I was really happy with the business speakers that we had for this year apply and we've gotten set up in the business track all day for the most part. Really above average quality business track speakers, so really happy about that. And when we saw all the folks come in, we thought let's put a panel together of some of our business speakers and let you guys ask some questions and I'll ask some questions and we'll go from there. So my name is Nathan Ingram, I'm the lead organizer here at War Camp Birmingham. I'm also a coach for WordPress freelancers and I love the business tracks at War Camps. That's usually where I speak and I've gotten to know a lot of these folks over the years. And so what we're going to do is we're going to start off letting them introduce themselves and then I've got a few questions to kind of get the conversation started and then we'll open it up and let you guys ask questions. Okay, and we'll go for 45 minutes or so. All right, so let's start down here at the end with Mickey, Mickey. What you guys are going to do is tell us who you are, where you're from, a little bit about your business and kind of stuff, what you do in business. All right, my name is Mickey Trivedi, I work for USA Enterprises. We are out of trust in Tennessee, also known as Jonesboro. It's in the very tip top of Tennessee, a very small community. I've been in business since 2004 and I do website design for people who are pretty consulting and all that good stuff. What will I do there? Anything? No, good. I'm Melanie Adcock, Adcock Creative Group. I just recently, as of last week, merged with my husband. I used to be MGA Creative Designs on my own, so we have merged. He's also a freelancer. We're out of Newton, Georgia. I've been doing freelancing since probably 2003, but WordPress Freelancings since 2010. My specialties are church websites and retirement communities, but I've done really really well. I'm Gordon Sygrup. My two companies are Copperleaf Creative and Press Managed. At Copperleaf Creative, we build websites for clients, with purpose, on purpose. And at Press Managed, we give our clients the peace of mind of a sleeping puppy by giving them a single neck-to-ring, mind if anything goes wrong, and then you just call us and get it taken care of. We run out of Wublin, Colorado, which is about an hour north of Denver, and I've been building websites full-time on WordPress since 2018. I'm April Weir. I run a digital marketing agency in North Metro Atlanta called Sugar 5 Design. And we work with growing businesses who want to grow faster. We do web design, SEO, strategy, and business coaching. And we are very involved in the local WordPress community, and we just really, really love going to meet-ups and cams and supporting the community.  All right, awesome. So, how many of you struggle with pricing your websites? More or less. All right, how many of you at one time or another have charged far less than you should have for a website? Desperate people. So that's the next question. I would like each of these folks to tell us what is the least you've ever charged to build a website for somebody. Okay, the very first website I got paid to do, I got paid $99, and it was live for five years. Whoa! Okay, you want to talk about long-term value to a client? That's 20 bucks a year in development. Now, I don't know if it was a good website or not, but, wow. Yeah. The cheapest website I ever bid was 200 bucks for a restaurant. I got lucky they didn't say yes. The cheapest one I actually got paid for that stands out in my mind was pre-wordpress for me. It was an OS commerce bill, full e-commerce, for 800 bucks. Anybody ever use OS commerce? God bless you. Other than the ones before I was a pre-answer that I actually did for free when I was a teacher, and I did one for my school, the least I've gotten paid is around $500, and the site is still on. So, yeah. And it's pre-wordpress, so it's terrible. I'm a police. I've done a free website for nonprofits, so I guess that would be the least. But the least I've done, paid for, would be the request website I ever sold was $500. And that was one of the dirty words that we're going to call June 1. June 1 is a wonderful, and they're the step-child of the open-source community. We love you. So, okay, anybody think $99 for a website? I think that's awesome. That's a dubious price. Yeah, right. Well, you know, the funny thing about that is that it was awful. It was ugly. It was awful. It was ugly, but it ranked, and it got the guy a lot of business, and he wasn't able to... It ranked as in on Google, or as in... Well, no. No. All right. So, that's the least you've ever charged. April, why don't you start again and tell us the largest dollar-wise project you've been involved in. Well, I specialize in reservoir sites. The largest price point that I really usually go to is around $6,500. Unless we're doing something really super fancy, that's as high as I can. And I think if you don't actually have to charge a lot of money to be profitable, you just have to have really, really good processes. Exactly. Yeah, that's not about the dollar signs, about the margin you have in it. That said, I have two part answer again. I recently bid between $190 and $240,000 for working the next 12 months with the client. We both know we're in the client. Now, that's going to go through, so that doesn't really count. The most it's ever cleared through was a phased project, and that added up to just shy of $35,000. It was actually last month. The client signed it $23,000 for a website that's about... Well, actually it's $23,000 for the main website and $5,000 for each satellite website. So that's going to be about a $35,000 project when it's all done. And I just knew that they had deep pockets, so I just couldn't pull the amount out of the air. And they signed it, so I probably didn't charge it up. With me, it would be around $13,500. And that was a pretty good bid back. So about $30,000, if I'm going to go to school, if you want me. And so the point of asking those two questions is to show you the range where people kind of started, $99, up to $30,000, not only starting at $500,000 to $300,000. So there's a lot to be learned in the journey between a $500 website and a $23,000, could be $30,000, something $1,000 website. There's a lot to be learned. Yeah, yeah. So my largest client, I started off on a $350 a month retainer. And they are now $68,000 a year. Good. So starting small doesn't always mean ending small. No, that's such a great point. The most important dollars I think you can earn in a WordPress business are the recurring dollars. That is where the priority has to be. So there's a journey, like I said, between starting out in the $500 range where a lot of folks start out. Anybody start out around that's kind of where you're starting roughly there, $500,000 or somewhere in there. Yeah. And then charging a lot more. There's a lot of aches and pains, business growth, a lot of stretching that has to happen. So let me ask you guys, in that process, what's been the biggest mistake you made in your business? Biggest mistake? The biggest mistake in my business. Well, before I kill that, I want to say something else about the crossing. What I've noticed about the crossing is the lowest payment that I have is the worst client. Yes. So I don't even agree with that. So I just think we need to bring that to the focus as well. But the biggest mistake I've made in my business was not hiring help sooner. It cost me so much money because my business tripled when I hired help. So it makes me think, you know, what if I would have hired help when I first started versus when I did 10 years later. Look at the amount of money I could have made, could have shared with it. But instead I didn't because I was stuck on, hey, I can do this and nobody else can do it like me. Boy, that wasn't sure. It was hoping like me. The biggest mistake. That wasn't the biggest mistake. Mine's probably 2.1 is being afraid to talk about money upfront. I used to be like, you know, Oliver, you know, can I please have more? So it's like the top three questions, what's your budget? I am no longer afraid to ask them, being afraid that they wouldn't have a big budget and then I lose the job. It's not a problem for me anymore to tell them, tell them no, I'm not the person for you. I don't work at low budget projects like that. The second thing is not having a process for everything because if you have a process for everything and you stick to your processes, it just makes your life so much easier. Before you pass it, let me dig into one of those answers you just gave. You said that, you know, your first mistake was, what was it? Not talking about money. Yeah, so how do you learn, talking about money is tough, right, with blanks? How do you learn to talk about money? Well, you taught me. You and WP Elevation taught me about not being afraid to ask about your budget and if they say they don't have a budget, so I say, so you have an unlimited budget, money's no object. And that is a great thing to get a number like that. Well, I'm thinking about, you know, $2,000, well, you're not going to get an e-commerce site for that. You know, then you can kind of ask as WP Elevation, go wide, go deep, start asking what they want and why and why and why and what else. And you get down to the nitty-gritty and they may not have the budget then, but then you can break it down into pieces, which I did with the client. They didn't have the money up front for e-commerce, but you still need a website, so let's start with a brochure website and then once your business picks up, let's go add the e-commerce. So you end up still keeping the client, but breaking it down and then now you're guaranteed they're going to come back to you for phase two, phase three, and they end up being the client. Great. Gordon, biggest mistake. Biggest mistake was hiring too soon. And actually, built on both books. My biggest mistake was hiring staff too soon. It led me to run the business upside down for over six months, meaning I was losing money every single month. I was busting my tail, paying my staff out of my pocket and racking up debt. That is the worst thing you can do. And the reason that it was too soon is that I didn't have the processes. It was your same mentality, I do this. I'm amazing at this. How do I outsource that? Or how do I insource that? How do I staff do what only I can do? So that put me in a really bad spot. We're probably geared up to start hiring again in the next year or two, but this time it'll be processize everything, but that isn't to say get it down to every single click in screenshots and videos because if you make it idiot-proof, only idiots will want to work on it. That's actually a quote from the CEO of Netflix. Roughly, you know. Repeated. But the process of this is these are the steps you go to figure it out. For example, the WordPress troubleshooting process. Turn off all the plugins, but the one that you think doesn't work. Then turn off the theme. It's not what button, what plugin. It's the bigger process. I also waited too late to get my processes in order. So everything was a spoke design solution for each client. And that doesn't, I mean it sounds great, but in reality it doesn't work and it absolutely doesn't scale. So if you don't have processes, get them now.  