Take 2 with Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky

[Music] welcome back to mish bakar's take two with the personalities the names the faces you're familiar with from the pages of the magazine come to life amanda kotlaski was never actually featured in magazine as an article because he doesn't want to be featured in an article he's that sort of guy but at the same time the activity activities he's involved in and the movements he's involved with is extremely public so we have over the years done different articles smaller things with him many it's always been a pleasure to talk to you always been enlightening always been refreshing but you admit that you have this kind of this paradox where probability is important to what you're doing mandy kotlaska son of a moisture contrast mandy works as uh what's the official title executive director miraculous 302. it's a big of all doing a lot of different things four which is the formal body the correct of the succumb all over the world so it's the educational arm of the ilabovich movement one of the three organizations that the frida kahraba gave to his son-in-law when he came to america to run and that was the umbrella through which the rebbe established many educational projects uh what is most popular is the schliches network but there are a lot of other different uh points and projects of markets talk about the magazine has always been as it potentially which is an army so yeah we're involved in the schlichters part of america's yeah tell me about yourself let's let's step back a minute so i was saying hey you never are really comfortable being featured and being publicized you like to stay behind the scenes but at the same time you don't have the luxury of being behind the scenes because what you do is completely out there i have the luxury i have don't have the luxury of saying no to time with shirley besser that's um that's really what got me here you know to talk as an interview is me talking but to have a conversation with one of my dearest friends um i couldn't say no you work for your father with your father uh i make trouble and he has to clean up the business that's what it is but no it yeah look it's you know when i talk to other people that work with for under because of in the business of their father it's very hard for me to relate to hashem i was blessed with an amazing father who constantly reminds us and allows us to make mistakes but really he always tells us how he's working for us uh to be successful we're all working for the rebel for the shlokham so he doesn't have that aura about him in that context he really empowers people delegates enables lets you try and borrow hashem within the organization within many organizations he's the leader of the organization there's our office which is america's 302 that's a innovation hub and a kind of backbone organization for the world of schliches but you also have the jli the roar jay a lot jewish learning institute uh that he is the chairman of campus which is a department of its own right you have karen these are all central strategic pieces of the global network that my father has been involved in i think now coming up almost 50 years you could try well he's been in america the last couple of months he hasn't been traveling he's being careful but for that reason he could have a travel completely i mean the the world changed and really in it's enabled us to do amazing things uh you know somebody told me and it resonated with me that kovit didn't change anything it only sped things up you know businesses that were supposed to close closed faster people's businesses were supposed to grow grew faster people that were supposed to i have so many questions so let me just jump to this come out on campus if there's no students on campus like how does that even work you need the minion you need the people everything just goes to zoom it's not the same so especially in outreach if there's any organization that should have shut down and been affected by the last couple of months or almost a year coming up on a year khabad would be the one i mean we bring people together mignon friday night meals holiday parties in brick and mortar and yet barack hashem because at the core of what shlokam doing at the core of what the rebbe set up is to empower and cure for people and whatever their needs are teaching them terra to feeding them and everything in between once we saw the change and we saw it early on we had to cancel without 1200 people trip to israel we borrowed hashem we got that c team times square that was the last big event we had to cancel quite a few shabbatons we had uku champions young children competing in terror things that were supposed to come together we had to cancel that week and what happened was at the end of that week i'll give you one example hebrew schools started realizing they're going to have to close and imagine north america we have close to 800 hebrew schools this is the kids only interaction with yiddish guy thursday we found out that everybody is basically closing down brick and mortar matsushabas we had three interactive engaging virtual hebrew school classes up online being used we went from zero online presence in the hebrew school space to forty thousand people in the first three weeks listen ever since you were sustained afterwards we we had to so part of what we had to do was actually our goal is to support shlokan engaging their community like you said other institutions have an issue where once you're going virtual why am i staying in tucson arizona if i can tap