Teshuva: Change Your Label (Ep. 345)

Hi, this is David Alowski and welcome to our special pre- young hipper edition of the Rabbi Elarski show. Just for technical reasons, you realize that this will be uh on to Gdalia. Um we're not going to have a uh episode on Yumkipper. You know, Monday is usually where the uh they go up. I don't think it's appropriate. As as meaningful as the Rabiolski show may be, I don't know if it's appropriate for people to watch it on Yum Kipper itself. So, this is going to be our our pre Yum Kipper show. And whether you're watching with our friends and producers over at Torah Anytime or wherever you watch or listen to your podcasts, um if you are if it applies to the platform that you're watching at, please remember to subscribe. Uh we're going to be doing different kind of things for subscribers apparently. My daughter Yafa who uh is in Faracway where if you may have noticed I did a couple of podcasts from her house. 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And our sponsor is our good friend Jeffrey from California, who as he points out is not a member of the tribe yet, [laughter] but he describes himself as part of the mixed multitude who went out with the Jews from Egypt and therefore uh is um is Jewish adjacent. [laughter] It's so wonderful. You know, it's uh it's uh a tough time to be a Jew today. A lot of people apparently don't like us. And uh I'll be talking about that a little bit even among even among the tribe, you know, and when you have somebody like Jeff who feels such a uh strong connection uh not just to the Jewish people but more important to me personally, which is really all that I really care about. [laughter] The Jewish people have God to look after them. You know what I mean? But I got to take care of myself. And the fact that Jeffrey is uh making sure that he's helping that um whatever I have to say I was going to say the Torah that I teach but it's not only that I talk about other stuff gets that opportunity. So uh tremendous uh tremendous hakurus hat appreciation that we have. Okay. Um, I actually Googled it to find out what the source is. Apparently, it was in a novel. The expression, I thought it was older than that, but apparently somebody used it in a novel. And the expression is one man's terrorist is another is another man's freedom fighter. you know this um you uh it used to be pretty clear that the Arab terrorists were exactly that terrorists. They would attack civilians. They would uh you know cause terror. That's what terrorists do. That's the concept behind it. Yeah. But you find some publications call them freedom fighters. Some of them call it I've seen activists uh some people call them gorillas because terrorist obviously uh has a particular meaning and they are trying to do um uh damage control by uh changing the name of these people. Yeah. Um and uh there's no question that uh after Shminyat Seris, the anniversary of which is coming up, um the media really bent over backwards to, you know, try to cover for them. This was parodyied uh brilliantly by there's apparently a website called the Babylon B which does takeoffs of news stories, etc. Someone sent me this clip where they um they're interviewing this Hamas terrorist and says, "We understand it's it's because of the oppression, because of all the difficulties you're going through. What is it that you're looking for?" And he says, "We want to kill all the Jews." He says, "No, I mean, obviously what you're trying to say is that you have legitimate grievances and you're trying to get your land, etc." Goes, "No, no. We want to kill all of the Jews. All of them. And also the Christians. It's in our It's It's in our description [laughter] of the organization. Yeah. I'll send it to you. You can read it for yourself. He goes, "No, no, no. It's not necessary. I'm sure really what it is is that you are an oppressed minority." Goes, "Well, I don't know. We just want to kill all of the Jew. Are you a Jew? I'll kill YOU RIGHT NOW." [laughter] AND you see he's bending over backwards to try to explain away what he's saying. But it's pretty clear what he's saying. They want to kill all the Jews. Yeah. So he changed it to legitimate grievances and this and next thing and all kinds of stuff like that. I mean when you I think it was in Alice in Wonderland or was it Alice for the Looking Glass? I'm sure one of my uh my eagle-eyed readers will uh will give me the correct source, you know, but Humpty Dumpty is one of the characters. And he says at one point, "Words mean what I want them to mean." In 1984, George Orwell had this concept called double speak, where words mean whatever it is we want them to mean. And so uh Jordan Peterson who was a prominent psychologist professor of psychology um wrote a number of books and and uh had a tremendous following uh because he was against uh the this idea of demanding that everybody recognize trans people uh which he says is obviously not true. you force people to do this. Uh it's not legitimate. Uh he was sentenced to re-education training in order to be certified. Now that they used to do in in Russia and in China, they would have what they called re-education training where they would take people and put them in these re-education camps which basically to brainwash people so that they come out