We have Duvid and Rabbi Judas coming along in a few minutes, but let's get started here with some Daniel Sperber. He's a professor of Talmud at Bar Alon University in Israel. This is a modern Orthodox university in Israel. Why modern orthodoxy is true orthodoxy? Just a couple of days ago I was speaking to a friend and he asked me, he apologized that he wouldn't be able to come to my talk and he asked me to give a sort of a brief synopsis of what I was going to talk about. So I told him, really I don't know. I never know in advance. I have to see the audience and field them out and then I can work out what I should talk about. So he said, but you're going to talk about modern orthodoxy. How do you define that? So I said, that's one of the traps in a debate. When you're asked to define something, you get entangled in such a way that you can't get out of it. You get so muddled. You don't start off with definitions. Definitions are traps. So I'm not going to try to define what modern orthodoxy is, although I think that I know what it is for me, but I would say that there are certain characteristics that characterize our understanding, our notion of this generic concept of modern orthodoxy. And that is an orthodoxy which is on the one hand totally committed to normative halachah, Jewish law, and on the other hand is dynamic and is developmental and is willing to face the challenges of change, societal change, and even to be innovative. The Torah is said to be it's a living tree to those who hold onto it. And the tree has roots, strong roots if it's going to be a good strong tree. And it has a trunk, and then it has branches, and from the branches come twigs and they come leaves. And that's how the halachah is.  And then there's a trunk which is the basic pillars of the law, the principle. And I don't have any strong opinion on what is true Judaism, whether it's a modern orthodoxy or Haredi Judaism or some other kind of variant. It goes upon which our hermeneutical system is based. But then it branches out in a multitude of different directions, because it has to deal with a multitude of different situations. And the branches turn into twigs, and the twigs perhaps grow leaves, and then as it is now, the beginning of the fall, the leaves fall off, and then new leaves grow. And the new leaves may have a slightly different shape, and they may have a slightly different color, but they're the same genus, but they're new, and they're alive, and they're vibrant. So I think that one of the things that distinguishes, certainly in our generation, between what we would call modern orthodoxy and what we generally in a, again, somewhat crude fashion call the Haredi community, the ultra-religious community, is that modern orthodoxy is, as I said, developmental. It sees Halakha as a constantly developing entity. Well, guess what? All religions are developmental. All right? Modern orthodoxy is developmental. Haredi Judaism is developmental. Christianity is developmental. Every religion is constantly redefining itself. It's usually claiming that it's returning to a more authentic past while constantly changing and adapting to the present moment. So from a secular perspective, the definition of religion is ways of interacting with supernatural beings. And so how a religion expresses itself from a secular perspective, religion is a subset of culture that you can't understand religion outside of culture. So the culture of German Jews is very different from the culture of British Jews or Australian Jews or American Jews. The culture of Lithuanian Jews is different from the culture of, say, Lubavitch Hasidic, acted by the norms of English culture where the English, like other island people such as the Japanese, they tend to do things in a very orderly way. So the English tend to be very proud of how they queue up. And so the English Jews tend to be very different from Jews from Eastern Europe. So whatever culture you're in, the non-Jewish culture is going to have a tremendous effect on the behavior and the speech of Jews. So all forms of religion are constantly evolving and changing. And usually they're also always claiming that they're returning to some kind of authentic past. And it is willing to face challenges and to innovate. Now this is something which is very important to understand. Because throughout all generations, throughout all Hallachic history, and all religions are innovating, all religions are making changes while at the same time they're always saying that these changes are simply a return to a more authentic past, a mythical authentic past. There have always been changes and the changes are both horizontal and vertical. They're horizontal in the sense that different areas, different geographic areas, different climatic areas present different types of problems to the Hallachists. And they're also vertical and every age produces different societal problems. And in every single age there have always been challenges which were So an example of this is that the traditional Orthodox Rabbi Moshe Feinstein upped the requirement of regular sex. So in Judaism, the requirement to provide sex for the spouse is amidst of that it's incumbent upon the husband. And so living in a more sexualized country like the United States of America where as each decade has gone by since the 1950s the country has seemingly become increasingly sexualized. So in response to that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein increased the amount of times that a husband should have sex with his spouse. So I think he moved it from at least once a month to twice a month something like that. Based by the great decisals, the great Potski, and they were willing to be innovative and they were willing to make Hidushe Torah, Hidushe Torah being innovative decisions and they were willing to do so even if there was antagonism, if there was disagreement, everybody that learns that in no single passage is the one single view. Everything is a subject of controversy. So these controversies continue and they're a machloket, they're controversies of religious and spiritual nature. And there were rules and regulations as to how to make a decision. So the Shulkhah and Erug one definition of Orthodox Judaism is that you abide by the rulings of the Shulkhah and Erug. It's a compendium of Jewish law assembled in 1563 by Rabbi Yosef Karo and it's the most consulted compendium of Jewish law. And how to decide between the different opinions. But as I say, in every single generation, whenever there was a new urgent problem, it was faced by the rabbis who sought solutions where they were not going to be stringent and follow what? Okay, we've got Duvid joining the show. Duvid, how are you today? Okay, sound problem maybe on my end. You don't need to check anything. Wait, I think it is on your end. So yeah. So why don't you check and see what's going on? So I'm not hearing you and I think it's on your end. See if you can figure out why I can't hear you, why your sound's not coming through. And I'll come right back to you as soon as you get that figured out. It would appear at first blush to be the letter of the law, but understanding the spirit of the law find the means of circumventing the strictures in order to make life livable, in order to make the Torah aetschaim, a living organism and living organisms adjust to climatic changes and exist to all sorts of changes. They have to take into account that in order to survive, you have to make changes. Now, this was the traditional manner in which halakha functioned. Okay, Duvid, I'm sorry it was on my in the early 19th century, one of the great authorities. And I'm sorry it was on my end. My fault. Come on back to my fault was fighting a battle. Okay, I'm sorry it was it was my fault. So you're back. We can we can hear you now. How are you, Duvid? So how was your week? What have you been working on? Well, there was the Science of Consciousness conference this week, which was kind of a disappointment. But I still attended all the sessions and I spent a lot of time studying mostly scientific type stuff. But after the first day, they closed the chat.   So there's no advantage to being there over, you know, just watching it later on YouTube. Okay, so did you do anything else this week that you'd like to mention? Um, no, not really. I mean, my eBay business is I have over a thousand items listed. It's going pretty good. I have a whole bunch more to put up. But mostly I focused, I did a stream with Church of Entropy after the first day. And maybe where the reason they closed the chat, we actually like advertised our stream in the chat.  And then, you know, I was going to do a post stream every day, but then they closed the chat. So I wasn't going to be able to speak to any of the other people. So I didn't feel like it was worthwhile to do a post stream of just my audience. I wanted to try to expand my audience to, you know, different people interested in different subjects, but wasn't able to do that. So that's really the only thing you're worth mentioning, just the regular got my eBay business properties I manage in, you know, my studies. But this week, I almost exclusively focused on science of consciousness. And also COVID-19, you know, it's back up here in Michigan, we're back over a thousand cases a day. I'm not sure what's going on in Israel. The data seems conflicting about how good the vaccines are in terms of, you know, preventing severe disease or sickness or even spreading. Yeah, I saw the President Obama, I don't know, is this real or this is fake? I don't know, I just, it just popped up. I just thought it was interesting. But I forgot you told me before, but have you, have you been vaccinated? No, I've chosen that to be vaccinated because, you know, largely because I'm, you know, don't don't really have a reason to I don't attend anything. I mean, I used to go to your synagogue into the Hindu temples. So besides, so besides for attending those, I don't really have any reason to the work I do doesn't require me to be around people. So I figured because of the emergency status, and I'm not a vaccine vaccine skeptic, I'm skeptic of power. And I'm also skeptic about how well it works. Like, I think the evidence is coming out of Israel right now. And we're going to see with the fourth wave that it's possible that the vaccine, you know, doesn't prevent, I mean, it probably increases the person's odds, you know, like you say, it looks like you're about twice as unlikely to catch COVID. If you have the vaccine, it may be like 90% less to get the severe disease. So I just did a risk award calculation. My age and health, you know, I probably had like a two to 5% chance of severe sickness or death. And the vaccine might take that down 90%. But I like social distancing. I wear my mask. And you maybe I've used that as an excuse to just stop doing the few activities I did. And, you know, largely just continue my studies by myself. So you like social distancing. What do you like about it? I'm a peoplephobe. Like, you know, honestly, I never liked closed circumstances. I always liked, you know, my Daladamas. I put up with it. Like, I was around crowds. I was in, you know, Yeshiva. And, you know, I lived in New York City and took the subway. And, you know, I was even in a dormitory in Israel with, you know, multiple people sleeping in one room. But I always liked my own personal space. I was always careful about germs. Like I kind of always didn't like touching doorknobs or various things. And, you know, so when COVID-19 came around, I was happy about the social distancing protocols. I don't like wearing a mask that much, but it doesn't bother me. I don't mind wearing a mask, you know, when I go in public in these days. I'm one of the fewer people in masks, you know, like I'm an unroll man. I'm not vaccinated. So I wear my mask. But I don't mind being, you know, the odd man out wearing a mask. So, and I guess also like I try to avoid dispute, like I might be argumentative on YouTube, but yeah, try to avoid dispute and the easiest way to avoid dispute is just not being around people. And I believe that you stopped any use of marijuana in the last few weeks. How was that experience? You know, over two months now. And yeah, thank God, you know, I'm a little bit more irritable, but I guess because of social distancing, you know, say like, yeah, I was quoting perky elbows the other day, you know, the best is to be slow to anger and quick to appease anger. It's easier on marijuana.  