Tragedy and Ani Maamin | Take 2 with Shloimi Steinmetz

[Music] welcome to mishpacha's take two with the names and faces familiar to you from the magazine get a closer glimpse come a little bit to life today's guest is not a conventional celebrity traditionally on the show we've sat with so many great authors and singers and big-ass my french language time it is a regular guy he's what you call in the world of pasha thied but very much not a pasha deed slimy steinmetz along with so many other families were felt it very personally the tragedy last year and we run a vlog by america and hit very close down for him and he lost his son david and from that day people i think understood and looked at slimey as an ambassador of what it really means to be how he'd react how he had speaks how a year uses a torah like that to create something new it's a very big script for me a big pleasure and uh a big opportunity to welcome swansea thank you for coming again slap you in the studio we live next door to each other to bring you down here but your your story is very compelling story i don't know if you even know the effects of what you've been doing over the last 11 months on the world because you're so focused on what you're doing but i would love to talk to you a little bit about that again you were not a mechanic before you weren't that big fear whose name was in every building good either good father a good husband a good guy a regular guy that people aspire to be like and all of a sudden you're in the headlines from one second to the next not something you ever asked for not somewhere you ever hoped to be and and you've used that to be makazik a lot of people tell us a little bit about uh you know you haven't really stopped to think about how you got here i understand it's been 11 months probably a very little sleep a lot of emotion how did i get here i'm following the ibester i'm doing doing then we're saying again when this happened from from the first second like i mean it's unreal i can't i still can't wrap my head around it i'm not trying to understand but i just defeat the belt and try to be makazik from from day one and and i'm trying to reinforce and reinforce that this i mean this is what i wish i wanted then let's do the best whatever we can i think everybody believes that they should fit the vault but there's a lot of people say they should fit the belt he did this and i accept it but that doesn't mean that i have to go and talk about a moon a whole day that's in the whole other level to respond that way with that kind of strength and that kind of courage is very unusual you you must be coming from somewhere this is my father's father who grew up in antwerp which i grew up in and he lived there as well and he lived there as well and also my uh mother's grandfather which was actually just lifted three hours ago and while i came down on my plane i'd be also steinhart wow so this just happened now as well but they are again you ask me where it's coming from this is this is the coincidence that the zeitgeist put into my parents and then you know it trickles down to to us as kids so you grew up absorbing this i again i remember my if i remember with my my baby sister again she's close to 40 my baby sister but she's my younger sister she when she grew up she knew my grandfather was that well admired my she thought he has his best she never happened she was like basmati is not his friend it's a viable nest but that's how they live but again they started after the war mama schmidt gunished you know they they got married in 1946 in the dp camp my father was born in 1948 you know so it's like the every single simcha i mean i'm growing up in anthem my grandfather that was the same i mean for years i miss all this inaudible so i saw it's coming you know my grandfather in london it was asking he retired at 65 because he's in england and he was you know we retired 65 he had the ice cream factory called snow quests people have heard of it probably anyway what did he do he's going to build a new mikveh in london he was building a that's this is he went uh they needed a new shipment he was all the years my grandmother was also just nifty a few months ago she was in charge of the they lived in an area called hendon and she was the mick for lady over there and he was always busy with the maintenance and the whole thing so he understood because they were doing they were doing these things for for i don't know how many years i mean since i born i remember there was a second phone line there was no cell phones in those days the mikveh line was in my grandmother's house that's what they got then actually it's reminding me now september 11th i was uh i went to antwerp for a my sister made a pidna man one of my nephews and davey came with he was a year old my grandfather was busy building the mick for them this is a golden screen this is the biggest mick for this was like i don't know four or five million dollar pounds project and he came to give us a tour and we had david with the gay and he gave us all the whole mix and he's busy explaining the the the the technologies everything the mick for the the all the he was so proud of you know not the boilers the boy is my guy under the bar what's behind the walls all those things and he went he said he went to south africa he saw that he went to the muncie mcpherson as he traveled the whole world to see where how he's going to build the best mikveh for gold is green so you grew up and then you married into a home obviously and then you know again this is this is coming from my side you asked me my