הפרט הקטנטן - הרב לורנס קלמן HD

I want you this morning was I want to share with you something just a drop personal I was not raised as as an observant Jew that was not my background and when I first encountered this community I found certain things that were just absolutely bizarre as I think any intelligent person would and their words anytime you're visiting any foreign culture you can't if you're open-minded you're and you have a critical mind you can't help but notice certain things about that community which will strike you is very strange because it's a different culture so during my first encounters I developed a

very long list of things things which I find our bizarre about Orthodox Judaism I think that's not too strong a word so I'm not going to share with you my whole list because that will take many hours but what I thought I would do is this morning I'll share with you a few of the items maybe I'll do with two or three items that I think are very very strange about the world of these Orthodox Jews and then I'll show you how I processed those anomalies and then perhaps that will be instructive for you maybe you'll be able to take away some some ideas about how to process foreign cultures when you

visit foreign cultures okay let's start with this you cannot have any contact with Orthodox Jews and fail to notice literally their obsession with tiny itsy-bitsy little detail that's not too strong a word what is anyone at what time shall I started this week take a wild guess and you would say 6:30 or 6:45 you're wrong for sure what are the odds it's going to come out to be like 631 and 18 seconds on this side of our know if I'm the other side's like 19 seconds yeah and they're not kidding yeah if they could calculate out to the hundredths of a second they would what time the Shabbos end at

8:42 and 11 seconds literally you look on the calendar that's what it says do you think that's really what God cares about I mean like 8:32 and 11 seconds I understand a day of rest 8:32 and 11 seconds watch this if I shouldn't tell you this did you figure out that these Orthodox Jews put on their right shoe before their left shoe I'm not joking and they tie their left shoe before the right shoe except if you're a girl in which case there's two different approaches when they cut their fingernails I'm not I'm not kidding you when they cut their fingernails there's an order for cutting their

fingernails yeah this finger this finger this finger this finger this finger this finger this finger this to give this in relation here and on certain days it's better I'm not kidding now you hear the sort of thing and you think at some point they got so caught up in trees they missed the forest this is like Judaism for people who have OCD that's what we're looking at yeah so when you hear that kind of detail you can't help but think they lost at some place I found their obsession with the tale to be by the way it's not just a few areas of Jewish lights every single area of Jewish law

everything the most basic things things that you've heard about before that actually start to make sense to you if you dig a little bit deeper you'll see this kind of tale when I first encounter Orthodox a I had already been a vegetarian for seven years and I was a vegetarian basically for moral reasons so I was interested when the whole controversy broke out over kosher slaughtering I was very interested and it broke out in Europe because they were trying to ban kosher slaughtering in Europe is being inhumane and what ended up happening was there are independent non Jewish groups who came in

did studies and found that kosher slaughtering was laden humane and therefore it remained legal in most of Europe now it was interesting where they did the studies was they hooked up animals to an EEG to an electroencephalogram where they could actually watch the brain activity and with normal slaughtering let's say the way they kill most animals where I come from in Los Angeles is the bull shot the bull shot is like a steel ball on the end of a cord that's in a hydraulic gun that fires several times per second it just eats away at the animal's head until eventually enough damage has been

done the animal drops using the alumns not dead at that point then they take out chainsaws and just cut the animal to pieces and during this entire procedure you can imagine the EEG is going crazy because the animals in excruciating pain then how do they do the kosher slaughtering they take a long knife sharp within any surgical instrument they check with a nail if there's any Knick anywhere in the knife they can't use that nice to do the kosher slaughter e they take that knife in one continuous stroke they sever both the main lines going up to the brain now the those lines have to be severed

