Ep. 100 // "LIVE Q&A" moderated by Shaul Wolf

00:00 Speaker 1 Ideas come very easily, right? It's very easy to have ideas, and it's very easy for ideas to get carried away with themselves. Reality forces a truth out of ideas. What's gonna stay? That's what time does. You sit with an idea long enough, and what lasts, and what lasts is what's most robust and most true about that idea. With time and with, with reality, ideas actually become better. People become better. Lubavitch becomes better, and reality is actually the best cause for optimism. Welcome to Homesick for Lubavitch, a podcast where we explore Lubavitch identity in the year two thousand and twenty-six. My name is Bentzi Hofstien, and I will be your host. Let's begin. For the hundredth episode of Homesick for Lubavitch, I thought it had to be something special and different. So this past week in Crown Heights, I hosted for the first time a live Homesick for Lubavitch event where friends and listeners of the podcast came together for an evening of conversation, discussion, and ideas. My friend Shaul Wolfe moderated the Q&A with questions provided both from online listeners as well as live audience members. Looking back at the event, I'm immensely proud of the community that the podcast has created. This podcast, which began as an idea here in the studio and then the homes of the various guests, has become a real community where real people come together and can spend a real evening inspired by the ideas that have been shared on this podcast. Looking ahead to the next hundred episodes,

01:51 Speaker 1 I feel it's time to do more of these kinds of events, in-person events that bring together people around curated ideas and conversations. As mentioned, I've launched a hundred for a hundred campaign where we'll be raising a hundred thousand dollars for the hundred episodes. A big part of that campaign will go towards these kinds of events as we look to build this podcast into a real-life community. As we sit here in the days of Selichot before Rosh Hashanah, I wish all the listeners, both those who I've met and the, and the many more that I haven't, a . May this year be a year of growth, a year of camaraderie, a year of answers, and also, of course, a year of questions. And now with no further ado, here is HFL one hundred. Thank you everybody very much for coming to this experiment, first of a kind HFL get together, and, um, I appreciate each and every one of you coming. Some of you I know better. Some of you know me better. Um, I'll get to you in a second, Rivka. And, uh, I know some of you came from quite far away. We have people here from Connecticut, New Jersey, Brooklyn, Remsen Village, and, uh, and my family from Philadelphia.

03:19 Speaker 2 Woo-hoo!

03:20 Speaker 1 Before I begin, I'd like to thank in public and on the record for the podcast, uh, my wife for- -for encour-- not only putting up or tolerating the extended trips that are the result of this podcast, but also for the most part encouraging it, and anything that any of us have gained from this project, and I include myself in that collective, is ultimately very much thanks to her. So thank you very much, Mushki, and thank you very much to my daughters that are here and my son who is hopefully asleep somewhere else. Um, maybe we'll get to it later, but, uh, in many ways this podcast from the beginning has been for you. Thank you very much for being part of it. Come on in. Come on in. All right. And, uh, thank you, thank you again to everyone for coming. I know that this is a busy time of the year, the beginning of the year. There are many simchas, many events, many other things that, that have asked you for your time, and I, I respect and I think of you coming here as a gesture of how much the podcast means to you, and, uh, it's very meaningful to me. So now that, now that I've, um, now that I've begun my own program I will turn it over to the moderator, Shaul Wolfe. Um, I, I suppose Shaul Wolfe maybe had some words you want to say about how he knows me, but I'll first tell you how I know him.

05:18 Speaker 1 Uh, Shaul and I go back to-- how long ago was it? Fifteen years about in Los Angeles. We actually, uh, shared, um, we actually shared, um, we shared a desk together for davening and, um, and, uh, and, and other memories as well. So we go back quite a while, and we've been in touch, um, sometimes more frequently, sometimes less frequently ever since. And, uh, we've re-reconnected to some extent, like with many of you here in the room because of the podcast. So thank you very much, Shaul, for doing this. And I haven't spoken much about what the hundredth podcast means. I think that'll be part of the conversation here. So with no further ado, Shaul, before we begin I know that some people have to go, and of course I understand that. But in the-- as long as you're here, if you could keep your phones off, and when you have to leave, just do so quietly as the mics are rolling, and we will pick up the sound, and we hope to publish this online.

06:19 Speaker 7 Okay. Good evening, everyone, and thank you, Bentzi, for having me and asking me to moderate this evening. I'm very honored and grateful. Before we get too deep into it, I think we should take a moment-- or I'd like to take a moment just to congratulate Bentzi on reaching what is really a tremendous milestone of hundred episodes. You know, a lot of people, uh, maybe too many people embark on the podcast journey, uh, but there are levels to it. Level one is you think of a cute name, and you post it on a family WhatsApp chat, and then the idea peters out. Level two is maybe you'll go out and buy some equipment and download some software. The next level may be you record an episode or two. But a lot of people don't really make it past that point. So to have stuck through it, I think it's three years now already, and to have recorded ninety-nine episodes is a tremendous undertaking and a huge, huge, I think, accomplishment. And clearly, there's a crowd of people, obviously, you know, on the Internet and on the digital space, maybe even in a physical space that have come, who obviously appreciate all the work that you've done and appreciate what you're doing. So kudos. Tremendous accomplishment.

07:33 Speaker 1 Thank you very much. Thank you.

07:35 Speaker 7 And, uh, I'll start. The way Bentzi starts is, "Alrighty." Uh, let's dive into it. So we're gonna start all the way from the beginning of the podcast, the genesis. Um, you know, you're living in Philadelphia. I know for a while you were working on shlichas work, and you launched Yuvala Media, which was a multimedia business, filmmaking. And then you decide to launch Homesick for Lubavitch. What was the genesis? What was the impetus? What was the idea? Why did you launch this podcast?

08:09 Speaker 1 So that's a question that's been asked a few times, so I've given it some thought. And the answer is that there's no one moment. Um, it's something that developed over time. I remember when I-- I remember when it clicked for me. I remember the moment that it cl- everything clicked together, and that was a Shabbos morning on a walk to shul. I actually remember the tree that it happened under, and everything, everything came together. But to break it apart a little bit, uh, the first step I would say of the podcast, as you mentioned, is often the name, and the name is not mine, although I think it's a genius name. But the name, the, the, the, the, the phrase came from a comment on Facebook about, I would say seven, eight years ago. I made a video about my grandfather, Rabbi Shemtov in Yeruchikalo in camp, and there was a fellow, Meir Rhodes, who's quite famous in certain circles, and I think he lives in Bat Ayin. And he said, "This video makes me homesick for Lubavitch." And I remember loving the comment then, and something stuck with me from that. I, I'm gonna use it one day. I don't know how. And then, you know, as I got more and more into making videos, and a lot of my videos were documentaries for Chabad houses and, um, other, other causes, other Lubavitchers. We actually have here, uh, someone who's become a very dear friend over the years, Zalman Lubavitch, who, whose family was

09:44 Speaker 1 the subject of one of my earlier projects. And, uh, Zalman probably won't like me saying this in public, but you could have come on the podcast earlier, we would have sorted it out. But, you know, when I met Zalman, one of many, I'm not gonna blame it entirely on him, but it was-- it became very apparent to me that the way I under-- the way I thought who he was, my concept of him before I met him was very, very different to how I understood him after I spent time with him. And, you know, here was someone who even me, who's a filmmaker and a storyteller, I kind of let him blend into my preconceptions of what Lubavitchers are and what they think and how they live and what makes them tick. And I got to know him, and there's a fascinating world that, you know, it's just, it's just fascinating. Uh, he'll, he'll remember that I, I was supposed to come for one day, and I came back, I think, for sec-- two or three days, and that's not because a client paid me any more, but I just found the subject fascinating. And he wasn't the only, he wasn't the only case, although he was a special one. Uh, but there were more and more of these cases where I'd meet this person, I'd see this story, and I'd be like, "Why doesn't nobody-- why doesn't anybody know about this? Why didn't I know about this?" And so, you know, you extrapolate that

11:15 Speaker 1 bigger to, uh, you know, Lubavitch and the personalities of more famous personalities in Lubavitch, you know, the, the players, so to speak, in Lubavitch that you get to meet in the, in, in the project-- in the projects that I'm doing. And again, it's like you're having these conversations and nobody else gets to hear them. They're just kind of often not even recorded on camera, but when they're recorded on camera, you get three minutes of them. So I'm like, there's for sure a story here, a massive film to be made about Lubavitch. But then I'm like, there's no way that you can make a film about Lubavitch without it being thirty hours, and there's, there's a pro-- that project's just not gonna happen. So that idea with, with the idea of maybe we do that as-- maybe I'll do that as a podcast where I find people mainly who are not, quote, unquote, "famous" or the obvious people, some of them too, but mostly people that Are-- have kind of been under the radar, usually by choice. They don't like the attention. Somehow convince them to come on camera or to forget that they're on camera, and do it as a podcast with the name, it all clicked under that tree. That's the story.

12:28 Speaker 7 Okay. I wanna touch more on the name actually, and I didn't know the little anecdote about Mayor Rhodes. So the name Homesick for Lubavitch, I remember actually you texted it to me, uh, about three years ago.

12:40 Speaker 1 I texted you the, the image.

