Mindflex- The Incredible Journey of The Traveling Chassidim pt. 1

good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome back to mineflex from project inspire and today we have another exciting session here ahead of us an interview a live interview with the group that you've come to love and know called the traveling qasidim and it's my great honor to have with us tonight here rabbi arya roy rabbi arie roid is uh the founder of the traveling hasidim and as we go through today and our second part that will be aired tomorrow we look forward to getting to know arie a little bit better we get we look forward to getting to know hasidim a little bit better and to understand how the traveling has seen them both in concept and group came to be rabbi arya roy it's a pleasure having you on with mindflex hello good evening thank you for having me jesse you're very welcome okay so let's get let's get right to it everybody the viewers you know some of them have heard you some of them have really come to love what you guys do it's spectacular we'll get to that but tell us about you are you where'd you grow up you know before you got thrown into this whole you know mess of things with the traveling just see them and project inspire you know how did you grow up you know tell us a little bit about yourself thank you you could say that again the mess my life is so wildly changed around um so i was brought up in manchester england i know i'm losing the accent somewhat but i'll try my best to keep it um so we were brought up in a typical constitutional home maybe a little not so typical um because england manchester back in the days wasn't so hassidish so i most of my friends were not necessarily hasidic my my word of family are not acidic either my parents are sent me to reside schools but all of my cousins i don't have any hasidisha blood or sadistic cousins explain to explain this when you say blood you know the you know the world out there obviously views you know acidic blood as being like the ultra orthodox the maybe even sometimes the extremist view what does it mean to grow up in a community or in a family of in terms of upbringing you know which will obviously contrast your involvement today so i see two questions there first what do you mean consider your blood so y'all say i don't want to put you on the spot but you have consideration and i don't i have a serious blood that is correct that's right so i have i have bells of blood wow i don't the difference is my children join your children don't have so much so this blood would mean you'll see where you come from you know from the shtetl somewhere in europe so your your cities your grandparents you know they they belong to a hasidic group and i i don't have any of that i mean further back i do have somewhat but for the most part my my my parents their parents they lived in england actually my mother's parents lived in scotland they have some scottish blood and before before there was also england some of non-christian ultra-orthodox bernankercitis and further back there were some cassidy blood but there wasn't much of heartbreak is that for all of my cousins or not they're being brought up in the ultra um orthodox world and the hasidic world again i reiterate in manchester when i was growing up it wasn't like we would have like boro park today and you only know of hasidim and you only your neighbors only consider him and when they go out of town they go to williamsburg which is awesome so manchester was different and my friends and classmates weren't only just but still my upbringing was the warmth of a hasidisha family which means you know the longer davenings and singing and dance singing dancing and then you know the herring and the kettle after dabbling and long shabbos meals which are not just strictly you know shabbos dinner shabbat dinner you know with a song or two but you're much more singing and much more free would it be fair to say that it was a that that in general the hasidic upbringing is sort of a close-knit community of living within your quarters and not necessarily the type to um notice get involved with interact with outside you know groups beyond that absolutely absolutely um as in the facts today ideologically ideology no that means the the idealist of sorry the philosophy of of her citizen was certainly not that but today yeah absolutely and you know after the war people come to america or england and we were we were so few in number so we had to keep it small and keep it safe not small necessarily keep it safe so yes we would certainly see them for the most part are certainly much more in the box closed so that the you know things from the street elements from the bad elements you know from the streets shouldn't come in or penetrate our lives and yes absolutely we were closed up in the union this is a big place not to see the world out there excellent so and that and that i guess goes with the stereotype sort of how people view the hasidic sects of judaism is that you have your community you have your shops you have your synagogues you have your your social circles and really that's it not necessarily not necessarily the type who would be involved in reaching out beyond their communities to jews around them necessarily correct okay rabari i'm going to stop you here because we actually have your brother or your brother robert israel roy with us here who's going to join us and now that we know that you've joined that you know the background that you come from we're going to we're going to double team in terms of being able to get rid of yes roll roid and robario