But I think, for me, on a bigger picture is one of the big mistakes that I made was allowing my people-pleasing personality to affect my business decisions. And so I would take consequences, business consequences of my clients and I would absorb them. So my client wouldn't have the budget to do it and I would do it and I would absorb the difference. Or they would make a bad decision and break their site and in the middle of the night, I would fix it. That's absorbing their consequences that they should be absorbing. And of course that can ripple out through the rest of your life. But once I got that in order and started respecting my business and started putting appropriate boundaries that I'm responsible for and what they're responsible for, because a lot of us care more about our client's sites than they do. Right? That's a tweetable. A lot of us care more about our client's sites than they do, which is absolutely true. I totally agree. So all of you guys had mentioned something about processes. And this is just kind of open for anybody to watch the volunteer. What are the processes? Well, the way we do our processes are the things that we do repeated tasks or methods or philosophies that we do our work on. So in the beginning, it was all in my head. But when I got ready to do what I call a process book because I don't want to be in my business forever. I wouldn't have my business running forever but I don't want to run my business forever. So I actually hired a VA. She's fantastic and we started doing process workshops. And so we would spend time and I would just brain dump and then she would organize it and show it back to me and then we would create repeatable processes for other people based on that. And it was really amazing because it was such a confidence builder for me because seeing what I knew and what I did for my clients not only validated my value that I was bringing to them but now I can duplicate that value without me having to do everything. Get my VA to do that. That sounds fantastic. Do that. I'll jump on something really simple and looks smaller. Checklists. Checklists save you from errors of ineptitude. What that means is something you knew you had to do but you just forgot. It's not that you didn't know but there's 8, 9, 10 things in a row maybe you did 9 out of 10 but that 10th one matters. So for me the book was the Checklist Manifesta. It thinks it's about the World Health Organization but it's not. And my fun story on that is that I ordered a sitting standing desk and they've asked me not to use their name and when I went to check out the options were credit card or test check out. That's interesting. So I went through their test check out and like a lot of us developers we know there's a test card number it's not a secret it's 4, followed by 15 ones. So I checked out and I fully expected that they were going to send me an email that says hey nice job, Bozo you can't have your desk but instead I got a payment confirmation I got shipping confirmation I got a desk. And then we took pictures of us putting it together and never were we put in the office and we got a blog post about errors of ineptitude and this book and what happened and then I emailed them the blog post and I said listen guys I had no intention of stealing a desk from you I'm going to pay for it I just thought you should know and they called me and said listen take our name off that blog post and we'll give you the desk at half price I said this is not extortion I'm not blackmailing you I'm paying for the desk I did take the name off the blog post you can replicate what I did they turned off the desk checker it was like I hacked anything but they seemed to think it was a security problem wait no you need checklists and then later this is really ironic I had a client read that blog post and then come back to me with a screenshot of the admin panel where I had left the box that said to discourage search engine indexing checked for 9 months and they walked in and said this is not an aptitude this is your blog post this is our admin panel you're right so really basically my checklists are a reminder of everything I've ever screwed up ever so when you screw something up it goes on a checklist and now we go and check all the boxes and when we make mistakes we make it right I credit an awful lot of money to that client and they're still in the client because it's lists so mine are checklists checklists for what to install on a website I have processes for actually even scoring clients that come to me I work most just by referral so if I have a cold call from a client they have to pass a test I actually score them if they don't pass that I pass on the project because I don't want to work with PETA clients pain in the asterisk clients if they really sound like it's going to be a neat project and you just charge them a whole lot more to work with them but I know when you're first starting out you don't have that luxury I have the luxury to say no and that's what having a business coach has you got the permission from somebody smarter in the or farther along in the journey that's what people know processes I love checklists and launch checklists simply because of that very reason making sure that the test mode is turned off I actually thought oh this is such an easy small site I launched yesterday I don't need to go by the checklist and I went in there last night and I had to still have it on test mode for checkout luckily she don't have one product so I didn't think the whole world was going to try to buy this product but I went through the checklist and I'm like oh I forgot to do that and it was on my list so have a process for everything that's important in your step to go through even bringing on clients what you need from them sending them the list of what you need I have to write it all down because I'm not doing it anymore I can't remember everything so having that list in front of me that box on Trello that I can check that I've done it and I move on to the next task and that way I can go to bed and sleep at night and I don't wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning and go oh did I forget to do that so just having a process for if it's not on the list it does not exist yes so I'm going to go with pretty much everything they said since I'm the last guy I do as well I use Trello as well but one of my things too that I do is how many of us have like one of the things I've screwed up the most is contact forms how many of us forgot to change the email where it goes to once we launch so that's like number one on my checklist and number two is do I really want this client as a client you know and that's where I got into that mode of every client and then I go down in the launch and stuff like that as well I mean another thing that I do is I have personal goals that I want to do every day and I don't have a list of ten goals I write down two or three goals a day that I want to get done because it's easier to get two or three things done than it is to get teased so you know and I don't want it to be able to be reached and that's what I do so I love some of the stuff they've said as well awesome some questions here, yes sir you're probably way past this but when you pitch a client what deliverables do you offer so for the video and for the room the question is when you're pitching a client project what are the deliverables that you offer are you after what do the clients normally want they want results they want beauty, they want aesthetics I mean what do most of them what triggers do you think get you the job so my number one thing is they want to return to the investment so I mean they will get to work and get business going whatever that entails whether it be optimization whether it be good content writing whatever is needed is what they want but that's you know every clock is different I mean I don't really know how you can say what they want that's why I get that information in the client interview I'm going to talk a little bit about tomorrow my presentation on writing proposals and what you put in them but you know you have to keep asking what do they want because most of the time they don't know what they want the brand new websites that you build because they have to have a website because they are not considered a legitimate business unless they have a website so if they just be a brochure site they don't need it, I just need a website well and farther along it might be that they need landing pages to sell a specific service you know what do you want if they're a church what do you want them to see on the homepage for new visitors that are looking for a church it's you know what kind of worship do you have how do we dress what do you have for my kids versus a retirement community that you want them to know that you do the full level of services for retirement communities from independent living all the way down to skilled nursing so it all depends on what the client is and you listen to them and then in the proposal feed it back to them and mark those as the target needs that you're going to solve the problems that you're going to solve it's not I'm going to install this plugin and configure it is what problems are you solving you don't want to tangibly give them you know I can get you X amount of oh no no no no no actually I'll jump in on that so it's largely I agree with almost everything we said except for the detail that I like to add which is it has to be measurable so that if they say contact request a month I want 10 I can measure that and six months down the road it's hard to measure beauty you know you're excited about my fancy new website but that's not really what you wanted so again to roughly quote someone else I believe it was Brennan Dunn who said keep asking clients questions because one of two things is going to come out of their mouth money or BS keep asking questions until you get to them one and that's it then what they're deliverable that they want then ask them how they plan to measure that and then echo it right back in the book would you have a promise 10 contacts per month no never because we don't control the internet or the universe but we agree we are working together to hit this goal and we're going to evaluate it at six months and if we're at 12 that's awesome and if we're at 8 let's figure out why and what we need to make better if you can use language like we're going to increase your leads you know we're going to set things up and this is how we're going to try to increase your leads we're going to do you know slide in email sign up forms we're going to do a free giveaway you know you come up with a strategy to increase and I would say that kind of goes back to who owns the consequences of the website who owns the business right so is it my responsibility to make sure your business succeeds because that's way outside the scope of building a digital marketing platform right so what I try to do is I try to go to where the pain is so