12:41 Speaker 7 The image.

12:42 Speaker 1 Yeah.

12:42 Speaker 7 Yeah, we'll get back to that in a second. But the-- uh, when I think of the word homesick, I think of actually like two meanings to what it could mean. One is it evokes the idea of nostalgia. There's an element of a person realizes that a home that they had is maybe distant or maybe inaccessible, and they feel homesick, and it's like, "I wish I could go back there, and I wish I could recreate what was." That's the element of nostalgia. And a second element of homesick is a person realizing that maybe it's not accessible, and we can't go back there, but I wanna recreate that feeling by creating a new home. I'm craving whatever the security or whatever, whatever the home provided for me, I wanna go out and create something new so that I can feel that again.

13:26 Speaker 1 Yeah.

13:26 Speaker 7 These are my two things. So I'm cur-- It's a two-pronged question. I'm curious, uh, which, if any of those two, were kind of the guiding mission for the podcast when you set out to create it? And secondly, looking back, reflecting on ninety-nine episodes, which of those two approaches do you think the podcast has taken?

13:50 Speaker 1 Well, starting out, it was not trying to create a kind of homesickness or a movement of homesickness. Um, I could tell you why, why the name stuck to me or why the name stuck-- resonated with me and, and what it meant to me then, and then we could then maybe talk about the change over the hundred episodes. But the way it started was, is homesick for an, um, for a Lubavitch that feels, uh, that, that feels alive, um, that feels worth caring about. In a way, people think of it as you, you framed it the first time, the first, the first, the first option, the first translation was nostalgia. And I actually started the podcast as a fight against nostalgia. I-- You know, one of the, one of the, uh, framings that I, that I really approached the podcast with and, um, you know, it doesn't come from-- It comes from a, it comes from a book by Christopher Lasch, I think I may have mentioned on the podcast a few times, and there was a, there was a framing there that really stuck with me. And that's where he, he, um, compared or contrasted nostalgia with memory. And he's very pro-memory and very anti-nostalgia. And you could think they're really the same thing. What's really the difference between memory and nostalgia? And he said memory is a part of you that gives you life, that, that informs your present, that it's, it's a recollection of the past that enriches who you are today. Meaning

15:47 Speaker 1 we all live with past, present, and future. That's part of the human condition. But the, the past doesn't have to tear you away from the present. It can inform your present. That's what memory does, right? That's the function of memory. Nostalgia, and I, I'm, I'm very bad with remembering phrases from books. I'm very bad with it usually, but these words have stuck with me. "Nostalgia evokes the past only to bury it."

16:13 Speaker 7 Hmm.

16:14 Speaker 1 Nostalgia says, "Oh, there was a time in the past that was amazing," and it always comes with a caveat, "and yes, it's-- has nothing to do with us today." And so it's a very sickly feeling. You're reminded time and again that there's this supposed home that you have, this place that everything was all right and figured out, you know, whether it was the mud streets of Lubavitch or the starvation of Samarkand or somewhere in between or, or, or, you know, the smoke-filled rooms of Seven seventy in the sixties. That's when everybody had it figured out. That's when the world was all right. That's when you had the security of home. But I mean, let's talk about it. Let's, let's cook ourselves up about it, and then let's bury it. We have nothing that-- You know, it's gone. You know, and that creates a very sickly feeling that I think homesickness actually describes. Um, and Homesick for Lubavitch was maybe to point that out to people, but certainly that wasn't the reason to go and spend all this time and a little bit of money on a project just to point out a problem. It was ultimately an attempt to see if there's a way to deal with it healthier in a way of memory, not of nostalgia. There's this very rich past which even in times of frustration and times of, you know, I wanna burn-- you know, I wanna burn it to the ground, not for anybody else, but for myself, and maybe we'll

17:46 Speaker 1 talk about that later, but there's always something that's bringing me back. And is that just something that, like, I have to, like, get rid of 'cause it's just like a, a tick that's, that's just ingrained in me, or is it something real? And the only way you can find out, I think, is if you approach it in a-- try to approach it in a healthy way that doesn't make you feel sick every time you go back there. So it was home-- It was like a double entendre in a way. Homesick for Lubavitch, but anti-homesick for Lubavitch.

18:16 Speaker 7 Hmm. Just, I just-

18:18 Speaker 1 I'm an anti, basically

18:20 Speaker 7 Wow. Shocker.

18:23 Speaker 1 Homesick for Lubavitch is brought to you by Yuvala Media, a boutique video production company that I have run for close to ten years. Today, Yuvala Media works with organizations all around the country, bringing their stories to life in a way that is both meaningful and memorable. Whether it's a video for a milestone dinner, an online fundraiser, or a building campaign, we begin each project with the same question: What does your audience need to know about you to feel more connected to your cause? Once we answer that question, we tailor-make a video that best addresses this need. Over the years, we have built a reputation for top-of-the-line visuals, while also being responsive and reliable. As one of our clients put it, "A combination of technical excellence and real heart." If you are looking to make a video for an upcoming dinner, fundraiser, or building campaign, please reach out to us to schedule a fifteen-minute phone call to see if we can make something beautiful together. Email 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 show.

19:24 Speaker 7 Just to follow up, so the, the interviews that you did do which were more memory, you know, you interviewed people who were bochurim in the mem, so you interviewed people who were early shluchim. You interviewed those people who probably fit the category more of memory, and they were telling stories, and they were, they were, they were sharing what it was like. I guess from your framing, what role do all those play in this, in this Homesick for Lubavitch journey?

19:48 Speaker 1 Well, the bochur from the mem is a hit job .

19:53 Speaker 7 Just material.

19:54 Speaker 1 No, kidding. Um, uh, you know, ultimately the, the, the key to any kind of storytelling, um, is that you have to find something sympathetic about your subject. Even if instinctively or personality-wise they're not your type at all, you have to find something sympathetic about them. You have to give them, you have to give them a chance. Not necessarily 'cause moral reasons. Like, it's just your story's simply not gonna work if the audience can tell that you hate them.

20:26 Speaker 7 Mm-hmm.

20:27 Speaker 1 Right? You have to-- You ha-- Even if the person is wrong, you have to find something, at least for this hour and a half, there's-- we're gonna find the space that we can both enjoy and, and look back on with some, uh, it doesn't have to be fondness, but we did something productive, and you didn't make a fool of the person. You know, it's, it's... That's what journalism is today, and everybody hates it. So, you know, it was never, it was never a hit job. But what, what's, what's, what's a reason to, to speak to those people? I think the past can be approached either with memory or nostalgia. And so when, when you talk to people like that, I actually am trying to see can we talk about those years in a way that informs us today.

21:14 Speaker 7 Mm-hmm.

21:15 Speaker 1 You know? Um, if, if anybody-- I mean, I don't think it's ever happened on the podcast, but yes, if the conversation was to start going into, "That's how it was in the mems, and now we're screwed," yeah, that person's in for, he's in for a grilling. Um, but it never goes there because look, I think the past is integral to who we are. Not just in Lubavitch. A-any, any, any part, you have to know where you come from. Um, but my issue with the past is, is that the past cannot become the present. The past cannot domi-- The past has to know its place. We have to know its place. We have to know where the-- we have-- the past belongs somewhere, and it doesn't belong as the present. When you have the past as the present, you end up homesick. You end up, you end up completely imbalanced, and you, you feel like you need to be somewhere else, and you don't know where that place is. And, and if you figure out where that place is, it's clearly out of va-- it's, it's out of your-- it's out of limits. It's not-- You c-- It's, it's inaccessible.

22:20 Speaker 7 Right. So hopefully the conversations in the podcast help people to navigate some sense of, some sense of home with all that.

22:29 Speaker 1 Hopefully.

22:29 Speaker 7 Hopefully. Um, I just wanna share, I was looking back at our texts, and it was exactly September first, twenty twenty-three, which is exactly three years to the date.

22:37 Speaker 1 How about that?

22:37 Speaker 7 And the wo-- I wrote it down. The words I wrote back to you when you sent me that screenshot, I wrote, "Theme is nostalgia or looking forward?"

22:46 Speaker 1 And what did I-

22:47 Speaker 7 That was my question. And your response was, "I'd like to see what we have to our identity beyond nostalgia." So-

22:53 Speaker 1 Yeah.

22:54 Speaker 7 Three years later, we are reliving a WhatsApp conversation.

22:57 Speaker 1 You can't, you can't, you can't fake that.

22:59 Speaker 7 I can send a screenshot later. Um, we'll move on. In the, in the intro to the show, you describe the theme of the show as exploring Lubavitch identity in twenty twenty-six.

23:10 Speaker 1 Yes.

23:10 Speaker 7 And that's grilled in my mind in your slow, uh, your slow tone and with the music playing in the background. I'm curious, in your own words, how would you describe the challenges to Lubavitch identity in twenty twenty-six that your podcast is coming to address?

