Ep. 88 // "A Baal Teshuva's Eyes" w/ Reb Simcha Gottleib

00:00 Speaker 1 The Rebbe, you know, in the famous, uh, sicha, you know, but in many other contexts, you know, the Rebbe would talk about, you know, the goal is here, all we have to do is open our eyes. So many times I heard from people that I lived with, Hasidim, by that time I was very integrated in the community, you know. Um, what does he mean?

00:19 Speaker 2 Right.

00:19 Speaker 1 What does that mean, open your eyes? A- and I'm s- we've been opening our eyes, you know, the only way we got here is by opening our eyes, and the only way we stayed here is by continuing to open our eyes, so what are you talking about? They don't know what he's talking about.

00:37 Speaker 2 Welcome to Homesick for Lubavitch, a podcast where we explore Lubavitch identity in the year 2026. My name is Ben Zion Finson, and I will be your host. Let's begin. All righty. We are here in Miami Beach, Florida with Reb Simcha Gottlieb. Uh, it's about 10 o'clock in the morning, and, uh, I don't live in Florida, and I wasn't in Florida last night, so you can do the math of what time my day started today. Um, so if, uh, if I'm not-

01:19 Speaker 1 You'll fall asleep.

01:20 Speaker 2 No, no. I, I'm quite convinced that, uh, I'm not gonna fall asleep with you across the table, but, um, if I'm not, if I'm not as sharp as I should be, you'll forgive me. But, um, thank you for, thank you for agreeing to this podcast. It's the first recording I've done in a while. It's been a busy couple months. Um, and, uh, for all those who appreciate this podcast, please like and subscribe on the various channels, and, uh, those who really like the podcast, please contribute to the podcast and help support it at hflpodcast.com/donate. Reb Simcha, thank you very much. We've been in touch for a long time. It's nice to finally meet you.

01:59 Speaker 1 Thank you. It's a great pleasure.

02:01 Speaker 2 So let's, let's start from the beginning, shall we? Um, wh- where does the story of Simcha Gottlieb begin? But it can begin before you became Simcha Gottlieb. I'm sure you were born with a different name.

02:18 Speaker 1 Steven.

02:18 Speaker 2 Steven. Let's, let's start with Steven Gottlieb.

02:21 Speaker 1 Okay. How far back you wanna go? How much time you got?

02:24 Speaker 2 Um- I'll leave it to you.

02:27 Speaker 1 So, um, I became Simcha Gottlieb in my early 20s, I guess. Uh, prior to that, I was, I had a very nomadic childhood and adolescence. Uh, I was born in Detroit. Your family's from Detroit, huh?

02:44 Speaker 2 My father was also born in Detroit.

02:45 Speaker 1 Yeah.

02:46 Speaker 2 I w- I wouldn't say they're from Detroit. They were, they were refugees in Detroit, but-

02:49 Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, yeah

02:50 Speaker 2 ... but my father was born in Detroit, yeah.

02:52 Speaker 1 Yeah. So I, yeah, I also left Detroit when I was three. My father was a, a undergraduate at University of Michigan, and then we moved to Boston and then to New Orleans and then to New York.

03:02 Speaker 2 So different kind of refugee.

03:04 Speaker 1 Different kind of refugee. Right. Right.

03:06 Speaker 2 Right.

03:06 Speaker 1 Yeah, wandering Jew. But, um, so, um-

03:11 Speaker 2 What do they call academics, refugees from reality?

03:15 Speaker 1 Yeah. I, um, in my, uh, I went to high school in New York, Bronx High School of Science. In my f- in my first year of college, I went to University of California at Berkeley, which was, uh, long before there was any Chabad over there. It was in '64, actually.

03:36 Speaker 2 Right.

03:36 Speaker 1 I wanted to get as far away from New York as I could at that point, and my, my older brother was a graduate student there, so my mother, uh, con- s- uh, let me go, basically.

03:47 Speaker 2 So you were, you were in high school in New York, and you took off to Berkeley.

03:51 Speaker 1 Took off to Berkeley. I wasn't there long. I transferred back east and went to State University of New York in Binghamton, which at that time was a small liberal arts college called Harper College. It was SUNY Binghamton, but it was, you know, it was fondly known as Harper College.

04:04 Speaker 2 Right.

04:05 Speaker 1 And, um, I was in and out of school, you know, it was, uh, it wasn't a long time. I was a, uh, I was started out as a philosophy major, um, 'cause I thought it was a good idea, and then I became a theater major 'cause I had some background in that. I left, uh, college, uh, the first time, I guess, uh, no, second time in, uh, in the, in '66, and I went on, uh, and I went back to New York, basically. Now, I was in California for a while. I was, uh, spent a brief time in a rock and roll band where we wanted to be, uh, the Cream when we, when we grew up.

04:44 Speaker 2 Right, so describe the milieu a little bit that you were, you're, you're talking about here.

04:48 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

04:48 Speaker 2 This is, this is the so-called hippie counterculture, correct?

04:52 Speaker 1 Not yet, really. You know, that kind of advanced. We, we-- by '67, that started happening, but that was never really... You know, hippie was always like a Time Magazine word. You know, it wasn't really what we-

05:02 Speaker 2 So who were, who were the, who were the luminaries of this time? Or were you not part of a gr- or you're not part of-

05:09 Speaker 1 No, I was, I wouldn't say part of it at this time.

05:11 Speaker 2 Kerouac, or is, is this-

05:12 Speaker 1 No, Kerouac is the-

05:13 Speaker 2 ... later?

05:13 Speaker 1 ... Beat Generation.

05:14 Speaker 2 That was what?

05:15 Speaker 1 Yeah.

05:15 Speaker 2 That was later?

05:16 Speaker 1 That was... No, it was the '50s.

05:17 Speaker 2 Oh, the '50s.

05:17 Speaker 1 '50s, maybe up into the early '60s, and Alan Ginsberg-

05:20 Speaker 2 Right

05:20 Speaker 1 ... in those days, and Gregory Corso, whatever, you know.

05:22 Speaker 2 So were you following that trajectory of-

05:24 Speaker 1 It was after that. My father was from that generation, really. My father was very much in that trajector- trajectory. In the '60s, you know, it became, uh, especially in the Bay Area, it became, you know, uh, rock and roll and, and American, American music in the sense of picking up, picking up from the blues and, and, and country music and creatives, you know, Dylan and Leonard Cohen. You know, we were talking with, uh, with, uh, uh, Jonathan Sacks was interviewed by, uh, by Tim Ferriss, as a podcaster who has, like 11 standard questions that he asks his, uh, his interviewees, and one of his questions is, "What's your favorite purchase you ever made, uh, that's less than $100?" So Rabbi Sacks said, "My, my noise-canceling headphones." I said, "Oh, you, you like to listen to music?" He said, "What kind of music do you like to listen to?" I said, "Only Jewish music, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Leonard Cohen."

06:18 Speaker 2 Right.

06:19 Speaker 1 So, uh, so it w- that was very much what was happening then. Um, there was a political orientation. I, '64 was the Free Speech Movement in, in Berkeley. I came from a very, uh, sort of leftist, radical, anti-war, civil rights organi- you know, org- uh, uh, focused, um, uh, family and milieu. Um, took a while for that to meld into something else, to mellow into something else. Um, but, uh, basically I started to see that the left was p- more part of the problem than part of the solution, and, uh, started moving. As I started getting more and more into spiritual matters, I started, you know, gaining a more conservative perspective un- until such time as, uh, as politics began to recede into the background.

07:04 Speaker 2 That's an interesting point. Uh, jumping, jumping a little bit off to- off the, off the story here, but I, I find it very interesting a lot of times people like to, like, uh, they, they, they wanna align the two, the two, the two, the two, uh, the two paradigms of politics and spirituality and like where is, is... Or religion, like is Judaism leftist or rightist?

07:29 Speaker 1 Hmm.

07:29 Speaker 2 Is it, is it liberal or conservative? And you'll find people, you know, shoehorning it in either direction, and I find the whole thing silly. Like, like you said at the end over there, that i-i- the deeper you get into spirituality or religion, the more politics recedes to the-

07:46 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

07:46 Speaker 2 ... to the background, right?

07:48 Speaker 1 Yeah.

07:48 Speaker 2 I mean, it, it's-

07:49 Speaker 1 There was an interview with the Rebbe in New York Times, I forget the name of the writer, who was asking the Rebbe about this, you know, political, you know, about, uh, "Isn't Judaism very conservative?" In other words, backwards looking.

08:02 Speaker 2 Right.

08:02 Speaker 1 You know, and the Rebbe said, "You know, we, you know, uh, we're always looking for and advancing towards new things that have never been. So if you wanna call that conservative or, you know, leftist or rightist, that's not where it's coming from."

08:15 Speaker 2 Right.

08:16 Speaker 1 And I think it was quoted in, uh, in Chaim Miller's book or Chaim Miller and Wexler's book on, on the social vision. And, um, so yeah. So I... Let's see. Where's... You know, best place to go from there probably is, um, in... Fast-forward a little bit to '68, '67, '68. I was back in New York, and, uh, had been sort of on the, as you suggested, on the sort of the out- the outskirts of Summer of Love of 1967, all that stuff. You know, I was around then and, you know, we knew people and, and, and, uh, it was a, it was an interesting time, and it was-

08:54 Speaker 2 One second. Uh, people listening to this podcast-

08:56 Speaker 1 Yes

08:56 Speaker 2 ... don't, don't know about Summer of Love, and maybe- ... maybe for the better, but can you just describe a little bit what you're referring?

09:02 Speaker 1 It was a, it was, it was a quote, unquote hippie phenomenon.

09:07 Speaker 2 This is before Woodstock, right?

09:09 Speaker 1 Yeah. Woodstock was in summer of '69.

09:12 Speaker 2 So this was in, this was in California specifically?

09:14 Speaker 1 It was mostly in Ca- it, iconically in California, San Francisco.

09:17 Speaker 2 Right.

09:18 Speaker 1 Um, and, uh, Haight Ashbury was the neighborhood.

09:22 Speaker 2 Right.

09:22 Speaker 1 And the Grateful Dead were there, and Janis Joplin was there, and the Jefferson Airplane and, uh, et cetera if you want the, the music scene. And it was actually, that was what was most attractive to me was the music scene over there. There was the beginning of progressive FM radio where they weren't just playing, you know, three and a half minute, you know, Top 40 hits. Um, and-

09:42 Speaker 2 And the idea was that it's a summer of love as opposed to the war, as opposed to-

09:47 Speaker 1 Partially, yeah. It was definitely an anti-war feel to that.

09:50 Speaker 2 Who was the love against, is my question?

09:54 Speaker 1 Um, conventionality.

09:57 Speaker 2 Right.

09:57 Speaker 1 You know?

09:58 Speaker 2 Okay.

09:58 Speaker 1 The sleepy '50s, the sleepy culture-

10:01 Speaker 2 Right

10:01 Speaker 1 ... of American, you know, post-war, uh, passivity in a way, you know. Cons- conservative, but conservative not in so much in a political sense, but in a social sense-

10:10 Speaker 2 Right

10:11 Speaker 1 ... in a, in a personal sense, a psychological sense.

10:13 Speaker 2 Okay. Tight buttoned-up sense.

10:15 Speaker 1 Yeah.

10:15 Speaker 2 So basically Summer of Love, being in love with ourselves is-

10:19 Speaker 1 Yeah, very much so. Very much so. And, you know, and in love with anyone who comes along, depending on which day of the week it is. But, um-

10:28 Speaker 2 Right

10:28 Speaker 1 ... but, uh, so, uh, I came back to New York. My father at the time was, uh, was, uh, in the theater world, but in the avant-garde experimental theater world primarily, world. And, um, he was sometime around six- late '67, early '68, he was, he was directing a, a show, a, a play. It wasn't a play actually, it was a show. It was kind of a quasi va- vaudeville, uh, called, uh, Times Square Two. It was kind of like the precursor of the Smothers Brothers. Some people, you know, will, uh, relate to that a little bit. Maybe that's too, maybe that's too old school too. But, uh, he, um, he was directing this show, and I was hired on as the, as the director's kid, um, as a stagehand. And the stage manager got sick, so I was promoted to stage manager. So I was quickly thrust into a position of responsibility, technical, uh, demands, et cetera. Um, and, uh, that was, you know, that was my first serious gig in the theater. Uh, it quickly advanced to, um, in the... It's nine- end of '68, '69, my father even close to an ex- uh, to a radical theater group called The Living Theatre. Many people in the theater, theater world would, you know, remember them. And, uh, they had... He was close friends with them. He was actually assistant director on one of their well-known productions called The Brig. It's probably available on YouTube somewhere, about a marine brig.

12:01 Speaker 2 All right.

12:01 Speaker 1 Um-

12:02 Speaker 2 Just bring the microphone a little bit closer.

12:03 Speaker 1 Yeah, sure.

12:03 Speaker 2 Just for-

12:04 Speaker 1 Sure

12:04 Speaker 2 ... pull it up.

12:06 Speaker 1 And, um- So the Living Theatre got, uh, busted for tax evasion and exiled themselves to Europe. They were there for about five years. My father went and visited them there. He wrote about them. He was still close with them, and he, uh, actually he, um, uh, innovated a radical theater booking agency called Radical Theater Repertory actually for all the, you know... There was a whole scene in New York, Lower East Side, Open Theatre, Bread and Puppet Theatre. These may be meaningless names, but he brought the Living Theatre back in the late '60s, '68. Uh, got all their visas straightened out, uh, handled somehow their tax issues with the IRS, and, uh, they were l- they had, uh, uh, incorporated a lot of European actors as well while they were there, and developed a new, uh, very, very, uh, experimental repertory. He brought them back and booked a national tour, and, uh, I worked with them on that tour, uh, from '68, from '68 to '69. In the... Now w- now we're getting closer to the, to the, the next reality, to the real reality. But, um, in, um, after the end of the tour, I ended up back in Binghamton, along with a number of friends or new friends and acquaintances or what have you, all of whom were kind of, to one extent or another, refugees from the '60s. And, uh, you know, one of my very good friends who no doubt will come up later in the conversation is Yechiel Tillis, Mike Tillis,

13:44 Speaker 1 who had just come from two years in the Peace Corps in Thailand, followed by three months in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand before he came back, and came back to Binghamton. He-

13:56 Speaker 2 What do you mean, refugees of the '60s?

13:58 Speaker 1 Uh, we were headed somewhere else. We were, um... There was a kind of a nihilism. There was a kind of a, a hedonism that was, uh, that at least underlined the '60s mentality, which some people succumbed to it. You know, I knew, I knew friends who burned themselves out. You know, the drug culture and what have you, you know. It was a... Those of us who had-

14:22 Speaker 2 The f- the free love culture.

14:23 Speaker 1 Free love culture, the drug culture, you know, cannabis and, and, and psychedelics.

14:28 Speaker 2 Right.

14:29 Speaker 1 Um, and which I had done some of, you know. Um, it was never, you know, n- never w- you know, encompassed by it in a way that I... Some of my friends saw who really burned out.

14:42 Speaker 2 Homesick for Lubavitch is brought to you by Yuvala Media, a boutique video production company servicing the Chabad and Jewish community. Since opening 10 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 Boniolum, Torah Umesora, and Atalathon, 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. Oh, so you, so you were running away from the '60s. You felt they'd gotten too much.

15:39 Speaker 1 I was not running away so much as graduating from.

15:43 Speaker 2 But you said refugees.

15:44 Speaker 1 Okay, so it's a, you know, it's a, it's a, uh-

15:46 Speaker 2 No, I know it's a euphemism.

15:47 Speaker 1 Yeah.

15:47 Speaker 2 I'm just trying to understand what was going on then. If you, you, you felt that, that it got, that the train had, had gone off the rails or something?

15:54 Speaker 1 Let's put it this way. The year that I spent with the Living Theatre, who were very decadent in many ways, very talented, brilliant, um, their, uh, their, the most famous and, and most popular of their repertoire, repertory at that time was a play called Paradise Now. Very freeform, very, um, uh, audience participation, and, uh, very politically... They were anarchists, essentially. And, uh, my father cons- you know, considered himself an anarchist in those days too, you know. In a, in a, in a m- in an older sort of, uh, sort of early European sense when it was, when it, when there was an intellectual component to anarchism-

16:33 Speaker 2 Right

16:33 Speaker 1 ... as opposed to just nihilism. Um, and, um, I was part of the, I was the part of the company. I was, I, you know, d- didn't do much acting, but in the whole company set pieces, I was, you know, I did technical work. And, um, at the end of that, it's like it was the, I guess, uh, mid-spring 1969. I had a choice of going back to Europe with them, going to Europe with them. They were headed back to Europe. Um, and I said, "This is, this is not a lifestyle." You know, this, there's an old, uh, there's a, there's a, a line from The Band. If you're familiar with the, with the, with the, the group The Band. They said, "This, this living on the road is getting pretty old." And that was what I saw, and I said, "This would kill me if I went back to Europe with them." So I went back to Binghamton, and at that point, I started really advancing towards a more healthy, um, s- almost spiritual, in the direction of spiritual lifestyle: yoga, meditation, macrobiotics, macrobiotic diet. Um, and, uh, I, I and the aforementioned Mike Tillis and a bunch of others who were in a similar... You know, refugees was, you know, not exactly a euphemism, but, you know, a, a, an amusing way of characterizing it. But, uh, but we were looking for something, and we converged. And, uh, in the summer of 1969, we, uh, a bunch of us rented a, uh, a,

18:06 Speaker 1 a farmhouse outside of, of the campus area ... of Hartwick College. And there were actually a couple of such houses. There was, there was another group a little further away in Pennsylvania, the corner of Pennsylvania. But, uh, but, uh, we were getting into, very deeply into macrobiotics.

