Ep. 60 // "The Ability to Change" w/ Rabbi Chaim Shaul Bruk

00:00 Speaker 1 I had a call a few weeks ago about a, a member of Anash whose 11-year-old child was attempting suicide, and you get off a phone call like that after forty... I was in LaGuardia Airport. You get off a phone call like that, you're like all bets are off.

00:12 Speaker 2 Yeah, man.

00:12 Speaker 1 So the business of, of changing perspective-

00:16 Speaker 2 Right

00:16 Speaker 1 ... and recognizing that we have to go back to the core of, of basic middos, of, of basic ahavat achim. No one should have to wait till they're 35 or 30 and have gone through infertility and adoption and raising children with special needs and being on shlichus in, in Arey Asar to really awaken and realize that change is doable.

00:41 Speaker 2 Welcome to Homesick for Lubavitch, a podcast where we explore Lubavitch identity in the year 2025. My name is Benji Afson, and I will be your host. Let's begin. Alrighty. I am here-- We are here in Bozeman, Montana with Rabbi Brook.

01:07 Speaker 1 L'chaim.

01:07 Speaker 2 Um, l'chaim v'bracha. Rabbi Chaim Shaul Brook, and, uh, it's been a, it's been a whirlwind few days of, uh, driving around the state and, um, trying to capture a little bit the essence of what's been going on here the past 18 years, and, uh, yeah, it's, uh... I, I remember when you first went out, not that I was close t-to it, but I remember hearing about it, and I remember the, the meme of, you know, Chaim Shaul going to Montana, becoming a shliach. He-- Chaim Shaul ne- they, they made a stage for him to be a shliach, and, you know, the typical kind of gossip or whatever. Um, but it's, it's nice to, to actually see it and, and, and big hatikvah to-- for what you, what you've been doing, and we'll get to that in a moment. But, uh, that's what, that's, that's what brought me here, and, um, the Olam demanded. Um, why they have a right to demand, I have no idea, but they demanded -

02:04 Speaker 1 They wanted to see if I'm homesick

02:05 Speaker 2 ... a podcast. "No, y-you have to do a podcast." "Why do I have to?" "Whatever, it has to."

02:10 Speaker 1 You know, when, when I moved out, Chesky Wolf, my classmate-

02:13 Speaker 2 Yeah, sure

02:13 Speaker 1 ... my friend said to me, he says, "You know, Chaim Shaul, when the New York Post is done writing the articles, you know you have to, have to actually move there." "The joke's gonna be on you, you know? Yeah, shliach, Montana-"

02:24 Speaker 2 Yeah.

02:24 Speaker 1 "... but there's, there's a reality that's gonna kick in."

02:27 Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.

02:28 Speaker 1 Here we are 18 years later.

02:30 Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Look, uh, look, s-some, some things, some things start off, some things start off as a joke, but then, uh, but then they get real.

02:40 Speaker 1 It was a good joke.

02:41 Speaker 2 It was a good joke. Yeah, yeah. You know, w-what's a, what's a price that you're willing to pay for a good joke? Could be a lot.

02:47 Speaker 1 That question could be answered 18 years ago- ... and it's a very different answer today, and I'm not sure those answers line up at all.

02:53 Speaker 2 Yeah.

02:53 Speaker 1 Um, you know, there's the price you're willing to pay for yourself. There's the w-the price you're willing to pay for your marriage, and then there's the price you're willing to pay for your children, and that's a whole different subject which-

03:03 Speaker 2 We'll, we'll get into it

03:04 Speaker 1 ... I'm told that, that this has been discussed before, but, uh, about the idea of what our children, the price our children pay in the realm of shlichus.

03:12 Speaker 2 Uh, oh, you're saying on the podcast?

03:13 Speaker 1 Yeah.

03:13 Speaker 2 Yeah, but, uh, look, we can hear from somebody else. You know, we don't, uh, we don't have to only hear from, from me or whoever else. Uh, but we'll, we'll see where it goes. But before we continue the conversation, um, you know, whoever listens to this podcast and enjoys this podcast, uh, would be wonderful if you could drop a like on, uh, the platform you're listening it-- you're listening, you're listening to it. Um, it really does help with the algorithm, and if you really enjoy the podcast and, uh, you, uh, if you really enjoy the podcast, we'd much appreciate if, um, you contribute to the podcast.

03:51 Speaker 1 I was gonna say, make a donation, guys.

03:53 Speaker 2 There you go. He, he's a fundraiser. If, if you-

03:55 Speaker 1 He's beating around the bush.

03:56 Speaker 2 If you-

03:56 Speaker 1 The guy needs money.

03:57 Speaker 2 Nothing. If you really appreciate the podcast, please go to hflpodcast.com/donate. Somebody today told me he didn't know that was an option. Okay, so now you know there's an option. Um, let's see if it makes a difference. All righty. Now to, now, now to the real business, uh, or to the pleasure. Um, yeah, so, so we're-- I, I've seen over the past few days quite a bit of, of... Not quite a bit, a little bit of what, of what you're up to here and, and a little bit the, the u- the difference or, or what makes Montana special. But for people who weren't here or haven't been here and are listening and watching the podcast now, why don't you take us back to... Actually, why are we starting with shlichus? Why don't you take us back to growing up in Crown Heights? Let's, let's go to the beginning.

04:47 Speaker 1 So I grew up-- I was born in Tiferyomim Bais. I was born in 1981, December of '81. Uh, my first time that I got to the Rebbe, I was four months old in Alfes in Tiferyomim Bais. I don't know what Godforsaken hour my mother schlepped me on the line. I think it was in the wee hours of the morning by the time her turn came around.

05:05 Speaker 2 Your mother brought you?

05:06 Speaker 1 Yeah.

05:06 Speaker 2 Oh, 'cause you're a baby.

05:07 Speaker 1 I was four months old.

05:07 Speaker 2 Right. Yeah, yeah, your mother's bringing you.

05:09 Speaker 1 Um, and the first, you know, I was 12 years old at Gimel Tammuz. My bar mitzvah was Kis Lev Nun Hey. So the first 10 years or nine and a half years of my life was with the Rebbe pre-gim- pre-chazal and other.

05:23 Speaker 2 Right.

05:24 Speaker 1 Incredible years. I know everyone has a sob story about their childhood, or a lot of people do. I really don't. Um, I loved growing up in Crown Heights. I loved going to the cheder. It had its flaws. It had its... You know, there were better years with better teachers and-

05:39 Speaker 2 Right

05:39 Speaker 1 ... some years with not so better teachers.

05:41 Speaker 2 Right.

05:42 Speaker 1 But overall, I had an incredible experience. I had great friends. Uh, probably my top-- From my top 10 closest friends, eight of them are probably from those years growing up, meaning childhood friends that I've known now for 38 years.

05:56 Speaker 2 Right.

05:56 Speaker 1 Um, the streets of Crown Heights were different. They weren't cleaner. The 770 didn't talk less. Uh, not everything was hunky dory back then, but There was something incredible just growing up with the Rebbe. And, you know, we were not such big ‹Hachsadim›, so we did go for every ‹kudras›, and we did get every opportunity. We didn't go to dollars every Sunday, but we went enough. And I wasn't, you know, my mother-- my parents were not, you know, the ones that... We didn't live in simhas seven to eighteen hours a day, and my father had the... You know, we used to daven Shabbos morning at the Agudas shul on Crown Street so that we can have a normal sedar Shabbos before my father ran to Fabregian.

06:34 Speaker 2 Mm.

06:34 Speaker 1 So Friday night, we'd daven in simhas seven to Shabbos day in Agudah, then Fabregian. But I didn't say that Fabregian when I, you know, I was seven and eight years old. One of my, uh... But, but the big things, hakafos, uh, you know, Yomim Tovim, the saying Agudah by the Yomim Tovim, like Rosh Hashanah and, and, uh, Simchas Torah by the end of the Yom-Yom Tov. Those are memories that are etched in my mind. I live with it every day, and therefore I was o-- I was just old enough for Chabad other to break my heart, and obviously for Gimel Tammuz to take a, a different type of toll. There's the toll that Gimel Tammuz took on the Bachrim that were, you know, twenty-five years old. There was the toll it took on the twenty-year-olds, and then there was the hope that was shattered on so many levels for the, you know, ten to fourteen-year-olds who were really tag-alongs. You know, we tagged along to Beth Israel Hospital. We tagged along to, to, uh, the beepers going off, and you know, we didn't-- not all of us had beepers, so our older brothers had beepers, and we ran along. And then that world came to a crashing halt, and it, it didn't... I, I don't, I don't wanna use the word trauma 'cause it's overused all the time, but it affected us deeply. Uh, I'm grateful to my parents right after Gimel Tammuz, they did not cancel my trip that summer. Uh-

07:46 Speaker 2 To camp?

07:47 Speaker 1 No. I was going to South Africa to spend a month with my cousins, the Goldmans in Johannesburg.

07:51 Speaker 2 Right.

07:51 Speaker 1 And I was for ‹schleushim›. I was in Johannesburg. I still remember. I believe Rabbi Lipsky or Rabbi Goldman.

07:56 Speaker 2 So how old were you again?

07:57 Speaker 1 Twelve.

07:57 Speaker 2 Twelve. So before bar mitzvah.

07:58 Speaker 1 It was the summer before my bar-- my bar mitzvah was in Kislev.

08:01 Speaker 2 And so your parents said, "Just go on with life."

08:04 Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, they didn't say go on. They, they... You know, our, our... I had first cousins who were Bachrim who didn't leave the cemetery, the, the Old Montefiore Cemetery near the oil for weeks on end. And I don't know if I... It's not a blame game. It is people did what they did. I needed to-- or they felt that I should just continue with my summer plans. And I'm grateful that they did that.

08:27 Speaker 2 Right.

08:28 Speaker 1 I'm, I'm not sure what keeping me around would've done different and, and what, what, you know, infusing sadness, superficial sadness from the outside in is not really a thing.

08:38 Speaker 2 Right.

08:39 Speaker 1 And my parents did wanna keep some level of stability and sanity in our lives. The bar mitzvah was, was, was tough to pull off. It was in the year of avelus, and we took the year of avelus of Tofshin and Dalet and Tzin and He seriously. Um, but my parents, um, looked back at some of the instructions that the Rebbe had given my grandparents, Shimon and Esther Goldman, about various simchas and decided that we're gonna still have a proper bar mitzvah simcha celebration with music and everything at Lubavitch Yeshiva, which again, I'm grateful for. But that was the era in which I grew up. So, you know, nine and a half years pre, pre-Chabad other, uh, two years of strugg- along with everyone else going through the whole gezunt era, which in itself, you know, in retrospect, some people look back at the gezunt years of the Rebbe's health, you know, struggling, you know, with all these mixed emotions about, you know, what we could have done better with the Rebbe's health, what we could have done better with this or with that. And everyone has philosophies from here to Timbuktu. And actually, over the last five to six years, I've looked back at those two years in particular with a deep sadness, not necessarily because of what the Rebbe was enduring, but because of the infighting and the machlokes that was imposed on us young people.

10:02 Speaker 2 Yeah.

10:02 Speaker 1 I, I, I mean, I don't have a particular person to blame. I have an entire movement that I have challenged about this issue, that we were twelve years old in school, eleven years old, and we were arguing and fighting, taking sides on a machlokes that was so out of whack, so out of our wheelhouse.

10:21 Speaker 2 Right.

10:22 Speaker 1 We had no business even talking about, certainly not having opinions about, but we all did, and it was grotesque.

10:30 Speaker 2 Yeah. It doesn't sound like you're saying one side was right and one side was wrong. Like for-

10:33 Speaker 1 For years, obviously, I thought-

10:35 Speaker 2 Right

10:35 Speaker 1 ... my side was a hundred percent right.

10:37 Speaker 2 Right.

10:37 Speaker 1 And by the way, from an analytical, from, from a, uh, from a historical perspective, I do believe there was one side that was more right than the other.

10:47 Speaker 2 Right.

10:47 Speaker 1 But how things were, how, how we went about things-

10:50 Speaker 2 Right

10:50 Speaker 1 ... and the divide that it created and the animosity that was induced was not only unhealthy, you know. It's one of those things I, I've thought about a lot because if you read, and I do occasionally on a Shabbos afternoon, I pull out a Likutei Debarim or I was with my wife for our eighteenth wedding anniversary last year. We went, we went away on vacation. You're allowed to say that the shluchim sometimes go on vacation. Um, we could talk, we could, we could analy-

11:13 Speaker 2 People have, people have problems with it?

11:16 Speaker 1 Uh, yes.

11:17 Speaker 2 It's more my, my question was, where do you go on vacation when you live in Montana? How do you get away from Montana? Like, where, where do you go to relax?

11:23 Speaker 1 Where, where I go is is not going on the podcast.

11:26 Speaker 2 All right. We'll say that.

11:27 Speaker 1 But I need to have some secret places I can still go to. Uh-

11:30 Speaker 2 No, I'm just trying to understand it. People go to vacation to relax.

11:33 Speaker 1 The one, the one thing we don't have in Montana is ocean, so we try to go somewhere where there's an ocean.

11:37 Speaker 2 Fair.

11:37 Speaker 1 We have mountains, we have rivers, we have lakes.

11:38 Speaker 2 Fair.

11:39 Speaker 1 We don't have oceans. But-

11:40 Speaker 2 And people. And people.

11:42 Speaker 1 I go to places without people too. Yeah.

11:43 Speaker 2 With beaches without people.

11:44 Speaker 1 I, I don't wanna see peop... Be-beaches, you can't go if there's people. Doesn't-

11:47 Speaker 2 Right

11:47 Speaker 1 ... defeats the whole purpose.

11:48 Speaker 2 Right.

11:48 Speaker 1 I'm a Frum Jew.

11:49 Speaker 2 All right. Keep it a secret then.

11:51 Speaker 1 But, but the, the, you know... So I was away with my wife, and punk that week in the Chayenu, Shleishah Prakim Chayenu, they had in the back the translation of part of Yichudzu.

12:03 Speaker 2 Right. Yeah, yeah.

12:03 Speaker 1 And Shabbos afternoon, I'm sitting and reading it 'cause, you know, when you finish all the parts of the Chayenu that are obligatory, you get desperate-

12:10 Speaker 2 Right

12:10 Speaker 1 ... in the six hours left to Shabbos.

12:11 Speaker 2 You didn't bring a Mishpacha magazine with you?

12:14 Speaker 1 It's over, it makes the suitcase over with. You know, they're so heavy, the magazines these days.

12:18 Speaker 2 I, I hear the Mishpacha magazine sets off the security in the airport.

12:22 Speaker 1 It should.

