American Leadership (Ep.326)

Hi, this is Dr. Olowski and welcome to the Robert Olowski show. Thank you for that spontaneous burst of applause. To those of you watching with our friends and producers over at Tor anytime, wherever you watch or listen to your podcast, as always, it's nice to have you along. I wanted to give a shout out about our merch. People keep asking about our merch. We have the mugs with sweatshirts. You can make your own Rabbi mug with your own expression on it. We've got the aprons. We got all kinds of exciting things. Go check out rabiolowski.com/merch where you can uh see some of the exciting things that we have over there. Very good. Okay. Um the sponsor is a continuous series that we have in honor of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States where and we're talking mostly about famous characters uh who helped to uh build America. You saw an interesting uh video recently. Um it was a clip from a comedian uh Bill Bill Maher and uh he said something very interesting. He said he didn't say this but this is my quote. Voltater said that the perfect is the enemy of the good and that, you know, they went through this series where they were tearing down statues of people because they weren't perfect. Why then they would put up a a statue of George Floyd who was a criminal, I don't understand. But, you know, I guess at least he never pretended to have done anything. But they start pulling down. Delasio took out the um statue of Thomas Jefferson. People were pulling down other famous people. You know why? Because they weren't perfect. And uh his that that's the introduction. What he was saying is that sometimes imperfect people can do a lot of good things. And uh a person has to acknowledge the fact that when somebody does something good, whether or not they're perfect or not is irrelevant. And this is a terrible problem I have to say. Um over Pesak I met several people whose kids just stop talking to them. You know they always have a reason. I went left said you know people talk about sinum hatred for no reason. There's no such a thing as hatred for no reason. There's always a reason. It's just not a good reason you know. And uh uh people don't open up the phone book and pick out a name and say like you know I'm going to hate this person. Of course not. There's always something. It's just not a good enough reason to hate somebody. Especially when the mitzvah and when there's mitzvah and uh you know and it brings a and all those things like that, you know. And so uh I met a number a number of families one or more of the kids just stopped talking to them. And uh I said how do they justify this? And so they went to a pisk went to a pisk. Now, how any POS could possibly pos in a situation without talking to somebody is beyond me. When I was in NCSY, I had this kid who kept getting into trouble. And each time he'd say, "Please, please don't tell my mother because my stepfather is going to beat me. You know, he's violent." And uh, okay. And this went on for a while until finally the mother reached out to me and said, "Is my son making trouble in NCSY?" I said, 'Well, and he said, 'd did he tell you that my husband beats him?' And I said, um, well, he said, cuz he did that in school and he did that in the Boy Scouts and he does that in other places to get out of things. He tells this lie. It's not true. My my my husband is the most wonderful person in the world. Would never do anything to him, you know. So uh so a person here instead of me reaching out to the mother and finding out the story I just bought the kid story. So someone goes to a pis and says, "Oh, my parents are this, my parents are that and they give them aim." When the Gmorian Kaducian says that uh you know uh this this kib aim goes even if your mother throws your money into the ocean even if she she walked into the Senate and ripped his begott him and you know all these other kind of things that people did and you still have a mitzvah give and and somebody is going to be so cavalier about it you know so the answer is I'm sure you could find up reasons why parents aren't Perfect. But I said to one of them, I said, "Just work out how much your parents spent on you from the time you were born till now. Just work out the amount of money they spent on you. You don't owe them any for that." This is this is a maka in our generation. You know, it's a terrible terrible thing. Um I I've mentioned this already from Misha Shapiro where he said the gimmar says that the reason that the story of a scholam is next to the story of go is because you might the kap the kapim that talks about it is because you might think oh all the nations of the world will rebel against their father in heaven. I'll show you that a son will rebel against his father and says Mosha Shapiro the way you know that we're in the time of Gagamog is you can find children rebelling against their parents for no reason and it's just it's an amazing thing so uh as we go down the list of the president United States nobody here is perfect I know um people sometimes have a lot of criticisms of Donald Trump and uh I think Ben Shapiro once said he goes I didn't vote for him to be chief rabbi I didn't vote for him to be pope I voted for him to be president of United States and do the best job that he could for America and that's it and so you know whether or not different people have uh uh done things that uh problematic we have to look at them as far as their contribution goes to history and that's the message that's what you always have to look had um apparently uh the fellow Schindler upon whom the film Schindler's List was based himself was not a very moral individual. I don't really care because he saved a lot of Jews and what he does in his own what Oscar did in his own life and what he does in his own relationships is of no concern to me, you know, because we're looking at the end result. So um we have a uh um a short biographical information on a number of presidents of the United States and um I remember reading a book once upon a time. I think I mentioned this all the way back in my podcast where I talked about different books to read. This was in my non-fiction uh series called They Also Ran. And it was a um biography of the people who lost the presidency in each instance and how if you understand from that um from that election, you get a picture of what was going on in America. We mentioned this when we talked about Abraham Lincoln that a lot of people don't appreciate the fact that he barely was reelected in 1864. uh almost losing out to Mlelen and Mlelen himself was not a positive force in American politics but it didn't make a difference because he almost lost out to him. That's how it works. And so um uh you you look at somebody not just in the context of who they were but the context of where they