#55: Behind the Bima - Special Guest: R. Benji Levene

good evening it's the nine o'clock and i'm your host ryan from goldberg joined by my dear friends over field moscow it's intro by josh brody and we're here to take you behind the bema behind the bmw let's begin by thanking our sponsor and i'm really excited about our new sponsor the glass family of teaneck owners of morotec industries and they've launched a brand new brand which i'm excited about because i personally can benefit from this it's called good raise it is spelled go g-o-o-d-r-a-z and you can check it out at goodrayz.com.com why am i excited about this because i take vitamin d every day i gotta take three pills i take 3000 milligrams of vitamin d a day apparently it's very good for you in corona and i guess i don't get enough sun i'm not sure why i need that so here they created these drops and it's amazing because you could put a drop in your coffee your water your tea your cereal your yogurt and and you're done each drop is a thousand milligrams you get your vitamin d it's a no-brainer little bottle you want to go to the pharmacy you're not constantly replacing pills you don't have to swallow them you just you just put the drops in you won't even taste it good raise and you could check it out you could order online at goodray's or amazon or a lot of other places g-o-o-d-r-a-z.com g-o-o-d-r-a-z dot com very grateful to the glass family of t-neck thank you for sponsorship and thank you for listening gentlemen it's been a very tough week very tough week i don't think last wednesday night when we met we would have dreamt in a million years that the very next night lag by omar celebrations around the world of course the central celebration may roan thousands of jews and to think that the tragedy the casualties the loss of life the impact the devastation the catastrophe it's just it's just tremendously tremendously painful and we're all still reeling jewish people around the world this has transcended our differences it's made us feel united the stories of uh you know religious non-religious donating blood feeling connected feeling together just listening to rashawise who made such a powerful point he said you know in america you hear about another mass shooting and unfortunately there have been no shortage of these mass shootings they're terrible something must be done i don't know how to address it but it's it's terrible terrible devastating and scary world that we live in and when you hear when you see of course your heart skips a beat of course if you're a feeling person you have sympathy you have empathy but you don't feel that a member of your family's been killed right united states of america hundreds of millions of people we're proud patriotic americans we're connected we're loyal but you don't feel one of your own so to say but in israel aside from our community's connection to donnie morrison of hasham but the other 44 all 45 victims it's a cousin it's a brother-in-law it's a nephew it's an uncle the jewish people were one and um and and we've seen that the outpouring of unity and love if only we could bottle that and and continue that so i know some impressions that you have on what this week has been like what how you're dealing with this with this pain do you find yourself distracted are you sleeping well are you picturing how how they might have suffered or or what we can learn from this where is your attention so i mean again with everything you just said and uh it's been absolutely horrific um on so many levels and i think that's what's been most striking to it is the layers of tragedy that are built upon tragedy that are built upon tragedy and i think so many of us are grappling through it friday for me was just a big days um it felt that entire day of friday there was just a cloud hanging over every interaction i had it was a real challenge to be with my kids who obviously weren't able to fully grasp and understand what was going on and they expect you know smiley happy dad and obviously that was not the case on friday and that was a very big challenge for me personally and i don't remember a time coming into shabbos in shul in brs where there was just more of a cloud hov hanging over davening people questioning hashem how could hashem have and again we're believers and but i think people were legitimately struggling and i don't remember a time when as a community more people struggled in such a palpable way with amuna issues with bitahon how could hashem do this how could hashem allow this to happen sadiq baralo virus vitovlo i don't remember a shabbos like this in a very very long time yeah i agree with you and you know for us it really hit close to home uh for all jews that hit close to home for all good people um but donnie morris's grandparents live in our community and one of the hardest things we've ever had to do rabbi moscowitz and on friday after they were looking and searching and we understood what was happening from other sources and were asked to go over and be with donny's grandparents who are members of our shul to be with them and and frankly to tell them while family members were on the phone a very painful very very difficult impossible thing it's a parent and a grandparent's absolute worst nightmare and this isn't an illness that takes time one prepares himself not that that's any better but but you know the last picture that donnie sent was a selfie at mayron the biggest smile on his face which apparently he had all the time and that's the image that joy the family had all seen it and said oh he's having the best time and then you go from he's having the best time we're so proud we're so happy for him that smile it's just an impossible thing to believe in so this is you know it's impacted all of us on a lot of levels um my daughter was in mayron that night and thank god it didn't affect her it didn't affect anyone in the women's section but it was scary and it's definitely etched in her mind and memory forever the sirens the stretchers the emergency the casualties the scene um we did rabbi moskowitz and i did two zooms one with the girls in israel in seminary one with guys in yeshiva we did yesterday and i'm just an opportunity for them to schmooze to talk to share for us to try to give some very powerful things that came out on the girls zoom one of the girls said you know i'm dealing with it for me it's challenging but could you give me guidance on how to talk to my friends i don't know whether she had friends in chatham or whether she just mean my friends who were in there she was at marone she left before this happened she had friends who were there weren't obviously again the girls were not directly affected but you know if you're on the scene of a terror event even if you're not um at risk you're still very traumatized by it and she was looking for some guidance on on how do you support a friend and the guys was really an impossible question some boys in chauvin asked they said you know we're in the basement and we're struggling to concentrate when we learn because we know the best thing we could do for dhani nishmaso is to learn in his memory but when we sit in that basement all we do is look at his empty mockum the place he used to sit his farm are set up that was his place that's where he sat and now it's just empty so how do you tell 17 18 year old kids 16 year old kids the year in israel their life ahead of them you know if they feel immortal and they're looking over at an empty spot of a friend these are things they shouldn't be dealing with at that age i think i was blown away sorry yeah now it's just interesting to think that there's a lot of people out there that don't understand what marone is and why it's so significant why there's so many people that gather i remember reading an article last week from rabbi knew in our community who tried to describe it for people that just haven't experienced it or probably never will experience it but why it's such an important moment for people to be able to go there and and and see it but just your words that you said this past week i guess it was in your dress show when you spoke i think it was about your daughter was very you know left a big impact on me what you said at i guess at the moment they're all singing on imam and and the feeling was that meshiach was imminent like he you could feel he was about to come and then just moments later when the tragedy happened you never felt more distant exactly yeah that contrast i was just gonna add that i was um i was actually i was impressed and proud by the thoughtfulness of so many of the questions that we got yesterday when we were talking to the to the young men and the young women in our community and their concern for other people they're concerned for their own spiritual growth the questions they had the way they were grappling with it and again i was i was enormously almost proud of the way that they were processing things how they were seeking advice and guidance and looking to people with uh with more life experience for a little bit of uh physical answers were possible but uh but it was very i was i was proud to listen to them and to hear their questions and to hear how they're thinking things through and i thought it was a great sign of maturity for them as you said no 17 18 year olds should be going through this and they were thrust into this chaotic experience and uh you know to see them rise to the occasion and really grapple with it with the maturity was was a great source of pride for our community the future the future is bright i agree with that assessment i'll i'll leave you because i want to move over to our guest we have a very special guest and so much to talk to him about tonight and he's a perfect guest who can help us us offer us comfort and strength he comes from a legacy of revali levin his legacy of loving all jews of jewish unity it's it's what we need in in reaction and hopefully in in comfort from this but you know going behind the bema for a moment um two things i gave that russia on shabbos and it really came from from my heart i was sharing my own struggles and questions and how to channel it and where we can go with it um i gave it we have many many other shabbos morning i'd given