with the correct view. This took place during co anybody who was not willing to accept Fouch's versions of events which now we know for fact were false then you were deplatformed you weren't allowed to come up with anything and for a long time a boy who thought he was a girl so uh they understood that was a mental condition. Now, if a boy says he's a girl and you call him a boy, then you can be punished for misgendering. And in some places, you can actually be prosecuted for that, you know, cuz uh words of violence, you understand, you actually injure somebody. So, uh so that's uh that's what we play around with. We play around with terminology. You know, somebody pointed this out, you know, that instead of, you know, doing horrific things to little children, we came up with a great word, gender affirming care. You know, instead of uh saying uh we killed the fetus, we say we terminated the pregnancy instead of saying an abortion. come up with a, you know, instead of saying I'm in favor of people having the right to kill their unborn children, we say I'm pro-choice. So, you make up different words to make things sound better. Uh, you can't call people in jail now prisoners. It's um incarcerated people and uh Mayor Mamdani went down to uh Riker's Island to spend the time with the prisoners watching games etc. having a wonderful time. We don't care about the about the victims. Yeah. And that's one of the criticisms that people had about the Biden administration is he never called any of the victims of people who were killed by illegal immigrants. He never called the families of the service people who were killed in Afghanistan because of his sudden pull out here. Just no acknowledgement of them. But instead of saying an illegal immigrant, we say an undocumented citizen. Undocumented. What does it mean undocumented? You're undocumented because you entered the country illegally. That's why you don't have any documents. But we come up with undocumented, you know, in instead of saying the person entered the country illegal. So that's hurtful. You say, so you can't use that term. And somehow when you talk about undocumented people and protecting the rights of undocumented people, undocumented people don't have any rights. They're in the country illegally. The only right they have is to be thrown out. It's against the law. But we don't like that. Don't want to call it criminals. We don't want to, you know, you make up you make up different terms. Double speak and suddenly things can turn around. I mention this because of something that is so incredibly painful to me personally and I'm sure to many other um from Jews not all of them not all of them but to many of them and that's the following when the state of Israel started there was a large established uh orth Orthodox community that was living here. They were known as the old Yishu. And Benorian knew that if he's going to build this Zionist state from scratch, he needs their cooperation. So famously he came to meet with the Khazan to see what conditions they could establish that would allow the Orthodox Jews to join in with their new state. And so the set certain conditions one of them is you're not allowed to draft our daughters. The last thing we're going to do is give our daughters to a group of secular Jews to have control over their bodies and minds. That is not happening. And he said that anybody who is learning Torah should be exempt from army service. It's not a crazy concept. Almost every nation in the world had this. Even during World War II, there were seminary exemptions. Even during the Vietnam War, people used to who were learning yeshiva were exempt. It's a concept. It's a concept goes back a very long time. And uh and in the Jewish people, it of course goes back to the fact that shvet ley is exempt from going out to war because they're the people who are learning Torah. And the Rambam famously Poskins that anybody today who wants to sit and learn can have a den of shvet ley. Right? So this is not a there's not a crazy concept that Khaz was introducing. So for the major majority of the history of the state of Israel, there was a arrangement that was made that boys who were learning in yeshiva were exempt from army service. Now there were people who offered criticism of this for many many years. Obviously, when uh they argue that Bengorian basically figured that, you know, the Torah world was going to die out anyway. And Bengorian had said that one day uh May will just be a museum when it could show people how Jews used to live, but it's not it's not going to be alive anymore. And in fact, the uh Torah community in Israel uh has continued to grow. Now, there's a few reasons for this. One is that we have large families. You know, a secular family may have one kid and two dogs and they don't have a lot of kids. It's just a fact, right? among the um religious Zionist community. They have more kids but not as much as you know the uh what they what they call the ultraorththodox. I I don't even know what that means. Ultra. Whenever anybody adds on an ultra, it's just made to to be demeaning. So when you say ultra liberal or or ultraright or far right or any of these kind of things, it's just it's just used to to uh disenfranchise. So I I refer to the Torah world that you know [clears throat] has