23:27 Speaker 1 Well, I think the fundamental challenge that we're, that, that we're ta-- that we deal with is the challenge that we're discussing now. You know, I, I, I very often will see discussions about this or that crisis. Um, and I, I... We'll mock the term crisis another time, but this or that problem being discussed, and very often I find it, in my opinion, to be downstream of identity, of this, of this question of how do I exist today vis-à-vis the past? The past is clearly dominant in Lubavitch thinking, in my opinion, way too dominant, and it doesn't-- It, it, it, it for-- it, it forces people into boxes that make it very hard to deal with whatever issue comes their way. You know, what, what are we about? How do we, how do we, how do we decide what's important? How do we decide what we hold onto, what we don't, what we don't hold onto? If, if you can't discuss that, then you can't discuss anything. And, you know, incl-- in-included in that question is obviously the question of the Lubavitcher vis-à-vis the Rebbe, or Lubavitch as a whole vis-à-vis the Rebbe. You know, if, if, if, if we cannot be honest about who we are in general and who I am as an individual, and every conversation becomes immediately a conversation about what this or that person thinks the Rebbe would say, as if, A, they know, and B, as if everyone just does exactly what the Rebbe says all the time. If we,

25:26 Speaker 1 if we cannot unwrap or unwind our identity to an honest place, I'm not saying to a secular place, I'm saying to an honest place, then we can't have a conversation about anything. And we can't have a conversation about anything, you can't solve anything. So, you know, as-- There are many ways to frame the issue of twenty twenty-six, but the issue of twenty twenty-six really, in my opinion, is an issue from nineteen eighty-six. It's the same issue. I think if anything, it may have been worse then, actually. I think if we would have tried to make a podcast in the nineteen eighties, um, I think we would have a little bit of violence at the front door right now. And, you know, sometimes I wish we had that today as well. It'd be good for ratings. But, you know, this issue has been going on for a very long time, and at this point in history, the, the question comes to a head. You know, where, where do I stand vis-à-vis the past? Where do I stand vis-à-vis the so-called Lubavitch identity, the so-called Lubavitch man? And if we can talk about that and open up that conversation and show that it can be discussed, then we can disc-- then we can solve a lot of other problems.

26:48 Speaker 8 Just to, maybe to clarify, is, is the issue something you th- you said it might be even bigger in nineteen eighty-six. Is it because it's a culture that's always looking to the past, and that's what creates the challenge of identity? Or there's something unique in twenty twenty-six with, like, the post-Gimmel Tammuz environment that-

27:06 Speaker 1 Right

27:07 Speaker 8 ...you think is creating additional challenges?

27:08 Speaker 1 Oh, interesting. Yeah, fair enough. I, I think that's probably the, the difference between twenty twenty-six and nineteen eighty-six. I don't think they were looking to the past so much in nineteen eighty-six. I think they actually would have done much better if they were, but I wasn't there. It's just my-- it's my read on it. I think if anything, they were ripping away themselves from the past, at least in a healthy way. I think you could maybe say that about Der Shvi in general, that, uh, the fight with the past started quite early on, and a healthy relationship with the past has been a problem for quite some time. Um, and, and, and so I think they weren't looking to the past, and we definitely look more to the past today. But I-- So maybe I was just-- what I was pointing to was an even deeper problem. I think the reason we look to the past is because we're scared to own the present, and we're scared to own the present because we have this premise that to own the present is to somehow separate ourselves from the Lubavitch mass that was the nineteen eighties, that was whatever time, time that we give it, and we're not ready to be honest about who we are, where we are, and how we are in the present moment. And so I guess the nostalgia is, is a, is a underlying problem and, and deeper than that is we cannot deal with that nostalgia unless we're ready to,

28:40 Speaker 1 to, to live in the present with all the risks that it entails.

28:46 Speaker 8 Okay.

28:47 Speaker 1 Am I making sense?

28:49 Speaker 8 I'll push you one step further.

28:50 Speaker 1 Go ahead.

28:51 Speaker 8 If you don't mind.

28:51 Speaker 1 That's what this podcast is about.

28:54 Speaker 8 In my mind, the question of identity is compounded, um, by being in an environment that is post-Gimmel Tammuz, and it's accentuated by an environment that's thirty plus years post-Gimmel Tammuz. And I think that in my mind, when I think of identity and a challenge to identity, it's a challenge to Lubavitch has always, at least in the more recent history, been a Lubavitch with a Rebbe, and that, that's been-- And a Hasid has been a Hasid with a living-- With, with... What's this? I don't know the p- the PC things to say. You know-

29:27 Speaker 1 Jewish man

29:28 Speaker 8 So-

29:29 Speaker 1 This is a safe space.

29:31 Speaker 8 I don't know how, how people talk these days, but, uh , so-

29:34 Speaker 1 That's how they talk

29:35 Speaker 8 So I wanna know if that element of the identity challenge is-- was kind of a guide or was kind of a push in, i-- what is a challenge that was faced in this podcast? Is it driving you? Do you fi-- Have you-- do you find it come up in conversations, uh, with the people that you've spoken to?

29:55 Speaker 1 Okay. Yeah. Th-there's no, there's no question, there's no question that the obvious, the, the obvious question of identity is driven by, you know, what does it mean to be a Hasid after, after Gimmel Tammuz? And I won't deny that that was part of my question when I started. Absolutely. Um, you know, what, what does it mean to be a Lubavitcher after Gimmel Tammuz? What does it mean to be a Lubavitcher thirty years after Gimmel Tammuz? And to approach that not falling back on clichés and, you know, safe, safe words and safe terms that, that are, you know, not gonna get you in trouble, and so on. Um, but I think very quickly, I, I realized that that's not really the problem.

30:46 Speaker 8 Mm.

30:47 Speaker 1 Meaning you, you can, you can, you can wrestle with that, but I don't s-- I don't see that as being some kind of existential question so long as you can think for yourself and talk honestly about where you are I mean, so much of this question, for example, is, is-- You know, a lot of times you'll talk to people about this topic, and they will be, they will be like, "There's no answer to it." And then, "Yeah, of course, the Rebbe Bavar and the Rebbe spoke about it." So which one is it? Do we know what the Lubavitch theology of a post-Gimel Tammuz world is, or do we not? And it's, it's, it's, it's confused. On one hand, yeah, the Rebbe Bavar did, the Rebbe spoke about it. He spoke about it for fifty years after the Fidiker passed away, or forty years after the Fidiker passed away. But at the same time, we can't apply it to ourselves. And again, I, again, I come back to the idea that it's-- I think it's a fear, it's a, it's a paralysis of being able to deal with the present in a way that doesn't have the safety of the past.

31:56 Speaker 8 Right. Yeah. Okay. Uh, we will move on. Or one more, uh, question on the, the theme of identity. So throughout the ninety-nine episodes, you have spoken to a very wide range of people, uh, in, within Lubavitch and adjacent to Lubavitch, from Mashpiyim and Rabbanim and Shluchim and Balabatim and academics. How has your, uh, relationship or connection or understanding of the idea of Lubavitch identity changed or been informed, or what have you learned about kind of as an answer to your question throughout everything you've discussed?

32:40 Speaker 1 Yeah. So I, I alway-- I knew pretty much from the beginning that this was a question that was not going to have an answer. Like, there was no secret guru out there that was going to give a final answer of, "This is what it means to be a Lubavitcher in twenty twenty-six." Uh, you know, it's, it's not that kind of question. Some questions, as, uh, someone here eloquently put to me, it's a question of the heart, and you keep on asking it, and I keep on coming back to listen for more. And I don't think either of us are expecting to have an answer that wraps this up. I think that's-- And really, I think that's every good question is a question that doesn't have a, an answer in the offing, not now and maybe not ever. It's a question of the heart. And, you know, for every-- like the Baal Shem Tov said, for every quest-- for every answer, there's a de-- every answer has a-- brings a deeper question. So I don't think I ever thought there was gonna be an answer. But I think the-- what became, like, the change that happened, I would say also pretty early on, and I think you wanted qu-- you want an answer of what happened a little bit later. But I think in the beginning, and we have here someone else who I, um, I, I'm not saying their names because I'm pretty sure they don't want me to. But, uh, s- you know, someone

34:00 Speaker 1 here was speaking to me about it, um, quite early on in the, in the, in the-- I think we spoke about it before the podcast began. And in the beginning, it was more of an idea, okay, we're gonna talk to the people on the fringes who are kind of, you know, upset about, you know, wh-where things are going or have their gripes or have their-- are wrestling with things on the outside. And, you know, the people on the inside are gonna get pissed, and too bad. Or they won't get, you know, or they won't get pissed, and too bad on us. Like, that was-- I didn't think that there was any other option. Like, who else is gonna talk about Lubavitch identity other than people who are kind of done with it in a way?

34:45 Speaker 8 That's right.