were coming from and what was going on at the time etc. and all the things that went with it. you know, um people people were upset that uh when they put together the constitution, they uh they didn't outlaw slavery because they had a choice. They could make an imperfect country or they could make a perfect country that wouldn't exist. So, you had to make a choice. And uh and John Adams was a fiery abolitionist. And Jefferson in even though he owned slaves, he wanted to outlaw slavery in the constitution, but he realized that he would lose the southern states and he wouldn't have a country. So we did what we do best in America. We put it off till later. And of course, we had to fight the Civil War in order to do that. But uh the um the fact is that sometimes you you deal with the situation that you have. I'll not forget Donald Trump when he passed what he called the one big beautiful bill which is so Trumpian to do to call a bill the one big beautiful bill. But uh there were people who were complaining and he says you're right that's politics. If I want to get this person's vote I'm going to have to put in this. I want to get this person's vote this. So, I did the best that I could with the situation that we had. And it's very interesting because we're going to talk about Lyndon Johnson, but when Johnson was in the Senate, um there was a fiery liberal senator by the name of Yubert Humphrey. And uh Johnson who was a southern Democrat, he was close with all of the real, you know, uh racists in the south who the Democrats controlled and all these things like this. And he took you and Humphrey under his wing and he said, "Listen," he says, "we're going to get done what we can get done. We're not going to be able to do everything, but whatever we do is a step forward and that's it. And you can fold your arms and wait and insist for perfection, but you'll never get it. I just give that way by introduction because, you know, we we live in a revisionist historical situation. We look at people in in a context and say, "Well, why didn't they this? Why didn't they that?" you know, you have to understand where it is, you know, and uh and that's why we're sure that if we had lived at that time, we would have been uh practicing the morality of 2026. Police God, we wouldn't have. But what it means is at least certain liberal concepts that's come across um the first Republican candidate to endorse gay marriage and I'm not coming out that that was a good thing was Donald Trump, you know, and he at at the Republican convention and he pushed it through because he felt times have changed. you have to god when the state first started Israel. So uh there were a lot of people who were anti-ionist within the religious world and one of those people was the one of the things that came up was whether or not to recognize modern Hebrew. And a lot of modern Hebrew was made specifically to work counter to certain Torah concepts. And that's why a lot of people wouldn't accept it. At some point in the 1950s, the started instead of taiching into Yiddish, Taiching into ran to the Khan, this terrible breach and he said, "Gnug, we lost that battle. Fight the next battle. You got to be real. You gota you got to deal with what's in front of you. And that is such an important concept. Deal with the real, not with the ideal. The perfect is the enemy of the good. Work with what you have. And uh I mentioned that. So we talk about some of these presidents. Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th president of the United States. Now, this is very interesting because Grover Cleveland was always an anomaly among the presidents because he was the only president in history to not serve two consecutive terms. There were some presidents who had one term. There were some presidents who had two terms. But he was the only one. He was the 22nd and the 24th president of the United States which never happened in history until Donald Trump who got elected in 2016 and then again in 2024. According to him he's actually in his third term because he says he also won in 2020. But I am not getting into that. All I'm gonna say is that the the you know, Donald Trump is such an anomaly that you just can't even imagine it because um he was the first president elected who never held public office or was in the military. Such a thing never happened before. Grant Eisenhower, they became president, but they had been major military leaders. He was just a businessman. He never had a political office. He was never dog catcher, nothing, you know. He was just It was a first. It was a lot of first. Anyway, um uh so he appointed a Jew, Oscar Strauss, as US ambassador to Turkey. Cleveland protested against the Russians Zar's oper oppression of Jews. During his second term, there was a wave of Jewish immigration. the US uh fleeing oppression in Russia and Poland. Congress tried to limit Jewish immigration and President Cleveland overruled restrictions. I I got to take a moment just to speak about this because the the Democrats today keep using the same term that is just not true where they say, you know, Trump and the Republicans are anti-immigrant. We're not anti-immigrant. They're anti-illegal immigrant. And of course, if a person's illegal immigrant, there's nothing wrong with it. Trump's wife is an immigrant, if I'm correct. You know, uh the fellow uh Republican running for governor in California is an immigrant. So, of course, nobody has a problem with immigrants. It's illegal immigrants. And this has been a major issue. Uh the term they use for it is xenophobia where you're actually afraid of foreigners. And particularly in the 1920s they put up a lot of restrictive barriers against immigration because there were a lot of people who were afraid of foreigners. And there's always been that concept. That's what's called xenophobia. And in fact, um, in the first Hercule Parro novel, uh, called An Affair at Styles, uh, that was written by Agatha Christie. Um, the person she makes out to be the prime suspect is a foreigner because there's always this fear of foreigners. And so um uh it's it's not a question of a fear of of immigrants or foreigners. It's a question of illegal immigration. It's not fair. It's not fair. So um there were many times when the Jews who were suffering oppression especially uh by the Russians um wanted to be able to immigrate to America. And there were two major waves of this u and in the 1880s and the early 1900s. And um and Grover Cleveland was one of those people who wanted to allow the Jews to be able to immigrate uh to America where one could argue we've made some contributions over the years. Yeah. I don't know if we talked about Teddy Roosevelt, but when the when the pgrams were going on, he was the one who got involved to try to stop it. He was involved in the Bis trial. I mean