only Torah as their value. Yeah. Um it doesn't mean that there aren't Torah observant Jews who aren't part of the Torah world. It's just that the Torah is not exclusive to them. Yeah. They're also involved in, you know, secular society and secular culture and all these other kind of things, right? um uh the concept of having a phone that has no internet access that's a uniquely what they would call position you so there's a certain there's a certain attempt to separate themselves from anything that is not Torah in the world right that's that's the attitude I'm not judging I'm just saying that's the fact so for years um everyone in the country and the media used to refer to it as the uh Torah students or the boys learning Torah. And for years they would go down to the draft uh centers and they would get a deferment because they were learning Torah and that was a basis. It's not the only basis for deferment. There are other basises for deferment. But um uh they understood that this was the arrangement. There were always people who complained about it. But there are people who complain about shabas. There are people who complain about kashras. You know when uh the Bennett government was in uh so they passed a law that until then you weren't allowed to bring into hospitals during Pesak. Now you could they don't want kashist. They don't want shabas. They don't want all these kind of things. They don't care about him and they would love to see it come ac come apart. problem is that the majority of the Jewish people who live in Israel have an appreciation for um for Judaism. The secularists do not. And the most secure bastion of secularism in Israel is the Supreme Court. Now, I explained this once, but it's important to understand this. In America, all the states got together and agreed on a constitution because there were individual states and the states said if you want us to join your union, right? So then we have to agree on certain tenants and that's what they did. They had a constitutional convention and they worked out all of the basics of what we all accept and that became the constitution. And if you want to change the constitution, you can. You have to have twothirds of the states to be able to do it. Which makes sense, right? If they all joined. We don't have any states in Israel. We have only people. And the people never made a constitution. There's only one uh elected body. There's not two houses like there is in England where there's the parliament and the house of lords, you know, the house of commons and the house of lords. It's not like in America with the House of the House of Representatives and the Senate. There's only the Knesset with 120 members and 61 of them, assuming that's everybody's there. Otherwise, the majority of whoever's there can just vote for whatever they want and that becomes the law. Well, one day um the leftwing saw an opportunity. There weren't too many people there and they passed the Supreme Court bill. And of course it was written in legal ease, so not everybody understood what was going on. 40 of the 120 people voted for it. That now the Supreme Court has supreme authority. They can do whatever they want. They came up with something called the reasonableness clause, which means it doesn't matter what the Knesset does. It doesn't matter what the army does. It doesn't matter what the prime minister does. These people on the Supreme Court decide if we think what you're doing is reasonable or not. It's a complete dictatorship. There's no freedom in Israel. Anyone who tells you that is lying to you. There is no democracy. Democracy is all 120 members of the Kesset could vote on something and the Supreme Court could say, "Nah, we don't think that's reasonable." And they could just cancel the law. They can go into a town where the local authority decides, you know, um, uh, where buildings should be built and say, "We don't think this building should be built there. We don't think that's reasonable." They could do anything they want, and there's no checks and balances on them. So, at one point, this government that's now uh, coming to an end voted to at least remove the reason for this clause. You'll never guess what happened. Some people took it to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said, "No, you can't take away our power to do that." How could the Supreme Court decide what their powers are when the Knesset gave it to them? It's absurd. And again, because of double speak, the people who are out there fighting for and they tremendous demonstrations and and riots and closing streets, they said it's for democracy. It's not democracy. It's the the exact opposite of democracy. And a friend of mine told me, he says he saw one of these demonstrations. Says, "Why are you saying it's democracy? It's not democracy." Says, "I know, but we know the demographics are against us. We know that the right-wing and the religious are growing in this country. And all we have is a Supreme Court. I know it's not democratic, but that's all we have. and we will fight to the death to keep it because we don't want the majority of the country to make decisions. Only us. I have no idea how anybody defends this position. How could anybody say that these unelected people can decide everything in the country the height of absurdity