Ep 5 – Back to School and Elul

Sending our kids off to school makes us reminisce about our college experiences, which seem like yesterday.  Somehow we also find a way to tie the Ben & Jerry’s divestiture controversy to erotic pasta.  We end by discussing the various traditions of the Jewish month of Elul, and how they should help us prepare for Rosh Hashanah.

Episode Transcript

(00:07):
Welcome to a rabbi and alawyer. Walk into a bar,
a podcast with relatively well informedand a Reverend musings on religion,
news and society. And now for your hosts,
rabbi Asher Lopez,Patton and John Garinger.

(00:29):
Hey Asher.
Hey John, how are you?
I'm all right. I'm tired. I justdrove five hours today. Actually,
my wife drove five hours today while Iwas reading a good book while taking my
kid to college. And you took your kidto college as well this week, right?
Yeah, I guess, you know, two,
we sent off to Israel gap years and well,

(00:50):
one is at Michigan. Yeah.It's only 45 minutes.
Convenient to Detroit only 45 minutes,but still, yeah, it's a big deal.
It's a big deal. How do you feel?
Well, I can't believe we're oldenough to send kids to college.
I feel like I just left myself.
I know I, but you know, it's alittle bit of a culture shock. I,
I loved college. Did you like college?Was that a good, those were good years.

(01:14):
They absolutely were. You know,
being a PolySci student in DC is likehaving a backstage pass to a YouTube
concert. Yeah. You know, all theinternships and things like that.
I I'm trying to picture though.You in college. I, you know,
it's kind of like asuperhero origin story.
I want to hear what you weredoing for fun. Did you have, oh,
are you allowed to have fun? Where'dyou? Where'd you call Andrew too?

(01:36):
Are you Andrew? Are youAsher? What were you?
Well, you know, my English name isAndrew. So when we moved to Israel,
I was aha. So when we came back, Iwas mostly aha. And then in college,
you know, you have to fillout the forms, Andrew.
So my teachers knew me as Andrew. Itwas a little confusing, but in general,
in the Hillow world where I spenthours and hours every day, I was like,

(01:58):
you know, a hill nerd.
I was there all the time thatit was always Asha. And, uh,
but for my classes, Andrew.So I have some very dear,
very dear Christian friendswho they know me as Andrew,
but pretty much Asha, I think prettymuch Asha, but you know, honestly,
you know, that's the thingabout college it's really, you,

(02:20):
you have to understandyour own identity as a Jew,
as a person of the world or, oras a non-Jew or, you know, we,
I lived right near Newman house was, wassort of the Hillow house for Catholics.
So Newman house was like a,
a little brown stone where we understoodthat's sort of where the Catholic folks
hung out at Boston university.

(02:40):
So I love college because it'sreally a place where you get to
understand who you are and you get tomix the Andrew and the ASHARE so to
speak.
Yeah. And I that's, when I firststarted becoming more Scher,
Shabbat observing of the Sabbath and,and for example, my, my college roommate,
pat Keely would,

(03:00):
would help me walk down to a movietheater pay for my movie on Friday nights.
And that was the compromise thatwe made. It worked out pretty well.
And then my other one of my roommates,the general I mentioned earlier,
mark clingin would open up his window,a yell at the top of his lungs.
It's shovel.
Well.
That's yeah, loved it.

(03:22):
It's a really an incrediblething when people that we love,
whether they're notreligious Jews are into it,
or whether they're not Jewish at all.
And when they sort ofsupport our own aspect,
religious aspect of our lives, Ithink that's so powerful. And so I,
it was it's cheating a littlebit, cuz it wasn't in college.

(03:43):
It was just post-college.But I went with my friend,
Rob Radke to India andwe were in coaching,
beautiful little small Jewish communityat the time. This is 30 years ago.
And we were,
we were sitting with the elders ofthe Jewish community in coaching
and I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes.

(04:04):
There's an issue of killing animalson Shabbat and even mosquitoes,
I wasn't gonna SWATthem, but my dear friend,
Rob was swatting themosquitoes on me, like crazy.
It was such a mitzvah.So, you know, there,
that's sort of like yourmovie story kind of.
Yeah. So you started off didn't youwanna go into the state department?