12:23 Speaker 2 It, it-

12:24 Speaker 1 Um-

12:25 Speaker 2 It's been flagged by the TSA.

12:27 Speaker 1 Along with Ami.

12:28 Speaker 2 Yes.

12:29 Speaker 1 Someone came from Peisach. My sister was here at Peisach. She, she put up-- She brought out the magazines for Yom Tov. I'm like, "That's a suitcase in itself."

12:35 Speaker 2 Yes.

12:36 Speaker 1 "Meretzayit, who is buying for this stuff?"

12:37 Speaker 2 Yes, it does not belong. It does not belong.

12:39 Speaker 1 Although in the Ami magazine for Peisach, as a side note, there was an article about Menachem Zamba.

12:43 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

12:44 Speaker 1 Uh, the great, uh, Rosh Yeshiva from-

12:46 Speaker 2 Sure

12:46 Speaker 1 ... Poland who was at the Rebbe's chasuna.

12:48 Speaker 2 Right.

12:48 Speaker 1 And I, I was this close to writing a letter to the editor, that they wrote a six, seven-page historical biography of Reb Menachem Zamba, Hashem Yikom Damay. Um, and there was no mention. There was conne-- Uh, his connections with everyone except to the Friediker Rebbe, and there's many letters in the Friediker Rebbe's igros.

13:03 Speaker 2 Right.

13:04 Speaker 1 And that, that he was at the Rebbe's chasuna and that... So I decided I don't have time to write letters to the editor of the Ami magazine.

13:10 Speaker 2 Yeah.

13:11 Speaker 1 But I'm just saying there was something to read in the magazine. I just don't get it.

13:14 Speaker 2 Sure.

13:14 Speaker 1 So I was reading the Chayei, back to the Chayei.

13:16 Speaker 2 Yeah.

13:17 Speaker 1 And I'm reading the Sichos, and it talks about why we get upset about people and angry at people-

13:22 Speaker 2 Right

13:22 Speaker 1 ... when they have differing opinions than us. And I'm reading this vechvartsendaygen. Like, I was trained, not, not, not, not, not by anyone lecturing to me, but the, the osmosis. I was trained by osmosis that if someone disagrees with you, you have to feind hob ihm, you gotta hate him, and you gotta not talk to him.

13:43 Speaker 2 That's Kranites or that's Detroit?

13:45 Speaker 1 It's a mixture of both. I got it from both sides. So I grew up in Kranites, and I grew up in an era where... A-and I don't wanna go into the particular names, but if you-

13:54 Speaker 2 I understand

13:54 Speaker 1 ... starting in the late '80s, there were certain names, and you really thought that if you met this person, you were gonna meet the devil.

13:59 Speaker 2 Right.

14:00 Speaker 1 Then in later years, I went to various yeshivas, and I don't, I don't think Detroit was the induct-- I don't think Detroit induced it. It was hanging out with certain segments of people maybe associated with Detroit, but it wasn't the yeshiva.

14:14 Speaker 2 Uh-huh.

14:14 Speaker 1 Rabbi Guerari in Detroit or Rabbi Steinmetz in Detroit never-

14:17 Speaker 2 They were not into this

14:17 Speaker 1 ... they never spoke negatively to me about political stuff.

14:21 Speaker 2 Right.

14:21 Speaker 1 Maybe they spoke negatively about worldview, black and white, but not, not, not machlikis. It was infused. It was, it was in the avir. It was in the, it was in the coffee we drank.

14:31 Speaker 2 Right.

14:32 Speaker 1 And I'm reading the Sichos, and I'm like, "This is crazy."

14:36 Speaker 2 Yeah.

14:36 Speaker 1 "This is all about ego." And I start reading on, I'm like, "It's mamash. It's not someone else's story. This is my story."

14:42 Speaker 2 Right.

14:43 Speaker 1 And it came punkt bas gankev, you know, it came mamash bas gankev pat this. I had just been invited, uh, going back to your original joke about the Hachshaliach, I got invited to the America's Hachshaliach meeting. That was in September, in Elul.

14:55 Speaker 2 Yeah.

14:55 Speaker 1 And I really didn't wanna go.

14:57 Speaker 2 That does in fact exist.

14:59 Speaker 1 Once every 18 years, be'erech.

15:01 Speaker 2 He told me that it... He told me about it, and I was like, "No, it's, uh... This is, this is, this is, uh, this is, uh, what? This is myth."

15:08 Speaker 1 I actually said this to your uncle Yuri.

15:11 Speaker 2 He said? Oh.

15:11 Speaker 1 He represented Pennsylvania. Anyhow, I'm sitting... Uh, uh, so I, I was invited to come. I really had no interest in going because-

15:20 Speaker 2 So side note.

15:21 Speaker 1 Yeah.

15:21 Speaker 2 When, when, when Canada becomes the 51st state-

15:23 Speaker 1 Canada was invited to this

15:24 Speaker 2 ... but when Canada becomes the 51st state, how does it work? Who becomes the Hachshaliach of Canada, the entire Canada?

15:30 Speaker 1 I would say Professor Block, but, uh, he's not, uh-

15:33 Speaker 2 He's your wife's grandfather, yeah

15:34 Speaker 1 ... no. But I, I, I, I didn't-- I really didn't wanna go to the meeting. It, it does, does, it... You know, when I moved to Montana, I know it sounds funny, but when I moved to Montana, I really became all absorbed in Montana.

15:46 Speaker 2 Right.

15:46 Speaker 1 You know, Jews of Montana, shlichos of Montana. Um, sure, I write an article in the Five Towns paper in New York, so I have a crowd there that, that I'm very much connected to, and Chavi has a podcast, and, uh, it's not like I'm in, in s- It's not like I'm hiding in Montana. But my focus has always been the growth of Yiddishkeit in Montana, and I could not imagine what me attending a meeting with a bunch of other Hachshalah could accomplish for Montana in any way.

16:11 Speaker 2 Right.

16:12 Speaker 1 But I got a phone call or two of people asking me to come. People maybe perhaps are related to me, and it would really be a good idea if you came, and I really was hesitant. And then I read the Sichos thing, and I said, "You know what? I can't really justify not going." 'Cause the reason I'm not going is 'cause I have a disliking for this one or for that one, or I have an opinion that I created about one person or another, and I have allegiances. And the bottom line, it was all-

16:39 Speaker 2 Right

16:40 Speaker 1 ... none of it came from, from, from the nefesh Hachchais.

16:42 Speaker 2 Right.

16:43 Speaker 1 So right there, I said to Chavi, I said, "Sichos just sent me to the, to the Hachshalah meeting."

16:48 Speaker 2 Right.

16:49 Speaker 1 And I went, and I'm glad I did. I'm not sure there was an outcome of any kind, although there was an interest maybe in an outcome. I don't think there was like a big poel yietzer. But I went, and the greatest accomplishment of being there was that I ended up conversing and farbrengen with people who in my life I could have never imagined me, me farbrengen with, talking to, um, feeling comfortable having those conversations, feeling like the conversations were legit and real and authentic. And I'm 40-- Uh, at that time, I was 42 years old, so it was like this realization like, it's okay, you're 42, and for many decades of your life, you believe that the way to interact with fellow Chassidim was as if it's a war zone, right?

17:36 Speaker 2 Yeah.

17:36 Speaker 1 Either you're with us or against us, like, like Bush spoke about Iraq, you know?

17:40 Speaker 2 Right.

17:40 Speaker 1 We're gonna smoke you out of your pits. And you know, we have the brook shaft, and we're coming, and we're going, and we're fighting, and obviously, everything's in the name of the Rebbe. No one ever had a fight in the history of Chabad.

17:50 Speaker 2 I mean, your brook, you brought up the brooks. It's not like your family's on i- on both sides of this, isn't it? You have family on both sides.

17:58 Speaker 1 Perhaps, but there's, there's no in-family debates on these subjects. We don't, we don't bring it up at family dinner.

18:06 Speaker 2 No, I'm saying... Uh, my, my point is not to schlep your family into it. My point is that, like, this, this, this, this, this fight really cut through peop-- Like, it cut through families, it cut-

18:16 Speaker 1 It cuts through everything

18:16 Speaker 2 ... it cut through everything.

18:17 Speaker 1 Everything. And, and, and, and, and with- And with the biggest bread, you know, where-

18:23 Speaker 2 Yeah, it was a, it was a m-- I wasn't even there, but it was a... The-- It's funny 'cause this conversation that you, that you're bringing up now, someone brought up to me, I think off the air. It wasn't-- we didn't put it on the podcast, but it-- they, they were on the other side of it. Uh, on the other s- and they said the same exact thing. They said like they're looking back and they're like, "What was wrong with the community that you have kids?" There was once a moment where one of the... I'm not gonna say-

18:48 Speaker 1 Names.

18:48 Speaker 2 Yeah, but there was one of the leaders on one of the sides, there was a rumor that he had been killed in a car crash. And the kids who were on the other side were dancing in school because they heard that this guy was killed in a car crash. And like, they're looking back and they're like, "What the hell was going on?"

19:04 Speaker 1 So, so I don't know the particulars. That, that sounds even extreme for what I, what I, uh, you know, what I grew up with. But, you know, it goes back to... And I've asked this a lot of times over the last couple of years, is that when you learn, when you read Sefer HaZohar and so you read Likutei Torah, or honestly, you don't have to go... Even if you just read through the Rebbe's Farbrengens, and you see conversations about concept of Middos Toivahs, you know?

19:28 Speaker 2 Yeah.

19:30 Speaker 1 If that doesn't work for you, you could always go back to Dr. Midos. I mean, whatev-whatever works for you to realize that the ideas of Middos Toivahs, Middos Hagunos, what defined the Chasid-

19:38 Speaker 2 Yeah

19:38 Speaker 1 ... based on the Rebbe's teachings, what defined the Chasid, amongst other things, was the most unique character traits and Middos that reflected love, and sensitivity, and empathy, and kindness, and mercy. Uh, uh, and you go even further, I mean, all Jews are, are officially Rachmanim, Rishonim.

19:58 Speaker 2 Right.

19:59 Speaker 1 And then you see this insanity.

20:01 Speaker 2 Right.

20:02 Speaker 1 You know, for, for me, a little bit, you know, right now in the, right now in the last decade in amongst Gerrer Hasidim, you see a, a level of, of Rishonim coming against the Reb Sholom Alter and his Hasidim.

20:13 Speaker 2 Right. There's-

20:14 Speaker 1 And I'm looking at that from the outside, and like it's horrible. And then I, I look, I look at myself, I'm like, "I'm so glad." You know, it's better late than never. I'm glad that, you know, somewhere in my 18, 19 years of marriage... You know, Javi grew up in Texas. She grew up as a Schlichas. She doesn't know from any of this. The first time she heard of any remote Machlokes was when I was dating her, and I made sure when we were dating to-

20:35 Speaker 2 That she was on the right side of it.

20:36 Speaker 1 Not the right, not on the right side, but to educate her.

20:38 Speaker 2 Yeah.

20:38 Speaker 1 It's a minute. You have to you're dating a girl.

20:40 Speaker 2 Achiv, Achiv.

20:41 Speaker 1 You can't marry a cave, a, a cavewoman .

20:44 Speaker 2 Right. By the way, married.

20:45 Speaker 1 So I'm sitting on the riverwalk in San Antonio educating her about, uh... Now we joke about it, but... A-and you think to yourself, what, w- you know, what, what is that, number one? And forget about, you know, if, if you're not into biblical commandments of Loshon Hara, Techilas, you know, Vahavta Lereychem and, and Parashat HaAvodah about the Am Yisrael Elul, right?

21:09 Speaker 2 Right.

21:10 Speaker 1 Okay, you don't wanna go there. It's too holy for you. At least as a Chasid, A, emulating the Rebbe, and, and B, where, where did those Middos Toivahs go?

21:20 Speaker 2 Spring is here, which means that in two months, many communities will be looking for a way to mark Gimel Tammuz, the Rebbe's yartzeit. If you're looking for an event that is memorable, meaningful, and affordable, let me recommend This World is a Garden, a film and live concert production created by us here at Uvlah Media, inspired by Basse LeGani, the first mimer the Rebbe said. If you're a regular here at HFL, you know that Basse LeGani is something that we think about and talk about a lot. And in this production, we use the power of cinematic filmmaking and a live concert by a string quartet to bring the beauty of Basse LeGani to your community and your audience in a way that they've never seen, heard, or experienced it before. The production has already been hosted by Chabad houses around the country and has drawn wonderful reviews. Our package comes with everything that you need to put on the production, the film's original arrangements for string quartet, publicity materials, everything besides the string quartet, which we recommend that you hire locally to save on travel costs. To find out more about this production, please visit thisworldisagarden.com. Again, thisworldisagarden.com. And now, back to the show. Yeah, I think there's even a simpler barometer, especially when you grow up on Schlichas, is that, or when you are on Schlichas, is that w-would you be comfortable having this conversation in front of your Baal Batim? And the answer is almost always an emphatic no. There's no way. I mean,

22:46 Speaker 2 there are, there are certain things. Like, it's not like you have to be some kind of pushover in front of your Baal Batim. Like, there's sometimes you have to stand up strongly for, for something a-and, and, and really it doesn't make a difference if they care or not, but usually if it's for the right cause, then it's the right cause, and people respect, um, you know, for them to-

23:04 Speaker 1 Principal people.

23:04 Speaker 2 Yes. But this, I don't know anyone... No, and, and you see it also. There are a lot of Kanoim that the second that they're in front of the Baal Batim or s- or the second they're in public, it's a whole different story. And, and, and I think, like, that's just a simple barometer that we've lost your way because you've gotten basically swept up in this environment that allows you to act in a way that you would never act in front of other people.

23:30 Speaker 1 And, and a language that we would never speak.

23:33 Speaker 2 That's what I'm saying.

23:34 Speaker 1 If we saw our children talk like that about a fellow kid-

23:37 Speaker 2 Right

23:37 Speaker 1 ... we would have a conversation with them at a minimum to say that's not how a Jew talks-

23:42 Speaker 2 Right

23:42 Speaker 1 ... that's not how a Chasid talks. And yet, in the name of the Rebbe, which is the biggest sadness of all of it, is that he was schlepped into all these so-called religious zealot kind of, you know, things we're fighting for in the name of the Rebbe. And by the way, I do believe that there's historical facts-

23:59 Speaker 2 Right

23:59 Speaker 1 ... and they don't always align, and they don't, they don't always shine beautifully on every person. There were people, and there still are people, 'cause they are by definition people, which means some of them make-- all of them make some mistakes, some of them make more than others, who did things that were wrong.

24:15 Speaker 2 Right.