and if you try to take their power away then they'll decide that that's not reasonable. based on this power that 40 of the 120 members of Knesset gave them. This is just insane, right? Okay. Well, obviously they hate the religious and they hate the right wing. That's clear. And so they make laws and laws against them. Anything they can do to to uh um to stop any threat to their power or to remake Israel in their form. So they decided that the original arrangement that had been made and existed for 70 years in the state of Israel is illegal. We decide doesn't matter with the Knesset. Knesset passed various bills because we understand it's not in the best interest of the country to create a civil war. Like one uh MK from the left said, "I think we should just build giant camps and arrest all these people who don't go to the army and throw them in the camps, lock them away." When you hear this woman who was running for the Democratic uh nomination to run for Congress in Florida say, "I think all the Jews should be put into protective camps." She didn't think that up on her own. You heard it from an Israeli MK about the That's where we are. That's that's some people's dream to take all the and lock them up. Smart people understand that society will collapse. So what do they do? The Supreme Court, they say, "You have to start arresting them, but we're not going to arrest everybody. It's a terror campaign. I'll find a guy over here. some some yeshiva guy came to report a crime and they arrested him and threw him in jail because he was learning Torah which was the arrangement for 70 years and suddenly now he's a criminal why because we suddenly decided he's a criminal and that's why whenever I look in the Jerusalem Post in Times of Israel and I just saw it now in Arut Cheva That's why when I say you know that this hatred is is in the religious world too aruchva represents a religious point of view suddenly instead of speaking about yeshiva students they call them draft dodgers they're not draft dodgers they're people who've been following the same arrangement that has existed in the state of Israel since its founding which is we are seminary ary students and we are exempt because we're studying Torah. But the people behind this want to destroy the Torah world. That's it. There's nothing else to do. And so they how do you do it? You reabel it. We don't say these are yeshiva students whose arrangement has expired and we have not been able to pass new legislation. Suddenly that's it. We all call them draft dodges. And this happens all the time. So then an Arab terrorist is not a terrorist. He's a freedom fighter. And a yeshiva student who's sitting and learning yeshiva like we have for 70 years now is a draft dodger. We give them a new name. Anyone who remembers they did the same thing in Gaza. The people in Gaza moved there with the um blessing of the government and they built homes and they built communities and they and they built uh businesses and they lived there for decades and at some point Ariel Shiron said everyone has to leave and anyone who doesn't is a criminal and you'll be dragged out of your house. We just relabeled it. Yeah. The people in favor of kicking everybody out of their houses used the word hypnot disengagement. The people who are being kicked out of their house called it a gayouch, an exile. And the original date that they picked to throw Gaza, they took a secular date. Unbeknownst to them, it was Tishab. Makes sense if you're going to kick every all the Jews out of their homes in Israel. It makes sense to do that on Tishb. It's definitely keeping with the theme. So, someone pointed out to them, you understand the opic optics of having soldiers come and drag a bunch of people out of their homes on Tishab looks bad. Well, they made it to a later date, but but the concept was correct. They were spoton. It's exactly what it was. It was a girouch. It was an exile. But that's okay because, you know, when the left wanted to throw all the people out of their homes in in Guif, so they just relabeled them. Now you're no longer brave settlers who went to build the country and fulfill the Zionist dream. Now you're a criminal. And it's just a matter of relabeling. There was a uh Broadway play called Wicked. I understand that they that they made it into a movie, but I don't acknowledge any uh any plays that were made into movies. They they never do a good job with it. But um um and I've always been a Broadway afficionado. So I I would get soundtracks and just listen, you know, to the songs. But it's basically a retelling of the Wizard of Oz where they basically make uh the wicked witch is the good person, you know, and the wizard's the bad person. Yeah. So, at one point he he's singing this song and um and uh and she says to him um he goes, "Look, I just wanted to give the people of Oz everything I could." So, she said, "So, you lied to them." And he says, "Where I come from, people believe a lot of things that aren't true. We call it history." Yeah. A man's a crusader or vicious invader. One man's a thief or philanthropist. Yeah. All that matters is the label that happens to persist. There are many oities with moral ambiguities. So we just pretend they don't exist. So you call people whatever you want. Yeah. I I you you just look sometimes and