Ep. 9 // "From Lubavitch to Gateshead and Back" with Rabbi Moshe Leib Gray

00:00 Speaker 1 I'm a Chabad yeshiva boy one year after Gimel Tammuz, a, just accepted into a hotbed- ... of anti-Chabad Litvisher European Litvisher Hasidus. The Rosh Yeshiva in Ponovezh is still alive.

00:16 Speaker 2 Right.

00:17 Speaker 1 The Litvisher world is celebrating the demise of Lubavitch.

00:21 Speaker 2 Right.

00:22 Speaker 1 And here I am just plopped into this yeshiva.

00:29 Speaker 2 Welcome to Homesick for Lubavitch, a podcast where we explore Lubavitch identity in the year 2023. My name is Bentzi Offson, and I will be your host. Let's begin. All right. Thanks for having me here. Um, it's a beautiful town here in Dartmouth. I'm really glad that I came up here. You know, people do these things online or by Zoom, and I figured from the beginning I wanted to, I wanted to do it in person, preferably in the s- in the place where the person lives, and helps me understand a little bit where that person's coming from and the life that they live. And I think, I think the person being interviewed is also more comfortable in the place where they live, in the space that they live. So anyway, it's a, it's a beautiful town. Thanks for having me. Um-

01:23 Speaker 1 Pleasure

01:23 Speaker 2 ... and let's, let's, uh, let's, let's get right into it. Why don't you tell us a little bit about where you grew up, the school that you grew up in, like d- backtrack a little bit-

01:31 Speaker 1 Yeah

01:31 Speaker 2 ... for people that don't know who these people are.

01:33 Speaker 1 Yeah.

01:33 Speaker 2 So like-

01:33 Speaker 1 So these are Chabad. These are the boys of, their, their parents were the Chabad emissaries in Seattle, Washington. Um, these were my friends. We, we had a Chabad, an Orthodox Jewish day school that we grew up going to. It was small. My class was always small. The community was small. Um, and, uh, you know, so, so on that, on the one hand, it was like a very, like, insulated, you know, growing up. Um, the, the Jewish day, the, this Chabad day school, though, was fe- was an interest- it had a, it had a very interesting locale. I believe the Rebbe told them to, to, it should be near the University of Washington. It was on frat row.

02:15 Speaker 2 Hmm.

02:15 Speaker 1 Um, and I think about it often that imagine my kids went to school on Webster Avenue here in Hanover, New Hampshire, surrounded by all these fraternities. I mean, that's just not the normal place you sh- would put a Jewish day school, and yet that was my experience.

02:32 Speaker 2 Was there ever a reason given?

02:36 Speaker 1 Something about influence.

02:38 Speaker 2 What influence?

02:38 Speaker 1 Influencing outwards.

02:40 Speaker 2 Really?

02:40 Speaker 1 Yeah. It's-

02:41 Speaker 2 The Rebbe said something that the, the Jewish-

02:42 Speaker 1 So-

02:42 Speaker 2 ... day school should be in a place-

02:46 Speaker 1 Yeah

02:46 Speaker 2 ... interesting.

02:47 Speaker 1 I, I, we'd have to do a deeper dive into-

02:48 Speaker 2 Yeah.

02:49 Speaker 1 I've never actually thought of that question, but-

02:51 Speaker 2 It, it's so interesting 'cause, 'cause the Rebbe told so many people as young adults not to go to university-

02:56 Speaker 1 Right

02:56 Speaker 2 ... because of the influence. I mean, I guess the dis- the difference, the obvious difference here would be that you weren't going to university.

03:02 Speaker 1 Right.

03:02 Speaker 2 You were going to school near a university, but, you know, it, you would think logically that if we don't want people going to college, you wanna keep the kids far away-

03:11 Speaker 1 Right

03:11 Speaker 2 ... from college.

03:12 Speaker 1 Right.

03:12 Speaker 2 And yet here-

03:13 Speaker 1 Here we were very much... I mean, I, I grew up thinking college kids didn't do anything other than drink beer and throw a football around because it's all I saw.

03:22 Speaker 2 Yeah, frat row. Yeah.

03:23 Speaker 1 Um, but I maybe on, on some, on some level, it, it, it, it sort of had a, it certainly had an influence on me.

03:33 Speaker 2 So your dad's a scientist. Um, you said you grew up, like, in a, an All-American, regular, typical American, uh, lifestyle. Uh, that seems like he didn't run away from his previous lifetime-

03:50 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

03:50 Speaker 2 ... that before he became-

03:51 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

03:52 Speaker 2 ... religious. So you must have known about that part of him.

03:56 Speaker 1 Oh, my parents have never shied away from their, from their past.

03:59 Speaker 2 Right.

04:00 Speaker 1 Um, so much so that my father played baseball. My grandfather played semi-professional baseball, and so it was just a foregone conclusion that I would play Little League.

04:14 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

04:14 Speaker 1 And so I was the first, I was certainly the first Chabad kid. I might even be the first Orthodox kid in Seattle play, play Little League.

04:20 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

04:21 Speaker 1 And years later, as an adult, I had people living in Seattle telling me that because of me their kid plays, and it, how great it is. And, and, um, when I started, I mean, no Cornfelds, none of the shluchim's kids played, and I don't know what they thought of that. I don't know what they thought of me playing. No one, certainly no one said anything to me, but by the time my f- my Little League career was over, um, you know, all my friends were playing Little League.

04:49 Speaker 2 But how did you fit in as a family? So you're in this-

04:52 Speaker 1 Mm

04:52 Speaker 2 ... you're in this town where-

04:53 Speaker 1 Mm

04:53 Speaker 2 ... at least at the time, most of the Chabad people living in Seattle are shluchim there, 'cause why else would a La- Chabad or Lubavitch family live in Seattle? I don't think you, it doesn't sound like you guys considered yourselves shluchim.

05:06 Speaker 1 No.

05:07 Speaker 2 Yeah. So like-

05:08 Speaker 1 Although my mother was, my mother was the principal of the school.

05:11 Speaker 2 Okay.

05:12 Speaker 1 I think it was a lot harder for my mother than it was for my dad.

05:17 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

05:17 Speaker 1 Uh, my dad had his career. My dad was very involved in that, and he was a s- as a scientist, and I think my father was more comfortable in his identity as a baal teshuva than my mother. I think my mother, um, it took her a long time to be comfortable in that identity.

05:35 Speaker 2 Right.

05:35 Speaker 1 I think she would've much rather have been a baal teshuva, gotten married, and moved on shlichus. I think she would've loved that.

05:42 Speaker 2 You're saying it was hard for her to balance the kind of being in and out at the same time. Like, you know, "Who am I? Am I, am I on shlichus? Am I just a typical..."

05:54 Speaker 1 You know, we are in the Sefer HaShlichim.

05:56 Speaker 2 You are.

05:56 Speaker 1 We're in Chelek Da- we're in the fourth volume because they added sort of professionals. They added my, people like my mother who were... So it's, my mother's in there as the principal with her husband and, and her kids.

06:09 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

06:10 Speaker 1 Um-

06:11 Speaker 2 Interesting

06:11 Speaker 1 ... so I think that was very meaningful for her.

06:14 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

06:16 Speaker 1 You know, I think, you know, growing up, my mother would s-say to me that her, her dream was that I would be a rav. She always felt like that would be, like, that she would have a son that she could call with shailas, and, and that was, like, something very important to her. My father, it was not important to my father. I actually, we can get back to this, but I grew up with the sense that, like, I was not gonna be a shliach, that this was something that I would not to aspire to, that it's a difficult life, and why would you pick that for yourself, and go into business, and, you know, be able to pay for things.

06:51 Speaker 2 And you feel like you got that from your father?

06:56 Speaker 1 Yeah. He didn't actively dissuade, but there was definitely not a proactive, "This is something to aspire to."

07:04 Speaker 2 Right. And I imagine also that your, you know, your, your, um, you're growing up, you're seeing your dad, uh, being a professional, probably being decently compensated, right? And the chi- the child is able to discern, like-

07:23 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

07:23 Speaker 2 ... there's this way of life, and there's this other way of life.

07:26 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

07:26 Speaker 2 And so long as your father isn't, like, negative about his choice and, like, saying, "I wish I could be them," you're like, "Okay."

07:35 Speaker 1 No, he certainly never talked about like-

07:37 Speaker 2 Right

07:37 Speaker 1 ... "Oh, I wish I could be like one of the rabbis."

07:38 Speaker 2 Right. Exactly. So, so y- like, a child is, you know, I mean, we're both parents, and everybody knows that children are pretty discerning, right? So i-it does make sense that, you know, you're seeing these two paths ahead of you.

07:54 Speaker 1 Well, when I, again, I'm jumping in my story a little bit, but when I really started talking seriously about what I wanted to do, and, and this campus thing, my father, again, did not try to dissuade me.

08:05 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

08:05 Speaker 1 He just wanted me to go in eyes wide open.

08:07 Speaker 2 Ah, interesting.

08:08 Speaker 1 I need you to know the challenges and, and, and what you're gonna be f- up against, um, so that way you can think about things in a, in a healthier, in a healthier way, um, both in terms of parnasah and in terms of bringing up children in a place like Hanover, New Hampshire, which is isolating, just does not have a big Jewish community.

08:30 Speaker 2 Right.

08:31 Speaker 1 So, yeah.

08:31 Speaker 2 Well, that probably has a little bit to do with the few years you spent in Denmark, if you wanna talk about that a little bit. I mean, your father had to raise you. Your parents had to raise you, or were you there, or were you with your other siblings?

08:41 Speaker 1 I didn't really spend much time there.

08:42 Speaker 2 But you had other siblings there, right?

08:44 Speaker 1 I did. I did.

08:44 Speaker 2 So I mean, they, they, they got their taste of what it's like to be an isolated shlichus family.

08:48 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. But by then I was-- I, I, um-

08:51 Speaker 2 So talk a little bit about your years in-- Or, or you don't remember much of it?

08:54 Speaker 1 No, I do. Uh, um, yeah, so I grew up in Seattle, as I said, and then, um, I loved my childhood. I really, I really think I had a, a, a unique childhood. Um, I, I was sad to sort of leave it. Um, so at 14, I was, my parents sent me away from home. As I said before, I, I had two, these two best friends that I grew up with, and, um, they went to a yeshiva in Detroit, and I ended up going to a yeshiva in Los Angeles.

09:24 Speaker 2 Okay.

09:26 Speaker 1 And, uh, my experience in LA was not good, um, uh, for a plethora of reasons that I really am uninterested in getting into.

09:36 Speaker 2 Yeah.

09:38 Speaker 1 Um, I will say this, in terms of friends from those two years, I mean, it's, there's like, it's, like, two or three.

09:44 Speaker 2 Hmm.

09:44 Speaker 1 I literally have two or three, uh... There are, there are fellow shluchim from those years that I do see, but, but they're acquaintances, and they're not-

09:53 Speaker 2 Yeah

09:53 Speaker 1 ... they're, um-

09:54 Speaker 2 Well, it's a very challenging time of your life, age of your life to go and make new friends.

09:59 Speaker 1 Sure.

10:00 Speaker 2 Yeah.

10:00 Speaker 1 I was c- I was a cocky 14-year-old. Um-

10:03 Speaker 2 Yeah.

10:03 Speaker 1 Uh, you know, I showed up, and, and, you know, when you're 14 back then it was like, how good is your jump shot? And-

10:10 Speaker 2 And yours was good.

10:10 Speaker 1 Mine was good, and, and it's not good when there are bigger, older guys than you who you're better than. They don't like that. And that, that was n- and I wasn't humble about it, probably.

10:19 Speaker 2 And people in LA are not pushovers either.

10:21 Speaker 1 Right. Um, so anyway, so that was my two years there, and w- the second year that I was in LA, my parents moved to Denmark. And the, the reason they moved is, was for business. My father had a unique opportunity, um, to spend three years there, and for tax reasons, it was, it's like the dream come true. It's like Denmark has crazy high taxes, and, but when you leave America, you, the, your tax rate, like, halves. And so the idea is, but in Denmark, if you spend up to f- if you spend more than five years, you gotta pay back all the back taxes. So the, the sweet spot is three years. Um, and there was a kollel. There was a Litvisher kollel there that kind of made it more palatable. There was 10 families, so there was a community there.

11:07 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

11:07 Speaker 1 There was schooling for my sisters. Um, and so my parents wrote in to the Rebbe. Now, this was after the first stroke, so this is in 1994. Um, it was, they got an answer back to move four days before the second Chavsei HaDa'at. So this be- right before the second stroke, which that ended all sort of communication with the Rebbe. And the answer was yes. You know, "We have an opportunity to move to Denmark. Should we move to Denmark?" And the answer, "Yes or no?" And the answer was yes. The Rebbe nodded his head yes. "Okay."

11:42 Speaker 2 L-let me ask you a question.

11:43 Speaker 1 Yeah.

11:44 Speaker 2 Um, based on what you're saying, the difference between your father and your mother, is there any reason to believe that making that kind of choice contingent on the Rebbe's, uh, agreement or blessing was coming from your mother and not from your father? Or was, or was your father the kind of person who was both very confident in his identity as a professional, but also very kind of typical in the Hasidic way?

12:14 Speaker 1 So it's a very perceptive question. I don't know the answer to, but I'll tell you what happened four days later that might Or a week later that might actually shed light on that question, which is a week later, the kol-- there was a scandal, and the kol upped and left.

12:33 Speaker 2 Hmm.

12:35 Speaker 1 And my father called my mother and said, "I got some bad news. Like, this kol is gone." And my mother was not enamored by this news, to the point where she was like, "Well, that's it. We're not going." And my father's response was, "But we have a berakhah from the Rebbe."

12:53 Speaker 2 Hmm.

12:55 Speaker 1 So would my father have gone? I think the question is, should-- would my father have written? Once you write, you write. I mean, that, that, that's clear. You get an answer, you get an answer. If the Rebbe said no, I don't know what would've happened. But what happened directly afterwards is actually quite interesting. And so I've always said, like, my mother's the bigger Hasid than my father, but it depends where.

13:20 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

13:21 Speaker 1 Um...

13:25 Speaker 2 No, he could have also wanted to go there more, and-

13:27 Speaker 1 Oh, he certainly did.

13:28 Speaker 2 Right. So he was looking... But, you know, I'm, I'm not looking, really, I'm not looking to try to understand your father here.

13:33 Speaker 1 Right. Right.

13:33 Speaker 2 'Cause then I would, I would go interview him. But it's more, the reason I, I think it's important is because, you know, at the end of the day, our identity and our perception of who we are has a lot to do with our parents.

13:46 Speaker 1 Sure.

13:47 Speaker 2 Even if it's in the sense that we're trying not to be them.

13:51 Speaker 1 Right.

13:52 Speaker 2 Right? But the, you know, as long as there's some kind of relationship there, a lot of who we are is, is based on who our parents are and were.

14:01 Speaker 1 Certainly.

14:01 Speaker 2 So that's, that's why I'm asking that.

14:02 Speaker 1 Certainly.

14:03 Speaker 2 Like, you're, you're growing up clearly in a, in a household where there's, as a child, you're picking up that there's different aspirations and different dreams being projected onto you, right?

14:15 Speaker 1 Right.