into new york's high holiday service right it's much more interesting they're investing much more we created a model where it's all about the shlokam engaging with their community keeping them involved and giving them the resume but you can create a box and share it with people that they can engage and build their family basically what happened through the corona period was instead of five thousand chabad houses closing down another thirty forty thousand opened up we brought you this guy into the house the do it yourself a little bit uh either you could say ahead of the game depending on what your uh lean on khabar is but you guys were way ahead with technology you were out of technology when other people were still uncomfortable i mean the webber was letting videos fabricans be videoed it's a little bit the answer is yes but no it's not about technology the rebbe is of the opinion and spoke about it many times and quoted it many times that call masha barack baruch anything the abrasive created what do you create it for for the to use he created it for the for yiddish guide so any tool you have at your dispense you have to use for the base of migdash gold was created for the basement magnition everybody else got to use it anything that exists in the world is it exists for us it exists to teach tarot so i'm not here to debate or not you can hear the other side also whatever my point is the approach so therefore anything that we any opportunity we have to engage be it technology or anything we're going to use to bring people you know closer and no but let's give an example a lot of the the more yeshiva schools or whatever term we'll use um had a big debate so we let the kids have tablets we don't put the kids on zoom but i don't understand lauren on the phone santa skantama has no kid can't connect with a rebbe or a murderer on her phone and they went back and forth you guys already made peace with this years ago no i saw there's tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of community crown heights montreal toronto you know in montreal all around the world i was in florida now there's kihilis of my kids we had the same debate in our schools whether or not we're going to use tablets when it comes to shlokhim's kids that are living in middle of nowhere and the only connection they have and it comes with and we built in for safeguards for our kids the kids in the show you know we built in safeguards i travel around the slocum in vietnam and other places there's kids it's not like they're on computers a whole day it's not like my kids are on computers the computers are used for a purpose there's a room and you go to school in this room this is your classroom just like your kid goes to uh in the building what does that mean what does that even mean who decides how does it work okay you want the politically correct answer or the real answer the real answer you're going to get both um like this first of all the in the core context of schlichters the rubber would bring down from the rogue from the angle there's different dorm and sliches whether or not it's considered considered just doing a task for you but there's the highest argument to represent somebody to be able to represent the rebbe as if you are representing the arab in this place being plugged in in that location there's a system for that the rabbit tapped people the rabbit created a mechanism and for that there is the body that oversees us each country has a new countries we're dealing now like with dubai or cicelus i don't know what the name of that that island is that has tons of thought my father in america we have new mechanism but there's a system in place the concept of schlichters to empower every jew there this was the rebels this was the rebbe's calling from basil lagana tough all of the first mimer if you look at the end of my i found that fascinating there everybody brings down over there al-tiqur vayikr el vayakar there are made people call out in the name of the habister right the episodes are something fascinating everybody says that until the person you reach that you taught olive base doesn't go out and teach somebody else olive base whatever that olive base is the mitzvah and he doesn't share that with anybody else you're very not complete you will not understand it you will not be connected until the person you touch that's absolutely correct that's it that's that's the real answer actually i have a question what does that mean somebody decides whatever it means it is it is there a contract is it licensed is it you mean if anybody opens up a coffee shop and call themselves starbucks whether or not they're starbucks no there are many different brands of coffee so who you decide your father america is there is there is an oversight america so somebody comes to you who decides who goes where it's so there's that's that's the technical this is what i do for a living we do we tell people answers to the questions boring answer it's a technical answer i think people watching it are probably interested you know what i won't tell you how to do how to do america you know i mean it's very simple there are countries heads of state there are regions each very often every person is given a place where he's responsibility whatever people want to go to the same place where he's responsible to reach every jew once you go there that's your responsibility and hashem the reason why shiloh grows this way is because on a local level five thousand three hundred and like seventy six maybe seventy nine by now how does that work the world is only so