it one minion and and was very emotional while giving it and then there was a bar mitzvah a very exciting very happy uh wonderful simcha at another minion and as a rabbi as a rav it's very conflicting on the one hand you have a packed crowd by packed i mean socially distanced but packed that there are a lot of people there and you say to yourself to not talk about this you can't people come to sure they're looking to it makes sense to say something give me some strength so to not talk about it is a disservice on the other hand it's impossible mitzvah family flew in you're going to throw candies you're going to sing semester of a mazel dove and you're going to talk about 45 people who are who are tragically tragically died in a catastrophe so that's you know some of the thinking that i'm very lucky to to have colleagues who right beforehand i could talk it out and say do i go to another russia for this minion do i go to a backup hit the files for this minion do i talk about this how do i link it to the bar mitzvah what do we do but that's a little behind the beam of the other thing in in thinking i can just respond to that just for sure you did again having been there and a participant i think rabbi brodie would agree you 100 made and that made the right decision i think that's really what people needed to hear at that moment in time and you gave people who are really questioning questioning in ways that i've again i don't remember in in recent memory and you gave people a lot of physics so you made the right sense i appreciate that you know i tried and i hope i did and i hope the bar mitzvah family understands i hope it only enhanced and didn't take away but the second question as i was speaking was the kids in the room there there it's a bar mitzvah so all 13 year olds all the friends are there but there's 12 and 11 and 10 and seven year olds in the room and you're up there and on the one hand as a speaker you are tugging on the harsh strings and you're having people open up their heart by talking about what it meant that 45 people were were trampled to death a catastrophe what that meant that they lost their life so young on the other hand you don't want to give nightmares to a seven-year-old an eleven-year-old a kid comes to schultz and next to their a child comes to shul and sits next to their parent and the child the parent is the parent entitled to assume that the child is going to not be exposed to something at shul that will give them nightmares that the rabbi is not going to give a speech to make the kid go home the child go home and say i'm scared what if it happens to me i don't want to leave the house i don't want to go to an event i don't want to go to so that's another again it's just a behind the bema kind of just sharing there's not easy answers but just sharing some of the thought process of trying to figure it out and make sense of how do you address issues of the day in a meaningful and direct way but also recognizing and respectful that you have different diverse ages in the room that you have simcha that you have a lot of things that need to be that need to be balanced so add an example to that so when listening to the levia on sunday i had a very similar experience i mean two hours straight of just crying your eyes out and in the middle of that we had a bat mitzvah i had to go to an up sharon and it was it was really challenging as a rabbi we talked in the past about compartmentalizing then we went to a wedding from there we went to a wedding from there and just okay i'm like watching the levia i'm cutting out in the middle i'm running two and up sharon to wish mazel tov going to a bar mitzvah wishing mazata i'm gonna go to a wedding later tonight and it was very challenging day emotionally that's a lot of gears you can't constantly switching gears and and you want to be authentic so it's not we we're authentic although compartmentalized that's the that's the challenge so we are super super excited we have an amazing guest tonight uh he's been to our community he's become a friend of of my family my father actually grew up in his father's shul which we'll we'll talk about um revenge levine the grandson of the great sadiq of you shalom of arya levin he's a yeshiva university graduate and has a smile from the chief rabbinate of israel he was an advisor to the chairman of the aliyah department the jewish agency for israel educational director the great gesher we'll talk to him about that he's often a scholar in residence he's the rav of the achtute israel actress i hope we're going to ask him about that as well just an all-around amazing amazing person and i was curious when i first heard of him and met him and and we'll get into it i'm sure our audience is how did you levin's grandson end up at yeshiva university how did river yoshi's nephew how did robertson kanyevsky's first cousin end up speaking english growing up in new jersey and end up at yu how does that make sense so very excited to talk about that without any further ado it's our great pleasure to welcome on rabbit bench levine we are so honored and privileged to be joined by a dear friend rebecca levine benji's been to our community in boca raton he's hosted children from our community my own children and there's an extraordinary special person and we're so so excited particularly on the behind the bhima that is before yom you shall i am to be able to welcome one of the tsadikim of you shalom who takes after only his grandfather and other illustrious members of his family rebenji thanks so much for making time and for being with us an honor for me to be with you so we have so much to talk about obviously uh your grandfather that saddak of your shallamervaria levin what it was like to to be in his home what it was like to spend time with him the messages his legacy your uncle ravi yash of zacchael what it meant to be the nephew of a garlador nuclear tarakula your first cousin robertson kanievsky zakrono lovraka her special quality what made her unique there's so much to talk about in your own illustrious history but i want to begin by talking about one of the most special members of your family and that is you tell us a little bit about the amazing work that we know that you've done the history that you grew up in america your father was a rev in in in newark menachem begins your visits to your home we'll we'll get to all that in jersey city of course where my father grew up and attended that show you remember him from his youth i want to hear all of that but let's start with what you're doing now today you are the rav of the akhta siso shul one of the most special shules in you shall line with an amazing history a trap door for guns the fighters the work that you've done in guest share trying to bridge the gap between the religious and secular let's begin tell us a little bit about what you're doing now what you're dedicated to and and your extraordinary life well what i'm doing right now is i spent over 40 years working with gesher traveling around the country running seminars working in schools trying to bridge the gap between the religious and the secular which is a a very very difficult problem in israel because israel is a jewish country in america or england wherever you can belong to any sect do whatever you want you don't have to be affiliated to to anything if you don't want to and then but in your shalom in israel living in israel because it's a jewish state the question is what does that mean being in a jewish state and where do i fit in and and one of the very very great problems in israel is a problem between the religious and the secular when they proclaim the state of israel and they sat down and decided tried to decide together what kind of a state is this going to be is it going to be a religious state and the secular said of course not and they said it's going to be a secular state and the religious said of course not and and they went back and forth and worked out a kind of way to live together and that is and there were things like shabbat would be the official day of rest and so buses wouldn't go on shabbat but cars private cars could drive on shabbat so the religious said that it's a day of rest the national day of rest cars shouldn't try the resecular said uh what do you mean why should i pay more money for uh a taxi or or for why why can't i take a bus an and everywhere else on sunday and that buses run or whatever so they worked out a way of living together which through the years has caused problems here and there also because of the politics if there are more seats in one party they have they can try and pass laws against the other and it always causes a rift it's a rift that that until today they have never really able been able to figure out how do you live together in a jewish state religious and secular people but with all the problems it does work it works with problems and for many many years i dedicated my life to traveling around the country working with religious and secular schools uh bringing them together religious and secular kids trying to find a way where we could live together and not necessarily agree with one another but at least respect each other's positions and it was very it was a wonderful wonderful experience i i had a show i did call the four faces of israel that i was able to do all over the world that was was very funny but it broke down a lot of the stereotypes of how each one looked at the other person and and gave me a tremendous fulfillment in also being able to meet thousands of people throughout the country of all different types and different walks of life and being in certain ways and address for them when they wanted to talk about what is their jewish identity people don't know that guest share is actually responsible for the show diesel that she saw began not as a for-profit enterprise but gesher this non-profit wanted to give a insight a window into the world of hasidim in yerushalayim that in in their lives there's a lot that people face in the day-to-day drama of marriage and parenting and the like is similar across worlds so chisel itself is a product of gesher could you i don't know if you had anything to do with uh when you were with uh gesher i personally didn't no but