(04:26):
Yeah. You know, I started takingArabic cuz I knew some French.
I actually took Frenchat my monies. I loved it.
Jim Boku long FK I uh, andnew Hebrew, I knew English.
So I, you know, get to know thelanguage of the middle east.
And actually later on wevisited Morocco again in,

(04:46):
in graduate school. I did useFrench cuz you know, they,
they speak French thereand Arabic of course,
but so I started just sortof languages. But then I,
I had a wonderful professor,
Merlin Swartz who not only wasa great professor of Arabic,
but he brought our class togetherand we had one of the it's

(05:07):
interesting because you're now at DePaul.
Chicago Kent is where I teach.I went to DePaul law school.
Okay. Okay. Okay. I keep onthinking of Chicago, Kent. Okay.
But you to DePaul law school and in,
in my class Arabic class,
there was a Egyptian named do ho K.
His last name was K not, notthe Jewish kishka, you know,

(05:29):
but Kish and his father was,
was she Kish in Egypt wasa major fundamentalist
whose writings were allover the streets of Cairo.
But ho is now a professor or at leastwhen I was in Chicago as a professor at
DePaul.
Is that right?
Wonderful guy. And he came overfor Shabbat dinner, you know,

(05:51):
so it is really in anundergraduate. I just,
I felt that there was a theme of,
you can study Arabic and study Islamicstudies cuz that's what I, I majored in.
And yet that makes you a better Jew.It doesn't make you any less of a Jew.
It makes you a more whole Jew anda more whole human being. I really,

(06:12):
I really felt that that kind ofmixing and, and mixing with, you know,
with, with,
with Muslims and with Christians andthat makes you more Jewish, you know, a,
a more complete Jew. So it really was.I, I found, I think that, you know,
as much as people talk about thedangers of university life and you know,
all the temptations and all that,I'm, I don't flatter myself. I wasn't,

(06:36):
you know, I had opportunities. Inever thought I did, but you know,
it's great I'm and you know,really a great experience of,
and I continue to have thatphilosophy of shared society,
even for Israel will get into itat some point of Muslims and Jews.
John, I gotta say one more thing. NASdaily. I don't know if you follow.

(06:58):
There was an article in New Yorktimes. He's like a hero of mine.
He's in Israeli Palestinian,and he has 60 million followers.
He was doing once a day, likeone minute on the internet,
whatever was on. And.
We're, we're almost at that number.
we hope we're getting there.

(07:19):
It says that we do it once aweek, so we don't get, you know,
but so he's really into this mixedsociety and people coming together.
So I, for me, that was mycollege experience. I would see,
even though I spent like sometimeseight hours a day at Hillel and,
you know, just hanging out there andbeing the president or being the, this,
this and that, you know,

(07:40):
it did feel like an experience ofreally broadening myself. And what were,
what was your major, John?
I was PoliSci and international.
So basically soaking up everythingWashington DC had to offer.
And that's the good stuff anddancing in a cage in Adams Morgan,
for those of you who know WashingtonDC. So there was the, you know, the,

(08:02):
the other side of being in Washington,that was a ton of fun as well. You know,
kind of I'm thinking in my head likethat famous animal house scene, you know,
the, the studious Asher, and then, uh,on the other side of the shoulder, the,
the crazy Andrew, you know, is, isgonna be the new metaphor, I think, for.
For the crazy John. Yeah.
Right. Crazy John and interningon the hill, John. Right, exactly.

(08:26):
It's, it's so interesting. I don'tknow what we've talked about. I,
I felt a little guilty. So when I wasapplying for my road scholarship, I,
uh, you know, talked about my,
my dream was this bringingpeace to the middle east and BM
state department think tank, whateverit was, policy planning. And eventually,
you know, I became a rabbi, but thankGod, that's how we met, you know,

(08:49):
and I felt, you know,look as my, as my agenda,
as broad as it would be to make, you know,
to be Daniel Kurtzer or DennisRoss or all these people who
I don't know, maybe messed up the middleeast, but, or, you know, older ,
but now I'm kind of fullcircles. I have a small,

(09:10):
wonderful synagogue here in Detroit,
but I'm also doing Jewish relations withMuslims and with the African American
community, indu community, I mean, it'sfascinating the Catholic community.
So it's and John,
you also went into law andnow you're also like a,
an academic side really back into the,

(09:32):
the underpinnings ofpolitical science and all the,
the legal stuff that you do as faras law of war and that kind of stuff.
It's funny that both of us could havemet in two different parallel universes
and it doesn't Judaism have a view ofparallel universes that could exist at the
same time. Yeah.
Well, the Zohar,
there are mysticism is aboutthousands of worlds that exist and

(09:55):
are influenced by the smallestactions that we do that if we say
hello in a kind way to someone,you know, someone, something,
maybe someone on the street, someonehomeless or something, you know,
we can get into that, give them moneyor not. But if you say hello to them,
and I had that experience this week,I was in the car. So I couldn't even,
you know, but I waved to someone who,you know, is in a really difficult,