roy welcome robert estrella roy to our conversation here about the traveling crm excellent happy to have you so i wish you want to i want to go right into what i guess is the the crux of the conversation over here which is that you know arya explained you grew up in a very what's cool you know sort of a tight-knit community and hasidim in general are known to be in their tight-knit communities of you know and and the sects and the you know around them and the shulls and the synagogues that you pray and the shops that you shop in yet today you guys run one of the most uh profound exciting and dynamic outreach organizations called the traveling crusade and before we get to what you guys do and the impact that you've had tell us a little bit about your involvement and how you guys got involved and i'll ask you first every strawberry will go back to you wherever you were in terms of your involvement like how did this get started so we just we were interested in it with but without knowing how to we did take the the training by project inspire and that really gave us the push with the knowledge on the tools as well now the fact that we are hasidem so we do know that there's unfortunately some major illusional barriers between the world and us they with the misconception that we have that we have the the barriers so the fact that we are so open and friendly to the outside world this without doing any curve whatsoever number one just breaks the barriers hey the casino the non-stop they're not storm throwers they're actually friendly normal guys and that without knowing any curve this itself is the best work okay so so excellent so i'm going to put this back at you you know aria because you know what while r well your brother israel is explaining is 100 true and we know it to be true but you had to expect that entering this realm that people were going to view you guys as sort of like what in the world do you feel you know how in the world do you feel that you could contribute to this field on any level so yeah yeah absolutely right it wasn't as so simple at all and we did feel that who are we and as my brother so eloquently says we we're viewed as stone throwers sometimes unfortunately so we we are we have to wake through that within ourselves um it's a calling we have you know although you mentioned your aussie that has general arc in the close-knit community and closed off to the to the outside world we are we we belong to the bells sect has our leader our rabbi the belgian rabbi he actually encourages outreach and although the hasidim looked the same and we all still have our tight-knit community but he talks about it a lot so about going out to reaching out to brothers and sisters out there so we have to overcome that but when you're asking what could we add what we could add is i think and project inspire taught us this a lot that many times people want to connect two jews meet each other they want to connect but there's this barrier because they will probably not accept us so now if there's someone no offense you'll see but someone like you you're out there and you say hello to someone who is who is you know distanced or not so connected to judaism they'll say oh you know he looks more or less like us he does have a yamakura and he says he looks more or less so why not so he's nice he accepts me he's not one of those all two orthodox but the real jews the ultra orthodox the hasidim they'll never accept us because we're so different so we thought we have that a little more than other someone else because if we could just go out there and be nice and friendly and accept everyone with love subconsciously there's this you know the impact is so much stronger that even view us as human beings a and b as jews and as literally brothers and sisters that that's what we noticed could have an impact and over 10 years doing this we saw wow it does have an impact when they say wow we accept it you know i i i i it's amazing you're pointing that out and what's coming to my mind over here israel is that it's it's almost it's almost the um your responsibility and what i mean to say is when people are approached by you and i know you and i know both of you for a long time now and i know that there's no one there's no jew there's no jew that i would like to introduce another due to than the two of you but but you but realize when you approach people do you feel that sort of there's a responsibility of like if they can figure out how to connect to me then they'll view jews and religious jews in general in better light and want to connect to them as well your thoughts on that you throw absolutely but but as arya just said it works so easily by the saying i don't have to think they see that i'm not even thinking twice is he my brother are we the same type or not no it's so just part of me that he is my brother equally the fact that i wear different types of clothing all my parents raised me different doesn't make me the slightest different than him he sees that in a it takes a second and then then we just continue from there onwards right and so you say it's the brothership and that that connection with the recognition sort of off the off the bat knowing that we're brothers that that's that connection you know uh from the beginning the brotherhood and then it's then he sees a joy in the hasidim that is the second step that that we do well we're gonna we're gonna get to what that has sort of you know brought to this but but arya you know renault weinberg obviously was the founder of isha torah and he was the you know sort of the inspiration of many many