50.00% or higher when they do closer slaughtering according to Jewish law this is something I'd make it I'm critical do Orthodox in many ways but here I got a hand to them when they do closer slaughtering this way what happens is the blood drops out of the brain before the pain impulse can go from the throat to the spinal cord and up into the brain which means that the paint the animal never experiences pain it is physically impossible for an animal that is killed kosher to experience pain it cannot happen when they do the EGS of animals at a Coco sure they have normal brain activity and then

flatline so I give it to them yeah like you've got it they have the but there is no more painless method of slaughtering animals on earth unless you anesthetize the animal which will only be as painless won't be more be as painless because there's no pain also but if you nest eyes the animal you can't eat the meat because at the moment of death metabolism stops and the anesthetic is closing in the meat and then you can't eat it so if you want to eat an animal the only way to eat an animal it was kill painlessly as if it's kosher slaughtered so I like that but now listen to this I mentioned

that the two lines going up to the brain have to be severed 50% or more 50.00% or more what happens if one of those two lines is only severed 49.99 percent the animal is kosher or not kosher now are you telling me that if you severed one of those lines 49.99 percent the animal felt pain I don't buy it right this is pure obsession with itsy-bitsy tiny little details right and that is what you'll find in any Jewish law that you investigate they are all incredibly detailed oriented why such an obsession with the tail right coming from the normal culture that I come from that is bizarre okay take

that question put on their self adjustment I'll come back to it my first encounter with ortho excuse was I was doing academic research I fell into a Shiva doing academic research I had to interview Orthodox Jews that's when you find them I went to the Shiva I had no fluency whatsoever in the lingua franca so to speak the the the people there although they spoke English but it was a dialect of English it was sprinkled with Aramaic Hebrew and old French a bit of Yiddish as well so I basically couldn't understand anything any was talking about and they gave me a giant volume of the Talmud

written in Aramaic which I couldn't translate I couldn't even read and but I wasn't there to learn Tom and I was there to learn about the people and what happened was they had prayers at 7:30 in the morning in the schita which I didn't go to that I'm not religious but at 8:30 they had breakfast which I did go to and then at nine o'clock Stallman study started and I went to the Talmud study class because I had always wanted to hear like what is thomas study all about and the Talmud study was beyond belief it was so exciting and that they had from 9:00 to 1:00 what I didn't realize was it at

1:00 o'clock right as everyone close their books at the end of that class someone walked up to the front of the room went bang on a podium everyone grabbed a small book stood up it started going so when in Rome so I grabbed a booklet so we were right then suddenly everyone quiet I would write they're all standing there praying and I realize this is not where I want to be yeah but what am I gonna do I can't walk out at this point I try not to offend these people I'm a guest in their environment and I can't get up to ten minutes to one and walk out of the class that's not going to work so I

strategize that afternoon realize what I have to do and I went down to it Jewish bookstore tie bought an English Hebrew prayer book it was the first edition of a new prayer book that just came out called art scroll yeah and I bought this art school prayer book and I brought it the next day and at one o'clock when they all broke into divine dialogue so I popped out my art school prayer book and I say look at all I'm here to learn about them I'll study the things that they're saying so while they were praying I was reading through yard school prayer book this goes on for like three days after

three days the there was a little fourteen-year-old kid who had been watching me and he walked up to me and he says he says you know pray right and I'm like excuse me and he starts to explain to me he says he says you're just reading so I said what do you want me to do he says you have to say the words I couldn't believe where this was going I said are you telling me I was here to discover their culture are you telling me that the God that you believe in doesn't know what's in my heart so the poor kid got all flustered ran away yeah but don't have mercy on him because he comes back a minute

later with his giant folio sized book slams down the table in front of me starts pointing out and saying it says here you know how to say the words right what's point the rabbi's saw what was happening grabbed him carried him off but it was too late yeah because he'd already confessed they think you have to say the words now what is this neo-paganism yeah what kind of God do they believe in it if I didn't say it in articulate I didn't pray why such an obsession with the tale why do they think you have to say the words this is bizarre third question then Lord we'll be out of time third