(10:18):
so that affects you're right.
These parallel universes andpowers them and makes them move.
So you're right.
Parallel they're. Cause I,
I think there's a universe out therewhere you and I would've met you at state
department M the department of defense,
and we would've done something just asinteresting together as we're doing now,
but I'm, I'm happy where we are. Nocomplaints. I, I love this universe,

(10:39):
but it'd be interesting to think aboutthose parallel universes and how we
would've connected there too. Yeah.
And you know, it's interesting. There was,
so there was an article in the wallstreet journal about like how amazing
Kissinger and Schultzand James Baker were as,
you know, incredible secretaries ofstate. And I don't know, you know,

(11:00):
I'm not sure that really, we could have a,
quite a debate certainly aboutKissinger and James Baker.
Schultz is a sodic is a righteous man.
But sometimes if you're just that youhave that power in you're, you know,
influencing policy, I don't know.
Maybe I wouldn't trust myself withthat getting into a lot of trouble.
all I know is I was studyingterrorism in the, in the late eighties,

(11:22):
early nineties, before it was cool.
Wow. Yeah. Well, yeah. AndI was studying side Kuk.
I started my thesis about him. Hewas an Egyptian fundamentalist,
but AA is definitely there there'restudents of his, you know, and,
but you know what.
Like could up do a, do a tour in thefifties, in the United States. Yeah.

(11:43):
So that's really turned him offto Western culture. Yeah. He.
Saw how we danced and all that decadenceand that sent him back to Egypt.
Right? Yeah, exactly, exactly. Thatreally made him a fundamentalist.
And that's the innocent fifties thatwas like, I don't know. That was a,
we look at, upon that as a muchmore in, you know, innocent time,
which it really was. And.
Imagine, how do you see what'sgoing on on college campuses today?

(12:06):
Yes. It's, uh, you know,
I just hope that studentsreally try to just be
themselves and are not trying toconform. I think, you know, I don't know.
I'm hope I'm, it's really, it's tough.It's tough being a student, you know,
on the one, you know, on the onehand, it's the great life, you know,
now we're talking about studentloan, forgiveness and all that.

(12:27):
It's so amazing to be a studentand just to not worry about
anything, take out loans andwhatever. There is something, John,
I don't know what you say.Like, especially now we're getting closer to Russia,
to the Jewish new year to think abouthow great is we have a life where we
actually can make an impacton the world, you know?
And I guess when you're a student, youimagine you can also, but we really,

(12:49):
you know, you can makeit make a difference.
Well, I, I think a lot of folksdon't quite understood. I,
I didn't understand untilrelatively recently about the,
the run up to Rashana in, in the monthof the Hebrew month of Elul. Right.
And so it's Rashana for many people,is the, the Alta, the pinnacle,
the ultimate pinnacle as to, you know,

(13:10):
now is the time where you'resupposed to be repenting and saying,
you're sorry to all the, all the peoplethat you've wronged over the last year,
but really that process started onRoche Kolo, the, the first day of Ello,
which we just encountered last night.
And so talk to us about whatthat run up needs to look like.
And there's something calleda KSH Bon Neish, it's,
it's sort of an accounting of thesoul. It's pretty, pretty heady stuff.

(13:33):
But yeah. Talk to us about how,
how we're supposed to be thinkingabout ol and how, you know,
Rohan is sort of the end ofthe process, not the beginning.
Yeah, no, that's a great point.And, and right before I do that,
I have to say that, you know, this isa rabbi and a lawyer go into a bar.
So we both have some really delicious,uh, scotch, single malt, scotch,
you know what I.
And I'm, I'm drinking a deliciouslog of all, which is my favorite.

(13:56):
And I think your favorite too, and I'mdrinking it in a, in a glass that I,
that I got at a, at a receptioncalled the whiskey Jubilee,
J E w Jubilee. And itwas scotch and steaks.
So look I'm to you.
I'm I'm, I mean, it shows how, you know,
it's fascinating even with allthe restrictions that Jews have,

(14:17):
you can have a good time with steak.And I imagine again, other religions,
you know, I, I read about,I don't get to do it,
but flying first class in someof the dry airlines at Saudi
and itty hot, I think, andQatar, I think might be a dry,
you could still have a good time. Sosteak and scotch is pretty good. Well,

(14:39):
I.
I,
I once had one of the worstpossible experiences is that I was upgraded to first
class, but it was Passover, so Icouldn't drink anything. Oh, okay.
At least nothing, atleast nothing alcoholic.
That was good. That was, was a, thatwas your temptation. That was your test.
That was a.
Yeah, I don't think, I don't thinkthey had kosher for Passover,
anything on that flight.
So there is something actuallythat parallels drinking