big and there's a new generation who wants to bridge solution what do you do with that how many jews are we reaching today realistically unfortunately how many jews are there that are not being reached in a real way okay how many personal relationships can a person have you have 25 tommy them can you have 100 200 my father always says there's 14 16 18 million jews every 200 500 or a thousand jews can use a rabbi are there other tension between people who want to be questioned the question is money meaning meaning if all things considered right what's the mashiach live so this this okay let's take an example i'm going to montreal i'm opening up how does i come in over there the government pays i think though very easy you have enough kids um but you come to a place so by and large the rabbis set up as an independent each each location is its own place not only funds itself it's it's it's all built around knowing the local dynamics getting the local people involved it wasn't just about funding all because it's easier to to to create a decentralized type of organization faster bigger and better as much as i had this conversation this morning with one of our donors if you go to a place and you have 100 people supporting you that means you're needed there they they see the value versus if there is money coming in from the outside now at the same time i always tell people like chabad has a business model it's not the conventional business model it exists but it's not the regular fortune 500 so if you're looking at it from a business perspective you're not going to understand it because it doesn't make sense to have people dedicating their lives at the same time i have to say this because if not i'll get into big trouble we do have certain funds not certain many funds when it comes to establishing new places there are probably over 2000 locations that we helped that we seeded the first three four years till they got off the ground when it comes to yum toivon or extra expenses a simcha fund at different times when there is funding around we we do that it comes hanukkah now we actually because of corona we put together a substantial amount of money to send hanukkah girl to people that normally wouldn't need our help and wouldn't want to take a handout but it's a very nice way of giving it because i guess their students are offended because their funding comes a lot from life they're doing now there's a combination they're not getting faster so we're actually pushing now like we'll give you the teacher man to fish type of model and the year a lot of people didn't want to do end of year campaigns they didn't think they can approach their people we haven't been in touch with necessarily all of them and we put a tremendous focus giving them support marketing materials and pushing shlochem to do end of year campaigns so like that to drive them into a place where they they have incentives to go back to their people and raise money obviously emergency situations all the time and then a lot of times we we do get the big people that come and say you know what i have today i can build a hundred and fifty mcfly's in places that need make fights if i had 30 million dollars when you have a donor who comes to you how do you know which kabbalah somebody said i love what you're doing i'm on whatsapp yeah so we know everything on whatsapp so you know right away no i mean it has an emergency like i said we're not we we borrow hashtags a very small world there's very very few places and people in the world that i'm not uh indirect or one you know very close i know that's because i know in the magazine you're a big fan to me whenever their story is taking place in in in weird locales and things happening i said matthews could you get me the person earthquake a natural disaster uh uh a volcano you always have a ship those are easy because that guy already reached out to us the day before that he needs help that he's yeah it usually takes a you know a couple of hours till you guys are usually able to connect with us um which brings me to a little bit of a this may be a little raw this is maybe but it's an issue we should talk about sufficient fence i'm afraid i'm not between us i didn't want to be here to begin with so anything you do is fine you don't find you're doing fine um sometimes we'll do a story on a place so we'll say yeah we're doing a story in a cattle around a kiev center in pick a name we'll say uh las vegas and we'll do well you know because we write about people who inspire and there's a lot of inspiring people from all demographics and all communities who are doing incredible things and the readers enjoy reading about them and we'll get a letter inevitably um and a lot of online feedback via social media saying how did you leave you write about this guy who has a coyote with seven people don't you know that has been there for 40 years you ignore the whole story you guys are rewriting history magazine doesn't like and and you know with the culture we live in things spiral and everybody's signing their names and they don't even think about it and when i was younger i used to argue back and i would say we we don't like chabad and i would show different issues in the magazine where we uh highlighted uh not just uh freed and not just all about but the work of the solution and sometimes then i realize there's no point and we've had candid conversations about this over the years and i told you um that i don't see about publications and there are many of them writing a lot about what's going on in lakewood in in base matters