question is like this I have 100 of these so I'm just giving you some sample today I couldn't communicate with these people and even not just because they spoke an interesting dialect of English but because we come from completely different cultures and so there was really no one for me to talk to his all observation except for one rabbi there was run one rabbi in the building who I really got excited about I asked her a question and he must have known that I was useful a harvard-educated and so he he answered in perfect American University the guy was bilingual he's poking sheepish and

university and and and the answer he delivered was so deep and it was so relevant I was I was just thrilled so I thought maybe got lucky so I asked him some more questions and every time I asked him a question I got something that was an intellectual stake I don't know how to describe it yeah so exciting so watch talk to him a lot but everyone else like to talk to him also he's hard to get to so what I used to do is at 8:30 in the morning when he would eat breakfast me Shiva I would go and pummel him with all my questions and all my questions had essentially the same format which is rabbi why

do I have to keep this mister why do I have to keep that Mitzvah and everywhere he would answer and every morning I would get the most satisfaction of these answer I felt so good spired when I walked away until one morning when I asked him one of those questions and he looked across the table and he smiled and he said gentlemen you keep asking the wrong questions at which point I was suspicious to him with all my radar went up I said what do you mean he said you keep asking why do I have to keep this mitt so why do I have to keep that mitzva and then with a big smile he looked at me and said

don't you understand he said I'm quoting our mantra our theme song he said is we do it anyone if we don't understand it I thought you're a kook ok now I was not surprised if you scratch an ultra-orthodox you you find a religious fanatic underneath I suspected that all along what what what confused me was I'm a fairly good judge of people I really believed but he got me I really felt that he understood where I was coming from and when he answered me with such relevance every morning I understood he was talking to me the University Scholar he got me we're gonna stand is why would any

intelligent worth about you even he believed it confess don't we do it even if we don't understand that didn't he realized in that moment I was going to lose complete and total respect for him out the window gone why would he say it why are they so obsessed with the tale why do they think you have to say the words why would they admit we do it even if we don't understand it fast for the whole movie about ten years I'm here in Jerusalem I found the nothing value nor effects meaning to continue my pursuit I discovered here a scholar who was a leader in the Orthodox community an amazing man when

I first met him at this lecture about subscribe he was 75 years old I came to the lecture I'm the only person unless you're coming from my background everybody else it's a room about twice the size of this room filled with 150 people when I walked in they told me there's not going to be room to sit down stand against the wall but it was ridiculous I walked in all the walls were filled yeah people were standing on each other's feet I went and stood on someone's feet who was stand against on one seat and this this old mouth white beard gets up off the bench sits down on a stool and he starts to

speak and it was part of a long winter series and it became clear in the first few minutes this long winter series had the theme of the entire purpose of Judaism the whole purpose of the Torah is to craft a human being who will be expert at intimacy so I hear that I fall off my chair everybody else in the room is non-plus they're all accepting it as if that's right completely normal he gives this entire lecture I wish I had a transcript of a lecture and I could read it to you what I can do is I can tell you what happened to me as a result of that lecture I walked out my whole perspective on

this thing called Judaism changed I've been doing a marriage counseling I shouldn't say marriage counseling because I counsel people who also were not married I've been to a couple counseling for about thirty years so at this point I've counseled literally hundreds of couples I have never once had a couple come most of the most time nine nine percent that time the couples come to me that comes me because there's their marriages on the rocks and the relationships on the rock it's breaking up I've never once had a couple come to me whose relationship was in trouble because they disagreed over

some major issue yeah I'm a liberal she's conservative I want out I never heard such a thing right I never even heard I'm Jewish she's not Jewish get me outta here I never heard that ever not once now I imagine it might happen out there but statistically those sorts of instances are minuscule the vast majority of people who come to me have relationships they're breaking up over things that are so small so picky uni but if you heard about it and would say these people are not well I had a I had a couple come to me he he he was a physician and not just a physician he was very health oriented

