Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] In this world today, we are already used to politicians who don't always filter what they say.
[00:00:10] But back 40, 50 years ago, it was still a novelty.
[00:00:16] And Israel had one of these politicians. His name was Yehuda Avner.
[00:00:21] Yehuda Avner was a very prominent Israeli politician. But part of his perspective Persona was that he just spoke his mind and very often got himself into all kind of trouble that he successfully crawled out of, more or less every time.
[00:00:38] And once Yehuda Avner was visiting the Rebbe, and when he was visiting the Rebbe, he decided to ask him a question. You know, that was not part of the script, what he was planning to ask him.
[00:00:54] He asked him a very sincere question. He said, rabbi, could you please tell me what is your job?
[00:01:00] What do you do? What do you do all day?
[00:01:03] What do you do for a living?
[00:01:06] So the Rebbe said that in every single Jew, there is a candle inside called a soul.
[00:01:13] And my job is to light that candle.
[00:01:18] He said, okay, interesting. Then they were speaking for a long time, couple hours, about Israeli politics and about all kind of things that were going on in the world back then from political perspective. And then as Yehuda Avner is about to walk out of the Rebbe's office at the end, he turns to him and says, no, Rebbe, did you light my candle?
[00:01:42] The Rebbe said, no, but I gave you a match.
[00:01:49] You see, we spoke here a lot about being a lighthouse, being a light. It's very important.
[00:01:57] Everybody has a scandal and we give you a match to light it.
[00:02:01] And there are really, I would say, two different types of families that come to our Hebrew school to see Kids Club. And we are happy with both of them.
[00:02:13] One, when they just want their children to learn more about something Jewish.
[00:02:19] And that's great. We are here for them.
[00:02:22] And then there are parents who are here because they want to implement something more Jewish in their lives. And Hebrew school helps them to do it with their children.
[00:02:34] These are very different types of families.
[00:02:36] I was once speaking to a mother who was sending her children to one of the Jewish day schools here.
[00:02:42] And Jewish day school had some observant, some non observant children. And the mother was calling me in shock that another parent in the class has offered them a sleepover. And they were going through different times, different dates when they could have a sleepover. And the other mother suggested to date. And this mother looked at it, says, no, that's Yom Kippur.
[00:03:04] And the other mother said, so what?
[00:03:07] What do you mean? Like, we don't Have a sleepover on Yom Kippur. And she said, so what? And this mother called me, said, we are not observant, but, like, in my mind, why is it that the parent who sends their kids to Jewish day school doesn't even know where, doesn't care about Yom Kippur? I said, listen, your children are all going to the same school, but really, they're going to two different schools.
[00:03:28] They're having very different experience.
[00:03:31] You see, in every school, there are subjects that you take seriously, and then there are subjects we don't. There is gym, there is home economics, there's art.
[00:03:40] Mom, I got a bad grade in social studies today in civics.
[00:03:47] No parent's going to get upset if you got bad grade in civics. You got bad grade in math. Oh, here your parent comes after you, right?
[00:03:56] Yeah, Mama got a bad grade in gym.
[00:03:59] Okay, what'd you do? I was in the mood of playing sports.
[00:04:02] Okay, so. But I can imagine there are families or there could be families where gym is taken very seriously and you get a bad grade in math. Who cares, Jim? Oh, don't you dare get a bad grade at gym. There are probably people like this.
[00:04:19] So you go learn Jewish things and you come home and how do your parents value what you are learning in school? Determines how seriously you take whatever you're learning in school.
[00:04:33] If when you come home, your parents say, you better learn math, you know, math is serious. If your parents tell you you better get an A in civics, then, well, you know, I don't know why, but I guess it's very important.
[00:04:48] Son's a kid.
[00:04:50] So people could be in the same school, but they could be into different schools. They could be in a Jewish school where Jewish subjects are just like civics in gym, or they could be in a Jewish school, and for them, Jewish subjects will be even more important than math and sciences.
[00:05:04] And who is it up to? It's up to the parents.
[00:05:08] So we are here for both kinds of parents.
[00:05:12] We are here for both kinds of children. We are here for the children that want to just add a little bit of Jewish things to life. They won't have anything else Jewish in their life otherwise. We are happy that they're here, and hopefully they get a positive Jewish experience. And hopefully they're going to be learning something more in their lives about being Jewish. They'll go on to college. They'll have their own families later on. And we hope that they are going to be learning, learning more Jewish things, being part of Jewish community, and then we also know that there are parents who bring their children here. And for them, being Jewish is very important. And for them, all the Jewish things that they're learning here are so important that they are reinforcing it at home. Whenever child learns something about kosher like we did here, they reinforce it at home. They show children, oh, you see, this item that we have on our table is actually kosher.
[00:06:06] So we can reinforce what our children learn at home.
[00:06:11] And we, thank God, have those parents in our Hebrew school as well.
[00:06:16] So we are here for both.
[00:06:18] We are here giving a candle, and then we're giving you a match. And we are really hoping that parents will use this match to kindle this candle.
