Food Insecurity (Ep.325)

Hi, this is Rabbi Ulanski, and welcome to the Rabbi Ulanski Show. Whether you're watching with our friends over at Totty Time or wherever you watch or listen to our podcast, as always, we are delighted to have you along for the experience. If you are a newcomer and you're here for the first time or one of the first times, [music] welcome to our community. Welcome to our family. It's uh it we really are our own group and [music] our own uh basically cult. And uh one day uh I hope to dress in white robes and take you all away to my compound. >> [laughter] >> And we have a sponsor for this episode. SD Yeah. I didn't know that the entire state of South Dakota is sponsoring this episode. >> [laughter] >> Thank you for all your interesting Torah thoughts, jokes, and chizuk. Thank you. Thank you for helping us make this possible. You know, um uh I I've mentioned that we now have a merch store. You can go on my website verylastki.com and click on merch. And uh you can order different things, you know, the Rabbi Ulanski mug, sweatshirts, other exciting things. And I have to tell you to give a shout-out to my daughter Yaffa who put this all together. She really is. She's managing my social media of which I know nothing. I know nothing. So, apparently um I'm I'm on all kinds of different uh platforms. Yeah. Not platform shoes because I appreciate the fact that I'm short. >> [laughter] >> Hey, being short and overweight and grouchy is really my brand. >> [laughter] >> Right right right right right right right. Yeah. But uh but she also said she's working on this thing because there there people who want to help support the show, but they may not be in a position to sponsor an episode or, you know, a question and answer portion or five any of those kind of things. So, um there's this thing, I don't know what it is, but it says you can buy Rabbi Wolovsky a cup of coffee. Now, I don't know how this works, but I really like coffee. >> [laughter] >> So, when she was talking about all the different things she's doing, "Oh, you're getting 100,000 views on this and this is happening over here and that kind of stuff. And we're going to be starting the, you know, uh buy a cup of coffee." I have to tell you, me and my wife, we're both very excited cuz we like coffee. And so, I'm looking forward to getting a cup of coffee. >> [laughter] >> Um there's a something going on that I can't I I I can't really explain. It doesn't It doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It's so counterintuitive that it seems almost amazing. Um Governor Hochul of New York, when she was running, she said, "Anyone who doesn't want to be part of what we're doing here, just get on a bus and go to Florida. That's where you belong." And a lot of people took her advice. >> [laughter] >> And they went down to Florida. And they went down cuz the weather was better, they went down because there's no sales tax, they went down because there's no crime, because there's no woke all that kind of nonsense. And uh New York is unfortunately a very poorly run state. And the only thing that's worse than that is California, which I'll talk about in a minute. Anyway, not that long ago, she was giving an interview and she said, "We have generous social programs here, and the people with money have They need to come back cuz we need their money to support our generous social programs. But you just told them all to leave. Now you're telling them to come back. That seems somewhat counterintuitive. You know. You don't want to tell somebody to leave and then you suddenly realize you need them. Yeah. I was by somebody once and they got upset and they just like stormed out of the room and then they came back a few minutes later and said, "This is my house." >> [laughter] >> They were so intent to make an exit. Uh there was a clip I'd seen once from Piers Morgan where he had somebody on his show who was basically insulting him and he says, "I've had enough of this." And he gets up and he walks off of his own show. Why didn't he just disconnect the other guy? >> [laughter] >> He stormed off. I mean, he's stormed off of other shows that he's been on. So I guess uh I guess he wanted to uh he likes to storm off, but it's his own show. You know, it's just he's still there, you know. It reminds me when the James Bond movies were happening. So uh there's this Jewish comic that would take off on it and they called it James Bond. Yeah, agent double-0695 marked down from seven. But uh whenever he goes to Q and he's showing him the uh his latest gadgets, and he shows him this fancy car and he says, "Now let's say somebody's sitting next to you holding a gun on you. So you push this button and James Bond goes, "Wait, wait, I know. It ejects him out of the car top of the car." "No, it ejects you out of the top of the car. And that leaves him in in car holding a gun on nobody. And then he feels silly holding a gun on nobody. >> [laughter] >> But you can't tell people to leave and then say, "Why did you leave?" >> [laughter] >> And uh basically, when you the people with money, when you just keep taxing and taxing them, eventually they figure out, "I don't have to stay here." And that's what of course is happening in California. They came with this great idea to tax everybody's money