Episode 938 - Luzer Twersky
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck tuckians?
Marc:What the fuckingistas?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast, WTF.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:How is everybody doing?
Marc:How are you?
Marc:You alright?
Marc:Let me just, you know, let's do some dates first.
Marc:I'm going to be at Wise Guys in Salt Lake City tomorrow and Saturday.
Marc:Four shows.
Marc:Come down.
Marc:I'll be at the Comedy Attic
Marc:In Bloomington, Illinois.
Marc:No, that's not where it is, dummy.
Marc:Bloomington, Indiana.
Marc:That's better.
Marc:August 30th, 31st and September 1st.
Marc:I'll be at Acme September 6th, 7th and 8th.
Marc:But that is sold out.
Marc:um i'll be at the comedy works in denver september 21 and 22 for shows and stand up live in phoenix arizona october 13th go to wtfpod.com slash tour for all that info uh get the links to the ticketies get the links to the tickies that's what i'm trying to say today on the show it's a very interesting show for me i talked to uh loser twersky
Marc:He's an actor and former Hasid.
Marc:As a Jew, I have been at different points in my life obsessively curious about the Hasidim.
Marc:uh you know for a lot of reasons i'll maybe i'll get into it a little more in a second who's in the documentary one of us you've seen him on that uh the the uh high maintenance on hbo he's been on that he's also in a french film called felix and mira but i you know we'll get to him in a
Marc:It is true.
Marc:It is true, people.
Marc:It is true, ladies and gentlemen.
Marc:I have been added to the cast of the new Joker movie being directed by Todd Phillips, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Robert De Niro.
Marc:Two of the greatest actors that have ever graced the screen.
Marc:And I know some of you, given my recent discussions about the slow corruption of our culture and arts by the consolidation of desire around society.
Marc:The limited options of big budget blockbuster movies in the form of superhero movies are probably kind of, you know, thinking, well, look at this.
Marc:That big talker.
Marc:Huh?
Marc:Look at this guy.
Marc:He's a hypocrite.
Marc:He's this or that.
Marc:I'll be honest with you.
Marc:My agents trying to get me an audition for this film preceded my rants.
Marc:I do not think that my opinions have changed at all.
Marc:I have in my life, as I've mentioned before, read plenty of comic books.
Marc:But the bottom line is this.
Marc:I never thought that my life would take me to where I am now.
Marc:I didn't assume anything when I started this podcast other than I hope I can stay alive.
Marc:I don't know if I can make a living.
Marc:I don't know what you do with these podcasts, but I got to stay engaged, stay busy, and try to remain on the right side of the grass.
Marc:So...
Marc:Who would have known that some of my dreams would come true if they were dreams or some of my ambitions?
Marc:You know, making my own TV show, developing an audience as a comedian, doing the best comedy I've ever done in my life, having a career in show business, period, that the podcast itself would be successful.
Marc:So given all that.
Marc:Certainly one of my childhood dreams, and I don't like to use the word bucket list, but certainly something that I thought about in college.
Marc:I thought about, you know, as long as I was a fan of films was a God, if I was ever an actor, wouldn't it be amazing to be in a scene with Robert De Niro?
Marc:Wouldn't it be amazing to act?
Marc:With Robert De Niro.
Marc:Look at him there in Raging Bull and Taxi Driver and The Deer Hunter and Godfather 2.
Marc:All those when I was in high school and later, you know, Casino and Goodfellow.
Marc:I mean, look at Robert De Niro is the best.
Marc:The fucking best, man.
Marc:How cool would it be to be in a movie with Robert De Niro?
Marc:How long have I been thinking about that?
Marc:Most of my life.
Marc:So given that the time that we live in does not put a lot of resources into films like The Deer Hunter or even, I would say, Raging Bull or certainly not Taxi Driver, but probably not even Goodfellas really at this juncture in history.
Marc:So given that this is the timing, that this is where it's at.
Marc:Once given the opportunity that it was going to happen, that like, you know, I got this gig and I'm going to do a couple of scenes maybe with Robert De Niro and Joaquin Phoenix, the next in the line, the succession of great actors.
Marc:Fuck yes, I'm going to do that.
Marc:Of course I'm going to do that.
Marc:This is the movie that it's going to be in.
Marc:And hopefully it'll make the cut.
Marc:And honestly, it's a pretty great script.
Marc:So there you have it.
Marc:Bucket list, dream, whatever.
Marc:Whatever you may think of what I said, I'm not backing off my assertions in any way, the core argument of what I said.
Marc:But for those of you who got so offended by that and took it so personally and drew a line, I hope you enjoy me.
Marc:in the joker and if i don't make the cut karma is a bitch thank you for all you people that were congratulatory uh thank you for all you people who were uh snotty and thank you for all you people who who thought that it was somehow some giant uh conspiracy on my part a ruse
Marc:to either leverage a deal or to supply a punchline today.
Marc:You give me too much credit, people.
Marc:You give me too much credit, the three of you that did that.
Marc:So what can I tell you about what you're about to take in?
Marc:Loser Tversky was a guy that used to show up
Marc:I saw him years ago when I did... Jeez, man.
Marc:When did I... When was that?
Marc:I first met him when I was doing some sort of event at the New York TV Festival for the pilot of Marin, my show.
Marc:Wow, so that goes pretty far back.
Marc:That goes back to 2010 or something.
Marc:It was the pilot we were taking around to try to sell the show Marin with Ed Asner.
Marc:It was a weird little pilot presentation, and it was at the festival.
Marc:And this guy shows up, this Hasidic Jew, not Orthodox Hasidic.
Marc:He's a Hasidic.
Marc:He's got the payas, the curls on the side of his head.
Marc:He's wearing the kippah.
Marc:He's got the tzitzit, the talis on underneath the jacket.
Marc:Full blown Hasidic Jew, young guy.
Marc:Very manic, very intense, smoking cigarettes.
Marc:I was a fan of mine.
Marc:That's when I first met him.
Marc:And then I think I saw him at the Bell House.
Marc:He came to a live WTF, and I noticed that still Hasidic, still with the payas, still with the kippah, but wearing a sort of slick suit, not the standard issue black.
Marc:Uh, so that was sort of weird.
Marc:I'm like, what's up with this guy?
Marc:Still smoking a lot and, uh, uh, yammering on very manic.
Marc:And then I saw him again at, uh, he came to my book signing at Barnes and Noble.
Marc:Apparently I said, Oh, you got a haircut because he was not in the garb and he was not with the pay us.
Marc:So this guy extricated himself from the Hasidic community.
Marc:Now, I didn't know much about that other than, you know, my own sort of weird, you know, when I'm growing up, when I was a kid, you know, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, you know, we learned about it in Hebrew school.
Marc:You knew it was there.
Marc:You kind of wanted to go see them.
Marc:It was almost like some sort of like human zoo for religious fanaticism.
Marc:which there are many around the country.
Marc:But this one, very specific.
Marc:It's kind of 1800s Poland-looking.
Marc:But the Hasidic are always, in my mind when I was younger, like they're the real ones.
Marc:They're the most committed Jews.
Marc:They're the ones that are holding up the end for the sort of middle-class, bougie, conservative Jews.
Marc:These guys are doing the real work.
Marc:And I've written about this in Jerusalem Syndrome.
Marc:I've performed bits about Jerusalem.
Marc:visiting the wall in jerusalem how they're there you know sort of keeping you know the channels open for all of us and i don't know if any of that is true i had some sort of romanticized idealistic or you know i always knew they were kind of odd and i was always taken by the fact that they odd even with the payas and everything else if there's a generic sort of if i have a sense of like that guy looks jewish that guy doesn't look jewish outside of the getup i thought a lot of these cats they didn't look that jewish
Marc:And then I started to realize, well, maybe the gene pool is getting a little tight in the Hasidic communities, which is true.
Marc:But I used to see them cruising around in their station wagons in New York, looking for hookers down on 27th Street.
Marc:You start to realize, and then you start to deal with some of them in different ways.
Marc:You start to get this different impression.
Marc:There was kind of like a Jewish hillbilly element to them.
Marc:But but they were like a highly religious community.
Marc:It's almost a theocratic community.
Marc:They are very limited in their exposure to the to the world.