34:47 Speaker 1 And, you know, I remember that's how it started off. But then, you know, I, uh, very, very early on, within five recordings, it was actually the first episode that I published was with a Shliach in New Orleans, Rabbi Nemes. And, you know, I had known him a little bit from social media from the past, and he was kind enough to, and bold enough or naive enough to, to agree to, uh, to, to, to, to do it with me even though there was no track record, and he could have easily thought that I was trying to ambush him and get him in trouble. And some people thought that's what I was doing there, and it w-- he didn't think that. And I realized there, what do you mean? There's a whole conversation that we just had that we both found interesting, and he's a Shliach. And he's, you know, white shirt Shliach, uh, from the mems. Like, he doesn't have any problems, you know, to speak with his Ba-- with, with his Lubavitch identity, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't have questions. It doesn't mean that there isn't a conversation to be had. And very quickly, it was like this c-- this conversation of, of wh-who we are is not on the fringes. It's all the way to the core. So that was definitely a change that happened pretty, pretty early on. Has something changed since then? No, I, I think that core thesis has basically just been proven again and again. And, and, and,

36:15 Speaker 1 you know, as you have more corroborating evidence, the thesis becomes stronger and richer and more robust. And that is that Lub-Lubavitch identity is a question that all kinds of people wrestle with. To be a Lubavitcher is to wrestle with big, big questions. And that's not a post-Gimel Tammuz phenomenon. I think if anything, um, if, if it is, it's only because before Gimel Tammuz, a lot of people delegated that role to the Rebbe. You know, people ask me, "What's one of, like, the most powerful moments you've had in interviewing?" And I'm very bad with favorites or, you know, like my top ten. I can't make those kinds of lists for the life of mine. Um, my kids know that I don't know what my favorite color is and so on like that. I'm just very bad at these things. There's a moment that sticks out to me. I remember when he said it to me, I don't know if I gasped on the podcast, but I-- like my mind gasped, and that was, uh, Shmary Brownstein was telling me that the Shabbos after Chazai Nader, he remembers in seven seventy he suddenly saw people davening Bareches in the afternoon. And like there was this sudden flowering of, of, you know, what we call a Veid Primis that the Rebbe hadn't negated, but just Rebbe's presence had not given space in a way for it. There was a fabring that you had to be on time for. And I'm not saying that therefore it was a good

37:51 Speaker 1 thing. I'm saying that it's an observation that he remembers where you're like, "Wait a second," like this-- these things were literally shelved for years. Basic bread, bread and butter parts of being a Lubavitcher were just shelved for years, and in many ways only began to become available for exploration in the years after.

38:18 Speaker 8 Right. I think it was Eli Rubin who said something similar about Bochrim these days, how they learn chassidus. I think he was saying that he sees people like Bima'ayan more and, and like just going deeper than they-- than, than it used to be. And his theory was that there wasn't really time to Bima'ayan, or there wasn't time to compare Mayim Ahrum. You were like learning the next one that just came out, or the next sicha or the next whatever it was.

38:42 Speaker 1 I'll give you a good story about that from the podcast. So we had, we had a number of mems Bochrim in the probably the past twelve episodes, and you know, one of them c-came from a more, um, you know, you know, he, he experienced the mems and, and, uh, he, he s-- he-- I think he pretty much said this on the podcast. He experienced the mems in a more what he would call primisic way, you know, learning and davening, more kind of traditional Lubavitch. And another one of them experienced the mems in a much more mems way, you know, off the rails. And after the second one had the episode, the first one sent me a voice note, and he said he completely distorted what the mems were. "The mems were not that. I'm telling you, it was just him and a few friends. The mems were more like what I was telling you, people learning and davening and so on." Okay, fine. You know, he, he had a point, and he, he tried to give me some context. But then as we're going back and forth on these voice notes, and you know, I, I should say for anyone listening, and many of you here, one of the joys of the podcast, which sadly I'm not able to share with everybody else, is that the conversations that are posted online very often, you know, keep me busy in the weeks in between or the days in between. You know, where people will chime in,

40:16 Speaker 1 and then they'll push back, or they'll... And you know, i-is it good for time management? No. But it's, it's, you know, it's just something that I've in a way taken for granted, and it's, it's just-- it's, it's amazing the kind of conversations that now just happen kind of naturally, um, and, you know, just, just, just happen all the time. So, you know, he tells me, "That's not the mems. The mems was a lot more like I said." And he's describing to me his mems. He's like, "Yeah, there wasn't a thing where like the Hanhalah always was fighting with us about going to seven seventy or not going back to seven seventy. And yeah, it was hard for us to learn what we had learned-- what we had to learn in Sefer because there was alw-always another Likud than another Mayim Ahrum." And then he tells me a story where he was-- He tells me a story where one morning he comes to seven seventy, and one of the older Bochrim, I think he was an alter at the time, one of the older Bochrim had been up the whole night learning one of the new Sefer Mayim Ahrum of the Fiid Rebbe, I think, from cover to cover. And he said, "How did you learn that in the night? Did you retain any information?" He said, "No, but the Rebbe's gonna talk about it at fabring, and I wanted to be at least familiar with, with what was in the Sefer." And I said, "Do

41:34 Speaker 1 you hear what you're telling me? You're telling me that this wa-- you know, that you, you're, you're telling me that the mems was a very stable, you know, uh, productive time in your life, and this is an example of that productivity. It sounds very unstable or uncentered to me, or decentered to me." And so, you know, um, I, I, I don't remember how we started. How did, how did we get to this?

42:07 Speaker 8 How we were talking about if-- your journey of identity, I think.

42:12 Speaker 1 No, we were, we were talking about something else. We got lost. It's okay. This is, this is, this is how the podcasts go. This is how the podcasts go. Uh, the, the, the-

42:21 Speaker 8 The two different stories of the mems.

42:23 Speaker 1 Yeah. I'm-- no, no, no. I'm scared to go into a whole rant about the mems. We'll talk another time.

42:27 Speaker 8 So we can move on. We'll move on. The next, uh, question has two sides to it, a positive side and a negative side. So which one should we start with?

42:36 Speaker 1 You're in charge.

42:37 Speaker 8 Okay. We'll start with the positive side. I've seen you have posted, uh-

42:40 Speaker 1 I'm clearly, I'm clearly not in charge.

42:43 Speaker 8 I've seen you have posted on your WhatsApp stories feedback that you've gotten from people.

42:48 Speaker 1 Yes.

42:48 Speaker 8 Uh, people that have, uh, found themselves encouraged, people that have stopped alone anymore, that felt more connected. I'd love if you can share a couple of like the most impactful stories that people have shared with you from listening to the podcast.

43:03 Speaker 1 If-- You want a, a good story from, from the feedback?

43:07 Speaker 8 Stories that people have shared with you that, that how the podcast has impacted them.

43:14 Speaker 1 Has there been a story?

43:17 Speaker 8 Or feedback, if it's not a story.

43:19 Speaker 1 Um, you know, in a, in a way, in a way, the, the blessing is that there's been a lot of it, and, and the curse of it is that it kind of just-- it, it turns into a bit of a blur. Um, like is there one specific incident that stands out? Not that comes to mind. But, you know, what, what-- the, the theme that, that touches me every time it comes up, and it's come up a lot, is people will tell me that I have been wrestling with these ideas for many years, and I thought I was the only one, and I either didn't wanna bring it up, or when I brought it up, people would shut me down. And basically, it's not just that they see that I'm wrestling with it, but they see that, they see that many other people are wrestling with it. And, y-you know, so is there a story? That's the story, though. The overall story is that many, many people have realized through the podcast that these questions, they're not just thought, they're not just in, in limits. They are, they are part and parcel of being a Lubavitch Hasid. They're part and parcel of, of, of wrestling with this way of life, with these ideas, and, and it's okay. It's okay. Like, people are, are, are vibrant, are, are asking these questions and staying vibrant. People are asking these questions and, and, and, and, and, and becoming stronger. People are asking these questions and they're, and they're, and

45:09 Speaker 1 they're alive, and that has always been-- When someone tells me that, I, I, I know it's true because it's true for me.

45:19 Speaker 8 That's-- That I'll just share for me as well. It's been like a super, like, impactful part of the podcast, is just the conversations being out in the open. I think when there's like an-- a, an environment of silence or an environment of things not being spoken about, then anybody who struggles or anybody who suffers is suffering alone because it's not spoken about, so nobody thinks anybody else identifies with his issues or his struggles. And as soon as the conversation is opened, and some people might find it scary or see it as like cans of worms, but at the same time, you're giving people a space to identify and a sta-space to belong because you realize that we are all, like, we're all grew up Lubavitch. We're all in the same community, and it makes sense that we all or a lot of us would struggle with the same kind of questions. So it gives people kind of a home to belong to. Uh, if we can jump to the negative side, uh, I, I'm sure you received backlash at various points in this podcast journey. Uh, I'm curious-

46:21 Speaker 1 We're gonna get to the mem zecher, aren't we?

46:23 Speaker 8 I'm now curious if you can share maybe some of the backlash you received and how it impacted you and how you went about navigating it.

46:34 Speaker 1 Look, the, the full disclaimer is I never thought I would care, and I never did care about the backlash. And, and, and, and not to be coy about it, not 'cause I'm some kind of Mr. Brave, but, you know, I was t-- I think I was talking about this on the podcast with somebody or I, or, or maybe it was just in person. I don't remember. But, you know, when you, when you-- It comes a point where I'm hurt enough that you can't hurt me, right? Like I've been, I, I've been wrestling with this and gone to a dark enough place about it that what are you gonna do? You're gonna call me a name? I've, you know, I've called myself worse. Or so you come to a place where, like, I don't care. You know, it, it's, it's not because, it's not because you're reckless about life. It's because you, you-- In my case, in my case, I had to, I think like many people, but speaking for myself, you know, I, I started off on shlichus. I started off in the more kind of typical, traditional, expected path, and that didn't work out for a number of reasons. Not just because of shlichus disputes, but that was part of it, and you realize that some things that you wanted maybe you didn't want as hard as you thought you wanted them. I didn't. And there are other, you know, one thing leads to another, and there are questions that I had, and it

48:13 Speaker 1 wasn't so much like deep philosophical, theological sfekas and nothing that exotic, but just, you know, is this working? At the end of the day, something has to work. I think, oh, I think I spoke about this with Uri Perlman from Voks. Yeah, we definitely spoke about this. At the end of the day, things have to work. If they don't work, you don't hold on to them.