I think is the large reason I spoke marijuana. You know, also, you know, like I when I had lived in Matthews on my channel was mentioning this Anthony storebook solitude. And it's tough that no one really cares about what I think about, you know, like no one is really interested. Like I found Church of Entropy. And, you know, to have a regular stream with to talk about things that are interesting to me.  I think our post stream was the only stream that covered it, no news coverage, and then added on that they closed the chat. So the few 100 people interested in this topic, you know, the organizers of the show ran it in a way where they didn't even allow us to talk to each other. So, you know, I think that's largely why I was smoking marijuana. But I guess, you know, I'm a middle age man. And, you know, health, I'm still in pretty good health, but I feel like, you know, I could feel the my health is on a decline. So, you know, the evidence that, you know, like lung cancer and the negative health effects after 40, you know, there's been studies that show if you stop smoking before you're 40, your chances of long term heart disease or cancer is almost the same as non smokers. So I figure, you know, I better stop doing it. And then also, you know, not not that I much chance of finding a wife or building up a family in the current circumstances. But it's not conducive to, you know, finding a wife for building up family raising kids. Do you notice any difference in the ways that the Hindu community reacts to COVID from your experience and knowledge compared to, say, the Orthodox Jewish community? I went to, you know, the Hindu, the Iskand Farmington Hills. And even though it was outdoors, everyone had masks on. So I think if you did it as a function of IQ, like certain Hindu temples, at least here in Metro Detroit, are probably better with COVID regulation than even modern Orthodox Jews. You know, like the reform secular, they just don't gather. So, you know, like Zoom or the downtown synagogue is largely closed down. You know, now they're even like meeting in a church. And I doubt there's only a handful of people showing up, but they're probably wearing masks. So I would say at least the Iskand Farmington Hills is probably better at masking and social distancing, even than the modern Orthodox Jews. But that might be a function of wealth and IQ that like impulse control is related to IQ. And it just happens to be a collection of highly educated, successful, kind of like suburban, yuppie Hindus. And like the modern Orthodox synagogue near my house, the young Israel stopped having outdoor minion, because people were complaining about no air conditioning. So, you know, that's like relative minor impulse control. So, but the modern Orthodox community, I think that like vaccines, they're just not masking anymore, maybe keeping minor social distancing, even though the evidence out of Israel and the experts was that we should be masking till the end of the year. So I'm not sure if you agree with me if you would put it on a level of IQ, impulse control related to IQ. So if you're part of a Hindu community, that happens to be educated, well to do high IQ, that they are able to follow rules better. Yeah, I think that IQ correlates with more accurate perception of risk, and with more self discipline. And the one in Detroit has less masking. So the one in Farmington Hills had basically everyone wearing a mask, as opposed to the one in Detroit, which only like half the people are wearing a mask, social distancing, much less more. And so it's probably related to material success and IQ, that it's not just like Hindus are really good at following rules. It just happens that if you self select into a community of more intelligent, more successful people, they're going to be better at like you said assessing risk and following arbitrary rules. So to say that even if you don't understand the rules or disagree with the rules, they just say, I'm capable of following the rules as they're set out. And you know, kind of like obeying, you know, regardless of my thoughts on them. Is that much of a Haredi community in Detroit? There's a Yeshiva Orthodox community, not really Haredi.   And generally, after the Supreme Court case, most of the Orthodox synagogues drop the masks and social distancing. And so only the modern Orthodox, you know, kept social distancing. And during the winter, even the modern Orthodox, most of them, you had indoor Minion. So I was kind of surprised. I was arguing with half Galician on Twitter, just mentioning. I think like, you know, God forbid, if something does in the Jews, it's going to be fear of disease.  I think the most visceral fear of Jews has came out during COVID-19. That is actually fear of spreading disease. And I think even myself, like I always went to shul, I was never scared of anti-Semitism or, you know, like the Israel Gaza war, none of that ever caused me to stay away from synagogue.    And a lot of these things, even blue-eyed Jews, even, you know, white, blue-eyed, blond-air Jews, people are scared of disease. And, you know, of all the historic anti-Semitism, I think that that's the one that right now is probably the biggest factor, even if it's the, there's a tiny bit of truth to it. But I think that that's just historically what really scares people is spreading disease.  And have you experienced any benefits from, of standing from marijuana use over the past two months? I've been going to sleep earlier and waking up earlier. You know, I've been taking my business more seriously. I've had a lot of books to post and various things I just hadn't been doing because, you know, like I didn't need the money. But, you know, mainly, and also I've lost some weight. I started doing sit-ups and push-ups and yoga. So I think there's, you know, like I said, it was largely a health concern that I said, like, okay, like I'm over 40. And, you know, like I don't want my health to deteriorate any faster than necessary.  I'm more capable of having smaller meals and things that I hadn't done for a while, just like doing push-ups and sit-ups and yoga, although I did that in the past. But, you know, like I started doing that again. I mean, that sounds like a lot of good things. Do you think you'll keep this up? Yeah, I think so. I think it's probably correlated. I was always relatively health conscious. Like, you know, I was in university. I was even part of the MMA club. Yeah, I belong to gyms. I did yoga. The majority of my life.  So I think it was largely the marijuana that stopped me from doing it.  Can you tell me more about things that rabbis thought you'd be better suited for because your father was not Jewish?  So by facetum in New York, you know, like just driving is extremely discouraged and frowned upon and really like only a married man that needs to drive. So the very first thing I did was as a driver, I drove the Arab truck in Borough Park and that involved construction in Bubbov. I helped out with construction. I drove a lot of rabbis and there's a lot of, you know, facetum that drive also. But, you know, the rabbis, a lot of them accepted me as their driver because they didn't want to encourage facetum to drive. So even on a simple level like that, but even like in terms of synagogue, I used to help out the Goyim.  So even something like bookbinding and I did a whole bunch of various things and a lot of them you'll call were somewhat labor, even if they're like a kadoosha labor, you know, related thing like, like binding books, but it was usually, you know, so to say the worst students that ended up, you know, doing these fields like, like binding books or various things and there's a certain theology to it that I expressed as, you know, Jews as a management class, you know, and saying if you could find a creating person to represent themself, you know, maybe they could explain it from their perspective. Even Mark Shapiro, I mentioned, like Mark Shapiro couldn't change his own flat tire when we spoke about it that way.  And I think in, you know, in Brooklyn, they have haverum in various organizations, but they discouraged, you know, bacherum, non-married students from doing that type thing because it's conducive to bad behavior.  And how prevalent is this concept of half Jew in Jewish life? It's not that prevalent outside of ultra-Heredi circles because, you know, in, if you're in even like modern orthodox, you're like, if you're in a, you're like, I was in Mir Yashiva, I was in, you know, Brooklyn in synagogues, where basically everyone was a FFB. There might have been a handful of people that were like Balichuva that went off the derrick a few years. But like 99% of the people were 100% Ashkenazic Jewish.  So, you know, so if as a Balchuva in the very orthodox places, everyone just wanted to know about my lineage and, you know, where I came from. And the fact that my father wasn't Jewish was an extremely big deal. So a lot of the people like Judas, you know, would just be like, oh, that's not true. You know, you're 100% Jew. But like, no, I spoke to the rabbis, the Talmud in Yavumas, if you learned it, talks about half Jews. And you know, to some point, like, you know, there's more question like, am I a Jew? Can you really trust this person?     And okay, I'm a half Jew, like, I don't really know what it feels like to be a Goi, but I still have family members.  And I've been in a lot of circumstances. And also the way people look at me, even like Adam Green, Brundle, a lot of non Jews look at me differently because I'm half Jew, in that sense. So you could be like, okay, there's no difference between a half Jew and a Jew, according to certain understandings of Jewish law. But a lot of non Jews will look at me different than a full Jew.  I think a lot of your people will make more of an attempt to convert me to Christianity, because I'm half Jew, or, you know, various levels of participation, or being part of various things that, you know, there's definitely a factual difference in the way that people treat me, you know, being a half Jew. Even a Jewish law, even if you're from the school of Jewish law that, you know, that doesn't exist. And how about the Hindu community? How accepting are they of your participation? I mean, they're probably skeptical. I mean, depends on, you know, like, if it's a temple that basically everyone is Indian, group strategy comes out very quickly, that even if, you know, like, we're doing the same things. And I'm also actually part Indian. So like, I'm part Cherokee, part Native American. And so I usually mention it to that.  