it's a wonderful wonderful show and it it took the country by storm really it did it did create that that window can you talk to us about that shul that your grandfather sure that you're privileged to now serve the rav tell us some of its features and in whose memory was it founded or the original founders of it and and what continues to happen there today well i just want to give you a little background of where i come from and how i get to this school uh my father of hamiakov who is one of the godolan the greats of jerusalem as a young boy he was considered one of the great talmudic scholars he had written a book on the rambam at a very young age he was very close to ralph cook and many of the greats in your shalom braves alma and my grandfather sent him to poland to learn by bearing the great communist yeshiva my father's harusa in jerusalem was ripley mizam and oyabok and they grew up together and zama told me when he came to to pay a shiver call my father passed away he was crying and he said your father was one of the greatest he was greater than all of us and my father was a young boy all he was shallam hit they talked about him and what happened was that um my mother came from london her father was a rover in london and was in contact with my grandfather rebaria in jerusalem they wrote to each other and my mother wanted to come to israel my father had just come back from poland and they were married and lived two years and you were shallam and then my grandfather rabbi said to my father take your wife to see her family she hasn't been home for uh a couple of years so they went to london and visiting london was mayor berlin the son of the netsif uh barilan right ramayana barilan he was the head of mizrahi world mizrahi and interesting enough he used to test the boys in the great it's yeshiva near the shook of mahne yehuda and he knew of my father and he remembered my father because he had tested him and my father was a young boy and when he saw my father all of a sudden in england mayor berlin barilone was speaking in england for world miss rocky he said to my father what are you doing here and my father told him my wife is from london her father is a rob in the east end of london the great jubilee street synagogue and we came for a visit so mayor berlin said well i want to send you for a few months to america la fitz to give shior and people should know about you and my mother said to my father it's a great idea i'm not in the street i'm in my parents home go to america for a month or two you'll meet the the jew jewelry american jewelry and the golem there the rabbanim there and then you'll come back to london we'll go back to earth's israel and uh my father went to america and while he was in america world war ii broke out and for two years my parents were separated my mother was stuck in england during the blitz she was evacuated to a small little town called sirencester my father was stuck in america in order to stay he had to get it was sort of like a green card whatever but in order to get that you had to travel outside of america to an american embassy and then come back in he was advised to go to canada he crossed back into seattle and he started yeshiva in seattle of shamrock oyster and many of these young boys who went to public school in the morning afterwards became very big tamir studying in this yeshiva that my father abandoned siadli also became the rabbi because rabbi vogelenter was busy with overseas he was working for that sola and my father became the rabbi there two years later my mother came over and my father was in seattle for 12 years and then i was born there in 47 and in rabbi henkin who was then the poisson in new york before emisha loved my father and he brought him to jersey city uh the rub there had passed away rough bluff there was a beautiful shul and my father became the rabbi in jersey city in 1949 till 1969 and i grew up basically in jersey city new jersey but in the summers they would send me to eretz israel a number of times to live with my grandfather and and that was an unbelievable experience okay let's ask you a question go ahead when your father when your father first came to america or mayor berlin ramirez bayern sent him was that under the auspices of mizrahi or was that of mayor barilan saw his greatness and thought it would be good for him to come to america i i'm not sure i i don't know it's a good question i know that he was instrumental my zeta rebar had learned by the native and with mayor berlin it's interesting the native had two sons who were like about 50 years apart rebecca in berlin who was the chief rabbi moscow and my grandfather told me lomash yadi miyado my hand never left his so my grandfather abaya learned by the nitsy bian balogen and was very close to his son rakhine berlin was the chief rabbi of yerushalayim red mayor berlin was born like 50 years because when the civ was an old man his wife passed away and he married a younger woman and so there were two brothers who were many years apart very very different and um was there was the the rav rashi of yerushalayim red mayor was the head of world miss rocky a goddall in his own right in fact i'll tell you an interesting story told me that when mayor berlin once came in to uh to give a a um a test the beginner in the yeshiva in its time the kids my father and zama were then about nine ten years old and he asked the question rabbi mayor berlin who can give me all the mahlika sin in bhavamitsia between remay and rebyoda he said your father got up he pointed to your father your father got up and he went through the entire massachusetts he went through all the mahalakshmi so after his alma told me this story i came back and told it to my father and my father laughed and he said to me and you know why he asked who can name all the macholicus in between red yehuda and redmayer i said why he said because his father was reviewed in a tif and he was the mayor that's right that's correct but um uh so i always say that i i speak english people say to me how is it that whereby levine's grandson talks with an american accent i say because of barilan mayor berlin barilon was the one that sent my father to america and why we wound up in america so you have us on the edge of your seats you're a teenager in america you go to your grandfather in israel for the summers what's that like a yankee fan yeah you forgive us father i'm growing up in the house with my father who's a guttal in his own right i mean my grandfather used to stand up for my father he said benika onya akov and i'm sent to you shalom and it's an amazing experience because it's before the six day war it's mama's the early 1960s and this after my bar mitzvah 61 62 and your shalom is very very small very very primitive um and i come into i i come for the first time to see my grandfather who i've heard so much about who has sent me letters in his special unique handwriting and um i even remember that first experience because there was something very unusual about it i come and my brothers were there and i walked in and my brother said bin yaman is here and my grandfather saw me in his little room and he made a shakriano with the shem and he said and then he ran and he hugged me and then he turned to my brothers and he said what joseph said when they brought bin yamin to mitram he said is this your young brother that you that you told me about by me and i concluded the sentence and the reason i concluded the sentence was because my father i said to my father i said i said abba daddy what is rabbi going to say when i first come my father thought for a minute my father was brilliant he said i'll probably say to your brothers so i know the rest of the buzzing my grandfather's face light up and every time my grandfather would write me he would write to me which is the brother of and i believe adhayong that any success i've had in my life has come from that broker that my grandfather gave me when i first met him in his little room and you were shalom must have been an amazing culture shock this american yankee grown up in jersey city and and as i said you know my father has incredible memories of that shul and of your father's greatness and uh what a culture shock american english speaker to go into the heart of you shalom the yeshua of rivaria levin that saddek of you shall i am i can imagine the pressure on you to be ravario levin's grandson that sadly of eusaline's grandson the pressure to be the son of your father and the culture shock what was that like when you first came to shalem well it was it is all my life it's been tremendous pressure but it taught me one very important thing how to relate to people who come from families that are very well known met jace to their children because i understood exactly what they had to go through but in a way though it was a culture shock it wasn't such a culture shock because i spoke yiddish my parents first language my mother came from london her father was around there thomas time my mother spoke of fluent litvishy yiddish and the queen's english she sounded like the queen when she spoke we have tapes of her and my father spoke yiddish in hebrew so my parents first language was yiddish and i grew up in a house of litvish yiddish and so i'm so grateful for that because i was able to speak to my grandfather my grandfather learned with me every day but um but i came from a house in jersey city we had a beautiful house that the shul gave us to this little tiny room in in um in the new sheline and uh i'll just tell you like in the morning my grandfather would get up very early and he would go to darwin's which is a shul opposite the sugar machine yehuda that has a big sun dial on it and there there was immediate vasekin what's interesting is and i always talk about how people were much more normal there from hidden were very normal because my grandfather would go to dive and he would get up about 5 30 and i would watch everything he did because i figured to myself i'm going to watch i have an opportunity to live with it salic viewership line i'm going to watch everything he does and i wrote it down and everything i said and then i'm going to go back to america to my yeshiva and i'm going to do the same things i saw my