24:16 Speaker 1 You know, I still... I, I, I, I study history to the best of my ability. I have family relationships and allegiances. I still have a deep reverence for people like Reb Efraim and Berke Wolf, for people like Re-Re-Reb Label Kaplan and Zvas, people who really stood at the forefront of building Chabad

25:15 Speaker 3 of Fabrangens, at least not where I'm listening. If anything, I'm talking. I don't recall many Fabrangens, and I sat through from Michigan to Morristown to Montreal to Lod. I mean, I've been around the block. I don't recall many, many Fabrangens where the mashpia were discussing the refinement of character traits. I remember the Rebbe-

25:33 Speaker 4 Uh-huh

25:33 Speaker 3 ...being thrown around. The Rebbe, the Rebbe, the Rebbe- ...Shluchus, the Rebbe, which by the way, at the right time, the right place, and the right limitations is a wonderful thing, but you're raising a generation of kids-

25:44 Speaker 4 Yeah

25:44 Speaker 3 ...who were never educated with middos.

25:48 Speaker 4 Okay, so you're, you're already leading to an answer, which, which, which I happen to agree with. But, um, I- so if, if, if, if... I, I, I, I probably would've... If, if, if I was answering the question, I probably would've gone in that direction myself, to be honest. But to open it up a little bit, yeah, I mean, there's... You're, you're, you're suggesting th-there, there is a simple kind of or direct explanation that you could start exploring, which is, um, what happened in that era that c-caused that kind of, um, chaos that then allowed for people to push it, lose their minds, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and lose their bearings, where you would talk about someone who you... was your neighbor or your relative or used to be your friend. This tore brother... This tore brothers apart, this tore families apart, this tore neighbors apart a-and, and, and in vicious ways. What happened in that moment that caused that? And you can start exploring it as an incident that caused it. I think there's, there's value in exploring that, but I've always maintained that or f-- I wasn't there, so it's more like a, a speculation, but from what I've heard and from what I gather, that it didn't start there. The people that lo-- The, the fact that people lost their bearings in such a crazy way, to me, is not just a traumatic event because I think ultimately a traumatic event, usually people get their bearings back. They... You

27:17 Speaker 4 can lose your mind mo-- for the moment, but then eventually you come back to yourself.

27:22 Speaker 3 Temporary insanity.

27:23 Speaker 4 Yeah. No, pe-people, God forbid, they lose a loved one in a tragic accident, they, they can g-- they can, they can act out in a, in a, in a terrible way, or they can lose their mind. Sometimes they have to be, they have to be medicated even, right? But eventually, you can... Most of the time, you can come back. Here, there was something that endured, and so I do believe that something happened beforehand that led to it. And, and that's what you're talking about, this is already you're, you're, you're touching on it, which is at least a po-- something that needs to be dis- explored and, and, and we have explored on the podcast, is that when you, when you believe that, that you can skip over the, the bread and butter of Yiddishkeit and Hasidishkeit, kind of the boring, the boring stuff-

28:07 Speaker 3 The basics

28:07 Speaker 4 ...the b- but they're boring, and they're like, "Eh, whatever. Baal teshuvas do that, you know? That's for, that's for the Baal teshuvas." We're already past that. You know, like, like it... Even use an example, like we're past Avos Yisroel for, for a, for another Hasid. And we're past for, for the Lubavitcher who comes to town and, you know, seems like a bit of a nudge. We're, we're, we're past that. We're into Shlichus. Like Avos Yisroel and for people that we never met and never will meet again. It's like, "Wait a second. What about the basic?"

28:38 Speaker 3 So, so I-

28:38 Speaker 4 You see what I... Yeah

28:39 Speaker 3 ...yeah, no, I, I... There's a couple of things. First of all, our Chabad House, just as a side note, in addition to our local community, we host hundreds, sometimes thousands of Frum Jews every year for Shabbos.

28:51 Speaker 4 Right.

28:52 Speaker 3 And our motto has always been that just because they're from Lakewood or they're from Monsey, and I don't like the brim on their hat with the chup on their hair, doesn't mean that I'm their judge. Just like I'm non-judgmental with the Ich lechazer, right?

29:09 Speaker 4 Right.

29:10 Speaker 3 I'm not gonna... I'm certainly not gonna be judgmental with the person with the, with the brim that I don't like, and they need to be welcomed and treated with the same love in our Chabad House as every other Jew. But there's another mikvah which I think really goes to what you're saying, and that is there was a, there was a meeting of Hetshlachim. Maybe after this podcast, they're not gonna invite me onto the Hetshlachim meetings anymore, and that's also fine. It's one less thing I'll have to do. But it was a phone call.

29:35 Speaker 4 You're welcome.

29:35 Speaker 3 Yeah, anything. I'll pay you later. Um, and, and it was a whole thing. I think it was Schnatsa Meyv Esrim. Maybe it was Ha- maybe it was Hakal. Uh, something that, that was somehow associated with Achdus. And I'm listening to colleagues talk about the bringing Yidden some oil, some rebbe.

29:56 Speaker 4 Right.

29:57 Speaker 3 It's a, it's a year of... I think it must've been Hakal.

29:58 Speaker 4 Yeah. Sounds like it.

29:59 Speaker 3 Bring as ma-- uh, uh, the Ali Yidden that bring... You know, let's bring as many Jew... And I think it's a beautiful idea. Achdus Hakal.

30:07 Speaker 4 Right.

30:08 Speaker 3 So when it was my turn, when it was all done, I unmuted myself and I said, "I have just a question. Does this include Shlichim that are two blocks away that we don't talk to?"

30:16 Speaker 4 Right.

30:17 Speaker 3 "Are they included in the Hakal Achdus program? Could we bring them along with us to the Rebbe too?" And naturally, there was radio silence. What was even worse than the radio silence was the multiple text messages and WhatsApps I got after thanking me for saying what I was saying. And I, I was like, "You cowards."

30:35 Speaker 4 Yeah.

30:36 Speaker 3 "Don't send me a WhatsApp message later privately. You're on a call. If you really believe that Achdus is viable," which by the way, I do, and I proved it. I mean, we had some... In our family, we had some family feuds that I resolved because I, I stood here one Shabbos giving a sermon about forgiving and, and I was like, "I'm such a farce." I was walking home from shul, I said to Chavi, I said, "This is a joke. I'm talking about forgiveness, meanwhile, our family doesn't talk to this one, to that one." Motzei Shabbos- I reconciled. And, and because I reconciled all my siblings, it became a family thing, and we all reconciled

31:06 Speaker 4 Uh, you, you had a, you had a grievance with someone in the family

31:09 Speaker 3 No, no. Our family had a grievance with another family member, but we're a unit. We're the Brooks.

31:13 Speaker 4 Uh-huh.

31:13 Speaker 3 We do everything in a unit.

31:14 Speaker 4 I see.

31:14 Speaker 3 And I said, "I'm done."

31:16 Speaker 4 Yeah.

31:16 Speaker 3 And, and it changed the entire family reality for the positive.

31:20 Speaker 4 Right.

31:20 Speaker 3 And so I'm sitting here on this conference call and I'm talking about achdus, and I'm like, "My high, what are you talking about?"

31:25 Speaker 4 Yeah.

31:25 Speaker 3 You're ready to go... Like you said before, you're gonna come in the private jet, you're gonna land in Teterboro to go to the oil-

31:30 Speaker 4 Yeah

31:30 Speaker 3 ... with the, with the grace of Gvir. What about your brother down the block-

31:35 Speaker 4 Right

31:35 Speaker 3 ... who you can't do carpool with 'cause you're not on talking terms?

31:38 Speaker 4 Right.

31:38 Speaker 3 Is that what the Sidereinu had in mind when he thought about achdus and hackel?

31:42 Speaker 4 Yeah.

31:42 Speaker 3 And, and so you're not gonna talk to him in the name of the Devil?

31:45 Speaker 4 Yeah.

31:45 Speaker 3 I, I'm sorry. I don't buy it. Now, the... When I, when I was, when I was 17, I thought they were big chiddum, fiery chiddum, but I don't buy it. I don't buy it, and I think it's counterproductive. I think it's not what chiddum is all about. And, you know, another thing you learn when you get slightly more mature is that I'm a loyalist. That's my natural inkling. So if you're on my team, I am loyal to you to a fault. The problem with that is if your friend gets you involved on his team in a machlokes and forgets to tell you that he made shalom with the guy-

32:16 Speaker 4 You're still fighting

32:16 Speaker 3 ... still fighting. So I was-- I once came to the oil, this is about 15, 20 years ago, and a good friend of mine, I, I, I took one of my close friend's sides, uh, and I wasn't talking to so-and because he was in a fight with my friend. I walk into the aisle, I see them talking to each other. So I walked up to him, I said, "Excuse me."

32:33 Speaker 4 "I'm in fighting for you."

32:34 Speaker 3 "I am not talking to this guy because what, what's go..." "Oh, we made up a, a long time ago." I'm like-

32:39 Speaker 4 Yeah

32:40 Speaker 3 ... "If I should... I'm done. From then, I'm not interested."

32:44 Speaker 4 Yeah.

32:45 Speaker 3 Moshiach doesn't come from machlokes.

32:47 Speaker 4 Yeah.

32:48 Speaker 3 Our shlichas and our love for fellow Jew is not u-u... Is not limited to the people that show up in our Chabad on Shabbos morning. It's a biblical commandment for all Jews, and amongst Chiddum it's supposed to be even more so. Um, I actually once called a shliach in a different state and I said, "Do me a favor. I'm in Montana. I'm trying to bring Moshiach. I'm trying to move this thing along. Could you... Do you mind canceling your din Torahs for a few months- ... so I could bring Moshiach? And then when Moshiach comes, you can go back. But just... It's really getting on my nerves, and I'm, I'm trying to do mitzvahs to make it closer, and you're tipping the scale the other way."

33:20 Speaker 4 Yeah, okay. But look, it, it, it's... A lot of it's, a lot of it's, like, sadly funny. Like, it's funny in a, a very dark way. Um, uh, you know, and, and, and I'm not above laughing at, at, at, like, the laterness of it. But I think, I think, to be fair, like, it, it, it goes a lot deeper than just people being silly and having silly fights. And it goes even deeper than saying, "Oh, people are fighting over parnassa," and you have to understand. I really believe that it starts with a, a, a unwillingness to get real with the language that we use. I know it sounds like, uh, what are you talking about? This isn't some kind of philosoph... No, it, it, it's very... To me, it's very straightforward. When, when you, when you use words that you haven't earned, when you, when you, um, when you just basically borrow these lofty ideas that you haven't reached, you haven't, you haven't, you haven't earned them-

34:14 Speaker 3 For example

34:14 Speaker 4 ... um, for example, uh, even, even the example that what I'm doing is the c- is the Kavan Al Yenah. How do you know? Right? You're, you're, you're, you're, you're jumping, you're jumping from something basic like kindness and, and, and, and, and, and, um-

34:37 Speaker 3 Empathy

34:37 Speaker 4 ... empathy- ... sensitivity, sensitivity to something that is a, a divine, mysterious idea, right? And, and, and because the rabbi speaks in that language sometimes, you speak in it willy-nilly, right? You, you brought up Ichotsu earlier. Ichotsu is a minor printed in Ranat that any, like, wannabe maskil in Yeshiva, which, uh, there was a time that I was like that. You're learning the Hamshacha Ranat and you're like, "Wait a second. Why do I have to stop my, my gracious scholar of Malchus and then, and, and, and Malchus, uh"- Yeah, and the and the and you're, you, you know, you're getting carried away with yourself and, oh, Ichotsu, 'cause Ichotsu is not part of the Hamshach. Like, what, what's this about, right? And, and there's, there's something about it where it's like, this is what it's about. You're getting carried away. It's one of the first Simshachim of the Rab Rabbi Shab. It's one of, one of the first Simshachim he's delivering to Techat Mimim. This is a, you know, uh, uh, Eli Rubin calls it the precursor to, to Samach Vav. This is when, you know, Chidduch is, is taking off on a, on a jumbo jet, and Mittamal, you have to go take Ichotsu, right? I see it. I, I, I... Recently, I've been, you know, here and there reading, uh, learning the Fidikaros Ramarim. And you'll see that the Fidikarim will be talking about this big, big hascala. And then, like, w-how does it furiously in, like, in practical things? So, like, the

36:05 Speaker 4 famous example is Basili Gani, where it's about doing business honestly, showing up to davening with a minyan and Biggest things. What's the Even Habehen? It can't be in a bosom, in, in, you know, fake laugh and bosom. It has to be like, are you, are you an honest businessman?

36:25 Speaker 3 I'll tell you, I'll tell you a cool story.

36:27 Speaker 4 Yeah.

36:27 Speaker 3 Didn't happen to me. It happened to my, my neighbor in Wyoming, to Zalman Mendelssohn. Um, he once had Rabbi Moshe Feiler come over to Febrayim for Gimel Tammuz. And I hope Zalman doesn't hurt. You know, he can't kill me. I'm a Brook. But I'm just saying, I hope... It's, it's an incredible nekuda here. You know, talking about remembering the fundamentals. So it was Gimel Tammuz time, and Moshe Feiler's coming to Febrayim in Wyoming. So Zalman asks him casually, "Did you have a chance to read Rabbi Talushkin's book?" And Moshe Feiler responds, "What? I'm still finishing Tikun LeShavuot." He was on the plane, Erev Gimel Tammuz, landing in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with Tikun LeShavuot 'cause he didn't finish on Shavuot.

37:07 Speaker 4 Right.

37:07 Speaker 3 That simplicity That basic fundamental relationship with God that got lost in the process of lofty terms and throwing the word Rebbe around as much as possible is, is I think to the detriment of all of us. My Zayde Yechanan, who I never met, he passed away in תשכ"ט. He was the gabbai in seventeen seventy, and his kever it says, "Ish pikach." He was a pikach.

37:31 Speaker 4 Yechanan, what was his-

37:31 Speaker 3 Yechanan Gordon.

37:32 Speaker 4 Gordon.

37:33 Speaker 3 My alter zayde, my Bubby Goldman's father.

37:35 Speaker 4 Right.

37:35 Speaker 3 But I grew up my-- with my grandparents Goldmans, so I heard lots about him. He would wake up every morning at the crack of dawn, wee hours, he was a shochet, and he would put in the tzedakah box. In the tzedakah pushke, he'd put in tzedakat Tat Israel, for tzedakat the mama, and tzedakat the bruder. He would put in a coin in the pushke of each of his-- A simple act of basic Judaism.

37:55 Speaker 4 Right.