you just can't even believe it. Yeah. The governor of Minnesota, Tim Waltz, who was running for vice president, he said, "In Minnesota, we have a policy, you know, leave everybody alone. Just it's let your neighbors do what they want. It's none of your business." And that was interspersed with a clip of where he had people walking down this the street, police screaming to everybody to get into their houses and get off the streets and lock it up. No one's allowed out. People were thrown out of the military because they refuse to get the vaccine. People's businesses were destroyed unnecessarily. But that's okay because we'll label them now a criminal. There was a time in America when homosexuality was a crime and you could go to jail for it. Today, if you think there's something wrong with it, it's a crime and you can go to jail for it because I just relabeled it. The Biden administration touted the fact that their crime statistics went down and it turned out, no, it didn't. They just relabeled what were called crimes. and they said, "No, that's not a crime. That's not a crime." Donald Trump, they uh re labeled a misdemeanor as a felony. They passed the law to undo the statute of limitations. And then they found them guilty of like 20 of these mis misregistering of uh you know u of of uh things in a in a ledger which he didn't even do. It's just it was his company and they convicted him of 20 felonies. Now he says he's a convicted felon. Sure. Sure. Because as they said in Soviet Russia, "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime. I can label anybody as a criminal. I can label anybody as whatever I want." So, you know, in New York City where this person comes in and starts attacking bodega owner who fights back and ends up killing the guy. They arrest him. He's the criminal. not the criminal. Yeah. It's it's just it's just playing games with labeling. And I have to tell you, every time I see this where they say instead of saying yeshiva students whose arrangement has expired and they're waiting for legislation, every time they pass a bill in the Knesset to try to solve the problem. So the the Supreme Court says nope. And they call it democracy when it's clearly a dictatorship because we call it whatever we want and words have no meaning. The miss says how will you know when you're in your most messiah and one of the things is is ms truth will be hidden and The best way to hide truth is by relabeling it. Yeah. Undocumented aliens. Anyway, uh I just I had seen this recently and it just it infuriated me all over again that you know that the the name calling. The name calling. What do you accomplish by that? Yeah. My good friend Lenny Solomon from Schllock Rockck who we had on the show um who by the way wrote our theme song and always like to give a shout out to Lenny whenever I can. Um, so he wrote a song. Yeah. And people aren't comfortable with that. They have to give a label. Um there are these uh dating sites. Now I've got, you know, two daughters who uh are looking to get remarried. And so they're, you know, sometimes they send me the profile and it says, "Describe your religious observance." And there's a whole long list. Yeshivish, modern Yeshivish. Um, uh, himish, modern heish. [laughter] I I I can't I can't keep up with all the terms. I have people sometimes at my at my table and they're wearing. So I said, "Oh, you're says, "No, no, no. I'm Hish." I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means. Somebody suggested a shurik for one of my nephews once and my sister-in-law was says, "I don't know if they're for us. They're a sadic family." I was like, "Isn't that a good thing?" He goes, "No, no, you you don't understand. It means something. Every label means something." And once you label something, you automatically give it a limitation because it's this and it's not that. And that's why Um I don't fit comfortably into any label. You know [laughter] my son's uh Rashiva um potach. So he was describing a particular place and he says it's but it's noted. [laughter] There's something called and something called [snorts] labels. We give we give people labels and those labels you know everyone falls into a position where that's the role they have to play. When I was in NCSY, there was a fellow there, wonderful fellow and his father was the caner in one of the largest conservative synagogues in Long Island and he came to an NC event and he would fight with everybody saying I'm conservative and so people would try to argue with him and they all got stuck. He worked his way through most of the advisors and then the head advisors and the program coordinators and finally someone said maybe you can talk to this kid. He's got a big chip on his shoulder because he's conservative. So he comes to me and he says, "I'm a conservative Jew." I said, "Okay." He said, "Well, what do you think about that?" I said, "I don't know. What does it mean?" He says, "You know, I follow conservative Judaism." I said, "You believe in God?" "Yeah." "You believe in Torah?" Yeah. You believe in the rabbitic tradition? Yeah. I don't know. Sounds like we believe in the same thing. And that was it. That was the end of it. Once I stripped away his label and we have so much more in common than we have that divides us. Yeah. Um uh I told this story a long time ago where I happened a long time ago. I might have just told it last week as I have no memory left, but uh I was doing a Shabbat Oli in Leeds. Uh I was uh replacing uh Chief Rabbi Jonathan Saxs. The largest Shabbat Oli is in Leeds. He was supposed to be there, but the queen asked him to come to the 50th anniversary of VE Day. So you can figure out this must have been 1995, right? 