governor and i don't see them writing a lot about what's going on in new square so the we have a balance in mr magazine i think that every demographic will be represented over the course of the year and every single issue there's 20 different communities coming together but it's not only going to be khabar all the time this is a conversation we have what's your take on this first of all i'm actually impressed that there's 50 or 100 or as many khabad people reading the mishbaka magazine that they actually way more than that that they're actually writing campaigns they actually care that's that's impressive that says a lot about the the inner worlds you've made but to the point of the conversation i see it a little bit not just i know i know because i also get feedback when you stick things in that are connected to us uh at the same time to me look this has been an age-old conversation i see it from a very different light uh you talk a place like like las vegas all right we can tell you talk about the house about the connection we've been talking right las vegas has a statement for 40 years for years before there was a coil there any type of readership that you have or any location that they go to and if there is no other coil to go to or there is no other organization have it all the time people call me i need a minion i need a meal i need kosher food i need a place to sit and learn for a few hours between meetings whatever it is right there's a shliyar there people are using cabaret houses all the world all over the world i was in belle harbor florida there was much there was maybe ten percent lubavitch and kharidam all different types of charading coming to seoul i don't think the question over here is about whether or not we feature i i don't i don't see i don't see lubavitchers i'm sure in the areas let me put it to this way i have a friend that just started learning daffy me a little and he sponsored a uh the one that i think was arriving or shabbos he sponsored the the the the big cm in in lakewood because that's the the maggot share that he listens to and he appreciates it and he sponsors it that type of thing actually got coverage within our websites and and our places i don't necessarily know how many places you go to where lobovich is coming to place where there is no labovich that they go to use versus your readership that are going to places using the babbage but then when it comes to covering it all the questions forgotten somebody's had salah and they in the loyola and somebody goes down the heart attack and the hatsala member is on site and he's there two minutes later and he's able to save the guy's life does he say after um i have to tell you the truth i asked this guy for a loan and he didn't let me he better give me the next time he says no that's all i'm here to save jews it doesn't make a difference what you do for me i'm here to do for you not here you're not here to take your to give isn't that what they've ever set up why is it first of all anything i don't think i don't think i've ever called you and i highly doubt the shlokan themselves necessarily are the ones that are chasing it it's true but there are the people your readership is entitled to come and say you know what i have a cousin a brother or friend that lives in this place that invested sweat blood and tears you're writing about the exact same thing that they're doing to make them as if they don't exist when they were the ones being used until otherwise that's paranoia whether or not it's true right now we're talking about whether or not people have a right to feel that way what's the truth you'll make your editorial decisions and you'll decide you know the famous question whether you pay your shotgun every time you have a baby or not you know i i understand your question at the same time i don't think people are looking necessarily to be promoted but i always you know my father always told me says but when you throw rocks throw the small ones if i did you a favor throw the small ones don't throw the big ones i think in this context of conversation is important especially they cite their donors and say to their people again there's publicity and then there's showing up again if you want what i know it happens to me often in the sense where you go and tell somebody like you said we have so much going on then all of a sudden they read an article and you don't even exist so you don't write and say look there is a whole operation this one is going to focus on something else a lot of these articles are just like this is the only game of talent do you believe that there is a hawaii media bias against what is and how does that differ from mainstream publications to me like this is like so 200 years ago like i travel the world i meet people from our donor base i can tell you the types of people that donate i was yesterday with a full-on lakewood you know type of guy that he was telling me stories about you know rob schneider and and and that whole space with all the benebrach boy who's supporting us to the other extreme to the satmir friends that i have and to the non-religious you know to the hedge fund managers like i the world has changed i mean i'm surprised to hear that there's even people that live in that world where there's a charity space versus a chabad space versus other spaces you can answer the questions but to answer your question do you think that someone said oh bob it's too much you believe that first of all first of all i happen to know it i don't know what you want a blanket statement i won't make a blanket statement