Latest / None of Your Business Podcast / A Father & Son's Secret Mission to Save Jewish Lives

Transcript

A Father & Son's Secret Mission to Save Jewish Lives · None of Your Business Podcast

• 0:00
  She said what are you doing here?
• 0:01
  I said I can't just stop and put up.
• 0:02
  He said you're not allowed here, I can arrest you.
• 0:04
  I said that we'll talk about. Tomorrow my father Lee Schaefer
• 0:07
  from the balcony that Hitler Yamashima made his first public
• 0:11
  speech in Poland against the Jews.
• 0:13
  In the hotel room they were like, this is Hitler's desk and
• 0:16
  this is Hitler's chair. What were you feeling like when
• 0:18
  you did? It getting the come on Hitler.
• 0:22
  None of your business or she none of your business Michael,
• 0:25
  it's the None of your Business podcast hosted by Michael.
• 0:28
  Welcome back everybody to another inspiring, incredible,
• 0:33
  emotional, fantastic, amazing episode of the None of Your
• 0:37
  Business podcast. I say all that because I am
• 0:39
  really looking forward to this guest over here that we have
• 0:42
  rubber Edgar Gluck. Welcome to the program.
• 0:44
  I have to start off by just saying Brooklyn, my boy am a
• 0:46
  tremendous welcome and thank you for coming to us.
• 0:49
  We really, really appreciate it. I understand it's your first
• 0:52
  time ever really doing a podcast.
• 0:54
  It only took almost 90 years to make that happen.
• 0:57
  So we're really, really excited. We have another guest Co host
• 1:01
  with us today. So welcome Zeesh Murmelstein
• 1:04
  back on the program. Zeesh was one of our first
• 1:06
  guests ever. I remember when we first started
• 1:08
  the podcast, I went to all my friends and they no one
• 1:10
  hesitated. Everyone's like I'm in.
• 1:12
  You see churns in Zeesh Murmelstein, in a couple of
• 1:15
  others we did and it never came out because the audio was
• 1:17
  broken, The video is broken. That's for another podcast.
• 1:53
  I get it all the time. They're great.
• 1:55
  So we are joined with us today with none other than Siglok,
• 1:59
  who's back at it in a new comfortable chair 'cause last
• 2:02
  time you were in the round table.
• 2:03
  And you? New comfortable suit.
• 2:07
  Made by Twillery. Twillery.
• 2:10
  I don't know if their sponsors but big plug for twillery.
• 2:12
  Let me tell you being suit all day in the summertime especially
• 2:16
  I was able to function. Big shout out beautiful and I am
• 2:19
  waiting for the airbag. It was the headish of the
• 2:22
  Shabbos sneakers that came out when we were able to wear
• 2:25
  sneakers on shopping. No, till then we had to go to
• 2:30
  16th Ave. by the pointy floor shine once and that's what.
• 2:34
  I don't understand why were you able to wear sneakers suddenly?
• 2:36
  'Cause they made him. As they made sneakers can look.
• 2:38
  They look like shoes. They look.
• 2:40
  So you're saying that was the era of transitioning?
• 2:42
  Right. I see.
• 2:44
  But that suit is the next, right?
• 2:46
  That's so, you know. What it is when we grew up,
• 2:48
  right? So we, we all, I mean, just to
• 2:50
  state this. So first of all, you forgot to
• 2:52
  mention that this is my father. That I was not together but.
• 2:56
  What makes this even more special is that the three of us
• 3:00
  grew up together. Well, if we grew up debatable.
• 3:02
  About that so. See, when you were on one of our
• 3:05
  podcasts, also a friend that was willing to say yes right away,
• 3:08
  it was our fastest growing podcast at the time.
• 3:11
  And we it blew up and it really took us to the next level.
• 3:14
  We had a very, very, you know, it was a great conversation.
• 3:18
  And you nominated your father and it took us a few months to
• 3:21
  get him here. But I am so honored that you're
• 3:23
  here. A big luck.
• 3:24
  Thank you so much for being here again.
• 3:26
  It means a lot to me. Tzvi, thank you for nominating
• 3:28
  him and thank you for bringing him on board.
• 3:30
  Unfortunately, unfortunately, oh, she wasn't able to make it
• 3:33
  today. But we have someone who I think
• 3:35
  would be a great person to add value to this conversation, who
• 3:38
  grew up together with us, who knows you Rabbi remembers you
• 3:41
  from the good old days. I'm sure you have a couple.
• 3:43
  Victoria with the DD license plate No.
• 3:48
  Caught that one person, it was not the DD.
• 3:51
  What was it? D13DD13 You tell me, Doctor
• 3:54
  Davidian. Yes.
• 3:56
  DD13I grew up with that license plate.
• 4:00
  I never paid attention to the license.
• 4:02
  Plate Doctor Kevorkian. Doctor Kevorkian, that's the one
• 4:05
  that we don't talk about. DD stand for.
• 4:07
  Doctor Divinity. Doctor of clergy member, Rabbi.
• 4:11
  Was it clergy mean? Anything but.
• 4:13
  The D13 was your license? What?
• 4:16
  I remember it. But it was a, it was a Grand
• 4:18
  Marquis, not a, not a Crown Victoria.
• 4:19
  That could be please. Rabbi, we learned earlier that
• 4:23
  you're almost 90. Just design gazunt until we
• 4:25
  celebrate Michelle together and air to stroll.
• 4:28
  And I'm curious, you ever heard of ChatGPT?
• 4:32
  You're familiar, OK? You're familiar with the
• 4:33
  Internet, computers, social media and all that stuff.
• 4:36
  So they developed the system called ChatGPT that basically
• 4:40
  like Google, you understand the concept of Google.
• 4:42
  On my phone, yeah, it's just chat.
• 4:44
  Yeah, except there's another one thing called ChatGPT.
• 4:48
  So there's something called ChatGPT.
• 4:49
  It's like Google, but it's basically like, what does Google
• 4:51
  have to say about you? So we have a thing here, we
• 4:55
  print it out. Yep, it's been doing better.
• 4:58
  It's doing not a better job. Different ChatGPT is using
• 5:02
  artificial intelligence AI. You've heard those words.
• 5:05
  And the way it works is that the research, it's like Google on
• 5:10
  steroids. So it's not just searching for
• 5:12
  something. And for the most part, it's
• 5:15
  pretty darn good, except for when it cites a legal case and
• 5:18
  the case never existed but continue.
• 5:21
  So I do this thing in the beginning of the podcast to to
• 5:24
  allow the audience, the people listening to get to know you in
• 5:28
  a, in a short form way and tell you what the Internet says about
• 5:32
  you. Are you ready?
• 5:34
  You didn't do it on me though, right?
• 5:35
  Because no, it wasn't just making sure, OK.
• 5:39
  No, today it's just the rabbi. This rabbi was born in Hamburg,
• 5:43
  Germany, in 1936. So yes, he survived one of the
• 5:47
  nastiest chapters of history and turned it into a mission.
• 5:52
  You were born in Germany? Yes.
• 5:54
  And the DP camp. No 3636.
• 5:57
  Which Achieva did you go to? No, no.
• 5:58
  Which Achieva did you go to? Let's talk about this again.
• 6:01
  Let's give a plug for the one that taught you.
• 6:03
  That if you graduated to the same one some size.
• 6:07
  That's funny, that's actually that you hold ABA from Kasamso
• 6:11
  for Rabbinical College in 1957 and then MA from Long Island
• 6:15
  University in 1970. I don't I have I'm 399 points
• 6:19
  behind on Mai have to write a thesis.
• 6:21
  I never did it. Rabbi, Rabbi, rabbi, you got to
• 6:26
  find time and prioritize that's rabbi and academia combo that
• 6:30
  you don't see every day. So that's that's pretty
• 6:32
  fascinating itself. Curious about your 1st 20 years
• 6:36
  of your life. You were born in Germany and
• 6:37
  then? You came to Bronx, NY at the age
• 6:41
  of 2 and down by Rabbi Bick. That was the end thing there in
• 6:48
  the book of everybody. Moshe Bick, anybody who went to
• 6:52
  his show remained for him and other areas in the Bronx had a
• 6:57
  lot of difficulty with people remaining for him.
• 7:00
  My own father, when he came, went to a relative of ours to
• 7:05
  get a job. He he got a job.
• 7:08
  Pastor's Bakery is a cousin and he came Friday.
• 7:12
  So he went into the owner and he told them, I'm not coming in
• 7:16
  tomorrow. He says, you mean I can work
• 7:18
  tomorrow and you can't? Don't come tomorrow, don't come
• 7:21
  Sunday, don't come Monday. Goodbye.
• 7:22
  That was his first job. Wow.
• 7:26
  So I mean, that's, that's the way it, it was at that time.
• 7:28
  So a lot of people couldn't couldn't get over it.
• 7:34
  And they they just came in on Chavez.
• 7:36
  But then the story gets even more interesting.
• 7:39
  So my grandfather is, what I mean, was considered to be a
• 7:42
  very big joker. He was a big comedian, but a
• 7:46
  sweetheart. Again, I don't really remember
• 7:48
  him. This is what I've heard, but
• 7:49
  there's an interesting story is that.
• 7:51
  So after that, where does a Jew from Germany go?
• 7:55
  Look to Davin on a Friday night. The first job is in America.
• 7:59
  What do you do? You go to the biggest shul with
• 8:01
  a big mug and right, you want to, that's what you're used to.
• 8:04
  And he walked into the shul, and what did they say to him?
• 8:07
  TA They asked him to give a. Nickel, no.
• 8:12
  Well, the first day of the nickel then.
• 8:13
  Then he got an alea and he had a bench grammar because he came on
• 8:18
  a Thursday. So far Shabbos was a good bench
• 8:20
  grammar. He went to bench grammar.
• 8:22
  Bavia Shenuda. How much do you give?
• 8:24
  So he said a half a dollar, because he got a job after that
• 8:26
  for $2.00 a week. And they said Schweich, a
• 8:29
  dollar, $3.00 So and Monday morning they came to my father's
• 8:33
  uncle who brought us to collect the $3.00.
• 8:35
  So my father, my uncle came home.
• 8:38
  He says the green, the high, you know, greenhorn, why you giving
• 8:42
  such kind of money? You know, my father said I never
• 8:45
  scared such kind of money. You go into a shul soon Tuesday
• 8:47
  morning and there's herring and schnapps and Pickles and but you
• 8:53
  name it. And he says, what's this?
• 8:55
  Who's your dad? Just no because you gave $3 For
• 8:58
  the next two weeks have every day we have this kind of.
• 9:01
  A spread. Monday they came knocking for
• 9:04
  it. My father.
• 9:04
  Says this is not a shul, this is a bar.
• 9:06
  I walked out, went around the corner with my uncle, tries
• 9:10
  them, my uncle Fulton and they walk on foot and they see a guy
• 9:13
  with a beard cleaning the leaves in front of a shul and he sees
• 9:17
  them. He runs over to them and he says
• 9:19
  come, I want to show you where you see some for Rosh Hashanah
• 9:22
  so far. He says we don't have any money.
• 9:24
  Money. Who talks about money?
• 9:27
  Mantra Kashmir, whoever mentioned money, He takes them
• 9:30
  into the shul, shows them that was Rabbi Big and that's where
• 9:33
  they became close to Rabbi Big from that time on and he also.
• 9:38
  Had a 50 million sense of humour. 52 years we've never
• 9:41
  been well more than. Just Avenbarafic.
• 9:43
  When they moved to Borough Park from the Bronx, Ravi Shul was on
• 9:47
  55th Street, right? The ground floor was the shul.
• 9:49
  The second floor is where Ravvik lived, and the third floor is
• 9:52
  where my grandparents lived. They lived in the same house.
• 9:54
  It wasn't just as a matter of fact, how do you?
• 9:57
  Say it's been Oba rabina, Oba rabina.
• 10:00
  He's over the rabbi over on. Top of the rabbi.
• 10:04
  But but one second. And what about people that used
• 10:05
  to call my my grandfather? And then he would run down to
• 10:09
  ask Ashaya Lutheravik because they would dial the wrong number
• 10:12
  and they got one. And and.
• 10:15
  The Vicks number was 6111, I thought it was 6112.
• 10:17
  I got them both the numbers at the same time, so.
• 10:21
  Wow, so you so you grew up in the Bronx essentially till.
• 10:24
  Till about 20 till about. 20 And then you moved to bark.
• 10:28
  Then I went to this Mediterranean.
• 10:30
  Oh, well, first you spent the year, which I found out again.
• 10:33
  I'm I'm learning new things. Love it.
• 10:35
  I was in Vineland, NJ by my wife's family, by my in laws
• 10:39
  going through. And we get to this old shul over
• 10:41
  there and there's a rabbi there and he says, what's your name?
• 10:43
  I say Glock. He goes, oh, your father was
• 10:46
  from my father's first Tamidim said what yeshiva?
• 10:49
  He goes right here and the shoe you're standing.
• 10:50
  And I said, what are you talking about?
• 10:51
  My father went from Southside for the Bisbendershalian.
• 10:53
  Nope. So I call up my father.
• 10:55
  He goes, Yep, Ravvik sent me for the first year to wash to
• 10:58
  Vineland to help them with starting the yeshiva.
• 11:00
  I didn't even know about it. Learn new things and I learned
• 11:05
  another new thing. This is a great time.
• 11:07
  My son Penny, my baby who is now in 9th grade graduated and was
• 11:11
  valedictorian and we were saying where did he get that from?
• 11:15
  My father goes what do you mean I was valedictorian?
• 11:17
  Regret like what are you talking about?
• 11:19
  I don't know these things like fan.
• 11:21
  Saif I was valedictorian, they. Paid for it.
• 11:25
  You were the first Chief Rabbi of Galicia, Did I say that
• 11:29
  right? Yes.
• 11:31
  That Galicia, the historic region, not just the Delhi, it
• 11:33
  says here the title had been abolished in 1786 and it was
• 11:38
  resurrected for you. Which is a great story.
• 11:40
  Also, it was resurrected really because of me.
• 11:43
  I was there putting on filling from my BA Mitzvah.
• 11:46
  Where? In.
• 11:47
  Krakow in the Rama shul. What were you?
• 11:48
  Doing there my. Father used to go for years and
• 11:50
  years to Poland versus Shani Yum Kippur and they're. 43 years
• 11:53
  and. Rebuilding cemeteries, finding
• 11:56
  mass graves, a lot of things which we'll get back to in a
• 12:00
  second. But I'm there to put on my
• 12:01
  filling. And there's a female rabbi
• 12:04
  that's there with her daughter who says, I want my daughter to
• 12:07
  be able to lane Shabbos for her BA Mitzvah.
• 12:10
  And my father looks at her and he's like, no, she's like, what
• 12:14
  should I do? He goes, listen, there's a
• 12:15
  temple synagogue down the block that was a Reform synagogue
• 12:18
  before the war. Go there.
• 12:20
  And Missus Jakubovic, who was the head of the community, she
• 12:23
  starts yelling at Missus Jakubovic.
• 12:25
  And he she says, listen, this is our chief rabbi.
• 12:28
  You have to listen to what he says.
• 12:31
  And lo and behold, the title has been bestowed.
• 12:34
  That was. How the title that was in other
• 12:37
  words, she was the head of the Gamina.
• 12:39
  So she actually, believe it or not, had the power to do that.
• 12:43
  In other words, I mean, they control all the cemeteries, all
• 12:45
  the shuls, everything nursing homes.
• 12:48
  You should maybe get business by them in the Polish nursing
• 12:50
  homes. They have everything and but
• 12:52
  then it became but but that they didn't stop at that.