beyond what they earned, just whatever they had, just tax it again, take it away from them. And uh people are like, "Yeah, that's not going to work for me." And a lot of people have left the state. But that's not the the most dramatic thing they did in the state. They made so many different regulations. They had to put on environmental codes and this kind of code and that thing and they raised the minimum wages. There are all these kind of things. And a lot of businesses just left. Ooh. Companies that had been in uh California for years. Decades. They picked up and and left and said, "This is ridiculous. You keep making more taxes, you keep making more regulations, you make it more uncomfortable to do business here. And you think everyone's going to just stay and take it?" And people picked up and they moved. They moved to Florida, they moved to Texas, they moved to Tennessee. Places where they don't have these kind of tax burdens and uh they don't have that kind of crime and all the kind of difficulties that go on and they people vote with their feet. So, one of the places that left was Walmart. And I read an article about this, which I found absolutely fascinating, cuz I had heard the term beforehand, that there are areas that have become what they call a food desert. Uh what's meant by food desert? So, I live in Aris Hill. And Okay, I live in I'll take one neighborhood. I live here in Har Nof. Right? So, there's uh Macolette with a fruit store down on Haight Ave. There's another one further along on Haight Ave. When you come up to Shaul's Inn, so there's a supermarket, and then there's a smaller supermarket on the other side. And then when you go around Katzenellenbogen, there's another Macolette. And if you go up to Agassi, there's another Macolette. Then on Kaplan, there's a Macolette. And there's another Macolette there there Vishnitz Kanievsky over there. You're not that far away from being able to go and buy yourself some groceries. Once you leave the neighborhood, then there's a big Osher Ad, there's a big Rami Levy. Right? There's a big Yesh supermarket. All of that is within a mile's radius. But there are communities where they don't have anything. The amazing thing to me is, okay, I can I can understand for whatever reason, you know, you need groceries. You need to get milk, you need to get bread, you know. What is the demand for pizza? On Haight Ave, there's J2. You come up to Shaul's Inn, there's another pizza place. Uh next to uh next to the fruit store over there, take out place. You go up to Agassi, there's there's a pizza place. As soon as you step out of the neighborhood, there's Apple Pizza, there's Larry Pizza, uh there's another pizza place like the one block over from Apple Pizza. Apparently there's David's Pizza at the top. Like eight pizza places for this neighborhood. Why is there such a demand for pizza place? I don't know. But certainly you have no problem finding a a piece of pizza, yeah? Um I just had some girls over my house for Shabbos not that long ago. One of them was from South Bend, Indiana. I said, "Well, do you have any kosher food?" No. Pizza place? No. Is it? No. It used to be I I remember when there were Jewish communities that were starting out from communities and they subsidized the pizza place cuz people are not going to go there unless there's a pizza place. I remember that I spoke in Denver many years ago. They said, "I don't know why more New York Jews don't move here." I said, "Tell me why." He says, "Well, you know, we have uh swimming and boating and fishing and mountain climbing and hiking." I said, "Okay, you you don't understand New York Jews. Okay, they're looking for places to eat. That's what they want to do. You have one restaurant here and that's it." >> [laughter] >> No Jew New York Jew is coming here to go to that one restaurant. It's not happening. I I made a joke once. I said, "You know, people in New York, yeah, so they care about is going out to eat." This person was very offended and they said, "It's not true. My My roshe shiva came in. I went to the airport to pick him up." I said, "And do what?" "I took him out to eat." >> [laughter] >> But because of these policies, there are areas in California which have become what they call a food desert. There's no place to go shopping. For like 40 miles. There's not a store, not my kollel, not a nothing. It's uh hard to believe. But they institute policies that drove people away. And and so the the word they use besides using it as a as a food desert is food insecurity. Now, it doesn't mean that people don't have the money to buy the food, but it doesn't make a difference. Right? If if there's no food, doesn't matter if you have the money. And Hasidic tells of the Holocaust. So, there's a story there of this one from woman who they were on starvation rations. She would not eat her bread the whole Pesach. She sold it to another inmate who was non-Jewish. I'm shocked that she did not take that. And she saved up her bread for a whole week. Who starved it? Starved. And at the end of Pesach a call went out. They said the Bluzhever rebbe is dying. He did not eat any chametz whole Pesach and he's starving to death. Does anyone I know it's while on starvation rations here. Anyone maybe have any extra bread? So, she without hesitating