37:56 Speaker 3 A tzedakah in the tzedakah box. But he was also a guy that on Pesach, my Bubby always spoke about this, he used to make matzo brei every day. Tractate of the resembling Yechanan Gordon made matzo brei? Yeah, with eggs and matzo. He never washed the frying pan all Pesach. He just used a napkin to wipe it, so it was no shail of gibruchs or anything. Right? So we got caught up in the chumras-

38:16 Speaker 4 Right

38:16 Speaker 3 ... and forgot about basic Judaism. And I'm not-- I don't have an opinion about people's chumras. Everyone can do whatever chumras they want. It's not my... I grew up in a home with schmaltz on Pesach, and we had our own, own... Although Rabbi Shusterman once told me that olive oil these days is the chumra because it's less ma- there's less ma- uh, hands involved in dealing with it. But the nekuda is that you can have all the chumras you want as long as you don't forget about the fundamentals.

38:39 Speaker 4 Right.

38:40 Speaker 3 So if, if davening, uh, you know, i-i-if we, if we got stuck on davening by avoda, but we forgot about the basics, which is davening.

38:50 Speaker 4 Right.

38:50 Speaker 3 We got stuck on the avoda without the davening.

38:53 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

38:54 Speaker 3 Or, or, or, or we think that because we learned Shulchan Aruch and Rambam, we can't learn a blatt Gemara every day and be a typical Orthodox traditional Jew. Actually, not Orthodox, not traditional, just a Jew.

39:08 Speaker 4 Yeah.

39:08 Speaker 3 This is our Gemara. It doesn't belong to anyone else. It's ours.

39:11 Speaker 4 Right.

39:12 Speaker 3 Or if our seforim shelf is right, I still remember Bochum 'cause I... Still today, the Bochum come into my library at my house, and they see a Divrei Yoel on the shelf.

39:19 Speaker 4 And they go-

39:19 Speaker 3 And they see a Yabi Omer on the shelf. Like, what kind of Lubavitch house is this?

39:23 Speaker 4 Right.

39:24 Speaker 3 Like, one with a rabbi who happens to like reading holy books.

39:27 Speaker 4 Right.

39:28 Speaker 3 I'm an eynikle of the Chidushei Harim. We come from the Gerrer dynasty through my Zayde Goldman. I told you this earlier today. My matru-- my paternal grandmother, uh, Chana Brook, my father's mother, was an eynikle of Reb Yisroel Chaim Sonnenfeld and the Levi Yivri, Rav Kiviyahu Schlesinger, um, Rav Hilkel Meyer. These are people in the Yerushalayim world or in the Gerrer world.

39:47 Speaker 4 So you come from a Lubavitcher.

39:49 Speaker 3 From my-- From Mendel Brook and from Esther Goldman, I'm hardcore Lubavitchers, but they weren't married to each other then. So I have one from one side, one from the other. I still remember, by the way, one of my brother's, I don't wanna say his name, but a, a close friend and classmate of my brother used to... A whole day in yeshiva, he would talk about how he's gezha.

40:05 Speaker 4 Yeah.

40:06 Speaker 3 So one day, Yechanan came home, my older brother, and he said to my father, uh, "I, I..." I don't know if he... He wasn't crying, obviously, but he was pretty upset. Like, "Why aren't we gezha?" My father said, "We are." So he says, "How come we never speak about it?" 'Cause e-evidently, if you're gezha, you need to speak about it all day.

40:19 Speaker 4 Yeah.

40:20 Speaker 3 It's okay. I mean, I married the Blocks. They, they're, they're Baali Tsuda from, from Tennessee, from Zalman Posner's days. I, I think that we, we forget that to be a religious frum Jew is the foundation of becoming a Hasid.

40:33 Speaker 4 Right.

40:34 Speaker 3 You know, when I looked around the Rebbe's room the few times that I've been in there, I looked on the shelves. I'm pretty sure, based on my assessment, that the majority of the seforim are not from Kahas.

40:44 Speaker 4 Yeah.

40:44 Speaker 3 Not, not that I have the... Go get the whole Kahas library.

40:48 Speaker 4 Right.

40:48 Speaker 3 But don't limit yourself to that. You know, I, I, uh, Rabbi Krinsky, Rabbi K-

40:53 Speaker 4 Well, I would also say get the Ka-

40:54 Speaker 3 Yeah

40:54 Speaker 4 ... get, get the Kahas library with the same discrimination that it would take to get other seforim. Meaning, it's not a default. Like, the same way that you have to choose the Yabi Omer or the Divrei Yoel, choose which set of Mamaram you're getting or which Sefer Mamaram you're getting.

41:08 Speaker 3 And whatever set you're getting, open them.

41:10 Speaker 4 Uh, if you bechal need to get a set, but, like, you know, buy the seforim with intention, you know, the... Yeah.

41:16 Speaker 3 Listen, I try, by the way. Every once in a while, I open up the Sefer Mamaram of Admor Hazaken, the red set.

41:21 Speaker 4 Yeah.

41:22 Speaker 3 I give it a shot every once in a while.

41:23 Speaker 4 It's not for you.

41:23 Speaker 3 It's not working yet. I try the, the Ma'amar Maktsarim. I try the Inyonim. Occasionally, I see a one-liner.

41:30 Speaker 4 See, that's, that's what happens when you try becoming a mensch, is that you, you lose the, the good feel for-

41:34 Speaker 3 For without the Rebbe's Mamaram

41:36 Speaker 4 ... God forbid. But, uh-

41:38 Speaker 3 No, I, I think that there's, there's so much to be learned. There's so much to be learned. I remember everyone's calling Yossi Jacobson, YY Jacobson.

41:45 Speaker 4 Right.

41:46 Speaker 3 And I said, "Yossi, listen, next year, if you want a good sermon, to prepare a sermon for Sukkos, there's an incredible Shalom." And I told him where to find it in the Shalom. He said to me, "That's great. It's also of a Also, I found something fascinating 'cause I spent-

43:18 Speaker 4 Did, did it have to do with your own-- something in your own personal life?

43:26 Speaker 3 Perhaps, and I, and I'll get to that in a moment. I think that's a good point you make, and I'll, I'll, I'll see if that-- if, if I can put sense to that. I think what interests me always is I'm a big, um, admirer. My parents were. My, my father is, my mother was, um, my grandparents were of Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky. Rabbi Krinsky was always someone in our family we admired immensely. Uh, a very-- his, his sensitivity, his delicate perspective, his... And all in yoni shluchas from when I moved out, even though it's a little chutzpah, me and Rabbi Krinsky, even though we share a birthdate as well of Kislev, and we call each other -- I call him every year. But it was a chutzpah for me. I, you know... He was probably seventy-five years old, seventy-three years old when I moved out on shluchas, and I'm coming to talk to him about i-issues in my Chabadas. He was always kind and responsive. But I've discovered something. I, I'm defending Rabbi Krinsky, and in every-- and there, there's never been one conversation I had with him, no matter how much I've trolled him, that he'll ever say negative, anything negative about another Jew. Never. I can't get him to say a word. Even people that are making his life hard and miserable, he won't talk about them. He'll somehow... And, and so that had a big impact on me because if you're the victim of a crime and you're not even talking about-

44:41 Speaker 4 Right

44:41 Speaker 3 ... the criminals that are perpetrating you, then what am, what, what am I doing?

44:44 Speaker 4 Right.

44:44 Speaker 3 But going to the personal stuff, I think everyone has their own personal journey. You know, we have five adopted children. It's not a secret. The world knows that. Um, which obviously, if you have five adopt... Well, not obviously. Maybe it's not obvious. I'll say it for those that don't know. Uh, we did not choose to adopt children because that was our, uh... When we were dating, we decided we're gonna go the adoption route. It came with a diagnosis of infertility. We have five adopted kids. Adopted kids have their own set of challenges, each one in their own way. And then we have a t-child that has special needs that goes to Camp Simcha that, you know, our daughter Zizi, also not a secret. And there's no question that raising a child with special needs or being in a special situation, so you go through infertility, suddenly you now have this incredible level of sensitivity to other people that are going through infertility, and they're calling you for advice, right? We get calls. Chavi and I get calls all the time.

45:40 Speaker 4 Homesick for Lubavitch is brought to you by Yuvala Media, a boutique video production company servicing the Chabad and Jewish community. Since opening ten years ago, Yuvala Media has pushed the boundaries of artistic and thoughtful storytelling in the community with an insistence on there always being a memorable story, as well as a beautiful and striking visual image that we believe is second to none. Over the years, we have worked with Chabad organizations around the country, as well as large organizations like Bonial, Torah Umassorah, and Atalathan, guided by the belief that your story is absolutely worth telling with depth and creativity. If you are looking to tell your story with a video, please reach out to us at hello@yuvalamedia.com. Again, that is hello@yuvalamedia.com. A link can be found in the show notes. And now, back to the podcast. Can we, can we drill down on that a little bit?

46:35 Speaker 3 Sure. Sure, sure, sure.

46:36 Speaker 4 Tell-- Take me back to, to when you-- to, to that, when you first found out.

46:41 Speaker 3 So we were, we were-

46:41 Speaker 4 Um, 'cause I, I, I've, I've done some work with Bonial, and I've met people.

46:44 Speaker 3 Amazing people. I was actually on the phone this morning at eight AM with Rabbi Shlomo Bachar. He's a dear friend.

46:48 Speaker 4 Yeah, he's a good man.

46:49 Speaker 3 He's a good man. He's a dear friend, and he takes his work as serious as we take our shlichas. His shlichas and I... You know, I, I see him. He takes his shlichas as seriously as I take mine.

46:59 Speaker 4 That's no joke. No, it's no joke.

47:00 Speaker 3 Uh-huh.

47:01 Speaker 4 I, I... Th-the first project I did with Bonial, which is one of the first projects I did b'chal, like in this, in this, in this, uh, p- in this position that I do now, which is making films for people, was a documentary about him and his wife. The reason he agreed to it was because he was being honored at a dinner. So the, the dinner h- the dinner chairs twisted his arm. So the, the, the, the title of the film was "A Day in the Life of Rabbi Bachar." So I'm like, "Okay, Rabbi, I wanna film you."

47:28 Speaker 3 I remember the film.

47:28 Speaker 4 "I wanna film your-- the day in your life. When does the day begin?" He's like, "Cut, cut it out. I get up at four in the morning." I said, "I'm gonna be at your house at four in the morning." He's like, "You're gonna be at my house at four in the morning?" As if I showed up at four in the morning. He remembers it to this day. I show up at four in the morning. I mean, it's four thirty. He was up. He's sitting in his kitchen. It's on the video.

47:46 Speaker 3 With his papers.

47:47 Speaker 4 He's sitting in the kitchen learning a Gemara, but he's trying to learn Gemara, and he's on the phone with a doctor in Israel. Like he's, uh, uh, nonstop, nonstop. He's... And he doesn't take a salary for this. He doesn't take a salary for this. He has-- he's figured out, uh, how to support himself with the business that he does or whatever. Uh, yeah, he, you know, there's, um, there, there's a ival gevinkeit over there that's, that's superhuman.

48:11 Speaker 3 Be-beyond, and, and obviously we experience that personally, so I'm, I'm very subjective about his incredible love for Klal Yisrael.

48:18 Speaker 4 You're saying in the, in the time.

48:19 Speaker 3 When, when we went through our fertility treatment.

48:21 Speaker 4 And that was... Bonial was much younger back then, right?

48:23 Speaker 3 We're talking about nine-- We're talking about eighteen years ago.

48:25 Speaker 4 Yeah, that was much-- They were much younger.

48:27 Speaker 3 So we, we, we got married in two thousand and six. I was twenty-four. Chavi was twenty-one. A year later, we got married chov bezother. A year later, chov gimel other. My, my share asked me to stay in Kollel for a year, so I didn't want to be like Yitzhak Mitzrayim, one extra day-

48:42 Speaker 4 Yeah

48:42 Speaker 3 ... in New York. I can get stuck. So chov gimel other.

48:46 Speaker 4 From tes m- tes shar, yeah.

48:47 Speaker 3 From tes-- From gimel other, the next year we moved to Bozeman, Montana. And that's tough. Everyone's saying, you know, a year or two years, till two years. Rabbi Heller used to tell me all the time, "Fartz veyor."

48:56 Speaker 4 Yeah.

48:57 Speaker 3 We knew something was fishy.

48:59 Speaker 4 Right.

49:00 Speaker 3 I kept-- You know, we're already now we're in Montana. There's no doctors here that know what they're doing, and at least then there certainly wasn't. So eventually we doubled by Bonial, but by two thousand and eight we already knew, which is because of medical advancements, we knew that we came out of a, of a, of a treatment, uh, a set of treatments, and we knew that according to Derech HaTevah, at least the way medicine existed back then, we're not going to have biological children. You know, I mean, obviously the devastation and the realization and, you know, what... I was, I was twenty-six. Chavi was twenty-two, twenty-three. I mean, it's, it's a wild thing to have to deal with.

49:39 Speaker 4 You had no idea that this was coming before?

49:40 Speaker 3 No, no, no, no. Not, not even remotely.

49:43 Speaker 4 Right.

49:44 Speaker 3 And we went to visit Shlomo Bachar in his office afterwards before we flew back to Montana, so it's like three weeks later, and we spoke to him about our options and adoption, and he didn't give us any definitives 'cause he was smart enough not to do that. But we definitely felt like we had a guy in New York that was holding our hand.

50:04 Speaker 4 Yeah.

50:05 Speaker 3 And then we went into the whole adoption route.

50:08 Speaker 4 And people that don't know, he went through the same thing.

50:11 Speaker 3 He did and, and he doesn't... I, I'm not gonna talk about Shlema's story because let him talk about his story.

50:18 Speaker 4 Right.

50:18 Speaker 3 I don't wanna mess up someone else's story and miss the details, but he definitely... Yes.

50:22 Speaker 4 I'm just saying that people don't know-- that don't know about it, he also-

50:24 Speaker 3 He himself does not have biological children.

50:26 Speaker 4 Yeah.

50:26 Speaker 3 Correct. A lot of people that work in Binah Ulim are like that.

50:28 Speaker 4 Yeah.

50:30 Speaker 3 We came back to Montana. We had to th- you know, gather our bearings, figure out where we go from here. It, it was, it was a very challenging reality.

50:38 Speaker 4 I'm sure.

50:38 Speaker 3 Yeah.