(15:03):
a good scotch. And by theway, I have a Glen Livi,
a 14 year old Glen Liviin from cognac, not,
not cognac itself, but steeped in cognacbarrels. And we can talk about that.
That's a whole question isn't cognacmade from grapes and isn't that a problem
with wine. We'll talk about that andtalk about the, the London Beth thing,

(15:24):
the London court thatallows it. But, but it,
but what a really good scotch is,
and I imagine with any kind of drink isthat you're not supposed to chug Aug it,
right?
You do it very slowly and youlet it permeate and you let it,
you know,
spread little sips at atime and hemo on fish.

(15:44):
These, these times,the ideas before Rohan,
before the new year tokind of slowed down and,
and think about to step back, really,
to step back and to thinkabout not to run through life
and just do this and do that, and reallyto think about the impact of what,
what we've done there, there'ssomeone was teaching me.

(16:07):
And when I remember their name for nexttime, I will mention it. But the, uh,
beautiful idea of, uh, ruminants.
So I ruminate to think aboutruminants are animals that chew
their co that are kosherbecause they regurgit
regurgitate their food and chew it,and then swallowed it many, many times.

(16:27):
And that he said was an interestingidea that that sort of what we should be
doing these days, we should reallybe thinking of, you know, what I did,
what I said yesterday, was thatthe right thing or the wrong thing.
Now sometimes maybe we overprocess things, but these days,
like you talking about really to,
to take an account of what we'vedone to really think about it. And,

(16:52):
and some ways slow down alittle bit and take it all in,
and really like drinking afine scotch to do things really
very carefully and thoughtfully,and to add those thoughts.
So that's sort of what I'm thinkingabout this time of year. I mean, I,
I ideally, you know, then, you know,then I'll say something, I don't know,

(17:13):
something Rachel will tell me, you know,
I didn't say something asnicely as I could. I, you know,
but the ideal is to really tryto think about what you do and to
put a lot more thought into what you'redoing and that will get you hopefully do
the right thing and to change perhapsthe way we've been doing things.
It, it also reminds me,

(17:33):
there was a rabbi who told a story aboutthis time of year it's as if the king
leaves his castle and goesout to the fields, you know,
just like God out thereamong us, you know,
hearing our prayers maybe a littlebit more closely than before.
And it reminds me of a great story of amutual fr friend of ours who when vice
president Bush at the time. So this iswhen he was in high school, came to,

(17:55):
to his school at Ida crownJewish academy to campaign and,
and felt like he could basicallyreproach Bush about his support
or lack thereof for Israel. And, you know,
basically three times asked him thesame question and he thought he,
his teachers were gonna absolutelyrake him across the Coles.
And then it turned out later, hewas, he was fine from his teachers,

(18:18):
but you know, it reminds me of thatsame notion that here you are, you know,
sitting vice president comingout there into, you know,
campaign land and listening towhat the constituents has to say.
It reminds me of,
of this notion of king slashGod out there a little bit more
approachable during Ello.
Yeah. And it's interesting.I mean, I, I think that,

(18:39):
and I know that SHM Bottare Batta has mentioned this.
I'm sure many others havebefore after whatever that the,
the name he, that the Jews haveis that we argue, we fight,
we, we yellow Kim, we have, we fightwith God sometimes. You know, when,
when God comes closer,
God's probably nervous because we havea lot of things that we wanna challenge

(19:03):
God about. You know, people thatare dying that are so innocent,
whether it's from disease, whether it'sfrom wars, you know, it just people,
you know, suffering people, uh,you know, whether it's, you know,
Ukrainians being oppressed,
whether it's the URS or theRO hija or in all over and in
Libya. So we want, you know,it's a time for us to really,

(19:27):
uh, connect with God,but not in a way of, uh,
only of reverence. We have to havereverence for God in our tradition,
but it's also arguing withGod, God is much closer.
And so it's sort of like a three-wayargument. It's arguing with ourselves,
arguing with bringing Godinto that and really a very,
hopefully thoughtful time.

(19:48):
That's really gonna gonna changechange the way we are doing things and
change the world. The world isdoing things. And, you know, John,
I hope that our kids are getting alittle bit of that from, from college.
I don't know. Do you feel they,are your kids going to wash you?
Jake's at wash U it's a fine university.
Yeah. He's engaged. You know, first ofall, quarter of the kids are Jewish.