there was a lot of things that they did where you know there were presidents who were worried about what was happening to the Jews in other parts of the world. And that's why particularly during World War II with all the terrible things going on in in Europe and in Germany that uh the xenophobes were successful in in closing uh closing down America to uh to Jews. And um I remember if you remember the terrible story of the St. Louis. The Nazis took a whole bunch of uh Jews and put them on a boat called the St. Louis and they went to Cuba and Cuba wouldn't let them in. And they went around the world trying to find somebody who would take these Jews and and the Nazis used this as a justification. They said, "You see, nobody wants them. Nobody wants them." And at one point they said, "Stick them all in Alaska. You got a big empty state there. Why don't you put them there?" you know, so uh uh the fact that he looked out for Jews was uh was an important aspect of him. Woodro Wilson uh came from a middle-ass family, earned his PhD from John's Hopkins, and he was president of Princeton University. As president of the United States, he appointed the first jud of the Supreme Court, Louisie Brandeise, overcoming a lot of objections. After that there was always what was called the Jewish seat on the Supreme Court. Um uh Frank footer held it um I think it was a forest that different Jews throughout time had voted it but uh he appointed the first Judith Supreme Court. Wilson read and believed in the Bible. He supported the bow for declaration. So uh that was Wilson. Uh Wilson was elected in 1912. It was very interesting. Teddy Roosevelt who was probably the closest to true aristocracy maybe since you know the founding fathers um who was uh who was president United States. We don't have him here right we're not doing Teddy Roosevelt. So, I'll just throw in if if we haven't talked about Teddy Roosevelt, um he grew up as a rich uh in a rich aristocratic family in New York. Um and uh he became uh a boxer. He became a went became the hero of San Juan Hill. He went and fought in the SpanishAmerican War. He was a rancher in North Dakota. He was the sheriff of New York City. Um he was a big game hunter. He was a boxer. He wrote the definitive work on ornithology, the study of birds. He wrote the definitive work on naval warfare. He was secretary of of the navy. And he used to read three books a night before he went to sleep in different languages. He was as close to what you could think of as a Renaissance man who ever existed. and um uh he um he was just he had so many different talents. Now at his at his point it was not a law that you couldn't have two uh two terms as president. It was a mig was started by George Washington. He he was president. He was president the second time and he said that should be enough for any man. when uh King George in England heard this that he gave up the presidency. He said this is the most impressive person in history that he that he would have done something like this and um uh and so it became a mig but obviously his cousin FDR broke the munic. He was elected four times. Um so he was he became president when uh McKinley was assassinated. He was reelected in 1904 against Alton B. Parker. There's a little thing for you in 1908. And then he stepped down at the height of his power and he turned it over to his vice president Taft. And then he wasn't happy with what Taft was doing. And he tried to run again in 1912. And the Republicans said, "We're running with Taft." And he started the Bull Moose Party. And the two of them split the Republican vote. uh which is how Clinton got elected because uh because Ross Perau did the same thing uh to George Bush and split the um the Republican vote. But and so uh Wilson got in. That's how he became president. And he ran again in 1916 on a slogan which turned out not to work so well for him. He kept us out of war. He kept America from getting involved in World War I. And of course when uh he eventually entered World War I, many people think it was because of this sinking of the Lucatania. It wasn't. Um if you want to read a fascinating book, small book by historian Barbara Tuckman wrote a lot about World War I. There's a little book called The Zimmerman Telegram about how the Germans were trying to get Mexico to attack America. And uh and that's what pushed America. They felt they had no choice to get but to get into the war when Germany was attacking America. I remember she wrote in the introduction to her book, the person who wrote the article in the New York Times saying we'll never really know why America entered World War I. I dedicate this book to you. That's very interesting. Anyway, number three, Herbert Hoover, 31st president. There are many people who feel that he was one of the most misunderstood and vilified presidents in history. Before I before I read, you know, was actually there. Um, uh, basically FDR ran against Hoover four times. It didn't matter who he was running against. Nobody cared about Alf Landon, uh, who he ran against in, uh, in 1936. Um, Alf Landon uh holds the record for getting the least electoral votes of anybody in history with Mandel came close against Reagan, but you know uh forget about it. and in in 1940 against uh against um Wendell Wilkkey, you know, and uh who at least was more popular than Alf Landon and um and 1944 against Dwey. But um but each time he was really running against Hoover and people blamed him for the depression. If you're going to blame anybody, it was really Calvin Culage who had a a very much laser affair and when they showed him the information, silent cal, you know, ignored everything and and uh everything that was leading up to it. But uh um Herbert Hoover really uh uh is treated much nicer. Bill O'Reilly wrote a book about the presidents and um and it's very interesting and he says the worst president in history um was Buchanan, you know, definitely Buchanan. Biden was the second worst. He says I can't say Biden was the worst president. He says Buchanan was the worst, but he was the second worst. Anyway, but Herbert Hoover he he he says was really misunderstood, but he's been vilified, you know. Um there was a um after during the depression when these little shanty towns popped up, they called them Hoovervilles, you know, and I remember from uh um Annie the musical. I remember there was this line where these people who are in a Hooverville, you know, they offered us and Hoover. We paid attention and we chose. Not only did we pay attention, we paid through the nose. Hey, Herby. Right. So, he was really really uh vilified. He was born into a family of modest means in Iowa. His father died when he was six. His mother died when he was nine. He was self-taught in high school and paid his way through college working various jobs. you know, they they