14:16 Speaker 2 That your mother wants you to be a rabbi. Your father maybe isn't totally against you being a rabbi, but would not be unhappy if you chose a, a proper profession, in his view, right? And so that's clearly the, the background for who you become. You're growing up with these, and that probably sets up the stage for the next, for the next, um, f-for the next s- you know, part of your story when you decide to go on shlichas, and-

14:45 Speaker 1 So there's an interesting deviation in my story-

14:48 Speaker 2 Okay

14:49 Speaker 1 ... which further-

14:52 Speaker 2 Complicates it

14:52 Speaker 1 ... drills into this identity, which is, um... So I finished my second year in LA. My family has now been in Denmark for a year, and it sort-- My parents are like, "Well, we want you closer to home. You know, LA is nine thousand miles from Denmark," or whatever it is.

15:13 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

15:15 Speaker 1 "So, you know, we'd like you to go to yeshiva in England, in, you know, London." And so my father calls the yeshiva in London, and, and they say, "We're not taking your son." And it's not nothing to do with me per se, but they had not had a very good experience with the previous crop of boys from LA that year. And my father now begins to panic because what, where is he gonna send me? Like, where am, what am I g- my father, learning is a very important thing to my father. My fa- it v- you know, he really, that's what he connects to. His Yiddish, you know, he came to Yiddishkeit rationally. Um, and I think Brunnwai, I remember the conversation about Brunnwai, but it was like, it, it didn't seem like it was a non-starter. Um, so Manchester. So I, I, after the first Gimmel Tammuz, uh, I flew with y- you know, a f- a guy that I had met, and we l- we were gonna, we were testing out Manchester. And let's-

16:16 Speaker 2 That sounds, that sounds like, that sounds pretty sunny.

16:20 Speaker 1 Let's just, let's just say it was not, it was not good.

16:24 Speaker 2 Hmm.

16:25 Speaker 1 Um, I didn't wanna be there.

16:26 Speaker 2 Hmm.

16:27 Speaker 1 I didn't wanna be there. Um, the tone was set from the minute we landed. Um, we're in this taxi, and, uh, we get to... We pass b- I, I know we're getting close 'cause I feel the, the... And we pass by this building, and every building we pass, I'm like, "I hope it's not that building. I hope it's not that building." Then we pass one particular building. I was like, "Phew. Thank God it's not that building." The guy goes, "Oh, whoops." He just turns around and pulls into that building, and I was like, "Oh, no." Like, "Oh, boy." So we-

16:53 Speaker 2 That, that's pulling me back so vividly to when I-

16:55 Speaker 1 Did you study there?

16:56 Speaker 2 No.

16:57 Speaker 1 Oh.

16:57 Speaker 2 No. Um, I've heard that about Manchester before, but I remember when I landed in Argentina, it was the same, it was the same thing. Like, and I went to Argentina 'cause like I, I had these like very, very idealistic ideas about it. Like, there was a Mashpia there.

17:13 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

17:13 Speaker 2 I was gonna go there for, uh, a darosh hanavod, and I really, really meant it at the time. I, I was a pretty, you know, spiritual, maybe nutcase, you know, uh, kinda kid. And I remember we landed in Argentina, and like all of this spiritual idealism crashes in the reality of the Ezeiza Airport- ... where we're being picked up in this rickety bus from the 1970s. And like, I, you know, being in Argentina, like you get deeper and deeper into the city, and like all, at first you see like carts being, you know, h-horse, horse, horses drawing the, you know, horses, what's it called? The horse-drawn cart, taking people, doing all kinds of funky stuff. And- Yeah. And it's like, all of a sudden we end up in this dreary building, and it's like, "This, this is where my spiritual future is going to happen?"

18:08 Speaker 1 Right. Right.

18:09 Speaker 2 Anyway, yeah.

18:09 Speaker 1 So that happened to me. So I walk in, remember, we walked into the building. It was the dorm at the time. And, uh, we opened the first door on the right. I was actually just sharing this story with a, with a really, really close friend of mine who, who w- Did study there for two years, and I was telling him the story, and he was just, he was in stitches.

18:28 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

18:28 Speaker 1 'Cause he, it, he knew, he knew this story. And we opened this door, and it was this big bedroom, and it was four o'clock in the afternoon approximately, and the room has blackout shades, and it's dark. And we open the door, and we're trying to, like, see what this room is, and all of a sudden from under the blanket, this head comes out. He just goes, "Shut the damn door," and puts it back over his head. And I was like, "Oh, God. Like, where am-- What, what is going on? There are creatures." He was like a b- a creature.

19:00 Speaker 2 Yeah.

19:02 Speaker 1 And, uh, there was no one there to meet us. There was no rabbi there to be like, "You're in this room," or we had no sort of hadracha. We had no, uh, guidance. Anyways, I spent-

19:11 Speaker 2 But, but take-- back up a step. I mean, you're talking about... Talk a little bit about your subject, your personal state of mind at the time. You said it was right after Gimmel Tammuz.

19:20 Speaker 1 I was 15.

19:21 Speaker 2 No, but-

19:21 Speaker 1 Yeah

19:21 Speaker 2 ...this was a few months after Gimmel Tammuz.

19:22 Speaker 1 It was, it was a year, it was a year after Gimmel Tammuz.

19:24 Speaker 2 A year after Gimmel Tammuz. What's, what's it like at that time to be a Lubavitcher, if you remember?

19:32 Speaker 1 I, I, I wanna delve into this, um, this conversation. I don't know if, like, at this point in our, in our podcast, we... or maybe we wait a little later and we come back to this question.

19:43 Speaker 2 Okay.

19:43 Speaker 1 It's a really important question that I think many, uh, many people from my and my age are, are be- just beginning to deal with, which is, like, the trauma of Gimmel Tammuz.

19:53 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

19:54 Speaker 1 Um, what does it mean to lose our Rebbe where, like, everything was, uh, uh... You know, I think for adults, um, you know, the Rebbe was unbelievable in, like, "I'm not gonna do everything for you," right? He was-- The Rebbe was unique in that way, where like, "Uh, no. Like, this is on you. You need to do work." And little kids were just like, you know, what do little kids sort of know about that? We were in this, like, sweet spot where it's like 13 to 19, um, our brains are not developed yet. We're-- And we'd lost kinda everything. Like, like, the magic just got pulled away, and now what? Um, and I-

20:43 Speaker 2 'Cause the reason I ask is because you were just talking about playing basketball.

20:48 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

20:48 Speaker 2 You're a regular teenager.

20:49 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

20:50 Speaker 2 So, a, a, a lot of people like to idealize, like, you know, back in the day, everyone, all they did when the Rebbe was alive, all they did was learn Chassidus the whole day, and they're just a bunch of, like, holy saints.

21:00 Speaker 1 No. I, I'll tell-

21:00 Speaker 2 You know? So that's why I'm asking. Like, you're, you're a regular American teenager who just goes through Gimmel Tammuz and ends up in Manchester. I mean, that's like, that's like one of the most dystopian stories I've ever heard in my life.

21:12 Speaker 1 So-

21:13 Speaker 2 So I'm trying to figure out, like-

21:14 Speaker 1 I wanna jump. Yeah, I wanna just-

21:15 Speaker 2 Yeah

21:15 Speaker 1 ...mention something 'cause you said, like, like, you know, everybody thinks that back then everyone was learning Chassidus. You know, it's sort of like Roman Vishniac's photos of pre-war Europe. Everybody thinks it was a, was a bunch of poor Chassidim. That's not true.

21:28 Speaker 2 Some of, some of them were, some of them weren't.

21:29 Speaker 1 Right. It's-- So I think it's similar.

21:32 Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah. Um, you know, there's, there's als- y-you said that, you said that, like, you had... I, I forgot the words you used a few minutes ago, but, like, to me, I'm thinking about, like, when you're 15 years old, you're talking about being in the sweet spot between 13 and 19. You know, so when you're a child, you're not thinking about the future. You're just, you're... You know, the, the essence of childhood is that you're frolicking in the present, and you're just, you know, you, you, you know, you're, you're either super happy about what you're doing or you're super mad. Like, the, the world is very, is shrunk down to-

22:04 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

22:05 Speaker 2 ...your present moment. You know, as you get older and you start hitting your teens, then you start having ideas of the future, but of course, your ideas of the future at that point are extremely idealized and naive-

22:16 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

22:17 Speaker 2 ...and very innocent. And, like, to me, I, I, I was, I was much younger than you, so I was, I was still living in the present. Like, uh, the, when my fa- I was in Hong Kong when Gimmel Tammuz happened, and when my, my parents told us, we hardly knew what it meant because that was very abstract to us because we lived 20-hour-

22:38 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

22:38 Speaker 2 ...travel away and, like, you know. And my father was sitting shiva, and I was jumping on the couches. Like, so that's where I was.

22:44 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

22:45 Speaker 2 You're, you were older, and so to me, it feels like almost like your future is, like, completely the, the, the rug is pulled-

22:54 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

22:54 Speaker 2 ...completely underneath from your future. Like, okay, wait, are we still gonna be Lubavitch in two years? Like, are, um, like, are we still doing this? Like, you know, like, what, what, what, what's, what's the game plan? You know? Like, were, were, were that things that you were thinking about-

23:07 Speaker 1 So-

23:07 Speaker 2 ...or were you too young to be thinking about that?

23:08 Speaker 1 So I, I was a very, very naive and immature 15-year-old. I, I really, I really was. Um, I own that. Um, couple things. One is, um, I did not fly from LA to Crown Heights for Gimmel Tammuz.

23:27 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

23:27 Speaker 1 I couldn't get ahold of my father. I, I, I, I didn't recognize, like, the level of magnitude here is like you're, you know, uh, Matty Begun is swiping credit, his credit card for boys to book tickets. Like, I should've just been like, "I'm going," and, like, that's it, and let, let my father deal with paying this guy back later. But no, I, I, I knew the money was money, and I wasn't gonna spend $300 without speaking to him, so I didn't go. And I always, I've always felt, I think for a long time I felt guilty about that. Um, and I spent the next two days at my uncle's. I have a, my dad's brother lived in, lived in Santa Monica. Uh, he was not religious at the time, and I spent the next two days watching news, the news cycle go from the Grand, you know, the, the funeral of the Grand Rebbe to O.J. Simpson driving the Ford Bronco. I mean-

24:19 Speaker 2 Oh, it was at the same time?

24:19 Speaker 1 It was the exact same time. It was wild.

24:22 Speaker 2 Wow.

24:22 Speaker 1 It was wild. I mean, like, you talk about, like, cultures cla- converging.

24:26 Speaker 2 Yeah.

24:27 Speaker 1 Um, so-

24:31 Speaker 2 Was it, was it also strange to see the news talk about Chabad? Like, it wasn't like... I, I mean, from what I gather, it wasn't like Lubavitch was making headlines on a regular basis.

24:42 Speaker 1 It wasn't weird to me.

24:44 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

24:45 Speaker 1 Um, I was just trying to process. Now, the Rosh Yeshiva, I think, did a very good job of just, like, calming, bringing the temperature down.

24:58 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

24:58 Speaker 1 Um, I remember at one point, uh, uh, Ra-

25:01 Speaker 2 This is Rabbi Shochat?

25:01 Speaker 1 Rabbi Shochat. A, a Lubavitch family came in, and they started arguing the Rebbe's Mashiach, and he's gonna... And Rabbi Shochat stood there and calmly just, I think he did it for us, not for them, where, where it was like, "No, no, no. Like, this thing is gonna continue, and what will be will be, and let's not, let's not lose..." I, for some-- in a very weird way, he was a very calming, strong, rock-like presence, uh, f-for me as a very, very young Hasid. Um, I felt like I was in good hands. I felt like he had a real grasp of what was going on, and he was gonna, over the next year, he was gonna... Um, and it was a weird year. It was an odd year. It was, it was... I, I, yeah. Anyways, back to Manchester. So I end up, yeah, so it's, like, dystopian, it's weird, it's dreary, it's bad, it's, there was a hole in the ceiling. I felt like I would fall three floors down. Like, it was just, uh, the shower was just, like, beyond anything I'd ever seen. I went a whole week without showering.

26:10 Speaker 2 It was a nightmare i-in short.

26:12 Speaker 1 You know, can you imagine? Like, I, I haven't, I've never really told this story. I went a whole week without showering 'cause I couldn't bring myself to use the shower.

26:18 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

26:19 Speaker 1 So Friday, and I feel, I remember feeling my hair was, like, just gre- it was gross.

26:25 Speaker 2 Yeah.

26:26 Speaker 1 Maybe that's why no one wanted to be my friend. I probably smelled. And I asked somebody, I said, "Where do I take a..." They said, "Oh, there's this bub of mikvah." It's, like, unbelievable. I remember standing and went to the bub of mikvah and stood there for, like, forty-five minutes showering.

26:37 Speaker 2 Just l- getting it all off you.

26:39 Speaker 1 So I spent ten days there, um, and left. I was only supposed to be there for ten days, and-

26:45 Speaker 2 You're only supposed to be there for ten days?

26:46 Speaker 1 I was trying it out.

26:47 Speaker 2 Oh, you're trying it out, okay.

26:48 Speaker 1 For the fall, for, for, for the Elul. So-

26:50 Speaker 2 Well, it's a pretty big drama set up for, for just ten days.

26:53 Speaker 1 And my father, I remember my father telling me, he said, "You did not impress them." And I remember thinking, "Yeah, I know I didn't." I hated it. No one paid attention to me. No one-- The only guy that showed me anything was Rabbi Klein. He says, "But they're willing to give you another shot and come for Elul." And I was like, "No, I don't wanna go back there." So he goes, "Okay. Well, I don't know what we're gonna do." I said, "Okay." I was sort of like, "All right. Well, I, I don't know either. I'm sixteen. I, I don't know." So this Kollel that I told you about, the Rosh Kollel stayed in Denmark. Um, what was the scandal? The scandal was, is that he divorced his wife, so a real Litvisher guy, and married this Giyores that he was Megayer. Crazy story. Um, he has since passed. I owe him a great debt of gratitude because he learned with me three days a week for the next couple months. I would ride my bike from my parents' house. I love Denmark. I love Copenhagen. I think it's one of the most amazing cities in the world, um, that I've ever been to. Uh, and I would ride my bike, you know, seven, eight miles from my parents' house to his house, and we'd learn Gemara. And at the time in Denmark, there was a rabbi, there was a Rav of the Kehila, of the, of the Machsikei HaDas Kehila named, uh, Rabbi Moshe Jacobson.

28:16 Speaker 1 And Rabbi Moshe Jacobson, um, had a father named Binyamin Ze'ev Jacobson, who was a survivor of World War II, um, and s- and, and saved many, many Jewish women and girls, brought them through Sweden, uh, to Israel, and set up a town called Bnei Yaakov and set up a home for these girls and, and, and really saved their lives. And Rabbi Moshe Jacobson met the Rebbe once, and the Rebbe, without saying anything, the Rebbe said to him, "You have no idea how great your father, what your father accomplished." So Rabbi Moshe is this, this six foot two, two hundred and forty pound, big beard, frock, Homburg presence, right? Like, you think about a Litvisher Godol, like that's, this is what they should look like. Just had presence. Any room he walked in, he owned the room. And what was unique about him was is that he would talk to a three-year-old on the three-year-old's level, and he could talk to, you know, the Rosh Yeshiva from Ponovitch on their level, and the chief rabbi, and the-- I mean, he was just, he had such gravitas. And my parents became really close to him and his wife. His wife survived the cattle car for eleven days. She was left to die. Uh, just an extraordinary couple, and I loved seeing him. I loved interacting with him. And he offered my father, he said, "I'll take him. I'll, I'll take care of this. Are you-- If you're willing, I'll take care of this, but it's not gonna

29:45 Speaker 1 be Lubavitch Yeshiva 'cause I don't have..." My father says, "Do you, do you do you. I trust you." And we got on an airplane, Rabbi Moshe and I, and we flew to London, and we spent Shabbos in Manchester at the Litvisher Yeshiva, and I said, "Rabbi Moshe, as much as I like this yeshiva, I can't, I can't physically bring myself to spend-"

30:04 Speaker 2 Gateshead you're talking about?