Marc:And they're just full full on Jew all the time, very specifically ritualistically.
Marc:So this was a fascinating conversation for me and a very difficult series of events for loser.
Marc:You know who you know who it's been a struggle.
Marc:And if you've seen the doc.
Marc:one of us you know you know a little bit about it but you know i really got you know i i did a i kept him around a long time and i was happy to talk to him and uh he is living in an rv uh here in los angeles he is he's he's committed to making it in show business and it's nice that he's actually developing a show
Marc:With Norman Lear's company now and a friend of mine and friend of the show Moshe Kasher has been paired with him to run the show.
Marc:I'm not sure what it's about and I don't know that we talked about it because this was a while ago.
Marc:So as I mentioned loser loser.
Marc:I think I'm pronouncing it right.
Marc:Let me get, he's an actor.
Marc:He's a Hasidic Jew, a Jack Hasidic Jew, as they say, like Jack Mormon.
Marc:He's a former, he's a recovering Hasidic Jew, which is much different than a recovering Catholic.
Marc:It's much different than a recovering anything because generally you are not completely insulated from the modern world.
Marc:And that's enforced by your community in order to be in the community.
Marc:So, and as I said, he's developing a show at Norman Lear's company.
Marc:This is a very interesting conversation with the loser Tversky.
Marc:You know, like, I've been seeing you around for years, and you've emailed me here and there, and then, like, I watched that, uh, The One of Us.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The documentary, and I'm like, oh, there's that guy.
Marc:And then, and then...
Marc:Now I know about that guy.
Marc:And then, you know, I've seen you in a couple of shows.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I watched your high maintenance episode.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then you were in Transparent, but you didn't play in Orthodoxy.
Marc:No.
Marc:But in the high maintenance you played, basically it was a companion piece to the documentary.
Marc:Yes, because in the documentary you see me shooting the high maintenance episode.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That scene where they show me shooting something, I'm shooting high maintenance.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:So, let's go back then because the documentary was pretty compelling.
Marc:I personally thought, I don't know who made it, but I personally thought that they weren't hard enough.
Marc:On the elders.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In the sense that it really focused on you guys and the difficulty and insanity of trying to extricate yourselves from the Hasidic community, which was pretty daunting and scary and weird and cult-like.
Marc:But I thought they really kind of... It feels like there's a whole other documentary in the abuse issue.
Guest:Yeah, well, they didn't want to go too hard because they were trying to tell the story of these three people.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:And also... But the onus is on them.
Marc:The onus is on the elders.
Marc:Yeah, but nobody wanted to talk to them.
Guest:They tried.
Guest:Nobody wanted to talk to them.
Guest:They only got this one guy.
Guest:Yeah, who is that guy?
Guest:So that guy, he's not anybody in the community.
Guest:He's just a guy.
Guest:He looks good on camera.
Guest:He's got a big, long, white beard.
Guest:But he's not in the community?
Guest:He's in the community, but he's not like anybody.
Guest:He's just a dude.
Marc:The one thing that I learned...
Marc:about it that I didn't really put together was that the community moved and maintained its traditional everything, specifically as a reaction to Nazis.
Marc:That they were going to protect their way of life no matter what and the idea of continuing to procreate at the level they procreate at was really, it's really, the agenda is
Marc:on some level, to guarantee the survival of that particular strain of Judaism.
Guest:Right, yeah.
Guest:It's partially, like, I think having so many kids and, like, the strictures that they added after the Holocaust was partially a response to that.
Guest:I mean, I don't know.
Guest:I mean, the funny thing is, like, I don't know much about, like, the history of, like, why they do things.
Guest:Like, people always ask me, oh, why do they wear these hats?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:That's just what they wear.
Marc:I used to do a joke about it.
Marc:Oh, about the hats?
Marc:Yeah, so God could see them in crowds.
Marc:It was more of a yarmulke joke.
Marc:Well, I mean, those are traditional hats from Poland.
Guest:Yes, but they get modernized.
Guest:They change.
Guest:The other thing is people think that it's monolithic and everybody looks the same, but he wears the same.
Marc:There's slight differences.
Marc:Of course, they update them every few years.
Marc:The two hat makers that make the hats.
Guest:Yeah, they get taller, they get heavier, they get fancier, they get more expensive.
Guest:Those fur hats, they're like,
Guest:Five grand.
Marc:And there must be like one or two companies that make them.
Guest:No, there's not more than them.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, and now they make them in China.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where were they making them before?
Guest:They make them by hand in Brooklyn.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Now they make them in China.
Guest:Oh, no kidding.
Guest:So there's more casino?
Guest:There's a lot more casino.
Marc:There's like, I think a quarter million now in New York.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right, so when do you realize you're a Hasidim?
Marc:I mean, how do you grow up?
Marc:You grew up in Brooklyn?
Marc:I grew up in Brooklyn, yes.
Marc:Before Brooklyn became hipster, your parents were there in Williamsburg, right?
Marc:Borough Park.
Marc:Borough Park with the original community.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Because when I was a kid,
Marc:You know, I'm 54, you're young.
Marc:But there was like this idea that, you know, you could go over there and look at the Jews.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Guest:Yeah, people still come and they're like, look at them.
Guest:It's like, it's a tourist attraction.
Guest:It's like, oh my God, you want to be in Brooklyn and also in the 16th century?
Guest:They're great.
Marc:It's that far back, 16th.
Marc:Well, like 17th maybe, I don't know.
Marc:And what was the name of the guy who founded the Hasidic movement?
Marc:Oh, his name was the Baal Shem Tov.
Guest:Baal Shem Tov did it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then they started breaking off into smaller sects and like, you know, implementing their own changes.
Guest:So the one I grew up in was called Bells.
Guest:And it's from Galicia, which doesn't exist anymore.
Guest:And now it's like Ukraine or Poland, somewhere around there.
Marc:So there's several communities of Hasids throughout Eastern Europe.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That broke off from the Baal Shem Tov one way or the other.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I mean, they didn't break off in a way like they went against them, but they just went their own way.
Guest:They spread out.
Guest:Yes, they spread out.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I grew up in Barapag.
Guest:My dad is a rabbi, a Hasidic leader.
Guest:He is?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:He's a rabbi?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's got his own.
Guest:There's a different.
Guest:There's a rabbi and there's a rabbi.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:The rabbi is the one who does the laws.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, you ask him questions about Jewish law and the rabbi is like a spiritual leader.
Guest:The rabbi is the one that you ask questions about Jewish law.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:So like if you've got a problem... Like the legal authority.
Marc:So he's going to... You're going to go to the rabbi if your neighbor fucked your wife or if someone stole a chicken or...
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Or somebody ripped you off.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Or it's a rent issue.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You go solve it.
Marc:He's going to open up the Talmud.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And figure out a point of reference.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And say, this is how God wants you to handle this.
Marc:That's a rabbi.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And a rabbi is a spiritual leader.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:Which means what?
Marc:He's just a preacher?
Guest:He's the one who's supposed to have the direct connection to God.
Guest:He doesn't have to consult the books.
Marc:He just asks God.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:So in some ways on a mystical level, he's more important than the rabbi.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:The rabbi is like the judge.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The rebbe is like the guy who keeps the hustle going.
Marc:Basically.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:And your dad was one of those.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Does he think of himself as a mystic?
Guest:I never asked him.
Guest:I mean, I think probably deep inside he knows he's full of shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:I mean, he's a person.
Guest:I mean, it's not like, I don't think he thinks he can speak.
Guest:He might think that he has because he's like, you know, he's a descendant of rabbis because my whole family was rabbis.
Guest:That's how it works.
Guest:The Tversky rabbis?
Guest:The Tversky rabbis.
Guest:The Tversky family, they're all like rabbis.
Guest:It's like a Kennedy of the Hasidim.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So let's talk about it.
Marc:So the thing that fascinated about the documentary, because I know so little, and I am sort of fascinated, but not educated, because I choose not to do that.
Marc:But you look at my books over there.
Marc:I've got major trends in Jewish mysticism.
Marc:I've got the Hasidic tales.
Marc:I've got Martin Buber.
Marc:That Inner Space book is some insane mystical Kabbalah book that someone gave me.
Marc:But it's a little dense.
Marc:I like the Hasidic tales, and I like Martin Buber.