18:24 Speaker 2 What's macrobiotics?

18:25 Speaker 1 Macrobiotics is a, is a, um, a, a dietary, a sort of a spiritual dietary path based on the Asian, uh, philosophical concepts of yin and yang, which is very, reducing it to very, you know, simple, uh, simplistic terminology. But is, uh, it, in term- practically speaking, it was, it involved, um, primarily grains, whole grains and vegetables. Very little, if any, some pe- some were vegans, but very little, you know, animal protein, but some, you know. Soy products and, uh, you know, uh, we, we found tofu, we found sushi long before sushi became, you know, the Jewish national food. And, uh, and, uh, and it was, and it was following... In a sense, it was initiated in the West by a Japanese gentleman named George Ohsawa, who first came to France-

19:20 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm

19:20 Speaker 1 ... and in Paris, and, uh, and he started s- teaching in, in New York. Um, and, uh, he w- he wrote some books. We read his books. The Order of the Universe was the name of one of the books. Um, and, uh, it was, it not only was healthy in the sense of the material, uh, uh, refraining from d- from bad food, you know, from junk food or from, you know, too much meat and like that or whatever it is. It was essentially vegetarian, but not exclusively vegetarian diet, but it was more about whole grains as being principal food. Brown rice, miso, you know, miso soup was a big deal. Fresh vegetables, sautéed vegetables. Um-

20:03 Speaker 2 But how's that, how's that a lifestyle? Like today, a lot of people incorporate, um, diets into their li- and but I wouldn't say it's their lifestyle.

20:11 Speaker 1 Because then-

20:12 Speaker 2 This is more than, this is a m- more than just what you eat, right?

20:15 Speaker 1 Yeah. It, it was then it had a philosophical dimension. And that philosophical dimension almost had a... Just, just prior to a, a, uh, to a religious component as well. It was, it wasn't a religion, but there was a lot of, there, there w- there were devotees, and there were, um, and people, um, conceived it in philosophical terms whereby yin and yang were the basis of understanding polarities and the unity of polarities within the created universe, you know? Alan, in a, in an earlier time, Alan Gins- no, it wasn't actually. He was, he said it in an interview later on. Alan Ginsberg said that, uh, somebody asked him about, about Buddhism. He said Buddhism is exactly like Judaism except for God. And, uh-

21:05 Speaker 2 So basically this was a kind of Buddhism.

21:07 Speaker 1 It was, it, it was, it transcended Buddhism. It was, it took B- Buddhism away from the little statues of the Buddha and, and the, and the bowing and although not from the meditation, as I'll, as I'll say in a second. Um, but, uh, it was more, uh, pragmatic, practical, materialistic in a sense. Some of the, some of the same, um, philosophical principles, principles were embodied in the, um, in the, in the way we ate, in the way, you know, in the way, uh, not only the way we ate in terms of what we ate, but the way we ate in terms of mindfulness. Sitting on the floor with a bowl and chopsticks and, uh, and, uh, uh, very, um, conscious ways of cooking, preparing food, et cetera. Um, without, the details are irrelevant at this point.

21:54 Speaker 2 So, so you all ate, or you would all eat together and be like a whole ceremony?

21:58 Speaker 1 Not only. It wasn't ceremonial so much as, as just ki- it was like casually mindful in a way.

22:04 Speaker 2 Why'd you all have to be in this, in this like special h- farm? Uh, 'cause you felt that the world, the world was too, uh, too noisy for this kind of lifestyle? Like you needed each other's support?

22:15 Speaker 1 It wasn't escaping from anything as opposed to just cultivating a, a, a, a consciousness that was, where there was a common interest. It was, it was an affinity group, you know, more than a movement per se. It wasn't a, a, a, even a spiritual derech in a way. It was not like that. Um, but, um, and it was practical to live, first of all, we lived in the country, not in the city. It was practical to live together more or less because, uh, because, uh, you know, there was, it cook- it was very cooking centered, you know? And exa- and actually Mike Tillis and I, later to become Rabbi Tillis, Mike and Steve, we used to cook for sometimes 30, 40 people from the other farmhouse. We'd just like converge every once in a while. But it was like once a week casual. You know, it wasn't like a ceremonial dinners or whatever. And sometimes we just, we had a little, a little, uh, half acre organic farm. We used to grow corn and Swiss kale and, and carrots and whatever. We got to a point where we could tell the difference between corn. We'd boil the water first and then pick the corn and then put it in the water to steam the, the corn cobs. We could tell the difference between that and if the corn had been around for a day. Just freshness like that, life. It represented life to a, to a, a very more reverent, but again, not religious attitude

23:35 Speaker 1 towards life. During that summer, we had a friend who was very close with or very familiar with, I don't know about very close, but, uh, was a friend of Meir Abba Sura, Michel Abba Sura, who was a Moroccan Jew of Abu Hatzeira line- uh, lineage. You know, was the scion of tzadikim or whatever. He's not a direct descendant of Baba Salih, but, you know, a, a second cousin of a first, of a first cousin or something. It wasn't that-

24:03 Speaker 2 Adjacent. Adjacent

24:04 Speaker 1 ... adjacent. Yeah. It was, it was Baba Salih adjacent, and he was an Abu Hatzeira. He had left Morocco at a young age, maybe nine, 10. He lived in Paris for a number of years, uh, Strasbourg and then Paris. Was not as religious in France as he had been as a child in Morocco. Um, came to the States in, not sure exactly when, early '60s. He became a bit of a macrobiotic guru in that they made, uh, dinners in their house and probably in the West Village I think was where they lived.

24:34 Speaker 2 Who's they? He was married?

24:35 Speaker 1 He was married. He was married to Claude Ab- Es- Abba Sura, Esther Abba Sura. They had, when we met them that summer, they had two girls. Um, and, uh, we had this mutual friend who knew him, and we invited him up as he was doing a little bit to come up from New York and give us some cooking classes and lectures. Um, which he did, and he spent four or five days with us, and then he proceeded on a cross-country tour all the way across the country. Uh, as he put it a little bit later, he said he was, he was all over the country breaking up the macrobiotic movement. Ever the iconoclast. He didn't like anything that remotely smacked of, you know, idolatrous, uh, attitude, if, if not bowing down to anything.

25:19 Speaker 2 Because he was religious?

25:20 Speaker 1 No, not yet.

25:21 Speaker 2 Because he was-- his persona was like that.

25:23 Speaker 1 Because, yeah. Because he, because he, he could tell, you know, a phony when he saw one.

25:27 Speaker 2 Right.

25:28 Speaker 1 You know, he was one of the disciples of George Ohsawa in France, and some of those disciples, he, uh, he looked askance at, let's just say it that way. And so there was a budding movement, um, and he just, you know, he went, like I said, breaking things up. He was, you know, he was like... He was an iconoclast. He was like, he was like not settled for any of the-

25:47 Speaker 2 Right

25:47 Speaker 1 ... so, um, he called us up from LA at the end of the summer, towards the end of the summer, and he said, uh, and he said that, "I've been, you know, all across the country breaking up the macrobiotic movement. I'm coming back to New York." He said, "But I wanna move out of New York. I wanna write my next book. Um, and I like you guys. Can you find me a house in Binghamton?" We had known him through his first book, which was a book called Zen Macrobiotic Cooking, and, uh, I think the publisher kind of threw the Zen in there. But, uh, but, uh, it was, um, he said... You know, so we said, "Fine. Great. We'll, you know, we'll find you a house." And we found him a rented house near, near Binghamton, Endwell, and, um, he moved there, and we became close. And at that point, unbeknownst to anyone in our community, he was moving back to Yiddishkeit, to, to our end mitzvah. And, um, and, and connecting at least, uh, at least intuitively, if not actually, with his, with his illustrious background.

26:55 Speaker 2 And what was the cause of that?

26:57 Speaker 1 He had met... He was tr- The way I heard the story, I'm not exactly sure of what that really looked like we, but he said that he had, was driving past seven seventy and he saw some Lubavitchers. And he looked, and he sensed something, and he stopped, and, uh, somebody put tefillin on him. I know who it was, actually. It was, uh, Uncle Goldberg, who... The Rosh Yeshiva of Hadar Torah-

27:21 Speaker 2 Oh, no kidding

27:21 Speaker 1 ... a little bit later. Yeah.

27:22 Speaker 2 No kidding.

27:23 Speaker 1 But, uh, but, um, we didn't know that at the time. We didn't know, uh, didn't know any of this at the time. He came up. We gave lectures and cooking classes. He talked Mike, Tillis, and I, and me into opening a restaurant. He had, uh, consulted with restaurants, with macrobiotic restaurants in the city also. There was the Infinity Cafe. I think he had a brief, uh, partnership in a restaurant of his own. Um, and, uh, he said, "Don't worry, I'll teach you everything you know." 'Cause he got that we were, you know, we liked to feed people. And, uh, so he, you know, true to form-

27:57 Speaker 2 How were you guys making a living during this time?

28:00 Speaker 1 Um, to tell you the truth, I don't know. I can-

28:08 Speaker 2 Say, who paid for the farm?

28:10 Speaker 1 We rented it. I guess we each had... You know, I came back from the Living Theater tour with some money in my pocket.

28:16 Speaker 2 Right.

28:16 Speaker 1 He came back from the Peace Corps and, you know, with some money in his pocket. Um, and there were others as well. There wasn't-- It didn't take much to make a, to "make a living," quote unquote. We all, you know, we were used to, for the last several years, we were used to living in a very minimalist, uh, way. And the, and the farmhouse was like a, it was bupkis, you know?

28:37 Speaker 2 Right.

28:37 Speaker 1 It was, uh... And some of us took jobs. Actually, one of our friends opened a, uh, a, a boutique in the town of Binghamton. It was a kind of like a hipster boutique.

28:48 Speaker 2 So, but you were full-time on the farm. You weren't, like, doing another job. This was what you-

28:51 Speaker 1 Not at the time. Not at the time.

28:52 Speaker 2 Right.

28:53 Speaker 1 But we were looking around, you know, to, you know, what, you know, what's, what's next and how are we actually gonna make a living? This was kind of a, a little respite and a, uh, a preparatory-

29:02 Speaker 2 Right

29:02 Speaker 1 ... period for us. And so he talked us into opening the restaurant, which we did. Pulled a little bit of our... I don't think there were any investors. I think we pooled, M-Mike and I pooled, pooled our money. We opened a restaurant in Binghamton. Uh, Meir said he was gonna teach us everything we knew, and he did so by letting us figure it out for ourselves. You know, presenting some of the principles, you know, like that. But it was basically we were, you know, we were with him, but on our own. And we opened a restaurant in early 1970, I guess. A little sort of college hangout called Belly of the Whale, and, uh, it was a hang-- It was a, it was a, a, a watering hole. It was, it was, it was a central location for people of like, uh, temperament and philosophy at the time. Um, during this time, quietly, without any of us knowing until we did, he started moving back to Judaism. He... And we used to go to the... There was a thing, Friday night, you know, Friday night dinner at Michelle and Claude. And, uh, soon that started... At, at a certain point, he started putting on the Moroccan djellaba and making Kiddush and there were candles on the table. One of the first things I did when I came there, when, when at that point when he was starting to m-move in that direction was I walked in the house and I lit a cigarette on the

30:22 Speaker 1 Shabbos candles. That's how naive, how ignorant we were. Um, and even after Kiddush, you know, we would all sit around watching the Knicks game on TV or something.

30:32 Speaker 2 What was your, um... I, I don't think I asked you this earlier. What was your exposure or posture towards Judaism up to this point? Was it just-

30:39 Speaker 1 Prior to that?

30:40 Speaker 2 Was it just ignorance? Was it hostile? Was it-

30:42 Speaker 1 No, never hostile. Uh, Tillis had some, his hostility. He had actually gone to Hebrew school, and so he'd been, you know-

30:50 Speaker 2 So he had reason to be hostile.

30:51 Speaker 1 He had reason to be hostile, exactly. He had that, you know-

30:53 Speaker 2 The story of America

30:54 Speaker 1 ... negative experience. I had nothing of the sort.

30:56 Speaker 2 So your father was not against religion? He-

30:58 Speaker 1 No, not particularly. You know, I had a bar mitzvah.

31:02 Speaker 2 Oh, you did have? Okay.

31:03 Speaker 1 Um, why did I have a bar mitzvah? Because a couple of my friends who I used to play ball with, uh, had bar mitzvahs. They used to go to Hebrew school t-twice a week in a, in a shul. It was an Orthodox shul, actually, Orthodox Talmud Torah, just adjacent to the schoolyard where we used to play basketball. And, you know, every Tuesday and Thursday or whatever it was, they would disappear, you know, and I would continue playing basketball. And then they started having their bar mitzvahs, and I said, "Ooh, that's cool." So I said to my mother, "I would like to have a bar mitzvah." She said, "Really? Okay." My mother had a, at least a sentimental connection to the, to the Judaism of her, of her youth. She's British. She was British, alav ha-shalom. And, um, and she had some, you know, some... There was a Jewish component, probably Jewish youth groups and things of that nature-

31:49 Speaker 2 Right

31:49 Speaker 1 ... in London back then. And she said, "Okay." So she sent me to a, uh, a YU student to learn enough Hebrew to say the berakhos and the haftarah. And I had a bar mitzvah in this Orthodox, uh, the Inwood Jewish Center, u-Upper Manhattan. And, uh, so that was my exposure. I knew enough Hebrew to be able to read the words, but no comprehension to speak of. Um, and w- so it was very different from, from Tillis's experience 'cause he was, he, as you say, became hostile, and I was, I was neutral, basically. Um, and, uh, so I saw this in Meir. I saw his advance in this, in this direction in a very, very pronounced way because he, he's, uh, he made quick progress in that regard. Um, and he had some books. I picked up, you know, English translation of Tanya and those little, you know, on the essence of Hasidism, you know. So he had Chassid books around. And, um, and I picked them up and I read them. I said, "This is, looks so much like the philosophical, uh, substrate of my previous life," you know, and I started getting more interested.

32:55 Speaker 2 In what way?

32:58 Speaker 1 The, the relationship, primarily the relationship between Gashmius and Ruchnius, I would say now. Between the material world in, incorporating also, like, the way we eat, uh, nutrition, uh, contemplation, meditation. I didn't mention, by the way, that, um, on these, on this farm of ours, um, it was, it was on a, on a road outside of Binghamton called Brown Road, and people... I didn't do this myself, but people coined the phrase Brown Rice Road. You know? And, uh, so we had... In the barn, we created a meditation hall. We created a Zendo where we used to do zazen. We used to, you know, we got into that. We read books, you know. There was a, there was a... I don't remember the names of the books, but there was a Zen center in Rochester, actually, with a Jewish, um, Zen master.

33:49 Speaker 2 Of course.

33:50 Speaker 1 Phi- yeah, Philip Kapleau. And, uh, we, we, we learned something from him directly. Went up to Rochester once. Some of our, some of our chevra ended up going there. When we started going, you know, when we started moving into, uh, into Yiddishkeit, they disappeared into the Zen center. Um, so, um, there was a, there was a, uh, uh, a understanding of the connectivity and yet a distinction between spirituality and the material world.

34:21 Speaker 2 So that is, that's fascinating. This year marks seventy-five years since Yud Shvat and the first Basse LeGani. 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 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. So you felt that that was, that was at the heart of what had been kind of bothering you or, or animating your journey-

35:40 Speaker 1 Animating more than bothering, yeah.

35:41 Speaker 2 Animating your journey. Like the, what was pushing you was trying to somehow negotiate this-

35:47 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

35:48 Speaker 2 ... uh, on one hand, uh, op-oppositional relationship, but also how to bring them together into one.

35:55 Speaker 1 Yeah. Again, it wasn't so oppositional, you know. I mean-

35:57 Speaker 2 Material and spiritual.

35:58 Speaker 1 Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You know, it was, um, later on in a more sophisticated way, in a more intellectual way through Hasidism, uh, but intuitively it was there as well. We really got that tho-those kinds of, you know, opposition... It wasn't oppositional. Those kind of binaries were really one.

36:13 Speaker 2 Right.

36:14 Speaker 1 There was u-an underlying unity there, and, and that was fascinating to us.

36:17 Speaker 2 On a deeper level, though.

36:18 Speaker 1 Yeah.

36:18 Speaker 2 Right? I mean, the thing about these kind of things is that at first, as you become sensitive to them, they are, they do feel further and further apart from one another, right? If someone just comes carte blanche, you know, out of the swimming pool, we're in Florida here, out of the swimming pool, "Oh, you know, f- every-everything is spiritual and physical and spiritual are all one-"

36:39 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

36:40 Speaker 2 ... you know, he, he's probably... He, he probably drowned. He probably lost some oxygen to his brain. You know what I mean? It's not a serious-

36:47 Speaker 1 Right

36:47 Speaker 2 ... that's not-

36:48 Speaker 1 Right

36:48 Speaker 2 ... it's not a serious statement. But-

36:50 Speaker 1 But the culture of those times, it was more of a serious statement. But-

36:54 Speaker 2 But that's 'cause you'd been thinking about it.

36:57 Speaker 1 But it was... Yes, but it was prevalent in the culture at large. It was serious at the time.

36:59 Speaker 2 But why would you... Like, if it was, if it's so simple to, to, to, to marry the two or to harmonize the two, why are you off on a farm in Binghamton?

37:09 Speaker 1 Because it wasn't institutional

37:11 Speaker 2 That's, that's what I'm saying. The-

37:13 Speaker 1 So it was-

37:13 Speaker 2 ... the world didn't accept it. The-

37:15 Speaker 1 It was definitely not institutional

37:17 Speaker 2 Right. So the world didn't accept... The, the world saw it as binaries.

37:20 Speaker 1 Essentially, yeah.