And I would tell them that I'm half Jew and part Indian.  So like, if you're, you know, you're a blue eyed man, or you're part Chinese, I don't know if you told the Chinese person if you were one 16th Chinese, it might make a difference to them. And, you know, so the fact that I'm part Indian to some of them, it makes a difference in terms of your discrimination in group strategy.  So when it's multicultural, and there's also various non Indian people, it's a little bit different than, you know, when it's all basically Indians. And because you could be a second, and I would basically compare it to being like a Baltruva. So if you're Indian from India, and in doing these rituals, you're just like, well, I'm Indian. These are, this is my group strategy.   Why are you interested in doing this stuff?  So that, you know, like Kevin McDonald's group evolutionary strategy, I think it largely, you know, that Hinduism to some extent is the group evolutionary strategy of Indians. How percentage of you is Native American? Two to 5%. You know, my father didn't do the genetic test, but he's either got one or two direct charity ancestors. If it's one, my father might be, you know, as much as 10%, or as little as 5%, but he hasn't done, you know, like we have a family graveyard, and, you know, but we didn't do the research and my father still hasn't had a genetic test. And I think the genetic tests don't work that well for Native Americans anyways. Do you feel the tug of your Cherokee genes? Yeah, I could usually tell just by looking at a person if they have Native American blood, you know, like even in public, but I feel the difference and maybe a certain way of looking at things, maybe like why I do certain things like gardening or approach to life, but I find that usually I could just look at somebody and if I speak to them a little bit, you know, I'll ask them, you got Native American blood. And I'm usually right, like I don't, you know, like I didn't ask you if you have Native American blood.  And I'm not exactly sure how I could tell, but usually I have a sense and I'll just ask people if they're part Native American. And I don't, I'm not an expert. There's a lot of different tribes. Cherokee is actually the single most common blood type of mixed blooded people. And Cherokee also has the most liberal blood quanta level that the Cherokee Nation, Oklahoma will accept people regardless of blood quanta into Cherokee Nation, as opposed to most other Native American tribes have like a one quarter minimum for, you know, the right to return, so to say. And what was the experience like being the child of a mixed marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew? I'm sure there are benefits and problems. Well, I was the only one interested in Judaism, maybe because I was the youngest son.  Maybe the youngest child is more nurtured by the mother. But my parents were largely secular. We went, I requested to have a bar mitzvah. Like, I knew we were Jewish. My grandparents, we went to Madhanaka candles. But as a young child, I had interest in Judaism. I requested to have a bar mitzvah. For a period, my brother and sister got sent to Sunday school and they hated it. None of them had a bar mitzvah. My brother doesn't even identify as Jewish. My sister has some Jewish identity. But at first, maybe we tried to acclimate into white culture, but Metro Detroit, and so to say white flight, by the time I was in junior high school, whites were, even by the time, I think by the time I hit third grade, whites were a minority. So I remember like second grade, and then in second grade, basically all the white kids got transferred to a charter school. And then, you know, so from eight years older, whites were always a minority growing up.  So people would, you know, ask me like what I am.  And, you know, so I played dualistically. And my brother and sister don't really have much of a Jewish identity. Even my parents know very little about Judaism. It never interested them as a serious subject. I tell my mother sometimes about like Talmud and, you know, what it says in the text or what's happening in Israel. But due to the circumstances that we live in, people don't really take Judaism seriously. So even though I became an Orthodox Jew, I would assume like 99% of the people that knew me as a child or even know me today would probably assign some sort of like nefarious reason to it. And they have absolutely no interest in the Talmud, or to even consider Judaism as like a serious vehicle of truth. And it's also a lot of Jews because you met with Detroit, only 5%, 10% of Jews are Orthodox.  And so, you know, coupled with, you know, that when the only Jews you know, say, you know, that don't have any interest in Orthodox Judaism or can't ascribe any truth to the traditions, it makes it very difficult. And, you know, then you have a small Orthodox community that, you know, per force largely has to be Insular. And so even me that, you know, I went to better schools, I probably know Talmud better than most local Orthodox Jews, but probably rightfully so.  And, you know, a lot of people have very big families like in Bubba or something like that. I would assume that, you know, 90% of the people are cousins with each other. So in the Detroit community, I'm not related to anybody.  And my mother's lineage is German Jewish. So, you know, as a smaller family, although, you know, I do have a distant Jewish family, I would assume in LA also, that the Orthodox community there, probably like 90% of the people are basically cousins with each other, even the modern Orthodox places, you know, it's pretty like extended tribal family network. So just having went to the same schools or trying to follow the same laws, there's a difference of, you know, not being cousins with people.  And Judas, how Israeli do you feel? What? I was really do I feel. Yeah. I feel pretty Israeli. I was born here. I was born in Jerusalem. So, how much of your life have you lived in Israel? Back and forth, when I was three years old, my parents moved to the States. And then I moved back. I moved back to Israel when I was about 17 or 18. So, yeah. Again, let me repeat the question. How much of your life have you spent in Israel? Five years, 10 years, 20 years? Let me see. Three and 10. About 15 years of my life. Oh, okay. And so, do other Israelis treat you as Israeli or do they treat you as an American who's so journeying amongst them? I'm not sure. I never thought of that question. I served in the military. I worked in Tel Aviv. I speak good Hebrew. I don't, I never, I never thought of Israelis that kept me. I always, I just, I feel at home here. I never, I never thought like, maybe they do see me as an outsider because I've lived in different countries in the States and in the UK, but I'm not very self-conscious about these things. So, I don't, I don't really know. Did you hear my point on everyone being cousins? Like I said here, there's a cone here in Oak Park that tells people he's related to over half of the people in Oak Park, even close cousins, like in Bubba. I think over like 90% of people are like, you know, first, second cousins with each other, even in Israel, in communities that, okay, you served in the Army. You're in Israeli. I don't know your lineage if you're also cousins with everybody, but you know, like certainly I feel that especially in the Orthodox community, like everyone's cousins with each other. It's not just like, it's more, it's more than, you know, just. So, there's a, there is something to that. Yeah. There is a, it depends on which community. My family is all over the world and I didn't really grow up around them. Can you hold on one second? Yeah, yeah, yeah.  So, hang on. So, Duvid, how, how competent is the government in Detroit these days? Um, not, not very.  You know, there's still functioning like, like President Obama, you know, happy 60th birthdays of the, the, the, the institutions are very resilient.   But, but my guess would be even Democrats that are largely in power, you know, don't have that much faith in the government to, you know, do what they're doing. The police department here is relatively good in, in, you know, like in Detroit may not be so good, but in, you know, Southfield, the suburb, the police are very good. Oak Park next to me, the police may not be so good. So the resilience of the institutions are more locally, you know, dependent and, you know, might be related to things like housing values, you know, like, you know, the local, like if you're in Beverly Hills and they have good police, that might be locally funded by, you know, property taxes or something like that.  I don't know if LA is divided like that. I mean, if you are you in Los Angeles properly or Beverly Hills is its own township, its own, you know, self-government. They have their own police department, their own property tax, their own millages to handle their own local needs that even if LA, so to say, went under that the township you're in through its own millages and property taxes could keep up their institutions. Yeah, Beverly Hills is its own township with its own police force and millages for property taxes. I'm not sure about property taxes. I simply don't know, but Mike Dugan is the mayor of Detroit. What's your perception of him? He's a white mayor on his second term. He won the primary again.  You know, he's basically pro-African American. He's been working with African Americans for decades. He was largely voted in by, you know, Detroit voting is over 90% African American. So he had some competition. I think they just had the primary anyone pretty handily. But there's a lot of issues in Detroit, COVID-19 devastated a lot of businesses.  But COVID-19 really devastated a lot of those efforts.   So, you know, we'll see what happens. So right now, the government is basically trying to keep these COVID-19 measurements into place. I think they just extended eviction moratorium. And in right now, you know, basically they're begging for more money. And the Detroit police department seems fairly based. Are they competent? Yeah, actually, the former chief of police, I mentioned quite often that James Craig retired and is going to run for governor as a Republican against Governor Whitmer. And he was against Black Lives Matter. He, you know, kind of like old school crime and punishment. And also kind of territorial, where he kind of recognized that, you know, the whites don't really necessarily want blacks from the suburbs coming into their neighborhoods. But at the same time, that, you know, Black people in Detroit don't want people from other places coming in and causing problems there. So when they had the George Floyd Black Lives Matter protest, they put special restrictions on people from outside of Detroit coming into Detroit. And it turned out that, you know, the vast majority of the people getting arrested doing these protests were actually, you know, from the suburbs. But he retired and is running for governor. They have a new chief of police. You know, there's underfunding and in corruption. So it's not like, you know, like the suburb here, where it's over 50% African American. We also have African American chief of police. But it's relatively good in Detroit.  