30:06 Speaker 1 No, Manchester.

30:07 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

30:07 Speaker 1 I can't spend any time in Manchester. I just, I'm too triggered by it. And I remember him saying, "All right. Upwards we go." And we got in a car Sunday morning, we drove to Gateshead.

30:16 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

30:17 Speaker 1 And we get into Gateshead town, village, whatever you wanna call it, and there was a Bachur walking. And he says to the driver, "Pull up next to that, that boy over there." So he does, and he rolls down the window, Rabbi Moshe, and he says, you know, "Young man, come here." So the boy walks over to us. You know, he sees this, he sees this very distinguished-looking rabbi with a long white beard and a, and a Homburg. You know, he, he says, "Where, where does the Rosh Yeshiva live?" So he says, "Well, there's two. There's Rabbi Ram Gorovitz, who is the, the, you know, the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Gedola." And he says, "There's Rabbi Israel Yaffe, who's the Rosh Yeshiva of the Yeshiva Ketana." So he says, "Well, I have a boy here who's 16." So he says, "Oh, you want the yeshiva ketana, 'cause the yeshiva ketana goes from 16 to 19. Um, and the yeshiva gedola starts at 18 and goes till..." He says, "Well, where does he live?" And he says, "Down the block, right over there, number 12." So we pull up, and as we're getting out of the car, I finally look at him, and I said, "Rabbi, how, how's this gonna work?" And he said, "I used to babysit this y- this rosh yeshiva, Ken, um, from the, from, from the diapers." I said, "Okay." Like, I don't even know how he was dressed. To be honest, I was probably wearing sneakers and a... And Rabbi Meishar, again,

31:43 Speaker 1 gets to see the physic, knocks on the door. The rosh yeshiva opens the door, and the rosh yeshiva like sees this image of like this, this rav and this boy, and kind of has like this moment. And Rabbi Meishar says, "I have a boy for your yeshiva." This is second week into zman after Tishrei. And the rosh yeshiva just starts, doesn't... He says, "Will you, will you invite us in?" I remember that. So we go into the house, and he ex- he says the following thing: "I have a boy for your yeshiva. He's an American Chabadnik whose father can pay full tuition." The rest of the conversation I have no memory of. I was gonna let the adults do their thing. I'm just kinda looking around. He says, "Well, I can't... Has he seen the yeshiva? He can't-- I'm not gonna accept him." There was a waiting list of 300 boys to get in. Rabbi Meishar just leapfrogged me, who were far more, uh, uh, had far better credentials.

32:59 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

33:01 Speaker 1 I couldn't read Hebrew practically. I mean, uh, like let's be honest. Like, so I go see the yeshiva. An hour later, he calls me into his office, Rabbi Meishar's standing there, and he says, Rabbi Meishar says to me, "You've been accepted." He's like, "What do you say?" I was like, "Tha-thank you?" Like, I didn't realize what kind of a, what had just transpired. And Rabbi Meishar goes, "Okay. I'll send regards to your parents." I said, "Uh, I'm not going back with you?" He goes, "No." I said, "But I didn't bring anything." He says, "We'll ship it to you. Don't worry." I said, "Okay." He leaves. I'm a Chabad yeshiva boy one year after Gimel Tammuz, a, just accepted into a hotbed- ...of anti-Chabad, Litvisher, European Litvisher Hasidimus.

33:54 Speaker 2 And this is all going on during the O.J. Simpson trial.

33:57 Speaker 1 O.J. Simpson meant nothing to me.

33:58 Speaker 2 That's good.

34:00 Speaker 1 Just to be clear, the Rosh Yeshiva of Ponevezh is still alive.

34:04 Speaker 2 Right.

34:05 Speaker 1 The Litvisher world is celebrating-

34:07 Speaker 2 Right

34:08 Speaker 1 ...the demise of Lubavitch.

34:09 Speaker 2 Right.

34:11 Speaker 1 And here I am, just plopped into this yeshiva. Now- ...the f- the funniest thing was is that I wore, at the time I had a blue velvet yarmulke with, you know the stitching? When you had stitching in a yarmulke. It just had blue waves.

34:27 Speaker 2 Yeah, I remember that.

34:28 Speaker 1 So blue on blue.

34:29 Speaker 2 Sure, I remember that.

34:29 Speaker 1 You couldn't even see. It was just a blue yarmulke.

34:31 Speaker 2 Right.

34:33 Speaker 1 But in the Litvisher world, the boys would wear black yarmulkes exclusively. Rumor went around that day that this Lubavitcher was just accepted to, to Gateshead, to the yeshiva, and he's wearing a yichi yarmulke.

34:48 Speaker 2 Yeah.

34:49 Speaker 1 I think I wore a yichi yarmulke for like a year. Like, you know, in like Tof Shen Nun Beis type of deal.

34:56 Speaker 2 Oh, really? People did that back in the day?

34:57 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

34:58 Speaker 2 Oh, I didn't know that.

34:59 Speaker 1 Yeah.

34:59 Speaker 2 I thought it started later on.

35:00 Speaker 1 Yeah. So I stayed at the rosh yeshiva's house for three nights 'cause they, they didn't have... And then finally they put me in a, in a house. Now, you know when you're a Lubavitcher, there's, there's two levels of Jews, right? There's the Rebbe, and then there's everybody else, right? It doesn't... I don't care if you're the rosh yeshiva, you're mashpia, you're, you're, you're the chief rabbi. You're not the Rebbe.

35:27 Speaker 2 Or the janitor.

35:28 Speaker 1 Or the janitor. Just everybody. But you're... If you're not the Rebbe, you're not the Rebbe, and that's it. There's... In that world, that's not how that works.

35:38 Speaker 2 No.

35:39 Speaker 1 And so, but I didn't know that. So I'm busy having breakfast with the rosh yeshiva and just chatting and talking and not knowing that I should be far more b'eima o b'yira than I was.

35:53 Speaker 2 Were you saying, "Would you like?" and not what the rosh yeshiva-

35:55 Speaker 1 Oh, no, no, no. I didn't know how you, I didn't know how you-

35:58 Speaker 2 Third person

35:58 Speaker 1 ...that you talk in third person. I didn't know this yet. Um, but it served me quite well over the next three years.

36:06 Speaker 2 You were there for three years?

36:06 Speaker 1 I spent three years there.

36:08 Speaker 2 Huh.

36:08 Speaker 1 And I did because I was gonna prove something to them and to myself.

36:12 Speaker 2 Wow. So you, you, you, you, you, you, uh, you acclimate to it, you situate yourself there, and at no point do you say, "Okay, I'm ready to go try another, go back to my comfort zone, some other Chabad yeshiva."

36:26 Speaker 1 No, I was gonna finish three years.

36:28 Speaker 2 I was gonna, I'm gonna finish it.

36:29 Speaker 1 I'm gonna finish. I, I, I really, I would do it again in a heartbeat.

36:33 Speaker 2 Wow.

36:35 Speaker 1 Um-

36:36 Speaker 2 So that's really, that's really a, that's really an interesting story. So you post-Gimel Tammuz, you, you like, 'cause you're saying that everybody your age is beginning to return back to that and like revisit what happened. But in your case, you didn't really, you... One thing that you didn't have was like three years of collective grief surrounding you 'cause like you said, if anything, people were kinda happy that, about what had happened.

37:03 Speaker 1 So I evolved. I, I-

37:04 Speaker 2 It's pro- it's pro- in a way that was probably helpful for you.

37:06 Speaker 1 It was pro- it was very helpful. Um- The first six months were, were, were exceedingly difficult-

37:11 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

37:12 Speaker 1 ... from many levels, from a learning standpoint, um, uh, from a being f- you know, in the new environment, culture shock. Um, most of the boys were really understanding-

37:29 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

37:30 Speaker 1 ... um, and kind and generous. There were a few bad apples.

37:37 Speaker 2 Right.

37:38 Speaker 1 Not many. Um, two stories in particular. One is, uh, a, a shir gimmel bocher, so a guy three years older than me, uh, was chaperoning me and chaperoning me and chaperoning me, and, uh, eventually said, "I'm, I'm so glad that the rebbe is dead," and I socked him in the face. It was just a visceral reaction, and he then pummeled me, and I went running to the rosh yeshiva's house. Basically, I was gonna say, I said, "I'm done." And thank God he wasn't home. And I walked back to my dorm, and I just-- I was like... But that boy never said another word to me, because he may have gotten the best of me in the fight, but he, he felt it for three days after. Another similar incident around the same-

38:23 Speaker 2 And that's when you started weightlifting.

38:24 Speaker 1 No, no, no. No, that we'll get to. That's it. But another boy, another boy said something very similar to me as a shir was about to begin. Um, actually, the magid shir, uh, is Rav Matisyahu Solomon, who's, who's the mashgiach in, in Lakewood, nezir haRefuah Shlome, his son. And the shir's about to begin, and this boy is chaperoning and chirping.

38:48 Speaker 2 His son was the one starting-

38:49 Speaker 1 No, no, no. His son was the magid shir.

38:50 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

38:51 Speaker 1 Was the teacher. And he walks in, and I just-- Like, the floodgates start open. I was just crying. I wasn't wailing. I was just, tears were streaming down 'cause it was so painful. And he looked at me, and I've never really shared this story with anybody, and he kinda goes like, goes like this with his hands, like, "Listen up." Like, "What?" Like, "What's wrong?" And I'm just ba- I'm just, tears are flowing down my face, and a bocher said something along the lines of, you know, he's chaperoning the rebbe or something along those lines, and he just gave a look. And really, after that, I don't think there was anything.

39:28 Speaker 2 Hmm.

39:29 Speaker 1 There were a few other instances. I had a, I had a, I actually had a chavrusa who used to write letters to Rav Chaim Kanievsky. Um, I don't know if he was considered back then the tzaraat or not, but he would write Rav Chaim K- I, we were chavrusas.

39:42 Speaker 2 Right.

39:43 Speaker 1 I would see him write the questions, and Rav Chaim would answer him.

39:46 Speaker 2 Really?

39:47 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, like, kind of a big deal. Like, every month or two, he'd get a letter back from Rav Chaim. Rav Chaim would answer on the... And we, he would open it up, and he, it was like a big deal. But he, he asked a q- he a- I shared this recently with somebody, and I think it, it's... Oh, I shared it after Rav Chaim passed away with a, with a group of friends of mine that are not Lubavitchers. He wrote a let- One of his questions was, "Can I join a Chabad minyan or use a Chabad mikvah?" And I remember telling him like, "Why are you bothering Rav Chaim with such questions?"

40:19 Speaker 2 Right.

40:20 Speaker 1 And he says, "Oh, I need to know." Uh, and I'm like, "You're an idiot." You know? You're just... Like, why are you wasting this, this... Rav Chaim responded. He asked about 10, 12 questions in this thing, and Rav Chaim answered, like, nine of the questions. Just left those two questions blank.

40:40 Speaker 2 Hmm.

40:41 Speaker 1 And what I took from it, and I remember saying to this, to him at the time, I was like, "See? Even Rav Chaim thinks your questions are stupid."

40:49 Speaker 2 Y- when, when you talk about, like, you know, 14, 15 years old taking these kind of things personally, um, was it because, like, you really felt offended on behalf of the rebbe? Like, the rebbe was that important to you? Or was it that, like, you feel like, I have no clue. Like, I, I'm, I don't know what Chabad's, like, what Chabad's doing right, what, what, what my L- Chabad or Lubavitch world, however you were referring to it. Like, I don't know what these yeshivas, yeshiv- what these yeshivas look like right now. I'm not really part of that world. I don't know what I'm going back to down the road. Like, I'm basically... It's almost like a, a child who's orphaned, right? Like, if, if, if somebody makes fun of their father, is it, is it because-- and they get upset, is it because their father's memory is so dear to them, or is it because they're so lost in this world, and it's like you're pouring salt onto injury? I mean, it could be that's nitpicking, but I, I mean, I guess, I guess my, my question is like, do you, looking back... 'Cause this, like, this concept of, like, a lost future is something that's very interesting to me.

41:59 Speaker 1 It was-

41:59 Speaker 2 Because I think, I think it's something that plagues us to this day.

42:01 Speaker 1 It is. It, it, I, I think it was a lost future.

42:04 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

42:04 Speaker 1 It, not so much a lost future, but a loss in potential.

42:07 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

42:09 Speaker 1 Um-

42:10 Speaker 2 A- and so this person picking on you is basically just r- pouring salt into injury. It's like, "You Lubavitcher, look at you. You thought you were, you thought you were the game a few months ago or a few years ago, and look at you now, you know. We can make fun of you, and, you know-"

42:25 Speaker 1 I think I was genuinely, uh, offended on behalf of the rebbe.

42:33 Speaker 2 Okay.

42:35 Speaker 1 Um, I may not have fully understood what the rebbe meant to me, but I knew that the rebbe meant a tremendous amount to me.

42:42 Speaker 2 Okay.

42:42 Speaker 1 Um, that I was only a f- uh, an observant Jew because of the rebbe. My parents became frum because of the rebbe.

42:52 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

42:52 Speaker 1 You know, my mother's, my mother has a story, too. It's not quite as exciting as my... You know, there's no f- there's no sukkahs falling down in my mother's story.

43:00 Speaker 2 Right.

43:01 Speaker 1 Right? Um, but my mother, my mother grew up in a conservative Jewish home in Toronto and, and did a shabbaton to Crown Heights- And, uh, fell in love with it. I mean, I, I recently started asking more questions of my mother, and apparently there's more to the story than my mother ever s-told us. But she wanted to go back, and my p- my grandparents wanted her to go back and, and become a lawyer, and the Rebbe, the Rebbe's actually very involved in decision-making with my mother, uh, which I never knew. Um-

43:28 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

43:28 Speaker 1 ... never encouraged her to, y-you know, strategize with my mother a little bit-

43:33 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

43:33 Speaker 1 ... on, on how to deal with my, with my grandparents. Um, but, you know, this whole who's the bigger Hasid, my mother or my father, that whole thing, um, now not only is there we're moving to Denmark, but there's my son, my bechor, my only son at the time. I have a little brother who was born years later, so it was six girls and then my little brother, is now in a But my mother always said that she, she got a bracha from the, she got a dollar from the Rebbe, and she asked the Rebbe about chinuch for her son, and she always felt that, like, everything that happened to me in chinuch was, was the Rebbe's yad. So to her, me being in Gateshead was, was not something to be lamented, but she was actually like, "If he's doing what he's supposed to be doing, then, then this is all part of the plan."

44:28 Speaker 2 Yeah. Look, my father also went to a, uh, Litvish yeshiva in, at that age. Um, uh, yeah, just, just different reasons of why, from what I can tell. But, you know, he, he went, so it's not something completely foreign to me, although I, I never heard a story of that happening to somebody at that point in time.

44:47 Speaker 1 Yeah.

44:47 Speaker 2 I think it was a little bit more common earlier on.

44:51 Speaker 1 Oh, the world tried to get me out.

44:53 Speaker 2 Who's the world?

44:53 Speaker 1 The shluchim and friends and classmates. People tried to... "Oh."

