Rabbi Yom Tov Glaser Practical Spirituality: It's Your Fault

so and welcome to a practical spirituality here in the old city of Jerusalem in Asia tour overlooking the Temple Mount so there I was lighting Chanukah candles to secular secular groups of Israelis that were coming from all over the country from the Golan Heights to from a lot and everywhere in between there were secular groups coming to my Hanukkah lighting where I was being extra friendly and being like a good representative of the her ad world making everyone have nice and warm feelings about the Jewish people about Hanukkah lighting etc and but what happened was the elderly of my community where I live in a in like a fiddler on the roof' shtetl in the middle of Jerusalem the elderly of the community were really excited about this and they felt they felt that this was the way that the best way you can possibly say pursue mean he said the best way to publicize the miracle of Hanukkah was having all these secular groups come right to your door in and enjoy the fun of colliding and the music and everything and I play guitar for them and speak to them anyway but the younger generation who are like the real her 80 people they were really not happy with these groups and they would call them they would call them Greeks they would yell at them they would call the Mickey of NIEM which is Hellenized Jews they would yell at the groups coming to our neighborhood that they were Hellenized Jews they were Mitch of NIEM and and we even throwing water balloons on them and like and the kids were getting into it because the parents were into it the parents were getting aggressive aggressive and the kids were getting aggressive and I was feeling this insane stress over this whole thing because it seems so natural to me that if people are gonna come you might as well reach out to them and be nice but why would you be mean to them and so I was really torn and I was torn also in deeper ways because because these people the secular Israeli we're coming were shared my background because I wasn't raised observant so so it was like there were throwing water balloons on me and so or at least on my family or on my friends I grew up with like it you understand but but meanwhile do I stick up for these people and still give them a nice Chanukah because because I don't live with these people they're just on a tour they're paying for some tour that the tour guide is capitalizing on our community and on me and they're gonna all go back to their hometowns while I'm gonna deal with I live with my neighbors like we we really live together and so here I am like upsetting my neighbors by being friendly to these people so what would you do well I decided to speak to my Rebbe so I went to the Rob North Weinberg and I spoke it out with him and I asked him you know what am I supposed to do like should I be even with them these people or should I be with them with my neighbors which side do I go on and you know what he did he did something that only he can do he well he sits up high in his chairs keep it kinda comes up like that and he looks really angry and it's super scary and but I I just I pay a million dollars to have it happen again cuz he passed away 10 years ago on this day but rough North Weinberg pointed at me like this and he says it's your fault I just wasn't expecting that and I said what what's my fault it's your fault Yom Tov and I said why is it my fault he said that how is it possible that Yom Tov Glaser lives for 15 years in a community and they don't understand how important outreaches what are you doing over there what are you playing whack-a-mole you know whack-a-mole is anyone who doesn't know it wagon boys you know you also know at LACMA you just don't know it was called that you know in in front of like shopping centers in supermarkets they have games for kids to play outside so it's it's got holes and the thing pops it said I'm you have to bang it and it disappears you got to get in the x1 every time you can bang it you get a point whack-a-mole so what are you playing whack-a-mole ask the Red Rooster Shiva I mean are you just hiding from your neighborhood you're not sharing with them the importance of outreach and I knew once again he's right I mean he he just had this way of seeing things he could dissect a situation and get it's the issue like that and he did and so I said you're right you're right I didn't I have not said anything about outreach in my community ever I just don't feel in position to do that you know I'm in a very like ancient 200 year old community of people who are connected to Torah from time immemorial and Who am I to walk in from you know a BT from Los Angeles and start telling them how important something is but I took the lesson and Hanukkah ended but I knew that I would have to do something by next Hanukkah so the following Connick I took care of the issue what I did was I I did some very sneaky and a little bit of manipulative but it was worth it for the cause is what I did was I first went to one of the fathers and you know the communities all the fathers of the communities I went to one of the fathers who was most against the these tour groups and I asked him if he would host a host a town meeting of all the father's about this issue of secular groups coming to the shtetl and so he said he would host it so my next trick was I went to the biggest rabbi the elf most elderly rabbi of the whole community but the one who's against it because all the rabbi's basically were passed away from the generation that still believed in the Jewish people so that elderly generation that believes in the Jewish people were kind of gone so I took the next oldest rabbi who was against the groups and I asked I told him there is where I was a little mini I said there's a meeting going on meanwhile the only one invited is the host but I said there's a meeting going on by all the community about these secular groups community and he says I'll be there so once he's there every everyone has to come because if he's if his name's on the ballot everyone's gotta be everyone's gotta come in and vote so so everyone did come in and they all sat around this table and I specifically sent myself a little to the right of the head table and looking around who's who's who's the master of ceremonies here which was me so I finally spoke up and I said um I spoke up and I said that uh we're gonna have the rabbi speak and then we're gonna go around the table and everyone's gonna give their opinions - everyone's gonna give their opinions of what they think of the groups so they just went around one at a time all the way around the table speaking against reaching out to these groups and when it finally got to me I had been taking notes the whole time so I knew everyone's points and I spent 10 minutes refuting every point that anyone made and then I went on for another half hour to explain the importance of our page from a Torah perspective like how many mitzvahs we fulfilled from the actual Torah just in reaching out and and and some possible compromises I could make in how I'm doing things because I was doing it inside the courtyard where we all live and people just couldn't even get in their doors cuz there was like literally five six seven hundred people in the courtyard so I can do it on the other side of my house where it says on the street side where there's no cars anyway and just do it there so I just want to tell you that that was about ten years ago or more since the rabbi passed away ten years ago so that was let's say 12 years ago the this year my wife and I took a walk around the neighborhood which we never do just to see all the Chanukah lights and we walked around to see the Chanukah lights we found tour groups being the tour groups being spoken to by these same fathers who were sharing about Chanukah to the tour groups we found we found probably about 10 of the houses we're not a big neighborhood about ten of the houses maybe eight of the houses had big signs that they had posted explaining the miracle of Hanukkah to the tour groups that would be walking by this has already been like twelve years and oh by the way that that year was the end of all problems for the tour groups but it's gotten to the point now 12 years later that the actual community is reaching out to the the people so this class was called it's your fault so it's your fault thank you