but not just health oriented he also was into nutrition but not just nutrition he believed that refined sugar was poison and so he would never eat refined sugar when he married his wife he discouraged her from eating refined sugar but she thought it was like a joke so she ignored him then they had kids and he kept telling his wife like I don't really feel comfortable with you seeing the kids refined sugar and and she thought that was funny until one day he blew a fuse they had already had I think it was quite like three kids he blew fuse and he said to her you are poisoning my children and in

order to protect them if you continue to do this I am going to divorce you because she was like you're kidding and he's no I'm serious she said I didn't realize was such an issue I'm sorry I won't do it again and everything was fine for a few months until he caught her smuggling into the home curios and that was it yeah he sought for divorce they came to me because one of things that I do is sometimes I'll help couples shield their children from the noxious effects of the divorce and they wanted me to buffer the children give them some advice how to protect the children so they'd come to me

for counseling so I I wanted to help but here you have a couple who's getting divorced over Cheerios ya know you hear this new think he's insane but he seemed saying that the other way yeah I had a couple came to me this is a this was a tragic story it was started tragic it ended up okay but it started tragic I knew both him before they they met each other he very very sweet people a nice young couple they just got married I attend the wedding a couple weeks later I see him he's got a scruffy beard and he's got big black wings under his eyes he looks terrible and I said to him is there any

okay what's wrong he said to me I'm a divorce her sister divorced here why I know the girls his sweetheart I even divorce her he says she doesn't like the beard I said you're kidding he said no he said start growing a beard she doesn't like the beard they said you are divorcing your wife over a beard I said give me a knife I will cut your beard or I will cut your throat are you crazy when you doing cut your beard she said no it represents something much larger there's always what they say in my office it represents something much larger if you would sit in my office you would think but crazy

people are attracted to me because everybody comes to my office getting divorced or breaking up a relationship over something which is so picking on me so silliness just let it go forget about it so small and they always say no no represents something much larger and if you think I attract crazy people watch this if there is anybody in this room who is involved in a long-term relationship and recently broke up if I asked you to publicly say what the issue was you broke up over you would be embarrassed because they all break up over a little picking you knee itsy-bitsy tiny little things and

it seems like insanity but that's the rule of course they always say represent something bigger but the reality is it's tiny things all relationships almost all relationships crash over little tiny itsy-bitsy details and more than that in case you think you may have discovered a rule here watch this 1% of time a couple will come to me and everything's going great and I start to investigate why is everything going great and what do you think I find well I'll tell you story a very cute couple came to me adorable they called for an appointment for some reason my wife gave employment my house

instead of my office and and they when they arrives my house I was on the phone so my wife welcome and she brought them into the into the kitchen and our kitchen had a sliding wooden door that separated off in the rest the house and she brought them into the kitchen so they could have privacy she closed the door then she came and she got me she said they're here so I got off the phone I did I did what I always do was I went over the door and I I lightly knocked before I went in then I opened up the door but they must not hardly milk because I'll just say they were very viscous so I didn't

want to interrupt anything so I quietly closed the door yeah then I knocked again much louder I waited a moment I opened the door now they moved into two chairs which was a good sign yeah and then I came and I said how can I help you they're all giggly so I said how can I help you so she says she says to me what one to get some advice for our marriage and I said you know to be honest I think your marriage is doing just fine I said actually it gave me some advice so so they said no no no really we why and we ought to get some advice so this actually very wise indeed and I advise couples to do

this I told my own kids to do this right before you get married when you get married go off you talk to somebody who's good at it and get some good advice so I said fine I'm happy to help you and what I did was I started asking some diagnostic questions I developed over the years some diagnostic questions which allows me to extract an enormous amount of information in a very short period of time so I asked them one question I'll tell you what question is but I can never use it on you yeah these are all trick questions so I asked tell me something do you think your spouse loves you people are