• 12:55
  From there it actually became something very real that my
• 12:58
  father for the next many, many years was flying back and forth
• 13:02
  and dealing with all sorts of issues that kept coming up
• 13:05
  today. I'm still working on three
• 13:06
  cemeteries to reinstate the people.
• 13:09
  Are still dead. They weren't sure.
• 13:12
  Rabbi, you got to take us back a little bit.
• 13:13
  I'm sorry. OK, how did?
• 13:15
  You get involved in this how you know I I'm sure if you Google
• 13:18
  the Jewish world's Oscar and your name will come up.
• 13:21
  But I'm wondering where did it come from?
• 13:23
  You're in the Bronx. You're a young man, you're
• 13:26
  growing up. What happened?
• 13:27
  Like what? What drew you to Ukraine?
• 13:29
  What? Tell us about the first time you
• 13:31
  went. Why did you go?
• 13:32
  I. Get a call from Nachman Elbaum,
• 13:35
  who's the head of Ideal Tours. In fact, my wife was working for
• 13:38
  him at that time, but it wasn't my wife yet.
• 13:41
  He says to me. A Baltzfilla in Warsaw either
• 13:46
  had a heart attack or died, something he's and it's a few
• 13:51
  days before Rosh Hashanah. How old?
• 13:52
  Are you at this point I. Was in the early 20s and it was
• 13:58
  and and and he said and, and if you did fortune, I said I know
• 14:04
  you're a good belt filler please go and dive in a Warsaw.
• 14:09
  I said OK, so I dive in a Warsaw for three years and after that
• 14:16
  Krakow started requesting me. So for the other 40 years I
• 14:20
  dived in Krakow for Russian Yom Kippur.
• 14:23
  Well, no. First it was Yom Kippur.
• 14:25
  For the first many, many years, it was always Yom Kippur.
• 14:28
  We would leave right after Rosh Hashanah and I'll explain in a
• 14:32
  minute why that's so important. And, and, and then when I would
• 14:37
  go with my father, because you know, my brother Yaakov, So it
• 14:39
  used to be that one year he went, one year I went, one year
• 14:42
  we both went depending on what was going on or how much we
• 14:45
  killed each other the summer before.
• 14:47
  If one of us was punished, the punishment was not to go, which
• 14:50
  was a, a real punishment because everybody like it was great
• 14:53
  going except for the fact that in those days there was no
• 14:55
  sleeping 'cause, you know, my father would go, We'd go to
• 14:58
  cemetery, cemetery, Rav Rebbe, caver the whole Poland.
• 15:01
  We, we would travel the entire Poland in four days.
• 15:04
  Like literally like it was just but and then it started with
• 15:08
  Rosh Hashanah also then 'cause and then it was where Warsaw
• 15:11
  wanted him and Krakow wanted him.
• 15:13
  So the best Shara was OK 111 the other then the best year ever,
• 15:18
  sorry, I meant to cut you off was the year that we ended up in
• 15:21
  Vratzlov, otherwise known as Breslau.
• 15:24
  Now, just so you understand, you know, like I, I, I joke around
• 15:29
  sometimes. I say I went recently to
• 15:31
  Kazakhstan and when I landed, it seems that they never got the
• 15:34
  memo there that communism ended. They they never land.
• 15:38
  They still check your pockets, how much money you're coming in
• 15:40
  with, how much like it was mama's like you.
• 15:41
  Mama felt like I'm still travelling to Poland when I was
• 15:44
  10 years old with my father, you know, and with the soldiers
• 15:48
  outside. So the year of Breslau.
• 15:51
  So I guess at that point the Gamina kept saying other
• 15:54
  neighborhoods want you, you got to go.
• 15:56
  So we end up there and the people were very, very nervous.
• 16:03
  It was scared. Now that neighborhood was one of
• 16:05
  those areas that kept changing. It kept changing Russia, Poland
• 16:08
  or Germany, I don't even remember which one.
• 16:10
  I have to look at the map. But whatever it was, it kept
• 16:11
  changing places and even the people in the shul was scared to
• 16:16
  be in the shul. Like it was a it was a very
• 16:17
  interesting thing. And then at one point, like I
• 16:20
  was taking pictures, 'cause you know, you do that and people
• 16:23
  were getting scared, what are you doing?
• 16:25
  But it was worth everything for blowing Schaefer mutsu yam
• 16:29
  kippur 'cause my father's a zang is in stark blue.
• 16:33
  Schaefer from the balcony in Breslaw that Hitler Yamashimam
• 16:38
  made his first public speech in Poland against the Jews from
• 16:42
  that balcony. So in that same balcony, blowing
• 16:47
  shy from Mutzie M Kemper. So you you knew that balcony was
• 16:50
  there and you did it on purpose, of course.
• 16:53
  Yeah, they were like in in the hotel room, they were like, this
• 16:57
  is Hitler's desk and this is Hitler's chair and this is
• 16:59
  Hitler's this. And they had it in no tone.
• 17:01
  They had this ladder on show. And I said the best way to get
• 17:05
  them is I'm going to blow Schaefer.
• 17:07
  And you know, what were you feeling?
• 17:09
  Like when you did it getting. The Kuman Hitler, that's all.
• 17:13
  What was the Poland like for those 50 years?
• 17:16
  Well. The first years that I was there
• 17:18
  was communist. And what were the Jewish
• 17:20
  community like at in Poland? How many were there such?
• 17:23
  A great question, like after the war, what was left in in in
• 17:26
  Poland I had. About 250 people who are shown
• 17:30
  you kippa. And those are families that came
• 17:32
  back after the Holocaust that. Family there, Israelis doing
• 17:35
  business and what happened in the.
• 17:37
  Early days, it wasn't Israelis in the early days it was it was
• 17:40
  locals. Yeah, I mean that was it was
• 17:42
  local. You're saying like act that
• 17:43
  wanted? To try to or.
• 17:44
  That a lot of them were married. They they were saved by their
• 17:47
  non Jewish neighbor who they then married.
• 17:49
  I mean, there, there was a lot of them.
• 17:50
  We're not judging anybody. We're just stating it like a lot
• 17:52
  of the, I mean, we heard stories of people being saved, amazing
• 17:56
  stories, like just, you know. So for the first couple years
• 18:00
  there was 250 and then it grew, shrunk.
• 18:03
  What was that like? Shrunk and it kept.
• 18:05
  Shrinking over the next 50 years.
• 18:06
  Well, one of the people that we made a birthday party for and
• 18:10
  the the Polish song is till 100, till 100, till 100.
• 18:15
  And the guy turns around and he says they want to kill me.
• 18:17
  I'm already 103. Why they say till 100?
• 18:22
  So, I mean, but there were a lot of old people the year of the
• 18:28
  September 11th, I was at the site well.
• 18:33
  One second, let's go backwards. Our flight was for September
• 18:38
  11th. That was our scheduled flight to
• 18:40
  Poland. That's why I said it was still
• 18:41
  after Rosh Hashanah that year, if I'm not mistaken, right?
• 18:44
  Well, I don't remember it was before.
• 18:45
  OK. And my grand, my nephew was
• 18:47
  supposed to come with us that year was before Rosh Hashanah.
• 18:50
  Might know my nephew had a bar mitzvah that shot.
• 18:52
  This was my nephew's bar mitzvah and the flight was supposed to
• 18:56
  be September 11th and I I for some reason I believe that the
• 19:00
  FAA cancelled all flights. I'm not sure why but they
• 19:04
  cancelled it. I would have called Sweden.
• 19:07
  One second, but we ended up going, we got there a few a few
• 19:10
  days. Later So what?
• 19:11
  Happened is that the old people, 3 or 4 old people that are close
• 19:16
  to 100 went into the American embassy and told the council
• 19:20
  general, this rabbi comes and blesses us every year.
• 19:24
  You got to make sure he comes this year.
• 19:25
  So I got called, I said good, give me a flight, I'll come.
• 19:28
  I mean, I'm ready to come. We ended up coming 3 hours
• 19:34
  before Rosh Hashanah. It was.
• 19:35
  An empty plane, but it had full staff because the airline
• 19:39
  industry needed to show that they're going to bounce back.
• 19:42
  So there was, we were on the plane and 9 stragglers ended up
• 19:48
  that were supposed to go to Oman, Rosh Hashanah, and they
• 19:51
  just needed to get to Poland or wherever.
• 19:53
  And they were already in Europe. I don't, I don't know, pink
• 19:55
  Look, it was the whole thing was, it was hysterical.
• 19:58
  But the crazy part was we flew back and then flew back to
• 20:01
  Poland again. We did two round trips 'cause my
• 20:04
  father came back for my, for the bar mitzvah and then back for
• 20:07
  Yom Kippur. It was like a wacky week.
• 20:10
  I'm. Wondering to myself, you know
• 20:11
  you went at a time that I personally would have been
• 20:14
  scared to go I. Walked out of the shul, Yeah and
• 20:18
  the guards that was standing with with M16 or whatever the
• 20:23
  the the thing was around the shul, but emotional.
• 20:26
  They were standing on the roofs of the hotels and everything
• 20:29
  else around there protecting me and I walked out and Mr. Jacobot
• 20:33
  says to me, runs out, says to me go back and go back in.
• 20:37
  What happened? She said they just came down
• 20:39
  from the police to say they can't give you security unless
• 20:41
  you're inside the shul. You know, please stay inside.
• 20:44
  Don't, don't, don't become a think that draw attention or
• 20:48
  something like that. When I went to my hotel at that
• 20:51
  time was like a 15 minute walk. They had cars full of guys with
• 20:56
  machine guns escorting me back and forth.
• 20:59
  I get a call from Mrs. Jacobovic once, hysterical.
• 21:02
  The communists want to demolish the mixer.
• 21:05
  Why? Because the roof, instead of
• 21:07
  being like straight, is a drop like this.
• 21:10
  And they're afraid the Jewish woman's going to be killed by a
• 21:12
  stone falling from the roof, which is a phony excuse because
• 21:17
  the communists threw down churches and mikvis and shules.
• 21:20
  They don't. Need excuses any.
• 21:21
  Religious institution, if they had a way, throw them down.
• 21:24
  So I told her, tell them what they don't want to hear.
• 21:26
  He says what I said. I'm going to rebuild it and they
• 21:29
  have no right throwing it down. I'm going to rebuild it.
• 21:32
  I came back to Poland and I said I don't know what you guys want.
• 21:36
  There's nothing wrong with the roof, but you want give me a
• 21:39
  price, how much it costs to to rebuild the roof and I'll do it.
• 21:45
  But I need one thing from you, a letter from the mayor that it's
• 21:49
  100% legal, everything is fixed and everything that once I get
• 21:52
  that letter, I pay you here's two and a half, $1000 how much
• 21:56
  you want. That's five and a half thousand.
• 21:57
  It came out 800,000. The one good thing about
• 22:00
  communism is also shroud some money always.
• 22:03
  Like if you get $4.00 four zlotos for a dollar by the
• 22:06
  communist you get 12 you can. Negotiate differently, yes, so.
• 22:10
  I said when do we get the rest? I said I have the rest right
• 22:12
  here in my hand. I give it to you when you're
• 22:14
  finished or when you give me the letter, because I know how you
• 22:17
  guys go. The comedies, they take 10 jobs
• 22:19
  at a time and they start this one and they said we'll be back
• 22:22
  as soon as we finish that one, isn't it?
• 22:23
  I said, I don't want to hear that.
• 22:25
  I give you a 10 to two of them. I go into a Bob of a roof.
• 22:29
  I used to go to him every time, every year before I went, and he
• 22:32
  gave me handwritten Polish letters to the people there that
• 22:35
  he knew. People there that he knew he
• 22:38
  gave me. So I tell him about Mikvah.
• 22:42
  She goes like this takes out $1000 and says here's your first
• 22:47
  payment. So what I mean, he says, I know
• 22:49
  38 women that use that mikvah and there's no way you should
• 22:53
  let them demolish that mikvah. That mikvah must must say it's
• 22:56
  for my time yet for me and and this and that.
• 23:03
  And that's how it worked with the communists.
• 23:05
  So I mean also. Have you ever lost luggage in
• 23:08
  communist time? It was great because we, you
• 23:12
  know, travelling in those days, I was 988 or nine years old.
• 23:16
  I remember like it was yesterday and it's a few days before
• 23:20
  Yomptiff and I have no clothes. I'm not going to.
• 23:22
  How am I going to shul? I have no clothing.
• 23:24
  So this lady there misses what's her name, not Yakubovich, the
• 23:28
  other one that was like the competition, which after
• 23:32
  communism fell, she went back to Russia.
• 23:33
  So then they claimed, oh, she was really KGB, That's why she
• 23:36
  was here. But we don't know.
• 23:37
  But we don't know the real story anyway, So she sends us to a
• 23:40
  store. Now in those days when you went
• 23:42
  shopping in a store, especially as a kid, like it's the
• 23:45
  fascinating. So first of all, the amount of
• 23:47
  money that you get is like my father said, you know, you
• 23:50
  you're getting three to four times more than what it's worth
• 23:52
  A. Three piece suit with a velvet
• 23:54
  collar. Beautiful.
• 23:56
  Cost $3. So we bought 2/3.
• 23:58
  American dollars didn't know which side it was.
• 24:01
  The. Bigger the bigger one and.
• 24:03
  Then this other woman was able to do a shot in his chest and.
• 24:06
  She did a shot in the yard. And she said she did OK.
• 24:08
  We believed it. It was good.
• 24:10
  The point is, I got a whole new wardrobe for like 10-10 bucks,
• 24:13
  you know, but I remember like the, the parts that stick out is
• 24:17
  I would be, you know, waiting on line.
• 24:19
  So you go to one line, they give you a paper that you're allowed
• 24:22
  to go look at the clothing. You get the clothing, you get
• 24:27
  another paper that it's being held.
• 24:28
  You then go to the cash register, which has a soldier at
• 24:31
  the cash register. You make the payment, right,
• 24:34
  like a full army uniform that suits you make the payment, they
• 24:38
  give you another piece of paper, you go back and then they give
• 24:41
  you the product. And that was how they were
• 24:43
  working for the. Government, each one of these
• 24:45
  people what that was their Penusa.
• 24:46
  They were working for the government, but I.
• 24:48
  Do want to say, people make jokes all the time and I have to
• 24:52
  say something that I, I, I remember when I was 11 years
• 24:56
  old, they were just getting the money to build the first major
• 25:01
  highway from, I don't remember, it was Vrotzlov to Varsha or
• 25:05
  Varsha to I remember which one it was.
• 25:06
  But whatever it was, it was a major highway.
• 25:09
  Major highway meant there was going to be two lanes in each
• 25:11
  direction. And they were preparing for gas
• 25:14
  stations. You know, there was those that
• 25:16
  and there was brilliant because they had the guardrail, you
• 25:19
  know, between the North and South.
• 25:20
  And like every few miles they had a no U-turn sign, you know,
• 25:23
  like on the Thruway. But there was no opening in the
• 25:26
  guardrails. I'm just saying it was an
• 25:29
  interesting thing to see. Like, OK, I won't.
• 25:33
  Mickey, you turned there. Even if you try.
• 25:36
  Yeah, Rabbi, I'm curious because you're saying about the the
• 25:39
  times of communism and you're going back to Poland, Krakow,
• 25:41
  wherever you were in the world then.
• 25:42
  You're in your 20s, you're young.
• 25:45
  From then till now, have you ever been afraid?
• 25:49
  Where it's not in my second in in my dictionary.
• 25:52
  That word doesn't exist in my dictionary or in.
• 25:53
  His DNA. Except it's not you.
• 25:55
  Were to be afraid what would have been the scariest situation
• 25:58
  you ever that I'm. Not doing what the ambition
• 25:59
  wants me to do. That's all of you.