gave him all of her bread. Saved his life. He later married her. And she said, "Do you know what that bread was worth? A week's worth of bread in in in Auschwitz? You couldn't buy that bread for a skyscraper." That that's that's what it meant to be able to have a piece of bread. And the Gemara in Gittin discusses this, you know, where uh when when the starvation hits in, people would pay anything for a piece of bread just to be able to have something to eat. So, we're not talking about that type of of insecurity. We're talking about it's just you want to go out for a loaf of bread or for container of milk, there's none around. It's uh Now, I know certain out-of-town communities where they don't have kosher shopping. So, they bring in meat from the city, they bring in baked goods, and they freeze everything. And that's what they have, you know. One of the places I went from the Yeshiva, they all their bread was frozen. They would take it out before a meal to defrost, yeah. Hopefully it was defrosted in time for the meal. But uh but there was uh apparently wasn't a bakery around. Uh the the things that people take for granted. I had a friend of mine who worked for a uh high-tech company, and they sent them all around the world. And he says, "Whenever I saw a kosher shop, I would go in and get something to eat cuz I didn't know when I would find one again." Now, he's English. So, they put him one time at a you know, for to visit a company in the Five Towns. He says, "So, I saw a kosher shop, and I went in and got something to eat." And I walked down the street, and three stores later, I see another kosher shop. By the end of the block, I was nauseous. >> [laughter] >> Well, yeah. But uh what do they call that? Feast or famine, yeah. But uh the idea of being able to um have food around when you need it. Tremendous bracha. Tremendous bracha. And I know that there are people who uh when they're looking to rent an apartment or to buy a house, they say, "Where's the shopping?" I want to make sure the shopping is close enough so that uh I If I need something, it's not a problem to go out and get get some milk, and get some bread. But uh it makes it makes a big difference in a person's life. And when you don't have that, very insecure. >> [sighs] >> There's a story I think I remember who said it, but I'm not 100% sure, so I'm not going to say. This city fellow goes out to a farmer. Says, "I understand you make bread here." Says, "Yeah." He says, uh "I have no idea how they make bread. I go to the store and I buy a loaf of bread. I don't know where it comes from. Can you teach me how to make bread?" Says, "Yeah. You got got a couple months?" >> [laughter] >> Says, "Sure." So, they get in a tractor and they go out to this lovely meadow. And he says, "Oh, this is beautiful, bucolic, ideal, you know, idyllic, beautiful." Yeah, he says, "You like that?" Yeah, he says, "Hop in the tractor." And plows the whole thing up. Says, "You destroyed all of the beautiful flowers and grass." He says, "Patience." Comes out with another another machine and he makes furrows. Says, "Okay." Looks like New York City now, you know, you have everything parallel, very nice. Then he brings out wheat. He says, "Oh, wheat, that looks nice." He says, "You like it?" Yeah. And he starts throwing it in the ground. Says, "What are you doing? You're throwing all that food into the mud?" Patience. And then he comes by with a wheelbarrow. He says, "What is that? It smells like" That's exactly what it is. It's manure. Pouring it on top. He says, "But you're destroying all the seeds." Patience. Come back a few weeks later and there's a field of wheat. He says, "Oh, now I understand. You destroyed the meadow to plant the wheat to be able to get all these wheat plants. It's beautiful. Amber waves of grain." You know, it's very nice. He says, "You like it?" Yeah, he says, "Hop in the tractor." Vroom vroom, he cuts it all down. He says, "What are you doing? You cut it all down." He says, "Wait. We'll make them into bundles." He says, "Bundles? Oh, bundles are always nice." He says, "You like the bundles?" Yeah. Now he puts it into the threshing machine. Pchoo pchoo pchoo pchoo pchoo. He says, "Oh, you're destroying all of it." And when he's done, he has obviously much, much more wheat than he planted. He goes, "Oh, now I understand. You dug up the the field to plant the wheat to harvest the wheat, to thresh the wheat, to get the uh wheat. Now you have lots of good wheat." He says, "You like it?" He says, "Yeah." He throws it into a machine, grinds it up. He says, "What are you doing to the wheat?" He says, "Patience. When it comes out, it's flour." Oh, this guy obviously was not too up to scratch with it. He goes, "Oh, white powder. I remember that from college." Okay. So, he says, "You like it?" Yes, it's so pristine and white. He goes, "Now" he adds water to it, mixes it all together, makes it into mud. He says, "Oh my gosh, you destroyed the beautiful flour." Patience. He forms them into loaves and puts them onto boards. And he says, "Now I understand everything." And he puts it in the oven. And he says, "After all of that, you're going to burn it?" And then he takes it out and it's bread. He says, "Now you understand where bread comes from." But that's a very involved process to