48:32 Speaker 8 Hmm.

48:33 Speaker 1 Right? And, and, and we-- a-and it wasn't working for me, so i-it-- I came to a place where I was thinking about if it doesn't work for me, let me drop it. And everybody that thinks about-- everybody that's been there that knows it seriously... And by the way, I w-- I'm not-- To be clear, it wasn't so much about Yiddishkeit. I don't even think it was about, for example, my beard. You know, it was never a thing for me, but it was about other things. Everybody has their things where, yeah, I don't care about that. Like I, I don't think I can care about that anymore. It's just not working. It's causing too much grief. And like I mentioned earlier, you know, I had children, and it's, you know, is it right for me to saddle my kids with my questions that I don't think are healthy questions? Questions you're always gonna, you're always gonna saddle your kids with questions. Uh, uh, the worst thing a parent can do is give their kids only answers, but I'm gonna give them questions that have-- that are just bad questions, that are just destructive questions. I don't wanna do that, right? So you're ready-- I was ready to give up quite a bit, and anybody that's been there in an honest way knows that that's not a fun place to be. You know, one of the conversations that I didn't publish for a number of reasons, um, was, was a very meaningful conversation to me with someone

50:14 Speaker 1 who had been on shlichus for a number of years, and not only had left shlichus, but at that time, I don't know where he's holding today, but at that time had left faith as well, at least inwardly. And I remember a line that he told me that was very, very powerful. And he said, "Look, I want it to work for me. It would, it would be, it would be so much better for me if it worked. It just doesn't work." I'm, I'm just being honest with-- Like, he's like, "It's not I-- Me dropping my faith doesn't make life easier for me. Everybody thinks it makes life easier for me. 'Oh, I can do whatever I want.' He's like, 'You know, it makes life a lot harder for me.'" And so, uh, you could say, "Okay, he's just..." You, you could say whatever you want about that. I believed it when he said it because I knew that from experience as well. It's not a fun pla-place to be. And so I've been through that. What are you gonna do? You're gonna call me a nifrad? What are you gonna do? You're gonna call me a, a derushishnik? Like, this stuff is water off my back. The one time that there was criticism that got personal was when I brought up the topic, and I brought it up for-- compared to what it's about, I brought it up very, very gently, um, the story of shluchim's kids and what I suggest is the cost of shlichus.

51:48 Speaker 1 And that was the one time that people really got hot under the collar and came, came, came at me, like in a, you know, personally and sometimes publicly and whatever. A-and I wouldn't say that it cost me anything, but if anything, it made me realize, okay, this, this is a, this is a real issue. This is, uh, because people are getting mad about it, which means that the conversation will always be shut down.

52:16 Speaker 9 Right.

52:18 Speaker 1 And people are texting me always. The people in public are cursing me out. The people in private are telling me, "Actually, you're a hundred percent right. You have no idea how bad it was," or, "You know, you know, you have no idea how right you were. It is-- it's exactly my story." And so, look, at the end of the day, I live in Philadelphia. Where I live, I probably live in the only Lubavitch community where nobody in shul has listened to one episode of Homesick for Lubavitch. And that's a very healthy way to go about it. Nobody, you know... Well, what's, what's gonna happen? Another funny story is, you know, somebody, somebody got upset at me for one of the episodes I published. And, you know, he, he expressed to me his dissatisfaction and how, you know, he, he was-- however he was supporting me up to that point, he was going to cut it off, which I respected, by the way. You shouldn't res-- you shouldn't support something that you don't agree with, which is also the reason that I've never turned my podcast into a business, 'cause I don't wanna be dependent on it for, for parnasah. I mean, it forces you into bad, bad decisions. The funny thing is, is that literally a week after he did that, somebody called me up about a project, and the reason he called me up, he's like, "I, you know, we worked years ago. I forgot about you, but then I was hearing this guy

53:35 Speaker 1 on another podcast mention your name, and I remember that you do this, so you wanna take on this project." So, you know, at the end of the day, when you do things that you believe in, it'll work itself out. This year marks seventy-five years since Yud Shevat and the first Bas Selegani. 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 Uvla Media, inspired by Bas Selegani, the first Rebbe said. If you're a regular here at HFL, you know that Bas Selegani 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 Bas Selegani 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 in the production: the films, 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.

54:57 Speaker 9 Okay, I'll, I'll finish with one, maybe two more questions. Um, I think, and this is from my perspective, and I think a lot of people will agree, that for a long time, many people in our community were scared of having certain conversations, maybe certain hot button issues, whether they're about Mashiach or about Derashvi or about Gimeltamos or these kinds of conversations. It's, it's clear that as a community, if we are to move forward, if we are to progress, if we are to be Mechanech children, these conversations have to be had, and there has to be some kind of progress on, on, on, on identity questions and on how to address these questions. Do you feel that your podcast has opened up some of these conversations? And if so, can you point to maybe some examples?

55:51 Speaker 1 Well, with, with, with all due humility, I know for a fact that it has. I know for a fact that it has, uh, because A, literally nobody else is talking about it You know, at the beginning, people used to try this gambit with me, "Oh, it's being discussed in all these WhatsApp groups that you're not a part of." "Okay, can you show me a screenshot? Can I be invited to any of them?" They don't exist. Everybody's scared of their own shadow. Uh, so these conversations haven't been had, and I have sometimes felt that myself, you know. Um, i-in the recent-- a few wee-- the past few weeks, we've spoken to the so-called Mishichist side, and I realized myself how a lot of other taboos have been broken in the podcast, and suddenly I'm, like, getting all, you know, walking on eggshells i-in my own mind.

56:40 Speaker 10 Mm-hmm.

56:41 Speaker 1 And, and then I said to myself, "This is ridiculous. What am I scared of? That what people who have the internet are gonna find out for the first time that people believe these things?" It's oh-- e-it's, it's everywhere.

56:55 Speaker 10 Right.

56:55 Speaker 1 And on top of that, have you seen how crazy the world is today? Like, like, like, like this, like, this is what I'm wor-- this, this is what I'm embarrassed of, and, and, and even if I'm embarrassed of it, so what? It doesn't go away 'cause I don't like it. Uh, you have to... You know, what is it? What is this? These people, they're not just people. They're, they're either some, you know, related to me, you know, two gr-- some, some of them family, some of them two degrees related. We all come from the same place originally, and you c-- if you think that they're so wrong, it only makes sense to find out how did they get to where they got.

57:30 Speaker 10 Mm-hmm.

57:31 Speaker 1 So definitely I felt the resistance in my own mind, which tells me how deep the resistance is in general. And of course, there are many conversations that shluchim's kids never discussed in public. Uh, you know, Mishichism never discussed in public. And, and that's... You know, those are two easy examples, but there's so, there's so, there's, there's so, there's so much of it. So, so, so yeah, absolutely.

57:58 Speaker 10 I wanna be mindful of time, so I'm gonna wrap up my questions with one final question, and then we'll hand it to the crowd. You have hit the milestone of one hundred, which is a tremendous milestone. What is next for Homesick Lubavitch?

58:12 Speaker 1 What's next? I'll get to that in a moment, but I, I do want to go back to one of your earlier questions 'cause I'm remembering now that there's, there's a point that has changed over the, the ninety-nine episodes. I, I don't know what-- at what moment it happened, and I think it's important to share. And that is that I realized... You know, I started off, um, as a, at best, a recovering cynic-

58:39 Speaker 10 Mm-hmm

58:40 Speaker 1 ... but also a pessimist that obviously calls himself a realist. And, you know, the only way to be real and honest is to, is to basically describe things in the most brutal way possible and the most negative way possible 'cause, you know, enough of this flowery language, enough of this fake optimism. Let's get real. And the podcast has cer-- at least vis-à-vis Lubavitch, and I think of in life in general, has turned me more and more to an optimist. And the reason for that is not because, oh, I discovered that there's so many wonderful people out there. I, I, I think I knew that before. But what I realized was reality, like, if the reality forces ideas to, to contend with what's true and not true, ideas come very easily, right? It's very easy to have ideas, and it's very easy for ideas to get carried away with themselves. Reality forces the truth out of ideas. What's gonna stay? That's what time does. You sit with an idea long enough, and what lasts, and what lasts is what's most robust and most true about that idea. And what I learned was is that these ideas that a lot of them have gone off the rails. As you apply time and reality to them, what actually comes out is something far more robust. How do I see that? I'm talking in abstractions here. But, you know, a lot of times people will talk one way in public, you know, at the public farbrengen or, you know,

1:00:25 Speaker 1 at social media, and they'll talk in slogans. And then when you talk to them in person, and you talk to them about life, you realize here's another person who has children, is married, has, has a mortgage to pay. You know, uh, Hergeshem don't pay for the mortgage. They don't take care of your kid's chinuch. And when people face, when people face the, the, the, the c- the conflicts and the challenges of life, they get real very quickly, and that's why in private people very often are so much more real than they are in public. 'Cause public is spectacle, it's performance, but private is real. And you realize then that reality is actually not like the sh-- the Mem Spitz mafia like to say that reality and time is, is the enemy. And, you know, you know, one of the things actually that really irked me, like a, a moment that really irked me before the podcast was I, I was selling programs to shluchim, uh, as part of my multimedia-

1:01:31 Speaker 10 Mm-hmm

1:01:31 Speaker 1 ... uh, company, and I sent out an email once advertising programs for the year. It was supposed to be for the year five seven seven two.