• 26:01
  The scariest situation. I love you, I.
• 26:03
  Love him too, but I I have to say, Tati, with all due respect,
• 26:06
  I'm not allowed to argue with you because you're my father,
• 26:08
  but you're scared of mommy. I just want to go on record.
• 26:14
  I was wondering where somebody. Else, what about mommy?
• 26:17
  I wouldn't be able to do any of the things that I'm doing now,
• 26:20
  but he deserves a lot, a lot of credit.
• 26:22
  Wow, I told. You.
• 26:23
  He's scared of her. Nobody believes me.
• 26:25
  How did? You.
• 26:25
  How did you meet her, by the way, when you said she was a
• 26:29
  travel agent? No.
• 26:30
  He was divorced for many years. Is that what happens?
• 26:32
  I'm the product of a second marriage.
• 26:34
  Yours, mine and ours got. It my father.
• 26:36
  Was divorced for many years. My mother was divorced for a
• 26:39
  little bit, whatever amount of time.
• 26:41
  And somehow she reached out to my father for something, for
• 26:43
  help. It doesn't matter what I
• 26:44
  whatever didn't matter. And he decided he liked her.
• 26:47
  And he was very well saw. He was a very eligible bachelor,
• 26:51
  right? He was already involved in
• 26:52
  community politics, right? Rabbi Glock.
• 26:54
  Rabbi Glock. And then he met my mother.
• 26:57
  This. Fascinating piece of information
• 26:59
  that I didn't know, but yeah, Scott has started after your
• 27:02
  divorce. No, that's what I'm saying.
• 27:05
  Something like that. I mean what?
• 27:06
  Happened. Then how did you get involved in
• 27:07
  this? Yeah, one thing.
• 27:08
  Happened that somebody was killed in a big shoe.
• 27:11
  The guy has a basement, washing machines and dryers and, and,
• 27:18
  and basements. And he walked into a basement
• 27:20
  and he saw the guys breaking into his machine and taking the
• 27:24
  money out. She started yelling at them and
• 27:26
  they killed him with a knife. They just killed him and they
• 27:28
  left him there. And I went to the medical
• 27:32
  examiner's office and I saw Doctor Halpern.
• 27:35
  He was the medical examiner and the chief medical examiner.
• 27:37
  She said, what are you doing here?
• 27:39
  I said I can't just stop an autopsy.
• 27:42
  He says, you came to what I said to stop an autopsy.
• 27:45
  He says, you know, this is city property, you're not allowed
• 27:47
  here. I can arrest you.
• 27:49
  I said that we'll talk about tomorrow.
• 27:51
  Right now, let's talk about this person who died.
• 27:55
  So I said maybe we can do something.
• 27:57
  So we ended up doing what they call now partial autopsy just to
• 28:01
  get a cause of death and he said I'll stop the minute other.
• 28:04
  Than the knife, right? No, no.
• 28:06
  So this is with the cut. No, this is with but limited.
• 28:09
  Limited. Limited.
• 28:10
  Is what they call it again now already Bakasham, you know, in
• 28:13
  cases like that, but. And and day later then we made
• 28:18
  the levaya and a day later I went down again, she says, what
• 28:22
  are you doing here today? I said I came to be arrested.
• 28:24
  I promise you he liked that so much that he became a friend of
• 28:29
  mine and both Hashem were able to stop hundreds, thousands of
• 28:33
  autopsies because I had a very good relationship with him and
• 28:38
  both Hashem. Do you feel like that was your
• 28:41
  first entry into that? Was one of I one of the best
• 28:44
  story that I that I have of my father's entry was when my
• 28:48
  father was in Besmirchelian, there was a fire on a Friday
• 28:52
  night. Who?
• 28:53
  Was this yeshiva there when you were there?
• 28:55
  Above him. But he was very sick, you know
• 28:58
  what I mean? Like like, like this.
• 28:59
  And then was it a gun and a show still?
• 29:02
  I'm sorry, for those that don't know, Basement Alien is in
• 29:04
  Muncie at that point. Yeah, that's before Lakewood
• 29:07
  began. It was the club.
• 29:08
  Together. Together, this was the.
• 29:10
  This was the. Input Who else was going who?
• 29:12
  Else went through basement alien that you remember.
• 29:14
  Give me some names, Gidal. You sure, Gidal?
• 29:16
  You. Sure was a Shiva OK, he gave us
• 29:18
  a Shiva got. It the moncache OK?
• 29:21
  Keep going. Who else you remember?
• 29:23
  Classmates. Yeah, keep going.
• 29:25
  And Koopitz. I'm from the Koopitz family, the
• 29:29
  Bianchi. Kamenetsky was the Bianchi.
• 29:31
  Yeah, it. Was it was the place you had to
• 29:34
  be? Yeah, it was.
• 29:35
  That place, thanks for bringing flavour to that.
• 29:37
  Obviously very smart, still is and, but do you remember?
• 29:40
  Do you remember the story he's about to say?
• 29:42
  Yeah, of course. I thought maybe.
• 29:43
  We'll hear it from you. What what happened there Friday?
• 29:45
  Night so right after she gave she a Friday night but between
• 29:49
  the eating and that they went for a walk a little bit and then
• 29:53
  and all the fighters turned the hose right on us what the fire
• 29:59
  instead of fighting sitting on the fire they turned it on us
• 30:03
  they started spraying us with water the.
• 30:05
  Local fire. The local fire.
• 30:07
  Department So after that one of the guys came in to me and he
• 30:11
  told me Bernie Gola, he says I want to run for Fire
• 30:14
  Commissioner. The North, to vote for Fire
• 30:16
  Commissioner have to be a citizen.
• 30:17
  You have to be, you have to be a resident.
• 30:20
  He says you have contacts here with the with the community and
• 30:24
  the church is opposing me. So can you help him?
• 30:28
  I said sure. What they did to us on Friday
• 30:31
  night, I said I'll do anything for him.
• 30:34
  The votes used to be in the fire department.
• 30:36
  The commission's voted for themselves.
• 30:38
  So you had seven to two, 5 to 8, something like that.
• 30:40
  You know, there was no all of a sudden the church came out with
• 30:43
  a paper vote for this and this guy.
• 30:45
  And OK, so I brought the guy into the Shiva and we made
• 30:50
  announcements and first people can start voting.
• 30:54
  They said, hold it, you can't vote.
• 30:56
  What do you mean you can't vote? You need a voting machine that
• 30:58
  too many people should have turning up.
• 31:00
  We ended up winning 350 to 35. Yeah, that.
• 31:04
  That time. So they made me Chaplin for the
• 31:07
  for the fire department at that time.
• 31:09
  Ah, so that's a good one. That's a good one too.
• 31:11
  So that's a good one, but. The entry, but there's.
• 31:14
  Also other parts to that story that followed suit many years
• 31:17
  later. Let's hear your.
• 31:18
  Your your side. No, no it's not.
• 31:20
  My side it's that's what I've yeah, your your.
• 31:22
  Memory. Yeah.
• 31:22
  So there were not my memory. My memory, I remember hearing.
• 31:25
  So some of the people that were involved in the fire department,
• 31:28
  it was very, I mean, Muncie Fire department was very anti-Semitic
• 31:30
  before this. I mean, as a group of people,
• 31:33
  they were just, you know, nobody was.
• 31:35
  So they're. Coming in as a joke and spring
• 31:37
  the Jewish kids. Or they were.
• 31:38
  They were anti semites instead of spring they saw.
• 31:40
  An opportunity to just so. There was one of the big people
• 31:43
  that was involved somehow wanted to keep his position as chief or
• 31:47
  whatever. And my father made a deal with
• 31:49
  the new commissioner. Like, listen, you know, the word
• 31:51
  got out that if you upset, you know, Edgar Glock, then he's
• 31:55
  going to help put you out of business.
• 31:57
  So this guy became close with my father.
• 31:59
  Anyway, we'll Fast forward many, many, many years later.
• 32:02
  Haksala is working on getting their licensing.
• 32:05
  And there were fights in every level, but one of the biggest
• 32:08
  ending fights was the largest, most powerful union was the Fire
• 32:13
  Chiefs Association in New York State.
• 32:15
  Because at the end of the day, most New York State is living in
• 32:18
  areas where the fire department is EMS is fire is everything.
• 32:22
  And they were coming out against Hatzalah.
• 32:24
  And my father went and had a meeting with the head of the
• 32:27
  Fire Chief Association, which turned out to be that chief that
• 32:30
  he. Years.
• 32:31
  Ago kept his job and you know, so these things the next.
• 32:36
  Paragraph on chat chief. PT Look at that, you know?
• 32:38
  It's perfect. He Co founded Hatzalah in New
• 32:41
  York. Yes, the volunteer emergency
• 32:42
  responders service. So he's got serious saving lives
• 32:46
  cred, not just shul talk. That's what it's saying, that's
• 32:49
  what chat. GPT said yes.
• 32:51
  The. Story was that Herschel Weber
• 32:55
  was the founder of He went to the South move of and he told
• 32:59
  the South move of. I witnessed 6 people dying.
• 33:01
  A lady was running for a boss the avenue she turned blue.
• 33:05
  She fell out and turned blue. 6 police cars came and they went.
• 33:09
  Nobody knew what to do. They were just saying yeah, and
• 33:10
  and she died and then there by one of the shules.
• 33:14
  All the people ran out at one time and they ran over a guy who
• 33:17
  and who's dead and this and that.
• 33:20
  So sat N told them there's a Albania that says any place that
• 33:26
  there's no atulum Jews shouldn't live there.
• 33:31
  She said we don't know exactly what we're in, but call the
• 33:34
  organization at Sola. What he said gave him $100 at
• 33:38
  that time 100,000 and he said this will help you more than
• 33:41
  anything else and go to bar upon get Rabbi Glock and you and him
• 33:46
  will have muzzle in making the organization so your.
• 33:50
  Relationship with the Godolumn of yesteryear is fascinating.
• 33:56
  Your history with everyone and their love and trust in you.
• 34:01
  Yeah, I'd may have asked him Shana, but when you come up, the
• 34:06
  amount of Neshamah's greeting you of favours you've done for
• 34:09
  the biggest gadalam out there, it's mind blowing, you know?
• 34:12
  What's going on before? That let's go even back.
• 34:14
  My father was still a Talmud on Main, by the way, first of all
• 34:17
  on Main. And I'd may have asked for my
• 34:18
  maybe shishim, my father maybe shishim.
• 34:20
  Why are we stopping income? Tax.
• 34:23
  But you talk about stories with Gadalam.
• 34:25
  So this is probably my favorite story.
• 34:29
  And I'm I'm going to say it because not that you don't want
• 34:32
  to say it, but if I say it, I have my my twist to it.
• 34:34
  Maybe is my father was a cocklaful already as a kid and
• 34:40
  he was in Camp Aguda from the first day Camp Aguda opened up
• 34:42
  in High Mountain New York. We're not going to discuss how
• 34:45
  old he was when he used to take the camp truck home with him
• 34:48
  after the summer for the whole year and my freshman.
• 34:52
  Didn't kill you, no. This was Bree Breeze.
• 34:55
  This one might. Tell me.
• 34:57
  Anyway Long story short my father gets reuven the making of
• 35:03
  Bris and Miss Madrigalian and he sends my father to drive to
• 35:06
  Williamsburg to pick up the SAT Maraba to be sounded by the Bris
• 35:10
  and who's. Making the breath.
• 35:11
  Rubruvain Fernandekovsky. Rubruvain.
• 35:14
  Fernandekle. Fernandekle and he's has in the
• 35:16
  SAT Mehruv, I'm just hello this. Is This is why I said this story
• 35:21
  to me, you know, especially after recent events with rabbis
• 35:24
  and letters and stuff. This type of story really is
• 35:27
  gives us a renewed but he tells my father very important.
• 35:32
  You have to be there on time because I told the SAT Mehrabu
• 35:37
  that we're making the Bris Bismani and he's going to be
• 35:40
  ready. Now, mind you, first of all,
• 35:41
  there was no police escort, no lights, no Cadillac.
• 35:44
  I think he was driving a pickup truck at the time.
• 35:47
  That was good enough for everybody, right?
• 35:48
  This was the days. Anyway, gets to Williamsburg,
• 35:52
  8:00, 8/30, 9:00. Rabbits not coming out.
• 35:57
  Finally, whenever it is, the rabbit comes out and they drive
• 36:02
  there and tell them what happens when you get to Muncie, when you
• 36:05
  get to the Yeshiva Ruvain, OK Ruvain turns to something and
• 36:09
  goes Sat Mahov and Staten Pasuk Vayashka Mahremba Baker,
• 36:16
  Vayashka Mahremba Baker. And the SAT Maraba turns to him
• 36:20
  and goes, all right, the lit fox.
• 36:26
  And then he turns to my father and goes, oh, the deepest niche,
• 36:29
  to Kamar. So.
• 36:31
  That that was the part that I liked, that little cuteness of
• 36:33
  like even in that. So just for those in English,
• 36:35
  right, So Ruben was saying to me, rebel, right?
• 36:38
  Because you grew up with us. I didn't understand making it.
• 36:40
  You're so fucked. I didn't.
• 36:41
  Understand. I'll say it in.
• 36:42
  Hebrew Then you'll make believe anyway, 'cause you know, you
• 36:45
  still, you still make believe you're Israeli.
• 36:47
  How many? Listeners, we have that
• 36:48
  appreciate that Yiddish, by the way.
• 36:49
  Please comment below. By the way, absolutely.
• 36:51
  Comment like share tweet XLMNOP everything in Yiddish in
• 36:56
  Yiddish, Ruben said. When we learned about Avrom
• 36:59
  Avinu and the bris, it says Vayashka Avrom got up early in
• 37:03
  the morning. So 'cause I'll say early in the
• 37:05
  morning meant you get up early to do a mitzvah, you don't wait.
• 37:09
  And from there is where we learned that we do a briss in
• 37:11
  the morning. Otherwise we would all make
• 37:13
  afternoon evening brisses before night, whatever.
• 37:15
  But that's the reason. And the SAT Mareba's response
• 37:18
  was, yes, it says that he got up early in the morning, but then
• 37:22
  it says that he had to saddle his donkey.
• 37:25
  And the SAT Mareba said saddling donkey is the equivalent of
• 37:28
  preparation. Just because I'm not getting up
• 37:31
  early in the morning to come to you doesn't mean I'm not up.
• 37:34
  I might be up. I'm learning, going to
• 37:35
  Mikhvidat, doing all my other things.
• 37:37
  That's called preparation. But because he used the pusuk of
• 37:42
  with the hamar with a donkey and people used to ride donkeys, he
• 37:46
  quickly turned to my father to say, but you're not the donkey,
• 37:49
  so that it shouldn't be said. So you say stories about Sadiq
• 37:53
  and right of yesteryear. So you know, growing up and we
• 37:58
  say this as a child, but my father was very close, whether
• 38:00
  it's from Spa de Sharabanam, Rava Roshi artis role at my
• 38:04
  Hassan. No, at my son's my first bris I
• 38:07
  made, we used a bottle that was from Rev Kaduri.
• 38:09
  You know, like I'm saying like Hassid de Sharabanam
• 38:12
  litfischerabanam. You know, we still talk about
• 38:14
  dancing at all Hassanas and and growing up it was everybody.
• 38:17
  Had to come on to him, I. Don't know, Say, come on to him.
• 38:20
  You know, I use the line. As long as they need you more
• 38:23
  than you need them, you're in a good place.
• 38:24
  But we don't have to say it like that.
• 38:27
  But it's true. He.
• 38:28
  He was an, you know, Swiss Army knife.
• 38:31
  There was. Nobody else for.
• 38:32
  Everything in Claudius that went wrong right was.