grandfather do and when when my rebbe said to me why are you doing that i'll say that's what sadiq do but there was nothing to copy because everything my grandfather did was so normal and so easy it didn't dive in longer than other people or shorter or whatever it was just very glass and very very easy how did he wake me up in the morning he didn't say to me get up you have to dive and an american kid you know like he got up at 5 30 and that he didn't he didn't wake me when he went to schule when he came back later on about eight o'clock then he woke me and how did he wake me would say to me by dantata in jersey city in america when did they adopt in your father's shul in jersey city in america and i would say zera zega about eight o'clock so would say to me in yiddish if you run now you can still make it so i would get dressed very quickly i would run to one of the schools in the center you shaline because i do a tour there actually in that whole area that i i remember as a kid so well and the characters there and um i would dive into one of the schools come back then he wanted to make me breakfast so he would send me up to my aunt who lived in the upstairs to get some eggs and to get some shem and zayat some olive oil now he didn't have a stove he had a primus a primus is like a camping stove it was all on kerosene uh heating light all these things cooking was on kerosene so he would i would bring back these eggs and shem anxiety and he had a frying pan that i was sure they used in the besan migdash it was the mother of all antiques and he would take the shemen's is his olive oil and he would fill up the pan and i was starting to break out so i said zeta gnu genug enough olive oil and it would say name it's very very healthy now then he showed me how to light this primus it was like a camping stove that everybody used they didn't have stoves so uh you would take um there was like blue alcohol and and you would you would pour some on the top and light it and then when it got very hot there was a little pump on the bottom and you would pump the bottom and the kerosene would move up and when it hit the fire would go and that's what you cooked on right it was like a fast cooker and so he would make me an egg and this was already in the the middle of the summer he still had matzos left over from pesach so he gave me matzos with an egg that he made me full of olive oil it was the most delicious breakfast i've ever eaten i've eaten in a lot of places in the world this was the best breakfast i ever had and then he would learn with me for a few hours and it was always with stories interesting it was like i i could uncle ravel yoshi who was the best in and walk him home to his house in mayor sharon you have to understand that the was the seed of the of religious zionism and ravali yoshev uh there was a brisker a ban uh a kharam against going into hekhal because it was part of the uh the religious zionists and revelation had his office in efron he was the head of the best in and i would wait for him there and i would walk him home to mayor sharon there are many many experiences of the summer of of going every shabbos to revelation and being with him he would sing samiras he was very very nice he was um i love to go there well what was it did you realize at the time um not only your grandfather's greatness and sidcos and of course in learning but your uncle did you know that ravi yasha was on the track to be the undisputed garlador that's encyclopedic knowledge that he was respected around the world um i i knew of him and everything but i but it was very interesting because revelation held so much from my father that in the letters that he writes to my father he writes the biggest titles of all so it wasn't even though i grew up in jersey city on a street with mostly non-jews and played ball with them um you know and i knew all of them street it was it was it was in many ways you would say it was a tremendous culture shock it was but in many ways it wasn't because in the house that i grew up in it was you were shalom in jersey city that's the house we grew up in but but it was also growing up of course in jersey city and uh coming to ushala in in many ways even though it's like at that time you would people call it a third world country because it was very primitive uh and it didn't have until after the six day war when it started to change but it was um i loved it i just loved it i loved the way it was i loved and i loved being with my grandfather we couldn't go to the old city on tish above we went up to hartseon and you could look from heart sion and you could see the jordanians with their guns standing opposite you from a distance and your shilling was very very bottling was very very small but there was something about the the the avira of jewish line of uh in those days it was still still the early days of of every shrill of the medina and there was a feeling in the country that was was special it was something very unique you mentioned what's that your grandfather was the rob of the time we wanted to get back to the actual okay so my grandfather was the brother of this show called doctors israel which started even before the beginning of the state it started actually on raf cook street and then it moved over to this little mithram right off of joviafo and the people who were members of that shoe were people who were sent to africa and by the british people who fought in the underground in the eighth cell the lekhi the the ergon the freedom fighters and um after in 48 when they proclaimed the state then uh the number of these people who were sent to africa came back from kenya and other places where the british sent them and uh like the people like him begin would come in there from time to time to dave and uh ruby rivlin who is the today the president of israel still has his seat in the middle of the school that in the first row it says rauvein rivlin and um many of the of the real heroes of the underground in that daven in that shul in in jerusalem and i would sit next to my grandfather i mean it was um it was it was a wild experience for me you know i i saw the way all these people they were these guys were really tough fighters and uh i saw the love and respect that they had for my grandfather was amazing now you mentioned you shalom and uh you had mentioned to us previously that you had the great privilege of being with your grandfather in your shalom after the 67 war and being able to escort him to the kotel um can you share that story with us yes i can i i have to go back a little ways i was a junior in nyu yeshiva university in 1967. it was before finals and the members of betar and other groups started coming around and saying we need volunteers there's going to be a war in israel we need volunteers so um i said you know i grew up with all malachi began used to come to visit he came to my bar mitzvah i have a picture with him at my bar mitzvah and uh to come to talk to my father he he revered my father menachem began and um and so i grew up with all the stories of the ergonomy and my grandfather's involvement in it and now when they said this is a this is a dangerous time we need volunteers i said this is one i'm not going to miss so i asked the guys in you what do i need to get to be able to go they said you have a passport i said sure have a passport but i had used my passport a number of times before to come to israel so when i went back to jersey city and i opened my passport i found it was overdue and i knew that to get a new passport you got to wait a few months so i went right back to yu and i said to them what do i do and they said to me uh well usually it's a but it's not a problem they said why because if you go down to uh you know where they have all the ice skating rink and that in new york and um what's there's a place there if you go there and you really need a passport it's until today i've done it a few times you pay a little extra they wire to washington and you can get a passport the same day so they said to me but don't wear a kippah wear a baseball cap and um and they said to me and don't say you're going to israel say you're going to england or whatever say your uncle's very sick in england and it wasn't a lie really because my mother is from london i had an uncle who was then really thick in england so i could really use that without lying so i went down to rockefeller center and this is june of 1967 i'm wearing my baseball cap i'm online it's a true story and i get to the dalpec to the counter the guy says to me okay what do you need i said my passport's expired i need nukes i need a new passport he said okay fill out the forms and it'll take a couple of weeks you'll get a new passport i said no no no i need it now today he said why i said i have an uncle in england who's really sick and i have to go now i may never see him again so the guy looked at me and he said where do you really want to go i said i got to go to england my uncle's very sick and uh i want to i need the passport today he looks at me again he says okay one more time where do you really want to go so i figured one of my this guy knows what's going on so i said i want to go to israel there's going to be a war and anybody who remembers everybody thought this was going to be another holocaust 12 egyptian armies going to throw israel into the sea people really thought we were at the end of the line so uh so then i said to myself as i said them i wanna i wanna volunteer they need volunteers so he said to me get out of the line please go into that office over there on the other side of the hall and wait for me and i figured i blew it why did i have to say that to him but i went into the office i sat there in about a little while later he walks and he sits down he said okay where do you want to go i said we've done this before i said we've talked about i want to go to israel i said i i said what he said well we can't stop you from going to israel we can only advise not to travel to the middle east i said then why did you ask me all these questions he said because i have a cousin in tel aviv can you bring him a package for me and i almost fell on the floor but it's true and i bought the package for him anyway i left america the