1:01:40 Speaker 10 Mm-hmm.

1:01:41 Speaker 1 Five seven eight two, sorry. Five seven eight two, and I published it as five seven seven two. So I made a mistake. I, I, I wrote a decade earlier, and the shliach wrote to me, "You made a mistake. If only it was ten years earlier." Like, dude, you're in a fight with time? It's, it's the stupidest fight ever. Like, uh, I was talking to a friend last week. You look at the one of the last climactic klalos, curses- Is that the Jew will say, "But Baker, Emma meet an arev, very, very meet and Baker." And Rashi explains, it's not that a person will hope for the day to end and the sun to come down. In a way, how is that a curse? That's how we get through life, right? You, you are in a tough moment, you know time's gonna pass and things will heal. Now, Rashi says the curse is that in the morning, you're wishing for last night. You wanna go back in time. You, you're wishing for something that never is gonna come. And so the worst kind of life is to live hoping to go back against time. It's just impossible. And so you, you see people fighting against time, and a lot of people feel that time is the enemy. And what I realized with the podcast is that with time and with, with reality, ideas actually become better. People become better. Lubavitch becomes better, and reality is actually the best cause for optimism.

1:03:07 Speaker 9 Oh. Thank you for sharing that.

1:03:10 Speaker 1 Oh, so I have to answer your question.

1:03:12 Speaker 9 Oh. Yeah, one minute.

1:03:15 Speaker 1 I have to answer your question. What, what, what's next for the podcast? So, you know, I-I always thought about this podcast as a, as a one episode by, by, by episode project. And, uh, I've been kept grounded by, by a lot of the people who I talk to about the podcast. You know, you don't have to do it every week. You can do it when it makes sense, when there's an interesting person, and I, it-- I think that's the way to go about it. Um, you know, to, to have-- To, to, to think of it too big, in, in my circumstance, probably wouldn't have allowed for it to happen in the first place. But, uh, you know, it is a hundred episodes, and it do-it does feel like it's time for, for something new or, or, or not-- or to add, not to change. I like what it is, and I, and I, and I think there's... People ask me from the beginning, "How are you gonna get to hundred?" I said, "Two hundred's easy." And I, I still believe that. How long-- Will I get to two hundred? With God's help. But I think the podcast is something I will do for the foreseeable future. But on top of that, I think there are a, a number of projects that, that, that I'm, that I'm looking at. I don't wanna, I don't wanna talk in too much detail until they're actually confirmed, but we're looking at doing a, uh... You know, I saw-- I

1:04:29 Speaker 1 announced on the podcast that, uh, for a hundred episodes, we're gonna have a campaign, a hundred K, a hundred for a hundred, a hundred thousand dollars for the new projects. And a few people actually, whether because of that clip on the podcast or actually, I think some of them reached out completely, um, unsolicited, a few very generous friends of the podcast, uh, th- we have in the works, um, a trip to a, a country you might be familiar with down under, God willing, uh, in the foreseeable future. And I think that will be a fascinating study of, uh, of Lubavitch identity. I think Australia, I think Australia is a very, very unique place. And, uh, that one I'm, that one I'm comfortable enough to, to talk-- to, to say that it looks like it's gonna happen. And there's another project that I'm not gonna say too much about, but I'll just tell you the name of it, and I think it'll give you the gist of it. And that'll be it. The name of it will be the Biz Bazars Conference.

1:05:31 Speaker 9 Okay. I'm very excited for the Biz Bazars Conference. I hope I get invited. Uh, we have, like, ten minutes left, so if anybody from the crowd wants to address any questions to Bentzi, I think there's an extra mic, right?

1:05:47 Speaker 11 I think largely you answered the question I was gonna ask just before, but, uh, I'll still comment that, you know, after a hundred episodes, as you interviewing other people, I think a lot of us have also been watching the ever-present presence of all the episodes, watching y-yo-your own journey, like you were explaining what, uh, your views and feelings were in the beginning versus as they changed. Uh, a big part of the podcast was watching y-you progress and seeing how you ask the questions and interact with everybody, and that was all fascinating for, uh... So I guess thank you.

1:06:21 Speaker 1 You're welcome. Thank you.

1:06:26 Speaker 12 Hi, Rabbi Bentzi. for the podcast. I'm curious to know if from any of your guests that you've interviewed, if they've ev-ever shared with you how being interviewed changed their life.

1:06:58 Speaker 1 Being interviewed by me? Or the response after?

1:07:03 Speaker 12 The-- As, as meaning that the interview was a catalyst for something in their life, that they were able to talk about something, something shifted.

1:07:11 Speaker 1 Yeah.

1:07:11 Speaker 12 Have you ever gotten feedback like that?

1:07:13 Speaker 1 I, I, I think it's probably... Th-like that, to that, that kind of, that emphatic change changed their life, I, I don't know that I've heard from someone that the, the interview changed my life. But I think-- I, I, I know that I've heard from some of the people that, uh, they'll tell me after the interview, "You know, I-- It's the first time that I've thought about these things. It's the first time that I've really discussed these things. You know, after the podcast, I thought about it for the first time. You know, I was thinking about it." And you know, I don't think that's necessarily something... That's just, that's what conversation is. You know, you're, you're trying to get people off their... You're, you're trying-- Both, both people are trying to get into a place that isn't predictable and hasn't been g-- hasn't been visited before. And, uh, I think it, it-- I think what I've heard from people is that it surprised them where it took-- where the pod-- where the conversation went and where it took them. And something more concrete doesn't come to mind. If, if it comes to mind in the next few minutes, I'll let you know.

1:08:21 Speaker 13 Um, first of all, thank you very much. Great. Everything here is amazing. Um, could you share with us, as a business owner and somebody that's doing a lot of this as Kesem, how you handle the downside, right? It's all exciting. You come out with a new episode. You get positive, negative feedback. How do you handle the challenge of a week later when, when you have the crash landing, let's call it, of like the hard times? How do you stay facing north and then bounce back up?

1:08:49 Speaker 1 The hard times of business?

1:08:50 Speaker 13 No, I mean, as a business owner, you're also, you know, juggling family business and then doing this on the side or-

1:08:57 Speaker 1 The hard times of the podcast or the hard times of life?

1:08:59 Speaker 13 The hard times of life to keep yourself facing north to keep putting out this content.

1:09:05 Speaker 1 Well, I mean, look, the, the-- First of all, Dom, thank you for coming from New Haven. I appreciate it. It's the first time we're meeting, and, uh, we've just-- we've talked on, on WhatsApp and, uh, it's very nice, very nice to, uh, to meet you.

1:09:17 Speaker 13 Thank you. Thank you.

1:09:19 Speaker 1 Look, I-- The, the honest answer first of all is that, you know, we c- people will say it's so nice that you can have a conversation in such a form-- in such a productive, respectful way. I said, "Yes, 'cause there's a camera rolling." Right? I mean, maybe the person who I'm talking to, I can get them to forget there's a camera, but I'm acutely aware that there's a camera. So, you know, at the end of the day, we behave differently when we're being recorded for thousands of people to potentially see. So the idea that every time you see me talking to someone as if nothing's on my mind and life is all hunky dory, it's-- part of it is because there's a camera rolling. But I think a-another honest answer would be that for me conversation is literally medicine. There have been many times where I'm going to a, you know, I'm-- Very often these podcasts are stuffed in between trips where... And I can-- Those podcasts I, I can remember and tell you offhand where it's ten o'clock at night, eleven o'clock at night, and I'm sitting down to start a podcast. You know, I flew, I flew in the morning from, from Philadelphia to San Francisco, and I had one interview followed by another interview, both for the podcast, followed by a third interview at ten o'clock at night Pacific Time.

1:10:43 Speaker 13 Hmm.

1:10:44 Speaker 1 Um, and a lot of times I'll answer, "How in the world am I gonna get through this?" And it's just sometimes I come with a splitting headache. And something about conversation just for that hour and a half to two hours, it's gone. So I don't have a secret to how I handle life. You know, I, you know, I certainly don't know if I'm happier. It seems like you're doing a pretty good job. You have a pretty big smile on your face.

1:11:17 Speaker 13 I... It's okay.

1:11:19 Speaker 1 But, but, but in terms of what the podcast looks like, it's just a-- em, it brings immense joy, and that's, that's-- What, what you see-- If you see that on screen, it's because it's real.