they're experiencing pain and we can define why they're experiencing that pain and we can craft a solution to alleviate that pain that's worth money let me just reflect for a second because the answers that you just got are not about building a website they're about running a business and there's a lot of what we are asked to do as web developers that follows much more under the hat of business consulting than it is building a website and those are two totally separate services you may be able to build a website you may be able to offer some business consulting some amount of people just need a sounding board but those are two separate services so make sure you're charging them when people ask you what you do for a living you do not build websites you own your own web design company that's a huge difference in perception than I'm sitting in my basement in my pajamas building a website versus which you certainly are I do make a rule to get dressed every day so but I can't guarantee I'm not in my pajamas in the evening working on websites but there's a whole perception about that so get yourself out of that where they perceive you being in the basement you know working on a project versus that you are actually operating your own company yes nobody will ever respect your business more than you do now they're tweetable tweetable two for two alright questions going back to what you were saying about clients messing up your site and you fixing it in the middle of the night how do you determine who gets access and how do you lock it down so that that doesn't happen so I am kind of a jerk about this so I am very I'm very generous to my clients but I have very strong boundaries so there's a warranty period and I believe that my clients should have total access to what they own but they also own the consequences of access to what they own right so I don't do this anymore but I used to have a crack the box cause so you know like when you buy a PC and you crack the box you board the warranty so I would give them admin access and then editor access and if they locked in access during the warranty period they pointed the warranty I kind of dialed that back again but I reserved the right to reenact it at any time don't take it out keep it in ours is actually quite similar in that we create a client level access and the way we describe it is I try to remove the things where you're more likely to hurt yourself than do what you intended to do and so we turn all those off and that way there's really easy access to posts and pages and forms and the stuff they should be interacting with every day and it's all written in a dashboard widget that we made and then it says hey at the end of the day this is your site we will give you full admin access but if you break it we will fix it and that's billable and it says that in their dashboard every time they log in for me it depends on if I'm building it they're not going to be on a website care plan and I'm just handing it off I give them admin rights I still they don't know this I have the website backed up usually it's monthly for the people who aren't on care plans to my Amazon S3 they probably never even notice it goes there because that has saved and made me the hero so many times where they have broken something really really badly and I'm like well I have a backup so I'll just you do and I'm like well we have to plan for emergencies so I put it back up I come across as the hero and we go on from there for my care plan clients I give them an admin account they tell them never to use it unless I die and then they get editor access advanced access manager allows me to give them access to things like forms and things that they normally wouldn't get as an editor but they don't get to do things like plugin updates and things like that because I want to control that and make sure everything's working but they do own it and I do give them the admin but you know I tell them not to use it so I'm just like Gordon I give full access if they request it if they don't I set it up to where it's if they can't break anything and tear it up I do do backups of everything I think I'm going to set on there a database backup every day all my clients do not know that but I don't only want to have to do all the extra hard work if they screw something up so I have it there to help that but you know I mean I had a client for instance his password was 123456 he got hacked and anyways I told him I was like this is your fault he got billed for it and he wasn't really happy but guess what he signed up for my piece of mind right after that so it worked out really good for me but like I said I do pretty much what he says he does as well so on that subject I'll actually zoom in on the webinar on I think it's training I think it's one of the sponsors of the event today I think it's training in a couple weeks called preparing a site for the client it's free so if that's something that you're interested in and you want to see a process for that it's training.ithing.com and you can join us for that in a couple weeks another question yes sir maintenance plans versus you break it you pay for it what are your all thoughts on both sides of this basically I'm going to charge you $20 whatever I want and I will then take care whatever happens I'm not going to charge you anymore after that notice I think you're going to pay for everything that you gave me today so let me shake that question a little bit hourly work versus having some sort of maintenance recurring package for your clients if you have a package maybe tell us what that involves and how do you balance that with hourly work so I do have a piece of mind package that's what I call it because I want a client to have a piece of mind if they elect to do this I don't require that if they elect to do this then they are waived from ever having to worry about their website because that's what it is it's a piece of mind if it goes down I get it up if they break it I get it up if they tear it up I get it up period and the way I sell that to those clients is I'm like do you have a car yes you get the whole chain yes why not do the same thing for your website listen maintain your website we can keep it up today keep everything fixed where everything doesn't happen you invested this much money in it why not do that now if they go in and break it and they don't have a good maintenance plan then I turn the money out and fix that conference who still has a session yet to come Melanie what is your session crafting the perfect proposal 10 am tomorrow 10 am tomorrow morning so we'll be back right and early Sunday morning check out Melanie's session on proposals and enjoy the rest of the day


What maybe improvements do you want to make this week? Could have been better. I think that's the case every week, especially for that week. I obviously wanted to have a good game. Sometimes when you want something too much, it slips through your hands. But right now, I'm focused on what I can do from a technical standpoint, and then also what we can do as a team. So yeah. You think it's through the Christian Kirk touchdown and maybe what you learned from that play? Yeah, I mean, he made a good play. That was a situation where I think film study, and that situation is just going to come down to film study, you know what I mean? Inside leverage, third and short, if I'm disciplined watching film, then I know, OK, maybe a seven route is coming right here despite the stick. So that's part of the game I'm looking for to grow on more. You were talking to people about this morning. Is that kind of all part of the process, learning to lead, learning how to handle certain things, and having to show you how to get out there and do it. Yeah, I think so. This is my first time. You know what I mean? It's different than pre-season. Everything matters now. And I'm really taking every week. I'm taking it all in. You know what I mean? Every week there's different challenges and different obstacles to overcome. How the rest of the defense was set up and how you might get help, is that something that you're feeling coming down to knowing where the secondary might be to help you out? Yeah, no, 100%. And at the end of the day, I think it just comes down to making a play on the ball. You know what I mean? Like Coach Bowen puts us in a position to make plays and use help. And we've got to go out there and actually execute.  But how many times have you been to Lumen and felt the crowd and the presence and how excited are you to actually now play in that as a professional? A couple of times. I'll probably say like two or three. I'd make the drive up. It's like a three-hour drive from where I'm from. It is exciting just because they have a great atmosphere. You know, it's definitely going to be a hostile environment for us. You know, I think even when I got to college, I figured I'd be playing in the NFL and I couldn't be a fan of one team anymore because eventually I'd be playing against them all. So yeah. What's the film study showing you this week about this passing game? I mean, Russell Wilson, I think he's a future Hall of Famer. He's a great quarterback. And they got a lot of weapons with different skill sets. You know, DK, Metcalf, bigger receiver, obviously. And then they got guys like Tyler Lockett, who's inside and pretty much the opposite of what he does. But you know, I think at the end of the day, it comes down to us and executing on what we're supposed to execute on. What kind of liberty do you guys have as far as like on covers?  Do you have that type of freedom? Yeah, I mean, a lot of it depends on the down and distance, you know what I mean? So typically, you know, second and short, third and short. I mean, third and short, really, you want to go up there and challenge it because the sticks are right there. And a lot of teams play the sticks. You know, third and 10, you probably want to play off just because there's a lot more space. So yeah, it all depends. But within that, I mean, do you personally, as a player, are you able to, OK, it is third and short.  It's third and long.  Do you have that freedom yourself to, you know, do that within the scheme? Oh, individually, yeah. Yeah, I think so.  You know what I mean?  So yeah. Coach, why send me where you're from? Do you have a freedom to come in, a family, and what's that going to be like when you come to the sport? Yep. So my dad's coming with three of my brothers. We can't bring the whole family just because there's a lot of tickets.  But my mom and two of my youngest siblings went to the last game, and then my dad and three of my brothers will come to the next one. So yeah. You figure you'll probably get tested with speed, especially this week with the regular. You're going to take it. Are we going forward here? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm sorry, can you elaborate on that? Do you feel like you'll regularly get tested with speed in the slot, I guess, in particular, you know, this weekend and going forward? Yeah, I think usually the quickest, fastest guys are in the slot. And they have so much space that it's about angles and about using your help if you have it.