wife is uh can i know her all the way back to carista okay i nickel my my wife's grandfather was actually great grandfather was the woven kirstie after the war so she grew up oh i mean the world heard of kyrgyzstan today but uh she grew up here in kst since she's a baby i mean her grandmother went to christie in in the 60s or 70s she was i mean she wrote that oh my pathetic evans came uh you know you spoke by the convention this year very famous russia so you said that you have to have a moon bucket in the binary in the bible some people made jokes i haven't heard such words at the american convention but that's what you're talking about to be able you grew up it was baked into it it was baked into by the way that wasn't part of the speech it just came naturally it came out you do that very well i think that the reason you're sitting here today and the reason people connect you is because you don't do prepared speeches and you're just a guy who's speaking his heart it's a very either heart and people it resonates because everybody has challenges david shows all repeating from big ones but everybody's dealing with their things and they hear you speak and they say okay davis is good and he knows what he's doing and everybody needs to hear that yeah so that's what you're talking about and and i have to say um you know people go through things in life people say always assad they're cool i don't think anything changed i think that your family was always brought from a very addictive family your very very special home always themselves invite them like like my wife used to say hashem we you know we we have a house full of boys because i have five boys one daughter i tell everybody when they introduce them she's my best daughter she came after four boys but you need tv and davey to give you an idea these are my oldest kids davies bris was before my you disruption so we had three under the age of three my wife was governing that by when you're this option he should at least you shouldn't have three kids and pampers he should be out of diapers that was like uh and uh you know we we forget those days you know it was i've said this problem uh what question i tell to you somebody called me information about sv about your son i said i feel like this diamonds boys wake up at the morning and they say thank you hashem for making me assimilate you always had a very very special amen listen it has to be balanced you know because um i have to give full credit to my wife because sometimes me i get carried away and my wife has to remind me that you you're the father you're not one of the you know you're not a friend but hashem together was i have to be able to build a beautiful beautiful home and again it's not that i'm i i always like to give my kids a big enough playground to to you know room to maneuver but from my side i mean during corona wasn't easy for anybody let's let's face it i mean especially i'm talking about the first two months afterwards once uh you know we we know that nobody knows what's going on what i wish to feed but we had to follow a little bit the rules so so i had my house was actually the only place that we had minion from day one how did we do that i had my boys so i had right away i had the half the mini was uh me my boys it was my back porch my neighbor had two boys and my back neighbor so we had minnie right away and i told the kids okay you don't want to get up at seven o'clock and i used to i get up every day at 5 00 5 30. so i said okay we're going to make shakha at 8 o'clock to be a happy medium you know we had zoomed up here me before anyway so 8 o'clock and you know the kids got used to it my david he wasn't too happy but you know what then they said tati let me have my coffee i'll be at eight o'clock don't bother me just let me as long as i have my coffee before shots that's a little good to go let's talk a little about that he was he was very special all you boys are special look the good boy listen i said i should put this nasa we're talking about davi you know this is what i hold from all my boys everybody's special but now they should put this massive so we're here to talk about davi and then and and to bring to bring out his again can i bring everything out and see you know try to bring out at least uh he was he was a boy that was full of life vampire jaime he was proud of what he was he grew up again we we my kids we all went to massive without so that's how he grew up i'm clean-shaven because my father cleans my grandfather's clean shave so are my kids guys my kids go to literature retrievers but they still don't necessarily when it comes to rebels they go to rebels to go to to the nation that you know it's not that they had a tremendous pull to kadusa we have to make a you know there's a other if it's a youth or if it's a you know special shabbos or something it's there is some hope and you know what his literature she was appreciate those i mean he was very close to his austria he was his right-hand man again he's there's no they weren't it wasn't it's not an easy shiva i think he finished saying that every night at i think 11 30 or midnight hidata didn't want them to have it was a very late night seder because he didn't want them to uh he they didn't want them to be busy with uh with other things other things and and then this mice happened and also you became an ambassador overnight without even realizing it for a certain method from really the hospital although if you don't mind tell us a little bit about that shabbos what that shot was about where it was like the shabbos you know you got out of