• 38:36
  Absolutely. Rabbi.
• 38:37
  What what is your recollection throughout your life of what
• 38:40
  people called you mostly for? If you can sum it up, you know
• 38:44
  from originally was autopsies. Autopsy.
• 38:46
  Parking tickets. Stopping.
• 38:48
  Stopping autopsies from happening, and you were,
• 38:50
  obviously. A guy calls me up and tells me
• 38:55
  that his father walked out of a house and walked between two
• 39:00
  cars and fell down and died. So he was in Queens in que gun.
• 39:04
  So he went to Rabbi Schonfeld. Femi Schonfeld told him no way
• 39:08
  could stop north of some guy dies in the street.
• 39:10
  There's got to be north of thing.
• 39:12
  Then he went to Rabbi Steinberg. Parrot Steinberg told him the
• 39:17
  same thing. They called him the patients
• 39:19
  that have had it for frustration.
• 39:20
  He says, what do I do? He says here's the Rabbi Glock's
• 39:23
  number. Call him.
• 39:25
  Just by the way, another name, yeah.
• 39:28
  Another name, right? Very, very close.
• 39:31
  Mind blowing. And and and the guy calls me up.
• 39:36
  I called the medical examiner calls me back.
• 39:39
  He says in 10 minutes send an undertaker, you can take the
• 39:42
  body. The guy never forgot the family
• 39:45
  keeps on even start telling the story now it says like pictures.
• 39:49
  I haven't gave them a number and and and and and that's it.
• 39:51
  So I mean at that time, how did? You do it.
• 39:53
  What was your tactic? How did you stop so many
• 39:56
  autopsies when the law well. Before changing the law, wait,
• 39:59
  don't forget, my father changed the law.
• 40:01
  But let's by the way, I just want to interject and say
• 40:03
  something that when Hatzalah was becoming legal, just to add that
• 40:07
  in because it's an important keynote, one of the people in
• 40:10
  government and politics was yelling and screaming that my
• 40:12
  father was not a patriot because he's changing laws to fit the
• 40:17
  community or something, right? The the the.
• 40:19
  The Kehilda and Lung. He said you're not proper.
• 40:24
  I said, what are you even proper?
• 40:27
  I said, what do you guys do when somebody dies and they make an
• 40:29
  autopsy? He says we make sure that the
• 40:31
  medical examiner and the undertaker don't tell the
• 40:33
  family. I said that's what you're doing
• 40:35
  for 30 years. You're telling people, but they
• 40:38
  make autopsies. No, they have to, but you're not
• 40:42
  proper. I said what?
• 40:43
  What means not proper? He says you make sure that they
• 40:46
  don't make autopsies. So I said, so what's not proper
• 40:49
  with that? He said we can do like that.
• 40:53
  I said, listen, did they make autopsies?
• 40:59
  And we would argue with them that if you want to do it for
• 41:02
  research, do it on people that don't have an objection.
• 41:05
  But we had a religious objection and I included the Muslims in
• 41:09
  that because the Muslims called me also to stop autopsies
• 41:12
  because they also want to burial immediately and then autopsy is
• 41:16
  the. Biggest problem with an autopsy?
• 41:18
  Excuse me for interrupting Bizarion.
• 41:19
  Ms. It's the. Bizarion, Ms. and the delay.
• 41:22
  I'm sorry. Explain what that I was thinking
• 41:24
  the same question explain it how in that.
• 41:26
  OK, so from the of the. Of the dead person.
• 41:29
  There's two things. The way you're born is the way
• 41:30
  you're supposed to be buried from 100% spiritual.
• 41:33
  So how long I can spiritual? So the answer is yes.
• 41:37
  So the immediate burial is a very interesting thing because
• 41:40
  people have this terminology of saying 24 hours, the WhatsApp is
• 41:44
  24 hours does it's as quickly as possible.
• 41:46
  So when I do trainings, I tell, you know, whether it's law
• 41:49
  enforcement or medical examiners, I tell them, listen,
• 41:50
  if somebody dies in Israel 8:00 in the morning, but lunch,
• 41:53
  they're already in the ground. Meaning it takes time to get a
• 41:56
  death certificate to get this, to get that.
• 41:58
  But it's so important by the Jewish community that we do it
• 42:01
  right away. But I'm talking about the story
• 42:03
  earlier when, when, when, when you were first working on the
• 42:06
  law in America, when the guy said he's not a patriot because
• 42:10
  he's changing the law and whoever it was that was the
• 42:13
  speaker of the City Council or something gets up and goes just
• 42:15
  the opposite. That makes him a real patriot
• 42:18
  because he is going to work with the legal system to change laws
• 42:22
  and not trying to go against the law.
• 42:25
  So that was A and. Then we had a meeting of rabbi's
• 42:28
  meeting with District Attorney Hines, and a Reform rabbi came
• 42:32
  in. He was.
• 42:33
  The longest serving District Attorney in Manhattan.
• 42:36
  No, in Brooklyn, Manhattan was Morgantown.
• 42:39
  And. Then she's me, this Reform
• 42:42
  rabbi, he says, Heinz, how can you let this man be a member?
• 42:45
  You know what he did? He says what he's violating the
• 42:48
  law does run to me. I said we changed the law, he
• 42:54
  says. But that's violating it.
• 42:55
  So Heinz says, no, I'm going to go after you.
• 42:57
  You're the one who's violating the law because now the law is
• 42:59
  with him, so you don't. And the guy got so embarrassed.
• 43:03
  What? Was the law change?
• 43:04
  What was the? Law Mario Cuomo was governor.
• 43:08
  Interesting. And I go into Mario Cuomo and I
• 43:10
  said, listen, we have a case in Muncie where a guy lost the
• 43:17
  control of a car. I hit the House of a rabbi and
• 43:20
  hit a swarm closet and a swarm closet fell down on a chair, an
• 43:24
  infant in a crib and killed a baby.
• 43:27
  I called up the the coroner and I said, when do I get the body
• 43:31
  for the middle of the burial? He just want to finish the
• 43:33
  autopsy. Autopsy, you remember, cause of
• 43:36
  death. So right now chicken pox.
• 43:38
  I mean, it's like I don't. Understand you it's obvious I
• 43:41
  mean, because. I can, I can.
• 43:45
  So I called the County Executive and I said last year you're
• 43:50
  running in three-year, in 3-3 weeks, you're running for
• 43:53
  election. The last time you won three
• 43:56
  years ago by 14,000 votes in this room between Visionists and
• 44:00
  Square Muncie and New City is that I have 52,000 votes.
• 44:06
  You want to really be embarrassed?
• 44:08
  He says what do you want me to do?
• 44:10
  I said make sure the guy can't say because I can.
• 44:12
  So what do you mean by fire him? He said, no, just come to resign
• 44:16
  because there's a sickness in the family and he has to take
• 44:18
  care of his family. The next day, Journal news
• 44:22
  headlines, medical examiner resigns because of sickness and
• 44:25
  family. So I mean, this is this is this
• 44:28
  is when but I went to Mario Cuomo and I said, listen, we
• 44:31
  have problems with them. So he says to me, OK, you get
• 44:35
  Shelly Silva, let him get the Assembly vote the Republicans,
• 44:39
  that's your department. He says to me, because it was
• 44:42
  Republican Senate, so you work with the Republican Senate and
• 44:46
  I'll sign the bill. When it comes to me, I said no
• 44:49
  problem and just. So you know, Dennis was again,
• 44:51
  my father was very close with Mario Cuomo.
• 44:53
  My father worked with Mario from the day he came in and did it.
• 44:56
  But good guy. Yes, very, very.
• 44:58
  He's the reason why I'd solo became legal.
• 45:00
  He's the reason why the autopsy law was passed when they were
• 45:03
  drafting the law. So the IT was based on religious
• 45:06
  reasons. But Dennis Raps is who was very
• 45:08
  involved, right in helping you cope or something, President.
• 45:11
  Of Copa. So Shelly says to me I'll write
• 45:15
  up the law but tell me which rabbi you're going to have
• 45:18
  that's going to say that this law is according to Aloha.
• 45:21
  I said rally big OK so I'm endpoint, we rally big.
• 45:25
  Dennis Rapp came the head of OU, the head of I mean 5 big sharp
• 45:30
  lawyers. And then Shelly says to me on
• 45:33
  the way up, OK, who's going to read this to the rabbi?
• 45:36
  I said I can read it himself. No, no.
• 45:38
  It's written on legalese party or the first part party.
• 45:41
  Second way, don't worry about it.
• 45:43
  I'll be goes through one page, same page, third page stops.
• 45:48
  What does it say over here? There's no autopsies on Jews.
• 45:53
  Wait a minute. You mean if somebody kills a
• 45:55
  Jew, then we know autopsies, they won't be able to convict
• 45:58
  them. Nobody made you balibles on
• 46:01
  Jewish blood. If a pie kills a Jew, we have to
• 46:04
  put them there. We have to convict them.
• 46:06
  There's no such thing as as as as as just saying because he's
• 46:10
  Jewish isn't making autopsy. So take that out.
• 46:13
  All the lawyers were shocked in case of.
• 46:15
  Murder so. There's 2/2 he made.
• 46:18
  The murder. And a.
• 46:21
  Murder more than. COVID one second.
• 46:24
  So let me tell you, when did public public health emergency?
• 46:26
  First of all, that's a foresight that nobody ever thought of.
• 46:29
  What was his husband? The same way the Jews were
• 46:32
  blamed for the Black Plague and all these other things.
• 46:34
  If Kasperscholam something happens, Jews can't be blamed.
• 46:38
  The only time that I remember it almost being an issue and at the
• 46:42
  last second it wasn't because somebody else had just died like
• 46:45
  an hour before they were going to do the autopsy was by swine
• 46:48
  flu where there was a kid that was nifter And the medical
• 46:53
  examiner's like, listen, we know the law, but public health
• 46:56
  emergency, we can't find anything on this.
• 46:58
  Like we need to do this. And my father went, I think to
• 47:03
  Friedman, the tanker roof of somebody.
• 47:04
  Who did you go to? He goes, he goes, Nope, this is
• 47:06
  he goes, he's right. Meaning this is what This is the
• 47:10
  reason why. This is why Ravik.
• 47:13
  Put that in there for this reason.
• 47:15
  So they agreed, but then literally like right before they
• 47:18
  had somebody else but but. Mario Cuomo called me up.
• 47:23
  I can't sign. You got it passed.
• 47:24
  Oh, so I got to the Republicans. So they said tonight's the last
• 47:28
  session, the last session of the year, and we're going to meet in
• 47:34
  caucus. I'm inviting you as a guest for
• 47:37
  the Republican caucus. You speak to them.
• 47:39
  If you convince, convince them you got it.
• 47:42
  I went to Republican caucus and I told him I have a fight in
• 47:45
  Nassau County. A medical examiner, I called him
• 47:50
  up. I said that a passenger got
• 47:51
  killed in a car accident. He says, well, I can make an
• 47:54
  autopsy. I said why?
• 47:55
  Because I can so but passenger, you can't.
• 47:58
  You can't blame a passenger for for an accident if the person
• 48:02
  was on drugs or something. I mean, there's nothing that you
• 48:05
  can do with a passenger. Well, I can.
• 48:08
  So I told this to them and then I told the story about the death
• 48:11
  in one scene and they turned around.
• 48:13
  They said, OK, you got our vote. So then we came up for a vote,
• 48:18
  20 to 4:00 in the morning and one of the last votes in that
• 48:20
  session. Mind you, mind you, one second,
• 48:23
  one second pause. You have to understand in a
• 48:25
  normal 19, I have to look it up 8990 somewhere I have to look up
• 48:30
  the the year. But you have to understand, just
• 48:33
  to pause for a second, in order for something to get past, you
• 48:36
  need both sides, right, the Assembly and the Senate.
• 48:39
  And you have to use the same verbiage, the same language.
• 48:42
  And if any side has to tweak something, it's got to go back
• 48:45
  and forth. This is a process that sometimes
• 48:47
  takes more than one gubernatorial cycle for people
• 48:50
  to change along. Here, we're talking about not
• 48:52
  just fast tracking but like, zooming right through it.
• 48:56
  Now continue. I'm sorry.
• 48:57
  Anyway, so just the. Listeners need to understand
• 48:59
  what this process is. Maya that you're talking about
• 49:02
  and that's what I wanted to get to next.
• 49:04
  There's some some other scatter the Shmaya stories so.
• 49:06
  Maria, Maria Collins says to me. I can't sign it.
• 49:10
  All the medical examiners, the coroners, the sheriff's and the
• 49:13
  police chiefs are calling me saying not to, not to sign it
• 49:16
  because we go in case of homicide.
• 49:18
  I said wait a minute, hold on, Look at the bill, look at page
• 49:22
  three. That language was taken out.
• 49:26
  It specifically says homicide there.
• 49:29
  Oh, so I can answer that, Karen, if they said, OK, so when we
• 49:33
  make the signing, how many rabbis are going to bring?
• 49:37
  I said 50s, That's too much. That's too much.
• 49:39
  She says Rabbi Shearer going to come.
• 49:42
  Might you share it? That's what he was interested
• 49:43
  in. So I said very sure is out of
• 49:45
  town. But Rabbi Bloom, who's his
• 49:48
  assessment will be there representing him.
• 49:51
  OK, We come there to think about 35 rabbis, and his pen is going
• 49:58
  from back and forth from the veto message to the passing
• 50:00
  message, veto passing veto, passing room like that.
• 50:04
  All of a sudden he says, OK, I want to bring someone in to meet
• 50:10
  you people, the head of the New York State Supreme Court.
• 50:13
  I'm nominating her for the Supreme Court of the state of
• 50:16
  New York and the Chief Justice and the first Jew and the first
• 50:20
  woman to have that position, but the first Jew.
• 50:23
  So everybody clapped on this and that.
• 50:25
  Then he talked about the GET law, which wasn't too much and.
• 50:31
  Why not throw the gun at all? They they clapped like this Then
• 50:37
  it came to passing the the law, the Shelley Silver you come here
• 50:40
  this one Marino from the from the Senate, you come here this
• 50:43
  none. Then he was giving up pens and
• 50:45
  he signed it and everybody got up and started applauding and
• 50:48
  it's not. And both Hashem there.
• 50:50
  What a. Moment, but one second moment.
• 50:51
  More than that, he serves as a me and he should also have a
• 50:54
  lifting and a all the work he's done on behalf of Claude
• 50:58
  yourself. You guys work together and Oh
• 50:59
  yeah, so many, so many you got. My my title and Scotch all the
• 51:03
  state one and Shelley want to they too, right?
• 51:06
  Yeah, State. Well, Shelley?
• 51:07
  Is a state too. But by the way, you just
• 51:10
  understand that, that, you know, you talk about these things.
• 51:13
  So I'm gonna have to throw in a little trauma plug over here.
• 51:17
  So my philosophy is when it leaves. 3 Glock without putting.
• 51:22
  So my my philosophy in life is that people are very successful
• 51:27
  when they have to prove something.
• 51:29
  And my father unfortunately lost his mother when he was very
• 51:32
  young. I was. 8 years old and.
• 51:34
  Then his father got remarried, so he was raised by his father
• 51:36
  and his stepmother, But more by Rev Vick, you know, Same, you
• 51:39
  know, but so I people say what gave him that kayak.
• 51:43
  I said you just needed to prove something.
• 51:44
  You know, not I'm not saying it in like a in a bad way.
• 51:47
  Yeah, but but even before the autopsy, let's one second you
• 51:52
  want to continue going down with this is like the ChatGPT.
• 51:54
  No, don't be somebody this is. Perfect.
• 51:56
  No, no, no. There's just.