Jerusalem, Yerushalayim, is much, much more than the capital of our land, of our state. Yerushalayim, Jerusalem, is really the heart, the beating heart of the Jewish people. Every Jew, wherever he lives, is really a citizen of Yerushalayim. There's a connection. There's an attachment. We celebrate the joys of Yerushalayim. We lament its suffering. Whatever celebration we celebrate, be it a wedding, any joyous occasion, our jewelry is diminished by the sirens of Jerusalem. As King David said, if I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning. Let my tongue cleave to my palate if I forget you. If I don't raise Jerusalem above all my celebrations. Even at the most fulfilling religious celebrations, such as the day-long Yom Kippur observance, or the Passover Seder, our last words are Lishonahabah Yerushalayim. Next year may we be Yerushalayim. As if to say, it was glorious, it was grand. There was a magnificent Yom Kippur, there was a magnificent Passover Seder, but there's something missing. Because it wasn't what it should be. It wasn't in Yerushalayim. It wasn't in Jerusalem. So tonight, I don't think we're going to come up with any arguments that are going to dissuade the UN. But I think it's important for us to feel what the Jewish tradition has to say about our connection to Yerushalayim. As we all know, the Judaism is a universal religion. In the general sense, its laws, its rules are applicable worldwide. But as we also know, there are many laws that are specific to the land of Israel. There are many laws that are specific to the city of Yerushalayim. And there are many that are specific to the base Hamigdash, to the holy temple, which was at its center. In the base of Hamigdash, in the holy temple, there was a rack. And this rack is called, in the Talmud, the Evan Shesea, the foundation stone. According to some scholars, this is the rack, which today is under the dome of the rack. And the Talmud says, the reason it is called the foundation stone, the Evan Shesea, because it was from that point that the world was established. Meaning, when God created the world, it began at that point. And from that point, it radiated outward. But this is where the beginning was. This is the point of contact between the divine, the spiritual, and the physical material world. From there, it expands. According to one rabbinic tradition, the earth, the soil from which the body of Adam was created, was taken from the site that was destined to become the holy temple in Yerushalayim. According to a rabbinic tradition, Adam was the first to offer sacrifices there. Likewise, in the story of Cain and Abel, who built their altars and offered sacrifices, we know the story. Those sacrifices were built on the site that was going to become the temple in Yerushalayim. When the Bible tells us that Noah, Noah, after the flood brought sacrifices, it was also at that same site. The great story of Abraham, the Akheda, when he took his son and with tremendous devotion, was willing to offer him as a sacrifice. The story identifies that as having taken place on Har HaMaria, Mount Moriah, which is the site of the temple. When Jacob, our patriarch, in flight from the land of Israel and his brothers' attempt to kill him, stayed over for a night and had a dream of a ladder that had its feet on the ground and its top reached the heaven. And angels were going up and down the ladder. According to a rabbinic tradition, that was on the site of the temple. So we see that our connection to Yerushalayim goes way, way, way back to the beginning of Jewish history and is identified with our patriarchs, our founding fathers. When the Jews were liberated from Egypt, we know they came to Mount Sinai, the divine presence came to rest, and the Torah was given in thunder and lightning and smoke and fire. So we would expect that that site, Mount Sinai, would become an eternal shrine. This should be the central place in Judaism. And surprisingly, it's not. There is no sanctity which attaches itself to that mountain in the Sinai Peninsula. But at that place, God told Moses that there is another place that I will choose, that I will designate, in the land of Israel. And that is the site of holiness. That is the site of sanctity. And if you look in the book of Duna Raname, where Moses reviews God's speaking to him, this phrase, HaMuakomashayiv HaHashem, the place that God will choose, that God will select, is repeated again and again and again. That in this place, there would be a permanent sanctuary. In this place, the Supreme Court, which was the authority for all the Jewish nation, would convene there. This would be the place where Jews would assemble three times a year as pilgrims. HaMuakomashayiv HaHashem, the place of God would choose. It was hundreds of years later that that place was identified by King David and the prophet Shmuel as being the city of Yushalayim. David made it his political capital, the capital of the regime. And interestingly, that King David and his descendants became the defenders of Yushalayim and they were given a very interesting privilege that in the Holy Temple, the protocol called for standing. No one was allowed to sit in the temple. It was too holy. There was only one exception. The kings of the House of David were given the honor to sit in the temple courtyard because they were considered the defenders of the city. King David purchased the site that the temple was going to be built on. There was a threshing floor that belonged to a man named Arnon. He was of the Jebusites, a Canaanite tribe. And King David bought the site with money and the Medrish tells us a fabulous thing. There were three places in the land of Israel where our claim is the strongest. If we assert a claim on the basis of conquest, so people could always argue, well, that's not fair. Can't steal it. But there were three locations that were purchased in the land of Israel. The first was purchased by Abraham. This was the city of Hebron where he purchased the Maara Samachpela, the cave which was the burial site of the patriarchs and the matriarchs. The second was a field in the city of Shchem. It was purchased by Jacob. And ultimately this became the burial place of Joseph. And the third was the site of the temple that was purchased by King David. So the Medrish says that these three locations, our title can't be disputed because we paid for them with cold hard cash. And the irony is that these are the three locations that today are the most contested. Jerusalem, Hebron, and Nablus, which of course is Shchem. So the irony is amazing. There were our claim the strongest. This is where it is most contested. And I think that this not only applies to these three specific locations, but it applies generally to our claims to land of Israel. King David began to lay the foundations for the building of the temple. But he was not allowed to complete the process. The Book of Chronicles tells us that God sent a message that because King David was a warrior, he was a man of war, and the temple is meant to be a place of peace, he would not be allowed to complete the construction. And it was carried out by his son, Shlomo King Solomon, who built the magnificent first temple which stood for 410 years. Now it's hard to imagine what the temple meant to every Jew. Nowadays, we have local synagogues. So every city has many synagogues. No one goes more than a few blocks to find the place of worship. But the institution of the synagogue did not exist yet. There were no local houses of worship. All there was was the one temple which was the place of worship for the entire Jewish people. This was it. If you wanted to pray, if you wanted to bring a sacrifice, this is where you came. And interestingly, the Torah itself created a very interesting institution which almost compelled people to spend significant chunks of time in Jerusalem. You know, when you raise craps in the lands of Israel, there are certain agricultural gifts that are given to the priests, the Levites. These are called Chuma and Maaseir. Chuma is a smaller portion, Maaseir is a full tithe, which is given to the Levites for the maintenance of the religious functionaries. But there was a second tithe called Maaseir Sheini. In addition to the first tithe that was given to the Levites, there was a second tithe. And what was done with it? To whom was it given? It was given to nobody. It was kept by the farmer. But there was one rule that could only be eaten in Ushalayim. And this meant that if a person raised a bumper crab, approximately 10% of it was reserved for consumption in Ushalayim. That means every family had to spend a significant amount of time there absorbing the spiritual atmosphere of Ushalayim. Visiting the temple, visiting the rabbinic scholars, interacting with other Jews who are also coming from all over the land of Israel. And enjoying its spiritual blights. Now historical revisionists, for reasons we're going to explain, would like to deny the Jewish connection to Ushalayim. But I'm going to tell you something which can't be denied. The name Ushalayim is mentioned in the Tanakh, in the Jewish Bible, over 650 times. Over 650 times. The city of Ushalayim is mentioned by name. Now there's another name for Ushalayim, which is called Sion. Also a reference to the temple to the city of Ushalayim. The name Sion is mentioned in additional 150 times. So we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of references. This is not a footnote. This is not a marginal place. This is the very, very center of Jewish political life, Jewish economic life, and Jewish spiritual life throughout the biblical period. When the temple was destroyed, the first temple, the majority of Jews were exiled to Babylonia. The small remnant that remained behind shortly afterward fled to Egypt. And the land of Israel had been abandoned, but for a very short time, for 70 years. And after the 70 year Babylonian exile, the Persians had overthrown the Babylonians, and they gave permission to Jews to return. Not a large group, about 40,000 returned. And they rebuilt the temple, and the second temple stood for 420 years until the year 70 that it was destroyed by the Romans. So if you talk about the first temple, 410 years, and the second temple, 420 years, and the 70 years in between, you're talking about a 900 year span from the building of the first temple to the destruction of the second temple, where it was the focal point of Jewish life. In the year 135, there was an uprising against the Romans under Bar Cochva. And at that time, Jews were banished from the city of Yushalayim. This was the beginning of the Great Diaspora. And for the most part, our physical connection to Yushalayim was severed. Throughout the Middle Ages, there was no significant Jewish presence in Yushalayim. Only a handful of families living there. Although we do have reports of individuals coming as tourists in those pilgrims. Starting in 1517, when the Ottoman Empire took over Yushalayim, and continuing, rather, for the next 300 years, we have Jews beginning to return. A small population, somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 people, living as a minority among Muslims and Christians. Starting in the mid-1800s, and accelerating in the early years of the 20th century, we have an influx of Jews returning. And by the 1920s, the Jews comprise a majority of Yushalayim.   They'll focus on one of the later periods and say, well, the Jews weren't here. They weren't here in the Middle Ages. They weren't here during the time of the Crusades, and so on and so forth. But this is a trap we have to avoid. If you are relying on the historical record, you have to look at the historical record in total. Don't focus on a specific slice of history.  