expecting the opposite the reciprocal of that question I say do you think your spouse loves you so they're very cute right he looked at her and said oh yeah and she looked up and said oh yeah so I said that's a great I said tell me something I turned to him I said what makes you think that she loves you so he's really caught off guard and he became defensive and he said well Sun is light when I come home at night and I and I walk in and she's in the living room and she looks up and she sees me she smiles I said that's it see my very defensive and he said no sometimes she makes me a cup of tea

so I said that's it a smile and a cup of tea and that's how you know that she loves you I turned to her and I said what makes you think that he loves you she thought for a minute and she started to laugh so I said what so she said this morning when he left he left me a little note on my refrigerator with three words okay I didn't ask which three words cuz there's many combinations I could make up yes but nevertheless that's amazing I said to them that's what makes a relationships or a smile a cup of tea three words on a refrigerator and the answer is yeah that's what makes it a relationships

or all relationships crash or skyrocket based on attention the tiny itsy-bitsy little details I found this consistently over hundreds of couples and I will tell you why I believe you can argue on me but this is why I believe it is if somebody know this is the big thing that doesn't mean that they actually care about the other person because how can you miss the big things if I just celebrated by 31st anniversary if I remember it's our 31st anniversary that doesn't mean that I'm in love with, because how can you miss the 31st anniversary it's an elephant in the middle of the room but if I

remember the 31 years ago last week I met her for the first time and I remember when I said where do you want to go she said let's go for fish and remember at the restaurant when the waiter brought the menu she said no no I don't need to look at I'll just I'll take salmon and remember that night she told me she doesn't like chocolate she likes carob and I remember that night she told me that she loves flowers and her favorite flower roses but not red roses she likes you yellow roses and she likes a lot of that white proof stuff that they put in the top and she likes a lavender ribbon and on

my 31st anniversary when we go out and we sit down the mayor doesn't bring the menus he just right right away brought the salmon and then he came back a few minutes later with the 31 yellow roses with a lot of the white poop stuff and a lavender ribbit if I do that that means I love her because otherwise why would I remembered the lavender ribbit if you really care to notice the details and it turns out that yes all relationships rise or fall based on how attentive that human being is the tiny little itsy-bitsy details I have several bestsellers out but I have an idea for a book that would

outsell all of my other books it's an ingenious ingenious idea it's a self-help literally self-help book for relationships and here's how it works you buy the book the book has got exercises which force shoe trains you to focus in on detailed preferences little tiny detail preferences and the book will have dozens hundreds of these exercises for five six hundred and thirteen of them books already been written the rabbit with the long white beard explained that's why there are 613 categories of Jewish law which include thousands and thousands and thousands of tiny little itsy-bitsy details

because if you're going to try to massage the human mind to create somebody who will be expert at relationship they must train in attending to little tiny itsy-bitsy details but why do you have to say the words over the years I've had many interest in psychology my favorite area of psychology says the psychology of sex differences in the psychology of sex differences my specialty is linguistics I'm fascinated by the way that men and women used language differently I could talk to you about that for an hour but not right now we don't have time one thing I will point out is one of the

significant differences in the way that men and women use language is not the number of words they use during the day contrary to popular belief yeah there's a widespread belief that women use more words during the day than men it's not true on average in any particular culture and men and women use the same number of words but what we do find cross culturally is that men and women use those words differently and specifically men tend to speak when there's a logistical issue that needs to be resolved when there's a problem that requires attention men will speak when there is no problem

requiring attention men tend to go silent so masculine language looks like excuse me could you bring it over to me please you're gonna pay the water bill no no I'm making dinner tonight all of that is masculine language it gets things done this causes problems because men tend to go silent as soon as there's not a problem to solve so the woman comes home she says I got this problem work today there was tension between me and the boss enemy worked it out and I felt so much better how do you feel about that and he says to her good and then she says well well but then later on this friend of