montreal friday already we got it yeah so basically we only found out at about 9 30 local time which was around i think was 4 30 ah my sansui was uh and it's a swallow and you know they wanted to have next of kin but sometimes enough cycle to last second i asked my cousin one of the rabies to go and and whether they should be there in his last swede's last vision of david i mean when they were there to get in the room as david is standing on top thumbs up he was everything's okay so he was with a smile and then and i wanted it to to stay that way so and it was a shabbos and i remember hearing the news obviously i don't even know if shock is the right word i don't i i can't i can't really explain the the emotional goal but i i kept on housing i remember telling it to my mind for my kids i mean it's obvious it's beyond comprehension i wish to feed them i wish to feed the world and okay and then i went into a very technical mode i said okay we have to get in order to get there so we have to leave from new york so we have to get to new york and we're gonna start we're gonna pack up and then we're gonna we're gonna make a flight to new york so we made it to muncie for travis my oldest son you gives a muncie so with that and i said namaste you know it's going to be a very hard choppers i mean we just got hit with the biggest trauma of our life and for all of us again as parents it's it's hard as siblings it's hard and guns cloudy so it was in shock i mean even before i heard of what happened i went to hamas i remember going out and i heard something happen in iran people got killed parents you know we didn't know at that point my stomach wasn't enough i had no clue because at that point i got two voice notes telling me that yeah david's okay we saw him he's accounted for even my my son is alive he we didn't like it we didn't even have a hashtag he made us a joke at that point was like we know how serious how severe the the situation was you know so anyway going back to trouble i said we have to try you know aina it was a very technical mode we did we said we're getting into new york my kids came in my kieva was in yeshiva there he you know i think he joined we all together for shabbos so we went to dublin friday night and um i mean i'm beyonce i mean i'm just like i'm trying to to to to be strong just i'm trying to be strong for the situation the end of the day i have a guys i have a wife have kids and then you know it's it's a challenge beyond uh we could ever imagine anyway so then i'm like without him and then i tell him where have you finished him in him for a couple shoppers by a line hotel i tell you you know what they say i want to have a couple shoppers i don't know why i'm struggling like a drinking cup you know and i've been putting a lot of drugs lately i mean i was shabbos to me in the muslin i had to be that moment already you already understood i felt you were reaching in and pulling i said listen i'm just going to sit there i'm not going to i'm going to how am i going to be my husband myself i'm i'm i'm sitting there shabbos i say no no i mean it wasn't a big million dollars friday night i don't know how many people were happening there but it wasn't in the massachusetts but i'm telling i was down limited i had to just let it out i almost broke down a couple of times and then i said if i'm going to break down the gun some smells great wine in the bagoon i'm i want a darvin to be my khasich if i don't get the hezik what's the point in the whole dublin and anyway again i said one step at a time one step at them we had you know we came home we made the shabbos see that we're sitting all together we're talking you know we're reminiscing it's even my sister-in-law's birthday was she she just got a package in the mail davey sent them a birthday birthday present it came it arrived that day you know like it's just such a good sky again we have we have a certain sense of humor in the simon's family which is uh you know sometimes we're trying you know sometimes that so you must have as you go someone you gave a hasped for the ages one second mata shabbas we left uh we went to jfk we have four months we had the flight on the way to the airport my wife gets a call from mrs gustatner just you know she knows it's friendly with her montreal and it gives her number right then she turned my wife turns around and calls mrs cohn she doesn't even know i mean our kids were friends he asked wasn't that magnificent together with davi and she calls mrs corn and i i'm so i was so i was impressed i mean my wife impressed me on we're married a long time so she's not looking to impress we we're not looking to impress each other anymore you know which fight but it was for her to have the koi hosted to do that to go call i mean this is the hardest time of our life we're going to edit this these hard hard times i mean this is this is times like this which you see again i need i said i'm going to rabbits and who knows i said [Music] so people are doing but it's very it's not but then the shiva you already had this thing you know the the what you were going to do with any mom until like you you came out the website anybody can go on imam.net and they see it i think i understand it's only going to lead to more things the more initiatives hashem you're just going to understand this is just the beginning the way it started wasn't my idea i'm not taking credit for it this is our oops idea bianca valley um and again we got up from trivia of shabbos and he speaks every every shabbos every shabbat sorry before missing for five minutes he says what can we