night before the war when we got to paris to orly airport they told us the war broke out and um a number of people are on the plane to a lot of volunteers and rep david miller was also on the plane with me we were together nyu and um but some of the people went back we decided we're going no matter what we were in transit so they took us to greece we spent a day and a half in greece and then in the middle of the war with four mirage jets before they had the uh american jets the f jets whatever they are fifteens whatever they they had their planes that they used in 48 were from france the mirage jets there's they won the wharf with the mirage jets so the former rajim uh brought us into the airport was a total blackdown everything was black they gave us um flashlights to find our suitcases and then they even said to us if you're americans you don't have to have your passport signed that you entered israel during the war so it won't make any problems i said no way i said this i want to show to my grandchildren i said stamp it twice so he did anyway so um we we got our stuff they took us to an old age home and heard salia and then we slept there that night and the next day they they just uh filtered us out to all these different kibbutzim i was wearing a black hipaa so they sent me the kibbutz sky a lot of my friends went to yadna they sent me the prophet the muslim was that on khofitzheim there was a member of the knesset kalman kahana he wrote a lot of books on shemitah and they used to give shihuram every day in in the kibbutz to their volunteers on ilhot mita and and kalman kahana he was a member of the knesset of paulia gudat israel so on thursday after they um after they got usher lying back he went to the knesset and he took me to my grandfather so i got to my grandfather on thursday it's still the war is going on the six day war uh friday they came to take my grandfather to the hotel before they opened it up to the public all right so my grandfather says you're going to come with me i couldn't believe this we went through this car took us with some people i don't know who they were they took us through the mandelbaum gate afterwards they they threw down the gate and everything else and we came to this we came into the old city i didn't know where it was into this little little uh guest sale this little little street and they got out there and my grandfather knew where we were you couldn't see the wall because uh then still it was all built up until the wall there were houses all the way it was only a week later that they knocked all the houses down so that the throngs of people that came could come on shavuous to the kotel but still it was all built up and we we um my grandfather got out and he wanted to make a korea he wanted to rent his garment his frock because he hadn't been to the hotel since 1948 and he tried he couldn't do it now i have a picture of me there with a little pocket knife that i had in my pocket i took it out and i made a cut for him and he rented his garment and he made a shahiyano the two shahriyanas that i remember that used the shame of first when i first came as a kid and the second time the week of the of the six day war he and he was crying said and he started running down this alleyway and i don't know where he was going he was 80 years old i was 20 years old and i tried to keep up with him i ran after him and at the end of the alleyway was the kotel and he started kissing the stones and he knew and his hat fell off and the soldiers ran over to help him up they said that sadiq and they helped him get up and everything and i'm looking around and what was so amazing to me was that when i was a kid in jersey city my father was the rub of the community there were two pictures in our living room one was of rivaria levine my grandfather that sadiq abu shalam and one was not the kotel the castle because nobody said kotel then and nobody called it the western wall they called it the whaling wall where people went to cry kotal had ma anyway so we had these two pictures in our living room and i remember as a kid when when i had a test the next day in fourth or fifth grade and i didn't know it or whatever or i was worried about what was going to be the next day in the middle of the night i would light a little lamp in the in the in the dining room the living room wherever and i would i would talk to my grandfather and i would talk to the kaiser and it always calmed me and always helped me the next day and all of a sudden in june of 1967 i'm running after my grandfather and the two pictures of my youth the kotel and my grandfather are standing in front of me but they're not peaches they're live it's real it's really the hotel the castle and it's really rebar there and it was like um it was like a dream and we went from there to cave rocco and there were the soldiers there they meet with him these older guys were crying i remember my grandfather said no about an mama came in vain only by a real mother can you cry like that and we were supposed to go to hebron but they said it was too dangerous yet uh so we couldn't go to heaven that was the friday and um but what was most amazing also was that um even though my grandfather called kakit lahev and he was so excited and everything and the whole period was a period of euphoria everybody thought meshiach was coming and even though it was my fault my grandfather was very um he did he didn't go crazy he didn't go nuts he was he was very very mu pak and sort of closed in himself and i said to him i asked him why and he said to me a very interesting thing he said he said you know he said when avraham fought the mullah and he went to save lot and he won it says afterwards what does the posix say that hashem came god came to abraham in a vision saying don't be afraid abraham anoki he says to him god says after the uh he defeats the kings and everything god says to him i am a shield for you your reward is very great so my grandfather said to me isn't it odd that after the battle hashem comes to abram and says i am a shield for you that you say before the battle you don't say it after you won a stunning victory that i'm a shield for you and before you go out to battle when you're afraid hashem comes in don't be afraid it's going to be okay i will watch it and instead after the great victory and he destroys he gets low back everything ano him i am a shield for you what does it mean my grandfather said because he understood he said that this is even though the victory is very great the malachim the kings will never forge in will never allow you to keep that victory they'll still do whatever they can to take it away from you and my grandfather said what i'm everyone is is going you know so happy and everything he said but i am worried he said i don't think the battle is odor is over he said i don't think the battle is over i don't think that the nations of the world are going to let us keep the kotel they're going to do everything they can to take it away from us and shmuel tamir who was lady became the minister of justice who was a lawyer and a great a great lawyer from and then became a member of the knesset he said at that time he said this old rav rabalia levine this wise man understood what none of the politicians understood it was brilliant i was very prescient of him i know that brody has a question then i have about a thousand followers thank you the longest interview ever we uh sorry i'm great no we love it should do a full day here um one of the one of the great uh synagogues the united states is obviously boca raton synagogue but i think if we could ever change the name it would have to be akhtar's israel in fact whenever we take trips to israel and we were in mahanayada and some people want to hop on you know the tour bus and go back to the hotel say we've got to walk back to druz we got to walk back to the center of town you pass by the shul we show them so what's the name of your shul they tell me a hebrew name they say i say you know what it means they said we have no idea i say you know what actus israel means that's the greatest name in the world there's nothing like it and uh i just wanna i just wanna make you father represent it now i wanna tell you something yeah you mention this very often because one of the things that i felt and noticed very much when i was in boca raton as a guest rabbi was the artist that you have in your community and i've said it many places maybe we should become adjoining sisters or brothers how do you call it office you scrabble if we're in we're in so today happens to be they they it i guess at the president's house you mentioned ruby rivlin before they actually gave out the jerusalem unity prize today the chairs the year frogs the frankel's they they they gave out this year's uh awards and since he wrote the biography he is becoming he's getting the war two of the yakir jewish alliance right he's get he's getting the word i spoke to him a few days ago and and deserves it very well he is the one that wrote the first book of rabbi at sadiq in our time which was at that time very the first of its kind since then they've written all kinds of books like that but when it first came out right after rebary passed away he passed away in 1969 it came out in the early 70s it it was the bar mitzvah president for many many years all over and and many of the people who remembered who had some incident or something with rebaria levine so i'm just i'm just wondering you know may goldberg actually gave an incredibly uh impassioned russia this past shabbos about actus he spoke about how you know in times of tragedy you see time and time again we can come together gave a number of examples and i'm wondering with all of your experience and everything that you're doing and you've done with gesher what are the the simple things that perhaps some of our our listeners could be doing a little bit better some things that maybe they're not considering when it comes to jews that are different than us how could they be like your grandfather more there you go i i i think he had such a love for every jew and and and it came through in the family very very much and i and i think that um you know you teach more by example than anything else i remember