37:21 Speaker 2 Right.

37:21 Speaker 1 You know, except f- emerging out of the counterculture-

37:26 Speaker 2 Right

37:26 Speaker 1 ... you know, the hippie movement, which again is not a, you know, not a terminology we even like, let alone-

37:32 Speaker 2 You didn't like it back in the day?

37:33 Speaker 1 Yeah.

37:34 Speaker 2 You guys were anti-

37:34 Speaker 1 It was like, okay, you know, fine. You know, let, let, you know, let them talk that way. You know, that wasn't who we were. Um, so you-

37:41 Speaker 2 You, you, you consider yourself, like, the serious people, like, the serious side of the, of, of, of the '60s

37:47 Speaker 1 I would say that, yeah. You know, as e- as evidenced by wh- the direction we went in as opposed to the direction where a lot of others just sort of fell to the, to the wayside-

37:56 Speaker 2 Right

37:56 Speaker 1 ... and, you know, either went back to college and become lawyers.

38:00 Speaker 2 You know, yeah, I, I don't... I, and I'm, and I know I'm cutting the story again, but it, it's... What we... What I'm thinking about when you said that is, like, there's a famous... Every Lubavitcher listening to this podcast, they hear counterculture, coun- counterculture hip- counterculture hippies. The first thing they think about is, well, the rabbi said that it's a good thing. The coun-

38:21 Speaker 1 Yeah

38:21 Speaker 2 ... counterculture's a good thing.

38:22 Speaker 1 Yeah.

38:23 Speaker 2 Right? Uh, if I remember correctly, the, the idea was because you have young people asking questions and open to, to, to bigger truths, something to that effect.

38:31 Speaker 1 Searching, seeking truth.

38:32 Speaker 2 Right.

38:32 Speaker 1 Right, right.

38:34 Speaker 2 What's interesting about what you're saying about this kind of, the serious, like, the serious pursuit of that versus in many ways the, the, the majority of the kind of the mass culture that emerged from it-

38:46 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm

38:46 Speaker 2 ... is, is, is very interesting because I've always, I've always, I've always thought about that, you know, the rabbi looking at the, at the positive side of it, and I felt that, like, I see... I, I understand what he, what he said there, but I don't believe that necessarily the world as a whole im- was improved by the nonsense of the '60s. Like, I think a lot of garbage got introduced as a result.

39:09 Speaker 1 Absolutely.

39:10 Speaker 2 And I always wondered, like, how do you, you know, how do we reconcile this? Like... And, and I, and I think what you're saying here is possibly an answer, that the rabbi's looking at, at the serious side of, of this, of this, you know, of, of this culture that you're talking about, of this change that you're talking about. But that doesn't negate the fact that a lot of it, a lot of people that were in it and a lot of, uh, you know, got swept away in absolute-

39:34 Speaker 1 Absolutely

39:35 Speaker 2 ... nonsense.

39:35 Speaker 1 Absolutely.

39:36 Speaker 2 And I, I think it'd be silly to, to kind of, uh, portray that the rabbi or, you know, or Lubavitch, like, saw the whole of counterculture as some wonderful benefit to humanity.

39:49 Speaker 1 He saw truth seekers-

39:51 Speaker 2 Right

39:51 Speaker 1 ... who were getting somewhere.

39:53 Speaker 2 Right.

39:53 Speaker 1 And, and he saw the potential. The rabbi looks at a person, he sees the potential.

39:56 Speaker 2 Right.

39:56 Speaker 1 He looks at... He can look at a movement to see the, and see the potential.

39:59 Speaker 2 Right.

40:00 Speaker 1 You know? And so he saw the directionality of it.

40:02 Speaker 2 Right.

40:02 Speaker 1 You know? I think as you, as you roll back the camera just a, a, a couple of few months and, and, uh, Woodstock, you mentioned Woodstock earlier.

40:10 Speaker 2 Right.

40:10 Speaker 1 So in August of '69 was Woodstock, and we were very into the music. I mean, that was the music, you know, that-

40:16 Speaker 2 It's not too far from Binghamton.

40:17 Speaker 1 No, not far at all.

40:18 Speaker 2 Right.

40:19 Speaker 1 It was just down the road. Montic- It's, uh, not far from Monticello.

40:22 Speaker 2 Right.

40:22 Speaker 1 And, uh, it wasn't in the town of Woodstock actually. It originally was gonna be in Woodstock, but the venue didn't work, so they moved it to the town of Bethel, which is just up, you know, what, 22B or whatever from-

40:34 Speaker 2 Right

40:34 Speaker 1 ... from Monticello. Um, and we heard about it and we said, "Love the idea. That's great." We actually had one of our, one of our group, a fella you may know, it's Yehuda Sacks from, uh... He lived in Pittsburgh for many years.

40:47 Speaker 2 I think I know some of his kids possibly.

40:49 Speaker 1 Yeah, sure. Yeah.

40:50 Speaker 2 Yeah.

40:51 Speaker 1 Um, and Oliver Shaw, he, uh... We lost him a number of years ago, but, uh, but he was very close. In fact, he had grown up with Mike Tillis-

41:00 Speaker 2 Mm

41:00 Speaker 1 ... from, like, five years old, whatever, and I met him during those days. He and I and Tillis and a few other people used to practice Zen meditation in that Zendo in the barn.

41:11 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

41:12 Speaker 1 But in any event, um, Woodstock was happening. You know, uh, the Thruway is shu- Seven- Route 17 and Thruway are shut down, and there'll be, there's, like, I don't know how many, couple hundred thousand people converging on this, on this, you know, on, what was, what was his name? Uh, Max Yasgur's farm. And, uh-

41:29 Speaker 2 Right

41:29 Speaker 1 ... and, uh, uh-

41:31 Speaker 2 Yeah. It's funny, parenthetically, my grandfather w- told me that he had to get up to camp at that time.

41:37 Speaker 1 Uh-huh.

41:38 Speaker 2 Like, I, I, I wa- like, I was wondering, like, what, what's this Lub- you know, Lubavitcher thinking driving upstate and all these loonies on the side. But it's funny, a lot of them were gonna be his friends one day, right?

41:48 Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. On the road up to Woodstock, up to Bethel from, from Monticello, there was a, a couple of, uh, Hasidish bungalow colonies, one of which is Gerson's Bungalow Colony, which was a, which was a Lubavitch haunt in those days, and which a couple few years later we ended up spending part of a summer there. But the... So the, so the Hasidim would stand by the, you know, would stand by the road watching this parade of freaks. You know, what? And, uh, and invite, you know, any of us who know it, who-

42:20 Speaker 2 And he, and he-

42:21 Speaker 1 Yeah

42:21 Speaker 2 ... and he looks right back at them the same way probably.

42:23 Speaker 1 Right. Exactly. So we were in Binghamton, um, not yet, uh, in the restaurant business, but getting there. Um, and on the road to a serious Jewish involvement, but not quite there yet. But we knew we were moving in that direction. We went down to, to Woodstock. Um, uh, uh, Yehuda Sacks, Vic Sacks' brother had a place there 'cause he used to play the horses at Monticello, and we stayed with him for a night, basically. We went to the, we went to the festival on the first morning, Friday morning. Um, and, uh, I saw Joan Baez and Richie Havens, if those names mean anything. Um, and, uh, we turned around, and we had actually planned with, before, before the, the festival was planned, we had planned to go that weekend, we were gonna go canoeing and camping in Maine. So we came down there instead, and we looked around and we said, "Okay." There was, you know, people were wallowing in the mud.

43:20 Speaker 2 Yeah.

43:20 Speaker 1 And famously so, and, uh, and, uh, we saw the scene. We said, "I'm really glad as a cultural phenomenon that this is happening, and we've graduated from this. I'm out of here." And we went to Maine, camping and canoeing.

43:34 Speaker 2 Why were you happy that it's happening?

43:37 Speaker 1 It w- it was, um, it was an expression of a forward-looking countercultural, um, search-

43:45 Speaker 2 Hmm

43:45 Speaker 1 ... for more than the, than, you know, than the, than the, uh, prevailing culture.

43:51 Speaker 2 So you also saw potential in it?

43:53 Speaker 1 Oh, absolutely.

43:53 Speaker 2 Okay.

43:54 Speaker 1 And it was very resonant when the Rebbe, you know, when I l- learned years later that the Rebbe had said that. Um, it was a film that was made, I think, where some-- they focused on that, that statement of the Rebbe's. Totally got it. Absolutely. That's who we were. You know, and that the Rebbe got that was just, you know, so empowering. But, um, uh, so we came back from that camping trip, um, we started the restaurant. It was, it was a moment of having graduated, in a sense, towards, um, f- finer, more refined sensibilities with some of the same, um, searching, q- uh, quality of searching. Um, but with, um, open to more directionality. Pathetically, by the way, the whole idea of eating macrobiotic food in this way was also, it happened to be, uh, you know, Bedieveit, it was kosher. You know, and we were, uh, not only was it, you know, we weren't eating treif per se, maybe occasionally something, you know, our pots were not koshered, you know, whatever. But, um, but we were becoming aware of the influence of the wa- the way we lived physically on our philosophical, spiritual, uh, directionality.

45:09 Speaker 2 Right.

45:09 Speaker 1 You know, it was, it was a, it was an opening up of... We were rendered, um, vulnerable to spirituality in a way that we were eating, you know, burgers and whatever and, you know, tender, sweet fried clams from Howard Johnson's, um, that we were not-- it was not accessible to us. It became more accessible to us. We were moving in that direction. Um, at the end of the period in which we ran the restaurant, we did it for about a year and a half or something, then we graduated from that. You know, it was like, "Great, then enough of this." And by that time, uh, I had not only, uh, continued my practice of, of, uh, zazen, Zen meditation. Again, not in a Buddhist sense at all.

45:57 Speaker 2 What's zazen meditation? You sit in-- You sit quietly for a certain amount of time?

46:01 Speaker 1 Yeah. No-- Yeah. We sit quietly for a certain amount of time. The, the initial sort of the beginning practice is just counting your breath. You sit quietly. There's a certain, a certain, a very, um, easygoing and yet, and yet, uh, uh, uh, still forcefully still. Not forcefully, but, you know, intentionally still. Um, uh, f- full lotus position, meditation position. We had special cushions, et cetera. And initially, you start by counting your breath. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, like that, and then over and over again. So it's a way of paying attention. With, with the, with the tool, with the crutch of counting the breath. The counting the breath fell away, and it became just observing the breath. And, um, there were ways in which zazen became more sophisticated and more content-oriented to that. Well, we never really got, got that far. We just-

46:59 Speaker 2 What's the objective of it?

47:02 Speaker 1 Stillness of mind. Um-

47:05 Speaker 2 And what's the objective of that?

47:11 Speaker 1 A transcendence of the turmoil of living.

47:14 Speaker 2 Hmm.

47:15 Speaker 1 You know? All, all those binaries, whatever they are, you know, uh, hot and cold, you know, female and male.

47:23 Speaker 2 So you're escaping the binaries, basically.

47:26 Speaker 1 Not... Well, I say, I use the word transcendence because it wasn't really an escape. We just knew that we wanted to move, or that we were moving beyond that.

47:33 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

47:33 Speaker 1 So it was an opening, it was a settling of consciousness. It was, uh, you know, m'nuchas hanefesh in a sense.

47:40 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm.

47:40 Speaker 1 You know? And a, and a, and a disentangling from the bodily spiritual experiences. You know, we were still souls within a body, but we didn't characterize it that way. Um, at that point, I got-- I-- Some would say it was a, an, an advancement, some would say it was, it was a, it was a retreat from zazen to transcendental medi- meditation, which is still very well known today. Um, it was burgeoning and, and booming in those days. Um, during that year, early '71, both my parents died.

48:22 Speaker 2 Hmm.

48:23 Speaker 1 And, uh, I was twenty-two, and they both died young. Um, you know, at the hands of the conventional medical establishment. So, you know, that had a major influence on the direction I took many years later. Or actually was taking at that time now because I was into health and health foods and alternative medicine and stuff, Asian healing modalities, et cetera.

48:45 Speaker 2 Right.

48:45 Speaker 1 It wasn't until many, many years later, but many years later that I, you know, embraced that as a, as a career, you know, as a practice. Um, but, uh, but now I'm jumping way ahead. Um, that-- So we sold the restaurant within a few months. We actually, there was an interesting development. I don't think it pertains to, too much to go into it, but we had a macrobiotic summer camp in a lake about fifty miles north of Binghamton. A couple of hundred people from, from, again, graduating from this counterculture, a couple of hundred people from the, from the Boston area, from the New York area, whatever. We-- With Michel Abesera, with Mayor Abesera. He, he still wasn't calling himself Mayor full-time. Um, and he gave lectures, and we fe- you know, we, we fed-- We brought all of our, you know, pots up to, up to the, up to the campsite. We dug stoves out of the hillside with stones and iron, you know. And we cooked, you know, we cooked for a couple of hundred people for ten days.

49:46 Speaker 2 Wow.

49:47 Speaker 1 And, um, and it was like a, like a trips festival in a way, except nobody was tripping anymore. Um, and, um, maybe somewhere but, um, but it wasn't the intention. And at that point, we sold the restaurant. Mm, Tillis and I and my younger brother drove across Canada, ended up in-- went to Vancouver, went to-- We stopped in Calgary. Actually, at that point, we stopped in Banff National Forest, uh, National Park in Canada, near Calgary, and I said, "I wanna keep Shabbos here." So they looked at me and said, "Okay, we'll keep Shabbos here." You know, and I-- we stayed there. And to whatever extent I understood, kept Shabbos there. Then we went out to Vancouver. Why did you wanna keep Shabbos here? 'Cause- 'Cause I was getting interested. I was getting into it. It made sense to me. Mm-hmm. You know, again, the sense of withdrawal from the, from the tumult, from the confusion, from the... You know, it's like giving up your cell phone for, you know- Right ... in, you know, in two thousand and twenty-six. But, um, it still is actually giving up your cell phone. But, um, and we ended up going down into California where the guru of, uh, transcendental meditati- meditation, Maharishi, um, was giving a teacher training course, and my girlfriend at the time was there. So, you know, just put two and two together. I stopped there to see her, um, and I ended up staying there for a month, and I got drawn in to

51:17 Speaker 1 the, the quality, the philosophy, the camaraderie. Um, and, uh, and I had a little money in my pocket 'cause I had just lost my-- my, my mother had a little annuity or something. You know, I didn't have much, you know, but there was an opportunity to go to Europe to go to, not on a one-month, but on a nine-month teacher training course, intensive meditation course. And I was in that position where, you know, the... I had money in my pocket that I didn't wanna really spend or have, um, and, uh- You were against money? No, not by then. I was never really against money, but I was raised in a culture where, uh- You said you didn't wanna have it. I didn't wanna have it because it was f- it was associated with my mother's death. I see. I see. Okay. And, uh, you know, and it was a tough time, and I needed some spiritual R&R. Okay. So I jumped and I said, "You know, I can do this. I can go to Europe. I can sit and meditate, become a teacher." I would... Of nine months on this, on this course, it was started out in, in Mallorca in like off-season hotels. And there were nine hundred of us who were there for the entire nine months, so other people came and went. But, um, we started off in Mallorca, then I think those hotels were no longer off-season, and we moved to a little, uh, resort, uh, spa town in Italy called

52:36 Speaker 1 Fiuggi Fonte. And, uh, we spent another few months there, where I was, uh, trained and certified as a teacher of meditation. Why do meditators need to be in, uh, vacation towns? Well, first of all, it's away from the city. Okay. It's quiet, you know? Right. And it's lovely. Yeah. It's a lovely... And Mallorca is a beautiful place. Right. And, uh- No, it just seems to be a little bit jarring, like if you're... If the whole idea is that you're... Like, are you running away from the... You, you run away from the noise of the world, but you're also... but you are embracing this physicality of the world. It's more the embracing of the interiority of the world- But- ... than running away from the physicality, and the physicality was, you know, it was a, it was, you know, it was a, a, a fringe benefit. And the interiority of the world you find in resort hotels? It wasn't about the hotel. Okay. Most of the time we were staring at the inside of our eyeballs. Right. That's what I'm asking. So yeah. So it was, you know, it just happened to be a convenient place for nine hundred people to con- I see ... to, to converge. I see. And to, and to have daily lectures from the guru. I see. Um- Oh, the guru was there the whole time? Yeah. Yeah. It was his gig. Mm-hmm. And, um, and it wasn't until years later that I began to... Actually, I did even then, I

53:53 Speaker 1 started to question the integrity of the whole scene. And later on, not so much questioning, but really saw through, uh, the, the lack of integrity in the whole scene. But that was, you know, it took a while. You know, we were, we were... You know, and it had benefits for us, you know? I, you know, I needed, you know, some, a spiritual, uh, not escape, not even an outlet, but a direction in the wake of my, of my personal trauma at that point. And, um, the whole time I was there, I had s-- As, as you can tell by the thing I said about spending Shabbos in Banff, um, I was already getting somewhere in Yiddishkeit. Um, I was into it, and the people in our circle of friends, many of whom were into it, but not as much as me. The whole time I was in Mallorca and Fiuggi, I was corresponding with, I'll start using his actual name, Yerachmiel Tilles. He's a very well-known guy. He's one of the co-founders of The Ascent Institute- Right ... in Slott. And, um, he, uh... We started corresponding. We would exchange sometimes twenty-page letters. And while I was meditating sometimes up to sixteen hours a day, he and our friends and, and the abbaseras were like, they, they went to their rabbi for Purim. And, uh, and it was like, you know, his, his rabbi and my guru, and I said, "Wait a minute." And at the end of that teacher training course, when I, I