But even when Jews were not physically present, we always were connected. In our daily prayers, three times a day, we pray, To Jerusalem, your city, return in mercy. We mourn for Yushalayim. There is a chapter in the Shulchanarach in the Code of Jewish Law which talks about the myriad of practices which are to remember Yushalayim and lament Yushalayim. If you go into a ritually observant Jewish home, you'll see that near the front door, there's a patch of wall which is left unpainted. This is to remember that we're missing Yushalayim. At a wedding, we break the glass. That's not simply to send a signal that the ceremony is over. The breaking of the glass is to put a damper on the celebration in remembrance of Yushalayim. There are mitzvahs, there are commandments which technically should not be performed because they only are operative during temple times. We observe them as a remembrance of Yushalayim. Whenever we eat a meal and we see the Burkatimazon, we pray for the restoration of Yushalayim. And thank God now that travel has become so relatively inexpensive and convenient, virtually every Jewish family has the opportunity to visit and savor the glories of Yushalayim. Let me tell you a story. Napoleon saw himself as the great liberator of the Jews, the emancipator of the Jews, granting them citizenship and political rights in France. And the story is told that once, a night, at this time of year, July, August, he passed by a synagogue in Paris and he heard wailing coming from the synagogue. And he asked one of his entourage, what is that sound? So his assistant told him that tonight is the night of Tisha Ba'ov, the night of the ninth of Av and that commemorates the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. So Napoleon is reported to have said, what? The temple was destroyed in Jerusalem? How is it possible that I wouldn't have heard of this? So the person says, well, it happened a long time ago. We're talking about something which happened 1500 years ago. And Napoleon said, 1500 years ago and they're still crying? If they're still mourning after 1500 years, I know that someday that temple will be built. If they can still lament its loss, that means they're going to return and it will be rebuilt someday. I'd like to talk about a few ideas about Yushalayim. And if you look at the handout, the first section begins with a quotation from Humanities which reviews some of the history. But let's talk about a very interesting thing, but the name Yushalayim, where does the name come from? There's a story in the Bible of Abraham having successfully waged a war in which he defeated four mighty kings in the defense of five smaller kings. And in the aftermath of this great battle, it says that Malchitzedek, the king of Shalem, came and brought bread and wine, which was the customary practice. When people came back, we were from the battlefield, you brought them refreshment. And this was produced by Malchitzedek, the king of Shalem. According to rabbinic tradition, Shalem is the city that today we call Yerushalayim. And this is one of the first references to that place. He blessed Abraham, he blessed God, and Abraham gave him a very, very nice donation. Masir, one-tenth of the spoils of battle. Keep that in mind. Malchitzedek is the king of Shalem. Later, we have the story of the Akheda. Abraham returns to that same place, Mount Moriah. He offers his son on the altar. And it says that Abraham gave a name to that place, that Abraham called the name of that place Hashem Yer'eh. Hashem Yer'eh means God will see. That this is the place from which God looks down and observes the world. Hashem Yer'eh. And the Torah adds in the editorial comment that nowadays we twist that a little bit and we don't say Hashem Yer'eh, but Hashem Yer'eh. This is the place where God is seen. That this is the place where on the one hand God sees us, and this is on the other hand the place that we see God, but Yer'eh. So the place has two names. One name is Shalem, and the other name is Yer'eh. So the measure says that God had a dilemma. God said, what should I call the place? What should I call the place?  Why don't I use the name that he gave the place? If I call it Yer'eh, which was the name that Abraham gave to the place, then the righteous Malchitzedek will have a grievance. Why don't we use his name? So God said, I'm going to combine the two names. Yer'eh, Shalem, is Yerushalayim. That the name that God gave to the place is the combination of the two names. The name that Abraham gave, Yer'eh, and the name that Malchitzedek gave, which is Shalem. What is the significance of this fact? There's a lovely commentary that is given in the safer Meshachochmo. And he says the following, the word Shalem means perfection. What Malchitzedek was trying to do, his mission was to bring people to virtue, honesty and compassion, to develop exemplary traits of personality and character. That's the idea of Shalem. And it's interesting to note that Malchitzedek, the very name, means my king is righteous, sedek, just. And that's what he was trying to do. He was a warrior on behalf of justice and virtue. And that's certainly a very worthy cause. Abraham revealed that there's another dimension to life. Yes, of course it should be just and honest. And Yerushalayim is called the Yer'hatsedek, the city of virtue. But there's something else, which is a connection to God, a relationship with God, with the divine. That's Yer'eh. This is the place where God sees us, and this is the place where we behold him. Each picture of Yushalayim is incomplete. If Yushalayim is only perceived as the city of virtue, of honesty, of decency, of morality, that's certainly a very wonderful thing, but it's an incomplete picture. If we see Yushalayim simply as the religious shrine, a place where a person can connect to the divine, that's also a wonderful thing, but incomplete. God said that the full name of Yushalayim is Yerushalayim. Now I want to point out another interesting thing about the name. If you look in the Tanakh, in a written, printed version of the Bible, you'll discover that the word Yushalayim is always, almost always, there are four exceptions, out of the 650 something odd times. Yushalayim is spelled with a missing letter. When we write Yushalayim, we write it in the Hebrew letters Yud, Reish, Vav, Shin, Lamid, Yud, and then that Yud, which is the next to the last letter, is always missing, again only four exceptions, but in over 645 of the times it's missing that letter, meaning that if you would read it without the vowels, you could easily read it Yerushalayim, which is really reminiscent of Malchizedek, who called it Shalayim. Somehow we are mindful of the fact there's an extra Yud there and it becomes Yerushalayim. What's the significance to this? There's an amazing comment by one of the medieval biblical commentators in the Bacha'i, it says like this, another in Hebrew, there are certain words that when you have two of something, the plural ends with the suffix Ayim. For example, if you have a Yad, which is a hand, two hands are Yadayim. You have a foot, which is a regal, two feet are Raghalayim. Yerushalayim is also a plural word. The singular is Yerushalayim, which is the way it's written, but it's very Yerushalayim because it's plural. In what sense is this plural? So there's a rabbinic tradition that there is an earthly Yerushalayim and there's a heavenly Yerushalayim. There's a Yerushalayim Shalmatah, or Yerushalayim below, and there's a Yerushalayim above. And our earthly Yerushalayim corresponds to the heavenly Yerushalayim. Each one is a Yerushalayim. Together the two are Yerushalayim. And it says in Psalms, Yerushalayim habinuya, Yerushalayim rebuilt, ke'ir shukhubra loyachtav, like a city which is joined together. Now we see this verse and we think, oh, we understand what this verse means. Because we know there's the new city, there's the old city, there was a time that the two were severed in 1948, in 1967, they were reunited. Ah, that's the meaning of this biblical prophecy, that rebuilt Yerushalayim like a city which is joined together. But the Talmud says there's another dimension to this, that Yerushalayim is an earthly city, but it's connected to a heavenly city above. This is the two halves that are joined, the lower Yerushalayim and the upper Yerushalayim. And as we said, Yerushalayim is the site of the temple for all time. The Torah says that for many, many hundreds of years, there was a portable sanctuary called the Mishkan. And the Mishkan moved from place to place. For 40 years, the Jews wandered in the desert and traveled with them. When they came into Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel, for 14 years, it was in the city of Gilgol. For another 369 years, it was in a city called Shiloh. Then it went to a city of Nov and Givon. Between the two, it was there 57 years. Also it wandered. But the Torah says that there's a special mitzvah to identify the final and permanent home for the temple. And the Torah says, you shall seek God's dwelling place and come to that place and build a permanent home. That's Yerushalayim. Once Yerushalayim was designated, it can't be moved anywhere else. Now let's think about this for a moment. Now you may know in Jewish history, there was a time, the issue was raised in the second Zionist Congress, that why are the Jews so insistent on returning to Israel? There was an option on the table and offer that the Jews could be relocated to Uganda and establish a Jewish homeland there. And there would be no objections. In Israel, you have the Arabs and the Palestinians and everyone is vying for the same piece of land. Give it up!  No one will contest your claim. And it's all yours. And it'll be wonderful. And there were some of the secular Zionists who thought, you know, this is a good idea. Like, why not? It was as important to have a Jewish homeland. This will be speared from anti-Semitism. We'll have a land of our own. But why does it have to be in that particular contested spot? We could go to Africa and live there. And it makes a lot of sense. Very much to their surprise, there was a great pushback. They said, no, we're not interested in going to Uganda. This is our home. This is our place. And so it is with Yushalayim. There are probably a lot of people that are saying, why are you so insistent on Yushalayim? Tell them that it's okay. We want to have a capital? We're going to be here. This is where the Palestinians, where the Arabs have declared this to be their holy city. This is one of the Jewish capital. As they say in Yiddish, gizunterheid, go ahead, sign, Tel Aviv, over there, Haifa, wherever you want. You can have your own capital. Just not here, not in Yushalayim. We have to understand, it's important for us to know, that once Yushalayim was designated, it can't be replaced. It's not okay. It doesn't work out here. We'll go there. You know, Washington, D.C., or Ottawa, could move. The United States would discover, oh, Washington, D.C. is not central. It's all the way in the East Coast. It would be much better if we had the capital in the middle of the country. Let's move it to St. Louis. It would be possible. It would be difficult. There would be no theoretical objection to that. It's not even in the Constitution that the United States capital should be in Washington, D.C. Or if Canada would say, well, Ottawa, we should have our capital all the way in the East, let's move it somewhere in the middle of Saskatchewan or Alberta. It's possible to do, but not in Yushalayim. Yushalayim is our heart. It's our core. Once it was designated, it's a permanent designation. It can't be changed. Now, one of the great things about Yushalayim was that it was the center authority for Jewish law. There was a Supreme Court, the Bayes-Dinhagodal, which convened. Its offices were on the Temple site. And all disputes in Jewish law and practice were settled here. That means there never was an unresolved question in Jewish law. Now, we all know that in every synagogue, there are points of contention, you know. The story is told that there was one Sabbath in a certain synagogue there was a question as to whether a certain prayer should be said. So these people said, no, we don't say it on this Sabbath. Others said, we do