do to to and obviously i mean the whole the whole business matters was the club the whole world was the club what can we hear it hit home i mean this is the kid that grew up in the show his bris was there his upshame was there his his skirmishes was there his graduation was bar mitzvah was there everything i mean my kids are part of the show my uh like i mean my swears father we had four uh five how many generations i swear i lost track my head's not working so we had we were the only we were the first one to have my my desire my father was the first era nickel because nobody had this was a new thing oh yeah so suddenly all my grandfather's friends my wife's grandfather they have a little mascot going on over here they never had this before and then unfortunately not anymore but they grew up they were part of the sifter they they grew up in the school was there the mismatches was there your wife said that yeah said in the morning how would she either give ticking after darling there's some danishes whatever so he was in charge of things so they were cut in half old eye machine and he didn't get all that your kids would come in he gave them a hole it was a special style of its privilege he was he was the sheriff yeah he was in church so they were privileged citizens for sure yeah the move gets up so the wolf gets up and and he says what can we do episcopal episteme you know something small so he said he printed out his animal cards it takes 90 seconds and what the same happens in david and he gave it out to the show i think he said that sansa would have said to say any moment right anyway so let's he gave other cards and that was it i said let me see if i can get to a thousand people on the first shabbos on the bed by the first sunday because this is much sharper and let me hit ten thousand by next sunday and after that we'll see what i wish to shake i can't uh so what are my struggles again one i figured every person that's saying an imam is another stress it's not disgusting anyway i started calling all my friends and cousins and any connections that i had and my kids helped me in that and i started sending a whatsapp and then you know again i was never into whatsapps and things i mean i had it but i wasn't into the whole status and this and that and you know people told me today's age you want to get you want to get the word out you have to there so then we did the first i was just sending text and text and then they said no make a little clip and we sent the you know 30 second clip and and it went around and the master we hit like 10 000 people in the first week and it's like wow as i started printing the cards i ordered first i ordered like a 3 000 or 5 000 or 10 000 and people asking for more we're getting schools on board and moistures and and different con cities and we went i mean nowadays i'm printing them 30 000 at the time and that's okay let's learn english so we we we now we're doing a we had a few name but it was mainly because we had a little bit of english now we actually have we printed in yiddish also we printed also in in russian we had a campaign going now in ukraine not long ago before this whole uh this the war broke out how did that happen how do you think about ukraine i mean i'm not i'm not i'm not ukrainian i mean yeah madame i had the i wanted my kabum again the people are helping in in this is just people who are inspired they want to give they get increasing they want to give physique that's that's that's that's what it was all about so they wanted to the the guy i hired to do the slideshow again going back i want why they do this i mean i had to do this livestream over there my my son's he was and i felt bad for all davis friends david was so everything for his friends he stealthy shabbos even miranda they didn't just go to maron and and you know he went they they rented a an apartment the villa they went with 20 bohan they made the high rotten he was going the air of shabbos he went he was it was going in all in he went to see he went they got their wednesday after they went after say they told me they'd have to say that they could set up the house they're going to have to stand thursday by day whenever abundantly was able to go he was [Music] he was and again it wasn't just for him he showed me pictures look i i got i got hundreds and hundreds of bottles we're going to give out to him you know so that that was what he was so we're doing this in davis because david you know we made the for these close friends probably must have been about 150 boys there and it was a very very it gave him a lot of physique gave hezek for you know that one who spoke his rebellion spoke their friend whatever it was it was it was immature so the cater which i don't know but i had to hire somebody he was so he said they want to help i can i said okay we'll see so we'll start printing yeah you'll send me we'll send to this seminary that show this or whatever you know we're trying to spread it out so we printed about in february whenever it was the two months ago uh and the dragon we printed ten thousand uh in etsy sold again he goes to the print xk of it i just give my credit card but you know hashem i mean i have a quesada for him so he calls me up he says this guy he bumped a guy called hillel coin came to this sort of thing i never heard of hillary clinton i don't even know if you know hillary clinton they said no he goes to ukraine and he does a lot of with all the kids and they say do i mind if he takes a few thousand cards he's going out there anyway he wants to make a whole uh hezekiah sure ukraine anyway he