(20:10):
She's engaged with kabad there.Uh, and then he goes out,
they have what are called Jewish partiesor JDI on, on Friday night. So I,
I feel like, you know, he, heis engaged in that community. I,
I don't pry too much how much ,
but he is to a significant degree.
And that's all we could expect from himin college, what he decides to do later,

(20:32):
you know, I'll put on him.
Well, you know, it's interesting. I, my,you know, SHA is doing loves Michigan,
and she's taking some great courses,but I got a lot out of it. So, you know,
we're paying the tuition, eventhough it's thank God it's in state,
but we're paying it becauseshe took a course about the,
the history of the sixties. AndI was born, I'm a baby boomer.

(20:54):
I was born in 64 and she wantedto know about my life in the
sixties. And I could tell, you know,I could tell her about the hippies.
We grew up in Berkeley, near Berkeley,
in ADA and hippies anddrugs and all those things.
And it was so fascinating becausebecause of this class that she

(21:14):
had, I Googled, you know, there,there was a fire when I was again,
five years old. So I don'tknow it was 69 or 70, maybe 71.
There was a fire across the way.
And apparently is becausethe people there were,
were boiling LC LCD, is it,what is it L you, right.
Lucy.
LSD.

(21:35):
LSD. I can't LSD. Sorry.
I'm so, I'm so glad youdon't know what it is.
so LSD, but then I looked it up.
So I wanted to find this story of thehouse that burnt down in ADA because of
LSD. And I couldn't findthat, but I did Google it.
And ADA,
my sleepy suburb where I grew up tillI was eight years old is one of the,

(21:57):
is like the LSD capital ofCalifornia. Some of the,
the greats who invented LSDand popularized it. Even the.
Gotha doors, the, the, exactly the leadersof the generation on LSD came from.
Hey, the Marinda, I got a lotout of, out of Shayna's class.
I was very excited about that. So.
You, could've definitelytaken a different direction.

(22:18):
Yeah. You know, I don't know what wemoved to Israel when I was eight. I,
you know, you never know what,what I would've been like.
We also were not in a, it wasn'ta heavily Jewish environment.
We would go to synagogue in Berkeley,
but I wonder what would've happened.Had we stayed in that area. Um,
you know, I don't know, it's, you know,nature versus nurture and you know,

(22:42):
how we, how we would've turnedout, speaking of hippies.
Can't wait to see wherethis is going. .
We have not talking aboutBen and Jerry's ice cream.
we have not, we were, it'sinteresting as we're planning the podcast,
the Ben and Jerry's story just tookits toll over a series of months.
And now here we are towardthe end of the saga, it seems.

(23:04):
Yeah. Yeah. I hope it's really theend of the saga. And first of all,
it's frustrating because Benand Jerry's brand makes a great
non-dairy kosher ice cream thatyou can serve for dessert on
your meat meal after yourmeat meal on Shabbat.
So it was a Ben and Jerry's waslike a regular at our Shabbat table.

(23:24):
Look, we're,
we're not arguing about how greattheir ice cream is slash was.
It was fantastic, butI won't touch it again.
Maybe let's take a step backin history. So in, in, I I,
around 2000 Unilever buys Benand Jerry's mm-hmm ,
but allows them to have an independentboard, uh, for their social issues.

(23:45):
But Unilever maintains control overfinancial and operational issues.
So fast forward to last summer, right?
They basically tell the local licenseeof Ben and Jerry's a guy named Avi
zinger. I love the name.
What is zinger Avi zinger thatthis license won't be renewed. Why?
Because it's an O P T sortof a new expression for me,
occupied Palestinian Territories. Andwe can spend a whole class on Juda,

(24:09):
Samaria, west bank, what all that means,
but some variation ofthat plot of land. And,
and then of course, peoplelike me were up in arms, not,
not withstanding how greattheir ice cream is, because it,
it sounded like it passed thetest for remember Naton Sharansky,
the famous Refusenik who became anIsraeli minister basically said he had a

(24:31):
three part test for antisemitism.
It was gonna involve somecombination of dehumanization,
double standards or de legitimization,
basically the three DS mm-hmm, which in my mind is,
is a lot better, a lot betterdefinition than what the,
I H R a the international Holocaustre remembrance Alliance has as their
definition. But anyway, itseemed to pass that test. We.

(24:53):
We'll talk about thatat another time. Yes.
Exactly. That Right. Sothat happens. And then,
and then there's a lawsuitsback and forth, and,
and Unilever said it would thensell its license to zinger,
but he could only useit in Hebrew and Arabic.
And then of course the Benand Jerry's side of it, right.
We have the Unilever at the top.