55:27 Speaker 1 was certified and I was ready to go out to... Actually, Maharishi even actually, he wanted me to be part of his World Plan Council, to stay with him because he had this ambitious, uh, plan. And, uh, I said, "I can do that. I can stay here with him. I can go to Israel and teach, teach meditation," because I, I knew of one TM initiator, one meditation teacher there. Not... And it wasn't much, but it was becoming popular. Or I can go back to Binghamton and learn. I said, "It's a no-brainer. I'm going back to Binghamton." It was around my twenty-fourth birthday, summer of seventy-two I got off the plane from Europe, and basically hit the tarmac, and it was Frum. Frum? Yeah. I mean, 'cause that was-- that's where they were, and that's where I wanted to be. Um, we had a little mini yeshiva there. Yeshiva, we had a class. We had some classes. There was a, at that time, very well-known and very beloved teacher who had moved to Binghamton kind of like, you know, at the urging of Meir of Sara to teach, to teach us, uh, named Akiva Greenberg. Many people know him. Actually, you know him, probably a bunch of... Eli Talger is, is w- is married to, to Malka, one of his daughters. That's, you know... He's a, he was a Baal Teshuva himself, um- Where does, where does he live today? He's, he's not with us anymore. He's not with us, okay. Eight, nine years maybe, something like

56:55 Speaker 1 that. Um, he had, at the age of fourteen, picked himself up from his home in Edmonton, Alberta, and gone to Israel to learn in Bnei Brak. Hmm. In Litvish yeshivas primarily, but he and a friend on Shabbos, uh, on Friday nights would go around to the various tish of the Hasidic rebbeim, um, and sort of stand outside and, and learn the nigunim. He was very... He became a Baal Nigun. He was really into the nigunim. One day, learning in a Litvish yeshiva, one day he was standing outside or maybe in the back of the Vizhnitzer tish. Had been there a few times, and the Vizhnitzer Rebbe looked back at him, and he said... Sat down next to him, and he was sold. He was a Vizhnitzer Hasid. And married a Lubavitcher woman from Nachlas Habad. And their, all their ten children were and remain Lubavitchers. Hmm. Um, and some of them very illustrious, but, you know. They, um, they t- he came to Binghamton. They taught us. He was a master educator. He also, as a Vizhnitzer Hasid, he, you know, a, a shtreimel and a, and a golden tish bekishe, you know, you know, like that. But he said, "You guys, you know, this is not for you." We learned Chabad Hasidus with him. He lived in Binghamton? He came to Binghamton for about a year, yeah. How many of you were there? In the larger community of, you know, nascent BTs, probably about fifteen, something like that. S- so he moved, he picked

58:47 Speaker 1 up, he moved with his family? Yeah. A bunch of kids? Bunch of kids. Moved to Binghamton for a year. Who paid him? He got a job teaching Hebrew at SUNY Binghamton. What motivated him to do this? The opportunity to teach Baal Teshuva, and to, and to be in a community, to be a, you know... He loved us. Yeah, but that's after he met you. Yeah, but he met Meir. He loved Meir. No, I, I love these kind of stories. And he, and he came acrobatic also. Oh . So there was a, there was an affinity there as well. Yeah. Yeah, it's a great story. He must have had to tighten his bekishe at the end of that, huh? He was very, he was very strict. Yeah, but, um- There, there were a lot of jokes about the cookies his wife used to make, but he doesn't - Bekishe and macrobiotics don't seem to go together, but- Yeah ... um, no, 'cause I, I, I, I love these kind of stories I hear more and more. Um, you know, it, it, the person who, who takes off time during, during, during the day, during the week, takes off a year, moves somewhere clearly for no, um, no long-term plan, no financial gain, goes and learns with people. There's no way at the time. You know, you have a person that like learns with a boy on Sunday morning, and there's all these different stories of like these people just took out time out of their li--

1:00:10 Speaker 1 took time out of their lives to learn with people for no immediate or apparent gain. And at the time, there's no way that they knew that there was any, anything that was gonna come out of it. This is... It's like it's pure love of the game. There was a sense of some, of some kind of revolution in the air. Fine. But there's no gu- Not like, you know, anti-war marches and civil rights, you know. But there's no guarantee for a guy to pick up for, for a year and, and- Yeah ... he had no... I, I can't imagine he had any idea that so many of these people would go on to, to, to have families and- There was a heireshu. There was a heireshu. There was something substantive about this group of people. You know, and, you know, and, and s- many of the people who came through that scene, you know, Michoel Moshnik was one. You know, Tillis was another. Uh, uh, some of the, some of the women, you know, you probably know, uh, Rachel Bluma Thaler, Boruch Thaler's mother. Right. Um, et cetera, um- But isn't a lot of this in hindsight? Like at the time, you're just a bunch of weird c- commu- commune people living in Binghamton. We didn't feel weird. I know you didn't. Yeah. I'm talking about him. I'm not talking about you. No, he's-- He got it. He saw us. No, he was... He had made himself- How would, how would he- ... a Baal Teshuva

1:01:26 Speaker 1 himself ... Fair. Okay, I see what you're saying. I, I'm just trying to understand like how he would explain that choice at the time- Mm-hmm ... to people around him. I think he probably had to explain it to his wife. There you go. Yeah. So that's my point. Yeah. My point is it's not like a logical thing to do. Yeah. And yet, so many times, the deepest change that people make, like the, the, the, like these, these, these profound changes that people make in the world starts with that kind of- Mm-hmm ... almost blind and, and then, and completely... You know, like we say, l'havdil when you're burying somebody, it's a chesed shlemis. Mm-hmm. Right? Like in a way, it's the same thing here. Yeah. You have no, you have no, you have, you have no sense that something's coming back your way And there's so many stories like that. I mean, the story that I always go back to is, is, uh, Berel Baumgarten in Argentina, which is very different but also very similar, where in that case, he was sent by the Rebbe to Argentina. But for most of his time there, he was there for I think over a decade, most of his time there, it was a completely thankless job. The community hounded him. He was hounded by all kinds of people. He had a very, very hard life there. But the one thing that he did have was a deep love for these young children in the community- Mm-hmm ...

1:02:41 Speaker 1 who were growing up in, in, in, in, in perfectly good families, but their parents were Holocaust survivors or whatever it was, and they were too, you know, they were busy working and, and providing for their families, and here was a teacher and a rabbi who cared about these boys, and they would eat by him Shabbos, they would spend time with him, and that group of boys became the foundation of this flourishing community- Mm-hmm ... in Argentina. Sometimes the love come first, it comes first and then the giluyim. Right. You know, um- Always, I think. Yeah, probably, you know. There's a burning bush over there, let me go check this out, you know. But, but, but yeah. But, you know, his love was first, you know, he was taking care of the sheep. What is it... Doesn't it say something like, Ava has something to do with Urs? No. Um, Beis from Ava's Ur or something like that. Could that be? I'm not following. I think Ava, Ava and Ur, there's some kind of connection. I'm forgetting now. Ava No, no, no, no, no. Some... Ava and light, there's a connection Chassidus makes, I believe. Mm-hmm. And you're talking about love bringing out giluyim. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think there's something about that there's... You cannot force, you cannot force change. You cannot force it. You cannot, you cannot logically dictate it. You cannot plan it. Except that Chesed is a Mm-hmm ... So there is a, you know, so the giluyim are almost, you know, uh,

1:04:11 Speaker 1 uh, come with the territory, so to speak, you know. So love is a, is a, is a, an emotional manifestation that brings with it a whole pantheon of spiritual and intellectual, uh, phenomena, giluyim. Right. Right. Right. So it's just, it's, it's a fascinating thing that I, that I see more and more of. It just, just, you know, w- w- we, we, in a, in a, in such a, uh, you know, hyper logical and rational world or like we make believe it is sometimes, where every... Or a world where we're very pragmatic, where everything needs to have a, you know, a reason and an outcome and an ROI. Mm-hmm. You realize that, that real change, real change and, and lasting impact is, is usually caused by these kind of quiet relationships- Absolutely ... that are completely under the radar. Absolutely. That just comes from that still small place. Right. You know, that, uh, that voice, you know. If you're quiet enough, you can hear, you know, Hashem voice speaking to you. Right. And, uh, and, and that stillness, that quietude was a big part of what, you know, what was going on. Now, sometimes, you know, even then, but, uh, certainly now, there are, there are- Just bring the mic a little bit closer. There are places, you know, there are people in groups where quietude becomes an avodah of, of itself, you know. You're seeking the quiet, you know. Whereas, I mean, even the meditation practices, the meditation practices were about, were about cultivating inner

1:05:41 Speaker 1 silence and a mindfulness, you know, that went deep but nowhere, you know. Whereas, uh, and this brings in a whole other place where we should probably go to, which was the Rebbe's, uh, uh, uh, directions to me. No, so that's, so that's what I wanna get to. You, you, you, you have this, you have this fellow, Rabbi Greenberg, teaching you, um, and you, you clearly, you were already kind of bought into it as like this is where we're going. We're just, these- Yeah ... these are kind of bridges. Yeah, we were, we were in. You were in. We were in. In terms of Chabad, when did... Like, what was it like at that time? This is from the, you know, this is pretty early on in the whole Baal Teshuva movement. What was it like in terms of... We'll get to the Rebbe in a moment, but what, or may- or maybe that comes first. What was it like integrating or was there an integration into the... Like, what was the first time coming to 770 like, for example? It, the whole thing was very rapid. It unfolded very rapidly. We were going at lightning speed. Um, I, um- Mainly because of Rabbi Abu Hasira? Well, he was going pretty fast. Right. And we were... And he was a, a center of... He wasn't as, he wasn't a guru, he wasn't a teacher necessarily. He was a tea- he was a mentor. He was an, he was a Role model. In many ways. Yeah. A

1:07:00 Speaker 1 role model. And, uh, and he, uh, and he was a friend. Right. We were all friends. Akiva, you know, is, you know, people call him Rabb- called him Rabbi Greenberg. He has, he was Akiva. Right. We had a little shiur every day after davening, uh, where 8 or 10 of us, maybe it was 6 or 8 of us, um, used to sit around and learn Chumash and Rashi. Um, some of us didn't know Hebrew at all. All of us had to learn Rashi script, and we'd learn inside Chumash, we started with Parashat Hayitzi. And he, he was brilliant, and it was, it was, it was so formative. He would say over the pasuk and the Rashi and translate into English, and then we would go around the table one by one, and each of us would say over the pasuk and the Rashi in Hebrew and then translate into English, and go around till everybody had said. With all the mistakes and all the fumfering and the whatever like that, it was agonizing, and we learned how to learn. Hmm. It was amazing. He w- I'd say he was a ma- he was a master educator. Um, in any event, um- Talk about going lightning speed, within six months of that, you know, landing, you know, at JFK and me coming from, I was married. Huh. Um- She was part of your group? She was part of the group. She was a macrobiotic person from Boston who had heard about this huge macrobiotic community and

1:08:30 Speaker 1 came there. Mm-hmm. Um, and, um, after a couple of month, we had an apartment there, what have you, we were probably, I think the first married couple, other than those who had been married prior to this, uh, first married couple out of this group. Had a little apartment there, and then we looked around and we said, "We have to go somewhere where we can, where it's a serious, uh, community. We have to learn." We, uh, we took a little tour. We went to Morristown. There were some people there. We went to, uh- You guys consider, consider yourselves Chabad at that point? Yeah. That was, that was the world we knew. Mm-hmm. Well, so that was, that was actually I and my closest friends from that group, but everybody kind of eventually... In the, in the course of those next few months, again, I was w- I was among the first who, who left, not, not the first, but, um, but, uh, uh, some ended up in Far Rockaway. Hmm. There's a Belz yeshiva, Shaalvi Yishuv there. Sure. Yeah. Some ended up in Hertzliya. A guy who was this fi- this fire stoker at that Empire, uh, Empire Lake summer, uh, uh, macrobiotic summer camp, uh, went to Israel and his, you know, he was, he was a great blues harmonica player and a dishwasher in the restaurant, and he ended up being a maggid shiur in Ponovitch. Hmm. Um, et cetera, et cetera. Other, you know, other such, uh, uh, incidences. Um, we looked around,

1:09:54 Speaker 1 uh, where, where are we gonna go? What, what's gonna work? We went to Morristown. We had a friend in Morristown who, you know, an, an, and also an early married BT in Morristown. Spent a c- few days with him, very interesting and, uh, seminal incident with, uh, Avraham Olipsker, the rosh yeshiva there at the time and of the, of Tomchei, of the, of the, of the, uh, the Belz shul section. And, uh, and no, uh, Tiferes, Tiferes B- Tiferes Bochurim Tomchei was a little Right. Yeah. And, uh, and then we came to Crown Heights, and we met some people in Crown Heights and checked that out, and went to Far Rockaway to check that out, you know. We ended up moving to Crown Heights. Had you been to Crown Heights already before personally? Well, I had been once or twice in s- in that summer of '72, where as most of my friends had, prior to my arrival from Europe, had already been to the Rebbe. Um, I said, "I gotta, you know, I gotta do this." So I borrowed a black hat that was two sizes too big for me from a guy who I don't know where he got it. Who told you you needed a black hat? The bo- Yeah, we saw, you know... There was a, there was a big spread in the New York Times for the Rebbe's, the Rebbe's 70th birthday. Right. You know, we beca- I became aware of the, of the- No, but you were trying- ...

1:11:13 Speaker 1 the scope ... you were trying to look like a Lubavitcher? Yeah. Yeah. I was trying to fit in. You know, I went in my, I went in, in my, in a black hat and earth shoes. And, and the beard you already had as a hippie? I had a, I had a beard. It was... Yeah, I had a beard. It wasn't like this beard, you know. But, uh, but, um, I just went by myself. I wanted to check it out. It wa- I was a seeker. I see. You know, I got on a bus, went to Crown Heights, met some people, stayed over in some bizarre place, and I went to the Farbrengen. I think it was Yud Beis Iyar with Rabbi Thomas maybe, or it could've been Chof Av, I don't remember. During the week? Yeah. And so you, did you have a translation device in your ear? Not then. Didn't exist. So you're just standing there. Just stand there. I walked in, I looked around, and my first... Sometimes your first impressions, you know, become, uh, very- Yeah ... seminal. I walked in, I looked around. I don't know how big it was in those... Before it broke through to Kingston Avenue. Right. You know, in the downstairs shul. Um, and, uh, seemed to me like a couple thousand people. I'm not sure what the number was. Um, and I said, I saw the Rebbe, and I saw the crowd, and I said, "This guy has got it going on. The rest of these

1:12:18 Speaker 1 people, I'm not so sure about. Time will tell." And, uh, and I went back to Binghamton, but I had had that experience. So you, you stood in the blea- I had seen the Rebbe. You stood in the bleachers for all the whole Farbrengen, or you just looked and left? I was on the floor actually. Near, in the back, near the, you know, near, near, near the, the, the front door and- But you spent the whole Farbrengen there watching him talk? No, I couldn't have been. Couldn't have. I don't remember how long I was there, but I was there s- for a stash- substantial amount of time. Right. I was drinking it in. I was like, you know, "Is this a world where I can, you know, possibly, uh, either, you know, be adjacent to or be in?" Right. Um, I went back to Binghamton and continued to learn, and then I got married, and then we moved to Crown Heights. Huh. A lot of, uh, you know- This is all within a year about. Less than a year. Less than a year. Yeah. I was married. I came, I came to, to, uh, Binghamton at that point in June. I, uh, I was married in December. And, and somewhere around February or March, probably March, I moved to Crown Heights. Hmm. Totally green. Wow. Um, and my wife was pregnant with our first son at the time, and, uh, she , she came from a small, uh, industrial town in Connecticut and couldn't handle the

1:13:49 Speaker 1 big city, and was, had terrible morning sickness every time she turned a corner. So... And she was not happy with the seminary, with the Belz Yeshiva seminary in Hmm. ... Mahaleh. It didn't have it right together at that time. And there was a well, very well-known, very well-established Belz yeshiva seminary in Far Rockaway, who had friends there also. And, uh, so we moved to Far Rockaway. We ended up there for a little bit less than a year. The baby was born. Meir and Elkivva came to the bris in Far Rockaway, and, uh, and I think actually even the Rosenbergs did, because they were already in Morristown at that time. Um, again, coming from Binghamton, coming through Binghamton. Um, and in less than a year, I had been, I had been, um, coming home from yeshiva. I was only full-time in yeshiva for a couple of months. I was a married guy. I had to make a living, and I went to, I worked in some, some furniture warehouse. A, a frum guy, you know, uh, in the area. And, uh, I'd come home at night and learn Chassidus. And I had learned how to learn because the couple of months that I spent prior to moving there in, in, uh, in, uh, uh, Far... In Crown Heights, I was lear- I was learning in Hadar Torah when I could. And Yankel Goldberg, the aforementioned Yankel Goldberg, had a, had a, a, a sicha. I had a sh- a class in, in Chassidus. and he would

1:15:16 Speaker 1 say in the Yiddish sichas. So he would say over the Yiddish phrase and translate it into English. He would say over the Yiddish phrase and translate it into English. I had a little bit of German at this time. One, I had taken some German in college. Mm-hmm. Um, and I had some Hebrew also under my belt, you know. And, uh, so I picked up immediately how to learn the Rebbe's sichas, and I would, in Far Rockaway, come home at night and burn the midnight oil, and I would learn the Rebbe's sichas. And, and I became inwardly a frenetic Lubavitcher. Frenetic Lubavitcher. Mm-hmm. And we moved back to, you know, other parts of that story, but be that as it may, um, moved back to Crown Heights. Wow. When I moved to Far Rockaway, uh, Rabbi Jacobson, oh, Yisroel Jacobson, who was the rosh yeshiva there, he was kind of the rosh yeshiva, you know, above, above Yankel Goldberg, who was the rosh yeshiva. Of HaDarah Torah. HaDarah Torah. Yeah. And, uh, so Rabbi Jacobson said to, uh, Boruch Spielman, who was living in Far Rockaway at that time, "Keep an eye on Gottlieb." So he invited us for Pesach, you know, whatever like that. We had a little bit of connection. They were, they were afraid they were gonna lose you. I don't know if he was afraid we were gonna lose- I know- He just, he probably knew that he wasn't gonna lose me, but he wanted me to be escorted properly. Right. Um-