jews who came closer to judaism and some of them became religious jews and have families and even grandchildren some great-grandchildren today as well he wasn't necessarily the inspiration of the religious community until sort of project inspired brought that to light within the religious community but somehow you connected with that in a very strong way tell us about that boy did i connect with a holy rabbi you ever know if one works blessed memory so um i have i even have a son called noah from named after him he is our inspiration so tell us tell us what that connection was like are you so yeah so i actually teach now you know on a daily basis i teach the seminaries and the teacher all over um really really i teach what he he taught me so that it was it was like epiphany um i looked as we discussed before i i was in the kassidish world and i learned in the khasirishi yeshivas and i was doing pretty well if i may say that was strictly intellectual study learning i had a connection with the torah i was studying but i don't have to say this on a you know kosher way how much of that connected meat my inner soul how much of that connected me to my god is it my personal relationship to the almighty or is it i'm i mean could you i keep shabbat i i you know i eat kosher i study the talmud is it me is it my torah is it my god is it my soul i'm in touch with and it was it was it was project inspire that that got me to him hear his torah a bit and i listened to a class or two of his i was blown away one message one message per se was it that that got into your into your very being as we said you designed my kiskus my beans two things oh really three things number one it's truth that means he pushed a lot that message how truthfulness the torah is and how it's possible to prove every aspect of torah and judaism is true so that was good that wasn't yet the home run it was good i was happy to hear that you can ask any question and there are answers we don't believe in blind faith judaism isn't the religion of faith we know we know the answers that's true so i like that a lot resonators what i liked more was his idea of torah scheim which means instructions for living you cannot live without instructions you you buy a camera it comes with a user's manual if you want to fly a boeing 747 you're not just going to read the user's manual you're going to go to flyers school and sit with a flying instructor until you're comfortable life is slightly more complicated than flying a boeing 747 and we need to use this manual and notorious our guides and that's what he that's what he taught me he told me that it's it's it's our life and if you want to have a happy marriage great relationship to your children and anything else you gotta follow the user's manual make sure this is your life that's number two number three is the joy and duties which is uh you know wherever was my rabbi it still is he didn't teach me to dance i wasn't part of it we'll get to the hasidim tomb but the idea of judaism isn't about you better do this or there's consequences it's not about heaven or hell it's about this is your pleasure judaism is all about it's my greatest pleasure to have a deep meaningful intimate relationship with almighty so it's not just i have to and it's true but it's pleasure and if once i started feeling that we felt a moral obligation like unfortunately people don't know a that is true and b that's fun it's pleasure there's no greater pleasure of a great relationship with that i i'm gonna ask you before i get you so i'm going to ask you a very uh um funny question did you ever meet with noah weinberg never never yet and yet sitting sitting right behind you is a picture on your wall i'll know weinberg a blessed memory who obviously had a tremendous impact on i never met him i only heard about him about a year before he passed away and i tried once he was very unwell and um but yeah i never met him but doesn't doesn't go by a day which i don't talk about him amazing you know i i actually did meet him once but tell us about it but then when i met him i was involved in care of and i knew that rimnoyef was a big care of a professional i'm the leader of care but i wasn't yet a student of his but it was a major honor for me that i met him and afterwards i also i became a talmud of his a student of his unfortunately after his his material after his death but he's living with us every day we're growing with him i have next to um in my desk next in my farm his will his last his last will that is um which is one of the most important messages that i have for him that since torah is our life i'm gonna focus more on the second thing which arya was saying more about taurus instruction for our living this is the most amazing lifestyle based on everything notorious tora's going to teach me about happiness marriage love relationships education anything growth everything is in it from the torah and then the second step which is really what redneck taught us is it's my obligation to to continue this god gave me the instruction book i'm extremely fortunate that my parents raised me this way and i'm extremely fortunate that franklin spy helped me find him more which taught me that this is our life and this is our being so now it's our responsibility and the world needs my work and my brother's work and everyone's so here you guys are you're inspired by revenue weinberg's message you've internalized his is his world view you've you've understood that taking torah as an instruction book for living and being able to pass on that message to those who maybe didn't grow up with