mine and I had this great idea and then we worked and we worked on and we did it together and we felt triumph when we actually were successful and he says Wow and a certain point she wants to grab him by the collar and shake him and say talk to me now why does she care why does it make a difference to her the answer is because for women language means something else from the time that women are little girls they are very sensitive to their position what I call love space that is a woman is sensitive to the smallest movements into a relationship a closer relationship or out of a relationship a

woman will notice if she's getting closer to someone by microns emotional distance of microns she will pick up in a relationship by the way men also notice if they're becoming more or less distant but instead of measuring that distance in microns by men we have to measure it in lightyears yes like oh you want divorces there's something wrong because with with women because they are so sensitive so whether or not they're getting closer to somebody or moving further away from somebody they discover certain movements they can make which will tell them into a deeper relationship with somebody

make them care more about that person make them love more and when women want to love more they'll make these moves one of the key moves is women intuitively sense that when you want to draw close to somebody you should give to them the more you get to something the more do you care about them and the more precious thing you give to them the more you care about them and the most precious thing you can give to something is when we open yourself up and you share your self with them when I open my mouth and I articulate and tell you what's happening inside of me that makes me feel close to you

often a woman will speak not for the sake of communicating technical data but in order to feel close to the person she's speaking to watch this I'm speaking here to a group of 100 cent women now I want to ask you as women have you ever been involved in a conversation with another woman and that woman told you the exact same detail in that conversation twice has that ever happen to you ever three times ever it seen two women walking down the street they're both talking simultaneously what is that what are they doing so the answer is it's not so they're not trying to communicate it's that

they're excited they wanted right closely chattering so they talk to each other because the more you talk together the closer you feel to the other in Judaism we also find masculine feminine language masking and meaning that we find languages purely functional versus we find language that is more relationship oriented so for example these Orthodox Jews think that the world does not belong to them they think the world belongs to God and so for example they want to eat something an apple the Apple doesn't belong to me but I want to eat the apple so I need to ask can I please have your apple so

they make a blessing before it in the Apple can I please have the Apple and they move the Apple from God's possession to their possession that's very functional that's pure masculine speech where do you find pure feminine speech in Judaism so I discovered it because this elderly sage David course a beautiful course there were five of us in this group and he spoke to us about how to be better husbands and he gave us the craziest most counterintuitive advice every night when he was speaking I was thinking this is ridiculous and then he would say go home and practice that in the next week my

wife would say go back learn more yeah fine so so one night he gets up in front of us and he said that if a couples not spending private time together two to three times a week their relationship is headed for a crash now when I heard this I was so confused because it was the first thing he said which had made sense in 20 weeks everything else he told me was crazy this actually made sense which means I knew I wasn't understanding him properly so I walked up him after the class and I said to him rabbi when you say I should spend private time with my spouse what do you mean and which when you

looked at me like wow you're a bigger idiot than I thought so I said no no I understand what I think is private time but what do you think is private time she said to me tell me something you ever take your wife out to a restaurant I said yeah sure said the next time you take your wife out to a restaurant he said find a restaurant where there are none of your students which is not the easiest thing that time I had a couple thousand students just in the city finest restaurant there and none of your students he said set up the chairs right across from each other kelvinator do you want to be

seated right across reach other 180 degrees and then he said come out the evening why she said to me don't you feel how small who becomes when you whisper so I said yeah so I tried this yeah I did the whole thing I found a restaurant working they were sure not gonna be any my sentence yeah little place I told the maitre d I want to be seated right across from the girl yeah not a problem and then I took her out and throughout the East new things okay don't do this unless you're married yes extremely effective now I went back to him and I said to him where on earth did you get that like I was

sure he liked reading psychology books in the bathroom where'd you get that so he said I got it the code of Jewish law I'm like yeah right where laws admit love lot of dating you know like come on so he says no right here and he pulls off the coating Jewish law opens it up puts it down in front of me laws of prayer he says it says right here we want to create an intimate moment with your God what do you do he says you take three steps back from the whole world find a restaurant where there's none of your students then he said you take three steps forward see right across for her and

throughout the evening should whisper why do you whisper how loud would you speak if you knew this her ear was right next to your mouth and he said and why do you have to talk he said because God is head-over-heels in love and he just wants you to join him in that relationship and the hottest organ of intimacy in the entire human body it's right here the more do you open up and award you speak the more do you fall in love I wish there was more time for stories I have a guy he came to me he came for counseling boiling over with anger so upset I said what's wrong he said I fell in love I said