be able to get it. Um here in Israel, we have more of a sense at least of what it means to have a season. Um I got married 1982, and we came to learn in Israel for a year. And there was a little fruit store where we lived. And I went down and I said, "Do you have any oranges?" And they said, "No." I said, "Well, when are you going to get oranges?" Uh a month or two. I said, "You know, no oranges? You always have oranges. You get them from Florida." >> [laughter] >> The guy had no idea what I was talking about. In America, you can always buy an orange. You can always get an apple. You can always get cherries and grapes. Here, there are seasons. The cherry season lasts like 3 weeks in June, and that's it. Then you can't get any cherries anymore. Uh and things are very much seasonal. Go out now, you're not going to find plums, uh peaches, nectarines. Uh that's the summer fruit. In America, you can get it anytime you want. In the summer, you can't get uh oranges and grapefruits and and uh clementines and uh you know, that that's winter fruit. You get to start to get the feeling of of what it means that there's a season. And how important the harvest is. Like I say, those of us who live in large cities and we have food security, I mean, we remember after COVID when there was all the supply chain problems and things like that. Uh it was uh it was a rough situation. You couldn't get things, boats were backed up, it was all kinds of problems. But insecurity that I'm not going to be able to get uh milk. Now, that happens here in Israel sometimes. There was a I don't know if it was last summer or the summer before. Suddenly, there was no butter in the whole country. The dairy farmers decided they weren't making uh butter. It wasn't worth their while. The sub- I don't know what it was. Couldn't get butter. You think, my gosh, butter? There are times you can't get milk. During COVID, you couldn't get eggs. Remember we're going into Pesach, you couldn't get eggs. It was it's rough. I'm not talking about the imports. There was a takufa here when you could get Heinz baked beans anyplace anytime you wanted. Now, it's been a year, maybe 2 years, can't get it. Yeah, you say, "Where is it?" Now, Heinz about it. Heinz it? It's it's a you know, strange thing. But okay, but that's an import. You know? But uh but eggs, milk, things like this. So, we know that there's a din of a veiless during Sefirah Omer. And the main reason for it is well, I don't know if it's the main reason, but the reason that's cited most often is because of the 24,000 talmidim of Rabbi Akiva who died. And yet, there was an old minhag to have a certain level of a veiless during the May hiring. Why? One of the reasons we read Megillas Ruth on Shavuos is because it describes the wheat harvest. And uh one of the names of Shavuos is Chag Hakatzir. Because uh the barley ripens earlier, that's when we bring the omer from the barley. And uh and then you um have to wait for the wheat to harvest. And that is around Shavuos time, Chag Hakatzir. There are so many things that can go wrong. Uh it's very hard being a farmer. You can suddenly get a fungus. You can um there could be a fire. A bolt of lightning comes. We don't really see this today, but many times in history there'd be locust. Somebody told me he had a relative who was on a kibbutz in the 1950s and he described this gigantic cloud of arbeh, of locust came and descended on a field. And all you hear is chomping, chomp chomp chomp chomp chomp. And when they got up, there was nothing left. They ate everything. I was like, "Why don't you swat it?" And he was like, "There's a gazillion of them." He says, "So, one of the Yemenites, you know, went out with a jar, caught a whole bunch of them to pickle them for later, you know, cuz they eat they eat every tradition on which locusts you can eat. And uh that was it. We would have just sat back helplessly. What could you do? Nothing you could do. So, while the grain is growing until you harvest it, and you read these stories every now and then down in Florida where there's a frost and they lose the crop. All the things that are uh that were there. We have this in Israel sometimes where there's a drought and uh you lose you lose a lot of your crops. But, like I say, back then there wasn't a Walmart that that brought it in from someplace else. If you lost your wheat harvest, you were in desperate shape. A whole country was in desperate shape. And, there was a sense of food insecurity. Not just that you couldn't go shopping, just there was no food. And then, of course, the prices shoot up with what's left and you know, life becomes very difficult for people. So, a person has to appreciate when things go right. A farmer very much depends on a lot of outside factors. Make sure he got good wheat, to make sure that uh the ground is being maintained. You could suddenly have the sprinkler system go off and uh things dry up. It's uh there's there's there's a sense of insecurity when you're a farmer. And um not an not an easy job. Not an easy job being a farmer. It's a lot of work. And at the end you have the harvest. And everyone comes out to help with the harvest. And they get together all the bundles of wheat and eventually they thresh it and and have bags of uh wheat. Now, it's not that simple. Cuz