50:38 Speaker 4 How did it mess with your shlichus? Because I, I... You know, the story of infertility is sadly one that people are familiar with. I mean, to different, to different extents, but how does it mess with your shlichus? You're already on shlichus. How does it mess with your view of the world? And le- let me flesh it out a little bit. Uh, maybe I'm going a little bit too far with my question, but I think, I think it's important to, to put it this way. Part of, like, people have spoken on this podcast about, like, the naiveté that it takes to go on shlichus, which is we, we have the world in bud. Like, we have it all figured out, right? And the world has questions. We have the answers. We're good to go. We just have to figure out some financials, but otherwise, you know, philosophically, it's all figured out, right? There's that innocence, that naiveté, and then you, you get this crushing thing where, like, on, on one of the most basic things that we all take for granted in life, you got nothing, right?

51:37 Speaker 3 Correct.

51:38 Speaker 4 Like, how does it-- how did that-- how did it mess with your, with your, like, concept of shlichus?

51:47 Speaker 3 So the, the... Being in Montana actually had a few milas just practically. You know, not on Kingston Avenue-

51:54 Speaker 4 Sure

51:54 Speaker 3 ... where you're watching the strollers roll by with your nieces and nephews that are forty years younger than you.

51:58 Speaker 4 Yeah.

51:59 Speaker 3 Um, I, I think the bigger question is how the Emunah and the Aibishter remained intact or somewhat intact.

52:11 Speaker 4 And the Rebbe also-

52:12 Speaker 3 And, and-

52:12 Speaker 4 And the Rebbe also, right?

52:15 Speaker 3 So I have this... Personally, I have a very great berakhah that I never have issues with the Rebbe. I don't. Some people, you know, they blame all their, you know-

52:26 Speaker 4 Mm.

52:27 Speaker 3 I, I, I don't have that. I think I have so much gratitude from, from what the Rebbe has given me just on a very personal level, the, the simchas ha-chaim and the meaning in life that I find every single morning at five o'clock when I'm opening up the Rebbe-- the Tzemach Tzedek that I... In addition to my childhood with the Rebbe, I just think the daily, the daily meaning that is put in my life because of the Rebbe and the gift that he gave me to, to be able to share a unique worldview with so many others. I mean, I'm not saying I don't have conversations with him. I sure do. And I'm not saying I don't let him know what I think. I do. But as a Jew, my, my job as a shliach was to, to share with the world Emunah and the Aibishter. How could Hashem do this? Right? I remember Yossi Serbransky from Denver. There was a... Someone posted a story on the, on the Shluchim network that said, "There's a lady in my community that didn't have kids for two hundred years, and fifteen minutes later after she started using the mikvah..." So he wrote, he says-- 'cause he struggled with infertility for many years. He wrote, "Just wanting to know, out of the Elul that are shluchim on this network-

53:32 Speaker 4 Have been using the mikvah

53:33 Speaker 3 ... that also use the mikvah." In my case, Chavi and I drove every month seven hours each way to Salt Lake City for two years.

53:39 Speaker 4 Yeah. Yeah.

53:40 Speaker 3 And they don't have biological children. Now, does that mean that there's no Nissim that happened through tefillah and mishpocha? Of course there is.

53:47 Speaker 4 Right.

53:47 Speaker 3 And if I ginze, God bless them. But to take the, the-

53:51 Speaker 4 I mean, the Rebbe also didn't have children.

53:53 Speaker 3 Correct. And the hardship of, of standing up at a podium and saying, uh, that when you live a life of taryag mitzvahs, the Aibishter promises, you know, "Leziya mishakeil v'al kara," you know.

54:07 Speaker 4 Right.

54:07 Speaker 3 Everyone loves learning the Maimonides, "Leziya mishakeil," I'm like, "Let's have that discussion."

54:11 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

54:11 Speaker 3 Um, I think that was hard. I think on some days it still is.

54:15 Speaker 4 Mm.

54:18 Speaker 3 But the alternatives, if you move away from Emunah and the recognition that the Aibishter has a gezunta plet and there's a plan here... In addition to the fact that in our particular life there was a plan. We adopted five kids that obviously needed our home, whether, whether it worked out perfectly or not, it's clear they, they were dropped on my doorstep.

54:36 Speaker 4 Right. But that's, but that's later on in the story.

54:38 Speaker 3 Well, a few-- a year and a half later was the first a- adoption-

54:41 Speaker 4 Right

54:42 Speaker 3 ... in two thousand and nine.

54:42 Speaker 4 Right, but that's now all in hindsight. In the moment-

54:44 Speaker 3 Yeah

54:45 Speaker 4 ... you're not thinking about that, right?

54:47 Speaker 3 No, in the moment I'm putting up with people telling me every zechirah. My mother sent me, I think, sand from Saudi Arabia or something that I should mix in applesauce. And by the way, I ate it. It tasted like applesauce, and we're still here to tell the tale. And then at a certain point I'm like, "Stop inviting me for klal programs. Stop giving me applesauce."

55:06 Speaker 4 Right.

55:06 Speaker 3 My father asked me if I'd go to Haditch with him 'cause a close friend of his said that by the Altere Rebbe in Haditch there's a berakhah for children. I said, "If we can fly Aeroflot and I can get Delta miles." At the time, Delta and Aeroflot were part of the same alliance.

55:18 Speaker 4 Right.

55:19 Speaker 3 So I said it with humor and sarcasm, but I did go to Ukraine with him 'cause he told me to. And-

55:23 Speaker 4 Zechira often

55:24 Speaker 3 ... there's a Lubavitch in Crown Heights, a very, very special man who goes with yungerleit to the oil.

55:28 Speaker 4 Right.

55:29 Speaker 3 Right?

55:29 Speaker 4 Rabbi, Rabbi Zeltsman, no?

55:30 Speaker 3 No.

55:30 Speaker 4 No.

55:30 Speaker 3 Someone else.

55:31 Speaker 4 Uh-huh.

55:31 Speaker 3 Um, and officially there was a special berakhah he had.

55:35 Speaker 4 I, I see.

55:35 Speaker 3 And I stood by the oil with him. I mean, I did whatever the Rebbe-

55:38 Speaker 4 Oh, Rabbi Zeltsman goes every year for, for, for-

55:40 Speaker 3 Oh, no, no. But I went with this person.

55:42 Speaker 4 Uh-huh.

55:43 Speaker 3 And then, and then, and then even there was a, there was a shliach who said to me, "Vos heist? There's a doctor in Jerusalem that has special treatment. You should shut down your chabadahs and go to Eretz Yisrael for two years until you can figure it out." What are you saying?

55:54 Speaker 4 Yeah.

55:54 Speaker 3 The only thing I, I want-- that I wanted to tell the guy is, "The only thing I have right now going for me is my marriage and my chabadahs."

56:01 Speaker 4 Right.

56:01 Speaker 3 Moving now from Montana to Jerusalem

56:04 Speaker 4 I mean, that's what you found ridiculous about his statement?

56:06 Speaker 3 No, I found ridiculous about his statement that, A, I went to the best doctor in New York with

56:10 Speaker 4 Right.

56:10 Speaker 3 B, as the

56:13 Speaker 4 Right.

56:13 Speaker 3 The berakhah will come from wherever it comes. Who are you,

56:16 Speaker 4 Right.

56:16 Speaker 3 To meet me at the night of the banquet in seven seventy and whisper in my ear that I should... Who are you?

56:20 Speaker 4 Right.

56:20 Speaker 3 You're not in my life.

56:21 Speaker 4 Right.

56:22 Speaker 3 I understand you experienced infertility too. It was someone that had experienced-

56:25 Speaker 4 Uh-huh

56:25 Speaker 3 ... infertility, but it doesn't give you a blank check.

56:28 Speaker 4 Okay, but y- I mean, I, I... Look, these people sound very annoying on a, and- No, and I think... Look, I think to be fair, I think there has been a, a, a growing awareness of, of the sensitivity that's needed for this because people have only found out in the past ten years how real this issue is and how it's not... Like, like people are... Like s- like this is real stuff. It's not, it's not hocus pocus.

56:52 Speaker 3 But there's, there's a lot of shame, meaning there's, there's an assumption, for example, right? The Midrash says that Avraham and Sarah were both eiker and akarah.

56:59 Speaker 4 Right.

57:00 Speaker 3 But in the Frum world-

57:01 Speaker 4 It's always a woman

57:02 Speaker 3 ... it's always woman's infertility.

57:03 Speaker 4 Yeah.

57:04 Speaker 3 And, and for-

57:04 Speaker 4 Not just the Frum world, by the way.

57:05 Speaker 3 No, no, I'm just saying-

57:06 Speaker 4 In the whole world, that's the, that's a growing assumption.

57:08 Speaker 3 It, it, it's, it's getting less and less, but in the frum... I get calls often and, and that's what I'm getting to the, to the sensitivity part that you asked me about before. I get-- I deal with a lot, a lot of couples. I'm not

57:19 Speaker 4 Right.

57:20 Speaker 3 But I just deal with them just preliminary. They have no idea where to start even. And I just like some- sometimes it's... And, and they're s- they, they don't wanna talk to their family.

57:27 Speaker 4 About infertility or about adoption?

57:29 Speaker 3 First, infertility.

57:30 Speaker 4 Right.

57:30 Speaker 3 They, they, they don't wanna call their mothers.

57:32 Speaker 4 Right.

57:32 Speaker 3 They don't wanna freak them out and-

57:34 Speaker 4 Right

57:34 Speaker 3 ... so they call me or they call Javi. And what you learn in that process is that there's a lot of people struggling.

57:43 Speaker 4 Yeah.

57:44 Speaker 3 And, and when you see a person walking on Kingston or walking anywhere in Miami on Collins Avenue, you don't know really what's going on behind the scenes.

57:52 Speaker 4 No.

57:53 Speaker 3 And yet we're all judgmental. So the first thing that happens when you get involved in something like that, and you become an address for that kind of-- those kind of phone calls, and then later that continues with phone calls about adoptions.

58:04 Speaker 4 Yeah.

58:04 Speaker 3 Shluchim, people in their community or Anash or Lakewood and Borough Park, they call us too. I once had a

58:10 Speaker 4 Right

58:11 Speaker 3 On the phone begging me for advice, and I kept saying the same thing: "What does your Rebbe says? Does your Rebbe allow you to take a non-Jewish child and have them go through a gir or

58:21 Speaker 4 Right

58:22 Speaker 3 To go through a child giyus?" He said, "No, the Rebbe

58:37 Speaker 4 Right.

58:38 Speaker 3 He didn't have the guts to talk to his Rebbe. I told one

58:41 Speaker 4 Right

58:42 Speaker 3 The Belzer Rebbe doesn't know who I am, but if you get me on the phone with him, I will tell him myself with the greatest respect.

58:48 Speaker 4 Right.

58:49 Speaker 3 So there's a disconnect, and so you become empathetic, and you become sensitive to the recognition of infertility, adoption, secondary infertility. Then you have a child with special needs. Then you have a child that has some emotional challenges or mental health challenges, and now people are calling you for that. I had a call a few weeks ago about a, a member of Anash whose eleven-year-old child was attempting suicide. And you get off a phone call like that after forty... I was in LaGuardia Airport. You get off a phone call like that, you're like, all bets are off.

59:15 Speaker 4 Yeah, man.

59:15 Speaker 3 So the business of, of changing perspective-

59:19 Speaker 4 Right

59:19 Speaker 3 ... and recognizing that we have to go back to the core of, of basic middos, of, of basic ahavat achim, right? You know, I have political... I, I wouldn't call political. I have strong views on Messianism. It's, it's something I-

59:36 Speaker 4 Yeah, for anybody who listens to this podcast, Chamsha's not a teddy bear.

59:38 Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah. No, no. Far from it. I'm a grizzly bear.

59:41 Speaker 4 I'm saying I, I can attest.

59:43 Speaker 3 No, no. I, I, I, I, I don't wanna give that impression at all. I don't want them to think-

59:48 Speaker 4 'Cause if they're listening to you, they-- all they're hearing is peace and love over here, but-

59:53 Speaker 3 No, no. So I have very, very strong opinions, even more than most of my friends and family.

59:57 Speaker 4 Right.

59:57 Speaker 3 The difference is that twenty years ago, those opinions meant that I needed to talk about it.

1:00:01 Speaker 4 Right.

1:00:01 Speaker 3 And I needed to fight the enemy.

1:00:03 Speaker 4 Right.

1:00:05 Speaker 3 Now, when those same people call me because we have this little thing called

1:00:09 Speaker 4 Sure

1:00:10 Speaker 3 That I run with three other shluchim.

1:00:11 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:00:12 Speaker 3 I have two of your neighbors.

1:00:13 Speaker 4 Menny Mangal.

1:00:14 Speaker 3 Menny Mangal and Sruly Sherman and-

1:00:15 Speaker 4 Sruly Sherman's my rabbi.

1:00:16 Speaker 3 Right. And Shloime, and Shloime Vishetsky in California, the four of us, and we get calls from all over the world.

1:00:21 Speaker 4 Right.

1:00:21 Speaker 3 And I'm the secretary, so to say, so I man the calls and make the connection to the doctors.

1:00:25 Speaker 4 And it's mainly for other shluchim?

1:00:27 Speaker 3 It's for other shluchim.

1:00:28 Speaker 4 Uh-huh.

1:00:30 Speaker 3 Especially people living in Eretz Yisrael where they don't have p- proper medical facilities.

1:00:34 Speaker 4 Right.

1:00:35 Speaker 3 When you take phone calls like that... So, so my point is that I can have a lot... I, I do have, I have very strong views about the whole Messianism in Chabad.

1:00:46 Speaker 4 Right.

1:00:47 Speaker 3 And let's just say I'm not fond of it, and I'm not shy about saying that. But if a guy calls me on the phone, and he's going through a... You think that comes into the... It's not even, it's not even part of the-

1:00:58 Speaker 4 No

1:00:58 Speaker 3 ... It's a brother who's in, in a terrible situation that needs love and care.

1:01:04 Speaker 4 He's a husband. He's a father.

1:01:06 Speaker 3 Correct.

1:01:06 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:01:07 Speaker 3 And the theological differences that I feel in the mo- very strongly about are not part of this equation.

1:01:14 Speaker 4 Mm.

1:01:15 Speaker 3 So I think, did I change my, my fierceness in, in policy, so to say? No. Actually, Javi always says to me, "You feel better now that you gave your opinion? Like you said it strongly, like you're ready?"

1:01:27 Speaker 4 Right.

1:01:27 Speaker 3 So, so my opinions are still strong. The difference is that you can, you can have a strong opinion. You can, you can study history from a certain angle and not feel the need to invoke inner wrath, inner anger, and to shoot down anything that stands in the way. And, and my wife actually had someone on her podcast recently who said, uh, that she quoted someone who said that, you know, people always say, "You trigger me. You trigger me. You trigger me." She says, "Trigger you is, it means nothing."