Marc:Well, it's good storytelling.
Marc:It's really good storytelling.
Marc:They never end great.
Marc:A lot of them don't end great.
Marc:They just end with, and who knows?
Marc:Well, they end with the goyim dying.
Guest:They all end with the Rebbe.
Guest:The Rebbe created a miracle, and the bad goyim died.
Guest:You know, it's great for us.
Guest:You know, it's like when you're a child, you know, it reiterates, you know, that like, oh, we're the best.
Marc:We're the OG.
Marc:We're the chosen.
Guest:Even amongst the chosen, we are like the OG.
Marc:And you talk like you're supposed to.
Marc:You like have the accent that people make fun of, but it's real.
Marc:yes and it's not it's hard to figure out because it's not it's not because of Hebrew it's because of Yiddish because of Yiddish yeah and also because I didn't speak English it's New York and Yiddish is what it is yeah basically it's a combination of like New York and Yiddish but also my mother is Israeli so I have like a little bit of an Israeli accent I can hear that a little bit yeah
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Your father married an Israeli?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So my father went to yeshiva, went to study in Israel, and that's where he got introduced to my mother.
Guest:I mean, they had like all Hasidic dates that was arranged, and they had met for like an hour or something, and they got married.
Guest:They lived in Israel for a year, and then my dad moved back to Brooklyn to take over his dad's synagogue.
Guest:now was your grandfather alive when you were a kid no none of my grandparents were alive my mom's parents my mom's dad died when he was 44 yeah suddenly and then his his wife my my grandmother died a couple of months later in a car accident wow yeah so she lost both her parents when she was what about your dad's parents was he was your dad's father the rebbe in brooklyn in borough park yeah same house that my father lives now same same synagogue same house
Marc:So how many synagogues are there in Borough Park?
Marc:Oh, God.
Marc:There's like, on my block alone, there's five.
Marc:Really?
Marc:And they all have different rabbis?
Marc:They all have different rabbis.
Marc:But are they still, do the communities interact, the different congregations?
Guest:So it depends.
Guest:There's a lot of infighting.
Guest:So like, there are the famous on the Chabad, right?
Guest:The Lubavitch, the ones that stand on the street.
Guest:It's like, hey, excuse me, are you Jewish?
Guest:Are you Jewish?
Guest:Come do a tefillin.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:So this is Chabad.
Marc:Right here in the bathroom, we got to do tefillin?
Right.
Guest:On the street, they always, when they stop me, are you Jewish?
Guest:No.
Marc:How do they not know?
Marc:They pay us?
Guest:They don't give it away?
Guest:Even when I had pay us and beard, you know, I would go by and it's like, you're not going to ask me?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:They don't want to ask you.
Marc:They're afraid.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They're afraid because you might.
Guest:Well, also they assume that I already put on film.
Marc:They assume that I already did it.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:That guy already did it.
Marc:He's good, you know.
Marc:But there was the rift with Chabad.
Marc:Why?
Guest:Because they didn't like the missionary element?
Guest:No.
Guest:So Chabad and Satmar.
Guest:Satmar is like the biggest, like really extreme Hasidic sect.
Guest:Like they're the most famous.
Marc:Which ones?
Guest:Satmar.
Guest:They're the anti-Zionist.
Guest:They're the ones who are like,
Marc:All right, we live in Palestine, the wall is in Palestine, Israel's not a state.
Guest:Yeah, like when you sign, like the books that they print, it doesn't say printed in Israel, it says printed in Israel, which is the Hebrew word Eretz Yisrael.
Guest:So it's like Eretz Yisrael, it's not Israel.
Guest:Israel, the state of Israel is something else.
Guest:Are there a lot of those guys?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:They're huge.
Guest:They're based in Williamsburg.
Guest:They're the ones that people, when they think of Hasidic Jews outside of Chabad, they're thinking about Satmar because they're the biggest, the most visible, the most politically connected, the most active.
Marc:What I was going to say is the thing that fascinated me about the documentary was that kid, the one who just basically didn't know how to read or function.
Guest:Yeah, neither did I. Because it's so insulated?
Guest:Yeah, because they don't teach you any English.
Guest:They teach you very, very basic English.
Guest:There's an hour of English every day, like four days a week.
Marc:Okay, so when do you start?
Marc:Yeah, pay us when you're a little kid, right?
Marc:Three years old.
Marc:And that's part of the rule book?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:When you're three years old, you get payas.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And then what's next?
Marc:And then there's bar mitzvah.
Marc:So, 10 years, you just walk around with payas and the talus vest without being ordained?
Guest:No, you wear like regular colorful clothes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But you wear tzitzes, you know, the fringe thing.
Guest:That's what I mean, tzitzes, yeah.
Guest:Underneath it, usually.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then when you're bar mitzvah, you start wearing the tzitzes outside, and that's when you switch to black and white.
Marc:Now, bar mitzvah...
Marc:In the Hasidic community, it's a big deal in middle class conservative Judaism for different reasons.
Marc:You don't really acknowledge, okay, I'm a man now, whatever that means.
Marc:I get presents.
Marc:We have a party.
Marc:Maybe there's a theme.
Marc:You get to buy a suit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:But for you, it must have been.
Guest:No, it means that basically from now on, it means you have to fast on all the fast days.
Guest:You have to keep all the rules.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like you have to fast on Yom Kippur.
Guest:You have to fast on Tisha B'Av.
Guest:Like, you know, you got to do all the rules.
Guest:You're basically an adult.
Guest:And you start putting on tefillin.
Guest:Every day?
Guest:Every day.
Marc:Every day is tefillin.
Marc:Every day is tefillin.
Marc:I don't even have tefillin.
Guest:Well.
Marc:I just found my talus.
Marc:I mean, I had it.
Marc:It was here.
Marc:I'm cleaning things out.
Marc:But I have a nice talus.
Marc:But I don't have the film.
Marc:I don't have mine either.
Guest:I do have them.
Guest:I think I know where they are.
Guest:I still have most of my stuff.
Guest:I use them for films and stuff.
Marc:Are you a little typecast?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:At least I'm working.
Guest:I would love to do other things, but most of the work I get is that.
Marc:All right, so you're bar mitzvahed at 13, and then what's expected of you given that you come from a family of rebbees?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Are you expected to be the rebbe?
Guest:No, because I have like four other brothers.
Guest:Older?
Guest:I have two older ones and two younger ones.
Guest:How do they designate which one?
Guest:Usually the oldest one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there's always a fight.
Marc:There's always a fight.
Guest:That's why, like, right now there's two Satmars, there's two Babavs, there's, like, every sect that came with one Rebbe from the Holocaust.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and they had a bunch of kids, and now the kids are splitting off.
Guest:There's, like, two visions.
Guest:There's, like, two of everything now.
Guest:Is that why there's so many synagogues?
Guest:Partially, yeah.
Guest:But also, like, for example, like, you would say, like, when you say, like, I'm part of Babav, they say, which Babav, 45 or 48?
Guest:Really?
Guest:45th Street or 48th Street, yes.
Guest:Oh, so everyone knows.
Guest:Yeah, everyone knows.
Guest:Like Satmar, are you Satmar Williamsburg or Satmar Curious Joe?
Marc:In terms of being part of whichever congregation, is that just the community has to decide?
Marc:It breaks up the community?
Marc:Who are they going to go with?
Marc:Or is it they prefer the guy?
Marc:Because people in conservative Judaism, a lot of times they change temples just because they don't like the rabbi.
Marc:Is that the way it works there?
Guest:Well, I mean, it is a personal choice.
Guest:I mean, people decide which rebbe they like, and that's the one they go with.
Guest:But then is there friction between the two?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:When Satmar was splitting up, there was violence.
Guest:Oh, there was fires.
Guest:There was stonings.
Guest:There were burning up cars.
Guest:Yeah, there was a lot of violence.
Marc:Same with Bubba, too.
Marc:To what end?
Marc:To keep it one community?
Guest:No, but basically to kick out, like Satmar and Williamsburg, they would want to institute some new policy, and the guys who are splitting off wouldn't like it, a fight would break out.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Or if one of his people would show up.
Marc:They're burning cars?
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:So then how does the rabbi handle that?
Marc:That's a lot of sit-downs with the rabbi, I would imagine.