after they harvest it, they leave it outside to dry properly. Because if it doesn't dry properly, it could rot. And uh I read an article many, many years ago where someone wants to he had evidence, whatever his evidence was, that the wheat that they stored in Salem, Massachusetts, was not stored properly. And so, it was damp and grew a type of a fungus that was a hallucinogenic. And that's why when they said they saw witches flying around, they probably did. But it was all in their head cuz they were on drugs. They just didn't realize it. So, if you're not careful, so here in Israel, it doesn't rain in the summer for the most part. Um it also uh doesn't rain in Indianapolis in the summertime. I think, if I remember that correctly. But anyway, um it never rains in Southern California. You know, there's a lot of places it doesn't rain, apparently. But uh you leave it out in the sun until it dries well. And then you store it. That's why Sukkot is called Hag Ha'asif. You gather together everything that's been drying in the fields. And now you have it in your storerooms and everything's good and everything looks good and you're you're secure. Secure, that's the idea. And uh bags of grains are uh are prepared properly. There's an English author named Hardy who writes incredibly depressing books. His last novel was so depressing and there was such a uproar that he just stopped writing novels altogether. He was So uh Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Mayor of Casterbridge, and a number of novels like this which are all people who are essentially self-destructive. But he has one that's called Far from the Madding Crowd. And in it uh this uh young shepherd ends up losing uh his flock. And he goes to work for this girl that he had wanted to uh you know, wanted to marry and then she inherited her aunt's farm. And so she's well-to-do and he has nothing. So he goes to work for her. Anyway, she eventually marries this handsome, gallant soldier who's a ne'er-do-well. And the part of the theme of the book is that to work on a farm, you need a certain farm ethic. You have to um be serious about it. Yeah. It's a lot of work and a lot of dedication to be able to be successful. So um So he makes a big party and all the workers are you know, drunk and exhausted except for this fellow who was working for her. And it starts clouding over and they realize there's going to be a thunderstorm and it's going to destroy all of their grain. So, they want to thatch it over which is basically make roof over it going down to protect it from the rain. But it's very dangerous cuz you're standing on top of all of this grain and there's lightning all around. It makes you an easy target. But he says to her, "Come, you and I, we will save the crop. Everybody else is out." She says, "But it's dangerous. You could you could die cuz you have to save the grain." And he stands up on top of it and he keeps saying, "Hit me another thatch. Hit me a thatch." And he's tying them together and putting it down and then lightning's striking here and there and it's unbelievably frightening and he he finally gets it all finished. The two of them finish it just before the rain starts. Cuz otherwise you'll lose your whole crop. And amazing thing, the connection that people have to the to the land. We say in Krishna when the sati matayata can be tell you ramakosh we are soft to the ganacha with sirosh of the yitzarecha. You're bringing your grain, your olives, your wine. I mean, that's the brocha we give. Not that you'll have a CD, you know, in the bank, you know, that's going to give you a good interest and not that you'll have this going on or that going on, this investment. Food. Yeah? Grain, wine, oil, staples. And um and as long as you have these things, you'll be okay. That's the brocha. When you don't have these things, you can't stay. You'll have to you'll have to leave. I was a one of these outrage comics, Sam Kinison. And he says, "I know people keep raising money for these people starving in Africa. Uh I'm not going to give them any money. I'll just give them some advice. Move to where there's food." >> [laughter] >> Why would you stay in the desert starving to death? >> [laughter] >> It's a keen idea. And in fact, a lot of migration that's taken place throughout history was exactly that. And people looking for greener pastures, as the expression goes. You know, a place to live, a place to grow, a place to raise food. So, to be able to get food is quite a process. And while the grain is growing, you just have to hope that the grain doesn't dry up, that there's not a strong wind that blows it down, or as the Mishnah says, a bunch of ants come and eat away at the roots until it collapses. You get locusts. And so, there was a concern to be able to get food. And the question is, do we take it for granted? No, that's not the question. And we take it for granted. Uh there is a worldwide epidemic of type 2 diabetes. It's a new phenomenon. It's caused by two things. Having too much food and not enough exercise. Cuz in the good old days, you walked everywhere. 