paint these pictures sometimes of Republicans who are um born with a silver spoon in their mouth, but the fact of the matter is that many of them were more in tune with the common man. Uh, you know, it's ironic that they have this term in Israel called AMA, which is like the average the average Joe, average people, you know. And um the president in recent history who was most ama was Donald Trump even though he was a billionaire. And he said because my father was in construction and he used to send me down to work with the working guys. I didn't sit up in an office. I worked with the plumbers and the carpeted electricians and and he he understands what what what's bothering the common person, you know. So, while the Democrats focus on using the wrong pronouns, he's worried about the fact that your shower head isn't giving you enough pressure, why your dishwashers aren't working well, you know, just really ama kind of things that he's so concerned with, you know, and uh you know, it's not not high up in the sky, you know, this this the the very unelitist approach. Anyway, so Herbert Hoover, as you see, who was Republican, he worked his way up. Uh, after graduating college, he became successful in the mining industry. And that's called, of course, minding your own business, in case you were wondering. During World War I, President Wilson appointed him, Herbert Hoover, to head the American Relief Administration. After World War I, it sent 30 million tons of food to 23 countries, including Germany and areas of communist Russia, where people were starving and where there was a large Jewish population. When asked if he was helping the Bolsheviks feed their population, Hoover replied, "20 million people are starving. whatever their politics, they shall be fed. And uh no, frankly, using uh using food as a method to force people to do what you want is a terrible thing. It happened in Israel in the old Yishu where uh also during World War I uh the people in charge of the Jewish agency got their hands on all of the funds and they would only agree to give it to religious people if they would sign up their kids in secular schools. This has been uh repeated unfortunately throughout Jewish history. Miss Kerat Batya, which was a religious settlement in Israel that was founded uh by Edmund Rothschild, was being run by this guy who was anti-religious and even though they were guaranteed that their religious liberty would be preserved and they wanted to keep schmita and this guy wanted to force them to work and they were literally starving and the only way they could get food is if they sent their kids to the secular um schools. And even though all of the founders were very very firm and devout and he named it Batia after uh after Rothschild's mother nonetheless um the most of the community eventually became secular because of these methods to use it for food. I contrast this something I heard once from Ray Burkowitz. The med says about uh Abraham's kov techniques. He made an inn and he invite people in and give them the finest food as we know from the story uh with Abraham. He would do this for people give them the finest food and uh at the end he'd hand out the benches says okay now we bench. They said whoa what's this? Says well you have to thank God for the food. because I don't believe in God. He says, "Oh, I didn't realize." Okay, so let's work out your bill. Uh, tongue with mustard. Excellent choice. I had to slaughter three whole cows for that and have to figure out transportation to the desert maintenance curds and way wonderful appetizer. You know that here's your bill. He says, "You invited me as a guest." He says, "If you're a guest, you thank your host." Said, "I'll thank you." He says, "I didn't create the food." You know, so this is okay. Where'd it come from? Well, the fruit came from the tree. I'll thank the tree. Where'd the tree come from? Uh, it came from the ground. I'll thank the ground. Where'd the ground come from? You know, the earth came out of the sun. Where' the sun come from? A big blob of gases. I'll thank the big blob of gases. Okay, where'd that come from? And he would use the argument of first cause to get people to recognize a keshu. And then he'd have them bench. So Ray Burkowitz when he was telling over the story he says the first thing you see is you don't take advantage of a hungry person. Somebody's hungry first you give them something to eat and then you can talk to them about religion talk about anything you want but don't take advantage of a hungry person and say I'll give you the food if you say what I want you to say. You do what I want you to do. Yeah. So you got to help people who are in trouble. I've told this story a long time ago in the old is um of yim zenfeld there was a famous anti-religious Zionist who was fighting against him uh viciously viciously and at some point he became sick and uh he went to his doctor he says look there's only one place where they could maybe help you in that charitic hospital which is under under religious supervision. He says, "But there's a big big waiting list. You'll never get in. You'll die before you get to treatment." He says, "Is there is there any protection I can use? Anyway, he says, well, the one person who has pull there is Yanfeld." He says, "Forget about it. You know, I've been fighting against him my whole life. You know, I've been terrible to him. He He hates me." He says, "I don't know what to tell you. You don't do something, you're going to die." So he goes hat. Well, I can't say hat in hand. Didn't wear a hat, but he comes to him and basically says, "Listen, I I need your help to get into Uh, you know, uh, I going to die." He says, "Oh, for sure. I'll speak to them. I'll get you in right away." The guy says, "After everything I have done to you," he says, "I just see a sick Jew who needs help. That's all I see." So, uh, so when you help hungry people, there's not a question if it's, uh, you know, who those hungry people are. I told this story, um, I'm sure a few times already. Uh, you have people in my generation who say, "Where'd this crazy thing come about checking vegetables for bugs? We never did this when I was a kid. Nobody checked for bugs." That's one. The other one says, "What's this yen stuff? We never had yin when I was a kid. Everybody just bought whatever it was. You went to every bakery, you just bought a piece of bread. What is this yash? Where did this all come from?" So, the answer is they're right. you never had to check for bugs cuz they used a uh they used a pesticide called DDT and it killed all the bugs. Unfortunately, it also killed the people eating the vegetables. So, they stopped eating it. Suddenly, there was a problem with bugs again which hadn't been beforehand and they changed certain rules. So, in New York State, Department of Agriculture