Marc:Is there still just one rabbi for all these communities?
Guest:No, so the rabbis, the judges, they also split.
Guest:So some of the rabbis go with one rabbi and some of them go with the other rabbi.
Guest:It's real politics.
Guest:It's real politics.
Guest:Yeah, it's like if you go to a Hasidic synagogue, which also the other thing you have to understand, people think that they don't socialize.
Guest:They do socialize.
Guest:They don't have bars.
Guest:They don't go to bars.
Guest:They socialize in the synagogue because you pray three times a day.
Marc:It seems like there's a lot of singing in the socializing and a lot of arguments.
Guest:Yeah, a lot of arguments.
Guest:I don't know if you know about the mikveh.
Guest:Yeah, the bath.
Guest:The bath.
Guest:But the men go to the bath every day.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yes, every day before morning prayers you go to the bath.
Guest:And you go in there and it's like...
Guest:Probably thousands of people go through it every day.
Guest:It's like a schvitz or just a bath?
Guest:So there's showers.
Guest:Some of them have a schvitz.
Guest:But there's the big pool that you go in and you immerse yourself in.
Guest:So a lot of people, they just go there and they just sit like it's a hot tub.
Guest:And they're just like arguing about satmar this, satmar that.
Guest:They're arguing politics.
Guest:Just dozens of men.
Guest:Just dozens of completely naked.
Guest:Completely naked, bearded men arguing.
Guest:Yeah, and there's always this one guy who dries his groin.
Guest:He puts one foot up on the bench.
Guest:There's always this one guy.
Guest:And then there's the one really, really religious guy who doesn't want to look anywhere.
Guest:He keeps his towel up, right up to the bath.
Guest:And then he just jumps in and jumps out and splashes everyone because he doesn't want to see anything.
Guest:He's just immersing.
Marc:Yeah, he's doing that thing.
Marc:What is the immersing?
Marc:What's the ritual mean?
Marc:It's just cleansing yourself, basically.
Marc:Is there showers involved in the casino?
Marc:Well, there's showers.
Marc:I don't want to be weird and generalized, but I've been around some smelly chassids.
Guest:No, a lot of them, they believe.
Guest:Because life is about spirituality.
Guest:Life is not about the body.
Marc:Or cleaning your suit.
Guest:Well, the body is just a vessel, you know, so it's not important.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But that means that there's a lot of enjoyment, so you don't have to worry about what you eat as long as it's kosher.
Marc:Basically.
Marc:I imagine doctors in the Hasidic community have to be bringing their hands all the time.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Well, they don't have their own doctors because they didn't go to college, but yeah.
Marc:Oh, see, so that must be the one thing they don't have.
Guest:They don't have doctors.
Guest:They have very, very few lawyers.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:There's no yeshiva or Jewish university for chassids?
Guest:That's the thing.
Guest:People think of Jews and they're like, oh, they're the educated ones.
Guest:Hasidic Jews get zero education.
Guest:There's no college.
Guest:There's no high school.
Guest:I have no high school diploma.
Guest:I couldn't read or write when I was 18.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I barely spoke English.
Guest:How is that legal?
Guest:It's not.
Guest:But they get away with it.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Political power.
Guest:There's actually an organization in Brooklyn called Yafed.
Guest:And they're fighting against, they're suing the state of New York to enforce the laws.
Guest:They had to sue the state to enforce its own laws in the schools.
Yeah.
Marc:What, because they just don't want to do it because it's insulated?
Marc:Because they pay their rent?
Marc:Because they have their property owners?
Marc:I mean, I don't know how they get away with that.
Marc:Because they have a voting bloc.
Marc:They're a voting bloc.
Marc:They vote as a bloc.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:So if the Rebbe says, like, everybody votes for de Blasio.
Marc:All of them, no matter what the infighting is?
Marc:That's something that transcends the infighting.
Marc:We can fight amongst themselves, but when it comes to what's good for the Hasidim... Basically.
Marc:...that we vote for that guy.
Guest:The guy has to be socially conservative and fiscally liberal.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So give us all the government programs you can, but don't let the gays get married.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Basically.
Marc:So you're telling me the Hasids, it's like the opposite of what everybody thinks about the Jews.
Marc:They're living off the welfare system.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they're just... Well, not all of them, obviously.
Marc:No, I know, but they're not... Because they're not all diamond merchants and selling cameras.
Marc:No, not anymore.
Guest:I used to work at B&H, actually.
Guest:Did you?
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:I have a good picture of me in the B&H Fest with the payists and everything.
Guest:B&H for the audio equipment.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's huge.
Guest:It's a massive company.
Guest:Is it still there?
Guest:Yeah, it's still there.
Marc:It does billions of dollars a year in business.
Marc:Yeah, they sell all the mixers and things.
Guest:I still get the catalog.
Guest:I used to work there, and I used to have filmmakers come in.
Guest:I had no idea who they were.
Guest:I remember I had this one more modern Orthodox Jew next to me, and he was like, you know who that was?
Guest:That was Harrison Ford.
Guest:I'm like, who's that?
Marc:yeah oh my god come on what movies are you watching well i wasn't watching anything at the time they didn't let you watch movies no there's no movies there's no tv there's no newspapers there's no radio all right so okay so you get bar mitzvah now who yeah now which one of your brothers is going to be rebby oh we don't know they're going to fight it out how do you fight it out i don't know i know i know who side i'm on yo really you picked a brother i have a favorite brother yeah you know
Marc:So it has to be, it's within the family?
Marc:It's within the family, yeah.
Marc:That your dad's going to make the call?
Marc:It's probably going to be in his will, yeah.
Marc:Oh, that's how it works.
Marc:So they don't even know what they, so they're both kissing your father's ass one way or the other?
Guest:Basically, yeah.
Guest:They're all grabbing real estate.
Guest:You mean mental real estate?
Guest:No, like actual real estate.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So like my father, like, you know, he makes a living from the synagogue, obviously from donations, but he also has, you know, a few buildings that helps.
Guest:I mean, he's got 12 kids.
Guest:There's 12 of you?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:How many girls and boys?
Marc:Seven sisters.
Marc:You have seven sisters.
Guest:Seven sisters, four brothers.
Marc:And you're the only renegade?
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Do you talk to any of them?
Guest:Some of them, yeah.
Guest:There's some of them who, like, just completely ignore.
Guest:My sister got married a couple of weeks ago, and I went to the wedding, and some of them just, like, pretended I wasn't there.
Guest:They just completely ignored me.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's actually interesting because, like, I don't know if I told you this, but when you did that episode with your father, I think the 500th episode, I was driving, and it touched me so much I had to pull over and cry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I hadn't spoken to my parents at that point like for probably seven, eight years.
Guest:And I decided at that moment that I'm going to try and make it right.
Guest:I'm going to try to reach out to my dad and see.
Guest:And we actually did reconcile.
Guest:And then one of us came out and he stopped talking to me again.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So just recently.
Guest:Well, he didn't see it, obviously.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, he hasn't seen a movie.
Marc:Did you throw him under the bus?
Marc:No.
Marc:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:He's a good guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just wish that I understand where he's coming from because I grew up in it.
Guest:And I just wish he understood where I'm coming from, which he might never.
Marc:But it's intentional.
Marc:I mean, they're surrounded by modernity.
Marc:And I have to assume that they have cell phones.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Filtered cell phones.
Marc:Really, like China?
Guest:Yeah, well, the best way to understand what's going on in Borough Park and Williamsburg is think of it as North Korea.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Everything is censored.
Guest:There's no outside influence.
Guest:That's why they don't teach you English because if you can read and write English, then you might read a book and then you might find out that there's a world out there.
Guest:So, like, when I was a kid and I would, you know, I'd never seen a movie.
Guest:I'd walk on the street.
Marc:But it's fucking nuts.
Marc:You're in New York.
Marc:You're walking around.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I would walk down the street and I would see, like, let's say maybe 10 years ago.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If I would walk down the street and see a billboard for, like, Mission Impossible, it would say Mission Impossible March 4th.
Guest:I would have no idea what that means.
Guest:I would have no idea what that's about.
Guest:To me, it's a Goy with a gun.
Guest:And from what I would, I would look at that and I would say, okay, I get it.