50 from 1945. Yeah. VE day is victory in Europe day. There's VE day and VJ day, victory in Japan. Right. Anyway, so he wasn't there. So they asked me to fill in and I came in and uh sent my apologies to the queen said, "I'm sorry I won't be able to come. I have to go to leads." Anyway, so um uh so by Shabba's lunch, fellow sits down with me and says, "You know, Rabbi Jonathan Sax was supposed to be here." I said, "I know." He says, "If he came, I wouldn't have come." I said, "Really? Why?" He says, "Because I'm a progressive Jew and he doesn't like progressive Jews." So, I said, "Oh." Which is my go-to answer when I don't know what else to say. Yeah. I find superarafhagidocious is too long. So, I just go, "Oh." And then he says to me, "What do you think of progressive Jews?" I said, "I tell you the truth, we don't have it in America. Is it like reform? No. Is it like conservative? No. What is it? And after about five minutes, it was clear that he had no idea what a progressive Jew was, but he knew he was one. And he knew he was angry at Rabbi Sax because he didn't like it. And I had no position on it. So, we were very easily to be able to have a conversation because I didn't I didn't embrace his label. And that's always the problem. When uh person says to me, I'm not religious. I often say, how do you know? I don't keep shabas. I don't keep this. I said, okay, I know people who keep those things and don't keep other things. So, I'm not sure. You know, it takes God to decide who's religious and not religious. It's not for me. And they're shocked because we understand the there's the religious and there's the irreligious. But labels all they do is close off people. And so we're going into Yamiper the conclusion of the mula. So you know on rashash shana on the first day of rashash shana or in a year like this when the first year first day of rashash shana comes out on shabas we usually do it on the second day of rashana we do a ceremony called tashik where we go down to the water and we throw in all of our sins. So someone said to me, "That's great. I'm just going to come down once a week so there's no buildup here." I thought I have to do chuva. I just throw all my sins in the water. Great. I'm going to do that once a week and then I won't have any buildup. I I'll I'll beat the holiday rush. Seems like a pretty strange idea. I was mash and uh we went to a park in Pagi to do tashlik. There was this big yellow box that everybody was saying tashlik to. Apparently, there used to be a well inside of there and it was covered over. I don't know. So, one of the boys who was not familiar with tashlik says to me, "What are we doing?" I said, "We're throwing our sins into the water." He said to me, "Won't it bounce off the box?" I said, "That's the only problem you have with this." >> [laughter] >> I said, "And if there was an actual well, you'd be okay. I take all of my sins and I throw it in the water and Arabium. There is a min in some circles to eat. For those of you who are culturally deprived, think of wanttons. Uh not the fried ones, the ones that go in. For those who have Eastern European extraction, think of dumplings. Basically, dough with meat inside of it. Yeah. Mill is to eat crepllock. What's the reason for it? Because when you look at a crepel, all you see is a piece of dough. But if you cut it open, you'll see the meat inside. But it's easy to label it as a piece of dough. If you don't look a little deeper, when we throw our sins symbolically in the water by tashik, we're making a very powerful statement. I am not defined by my actions. I'm not a bad person. I'm a good person who have done bad things. my averos, my sins, I'm gonna cast them off because they're not me. I'm not going to throw my arm in because my arm is me. Yeah. Unless you're uh the fugitive. You're chasing the one-armed man. Guess he could take his arm off and throw it in. But um but we uh we don't throw away body parts, but our sins are not us. The very fact that we symbolically throw it in the water is because I recognize I need to remove these actions. But these actions are not me. And that's why there are two wonderful terms, a bar mitzvah or a bas mitzvah and a ba a vera. By mitzvah, you're either the son or daughter of a mitzvah. That's genetic. But you are a vera. You own sins and I can give away my possessions. They're not me. And that's why at the beginning of yam kipa we say the pekk the entire nation are shog. If you do something there's three levels and is which is what is right is there's two different discussions of what they are one is yode eso vera limro I know who God is and I want to rebel against him that's really bad it's a very serious form of amazed doing it on purpose. And then there's a person who did it on purpose, but he's doing it because there's a tya. What's the difference between the two? There's a pizza place, kosher pizza place. It's right down the block. Uh it has