(25:15):
We have the Ben and Jerry'sboard on the other side,
sued in the Southern district of NewYork and the federal court there and said
that, you know,
this Unilever settlementbasically violated the terms of the takeover would lead
to reparable harm, customerconfusion, and the like,
and basically the court shut it down.
So basically zinger apparentlycan now sell wherever using Hebrew

(25:36):
and Arabic only guess he couldn't useEnglish as part of the settlement.
And that's where it standsnow. I mean, have you,
I assume you've dealt withthe issue in your other job.
Yeah. Well, J CRC a JC, I mean, we,
this whole idea of normalization,
and then if you allow ice creamto be sold, like the, the boycott,
the BDS movement, the, uh, youknow, this whole idea that,

(26:01):
you know, if you do something normal,
like you allow Israelis andPalestinians and Jews to
sh have ice cream that, you know,
that's sort of normalizingthe occupation or normalizing
a bad situation and an imbalance of power.
It's so problematic because I'minto building relationships.

(26:24):
That's what we want more relationshipsand the closer the relationships and the
more people do things together.
That's how you move towards peace. Andthat's how you move towards empowerment,
including empowermentof Palestinians. So it.
Like 2000 people in four different plants.
Yeah. And, and this is,
I remember soda stream wasinvolved with this also, right.

(26:47):
Noah TPI has in her book talks about this,
that it just hurts Palestinians.
It just would mean that Palestinianscould not buy Ben and Jerry's,
and now with this new deal, they can.
And I think my hunch is,
and though I didn't talk to the judge,
but my hunch is that when thejudge saw this and said that, oh,

(27:11):
by Ben and Jerry said, you know, havingtheir brand in Hebrew and Arabic,
which is great, it'll haveHebrew and Arabic on it.
What's a better symbol ofshared society than that,
that that's causing iRealharm to their reputation
of being moral or ethicalor socially conscious. No,

(27:31):
that's, Doko, we would say,
that's specifically what you wanna dothis judgment said, what is going on here?
And I, I, you know, I think that's thewhole BDS movement. It's really about,
you know, boycott to vests sanction,
but it's really aboutdemonization of Israel and,
and Jews and that they wouldrather, they don't okay.

(27:53):
I'm gonna say it. I don't thinkthey care about Palestinians.
They don't care about anybody.They just wanna harm Israel.
They just wanna fightIsrael. And some of it,
unfortunately I think our Jewishpeople that feel very guilty,
Israel is a great state, ispowerful and, and Israel,
the truth is the Palestinianshave been, you know, are, are,

(28:15):
are in a bad state. And I don'tthink it's really Israel's fault.
I'm very sympathetic towardsthe Palestinian people.
And I want there to be sharedsociety with Israel and coexistence,
but the way to do it is not by beatingup on the Israelis or the Jews,
and certainly not by harmingPalestinians to do it.
So I, this judge, God blessher. You know, I think she,

(28:38):
she really got it and I'm sure they'regonna still Sue some more. And, you know,
I don't look, I'll take tothe Supreme court, you know,
Coney Barrett or whatever.
I don't think he's gonna be thatsympathetic to this or .
And, and for the record, I, youknow, I also come from a line of,
you know, my father won an award inthe late seventies for Israel bonds.
And my, my dad was a Holocaust survivor.

(29:00):
Imagine he gives up andI I've read the speech.
And I have the speech where hegave, uh, you know, in his speech,
basically a presentation. Wecertainly talked about Israel,
but also talked about the Palestiniansand how they deserve rights. And they,
and that was, you know, for aspeech in the late seventies,
at an Israel bond dinner, talkabout potentially divisive.

(29:21):
And yet he had the,
the moral compass to be able to say thathe thought the Palestinians should have
a right to, you know, tolive free. And, and the like,
and so I would agree with youa hundred percent. You know,
I think that we can talk about the IsraeliPalestinian issue on a whole nother
podcast,
but I think we can put a pin in the factthat both of us want for them what we

(29:43):
want for our people as well. You know,
one question I have for you is whenyou have a situation like this,
should it impact their kosherstatus. In other words,
if you had a company like thisthat let's say the decision stood
and, and they were basicallypulling out of Israel entirely,
they were engaged in a BDS programwith respect to their food.

(30:07):
Would that be something that youthink should impact the kosher status?
No. So I, I, the greatquestion, and it goes back,
there are two interestingcases. One is the glut yacht,
the famous glut yacht from, I thinkthe, probably the late eighties,
maybe the early nineties,
this was a kosher cruise thatwent around the New York Harbor.