says that if a bunch of broccoli only has 50 bugs in it, it's considered bug-free. So, suddenly you got a problem. Yeah. And um uh it was interesting at the Pesak program. Um so uh the uh a good friend of mine Rabbi Mikl Kaplan teaches in Torah or he was there and he told me he says I went to the mashkah um who was there on behalf of Ramanat you know and uh and he said I don't understand he says I never ate as much broccoli and cauliflower as I did over this pesak and it's such a quality He says, "It can't possibly be kosher." So he says, "We got it from Sheris." He says, "It has a sherus that is bug free." He goes, "Yeah." He goes, "How is this even possible?" He goes, "They make a very high quality product and that's what we use here." So, uh, you know, the fact that we've come up with methods to work around it, but you're right. When I was a kid, you just ate it, you know, and that's why all the people kids who grew up in the 60s look the way they do because, you know, they eating all that DDT. Okay. And uh there was never a problem with Yoshan because of FDR, who we'll talk about soon. FDR wanted to keep the price of wheat stable for the farmers. So he would buy up all the surplus wheat and store it. So sort of like Yoseph and Mitraim, he had 7-year supply of wheat that was stored up. So of course there was no Yoshan. Everything was Yoshan. When you ate flour, it was seven years old. So, it never happened. But then there was a famine in Russia during Nixon's administration and he sold the whole wheat surplus. So, for the first time in decades, there became new grain on the market. That's why all of a sudden there was an issue of that never happened before. Anyway, I digress. Uh, President Huba appointed Benjamin Kardoa. Cardoza. Yeah. To the Supreme Court who supported the Zionist movement, protested the rise of Nazi Germany and tried to negotiate with the British government for a refuge for Jews in Africa. And now Harry S. Truman, 30 president. He was never supposed to be president. He wasn't supposed to be. FDR had a vice president who was working at cross purposes. So um he uh he replaced him in 1944 with Harry S. Truman from Missouri who was talk about Amha. He was very very down to earth. You know, one of my favorite Harry Truman stories is he had this expression when he didn't like something, he'd say, "That's a lot of manure. That's a lot of manure." So, finally someone said to his wife, "Bes, they said,"Bess, could you get the president to stop saying manure?" She says, "You know how long it took me to get him to say manure? He was he was, you know, his daughter played the piano and some critic criticized him and he got a letter from the president of United States. I'm going to come down and punch you in the nose. Harry S. Truman, I don't know. I have to read everything we said here, but he famously had a a sign on his desk. The buck stops here. You understand? I I'm the president. I'm responsible. I'll do what has to be done. Yeah. Grew up on a farm in Missouri and that's why FDR wasn't planning on dying as many people are not. You know, uh it's uh uh very often comes as a surprise. Even even people who are sick, the they they really don't think for sure they're going to die. They imagine something's going to happen. you know, uh, when my I got I got the call on a Thursday from my father's doctor. Come in now. And I said, I have a flight on Sunday. They said, come in now. So, I found out what happened is the he had lung cancer and the blood clots were forming in his in his lungs so quickly they couldn't even get rid of them. He was drowning. and they wanted to give him a shot of morphine so he would relax and he wouldn't have to keep gasping for breath. But he knew that once he got the shot he'd slip into a coma and he refused to take the shot till he could say goodbye to me. So he was sitting there waiting for me to come in. So I got a Thursday night of flight. came in. There was my father lying at me going and his last words he looked at me and goes, "Ah, David." That was it. Anyway, they gave him the morphing. He slipped into a coma. And of course, I hadn't gotten any sleep. Flew in the whole time. I was jetlagged like crazy. So, I laid down and my brother wakes me up at 2:00 in the morning and said, "Dad was nifer." My first reaction was, "Can't be. Can't be." Now, come on. You know, my brother has a sense of humor, but I don't think he would pull a trick like that. But you just can't accept it. Not only can't you accept it when somebody dies, very often people when they die don't realize it. It's uh it's a freaky thing. Uh my friend Ruby Granowski, who was on the show many years ago, he said that after his mother died, she used to come to him every night in a dream and talk to him, freaking him out. And uh he finally says, "Listen, mom, I I can't take this. Either be alive or be dead, but you can't, you know, you can't do this." And she never came back. But that's why there's a minigaya. You tell the person you're dead because sometimes they don't know and they just keep coming back. My mother came to visit me in Israel and she took took my uh niece to accompany her and my mother woke up in the middle of the night because she said my father was there like just to herself. She just suddenly woke up and she sensed that he was there and just then my niece wakes up. She was sleeping. She goes, "Is grandpa here?" So, you know, sometimes people don't always know it. So uh maybe just in that point I would mention that um the uh the Kutzko who spent a lot of time in his room every now and would come out and say something. So one time he came out and was waiting to hear what he's going to say. He says I could go down to the basis right now and bring all those people back to life. I just wish I could do it for the people in this room. And then he went back into his little room. So that was a cutscap. But Harry Truman became president because FDR died and he suddenly was thrust into some of the most important decisions in world history and and FDR did not include him in all the discussions. So he was really was not ready for this. And so that's why when Dwey ran against him in 48, he was sure that he was going to destroy him because I I I lost to FDR, but uh but Truman, I'll beat him for sure. He was sure that he had beaten him. In fact, there was that famous picture of Truman carrying the headlines where it says Dwey wins after Truman had been uh actually elected. So let's read about him. He grew up on a farm in Missouri and he was well read especially in history. He read and believed in the Bible. He worked a lot of part-time jobs to support himself and his family. He never earned a college degree. During World War I, he served in an artillery unit, became friendly with Eddie Jacobson, with whom he opened the clothing store after the war