1:16:34 Speaker 1 Right. I don't know what he knew. I... It's a fascinating story. I, I love the whole history of it. Um, I think in general it's, you know, e- even most of the people listening to this, and even most Lubavitchers today are not, um, I mean, no one today is living through the '60s, and most people listening to this are not children of the people who went through the '60s. So one could say that the story is, um, kind of in the corner. It wasn't to do with regular or other people, everyone else. Uh- Many are the children and grandchildren of our generation. For start. For start- I can tell you how many people, I mean- No, for starters- Yeah ... there's hundre- at this point, there's hundreds if not thousands. Yeah. But I think percentage-wise it's still a, a relatively small percentage. I think though that, you know, anyone who lives in America today is in some way or another, um, living in a world that is a child of the '60s, for good or for bad, and, um- Both ... right? Mm-hmm. For, in both ways. And, and, and, uh, you know, I'm not, I, I don't believe it's fair to say that if not for the '60s everything would be great, right? Like, I think the '60s did br- did change some things for the good, and I think it's also fair to say that if not for the '60s, some things would've been better. But this is a world we live in,

1:17:54 Speaker 1 and so to understand that history I think is very important, to understand what people were dealing with and, and, and thinking about and, and how that has affected the culture we all, we all live in one way or another I think is very important. And, um, yeah, so I just find it fascinating. But to tie it, but to tie it together a little bit... Is this thing all tangled up? Yeah, never mind. I'll just- Um- I'll keep my hand on it. No, that's okay. To tie it up a little bit, c- 'cause this is something I'm thinking about as you're telling me this story, is, you know, this is a story of people who are very seriously, um, considering how to, uh, live a life that feels coherent and feels, uh, f- feels, feels like, I don't know if there are the words to make it sen- to, that it makes sense because I, I, I- Coherent is a good word. Yeah. I think, I think it makes sense a little bit too. No, no one really believes that they can make sense of life that way, but coherent, where, where things fit. Mm-hmm. Balanced. The other words that you used earlier. Uh- And inwardly and outward- outwardly aligned, you know? Right. Tiche kabari, you know? The- Right. And there's something interesting about the fact that, you know, the, the earlier life that you lived is, is, was much more focused, like, in terms of the way you describe it, macrobiotics, the movement itself. You

1:19:13 Speaker 1 know, it's an understanding that it starts from we have to get our physical intake under order. We, you know, we need to get it in order. We need to know what we're putting into our bodies and be, be conscious of what we're eating and how we're engaging with the world. You know, if like, if, if we're gonna make any, if we're gonna make anything coherent in our lives, we have to make order out of the physical. Mm-hmm. You know? Um- It was challenging at that time because, you know, I basically, when I moved from Binghamton to Crown Heights, I basically went from eating rice and, rice and vegetables and miso soup to eating chicken and marble cake. So that, that's exactly where I- Yeah. That's exactly where I'm heading. It's like, it's like, it's, it, you know, and you were talking about how, how Chassidus philosophically also deals with, and really Torah in general deals with, um, you know, the, the, the f- when you believe that God is one, you have to somehow make sense of the f- fact that the world that he created and, and the, and your body and your, and your soul are, are, are also one, and you have to make one out of them even if they look different and, and are, and are in some ways, and, and not some, in, in, in some of the profoundest ways different. Um, but, but in terms of practice, like, like you just described, you know, you go from this

1:20:28 Speaker 1 world where it's not just about f- it, it's not just about that you start with food. There's a certain humility to the fact that we have to spend all this time getting our menus d- down pat. We need to know what's going into our bodies. We come to the, a religious world, and, like, there's... No one cares about that. Like, it's c- you know, as long as you say a beracha, it's all good. But they started to. You know, in the beginning the whole wheat challahs, what are you, nuts? You know? And then- No, but how about for you at the- And then they came. But for you, wasn't it, like, jarring? Like, what are you... You're, you're leaving all that behind and you're jumping into this world that you're saying it, you're saying that there was a, that there was, um, that there was a- A similarity between the two- Mm-hmm ... between the two ways of life. Mm-hmm. And there was a... You, you could resonate with it. Mm-hmm. But in terms of just a, like change, you didn't feel like, "Wait a second, these guys are com- these guys eat garbage all day"? It was a tough row to hoe. It was tough. Yeah, yeah. The, the whole idea of acclimating, of assimilating, of, of feeling a, a member of a community which at first was alienating. Right. You know? There were many milestones. Yeah, but that's a ge- that's a general problem that anyone joining a new community faces. Mm-hmm. I'm

1:21:41 Speaker 1 talking more philosophically. Yeah. You, you didn't feel that, like, they were missing something? These people don't care about their fitness. They don't care about their food. They don't care about their... They don't meditate, half of them. I mean, some of the Hasidim meditate, but as a rule, you're saying you, you... They were, the jury was still out on them. There's a difference between meditation and his brightness, which was, you know, the- Right ... the, uh, the, the, uh, the goal or the, uh, the preferred way of cultivating consciousness at the time. And, and that's where my, my, my first yechidus actually comes into, comes into play over there. But, uh, yeah, it takes, you know, it takes a lot of effort. But there was a sense that in most cases, if some people, you know, some burned out and ran away. Like, you know, I... One of our, one of my g-good friends, um, a m-married guy in Crown Heights, they picked up and moved to the, to the northwest, and it was because, it was because his wife said, "I just needed to feel the wind in my hair." That's, you know, and that doesn't mean to say that some of us who stayed didn't need to feel the wind in our hair too, you know, or some equivalent thereof. M-meaning that, that what had seemed, what had seemed to be a continuation of this in, in, uh, life of interiority got stifled. Mm-hmm. Is that, is that what you're... Is that what that

1:23:03 Speaker 1 person meant? It was, it was constricting. It was confining. Right. Right. It was, you know, it was, you know, it was, you know- It's city life. It's city life ... a, a kind of, of synthetic sheitel in it, you know, and, and, and, and, you know, black, wearing black and white and, and, uh, and, uh, so many aspects of- So why did you choo- ... modern life stuff. So why did you choose it? 'Cause, uh, 'cause, uh, the, again, the interiority. I know Hasidics and the rebbe, you know, which are identical in a sense. Uh, Hasidics moved me, touched me. I learned. I was learning. I was... You know, and I, you know, and I had a relationship with the rebbe. You know, I, you know, I was, I think, probably just Frum for one year when I had my first yechidus. And it was like, you know, I was already, you know, like, you know, sold, but, you know, but this was... But it cemented a quality of the relationship that was personal. You know? And by that time, my, uh, no, my, my first son was not yet born. Um, and, uh, and, and it just continued like that, and I became a member of the, a member of a community who was to some extent, even though, you know, many people looked askance, you know, these dirty hippies or whatever it was, and the rebbe would, you know, would, would give them a chelek because, you know, because these, these are hay

1:24:24 Speaker 1 neshamos who we're talking about. And, and, uh, and, uh, uh, but we began to feel more and more at home, less and less alienated, but it was like, you know, it was like the clutch coming up and the gas pedal going down. It took, it took some... And sometimes, you know, sometimes rocking the boat, but, um, to mix a metaphor. Um, and, uh, but it was, it was real. It was meaningful. It had direction. You know, I, uh, my wife and I wrote a, there's a little sidebar in our book where, where, um, where I said that, uh, I said that I was... One of the first things I was learning was in Chumash where it says, you know, in Bereshit, this one begat that one, and this one begat that one, and this one begat that one. There was a sense of continuity, a sense of family, a sense of broader family, of national family, like that. And I said, "I want to get beginning. That's it. I'm in." Right. I saw that, you know, I didn't come from a very rich family life at all, to put it mildly. Um, and, uh, and, uh, Frum, my wife, was an only child, but she had a, she had a very, uh, warm and loving family. You know, mine was a little bit less, uh, less, uh, normal in a way. But, um- You said it before, academic. Acade- Yeah. Another thing we... A phrase we used in our, in our book, a sentence we

1:25:50 Speaker 1 wrote in our book was that, was that, uh, she was the, the daughter of a Republican stockbroker, and I was the son of a, an anarchist revolutionary poet. Right. It was a perfect match. Right. Right. Yeah. Um, but, you know, it wasn't long before, um, I was in Crown Heights. I was working with Meir. Meir was living in Flatbush by that time. You know, we all kind of migrated to, uh, to Brooklyn. He was in Flatbush. There was a Sephardi community there, much more so than, you know, than Crown Heights. But he was a Hasid of the rebbe, 100%. You know, he, he taught me how to love the rebbe. So you were- He not taught me. He showed me with his love of the rebbe. At a certain point, I can even pinpoint some of the moments where, you know, when I went from being a student of the rebbe to being a Hasid. Mm-hmm. And- What, what do you mean by that? Uh, love and, and, uh, and a connectivity which is more than just cerebral or even cerebral and behavioral. Spiri- uh, spiritual in- an interior connection that was immutable, an immutable connection, really. Mm-hmm. The rebbe. Right. Most of your, most of your listener, most of your viewership, I don't have to, I don't have to explain that to. I, I think you do, actually. Yeah. Okay. I, I think you do because, um- No, because, I mean, you, you were, you were, you're beginning to mention about the Yechidas. Mm.

1:27:21 Speaker 1 Right? And how that made it personal. Mm-hmm. Um, that's not an experience that, uh, that was-- that's available to people today. So, so it's important to know what you mean by these different, uh, definitions. So what, what, what, what... So how-- what was a Yechidas? Like, how did, how did it make it personal? In those days, Yechidas was on your birthday. I know. For another few years it was. Right. That was the MO. And, um, so you would write a tzedakah and put it in an advance with your questions, essentially. And then when you came in, your appointment was there, and you came in, you would hand the Rebbe, you know, a little, you know, a, a summary of, of, you know... I wrote a fairly substantial letter. Rebbe didn't, you know... I ha-- put it, I, I put it on his desk, the little, uh, the summary with, you know, just itemizing that I had ten questions. And I walked in, the Rebbe didn't pick up the, the tzedakah. He had a stack of letters on his desk like this. He went to the middle of the stack, pulled out the envelope, put it down in front of him, didn't open it, and said, "Gotlib." "Yeah." And he proceeded to answer all ten of my questions in order. Ex-except for one. There was one question that I asked. There's a few sto- few things about that Yechidas, but, uh, one of them has to do with meditation, actually. But, but, uh, I had asked

1:28:57 Speaker 1 a question that he di-- Instead of that-- answering that question, he answered a question that I had not asked. I had asked about, uh, learning, and I was, um, I was at that time in a, a shi- a shiur. It was under the aegis of Hadar Torah, but it was an evening shiur for, you know, basically, uh, you know, baal teshuva, baalabatim, you know, who were not sitting and learning in, in Hadar Torah with, uh, the venerable Chassid, uh, Abba Pliska. And, uh, I loved the shiur. It was a Gemara shiur. We'd do a little bit of Chassidis at the end. We'd daven Maariv afterwards. And I felt, and told this to the Rebbe, I said, "I love Rav Abba. I love being in the shiur." But it's, it's a beginner's shiur, and I'm kind of in that category, but I just feel like it's-- I wanna go faster. I-- it was not, you know, it was like I was impatient. So I asked the Rebbe, "Should I, um, should I stay in Rav Abba's shiur, which I know would be good for my middos, 'cause I have a lot to learn from the quality of this personality, or, you know, should I follow my instinct, my instinct, you know, my desire to, uh, to go s- you know, to, to find a, a, a way of learning in a, in a, in a quicker, you know, mo- way?" I said speed. I was talking about speed of, you know... I didn't, uh, I didn't,

1:30:21 Speaker 1 you know, I didn't express it in terms of sharpness and what have you, but it was, there was an aspect of it also. Um, and, uh, and, and, and the place of the order of the questions, when it came to that question, he said, "And about the question of whether to put on Rabbeinu Tam's tefillin, it would be a good idea." That's almost verbatim what he said. Okay. So I went and got the Rabbeinu Tam's, of course, right away. Um, and, uh, and, um, s- you know, continued from, from that point on, I started thinking about, you know, what, what's this about? What did he mean? Okay. And on the first superficial level it was, you know, you know, okay, it's not all cerebral. You know, mitzvahs maiyis is where you have to go, and you'll, and you'll get there, you know. And that was mostly the way I looked at it for the first, I don't know, couple years probably, you know. Which was a meaningful statement to me, something that I needed to hear. I knew I needed to hear it. Um, and, uh, and over the years, over the years, new insight... You know, the Rebbe says something, and then over the course of the next forty years, something begins to cook that you didn't think of forty years, forty years ago, thirty-five years ago, whatever. So the first thing that came to me was, was I had been learning in shiur with Rav Abba, and I saw somewhere that the Hamshacha

1:31:42 Speaker 1 that's associated with Rabbeinu Tam's tefillin is Moichem de Abba. So first of all, there was a, a sort of an amusing correlation with Rav Abba's name. Right. And by the same token, the Hamshacha of Moichem de Abba, which is Chochmah, was, was about what I was asking for, which was the speed. Not this plodding, you know, you know, uh, uh, tam b'd'us kind of, you know, cultivation of, you know, of ahavah d'veha asakah, but it was like direct- Right ... influx of, you know, of, uh, of Chochmah from the inner recesses of the, of Kabbalist summation coming, you know, the, the first manifestation, the first lightning flash, so to speak, you know, of where sechel emerges into conscious words. Right. Yeah. That's what I was looking for. I didn't know it at the time, but that's what I was looking for. Many years later, actually, it, it, uh, it came to mind, I don't know how many, but it came to mind that, uh, that when the Rebbe said, "It would be a good idea," I got that from this observance, I was more open to and more able to, uh, to receive good ideas. Yeah. And, uh, behula behula, there's, you know, other things, you know, but that-- those are the, those are the main, the main aspects of that chiddush. What happened to the meditation? Oh, so that's an- that's another question So what-- among my questions in that yeshivas was also, uh, I said, "I have a background in meditation. I-I-I've done

1:33:30 Speaker 1 this kind of meditation, that kind of meditation. I was a teacher, I was a certified teacher." You know, of course, you know, I'm not doing that anymore because of whatever associations there are in Nevadasara. I mean, they're ever later on in the late seventies, you know, I had a whole... Made a big deal about Nevadasara associated with tran- with TM, with transcendental out there, and other forms as well. Um, I said, I said, "But I feel like I have an ability, I have an ability and responsibility somehow to, um, to find the panimius of that and teach others. To be a rep- to represent that inner life." Because you look around and you see, you know, as you said, people don't meditate, you know, whatever. They don't even do this brightness. They, you know, people, you know, it's, you know, they, they-- it's not by accident that people talk about, you know, when you're rushing through something, you just, you're davening it up. Right. You know. Um, I said, I said, "But I'm concerned. I'm afraid that it might be dangerous for me to revisit some of those, some of that training, some of that, you know, sort. And I don't know whether I should do it." The Rebbe said, "On the basis of what you're saying," which means he was listening, he was listening, and he was not giving me a generic answer. He was talking to me. "On the basis of what you're saying, it would be premature, and you should pursue this

1:34:55 Speaker 1 when you become more comfortable with your new lifestyle." Hmm. I don't know how long it take-- took me to become more comfortable with my new lifestyle. I'm still working on it, you know. See, I haven't returned to it. No, I, I, I got it. You know, I, um, um, that's, you know... I'm trying to be witty here, but, uh- Right ... but the fact is, uh, but the truth is I'm still working on it. Right. Uh, because, you know, today's lifestyle requires, you know, um, um, uh, achieving a level, a c- level of comfort and competency that you didn't have yesterday, you know, so- Do you ever feel a need to go back to or a desire to go back, not to go back and reverse everything, but to, but to bring in meditation into your life, that meditation? Yeah. But it's, if it's not that meditation per se, it's how that evolved. I see. How that has evolved. The kits are numerous. It's not, uh, you know, it's a, it's a whole other discussion, as we know. Right. It's, that's, that's-- And that'll be in the book I'm not writing yet. I see. All right. But, um, um, actually, I am writing it, but it's index cards and notes. But, uh, and . But, um, be that as it may, um, first of all, Hasidus began, you know, the more, you know, not just sikhas, but, you know, way more of the things, the things going deeper into, more deeply into the, the structure

1:36:18 Speaker 1 of consciousness. You know, Hasidus structure, this is structure of sikha. How does it work? Right. You know. I began looking into the Mittal Rebbe. I don't know exactly what happened first or when, whatever, but- Right ... but, um, and, but, uh, beyond that, in seventy-eight, I guess it was, the Rebbe sent that famous letter to, uh, whatever the number was of, you know, of psychologists and, and, uh, and, uh, academics, people who were in a position to, uh, to have the authority as well as the, as well as the ability to start inv-inventing to... Not inventing. To, to develop and cultivate a Jewish approach to meditation. Uh, no, not a Jewish approach to meditation. A non-Avodah Zarah approach to meditation. He didn't want Jewish meditation. He didn't want us to talk about... He didn't want some of these guys who were, you know, using Shema Yisrael as a mantra. Right. Like that. He wanted a, a, a technique which was medically, um, a-apropos to help people re-- uh, uh, uh, go beyond anxiety, restlessness, you know, make people calm. Right. Like that. Help people become calm. And, uh, and, but it was clearly, clearly, uh, pointed at the popularity, the growing popularity of, of TM, transcendental meditation. Um, and so one of the people he sent that letter to was a, a psychologist in Palo Alto named Judd Landis, Yehuda Landis, alav hashalom. Uh, who, uh, he got the letter, and he said, "I don't know what the Rebbe wants from me." You know, he,