went to ukraine the whole shop was in measurements and some of the kids they they made the whole thing and they they memorized animal and these nine-year-old ukrainian kids about shiva's i don't know any moment by heart they yeah let me interrupt you a minute if somebody wants to reach out to you directly and get the cards or is there go on the website the best thing is you go on the website we do animal.net you again this is this is being built there's there's also we have hazeldavi gmail.com or on the website c-h-a-s-d-e-i-d-o-v-i u-v-i if they want to actually get the card for their schools anybody wants and we get you've been going i want to say something here i hope it comes out i hope what i'm trying to say you could say anima and the whole world and and and talk about the ideology and the theology and the philosophy of amuna and then you could just give over muno with the way you're being without saying very very much anger in the binder i i woke up poor morning last week early was you never seeking and my first thought was for you what must porn be like you know last year and to this year last year coming off the heels of a simcha and i checked his status like i do always and the first thing he wrote was a phrasalistic perm with like a smiley face that was your first thing in your status i said myself what is it to do that that means not only not only are we going are we going enjoy your par be happy that that's that's that's very big where does that come from how do you do that is it's communicating it without the words although i have to say i didn't say any moment before this to be honest with you i should have wanted to whatever it changes your day attacker takes it doesn't take you said 40 seconds it takes a bit oh it says 90 seconds yeah it takes it was better than half two minutes but it changes the day it frames the whole day and once you remember that who's is i didn't make it up this is it was always there i've been saying it for many many years i never told my kids to say it either my kids say because this is why i said it says i remember the day the day when we were still looking for davie at that point i said he's going to be the most wanted person because every hospital called other parliamentary stimulus like we were i had so many i screwed them looking for him all over and nothing for all the school and we're not going to name them but at the end of the day this is what i'm sure wanted and yuri sent me a picture he went to the remnants of them and he went and then he sent me victory i went to dave on imam in this is before we even think we sang anima on the first day of shiva how did i start seeing that it wasn't under with the campaign we didn't even think of that kind of assets all we had hundreds of boys you know i mean the house was full we had thousands of people okay he says i thought to myself so what's the song that davey liked one of them and we started singing is [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Applause] [Music] [Applause] is [Applause] [Music] [Applause] every every one of the 45 kardashians families and every single one of them has a lot of parents who are broken or children who are broken or spouses who are broken everybody with their own heartbreak do you have any any connection to them do you feel like davi you're just the spokesman for all those families because you're probably in a certain way the most well-known in america you you talk a lot and you're out there good do you have a connection to them i i feel the way dovie was for he was always there for everybody i mean so i'm i want to try to take something his strengths he was he was such a giving person he was such a git skype with a vampire and things he would do that people knew or people that didn't know he would help you know he would he would learn they didn't even know that they needed help he could not know he had such a good health cup he was not saying he just forgottens a lot yes he was good he was learning stealth and he knew you know with the shiva how to you know but then again he'll go he'll go skiing also he'll go have a hockey game it's okay we gave our kids enough leeway to again and i think that's why your message resonates with people because they identify with you you're just a guy from shul regular guy and and and look look what he did listen again i wonder if you have other families are you involved with them i'm i'm in contact with some of the families but i wanted to again i felt initially when we came in we went that's this wall we came for levi i was there for six hours i was in and out and and i felt like again we were also clubbed i mean the pain that we're going through or every single family is going through it's we can't measure it nobody should ever have to go through what we went through and i spoke to my my first cousin he said you know what maybe we should go just you should be my street and go be nakamura with all the families you know what i went by again i i came to my i left i'm back home i have food on the table some of these families they can't manage forget about the fact that they lost a loved one they can't even function needing the regular daily things and and that really i felt like you know what davio was together let's at least try and we did a few things behind the scenes we're trying to help whatever we can again i wanna i'm doing for davis but i i we we generally feel the it hurts everybody and maybe by doing something for other people it it's going to give hazard for everyone i didn't choose this this is this is the i've made a lot of new friends in the last 