There's been some improvements. Like murder is just going off the charts, you know, the number of people shooting each other.  And it's largely, I guess, disputes that get escalated to gun violence. So not necessarily like a rape or mugging pandemic, but more internal disputes between people that get escalated into people shooting and killing each other. And so Detroit, like probably LA in most places, maybe LA in New York has more like a crime and mugging Detroit to, I'm not sure you're so likely to get mugged or whatever. But there's not really a commercial district or rich people in Detroit to mug anyways. So they're more just disputes between people that get escalated to gun violence. And how accepted do you feel as an American by other Americans? It's tough to tell.   But what they say is, thank you, have a nice day. So, you know, from my experience, America has kind of always been like that's the impersonal capitalism, where you don't have to like each other. You just have to act within the norms of law and order and the capitalism where you're not allowed to reject someone's business.  So it doesn't really matter. You're like, I was mentioning, I walked around Hasidic for a long period of time. And I saw the fear disease really gets people. So all like, you know, like I said, like people like Adam Green, I've been having people discussions like that with people for decades. And like one out of three people I talked to hits me with those type, like those type comments. But when COVID-19 started happening, I saw like people really wanted to stay the hell away from me.   But even within that, like it's still America. And you're like, you could think and you could dislike and in the places where there's law and order, there's law and order.  But generally, things are just going on in the normal way that things have been going on. I'm not sure if you see the same thing. Yeah. Yeah.  Probably not.  I don't mind dealing with everybody equally, like who I'd take into my house or who I'd have more closer association. I might be a little bit more, but I don't mind doing business or normal patriotic activities treating everybody equal in the same. And I've accepted capitalism that, you know, that free markets require you to basically accept and do business with everybody equal. I mentioned that because, you know, business, don't do business with people you like, do business with, you know, people that do good business. So, you know, like, I've done a lot of jobs in the past and you build up relationships because people are trustworthy, people have a good reputation, people do what they say, people come on time various things. And even streaming like that, like, I don't stream with people I like, I stream with people that make good content with me and I don't even factor into the decision whether I like the person or not.  But in terms of how I, you know, portray and conduct myself, it wouldn't even factor into my decision whether I like the person or not. I don't know if you're enough of a businessman to look at it that way. I think so, but I don't have that much experience in business. I've seen tons of my, you know, what mostly orthodox Jews that when they first start doing business and they try to hook up, you know, their family and their buddies and it doesn't work.  You're better off teaching Alexander technique to people who pay and are good customers that you don't like, then trying to get the people that you'd like to turn into good customers. I don't know if that, you know, saying it like that means something even with Alexander technique that you have more success with people you don't like that pay and take it seriously than people who you like that don't pay and don't take it seriously. Yeah, I agree with that. So that's a good point. Now you've got some experience with the Hindu community and you've got a lot of experience with the Jewish community. How would you compare and contrast the Hindu community with the Jewish community? What do they have in common and what are some very different things that they exhibit?  Like you could be a modern Orthodox Jew in LA and, you know, so to say white pass.  So I did notice it's a huge difference. I even have statistics. I read the books that Hindus are generally excluded from social activity.  They don't really have white friends. And if they do have white friends, there's a huge, you know, like economic educational, like so the Indian has like a master's degree and is making $100,000 a year.  So I did notice that there really is in America a huge advantage, so to say, at least socially. So I think economically, there's not really that much of an advantage to being white, because I said like in America, even white people, even blue-eyed people, they're going to go with who gets the job done. They're not going to go with their fellow white because that's how business works. But in terms of social, you know, social settings, there's a lot of discrimination against, you know, dark, I think it's largely being dark-skinned, you know, so to say, you know, so that's a huge difference. Also, you know, being Jewish is interesting to Christian Christians and Muslims as in a different way to Hinduism. So a lot of people are interested in Judaism in relationship to their own Christianity or Islam, as where a lot of people who turn to Hinduism are interested in something different outside of the Abrahamic traditions, mostly through yoga.  So it's probably also like that for Hinduism. And there's also the interesting American dichotomy that most Hindus are educated, rich, and have, you know, higher IQs than average, and also exhibit relatively high family values that, you know, divorce rate is very low, you know, even out of wedlock marriage. You know, most of the Hindus I know got married, have children, and are relatively maintaining a happy family life, although most of them on average have like two kids, because it's probably, you know, the successful way to, you know, be successful in America to have more than two kids is probably, you know, difficult, but I think in a lot of ways, you know, like we're minorities, we have practices that most people don't really understand or appreciate, like people understand and appreciate Judaism because it's in the Bible, but it's like, you know, do you want to come to my synagogue and wrap on to Phyllian, or chant a bunch of prayers for like an hour straight, your average person would, you know, basically just look at us like we're Hindu, you're saying like, you know, sorry, not interested in going to your temple and seeing your idols, and, you know, and Judaism might even be more like that, you know, because it's like, not really interested in going to your synagogue, strapping on to Phyllian, and saying a bunch of prayers for an hour straight.  And on University of Michigan where there's like 2000 adult Jewish males, the Minion is half rabbis. So you can't even get more than like five, five students, you know, so if they have a Minion at University of Michigan, it's basically, you know, like five students and five rabbis. And who has better food, the Hindu temples or the synagogues? It depends. So a good Hindu temple has better food. I think it's vegetarian, and it's more healthy. And like Jewish food is very fatty. And like, I think a vegetarian, and I do think if you went to the Hindu temple, you'd see less like fat out of health people, you know, because yoga is affiliated and vegetarianism with better health. So among Orthodox Jews, I think obesity is actually a big problem.   So a lot of, you know, like I work with the food. If the food is clean, it's better at a Hindu temple. And it's probably cleaner and more healthy. But a lot of times it's not so clean.   So you have to, it's kind of like cash risks. Generally, and I spoke with rabbis about this, like if you go to a non kosher place, and you could speak to the manager and the chef about the way the food is being prepared, you could eat there, there might be like a hill of the shem, like an issue like people are going to see an orthodox Jew eating at a non kosher place. But on pure cash risks, if you could speak to the manager and the chef and talk to them about the way the food is being prepared, you could eat at a non kosher place. And I've done that, you know, really all over the place, even at, you know, largely trade places, because I was able to speak to someone who was willing to discuss with me how the food is being prepared, and tell me that they're going to meet my expectations. So Hindu temples are probably the same way that, you know, you could go in, you could look at the kitchen, you could speak to the people. And if there's someone there who kind of explained to you, you know, the process or, you know, what's going in the food, and you could see like a basic cleanliness standards. I would say Indian food is probably your safest bet as an orthodox Jew. If you're traveling, and you're going around, and you need some place to eat, if you find a vegetarian Indian place, that's probably your safest bet.  And I don't know if you're, you're, you're room enough where you don't, you wouldn't even bother going, you're like, you're in LA, you got enough issues with kosher that you wouldn't need to go into some Indian restaurant to get vegetarian food. But I think that's pretty common. And I've spoken to a lot of Jews who agree with me about that, that your safest bet is Indian vegetarian food. Yeah, I've seen conservative rabbis who eat at Hindu or Indian vegetarian restaurants. So how did your family react to your growing embrace of orthodox Judaism? Honestly, they were never, never that, that proud that, that, you know, they thought, they always thought it was a bad decision. Like they backed me, kind of like if this is what I want to do, they're going to back, back me. And in some cases, they, you know, like, stop financially backing me because they didn't support it. And, you know, working to financially back something they didn't support. But they probably always thought it was a bad decision. And, you know, that I'd be, you know, one, they probably, they just didn't believe in the veracity of it. Also, you know, being from an intermarried family. And then my brother married a Jewish woman, almost right after I went to Israel.  Every single person that I knew recommended, including the rabbis, including the orthodox Jews that helped me become a Bolsheva recommended against it. However, I think it's the best decision that I ever made. And, you know, my parents backed me on a certain level, like this is what I want to do. They're going to back me.  