better pizza and it's cheaper than the non- kosher pizza place on the other side of town. and I dka go to the non-coosher one, pay more money for less good pizza. That's the first level. Second level is I'm happy to eat the kosher pizza. But if the kosher pizza is far away and it's not as good pizza and it's more expensive, so go to the non-coosher pizza place just because uh convenience or tyber um having driven many times on the New Jersey Turnpike, going to Baltimore, whatever, you're not driving through New Jersey. Um there are these rest stops and as you're driving through New Jersey, there's not kosher food per se. Um certainly not on the highway. I guess maybe you could get off at one of the local towns or something, but when you get to central and southern New Jersey, I don't know how many kosher places there are. Anyway, I remember when we drove down to Orlando, uh, one of my kids looked up kosher places and they said, you know, basically from Baltimore down to Orlando, it's a kosher food desert the way they describe it. So a person pulls in and you see a Roy Rogers or you see a you know a Cinnabon or you see any of these kind of things and you think to yourself hey you know how bad is it right now I wouldn't given a choice if there's a kosher place I go to the kosher place but it's expensive you know that's why if you go to the mall of America you can go to the food court over there and there are you a few mamish kosher stores where you can go and buy things. Absolutely delightful. Can't afford to buy anything in the mall, but I can go to the food court, get something to eat, you know. So, uh um the uh the experience, you know, of looking at the food and saying, "Well, I'm hungry and I have nothing to eat." And, you know, given the choice, I would eat kosher, but you know, it's inconvenient. Yeah. So that's it's also amazing. I did it on purpose. I can't say it was by accident. Shogg is I made a mistake. Right. The classic example is either I didn't know that this food wasn't kosher or I didn't know that this particular food could be not kosher. Yeah. I didn't know what was in it. I'll never forget when I was a Long Island director of NCSY. They had a regional director tour. I had been in Israel. It was the year I got married. They had at the end of the year. So, I was there already. And a number of the regional directors came along uh on this tour. And we went to a particular kibbutz. Um whoever arranged this tour was not careful to make sure that the places we went to were mahadin. And uh I was living in Israel. Uh this is 1983 so the awareness was not the same. And um um and we were in this kibbutz and I wouldn't need anything basically because I didn't know what the what the standard of conscious was. and re uh Itchy Loen Brown who is the Baltimore regional director was there and he didn't know about the Kasha situation in Israel and I said he's eating and he says how come you're not eating I said I don't know what the kash is here he says it has a hashkah I said I know but hashkah is in Israel is caveat mar very often the the regular raut certification is controlled by the government, not by the rabbis. So that if a rabbi does not want to give a hashkah, the government can say yes, give it to them anyway. And this is this is a big problem when it comes to the kashik. Anyway, I'll never forget he says, "I'm eating rice. What could be wrong with rice?" And I said, "Because we live here in the Middle East, and in the Middle East, here in Israel, we have the bugs of three continents. We have African, Asian, and European bugs. And if you don't check the rice to make sure there are no bugs, you might be eating a bug. I'll never forget there was a fork in his hand up to his mouth. He dropped it down. I was like, "What?" I said, "Yeah, yeah." And unfortunately, the people who arranged this tour were not careful to make sure that everything was mahadin. Now, I'm not saying there were bugs in it. I don't know if there were or not. But if I'm not aware of the level of cautious uh you know so that's why in America in New York state anyway I don't know about all of America yeah they passed a law under um under the fraud commission they set up a kosher certification like kosher investigative thing because there are people who claim that what I'm selling is kosher and it's not and so New state will charge you with fraud. Now, I'm not saying they're in a position to posit because I'll never forget when I was living in Farway, there was a bakery there called Zamics. It's since been absorbed into gourmet glery and they were very popular and uh a little more expensive because the stuff was very good. And uh and a neighbor of mine says, "Did you hear Zamik serves lard? Uses lard, which is pig fat." I said, "What?" He says, "Yeah, that's what I heard. I knew their stuff was too good." Well, Rab Lefkowitz was on the five towns, you know, Kash uh commission, and I called him up and he says, "What? I'll tell you exactly what happened. He says, uh, the people who deliver the pie shells delivered their order of pie shells. Apparently, this company makes pie shells with a hashkah and without a hashkah. And after they put the delivery and he put it in the freezer, so they went to get one and they noticed it didn't have a a hashkah on it. They called up the guy