44:57 Speaker 2 "We gotta save him."

44:59 Speaker 1 "We gotta save him."

45:00 Speaker 2 And you were, "I'm not interested." Like, "I'm-"

45:02 Speaker 1 I, by about six months in, I was like, "No, no, no. No, I'm here."

45:06 Speaker 2 A-and so you said it was that you were, you were trying to prove them that you could make it there? You're trying to prove the Gateshead people that, "I can make it on your turf"?

45:13 Speaker 1 I, I, uh, I-

45:14 Speaker 2 Or, or was there a little bit of like, "I just got burnt really hard in the Manchester Chabad yeshiva. Like, you know, maybe I'm not interested right now in-"

45:23 Speaker 1 So I don't feel like I was burnt by Manchester. I felt, uh, I've never felt any ill-

45:28 Speaker 2 Well, not that they intentionally hurt you, but, like, you went to this yeshiva and it was a disaster for you.

45:34 Speaker 1 One of, one of, one of the bad things that came out of LA for me was is that I felt that, that LA made me feel like I was gonna amount to nothing.

45:42 Speaker 2 Interesting.

45:43 Speaker 1 That I was... I had nothing going for me.

45:48 Speaker 2 So this almost gave you a opportunity to kinda carve your own path. If I go with everybody else, everybody else that I know, at the rate that I'm going, I'm gonna be a nobody. Whereas here, I have an opportunity to be different.

46:01 Speaker 1 I would frame it more in my observance. I had a lot of friends from LA from those years that, that did not remain observant.

46:09 Speaker 2 Because of the Rebbe passing away, or-

46:12 Speaker 1 I think it was probably a combination of that and the, the, the certain 770 members in LA and what was going on-

46:18 Speaker 2 And just being in Los Angeles. And just being in Los Angeles

46:18 Speaker 1 ... and being in Los Angeles, and I was gonna prove them wrong.

46:22 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm. So what you're saying is that you, you were on the path of kind of falling off the path.

46:29 Speaker 1 Well, I wasn't on a path.

46:31 Speaker 2 Right.

46:31 Speaker 1 I didn't feel like I was on a path when I went to LA. I was just, I was just a 14-year-old kid who, who, uh, knew he was good at sports-

46:40 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

46:40 Speaker 1 ... and knew that, like, this is kinda like the way that you do it, and my parents kinda made decisions for me, and I was like, "All right. Here I am."

46:48 Speaker 2 Yeah. It's almost like a story. Like, there are all kinds of these archetypical stories where, like, you know, a person, you know, a person, um, fails in a society, you know, gets shipwrecked somewhere else or gets imprisoned or whatever and builds, you know, s-somehow escapes a different world, an alternate reality, builds himself up, and then returns victorious.

47:10 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

47:11 Speaker 2 That's kind of what it sounds like.

47:12 Speaker 1 Yeah. It is. It is.

47:13 Speaker 2 Yeah.

47:13 Speaker 1 Because, because I physically, I was v-very little. I was very short.

47:18 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

47:20 Speaker 1 Um, w- you know, growing up in Seattle, just to go back to Seattle for a minute, um, my two friends, Mendy Kornfeld and Sender Kafka, they, they physically grew much earlier than me. I have a picture somewhere that I can show you of, of us at, I think, Mendy's bar mitzvah, and Mendy and Sender are both a head taller than me, and I, there I am, this little shrimp. And so we had this boy who, who became a part of our, our, of our group, this kid named Shaul Galler, and so it was the four of us in class, and every recess we'd play basketball. It was always two on two. It was usually Mendy and Shaul against me and Sender. And, you know, we played, I mean, we played AA style basketball, so there was elbows and pushing and fouls and beating up, and there was alw- always ended into a fight.

48:03 Speaker 2 Right. Sure.

48:03 Speaker 1 And, uh, the fight always was Mendy chasing after my shlaym and Sender sticking up for my shlaym.

48:08 Speaker 2 'Cause you were the smaller one.

48:10 Speaker 1 'Cause I was the smaller one. And, um, and Shaul and I really didn't get along. I think we, we were constantly at each other's kinda throats, um, as s- you know, 12, 13-year-old boys are. Um, and so when I came back from Gateshead... So what's interesting is that the timeline was, so right, so I went to Gateshead 16 to 17. 17, 18. I was done Gateshead at 19, and my family was only in Denmark for three years. So they moved back to Seattle, and I remember coming back for Pesach my third year in Gateshead for Yom Tov, and I remember how excited I was. I was really, really, like... 'Cause we had a Kinust Torah every year on the shvi'i shel Pesach, and I had written, like, this... You know, I've been learning for, for two and a half years, like 12 hours a day in, in zal learning Gemara, and I had written this pilpul, and I was like, you know, I was so excited that I was finally... I remember, you know, growing up watching Shmuley Kornfeld and Eli Kornfeld and Alter Levinson, these guys giving, and I was like, I, this is, like, kind of this prodigal son returns-

49:14 Speaker 2 Right

49:14 Speaker 1 ... in my own brain. But what I didn't realize is that I left Seattle 4'10", and I'm coming back to Seattle 5'10".

49:25 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

49:26 Speaker 1 But Sender and Mendy didn't grow anymore.

49:28 Speaker 2 So now you're taller.

49:29 Speaker 1 So now I'm taller than them. But, but here's the, here's the saddest part. At 18, you don't care anymore.

49:36 Speaker 2 Who cares, right?

49:38 Speaker 1 It's very much a who cares.

49:40 Speaker 2 Yeah.

49:40 Speaker 1 But I remember being like, "Oh my God. I'm so much bigger."

49:45 Speaker 2 Yeah. That's funny.

49:46 Speaker 1 Um, and, and that, I wasn't even working out then, so I was just, I was just taller.

49:50 Speaker 2 Right.

49:51 Speaker 1 Right? I was a stick. I weighed, I weighed 130 pounds maybe.

49:54 Speaker 2 Is there, is there ever something in you today that, like, you think, "Wait a second, like, a lot of my ability to learn, a lot of my knowledge comes from the very people who, you know, typically we would think are like, you know, we're not supposed to, we're not supposed to be getting it from them.

50:16 Speaker 1 Yeah.

50:17 Speaker 2 Right? They're... I mean, things have kind of mellowed. The animosity isn't at the pitch that you were describing earlier.

50:23 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

50:24 Speaker 2 But, you know, like, nobody wants to be like the, the reci- you know, the recipient.

50:29 Speaker 1 Mm.

50:29 Speaker 2 Or you don't wanna be like the misnagid in the room, you know?

50:32 Speaker 1 Oh, I'm the misnagid in the room.

50:33 Speaker 2 Right. So-

50:33 Speaker 1 I mean, my friends make fun of... I'm the Lit- I'm the Litvak in the room.

50:35 Speaker 2 To this day, I'm talking about.

50:36 Speaker 1 What's that?

50:36 Speaker 2 To this day.

50:37 Speaker 1 To the day.

50:38 Speaker 2 To the day.

50:38 Speaker 1 To the day. They, they, it's an ongoing joke.

50:40 Speaker 2 Does it ever, does it ever, does it ever bother you that-

50:43 Speaker 1 No.

50:43 Speaker 2 It doesn't bother you?

50:44 Speaker 1 No. I've embraced it.

50:46 Speaker 2 You've embraced it.

50:47 Speaker 1 Um-

50:47 Speaker 2 So you're, you're... So you're like, you, you... At, as a teenager, probably a little bit frustrated and angry and looking with a chip on your shoulder, you wanna prove a point. You kind of go on this vendetta that, "I'll show them," and you're kinda stuck with it.

51:07 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. And it, it's... Certainly, there's, there's... that's there somewhere.

51:10 Speaker 2 Yeah.

51:11 Speaker 1 Um-

51:11 Speaker 2 So, like, it hasn't changed. Like-

51:13 Speaker 1 There was a mashgiach

51:14 Speaker 2 ... you don't regret it.

51:15 Speaker 1 I don't regret it. Not, not even-

51:16 Speaker 2 Okay. That answers that. That answers my question

51:17 Speaker 1 ... not even a drop. There was a mashgiach, um, in Gateshead at the time, uh, named Rabbi Houdelay Wittler.

51:22 Speaker 2 Okay.

51:23 Speaker 1 He had a shi- really strong shias to Lubavitch. And so Yutras Kislev and, you know, Yoch Spat, Yomi the Pago, we would actually farbrengen. He would invite me to his house, and we would sit and farbrengen. He was a, he was a... He could've become a Lubavitcher. There was, there was a, there was a pivotal m- anyways, and I, I asked him something along the lines of, like, you know, "Was it a good thing that I was here?" or something like this.

51:47 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

51:47 Speaker 1 And, and he said, "You know, Dan Holla discussed you. Not whether we should accept you, because it was... Rabbi Israel already accepted you. But what are we gonna do with this kid, and is this good, and, and should we really try to get him to leave?" And I actually asked the Rosh Yeshiva, uh, right when I left, as I was leaving, I said, "Why did you accept me three years ago?" And he said, "I thought you would leave within two weeks."

52:11 Speaker 2 And, and I still get the full tuition.

52:13 Speaker 1 No. But, but-

52:15 Speaker 2 You, you made a point earlier

52:15 Speaker 1 ... I, I, I had to, I had to... I couldn't say no to Rumisha, but I thought you would leave. So he says, "You know, we've discussed you, and, um, there were those who said, 'This is terrible. This is not good.'"

52:27 Speaker 2 Right.

52:28 Speaker 1 "This is gonna cau- he's gonna cause a lot of problems. Not, not because he's a problem kid, but because he's a Lubavitcher."

52:32 Speaker 2 They're quite cheap. Yeah. And...

52:34 Speaker 1 And, and I made the argument that I said, I said, "You know, there's gonna be five, six years of Yeshiva Bachim coming in who are gonna learn to respect another Yid."

52:42 Speaker 2 Hmm.

52:43 Speaker 1 And he says, "That's what you accomplished here." He says, "Every single boy that I talk to about you respects you, respects you as a Lubavitcher, respects you as a peer, respects you as a, as a, as a B'nei Teyrah." And that, I, I knew at that moment, it solidified that this was the right thing.

53:00 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

53:01 Speaker 1 Um, you know, the Rosh Yeshiva gave a shiur once, and he talked about th-th-the menera. And he made a joke, an offhanded joke about, you know, th-those who put meneras on their cars thinking that that's, that that's a Kio mitzvah. And I raised my hand, and he looked at me, and I said, "With all due respect, Rabbi Israel, it's not why they put the menera on the car. It's Pirsumei Nisa. It's, it's Sayem. It's... We, we all light our own meneras at home." And he, and he apologized. He said, "Oh." You know? But he would learn with me.

53:31 Speaker 2 Huh.

53:32 Speaker 1 As a, as a... My last year, he had a regular bacher chaver that he would learn with at night, and when that bacher wasn't there, I was the replacement guy. And we would have conversations, and he would he learned Gemara because that's what they learn in Litvishe yeshivas, but with me, we would learn, like, Ramban Alateira.

53:47 Speaker 2 At any point, were you like, "Okay, so I've, I've... I grew up in a Chabad family." I keep on going between Chabad and Lubavitch. How did you consider it, though? Chabad Lubavitch?

53:57 Speaker 1 No, it's both. No, no, no.

53:58 Speaker 2 They're both. We kind of use them interchangeably. But you grow up in this Chabad Lubavitch family, uh, but your parents themselves are Baalei Teshuvah. So, like, you know that this wasn't, like, a given even two generations earlier.

54:14 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

54:14 Speaker 2 You're k- you're, you're in this family that almost happens to be Chabad, right? And then you go to yeshiva that's very not Chabad. At some point, do you go like, "You know what? Maybe I'll be my own guy." Like, were, were, were, were you always sure that you were gonna come back before even deciding to go on shlichas? Were, like, were you always sure that you were gonna come back? Not that, not that I think you were going to run away from all your friends, but at any point, were you like, "You know, I'm gonna be my own thing. I'm gonna be this combination. I'm gonna be..." You know? 'Cause I'm sure there's also things that you picked up there where you're like, "Okay, wait a second. What we do at Chabad's a little bit crazy," or like, "There's some things that we do here that seem to be better than what we do over there." And-

54:52 Speaker 1 So I, I, I learned this about myself years later. Um, I am a loyalist.

54:57 Speaker 2 Hmm. Okay.

54:59 Speaker 1 Um, in everything. I'm, I'm a real loyalist. Uh, so I don't think I would've left Chabad only under the most extreme circumstance.

55:12 Speaker 2 But not leave it completely. Why-

55:13 Speaker 1 Uh, I, to me, I wasn't gonna mish. I, I knew people who mished. They were weird to me.

55:18 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

55:19 Speaker 1 You know, Lubavitchers but had payos behind their ears. That was always, like, a weird thing to me.

55:25 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

55:25 Speaker 1 Um, you're a Lubavi- you wear a down hat, but you're married, and you wear a suit but with a gartel. That's weird to me. I, I didn't wanna stand out like that. I don't... 'Cause you look at... As a kid, you... When I was growing up, you looked at that person like, "Oh, they're not really, uh..." You know? So no. Now, had I stayed in the Litvishe world another few years-

55:48 Speaker 2 Who knows?

55:49 Speaker 1 I could've. I also don't think that the European style, uh, uh, at- was attractive to me. It was, it was very tsuk fetched. It was very, um-

55:58 Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, Gateshead's known to be that way.

56:00 Speaker 1 Now, I, I, I was gonna say had I gone to Lakewood, but even Lakewood back then was like this.

56:05 Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah.

56:05 Speaker 1 The Lakewood of today was not Lakewood of-

56:07 Speaker 2 No

56:07 Speaker 1 ... of then. Um-

56:10 Speaker 2 So that's one of the reasons that, that the animosity is down. A lot of it is cultural. A lot of it is cultural, and, and, you know, peop- there's a lot more overlap. Uh, the, the brute truth of it is that we're all more Americanized. That that's, that's-

56:23 Speaker 1 Yes

56:23 Speaker 2 ... what's really going on. But, um-

56:25 Speaker 1 Yes. I mean, look at what's going on with, with the rise of, you know, not to go off topic, but, and I love it, I think it's great, but the, the rise of, like, the baal habos maggid shiur.

56:36 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

56:37 Speaker 1 Right? Like the Eli Stefanski and the Sruly Bornstein. These are guys that d- they don't owe allegiances to anybody. They're not a co- they're not company men.

56:45 Speaker 2 Right.

56:45 Speaker 1 They're multimillionaire businessmen, I mean, Sruly in particular, who's just an unbelievable Baal Keshem, who can learn, who has a vilde kop, who gives a phenomenal shiur and has 30,000 people listening to his daf yomi shiur every day.

56:59 Speaker 2 Right.

57:00 Speaker 1 They're not beholden to anybody.

57:01 Speaker 2 Right.

57:02 Speaker 1 They're not towing a line.

57:03 Speaker 2 Right.

57:03 Speaker 1 They're towing Gemara Ashutosis. That's it.

57:06 Speaker 2 Right.

57:07 Speaker 1 I love it, but I think that it wouldn't have been possible 30 years ago, but it's possible today.