And I don't know if your family looks at looks at the same. What do you mean even orthodox Jews were telling you to give it all up? Is that what you said? Well, I was saying that, that me becoming a Bolsheva, basically everyone I knew told me it was a bad decision, including the orthodox Jews that helped me do it. So I think even, you know, like I went to Yeshiva's, even like, you know, I was even in largely FFP places, a lot of people helped me. And they were all kind of like, you're crazy. Like if I were you, I wouldn't be doing this. And why would they say that a lot of them help me? Why would they say that? What was what was their thinking? Well, I think that's probably what you're because it's, you know, I guess for FFBs, it's more ethnic. And when you get more into the more orthodox circles, they're more against Kirov or they look at Kirov is largely just the money making, you know, venture or some sort of larger, you know, community building. But, you know, certainly in the more orthodox circles, Kirov is frowned upon. It's, you know, like, even like, like I said, that a Bolsheva have a hard time acclimating into more from society, especially Yiddish speaking, I was smart. I was able to pick up Yiddish. I was able to understand Yiddish. I was able to, you know, like I still can't speak Hebrew that well. But like, no, I could pick up a Talmud relatively without an art scroll and, you know, have a chance of 90% comprehension. But yeah, basically, all the people were kind of like, you know, like I was crazy. Like if they were me, they wouldn't have been doing it. And it's probably because it was like tribal that they looked at it. Although a lot of them felt that they had an obligation, like if this is what you're going to do, I have an obligation to help you, even though they recommend me against doing it. However, if I insist on doing it, they're going to help me. I don't know if you have a similar experience. Well, sure. In your conversion, you get pushed away quite often. And you have to persist over weeks and months. So it's not easy to make your way into what is an ethnic club. Even like the people you grew up with for your parents, didn't even encourage you. Like you're making a really good decision. And I also went to Israel. Like I saw things different. I had a picture because I went to Israel and I saw, you know, the creation of Israel in the Orthodoxy was the norm in Israel. And so I became more centered with the Jewish community through, you know, kind of like helping out larger Jewish causes and Zionism, even though I had anti-Zionist training that, you know, like by being a Bolsheva, if you could put that into like helping out Israel, it becomes more popular among the larger Jewish community than them just like a Bolsheva. And I decided that the Torah is true. So I decided to try to keep the halakha. Okay, let's go to the Rambam's commentary on the 10th chapter of the Mishnah Sanhedrin. And so the Rambam writes, and the masses do not lose everything by they're doing the commandments out of fear of punishment and hope for reward, except that their performance will not be complete. Nonetheless, it is good for them so that they have the ability and the habit and the effort of fulfilling the Torah. From this, they will be aroused to know the truth and they will turn into those that serve from love. So the Rambam is saying that ideally we do not perform the commandments out of fear of punishment and hope for reward. But even if that is the reason that we perform the commandments, that that's fine because that will develop the ability and the habit and the effort of fulfilling the Torah. And from that, we may start to perform the Torah from love. Any thoughts on this commentary? Yeah, that's the kind of stuff I love. Like I went to Yeshiva, I like philosophy, and I read this stuff. And to some extent, I decided that this is true, that there is a God and that God reciprocates with us through the fulfillment of being Jewish. And that's as opposed to like we were talking about Hinduism as a group strategy. So if you went to a Hindu temple and started doing the stuff, they would ask, like, are we crazy? Why are you doing it? And so if you told them, because I believe it's true, I think that this idol is real and reciprocates to my service, then even the Hindus there might look at you like you're crazy. As opposed to if you're Indian, they're just like, well, it's your group strategy, this is what my ancestors did. So most Jews, the vast majority of Jews, including Orthodox Jews, don't really believe that the religion is true. But there's still a group strategy that this is what we do, this is what our ancestors did. But when you look at the actual books, you say, well, this is true. And the reason I'm doing it is because there's a God and God cares whether we do it. And if you don't believe that, then you're going to have like as a convert or a half Jew that you have the, you know, the unaccomplishable task of joining an ethnic group you're not part of. And here's more from Maimonides, meaning the Rambam's commentary on the 10th chapter of Mishnah Sanhedrin. So the first group believes Torah teachings according to their simple meaning, and they do not reason that they have any sort of esoteric meaning. And for them, the impossible things must correspond to reality. However, they do this as a result of their not understanding wisdom, and they are far from the sciences. They do not have wholeness so that they be aroused on their own. And they did not find something to arouse them. These people hold that the sages, meaning the Talmudic rabbis, only intended in all of their straight and sweet words, what this group understood according to their intellect from them, and that they are according to their simple meaning these Talmudic teachings. And even though that which appears in some of their words is repulsive, and some of it pushes the intellect away. So the point that if it would be recounted to the ignorant, nor the more so to the wise, they would wonder in their pondering of them, say how is it possible that there is someone in the world that thinks like this or believes that it is a correct belief? And one that should be pained about the foolishness of this group of simple-minded Jews. According to their opinion, they are honoring and raising the sages, but they are in fact lowering them to the lowest depths, and they do not understand this. And as God lives, this group destroys the beauty of the Torah and darkens its splendor and makes the Torah of God the opposite of its intention. As God said in Deuteronomy chapter 4 verse 6, that they should observe all these laws, and they shall say this is certainly a wise and understanding people, this great nation. And this group recounts the simple words of the sages, may their memory be blessed, such that when the other nations hear it, they say this is certainly a foolish and silly people, this small nation. And the ones that do this, most of the preachers that explain and inform the masses of the people about things that they themselves do not know. So it's fair to say that Maimonides is very much an elitist, and he understands that there are simple people who will only be able to understand things on a simple level, and then there are the elite who are more philosophically inclined, who will be able to understand things on a deeper level. Any commentary? Yeah, I took a Hasidic approach, so I tried to be anti-elitist, and kind of like the pure heart, that like the Bolsheviks have taught that God wants the pure heart, and that the simple, unintelligent person with a pure heart could accomplish just as much or more than the most intelligent, sophisticated person. But yeah, there's the basic level that it's very difficult, there's a lot of information, it's hard to understand these things, and you're going to get more out of it the more you understand, and I don't know if IQ existed, things like the Rambam would have talked about nature versus nurture in terms of modern day IQ, but it's kind of like the modern day IQ type studies that the Rambam goes into. And I was thinking, related to the comparison with Hinduism, besides the group strategy, and it's different when you're doing a group strategy that's your own ethnic group strategy. But I remember I was in New York, or a lot of people I dealt with, but a lot of them, God forbid they messed up their life, they were in prison, or they were old or health issues, and they talk about how important it was to have a routine, and a schedule, and some sort of normal activity. My mother, when she was an early lawyer, her head of her department was a modern orthodox Jew. And I think when I was young, I asked him, did he really believe this stuff? And my mom said, well, he said at least it keeps me disciplined, that even if you have questions in doubt, that the lifestyle provides you a routine, a community keeps you disciplined, keeps you focused on life. And so if you're more intelligent, and Hinduism could provide that also. So I say that, I can see that being a Hindu, like an orthodox Hindu, having, doing the most extreme practice gives a person routine, practice a community in the same way.  And you know, there's a certain trend we've talked about that I think higher IQ orthodox Jews are more likely to become modern orthodox. A lot of times they don't dump orthodoxy, you know, completely, they just become modern orthodox, because they want the benefit of the secular world. Also, where the, you know, fully creative orthodox is going largely require the person to reject the benefits of the secular world, besides for, you know, pronounced the making of money, or something, or, you know, political power or something like that. But there is a connection between following the law, understanding God's will, and this larger how to live a good life, how to be a happy person, how to be a respectable person in your community. And it requires a lot of intelligence that your average Jew, orthodox Jew, that just tries their best to keep the law, you may not be able to understand, how does this actually help me live a good life and create community, and you know, these various things. Okay, I want to read a little bit from Ha'adrat's back in 2007.  So then Prime Minister Ariyel Sharon at the Knesset in May 2001 was discussing the collapse of the Versailles wedding hall in Jerusalem, which killed 23 people. And Sharon said, shocking to hear both full on haughty words like laws are meant to be circumvented. How many times have we heard people who've returned from trips abroad who make fun of the citizens of the countries they visited because they act like nerds, they stand in line, and they make sure to pay. They look at these citizens as friars, suckers. They're not the friars, we are the friars, the suckers. I searched but didn't find Mr. Speaker linguistic parallel in any language to the Israeli term friar, meaning soccer. Any thoughts on this Israeli phrase to don't be a soccer or don't be a friar? Yeah, I mean, I heard that I guess during COVID-19, where, you know, the saying like, no Israeli is going to keep the rules.  And it could be related to a lot of our arguments we've had about your racism versus modern orthodoxy, where if you think that this is just what you have to do because God runs the world, God is going to determine whether you have a good life, as opposed to a more rationalistic approach, where it's not just like, you know, you pray good, you have real kavana and seriousness when you say the morning prayers, and therefore God makes business good.   And then, you know, if you take it more of the approach of your rationalism, and maybe at a extreme level, modern orthodoxy, verse charatism, like, don't be a sucker, don't think that, you know, that you that don't listen to the rap, I says, don't get a driver's license, that you know, you need to get the half to drive for you, because you're not supposed to drive yourself, don't go to university, don't do all these things, and even related to the opposition to Kirov, that, you know, from the ultra-grady perspective, they might be right that accepting outsiders usually leads to more negative repercussions to the community than for benefit.   