this as their instruction book for living and you decide out of the blue or was it out of the blue to create this group called the traveling casino this crazy idea are you tell us about how this idea came to be how you dragged your brother along for the ride and made him you know sort of your your partner in crime in this so it wasn't like one moment uh flash ideal that's traveling crusader um i must say rabbi samson was a lot behind again not traveling considering but she just he didn't leave me alone i went to many of his classes and he knew that i'm warming up to this whole cure of idea outreach and he was like no rebarrier what are you doing i don't know i'm smiling to my neighbors well you got to do something more and i was always that it was i mean maybe it was like guilt i was embarrassed to meet him again and i had to do something we were always coming up with ideas and um actually my partner as you'll see i think he's coming on soon ellie benetti we used to knock on doors in our areas like hanukkah time where we saw minori in the window i went with my brother too actually in hanukkah we would hand out him panicky gifts we tried to do bits and pieces of things anyway when the moment came i was actually in wilkes-barre pennsylvania with one of the rabbis vegetarian that were teaching the discovery seminar which is the seminar which teaches all the proofs to prove god's existence towards divine and all that and i was following along um learning the material which is i wanted to be a lecturer too and i was sitting in the audience now this audience wasn't was a secular audience or less affiliated rabbi was orthodox rabbi and he wrote in the discovery seminar and i was sitting in the audience the rabbi of the synagogue came over to me and he said you seem to be familiar with the speaker or the material i just want to share with you that i don't think this material or the seminar is going to do much for my community it's not going to shake my community people are going to walk out of here saying that was beautiful wow it's amazing you can prove it nobody's gonna change their life around because of it so i said okay that's a positive compliment what can i what can i do he says you know what we need we just need to bring in some kassidium to sing and dance this is his idea he said we just need to have some casinos some warmth and show them the beauty of shabbos i said i'm game you know i'm coming to your community where do i sign up that's right so so he you know i said no i'd love to come to you and he said he said i gave him my name and you know he said okay so let's be in touch um i gave him my name he said i'm never going to remember this name so he said he put me down in his contacts as traveling so we'll stay in touch okay so he put me down in his contacts as the traveling crusader okay i mean well simple name if i'm across it i'm coming to him and traveling to him i guess traveling cassidy work i actually forgot about the incident no oh i'll put it in the back of my mind cool maybe i'll go with a few of my friends to walk small friends already a week after i met him isha torre ran their yearly um [Music] convention weekends now since i was really getting involved in kira i went i went to that weekend i went with a couple of my friends ali burnett and a few of my friends and we spent travis in a hotel with a with um with isha torre now no offense there wasn't too much singing there it was beautiful shabbos but asiator didn't there wasn't so much singing over that shadows so we asked the city and we just friday night after the lectures we took one table and we sat and sang we just sang like for an hour straight we enjoyed ourselves so there's a guy walking past he says you know this sounds so smack as we say so great so beautiful he says i'm a rabbi in philadelphia actually an israeli in philadelphia and you know this would be so beautiful if you come to our community and just do what you're doing just do that come to my community and sing i said yeah with the traveling considering we're going to oxbow in three weeks from now we do this so he says he says are you available perhaps next week already i said i'll speak to my secretary i'll get back to you so we actually got back to him and i said you know where there's availability so we actually went to philadelphia before we got to oxford so that next shabbos was the shabbos hanukkah it was just saturday 11th anniversary 11 years ago um chavez chanukah went to philadelphia a week after that we went to earth it goes two weeks after we went to waxborough pennsylvania by then we were veterans we knew how to do it and we were come plans we had the group so i got my group of friends i said you know we gotta go to philadelphia for chavez to be no clue we're just going to philadelphia for shabbos we're going to do what we do at home we're going to sing and dance israel tell tell us what it is you come to wilkes-barre pennsylvania you show up on the shores i'm sure the eyes were bulging on this group of yours what's your take what was the impact you guys ended up having on that weekend i was blown away right from the beginning i didn't know what to expect i come in ponytails all types yes keepers no no no no keepers and i even though i like to be um i like to welcome people but then i'll film you in it had to back my lips are going to go to people hi shalom and introducing myself yes what do you want i got some of those responses i came to enjoy shabbos together together to get together with you and so that's how we started on friday night a few cold shallows to them shabbat shalom but