1:11:29 Speaker 13 Thank you.

1:11:32 Speaker 14 Um, whatever happened to the LaKoteytairah podcast?

1:11:43 Speaker 1 My wife's patience has its bounds.

1:11:46 Speaker 14 Okay, one more because that was a quick one. Um, do you have a, like, a bucket list of guests that you wanna have, or a list or just like a general idea, or does it just come as it goes?

1:12:01 Speaker 1 Yeah, there, look, there are definitely some people that I, um, would love to have on and I still hope to have on. There's some people that I wish to have on who I no, no longer can have on. Um, I try not to focus on that. I try to focus on people I can get. But what I've found time and time again is that I'm always surprised by which episodes captivate me and also which episodes captivate others. So yeah, you wanna have the people that you have your eye on, and very often those are the more predictable people or names. But in a way, that's just a way to like kind of keep on going. You always wanna have your eye on the sides of the road, you know, the people who are trying to keep a low profile. Those are... I mean, the name that comes to mind is like Rabbi Cousin. I interviewed him three times. The first time was for somebody else's project, for a family project. The second time was for the podcast where I cooked the audio by my own mistake. I went back to him a third time and, like, each time I come back, like, how does nobody know about this guy? This is my third time, and I'm spellbound the third time seeing the same story. You know? So I would never have had my eyes on him 'cause I didn't know about him. But, you know, a, a friend of mine asked me to video a

1:13:26 Speaker 1 family interview. You keep your eyes open, like this story's amazing. And, uh, yeah, so it, it's both. The, the names you want, but the names that, that come.

1:13:37 Speaker 13 Hmm.

1:13:38 Speaker 3 Hi, Matzav. Thank you very much for this, uh, event and this podcast. Uh, first of all, I just wanted to thank you for the very, uh, inspiration that I get from you. Um, you probably don't even notice, but, um, very often either on the podcast or on Twitter, you'll mention, "Oh, like I was just reading the Kasah last night or, uh, going to Tachana." And, uh, it's just, you know, you have a life, you, you have a family, you have a business, go to the gym. Like, you know, it's, uh, it's very... it's very, very impressive that somehow you get that in also, and, uh, I, I really learn from that. Um, so-

1:14:16 Speaker 1 I, I just want to interject there for a second. I will absolutely admit that a lot of that posting, it's, it's real. I don't post if I didn't learn it, but it's absolutely performative. And, and I believe in performative tzitzis.

1:14:33 Speaker 3 The gym?

1:14:33 Speaker 1 Okay. Both. No, the-

1:14:34 Speaker 3 No.

1:14:35 Speaker 1 Well, well, both. Uh, the gym you see on video. Uh, and, and, and-

1:14:40 Speaker 3 Let me see one set.

1:14:41 Speaker 1 What's that?

1:14:42 Speaker 3 Let me see one set.

1:14:45 Speaker 1 You do that set. All right? And, and, and the tzitzis also is performative, but meaning, meaning if I'm-- if I, I'm taking a picture of a, of a, of a Sefer Torah on a plane, it didn't just happen by mistake that I took that picture, right? I took the picture, and it's like there's performative everything else. My, you know, my WhatsApp status feed, I, I-- that's the one that I see. Instagram I don't hang out on or whatever, is just full of stakes and, and all kinds of consumerism. All right, so if they're gonna perform that way, I'll perform the other way. Okay, go on.

1:15:25 Speaker 3 Only vanity is the vanity of Tzidkus. Everything else is vidal.

1:15:29 Speaker 1 That's all right.

1:15:30 Speaker 3 Um, no, I'm kidding. Um, other thing I wanted to ask is like I, I see that for me, one of the main like, uh, uh, meaning of this podcast is a, a pivot away from like dogmatism and, um, just fakeness and whatever. And not, not a pivot away from like Kabbalah at all or a pivot away from like Tzidkus and Tzaddik. It's more just engaging the same things but in like a, like in a not in a bumper sticker kind of way. And I think for me, it kind of opened up a little bit, uh, like other people mentioned, like a little bit the, the possibility like other people think like this, other people have these questions. Um, I was just wondering if there's-- but I feel like the culture is still very much broadly, like you even talk to like Ofek Le'Hitba'ot people, um, Al Erev, they won't-- there's certain things they won't touch. And I'm wondering like if you see like that changing and if you see that there's something to be done to change that, um, because I think that that's kind of the key for real change to happen across, across the board.

1:16:36 Speaker 1 Yeah, look, uh, somebody asked me a similar question the other day. Uh, may-maybe there was a form, you know, people submitted questions on a form for this. And you know, I, I, I-- some people ask this question all the time, and my answer maybe is a bit of a cop-out, but my answer is that if you're gonna wait for permission from everyone else to think a certain way or to live your life a certain way, you're gonna be waiting a very long time. And at the end of the day, you just have to, you have to, you have to take care of yourself, not in a selfish way, but you have to lead. You have to lead, right? Uh, you know, going back to the gym thing, uh, how do you get away with that? How does your wife let you? Now, look, my wife is here. I'm happy to say this in front of her. If you wait for your wife to give you permission, she's not going to give it to you because- What, what kind of useless, what kind of useless weakling are you? Like, you know, what, what, like, leave me, like, leave me alone, you know. Just go do it, and if you do it and you sh-- it becomes clear that it is good for you and it's good for your mood and it's good for your family and you're a more pleasant person to be around, she'll be begging you to do it, right? And, and that's true

1:18:03 Speaker 1 about, about the podcast as well. If I waited for people to give me permission, they never would have given it. I, I, you know, I have here th- anonymously, you know, members of my honorary, uh, executive advisory committee, uh, very-- it's a very elaborate, uh, title. Um, they know who they are. And, and I joke about the title, but you know, them and others have been very important at different, different, uh, different parts, different points in the way of, of what to do and how to do it. But you can never ask permission from people, because if you ask-- if you're waiting for permission, you're not gonna get it. So, you know, I-- if you're waiting for Lubavitchers to be more thoughtful, it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen 'cause that's just not how-- it's, like at the end of the day, communities work in a certain way. In a way, it's, it's, it, it's a good part of Lubavitch. We're very interconnected, we're very related to each other, and so we're aware of where other people are at. But that can become a curse where I'm waiting for the guy, you know-- You know, one of my favorite posts on X, I don't know if I'm gonna quote it verbatim, but it's worth quoting or at least attempting, where imagine you're Nachshon ben Aminadav. You're wading into the, the ocean because you believe that's what Moshe Rabbeinu wants from you. And as you get deeper and deeper in the water and you're losing

1:19:32 Speaker 1 breath and your world begins to go dark, you hear voices back in the distance asking, "Who appointed this guy to a Hagbah?" You know, it's, it-- the, the permission is not gonna come. So, you know, the, the beauty of Lubavitch is, at least in my opinion, and it was from the beginning, is thankfully I had enough time in Yeshiva where these things resonated with me in a personal way. And so I always knew that I had a personal connection to it. It, it was just about being able to say, "I'm gonna do it on my terms, and either, either people come along with me or they don't."

1:20:17 Speaker 3 Hi, Ben Zim. Big-- I'm a big fan. Uh, I'd like to make a, uh, uh, perhaps an, a, uh, a observation, um, and perhaps a, uh, perhaps it'll turn to a question. But, um, you mentioned earlier that you tackle some of the big issues, and some of the issues you talked about, uh, you said Gimmel Tammuz and Mashiach. I just wanna... Uh, now, what I think, um, when you say those things, and these two things come up in the podcast over and over again, my understanding is the big issue around Gimmel Tammuz is that a community that is so dependent on a Rebbe, and when the Rebbe all of a sudden is not around, what does the community do when we have this tremendous loss?

1:21:08 Speaker 4 And especially when people feel they weren't prepared for it. The Rebbe was such a fantastic leader and, and so this causes a lot of, you know, um, you know, problems with people. And, and, and I think the second thing is also the idea of Mashiach. Uh, seemingly the Rebbe promises that Mashiach is about to come, Darashvi, and it's been decades later, and, you know, where is Mashiach? Or like my father says, "Where the f- is Mashiach?" And that can be very confusing, right? Now, I've listened to-- I, I don't know if I've listened to all your podcasts, but I've listened to many of them. And I find that I'm getting the same answer over and over and over again, you know. And it seems like it's a canned answer. It seems like it's an answer, you know, of course, around, uh, the Rebbe's not here, how can I have a relationship with him? And the general, I guess, answer is that, "Oh, well, you know, he's not here in his kuf, but his neshamah is here, and that's how we connect with him." Um, issues around Mashiach, they say, "Oh, well, if the Rebbe could-- he could really bring Mashiach, but, uh, if it was he was doing it, it would be easy. The Rebbe wants us to bring Mashiach. So all you gotta do is one more mitzvah." And this is sort of a classic r- uh, it's over-- repetitive over and over again. And, um, every time I come back to the podcast,

1:22:42 Speaker 4 I'm hoping someone will give us perhaps a different answer. Maybe someone will be a little bit more honest.

1:22:48 Speaker 1 Any comment.