5 miles, [clears throat] you didn't think twice about it. 20 miles. People used to walk. It was what they did. Um when the weather is nice, so I I start exercising. I put on my my exercise equipment, you know, I I clothes, I get tied on my sneakers, you know, and and uh and I go walking. And it always strikes me that I'm passing these people who are doing this not for their health, just because they don't have a car. >> [laughter] >> They don't need to uh walk for exercise. They walk because they need to get from one place to the other. That's the nature of what they're dealing with. Yeah? We don't have that problem. Right? We baruch hashem most of us, we have ways of getting around. But people used to exercise a lot just in the course of the day. What was involved in um making bread for a housewife or doing the laundry? What an unbelievable amount of work that was Now people complain, I have to put the clothes in the washing machine and then I take them out, put them in the dryer. Yeah. Forget about it. Um and uh in the first of his series of uh the biography of uh Lyndon Johnson uh Robert Caro has in there how he brought electrification to rural Texas, uh Johnson when he was a congressman. And he describes what it was like to do the laundry at that point. How hard it was, how many steps were involved, how much physical labor. It was unbelievable. And now the you throw it in the washing machine and we complain. Yeah. So uh there's the uh the the amount of maintenance that went into keeping a society going. I want you to reflect on this just for a moment. What it was to walk down the street. People had sewage pipes that opened out into the street. Animals were walking up and down the street and they were dropping manure every place they went. Do Can you imagine what a What it just a rabbin looked like and smelled like? When I came to Israel with my parents the first time in 1969, we went through the Arab shook and there was uh open sewer going straight down the middle of the that little path that you walk through the shook. And the stench was unbelievable and just the sewage is everywhere and eventually they put in pipes and then they fixed it up and they and they built it up for them. Yeah. But uh But could you imagine what it just a rabbin was like? What it was to live in those in those kind of times? Wow. Just to just to try to be able to get down the road. Amazing amazing experience that was. Um Allan Sherman used to write these funny songs. So, I wrote one. And he took the word the song Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and he turned it into uh Smog in Van Nuys. Yeah. But there's one word there that was there. If they'd all drive a horse there'd be no smog of course but there'd be something worse which we don't even take take into consideration what it means to have that. But okay. Um to to be able to harvest thresh everything that was involved major major deal. Yeah. Isaac Bashevis Singer who uh was a Yiddish writer not religious grew up not just in an Orthodox home but his father was a rough. I don't have it anymore. I don't know what happened to it. But one of the best things he ever wrote was a book called In My Father's Court. And he describes growing up in the home of a rough in Warsaw. And he reports different stories that he saw and how his father would brilliantly solve the problems and and deal with people's problems and all kinds of things. Says he wasn't he wasn't much of a good at real life but at being a rough he was tremendous. So he describes the following scene. There were two families that had made a shidduch. The wedding hadn't taken place yet. And they got into a fight. As happens among Jews. And one of the families decided to send the other family a shalach manos and they baked into the hamantaschen excrement. And the other family was outraged and they wanted to call the sheriff and everybody was angry and they come to the rub. And they tell the rub the story. And he says, "You don't appreciate what food means, do do you? I guess you don't know what it is to have hunger." And he went through everything I just said. How you have to plow and how you have to plant and how you have to harvest and how you have to thresh and how you have to winnow to remove the the the shells from the grain. And then how you have to pick out all the little stones and then you grind it up into the flour and you finally make it into bread. And that's what you do to it? You know, there are people who don't have a piece of bread in our city to eat and that's what you do with it. Anyway, by the time he was done, both sides were crying. Because we don't take we we take it for granted. We don't we don't think about it. Because we have so much. So many different things. You uh you go to America, go to any decent kosher supermarket, bagels, hard rolls, soft rolls, different types of breads, all kinds of different types of cakes, different types of pastries, all kinds of amazing things. And if they have a bakery department, that's without a bakery department. If they have a bakery department, how many different types of things there are. Everything that you get there is like, [clears throat] "Wow." And so people take a bite out of it. Now, okay. Because I don't have to finish it. I can always go someplace else, get myself something else. There's always someplace to get something. It's amazing to me that Costco, which is an enormous place, their entire bakery section is under our hashgacha. It's milk it's but it's under our