57:13 Speaker 2 Yeah. That's the, that's the New Hampshire coming out in you, the libertarian. There's something very libertarian about from Judaism today, which one can be quite optimistic about, where, you know, the id- because people are making their own money and, like, and therefore are less beholden to the institutions-

57:32 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

57:32 Speaker 2 ... maybe in the way that they used to be, um, the upside is that, you know, the individual can, can really cast aside the s- the kind of the, the, the, the silly history and the pettiness that accumulates over time and just, you know, like, I don't have to not bring up this peerish in the Gemara because f- four generations ago there was a fight, you know, and something like that. So there's something very libertarian about that. But the, the downside, which is I think we're, we're what we wanted to discuss, um, going into this, which is identity begins to fracture.

58:10 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

58:13 Speaker 2 Identity begins to fracture, and, uh, that's, that's why I'm pushing a little bit about, you know, when you go to this Litvishe yeshiva, at some point does that begin to pressure your identity? So you said, "No, I was always gonna go back to being a Lubavitcher." That leads me to the question, what is a Lubavitcher?

58:30 Speaker 1 Hmm.

58:31 Speaker 2 Right? At the time, what did it mean to you to be a Lubavitcher? Did it just mean, using the examples you used earlier, that, you know, you weren't gonna wear payos behind your ears, you were gonna have payos in front of your ears? Was that... Like, w- are you talking just, like, the, the, the, the look of the Lubavitcher? 'Cause what's fascinating to me about your story is you leave Lubavitch basically at a moment of crisis. Not that it's... Not that I'm implying that you left it because of the crisis, to the contrary, like, it just, it so happened in your life, but you leave it at a moment of severe crisis, severe identity crisis, no question. And you come back a few years later, and you've kind of stabilized who you are, right? And Chabad has also stabilized what it is. When you come back, is it what you thought it would be?

59:16 Speaker 1 Yeah. Um, no, it wasn't. No, it wasn't.

59:24 Speaker 2 Right. Wha- In what way?

59:29 Speaker 1 I, um... I don't know if I should say this story.

59:34 Speaker 2 Why not?

59:35 Speaker 1 I guess I will. Again, it's analogy. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not analogy. It's, um, it's just, uh... What's the word I'm looking for? It's anecdotal.

59:48 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

59:52 Speaker 1 There's a, uh, there's an action that young boys engage with, which is an unhealthy action, but it's human nature, and we all do it. Alter Rebbe writes about it in Tanya profusely. And, um-

1:00:06 Speaker 2 You're referring to masturbation.

1:00:07 Speaker 1 I'm referring to masturbation.

1:00:08 Speaker 2 Okay.

1:00:09 Speaker 1 And so I'm in Gateshead, right? And, um, I finish up. I was actually gonna go to another Litvishe yeshiva after that. I was gonna go to the Litvishe yeshiva that, that was in Stamford, Connecticut at the time, which is, was considered a very good yeshiva, 'cause my parents had moved back to America, and they were now living in... They were gonna be moving to Boston. And, and of course, things happen. Bash-G-ach HaPratzis. Um, I went for my farher. Even though I got glowing recommendations, I got sick the night before, like really, really, really sick. And so I went to this farher like I was Oysmansh. I was not myself, and I bombed the farher. And they rejected me. I couldn't believe it. And through Yitzi Lowenthal, my father, and a few others, uh, and Levi Deitsch, alav ha-shalom, I was ex... My f- the only Chabad yeshiva my father felt that I belonged in was Migdale HaEmek.

1:01:04 Speaker 2 Hmm.

1:01:04 Speaker 1 It had that reputation, Itche Goldberg, high-level learning. Okay. I ended up getting in. And I remember very seriously thinking about this, being like, "In Lubavitch, the Bachurim don't masturbate. The Chassidish Bachurim, they learn Chassidus. It's payo on them, b- payo, and they don't do it. And so therefore, I need to stop." And I did. And then- ... I was gobsmacked when I found out that it's just as prevalent there as it was in Gateshead.

1:01:42 Speaker 2 Wait a second. Was that because things had changed or because you had grown up and found out what was going on?

1:01:46 Speaker 1 No, I grew up and found out that, that, that... In other words, I thought there was an ideal that people were actually living out.

1:01:56 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:01:58 Speaker 1 And then there was this moment where it's like they're not living it out.

1:02:01 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:02:02 Speaker 1 This fundamental action that we're like, as Bachur, like there's nothing bigger, and they're all doing it.

1:02:09 Speaker 2 So in this weird way, you almost have this kind of teshuva moment-

1:02:13 Speaker 1 Yes

1:02:13 Speaker 2 ... is what you're saying. You have this teshuva moment-

1:02:15 Speaker 1 Yes

1:02:15 Speaker 2 ... where, like, you know, your, your father had it in his way, but you have it in your way. You grew up in this Chabad family, then you leave. Even though you're always gonna come back, when you come back, you realize, "Wait a second." It's not what I thought it was

1:02:28 Speaker 1 Uh, uh, let me put it another way. It began-- You were talking about identities and fracturing. This began to fracture the idea of ""Unzer zbur is beser fun zeyere dis""

1:02:40 Speaker 2 Ah, interesting.

1:02:41 Speaker 1 And it's something that today I hate.

1:02:45 Speaker 2 Mm.

1:02:45 Speaker 1 I push back on it. I challenge people about it. I don't believe it's true.

1:02:50 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:02:51 Speaker 1 And I think it's, it's, it's deeply unhealthy for us to be talking this way because I don't believe it's true. It can be true, but I don't believe as a rule it's true.

1:03:03 Speaker 2 It should be true. But it, but, but in a way, because we've taken it as this kind of normative line, as if like this describes reality de facto, in many ways, one could argue that it leads us to the, to having a problem because when, when you kind of... It makes you very, um, very, what's the word? Very presumptuous and very like, "Oh, yeah, I'm a, I'm, I'm a Lubavitcher. I'm in yeshiva." Like, "So all's good." And it's like, wait a second. If you don't, if you don't, like if, if you don't hold yourself to a higher standard, then what are we even talking about here? When we take that as just like a statement of fact and a description of reality without-- and not like a call to-

1:03:46 Speaker 1 R- exactly

1:03:47 Speaker 2 ... like, like this is how you have to behave, that like this yeshiva demands at the lowest, like the lowest, the, the entry point of this yeshiva is the highest point-

1:03:58 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

1:03:58 Speaker 2 ... of some other yeshiva.

1:03:59 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:03:59 Speaker 2 Like that's the ideal. But we just bec-- "Oh, no, of course. That's just how it is by virtue of you being here," then it, it only makes sense that eventually behavior begins to slip because nobody feels like they're, they're ob-- you know, that they have to aspire to anything.

1:04:13 Speaker 1 The way I, the way I think about this, and this is, this is, this is me thinking about this today as a, as a almost forty-four-year-old, and so I certainly wasn't thinking about this at, at nineteen, but I think in a lot of ways I was thinking about it this way, which is the Rebbe, the Chabad is trying to create the healthiest humans. The f- or I'll use a, I'll use a, a gym term, the fittest humans. And if we define fitness just for a minute, what does it mean to be fit? It, and it means being able to do your, your, you can run, you can jump, gymnastics, you can lift somewhat heavy. Um, y-your, you know, your metabolic conditioning is good. Your VO2 max is good, right? I think everybody would agree that that's the level of, that, that is the epitome of fitness, right?

1:05:02 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:05:02 Speaker 1 Now, is a, is a marathon runner fit? I would, I would argue no. They, they, they're a specialist. They can run for a long time. Uh, is a powerlifter fit? Well, no, they're really strong, but like ask them to run a mile and we'll die. So I look at the Jewish world, and I see Chabad as what the Rebbe wanted and what Hasidism wants is, is exceptional Jews. You know how to daven. You know how to learn. You know how to do kibbud av v'em. You know how to do mitzvos. You know how to do outreach. You know how to do in-reach. You know, you know, we want-

1:05:32 Speaker 2 There's no compromises.

1:05:33 Speaker 1 We want you excellent everywhere.

1:05:35 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:05:35 Speaker 1 I look at other places within Yiddishkeit, and they're specialists.

1:05:39 Speaker 2 Right.

1:05:40 Speaker 1 You know, y-you know, the, the epitome for my peers in Gateshead was to be an outstanding learner. I wasn't taught how to daven there. I mean, we had a, we had a, we had a Halacha chavrusa for like fifteen minutes a week. You know, so but they could learn a Daf Gemara.

1:05:58 Speaker 2 Right.

1:05:59 Speaker 1 So they're specialists.

1:06:01 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:06:02 Speaker 1 Um, and people like to be specialists. But at, the older we get, the re-we realize that like, well, uh, you know, at a certain point, you gotta be well-rounded. And so that's... You know, we talk about, I mean, this is sort of jump, leapfrogging into sort of defining what Chabad is and defining what the Rebbe is and defi-- you know, in my own mind. That's h- I think that was even starting then. I needed, now sometimes to be the best CrossFitter, you know, are people that came from gymnastics backgrounds or people that came from weightlifting backgrounds. Well, okay, that's the foundation that you're building off of. So my foundation for my adult life as a, as, as an observant Jew was Gateshead.

1:06:50 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:06:50 Speaker 1 It was this appreciation for learning, um, understanding that, that, you know, this is the idea of ki heim chayenu v'echad imeinu, and that this is the wisdom of the Aibishter, and, and it fit. It was congruent with Chabad.

1:07:05 Speaker 2 Right. Meaning you got exposure to the idea that this one thing that you're doing is worth dedicating your entire life, which is a lot more-- one of the reasons why some people or many people will choose to do running to the extreme or lifting to the extreme, because in many ways that that's easier to latch onto than to be good at everything.

1:07:27 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:07:27 Speaker 2 'Cause good at everything means you're not, you don't have the time and the dedication to any one thing, which makes it harder to excel at any one thing, and also it's harder to c-- it's harder for your mind to focus on excelling at so many things. Your mind, uh, give me a task, a lot of people especially like, "Give me one task, and I'll do it right. Give me ten tasks, and all of a sudden I'm all over the place." And so you're saying that your, to this day, your foundation is from a very specialist-focused background, which, which is not something that's gone away. Um, but how does that translate, how does it translate into your, uh, how does it translate into your identity? Well, you're saying how it translates into your identity, that it's still very much part of who you are. So l-let's move forward a little bit to, uh, you know, we took a, we took a pretty large detour, so I don't even know if we're gonna be able to cover so much of the whole shlichus topic.

1:08:17 Speaker 1 Sure.

1:08:17 Speaker 2 But, uh, we can always do this another time.

1:08:19 Speaker 1 Sure.

1:08:19 Speaker 2 Part two. But you were talking about going on shlichus, which to bring the story full circle, your Your mother had always wanted you to become a rabbi and probably a shliach. Your father, not so much. And you decide to be go, to go on a shlichus. Uh, at that point, at that point, why did you... Essentially, you are doubling down in the biggest way on your Chabad identity. Like, there's nothing more Chabad than going on a shlichus. Like, there's, you can't half-ass it.

1:08:57 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:08:58 Speaker 2 You know, as a shliach, like, "I'll be a little bit Chabad, a little bit Litvish."

1:09:01 Speaker 1 Right. Right.

1:09:01 Speaker 2 Like, there's no Litvak in Dartmouth. There's, there's no part, there's no part of any Litvak that exists in this town. This doesn't, doesn't make any sense, right? So what, what makes you decide that this is, that this is the, the way you wanna live your life and the way you wanna raise your kids?

1:09:22 Speaker 1 Yeah. So, you know, we talked before this about, you know, it was a very rational decision, right? It was never, "I'm moving on shlichus L'Man Asa. I'm moving on shlichus 'cause that's what the Rebbe wants." That was not my thought process. It helps that that's there, but that was not, that wasn't enough. Um, I had to... I, I, I was... So, you know, going back to my yeshiva years, I ended up, finished Gateshead, went to Machneh Israel for a year, went to yeshiva in Montreal for a year, and ended up as a shliach, uh, in New Haven, Connecticut for a year. And-

1:10:03 Speaker 2 As a bachur.

1:10:03 Speaker 1 As a bachur. And, um-

1:10:06 Speaker 2 This is back in the day when Constance Yeshiva was in the house?

1:10:08 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was the best y- It was the most fun year I've e- I, I had as a, as a b- as a yeshiva boy. I loved it. It was like living in a frat with 19 of my best friends. And, uh-

1:10:19 Speaker 2 That was a unique yeshiva where basically the shluchim were the yeshiva.

1:10:22 Speaker 1 That's right. That's right. That's right. We, we really had no other obligations other than to sit and learn all day.

1:10:27 Speaker 2 And a little bit of community-

1:10:28 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:10:28 Speaker 2 ... involvement.

1:10:29 Speaker 1 Whatever you wanted.

1:10:30 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:10:30 Speaker 1 Um, and it was put together by two of my friends from Oholei Torah. Um-

1:10:36 Speaker 2 Oh, you were the founding class of it?

1:10:38 Speaker 1 No, no, no. They, they put together that kfu- that year's kfutza. They somehow convinced, you know, Robert Pokarsky to send them all to New Haven, and no one wanted to go to New Haven. New Haven's not exotic. It's the least exotic of spaces. Um, so my friends, you know, it was like eight of them, they somehow convinced Robert Pokarsky to send all eight of these guys there, and, uh, they call me up and they're like, you know, "We'd love for you to come." And so I, I was able to get myself onto that kfutza. Um, and it's an extremely tight-knit group. Uh, we're talking 20, 23 years later, we have a WhatsApp group that was, is, is vibrant. Uh, the first guy, literally as we're podcasting, the first child of that kfutza just got engaged.

1:11:24 Speaker 2 Oh, that's nice.

1:11:25 Speaker 1 Which is really ironic. Um, many of us are on shlichus. Uh, some of us are not. Um, we try to get together at least once a year in February, usually over the Kinus Hashluchim. Um, it's really a special group. I mean, you don't hear of many groups like this. Um, you hear of groups of friends, but never sort of 20 guys. Um, so I get on this, right? And, and, and part of me, part of me was, "I wanna check out Yale University." Like, you know, all of a sudden this childhood of hearing my father's story is, it's starting to awaken. And, and, uh, at the time, um, I mean, they still lived there, Shmuly and Toby Hecht. Uh, he was running s- an organization called The Chai Society at the time. Toby and I grew up together in Seattle. Her father was, was the head shliach there. Um, and I was like, "You know, this could be an interesting oppor- like, let me see if, you know, if this is exciting or interesting." And so I owe them, you know, a tremendous debt of gratitude. Um, so I get there, and the first week I call her up and I say, "Toby, you know, I'm here." And she's like, "Great, you know, love to have you. Why don't you come Friday night to The Chai Society?" And I walked in, and I mean, it was like love at first sight. Like, I fell in love with the vibe immediately. Here's, in my mind, it

1:12:38 Speaker 1 was like hundreds of students, but it wasn't. It was probably 40, 50 students maybe sitting around this just kinda long table that L'd out into four, 'cause it was like a brownstone, so it wasn't-

1:12:48 Speaker 2 Right

1:12:48 Speaker 1 ... didn't have one big room. And I remember that Friday night, uh, I didn't eat anything. I just was saying L'Chaim and arguing. I was, like, for the first time in my life, I was being challenged by, like, really smart, articulate, secular Jews about everything that I believed in.

1:13:08 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:13:08 Speaker 1 They're asking me about everything, what my thoughts are on, on US politics. I mean, remember, that was the year of, of the hanging chad. That was 2000, right? So the, the Bush-

1:13:18 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

1:13:18 Speaker 1 ... the Bush-Gore election, and, you know, Israel politics and Zionism and homosexuality and, and all these desperate, different things, and I'm, I'm, all of a sudden I'm finding myself having to, like, grapple myself, like, what do I believe?