that went bankrupt. He became a US senator and then vice president of the US. When Roosevelt died in his fourth term, Truman unexpectedly became president. Historians know that Roosevelt knew about the Holocaust since when a Polish gentile Jan Karsski risked his life by traveling through Nazi occupied uh Europe during the World War II and reported to Roosevelt what he saw. Rose Roosevelt's response was a question about the well-being of the horses. Unlike Roosevelt, Truman was shocked by the Holocaust. Like I told you, he was out of the loop. He ordered General Eisenhower to improve the conditions of Jews in the DP camps after World War II and pressured Britain to allow Jewish refugees into Israel. Truman went against the advice of the entire US government, foreign policy, and military establishment and the oil companies and recognized the state of Israel 11 minutes after it declared its independence. David Niles, who worked in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, commented that if Roosevelt had lived longer, he would not have done what Truman did. Even Truman almost didn't do what Truman did cuz Truman was under terrible pressure cuz uh Kim Whitesman who later became the first president of Israel came to America and tried to get a meeting with Truman and Truman wouldn't see him because he knew that Kim Whitesman would talk him into recognizing Israel and he was under terrible pressure. Well, he didn't know what to do. So someone said, "Call Eddie." So he called his former business partner, the Jewish guy, and um and uh and he called up Harry and Harry's like, "What's going on?" He says, "Heim Weissman is outside. He's waiting to meet with you. Do me a personal favor and let him in." And that's how America recognized Israel was because of our Jewish partner. And I'll tell you one more thing about his Jewish partner, which is amazing. Um, one of the things that Harry Truman did is he fought for civil rights and um, and he was very much against the clan. And so the clan uh, basically said they're going to murder him. This is when he was uh, a politician in Missouri. Anyway, was a big clan meeting and he shows up and he said, "Well, here I am, boys. I understand you guys want to string me up. Get piece of rope. here I am. And he started calling them, "Nay, you cowards, you phonies." Is that thing? And finally, he said, "I've got a Jewish partner that I run a store with." And he said to me, "The clan had to be started by a Jew." Cuz who else could have charged you $10 for a 10 cent white sheet to be able to wear it as a hood? Ah. He was I mean you understand he's the one who had to make the decision about whether or not to drop the nuclear bomb that t us into the atomic age. This was a major decision and it remains controversial to this day. But but Truman looked at the numbers at the time they estimated that a million American soldiers would be killed if we invaded Japan. And he says I you know if I can end this war now I'm going to do it. and um you know he's he's the one who pushed it through. He didn't even know it was in development. He was hidden from the Manhattan project. They they didn't have in the loop because again they nobody expected him to come president. They weren't expecting to die. Lyndon Baines Johnson basically the first president that I remember. I mean, uh, I was born in 59, so I I caught the end of Eisenhower, but I really wasn't following the news at the age of one. And, uh, then there was Kennedy. I remember when Kennedy was assassinated because they stopped the cartoons for the special thing and they brought this whole report. Remember my mother was crying and I was just upset about the cartoons. But Johnson, I remember, boy, do I remember Johnson. And uh you know the thing that Johnson's remembered for the most of course is the Vietnam War which uh actually Kennedy was the one who got us into Vietnam. But uh you know the draft was mid so scary. And my brother my oldest brother got himself a loan number and um and had to get into college because otherwise he was going to go to Vietnam. the worst college from what I understand is better than Vietnam. I don't know if that's true today, but back then, you know, so he wanted to learn horiculture because my father had a florist and nursery and he was in charge of the nursery and he was in Farmingdale College and my father who of course was always the master of the double message, you know, he was a master of it. I remember when um I first got married, he said to me, "Look, you know, you don't have a real job. You're working for the kal. You're not going to have a lot of money. You have to learn one phrase, I can't afford it. I can't afford it." You have to learn to say that. I can't afford it. So 5 years later, maybe I bought a house and my father came to visit on Sunday and he says, "Why don't you fix that thing over there?" And I said, "I can't afford it." He says, "Don't be a cheapkate." It was always it was always the the the master with the double message. So, um so Jason was in Farmingdale and my father said, "It's Mother's Day. You have to come and work in the store." So, Jason says, "It's finals." Says, "Don't worry about it." So, sure enough, he flunked out and he was going to get drafted to Vietnam. So, my father got him into a college in Emporia, Kansas. And uh like I said, was better than Vietnam. But uh but Johnson's an interesting fellow. Um there's a historian by the name of Robert Caro who wrote a book about Robert Moses called the power broker which is one of the most fascinating books I ever read. It in fact won an award there's an award they give out for history as literature and that's how well written it was. So he then turned his site to write a three-part biography of Lynden Johnson. I just read the fourth of the third volume. Number five is going to come out. I hope he's in his 80s. I hope he finishes. But um uh just to give you an insight into Lynden Johnson, it's just fascinating. But the last book, the second half of the last book when he becomes president and he just lists all the things that were going against him and what he accomplished in six months. No president in history accomplished what he did in those six months after Kennedy was assassinated and how he he did every it was amazing. But okay, 36 presidents. He grew up in rural Texas. Um when I say he grew up in rural Texas, I mean his father went bankrupt. He was very very nervous about money uh his whole life. and rural Texas was very very poor and he pushed to get it electrified to bring in the electric electricity into western Texas nobody was going to do because no one cared about these people you know that was in the first of his books and and he says um people started naming their children Lyndon after him he changed everybody's life it was amazing he became an FDR uh Democrat