say it on this Sabbath. And they were arguing back and forth. So a guest overheard this argument. So he asked his friend, well, what's the custom over here? What is the general practice? Every year, this Sabbath comes along. Why are they arguing? So his friend said, that's the custom. The custom is that they argue. And in Jewish life, this is often the case. That our custom is to argue. We're litigous, contentious people. We're strong minded. We have opinions of our own. And we often disagree. Accordingly, there are variants of practice. And sometimes it causes a situation where Jews just can't get along with each other simply because of differences in standards of religious observance. But this is not the way it was meant to be. This is a consequence of the fact that Yushalayim was destroyed. But in Yushalayim, there was this central authority that bathed in Haggadol. And it issued rulings that were binding for the entire Jewish nation. Instead of there being dozens of different versions of Torah, there was one Torah for everyone. This was the force that unified and united the nation. Yushalayim is the gateway of prayer. And we know that Jacob, when he had that dream of the latter, and the angels are going up and down, they're going up and going through the gate into heaven, coming out of the gate of heaven, coming down the ladder, he woke up and he said that, behold, God is in this place. And I didn't know. I had no idea. This is nothing but the gate of heaven and the title of stock. Yushalayim is the gate of heaven. The Bible tells us that when King Salomon built the base of Migdash, when he built the temple, he composed a very, very beautiful, elaborate prayer for the dedication. And in this prayer, he reiterates again and again and again that the role of the temple is not only for people that visit the temple. People will pray towards the land of Israel, towards the city of Yushalayim, towards this temple, wherever they are. Yushalayim is called Tal Piot. There's a neighbor in Mount Anushalayim called Tal Piot, but it's called Tal Piot. And the Talmud says that the meaning of the word Tal Piot is tail, it is the elevation, shakal pios ponumlot, which all mouths turn. This is also the unity of the Jewish people. If you live in the far north, then you pray towards the south. If you live in the far south, you pray towards the north. If you are as we are, west of Yushalayim, you pray towards the east. If you're in China, you pray towards the west. Everyone turns to Yushalayim three times a day. This is the gateway of prayer. This is where all prayers ascend and it's from Yushalayim that all prayers are answered. And it's also the focus of our aspirations. Judaism is a messianic religion. It's a religion which is not only focused on the here and now, it also is a vision of the future, a vision of a better world that will be ushered in by the true Mashiach. And the true Mashiach will liberate us from oppression. He will gather the exiles. He'll bring us back there. It's Israel. A lot of people are uncomfortable with the concept because they're well entrenched in exile. But this is what the role of Mashiach is. And on the sheet, there are a number of biblical quotations that are worth reading, just to give you an idea. And these are just samples. If you read the books of the prophets of Isaiah and Jeremiah, you have again and again and again such poetic, such lofty expression of the heartfelt feelings of the Jewish people. Take one verse. And it shall come to pass on that day that a great chauffeur shall be sounded. And those lost in the land of Assyria and those exiled in the land of Egypt shall come and they shall bow before the Lord on the holy mountain in Jerusalem. A vision of all Jews coming together returning to the holy city and bowing in submission before God. And this is what we pray for. This is what we yearn for, for the return to you shall I am. By the way, we've seen much of it happen already. If you think about the years since 1948, how many Jews from so many countries have returned and come back? If you think back to the mass immigration of Ethiopian Jews, of Russian Jews, thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of coming in, we're the last holdouts, the exiles of North America. But someday we'll also return. And in the book of Zechariah, we have such a beautiful vision. Start from verse 4, So said the Lord of hosts, old men and women shall yet sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each man with his staff in his hand because of old age. Now you think about these tough frontier towns. These aren't places for old people. These are places only for the most robust and mighty warriors. An old person isn't going to find himself in a war zone. But the time is going to come that Jerusalem won't be a war zone. Jerusalem will be a city of peace. It will be a city of love. And we're going to have old people, people with their canes sitting on the benches in Jerusalem.  And of course anybody who's had the pleasure of visiting Ushalayim knows that this is the case today already. Even the pre-Messianic times, Ushalayim is not a war zone. Ushalayim is a vibrant living city with old people, with young people. It's the center of scholarship today, virtually every young man and young lady who's finished a Jewish high school turns to Israel in general, and Ushalayim specifically, for that extra bit of inspiration in the year or two following graduation. And there are prophecies which tell us that in the Messianic age, the vision is not parochial. It isn't just that Ushalayim will be our place, but rather when the Jewish people achieve their destiny, all mankind will share. And in the book of Zechariah, it says, there will yet be a time that peoples in the inhabitants of many cities shall come, and the inhabitants of one shall go to another and say, let us go pray before the Lord and to entreat the Lord of hosts, I too will go. And many peoples in powerful nations shall come to entreat the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to pray before the Lord. And of course the magnificent prophecy of Ushayim. And it shall be in the end of days that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be firmly established at the top of the mountains and it shall be raised above the hills and all the nations shall stream to it. And many people shall go and they shall say, come, let us go up to the Lord's mount to the house of the God of Jacob and let him teach us of his ways and we will go in his paths for out of Zion shall the Torah come forth and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge between the nations and we prove many peoples and we shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nations should not lift the sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. And of course, this is our dream. Our dream is not that Ushalayim should be a beacon of light for us. Our dream is that Ushalayim should be the beacon of light for all mankind. And this is our prayer. As Judaism is a universal religion in the sense that it isn't just our thing and everyone else is condemned to eternal damnation. As Judaism believes that our mission, the mission of the Jewish people is to bring all mankind to truth, to virtue, to morality, to a real connection to God. And therefore, when we pray for Ushalayim, we pray for the return, it's not just our thing. With Ushalayim, we hope and pray should be the capital and the beacon for all mankind all humanity. What can one say about Ushalayim? Books and books and books have been written and filled with the praises of Jerusalem and every Jew, every Jew feels it deep in his heart. But we touched on a few points tonight. And of course, this is the time of year that we're very mindful of all this. The three weeks that began this past Sunday will culminate three Sundays. This is the period where all Jews mourn for the loss of the temple, for the loss of Ushalayim. We hope and pray that we should be able to return and Ushalayim should fulfill its promise. And all those who wish to deny Ushalayim and take it away and steal it, corrupt it for their own nefarious purposes should fail. And Ushalayim should be what it's meant to be. As Malki said it, Shalayim, the city of virtue, the city of truth, the city of honesty, of decency, of morality. And as Avril Movinu said at Yere, the city where God sees us and we can see God. Because if these two visions of Ushalayim shall blend into one, Shalayim plus Yere, the common Ushalayim, that'll be the fulfillment of the Jewish mission on this earth.


Yuri Dadosch, welcome to WPC-TV.  You've just been on a panel on, based on education. I mean, one talks always of the talent gap, the skills gap, I mean, is there an easy solution? There is no easy solution, in part because, you know, what you do today in education will have an effect 20 years from now. But it's clear to me that the kids, that's my view, need a little more direction than they're getting at the moment, in terms of, you know, some of the more technical things that we need and the engineering, etc., which are not particularly popular for a lot of young people. You mean finance has become too popular? Well, actually, not necessarily finance, but general studies of various types. And, you know, I don't want to knock any area of education. I think education is at the heart of the human spirit. But in terms of preparing kids for the job market, I don't think we're really doing a particularly good job. We're leaving them, essentially, to themselves, to a very large degree. Now, when you say we, do you mean Americans, Europeans, Middle Easterners, or is it ever happening? Actually, the irony is that I don't know any country that's happy with their education system. Now, I don't live in Finland, but maybe they're the exception. But it's actually one of the regularities that I see when I travel around the world that people are deeply unhappy about their education system, the quality of the education or very often the gaps and the diversity within the education system with a few privileged people and the bulk. But I would say that, you know, some countries and some regions are suffering more than others. And in particular, I would point to the Middle East, North Africa, very simply because they have a huge unemployment problem among young people, including among university graduates. And they have a bulge of young people coming through the system. And their education system really is one of the worst performing in the world. So there's a big challenge there, both indirectly in the kids, but also in the governance of education. So it's going to be a very big challenge. Yuri Doudouche, thank you so much for coming on WPC TV. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm Yuri Doudouche. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm going to leave you with my family. I'm going to leave this video to you. I'm going to leave this video to you. So I'm going to leave this video to you. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I'll see you guys in the next video. Bye-bye. Bye.


I'm James Swannick and thank you so much for watching this video. You know I took a 30 day break from alcohol back in 2010 and when I did I lost weight, my skin got better, my relationships improved, I slept like a baby, had so much more mental clarity and so much more energy as well. I was like jumping up and down at parties having a great time, not a drop of alcohol and you know what? It was so good and it completely transformed my life that I just kept going. I have not touched a drop of alcohol since 2010 and I feel amazing. If you want to watch me live an alcohol free life, if you want the same benefits that I got from going alcohol free then go ahead and subscribe to my channel down below. There will be lots more videos like this one and if you want to take a 30 day no alcohol challenge too, just click the link in the about section down below. Alright thanks for watching and I'll catch you on the next one.