1:13:32 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:13:33 Speaker 1 You know, not just parrot or mimic. Some of these things I didn't even know. Like, I don't know. So I started learning and researching and growing and having conversations and, and, uh, weekly chavrusas with these guys that weren't half an hour chavrusas. They weren't hour chavrusas. They were, these would take hours 'cause we would sit and talk and talk and talk. And to the day, I'm, like, friends with probably seven or eight of them.

1:13:54 Speaker 2 Hmm.

1:13:54 Speaker 1 Um, and they're amazing. Um, we go to each other's simchas. And so I finish that year, and I'm like, "If I can do this full-time, I'm gonna do it. This is like, this has given me more meaning than anything I've ever done in my life."

1:14:11 Speaker 2 But you initially went to see it to think of going there yourself, right?

1:14:15 Speaker 1 Not to be the shliach at Yale, no.

1:14:17 Speaker 2 To, to go to the university yourself at some point?

1:14:18 Speaker 1 I was like, I thought maybe it could be an interesting thing that I was gonna, at that point I was like, I was gonna go make money.

1:14:24 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:14:25 Speaker 1 I wasn't gonna be a shliach, but the idea of being a rabbi on a campus ha- was interesting to me.

1:14:32 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:14:33 Speaker 1 Um, I had no idea I would fall in love with it as quickly as I did. So I called my parents. I said, "I think this is it." And my parents were like, "Whoa, whoa. Pump, pump the brakes." You know. And, and if you know Shmuly Hecht at all-

1:14:53 Speaker 2 Yeah, I know him

1:14:53 Speaker 1 ... I mean, he's like just a ball of energy.

1:14:55 Speaker 2 Yeah.

1:14:56 Speaker 1 And he was hyping me up, and I was hyping him up, and he's like, "This is the greatest thing ever, and look who we're influencing, and this is the future leaders of the world, and look at who, these kids that you're being exposed to." And I was like, "I know. I know. Like, let, let's go. Like, I love this."

1:15:11 Speaker 2 And at the time, Chabad on campus was a much smaller-

1:15:14 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah

1:15:14 Speaker 2 ... phenomenon.

1:15:15 Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. I mean, it was, it w- the proof of concept for this, for the revitalization of Chabad on Campus was, was Shmuly and Hershey Zarchi at Harvard. I mean, these were at these two schools which-

1:15:26 Speaker 2 Ivy League schools, yeah

1:15:26 Speaker 1 ... no one wanted to touch 30 years before, and here they are, they're showing this proof of concept. They're showing how they can raise money and live and, and influence the best and the brightest.

1:15:36 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:15:38 Speaker 1 Um, and so I, I was like, I was just taken by this. I was enamored, and I was like, "Why do something out of Kabbalah Zohar and lack of congruency when I can do what's right?" Uh, it doesn't even matter to me whether it was Kabbalah Zohar or not 'cause, 'cause I, I'm so passionate about it, I wanna do it. Like, there's, there's the ultimate congruency. I mean, that's what Hasidus teaches us is get congruent with yourself.

1:16:02 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:16:02 Speaker 1 Then things go easy.

1:16:04 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:16:04 Speaker 1 That's the... If you can appreciate and learn to love davening, you'll daven, right? If you can learn to appreciate and love learning, you'll learn. Uh, it's just that simple, right? Again, we look at the fitness world, we look at the gym, you know, people hate doing burpees, but if you can learn to appreciate a burpee, you might not, like, love burpees, but you'll do them because you know that they're important to do. They're healthy for you. So that's how I thought about things. I just didn't have that language back then. Um, I was like, "Wow, if I can open a Chabad house, I'm never gonna hate a day in my work in my life 'cause it won't be work."

1:16:39 Speaker 2 Right.

1:16:39 Speaker 1 Monday mornings-

1:16:40 Speaker 2 And you also felt like you were good at it.

1:16:42 Speaker 1 And I was good at it, and I felt that it was incredibly fulfilling-

1:16:45 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

1:16:45 Speaker 1 ... and meaningful-

1:16:46 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

1:16:46 Speaker 1 ... and impactful. And I kind of like, over the course of the year, thought like, "Well, well, making money is not gonna give me this feeling. Like, I'll enjoy life, but I won't have this feeling."

1:16:58 Speaker 2 Going into it rationally certainly feels like the better way to go about it. Um, you know, in general, I don't think, I don't know if I can look back besides getting married, but married is not really a rational decision. You know, I don't know if I've made a decision that is so impactful in my life like that 'cause I've, I've shifted courses personally. But, you know, whenever I make a decision, I try to say if I'm rational about it, then if it works out, great. If it doesn't work out, I can always look back and say, "Okay, well, at least this is why I did it."

1:17:30 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:17:31 Speaker 2 Like, it just gives me something to work with, you know? So it certainly feels like the better way. The, the downside I would think is that, um, you're, you're constantly thinking about it. It's not like this blind-

1:17:43 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

1:17:43 Speaker 2 ... faith jump where it's like, "Okay, I'm in the ocean now. It's too late. Screw it."

1:17:47 Speaker 1 Figure it out sort of.

1:17:48 Speaker 2 Yeah, like I got no choice. Okay, I'm, you know, I'm just stranded, and that's it, that that's my life, right? So do you, A, do you... Uh, I'll ask it two separate questions. Like, is it, is, is, has that be- has that ever posed a challenge to you where like as you grow up and, um, you know, we were talking earlier off, off, off the microphone about like not being old, but getting older, right? Have you, have you ever begun to like reconsider that choice? Or ha- or has it, or has it, has it become, like has that opened up the door to regret? Or, or, or has it... Let me ask you, uh, 'cause I think that's an unfair way to put it because everybody has moments. More like, do you sometimes feel like you wish you had more blind faith going into it?

1:18:36 Speaker 1 No. No, I have very few regrets.

1:18:40 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:18:40 Speaker 1 And I'm not saying that to try to like... I think I've been, you know, you can see I'm pretty honest. I, I don't have a lot of regrets.

1:18:45 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:18:48 Speaker 1 Um, you know, we, we talked about the, the yarmulke story. I had a yarmulke which I wrote. Remember it was the, it was the glue. They would write with that sparkly glue.

1:18:57 Speaker 2 Right. I remember that.

1:18:59 Speaker 1 I remember putting as like a ta- on my yarmulke. I always liked that idea.

1:19:06 Speaker 2 At what age?

1:19:07 Speaker 1 Probably 13, 14.

1:19:08 Speaker 2 That was before gates then.

1:19:10 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:19:11 Speaker 2 So you weren't such a nobody.

1:19:13 Speaker 1 I liked the idea of, of the rationale.

1:19:17 Speaker 2 Is that like your dad? Is that your, is your dad that kind of person?

1:19:19 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:19:20 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:19:20 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:19:20 Speaker 2 So that was, in a way, your example-

1:19:22 Speaker 1 Yeah

1:19:22 Speaker 2 ... something you looked up to.

1:19:24 Speaker 1 Absolutely. Um, just think through decisions.

1:19:27 Speaker 2 No, but do you ever like, 'cause I'm sure you go to Kinussim, and you have a lot of s- friends that are shluchim, and you know, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not looking to like go on some kind of critique of-

1:19:37 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

1:19:37 Speaker 2 ... shlichas now. Um, that's a different conversation. But I'm sure you have a lot of friends, and I think you said to me earlier, a lot of friends who were more like blind faith, jumped in.

1:19:46 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:19:46 Speaker 2 And do you sometimes wish that you had that blind faith? You're hap-

1:19:51 Speaker 1 No

1:19:51 Speaker 2 ... you're, 'cause this is who you are.

1:19:52 Speaker 1 No.

1:19:52 Speaker 2 You're a rational guy.

1:19:53 Speaker 1 I'm, I am who I am.

1:19:54 Speaker 2 Right. I, it would have to be this way.

1:19:56 Speaker 1 I don't, I-

1:19:57 Speaker 2 But it do- does it make your shlichas harder?

1:20:02 Speaker 1 I don't think about it that way.

1:20:03 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:20:04 Speaker 1 Um, I see it as a blessing. I see it as I'm open to more, to different things.

1:20:10 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:20:11 Speaker 1 Um, what, what I think is attractive, what I th- what I brag about, what I think Chabad is, should brag about is, is we're cutting edge, uh, we're disruptive, we're radicals. I think, I think we're losing it.

1:20:29 Speaker 2 Hmm.

1:20:30 Speaker 1 But that's a, that's a-

1:20:31 Speaker 2 That's your part two.

1:20:31 Speaker 1 That's part two. Um, um, and so I always... There's a lot of peop- sh- a lot of Lubavitchers are, are, they have a chip on their shoulder. Uh, they're s- they're scared in a sense. Um, they've bought into there's only one true path.

1:20:57 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:21:03 Speaker 1 At the very least, like have a, have a real respect for others. Um, there's other within, um... And, and, and when you're not, I think it's when you don't have confidence in your own, you, you, you, you, you find others threatening. I'll, I'll tell you for, for, for, so I-

1:21:26 Speaker 2 It almost sound, it almost sounds like when you, it almost sounds like... It's not exactly a synonym, but one of the byproducts of being rational is being honest.

1:21:38 Speaker 1 Mm.

1:21:39 Speaker 2 And when you're honest, you don't have the kind of gung-ho, you know, blinded, you know, you know, blinders on mentality, like nothing else, you know.

1:21:50 Speaker 1 Because you're not gonna s-

1:21:51 Speaker 2 It's the only option in the world

1:21:51 Speaker 1 ... you're not gonna allow the truths to filter in.

1:21:54 Speaker 2 Right. Right.

1:21:54 Speaker 1 You know, I tell, I, I-

1:21:56 Speaker 2 But the, one thing, the advantage of being honest is that when those things peak up, you don't have to lie about them 'cause you knew about them the whole time. Like, the decision that you made was not that this is the only thing I could do with my life, and that everything else was garbage, and, you know, well, you know, why would anybody ever wanna do anything else? No, no, it's not, it doesn't sound like that's what you were saying. What you were saying was, "Look, I, I went to, my, my parent, my, my, my, my father is a Baal Teshuva who's, who's, who's a, who's a professional with a career that he's very proud of. Um, I myself went to Gateshead Yeshiva, which is not a Chabad Yeshiva, and could have taken that path further had I chosen. I see value in that path."

1:22:35 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:22:35 Speaker 2 Right? Um, "I was thinking to go into business. And so there are all these paths that I, that, that were open to me and were very, very, like one step in a different direction, that's where I'm going."

1:22:45 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:22:46 Speaker 2 "Yet I chose this path, not because it's the only path, but because it's the best path." And so you don't have that kind of like ignorance is bliss of that there's no- nothing else.

1:22:58 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:22:58 Speaker 2 But on the other hand, when those other paths present themselves to you, you, you're not shocked.

1:23:03 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:23:04 Speaker 2 You don't, you don't have to, you don't have to, you don't have to lie to yourself.

1:23:07 Speaker 1 I do Daf Yomi.

1:23:09 Speaker 2 Okay, we have to cancel this podcast right now.

1:23:11 Speaker 1 When I say that to people w- in Lubavitch, what's the, what do you think the number one response is?

1:23:18 Speaker 2 Well, do you learn Rambam?

1:23:19 Speaker 1 Bingo.

1:23:21 Speaker 2 You see, I'm a professional Lubavitcher.

1:23:23 Speaker 1 Bingo. But not just do you learn Rambam. Do you learn three perak Rambam?

1:23:27 Speaker 2 Yeah, obviously.

1:23:29 Speaker 1 And I- The, the old me-

1:23:33 Speaker 2 Do you wanna answer the question? Is that funny?

1:23:34 Speaker 1 The old me, yeah, I do learn three perak Rambam.

1:23:36 Speaker 2 Okay, fine.

1:23:37 Speaker 1 For the last two years, I did one perak, and, and now I'm doing three perak. Um, there's such a, uh, th- there's this need. It's like the, it's like the Lubavitchers need to know that other people give props to the Rebbe.

1:23:57 Speaker 2 Well, look, it, it, it's just gonna boil down. We could talk about it for endlessly, but to me, and this is why I fe- this is why I, I liked the detour that we took. I wasn't expecting it 'cause I had no idea about it, the whole Gateshead thing. But I always feel, especially because of what I do for a profession, I always feel it's so much more powerful when it comes out of a story than-

1:24:13 Speaker 1 Sure

1:24:13 Speaker 2 ... when it's just like kind of spitballing theories and-

1:24:16 Speaker 1 Sure

1:24:17 Speaker 2 ... pontificating. I, I relate to that a lot more personally. I think other people do too. But like, you know, that's the beauty of having been exposed to a, to a different world, and not just by force for like three, four weeks, but like immersing yourself in that for three years. And you mentioned earlier that they had to res- they, one of the reasons, one of the beautiful byproducts of you being there was that they learned to respect you, but I'm sure what you also meant was you-

1:24:45 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

1:24:45 Speaker 2 ... learned to respect them.

1:24:46 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:24:47 Speaker 2 And, you know, there could be differences, and there could be serious differences, and there could be things where they th- still think that you're loony, and there are things where you think that they're loony, but that doesn't mean you don't respect each other. And, you know, that, that changes so much about how you view your identity, and that allows, as a, as a Lubavitcher, and that allows so much more honesty about, about what Lubavitch identity means. Because now what Lubavitch identity means are things that really mean something to you, right? You, you've chosen the things that mean something to you. You know, Lubavitch identity can't mean everything. It can't, or it can't be the only thing. It can't be the only identity, right? It has to be a identity, and you've shaped that identity by, by forming it for yourself and, and, and, or, or, or, or, or appreciating it for yourself. And you can only do that when you know what else is there and what differentiates it from the other identities, and with respect and honesty. Um, and I think that's a very fruitful kind of takeaway from the conversation also, is that, um, is that I'm not, I'm not suggesting that everyone should go to Gateshead for three years, and I don't think you are either. I don't think that's feasible. But I, I, I, I can't, I can't, you know, I can't tell you how much I've, I've said this to myself and to others over the years, where like so

1:26:14 Speaker 2 much of, so much of our malady, collective malady as, as like Lubavitchers groping for identity, is this lack of honesty that you're talking about, and this like... Chabad could be f- Chabad identity, Lubavitch identity could be the best identity in the world, but if it's on the, if it's on, if it's only available to the exclusion of everything else, it's not gonna stand up.

1:26:41 Speaker 1 I, um, I take on hobbies. Every, seems like every five, six years, I pick up something else, whether it's a hobby or an interest. Um, and I've noticed that over the last 20 years, the friends that I've stayed in closest contact with are doing similar things.

1:27:05 Speaker 2 Similar hobbies?

1:27:06 Speaker 1 No, no, no.

1:27:06 Speaker 2 Or they're also doing hobbies?

1:27:07 Speaker 1 They're, they're also evolving.

1:27:09 Speaker 2 Ah.

1:27:09 Speaker 1 Um-

1:27:10 Speaker 2 Mm That's very interesting

1:27:12 Speaker 1 Because, because we're not the same as we were when we were 23.

1:27:15 Speaker 2 No, nobody is.

1:27:16 Speaker 1 Um, but some people are. But some people are. Some people have not evolved because-

1:27:21 Speaker 2 Yes, sir

1:27:21 Speaker 1 ... because their entire identity was an identity that was chosen for them.

1:27:26 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:27:27 Speaker 1 Right? And so, um-

1:27:30 Speaker 2 Very interesting

1:27:31 Speaker 1 ... I find myself bored-

1:27:36 Speaker 2 Mm

1:27:36 Speaker 1 ... in talking to them because they're still having the same conversation they were having, we were having 20 years ago, and I'm not having that conversation anymore.