uh at the Um, so it jumps ahead over here. As a US senator, he opposed Eisenhower forcing Israel to withdraw from the Sinai, the 1956 war against Egypt. So, let me let me give you some context over there. Um, Johnson was in the house for a bunch of years, but he felt he could do more. So, he decided to run for Senate. And the third book in the series is called Master of the Senate because the Senate was made to be unmanageable. It's one of the things you hear Trump talk about all the time because of the filibuster and this and next thing. It was made that way. When Jefferson asked Washington, "Why would you have the Senate set up this way? It's going to be a roadblock, you know, to accomplishing anything." And he says to Jefferson, "Why did you pour your tea into the saucer?" He says, "To cool it off." He says, "That's the job of the Senate." And so the Senate never got anything accomplished. Everything was, you know, backlogged and stuck. The only person who could get things done in the Senate was Lyndon Johnson. He was the master of the Senate. He knew how to work people, negotiate people, make deals. It was unbelievable. You have to read the book. what he was able to accomplish. And because most of his time as the head of the Senate was during the Eisenhower administration, who was a Republican, he was a Democrat, he figured out how to play the Senate against the president, the president against the Senate to be able to get through whatever he wanted. I mean during those years when the southern fire brands had control of the entire Senate, he pushed the first civil right bill in history, which again was not perfect, but it was the first one that was ever done. Uh he was Kennedy's vice president. Kennedy was the first US president to sell Israel military weapons. Kennedy put heavy pressure on Israel to abandon its nuclear program. When Johnson became president, the pressure on Israel to abandon its nuclear program stopped. Johnson was the first US president to sell fighter planes to Israel in 1966, which were used in the Six-Day War in 1967. Now, that's not the most amazing thing because I heard from people who were in the Israeli government at the time that officially during the war, Israel, America was not selling Israel arms. And yet LL planes were landing from America the whole time all during the war. There were no passages on them. All the seats had been taken out because Johnson was secretly filling them up with military equipment to bring to Israel. And of course Johnson, who for all of his many flaws, was nonetheless a great liar. Not as good as Clinton, but he was good or as Carter, but he was good. Yeah. And he uh uh he said, "I know nothing about it. I have nothing about this." You know, he was beaten up a lot by the press. He's the one who said, "You know, if I was to walk on water across the Ptoac River, they would say the president can't swim." Uh during the six- day war, Israel accidentally bombed the US spy ship, the Liberty, killing 34 and wounding 171. And there are still people today like Candace Owens and uh people who use this to to attack Israel. But Johnson accepted Israel's apology and offer of compensation. Uh the protest in the US against the war in Vietnam destroyed Johnson's presidency. The sponsor of this show asked River Victor Miller about the Vietnam War. And Miller replied that the Vietnam War was justified to stop the spread of communism in Asia. And that brings us apparently to the last one we're going to deal with in this episode, which is Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan. That was the 80s. Ronald Reagan defined the 80s. I was already an adult during the Reagan years. Yeah, you had to love him because uh Trump is very funny, but Reagan was a professional comedian. He would tell stories and he would this, you know, Johnson was also an unbelievable storyteller. So was uh Abraham Lincoln. They were all loved to tell funny stories. But uh but Reagan, you can watch the clips of him. He was just unbelievable. He told a story once about this Republican politician who was speaking someplace in a very heavily Democratic area. And uh he came, he's running for office, he wants to speak. He says, "Well, we we don't really have any place for you uh to stand, sir." He says, "Uh, well, can you call together some of your neighbors?" So, they bring together the farmers and said, "We can't see you." So, he says, "Well, there's a heap of manure there. You could stand on that." So, he climbs up on the top and he says, "I have to say this is the first time that a Republican candidate is speaking on a Democratic platform." Reagan used to tell that joke. Um, Reagan grew up in the Midwest, was good at sports. Now, you might have seen him on horseback. He did well in school. He became a sports broadcaster on radio and well, he worked for Warner Brothers as a film actor. In World War II, he enlisted in the army but was kept stateside to work in educational films. After the war, he became president of Screen Actors Guild. He was opposed to communism. He became governor of California on a platform to balance the budget and to make welfare recipients work. There was a time when California elected Reagan as governor. Yeah. 1980 he ran for president on the Republican ticket promising to lower taxes, revive the economy, rebuild the US military, and punish the Islamic Republic of Iran if it did not return the kidnapped American hostages. You may have heard about Iran a little bit and this incident that happened 1979 under under Carter where they captured our embassy and uh held our people hostage. Soon after Reagan was elected, Iran returned the US hostages because they didn't want to mess with him. During the Reagan term, Israel flew American supplied fighter jets to destroy uh Saddam Hussein's French-built nuclear reactor. the UN and the whole diplomatic world was in an uproar against Israel for violating the sovereignty of another country. Uh the US defense secretary Casper Weinberger a uh uh Sony Israel was in censored Israel for breaking the terms of the sale of the jets which were to be used only for defensive purposes. How did Ronald Reagan punish Israel? He delayed the delivery of one M15 jet for two months. The leader of the Democratic Party in con Congress, Tip O'Neal, referred to Reagan as an amiiable dunce. Many of the academic, political, and media elites had the same opinion of Reagan. However, his policies revived the US economy. Inflation and unemployment dropped. He invested in the US military. The Soviet Union could not keep pace with the US economy and military buildup. In 1990, the Soviet Union after 70 years collapsed. One of the things that the academic, political, and media elites made fun of Reagan for was his Star Wars proposal. The idea that technology could be developed where an anti-missile