that all publications that you just mentioned do that uh like you said we know we have a very close relationship i know your perspective i know the the approach and and i and i watch a lot of these things but like i have a relationship with you i do have relationships with other people in other media industries who told us clearly that i can't publish this because of a b and c because if you have a question now like this and then and then i can move away so that's no problem actually i called me very prominently he said uh he wants to get i think you associated in all these discussions we wanted us because they come in students come in and they're shocked to see that they're attractive beautiful sophisticated mainstream publications that are totally true they never knew this so not only are the articles about but there's articles that speak to my kids about science about the world about history and politics that are he says this is a kindergarten we need to have this but um you need to be more friendly until baptist said what do you mean he says last week you had an article about whatever god all it was um somebody who wasn't friendly to tell about it he says i can't do that i said we can't i'm not gonna oh hello man come on uh do you think that's like a realistic demand devil classical magazine there was glucan daisy christopher always there's like this there's two zombies and there's two businesses and there's two part of interest guess what we cover everybody look i i think that you guys know your business well i don't think if you ask me if you need a big statement that there's a bias i i get the conversation i think you need to make the decisions that are right for you and for your readership i think lubavitch and khabad is a very very large potential industry for any of these things like you said where the front lines of these places it could be used it's a decision you make and then the shlochem get to make the decision whether or not they want to put it in every clubhouse or not okay based on you know and and we see this all the time you know that's a question then not about media this is just about the the the relationship between khabar and the rest of um i don't want to use the word kharedi but mainstream orthodox judaism and i was at the kennedy more than once he's a very prominent leader of a prominent uh firm the organizat and most authentic expressions of what it means to see courage and to see passion and to see enthusiasm and people who really believe in what they're doing it's a beautiful experience he says to me wow wow i look at this and i wonder what are we doing wrong he was saying with his own organization that our people don't don't have that kind of passion for what they do do you look at other things i'll talk about it and see that and say well i'm impressed by things in other parts of class a thousand percent i mean why not i mean like who do you look at outside of khabar and say that organization that person that that's an impressive idea concept i i think that i think first of all you watch certain certain yeshivas and coils the way they syndicated and came together to raise money and to support and to adopt and to certain campaigns and organizations whichever one it is but i'm saying there was a period of time it was fragmented they came together and there's so much more how about the satire and so many more people involved there's a lot of those types of organizations even you should adopt the thing also then we discussed this you didn't adopt maybe you hadn't adopted something at that point you had an adopt concept after that i don't know if i remember teasing maybe it could be but nothing in a in a very real way but you know that's an unwanted on on the one hand i think there's a lot of very very interesting um i think the way you if you want to talk about the the uh what however you termed that group the way they're focused on on on on educating and keeping the you know the the parameters and making sure that people are following their good dolem and and listening to the pisces and that type of stuff i think that's fascinating i think there's a lot of fascinating there's there's a lot of legitimacy i know you can't answer this as a clown you know obviously but just off the top of your head you see a lot of working in heroic situations and under difficult conditions what do you think about now and say wow this guy's going straight to islam how but what sort of which particular which location do you say well that's that's impossible every one some have it easier some other you know what i like i told somebody i was in florida and they said oh you're moving to florida also the exodus you know i said my mister sniffer has to live in crown heights everybody has their mysterious nation obviously listen when you come across people teaching torah in you know duluth minnesota or the or the smallest ceo that like tower tells new mexico or wyoming montana uh items in every state now you're done yeah yeah there's north dakota south dakota and you know what it means that there aren't mcphoys in a lot of these places yet and the traveling and the the the the issues and trying to teach people and people coming and and teaching them tours from olive bays and then you know what are the dates and then i think you imagine after you make someone about children they move out of town and you have to start from the beginning you know how hard it is in tulsa oklahoma yeah they make a balchu and he moves to a big city and uh you know it's there's so many every every shliya obviously the big and