Mazel Tov what's the problem he said I'm too young he's 35 years old it's like so what he's too young well he wanted to make a certain out of money before he met the girl and he met the girl before he made that amount of money so he's all upset so he said who are you upset about you're the one who did it he's I didn't do anything I said you certainly did something I said where did you meet her he said at the office I said what do you do nothing we just talked I said idiot yeah right that's how you fall in love why such an obsession with the tail because all relationships rise or fall based on

attention to little tiny itsy-bitsy details why why you to say the words because this is a mechanism for falling in love you open up and say what's happening inside of you that's how you fall in love but what was that rabbi thinking why did he say we do it even if we don't understand it didn't you realize I was going to lose total respect for him my wife is the youngest of four kids my father-in-law moves from from Germany in the middle of the Holocaust he escaped in the middle of the Holocaust he came to America he want to start a better life for himself he found something beautiful there

that was very wholesome called Boy Scouting right right leave the world cleaner and he found it be thrifty be honest it had all these good ethics my father-in-law said is what I want my children he and my mother-in-law had a little baby boy when that boy was old enough my father my settlement boy Scouty my father and I became the Boy Scout troop leader a few years went by they had another boy when he was old enough they put him into Boy Scouting by then my father-in-law was a head of ala voice cutting in Los Angeles years later than another boy when he was old enough they put him into Boy

Scouting they now had three boys in Boy Scouting my father-in-law had become the head of all the Boy Scouting in California then a few years later they were done having kids if years later woops they had an accident and they had a little girl kana and when Hana was old enough she saw the boys doing the cross-country bike trips and the survival training and she said dad I want to be a boy scout and my father and I said to her sweetie you can't be a Boy Scout because you're a girl but he said you could be a Girl Scout so my father line rolled her in Girl Scouting and while the boys were doing

the survival training the cross-country bike trips she was selling cookies and she was so upset and she said she came back and she said it's not fair and he said you know you're right it's really not the same and he's a very honest and good person and my father-in-law Wright said to her listen pull on a pair of blue jeans put on a t-shirt tuck your hair up into a baseball cap don't tell anybody you're a girl you're a Boy Scout come with me yeah my wife became a Boy Scout okay now here's what I discovered I discovered that there are advantages and disadvantages in marrying a Boy Scout okay the

advantage of being a Boy Scout is that Boy Scouts don't need very much she grew up her whole life camping and so she's not very materialistic like she's very very simple and what she when makes her happen she doesn't need a lot of stuff the imaginary boys guys they don't need very much the disadvantage in wearing a Boy Scout I could describe him this way the time I met her I had a very successful business writing I had caching pocket I would say to her I want to buy something what do you want you want perching you want jewelry you want clothes let's go shopping right but the distant Angie

bring a boy stop scout is they don't need very much so she would look at me to say no let's just lobby with you I say no I'm serious I want to think I want Bisons what do you want mergers I'll be with you but and would make me crazy okay now over the years I have actually discovered a few material things gifts that I can go into a store and I can buy for her and she likes so much it makes her giggle like honor like Scarab and kind of likes the yellow roses with a lot of the white poof stuff and the lavender ribbon one day I'm teaching my class on intimacy here in La Rochelle I was part of my