Guest:Goyim are guns.
Guest:Goyim are murders.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's a movie.
Guest:I don't know anything.
Marc:What is the day-to-day?
Marc:Because it was always my assumption that in the community, I see it surprising to me that they don't have doctors, they don't have lawyers.
Marc:Theoretically, they don't need lawyers for most of what the community needs to deal with.
Marc:They go to the rabbi, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And in terms of like, and everybody is employed, you have bakers, you have tailors, electricians, all that stuff.
Marc:But where do they get trained?
Marc:Do they get trained in Hasidic training?
Guest:No, now you have Hasidic computer programmers.
Guest:They're good improvisers.
Guest:They're good survivors.
Guest:They've learned how to survive.
Guest:So my brother is a computer programmer.
Guest:I mean, he actually works at B&H.
Guest:And he is really, really good.
Guest:He's self-taught.
Guest:He still works at B&H?
Marc:Yeah, he's self-taught.
Marc:But you have 12 of you, and you're all living in the same house?
Marc:No, no, no, no.
Marc:Most of them are married now.
Marc:Right, but I mean back in the day?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Was there ever a time where you were all 12 there?
Marc:No, I went off to yeshiva in England when I was like 14.
Marc:Okay, so you're 14, so you're the son of a big rebbe, and you get to choose the yeshiva thing.
Marc:There must be some class distinction.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So if you're like, if your father is like a big Rebbe, he has his own yeshiva.
Guest:And then you go to your father's yeshiva.
Guest:But my father's not that big.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:So I had to go to another yeshiva.
Guest:He's a minor Rebbe?
Guest:He's a minor Rebbe, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he's like a B-list Rebbe.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And why England?
Guest:So, because I got kicked out of every school I went to.
Guest:How do you get kicked out of school if they're just teaching Yiddish and Jewish stuff?
Guest:Well, you can still make trouble.
Guest:You can still not learn, even like Torah.
Guest:If you don't like classrooms, which I don't, you know, it doesn't matter what it is.
Guest:So you're making trouble?
Guest:I'm making trouble, yeah.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Well, it was one time where I was, so you have the classrooms, and then after they teach you the class, so after you get bar mitzvah, this is the thing, after you get bar mitzvah, you go to yeshiva.
Guest:Before that, you go to a cheyder, which is like an elementary school.
Guest:You go to yeshiva, and you're there every day from 6 a.m.
Guest:to like 10 p.m.
Guest:All day.
Guest:You study all day.
Guest:And the way it works.
Guest:Torah, yes.
Guest:When do you learn Yiddish?
Guest:Yiddish is just a spoken language.
Marc:That's what you speak in the house.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You don't study it.
Guest:You just speak it.
Guest:That's fascinating.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So everybody's still speaking Yiddish.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Aren't there a couple of different strands of Yiddish?
Guest:There is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So there's like the... Russian, German, Russian Yiddish.
Marc:German Yiddish.
Marc:Polish Yiddish.
Guest:Like the Israeli Yiddish sounds a little different.
Guest:You know, it has like the R is like R. Yeah.
Guest:And the Brooklyn Yiddish, the R is more like a rolling R, like R. Yeah.
Marc:But it's all understandable to you.
Marc:It's all understandable.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right, so, okay, so you go to 6 a.m.
Marc:to 10 p.m.?
Guest:Yes, all day long.
Guest:You study all day long.
Guest:And so you go to class, and after class, everybody goes into the big sanctuary where they study together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I, you know, when class was done, for example, I took a couple of chairs, I laid down, and I wanted to take a nap.
Guest:And people kept coming in and turning the lights on.
Guest:Other kids?
Guest:Yeah, other kids.
Guest:So I took off the cover from the light switch and I stuck my key in there and popped the fuse and shut down electricity for the whole building.
Guest:So you could take a nap.
Guest:So I could take a nap.
Marc:So you're already a problem.
Marc:I'm a problem.
Marc:Independent thinker.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:But it strikes me now, even now, sitting with you and your disposition and the fact that you're still sort of, you got payers for roles or whatever you got, but you still got it.
Marc:I don't get the feeling that you don't believe in God.
Marc:I don't.
Marc:I don't.
Guest:How can I?
Marc:I mean, it doesn't make sense to me.
Marc:All right, but when you're a kid, is it just taken for granted?
Marc:Because the Jewish God, given the books, is a fairly complex entity.
Marc:Not to us.
Marc:Not to Hasidim.
Marc:No, but you've got to know the books.
Marc:You're studying all day long.
Marc:With Christians, give or take, it's just sort of like you take Jesus into your heart and you're done.
Marc:You're done.
Marc:You can live your life and go to church on Sunday and try to be a good person.
Marc:And that's that.
Marc:I mean, it just seems like unless you get deep into Catholicism, that the issues that the religions...
Marc:Like Islam and Judaism at the level that you were practicing it is fairly complicated, very demanding and all consuming.
Guest:Yeah, but that's the difference between Hasidic Jews and all the other Jews.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Hasidic Jews do not study any like theology or philosophy.
Guest:We don't ask those kind of questions.
Guest:We don't go into that.
Guest:We just study the laws.
Guest:We just study like the laws and the spirituality of it, like the feelings of it.
Guest:And like, so all the other stuff, all the theological stuff, the philosophical stuff is taken for granted.
Guest:That's like set in stone.
Guest:There is a God and he gave us the Torah and then he gave us the Baal Shem Tov and that's the way it is.
Guest:And like that part does never get, we don't even study like the whole Bible.
Guest:We only study the first five books.
Guest:Hasidim don't even study the rest of the Bible.
Guest:That's the crazy thing about Hasidim.
Guest:They took like these spiritual ideas and turned them into dogma.
Guest:That's what they did.
Guest:That's, I think, one of their biggest problems is that a lot of what they do and what they say has no basis in Jewish law.
Marc:In terms of new people coming in outside of just people who are born into it, is that something you see often?
Marc:No, very rare.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's very rare.
Marc:Yeah, unless they marry into it?
Marc:They wouldn't marry into it either.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Some people are fanatics of all kinds.
Marc:Yeah, you know, like...
Marc:I know you're not an expert, but it's not something you saw.
Marc:It's very rare.
Guest:What about inbreeding?
Guest:Inbreeding?
Guest:Well, I'm going to try to make this as uncomplicated as I can, but it's going to be hard.
Guest:So my mother, my mother's parents are first cousins.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And then my mother has, now she has, I think, 12 siblings left.
Guest:A lot of them died.
Guest:But my mother's youngest brother married his oldest brother's daughter.
Guest:So like in my mother's family, there's a ton of inbreeding.
Guest:Like cousins and first cousins and nieces and nephews and uncles.
Guest:They're all in marriage.
Guest:And there's an old joke they say.
Guest:They're like, well, if he's a good boy, why give him away to another family?
Guest:And if he's not a good boy, why should another family find out about it?
Guest:So either way, just keep him in the family.
Guest:So that's the way it goes.
Guest:Yeah, but it's not every family.
Guest:And they do genetic tests.
Guest:So when you turn 16 or 17, there's a nurse that comes to yeshiva and takes everyone's blood and he gets a barcode.
Guest:Everybody gets a barcode.
Guest:And it goes into a database.
Guest:And then when they start doing arranged marriages,
Guest:the , the matchmaker, would call up and say, I have number five, four, three, three, three, and number blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Are they a genetic match?
Guest:Can they marry?
Guest:Are they gonna have Down syndrome kids or whatever?
Guest:Oh, so that's how they do it.
Marc:That's how they do it.
Marc:So it's not, you don't look at the family tree anymore.
Marc:No.
Marc:You just look at the crapshoot of genetics.
Marc:Basically, yeah.
Marc:So they're only concerned with certain genetic matching.
Marc:Like, they know that this plus this equals this.
Guest:Right, yeah, they don't want like, you know, sick kids.
Guest:So they're basically saying, you can be family as long as we don't get them.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:As long as it doesn't, you know, as long as you don't have healthy kids, why not?
Marc:But it's weird because this would sound crazy, but like I used to think that, like I'd see a lot of Hasidim, I'd say, you know, if you shave this stuff off, he doesn't look Jewish.
Guest:Yeah, they're like redheads and like blondes.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I was a blonde boy.