How has such a great fear of being a sucker developed in Israel of all places? This could be because of a desire to be free of the image of the Jew in exile. So there are five attributes of Israeli character that come together to create the culture of just don't be a friar, particularly strong ego and a sense of honor, avoidance of laws and rules, individualism without responsibility, competition and machismo. There are some people who are prepared to kill to not come out as friars. So there are murders for purely negligible reasons like a fight over dogs or an argument over a lounge chair on the beach. So the word friar has remained in the realm of slang rather than becoming an official Hebrew word. So the term has been pushed to the sidelines, which allows people to ignore its malignant implications. Whoa. So the word friar is slang borrowed from Yiddish, and is not suitable in cases other than spoken, spoken speech. So immigrants think that they're seen by the Israelis as friars, and they carry that mark with a certain pride. So immigrants to Israel are prepared to be friars to show that there's no need to push. There's no need to honk that there's no need to cheat on your taxes. After all, they can't be pioneers like in the Odin days. So being friars is their contribution. So immigrant parents so that their children should be able to function in Israeli school and in the army should not be too sensitive. The children have to learn not to be friars. You might find that they become more assertive and less polite than you hoped. So the Los Angeles Times reported in 1997 that the fear of being a sucker plays a role in every element of life from performing the most routine of tasks to making peace between countries. So does the friar ideology influence Israeli policies related to peace and war? For instance, then Prime Minister BB Netanyahu told students in 1998, we are not friars. We don't give without receiving. So the desire not to be a friar is one of the reasons that people who get entangled in serious scandals in Israel prepared to accept any humiliation as long as they get to stay in their seats a little while longer. So resigning is taking responsibility. It's similar to apologizing about resigning, taking responsibility and apologizing. These are all friar behaviors, sucker behaviors, especially if you can assign the responsibility to someone else, the friar on duty. So who were the biggest friars of Israeli politics? Perhaps Yitzhak Rabin who resigned after a bank scandal. Benny Bagan who resigned disappeared from public life because he lost elections and discovered he had no public support for his views. By contrast, it seems that choosing the anti friar would be easier. You've got President Moshe Kutsov, former president of Israel appeared to have no real competition in this category due to the serious allegations against him and his determination to remain at the center of the alleged crime. So let me just figure out how to I'm sorry, I just said put something back in my refrigerator. Yeah, I can't quite figure out how to mute you, but okay, it's fine. The sounds of skull. Let me just play some, see if you can mute yourself, do it for a few minutes because there's a lot of noise on your end and I'll just play some Daniel Spur movement, the neolog movement, which was undermining classical halacha by doing away with customs minagim which don't really have a biblical source or rabbinic source by reinterpreting biblical verses in a non rabbinic fashion and therefore eroding the authority of the classical halacha normative halacha as it was known. And he in his struggle against him regarded these reformers as innovators, he called them and he coined or he quoted a phrase which became very, very famous, innovation is forbidden by biblical law. Now the original meaning of that particular phrase comes from a totally different area. It comes from the area of agricultural activities in the time of the second temple or the time of the temple where you were not allowed to eat of a new harvest before a new harvest, that's before the omel sacrifice was brought during the Pesach period. And Chadash, the new harvest was forbidden until you did certain things. He extended the use of that phrase to refer to all types of innovation. And he said that any type of innovation is absolutely asur, the taklita isur. For instance, the reform movement at that time in Germany and Hungary moved the bima in the synagogue closer to the Aron Kodesh to make the architectonic structure of a synagogue closer to a church. He said that moving it from the center is asur minatra. They introduced clerical gowns again to make it closer to their Christian neighbors. He said it's forbidden by biblical law. It's forbidden by biblical law to wear a different type of garment. They introduced vernacular into the synagogue service. Vernacular meaning German or Hungarian or whichever language they were speaking in that particular area. As part of the service, he said the asur minatra. So he in his very specific struggle against the reform movement coined this phrase and argued it very, very powerfully. And his influence was immense. And his talmidim, his children and his grandchildren, the Khatamsofair, the Khatamsofair, the Shevetsofair, the Maramshif, the Maramshik, etc., all followed in his footsteps, expanding in every single generation the notion that innovation is forbidden. And let me give you just a couple of examples of the reductio and absurdum of this particular notion. Recently, a fine scholar published two volumes of the customs of the Arbaki lot, the four congregations of Matasdorf, Unsdorf, and two other congregations in the Oslo-Hungarian Empire, Hungary, Romania, Northern Romania. In those areas, the synagogues had never had heating. It may be because many of the synagogues were wooden and they thought it was dangerous. But in the winter, it was enormously cold. And the descriptions of the rabbi coming with his beard encrusted in ice. And it was very difficult to get a minion in the morning unless you paid people to come because it was just too cold. So somebody suggested to the Badakiladi committee of all these four kilots that they introduced heating into the synagogue. But the committee said, Khadash Asuminatura. Our fathers and our forefathers didn't have heating in the synagogues, you won't either. Similarly, in their synagogues, they didn't have seating. The people used to stand in front of a stenda and dive in that way. On Yom Kippur, people would stay in the synagogue for 24 hours. They didn't have a Sakai in the middle where you went to after Musa for Mincha and have a rest and then come back for Nila. And they had to stand up for the whole time because there were no seats. And some of the people were old, elderly, and it's not easy to stand even for a few hours and certainly not for 24 hours. So somebody made the very brilliant suggestion of putting in benches. And the Kila said, no. Khadash Asuminatura. Our forefathers never had benches, you're not going to have benches. So this, of course, is something which is absurd. And the Khatam Sofair never dreamt that his statement would reach such a degree of absurdity. But this became the heritage of the Khatam Sofair and the heritage of the Khatam Sofair and of his followers was one in which one makes no changes, one does not innovate. And furthermore, when there's something which is problematic, you don't rule leniently, you rule stringently. If you're not sure of something, then say it's asur, it's forbidden. And this is the situation that actually exists in present-day Kharedi communities. And again, let me give you an example. I mentioned the fact that Rav Kuk refined the heteronachirah, the way of selling the land, the arable land of Eretz Israel to a non-Jew in order to get by the problems which were presented by the sabbatical year. This was done from the time of Rav Kuk until the last sabbatical year, which was perhaps four years ago, three years ago. The rabbinate would always sell the land, actually to a Druze, not to a Christian, but to a Druze, because they were sure he would give it back. And for the first time in the last sabbatical year, the Kharedi establishment, which was run by the Moetsat Guddolei Hathorah, which at that time was Rav Shach and Rabbi Yoshif, Zikronam Librakah, decided that this, what was good for Rav Kuk is not good for us. We can't sell the land, you have to keep Shbita. What is going to do to the economy of the country, it doesn't bother us. We'll get money from Khudslavitz, you people are going to pay for us, you'll give us donations, we'll survive. For the first time the Rabbanut didn't carry out, this was done by the Rabbanut, actually by the Ministry of Religion and the Ministry of the Interior, but the political parties in it so, Agudatisay, Regal, etc., etc., were so powerful since they have the casting vote in our complex coalition government structure that the Rabbanut was not able to do it. There was an uproar, and finally a solution was found that the Rabbanut wouldn't do it, but the Rav of Tluva would do it. Well, Tluva is a big agricultural monopoly, so they did it and they solved it. Many of the Rabaneha Arim, many of the chief rabbis of the different cities, didn't accept it, and therefore they weren't willing to give her shehrim to the restaurants, to the shops, etc., etc., to base themselves on the Hetanakhira. So you can see that there was this complete shift, a shift where they, instead of accepting the ruling of one of the great authorities that had been functioning for almost a hundred years, they rejected it because they knew better, because they still saw this as an innovation, which is Khadas Shasuninaturah. Okay, Duvid, that's just a burst from Rabbi Daniel Sperber, Professor of Gomorrah at Bara Lan. You have some comments, Duvid? Yes, I mean, interesting.   And even when I mentioned about me being a half Jew, a lot of, you know, Zionism in many ways, because you have a state where the vast majority of people in Israel, I think over, you know, of the Jews, like well over 90% of the Jews in Israel are basically 100% ethnically Jewish. And so the collective Israel is ethnic in a way where it's about being ethnically Jewish, and not necessarily about following the law.  He did what they told him to do, but how included would he be in a typical Orthodox Yeshiva where everybody is cousins, and there may not be as much, you know, leeway for people who, you know, so Hadash wanted to do something new, wanted to do something different. And also I said about the skepticism towards outsiders that, you know, I always said it's relatively justified. I never begrudged Orthodox Jews that were skeptical of me and, you know, my own bad behavior, you know, you got forbid if I've done bad things, let alone just being an outsider that I brought in outside things like, you know, just in Israel, in New York, just having books that your average person there hadn't read, let alone ideas, or let alone comfortability with acting or doing things in a certain way that they may not be comfortable with, you know, comfortability speaking to women or something like that, where it's just like, you know, let's have this guy in who's so comfortable speaking with women, on a simple, you know, say that there is a tribal sense that, yeah, makes sense to be skeptical of outsiders. It makes sense that outsiders are going to bring in new things, and it puts the group at risk.  