1:38:04 Speaker 1 he'd become a, you know, he, he was a Baalsher of himself, you know. He said, he, "I don't know what the Rebbe wants from me. I don't know anything about meditation." So he said to, um... He called up, you know, the schlecht that he was close to was Chaim Rich Gazen. And, uh, at that time, jumping, jumping into something that I hadn't mentioned before, but at that time, I was on schlecht in LA. Right. And I knew Chaim Rich because, uh, he was, uh, I had met him early, early in that process of starting to work for professional reckoning. Uh, I was, you know, it was, you know, Chaim Rich was, was instrumental in that, in that development. But, um, so he called up Chaim Rich Gazen, and he said, you know, "How do I-- what, what do I do with this?" He said, "Call Simcha Gottlieb." So I was in LA. I drove up to Palo Alto. We spent four or five days, you know, picking my brain and going over possibilities and whatever, explaining him some things and whatever. And, uh, and that was, you know-- And then he continued on his path, trying to come up with a program, an institute, a program, a technique, whatever it was. Um, had a lot of correspondence with the Rebbe back and forth at that point. The Rebbe was never really happy with the fact that he kept, kept calling it in, in one way or another Jewish meditation. It wasn't what he was asking

1:39:18 Speaker 1 for. Um, and hi-- w-- h-his case and among many other of the people, I don't know what the number is of how many people received that letter. At the time, I thought it was a half a dozen. Um, I've later seen, you know, stories whether they're ap- they're apocryphal or not, as to, you know, that it was twenty or thirty. I don't know. But anyway, that's a moot point because, because it wasn't too long before he said a sikha in public, essentially emphasizing the same idea, 'cause that was a private letter. And over the years, almost none of that happened that the Rebbe seemed to be asking for. People were doing Jewish meditation, people were, you know- Meditation not strictly medicinal? Well, that's-- He wanted, yeah, he wanted, you know, m-medicinal is perhaps an unfortunate word, but, but a, uh, uh, he-- that was, that was, uh, uh, psychologically healing, emo- psychologically, emotionally healing. It was a, it was a, you know, uh, providing, providing an opportunity to cultivate . Um, and I looked around and I saw that that was, you know, the, the people's-- most of the people I was aware of, I wasn't aware of everybody, but, you know, was, uh, was, uh, they, they didn't exactly get it, and it wasn't, uh... Nowadays, peop-people are, people are more of a good friend of mine, uh, Mario Siegel in LA has, uh, has, uh, uh, he wrote, he wrote a book or two. One of them was, was, uh, trashing TM 'cause

1:40:50 Speaker 1 he-- we had both worked in the-- within the TM organization, and the other was pr-- was pr-- you know, proposing a practice- I, I- And he's teaching it, whatever. There's another couple, another couple people teaching something like that. But I have not really felt that it has gone in the direction that I think I see, you know, and there's a lot of "I" in that sentence, so I don't know, um, as kind of the direction that the Reb, that the Rebbe would now respond favorably to if, if, if he were, if he were talking to me. You know, sometimes I think he is, you know, but that's, uh... What do you mean? Huh? What do you mean? I mean, you know, I, I, I, I developed a relationship with the Rebbe where sometimes I think that the stuff that falls into my mind is con-- at least consistent with what I had learned from Chassidus, through Chassidus and from the Rebbe. You know? Um, and be that as it may, you know, the, the substance of that was that, um, that, uh, one of the philosophical or even the practical, technical aspects of both forms of meditation is the idea of, although it was never expressed in these terms, of bringing conscious thought more and more in touch with and, a-and, uh, and connecting with deeper and deeper dimensions of thought beyond to the, to the, to, to to the, to the, to the source of thought, right? Source of thought was an expression that

1:42:32 Speaker 1 we used a lot in, you know, in that material that I learned and was qualified to teach. You know? Um, and but I was seeing that in, you know, I was seeing it in the Midrash Rebbe. I was seeing it in Chassidus all over the place. I was seeing it in, in, in Torah. I look at it in Torah. And, and, a-and it was, you know, it was a, a, an explication of, or not even explication. It was a, it was a, um, uh, cultivation of, of... You know, when you learn the geography of you know, or, uh, uh, the structure of, the structure of consciousness in Chassidish terms, as is spheres and, you know, whatever and, you know, and, and, and and you know, et cetera, et cetera. You know, you-- not only are you learning, at least the way I experienced it, not only are you learning cerebral, it's not just words. Right. You know? There's an internalization of the experience. And it's, you know, just like, you know, coming to Crown Heights and, you know, eating chicken. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's not easy. It seems to me the, the through line for me is that, you know, the, the, the-- I think there's a, there's a story of the Marash where he predicted something. He-- They, they-- He was standing on some kind of elevated porch, and they asked him a question about what was gonna happen, and he predicted it correctly. And then when they said-- when they-- when

1:44:00 Speaker 1 the Chassidim, you know, expressed astonishment that he had predicted, he said, "What do you mean? I'm higher, so I can see further." Something to that effect. Mm-hmm. Um, and you know, there, there's, there's this element and there's, there's this, there's this through line in the story where, you know, the Rebbe saw potential in the, in the hippie movement. It wasn't necessarily in the moment, 'cause in the moment-- I mean, it was somewhat part of it was in the moment, but a lot of the moment was, was, was muddy. And you can talk about Woodstock, literally mud. Um, but, but, like, it was a messy time. And I think, you know, you could say the Rebbe was seeing where the thing was going and where the world was heading, and that there's, you know, the fact that some people are pushing towards a more thoughtful w- uh, world, a world that has more sense of it, its interiority is a good thing, even if the transition to it is messy. The Rebbe pushed for Lubavitch to incorporate baal teshuvahs. You, you mentioned that a few times, and it wasn't easy 'cause the community had its own, you know... It's hard in the moment to accept people that are very different to you, even if the Rebbe looking at it from a, you know, for like longer, longer timeline can see that a lot of these people are gonna have their kids marry each other. But at the time, it was gonna be difficult. And finally, with,

1:45:22 Speaker 1 you know, the, the, the meditation, same thing, you know. If the Rebbe wanted something, it'll come, like you said. I mean, it, it'll come after all these years. In terms of the, of the, uh, the Rebbe's insistence at that time that it be not characterized as Jewish meditation, but rather a medical or a psychological therapeutic practice, um, I-- as a part of me, and I, I, I sell my own advice, so I don't, you know, I, I don't know what to, uh, I don't know if it's valid or not. But, uh, but part of me wants to say, "This is then. That was then, and this is now." That was then, this is now. Something we joke around and say, "That was Zen, and this is not." But- What do you mean? It, it, it was, it was a heara for the moment because, because there was a sakana with regard to Jewish young people or older people getting involved in, in, in, a, in a practice that was clearly associated behaviorally as well as philosophically with the Vorazar. Mm-hmm. Um, and the, the, the initiation ceremony- Right ... involved, you know, certain bowing down, things like that or whatever. Um, and whereas, whereas there's a, you know, there's a, there's a, an evolution that is taking place. You know, I, I, I, I wrote a paper. I delivered a, a talk at the, at, uh, at shul, at the Baal Haber Science and Torah, Torah and Science Con- Conference, and somehow I had to

1:46:55 Speaker 1 expose on the Rabbi or whatever, and, and I had to, I had to find something, and I found just, just almost accidentally agavokol there was a, there was a, a, a, a, a s- a statement from the Rebbe from a sicha. I could probably find where it was, but anyway, but, um, where he said, "Even though avodas hameichin is really pertinent to a Hasid lover, it's not something for now." You know? He was alluding to the fact that every time you bring up, you know, meditate or his readiness or whatever among, you know, among, uh, a really pretty... You know, any- anyone in Crown Heights in those days anyway, would say, "That was for the mitzvos hasidim." You know? "That was for the, you know, for the Maggi." You know? And we would say, "Hello, what?" You know. And, um, so he said, "Even though avodas hameichin is for the Hasid lover, still at this point we have to do whatever we can with the tools we have in that regard." And I was like, "Oh, okay." So something has shifted. Maybe it shifted maybe 'cause that was about therapy, and this is about his readiness, and this is about, uh, this is about, uh, uh, cultivating an experiential interior mode of thinking and, and feeling and, you know, everything is, you know, the Moshe Veramaisa and prior to Moshe Veramaisa, you know, in all of the, you know, in, uh, all the way up to, uh, Panim Zakeh. Right. Yeah. And beyond. All the

1:48:27 Speaker 1 way up to atzmus really, but he, you know, who's gonna talk about that? You won't get me to talk about that right now. That's gonna be for part two. Yeah. Right. All righty. We are back in North Miami Beach like we never left. What is it? Probably about 1,000 miles, 1,000 miles later, I'm back like we never left. So let's, let's pick up where we, where we ended off last time. Uh, if I could frame it... Let me frame it like this just so that we're not, uh... This is somewhat fresh but also continuation. You know, we, we, we've been hearing a story, we've been hearing a story, um, of, of you and your colleagues trying to, uh, figure out a way to hold on to the, the insights of a generation that was looking for something deeper and meaningful, but at the same time not to get carried away with it, and that led you in a very long and in a very interesting way to Lubavitch in Crown Heights. And, you know, I, I think, I think the question I had thinking about the story is, in many ways, your story is a story about the struggle with or against conformity and, and, and looking for something that, that conformity cannot offer, and then you end up in a place where there is plenty of conformity. You know, and I think that will lead us to a conversation in general about Chasidus and Haspanus, which is anti-conformity in many ways. The whole point

1:50:28 Speaker 1 is that you think of things for yourself, but, uh, a-and, and you, you come to your own flavor of it. Right? That is each person on their own has to figure out what it means to them. But let's first talk in general about, you know, in a more cultural sense, how is it that a bunch of anti-conformists living on a f- a farm commune in Binghamton, how is it for you, as one of those people, how do you find your, your resting place, your destination, in a community that is very conformist? You know, I, I think I'd have to beg to differ about whether you can characterize, uh, the Crown Heights community, the Lubavitch community, as con- conformist per se. I mean, in many superficial aspects, yes. Um, and for that matter, we were not exclusively non-conformist either. You know, there's a lot of wisecracks about how, uh, about how all, how all of us non-conformists in the '60s and '70s or what have you, you know, were all wearing the same clothes and listening to the same music and, you know, espousing the same philosophical, uh, you know, and meditative practices, et cetera. You know, so, you know, it's-- there's a- Touché. Yeah. Touché. There's a... Well, the, it's, the fact is it's very understandable because, because there is always, in a healthy individual and a healthy community, there's always a balance struck between individuation and belonging. You know? We all desire some place to belong. Um, and that's, that was one of the

1:52:07 Speaker 1 attractions of, uh, of getting involved in the Chabad community. Uh, and by the same token, we are each individuals. I mean, the Rebbe very much emphasized that. In Chabad, I think it's particularly, you know, just the extent to which, uh, people do or do not, uh, exert themselves to them with dominion or to them very close or whatever. In fact, I think, I remember you had a conversation with Zvi Korf where it touched upon those, those, uh, aspects of, uh, of individuation versus quote-unquote conformity or belonging to the group. And there's plenty of, you know, uh, deep reason, reasons in Hasidism why we can understand it that way. „Memale Kol Olam," „Mesivta Kol Olam." There is a, there is an individual aspect to everything in creation, and yet we're all one, you know. Or some of us are one kind of one, and some of us are another kind of one, but we all belong to something. I think, uh, you know, when we came down from Binghamton, we didn't all come from Binghamton, but there was a, there was a large influx of new Baalshesiua, you know, a, a burgeoning Baalshesiua community that came more or less within the same year or so into Crown Heights, you know, Crown Heights and Morristown, you know, whatever like that. And, um, we had the advantage of coming as a cohesive group with similar values. And as such, the, you know, there's always a pressure to conform for a newcomer, for, you know, for a tsug ikumener

1:53:34 Speaker 1 to, to, uh, to conform to the, the, the styles and the mores and the, and the, uh, and the, uh, the perspectives- Right ... of where you're coming to. We came as a cohesive group into such a way as to, as to, um, strengthen one another, you know. We were not, you know, we weren't buffeted about by the sudden, you know, showing up in a, you know, stranger in a strange land, you know, kind of an experience. Um, and yet, by the take, same token, we were, we were, uh, interested in assimilating, but not in assimilating to the extent of self-obliteration. So we had that strength as an integral community whereby we could nourish ourselves individually and yet as a group and not be drawn into some of that tension that some of the BTs who came in at one point or another point or even at that time, uh, would be a little bit, uh, you know, bowled over. But doesn't every community ultimately, once you become assimilated into a community on, on some level, you, you, you will find that every community has, by definition, conformity? True. It's, it's certainly one of the poles of, of, of what makes a community. You know, there's individuality like you're talking about. There's individuals, and, and they will f- to some extent have their own individual qualities, but there's the fact that they're a community means that there's some kind of conformity that's, that... Or there, very often it means that there's some kind of conformity

1:55:05 Speaker 1 where they're all fitting in into one, into one way of doing things. And it, and, and, and how much they do either of those defines the complexion of the community. Mm-hmm. So you get involved in Chabad, in the Chabad community, I'm sure you began to sense, or maybe you didn't, if, if you didn't, you could tell me, but every Babasha that I know senses conformity and, and struggles with it or, or, or knows about it to some extent. Mm-hmm. Well, to you, let me frame it a little bit differently. As a B- was there a difference for someone who's a Baalshesiua coming in, basically carried, carried in, swept in by the idea of Hasidism, the idea of a Rebbe and the relationship with the Rebbe and so on like you described earlier? You know, there's these ideas that are very lofty and very f- you know, very poetic, and then you, you, you land in the community and you begin to settle, and it's like a, a lot of it is just, you know, everybody's just doing the same thing. And, and, like, was that at, at all a, a, a challenge for, for you? To an extent, yes. Even insofar as, as I said before, we came as a cohesive unit, and we sh- we came with shared values, and therefore, we were not inundated. But I'm sure you also changed. You also- Yeah. You guys also became a, a- Absolutely. Absolutely. There were experiences, I mean, Seven seventy itself was a, you know,

1:56:37 Speaker 1 a milestone of, uh, not only conformity but, but wild kite. You know? It was, it was, you know, I'd never seen such a, you know, such a, uh, such a, uh, uh, a wild and, and un-unmitigatedly, uh, almost violent kind of an environment, you know? There was a, you know, there, there was a time in which I would be in Seven seventy davening or whatever, and I would feel like at a loss, really, because it was so chaotic, at least on the surface. And then over time, I remember there was one or two particular instances where I would kind of like turn around and I would say, "You know what? It seems very chaotic here," and it seems, uh, by the same token, conformist. But then I picked up on the... I mean, really what I would call is the love. There was a, there was, I was just feel there was a love. There was a, you know, there was a, a, a, a solidarity between people that also respected individuality. As I had been there for a little while, I got to know people as individuals, you know, and they got to know me, and it became very different, um, than just a, than just a conformist group. I, personally, I've, early on, you know, I started, uh, being very involved and not just a guy who went out to work and, you know, and showed up and schul tedaven and, you know, kept Shabbats in the, in the neighborhood. But I was

1:57:59 Speaker 1 very involved with some of the organizations, you know. I worked with Kochav, I worked, I worked with the Hechs and the National Committee. I did whole, you know, a lot of other, uh, uh, I, uh, I mean, I used to joke around for a while because, you know, because, you know, people would say, "How do you fit in over there?" And I would say, "I, I pass for white."Pass for white I passed for white. You know, it was the old civil rights movement word, you know? Right. That, uh, but, uh, I was, you know, I was, uh, accepted and yet looked at as somewhat different, and therefore I felt a certain belonging, and yet by the same token, there's a, a degree to which I was kind of like a stranger in a strange land. Was there a sense... W- at the time was there like a very, uh... Did you, uh, felt consciousness, self-consciousness of being baal teshuvahs? 'Cause it was relatively early in that movement. Yeah, sure. It, I mean, it depended with whom you were communicating. You know, some people were more open. Some people, like, didn't want us in the neighborhood, uh, because we would be a bad influence on their grandkids or something, whatever. Um, but, um, that, you know, that was only a few places, and the Rebbe was not standing for that. You know, the Rebbe scolded many people for voicing that kind of a, that kind of a resistance to the influx of, you know, what

1:59:14 Speaker 1 the Rebbe considered truth seekers of a generation that was, you know, that had a strength, which we discussed earlier. But, um, the, uh... It was... There was an instance in which I was working, you know, I was, I was working with the, uh, I was a member of the team that produced the, the Rebbe's farbrengens, the farbrengen telecast. We had a four-camera shoot. You know, you've seen those, those videos in the, in the early to mid-'80s, number of farbrengens per year with a satellite broadcast, and I used to produce the, what we call the pre-game shows. You know, the Rebbe would come down at nine thirty, and nine o'clock we'd roll in a, uh, a tape of something that we produced, you know, uh, pertinent to the, to the particular farbrengen. You know, on Yud Aleph Nisan we had Pa- uh, Pesach, uh, uh, programming. We had a, a panel discussion from, with Chassidim who had known the previous Rebbe prior to the Yoshvat farbrengen, et cetera. You know. I was up there one time, um, in the offices upstairs in s- seventy, seventy, eighty-four, and, uh, there was a lot of bustling activity over there, and I was doing my job and, you know, and l- also looking over my shoulder as to, you know, as to who's looking o- over their shoulder at me. And somebody said something to the effect that there was a, there was a discussion about the baal teshuva in Crown Heights, and, um, I wasn't really participating. I