1:22:48 Speaker 4 As opposed, as opposed to just saying the canned classic answers. And, um, and I, and, and I also would imagine people are probably scared to say what they really feel, you know. I mean, they're probably scared to say what they really feel. Maybe perhaps people have different ideas. And so, um, I appreciate that you keep on asking the question and, um, and, uh, that, yeah, I just maybe perhaps you can talk towards that or, or...

1:23:22 Speaker 1 Okay. I-- to go back to, to, to X, uh, or Twitter, uh, I think Lubavitchers still think of it as Twitter. Um, my-- the, the post, the tweet that I pinned to my profile is Lubavitch doesn't die with the last Rebbe, it dies with the last Chassid. And, you know, I, I, I believe that. I believe that these questions that you're talking about, um... You know, first of all, it's okay if the answers-- I think the Rebbe said, um, the-- it's okay if the-- the question has to be a good one. To ask a question has to be a good one. The answer, whatever. The que-- to ask a question has to be a good question. And it's, it's a very solid question. It's a question that is a life-- uh, that's worth a lifetime of wrestling. And it could be a question that we go to our graves with when the ti-- you know, at a hundred and twenty. Many Jews have. Um, but in a way, that kind of, that kind of question makes life worth living. In terms of the answers, you know, I think that asking these questions in a canned way is going to elicit the canned answers. Part of that is because the question is too big and too complex to be handled directly. It's like staring into the sunlight. You know, it, it, it, it costs-- maybe it's too big on an intellectual level, maybe it's too big on an emotional level. You know, the, the, the amount

1:25:13 Speaker 1 of cost, the psychological cost that is involved for people who have believing-- been believing a certain thing for so long to adjust their belief set is, is extreme. It's maybe impossible. So very often, what I find when I'm talking to people is it's not so much that necessarily I'm braver than they are, but the, the, the cost that I associate with the question is different than they do. That's part of the conversation. Like talking to people from that generation and hearing what it is that's keeping them tied down to their beliefs, it might not give you an answer that's satisfying. I don't know that answer exists, but seeing how they deal with the question is part of getting towards an answer or getting to-towards a better question. How do they ask the question versus how do I ask that question? I know that might be a bit of a cop-out, but-

1:26:12 Speaker 4 I just wanna say, I wanna say that it-- I mean, I mean, it seems like that, that when their theology, you know, rubs, rubs up against reality, they just reroute the theology. I, I mean, like the cognitive dissonance is so, is so clear.

1:26:25 Speaker 1 Because for some pe-- look, I'll give, I'll give you, I'll give you... I don't know how much time we have. I, I have no concept of time right now.

1:26:31 Speaker 4 Fifteen.

1:26:31 Speaker 1 Oh, okay. So we'll get-- we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll do this quickly. But, you know, there's a, there's a mussar, a very crude mussar that I've had for a while. I hope I do it justice now. And that is that imagine you have a ship at sea, and that ship has been at sea for so many years that you have multiple generations on that ship. You have people that have been-- got on there when they were kids, and today they're grandparents. You have their kids and their grandkids, and they all-- and, and the kids and grandkids have been born on that ship. That's all that they know. Now, this ship has done them well for decades. One day, the ship springs a hole, and this hole is a unfixable hole. For some reason, they cannot fix this hole, but it's also a hole that is not doing any immediate damage. So they know that in thirty years, let's say, it's gonna sink the ship, and everyone that stays on the ship is gonna be dead. But it's in thirty years. Right now, it's, it-it's, it's very far away. Now, you could say the younger people who don't really have a concept of time, to them thirty years is no big-- you know, they can't even c-comprehend it. That-that's a lifetime away, right? So they're, they're the ones, uh, least concerned about it, and the older people who have more concept of time, they're the most concerned about it. But I think if we-- I'm not a

1:28:08 Speaker 1 psychologist, but my guess is, at least from my observation of human experience, is that ultimately the bias is the reverse. The people that are the oldest, they... thirty years is past their horizon. They're not gonna make it thirty years. So they care about their kids and their grandkids, but ultimately they cannot conceive of that world in thirty years, and so it's an abstraction to them. It's an abstraction to them. And so, "Oh, well, let's see what happens tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow there'll be a fix. Someone will come and figure it out. There'll be an answer, and we'll meet another ship. You know, uh, God will take care of it," et cetera, et cetera. The younger people, they know for a fact that if they don't find dry land, they're going down. Do we understand the Nimshul?

1:29:06 Speaker 5 Yes.

1:29:06 Speaker 1 Right. And so what I found-- Look, and I have, I have a lot of relatives, uh, people that I know that are very close to me that I love dearly, who are, who... Y-you know, I, I spent a lot of hours talking about this well before a podcast. Sometimes it was directly about this question, and sometimes it was around this question. And I began to realize that for them, being older, much older, for them to see the world the way I see the world would be as crazy as if I saw the world the way they saw the world, right? They are living on the ship for many, many years. It's-- they can't comprehend a world without the ship, and the world without the ship is a complete abstraction to them. And so they're just gonna keep on, you know, "If we survive one more day, we'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. We just have to make sure. We have to get there. We have to-- We'll get there." And why isn't that resonating with me? It's not because I have less faith in them or because I have, you know, a better question, I'm smarter than them. It's because I know that me and my kids aren't gonna make it in thirty years or when that time comes. The, the urgency is, is, is real. It's not an abstraction for me. And so that's part of this discussion. It's, you know, figuring out where do they come from. It's very easy to

1:30:30 Speaker 1 say, "You know what? That generation," you know, as much disdain or contempt I have for the MEMS, some of it's a joke, some of it isn't. But it's-- you have to understand where they're coming from. To write them off is silly. What, do you think they're all crazy? They all just committed some kind of pact where they're just gonna, like, ruin their lives? Of course not. They-- you have to understand where they're coming from, and then you said that ti-- as time goes on, it becomes a bigger problem. Like I said earlier, I think it's the reverse. As time goes on, it fo-- it's a, it's a forcing mechanism to take the good and the truth of things that have been said in the past. The-- some of these ideas have grown and metastasized in ways that are not healthy, in my opinion. But there are kernels of truth that are worth holding on to, and part of talking to these people is not about arriving at an answer, it's about a-arriving at where-- understanding where their question is from, and that's a step forward to finding the answer. All right. One more, one, one f-

1:31:29 Speaker 5 One minute. We'll, we'll do one more question.

1:31:30 Speaker 1 One final question.

1:31:31 Speaker 5 Not a question. I just wanna thank you for the podcast, all the episodes. I think you do a great job interviewing. And I-- to me, with the hundred episodes in, is a hundred ways of being a real chasid. Each person in his own way does his thing.

1:31:49 Speaker 1 Wow. Amen. Amen. What's that? What's that? Do you have something to say? This is the final final.

1:32:00 Speaker 5 Final final.

1:32:01 Speaker 1 Final final.

1:32:02 Speaker 5 Those are me.

1:32:03 Speaker 1 You have a final? A mother. Okay, I have to give to my mother. Go ahead. Just make it a really quick-

1:32:07 Speaker 3 Yeah, I don't really have a question, but I just thought that it's only right to thank your wife for putting up with all-- putting up with you.

1:32:13 Speaker 1 You missed it. I already thanked her. What do you think?

1:32:16 Speaker 3 Oh, okay. Well, we, we, we should thank her.

1:32:17 Speaker 5 Off the crowd now.

1:32:18 Speaker 1 All right. My mother wants to finish off. What's up?

1:32:22 Speaker 6 Without the mic.

1:32:23 Speaker 5 What?

1:32:23 Speaker 6 I just wanted to share that one-

1:32:26 Speaker 1 Why not the mic? One second. Give her the mic.

1:32:29 Speaker 5 Give her the...

1:32:30 Speaker 1 Give her the mic.

1:32:32 Speaker 6 The rabbi's mother's mic comes with It means a lot. I just wanted to say before the podcast was actually born, there were rumors in the family about this podcast, and behind closed doors it was like, "Does he really have to?" And I have to say a hundred episodes in, um, my husband and I are very, very proud of Bentzi and thankful to him for airing a lot of these issues and questions. And all I can say, I'm also representing three MEM generations, if women can be part of the pre-MEM generation, um, is that I get feedback constantly from women my age saying, "Wow, we've had those questions for so many years. Finally, someone is addressing it, and it's being spoken about." So thank you very much on behalf of all the senior listeners of your podcast.

1:33:29 Speaker 1 Thank you very much. And thank you. And, uh, and I also, I also wanna thank my mother in front of everyone for putting together this event. And, uh, I grew up-- I think I, I think I mentioned that at the beginning, but I'll mention it again. I, uh, grew up in a, in a Chabad house where the, where these kind-- uh, the attention to detail was the norm, and, uh, a lot of my work in, in video and the podcast as well, uh, is inspired by that example, and I'm very happy that you're here and that you're able to be part of this, uh, uh, project and this event. And, uh, again, thank you to my family for being here, and thank you to every one of you for being here, for your words of encouragement throughout the podcast journey and coming here tonight. And, uh, I hope this experiment was worthwhile. Thank you very much. The music for this podcast comes from the album Repentance Doors by Oren Sor and Nadav Bachar, and is used with their permission.