30 week series and I'm giving the class that that bad day's class was I'm given into a rational request for some reason people the West think you should not cooperate with your spouse is irrational requests cause it's like giving in to insanity I had to explain to the group that a human being is not a cerebrum and that people have psychological needs they have emotional needs we can get into a rational request you unless self-destructive or destructive we give into a rational question we take care of our spouse so I'm giving this whole lecture about getting into a rational request and there's

a knock on the door Hadassah the secretary from downstairs comes up she's so sort of interrupting urgent message from your wife she hands me a folded piece of paper I open up the piece of paper and it says late please double underline on the way home from work can you pick up two bags of seaweed so I closed this piece of paper I stick it into my pocket I finished giving my class on giving into a rational requests right I then walk down the hall as I'm walking down the hall I'm thinking if a man know nothing about relationships how would he respond to that no she never justified why she wanted

seaweed right and I can picture a guy like she didn't tell me why she wants it he gives one last try right he guides the phone right she doesn't answer the phone call and he says I'm not gonna buy her the seaweed okay now if a man responds that way the problem is not have Conner forgot to say why she wanted to see week the problem is she knows nothing about relationship what actually happened I walked down the navei Hill I walk into a my: I said on a three type of called bags of C which point he said to me I want to go repeat what he said to me yes but he said he did have it yes and he said

you got to go into the health food store in the middle of town so I said fine you guys picture the scene I love this lady to pieces and I know there's certain things that she loves but this never occurred to me here so I'm so excited I'm on the bus I'm gonna get seaweed for Hana fine I get off the bus I go into the health food store I said can I please have a couple bags of CDs his arm so sorry what's wrong he says I just sold my last two bags he said but don't worry there's a health food store another two blocks attitude I said could you call the police he said yeah just a minute because

pickle phone yeah I've got a guy here he wants he wants two guys with seaweed you know you got to tell him to hold it for me he wants to know if you hold it firm yeah yeah you hold it firm okay i'ma tell by that point I was out the door I'm sprinting down I'm running the only officer you have to picture the scene right I come barreling into their children so I'm a seaweed guy calm down yeah so so I I put the two badges seeming on the thing why anything else I said no oh look at that and on the counter he's got these trays and the trays are filled with different kinds of care bars I said you

know what actually I'll take three of these and I'll take three of these and I'll take three of these three of these and I'll take three of these he's in anything else I said no that'll do it he wraps it all but a bag he hands it to me hi I grab a bag I pay I take a change I walk out so walk out of it no I go back down the block they go into a flower store no not red roses I need yellow roses gonna put a lot of that white poop stuff in there yeah no no not pink lavender ribbon yeah I get the whole thing I go back to my house all right a little block from here han opens the door and I say hi

why did I do that she never told me why she wanted to seaweed so why did I buy four and answer the answer is not the answer is not that I don't care why she wants to seaweed as when you love somebody you want to crawl around inside their head and discover everything about them so I'm dying to know why Hana want seaweed I'm not going to refuse to buy it for it so she can justify it to me I love her so she says she wants seaweed that's enough for me when that Rabbi looked across the table with a big smile and said don't you understand we do it even if we don't understand it it's not that he

forgot that I was UCLA harvard-educated it's a he mistakenly thought but even though I had been to UCLA and Harvard I might still have a heart lift he was talking relationship I was talking philosophy okay here's what just happened I just showed you that there are certain things about the culture of the ultra-orthodox that strike me as bizarre because I come from a normal culture but in my normal culture the highest priorities achievement not connection and closeness and looking through the eyes of my culture therefore the foreign culture which I was visiting looked bizarre in a hundred

different ways and what I learned over the years is but when I see something in this system that seems strange that's where I have the most to learn that's where the deepest wisdom is buried and that's been the game that I've been playing now for the last 30-something years is finding those little elements that are bizarre and then discovering the treasure hiding underneath so as you go on your journey I'll give you the souvenir ya look for those things that are bizarre you know dig deep try understanding joy and take advantage of this amazing system for creating spectacular relationships your life okay good day old english lecturers are available online in Etobicoke you