2:00:43 Speaker 1 was observing. And somebody said, "You know, they, they bring a great energy, and they have s- they're innovative, and they're creative, and they bring a lot, you know, they bring a lot of new, uh, perspective over here." And one of the people in the, let's say, the upper echelons of, uh, of Beis Hamachois, uh, said something like you s- it was like a moment of cynicism, and he said, "Yeah, we'll s- we'll see what happens." And it was almost like he forgot who I was, you know? And, uh, and I, you know, I left, and he looked at me, I looked at him, and, you know, it passed, and it was not something that I, you know, that I, that I processed over time. But it was a moment where something w- something was revealed, and those kind of moments happened, you know? But over time, you know, people used to joke about whether, whether we would, whether they would let our kids marry their kids, and one of my baal teshuva friends who lived over on the other side of town said, "I don't know if we want our kids to marry their kids." You know? Uh, and it, both were in, in, were good-natured, you know, in good spirit. There was no, there was no, no real sense of separation, but under the surface there was. Um, eventually, I think I said last time about the whole we pray and what have you, the, um, eventually the, um, the, the culture that we

2:02:05 Speaker 1 brought and the culture that we were coming to found ways to communicate and found ways to be resilient and, uh, and respectful, and, uh, you know, they, you know, they learned from us, and we learned from them. And this, and it, to the extent that I don't even like that config- that, that, that, uh, con- the construct of us and them. It was no longer us and them. It was really, really became over time. But, but, but, but, but, but follow up that thought. What did they... I wanted to a- I actually wanted to ask you, what did they learn from you? Or what did you bring with you? What, what did you bring... You know, the Gemara says that, that par going to Galus is that shetay shelo gerim, right? The, the, the- Mm-hmm ... right? Mm-hmm. Obviously, we're not t- we're talking here about baal teshuvahs, not gerim, but, but the idea that you go into a, a foreign land and you attract people that, that join your tent and come to you, but they bring with them some- something new that you didn't have before. You could answer that on a number of different levels, you know, on a very sort of a surface level y- with the culture, with the music, with the, you know, the creative arts, you know? Right. Um, somebody once told me, someone, one of our Rebbe told me one time that he's, he heard somewhere, saw somewhere that the previous Rebbe said that the baal teshuva

2:03:19 Speaker 1 are gonna bring creativity and ar- artistic creativity, uh, back into the, into Yiddishkeit, you know? Right. He, he, it may be a co- apocryphal. He may have, you know, he may have, that may have been wishful thinking on his part. But there was a, you know... I'll give you an example. Uh, Yossi Pimenta, alav ha-shalom, who was a good friend, you know, uh, you know, fabulous, well-known guitarist, certainly not in the mold of anything that had represented Jewish music up until that time. And, uh, he showed me a letter that he got from the Rebbe. Um, I'm not sure what precipitated the letter, but the Rebbe basically said, he said, "Rock and roll, this music that you're, you know, that you're, uh, em- uh, it is embedded in you, and you're embedded in that world. It's a, it's music of, of chaos. It's, it's ohel matahu, you know? It's w- it's not, it's not disciplined. It's not, you know, sometimes it's not even kosher," whatever it is, you know, like that. He said, "Your job," he said to Yossi, "is to take that tohu and bring it down into tikkun." To bring rock and roll into tikkun. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. I, I don't know if he used that words, but the, the next words, the next sentence out of Yossi's, uh, uh, mouth was, and this is what I got from him, he says, "You wait and see how rock and roll has, you know, will become like so many instances where the

2:04:43 Speaker 1 Russian, you know, uh, folk music and what have you got, uh, interpolated into Jewish music and was, you know, Napoleon's March," those kinds of things, you know? Um, he said, "You'll see how rock and roll has an influence." And, you know, you go to your average bar mitzvah and wedding right now, and, uh, I w- I wouldn't even call that rock and roll. It's a whole later generation. It's a- Rock and roll's already throwback- Exactly ... and very nostalgic. Yeah. Exactly. You know, that's, you know, Gen Z and hip-hop and whatever, all this, you know, kind of stuff, you know? And as our parents would say in, in our youth, you know, "You call that music?" Yeah. So I can go to a rebbe and say y- same, same thing. And I, and I admonish people and say, "Don't say that. Don't say that to your kids. Nobody wants to hear it." And yes, they call it music, you know. Is it... Does it suit our taste? You know, do I want to turn the volume down the way they wanted us to turn the volume down? Absolutely. You know. But there's, so there's, there's a, there's an advance of generations culturally. I think I would bring it down to more in the panimius that, um, you know, we talked about meditation last time, mindfulness and all this meditation, which I, I think I answered you when you asked me what, to what benefit was it, and I answered rather, you know, rather quickly, uh,

2:05:55 Speaker 1 calm, stillness, you know, quietude like that. It's really much more, much more than that because what it, what it, uh, acclimated us to was an ability to perceive the conscious, to perceive thought really, um, on a different level, which is, which is coming from, from a different, at a different stage of development. You know, thought comes from somewhere. It comes from gadlus, I think, like I mentioned last time also, that, um, that, uh, you know, there is a pre-linguistic r- uh, uh, area of the mind where... Which is before we ha- uh, before there's language, before there's words and, and by extension limai limitan, but that's higher than, than any rational understanding. And contenting that w- contacting that realm to be able to nourish ourselves inwardly from that realm is not only calm, not only, you know, the kind of silence and stillness and what have you. It actually, when you're in touch with that, um, core, um, seminal aspect of consciousness, um, you become more resilient, kinder, less subject to the implications of the, of the yetzer hara because you have more... Because you, because your, your, your mindset and your perspective is coming from a deeper place, closer to the, closer to the etz emunas shma, you know. How do you understand hisbodedut given your background in, in, in, in meditation and mindfulness? How do you, how do you understand hisbodedut? And, and, and if I may sharpen the question, what has frustrated you about the way classical Lubavitch thinks about hisbodedut? I

2:07:34 Speaker 1 think you mentioned it earlier, um, that like people said, "Oh, hisbodedut is dead," basically. And you're like, "That's not true. We've been doing this for years in Binghamton." So, you know, what-- To, to, to, to, to recap the question, um, what-- how do-- what do-- how do you understand hisbodedut given your background, and what frustrates you the most about the way classical Lubavitch thinks about hisbodedut? Well, we, we weren't really doing it, it, doing hisbodedut per se in Binghamton. We were kind of preparing the ground in a way by acclimating ourselves to a deeper level of, uh, of, of thought, of consciousness. We were c- we were, uh, comfortable in a space. Why is it not hisbodedut? Why is it not hisbodedut? Because hisbodedut is, is, is lashon bina, lashon havan. And hisbodedut is... But it's not only that, obviously. Hisbodedut is, is, is avodas hameichin wherein we're using our minds, our rational mind and, and the deeper, you know, more creative, intuitive mind, you know, bina and chachma and what have you. We're, we're experiencing the dynamic between, you know, really all across the seder shtalshos. But in sechel, you know, in sechel, just let's say, you know, chachma and binah sheba chachma and chachma sheba bina, and we're having that inter, inter-included, uh, uh, dynamic of, of exploring and experiencing. Experiencing the, you know, the, the realm of, of, of how sechel emerges and, you know, from where it's from, its source and its, and its direction, its directionality. Um, I think we

2:09:11 Speaker 1 were, in a way, trained in becoming more adept in, um, in experiencing that rather than just talking about it, you know. The, the words are there, you know. We can talk, you know, uh, you know, whether it's, you know, whether it's through the rudiments of the, the, the, the geography of the human personality, you know, the, this, the, the, the, the corresponding to the, to the sefirot. And we have sechel and midas and all of this, you know, whatever, you know. And, uh, and, and there is a, a complexity to that whereby it's not just mechshava tal halev, you know. It's really panim halev also has an influence on the, on chitzei ha-meichin. And, and, you know, v- and, and in many more, much more, much greater detail. There's a lot of nuance there. It's difficult from the, from the text to experience that if you haven't had some ac- some, some ex- experience in, in exploring that and allo- and letting that sit in. Mm-hmm. You know, um, I was t- I was talking to Hammi Judson about this one time. You know, he says, "I, you know, I say some of this stuff over that we're learning in Ayin Bas, and I talk to my, you know, to my havrusa, to this guy that way," you know. He said, "They don't know what we're talking about. They don't know what the Mitteler Rebbe's talking about." You know. To me, you know, to my chevre, I, I-- I'm not saying that I'm such a

2:10:30 Speaker 1 big chacham that I really get, you know, where the Mitteler Rebbe's coming from. But one of, one of my havrutas at one point said, "You know, the Mitteler Rebbe taught me how to think." I think we were learning Imrei Binah at the time, which was very, uh, uh... It was before, it was before we got to Ayin Bas. You know, Imrei Binah, he really did teach us how to think in a sense that that pr- that, that landscape of the mind that, you know, when you see the, the geography Of the mind of Sechel and Midas and Machshava, you might say, and where it's coming from in the higher realms, which is prior to, which is prior to thought, you know. Um, it's, um, you-- Just becoming aware of the language, if you have some sense of transcendence across the, across the divide between these various nuanced levels of the mind. Why do you think, why do you think you have m- had more... You and your group had more of a-- Why did you and your group see the mind as more of a reality than a group of Hasidim who spend many hours every day learning about said mind? I-I'm not, I'm not being... I mean, I guess I'm coming across a bit cynical, but I'm not- And I'm not, I'm not trying to come across as any way superior or- No, no, but I'm asking, I'm asking a serious question 'cause I, I, I, I, maybe it came across cynical, but that's

2:11:58 Speaker 1 not my point. My point is that, like, you wonder sometimes, like, what is, what is that, what is that, what is that, like, that, that blockage that, that stops the, the typical Labavitcher from, like, taking the ideas literally, like, in a real way? Like, like, you know, when the Rebbe would talk about hispanos, they, they, they're not seeing it as a mashal. They're not seeing it like... Sometimes it is a mashal, and sometimes we take that, that, that whole framework of a mashal way too far. Like, no, the hispanos is, is a real thing. Like, they're talking about, like, this is something that you could actually do. Like, like, what, what do... You know, I saw, I think I may have quoted it once in, in, in, in, in on a podcast, on different podcasts, but, like, I saw in the Philip Kravis a beautiful idea that, like, people think hispanos is further away from the average person than, say, Havana. And he says it's actually the opposite. It's actually the opposite. Hispanos is whatever you understand, you can review in your mind, you can internalize and, and think through and think over. Whatever level of comprehension you have, Hispanos is actually more accessible to you. Havana is where some people can understand this and some people can understand that, but Hispanos is more a, a subjective engagement with what you do understand. So why is it that, that like, how do you understand that here's this group of people that... And I, I think

2:13:26 Speaker 1 they, they take Hasidim seriously. I think they, they believe that it's important. I don't think they're being cynical about it per se. But for some reason, the net result is, is that, like, for so many, these ideas of Hispanos seem to belong to yesteryear with, with, you know, with, with Binyamin Kloetzker and this Hasid and that Hasid. What, what do you think it is? There's a, um, speaking of rock 'n' roll, there's a, you know, there's a song from, from our culture, you know, but, uh, it happens to be, uh, well, whatever it is, it's a... There's a line in the song. It's a song is about how life is a masquerade. We're always kind of fooling ourselves. You know, you can, you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can fool yourself all the time. And, uh, and, uh, called "Life is a Masquerade," and they're talking about a relationship in that context, and they said, "We tried to..." The singer says it to, uh, uh, about his relationship, "We tried to talk it over, but the words got in the way." There is a, uh, you know, in that context, I think about another thing. There's a cartoon that, uh, that I've seen where there's two doors, and there's a big, long, long line of people in front of one door. The doors are closed. It's against the wall. Long line of people, uh, um, waiting to get into one door, and there's a few stragglers waiting to

2:14:44 Speaker 1 get into the other door. And on the door, uh, that, that has a long line, it says, "Lecture about God." And on the door where there's only a few people, it says, "God." Very, very good. Very good. We, you know, the, the face-to-face intimate relationship which takes, um, which is challenging, you know, which can knock you over. You know, it can be, you know, it can, you know, talk about Avi and Yura. It can be, it can be, it can be devastating, you know. And the words sometimes get in the way. The concepts, the, the, you know, the Havana basaga, you know, the, the chachma and bina has to give way at some point to the daas, you know, so to speak. And there's lots to talk about daas, but, you know, the middle level of daas is when chachma and bina are, are, are united, you know. Right. Daas is often characterized as, you know, when you have sechel, so the influence it has on, on, on the middas, you know, so that you get- Well, that's just, that's just the outside of it. Yeah. Right. And then there's another, the higher level of daas is when it's all coming down from, from before- Right ... before sechel, you know, from k- from, from- Keser ... keser, from panim, you know, like that. But, but, uh, but, uh, there is a, there's a struggle to turn those words, turn those concepts, um, into internalized experience and apply it to your life. What do you

2:16:06 Speaker 1 think the block is, though? Why do you think it's such a struggle? And why do you think it was different for you coming from Binghamton? I, I, I, I, I understand that you're not saying that you're superior. We're not talking about better or worse. Talking about- It was new. It was new to you. And, and it was, um, and it, it, it also resonated with the searches for truth that many of them, many of us went through before we came to Yiddishkeit, before we came to Hasidism. You know, there's a, um, there's a, there's an emphasis on internalized experience, you know, even music, whatever it was. I tried to... In the, in the, in the mid-'80s, I was a, for a couple of years, I was a director of the Ivory League Torah Study Program. And one of the faculty, one of the Rosh Yeshiva was, you know, we had a meeting before the summer. And, uh, and I was talking about, you know, the sensibilities of the students that we're, you know, that we're welcoming in and we're teaching that, you know, and sometimes teaching us, you know. And I was emphasizing the importance of music, and not just, you know, Nigunim like this or whatever, but we come from a culture of music. He couldn't understand what I was talking about It's like this is a clip, it's, it's not educated, it's like this, you know? He didn't understand how that's a s- he couldn't get that I was considering that or was

2:17:22 Speaker 1 trying to describe that as a spiritual experience. Right. Um, you know, and then, and then there's also, you know, as I said, it's new. You know, what does it say? It says, uh, you know, uh, a tainuk to me is not a tainuk. You know? I... Look, I, I've heard that before, that for some reason that, that answer, the, the, the, the newness doesn't really speak to me because I think for a lot of Lubavitchers, when they open up the Maimonides, it's also new. I mean, maybe, maybe let me, let me, let me tell you how I think of it, and maybe it is the idea of newness, but just some different words to it to tell me what you think. Something I've been thinking about the past couple days. Seems to me the, the word that, that, that, that, that the word that works for me is more openness. Mm-hmm. And, and openness- Yeah ... has a lot to do with, with... The thing about openness is that it means inherently a lot of risk, in the sense that if, if you believe, if you believe that you already have everything sorted out, or if you believe that you, there's too much to lose, meaning you, you, you, you feel a burden of not losing something that you already have- Mm-hmm ... you're by definition not open. You cannot be open when you are worried about losing, because in other words, you're way too conservative. You're way too, you're way too worried. Worried and

2:18:53 Speaker 1 openness are opposites. Defensive. Right. Be- you know, being worried about loss and being worried about, about, about change is a, is a, is the opposite of openness. And so it seems to me that, you know, when you're, when you're baal teshuva coming into... Like, what do you have to lose? You have nothing to lose. Like, like in terms of, uh, from the Hasidic standpoint, from the Hasidic standpoint, you have nothing to lose. Like, like you're, you're, you're, you're, you're out of answers over there, you're coming here for answers, you're coming here for ideas. You'll try it out. The Maimonides says to, to do hispanos, just go for it. What, what's there to lose? What could already happen? But, you know, when, when you, when you come from this place of like, "This is... I am what a Lubavitcher is supposed to be. I already am X, Y, Z, and I..." So even if you don't consciously think about that you don't wanna lose anything, you're, you're, you're by definition closed. And, and, and but what that leads me to think is that there's a very interesting almost like paradox of to be, and I think this is relevant to Yiddishkeit in general, but certainly to Hasidism, that like on one hand, there's a very deep tradition, and there is a deep uniformity in the sense of, of, of, of, of everything comes from one God, every... You know, Hasidism is one. There's, there's... You don't just make up your own thing. It's not like m-

2:20:16 Speaker 1 you know, write your own story, you know, craft your own, you know, build your own bear, whatever it is. You know, it, it, it... There is, there is a truth here that you have to be a disciple of, right? But at the same time, you have to be open to change. You have to be open to change. If you're not open to change, and we're just going through the motions, the whole, the whole Hasidism basically becomes desiccated immediately. Mm-hmm. There's no life to it. It's all a bunch of words getting in the way. We're talking about Hispanos, we're talking about God, as opposed to actually doing Hispanos and, and, and, and, and doing God, right? A-and so, like it seems to me... Uh, I'd like to hear what you think about that. I... It seems to me that that's the difference, the main difference between the baal teshuva phenomenon, so to speak, and the frum from birth phenomenon, or, or, or, or, you know, the, the... You know, what the baal teshuvas really teach us is the possibilities available to o- when, when one is actually open. We were very well-schooled before we got here in, or as we were coming here, in change. Right. Which is, which is openness. And in risk, and the risk that, you know, the openness and the risk that, uh, that, uh, that, uh, that calls for- Right ... that the change calls for. You know, we were, uh, you know, we broke a lot of barriers. You know,