From Santa Clara, California, it's theCUBE, covering Technovation World Pitch Summit 2019, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. Now, here's Sonia Tagare. Hi, and welcome to theCUBE. I'm your host, Sonia Tagare, and we're here at the Oracle AgNES campus in Santa Clara, California, covering Technovation's World Pitch Summit 2019, a pitch competition in which girls from around the world develop mobile apps in order to create positive change in the world. With us today, we have a Technovation executive, Devin Dillon, who is the Senior Director of Partnerships at Technovation. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. So, before we start, for people who don't know, can you tell us more about Technovation World Pitch? Sure, so Technovation World Pitch is sort of the culminating event of a program that we run for young girls around the world. So, we invite girls to solve problems in their community. This year, we had over 7,000 girls from 57 countries participating. So, lots of girls with lots of ideas, and then this world pitch is the culmination of that. So, it's a competition, and our winners from around the world are invited to come here and share their ideas. And a really exciting part is they get to meet all of their peers that are also working on solving problems and exploring technology. So, it's a really great week. That's awesome. And can you tell us more about how you got involved in Technovation and what your role is at the company? Sure. So, I got involved in Technovation about seven years ago. The program was small. It had just gone international. I think our first year, we had less than 10 countries that were participating. But I really liked the idea of putting education online accessible to anybody. Anyone can lead it in there and solve a problem in their community and learn a little bit as they were doing that. So, that's how I got involved. And then, the program has grown, and we now have this big celebration event. So, it looks different, but yeah, that's how I got involved. And can you tell me more about your role? Sure, yes. So, I lead the program. So, we have two programs at Technovation. We have Technovation Girls, which this World Summit is the celebrating event for. Then, we have Technovation Families, which is an educational program for a younger audience. It invites families to solve problems with AI. So, my role is really to make sure that our programs are awesome and helping people to learn. Our resources are good, and we're supporting our leaders around the world. So, our Technovation team never actually leads programs. We invite everyone from around the world to lead the programs. So, we do a lot of work to make sure that the quality is there and that the programs are having a great impact on the kids. Wow. And I recently heard that Iridescent became Technovation. So, can you tell us more about that change and why that decision was made? Yeah, I'm happy to. So, like I mentioned, we have two flagship programs. They previously had names that were pretty different, and our organization was called Iridescent. And Technovation was one of our, it was this program. It was like a program that had gotten a lot of global scale and participants. So much so that when we would say Iridescent, people wouldn't recognize us. So, we changed our overall organization name to Technovation, and this program is now called Technovation Girls. We challenge girls to solve a problem in their community using coding and create a mobile app and a business plan. And then our other program, Technovation Families challenges families to solve a problem using AI. And so, I heard the girls had an amazing week. What was the schedule like? Who did they get to meet? Sure. So, it's a busy week. We have flown in girls from all over to be able to see a little bit of the Bay Area, to be able to meet each other. So, we have lots of activities. We've had field trips to a lot of tech companies. So, we were able to visit Uber, we were able to visit Autodesk, Google Ventures, where the girls are able to see and hear from different mentors in the industry, meet people that are working on technology, ask them questions. And then the other component is we invite the girls to connect with each other. It's a powerful moment where we have a lot of girls representing different cultures and different ideas. So, we have fun things like dance parties and opportunities for them to get to know each other also. It sounds like a really fun bonding sleepover. Yeah, we try to create that atmosphere. Of course, girls can be shy and they're coming maybe further the first time to the United States. Many of them English is their third or their fourth language. So, it can be a little scary at first, but I think by today, they have been able to hopefully create some lasting friendships. That's amazing. Along with the friendships for the people who do win, what kind of prizes do they get? Yeah, so we are giving away this year over $50,000 worth of prizes. 30,000 of that is scholarships. So, the students can continue their education since they're young girls. They're able to sort of put that to their education how they would like. And then another option is that they can continue developing their idea. So, the girls have created a mobile app and a business plan, and so they're able to continue developing that if they would like to. And do they have mentors getting them through that? Yes, and the exciting thing is a lot of the mentors are here. So, the way that the competition works is that the girls are working on their idea for many months. They are creating an idea, they're coding, they're learning a lot of different things. They can be creating business plans, and the mentors are really there to support them to help them build a relationship with someone who's maybe in the tech industry, but also just someone to give encouragement and to help them work together on their problem. And have you seen an increase in participant in tech innovation over the years? Yes, so this year, like I mentioned, we had 7,000 participants, which is a large year for us. The past two years, we've had great growth because the program is online and it's freely accessible. We've really been able to see a lot of take up from different people around the world. What countries do you hope to reach to eventually? Yeah, good question. Well, we had submissions from 57 countries this year, so each year the submissions kind of change. So we're growing in a lot of really exciting places. I always love to see ideas from all different areas of the world. So tonight we have some great ideas represented from Nigeria and Cambodia and Bolivia and Canada, like really right there, like lots of corners of the world. So it's always exciting to see. And what criteria do finalists have to pass to make it to this stage? Yeah, good question. So they need to submit a lot of different things to be invited to the competition. So the girls really work on pitching their idea because we know that if you have an idea not just in technology, you need to be able to understand how to present it and develop a business plan and how you want others to understand what you're doing. They have created a mobile app, so they've coded something. They've probably learned technology or some technology skills. And then what are our other components? They develop their idea. So a large part of it is really thinking of an idea, making it better, developing an actual product. So wow. And how do you think Technovation is helping the overall girls in tech, women in tech community? Yeah, so we're hoping to get girls interested. So our girls are young, but we really hope to spark an interest and get them involved in a community. Hopefully this is a step on their path. Maybe they will keep taking classes that are technology related or maybe they'll make some friends that are into technology and form a community. Maybe they'll go to college for this. Maybe some of them will become computer scientists or engineers or someone in technology. So it's pretty open. We want to create problem solvers and problem solvers do a lot of different things in our world, including impact technology. And going off of that, are there any success stories that really stand out to you? Yeah, I'm trying to think of some girls from this year. I think what always stands out to me from the girls is that they aren't just building like a mobile app. A lot of them are collaborating with people in their community, with their governments, with different nonprofits. So one of the girls this year, she's working on opioid addiction and she's been collaborating with a lot of researchers in different universities. She's been thinking about how to create a prototype. Another girl this year is working on supporting farmers and invasive species. So she's been working with different invasive species groups to understand how this program is affecting people. So I think it's always really fun to see how the girls are not just thinking about themselves or collaborating just on their team. They're really thinking about their community and making an impact with different people in different groups. And how do you hope Technovation's gonna continue to improve and impact more girls? Well, I hope we continue to create girls that feel empowered to make the world better, which you know is idealistic, but I think that's the power of education, is that you help people to think about how to make the world better at the end of the day and I hope we're giving them those tools. Hope we continue giving them the tools to, you know, make their lives and their communities better. That's awesome and thank you so much for being here. Sure, thank you so much. This is Devon Dillon and I'm Sonia Tagare. Thanks for watching theCUBE. Stay tuned for more.


Hey guys, I've got a story to tell you. I was working on a project and guess what, I accidentally deleted some really important files. Ever been in a situation like that? I think we all have at some point. But the good thing is, you can totally get your deleted files back. Today I'm going to show you how to recover lost or deleted data on your Windows computer. Believe me, this software can be your life saver. Before we start, make sure to subscribe to the channel. To recover your deleted, lost or corrupted files and data, you can use Advanced Disk Recovery BISIS Tweak software to use this tool, download and install Advanced Disk Recovery on your Windows computer. You can also use the link in the description below. Once launched, in the areas to be scanned for deleted files and folders, select the areas that you wish to be scanned for deleted files and folders. Then select Drive to recover and click on Start Scan Now button. Now from here you can select the type of scan. I suggest you select Deep Scan as it increases your chances of recovering. Wait for the process to get completed. Once the scan is complete, you will see the list of all your deleted files. You can preview the files to ensure you are recovering the right ones. Then select the files you want to recover and click on recover. Select a location where you want to store the file or folder after recovery and click on the OK button. Wait for the process to get completed and click on Finish. Now you can easily find all your recovered files at the location you selected. Wasn't this super easy? Do try this and share your feedback in the comments.


When aeronautical engineers want to know how air will flow over one of their designs, they can build a model and test it in a wind tunnel. But thanks to today's supercomputers, like this Cray XMP, there's a less costly, less time-consuming way to evaluate their ideas. These ultra-fast machines, with incredibly large memories, make it possible to do timely, accurate simulations before committing to expensive hardware. And it's not just airflow that can be studied. Here, the flow of water around a submarine is being investigated. Even the flow of fuel through the shuttle's main engines can be examined. Recently, scientists producing these simulations at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California began using a new supercomputer, the Cray II. Though much smaller than the previous generation Cray, it's faster than any computer in the world, performing 250 million calculations per second. It also has 10 times more memory than any existing machine. In fact, the Cray II is so powerful that its circuitry is continually immersed in a cooling solution to keep it from overheating. Putting this new supercomputer's capabilities into proper perspective is the manager of the numerical aerodynamic simulation program at Ames, Ron Bate. What you see in this small tank of liquid in the Cray II is equivalent to a warehouse of small home computers. The Cray II makes more comprehensive simulations possible. For example, the people at Ames have been able to simulate airflow around the shuttle orbiter itself. But the orbiter attached to the solid rocket boosters and a large external fuel tank has posed too great a problem for any computer today. Ames Research Scientist, N.E. Shosi. But with the Cray II becoming accessible to us, that will give us enough storage or memory where we can actually solve the flow around this whole configuration. And in some cases, it may be very important to see what that flow is in order to maybe be able to take the safer routes when the thing is going off the pad. The Cray II will also play a key role in technology development for the NASA DOD National Aerospace Plane Program, leading to an entire new family of aerospace vehicles in the next century. NASA's Cray II Supercomputer, a valuable new tool in air and spacecraft design.