(30:30):
And it was glut. Koshermeans super kosher.
We can talk about the technicalities,but glut means super kosher. Uh,
but it was a yacht andthere was dancing on board.
It was just a great time,but, you know, mix games, I.
Assume, mixed dancing, men and.
Women mixed dancing, menand women. And, uh, this.
Is the, this is the Jewish love boat.

(30:50):
Exactly, exactly. So, and that'sa, you know, there are, you know,
laws about mixed dancing.
And so they pressuredthe supervising agency
not to, to pull the supervision,
which was just about food and itwasn't. And, but they said, well,
since there's mixed dancing,we cannot give our supervision.

(31:14):
I don't agree with thatat all. And in fact,
I admire supervisingagencies that are courageous.
So we went to a same sex wedding,
our whole family a couple of months ago,
and it was a kosher weddingand I would never want the
supervising agency to say, well,we can't give our, you know,

(31:36):
we can't declare it kosherbecause we disagree. You know,
whether that's a wholediscussion in Judaism, but we,
we disagree with the same sex marriage.
I wouldn't want themto be able to say that.
And so I thanked thesupervisor there. I said,
thank you for making this coaster.And in fact, when I ,
when we were going to the wedding, I said,

(31:57):
when I saw him and youcouldn't recognize me,
usually a big beard and a bigkeep on. And I said, you know,
everything's kosher. He says, thefood is kosher. So , you know,
but, but that's, I think that's soimportant. And I, I remember in Israel,
apparently there was a supervisingagency that pulled their hushka

(32:19):
pulled their supervisionbecause from a yogurt,
apparently because there was a dinosauron the yogurt and they didn't believe in
dinosaurs or something, you know,
because it would imply that the worldis more than 57, 82 years old. So,
so they pulled it. So,no, I, I, as much as,
as much as I would love to say thatthey shouldn't be given supervision,

(32:42):
all that let's let the supervisingagencies just see that,
you know, that it's the ingredientsand the, the care and everything,
the food is kosher. So that's whatyou'll see. It's I always, I did it at,
I think at Dom in Chicago, wedid like around Christmas time,
I would buy all these kosher Christmascookies and Christmas list. You know,

(33:02):
everything, not that the OU is endorsingChristmas, but just that, you know,
that's like living inAmerica that, you know,
their job is to make sure thatthe food is kosher. Don't worry.
Let people make the decision,
how they're gonna use theirChristmas cookies or whatever,
how they're gonnacelebrate their weddings.
Now, I,

(33:23):
I assume a step too far would bethe neighborhood in which Anhe
Shalom, sat, where they hadvarious very interesting stores,
including some that sold erotic pasta.
I'll just leave it at that and leteverybody's minds go where they may,
I assume that's whereyou might draw the line,
or you probably never get to the pointwhere any of those people who sold those

(33:43):
particular kinds of pasta would even ask.
Right. It's interesting though. Lookthere that, that is a challenge.
And how far you could push it. I mean,definitely the OU was getting involved.
The OU is a big supervising coach.
Supervising agency was gettinginvolved in marijuana and like
brownies, like, you know, who givessupervision for Dunken Hines? Well,

(34:07):
if Dunken Hines had a, you know, browniewith some, you know, I don't know,
cannabis or something, whichthey don't don't don't please,
that they don't as far as I know,but, but the OU was actually in,
was going to give supervision to someproduct because it's legal and it's
wherever it's legal, like inMichigan, it's legal, but.

(34:27):
Don't make me give my hourlong presentation on marijuana,
legal on the state fronts andnot legal on the federal fronts.
Because that way we turn this into avery different kind of podcast that will
lose listeners even faster thanwe would after talking about bris.
Yes, yes. I know. But you know,it it's, it isn't, you know, the,

(34:49):
actually my son, Judah,who's now studying,
we dropped him off this past week inIsrael, he's studying at the gush.
So he was trying to close down around.
one of the restaurantsin Detroit and here,
like the supervising agency, the VOD,
the committee that supervisesknown to be very strict,

(35:09):
but they have some live music inthe restaurant on Monday nights,
no mixed dancing, but live music.
And actually there is a law onthe books, in the code of laws.
It says that you shouldn't be listeningexcept at a wedding or something
like that. You shouldn't be listening tolive music while you're eating. And he,

(35:31):
my son, God bless him. He challenged,like why is this restaurant?
And the trot agency, the, the, theysaid, the supervisor said, you know,
we just vouch for the food. We, the steak,
we don't vouch for all the other thingsthat that people are doing. And I,
you know, I think, you know,
that's sort of like this themeof at college in college also,

(35:51):
I think it goes back to our,
our theme of back to schoolthat we have to have a lot of
tolerance repeat, you know, we, we need,there's certain things that we need,
we can't be subjected to racism or
antisemitism or Islamophobia orsomething like that. That's unfair.
On the other hand, there are thingsthat might trigger us in certain ways.