hashgacha. Every cake you see there, every bread, everything like that is kosher. That's besides their extensive baked goods of all different types and all kinds of things and they have yoshon and they have pas Yisrael and they have all kinds of stuff all stacked up. I don't know if that's true everywhere. You know, I I usually go to Costco's in Jewish areas, but such an enormous amount is there for us that we just take it for granted. To be able to have a piece of bread to eat. To be able to you know, make make a sandwich, have have a roll. I don't know if you've ever seen uh what when I was a when I was a kid we used to call them soup nuts. Here in Israel they call them soup almonds, shkedei marak. Yeah. Tiny little things. My grandchildren fill up bowls of it. They just sit there and munch on them. Somebody said when I was growing up in Yerushalayim, my father would buy a little bag of shkedei marak and every Shabbos, every child got three shkedei marak. That was our Shabbos treat. To be able to have bread. I used to speak for an organization called Karen Ezra Shabbos. Why did they start? There were these two guys who were learning in Torah Or. And they saw after davening, these people would come into the dining room and collect their half-eaten bread off the table. So, one of them asked the guys, "What are you doing?" And he looked at them and said, "This is breakfast, lunch, and supper." He says, "All you have is leftover bread?" He says, "Yeah." He says, "Well, what do you do uh Shabbos?" We have bread. Sometimes we get a can of tuna fish. Very exciting. We mix it up and we give every kid a little bit of tuna fish on Shabbos. That's a treat. Beis Yisrael catering hall. And the fellow told me once, he says, "You know, I'm breaking the law. I break the law. Cuz at the end of uh simcha, I have a lot of leftover food. I'm not allowed to do anything with that food. I have to throw it away, but I don't. I give it to a stocker who goes and distributes it to people. It's against the law, but I do it anyway. If they catch me, they can fine me. Just dump it. What else is there to do with it? I have never mastered the art of making exactly enough cholent for my family. For my shul, I have no problem. When I make no matter what size pot I make, it's gone. Yeah. But when I make it for my family, it's hard. You don't know. And you have leftover cholent. I can't give it away. They say, "Oh, you Shiva guys love it." I can't find any Shiva who will take it. Problem. You know? Well, what do I do? You keep it in the refrigerator long enough and then you throw it away, but I with a heavy heart. It's is good. It's delicious. But what am I going to do with it? How much can you How much can you You eat a bowl of challah. >> [clears throat] >> There's a lot of people have one challah together. We waste. People buy a loaf of bread. They use two or three slices. They leave it in the drawer until it gets moldy or stale and throw it away. Me, I buy a loaf of bread. I take out two slices and I stick it in the freezer. Every time I need it, I take out two slices like they did in that Yeshiva I went to. You learn to appreciate. Just throw it away. Just get rid of it. We're coming to Hag Hakatzir. These are the days when we're waiting to make sure that everyone's going to have food to eat. And you have to make sure that everyone's taken care. Have to make sure that everybody gets a piece of bread. Everybody gets what they need. Okay. I don't have to give excess, but I have to make sure that everyone is taken care of. And there are people who you know, buy up a lot. I'm always amazed when I go to a hotel where there's a buffet. And by the time I get there, there's no banana cake. There's no watermelon left. As I'm walking back to my table, I see plates and plates of watermelon on everybody's tables. They were afraid they wouldn't have enough. So, they loaded up and loaded it up and loaded it up to make sure that they had enough. They're afraid. One of the great things about the man was it to which you you get enough for today, and that's it. And learn to not expect to have anything other than what you've got. So, you need For the time had a uh store. And he would keep the store going till he made enough money for that day, and then he closed. There was a pizza store here in Jerusalem. I don't know if it's still true. That's why I don't want to mention the name, but He would run it in the morning. He opened the pizza store in the afternoon, and he ran it in the afternoon and the evening. But what he would do is he figured out how many pizzas he needed to sell that day to pay his expenses and make enough money for that day. And he would walk in, and he'd make that amount of pizza boxes. And once he sold them, he closed up. I told this story over once, and someone says, "Ah, now I understand." I said, "What?" He says, "I came in once, you know, with my my kids for dinner, and the guy was already closed." So, I asked him the next day, "Why were you closed?" And he says, "Cuz I got a big order. I sold 40 pies, you know, to you know, somebody, and 20 pies, and that's it. I was done." But if you kept work Why? I have enough for today. I have enough. I told the story of the Telshe Yeshiva, where he's um about to make kiddush, and he stops, and he walks all around the dining