• 51:57
  One other thing that says here that it's like it's, it's
• 51:59
  obvious that this happened to you, but the Presidential Award
• 52:02
  for community Service was given to you in 1984 and chat Chief,
• 52:06
  yes, the United States President's Award, you also got
• 52:10
  that that badge. So you had a lot of badges to
• 52:12
  pull out if somebody pulled you over with.
• 52:13
  Nobody. It was better for me.
• 52:14
  It was better for me because when I was his son, Zeesh quiet,
• 52:18
  no stories. We we had some stories of
• 52:23
  finding out of being Rabbi Glock's son.
• 52:26
  You know, was was worth it. And and I tested the system and
• 52:29
  it was it was by the way, I never got into trouble.
• 52:31
  It was, it was, it was. It was a come.
• 52:32
  On it's one story, one story like.
• 52:35
  The trooper. We got a few Let's let's I
• 52:38
  remember. Taking two cars from The Body
• 52:40
  Shop on what's his name? Body Shop on Fort Hamilton
• 52:45
  Parkway. He lived on 45th St.
• 52:47
  What was the name? The first excellent collision.
• 52:49
  The first guy that made lights and sirens.
• 52:51
  What was that? Oh, purely yours.
• 52:54
  No. No on on the Fort.
• 52:57
  I know who you're talking about. And they live the first guy.
• 53:01
  Anyway, they had two icky. No, this was no this is before
• 53:06
  him way. Before, I remember there was two
• 53:08
  cars in the shop. Yeah, identical infinities.
• 53:13
  But like the first year, Infinity came out with this
• 53:15
  wall. Q40.
• 53:16
  Fives the Q. You're talking like the.
• 53:18
  Because they were being fixed in the shop at friends.
• 53:20
  And they had lights and sirens. Yeah, they were being.
• 53:22
  Worked on in the shop, remember we just took them racing down
• 53:25
  colony. We put them back.
• 53:28
  Very nice. You don't.
• 53:29
  Have to use your. That one we did.
• 53:31
  But the best was the day I got my license, I wanted to test out
• 53:34
  the PBA cards the day I got it and I was, my New York license
• 53:39
  was issued in Muncie. I was in yeshiva there and I
• 53:42
  guess we registered the car to Muncie and this and I had a old
• 53:45
  beat up 1984 Oldsmobile Delta 88.
• 53:49
  It was already beat up then, and my father wanted everyone to
• 53:52
  know who I was, I shouldn't make trouble on the road.
• 53:54
  So he got me license plates, Glock 26.
• 53:57
  So you know what, you have a car.
• 53:58
  But fine. Anyway, I'm driving on a
• 54:03
  Thursday night on the Prospect. I'm literally coming around like
• 54:07
  between Fort Hamilton and Church Ave. where even then the speed
• 54:11
  limit dropped. Now I think it's 35 the whole
• 54:13
  time. But then it was like, you know,
• 54:15
  it dropped. And this troop, this officer,
• 54:17
  highway cop pulls me over. I'll never forget it like it was
• 54:21
  yesterday. Pull over.
• 54:23
  License, registration, insurance.
• 54:24
  No problem. I give it to him, and I give him
• 54:26
  some PBA cards. And this.
• 54:29
  Who's this? My father.
• 54:30
  Who's your father? Rabbi Glock.
• 54:33
  Really. Yeah.
• 54:34
  OK. I'm sick and tired of everybody
• 54:37
  saying that related to Rabbi Glock.
• 54:39
  If. You would be Rabbi Glock's son.
• 54:41
  Your license would be to 56th St. in Borough Park, not to
• 54:44
  Rockland County. And your car would be there.
• 54:47
  And you're just trying to abuse the name.
• 54:50
  And the guy wrote me 7 tickets, 7 tickets.
• 54:55
  And the last one that he wrote me, I'll never forget was called
• 54:59
  Greater than Prudent. You ever heard of somebody
• 55:01
  getting a ticket for Greater than prudent?
• 55:02
  I don't know. What that means?
• 55:03
  Thank you me. Neither.
• 55:04
  So what it really means is let's say the speed limit is 35, but
• 55:08
  it's pouring rain, so really you shouldn't go more than 10.
• 55:12
  So it's the common sense ticket. I've gotten a greater
• 55:15
  improvement you. Got that You you probably on a
• 55:17
  jet. Ski.
• 55:19
  OK on a. Lake and they gave me a speeding
• 55:22
  ticket and yeah. Rabbi, I'm curious.
• 55:25
  You're hearing all these stories from your Sun sitting right
• 55:27
  here, and I'm sure you have a lot of proud moments that you
• 55:29
  have. Was he a difficult child?
• 55:31
  Don't. Forget I was acknowledged all
• 55:34
  the truth on my last episode here and I even told him that
• 55:36
  I'm going to jail. So now you can answer the
• 55:39
  question. I like how my father had to.
• 55:41
  Think twice. Was it bad?
• 55:42
  Was to be a difficult child. No, no, not to you.
• 55:45
  Even with all the trouble that was being made, he was.
• 55:47
  Very good, Good hearted from when he was a little infant on
• 55:52
  good hearted. Really good that.
• 55:53
  Wasn't the question and how did? You know he was going to be a
• 55:55
  successor and has it at what point I.
• 55:58
  Heard stories about him. You know, it's, we mentioned a
• 56:03
  minute ago that he, you know, we were laughing about our ADHD.
• 56:06
  Yeah, right. You're familiar with that term
• 56:08
  ADHD. Very.
• 56:09
  Familiar. OK.
• 56:10
  So, so you've had to deal with children that had the ADHD I
• 56:14
  guess before? They knew what it was.
• 56:15
  Yeah, before. They knew what it was I.
• 56:17
  Wasn't taking. I wasn't on meds then, now I'm
• 56:19
  on meds then I wasn't. Yeah, 2 patch or what did?
• 56:22
  You call it back then. I mean was there ADHD?
• 56:26
  Did you know? That's it, that's it.
• 56:29
  But a good Vildehey, A good hearted Vildeheyat I'll.
• 56:33
  Take. That so So what, you know,
• 56:35
  looking back, what what can we learn from what he did as a
• 56:38
  child? You know, you're growing up with
• 56:39
  a ADHD son who's a Vildeheyat was good hearted who's using
• 56:43
  your name in vain. I'm kidding and.
• 56:46
  Not in vain, it was for real purpose.
• 56:48
  One second that's. Anything but vain.
• 56:50
  I was like, what? Can we learn from it?
• 56:51
  I'm just, I'm wondering like you as a parent, what you know as
• 56:54
  being a parent. You're busy, you're out there,
• 56:56
  you're doing very. Simple.
• 56:57
  You can learn that if you do the right thing, and you do it like
• 57:01
  because you really believe in because I'm Shamayim, your
• 57:04
  children will follow and will do the same thing.
• 57:07
  That's it. Beautiful.
• 57:08
  They use you as an example. My father did this when I did
• 57:12
  this. I'll do it better.
• 57:16
  What? Are what are some of your?
• 57:17
  Organizations that Rabbi Glock started, you know, whether it's
• 57:21
  Hatsala gives the opportunity for good kind hearted, good
• 57:25
  hearted people with a DHDA place to really express themselves and
• 57:30
  do good and go running in the streets at 4:00 in the morning
• 57:34
  doing good. These organizations gave an
• 57:37
  outlet and now we have 18 other you.
• 57:43
  Know I have a question for you. This happened at your wedding,
• 57:49
  OK, A comment that I heard because you had a lot of Atala
• 57:55
  people there and a lot of people that are askanim people.
• 57:57
  You know, for those listening who don't know the word, you
• 57:59
  know, we have a lot of non Jewish listeners listening and
• 58:02
  the word askin is rabbi. How would you translate the word
• 58:05
  askin a do? Gooder A.
• 58:06
  Do good someone that does doom does good.
• 58:09
  The the common denominator that I heard from people that I was
• 58:12
  talking about oh, your your husband does so good.
• 58:14
  I was talking to the we were couples hanging out together and
• 58:17
  we were talking about doing good for the community and someone
• 58:21
  said to me and my wife at the time that I wish my husband was
• 58:26
  home as much as he is on calls. And I'm curious how do you have
• 58:31
  that work life or has said or asking balance?
• 58:34
  I'm not. I'm not going to let my father
• 58:37
  answer that question. Why?
• 58:38
  And I'll tell you why, and I'm sorry.
• 58:41
  You can answer it afterwards, OK?
• 58:43
  When I was growing up, there was no balance.
• 58:46
  My father was never home. I've said this publicly, I've
• 58:49
  said it in front of him. I resented him at times for it
• 58:52
  growing up. I swore I'm never going into
• 58:54
  public service as a result of it.
• 58:56
  Obviously got the last laugh, but what I realize now, right
• 59:03
  and I'm going to say this in a way that is so first of all, I
• 59:07
  try very hard to overcompensate for that with my kids.
• 59:11
  I will tell you that the amount of time my father gives my kids
• 59:14
  OK meaning even now my father learns with my son Bukavrusa
• 59:17
  every single day he's in artistsoral and yeshiva.
• 59:20
  My father learns with him every day on.
• 59:22
  The phone so. There is that.
• 59:24
  But in those days, what I learnt now getting older is that there
• 59:27
  was nobody else. So it wasn't like, you know, and
• 59:31
  again, people say this all the time.
• 59:32
  It's like, oh, people are looking for an excuse to leave
• 59:34
  the house. In those days, you weren't
• 59:37
  calling somebody else whether you had a passport emergency,
• 59:39
  somebody died in a foreign country, somebody got arrested,
• 59:42
  somebody needed an autopsy, whatever it was, there was only
• 59:45
  one number you called Rabbi Glock.
• 59:48
  But did I appreciate it as a child?
• 59:50
  No. But as the balance.
• 59:52
  My father unfortunately did not have it.
• 59:55
  But I learned to understand it and and respect what it is I'm.
• 59:59
  Going back to your dad, I'm sorry, I have to, I need to ask
• 1:00:02
  this question to you because. I feel that there's a lot of
• 1:00:05
  people that have this challenge and I know you say that back
• 1:00:08
  then there was only one number to call.
• 1:00:10
  Today, there are plenty of organizations that help with
• 1:00:14
  plenty of different things and. Plenty of ASALA members
• 1:00:16
  available but. There's still that notion of I
• 1:00:19
  wish my husband was more home than he is answering calls or
• 1:00:24
  going to fix something for someone or going to pick up
• 1:00:27
  someone. So I'm curious from your
• 1:00:29
  experience based on your history and knowledge and knowing
• 1:00:31
  raising kids and hearing what he just had to say, what your
• 1:00:34
  response to that is, how your response?
• 1:00:36
  Is that that a lot of that that credit goes to my wife in the
• 1:00:44
  middle of Paser said. I was in my Manny's hospital in
• 1:00:47
  the middle of William Kippa. I was five times in the hospital
• 1:00:49
  with different patients. And I mean all these things and
• 1:00:53
  both Hashem my wife was able to to say OK, you know, keep on
• 1:00:57
  doing it and then let me. Let me rephrase.
• 1:00:59
  Let me rephrase the question. If, if we were to ask you what
• 1:01:03
  advice would you give somebody today who's getting involved in
• 1:01:08
  public service based on the fact that it's a different culture
• 1:01:12
  today than it was back then, what would your advice be to
• 1:01:15
  someone, especially if the wife is already starting to make
• 1:01:19
  comments about it? Keep on doing what you have to
• 1:01:22
  do, That's all. That's my, that's my advice,
• 1:01:25
  yeah. Old school as.
• 1:01:27
  Long as a problem comes, do you solve it?
• 1:01:30
  But what if the problem is that your wife needs you at home?
• 1:01:33
  That's a bigger problem. No, so this reminds me of that
• 1:01:37
  famous, the famous story that never happened right to my
• 1:01:39
  social Ohio of the guy that was in Kyle and he was coming late
• 1:01:42
  every day. Finally the rush Kyle said to
• 1:01:45
  him, listen, if you don't come on time tomorrow, you're not
• 1:01:47
  getting paid. We're done with you.
• 1:01:48
  This is a job for you. OK, So for the next week, he
• 1:01:52
  comes on time and then again he comes late.
• 1:01:54
  Rush Kyle says what you do, he goes, listen, I was on the way
• 1:01:56
  in and there was never a woman with five kids and she needed
• 1:02:00
  help. She had nobody to help her.
• 1:02:02
  He goes, oh, so you did a mitzvah?
• 1:02:03
  He goes. Yeah, OK, very nice.
• 1:02:04
  The next day, again the same woman with five kids, he goes.
• 1:02:08
  Yeah. By the third day, he goes.
• 1:02:11
  Chicago. It's my wife.
• 1:02:12
  She's a woman with five kids. If I leave, there's nobody to
• 1:02:14
  help. It's a very old school way of
• 1:02:17
  thinking, and I'm not saying this in a bad way, but it's just
• 1:02:19
  something for understand 100% that in today's day and age, the
• 1:02:22
  answer is I'm home. I turn off my phone, you know.
• 1:02:24
  We we Speaking of old school, you said earlier that you're not
• 1:02:27
  afraid. And in general that attitude,
• 1:02:29
  were you ever nervous about something?
• 1:02:30
  Was there was something that like got you nervous or were you
• 1:02:33
  nervous about meeting somebody? It says when, when.
• 1:02:35
  When Cuomo called me and told me he can't sign the bill, that
• 1:02:38
  made me like hysterical like you.
• 1:02:41
  I went to the Senate, I went to the Assembly.
• 1:02:43
  We got everything passed. And all of a sudden now when it
• 1:02:46
  comes to signing a bill, you said you can't because you're
• 1:02:49
  getting calls from the police chiefs and everything else.
• 1:02:51
  And Ravvik rescued the the situation.
• 1:02:53
  By by reviewing it by. Reviewing it, you know.
• 1:02:55
  It said here about the President Community Award.
• 1:02:57
  Did you ever meet any of the presidents of the United States?
• 1:03:00
  Which ones did you meet? Carter Bush.
• 1:03:03
  Senior Bush. Senior.
• 1:03:05
  Yeah. Was it a?
• 1:03:05
  Private meeting or was it like a public meeting?
• 1:03:09
  Bush senior was like a private mix and.
• 1:03:13
  Do we bring? Up somebody else you met?
• 1:03:14
  Yeah. Nope.
• 1:03:16
  We'll get to that in a minute. But one second?
• 1:03:19
  The Pope? We met the Pope, Yes.
• 1:03:21
  What would you like to know? Anything you'd like to share?
• 1:03:25
  When did this happen I mean? He's he's no longer alive.
• 1:03:28
  He's no longer with us, that Pope.
• 1:03:30
  Yeah, as much as you want to share the back story, the post
• 1:03:33
  story, there's no back. Story.
• 1:03:35
  There's no post story, it was just we.
• 1:03:37
  My father's been meeting popes for years.
• 1:03:40
  And how was the outcome for? Well, let's.
• 1:03:42
  Say the best one was John Paul. John Paul was a sounding when
• 1:03:46
  they asked him in Krakow. I mean, when he became Pope and
• 1:03:51
  then he became 95 years old and they asked him, how do you live
• 1:03:56
  in so many years? You know, there's not.
• 1:03:58
  So he says. When I was in Krakow, I was
• 1:04:00
  taking the children out of monasteries, all those that were
• 1:04:03
  put in by the war. And I had a list of older
• 1:04:05
  children. And those children that parents,
• 1:04:07
  we got them united, reunited with them.
• 1:04:09
  And those parents that didn't, we sent them to Israel on the on
• 1:04:12
  the church's expense. And then and those that came
• 1:04:17
  through Krakow and he gave me a gave me a blessing that I'm
• 1:04:21
  going to live long. Blessed the Pope before he was
• 1:04:26
  Pope, but. He was a priest.