1:27:45 Speaker 2 Right.

1:27:46 Speaker 1 Um-

1:27:47 Speaker 2 And they think sometimes that you're not having it 'cause like you're oof with clarity. You think you're better than us. No, no, I've grown up, and it... I don't think that... I'm not, I'm not regretting the conversation I had with you 20 years ago, but -

1:27:59 Speaker 1 You're not stimulating to me right now

1:28:01 Speaker 2 ... it's 20, it's 20 years now.

1:28:02 Speaker 1 Right. Right.

1:28:02 Speaker 2 It's like, like I'm very happy that I had those moments with you, and we argued about who's the better head shliach and like, you know.

1:28:10 Speaker 1 Yeah, whatever it is. Whatever it is.

1:28:11 Speaker 2 Whatever that was, yeah. And, and like, and like, or even it was like, but at, at, at this... Or even if it was like an idea in Chassidus, like, I'm happy that I had that argument with you then or that discussion with you then in that language.

1:28:22 Speaker 1 Right. Right.

1:28:22 Speaker 2 But for that conversation to continue now-

1:28:24 Speaker 1 Right. It's, it's a different

1:28:24 Speaker 2 ... the language has to be different.

1:28:25 Speaker 1 It's also like a personal e-evolution. Like it's, I was talking to a friend of mine who, who's like lives and breathes fundraising, and I was like, "I don't wanna talk about that with you."

1:28:33 Speaker 2 Right.

1:28:33 Speaker 1 Because I don't... It's something I do, but it's not who I am.

1:28:37 Speaker 2 Right.

1:28:37 Speaker 1 It j- You've made it your identity. But I, I have a friend who, who is a friend who has evolved, who, who's always been an evolutionary person. Maybe he's somebody for you to podcast, uh, Barry Farkash in, in s- in, uh, in Issaquah, Washington. And he became a therapist.

1:28:53 Speaker 2 Really?

1:28:53 Speaker 1 He still shlep and runs a very successful Moysed, but he's a therapist now.

1:28:57 Speaker 2 Huh.

1:28:58 Speaker 1 And we were talking the other day, the other... a couple months ago, and he said this, he said this vort to me, which I really... It's made a deep impact on me, and it was very validating, you know, years later.

1:29:12 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

1:29:12 Speaker 1 Right? Which is, you know, the story of Lot and his two daughters, and they leave Sedom, right? And they go out into the hills and the mountains and, uh, and we know what happens, right? They, they rape their father. Um, and it says, the passuk says that they looked all around and, and there was nothing there, right? It was like Sedom had been destroyed. And so the mefarshim say, "How, how is it possible?" And the answer is, the answer is, is that they, um, the father had told them that Sedom was it.

1:29:45 Speaker 2 Ah.

1:29:47 Speaker 1 And-

1:29:47 Speaker 2 Very interesting

1:29:48 Speaker 1 ... Sedom just got destroyed, so they're like, "Oh my God, that's it. There's n- The, the, the future of humanity begins with us."

1:29:55 Speaker 2 What an interesting critique of nihilism.

1:29:58 Speaker 1 And so what ends up happening is... And so his, the end of his vort is, is that when you teach your kids that this is the only thing, and that thing f- is destroyed, you, you end up having utter destruction. You end up having the daughter, what the daughters did to the father.

1:30:13 Speaker 2 Well, this touches a little bit to what we s- talked about earlier about you going to Gateshead. Not that that's why you went to Gateshead, but there's no question that the few years after Gemara Talmud was Chabad had a very, very cynical few years, you know, be- or nihilistic few years. As one would expect, it was very difficult times, right? And you were, you were-

1:30:36 Speaker 1 I was shielded from it

1:30:37 Speaker 2 ... you were shielded from that. But, you know, going back to your hobby thing, I think we could, you know, we could wrap it up with this, with this, with this conversation. But I mean, that, that's, that's definitely, definitely very relevant to the, to what we were discussing earlier. I mean, I, I think about it often as the subjective state versus the objective state. And I was just talking about it with a friend the other day, where like, you know, there's a famous story of, I think it was Rab, Rabbi Eli Parcher who heard a maamer, and he chazred the maamer. I forget which one of the first rabbeim that he chazred the maamer. The rebbe heard his, the way he understood the maamer, and he said, "No, that's not what I meant when I said it." And Rab, Rabbi Eli said, "No, but that's how I understood it." Like that, that part belongs to me, right? And one of the... You know, and this is something that's discussed ad nauseam in, in Chassidus with all the mashalim of the Rav and the Talmud. But the Rav has an objective truth.

1:31:26 Speaker 1 Mm.

1:31:27 Speaker 2 And the Talmud has a subjective truth.

1:31:29 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:31:29 Speaker 2 And that's always the, the c- the chasm between the two, is the chasm between the objective and the subjective. And I don't know when, and this is definitely something I'd like to get to the bottom of at some point in my lifetime, but I don't know when, but we basically, as a community f- we, we, we just bas... The community f- uh, we, we forgoed the subjective state.

1:31:51 Speaker 1 We were petrified.

1:31:53 Speaker 2 Of dealing with subjective state.

1:31:55 Speaker 1 We became petrified. You know, you know what, that word is an amazing word.

1:31:57 Speaker 2 Oh, petrified as in like, as like, as like-

1:31:59 Speaker 1 We became s- we became undynamic. We became-

1:32:01 Speaker 2 Right

1:32:01 Speaker 1 ... set in stone.

1:32:02 Speaker 2 Like, like a volcano in Pom- Pompeii, yeah. S- s- yeah.

1:32:06 Speaker 1 Right.

1:32:06 Speaker 2 Well, but it, it was like almost like... Or I would, I would even say more the word that I, that I think about is like we became desiccated almost.

1:32:12 Speaker 1 Mm.

1:32:12 Speaker 2 Or like, or just like our whole interior was basically sucked out, and all we were was f- you know, basically these hollow outsides that followed the orders given by the subjective truth.

1:32:27 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:32:27 Speaker 2 'Cause there's this rebbe who has objective truth, like what's even the place for you?

1:32:30 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

1:32:30 Speaker 2 You were saying earlier about on Chabad there's the rebbe and there's everybody else, but that, that doesn't make any sense. Like-

1:32:35 Speaker 1 So I would-

1:32:36 Speaker 2 ... if, if there's a rebbe and there's everybody else, then what's the point of me even getting, becoming better the next day? Like, from that line of there's a rebbe, there's everyone else, is not, to me, a very long ways away from, "And all the Bachar are masturbating."

1:32:49 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah.

1:32:50 Speaker 2 'Cause like why, why not?

1:32:51 Speaker 1 It's not-

1:32:51 Speaker 2 'Cause like I'm... What's the difference this way or the other way? And, and so you're talking about hobbies. Like hobbies, you know, on one hand like, you know, the Bachar would say hobbies are shtusim or whatever.

1:33:02 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:33:04 Speaker 2 Maybe. But let's start with there, and if that, if you wanna take, take it up a level, start with hobbies because that's where you're gonna ... differentiate yourself in a real way 'cause it, it costs time and effort to develop a hobby. That's the thing you discover about hobbies-

1:33:18 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah

1:33:19 Speaker 2 ... is nobody's born enjoying fly fishing.

1:33:21 Speaker 1 Right.

1:33:21 Speaker 2 You gotta really learn how to tie knots, and it's a pain in the tuchus.

1:33:24 Speaker 1 Right.

1:33:24 Speaker 2 Massive pain in the tuchus. But once you get into it, you can't let go of it. Once you know what that means, that kind of subjective d- d- you know, that dedication that, but that's based on subjective desire. Okay, now, n- now pick a hemshucha, okay? A- a- and shift or use that example of subjective interest and, and pr- a- a- and shift it, shift it to Hasidism. And just to end up, I remember when I was in yeshiva very clearly talking to a, a classmate of mine, and he had been stopped on the street. We were in Alter, and he'd been stopped, stopped on the street by, uh, by a reporter. And I think there was, they were doing this survey of young men in New York or something, and the reporter asked him if he has any hobbies. And he said, "No, I don't have any hobbies." And he was discussing, "Do you have any hobbies?" I'm like, "No, I don't. I learn. I don't have hobbies. I learn." And like, "Do you think anybody in yeshiva has any hobbies?" I'm like, "I never heard of anybody with a hobby." And, you know, I mean, it's a whole different conversation that we'd get, we would have to have another time, but there's no question that it, th- there is a connection between having hobbies and, and, and really for being comfortable, either being comfortable with having your own subjective state that is subject to interrogation and to failure and to being wrong, or

1:34:45 Speaker 2 at the very least, being uncomfortable with not having a subjective state.

1:34:50 Speaker 1 Yeah. So this is the... To me, this is a fascinating conversation, and one that I, that I, uh, I get a lot of blank stares. Because, because there's sort of like this... You know, it goes back to that thing that you were saying about, about 30-year-olds who, who you know that are, that are, that are, act like they're 90 because they, they think that's the way it needs to be.

1:35:12 Speaker 2 Right.

1:35:13 Speaker 1 Right? Like fitness has to be un-fun, right? It can't be fun. Like you're having fun at the gym? Like that's not fair, right? It shouldn't be-

1:35:21 Speaker 2 I don't, I don't, I don't even think that's what it is.

1:35:22 Speaker 1 It's a necessary-

1:35:23 Speaker 2 I think they feel, I think they feel that if they, for them to intervene in their own fitness is somehow messes with the whole idea that like God's in control and like life is just how it is. Life... Like in yeshiva, there was always this weird kind of contradiction where on one hand we don't care about getting a six-pack, but whoever has a six-pack is super cool.

1:35:44 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

1:35:46 Speaker 2 It's like way to say-

1:35:47 Speaker 1 But I'm not even going in that direction. I was, I was going a little bit different with this, but I want to say two things. One is about one of the hobbies that I picked up and, and unfortunately COVID kind of killed it, which was I, I got really into like studying about the Holocaust.

1:36:03 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:36:04 Speaker 1 You know, which is something that we weren't taught. It's not part of our curriculum.

1:36:07 Speaker 2 No.

1:36:08 Speaker 1 Um-

1:36:09 Speaker 2 Uh, Holocaust and Chabad are not very-

1:36:11 Speaker 1 Right. Right

1:36:11 Speaker 2 ... yeah.

1:36:12 Speaker 1 Because we're Russian.

1:36:14 Speaker 2 Uh, yeah, yeah. Main-

1:36:15 Speaker 1 There's a lot of reasons

1:36:16 Speaker 2 ... mainly, mainly also because it's complicated.

1:36:20 Speaker 1 Well, theologically it's complicated, yeah. But it was something that I really delved into for a while, um, and, and read, I read a whole bunch of books and, and, and really started talking to people about it and, and engaging with it and trying to understand. Um, but I wanna get back to hobbies in a minute, but, but something that you said earlier just before that triggered this, um, which I always liked, and I don't know why it didn't get more play because maybe it's wrong. I don't know. But I liked it. I read this blog back when blogs were a thing. So we're probably going back, it has to be 15 years.

1:36:52 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:36:53 Speaker 1 And the guy writes, he's a rabbi, and he writes this blog post, and he goes, "Why..." He says, "I know Lubavitch. I was around the Rebbe. I know the Rebbe. Like it's shocking to me that the Lubavitch Rebbe didn't name a successor. How can it be? How you talking? It, it just doesn't fit with the p- who the Rebbe was." He says, "I think it was by design." He writes in this blog post, "I think it was by design. The Rebbe didn't name a successor on purpose. Why? 'Cause the Rebbe had successors. The Rebbe had thousands of successors. He had all the shluchim and the shluchas. Those were his successors." And he goes on to say, "Let me explain to you." He says, "If you look at Rebbes, it's like any p- it's like any power. When the new guy comes, what does the n- what does the new king automatically do? They, they, they consolidate power."

1:37:43 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:37:44 Speaker 1 In the Hasidic world, what does that look like? Let's look at Ger, new takanos, right? He says, "The Rebbe knew that a new Rebbe would come, would consolidate power, would stifle what he had built with the shluchim."

1:38:00 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:38:00 Speaker 1 That creativity, that you are my, you are me in Hanover, New Hampshire. You are my representative. You shlich other ‑‑ can I say all that good stuff? But a new guy is gonna come, and he's gonna, he's gonna strangle you.

1:38:13 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

1:38:13 Speaker 1 He's gonna demand, he's gonna want, he's gonna... It's not gonna, it's not gonna work with what this unbelievable, beautiful thing that I've created with you guys. And the guy writes, he finishes, he goes, "That's why I think there's no next Rebbe." Now, the Darshv Nicks and the Dar, you know, whatever they're gonna say, they're gonna say. I don't really care. It doesn't interest me. Um, because oftentimes they don't make sense to me. I don't understand cer- Like I still to the day don't understand why we don't go visit the Kvarim of the Tzemach Tzedek and the Alter Rebbe and the... It's a, it's a, it's, it's a dumb th- but I don't wanna go there. A student wrote a blog post about me once, and he writes that Rabbi Gray is the Rebbe in Hanover, New Hampshire, and I remember being totally fine with reading that. I showed it to friends, and they like bristled. They were like so uncomfortable with it. I was like, "Why? But it's true." Like isn't this what... Yeah, yeah, but we don't say it. It's like the six-pack without the six-pack.

1:39:09 Speaker 2 Oh, okay.

1:39:10 Speaker 1 Right? Like it's like we want it, but we're not willing to do anything about it.

1:39:15 Speaker 2 Yeah, because, because it, it, there's basically, you know, it... I'm putting it in very academic terms, so it, it kind of kills, it kills the, the vitality of what's going on and like how messy it is. But the line of subject and object is something that, that, that we have a very big problem with, you know. Again, I'm, I'm... To say that that's our issue sounds like, like, like we're dissecting a frog in a, in a laboratory. But to me, like almost every time I have a conversation about, you know, what's going on and what's going right and what's going wrong, usually w- when we're discussing what's going wrong, it always comes down fundamentally to that questio-

1:39:57 Speaker 1 Mm

1:39:57 Speaker 2 ... to that issue of subject versus object.

1:39:59 Speaker 1 Mm.

1:39:59 Speaker 2 Because whether it's what we're discussing earlier, like the lack of interiority, the, the, the fear of developing yourself, like w- like so it must be at the cheshbon of, of Rambam.

1:40:10 Speaker 1 Right. Right.