They don't ask me like Talmud or what the sages say, but you know, like, if I do something for Israel, I do something for the Jewish people, they could see, people could see that this guy is helping out Jews, he's helping out Israel, he's helping out the greater cause. And I think we talked about that quite a quite a few times, about your pure Haredi, non-Khasidic Judaism, non-Khabbalistic Judaism, there is no greater purpose. You have to keep the law, and we're just going to keep on doing the same thing, regardless of the outcome.  And, you know, so obviously, there's a lot of pushback on that. And even this rabbi, who, you know, I guess is a mainstream Orthodox Zionist rabbi, is trying to push back on the Khasam Soyfer. And when I actually met many descendants of the Khasam Soyfer in the Yashiva World, ultra-Orthodox world, the Khasam Soyfer has a lot of descendants that are rabbis, and that, you know, was one of the major respect, even the Khasam Soyfer. I think he was anti-Khasidic, although some of his descendants became Khasidic, and is one of the backbones of Haredi society of this isolationist. I think the Khasam Soyfer also had the most extreme rulings on, like, wearing a shatel. So, you know, saying that it's forbidden to wear a shatel, you know, like a wig. And I think that also comes from the Khasam Soyfer, and a lot of these rulings, you know, today that you might see in ultra-Orthodox Jews that people would consider extremists, that the Khasam Soyfer is the fatherhead of it. Okay, let me go back to reading from the Rambam's commentary on Mishna Sanhedrin. He talks about a second group of Jews, also numerous, and they see the words of the sages, and they understand them according to their simple meaning. And this group thinks that the sages did not intend, in their words, anything more than that, which is indicated by the simple understanding. So this group comes to make, comes to be foolish and to disgrace themselves and to bring ill-repute to the sages. The sages deserve no ill-repute, and they mock the words of the sages, and they believe that they are more refined in their intellect than the sages, and that they were stupid. The sages were stupid, simple-minded fools regarding all of existence to the point that they did not grasp matters of wisdom in any way. Most of those that stumble in this era are those with pretence to the medical sciences, and those that carry on about the laws of the constellations, since they are according to their own thinking, understanding, and wise in their own eyes and sharp and philosophers. Now, far are they from humanity? How far are they from the truly wise and from the philosophers? Rather, they are more foolish than the first group, and many of them are idiots, and it is an accursed group, since they questioned great and lofty people whose wisdom was already made clear to the wise. And were these idiots to exert themselves in the sciences to the point that they would know how it is proper to organize and write things in the science of theology, things which are similar to it, for the masses, and for the wise, they would understand applied philosophy, and they would understand if the sages were wise or not, and the matter of their words would be understood for them. Any thoughts on this commentary from the Rambam, David? Yeah, I remember when Bubba used to chant a song from Mishley Proverds, Bani al-Talik, Baderraki, Tom, my son, don't go in the ways of your time. And so in the Rambam's time, may have been their form of medicine or astrologers, as today, where it might be economists or doctors or scientists, as opposed to the sages from a hebraic sense, are not like the leaders of secular society that are grounded only in the wisdom of our times, but have a grounding of the ancient wisdom in recognizing that there's certain truths that have to be kept, and even if the current trajectory of society or the times make it look that following these things is bad, that you have to trust that the sages understand the whole scope of human history and these eternal things, and the path of the just, the Ramakal, Missila Sasharam mentions in the introduction that people who seek spirituality are generally looked at as simple and dumb, because your average intelligent person is like, there is no God who answers your prayers. There's no way that doing these rituals actually means something.  So that was probably the same way in the Rambam and Maimonides time as it is today, although the science was different. And what does he mean by the sage?  And here's more from the Rambam's commentary on mission of Sanhedrin. And the third group of Jews is so small to the point that it's not fitting to call them a group. And these are the people to whom the greatness of the sages and the quality of the sages intellect is clear. And so members of this third group, we're not joking about the sages and for them, the sages words have a revealed and a secret meaning. So a meaning for a general audience and then a meaning for a more elite audience and that everything the sages said about things that are impossible. Well, this was just a way of speaking akin to a riddle and a parable because this is the way of great wise men. Therefore, the greatest of wise men opened his books, Michelet Proverbs, saying to understand a parable and a metaphor, the words of wise men and their riddles. And it is known to the linguists that a riddle is when the matter intended by it is hidden and not revealed by it. So since the words of the sages are all about supernal matters of ultimacy, they must then be riddles and parables. And how can we blame them for writing wisdom in the way of parable and making it appear as lower things of the masses when we see that the wisest of all men did this with the Holy Spirit, meaning Shlomo-Homellic, King Solomon in Proverbs and in the Song of Sons and in Ecclesiastes. And why should it be difficult for us to explain their words rationally to take them out of their simple meaning that they fit, reason and correspond to the truth. And even if they are holy writings, they explain the verses of Scripture rationally and take them out of their simple meaning and make them into parables. So if you, the reader from one of the first two groups, do not pay attention to my words and not to any matter of it, since no part of it will be fit for you, but rather it will hurt you and you will hate it. But how can light foods that are few in quantity but proper in quality be fit for a person who is accustomed to bad foods?  You do not know that the people that are accustomed to eating onions and garlic and fish said and our souls are disgusted.  You lay burdened in your heart and occupied by the meaning of the idea and the composition and in its rational meaning and think to find the intelligent intention and the straight faith. Any thoughts, Duvid? Yeah, I love this stuff.  I wanted to be part of this, you know, eternal tradition. I thought that there was truth there and, you know, that I had seen enough as a youth to look at, you know, we talked about the wisdom of our times versus the eternal wisdom. And I think we've talked about in the past also, you know, Hebrew, the call of Munus, Hohamim, your belief in the sages and submission, you know, say like, okay, Mark Shapiro is a scholar, but I don't think anyone would submit to him because like a modern Orthodox person, like, okay, I'm smart enough, I could make decisions for myself. I might consult a bunch of doctors and then I'm going to make the decision for myself, as opposed to, you know, kind of this, I'll call blind submission, but some sort of submission that I want to be part of the sages. I want my lot with the sages in the eternal lot and that I'm even willing to, you know, from a Hasidic point of view to reject my own intellect, go against my own thoughts and inclinations and, you know, the Maimonidian tradition, which is more rationalistic, which is going to claim that the sages always had a rationale. And even if you can't understand the rationale, that the rationale is still there, you know, I took it even further to a Hasidic approach where you're submitting even beyond rationality and you're willing to file the sages even beyond rationality. And, you know, so maybe now I'm moderated in my approach and, you know, I've, you know, got older, seen more rationality between, you know, so just following, doing what the rabbis or so to say, sages told me, even though it didn't necessarily make sense to me that over a period of time that it grew to make sense and then, you know, the pushback like the sharon, don't be a sucker, you know, the person who's just going to listen to the rabbis because he thinks that there's rationality to it, even though no one could understand how that could possibly be rational.  The average person in Israel thinks that you're distrust-worthy because you went to Mir Yashiva, God forbid.  But like, yeah, I agree with like, you know, when I was young, I wanted to be part of this third group.   And was it difficult for you to transition between, say, studying at Mir Yashiva and going to a Hindu festival and having such a broad life? I mean, you don't fit into a narrow box or was this just what was comfortable? No, I mean, it took years because like I, when I came back to Detroit, I saw that I wasn't really going to be able to fit in with the orthodox community, because it's small and, you know, they probably have to be insular and protective.  And my family just didn't have any interest. Like, you know, I saw most of the successful baltruvas that I saw were also able to get their parents and family to be more observant. I didn't have any luck in that. So it happened over years, more going to university and needing contacts. And that, you know, I felt more safer, more spiritual, dealing with Hindus, but it wasn't necessarily a pre-planned like that. It was more, you know, circumstance. And the transition took a while, because like, you know, that I'd been completely immersed in Therese society. And then I started working, you know, while I was still in Therese society, and then I started going to university.  Okay, let me play a little bit more here from Rabbi Daniel Spurber Ar-Alan. In his various writings, seen sought to counteract this whole movement, which basically leads to a calcification or a petrification of halakai. If you can't innovate, if you can't make changes, if whenever you have a problem you always say, a sur, and not butal, then you really can't function as a society. So he coined a beautiful phrase. And the phrase was, and I'll say it in Hebrew and translated, that which is old will be renewed, will be revivitified, and the new, the innovative, will be sanctified. Now this was the exact diametric of opposite to the Chadashasur minatura. He went further and he made a very important halachic statement. He said as follows, and again I quote in Hebrew and I'll translate, because the formulation is so succent. He said, There is no prohibition to permit that which is permitted, even if it was not practiced in the past. There was a view that things which were not practiced in the past became, as it were, a minhag, a custom, and therefore achieved a certain degree of authority of sanctity. He said, no, the fact that it wasn't done, for historical or social reasons, if you can't find a reason that it should be prohibited, it's not prohibited. This again is something which is diametrically opposed to what's happening in our Charedi community. There anything that was not done is forbidden. It doesn't matter if you don't have to look for a reason for it to be forbidden. The main fact that it hadn't happened in the past means that that is our tradition. Our tradition is not to do. Now society has changed. All sorts of things have happened.  