2:21:39 Speaker 1 break on through to the other side. It was, uh... And, uh, and so it was not, it was not a threat so much as an adventure. Um, and one thing that we're able to s-sometimes begin to recognize in the teshuva is there's a difference between being dutiful and being enthusiastic about what you're exploring. And dutiful of doing what I'm supposed to do. You know? Which, uh, which is also, you know, we are supposed to be doing what we're supposed to do. We are... There is a, you know, that, you know, you talked about in terms of bittel, in terms of, in terms of, uh, in terms of, uh, not, not obedience and not conformity, but solidarity, that we, we're coming from, you know, we belong together because we are together, we are all one, and that's, you know, there's a lot of truth in that. And that was very... one of the things that was actually very, uh, seductive to us and, uh, attractive to us. Yeah. Solidarity is a much nicer word than conformity- Sure ... or uniformity, for sure. Yeah. It's two individuals, uh, aligning with one another. Mm-hmm. And more brotherhood as opposed to, uh, like, uh, like, like, like, uh... It's a brotherhood. Two people that are different but have a shared, a shared, a shared, a shared sense of where they come from, where they're going. We're all vulnerable to that sort of superficiality. I mean, I used to have, you know, I put on different clothes when I walked

2:23:08 Speaker 1 on Kingston Avenue- Of course ... than wherever, you know, than, than, than when I was walking in Prospect Park or going into town, you know? Right. There were times, uh, in later years, there were times when I felt suffocated in the n- in what... Not the narrow-mindedness so much as the sort of the, just the, um- The, the, uh, monolithic cultural aspect that, that seemed to be surrounding me, and all this stuff is only because you don't get to know people very well. Right. You know, that experience in 1770, you know, I came to a point where if you look closely, you can see there, you know, there's that guy in the corner who's dominating Bar Vayta. Right. You know, and you sit in farreng with these guys, which you... Which wasn't accessible to us in the beginning, language barriers among other things and whatever. Like, there's a lot of premius there, there's a lot of enthusiasm there that is not just dutiful, and not just obedience. Right. Um, but it, you know, it does... It can come across that way, and it can be experienced that way. Sometimes you talk to people, and you really get that that's what they're about. But how can a religious person be open, be truly open? Because doesn't openness mean that you're ready on some level? If you're actually open and not just saying that you're open, doesn't it mean that you're ready to give it, to give it up or at, or at the very least to

2:24:21 Speaker 1 lose it all? That's what openness means, and a religious person ultimately, you're raising a ch- your child religiously, you're raising yourself religiously, so much of it is, "I know this is true. I know this is what it is. I... It's not, it's not a negotiable." So if it's not a negotiable, then, then are you actually open? Like, how do you see... You know, it's one thing when you were initially about truisms and you go, "Yeah, you know what? If I don't like it, I'll go back to how I used to be." But at some point, does it become like, "This is who I am, and now I'm in the same trap"? You know, Bittel doesn't necessarily mean self-obliteration, you know. The Rebbe was very encouraging people to be Mechadesh Chidushim. Well, you know, from, from birth, a Ba'al Teshuva or whatever, you know, we have to think for ourselves. We have to think. You know, there was a there was a shliach that, uh, in the, in the time of when Reagan was giving AWACS to Saudi Arabia, I believe it was, and at that time I was working up, up in 1770, and, and, and there was a, there was a, a shliach somewhere who was interviewed, um, I- I know where, but I won't say. Uh, he was being interviewed by a local magazine as to, you know, what's the deal with the, you know, the protest, protestations of the AWACS. I helped to write a full page ad in the New York

2:25:34 Speaker 1 Times about that. And, uh, he said, "I don't really understand it, but the Rebbe says." And the Rebbe got wind of this, and he was, I don't know, I don't wanna say furious. I don't, you know, I don't think the Rebbe does furious. But, uh, but, uh, but he was, you know, he chastised, chided the person. He says, "If you're gonna talk to the press, have an idea," you know. "Under- understand, understand what you're talking about." Fair. You know, say it, you know, say... Yeah, sometimes if it helps to say it in my name, say it in my name, but a lot of times it helps to not say it in my name. Correct. So, uh- Now, you walk into the Chabad house and, uh, you know, they, they... The idea of a, of a Dvar Torah on a Parshah is the Rebbe asked, the Rebbe said, the Rebbe answered. It's like, uh, can we somewhere interject, "And I thought" first? You know, there's a, there's a different kind of, uh, uh, different kinds of Drashes, you know. Sermonizing or even, or even, uh, Divrei Torah farrengin or whatever, you know. It's, uh, it, it's, it's not easy, but it is prevalent to master the art of saying over a Sicha, you know. Right. Divrei Harav, you know, the Rebbe is like this, this is the question, this is the answer, you know. And it comes across as somebody very, often, frequently, not necessarily, it comes across often as a kind of a top-down- Right

2:26:54 Speaker 1 ... way of, of, uh, of communicating. Right. You know? And, uh, several times I've had conversations about that where I say, "You know what? I... What I wanna hear is I wanna hear, uh, not this is what it says in the Sicha, and this is the uftun, this is the whatever," you know, like, this is how we m- have to be dutiful and obedient like that, or, uh, be able to say over the words. Right. Um, but rather, "You know, this is what I'm struggling with. It touches me in a way that, you know, I..." And sometimes there's a, there's this like, uh, just a casual, you know, "I'm talking to myself here," you know. Right. It's not just I'm talking to myself here. You know, that's a, that's a, a rehearsed line, you know. But rather, "I, I'm really struggling with this, and it affects me this way." And, you know, uh, uh, you put yourself personally into it and, and communicating with the person on that kind of a basis, you know. I said, "That's the kind of farrengin, you know, that's the kind of, uh, Drasha I wanna hear like that." And I was talking to one of the grandchildren actually about that, um, and, uh, I told her, I told her, you know... I said over what I, basically what I just said now, and I said, "You know, the Rebbe was like that." She looked at me and says, "The Rebbe was like that?" I said, "Yeah." I said, "When,

2:28:05 Speaker 1 you know, when the Rebbe was a Rashi Sicha, whatever it was, you know, the Rebbe was really saying, 'I genuinely have an issue with this, and I'm gonna go look into it, and you know, and, and go back and forth.'" Uh-huh. "And you know, with the whole-" Right. "I'm gonna go deeper. I'm gonna find sources. I'm gonna, you know, think about it more because there's something here that I'm not seeing either, and it affects the world." Right. "So it's my issue." Right. You know, and, uh, you know, not in so many words, but you get that from, from who the Rebbe was and where he's coming f- where he's coming from with that kind of a thing. It's not a, it's not a sermon. Right. And it's not top-down. The Rebbe was never top-down. So, uh, it's, uh, we, the tsug ikumener, I don't wanna overgeneralize, you know, but can, can see that coming a mile away. Right. And, uh, parenthetically, it's not, it's not exactly pertinent, but Simon Jacobson once said, uh, to me in a conversation, he said, he said, "You know, a Lubavitcher, a Lubavitcher can see, see a nar from a mile away, you know. But then he'll go and tell him, 'You're a nar.'" You know, it's not just there quietly like that. Right. You know, it's, uh, so there's a mile in a chasar there, but, uh, but, uh... Or maybe a ch- you know, a chasar not a mile. Right. So it's, um, it's, it's a, it's a

2:29:35 Speaker 1 sensibility that, as I said, having been accustomed to taking risks, to being ready to give it all up because there wasn't that much there to begin with, you know. Right. Or maybe there was. Maybe there was something there, and we're tempted to give it all up because the, because of the, of the, of the brilliance of Hasidus and because of the solidarity and the, and the, and the, uh, the revolutionary nature- Right ... you know, of the program. Uh, and so we give up something. I know a new guy in Hadar Hatorah who, uh, he, you know, he started learning full-time in Hadar Hatorah. He gave up playing the guitar. Right. He was a great guitarist, you know. It was a p- it was a part of his life that, that was... He, he had, he had life.

2:30:15 Speaker 1 He had life Yeah, but it, you know, it's, it's a fascinating, it's a fascinating thing when you think about it. I've heard many, many shluchim, uh, tell me, uh, sometimes, and on a video that I make for them in the interviews, you know. But this is a, this is a commonplace in Chabad houses where, where people will be like, "It's amazing how people in our Chabad house are changing their lives at 80 years old, you know, they're, they're v-," or even younger, they're starting to keep kosher, they're, they're, they're starting to keep Shabbos. Like, I could never change my life in that way, and in many ways that's true. Mm. Like, you know, like, it's amazing what people do in terms of changing their lives, and it's very hard to ma- to enact even small changes in your life. And, you know, so on one hand, you could say, well, that, you know, that just, that must mean that the people that are changing their lives, the baal teshovas, are just amazing people, and we're just much more limited people. But I think part of it, ironically, when you think about it, is that a, a frum person has a mechanism that makes change very hard because you feel that the way you are is... The way you've been educated is that the way you are is the way you're meant to be. Mm. Right? And so a- again, the openness is not there, and so- You have momentum. Well, the more you have, you

2:31:32 Speaker 1 have, you have, I don't know if it's a momentum, you have more just, like, this boundary around you. Mm-hmm. And it's like, "This is how I'm meant to be. This is how I was... You know, I, I, I am living life the way God wants me to live." You know? Or imagine, especially, like, if you talk, think about the shliach with the people in the Chabad house, the shliach is convinced on many levels, understandably so, that, "This is exactly where God wants me, to be a shliach in this community doing exactly what I'm doing." And that, that basically makes it impossible for that person to be open to change- Yes ... 'cause this is exact- Mm ... this is exactly h- what I'm meant to be. And so you have this irony that they're, they're, they're causing havoc in other people's lives, good havoc- Mm ... and people are upending their lives, and yet they're not open to even the tiniest of change. Including being ivige geben and That too is- Also- That too is o- official. Like, there's- Yeah. Yeah ... th- there's no room for that to change either. Right. Right. I'm not saying it in a negative way. I- My experiences with shlichus was such that it was very hard for me to, to internalize that value. Right. Because, you know, uh, I, I did it my way. Right. Right. Right. That's my point is that there's this very interesting phenomenon where, you know, the religious life that, that, that takes hold

2:32:47 Speaker 1 in, in, you know, especially when a person grows up in it and doesn't know otherwise, it prevents in many ways, it prevents bad changes very often, like, or negative de- you know, negative changes, but it al- but it also prevents positive changes. It's like it, there's a certain static quality that happens. There's an urgency from where we're, from where we stand, from where we're walking in. There's an urgency about it. I mean, you know, twice a day, more than twice a day, you know, we're talking about Vaychi Nan Temel Uvanecha. Right. You know? And I would come, you know, I've come up to, you know, Vaychi Nan Temel Uvanecha, and I, and I would be like, "I don't know how to do that." Right. "I didn't learn as a child. I don't know how to, how to, you know, how to be mevattel myself to the kelim of my child- Right ... you know, in a way that makes me a good educator." Right. And, uh, and to this day, I struggle with that, you know? So it becomes urgent that I, um, strive to internalize and, and translate, to be able to translate w- what I'm learning into a relevant language, relevant experience. Um- Right ... and, uh, I think the average, uh, there is no average. I think it happens a lot amongst the, you know, the, the steadfast, tried and true, you know, members of the community for generations, as, uh, the gesh. You know, that, uh, you know, that, uh, that

2:34:20 Speaker 1 it's, um, that comes, you know, just comes with the territory. You know that because you know how you were taught, and you know how you needed taught, and you know- You think, you think you know that, but the fact that you don't think about it proves that you don't know anything about it. True. Absolutely. Well, there's a lot of things in life like that. Yes. I, I, I think ultimately that's the gift of the baal teshuva to the community. Um, not that that's why they're there to give other people, you know, but everyone gains from each other, and I think the, I think the gift that they bring is that there's a certain... Uh, they, they, they, they introduce, they introduce, they introduce questions into the mix. They introduce an openness to the mix that does, that does put the, the non-baal teshuva a little bit on the defensive. "Where's this coming from? Do I have to put my guard up?" And so on. But ultimately, we, we need to have, we need to have some kind of openness, otherwise, like, the stagnation, it, it doesn't end well. It, it cannot end well. Like, like, st- stagnation leads, leads ultimately to death, and, uh, nobody wants to end up over there. You know, we use the word openness. It calls to mind that, you know, the, the Rebbe, you know, in the famous, uh, sicha, you know, but in many other contexts, you know, the Rebbe would talk about, you know, the goal is here,

2:35:38 Speaker 1 all we have to do is open our eyes. Right. You know, just open your eyes. And so many times I heard from people that I live with, Chassidim, by that time I was very integrated in the community, you know? Um, what does he mean? Right. What does that mean, open your eyes? A- and I'm s- we've been opening our eyes, you know, the only way we got here is by opening our eyes, and the only way we stayed here is by continuing to open our eyes, so what are you talking about? They don't know what he's talking about You know, and that's not fair. That's not fair That's fantastic. That's fantastic. Fantastic. Yeah. Um, you know, it's not fair because, because everyone does have that experience, that innate experience, but we don't give it to ourselves. Right. So, uh, you know, there's a certain amount of introspection, there's a certain amount of self-forgiveness. Look, the Alter- Alter Rebbe says so many times in, in, in, in, in, in the Likutei Torah, I believe, um, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's... I think it's more in Likutei Torah, but it, it, it's all over there, which is that the point of a neshamah coming down to this world is to become a baal teshuva. Mm. Right? And also, uh, also Moshiach :"Lasavah tzadikai b'tiyuvta." Moshiach is coming to, to take tzadikim perfection. Uh, tzadik is conformity in a good sense, in the best sense, but even that needs to be upended with teshuvah and to, to, to

2:37:05 Speaker 1 experience the milah of the baal teshuva. And of course, Chassidus is replete with, "B'malchus baal teshuva im dim," you know, it's- Tzadik, you know, mechayav. Right, exactly Lamers. And there are jokes about that too, you know. But, but what- B'vitney harei chav, there's a reason why that- Because of the, because of the patchouli? Because of the... Yeah, right. The smell of the patchouli? Yeah. Yeah. As, as, as, as if, like, the FFBs smell great. But, um- No, but I, but I... Look, I think that's just a fantastic, fantastic idea. You're talking about opening up the eyes. You know, it, it, it, it... The, the ability exists. Uh, conformity, the sense of being at peace, that you figured it out, which is in many ways the, the, the mistranslation or the misappropriation of the idea of being a tzadik. Tsidkus, you know, I, I have it right. That needs to be upended. That needs to change. "Tachat she'yudei ishu lei neida." You have to be willing to not know just as much as you know, if not more. Right. In fact, what you don't know is always much more than what you know. Yes. You know, and to keep that in your consciousness and to always be reaching beyond. Right. Um, that's, uh, that takes some work. Even for a person who's in some way schooled in that, you know. Right. It takes some work. It's very easy to, you know, to rest on one's laurels, especially when the material that we're learning is so compelling.

2:38:24 Speaker 1 Right. It's so beautiful, you know. And that's all, you know, a, a, a perek in Shaarei Yichud from the, you know, from the, from the Mitteler Rebbe is enough to, is enough to chew on for, for a month. But the Rebe- But, but, but no, you have to, you have to think about it, be musboben into it, and make it a part of... The, in the beginning of, in the beginning of Shaarei Yichud, the Rebbe talks, the Mitteler Rebbe talks about how the pre-req- prerequisite for musbobenus is to be able to see that the, that there's tears on this side and that, and, and laughter on this side of the heart, and they're not two different things. Or they're not one thing that transforms into the other, whatever. They are two facets of the same thing, and they identify each other. They, they, they... You know, without... If you don't have tears, you won't have laughter. Right. And, you know, and he's... I reckon that, you know, there's a lot to talk about. And in fact, so far in my, in my, you know, to whatever extent I've been able to learn that, you know, biyun, that there is a, uh, it, it's a thread that proceeds throughout, throughout that... Throughout chassidus really, you know? It's, it's not even a union of opposites because you... It's arising to a point where there isn't, there are no binaries. There aren't opposites. You know, talk about unifying Hochma and Bina. Right. You know? Chov halev, anywhere on

2:39:37 Speaker 1 the Seder Sta"s you can talk about that, you know. And it's, it's, it's work, and it's threaded throughout, and it takes not taking at face value. This very compelling, dynamic, exciting information. But, you know, uh, uh, in Birchas Shachar, you know, all the things that, uh, the things that, uh, uh, that, uh, we have, we bear the fruits in this world, you know, we, we, we, uh, had benefit from in this world, we bear the fruits in the, in the Olam Haba. You know, last L'ovah is a yiun tefila. Right. Yiun tefila, you know? Uh, you know, I cannot finish a Leinu with a minyan unless I, unless I'm blowing it. You know? It's just, it's, it's... Just forget about it. I can't, you know... I- If I'm not, if I'm not stopping and going slow, willing to risk whatever it takes to, you know, either personally or, or, or culturally, community-wise, I... If I don't take that risk of stopping and saying, "No, I'm not gonna daven it up," you know, uh, you know, I might as well not do it. And that's not true. That's not true. It has value. There's no... It definitely has value. And communal tefila, you know, e- even to the extent to which it might, uh, it might disempower our personal experience, also has value. Right. And yet, and as I said, you know, earlier to you, it's a question of balance between, between belonging and being an individual. Right. That's a, that's a beautiful, beautiful note. The

2:41:08 Speaker 1 idea of, of, of, of constantly working and looking even when you think you might have the compelling answer, knowing that really there's always something beyond that to, to, to look for. That's a, that's a very great way to end off a podcast. Whatever we've discussed until this point, there's so much more left to discuss, but we have to call an... We have to call it at some point, and, uh, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Until we meet again. Until we meet again. I'm glad we had this chance to wrap things up, and, uh, it should be with much hatzlacha. Amen, and to you too. Thank you. The music for this podcast comes from the album Repentance Doors by Oren Dror and Nadav Bachar and is used with their permission.