then even on the big scale a lot of the people you look at and you say wow these guys are they have it good right you know it's the amount of investment the mysterious efforts they have to put that smile on their face famous story with delusionaire walking around with gold gold shoes and the bottom the bottom was off some people not a smile better some people know to tell the story better but by and large mostly the soul of their shoe is off it's connected to the ground and they're and they're and they're sweating and they're working hard it's on top of taking care of their kinder luck and they're the the rabbit since living in these places and bark shrimp last 10 15 years as technology allowed us to but they didn't do that this year they must have suffered that's the only time they get together but you know what this is a good if you if you follow the kindness at all we're always thinking what's going to be that moment and somebody actually said if you ever need to prove a bala bus the need for the kidness we had a what do you do from the lava malcolm when shabbos goes out in australia into alaska 18 year old almost 18 hour difference so we did this you know virtual zoom for brangan that it was supposed to last one day and lasted eight days ago and it was fascinating the abstract gave the shlokham in within the framework of what was needed this year and this time the ability to connect with each other the ability to to have some people were in quarantine they were able to be a part of it the whole time some people were driving their kids to cars pool but even for myself i i maybe did a half hour in the morning half hour night when i was walking talking doing other stuff it was so powerful that that feeling that you have in the kindest big room that everybody says about this here because i look for that like they miss their families they can't don't get to go back home first question for a lot of people this is the one time of year they come to the oil to the rabbit to davin to the abrasive to connect this is one time here they see their families one time they hear that they eat a meal they didn't cook themselves it's not one time today was true the one time it was pretty clear they do that too yeah you know we saw it on zoom there were certain people that dalvin did pasha david with the you saw it it was unbelievable people went to school no not to them on the zoo some places were locked down you're talking about places where people couldn't leave even if they wanted to so this was their lifeline but i'm talking about you look back at covert i'll give you one one small thing that i'm watching at hanukkah and it's unbelievable to see justin hanukkah one of the things that we actually launched last year's kinis was something called a mitzvah ambassador right the rebel always say every like we said before every ship can reach every jew empowering other people to own their yiddish kite whatever their yiddish kite means to them and this hanukkah this past hanukkah you're looking at like friar kids public school kids young professionals millennials that people look at and you say right you know there are people and they're they're literally they make a list of 33 jewish friends they have and they're bringing them a manure and you get pictures of people putting on filling with other people like you you you know if they're wearing a yamaha or not wearing yamaka is the conversation the guy who's putting the tv on his friend whether he's wearing the yamaka or not and it's and it's uh and and then somebody got it and their cousin didn't get in their grandmother needs it and people are reaching people are meeting new people imagine in in in today in in today's world corona people meeting and you can make a move it's hard that you have to be a hostage only you could be a hustler when you become a hostage was this so bad was it so bad to be here it's pretty nice it was bad yeah thank you for coming in man they're always a pleasure version of you yeah hey look at father kaitlin's to continue doing what you're doing he carries such as also happened amazing but uh if there's one thing that everybody if any if anybody's watching this i don't know why they would but maybe because of you i guess not because of me to inspire to inspire anybody watching this really positivity that no but radiation that you're radiating but it's real it's very real this idea of what it means to be a to look at your business world look at the context you have to look at somebody who was not introduced to toyota to mitsubishi this guy to learning pick a mitzvah pick one mitzvah pick 10 mitzvahs share it with them bring them in get them to share with other people let's make proud jews let's start reversing the trends and the statistics and all those numbers that everybody's talking about and saying it's doomsday i after i saw what's going on this past year and how people are proud they just need to feel that mike we had a group and i'll finish with this from nyu a group of students that came to the shabbaton the campus shabbaton year after year and somehow or another they ended up by us and they had a song called geshmacht to be a smack to be and i tell you my kids started singing it and now it's a year every year and my kids my biggest knockouts i had one day i was my four-year-old kid was sitting and playing and it gets back to me all the rest is taken care of the guy who didn't want to come and you managed to disseminate and get out your message beautifully thank you for being here now we just need money to pay for it [Music] always [Music] you