1:01:59 Speaker 4 Right.

1:01:59 Speaker 3 Because if your gun wasn't loaded with bullets and gunpowder, it wouldn't explode. You would pull the trigger, and nothing would happen. The, the fact that you exploded because they triggered you is what's going on inside of you, not because of the trigger.

1:02:11 Speaker 4 Right.

1:02:11 Speaker 3 And I think so much of it, I, I have to ask myself, "Okay, so they're doing something that I think they, they believe in something they think is absolutely ridiculous." We're absolutely against halacha, we're absolutely against everything the Rebbe stood for, everything my parents and grandparents raised me with.

1:02:25 Speaker 4 Right.

1:02:26 Speaker 3 Therefore what?

1:02:27 Speaker 4 Right.

1:02:28 Speaker 3 What will me screaming about it accomplish? What will me talking to a third party about it accomplish? It's not going anywhere. If I take that same energy and focus it on growing another Chabad house in Montana and hiring another couple and meeting another Jew so that I change my "" yeah.

1:02:47 Speaker 4 The change.

1:02:47 Speaker 3 Correct. The opinion didn't.

1:02:49 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:02:49 Speaker 3 How you go about those opinions absolutely did.

1:02:52 Speaker 4 Yeah. Yeah. I-- Okay. Re-recently I started thinking about like, you know, y-you talked about your, your relationship to the Rebbe through the things that he, through learning his Torah, and I, I understand, I, I understand where you're coming from, but to me, something that I thought about a lot or recently, um... Yeah, it's, it's been something I think-thinking about recently, is that like, regardless of any... You could have questions about things the Rebbe said. You could have like, you know, "What was that about? What was this about?" Things that bother you about how something's played out. To me, like what, what I always come back to in those moments is here was someone who had thousands of people come to him, either in the earlier years personally in Yechidas or later on with letters, and push it, unburden themselves with tzaros that you can't begin to imagine. And like, and, and the Rebbe would go and read these letters by the oil and spend hours reading them, like-

1:04:03 Speaker 3 Caring about them

1:04:03 Speaker 4 ... caring about them and like, you know, and, and it's like it-- you cannot... This is not something, like to me, it's like that's just like, okay, I, like I, I don't understand. Like that's too big for me to, to like-

1:04:17 Speaker 3 Emulate.

1:04:18 Speaker 4 No, it's not a matter of emulating. It's like, it's like that's, that's such a heavy thing that like, it's like, you know, like you-- I can't touch it, you know? Like it, it-- that's the thing that just... Meaning some people when they have a shailah or a question, it's like the Rebbe's kluger. You know, it's the-- I think Isaac Kovler said the Rebbe's smarter than you. Like, like, like you, you can, you can answer your question with the fact that, the fact that you don't understand this 'cause you're not so smart. The Rebbe's smarter than you. And that's one, that's one approach, right? And it's true. Like, like if you have a shailah about, about something or so, you know, you, you... Something's bothering you, it's your problem. The Rebbe's smarter than you. That, that... But to me, it's more-- the Rebbe's more, uh, is, is, is carrying a bigger pekel than you could ever imagine. The, the Rebbe was someone who took this on and listened to people, and that is something that like just-

1:05:09 Speaker 3 Had patience.

1:05:10 Speaker 4 Yeah, but I, I'm not even talking... I'm, I'm push it talking about the, the, the suffering that comes with that. Like, you know, you look at Basse LeGani, and I, and I, and I... So maybe I, I'm a little bit guilty of talking about Basse LeGani too often, and maybe people could suspect I'm trying to sell a program, but it's a reverse.

1:05:25 Speaker 3 You know, when I was in Montreal in yeshiva, and I've totally proselyted in the shtetl of Montreal.

1:05:29 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:05:29 Speaker 3 I'm sorry for cutting you off.

1:05:30 Speaker 4 No, no problem.

1:05:31 Speaker 3 I'll never forget, he was fabreng with the Mesivta Bucher, and when Herschel Raskin was there, so I popped my head in.

1:05:35 Speaker 4 Right.

1:05:36 Speaker 3 And it was ruch shvat time. He says, "Oh, I heard everyone's excited. There's a new sefer from Maran Basse LeGani." He says, "When are we gonna figure out that he wasn't trying to print books, he was trying to make the world a Gan?" And I still remember, I was like, "Oh, we're busy. Chaz, let's chaz Basse LeGani again. Hello?"

1:05:50 Speaker 4 No, but that, okay, but that ma'am is a real-

1:05:52 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:05:53 Speaker 4 Yeah, that ma'am is a, that ma'am is a real thing. And, and, and you... The, the Rebbe is sketching the history of Lubavitch and trying to create a, a framing of where dirge free falls in, and he brings the seven Rabbeim, right? First he brings the seven Rabbeim's title of Ikar Shechinah, and then he brings the seven Rabbeim about what dir betachtonim is. Oh, haskala, haskala. But then when it comes to how does it firais? What does it look like? What does he bring? He brings stories of Ahas Yisroel.

1:06:22 Speaker 3 Chopping wood.

1:06:23 Speaker 4 Chopping wood, and then the story of the Mitteler Rebbe-

1:06:25 Speaker 3 Tzaddik from Eretz Yisrael Achman

1:06:26 Speaker 4 ... where, where the Mitteler Rebbe's skin is, is the, the, the, the, the pain, the physical burden, the physical pain of the spiritual issues that this, that this chassid is going through and the f- and the Mitteler Rebbe is, is, is carrying that burden. The Mitteler Rebbe was also known he wasn't well, and he's still taking it on. It wasn't the Mitteler Rebbe, the one also, or was one of the other Rabbeim who he would between Yechidas and would have to s- change his kapate-

1:06:51 Speaker 3 From the schvitz

1:06:51 Speaker 4 ... from the schvitz. You know, and then someone told me a story recently where, where JJ Hecht, when he was a bachur, so the Frierdiker Rebbe at the time was a la... Those later years, the Frierdiker Rebbe couldn't speak clearly. And so Rabbi Simpson used to be in there to, to, to, to be, to, to, to tell people what the Frierdiker Rebbe was saying. Rabbi Simpson had to be away, and so he asked JJ Hecht, who was a bachur, who I guess was, was close enough and familiar enough to Frierdiker Rebbe to do the same thing, to, to take the role. JJ Hecht was there for one day and got ill. From, from hearing what people were bringing to the Frierdiker Rebbe in Yechidas got ill for two weeks. And he told JJ-- uh, he told Rabbi Simpson, "Never again. I'm not touching this again." A-and, and, and I'm, I'm bringing this all to say that, like, you know, when you talk about Chasidishkeit and Chasidis and, and Mashiach and all these things, you remember that the Rabbeim as people who... Like they're the ones talking about this. Like these were not people who were aloof from society, who removed themselves from society and spoke f- on a, you know-

1:07:59 Speaker 3 In vacuum

1:07:59 Speaker 4 ... on a, on a megaphone from the, from the mountaintop, you know, from the ivory tower, right? These were people who were in the trenches with people and answering questions about, about, about ment-- you know-

1:08:12 Speaker 3 You name it

1:08:13 Speaker 4 ... children, children, chil-- No, but not, not lofty spiritual-

1:08:17 Speaker 3 No, no, no. My father, when I was a kid, my father wrote the Rebbe I had a medical challenge. I think I was three years old.

1:08:22 Speaker 4 Right.

1:08:23 Speaker 3 The rabbi wrote to my father, uh, «Ka tzaras rofe yid, feldman shirche».

1:08:28 Speaker 4 Right.

1:08:28 Speaker 3 So not only tell him, "Don't go with..." He told him which doctor. The, the, the Moisha Feldman, Dr. Feldman-

1:08:33 Speaker 4 Right

1:08:33 Speaker 3 ... Dr. Robert Feldman. Until COVID, I didn't know if I should get a COVID shot, and I was like I was, I was on the phone with Dr. Feldman, and he's like, "Hamsha, I really don't know what to tell you." And I'm like, "I'm not getting off the phone, Dr. Feldman," till he says, "We don't have enough information." Then I think two months later, his son Chanan messaged me and said, "My father says Johnson & Johnson," so that's what I did. My point is, to me, I always look back at them like talking about Tav Shvan Gimel and Daled, like the rabbi doesn't have enough on his plate, but he's not only giving the standard answer ka tzaras rofe yid-

1:09:05 Speaker 4 Right

1:09:05 Speaker 3 ... but he's telling my father, "I think in this case you should go to this doctor."

1:09:09 Speaker 4 Yeah. People showing bias. People's, people's, people's tzaros. Like-

1:09:13 Speaker 3 Look, my friends, the Sharfs. Mendel Sharf is my, my close-

1:09:15 Speaker 4 Right

1:09:15 Speaker 3 ... one of my closest childhood friends.

1:09:17 Speaker 4 Right.

1:09:18 Speaker 3 Look how the rabbi spent his time with them.

1:09:19 Speaker 4 Right.

1:09:19 Speaker 3 Look how... Look at, look at that sensitivity.

1:09:21 Speaker 4 Right.

1:09:22 Speaker 3 And, and think... And it was, it wasn't one day. It was, it was from Tav Shenun.

1:09:25 Speaker 4 Right.

1:09:25 Speaker 3 Till Nun Beis.

1:09:27 Speaker 4 Right. Right. So even in the, in the these days, those days where the Rebbe's talking about Mashiach and ways that people are, you know, p- uh, like romanticizing-

1:09:35 Speaker 3 Put out those again.

1:09:36 Speaker 4 No, but the Rebbe's talking like these, these-

1:09:38 Speaker 3 Yeah

1:09:38 Speaker 4 ... chasidishe kind of, uh, language. It's always in the context. It's always framed by, by this down-to-earth sensitivity and real, real understanding of people's suffering.

1:09:53 Speaker 3 Of the, of the yasom at the bottom of the stairs.

1:09:55 Speaker 4 Of people suffering.

1:09:56 Speaker 3 Rabbi Ganis told me once from, from Marston, you know, he was a former Satmar Hasid.

1:10:00 Speaker 4 Sure.

1:10:01 Speaker 3 That before Mrs. Vechter and Rabbi Vechter left Williamsburg, the rabbi asked Mrs. Vechter to leave a note. She was the principal of, I think, Bais Ruchel, whatever the name of the Satmar school was, to leave a note on the desk for the next principal of which kids in the school have which ones are yasomas, which kids have a medical issue, you know. So, so that it shouldn't take six months to a year till they figure out, till the next principal figures out, right? So he said to me, "Hamsha, the Rebbe'd Lit- Litvak had Satmar yasomas," right? So we're dealing here in an era where the Lubavitcher's, Reb Pinchas Korver's beard is going, going away.

1:10:33 Speaker 4 And the Rebbe was very sharf about Satmar.

1:10:35 Speaker 3 Of course. And at the same time-

1:10:37 Speaker 4 Right

1:10:37 Speaker 3 ... there are, there are Satmar children that need to be cared for by their principal, and that was what also on the Rebbe's mind at the same time.

1:10:43 Speaker 4 Yeah.

1:10:44 Speaker 3 And I think that, you know, it's, it's, it's a, it, it's a, it's a very, it's a very, uh... It's easy to have a rebbe as a malach.

1:10:53 Speaker 4 Right.

1:10:54 Speaker 3 It's a lot harder to emulate a rebbe who was malach Hashem's focus, but also as down-to-earth as it gets in caring and carrying the burden of his people, but all people that were connected to him in ways that are un- unfathomable.

1:11:11 Speaker 4 Right. So, so let me ask a question that might sound very silly, but I, I, I think, I think it'll... I think, I think I can defend the question. As you, as you gain this recognition, right? And you, you, you, you through maybe your own personal circumstances, you, you, you... And, and, and the people that you begin to hear and, and, and, and, and connect to as a result, you, you, you, you almost get involved in the more, uh-

1:11:38 Speaker 3 I block it out

1:11:39 Speaker 4 ... down to... No, no. One sec. And no, but you're saying you're getting involved in the more ... Like, people also... Not that I understand it at all on the level that you do. I, you know, I, I, I did not go through this personally, but from the little bit of work I've done, like go back to Rabbi Bachner.

1:11:55 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:11:55 Speaker 4 That story about Rabbi Bachner. Like, he's sitting there learning Gemara. He, he's a Hasid. You know, it says-

1:12:00 Speaker 3 A Baba Suka

1:12:00 Speaker 4 ... a Baba Hasid with the vest and the whole levush, okay? Uh, blood Gemara, talking to a doctor in Israel about sperm.

1:12:07 Speaker 3 Yeah.

1:12:08 Speaker 4 Right?

1:12:08 Speaker 3 That, that my conversation with him this morning was not much different.

1:12:11 Speaker 4 Right. But he doesn't speak like, like, like that's the, the, the-

1:12:13 Speaker 3 It's the world he's living in

1:12:14 Speaker 4 ... there are no better words or hal- more halachic words. In a, in a fact, in a way, this is the ha- the holiest thing he could speak about, right? But it, it's... And what I- I, I'm saying that because, like, you're, you're shlepped into a world that is, that on the surface is very not ruchnisdik. It's very not Mashiach. It's, it's, it's-

1:12:33 Speaker 3 It's very sad and depressing

1:12:34 Speaker 4 ... right. No, and it, and it, it gets to push it, the, the, the, like, the, the, the gashmius of life, right? The mechanics, the mechanics of life. And, and it takes something that many of us or most of us are able to kind of just, you know, s- like, like ignore the, the, the mechanics of it, a- and it forces you to see, right? Does that take away from the kind of luftig, uh, you know, um, m- spiritual Mashiach-

1:13:05 Speaker 3 So, so-

1:13:06 Speaker 4 You know what I'm saying? Like-

1:13:06 Speaker 3 So for me, so for me, there's definitely a, a little dose of cynicism that comes with it because of what you see in the world. I think part of that came to me, um, with losing my mother. My mother died, um, when I was twenty-nine years old. She was fifty-four.

1:13:23 Speaker 4 So after you went on shlichus?

1:13:24 Speaker 3 After I went on shlichus. She didn't want me to move to Montana. She, uh-

1:13:27 Speaker 4 She was ill when you left?

1:13:29 Speaker 3 She was sick for on and off between remission, but she started her... She st- she, she had twelve years on and off with cancer.

1:13:35 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

1:13:35 Speaker 3 So she started, I was, I was in Kiryat Aleph Zal and finished, um, in the winter of, uh-

1:13:42 Speaker 4 So she didn't want you to leave for this reason?