and he says, "Oh, I'm sorry. We sent you the wrong things. you know, we'll exchange them. We'll we'll be back in the neighborhood in two days. We'll exchange them. He says, "So, the owner immediately called me and I came down and I said, "Okay." I put them off to a side. I counted them. I said, "When the guy comes to exchange them, call me and I'll count them to make sure none of them was used." Fine. In between those two days, New York State did a spot inspection, found the p shells without a hashkah and gave them a fine. And the guy calls me and I ran down and I told the guy, I said, you know, I know about it. I'm the mashk. He goes, doesn't make a difference. It's New York state law. If we find anything that's not kosher, we have to give them a fine. Yeah. So the idea of advertising yourself as kosher when you're not. New York State understands it's a problem. In Israel, not so much. Um and uh when I was growing up, you know, you could basically call yourself kosher and whatever you want. Yeah. So uh uh this was a a major incident but um uh people people think you know well uh I'm I'm I'm following this I'm following that. So there's no question that uh Rabbi Loen Brown was completely shake. He didn't know that rice needs ashk in America apparently they don't have a problem with bugs and rice. I don't know about today. I know once upon a time they didn't. I don't know currently. I've been living here for close to 40 years. But um but uh but there's you don't know that's shake. Shogig is I just don't I didn't mean to do anything wrong. Koha we say and so we give people uh um labels. You're Russia. Yeah. your your um your uh um I'm you know whatever it is and we expect the person to embrace our label and once you give a person a label that's it. So, you have kids with learning disabilities and they give up because they'll tell you, "I'm LD. There's only so much I can do." You know, or they'll say, "I'm in the dumb class." Or they'll say, "Uh, you know, uh, I have this, I have that." Whatever it is, we'll give them a label. And then that label defines them. In order for us to do chuva, we have to let go of the labels. We have to let go of our limitations. No, I'm not a bad person. Have I made mistakes? Of course. That's what is when you shoot an arrow and you miss the target. Have I made mistakes? Sure I am. Am I a bad person? No. I'm a good person who did bad things. We like to give out labels and those labels limit us and limit the people around us and we need to move beyond those labels if we want to do chuva. A bad person can't change and as long as I limit myself I'm going to be stuck. And so if we can all uh move beyond our limitations and see ourselves as sadikim, see ourselves as good people who've made mistakes, then we become people who can do chuva and will be to aarim. And now uh some appreciation comments. Here's a nice really short one. I really enjoy listening to your show. I listen to it during long bus rides. Makes them so much more interesting. Thank you. I'll have to call uh the bus company and see if I can get a uh get get them to put it in. I don't know if they have any recording. I know in L you can listen to me as Rabbi Citrus. So uh I first discovered a real when he came to my hometown to speak and I was hooked. I was just finishing my freshman year of high school and beginning to become from aoy. I found Valinowski shurim in parenthesis show [laughter] online and after hearing him talk about fillain in some context I decided to start that summer I guess putting on fill in and five summers later I have never missed a day entering my second year in a wellrespected yeshiva and errell still I listen to rabbowski while getting ready for shabas or on long car rides. Another one who used me for traveling purposes. I'm just a traveling man and probably many other times that I shouldn't share for fear of you having to stop your show for having exponentially increased people's screen time. Well, you know, you don't have to increase your screen your screen time. You can listen to the podcast or you could call up on the phone, listen to the podcast. Yeah, I got tremendous to this day. I'm yet to find anyone who shares Torah quite like Rabiolvski. This is true. [laughter] No one does what I do. Gibly incredible work for Clay. Maybe I can get you to come and speak in my yeshiva mashem. And uh that's it for this episode. If you want to find out more about the show, you can go to my websiteki.com. You can sponsor an episode, sponsor para five, sponsor [music] a question and answer. You can submit a question. Uh send in a comment. Um you can uh um sign up for one of the online shorimm which [music] are still going on and uh there's other material there that you could listen to or read. And that's it for now. Until next time, I am David Olowski and this has been the Rabbi Olowski Show. >> It's the Rabbi Orlovski Show. Torah and Sima, ready to go. The Rabbi Olowski show. Knowledge and wisdom will help you grow. Lots of fun in every episode. And we don't have to rhyme, though we don't. [music] It's the Rabbi Orlavski show on rabbi.com. Torah anytime you two and more. It's the Rabbi Olavski show. Torah and ready to go. It's the Rabbi orski show. Till next time till we meet again. The Rabbi Olowski show. It's the Rabbi Show. It's the Rabbi Show.