• 1:04:27
  To the plain priest in Krakow. But I think they want to hear
• 1:04:30
  more about, I think I think he really is asking more about like
• 1:04:33
  the, the, the Pope viral video. So.
• 1:04:36
  I'm not sure where you're referring to.
• 1:04:37
  I want. To know what led up to it.
• 1:04:39
  You know what? I'm sorry.
• 1:04:40
  Aziz, what are we talking about? OK.
• 1:04:42
  OK, well, let's just a second, let's go backwards.
• 1:04:43
  No, no, no, let's go backwards because he doesn't even know
• 1:04:46
  what we're what we're even leading into.
• 1:04:48
  So let's just take it back as that's the Pope story.
• 1:04:49
  So my father has been dealing with the Vatican for many, many
• 1:04:53
  years, especially in Eastern Europe where the Vatican is the
• 1:04:57
  most respected institution, because having the Vatican on
• 1:05:01
  your side means you can get back cemeteries, you can get back
• 1:05:04
  jewels, you can get mass graves. And not having them inside
• 1:05:07
  doesn't. So my father's been involved
• 1:05:09
  with them for years. There's a cute story, I'll say.
• 1:05:13
  So Benedict when he was flying to I, I found this out by
• 1:05:16
  accident at a bar mitzvah a few years ago where I'm sitting by
• 1:05:21
  bar Mitzvah and this guy tells me, you know, I, this got my
• 1:05:24
  friend's father's not Jewish, his mother's Jewish, they're
• 1:05:26
  Russian. And his father works worked for
• 1:05:28
  the Russian government as the Vatican correspondent for the
• 1:05:31
  media, for the Russian government media.
• 1:05:34
  And he was sitting schmoozing and he's telling me a story.
• 1:05:37
  He goes, you should know that my father who was next to it was me
• 1:05:41
  him, his father was his son's mom.
• 1:05:42
  That's was sitting there goes I was the I was the correspondent
• 1:05:45
  and and we went to Poland and when we were on the plane the
• 1:05:48
  Pope made his speech to all of us that out of respect nobody
• 1:05:52
  should speak to me in Germany when we're in Poland in German
• 1:05:56
  because we don't want to. And then some rabbi sits right
• 1:06:00
  next to the Pope in Auschwitz before the ceremony and starts
• 1:06:03
  talking to him in German and he's not stopping and they're
• 1:06:07
  having a lengthy conversation. So I take out my phone show him.
• 1:06:11
  I said is this the rabbit? Yeah.
• 1:06:13
  I said no, that's my father. My father was born in Germany
• 1:06:16
  spoke German fluently. That story to go backwards and
• 1:06:20
  then we'll get to this one is my father was somebody made a
• 1:06:24
  comment that their grandmother knew about a mass grave in a
• 1:06:27
  certain area in Poland. So my father who Bharat Hashem,
• 1:06:30
  I say this, this thinking outside the box is really what
• 1:06:32
  got it all done, came up with a great idea.
• 1:06:35
  Let's do a school project where we're going to ask the locals
• 1:06:37
  kids to speak about what their grandparents say.
• 1:06:40
  And through that, we'll extract the information and we'll know
• 1:06:43
  about it, right. So project is done and one of
• 1:06:46
  the reports come back and talks about the grandmother witnessing
• 1:06:49
  many people being killed and buried.
• 1:06:51
  So my father reaches out to the local priest and he says I'm not
• 1:06:55
  talking to you, I'm not involved, I'm not giving you the
• 1:06:57
  property. Like leave me alone.
• 1:06:59
  After my father had this story speaking in Germany, the front
• 1:07:02
  page of the papers was the rabbi and the Pope.
• 1:07:04
  This priest came running back to my father saying well, I'll give
• 1:07:07
  you the property, I'll give you everything.
• 1:07:08
  So you talk about these things. They got back a mass grave from
• 1:07:12
  that meeting. So we this Pope meeting was my
• 1:07:15
  father my fault, meaning my father has reasons to meet the
• 1:07:18
  Pope and his reasons got successfully.
• 1:07:20
  I mean, tell them. Tell them what happened.
• 1:07:22
  Well, there's one town where I got a call from somebody that he
• 1:07:27
  wants me to. Somebody in my shul came over to
• 1:07:30
  me and he says to me, his father-in-law and mother-in-law
• 1:07:33
  on the grave in this town. And it's right near Legends.
• 1:07:41
  So when you go to Legends, stop off over there and see if you
• 1:07:44
  can see the graves. I go to Lucien's.
• 1:07:46
  Can I tell my driver? Next stop is he says where I
• 1:07:50
  tell him Lubichev, Lubichev. That's 190 kilometers from here.
• 1:07:55
  I said, listen, I told the guy I'm going.
• 1:07:57
  So I have to go. I come there and I go around the
• 1:08:02
  houses, around the cemetery and I ask for the key because
• 1:08:05
  usually you get him. That time was a dollar and I get
• 1:08:08
  $5.00. But they give you key and the
• 1:08:15
  lady comes out to me, the five people, they don't have any key.
• 1:08:17
  She says to me. Today all the historical
• 1:08:20
  objects, including the keys and everything else are by the
• 1:08:24
  museum in Lubetrov. Just call the director.
• 1:08:26
  The museum in essence, I call the director and thank God he
• 1:08:29
  spoke English. And he says in a few minutes
• 1:08:31
  I'll be there. Comes they say, what are you
• 1:08:33
  doing here? I said, well, I can't just check
• 1:08:36
  on the grave. Why don't you go away to kill
• 1:08:38
  the Jews? Said what?
• 1:08:40
  They killed 2500 Jews and then so where's that?
• 1:08:44
  He says, 2 1/2 kilometers from here.
• 1:08:46
  Come, I'll take you. So I drove with him, shows me a
• 1:08:49
  field that's like 4 baseball fields, 4 basketball fields.
• 1:08:52
  I mean like like from 11th Ave. to 18th Ave. in Brooklyn Borough
• 1:08:56
  Park. And he says to me, so I made my
• 1:09:01
  meeting at the United States, I'm memory United States
• 1:09:03
  Commission for Preservation America's Heritage Abroad.
• 1:09:05
  So I made a meeting, a public hearing, and four or five people
• 1:09:10
  came down, 90 years old, 92 years old, listen.
• 1:09:13
  And they said, yeah, we sort of killed the day they killed the
• 1:09:15
  Jews. But they told us not to tell
• 1:09:17
  anything. In fact, they told us I sat in
• 1:09:20
  my house for a week. I didn't even walk out.
• 1:09:22
  I didn't open the window because they said if I come out and then
• 1:09:25
  they're going to shoot me. And he says they shot 2500.
• 1:09:28
  They took them from the airport. They took them from from the
• 1:09:31
  from the movies, from the this from the synagogues.
• 1:09:35
  And so I meet with the, I asked the meeting with the mayor and
• 1:09:39
  the governor. So I meet with them and they
• 1:09:41
  said, you navigate this property, forget it.
• 1:09:44
  Why? Because they're making a branch
• 1:09:47
  of the world of Astoria here, and they're making the largest
• 1:09:50
  shopping center in Poland because it's only 14 kilometers
• 1:09:53
  from Ukraine. So all the rich people go back
• 1:09:55
  and forth through this area. So they're making the largest
• 1:09:57
  shopping center and they're fighting each other.
• 1:10:00
  So if the one says $25,000 for the property, the other one says
• 1:10:03
  30,000. So I said, so whose property is?
• 1:10:05
  It says the church said, OK, a week later I'm invited to meet
• 1:10:11
  with Pope Benedict and we spoke about this and that, etcetera,
• 1:10:17
  etcetera, and this. And like the American ambassador
• 1:10:19
  comes to me. He says you're the rabbi, you go
• 1:10:20
  first. I said no, you're the
• 1:10:21
  ambassador, you go first. So he spoke to him, 11 seconds.
• 1:10:23
  President of Poland says to me, you go first, you're the rabbi.
• 1:10:26
  I said no, you're the president, OK, 11 seconds.
• 1:10:29
  The Israeli ambassador, he got, look, I read, 11 seconds, comes
• 1:10:34
  to me, I start speaking in German.
• 1:10:36
  He spoke 3 1/2 minutes. All the press came running over
• 1:10:40
  to me. What did you discuss?
• 1:10:41
  I said when 2 religious leaders speak, it's not for the press to
• 1:10:44
  know. They took my name out of the
• 1:10:46
  article. They took my picture.
• 1:10:47
  They were furious. They wanted to kill me.
• 1:10:49
  Was it? This is like a day later.
• 1:10:51
  I went back to that place and I said, so it's the press.
• 1:10:55
  That's the property of the church.
• 1:10:56
  Where's the priest? He says he's waiting for you to
• 1:10:58
  call him. OK, I call him.
• 1:11:02
  He says I'll be there in a few minutes, meeting with the
• 1:11:05
  governor and the man. All of a sudden you're never
• 1:11:07
  going to get this property and in 90 days the final bid is
• 1:11:11
  coming down as to who's getting it.
• 1:11:14
  So you have 90 days to work on it.
• 1:11:16
  Priest comes in, he says, what did you discuss yesterday with
• 1:11:19
  the Holy Father? I said we discussed where if you
• 1:11:22
  see a Jewish grave or Jewish bones or any artifacts that are
• 1:11:29
  religious things, you have to contact me immediately.
• 1:11:32
  And I'm supposed to make sure that it's proper property's
• 1:11:36
  yours. No money, no nothing.
• 1:11:38
  Property's yours. And that town is 4 hours from
• 1:11:43
  Krakow. And the head of the Jewish
• 1:11:45
  community went with me 4 times there each time 8 hours.
• 1:11:49
  And we worked out a deal that they said, OK, you're, you're,
• 1:11:54
  you're, you got to give 40,000 because we're going to make a
• 1:11:57
  road coming here. We're like this that.
• 1:12:00
  And then they said that, you know, how do you know exactly
• 1:12:04
  where the graves are? I said, well, I take these metal
• 1:12:09
  rods and I go and I can tell you exactly where the graves are.
• 1:12:12
  But I called up Rabbi Schlesing in London and I said, send me
• 1:12:15
  somebody from the Eastern European rabbis.
• 1:12:17
  I don't want to say that I found it and I get it and I didn't.
• 1:12:20
  Just not, it looks like too much self promotion.
• 1:12:23
  I need some order organization to blame.
• 1:12:25
  So. So he sends me somebody.
• 1:12:27
  The guy sees me. He says to me, you're here,
• 1:12:29
  you're our expert for the graves.
• 1:12:31
  I'm not going to do it. I said OK, but just say you did
• 1:12:34
  it. I took the medicine.
• 1:12:35
  And what? Are you doing?
• 1:12:36
  I I go when I go over an area that's hollow, stick starts
• 1:12:40
  shaking and you know exactly when it goes.
• 1:12:43
  Between the bones, so there's two metal sticks it's based on
• 1:12:46
  the ground penetrating radar and so on are which it happens to be
• 1:12:50
  that after they did this, my father to be a yucky because he
• 1:12:54
  stole a yucky ended up hiring a company that does the ground
• 1:12:57
  penetration I. Had a company that was the the
• 1:13:02
  Archaeological College of Poland and I said I'll bring 3
• 1:13:06
  professors. No, the mayor calls me up.
• 1:13:08
  He says I don't believe in this what you did maybe it's hocus
• 1:13:11
  pocus. I said you're right, you don't
• 1:13:14
  have to believe in it. So I'll get the, the archaeology
• 1:13:18
  College in Poland that to verify, I went to here put in
• 1:13:21
  the stick here put in a stick here put in a stick and here put
• 1:13:24
  in a stick put in each, each one.
• 1:13:28
  We hired the we made a contract with them.
• 1:13:31
  We hired them. And exactly where I put in the
• 1:13:34
  stick, that's where they said they had their, their big, like
• 1:13:37
  it looks like a Geiger counter. You know, it's like it isn't.
• 1:13:40
  So they said 99%, you're right. But to be 100%, we have to dig.
• 1:13:46
  I said digging doesn't forget it.
• 1:13:48
  There's no such thing as digging.
• 1:13:49
  They're not going to take 99%. They're not going to take 100%.
• 1:13:53
  They call the mayor, they bring them the report and the priest
• 1:13:57
  says property is yours, but you need 40,000.
• 1:14:01
  So my the head of the gay community bond them not to
• 1:14:05
  17,000. So I called somebody in New
• 1:14:08
  York. I.
• 1:14:09
  Am silver Lobo. And I told.
• 1:14:13
  Him, I told him. And I sat there and listen, I'm
• 1:14:16
  here in the middle of a situation and they want $17,000
• 1:14:20
  to make. How many partners do I have?
• 1:14:22
  I said as of now, you're it. He says checks in the mail.
• 1:14:27
  Give her his gift, Right. Give her his gift.
• 1:14:32
  And he says checks in the mail. You got it.
• 1:14:35
  Yep. And then they did me give me a
• 1:14:37
  bonus that the guy who was charged in a museum was also in
• 1:14:41
  charge of the public education for the whole area, not only for
• 1:14:45
  a town like New York City and New York State.
• 1:14:47
  He was in charge of the whole the whole, the whole area.
• 1:14:49
  And he says he's making every graduating class in June, before
• 1:14:54
  they graduate, they have to go and cut the grass and cut
• 1:14:57
  everything to make sure that the cemetery is in good shape.
• 1:14:59
  But till today, they're doing it.
• 1:15:01
  Wow. I hope to be able to visit that
• 1:15:04
  location one day. Rabbi, I have to say that when I
• 1:15:06
  started this podcast today, I said fascinating, incredible,
• 1:15:10
  inspiring. There's not enough words to
• 1:15:12
  describe how I'm feeling listening to this story.
• 1:15:15
  Just. That one story.
• 1:15:16
  Just, and I'm going back with you, but the beauty of it is
• 1:15:20
  that would be amazing. But the beauty of it is that you
• 1:15:23
  were doing a favor for somebody who asks you to go check out a
• 1:15:26
  place, and you went hours out of your way because you said you're
• 1:15:29
  going to go visit. And then from there, what
• 1:15:31
  happened and what happened and when?
• 1:15:33
  Now the whole school is cutting the grass of the unbelievable.
• 1:15:38
  I'm blown away not. Only yet I found out the date
• 1:15:42
  and and and I put in a big they put.
• 1:15:46
  A monument with the thing of the date that it happened and then.
• 1:15:49
  The mayor calls me and he says you wrote down this and this
• 1:15:51
  date and it's not, but you didn't write.
• 1:15:53
  The Nazis did it, and they're going to suspect us.
• 1:15:55
  By the way, it's a big. Thing in Poland into it.
• 1:15:58
  I added on. Rabbi, 3 1/2 minutes.
• 1:16:03
  I know it took you 11 seconds to get that deal done.
• 1:16:05
  What else did you talk about in 3 1/2 minutes with the Pope?
• 1:16:09
  Book about his son who kept getting thrown out of yeshiva.
• 1:16:11
  You know he was asking for advice, Current.
• 1:16:13
  Pope, is that someone that you got?
• 1:16:15
  To get back to the other story that he was he knows he wants.
• 1:16:18
  To get back so the other story goes that my my father was
• 1:16:21
  setting up, was working on a meeting with the Pope get.
• 1:16:24
  A call from the from the head of the Kayla.
• 1:16:29
  He says there's a person coming now who's just promoted from
• 1:16:32
  Archbishop to cardinal, and he wants somebody from America that
• 1:16:35
  he can talk to. And he says, I told him that you
• 1:16:38
  have a very, very interesting background.