could shoot down an incoming missile. We know how crazy that is. 40 years later in Israel, we are grateful that Hashem put this idea in Reagan's mind. We have seen it in action every day during this war. As Rabbi Barl Wine once remarked, the elites are idiots. And uh I I want to tell you one story I heard from Julie Burman who was the president of the OU in the 1980s. And uh somebody asked him about Ronald Reagan because there was this whole thing where he wanted to say sell Awax to Saudi Arabia and Israel was opposed to it and and the Israel lobby was pressuring Reagan and Reagan felt like he needed Saudi Arabia to get some moderate Arabs on his side and it was being put in the press as Bean or Reagan. I mean it was a a whole thing, you know. So they asked him about Reagan and Israel and the Jews and he says let me tell you a story. He says uh Chiron went into Lebanon in the Lebanon war and uh Israel started it. We went in because you know we were being attacked and the terrorists and all this kind of stuff. We felt like we had no choice. We had to go into Lebanon. It was the the Leban Lebanese war in the 1980s. And uh Reagan was in the middle of some sort of an event. He didn't know what was going on. And they said, "We understand that Israel has invaded Lebanon." And he said, "My information is that the the Arab shot first." He had no such information. It wasn't true. But that was his instinct. His instinct was to come to the to the help. I'll tell you one more Reagan story that I heard a guy tell over at NCSY National Convention. There was this kid. He was a kid. He was in he was in college and uh he was working with the Jewish poor in the South Bronx, you know, and uh helping them out all kinds of different things. Anyway, on the 4th of July, Ronald Reagan was giving out a bunch of awards to good Americans who did charitable things. And uh and they invited him to give him an award. And he uh he wrote to the person and said, "I'm sorry, I I can't attend. You know, it's on Shabas. Thank you so much for the honor." You know, and he gets a call. I don't remember the guy's name. I think it was Steve, you know. Hello, Steve. Says, "Yeah." goes, "Hi, this is Ronnie. This is Ronnie Ronald Reagan." He goes, "Mr. President," he says, "How come you're not coming?" He says, "Well, I I I would like to come, but it's on Chabas." He says, "Listen, I'll get you a hotel right near the event. I'll get you kosher food. I'll make sure you have wine and kala. Please come." So it's like the president of United States Ronnie calls me up. How how do you say no? So he goes, he gets his reward and he figures okay. Every few months Ronald Reagan would call him up to see how he was doing. Check up on him, see how he's doing. And uh and that you know and so at one point he says to him, "Well, you're graduating soon. What are you going to do?" He says, "I'd like to go to law school." He says, "Where are you applying?" He says whatever law school it was, he says, "Let me send you a letter of recommendation." This guy gets a letter of recommendation from the president of the United States. Trust me, it helped. So, uh, so Ronald Reagan was, uh, was was was probably from from Truman till till, uh, Reagan, he was the most pro-Israel president until Donald Trump, who is not only the most pro-Israel president, he's the most pro-Israel prime minister of Israel. There's never been a prime minister of Israel who is pro- Israel as he was. You know what I mean? It's just off the charts. But we'll talk about him another time. Um, we're kind of out of time. Okay. I tell you, you know, everyone knows I'm a bit of a history buff, you know, so talk about the presidents is always very exciting. And the appreciation comments. I'm a TAT of yours from Oliga around the year 2000. Oh my gosh. Based on my new biography, you must have been about four. I've written before and I'm still thoroughly enjoying your weekly show, which I listen to faithfully. That's the only way to listen to the Rabiolski show is faithfully. I can always bank on you to liven up my day. P.S. I always used to struggle to remember the order of the doll parachios until a friend shared with me a great tip. He said, "Just remember this line. It pays to remember that the cow jumped over the moon." Get it? It pays to remember that the cow paras jumped over the moon. Thank you, dear. Thank you so much. And for those who are not familiar, it's from a nursery rhyme. Hey, didd the cat in the fiddle. The cow jumped over the moon. Hi Rabiowski. I have been a longtime listener to your Shirum dating back to the original classic. Why be Jewish? It is a classic. I I may have told this story, but I don't care. I don't care anymore. I I just just keep repeating them. Um I was speaking in Melbourne, Australia, and I was doing my YB Jewish, which is my, you know, my go-to for a new group. This woman said this is I don't know the 11th or 12th time she was hearing this. I said I wish I knew I would have said something else. She said no I came dka to hear it again because since it's based on the first part of masham where he says the only way to get benefit is from constant khazor I to sponsor a podcast years ago in memory of my father I think it was the one about pink shorts. Thank you for the hours and hours of shim and that's it for this episode. If you want to find out more about the show, you can go to my website raviolassi.com. Don't forget about our merch. Um, you can sponsor an episode. You can sponsor a param 5. You can sponsor a question and answer. Um, you can sign up for one of my online shurim where my ladies mash is coming towards the end and yet people are still signing up cuz each one is a gem in and of itself. It's a standalone. And I give you the background beforehand. And what can I tell you? When I have nothing else to do, I just listen to my own shirum because they're just so brilliant and I just I'm just amazed as as many people are. But anyway, you can start one of the online sher but Hashem when we finish I'm going to start again from the beginning. So, uh if you you know at the rate I'm going uh you know I'm already towards the end of the book so it shouldn't take me more than about two years to finish. But but if you want to come in we have that. And uh that's it for now. Until next time, I am David Olowski and this has been the Rabbi Olowski show. Well, that was fun. >> It's the Rabbi Orlovski Show. Torah and Sima, ready to go. The Rabbi Olavski show. Knowledge and wisdom will help you grow. Lots of fun in every episode. And we don't have to rhyme. No, we don't. It's the Rabbi Orlavski show on rabbi orki.com to anytime you and more. It's the Rabbi Olowski show. Torah and ready to go. It's the Rabbi orski show. Till next time till we meet again. It's the Rabbi show. It's the Rabbi Olowski show. It's the Rabbi Olowski show.