It's not that long ago that women were not allowed to be doctors. Medieval times they could be witch doctors, and they were witch doctors, and then later on they were burnt because they were witch doctors, but it was only in the 50s that women of the last century that women were permitted to go to medical school. Women weren't allowed to study to be lawyers. The Suffragette movement which begins in England, let's say, in the 1920s and begins in the late 19th century became more and more effective. Women were given a vote. It should be born in Brighton that Halachic authorities were very loath to permit women to have a vote.  This didn't happen 40 years ago. And indeed we have Torah, not Rabaniot, women who built religious courts, system, as sort of pleaders, we have Yotsot, Gilchatiot, women who are willing to give halachic advice in certain specific areas. This is a change that's taking place, and they feel that there's no reason that they should be excluded from many of the areas which have been monopolized by the male gender. And we have a development, which you all know about, I'm sure, of what are called partnership minionin, in which women are now taking a much more active role in the synagogue service. Parts of that phila itself are being led by women, those parts which are permissible to do so. They can get ali'ot la Torah. They can read in the Torah certain parts of the And I'm sure you've all heard of shirah hadashi in Jerusalem, which is overflowing, and Dakhre Noam, which is very close to here, which I believe over Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, had over 400 people. So you can see that these type of innovations, if they're permissible, and if it can be shown based on a careful examination of rabbinic sources, that these are dvarim hamutarim, these are permissible things, there's no reason to say that they should be assumed. It's only the modern Orthodox establishment that's willing to condone and to accept and support these types of changes that are taking place in our society. They've been completely rejected by our more ultra-Orthodox brethren. And not just ultra-Orthodox, but because the rabbinic establishments, both in Israel and in the United States, have basically been kidnapped by the ultra-Orthodox authorities, the g'dolim, whether it's the Moïse G'dole'at Torah, or whether it's the g'dolim of America. And the so-called modern Orthodox rabbis do not have the self-confidence to be able to stand up to the criticism that's being made against them by their ultra-Orthodox counterparts. And this has had a very deleterious effect, and those of you that have been following the fairly recent events that have taken place in the question of conversion, which are absolutely shocking, where the Supreme Court in Israel came out with a ruling that was absolutely disastrous, retroactively canceling thousands of conversions and turning with families who've been for 10 years practicing Judaism in a full manner and had children and wives, etc., and suddenly on Erev Shabbat declaring them g'dolim and chiksas. Can you imagine what that means? And then this sort of spilt over into the United States, and it started making a very limited number of Bateh din that were permitted to carry out conversions. And you have synagogues on the Upper West Side that used to have their own Bateh din and now can no longer do, and on the Upper East Side, and are no longer able to do so, because they're not on the list. Okay, this is Rabbi Daniel Spurver speaking in 2012. Duva, did you hear anything there you'd like to comment on? Yeah, I mean, to me it always seemed pointless to try to, you know, moderate the charatom or try to speak like you're some voice of reason or moderation in opposition to the charatom that are just ruining Judaism. I never liked that approach.   And, you know, so were you just trying to have a good life and the rationalistic approach for Judaism that I was going to be Jewish if it led me to have a good life. But if it didn't lead me to have a good life, I would moderate my Judaism, as opposed to, you know, fundamentalist attitude that this is Judaism, take it or leave it. And if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. And so I always had sympathy towards the preservationist attitude. And also, I think that Zionism is, you know, that I was taught in the sense it really is heretical to try to have this, you know, Jewish state or Judaism that fits all Jews.  Well, are they bothering you? Are they breaking any law? Or, no, it's this question of I speak on behalf of Judaism. I'm the real Jew, not you. And to some extent, when I said the first time with Judas on Kabbalah, that all Jews, good or bad Jews are authentic in a lot of ways. Basically, all Jews have that tendency to think like I, you know, like I am representative of true Judaism, I am God's representative here on earth. And then, you know, so you have the rabbis or Jewish leaders who are going to try to moderate like, look, this just isn't working.  And, and that's why, you know, kind of like Jewish nationalism, or even communal Judaism, you know, tends to always have a secularizing effect because you have to worry about what's best for everybody, as opposed to the traditional, you know, like, no, this is Judaism, take it or leave it. These are the rules. And we expect you to follow it, even if it leads God forbid to our torture and death. And like we read the books, you know, saying like Rebekah and all these things, that's what the books say, you know, so then to try to portray, you know, Judaism in a way that's amenable to the Goyim. And I don't mind, like I'm not, I'm a hater, I defend secular and reformed Judaism, but it would always seem counterproductive to try to take this mantle and even of the Kharedim, you know, the Kharedim say, I'm a real Jew, because I'm willing to accept suffering, because I'm willing to reject all the benefits of modern society, because all these various things, generally, even that, like, you know, some Kharedim have a right to keep their traditions and and live the way they want to live. But that's kind of like false mentorship claim of I'm a real Jew, which conversion is the biggest issue, because, you know, now you look forward, not just look forward, any convert who you're not necessarily saying I'm the real Jew, you're just stepping up and saying I'm a Jew.  And, you know, to some extent, that's why I say that converts set the pulse of Judaism, you know, but by what converts are accepted, and and then, you know, doesn't matter whether we're liked or portrayed, or successfully, you know, set up in a way that could be successful with the with larger society, not just America, but in Israel, and you're saying, okay, I'll die for my Judaism in America, if I have to, I'll die for my Judaism in Israel. And that's why I said what is authentic Judaism?  And if you're going to raise the bar that high that yes, essentially, yes, you do have to be willing to be a martyr to be an authentic Jew, that you know, what does it mean to convert to Judaism? Yeah. And I think I'm going to start to wrap things up. Any final words for today, duvid? We were going to have Judas on the show. He only showed for five minutes. He has something to deal with on the upfront on the West Bank. But so we regret that Judas didn't didn't follow through. I mean, I was all prepared to do a show with Judas and duvid on the Rambam's 13 essential principles of Jewish faith. But Judas can't can't make it. So do that any final words for today? Yeah, I don't know the man like I'll try to judge him favorably.  You know, but like I said, in terms of business, you do good business, not working with the people you like, but the people who have a good track record, who pay on time and show up on time and do what they're saying, say that they're going to do. But, you know, I like learning Torah, so it's good that you got back to studying Torah. And, you know, I think it's the Jewish questions becoming very difficult these days, not necessarily because of rising anti-Semitism. But I would say more like the growing civil war within Judaism. And it puts converts in a difficult situation because you see it impending kind of like civil war in Judaism, where it's very difficult, like you have to convert through the Orthodox rabbis by Israeli law to be a Jew. But then you go to Israel and no one likes the Orthodox rabbis that you have to convert through. And all of these, you know, various paradoxes where you just like, God forbid, did I sign up to be a murderer? I don't know. Maybe I did. But, you know, I love Torah. I love studying this stuff.


It's cold right now. I think for all of us except for Nice, he's used to it. It's 85 degrees when I left Jacksonville, so I'm freezing up here. It's cold, but it's cold and busy. Well from Ohio it shouldn't be too cold. Oh, not at all. It's about the same temperature, maybe a little bit colder in Ohio right now. Alright, well once you get from Florida, you know, Florida and California, then yes, it starts getting colder. Right, yeah, that's true. I don't like it. I can't wait to get down to Florida. How's the MCR A3 going? Uh, which one? No man, thank you for asking man. I'm doing great. Thank you. rehab is going really well this year. Just getting ready for spring training. Trying to get as strong as I can. I appreciate you asking, though. I'm doing really well. I'm excited. I think we got, you know, we got an all-star third base as well as Ruben played last year. And then I'm actually sitting next to the guy that will have to duke it out of me and turn it for second base. And then we still got the killer at first base, Ike Davis, so I think we're going to be pretty strong this year and we're going to be deep. Yeah, I just talked to him this weekend actually. He said his exact words is he's feeling springy. So I don't know what that means, but it was good to hear. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Philly, huh? How did that feel for you? I mean, I didn't know. I just, like, yeah, they started chanting USA and I just thought that maybe they thought I was really patriotic when my pinch hit it that late.  I didn't know it at the time. I just thought everybody in the state kind of had Tourette's or something like that. But it was pretty cool to find out. I guess if nothing else in my crew I could be associated with that.


Well, it's fantastic to have the first day of Queen Victoria with the Shared Service at the Fred Game Bridge. I'm delighted to sit here at my home, Patch and Swordsman. Very quiet, obviously, of his lifetime. Costs will be similar to what we've been doing.