1:13:44 Speaker 3 No. She said, "Why Montana? You can find a shlichus in New Jersey, in, uh, in, uh, New Jersey or Pennsylvania." And she had this Crown Heights, you know, this very casual, frank Crown Heights perspective. Like, she loved her kid going on shlichus. I was very close to my mother. I was a mama's boy. But like, "Why do you have to go to Montana?" And I said to her, I said, "They're offering me Vietnam or Montana." She goes like, "Fine, go to Montana." But you know, a funny... I'll tell you a funny story. Uh, when Chesky, my... When Chesky was at a Shickl Ben Bayis for a while, Chesky Wolf.

1:14:14 Speaker 4 Chesky Wolf, yeah.

1:14:15 Speaker 3 He came to my house a lot. My mother was very kind, you know, to, to all my friends that would come around, and one day he says, "Mrs. Brook, I just want you to know I'm opening a Chabad house in Montana." And my mother answered, "Mesiyaf ufik tuma." She says, "Why aren't you going on shlichus?" She, she said it like a Crown Heights, like with the, with the pshitas of a Crown Heights. "My son's in Montana, you're, like you're going to Manhattan."

1:14:34 Speaker 4 Oh, Manhattan. He said Montana.

1:14:35 Speaker 3 He said, "I'm opening Chabad house in Man- in Manhattan."

1:14:37 Speaker 4 In Manhattan.

1:14:37 Speaker 3 Sorry. He said, "I'm opening Chabad house in Manhattan." And she responded-

1:14:41 Speaker 4 Like, "Why aren't you-"

1:14:41 Speaker 3 ... "Why aren't you going on shlichus?" So th- this is a side note, but I think, I think that-

1:14:46 Speaker 4 Re- regards to Chesky. Shout out to Chesky

1:14:47 Speaker 3 ... a hundred percent. Always, always to Chesky. But I think, I think that's... It's, it's a, it's a... When, when, when you lose a mother and you see her suffer for that long, and you're very close to her, um, and I mean, like super close, you have a lot of questions. I said to my community after my mother passed away, I'm saying, "I'm really lucky that I finished that JLI course right before she died." She... The JLI course, mama's, before she passed away, was, um, I think it was the Soul Quest course, which was about all the medical halacha stuff, about end of life issues, and when you are allowed to end life and not end life. I'm like, if I would've, uh, had to give the class after she passed away, I think I'd have a different opinion on so many of these issues. A personal, not halachic opinions, but it would be very hard for me to stand up there with fire and brimstone and say it with a hay. So, so to answer your question, yes, when you're shlepped into that world of, of, of human suffering, of the nitty-gritty, you know, of the conversations about, you know, what goes on in people's bedrooms and what goes on in, in people's personal lives that are, that are challenging, you... For me, the only way I can, ten minutes later, get back to my day job, 'cause normally it happens smack in the middle of when I'm doing everything else, is I push

1:16:02 Speaker 3 it off to blank it out. I, I block it out as if it, you know, I did what I did. I gave them the recommendation. I hook them up with the doctor, and I let it go from there because my job is only at the initial stages once I get them hooked up. And then I, I really try to block it out and remember and remind myself that the Aibishter has a plan.

1:16:20 Speaker 5 But do you feel like you would've been a more Chassidishe Yid, uh, or a, a, a, a, a more m- like, connected shliach if you didn't feel... Like, if things had just kinda gone smoothly? Do you feel that this is a, like... 'Cause I think, I, I, I'm not-

1:16:35 Speaker 3 May- maybe, maybe the chitzonius would be more Chassidishe Yid.

1:16:38 Speaker 5 Right.

1:16:39 Speaker 3 There's no question that my emunah and bitachon of the Aibishter would be nowhere where it is today because to have emunah and bitachon and the way I live my life today and based on my life experience and our journey, you have to be rock solid. There's no, there's no ifs or buts about it.

1:16:53 Speaker 5 Right.

1:16:53 Speaker 3 You know, we live by the motto of, uh, of that Shmuel Gurary story of Shmuel Gurary.

1:16:58 Speaker 5 Yeah.

1:16:58 Speaker 3 Right? The, the, the, the nest, the, the, the miracle is that I'm still a Hasid.

1:17:02 Speaker 5 Right.

1:17:03 Speaker 3 And I love that story.

1:17:04 Speaker 5 I love that story.

1:17:05 Speaker 3 I love that story. And I share-

1:17:06 Speaker 5 Tell the, tell, tell, tell the story.

1:17:07 Speaker 3 All right. So I, I may butcher a little bit, but Shmuel Gurary was a Hasid in Ukraine. He was once sitting around with a bunch of other Hasidim from different dynasties, probably some of my cousins that were Gerr or something. And they're each talking about a miracle of their rebbe, the Vizhnitzer, the Gerrer, and this one. Everyone had a story, and it came to his turn, and he said, "Yeah, my rebbe," I think it was the Rebbe Rashab or the Me- maybe the Merash. Um, there was a big investment in a forest, and he told me to do the investment, and I did. I put the hein atzlo, I think was the loshon over there. And that summer, th- that winter, the river froze. We couldn't transport the lumber. We lost all our money. And they're all looking at him like, "What's the miracle?"

1:17:42 Speaker 5 Yeah.

1:17:42 Speaker 3 To which he responded, "The miracle is that I'm still a Hasid." And for Chavi and I, that has really been the motto. Being a Hasid from Giluyim, because the Rebbe gave you everything you ever asked for and your life is hunky-dory, therefore you could be high as a kite on every Yom Im T'kiah, and you can leave your house 18 times a year to travel to the Ohel, to travel to the Rebbe.

1:18:03 Speaker 5 On a private jet.

1:18:04 Speaker 3 Uh, uh, no, I'm talking about even the one sitting in coach in row 38, you know, near the toilet in the back of the plane.

1:18:09 Speaker 5 Then-

1:18:09 Speaker 3 But you're going and you're farbrengen and you wait three days before Pesach here in New York for Ralph Nissan, and then you're there again for Chav to Siv and Gimel Tammuz. You're basically, every five minutes, you're at the Ohel.

1:18:18 Speaker 5 Right.

1:18:18 Speaker 3 There's a part of me that envies that. There's another part of me that wonders, "How?"

1:18:22 Speaker 5 Yeah, what are you doing there?

1:18:23 Speaker 3 Either you got nothing going on in your shluchus or you have no challenges in your life.

1:18:28 Speaker 5 Right.

1:18:28 Speaker 3 Because even if I wanted to-

1:18:30 Speaker 5 Right

1:18:30 Speaker 3 ... it's pashut not shayah.

1:18:32 Speaker 5 Right.

1:18:33 Speaker 3 So if you're looking for Giluyim, it's true that without knowing all this stuff, I used to go... You know, when I'd go to Yahrzeit to New York, I'd daven 7:70 at the omit sometimes for my mother's Yahrzeit. I used to see Rav Pinchas Korff sitting there. He had a crowd of guys, four or five Tevre. He used to look at the Torah within the morning.

1:18:49 Speaker 5 Right.

1:18:50 Speaker 3 It was so-

1:18:52 Speaker 5 I, I know. I remember you talking about

1:18:53 Speaker 3 ... so fascinating to me. First of all, he taught it in English, which in itself rocked the house for me.

1:18:58 Speaker 5 Yeah. And it wasn't a very -- it wasn't a very Chassidishe English.

1:19:01 Speaker 3 I know. That's... But, but what I look... Every time I looked at him, I was like, "What is that like to live in a world where you don't know what Rush Limbaugh said?" Actually, you don't know who Rush Limbaugh is. What is it to live in a world where you don't care, you know, about the election, or you don't, you don't know what's cooking, and you're not dealing with other people's... You know, you're dealing with your own struggles. Everyone has, even the biggest of the Shiddim have their own struggles.

1:19:24 Speaker 5 Right.

1:19:24 Speaker 3 But, but you're not dealing with the nitty-gritty. And then reality kicks back in. Okay, it was nice having that moment, searing at Rav Pinchas. Now let's go back to reality. So I think that you have to be a Hasid in Giluyim, there's no question. You have to live BeChitzonios as a Hasid. But we can't do that at the expense of the, at the expense of the Etzem. And if you wanna find Etzem, it's not when everything's, uh, smooth sailing.

1:19:54 Speaker 5 Right.

1:19:54 Speaker 3 If you wanna get the essence and know if you're really a Hasid, and you wanna know if you're really connected to something higher than yourself, it can only come to, to, to fruition when everything you expected out of life and everything they told you was supposed to happen if you follow X program doesn't, and it doesn't affect that relationship, or at least doesn't affect it long term to the point where it's destroyed.

1:20:21 Speaker 5 Right.

1:20:22 Speaker 3 And so when you asked me earlier in this conversation, in this farbrengen, you said, did it ever... Did, did those mo- When I came back to Montana on shlichus right after our diagnosis with infertility, did it affect my relationship with the Rebbe? It didn't.

1:20:35 Speaker 5 Mm.

1:20:35 Speaker 3 Because the Aibishter's plan... The Re- the Rebbe doesn't make the plans. The Aibishter makes the plans. The Rebbe tries to intercede, and if the Aibishter says no, it's no. I still remember-

1:20:44 Speaker 5 So did it affect your relationship with, with God?

1:20:47 Speaker 3 It had a... Not long term, but yeah, sure.

1:20:51 Speaker 5 At the time.

1:20:52 Speaker 3 Sure. Like, what... You gotta tell... What's, what's your plan here?

1:20:56 Speaker 5 Right.

1:20:57 Speaker 3 So are we gonna go down the plan where the next 40 years we're gonna just do infertility treatments? 'Cause Someone told us that the-

1:21:03 Speaker 5 Right

1:21:03 Speaker 3 ... or are we gonna accept the reality? And that's also a challenge to know when to accept... When, when is it a challenge you're s- when is it a reality you're supposed to accept, and when is it a challenge you're supposed to overcome?

1:21:12 Speaker 5 Right. Exactly.

1:21:13 Speaker 3 B- b- and by the way, part of that issue is that I never really had a mashpia. I know, I know we talk about this concept of resembling HaRav and having a mashpia, but I was kind of shocked, broke. Like, who am I gonna sit down with and talk heart to heart with someone that I can actually be real with?

1:21:25 Speaker 5 Right.

1:21:26 Speaker 3 It wasn't until after I was married on shlichus in Montana-

1:21:29 Speaker 5 You found a mashpia

1:21:30 Speaker 3 ... I- not I found. I, I, I could say, I mean, I have an uncle named Chemshol.

1:21:34 Speaker 5 Oh, okay.

1:21:35 Speaker 3 And I called him, I said, "This is not a request. This is, um, I'm stating a fact. You are hereby da-

1:21:41 Speaker 5 Appointed

1:21:41 Speaker 3 ... you're hereby appointed as my mentor, and you're gonna be the mentor for myself and for our hou-household, and Javi accepts that as well. Therefore, we have a shailah about not, not-

1:21:52 Speaker 5 Wa- wa- well, he would've d- he, he would've been difficult to... He would've said no if you weren't so direct with him?

1:21:57 Speaker 3 I don't know.

1:21:57 Speaker 5 But-

1:21:57 Speaker 3 But I wasn't really... I, I didn't have any other options.

1:21:59 Speaker 5 You had no choice

1:22:00 Speaker 3 I couldn't, I couldn't have an option where he says no.

1:22:02 Speaker 5 Right. I see.

1:22:03 Speaker 3 So for over, I don't know, probably 15 years now, when we have a, a, not a shlichus question, should I have a mixed dinner or not dinner? I'll call Rabbi Krinsky for that. I'll call someone in the world of shlichus.

1:22:12 Speaker 5 Right.

1:22:12 Speaker 3 If I have a question about my avodah, if I have a question about my raising my children, the chinuch of my children, I have a question about shalom bayis, when I have a question about, um, chumras versus not, this is where you have to have perhaps a mentor that can guide you and put you on the right, on the right track, and you know that when he tells you what he tells you, whether you like it or not, or whether you have to accept it as if it came directly from, from the Rav. Which means I accept it without question.

1:22:37 Speaker 5 Mm.

1:22:38 Speaker 3 Had I wished I had that at a younger age? Sure. But like every good thing in life, it doesn't always happen at the right time, at the right place. But if you're gonna have one, you have to have one that's confident enough to tell you what they think and not give you six options. Can't stand Isaac, can't stand Isaac, can't stand Isaac. No, I need someone with clarity.

1:22:53 Speaker 5 Right.

1:22:53 Speaker 3 And he gives me clarity.

1:22:55 Speaker 5 Right.

1:22:56 Speaker 3 But, but that has guided me in, in situations where... I mean, this-- I think it's one of the things our community loves most about us is that we don't hide our personal struggles.

1:23:06 Speaker 5 Right.

1:23:07 Speaker 3 Our community knows that we struggle with infertility. It's not exactly a secret. Our community knows that we have struggles with children. They, they m- f- I mean, th- they know our struggles. Not, not every detail, but they know that we're, we're human beings that struggle.

1:23:18 Speaker 5 Right.

1:23:19 Speaker 3 And so when I give a sermon about emunah, or I give a sermon about shlicha pratis, or I give a sermon about, uh, midas tovias, I'm not just talking to them, I'm talking to myself, and they've seen the changes.

1:23:28 Speaker 5 Right.

1:23:29 Speaker 3 And so it's, it's, it's... The definition of being a Hasid is, is, is growth. Is, is, you know, what is the thing I remember there about knowing resembling yourself and restraining yourself? You gotta know who you really are, and you gotta know what your flaws are.

1:23:43 Speaker 5 Right.

1:23:44 Speaker 3 And then you gotta work to make yourself better. And sometimes if you don't do it on your own, the Abrishtter works it out, and he gives you such gifts-

1:23:52 Speaker 5 Yeah

1:23:52 Speaker 3 ... that you're gonna figure out a way to become more sensitive. Right? Chem Shullberg would never become... I would never become sen... I don't wanna sound like Donald Trump talking in third person. I would never become sensitive if everything was good in my life was I was in at the oil for fifty, right? Still probably s- be sitting by the fabricants with the oil bombarding somebody for some sacrilegious thing they did on the on chof chet tavias.

1:24:13 Speaker 5 Right.

1:24:13 Speaker 3 You know, they forgot that it was-

1:24:15 Speaker 5 Yeah, look, this, this is one of the things people have asked me. Uh, you know, you talk to these people on the podcast like, "What, what, what, what has changed your thinking?" Like, w- I mean, uh, many things have, many things have, many things have changed how I think because of these conversations. Um, you know, believe it or not, I, I do some listening while, while, while I'm talk... I mean, think I, I talk maybe sometimes a little bit too much, but I also do some listening. And then on top of that, I have to review it before I publish it, so I listen to everybody that talks twice.