as a kid when i first came i got on the bus my grandfather would go visit somebody so he took me with him on the bus and that we got on the bus i i was then about 14 years old something like that he was in his 70s and uh i got up with them bus and there was only one place to sit down and he was already an older man and that so of course you know i walked with him he sat down and i stood you know holding the bar next to him and and the next stop another old man got on the bus now what do people do when they see an old man standing on the bus most people today make believe that they're sleeping or or else near him or something like that uh or else they tell somebody else to get up or whatever they say you should young people get up and give a place my grandfather saw this old man standing he didn't say to other people you get up and you get up in your place he got up right away from his place i'll never forget this and he ran over to the old man he brought him to a sydney put him down and when the other people on the bus saw the way that this old man got up to give another old man a seat they became very uncomfortable and a whole bunch of young people got up to give him their seat and i saw it in his life the way they did it was not by giving musser are telling people you should do this you should do this it was by the way that he acted in other words his actions spoke louder than anything else and influenced people more than anything else and i think that if each each and every person takes it upon themselves just to be a mensch to greet another person so the person maybe doesn't keep all the mitzvahs that i do he doesn't know the thing he dresses differently or he doesn't do certain things that he should do to be able to look away from those things and to see the good in every person and to realize what people say and it becomes strike because everybody says it we're all one family but we are one family and and to be able to see the good things in other people and um and and to be mentioned to treat other people like you know it sounds like we grew up with this and it sounds to me so crazy you have to tell other people to be a manager to treat other people but that's what i saw with my grandfather you know i saw the love that he had for every jew i was a kid walking with him down the midrakhov which was then ben yehuda street and it was a real street with cars going by and i'm an american kid in the early nineteen sixties walking down ben you hit the street on shabbos with my grandfather and he's wearing a strymo because he was xiaomi even the literature they watched rymel's on shabbos of all of them and um i'm an american kid and we're dressed i'm not dressed like ushami i'm just like an american kid and i'm walking down the middle with him and and all of a sudden a few cars go by and um and and and people are being lo i looked at my i think to myself here is the tsarika viewership line on the holiest day of the week in the holiest city of the world right and people are being mahalo shabbas they're desecrating the shabbos openly what is my grandfather going to say he didn't yell shabbos he went to the side he looked at me and said so much saving of life because in order to save a life you're allowed to desecrate the shabbos so if people are driving they must be going to save a life because that they're allowed to do on shabbos now rabari wasn't stupid he was one of the cleverest people i ever met in my life but he didn't want to say something negative about another jew so i told the story over and they told me that uh that one of the rabbits the the um that he lived in a guy told me he lived in tel aviv and uh i forgot one of the rebels came to live in tel aviv and then he went he was shalam afterwards the belzer the belzer rebbe he lived in tel aviv he said he lived this old guy told me he lived next to me he said when he would go out and tell the river on shabbos and cars would go by he would stop and say mazeltov mazeltov they're taking a young lady to the hospital to give birth right now he also knew there weren't so many births in his neighborhood on that shabbos but instead of saying something negative about another jew he would only find something positive to say and and and and that was rabaria i mean i saw the love that he had for for everyone and i saw the love that people had for him i mean when i walked down in the street with him and you were shalom it was religious non-religious farting any kind of people you could think of who would just come running over to him to shake his hand or to say good job and and it and there was nothing political about this this was very very real but it was the love that he had and i said something this shabbos in in the shul uh uh um i said i said uh because you know it says and the the two phrases and more martha say and say again you know about the quran in the laws to give over to the children you know to tell the older people what they have to give over to the younger ones masha fanshin says how they act to be examples in the hazard gadolin for the younger people because they see what you do and and i saw that um that that dravaria in in everything that he did he was not in his how careful only about gedolin it's good about the little things like i once said somebody in the ear good i said what was unique about my grandfather he came to you every shabbos in the prison to darwin with you he said other rabbis came also why was such why was there so much love for him i said you know you know what was interesting about your grandfather he told me he said all the rabbis that came to visit the prisoners there when they left the prison that was the end of their visit but your grandfather when he left the prison he only began his visit because then he went to all the families to see to give regards to see if they need anything or whatever when he left it wasn't the end of his visit and i thought that was so apt because the hassam surfer says what isla hazir gedolim al-akitanim is that if you go to do a big mitzvah god you have to bury somebody who was killed who died and there's nobody to do it or whatever after you do the big mitzvah lazier gadolin don't think you finish the mitzvah make sure afterwards that you care for the orphans for the widow and the other people as well you didn't finish the mitzvah because you made a funeral for that guy you have to also continue it with those who come afterwards and my grandfather always was always continuing he was going on it wasn't just doing the mitzvah himself it was the the repercussions and what would come afterwards and he was a genius in this he was he's ingenious in being able to see walk in the streets of jerusalem and see where somebody needed help what he could do if it was the lepers if it was the those in prison a family with fights between the husband and the wife or whatever he had such a keen eye and he knew how to do it you know a lot of people give muslims they tell you what to do but you can also do terrible things when you know the road the hell is paved with good intentions rabbi also the way that he did it was just he was brilliant he was a master so my favorite uh variety story if i'm allowed to have one i think i heard from you in that remarkable shul you give a tour to one of our schools that the eighth graders before corona used to come every year so could you share the story when the young man in nachelot who was avoiding rivaria revarie wanted to know why this young man was avoiding him yeah actually i met the guy i met him when he was an old man he passed away since then and this story has different versions and and the versions fit all together but i heard from this old man he told me he said um he said that that he said uh i was walking in the street you showed me even where but they brought them he said i was walking the street he said i was a young man and he wasn't he wasn't a kid i think he was maybe in the army or something but he took off his kippah and i guess it was a time of rebelling or whatever he said and i'm walking down the street and i see from a distance i see your grandfather rebellion he says to me rabbi was at my bris and at my bar mitzvah he said and i'm without a kippah he said so i tried to run out the side alleyway so that i wouldn't encounter him he said but i didn't make it in time he said and your grandfather stopped me and he took my hand and he said shalom how he was doing everything and he said and he said to me did i ever do anything to hurt you i said rebellion you never did anything to hurt anybody why would you think that he said because i noticed as i was walking towards you you were running away from me so maybe once i said something to you i shouldn't have said or whatever and i apologize and the guy said to me i could lie to anybody but not the rebellion so i said no rabbi i just didn't want you to see me without a keep on my head so he said your grandfather took my hand into his as he did and he said i'm a very very short shoe i can't see what you have in the top of your head but i see your heart and that's what rebar you saw he saw the heart of people and the guy told me this is important because this they never tell the guy said to me because of what your grandfather did i put the coupon back on my head everybody was saying to me the vista shay gets that the goalish you know you're rebelling against your family and everything else but why you didn't do that rabbi didn't see that their body said and i see your heart and the words of herbaria was ultimately what caused me to put my teapot back on my head well revenge a tremendous lesson because it's a lesson of you know you want to give musa you have to know how to give say and i had a few stories of my own that happened to me teaching gemara that were influenced by this story in a way i don't know if you have time for it yeah please explain stories that are amazing they've been written up and one of the great authors in in israel said to me two stories that have become classics after i graduated yu in 68 so my parents were thinking already time to go back to heritage israel so we had a year where i finished yu i started my masters in jersey city in english literature and my father would learn with me in the afternoons