1:40:11 Speaker 2 Um, you know, so you're, you're doing fitness? Wait a second. What's that? That's of something else. And, you know, this idea that like, if y- obviously you're not a tzadik, obviously you're, you're wasting time with your life, but you're not consecrating it in an hour at the gym. You're just wasting it on the phone following some nonsense. But that's okay because it's not a statement of subjectivity. It's, it's- Mm-hmm ... just like a, "Okay, I'm not as good as I should be," but it's not like you're not celebrating your subjectivity. Like- Mm-hmm ... the other day I got a message from somebody who I haven't seen for years, and, uh, yeah, he like, he saw some thing that I wrote or something that I posted about at the gym or whatever, and he's like, "The Yevanim in the times of Hanukkah would be proud of you." So, so I- And then he got o- then he got offended that I'm like, "Bro, like, like, what's with the bitterness?" And he's w- He pushed- And he's like, he's like, "What do you mean?" Yeah. I'm like, "What do you mean?" Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm 20 years out of yeshiva. I, I don't live- They wanna lob grenades and they don't wanna take it back. No, it's not like I don't live in a world where you calling me a Greek Hellenizer is just a joke. Like, I'm not in that world anymore. We don't, we don't throw those kind of terms. Like, you know, "Oh, I

1:41:21 Speaker 2 was just joking." No, I mean, this is real stuff, you know? And, you know, so whether it's that issue of the, this fear of having, of like admitting and acknowledging and celebrating and, and, and encouraging your interiority, that's an issue. The issue, the, the, the, the challenge of realizing that the Rebbe spoke in absolute truths, and that, and in objective truths, and that in subjective relative terms, everything gets messy in a hurry. And how do we translate the Rebbe's message into a subjective world without, on one hand, diluting his message and making it all kind of feel-goody and modern-y and, you know, whatever, new agey, but at the same time, you know, making it something that we can relate to and something that we can live with, and something that becomes vibrant in our lives. It's always gonna be that issue. That is the crux of the issue, in my opinion. You know, I... One of the very interesting things that I, that I, uh- What time is it, by the way? It's 12:50. Okay. We have an organization, we have a people that if you were to ask to identi- one, the biggest identifier of a Lubavitcher, of a Chabadnik, is, would be, I would argue, is we are there to challenge people to change their lives. Like, we, this is what we do best. It's, it's like even, I'm not talking about shluchim, I'm talking about this was the Rebbe... Like, you're in the airport, you're waiting for a flight. You see a

1:43:01 Speaker 2 guy that, you go over to a guy, "Excuse me, are you Jewish?" Put on tefillin. Why, why are we doing it? Yes, the mitzvah's important, but th- there's this whole... We re- on a college campus, what am I tr- what am I here for? I'm here to ins- challenge kids to change their lives, right? Mm-hmm. When was the last time we changed our own lives? Mm. Have we ever changed our own lives? Mm. And it's not so easy, right? So, so you can't become frum. Like, you can, but you can't become frum. You were born frum. You're not gonna have that, that moment of black and white clear before and after moment where like, "Okay, I wasn't frum and now I am frum." Yeah. You can become frumer, but it's always gonna be murky. So I've asked, so, so, so for example, so I've asked friends like, "Okay, have you ever learnt just because a new language?" Right. Most people will say like, "Well, no." Hell no. Hell no. No. Well, okay, I know you. You've ne- you've always been, you've always weighed 150 pounds, so you've never actually had to lose 100 pounds of weight and keep it off, which, which I would consider that to be life-changing. Yes. When, when a secular kid who's eating shrimp and going to baseball games on Shabbos and doing other things says, "I'm now going to stop eating all these good foods, I'm going to stop engaging with it, and I'm going to literally change my life."

1:44:14 Speaker 2 Like, so that's what we're trying to... But we've never done it ourselves. Uh-huh. So, h- so that to me, in part, is where... There's a lot of reasons why one should do hobbies. It keeps you young, keeps you fresh, it keeps you nimble, it's, it's creating your neural pathways, all that good stuff. Keeps you humble. Keeps you humble, 'cause you're gonna be bad at... I, I picked up s- uh, skateboarding. Oh. This might be my new thing. Cancel the video. Um, it's very humbling. Yeah. But the fitness thing, this is, that's like my first love, right? That was like the thing that like, the greatest gift. When did you pick that up? So CrossFit started 10 years ago. Cross... You started CrossFit? Yeah. I s- CrossFit started a lot earlier ... I started, I started fitness 10 years ago. Really? Yeah. Until then, no, no fitness? I, I played sports as a kid. Right. But like I said, but like- Yeah, like everybody. I turned- Then you, then you neglected it ... I, I turned 21, 22, right? Got married, moved here, and that was it. I was done. I, I lived, I, I, I entered into a sedentary lifestyle where I was sitting at my computer, meeting with students. I would go snowboarding occasionally, but I gave that up. I, I just decided I didn't like it. And so at 32 years old, you know, after living here almost for 10 years, I walk in, I go to see my doctor, and my doctor's

1:45:33 Speaker 2 like, "This, things are not going in the right direction for you. You know, you're putting on weight. Um, y- your, your, your, um, your, um, your diet's terrible." Mm-hmm. I was smoking, you know, two, two cigars a day. Two cigars a day. At a, at a, at a certain point. Mm-hmm. I would sit and smoke a cigar and drink, you know, a liter of Coke- Huh ... over the course of two hours. It was my greatest pleasure 'Cause you have a beautiful porch Oh, I di- didn't have this porch back then. This is, we, we've been in the squatters only for five years. Okay. You had another porch, I'm sure. I had a porch, but- It's a beauti- it's a beautiful place to smoke a cigar. As this was, this was, I, um, I wasn't, I wasn't even paying attention to what I was eating. My cholesterol went through the roof. Right. And I go to the doctor, and the doctor's like, "You gotta make some changes or else..." And I was like, "Why? I f- I f- ha, I'm fine. I feel fine." Like, he's like- Yeah ... "But you're not fine." So I had a friend- You had a pretty perceptive doctor. Most doctors don't care about that age. I had, I had a friend who lived here, um, who owned the fitness club. Uh-huh. Who was a donor, Dartmouth alum, and he said, "Go see my people at the club." And I was like, "Ah, the..." And the doctor says, "Go take

1:46:46 Speaker 2 a walk." You know, for a guy that played, used to play six hours straight of basketball, like, taking a walk, like- Yeah ... what did I know? Like, no, those are for old women. Right. Uh, so about six months went by, and, um, I remember it was a Friday afternoon. I was at the liquor store getting probably, I don't know, whatever, and, uh, I knew the gym was around the cor- I said, "Let me go in." I said, "I'll pop in," and, uh, I meet this guy, Chris Acker, and I said, "Hey, you know, I'm really good buddies with Joe Ash, and he told me to come in, and..." So he's like, "Oh, great." I was like, "Yeah, just show me around the place." Right? So he walks me around this facility, and, uh, you know, it literally would be like taking an alien and showing him all these books. And, like, he was like, "I, I don't know what this is." Right? I saw machines, and I saw more machines and more machines, and I was like, "All right. Whatever." So he's like, "Why don't you come back for a fitness consult?" "Okay, fine." So I come back the next week for a fitness consult. Um, this woman, Cassie, did this fitness consult, um, and, uh, two hours later she says to me, she says, "Okay. So you're, you're... I don't see people like you very often. Like, you're on a little bit of an anomaly because you either score zero or you score

1:47:56 Speaker 2 100. You've got nothing in the middle." She's like, "Raw strength and mobility, you score crazy off the charts for somebody like you, but you have zero stamina." "Zero." I was like, "Okay." She goes, "You need a personal trainer." I remember those words coming out of her mouth, and, like, like the walls of, of, of, of, you know, the Philistine walls with, with Shimshon are coming down. I just saw dollar signs just flowing. I knew, personal trainer, I don't have that money. Right. I'm not gonna pay for that. Like, I called... She says, "You need a personal trainer." I called up Joe. I said, "What are you trying to do to me? You just trying to make money off me, Joe?" He goes, "Well, was that what Cassie said?" I said, "Yeah, she says I need a personal trainer." I said, so I said to her, I said, "Why can't you, you just show me how to use the machines?" She goes, "That's not how that works." Joe says, "Look, Rabbi, use a trainer. If you feel that it was a total waste of money, I'll give you back every dollar." I said, "Okay." So I said to her, I was like, "Give me somebody who will educate me, because I'm not gonna pay for this in perpetuity." Right. So she gives me this guy. I show up the Wednesday, and this guy shakes my hand, and he goes, "Hi, my name's Loughren." And I was like, "Oh, God. Here's a guy who has a first

1:49:15 Speaker 2 name as a la- his last name as a first name." Right. He was this big guy. Right. He's this big Gentile. Yeah. I was like, "All right." So, uh, begins, it, it, that was the beginning of the most beautiful relationship. Um, he's literally my best friend here. Uh, turns out his wife is Jewish. His kids are Jewish. His son's bris was right there. Right there. That's where the ki- That, that's where the sandek sat. I was the sandek for his son's bris. Wow. I mean, you understa- like, crazy. We started this fitness program for Shluchim. It was him and me. We would talk for hours about this. Has it taken off? We, we, we've had iterations of it. Um, it's changed lives. It has changed lives. Wow. Um, he came in, uh, probably a month into our f- training sessions, and he, he looked really tired. And I said, "Why are you so tired?" He says, "Well, I was up all night reading about you guys." I said, "What do you mean?" He goes, "Well, I started reading about the Rebbe." And I start, and he says, and I said, "And?" He goes, "Well, why are you guys all fat?" I said, "What do you mean?" He goes, "Well, I Google imaged Chabad rabbis." He goes, "You're all fat." So he says, "So you're doing the Lord's work, but you're not taking care of your bodies. Like, how does that..." He's like, "That doesn't compute." Yeah. So I was like, "Loughren," like, "you're talk... Like,

1:50:33 Speaker 2 this is amazing." So we, we, we've been, like, best friends for 10 years. Um, so he, we would have, like, these really intense conversations as we were working out, and I started seeing all these incredible corollaries between, um, what I'm learning about, uh, what... Like, I'll give you one example. What is kedusha? How do you defi- what is kodesh? Kodesh means holy. Okay, well, what does that mean? Separate. Separate. Ah. So, so separate means intentionality. Right. So now, all of a sudden, snatching 200 pounds is the most separate movement you can do because you have to be totally focused. Right. If you're not focused, the, the, not only is the barbell not going up, it might go up and injure you dearly. Severely, yeah. And so all of a sudden, you learn how to be super hyper-focused and separate for three, four, five, six, eight seconds. Right. And so to me, that all of a sudden defined what I had lear- been learning about kedusha for 30 years in yeshivas with the mashpiyim and the rosh yeshivas and the gaonim ha'olam who could never explain to me what kedusha actually is. Mm-hmm. And now, a barbell and a goy explained to me in like this what kedusha is. Well, look, it, to me, it comes back... I mean, look, you, you just opened up a Pandora's box of, like, I, I could talk for, as anybody that knows me knows, I could talk for three hours now about this topic. Um, I've been doing it

1:51:53 Speaker 2 for much less than you have, but, like, I've, I had the same kind of experience and, you know, of, of... I wasn't really guilted into it by my doctor, but it was, you know, a cousin of mine, actually, who was very, very much older than me, very, very overweight ... told me that he had started to work out just to be able to do some basic functions, like to just- Walk up a set of stairs ... to basically, to basically not p-pass away. Right. What was scary to me was, is that I had pictures of him at my age where he was skinnier than me, and he told me, like, "It doesn't just happen one day. It, it gra- happens gradually." And, uh, you know, as I've since learned, it has to do with decreasing muscle mass- Mm-hmm ... and all kinds of things that we- Mm-hmm. But I don't, you know, so it kind of got me into it, but then once I got into it, I had the same experience that you have. All of a sudden, you begin to see things in a much more visceral, immediate way that, like, your whole life you were grasping for, like, what does this mean? And all of a sudden you see it, you see it in the f- you see it in the flesh, literally. Um, but to, to kind of tie it into our general conversation, what, what I love about it is how humbling it is. Mm. How humbling it is, and

1:53:06 Speaker 2 that does tie into what we were dis-discussing earlier. You know, like, the, the, the mentality of like, "Well, why do I need to work out? That's what goyim do," or, you know, "So are you a bodybuilder?" Or like, you know, "Do you learn Rambam?" Kind of thing. Like, you're, you're, you're assuming somehow that you're higher than this thing that millions of people need to do just to function. They've come to a realization that for them to function, they need to develop some basic level of strength and some basic level of mobility and some basic level of heart strength, right? And that's, it's a n- it's a non-nego- it's a non-negotiable for them. You've decided sum-summarily that you don't need it. Based on what, right? You don't have a heart like everybody else does? Like, you don't have, you don't have muscles like everybody else does? No, you've just chosen to ignore this reality that's staring you in the face, right? And that goes back to what we discussed earlier, like, if somebody... Like, to me, it's, and, and, and add a, add one more layer to it. Like, I have friends who work in yeshivas and, and teach in yeshivas, and you'll bring up the idea of bringing it into yeshiva, and they're like, "Well, we're afraid if we bring it into yeshiva, maybe it'll take away from bakum, like learning or whatever." And it's like, how weak is your learning? A, how weak is your learning that you're scared that a little bit of

1:54:29 Speaker 2 physical activity is going to somehow throw the whole balance off? And B, how can you expect young teenagers to at all move about in their life and make, like you said, make changes in their life, make improvements in their life on this lofty spiritual level when they've never experienced that on a much more basic level? Like, how are we skipping 10 steps here? But so I don't want to go into a whole screed about fitness. I just think it comes back to this, what you were talking about earlier, that, you know, what I've learned, and, you know, maybe it's ironic 'cause I don't think anybody has ever called me a humble guy, and like, I don't think that's been a strength of mine. You know what I mean? I, I certainly have never thought of myself as a humble guy, but life has taught me humility, and, um, this, you know, weightlifting in particular has taught me humility in a very, like, visual, uh, physical way. It's like the fact that you think that you should be able to lift X amount of weight, go tell that to the metal. It doesn't care, right? What you have in your head, it doesn't care. Like, either you can or you can't, and you're either gonna respect the weight or you're not, and it forces you to become a lot more cognizant of your limitations. It forces you to become a lot more cognizant of the cost of change, and it forces you to be, uh, to,

1:56:00 Speaker 2 to become more cognizant of, of the choices you make. Yeah. And that to me is, is a perfect metaphor for, for the advantages of humility when you direct it towards identity. Uh, and for me, I think that's a great way to end, unless you want to add something. Yeah. It, it, it just, it, I think it full circle goes back to this idea of well-roundedness, you know, how we t-talked about and how we're trying to be well-rounded. Um, lear- it comes down to appreciation. It comes down to appreciating something. I'm not, I'm not saying everybody has to lift like I lift. No. But people need to appreciate, and, and, and there are a lot of worthy causes. There are a lot of things worthy of appreciation, and, and as humans, the more things we can appreciate, the better off we'll be. You know, uh, you look at issues in the, in the Jewish world, I mean, like agunah, for example. I mean, that's a major issue, but yet most people don't appreciate it because- Mm-hmm ... it doesn't affect them. "My marriage is fine," or whatever. Uh, but if we can learn, and, and that's, and that's what this is. This is about being a lifelong learner, uh, a lifelong student, learning to appreciate things. Um, you know, I sort of think about it is, is if you're not, you've got a gun, and it's got a chamber for one bullet. My gun's got 30 chambers, you know? I, I, I'm better prepared. I just

1:57:28 Speaker 2 see that as that. And, and so my sub... Again, it goes back to that subjectivity that we've talked about. Um, but if your identity is only one thing, and you've sold out on that, it's gonna be really hard. Mm. And so it's more work, and, uh, I, I see that. You know, I evangelize on these things, uh, you know, not so much CrossFit anymore, but, like, physical fitness, and I, and I've seen a difference since I've started 10 years ago and today in what's going on in our, in, in our community. The, it is a shift in the right, that, in the right direction. Um, so I'm hoping, I'm, I'm hopeful that this shift can happen in other places also, so. Yeah. Amen. Amen. Thanks for, uh- This was, this was great. I had a blast. Thanks for doing this. Yeah. We're gonna do it, we're gonna do it again. We, we, uh, we, we, we have to. We're gonna do it again. The music for this podcast comes from the album Repentance Doors by Oren Dror and Nadav Bahar, and is used with their permission.