Väst orange ploys  갑 señor allocations developing  jeunes haavin today subway hapr  financially emb ha Kad sha listeners on lack 플� heroin . mayın  expenditures  Azerbaijan  Punjabi ఑ిన్టిసuego. ఆరారాలుల్ ఎఫ్ంటింఠ్సైఆరాడియమి..క్ఝ్ంఖనiksiనువసasts." నిడావసికంవింర్లింామాలాంత్రసింఢనివిఆరంచ౅ానూత్నా. నోరిక్లంయిన్లానోటరిత్తిసింరం�餐త్నానిన్నిండిడిస్రాత్న్మెరిస్న్లా. It shows that the boy is on armors to do what is needful and bring a solution to the conflict. Beyond that, the conflict is a pro-sea world. Armors ask countries that are supporting it in the ongoing conflict. So the most important thing is that the actors that are involved should compromise on their interest for the sake of monetary humanity because of the monetary catastrophe that has happened since the war began. So what I would say is that the international community should continue in their efforts in pressurizing the actors involved in this conflict. Okay, finally, before we let you go now, Festus, the deal itself is neither a resolution to the war nor to the roots of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Most people have attempted as a significant development that is better than nothing. But what do you think is the long-term solution and the future of Gaza? Firstly, from what is happening to the war that broke out, Israel has been insisting that the post-war situation in Gaza should not be under the control of armors and that idea is being supported by the U.S. But the U.S. is not in agreement with that. To me, I think the future of gammas is to comply with the Austro-Accord of 1993 that said that it is the Palestine that has to be under the administration of Gaza, which we cannot violate, we cannot compromise on that agreement. If we do that, that we violate what we are trying to achieve in the Middle East and it will not bring about a peace that we want. But in doing that, armors should be forced to comply with the international regulation because of only part of the Western government. They are not interested in armors being charged. And we see that armors should not be charged. It's a compromise on their sovereignty. I'm trying to like the post-war argument in Israel to the Afghanistan conflict where the West was not interested in Taliban being in charge of Afghanistan. When it was invaded in 2021, they were removed from the government. But after 20 years of the Taliban's existence in Noray into the give-up, they were eventually allowed to come back to government in 2021. I'm sorry we just have to let you go.  But we'll bring you subsequently to talk more on the ongoing crisis between Israel and Hamas in subsequent bulletins. We do appreciate your time. First of all, Tokumbwa is a conflict and development analyst and he joined us all the way from the United Kingdom many times once again. Thank you. We'll see you in the next video.


Maine Coon Cat vs Norwegian Forest Cat. What are the differences between these two cat breeds?  Most Maine Coons weigh 9-18 lbs, males are larger and some tip the scales at 20 or more lbs.  Norwegian Forest males can weigh 13-22 lbs or more, with females somewhat smaller. Norwegian Forest matures slowly and isn't full grown until 5 years of age. The good-natured and affable Maine Coon adapts well to many lifestyles and personalities. They like being with people and have the habit of following them around, but they aren't needy. They're happy to receive attention when you direct it their way, but if you're busy, they're satisfied to just supervise your doings. Close a door on them and they will wait patiently for you to realize the error of your ways and let them in. They're not typically a lap cat, but they do like to be near you. They also retain their skill as a mouser. No rodents will be safe in a home where a Maine Coon resides. Even if you don't have any mice for them to chase, they'll keep their skills sharp by chasing toys and grabbing them with their big paws.  They can climb as well as any cat but usually prefer to stay on the ground level. They're also very smart and will happily learn tricks or play with puzzle toys that challenge their brain. Maine Coons usually enjoy a kittenish love of play well into adulthood. Males, especially, are prone to silly behavior. Females are more dignified, but they aren't above a good game of chase. Not especially vocal, they make any requests in a soft chirp or trill. The gentle and friendly Norwegian forest cat is fond of family members but does not demand constant attention and petting. He is satisfied to be in the same room with people and will entertain himself if no one is home. Although he appreciates the human company, he can be a bit reserved with visitors. Even with family, he's not much of a lap cat, but a nice scratch between the ears or beneath the chin is always welcome, and he'll usually reciprocate with a nice head butter cheek rub. He communicates with classic Scandinavian restraint. His quiet voice is employed only when he needs something dinner on time, perhaps and rises only if he is ignored. This large and athletic cat is a climber. You will often find him at the highest point he can reach in the home, and unlike some cats, he doesn't have any qualms about descending trees or other heights headfirst. Thanks to his heritage as a wilderness and farm cat, not to mention his waterproof coat, the Norwegian forest cat thinks nothing of fishing in a body of water for a nice meal. Aquarium and koi pond denizens, beware, while he loves the outdoors, he is content to live quietly in a home. This is a smart, independent cat who learns quickly and has an alert nature. He likes to play and thrives with a busy family that loves him. Both pedigreed cats and mixed breed cats are varying incidences of health problems that may be genetic in nature. Problems that may affect the Maine Coons and Norwegian forests are hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a form of heart disease that is inherited in Maine Coons. A DNA-based test is available to identify cats that carry one of the mutations that cause the disease. Polycystic kidney disease, a slowly progressive heritable kidney disease that can result in renal failure. Hello. This video is sponsored by Beemix Pets. Are you looking for high quality cat collars at an affordable cost? Check out BeemixPets.com. Use coupon code KittenLife, to get 20% off. Despite the length of the Maine Coons coat, it has a silky texture that doesn't mat easily, if you groom it regularly. It is easily cared for with twice weekly combing to remove dead hair and distribute skin oils. Useful grooming tools include a stainless steel comb for removing tangles, and what's called a grooming rake to pull out the dead undercoat, which is what causes tangles when it's not removed. Use it gently, especially in the stomach area and on the tail. Maine Coons are patient, but they don't like having their hair pulled any more than you do. Check the tail for bits of poop stuck to the fur and clean it off with a baby wipe. Bay the Maine Coon is needed, which can range from every few weeks to every few months. If their coat feels greasy or their fur looks stringy, they need a bath. Brush or comb an Norwegian Forest Cat's long coat once or twice a week, using a bristle brush, wire slicker brush, or stainless steel comb. If you run across tangles, work them out gently so you don't hurt the cat. A bath is rarely necessary, which is a good thing. With their practically waterproof coat, it can be very difficult to get them wet enough for a bath. Brush their teeth to prevent periodontal disease. Daily dental hygiene is best, but weekly brushing is better than nothing. Trim the nails every couple of weeks. Wipe the corners of the eyes with a soft, damp cloth to remove any discharge. Use a separate area of the cloth for each eye so you don't run the risk of spreading any infection. Check the ears weekly. If they look dirty, wipe them out with a cotton ball or soft damp cloth moistened with a 50 to 50 mixture of cider vinegar and warm water. Avoid using cotton swabs, which can damage the interior of the ear. Keep the Maine Coons litter box spotlessly clean. Cats are very particular about bathroom hygiene, and a clean litter box will help to keep the coat clean as well. It's a good idea to keep a Maine Coon and Norwegian Forest Cat as an indoor only cat to protect them from diseases spread by other cats, attacks by dogs or coyotes, and the other dangers that face cats who go outdoors, such as being hit by a car. Maine Coons and Norwegian Forest Cats who go outdoors also run the risk of being stolen by someone who would like to have such a beautiful cat without paying for it. Cats are obligate carnivores, meaning they eat almost exclusively meat. Their diet should consist of no more than 5% carbohydrates and most of their protein should come from an animal source. It's hard to accomplish this nutritional requirement by providing only dry food as most commercially available dry food contains a lot of carbohydrates, fillers, plant protein, and other ingredients that are not natural for a cat to eat. More often than not, the bag will claim that the dry food is well balanced and provides complete nutrition, but in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Another important consideration is your cat's water intake. Cats in the wild get most of their hydration from their diet, not by actually drinking water as most people think. Can cat food is about 70 to 80% water, while dry food is only about 10% water. Although you can make up some of the water lost by providing a bowl or fountain of water, it's still not usually enough to cover the difference. Raw food is meat that is uncooked or partially cooked and most closely mimics what cats actually ate in the wild. Although this is the most time consuming and probably expensive way to feed your cat, it's arguably the best way of ensuring your cat will get all of its nutritional needs met. Raw cat food can either be bought or prepared at home. If your cat is healthy and doesn't have special dietary requirements, then mainly wet food with dry food being supplementary and raw food being optional will likely be fine. Focus on quality as well, it's worth paying a little extra for food that has been highly rated as opposed to just buying the bargain brand at the local grocery store. Unless your cat has an exceptional ability to self-regulate its eating, it's not a good idea to leave out unlimited food all day especially dry food. It's okay to leave dry or wet food out all day if you use measured portions that make sense for your cat's weight and activity level. The friendly laid-back Maine Coon and Norwegian Forest are a perfect choice for families with children and cat-friendly dogs. They love the attention they receive from children who treat them politely and with respect, and they don't mind playing dress up or going for a ride in a baby buggy. They're happy to live with cat-friendly dogs, too, thanks to their amiable disposition. Introduce pets slowly and in controlled circumstances to ensure that they learn to get along together. If you enjoyed this video, kindly press the like button. Also don't forget to subscribe with notifications on, so that you don't miss out on videos like this. Thank you for watching.