the morning i had three times my father said the yeshiva it's the high school like a junior high is looking for a rebbe so go there you'll get the job and you'll have a year experience of teaching tomorrow so i said to my father how do you know that i'll get the job i never taught in front of a class before why so certain why are you so certain that i'll get the job my father said i know you'll get the job so i said well you're a navi so my father said i said how do you know i'll get the job he said they don't have anybody else they're looking all around whoever will come will get the job so that was a big compliment for me that i would get the job because they didn't have anybody else but lamai said that's what happened i went and because i didn't have anybody else they made me the rebbe so it's the 19th sixth i graduated white night it's september 1968 i come to a classroom in yeshiva hudson county for the first time with a gemara on my end in the same class that i learned in the eighth grade i could even see my seat where i sat and i walk into the class 30 kids and as i walk into the classroom a kid throws a paper plane across my desk so everybody looks because this is the first encounter with the new rebbe so truth is i didn't know what to do but i really feel sometimes i have seated my grandfather's over there he's watching over me so i put my gemara down i didn't say a word i went over to the kid i grabbed him by the collar i brought him to the front of the class everybody was silent and they said to him if you ever make a plane like this in my class again i'm gonna throw you out for the entire year and he got scared i said because if you make a plan in my class you're going to make it right paper and i made a paper plane and i know how to make things and i threw it across the room and everybody went wow and i said to what you do in my class but whatever you do you're going to do it well now i didn't see that kid for 35 40 years i'm in new york city a friend of mine whose father was a member of my father's school was in the hospital and he tells me about he says you know my father would love to see you let's go visit him i went with him to pay a a call in the hospital when we're coming out of his father's room in the big hall in the hospital in manhattan there's a group of doctors standing in the corner and one very mashem looking doctor in the middle and he's talking they're all around him and i look at this guy and he looks very very familiar so i say to the guy i'm with is that guy he said him head of the department you never cam you want an appointment with him you wait two years so what's his name tells me the name i said oh my god that's the kid who threw the plane well i look at him and then he looks at me sees me looking and then i see he's looking at this and he's he yells across the whole hospital floor is that you i said i think so i think it's me so he apologizes to all the doctors and he runs across he gives me a hug and he says to me do you have 10 minutes to have do you have 15 minutes to have a cup of coffee with me in the cafeteria and i'm thinking to get to him you got to wait two years and he wants 10 minutes 10 minutes 15 minutes of my time so i said okay even ten we go downstairs to the cafeteria you start talking and in the middle he says to me do you remember the story with the plane that i flew across your desk the first day of school i said do i remember i tell it over all the time he said you don't know the story i said i tell it over all the time you don't know the story i said why he said i went to public school i want to go to public high school too my father became froome and he decided his son's going to go to a jewish day school i didn't want to go but he forced me so i went the first day all my friends were in public school and i said i'm going to get kicked out i'm going to do something that's going to get me kicked out and then what can my father do i'll go back to public school he said that's why i flew the plane he said but it didn't turn out the way i thought i'll tell you something he put his arm around he said ready he said i've learned by study by some of the greatest doctors in the world but the greatest lesson i ever learned was that first day in school since then whatever i do i do it the best i can one more story yeah that was hard there was a kid who came into me the first day it was a wonderful year it gave me so much kid comes over to me and says i um rebbe i have one request i said one request for today the first day for the whole year except for the whole year i think one request for the whole year this is going to be easy i said what's your request he said i promised my mother that once this year i'll get a hundred in a gemara test so i'm thinking even if he doesn't understand or whatever it is we'll help him we'll do it whatever i said to him a lie on me i take it on me once this year no matter what you will get a hundred on a gamora test and i had no idea to whom i was talking he's a wonderful boy when it came to gamora cement addict you couldn't penetrate anything we learned shorshan so the first test he got like a 20 and then the next test the pen so then i stopped giving marks because i didn't want him to meet yaesh and and not to want to learn anymore i told him marx is not important you just do the best he can but it didn't help so what we did was we uh we we made comics sure and then a kid brought in a movie thing we made a movie in the class and then we did everything we could this day flag nothing else anyway so we um we went through the year the last week of school that comes over to me says rebbe was a great year but i must say you never kept your promise to me and i said oh you're they you know if a kid leaves your class for his whole life he's going to remember the rebbe didn't keep his promise but i had to think quick so i said to him but why are you asking me that now we still have a week left that you asked the rebbe on the last day i know we still have a week left don't worry about it i went home and i said what am i going to do now so two days later i gave him a test for a thousand points in gemura and he got a hundred i said dear balak if you tell your mother that that test was for a thousand points anyway so uh i didn't see him for years and the chances of meeting him again on the subway in new york millions of people whatever i'm in new york i used to travel a lot as a scholar and resident i'm in in the subway the a train whatever oh no there's 7th avenue train and i'm sits packed with people in the corner of my eye i see at the end the guy's sitting there and it looks just like this guy we'll call him five or whatever and he said that's five oh no but i keep looking at him and i see he's holding a shot and staying he's learning daffy me so i said even if it's five it's not five of them it's maybe it's his brother one brother who likes to learn it can't be him anyway i keep looking and staring at him and then he looks at me and he sees me staring and then his eyes brighten up and everything and he starts to smile we smile each other he comes over to me gives me a hug we talk we get out of 42nd street we walk up the stairs and we talk and he's doing very well and everything oh he shows me the gemara the shine he said would you believe i said no no and we laughed anyway i said to him how's your mother he said my mother passed away a few years ago i said she really loved you and she cared about you said i know anyway we part of 42nd street and he goes one way i go the other and a few seconds later he yells back to me in the middle of times square in the street yells back to me hey rebbe i forgot to tell you my mother passed away and she never knew the test was for a thousand four that's great 40 years ago so you know i learned from my grandfather these are the important things you know also a sense of humor certainly helps in marriage in relationships in teaching in everything i i want to first of all this could be our longest interview yet and and i'm sorry you're only getting no don't be sorry it's the opposite we could talk for hours and hours and hours but we don't want to keep you too long i want to ask you one one more question you know you mentioned that you went trying to take notes about a tsadek and then you realized that revari levin on the one hand was the tadaka of your shalom and continues to be that inspiration but he was very normal that was the word you used revel yoshi was the god of door and the posse khador but when you knew him and he was you know coming back from the base then he was so to say normal first of all i wonder whether you can comment did you have a relationship with your cousin robertson kanievsky you know our image of rebecca and kanyevsky did she talk to you did you have a relationship with her was there a connection did you spend any time but if you could come back to and maybe leave us with this notion of what normalcy is you are in the heart of your shalom gedola israel you saw the most righteous men and women and it seems that we've maybe lost our way a little bit of the normalcy a yiddish kite and a firm torah which is supposed to inspire and enrich a normalcy not make us abandon it so if you could elaborate a little bit more on what you meant first of all whether you had a relationship with with your cousin robertson kanievsky and uh what you mean by normal with with batsheva with uh rebecca and kanyevsky i didn't have a close relationship first of all because um when i was in your shalom i lived in your shalom with them i didn't they were there in benebrach but um but i visited them you know like i visited them a number of times whatever and whatever i did it was always very nice and very very warm and um again i was coming as a first cousin so the relationship was different i mean with revelation when you asked about talking and everything revelation was not a big talker not ripped off when you came to him like i i never left where he didn't say to me my father his kids used to go to watch watch through the keyhole watch ralph cook sitting and learning and they told me my father absolutely a few minutes they saw the kadusa on raf cook's face made them want to run back to their gamoras to become in