slowly but surely the casino themselves we cooled up we were getting more relaxed and we're breaking breaking the ice together and that's how we started off the cabal shabbat exactly what songs to sing we didn't really know we tried a thing now our cousin had never sang before in such an audience he didn't really know the no stuff but it was nice and we danced and then by the meal started bringing them through and the the the all the people there as i said with the with it with with the ponytails were without the keepers and they just started singing along with us it became a nice friendly movement and slowly but surely we are seeing how much the world needs it and it there's nothing to be afraid of the casino we don't have to be afraid of ponytails or no head coverings or short sleeves by the other side of the other side of the normal pizza we're just all brothers and sisters laughing together and we we just clicked by the end of towards the end of shabbos they were already telling us he better come back next year now let me fast forward it half of the community in the wilkesboro were upset at the rabbi you're bringing the hasidim into our community real treason you know so you're corrupting you're corrupting society and they didn't come 50 of the community didn't come next the following year when we went back to the same place i saw many new faces and they told me last year i was upset at the rabbit for bringing herself right after shabbos i heard all along how much i missed it i made short of a year now wow wow and i guess that gives you a feeling of you know you you really broke down the barriers that that you thought maybe not even possible or that other people thought not be not possible are you what did that give you in terms of inspiration of like we can continue to do this so my brother answered on you know the waxbury experience that was our second showers our first one i was at and i had mixed feelings because part of being being worked up in the hassetta close-knit community the only pets we have are more children okay so when i got to philadelphia the first time as i said we have no clue what's going on we knocked in the door my wife was next to me i had a couple of kids i don't remember how many i had then 10 years ago and the first welcome was barking from behind the door and my wife looks at me who came up with this idea of traveling considering so we there was was dogs in the house out that first shabbos now no offense to all the dog lovers which personally by now my family loves dogs because we've stayed in so many houses they have so it was interesting we weren't used to it and i was like uh we were slightly uncomfortable but over shabbos when we saw how the message resonates we weren't cured of professionals we play we just sat in show and senegal and over the the shabbaton we were singing and getting to know people it resonated people were afraid as my brother would say initially there's there's this distance but it resonated that w that we are family and i said if that works we're gonna do this every week because we just need to share that message of of of whether word love unity amazing you know you saw there are many people who want to share want to share judaism with others they do and you know but but but here you are faced with a situation where you were you weren't only sharing judaism you were you were sharing the the feeling of hasidis and the feeling of what you had inside of you with others when did you realize that that was something that you can get people to connect to one shabbos it was in um some place in maryland and after shabbos this lady came up to me she told me that that when we came she was very upset i see them judgmental should the whole whole challenge is going to he's going to be busy what clothing am i wearing what i'm eating did i make a bracha or not and and they're going to be busy with this i enjoyed the shabbos by the end of shabbas i realized i was the only judgemental person over there because they're non-judgmental so this is definitely it's step number one how we how we look at our brothers and sisters if we're judging them why are they acting like this you've lost before you start giving your sermon if you show them that we're equal brothers and sisters we are all on the same page we're all living in god's world we're all growing together we all have to spread god's word from wherever we are if i began from born and raised hasidic as my brother says bfb bells from birth which i was not bills from birth i was i was not hasidic spreading the word from where we're holding or a person which is totally as unaffiliated but he just knows about god okay if you know that god created the world spread it and don't judge someone doesn't know about god and that is our ultimate message we're all brothers and sisters there's no judging each other just loving each other amazing i know i know you saw i know that we've we borrowed you for more time than you anticipated i know that you're going to teach a class and i'm going to continue with arya and we have uh rabbi ellie bennett who's going to join us as well but i want to thank you so much not only for joining us here but for everything that you do and continue to do and my blessing to you is that the world gets back on its feet quick enough for you guys to start traveling again and making a tremendous impact on communities amen our main and thanks to you it was in the merit of yasser friedman pratchenspan isha toro that were able to do our work keep up your good work good to see you thank you go ahead keep keep inspiring people thank you