you should invest in.

42:04 Speaker 2 Right. You don’t need to get a private tutor for children for things—

42:07 Speaker 5 They’re weak in certain things.

42:08 Speaker 2 So the child won’t—so the child won’t know verbs and subjects and predicates in Hebrew. Fine. I remember that from Hebrew class. Or what the root of some particular word is, and which sentence in Tanach it comes from.

42:20 Speaker 5 Look, but there are also subjects that are important, no matter—

42:23 Speaker 2 Okay, it’s important for a child to know how to write and how to speak. Fine.

42:28 Speaker 5 No, they need to know—

42:28 Speaker 2 Tanach is different. There are subjects—

42:30 Speaker 5 They need to know how to write—

42:31 Speaker 2 History, Tanach.

42:31 Speaker 5 They need to know how to read, they need history, they need—exactly, they need—

42:34 Speaker 2 I’m talking about science, geography, all the things beyond that.

42:37 Speaker 5 About how much an isosceles triangle plus a parabola equals in who-knows-what.

42:42 Speaker 2 Yes.

42:42 Speaker 5 That really is—

42:43 Speaker 2 Or all sorts of other subjects, things like that, that aren’t so relevant.

42:47 Speaker 5 Dubi, I think we could turn the mothers’ club into some kind of educational institution together—

42:56 Speaker 2 An educational institution, yes.

42:58 Speaker 5 A new one.

42:59 Speaker 2 Yes. So one day you’ll be handing out certificates, and you’ll teach.

43:02 Speaker 5 Obviously.

43:03 Speaker 2 Yes.

43:05 Speaker 5 Somechas Alayich. Dubi Levitin.

43:07 Speaker 2 Come on, then.

43:08 Speaker 5 My dear son, it was a pleasure. It was fun.

43:12 Speaker 2 For me too.

43:13 Speaker 5 So, which child do you think we’ll bring here next?

43:16 Speaker 2 Shiraleh.

43:20 Speaker 5 Oh, that’ll be interesting.

43:21 Speaker 2 It’ll be interesting. The recording will probably end with [unclear] or something, but—

43:27 Speaker 5 Thank you so much, Dubi Levitin.

43:28 Speaker 2 Thank you.