(36:14):
And we just have to be tolerant of that,you know, kosher, like I cannot eat,
you know, we cannoteat a non kosher steak,
but if there's musicplaying in the background,
or if there's erotic pastawith it, then you know,
we have to learn how to deal withthose triggers, those microaggressions.

(36:36):
Boy, we've covered a lot onthis podcast. That's for sure.
Well, you know, so we're gonna,we're, we're gonna gotta,
I think we have to leave in amoment, but, but I know Jen,
you wanted to talk again about Ello alittle bit about this month of Ello,
which we, we did touch on. Yeah.
There's all sorts of neat traditionsthat I, I don't think people appreciate,
like in the, in the morningin the chare service,

(36:58):
the so far is blown E every morningto, to get you into that mood.
And there are certain Psalmsthat need to be said 27. Yeah.
And.
And Slee and certain penitpotential prayers are said, and,
and there's customs to visit the graves.All these things, I suppose, are,
are part of that entire process. Youmentioned of getting us prepared to,

(37:20):
to hit that summit. That is Rashna.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm I, I'm sorry. Whenyou mentioned about visiting graves,
your dear friend, Rosiemock of blessed memory,
she was a congregant inChicago and she was German.
She was from VBO I think. Andher husband worked for Spiegels.
So she would love talkingGerman to you. I think. Well.

(37:43):
And, and my dad knew himcuz my dad was at Spiegel.
Right. So yeah,
her husband was not Zig fried,
but Zig Burt Zig Burtt I think.
That's right.
Yeah. So, but anyway, shewould never go into a cemetery.
She just felt she was couldn'tshe'd be too overcome with emotion.

(38:04):
So, but so that, that's sort of your, the,
the idea that you're mentioning is wetry to do things in this month of Ella
that really get us worked upa little bit. And you know,
like we mentioned before,God is around more,
so feeling that presence of God,more hearing the, the, the, so far,
this, this Rams horn blowing,

(38:24):
which is sort of a veryprimitive sound, really,
it's not a fine trumpet ortrombone, but it's like a,
a primitive sound. And eventhat Psalm 27 is so interesting.
If you look at it, it'sall about being with God.
A lot of the theme is with beingwith God, but it's also about a,
a battle and a struggle. And Ialways like to say, to tell my,

(38:47):
my congregants or people, anyonewho will listen, actually,
maybe it's not my congregants, but myanyway, you know, , they're great.
They're great.
But anyone will listen thatit's sort of a struggle to
come to ourselves. Sometimes,
sometimes we're just not ready toopen up and we're not ready to,
you know, face the demons that we haveinside of us or face the, you know,

(39:10):
imperfections.
And this is about thebattle that we need to have
to really open up and to understand thetruth about ourselves. Just saying this,
Ugh, makes me a bit scared, but uh.
Powerful stuff.
Yes. There we go. there we go. Well,
a little bit of Glen live and beinginspired with you, John, and you know,

(39:32):
really, and, and now, like you said,we're old folks. We only have, we,
both of us have one, one kid at homeand we're nearly empty nesters. So,
uh.
And pretty soon we're gonna be doingthis podcast from the rocking chair.
Yes, exactly. And I'll tellyou coming up, we're gonna,
we're we're gonna talk more abouthaving guests. But one thing I would,
I would love is talkingto my wife, Rachel,

(39:54):
maybe we can have our wives besome of our first guests on it.
And they're both doing veryinteresting things. So.
I would love to,
but my only concern is that our listenersare gonna like them more than us.
It's okay. Aren't you a libertarian,it's a free market, you know,
free competition. It makes you better.

(40:15):
A free marketplace of ideas. And,
and I'm worried that our ideas aren'tgonna lose that race, but we'll see.
It'll make us better people.
Indeed. Just like they did for us.
so John, this is great.
It's always a lot of fun and thankseveryone for listening and for tell your
friends about it. And John I'll letyou, you opened up, I'll let you close.

(40:38):
All right. I guess thebest way to close would be,
have a very meaningful LLand we'll see you soon.
Excellent. Take care.
Thank you for listening to this episodeof a rabbi and a lawyer walk into a
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(41:02):
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(41:24):
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