• 1:16:41
  You said you have two ears and one mouth, so you got to reduce
• 1:16:45
  by 50% what you hear in order to what you say.
• 1:16:47
  He says, that's the kind of guy I'm looking for.
• 1:16:49
  So then the Israeli ambassador, ambassador called me.
• 1:16:54
  Can you meet with the Pope? I says, I don't know.
• 1:16:56
  Isn't that the American ambassador calls me.
• 1:16:58
  I says, of course, today at tomorrow.
• 1:16:59
  He says, you know, and I meet with him.
• 1:17:04
  And he says to me, I don't want anybody to know about this, but
• 1:17:08
  the previous John Paul's house in Poland, we want to buy it and
• 1:17:15
  it belongs to this and the psychiatrist from Park Ave. and
• 1:17:18
  he doesn't want to sell it. Could you be our intermediary to
• 1:17:22
  see if you can get if you this sounds?
• 1:17:24
  Like a joke, a rabbi, a Pope went into the bar and go buy a
• 1:17:28
  house for me in Brooklyn, I said.
• 1:17:30
  Do me a favor. You want to make money, right?
• 1:17:33
  You're a psychiatrist, but you still want to make money?
• 1:17:36
  Make a crazy price. If they give it to you, take it.
• 1:17:38
  That's all he says. OK, you got a deal.
• 1:17:41
  I called back to the Cardinal the time I worked that deal.
• 1:17:44
  I don't know anything about prices.
• 1:17:45
  I'm not a businessman. So you negotiate with him about
• 1:17:48
  price, but it is for sale here in from that time on that that
• 1:17:53
  Cardinal Mike Husset. Yeah.
• 1:17:55
  Anything I wanted. Call up this priestess.
• 1:17:58
  I have a cemetery there. Call up this one that one.
• 1:18:00
  He was by the. Way when the smoke was rising,
• 1:18:03
  we were all hoping for that cardinal, because this guy, when
• 1:18:06
  I go into Poland, right when I went with my father, we go to
• 1:18:08
  meet with him. So it's like Malchus.
• 1:18:10
  But well, let me just tell you, you know how to say these
• 1:18:13
  things. The story goes, my father, we
• 1:18:15
  knew he was supposed to have a meeting with the Pope and with
• 1:18:18
  with Pope Francis. A friend of mine very much
• 1:18:21
  wanted to meet the Pope, 'cause it's 'cause it's cool.
• 1:18:24
  I mean for no other reason other than Chick right next.
• 1:18:28
  Time. Anyway, long story.
• 1:18:30
  Short, this person only travels with a minion not to miss
• 1:18:33
  minion. So that made the trip even
• 1:18:35
  bigger. But does his name?
• 1:18:36
  Rhyme with finer. I'm not.
• 1:18:38
  Sure. I don't know.
• 1:18:39
  I, you know, a lot of people took a lot of heat for that
• 1:18:41
  story, so if you're gonna publish this, you got to get
• 1:18:44
  that permission first. But I'm.
• 1:18:45
  I'm a big exclusive for by Pinson.
• 1:18:48
  So, so I'm just saying, so we got to be careful how we do
• 1:18:50
  this. I am.
• 1:18:50
  Saying I want to bring it up and I want to bring it up with the
• 1:18:53
  most respect, right? So.
• 1:18:55
  I will tell. You like this?
• 1:18:56
  It just came up recently again. OK, so I'll tell you like this.
• 1:18:59
  I know. So it's very simple.
• 1:19:00
  Sorry, just. Pause.
• 1:19:01
  What came up just OK, so the. Scandal was that we were by the
• 1:19:04
  Pope. There was there was there was
• 1:19:06
  dancing with the Pope, OK, And there was it was the two people
• 1:19:09
  with guitars and it was during Sphero.
• 1:19:11
  OK, scandal number one scandal number 2 was the song that was
• 1:19:14
  being sung was the scandal. And that's what made public.
• 1:19:16
  No, no, no. But let me give give you this.
• 1:19:18
  So so you want the story, I'll give you the real story, OK?
• 1:19:20
  No, no. I.
• 1:19:20
  Didn't want the real story. I wanted the rumor and the
• 1:19:22
  scandal. OK, now you could tell me the
• 1:19:24
  real story. OK, so the scandal that there
• 1:19:26
  was a story. That wasn't a pro.
• 1:19:27
  I was singing him to the Pope. OK, OK, got it.
• 1:19:30
  What happened? Was my father knew that you had
• 1:19:32
  to have a meeting. Laser wanted to go.
• 1:19:34
  We're going to make a cover. We're going to make a Matzov,
• 1:19:36
  he's going to have a minion. It was fine.
• 1:19:37
  So number one is and by the way, I found it yesterday, the
• 1:19:42
  morning that we get there, right, I don't have the envelope
• 1:19:46
  with the entries like 'cause they everything is very formal
• 1:19:49
  faxes, messengers we're talking no, but even before that like
• 1:19:54
  the. Swiss.
• 1:19:55
  I'm sorry, the Swiss Guards. It's called Swiss Guards.
• 1:19:57
  It's like. Good they're.
• 1:19:59
  In Italy, yeah. It's a Swiss Guard for over a
• 1:20:02
  couple 100 years. There you go.
• 1:20:03
  It's fascinating history. And they still wear, they still
• 1:20:05
  wear their costumes from like 200 years ago.
• 1:20:07
  And they have these old bayonets.
• 1:20:09
  It's it's, it's fascinating. I don't have, we're sitting in
• 1:20:12
  the hotel. I don't have the envelope.
• 1:20:14
  Have a meeting, no envelope. What are you going to do?
• 1:20:17
  So I call up the phone number on one of the faxes or I faxed them
• 1:20:22
  because we only had faxed them. It was momish.
• 1:20:24
  Anyway, they don't. They don't.
• 1:20:26
  Talk on the phone. They don't talk on the phone,
• 1:20:27
  everything is faxes because there's no copy of anything, so
• 1:20:30
  you can't. This is the.
• 1:20:31
  Vatican 20. Years ago you did this.
• 1:20:33
  No, give us a fax number. We'll fax it anyway.
• 1:20:36
  That's that's the way they communicate.
• 1:20:38
  So. I send them a fax and I'm saying
• 1:20:39
  I hope the guy responds. Like, who knows if he's about?
• 1:20:41
  Anyway, we get a response back literally within a few minutes
• 1:20:44
  to the hotel fax machine. OK, just tell them when you get
• 1:20:48
  there that you're with the Grand Rabbi's meeting with the Pope.
• 1:20:52
  So I announced it louder than I guess I should have So we go to
• 1:20:59
  the Pope, my father, me lazy. We'd like five of us right.
• 1:21:02
  That was all we were planning on going was just a certain group
• 1:21:04
  and we go and we end up going inside for the meeting and the
• 1:21:10
  meeting was like a 45 minute sit down they.
• 1:21:12
  They they wrote down Rabbi and and Holy Father 5 minutes After
• 1:21:19
  27 minutes his people came in and started pointing on watches
• 1:21:23
  like and he and. He and he actually chased them
• 1:21:25
  out, but it got interesting. So the Pope only spoke in Latin
• 1:21:28
  with the translator. When it gets to me, what do you
• 1:21:34
  do? I said, I run an organization to
• 1:21:35
  help victims of sexual abuse and addiction.
• 1:21:38
  And in English he goes the holiest work, my son the holiest
• 1:21:42
  work. And he then starts talking to me
• 1:21:45
  while having a conversation. Fine.
• 1:21:48
  As we're done, right, We're walking towards the foyer to go
• 1:21:52
  back to the waiting area where the Pope is going to greet the
• 1:21:55
  other few people that came with us to shake their hands or
• 1:21:57
  whatever. Right, fine.
• 1:21:59
  And I have the video. I'll, I'll show you some of it
• 1:22:02
  as we come out. You hear me laughing and you
• 1:22:04
  hear the Pope laughing hysterically, like a laugh.
• 1:22:08
  What happened as we're going through that doorway, I, I said,
• 1:22:13
  you know, we understand that the Vatican has a $1 trillion fund
• 1:22:16
  to pay for therapy for victims of abuse.
• 1:22:20
  Is. There a possibility for Muddim
• 1:22:22
  to get that money to help pay for victims therapy.
• 1:22:25
  And he looks me straight in the face and goes, It was meant for
• 1:22:29
  priests, and I don't mean a Cohen.
• 1:22:32
  Boom. And we just, we both all started
• 1:22:35
  cracking up. So now to give you the real
• 1:22:37
  story and you might have to edit some of this out, but I'm going
• 1:22:39
  to pull it up. So the real story goes that
• 1:22:43
  we've come out and we see everybody there, including the
• 1:22:47
  whole group that we were there with.
• 1:22:48
  What happened? We found out later they were
• 1:22:51
  smart. As soon as they heard that the
• 1:22:53
  keyword was with the Grand Rabbi's visit, they waited 5
• 1:22:56
  minutes after we got into the taxi, they took another taxi.
• 1:23:00
  What's the worst that can happen?
• 1:23:02
  Either they'll let us in or they won't, right?
• 1:23:04
  So we had no idea Laser didn't, we didn't know any of this,
• 1:23:06
  right? All of a sudden what ends up
• 1:23:09
  happening is we come out and these guys are there with the
• 1:23:14
  guitars and the Pope says, oh, you brought the joyful ones in
• 1:23:18
  English, not in Latin. But he didn't speak of English.
• 1:23:22
  He's. Yeah, he spoke.
• 1:23:23
  The joyful ones. What's the joyful ones?
• 1:23:26
  What are you taught? Like, what's joyful, Right.
• 1:23:29
  And then he points to them and I turn around and I was like, oh,
• 1:23:33
  this is like, you know, right away something is going like it.
• 1:23:36
  It's just OK. Now, these guys were part of a
• 1:23:41
  choir with Yu or whoever that when Pope John Paul the Second
• 1:23:45
  came, they sang a certain Jewish song to him.
• 1:23:49
  So let me show you out of the spec.
• 1:23:51
  The. First thing was the Pope, after
• 1:23:53
  they speak for three minutes, the Pope says, wait, I'm going
• 1:23:55
  to get you my Secretary of State.
• 1:23:57
  You'll be in direct communication.
• 1:23:58
  Anything you need from the Vatican, the Secretary of State
• 1:24:00
  is your direct contact. So if I have it was it was worth
• 1:24:04
  it? Most of the property improved is
• 1:24:08
  owned by the church. Have you?
• 1:24:10
  Ever gone to see any of the artifacts that they have?
• 1:24:13
  Jewish I. Asked them point blank.
• 1:24:15
  I asked point blank. You know what they told me?
• 1:24:17
  It's not here. If we have stuff here, then
• 1:24:21
  we're going to give it to Israel because we're close to Israeli
• 1:24:23
  government. Do you believe them?
• 1:24:25
  No. I figured, OK, if there's things
• 1:24:27
  that have to be buried, Israel government will take it and make
• 1:24:32
  a monument out of it and make a public showing out of it instead
• 1:24:34
  of burying it and everything else.
• 1:24:35
  I said, if that's the case, I'm not asking anymore because I
• 1:24:39
  know they even cannot be controlled problem like like
• 1:24:43
  they dig for dead people all the time and everything else.
• 1:24:45
  I mean they they can't be trusted.
• 1:24:47
  So once these you have more difficult.
• 1:24:49
  Time with the Israeli government than the American government
• 1:24:52
  when it comes to then. More difficult time with the
• 1:24:54
  Israeli government than with the Vatican.
• 1:24:56
  And by the way, the worst thing that we had, and I remember this
• 1:24:59
  as a kid when they were doing Hwy. 1 and my father was then
• 1:25:03
  rebuilding some of the cemeteries and they turned to
• 1:25:05
  him and said wait, if Israel could do it, why can't we build
• 1:25:09
  over a cemetery? And that was a big issue.
• 1:25:11
  But hey, listen to this. Wow.
• 1:25:21
  Anything wrong with this song being sung?
• 1:25:23
  I. Don't think there's anything
• 1:25:24
  wrong with any song being sung one second, so the.
• 1:25:27
  Sphere apart with the music again, we didn't know, but
• 1:25:30
  again. But this was the song.
• 1:25:33
  This was the song. It wasn't.
• 1:25:35
  Meant for it happened to be that the Hevra when we used to
• 1:25:39
  travel, when we used to travel different parts of the world,
• 1:25:43
  that was our like anthem, right? Just like the end.
• 1:25:46
  Song. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:47
  Yeah, and, and one of the younger guys there just started
• 1:25:50
  humming it, not even thinking of anything.
• 1:25:53
  Was literally just humming it like Nah Nah, Nah Nah.
• 1:25:57
  And the Pope turns and goes, that sounds sounds nice.
• 1:26:00
  What? So at that point you start
• 1:26:03
  singing it and nobody thought about the context of the words
• 1:26:08
  or what it meant. It just became like it and it's
• 1:26:12
  a catchy song. And then the Pope starts
• 1:26:15
  dancing. And who did?
• 1:26:15
  You personally or you personally care that had a problem so we
• 1:26:20
  who was affected, I will be honest.
• 1:26:22
  Me, I don't care about anybody. What happened was when we were
• 1:26:25
  getting on the plane, one of the people that was there leaked the
• 1:26:29
  video. Now, mind you, Ali Talia, 7 1/2
• 1:26:32
  hours, no Internet. So by the time we land, this is
• 1:26:37
  all over certain media and everybody's commenting and
• 1:26:40
  they're commenting about the about the Streimeland, the
• 1:26:42
  Beckish and this and that. But it didn't matter.
• 1:26:44
  We didn't care. But there were certain people
• 1:26:47
  that were there that in the groups that they were part of.
• 1:26:50
  And you mentioned him, right? That within their community,
• 1:26:54
  this is like Lahashmid Laharik and it's the worst thing in the
• 1:26:56
  world. Was he the worst fallout?
• 1:26:59
  But my father went to bat for him big time.
• 1:27:01
  My father went to meet with the heads of the show rabbi.
• 1:27:03
  Did you did you see any problem with any of this?
• 1:27:05
  No. I mean at all because the the
• 1:27:08
  the bottom line is he got. What he needed to got.
• 1:27:11
  What he needed that was. My question the.
• 1:27:12
  Bottom line, that's the bottom line.
• 1:27:14
  When I went after that to a priest.
• 1:27:17
  And you got this. Wait a minute, the.
• 1:27:18
  Dancing rabbi. The dancing rabbi.
• 1:27:22
  Yeah, yeah, the dancing rabbi. That was that until today I got
• 1:27:26
  the priest that till today they they, they say, oh, you're that
• 1:27:30
  so it ended. Up that that song and that
• 1:27:33
  dancing video and the. Viral was actual because it's
• 1:27:36
  what made you, gave you something more power today.
• 1:27:39
  So you, you people don't realize mind.
• 1:27:41
  Blowing literally one of the people that were there came over
• 1:27:44
  to me last week at a bar mitzvah.
• 1:27:47
  Struggling still with the whole fallout from it they were very
• 1:27:53
  nervous that they were going to lose a big part of their
• 1:27:55
  business because of it from a certain sect and he came over to
• 1:27:59
  me goes I just want to let you know that specific sect I am so
• 1:28:03
  deep entrenched with right now more than ever everything I
• 1:28:08
  thought I was going to lose and you know what I'm talking about
• 1:28:11
  but the whole idea you know he was still super uncomfortable
• 1:28:15
  and he wanted to have you think with river Prince to discuss it
• 1:28:18
  still. The way he came to Rabbi Pinto,
• 1:28:22
  to Rabbi David Pinto and told him, you know, Rabbi Glock went
• 1:28:25
  and this and that, and you just said he had probably had good
• 1:28:28
  reason to go. That's all now.