their own was very warm like my father that you know when you came to him desk a shirt or a question it wasn't in and out he would just ask you where you're from he would talk to you or whatever revelation was very very different um you know it's a to give you a rough idea it's not the same thing like you would say revlichnistein and rav amital and the gush you know i learned by rav richtenstein and i was close to ravital there were very different kind of uh of personalities but each was a guddle in their own right and they were great people in their own right and um raveliosha was not a small talk person and so if i walked with him in the street and not it wasn't like we were having this running conversation all the time but like my aunt would say to him yes she would say to him to sit with me she would say sit with him talk to him he's your nephew from america go sit with him talk to him and he listened to her whatever she said was you know holy yeah she he didn't mess around and she told him what to do and then and so he would sit with me and talk to me and he would sing smear us on shabbos and i found him very very you know i found the normal in so many things like when my father was very sick he was in la niado so i went to to ask him as something and he said to me i and he said and how is it i said they have very good from doctors so he said to me from doctors it's not what's important now ever what's important now is a good doctor it doesn't have to be from he doesn't have to be jewish you have to get the best doctor that you can that's what you need at the moment when when somebody taken some things from my grandfather's room and sold them i put them up for auction so one of my uncles said we have to go to the basement and and i was a witness to this even though i've never told this over to anyone and i don't like to make these things public but revel yoshif said no not to go to a basement so he said no he said no get a lawyer so my uncle said get a lawyer not to go to a base did some uncle said yeah a base that he won't be afraid of a lawyer he'll be afraid of he was very very he was very i i'm afraid of telling all these stories because people say over i said it rebellion you got to be very careful with these stories but um i told over a story i got into a lot of trouble from because there was a convention of rabbis many years ago and i told over a story not that i heard but that i saw i got smith from ravuntamin he came from england uh and he became the rabbi of tel aviv and uh he came from uh the same place that the beatles came from he was in england right and um and uh he was the roving tel aviv and then he became the chief rabbi and he wore a big cylinder like a lincoln's dove pipe hat whatever and he were and we weren't standing in front of uh that's where the offices used to be and um [Music] and this number of old rabbanim and some students and a tourist went by a woman and somebody said to her that's the chief rabbi of israel so in front of everybody she walked over them she put out a hand and she said shalom and i remember the older rabbis like you see in the movies these people going [Music] and rav until shook her hand he asked her where she's from and and he was very nice to her and she went away like with a smile and then he turned to us and he said and he pushed it they you know like i'm not easy on the loss of the gear he didn't touch women's hands but he was very mahmee the cover of them not to embarrass not to not to embarrass another person and i told this story because i thought it showed a man who didn't give his hand to women or anything else but at the same time when he saw this woman came she didn't know he didn't he didn't want to be mufasa he didn't want to embarrass her and that's what she remembered her whole life she saw that she fried by and yelled at her whatever and that he was very nice to her and he and he was that's the way a jew has to act in other words and and you don't learn from that that everybody should go around shaking women's hands what it means is that there were times where time zone felt went to a brisk by svardhan and they and i checked out the story because it made a big impression on me and he was eating they were at the suda of the bris he was eating the meat and somebody said you know andy this far the ashkenazim there went according to we didn't go according to the basic so they didn't eat the meat of the shackling of this fraud and whatever and when zona felt it was like he was a zealot and he was sitting at the bris and he was eating the meat of the base joseph so somebody said to him why were you doing that you fight the battles of frunkite and everything he said i thought to myself what's the right thing to do it's the right thing not naughty to me to embarrass this person in the middle of a sudden or to either not embarrass him and i realized that the most important thing was not to embarrass him you know it wasn't just saying to be more from more from anybody can say oscar or us you don't have to learn you have to know anything to say it's us to say mutter you have to know how to learn and that was the greatness of these people wow that's the normalcy that we need revenge you're normal you're inspiring we can go on and on so we're gonna have to bring you back for part two and part three and uh we look forward to seeing you in your life you gotta quit in your head somebody told me quit when you're ahead you're you're always ahead but as we're as we're going to celebrate yom shalom the miraculous gift of the reunification of the eternal united capital of the jewish people that your family is forever so much a part of and a symbol of and you continue in that legacy we give you a bracha of gazoon from your family and continue to be that light that inspiration thank you for hosting our family and we look forward to your coming back and more we look forward to joining you in yerushalayim yeah thank you so much you are my family you're always welcome anytime thank you thank you thank you all the brokers thanks wow that was fantastic that was unbelievable what a conversation that's probably our longest interview and yet it felt like it was 10 minutes long and we could have gone on three hours more so much more to talk about wealth of knowledge good thing we've got some good rays to keep us hydrated you know raised vitamin d keep us healthy and well the vitamin d that we need which story what insight what message of revenge struck you the most what's your take away tonight a february one you start off with well i think after we started the show tonight talking about the tragedy in israel and reading all the uh the uh stories about unity and how how we can come together i think a lot of people like to think that there are just many many different excuses of why it can't happen and this is just another example of when it does there's no reason to wait for another tragedy just to demonstrate that we can't come together rav benji is the epitome of actus we can see it in everything that he does and there's no more excuses yeah i think for me it wasn't once any one particular story um rivaria levine has always been sort of a hero a mentor someone i've always looked up to and said i want to be like that and i want to emulate that and whenever you hear someone tell these stories there are always little tidbits throughout that you can glean and say that i'm going to i'm going to do that a little bit better i'm going to be a little bit more like that so when you hear about these gdolin and when you're reminded that they're they're real people and that there are parts to them that we can emulate even the way he described the way that rivara used to wake him up in the morning in such a sensitive way to not make him feel guilty about being a little bit late those are things that we could do we could all be a little bit sensitive we could all be a little bit more thoughtful it's real and that really resonated with me for me too if the story that blew me away it just painted a portrait for me the imagery just just jumped out was that his father and looking through the keyhole to watcher of cook learning like like spying peeking in under of cook learning and the kedusha that emanated the holiness from his learning just made them desperately want to get back to a gemara and learn themselves i love that i love that image of the holiness that's just kind of just coming out of cook and they're they're peeking he's not if cook's not doing it because he knows anyone is watching that's that's authentically genuinely who he is they're watching it and the reaction is not let's take a picture put it on the internet the reaction is i want to go learn i want to go be like that he's a genuine person right levine is he's the real deal when i promote it online that we were having him somebody wrote they took a walking tour which everyone has to take a walking tour with him of naklow where his grandfather avaria then lives he'll show you everything with the great people and the great places so he said they were walking with ravi levin and he said hello to every person you know the name hello how are you how is such-and-such he just he he exudes what his grandfather was reviled just about loving all jews just loving old jews his messages is perfect we need it and it was really a great honor and a great privilege to be able to have him the hour is already late that was such a long interview and as always i don't know there's so many things to talk about we have a list of things we want to get to and somehow we never get to it but we do want to get to thanking our sponsor again thank you to the glass family of t-neck good raise g-o-o-d originally of elizabeth elizabeth ah g-o-o-d-r-a-z.com g-o-o-d-r-a-z.com but pronounce good rays vitamin d3 supplement put a drop you won't even notice you want to taste it but you will feel better and you'll be healthier so we thank them and as always we ask you to rate and review let's get the mess let's get rid of benji's message far and wide the best way to get benji's message far and wide is for it to climb the charts people discover when they're looking for it so rate and review for a moment subscribe on youtube and until next time stay happy stay healthy