1:24:42 Speaker 3 Lucky you.

1:24:43 Speaker 5 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And forgive about the fact that I have to listen to myself t- at least once, right? But, um, when I, when I edit a film, I listen to the person three or four times. The podcast is already, you know, uh -

1:24:56 Speaker 3 Only once.

1:24:58 Speaker 5 Only once. It's not a paid gig. I'm not doing it more than once. Anyhow, but like one... So there are many things that end, that, that get into your system whether even when I don't, I don't always realize it at the moment, but it gets in there. But one of the things that I've, that I've been paying more and more attention to is it, is... And I tell people it's, it's, it's, it's a real cause for optimism when you talk to people. They... It, it's listening to all these people has made me more optimistic. Why? Because someone gave me a, a, a rah-rah speech that got me all juiced up. No, not really, 'cause that stuff lasts for a day and then goes away. I am too cynical for that, sadly. Or not sadly, whatever. Just how I am. But it's a realization that at the end of the day, people are people, right? And for all the talk of being above everything, we're not above everything, right? And people have to deal with every, every Labov has to deal with their, their themselves, their health, their marriage, their children, the day-to-day s-

1:25:59 Speaker 3 Their mortgage

1:25:59 Speaker 5 ... the day-to-day stuff. And you could say, "Well, that... Why is that optimistic? That, that, that, that slaps you down." It's like, no, no, no. That forces us to get real. And when you're forced to get real, the beauty of getting real is, like you said before, it's like a fork in the road. Like you, you, you're forced to say, "Okay, I can't keep on going anymore this direction I was going. I either have to basically say, 'Okay, I'm not up to it. I'm not up... Like I'm not up to this challenge, so I'm just gonna basically realize that I have to, I have to go a different route,' or I'm gonna figure out a way to be up to it, but I'm gonna ha- it's gonna have to be in a different direction." It forces people to get real. Like if I'm gonna be honest, when, when, when I st- we-- after we got married, I went on, we went on shlichus, and it didn't work out the way I thought it would. Some of it, um, was not my fault. Some of it was a typical shlichus kind of shenanigans of politics and shechach and stuff. But if I'm gonna be honest, part of it was a realization and the, and the fundamental thing was a, was a realization that I'm not all that interested like I thought I was. Meaning when it got... When it didn't go smoothly, I looked at myself in the mirror and said, "How much do I want

1:27:05 Speaker 5 this?" And the answer was not that much Right? And, and so I could blame other things as much as I want, and a lot of those things are... Like, there's validity to it, but at the end of the day, I was forced to reckon with, like, am I up to it or not? And my answer was no. I said I went a different way. There are, you know, there are other things I would hope where I had a similar thing, and I went a better way as a result, right? But I'm just saying-

1:27:30 Speaker 3 There's no question that, that when it comes to realism, th-th-there's a reason why I, I really have no tolerance for... First of all, I'm not on any WhatsApp groups. Besides, I have a... My f- my four siblings and I have a group, and I stay on there to keep the family unity. Not be- you know, not because I think the, the specifics are that important. And we have a group for the five shluchim in Montana.

1:27:55 Speaker 5 That's it.

1:27:55 Speaker 3 Which is very inactive, meaning we only talk when there's something to do with Jewish life in Montana. It's not a, it's not a gossip machine.

1:28:02 Speaker 5 Right.

1:28:03 Speaker 3 I'm not on any other groups. I don't allow people to add me to groups. There's a setting for that. I'm not interested in it. I don't have, you know, people... But do you see the new resembling?

1:28:13 Speaker 5 Right.

1:28:13 Speaker 3 Like, I don't know. I'm in tafshun yu tes in tes manachan. I started in tafshun yu. It's taken me eight years to get here. I'm pretty sure I have a lifelong journey till I get to tafshun imbese.

1:28:22 Speaker 5 Yeah. I'll get back to you. I'll get back to you.

1:28:23 Speaker 3 So the resembling that you discovered- -is really not high on my priorities. Or you're having a discussion now because someone said that we might not be in Devar Shvi.

1:28:32 Speaker 5 Yeah. Well, I mean, this podcast is guilty of that.

1:28:35 Speaker 3 That's fine. Uh, uh, I, I, I don't have t... I, I have a Chabad house to run, I have children to raise, and I have a focus. I'm not sure why I should have time now to figure out if I'm on Devar Shvi or not.

1:28:46 Speaker 5 Right.

1:28:46 Speaker 3 Does it even matter?

1:28:47 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:28:47 Speaker 3 Does it matter what Devar I'm in? I'm in the Devar the rabbi entrusted me to bring Moshiach.

1:28:51 Speaker 5 Right.

1:28:52 Speaker 3 You wanna pick which generation it is, let me know which one it is, and I'll, and I'll c- I'll conform. It doesn't... It's not... And I, and I have friends that take this stuff very seriously.

1:29:01 Speaker 5 Right.

1:29:01 Speaker 3 And they have their own groups to discuss it. So I once in a while, I tell them, "Just do your... Let me know what the conclusion was so I know what generation we're in. I'll know-"

1:29:09 Speaker 5 Yeah. But-

1:29:09 Speaker 3 But jokes aside-

1:29:10 Speaker 5 There's n-

1:29:11 Speaker 3 Correct

1:29:11 Speaker 5 ... there's ne- there's never a conclusion.

1:29:12 Speaker 3 So that, but that's the point.

1:29:13 Speaker 5 Right.

1:29:13 Speaker 3 Is that we get caught up in the arum.

1:29:16 Speaker 5 Yeah.

1:29:16 Speaker 3 And when you, when you have that realism perspective, like we have a job to do. Life is limited.

1:29:21 Speaker 5 Right.

1:29:22 Speaker 3 You know, I'm forty-three years old. I've got ...

1:33:07 Speaker 5 Right

1:33:07 Speaker 3 ... but, but, but, y-you know- But the, the-- in modern day, the closest shliach that ever dealt with Jews in Montana in the modern era was Benny Zippel in Utah.

1:33:18 Speaker 5 Right.

1:33:18 Speaker 3 So he moved to Utah on Tu Bishvat. He was the last shliach to go out "" other-

1:33:23 Speaker 5 Oh, yeah

1:33:23 Speaker 3 ... he got a dollar to go to Utah, and the next day was the stroke, and he didn't know himself what to do, and I think Rabbi Kotlarsky told him to get moving.

1:33:32 Speaker 5 Right.

1:33:32 Speaker 3 So he, he moves to Salt Lake. He was in touch with, you know, I don't know, a couple m- maybe two minyanim of Jews in Montana that reached out to him, and they were on the mailing list. And right in the beginning of my shlichus, one day we were talking, and he was like an, an older brother mentor that I, that I spoke to a lot. I still do. And he said, "Hanshal, I have a new gir, a billionaire." You know, I'm a young kid, I'm excited. He goes, "He's, he's richer than Bl- than Bl-" I still remember. He said, "Richer than Bloomberg." I said, "Benny, who the-- who's hanging out?" And he, he dragged it along, and then finally he said, "It's, uh, Melech Malchei Hamelachim Hakadosh Baruch Hu." And he really, with that little anecdote in-in-ingrained in me as a young shliach that I should not get caught up in the, the business of supporters and how much money they have and who's in charge, and what if someone else takes a dollar from them. There's a Nishtane that decides where the money's being allocated, and don't ever forget that in the process. And really, when I look around Montana, right? I had Chabad of Montana. I had supporters in Missoula, in Kalispell, in Billings. Not, not millions of dollars, but for a small Moises in a state that's rural, you know, bringing in forty thousand dollars a year from different parts of the state and then saying, "If I put a shliach

1:34:49 Speaker 3 there, then I'm not gonna raise money in that area anymore. It could affect me financially."

1:34:53 Speaker 5 Right.

1:34:53 Speaker 3 And then you ask yourself, "Hold on. You sit a whole day talking about Hazon Olam Kulnu Betulei V'chaim Chesed Avraham, every benching. We talk about B'tokh. We learn Shaar B'tokh. The rabbi talks about it all day. Tanya."

1:35:05 Speaker 5 Right.

1:35:05 Speaker 3 And I'm over twenty grand, I'm gonna be M'nei Abar from, uh, from five hundred Jews to have a shliach?

1:35:11 Speaker 5 Right.

1:35:12 Speaker 3 So I think in life, i-it's a little too much to expect Bochurim at fifteen, sixteen years old to really be inoculated and, you know, really understand... I mean, Midda's title should be a given.

1:35:27 Speaker 5 I, I don't think it's too much to expect. Uh, that's actually, I... It's something that I've, that I've disagreed with a number of people. I don't know if it's been on the podcast.

1:35:33 Speaker 3 No, I don't have a deep philosophy.

1:35:34 Speaker 5 No, no, no. I'm not saying I disagree with you, but you, you brought it up. It's, it's a debate that I've had with a number of people, and I, and I, and I, I usually find myself disagreeing. Look, it's one thing to say that you can expect Bochurim to really understand what you're talking about. You're gonna talk about Shalom Bayis. What's a Bochur know about Shalom Bayis? You're gonna talk to a Bochur about, uh, uh, the... Yeah. It, it's... A lot of it's abstract, yes. But that therefore you should infantilize them and, like, like, just cut off this whole language from Bochurim because Bochurim at fifteen-- First, two things. They're smarter than you give them credit for. B-

1:36:08 Speaker 3 Especially these days

1:36:09 Speaker 5 ... B, you're not getting another shot with them. This idea that, oh, when they're twenty-three... Uh, it's like if a, a parent has a young child and says, "You know what? My child's eight years old now. They don't really understand much, so I'll wait till they're fifteen to, like, actually have a relationship with them." Okay, good luck with that, right?

1:36:25 Speaker 3 Well, you know, the parents that thought they're gonna... I, I meet sometimes secular parents that are gonna let their kid, when they're eighteen, decide they should have a bris.

1:36:31 Speaker 5 Right.

1:36:31 Speaker 3 Like that's gonna work out really well for you.

1:36:33 Speaker 5 Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly, right? Th-that's one of the reasons why when it comes to a bris, the father has a chiyuv right away to do it.

1:36:39 Speaker 3 Right.

1:36:39 Speaker 5 It's the father's chiyuv, right? Like, there, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's a... There, there is a, there is sometimes a desire to, to not make the tough choice. "Let my kid make the choice." It's like, no, no. L- it's, it's... There, there's an urgency to it. There's an urgency to it. We cannot... We don't have this luxury of waiting for the time to arrive when they get to their... No, it doesn't work that way.

1:37:01 Speaker 3 Uh-uh.

1:37:01 Speaker 5 And so, like, when it comes to Bochurim, like, no, why, why shouldn't Bochurim be taught when you're in Yeshiva? Why shouldn't you be taught that Chassidus-- And you start off the conversation this way. Why shouldn't you be taught what it says in Chassidus? That the whole point of Chassidus is the L'shanas Tevah Midaisov, right? The whole point of Chassidus is to take a, a Middah of Achzarius, which is some people have it more, some people have it less, some people... Everybody has their challenge, but it's not like an unhuman thing to be born with a, with a streak of cruelty and, and, uh, bullying and these things, right?

1:37:36 Speaker 3 Teaching them that Dr. Doomstein is wrong and Dr. Midos is right, and that Dr. Doomstein can go do teshuva and go to Yeshiva's Ej Shamer. And this is bas-- And this is-

1:37:43 Speaker 5 Yeah, I'm not familiar with the whole Dr. Midos thing.

1:37:45 Speaker 3 How could you not be familiar? My ki- I still drive in the car with it, Dalayim, with my kids.

1:37:48 Speaker 5 Fair. Uh, maybe I should, but I'm saying I-

1:37:50 Speaker 3 You should

1:37:50 Speaker 5 ... Okay, say that. No problem. But, uh, it's a... I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll ta- I'll ask my kids. They're very particular about their music.

1:37:56 Speaker 3 I know. There was one-- There, there was once a group here from, from Monsey, a summer camp of, of Bochurim f- I think fifteen to seventeen years old, and they, uh, they were with us for Shabbos. It was in my house. It was a crazy Shabbos. We had seventy tourists, and the head of the camp, Rabbi Moscowitz, asked me if I could-

1:38:10 Speaker 5 This was a Babish camp?

1:38:11 Speaker 3 No, no, no.

1:38:11 Speaker 5 Uh-huh.

1:38:12 Speaker 3 Litvisher camp.

1:38:12 Speaker 5 Right.

1:38:13 Speaker 3 Asked me if I could speak to the kids about Shalosh Judes.

1:38:15 Speaker 5 Okay.

1:38:16 Speaker 3 So I don't know how we got to what the topic was. It was on Pirkei Avos, and I said something-

1:38:19 Speaker 5 You told them, "Babichers don't do Shalosh Judes."

1:38:22 Speaker 3 I let them even sing Mizmoris.

1:38:24 Speaker 5 Oy vey.

1:38:24 Speaker 3 A pleasure.

1:38:25 Speaker 5 Oy vey.

1:38:25 Speaker 3 I still don't know the words, but they're still welcome to sing it. So I said to the kids... I don't know how it came. In the, in the context of my thing, I said, "You know, if you're driving on the street or walking down the street and you see a pretty girl-

1:38:36 Speaker 5 Right

1:38:36 Speaker 3 ... and you turn around to look, that means you're healthy."

1:38:40 Speaker 5 Right.

1:38:40 Speaker 3 "But then there's something called Shemiras Einayim. There's something called the Scafia, depending on what terms you wanna use. So if you can't turn away, and therefore you crash your car, then you need to get help."

1:38:50 Speaker 5 Right.

1:38:50 Speaker 3 In other words, there's the human aspect of it-

1:38:53 Speaker 5 Right

1:38:53 Speaker 3 ... and then there's the Avoda of looking away.

1:38:55 Speaker 5 Right.

1:38:55 Speaker 3 We don't talk in those terms.

1:38:57 Speaker 5 No.

1:38:57 Speaker 3 And, and the challenge with that is, what, what... How do you expect someone to deal with the real world, to deal with a world that has-

1:39:03 Speaker 5 That's exactly what I'm saying

1:39:04 Speaker 3 ... the internet, pornography, uh, God knows, addictions from all sides, and, and we're not talking the language. Now, I'm not a Mechanech, and I don't know exactly how to go about it in the Yeshivas, but I still remember I was twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two years old, and I worked in Monsey Yeshiva then when you were there.

1:39:19 Speaker 5 I remember. Oh, yeah.

1:39:20 Speaker 3 So-

1:39:20 Speaker 5 We remember driving. We-- Do you remember that we drove and we almost-

1:39:23 Speaker 3 Your father, your grandfather.