11 months you've got to meet different communities different demographics you've and you're you're new at this and you're already giving credit to other people uh i don't know we tried the ibis of him and we were trying to be muhammad daily i mean this is not this every day you know we think and i can't wrap my head around what happened but i tried to be my hazard every single day i'm very close to the version and i know he came to me when again even before we search everything we saw you know and again i'm repeating i lived it my whole life the minute it's part of you you can't it doesn't happen overnight you talk after hazard you have to and especially when you get hit with such such thing it's just you're getting caught because you tell me you have questions i don't know what's going on because i know where i'm getting from i said i'm from the game of course i'm just going i'm going and we'll see what the ibishop tells me i didn't know i'm going to get to thousands and thousands of people again i didn't know it's again 100 it's hard to express where i'm going you know you're asking me where the people are getting to the i'm meeting new people you're just going very very day and you're just sharing what's inside of you i've been traveling a lot on business over the past few weeks different communities i mean you have from hasidis to modern to american to litvish to to every i i'm getting dozens of messages every week people are coming over to me people are telling me that hezekiah's giving i'm very happy to hear that it's giving me physique too but i'm happy people shouldn't do it again i want to do it for davis that's how i started i said he needs them but it's giving the per the people are getting the physique they need it for themselves again this is not mean we're doing this with we we've never seen anything like this it has to be it has to be and then maybe this is what i wanted in order to a little more again uh just in closing what blows me away and i think the people who know you are amazed not by the moon i think you didn't have a moon it's not a secret it's your ability to to make it into into reality to walk around and give off that vibe of the ibrahimovic knows what he's doing i see you every day and that's the vibe you give off that's an incredible thing listen even though davey what he's i used to tell i used to be upset where he says hashem that's they used to talk every second day we said it's okay let's go with the game that's okay you know he was that's the type of boy he was he was a brighton a good sky he would always i got his last credit card bill i help my kids whatever they need you know what what was in that bill that those kind of bills i didn't pay and his friends told me that every month he always said i should help him most of those bills was to document these kind of he had a tremendous ability to see what other people needed even showed me a letter from a friend of mine yeshiva that was i had a good voice but was shy to do that and then davey mamas would coach these people and build them up and lead them up by the end to see it for a young boy to be that sensitive and that he was there he and this is another example my sons we got engaged and david was near to soldiers he couldn't come home for the you know the height of the corona nobody's traveling shut down so he said tatia making uh in the basis rule you know and his dear so there i i can't remember if it was a kiddish or if it was in the weekday but whoever didn't have corona then definitely gathered that that there was a few hundred people that showed up and but who did you know he took who helped him with this thing he had a book that he was friendly with this book came over to me by the uh we we actually but akumas matsai when i'm remembering you know this guy came over to me uh i forgot his name but it's irrelevant actually and he just won't tell me he was friends with davey and you should know that when i made this kiddish david was so into it he wanted to give this book to do all the cooking and the preparation and the chickens and the this it was i don't know if it was a useless i can't remember exactly what i did what he needed and he came and you know not he was into it and he did it and he was happy i mean they had a few hundred bochum show up there that's that's that's what he was who lost who lost avi their lives will never be the same felt like you understood them too that you're able to make it about them also they all felt like they could talk to you you your wife understood them that it's like a family of davies people he he earned his way into people's hearts he was you're on his way so it's a good way of putting us that's that's what i do that's going to be trees oh my gosh thank you for coming in thank you for what you're doing all of us together and we should see see the great day all right again i wanna i don't know if you want me to mention this in the middle of doing the animal and book for davis but tell us a little bit for sure again we're doing many projects we're trying again i don't know where i'm getting listen i'm sitting here i was never here before it's very nice but one of the projects that we're working on now which i mentioned we're going to have it after like haskell elias started writing a very very eloquent and talented excellent writer so we're doing there's a lot of touch on that imam it's going to be giving up mentioned by art school and again this is part of internalizing a little more we want to turn over the world in davishes to give people there should be a simplest follow you then [Music] you