Guest:When I was a boy, I was blonde.
Guest:My mom is blonde.
Guest:Yeah, and I have blue eyes.
Guest:I mean, I don't look Jewish.
Guest:When I like clean up and I shave and everything, people think I'm Irish.
Marc:So, all right, so once you start having these rebellious, you're still going along with it.
Marc:You still believe in God as a kid.
Guest:Yeah, well, I'm figuring it out.
Guest:I'm questioning it.
Guest:I'm making a lot of trouble, you know, and I... But what'd you do in England?
Marc:That must have been different.
Marc:So you grow up in fucking Brooklyn, then you go to England.
Marc:It feels the same to you?
Marc:Like the communities as insulated?
Marc:Well, so I got sent to a boarding school.
Marc:A boarding yeshiva.
Guest:Yeah, a boarding yeshiva in England.
Guest:So it's an hour north of London in a little town called Hitchin.
Guest:Actually, it's not in Hitchin.
Guest:It's like outside of a little town called Hitchin.
Guest:It's in the middle of nowhere.
Guest:You're surrounded by fields.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you never leave the premises.
Guest:And it's just all payas.
Marc:All payas, all boys.
Marc:Yep, all boys.
Marc:And the same thing, 6 to 10 at night.
Guest:Yep, all day for like six months.
Marc:But what are you, just reading Torah?
Guest:Reading Torah, you're praying on Sabbath, you know, you're dancing, you know, you're singing, you're eating, smoking, a lot of smoking.
Marc:Yeah, they don't mind smoking.
Guest:Well, that particular issue didn't mind smoking.
Marc:No, but I mean, even like in New York, I used to see these fucking casas in their station wagons cruising for hookers.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Like all the time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Is that another thing that the community is like okay with?
Marc:Because I heard about like a lot of these Orthodox women, these Hasidic women, they got genetic, they got venereal diseases.
Marc:Yeah, they get them from the hookers, from their husbands, yeah.
Guest:Well, they look the other way.
Guest:The community looks the other way.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Especially if you're like a rich guy and like someone important and like, yeah, you know, he gives a lot of money to the shul, he gives a lot of money to the schools, you know, like, yeah, so he does that.
Guest:That's between him and God.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, certain things are between him and God.
Guest:But apparently some other thing is like, oh, no, we got to take care of it ourselves.
Marc:Interesting.
Marc:So they just decide within the community.
Guest:Yeah, people look the other way.
Guest:So you're in England for how many years?
Guest:Yeah, so basically I get bar mitzvah.
Guest:I spend a year in yeshiva in Brooklyn.
Guest:I get kicked out.
Guest:I spend another year in a yeshiva in upstate New York.
Guest:I get kicked out again.
Guest:And then nobody wanted to take me anymore.
Guest:They're like, this is a problem, kid.
Guest:We don't want to deal with him.
Guest:So do you have to go sit with the rabbi to discuss this?
Guest:No, it was because my father is a rabbi, so he gets to do whatever he wants.
Guest:And what was he doing?
Guest:Was he just being a father?
Guest:Oh, he was going insane.
Guest:He was losing his mind.
Guest:He didn't know what to do with me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he never knew what to do.
Guest:He was always kind of lost.
Guest:I was that one kid that he just had no idea what I wanted and what my deal was.
Marc:But were there other kids like you that you connected with, I mean, at least?
Marc:Did you find any other...
Marc:who were troubled kids in this way in the community?
Guest:No, because the troubled kids were like into stuff that I wasn't into.
Guest:To me, I still, I mean, I'm 32, so I'm still trying to figure out my childhood and what it all meant.
Guest:I just didn't fit in.
Guest:I just didn't like any of it.
Marc:So what are the other troubled Hasidic kids doing?
Guest:Oh, they go out at night, not like clubbing, but they get into trouble.
Guest:They drive.
Guest:They sometimes smoke weed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They get into regular kid trouble.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my kind of trouble was just bizarre.
Guest:It was just bizarre behavior.
Guest:It was like, who shuts down the electricity today?
Guest:Who wants to take a nap?
Marc:Stuff like that.
Guest:How did you get kicked out of the one in upstate?
Guest:Oh, it was Purim, like the Jewish Halloween.
Guest:And in the middle of prayers, and I think I started doing like stupid tricks in the middle of prayers.
Guest:Like, what do you call these cans that spray like string?
Guest:Oh, yeah, right.
Guest:Yeah, like in the middle of prayers.
Guest:Silly string.
Guest:Yeah, silly string.
Guest:I did that.
Guest:It was just like, I did things for attention.
Guest:I always, I mean...
Guest:Are you the youngest?
Guest:No, I'm number four.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:So as long as they gave me like out of 12, yeah.
Guest:As long as they gave me a stage and they let me sing and they let me lead the prayers, I was happy.
Guest:If I wasn't getting attention, all hell broke loose.
Marc:So that's right.
Marc:So you were a class clown and you needed attention.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:For some reason, your brain, like, you know, I guess that the idea is that you set the dogma in place in such a strong way that the kid does not have the traditional yearnings for sort of parental attention, nurturing, that kind of stuff.
Marc:So, like, the religion in the community was supposed to fill that void.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it didn't fill it for you.
Guest:And also, it didn't let my brain expand beyond the borders.
Guest:You had desire.
Guest:I had desire.
Guest:I did so much to do with it.
Guest:I had curiosity.
Marc:Yeah, once you realized that every billboard for a movie is not just about goys with guns.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:You were like, there's something else going on across the street.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I remember when I was a kid, there was one guy on our block lived right next door to us.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And at the top of the stairs, the second floor of our house, I could look into their bedroom.
Guest:They're watching TV?
Guest:And I couldn't see because I got glasses late in life.
Guest:You couldn't read, you couldn't speak, you couldn't see?
Guest:Yeah, I couldn't see because my parents thought I was lying when I said I couldn't see.
Guest:They didn't take me to the eye doctor.
Guest:So I could just see the flickering TV.
Guest:I couldn't see what was on it.
Guest:And I would just stand by that window for hours and just like wonder what is happening in that house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, so to me it was always just I have intense curiosity.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I would take things apart like toys just like to see how it works.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, I wouldn't put them back together.
Guest:I wouldn't figure out how it works, but I took it apart.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, okay.
Marc:So you had this drive that it was not, you know, you were not spiritually satisfied and you were not materialistically satisfied.
Marc:You weren't emotionally satisfied.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So after England, do you graduate from Yeshiva?
Marc:You don't graduate, you get married.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's your graduation.
Guest:Your wedding is your graduation.
Guest:So yeah, so they sent me off this boarding school where you're there for six months out of the year and then you go home for Passover or the holidays.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so over there, I kind of found my place because I was away from my parents.
Guest:And I was able to relax.
Guest:And I actually became a pretty good boy.
Guest:I studied, you know, and that's when I developed my performance, you know, skills.
Guest:What did you do?
Guest:I would sing.
Guest:I would, you know, just lead the prayers, lead the Sabbath meals, you know, and yeah, I became a little bit of a macher.
Guest:And yeah, and then I got married.
Guest:So you got arranged marriage.
Guest:I had an arranged marriage, yeah.
Guest:They did the gene testing.
Guest:They did gene testing, yeah, compared barcodes.
Guest:The barcodes were passed.
Guest:Yeah, we matched up.
Guest:And you didn't know her?
Guest:No, no, I didn't know her at all.
Guest:Was she from Brooklyn?
Guest:No, she was from Muncie.
Guest:She was from upstate New York, Rockin County.
Marc:And how did that deal go down?
Marc:What's the deal between the dads and the Hasidic community?
Marc:What's the dowry situation?
Guest:So the way it works is there's a matchmaker.
Guest:I think they go to the girl's parents first and they say, well, there's this boy, Lusa Tversky.
Guest:A little bit of a problem.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, they didn't say that.
Guest:And his dad is the Foltachana Rebbe.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So that's something.
Guest:Great family, the Tversky.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So they start doing some research, and I say, okay, we're interested.
Guest:And then he goes to my parents, says, well, we have, you know, I don't want to say her name, but them, and are you interested?
Guest:And so when both say yes.
Guest:Both families.
Guest:Yeah, when both of them say yes.