room. And he sees this one boy already took a piece of cake and put it on his plate. And he said, "You worried you won't get a piece of cake? Put it back. I'll make sure you get a piece of cake. Don't worry." No worry. People are nervous. I'm not going to get. There's nothing in this world you're supposed to get that you're going to miss out on. You're going to get everything you're supposed to get. And you have to be confident. That's the most important thing. And now, appreciation comments. Sorala Schwartz throwback to episode 282 where you mentioned a nasty comment that expressed disbelief in your receiving tens of thousands of views. I'm pretty sure at least 15,000 views are from me alone. >> [laughter] >> Listening to your show on repeat. I always wondered about that. If you listen more than once, does that count as a second view? I mean, cuz someone told me if it's coming from the same computer, they only count it as one. I don't know. But if so, I want to keep clicking on one of my videos. I'll tell you that much. Um Uh thank you for providing encouragement and positivity. I always say that's one of my on this podcast is to um give people a positive Jewish experience. As someone prone to anxiety, listening to your show show relaxes me. Reminds me that being human is difficult. That's that's me. I used to have people who came to my show and they say, "I love listening to you because I feel like if you could accomplish it, anyone could." >> [laughter] >> Reminds me that being human is difficult and makes me truly believe that whatever I'm struggling with, I can do it. Also, I'd like to point out that your theme song has no right being that good. When I start a podcast Who knows? Seems to be all the rage. I would appreciate if you could put a good word with Lenny Solomon and ask him to write my own theme song. Thank you for everything. May Hashem bless your efforts to uplift Klal Yisrael. It should be a for you and your family. Thank you. But I would suggest that if you want him to write you a a theme song, have him on your podcast. That's what I did. And he said, I have to write you a theme song. And I didn't think anything would come of it, but then somebody reminded him, hey, you said you're going to write it. And he sat down and he wrote it. And yeah, it really is pretty catchy. I I I have to admit. So, if you're a zoycha to have one like that, Lenny, just a quick shout out. We love you. And uh I have to put on my Schlock Rock uh t-shirt next time to uh to mention it. Hi, Rabbi Wolovsky. My wife and I listen and watch all of your shiurim all the time. We really enjoy them. {exclamation mark} We laugh through all the jokes, even when we don't understand them. >> [laughter] >> Let me tell you something. Someone told me that we're in one of my shiurim once and I told a joke and everybody's laughing. And the guy says, I turn to the guy next to me and I go, I don't get it. And he goes, neither do I. >> [laughter] >> But, I have I have a cheskis kashrus that people know that I'm funny and so they understand if they didn't get a joke, it's a chiseron in them, but it's definitely funny. >> [laughter] >> I used to tell my kids, you know, um uh you know, they'd say to me, ah, but that's not funny. And I said, how much do you get paid to tell jokes? You know, I get paid a lot. >> [snorts] >> So, uh they said, yeah, but not every joke is that funny. I said, listen, I get paid a certain amount of money when I speak and uh I have to fill up that amount of jokes, you know, so not every joke is going to be a thousand dollar joke, but you know, I have different different jokes, they all have to add up together. Well, after that, whenever I would tell a joke, one of my kids would go, that's about a dollar seventy-five. >> [laughter] >> Thanks for nothing. Um thank you for the wonderful content and for making Torah learning so entertaining. Yeah, shashuim, it's it's it's meant to be entertaining. It's meant to be enjoyable. It's meant to be fun. Yeah? Um Uh Josephus writes, "We Jews are not given to the writing of many books. The Torah has always been our source of entertainment." So, I'm glad that everyone's appreciating that. And that's it for this episode. If you want to find out more about the show, you can go to my website with me Orlansky.com. And you can order merch. You could sign up for one of our online shiyurim. You could sponsor an episode, sponsor parsha and buy, sponsor question and answer. And uh go ask a question, make a comment. Whatever you like. Lots of things to do there. You can go to my recipe section where somebody has pulled together all my different recipes that I've mentioned during different shows. And that's it for this episode. Until next time, I am Rabbi Orlansky, and this has been the Rabbi Orlansky show. It's the Rabbi Orlansky show. Torah and simcha, ready to go. The Rabbi Orlansky show. Knowledge and wisdom will help you grow. Lots of fun in every episode. And we don't have to rhyme, [music] though we don't. It's the Rabbi Orlansky show. At RabbiOrlansky.com. Torah, anytime, YouTube, [music] and more. It's the Rabbi Orlansky show. Torah and simcha, ready to go. It's the Rabbi Orlansky show. Till next time, till we meet again. The Rabbi Orlansky show. It's the Rabbi Orlansky show. It's the Rabbi Ulwaski Show.