• 1:28:31
  On my perspective being Public Enemy number one, especially
• 1:28:34
  since it was in the early days of amudem on the early.
• 1:28:37
  Days of the Internet and the. Early days of the Internet.
• 1:28:40
  Understand that that Shabbos we flew out on the matzo Shabbos.
• 1:28:44
  That Shabbos was the Tormosaura convention.
• 1:28:47
  Well, this whole trip started. I actually discussed it with
• 1:28:49
  Revilia Brittany. I said, listen, we got invited
• 1:28:51
  and my father's going and you know, Laser wants to come and he
• 1:28:54
  goes, listen, you're going, you're doing good things.
• 1:28:56
  He goes, something's going to come out of it because there's
• 1:28:58
  always haters out there and haters are going to hate.
• 1:29:01
  That was Revilia's whole line and which was great that I went
• 1:29:05
  to him because by the time I got back, a lot of the people that
• 1:29:08
  were upset that listen, talking about a modem topics publicly,
• 1:29:12
  you know, people were not we're not thrilled about it.
• 1:29:16
  And so it was very good because he knew about it.
• 1:29:18
  So there was really no fallout at the end.
• 1:29:20
  And let me say it like this, the haters are going to hate no
• 1:29:23
  matter what. If I sneeze the wrong way, the
• 1:29:26
  haters are going to hate me for sneezing if I so at the end of
• 1:29:29
  the day, like my father's langes and says what he needed was
• 1:29:33
  accomplished. And through this, I got LinkedIn
• 1:29:37
  messages from people all over the world for different things
• 1:29:41
  based on that video. They saw the video, they did a
• 1:29:44
  Google reverse search my image. It's like the weirdest things
• 1:29:47
  have happened. Then it was in all the Catholic
• 1:29:49
  papers the next day with the Pope dances with Rabbi group.
• 1:29:52
  And they made it as a big as a like there's a.
• 1:29:57
  Way you know, we know when Mushiya comes, all the nations
• 1:30:01
  there'll be 1 and by how's that going to play out with the
• 1:30:06
  Muslims, the Christians, the Jews?
• 1:30:08
  How we at your age now, after everything you've seen dealing
• 1:30:11
  with all the different religions in the world, is there a way of
• 1:30:16
  peace? Is there a path forward of
• 1:30:19
  peace? That's all.
• 1:30:21
  That's all we have to rely on. Same thing with the.
• 1:30:24
  Do they? Hate us?
• 1:30:26
  Do they? Deep down hate us.
• 1:30:29
  Does the Vatican the very? I can't say the Vatican hates
• 1:30:34
  us. But I mean, ace of Sinus Yankov,
• 1:30:38
  we could say that that's. What I was just going to say but
• 1:30:40
  the but the toilet says Ace of Sinus Yankov so I mean but.
• 1:30:44
  You've never experienced it. When you're there, it's always
• 1:30:47
  and the Vatican. No.
• 1:30:49
  No, he's full of. Respect.
• 1:30:50
  Oh yeah. Yeah, meaning the joke was that
• 1:30:53
  there was another very famous person who went with his family
• 1:30:56
  to the Pope 2 weeks later and there were pictures going around
• 1:30:59
  of the Pope with us smiling and the Pope with this family
• 1:31:03
  frowning like he was forced to be with them.
• 1:31:06
  And they were saying, oh look, your friends were here last
• 1:31:08
  week, you know, and they were smiling.
• 1:31:11
  As far as anti-Semitism though, I just want to say that although
• 1:31:14
  what you're saying is that, but currently look at what's going
• 1:31:17
  on in the world that we're living in.
• 1:31:18
  I mean, anti-Semitism is something like it's never see,
• 1:31:21
  it's public, it's allowed. Church, specifically the
• 1:31:23
  churches, yeah, we went through the Crusades.
• 1:31:25
  We've went girls through places where look.
• 1:31:27
  And your church? Specifically.
• 1:31:29
  People. So they made a Bishop, a Bishop
• 1:31:31
  will come to town. He's going to wipe out the
• 1:31:33
  shules and go wipe out the the Jews and everything else.
• 1:31:35
  Bishop that time was a was a big, big thing.
• 1:31:39
  Now we have contacts directly with the Pope.
• 1:31:40
  So I mean it's like, so don't. Forget the Vatican came out with
• 1:31:43
  an official statement already a while.
• 1:31:45
  Ago that the Jews did not. Kill Christ, all these things.
• 1:31:48
  But I I will also say there's one big story that we didn't
• 1:31:50
  even touch on. And I know this is going to
• 1:31:52
  being longer and I don't know what we're going to do.
• 1:31:54
  Tati you know, I always say my father, the design isn't the the
• 1:32:00
  greatest doer in this generation and Claudius or all that.
• 1:32:04
  I don't know a single from family in America for sure not
• 1:32:08
  that one way or another wasn't impacted in a positive way as a
• 1:32:11
  result of my father. I don't know of any somebody,
• 1:32:13
  anybody who has a family with the dies of an autopsy because
• 1:32:15
  New York State was the first law then all the states copied
• 1:32:17
  anything anybody that ever called.
• 1:32:19
  That's all that right. But there was one thing that
• 1:32:21
  when people ask like what's your father's shining moment?
• 1:32:23
  And he always likes to talk about the Mincha area.
• 1:32:27
  Sloatsburg. Sloatsburg, the original Minke
• 1:32:30
  area and I remember. Your car blocking off traffic by
• 1:32:36
  Sloatsburg. I used to park there to let
• 1:32:41
  traffic up to the top of the part of, not to let them
• 1:32:45
  Anybody, somebody. Fill me in.
• 1:32:46
  So can you share the? Story You know about the Minke
• 1:32:48
  area on the way upstate, no? Maybe, Rabbi, you can tell me it
• 1:32:50
  went upstate. I went.
• 1:32:53
  Upstairs, the Minkel they. Police called me.
• 1:32:56
  I was a deputy assistant to the Superintendent, and they had
• 1:33:01
  problems. And the Monroe 131, exit 131 of
• 1:33:05
  the 1717 people pulled up over there and started praying and
• 1:33:12
  they said they're going to start giving summonses because little
• 1:33:15
  kids are running on the highway. I mean, the kids, you know, did.
• 1:33:17
  The gap probably gets outstanding from that.
• 1:33:19
  So the kid runs out and this and that, so they start giving
• 1:33:21
  summonses. So I said, you know what?
• 1:33:24
  I went to Mario Cuomo. I said let's legalize it.
• 1:33:27
  Let's find another area where cars can pull in off the road
• 1:33:33
  and, and and say the prayers. So the first fire area we had
• 1:33:37
  was the salt area on the Thruway, but that didn't work
• 1:33:40
  out because there was no bathrooms there.
• 1:33:42
  No. This or not?
• 1:33:43
  No. One second, let's go back a
• 1:33:44
  second. Let this to go backwards.
• 1:33:45
  So that area was actually called Mincha area.
• 1:33:49
  The state police, the famous picture is Mincha area.
• 1:33:52
  Tell them what happened then. I got sued.
• 1:33:56
  The governor got got sued by who?
• 1:33:58
  The New York. No, the new No, not ADL and the
• 1:34:01
  New York Civil Liberties Union violation church and state.
• 1:34:05
  And also maybe you make a Muslim area, people can spread out
• 1:34:09
  their carpets and pray and why did this?
• 1:34:11
  And why is the Jewish area and this now?
• 1:34:13
  So Cuomo told him, go fight, go take me to court, take me to
• 1:34:17
  rabbi to court. And he just told him, well, when
• 1:34:21
  Pataki came in, he said, let's change the name to prayer area.
• 1:34:25
  So that's like we changed it to service.
• 1:34:27
  So then they switched it to service area, but this was then
• 1:34:31
  and then there was no bathrooms, no nothing.
• 1:34:33
  So so. We moved to the, to the, to the.
• 1:34:40
  Rest area and. But.
• 1:34:41
  Even then Slosberg area, it was on the grass on the right,
• 1:34:44
  meaning there was like the parking lot and then I see them
• 1:34:47
  all over the place like you know.
• 1:34:49
  And the funniest part is that they see them used to walk out
• 1:34:52
  with their jackets and their hats and workout and this and
• 1:34:55
  that. And he's saying Mintra, Mintra
• 1:34:57
  and this literature stand here. Rabbi, I'm curious in your
• 1:35:04
  phone, who's the most highest level person you have in America
• 1:35:08
  when it comes to, you know, the get out of jail free card?
• 1:35:11
  Who, who do you got in there today?
• 1:35:13
  In today's day and age, do you still have contacts like you had
• 1:35:15
  in those days? I have.
• 1:35:16
  Contacts at from time to time depending which agency you went
• 1:35:20
  where ever. Ever have any dealings with
• 1:35:22
  Trump? Yeah, with his father.
• 1:35:25
  Really, I helped. His father, His father came from
• 1:35:27
  my office with a big long limousine.
• 1:35:30
  FWT was the license plate number.
• 1:35:33
  He was building Trump Village in Coney Island and the people were
• 1:35:37
  demonstrating against him and he was threatened.
• 1:35:41
  So I arranged 24 hour police coverage for him and he never
• 1:35:45
  forgot it. So he was like Rabbi.
• 1:35:50
  I'm going to say I, I will never forget this interview.
• 1:35:53
  I really, really appreciate it. You know, being the first of the
• 1:35:57
  podcast of together with your son, it was so nice to have both
• 1:36:00
  of you here. Thanks for filling in the shoes
• 1:36:03
  and bringing an amazing perspective.
• 1:36:05
  You have good stories to tell. I want to ask you, what do you
• 1:36:07
  think is the biggest challenge facing the Orthodox Jewish world
• 1:36:11
  today if you had to? Anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism and
• 1:36:16
  and what became it now became an instinct to do and it used to be
• 1:36:20
  like a guy was an anti semite. He was privately cursed to Jews.
• 1:36:24
  It is never now you can walk over and and and spill something
• 1:36:28
  on a Jews face and then guess what?
• 1:36:30
  I'm an anti Semite. You're proud of it.
• 1:36:33
  What should what should we do about it?
• 1:36:35
  What can we do about it? Nothing.
• 1:36:37
  Like domining and asking Hashem to to to because I mean we see
• 1:36:43
  from day-to-day the mayor's office the this the that
• 1:36:46
  everything is becoming a legal legal anti-Semitism.
• 1:36:49
  So I mean we have to pray Tashem that he should assist us that
• 1:36:54
  in. All your years in America, have
• 1:36:56
  you seen anything like this? No.
• 1:36:58
  One second and when you were younger going it's worse now
• 1:37:01
  than it was when you were a teenager.
• 1:37:05
  That's a very scary. That's a scary.
• 1:37:06
  Thought so one second. And what about like reminding
• 1:37:08
  everybody that we do have one big power here besides
• 1:37:12
  vidavaning people? Should vote yeah, that is
• 1:37:16
  something that big every election they called me right
• 1:37:19
  away take me to vote take me to vote because he came from
• 1:37:23
  Ukraine and there was no such thing as voting there and they
• 1:37:26
  had etcetera etcetera. He was so happy that in America
• 1:37:30
  you could vote for a president and a governor and a mayor.
• 1:37:32
  He forced me to take him to vote.
• 1:37:35
  He must take. He must go.
• 1:37:36
  He must go. That was that was one of his
• 1:37:38
  big, big, big, big days of the year.
• 1:37:40
  But go. So how?
• 1:37:41
  Important would you say it is that people vote?
• 1:37:44
  Very, very important. And as being Jews, as being
• 1:37:47
  Jews, are we better off being proud Jews or better off wearing
• 1:37:51
  the cap baseball cap in, you know, in public?
• 1:37:54
  Let me. Tell you something, I go to
• 1:37:55
  Poland, I see people from Israel coming.
• 1:37:58
  They're winked and everything else in Israel and they come
• 1:38:01
  there wearing a cab for a drive, a taxi driver cab or this,
• 1:38:05
  whatever it was done. And I work with my spuddick in
• 1:38:08
  the street every Shabbos and this and I think that it's
• 1:38:13
  disgusting for people to hide their religion.
• 1:38:15
  That's it. There you go show it off and
• 1:38:18
  that's all. That's that's who I am and
• 1:38:20
  finished and that's all even. With all the answers, be proud,
• 1:38:24
  don't hide it. Powerful.
• 1:38:26
  Thank you. I I.
• 1:38:28
  Really appreciate that and I have to mention, you know,
• 1:38:29
  again, a thank you to a big thank you to your son Svi for
• 1:38:32
  nominating you and bring you here.
• 1:38:34
  What you know final thoughts about what your son has been
• 1:38:37
  doing all these years and what he's been accomplishing Amudim
• 1:38:40
  and all the great work that they do.
• 1:38:42
  What are your thoughts about it that?
• 1:38:43
  I'm very proud of him and Shem should give him a, the kayak to
• 1:38:48
  keep on going and should also give him kayak to get a lot of
• 1:38:51
  money so that he can keep his, his operation going.
• 1:38:54
  Because like he said that the some of the other funding
• 1:38:58
  sources are drying up. So we have to make sure that
• 1:39:00
  the, that they, that they wake up, not dry up.
• 1:39:03
  And they should help Ammudem because Ammudem is one of the
• 1:39:05
  few organizations that's in existence that helps people
• 1:39:10
  without any background, Anything else, just you, you're in
• 1:39:13
  trouble. We're here to help you.
• 1:39:15
  And they should have a lot of slotha and a lot of knackers.
• 1:39:18
  I. Mean I wish.
• 1:39:19
  You should be out of business. But I want to say my fault.
• 1:39:21
  I'm going to ask my father if he feels comfortable.
• 1:39:23
  My father told me something last week.
• 1:39:24
  We sat and sat next to him by a wedding and he turns to me.
• 1:39:28
  Do you remember what you said to me?
• 1:39:30
  I used. To go to a wedding and they
• 1:39:31
  said, oh, like one guy came over to me last week, 52 years ago,
• 1:39:36
  you did me a favor and this and that.
• 1:39:38
  I owe you a big score. Another guy said 58 years ago my
• 1:39:42
  father died and you stopped the autopsy.
• 1:39:43
  That's not now They come up with me, your son's V, help me, help
• 1:39:49
  me. And beautiful.
• 1:39:50
  One afternoon. These are the thank yous I'm
• 1:39:52
  getting by weddings now. Beautiful.
• 1:39:54
  Beautiful. You're alive.
• 1:39:55
  That's beautiful to me. That's not.
• 1:39:58
  You know what? This is all tremendous knockers
• 1:40:00
  for me also, and I really love that you came up here.
• 1:40:02
  I really appreciate it and thank you and a big thank you to our
• 1:40:05
  listeners, our subscribers. I always ask the last, the last
• 1:40:08
  question is would you sponsor someone else that you think
• 1:40:10
  would be a good guest nominate? Who would you nominate to be a
• 1:40:13
  good guest on this podcast? How about the Pope as?
• 1:40:16
  You said how about the Pope now? But somebody in in New York
• 1:40:20
  local that you've made? An impact or making an impact or
• 1:40:24
  sitting. In that same chair, sharing
• 1:40:26
  their life would make an impact to a big part of the
• 1:40:31
  listenership I. Don't know so many people that I
• 1:40:33
  know are not yeah. We're going to let you go on
• 1:40:38
  this one, Rabbi, On behalf of all of Khali's role, thank you.
• 1:40:42
  Thank you, Thank you. We really appreciate it.
• 1:40:44
  Again, we appreciate you coming here.
• 1:40:45
  Thank you, Tsui. That's a wrap.
• 1:40:47
  Have a good. Have a good.
• 1:40:49
  Day I.