Guest:Both fathers or mothers.
Guest:Fathers and, yeah, mothers, both.
Guest:And they start doing research.
Guest:They start calling the school.
Guest:They start calling her job.
Guest:Were they doing the same thing with you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they still signed off on it?
Guest:And they still signed off on it.
Guest:Apparently, they weren't sure.
Guest:And then what you have then is you have a meeting.
Guest:So my mom goes to meet the woman and her dad comes to meet me and we sit down for a couple of hours.
Guest:What did he do?
Guest:He ran an embroidery business.
Guest:For Taos?
Guest:Yeah, for like Taos and like, you know, all the ornaments for the shul, for the synagogue.
Guest:He does that.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So I meet her and it didn't go that well.
Guest:It was like an hour.
Guest:Where'd you meet her?
Guest:At her sister's house.
Guest:And she's got the wig on and everything?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:She doesn't have a wig on.
Guest:No, no wig.
Guest:You only put it on after you get married.
Guest:Oh, right.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:She has a ponytail.
Guest:She's pretty and she's very shy and very quiet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I am not that.
Guest:Yeah, but that can work.
Guest:Sometimes, but it didn't work.
Guest:There was just no conversation happening.
Guest:And I go back to my dad and I'm like, yeah, I don't know.
Guest:And that's also, like, unusual.
Guest:You usually don't say no.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Usually just say yes.
Guest:Because, like, you have to give a reason why you say no.
Guest:And, like, what could be your reason?
Guest:You haven't slept with her.
Guest:You barely spoke to her.
Guest:And, like, how do you know what you want?
Guest:You don't know what you want, so how are you going to say no?
Marc:But in their minds, all they want are kids.
Marc:They don't give a fuck, right?
Marc:No.
Marc:Whether you get along or not is not the issue.
Marc:No.
Marc:Because women are primarily, I guess, silenced initially.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I have to assume that at some point, like any other relationship, once everyone has surrendered to the situation, if no one's fighting, I have to assume that some marriages within the Hasidic community are fairly dramatic.
Guest:Yeah, but they always say, oh, look at us.
Guest:Our marriages work because there's less divorce.
Guest:Well, there's less divorce because people have no choice.
Guest:By the time you realize that you've fallen in with someone, you've got five kids.
Guest:What are you going to do now?
Guest:Walk away?
Guest:But you're stuck.
Marc:They're not happy.
Marc:They're stuck.
Marc:No, of course.
Marc:I get that.
Marc:I get that.
Marc:But there must be bitterness and fighting and domestic abuse.
Marc:Probably.
Guest:I mean, my parents, I mean, they didn't talk much.
Guest:They're both living their own lives.
Guest:I mean, my mother's raising 12 children.
Guest:My dad is, you know, running a synagogue.
Guest:So you marry this girl.
Guest:Even your father says, fuck you.
Guest:I do end up marrying her.
Guest:First I said no, and then a couple of weeks passed, and my rabbi, so actually the dean of my yeshiva, who I was very, very close to.
Guest:It's literally the only guy who I have any nice things to say about from that community.
Guest:He was a really, really nice guy.
Guest:I really loved him.
Guest:Not a rabbi, a rabbi.
Guest:Yeah, he was a rabbi.
Guest:He was the head of the yeshiva.
Guest:Okay, a wise man.
Guest:A very wise man.
Guest:Like a super, like probably one of the nicest people I've ever met in my life.
Marc:Why did you like him?
Guest:Why did he resonate with you?
Guest:Because he actually cared.
Guest:And did he understand your dilemma?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah, he did.
Guest:When I said, I don't think I believe in God, he's like, oh, don't worry.
Guest:It's a teenage thing.
Guest:You'll get over it.
Guest:But he said it with such heart.
Guest:I felt like I really meant it.
Guest:And this is the kind of guy who would leave his house in the morning from London with a bag of lunch from his wife.
Guest:And then he would see a homeless guy on the street.
Guest:He would pull over and go out there and sit on the curb with him and show him, oh, this is the chicken.
Guest:Here's the potatoes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And would just give him the silverware and everything.
Guest:He would go to his arch enemy to borrow money for some other sick person.
Guest:He was a completely selfless person.
Guest:He was a wonderful guy.
Guest:So he found out that I had what they called, it's called a beshow.
Guest:Like when you first meet the woman, it's called a beshow.
Guest:That meeting's called a beshow.
Guest:So he found out I had a beshow and I said no.
Guest:He calls me up.
Guest:He was very sick at the time.
Guest:He had cancer.
Guest:And he says that, listen, loser, they don't know your history yet.
Guest:You gotta say yes because the older you're gonna get, I was 18.
Guest:He's like, the older you're gonna get, people are gonna start wondering why you're not married yet.
Guest:And then they're gonna start digging in.
Guest:They're gonna find out all your history before you came to my yeshiva.
Guest:And then you're never gonna get able to get married.
Guest:This woman wants to marry you.
Guest:Just marry her.
Guest:It's gonna be great.
Guest:I said, yeah, but I don't like the way she looks.
Guest:And I'm like, he's like, oh, what the fuck?
Guest:Forget about pretty.
Guest:Pretty is for pictures.
Marc:Pretty is for pictures.
Guest:You know, so he convinced me, he said, why don't you meet with her again?
Guest:And if it doesn't go well, you can say no.
Guest:So I go into my dad and I said, you know, that's what the Rosh Hashiva says, what the rabbi said.
Guest:And I'm going to go meet her.
Guest:And my dad says, no, no, no.
Guest:If you meet her again, it's a yes.
Guest:So I call back my rabbi and I said, listen, this is my father.
Guest:He said, if your father says that, go meet with her.
Guest:And if he doesn't like it, I'll pay for the wedding.
Guest:What does that mean?
Guest:He's like, do it without your parents.
Guest:Get married without your parents because I think you should meet with her again and you should decide.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that's another thing.
Marc:Did you tell your dad that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's when they said, okay, you know what?
Guest:Okay, we're going to meet her again.
Guest:And I met her again and we actually, you know, it was okay.
Guest:It was like half an hour.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it was a good conversation.
Guest:Is everyone sitting around?
Guest:Do you have a room or what?
Guest:So we have our own room.
Guest:They leave the door open so nothing, you know, can happen.
Guest:They can watch over us.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:And I walked out of the room and I said, let's do it.
Guest:And that's it.
Guest:Like six months late, I was married.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But you didn't talk to her in that six months?
Marc:No, not at all.
Marc:She just came down for the wedding?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I just met her at the wedding.
Marc:And you break the glass and you dance on the chairs.
Guest:And then we go into our private room.
Guest:And then we go into our private room where we sit for like, I think 12 minutes is like the legal, the Jewish legal time that it takes to, what's the word, copulate?
Guest:You go into a room right after the wedding?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:You don't do it.
Guest:But you have to be there long enough to be able to do it.
Guest:Oh.
Marc:Do some people do it?
Marc:No, I don't think so.
Marc:Not anymore?
Marc:Or what?
Marc:Was it?
Marc:No, I don't think so.
Marc:I don't think anyone does it at the wedding.
Marc:Okay, so you do the 12 minutes, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then what?
Marc:And then we go party.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, you drink wine, dance.
Marc:Drink wine, dance.
Marc:Get on the chairs.
Marc:Get on the chairs.
Marc:They walk you around.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Everyone's happy.
Guest:Everyone is happy.
Guest:I'm happy.
Guest:You are?
Guest:Well, because I'm thinking like this horrible childhood is finally over.
Guest:Now I'm on my own.
Guest:Now I can fix it.
Marc:Now I can fix it.
Marc:But that's interesting because like, you know, you did get yourself to the point like as I did even, you know, when I married my first wife who was Jewish and, you know, we went through that whole thing that like, all right, well, one of the reasons I did it was because it was familiar and it was, you know, it was expected and it seemed okay.
Marc:But if you still have those things in your mind or in your heart, it's never going to be okay.
Marc:So now you're happy and you get your own place in one of your dad's buildings or what?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:So we ended up living in Muncie.
Guest:So my father doesn't have anything over there.
Marc:And upstate New York?
Guest:Upstate New York, yeah.
Guest:So we got a little apartment there.
Guest:And that's when I first started.
Guest:Now I have autonomy.
Guest:Because before that I was in yeshiva.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:All the time.
Guest:Or at my parents' house.
Guest:I had no autonomy.
Guest:I was able to go out.
Guest:Go out where?
Guest:Anywhere.
Guest:I wasn't able to leave like I was on the watch.
Guest:But could you read and stuff at this point?
Guest:I could read a little bit.
Guest:My English was a little bit better because I spent some time in England.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the Hasidic kids from England speak a little bit better English.
Guest:And so that's when I got a car for the first time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I started, you know, talking to people.
Guest:One of the first places I went was Starbucks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like I was just looking for places to interact with like- But you're full on hat and- Oh, yeah.
Marc:Black and white.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I started talking to people and I know my English got better and I started listening to this rabbi who like gives lectures in English just to improve my English.
Guest:A prophetic rabbi?
Guest:No, like it wasn't Hasidic.
Guest:It was like Litvish, like a Lithuanian rabbi.
Guest:He's very famous, Rabbi Miller.
Guest:He gave lectures in English.
Guest:And in one lecture, he mentions something about like how the goyim are so stupid.
Guest:They believe in evolution.
Guest:They believe that everything just made itself.
Guest:And I'm like, wait, wait, people, what is that?
Guest:What is that again?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I started researching it.
Marc:Because you're free to research.
Marc:You got internet now.
Guest:Well, I don't have internet yet.
Guest:So everything- You don't have internet yet.
Guest:No, there's a process.
Guest:So first I get the car, and then I get a DVD player.
Guest:In the beginning, I would watch anything.
Guest:I would go to Blockbuster.
Guest:I would sneak into Blockbuster.
Guest:I would go to one like Ramsey, New Jersey.
Guest:I would go far away from Muncie.
Guest:And I would make sure there's no other minivans outside, make sure there's no other sneakers around.
Guest:And I would literally, if it was rated R, I would rent it.
Guest:Also, here's the other thing- Where were you watching them?
Guest:In my car.
Guest:Yeah, I had a whole hookup where it plugs into the cigarette lighter.
Guest:And the thing is that I didn't even know you could rent movies.
Guest:I would go to Blockbuster and buy every movie I wanted to see.
Guest:And at one point, I had so many movies in the trunk of my car because I would hide them with a spare tire.
Guest:I could no longer close it.
Guest:So I went to a truck stop, and I bought these DVD sleeves, and I threw all the covers out, and I just had the DVD.
Guest:I still have a lot of those.
Marc:Who were you hiding it from, your wife?
Marc:My wife, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And once you move in with them, are you talking more with her or do you?
Guest:Well, we never really connected.
Guest:We never fought.
Guest:We've been married for three years.
Guest:We never fought, never had a single fight, but we barely communicated.
Guest:She was like doing her own thing and I was doing my own thing.
Guest:What was she doing?
Guest:She worked as like a home health aide.
Guest:And were you having children?
Guest:yeah we had a kid like nine months after we got married we had our first child and then a second child a year later uh-huh so you started yeah i mean like you know that's what happens you know if you do it that's what happens that's what you're supposed to do well you know i didn't know like condoms and like you know and like birth control i was like hey i'm having sex for the first time this is great you know right so you didn't know anything about that
Guest:No, nothing.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I mean, I knew a little bit.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because in the yeshiva, you know, boys, there's some boys who know more, they talk, but not practically.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it was also understood that you just have kids.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you're sneaking off, you're renting DVDs, but you're not getting hookers and stuff.
Guest:No, not yet.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:That happened.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:There's actually maybe a year and a half into my marriage, and I started reading more and getting into science.
Guest:And one of the only places I could go to speak to Goyim, where I felt free and I knew I wasn't going to be seen, was a strip club.
Guest:Because if there was another Hasidic Jew there who saw me, he wouldn't rat on me because he's there too.
Guest:So one of the only places I could go to interact with regular people was a strip club.
Guest:About science?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I had this strip where she was like Norwegian or something.
Guest:And she tells me that she's an atheist and she believes in evolution.
Guest:And I'm like, ooh, I got my Rabbi Miller argument.
Guest:And I'm like, oh, I can make you into a believer in like five minutes.
Guest:Because I still believed at the time.
Marc:What was Rabbi Miller's argument against atheism?
Guest:It's the blind watchmaker.
Guest:How come something as simple as an ashtray didn't evolve and something as complicated as a banana or a human did evolve?
Guest:So I just lay it on her and I'm like, there you go.
Guest:This is going to do it.
Guest:And she looks at me and she says, you know, it's not the same thing.
Guest:And I'm like, why?
Guest:She's like, because an ashtray isn't biological.
Guest:And I'm like, whoa, wow, right.
Guest:And I told the story to Penn Jillette and he says like, oh, it's amazing how much more convincing an argument becomes with a pair of tits in your face.
Guest:But yeah, so I went home after that night and I was like, wow.
Guest:After the strip club.
Guest:After the strip club and I was like, oh my God, I gotta get to the bottom of this.
Guest:And a couple of months later, I was like, yeah, I'm done.
Guest:I'm done, there's no God.
Guest:This is bullshit.
Guest:uh-huh yeah and that was when you were 23 i was like 22 almost 22 22 two kids two kids a bunch of hidden dvds in your trunk yep you're sleeping with strippers yeah well yeah well sleeping with them but uh yeah yeah well eventually i did start you know seeing uh seeing hookers because like all right well it's it's got to be more to sex than just uh
Marc:But you went with hookers because you couldn't really find anyone else who's gonna fuck a chassid.
Marc:Yeah, also I didn't know how.
Marc:You didn't know how to talk to girls.
Marc:I didn't know how to talk to them.
Marc:You had no game.
Guest:Well, you know.
Marc:How are you gonna have game when you got payers in a hat?
Guest:Yeah, well, now even when I have payers for a role, you know, I can still find my way around, you know.
Marc:Well, yeah, you seem a little more well-adjusted.
Marc:Yeah, somewhat.
Marc:Well, but so what does it take?
Marc:So now that you, when you started seeing hookers or started not believing in God, I mean, how long?
Marc:I didn't think I was going to talk about hookers on the podcast.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's okay.
Marc:But how long before you're like, I got to get out of this?
Guest:So at a certain point, I stopped caring.
Guest:And I brought my computer home.
Guest:I bring the DVDs home.
Guest:And me and my wife, we had an agreement.
Guest:We were like, you know what?
Guest:You do your thing as long as the kids don't know.
Guest:As long as on Shabbos, you come home, you do a meal, you pretend everything is fine.
Marc:So is she sleeping with people?
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:She's very religious.
Guest:She remarried.
Guest:She has a bunch of more kids.
Guest:She's in.
Guest:Right.
Guest:so we had an agreement okay you know like i was doing my thing she was doing her thing and it was okay and at a certain point she started you know saying like okay this is this is not gonna work you know we gotta make up our minds you know about what divorce no are you gonna be religious so you're not gonna be religious and uh she went and told her dad and her dad came up to me um after prayers friday night and he said uh listen in muncie because he's at the year at his temple
Guest:Yes, so he says, you know, I know and I need you to make me a promise that you're gonna be religious.
Guest:I said, you know, I don't make promises that I can't keep.
Guest:And he says, well, then you gotta let her go.
Guest:I said, okay.
Guest:And that was on a Friday night and on Tuesday I was divorced.
Guest:That quick.
Guest:You got to get?
Guest:I got to get.
Guest:I got a legal divorce.
Guest:Done.
Guest:Out.
Guest:No money things.
Guest:No nothing.
Guest:Just you're done.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You can have whatever you want.
Guest:I don't need anything.
Guest:I just want out.
Guest:There's a whole world out there.
Guest:I want to see it.
Guest:And that was it?
Guest:That was it.
Guest:And I lost.
Guest:I got fired immediately from my job.
Guest:Which job?
Guest:I was working at a liquor store at the time.
Guest:A Hasidic liquor store?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so because I don't, because I was open about not keeping Shabbos anymore.
Guest:So if I touch kosher wine, it becomes non-kosher.
Yeah.
Marc:Oh, and that's why you got fired?
Marc:Outside the fact that everyone knew in the community that you did this thing.
Marc:Yeah, but I can't work at a wine store.
Marc:I'm going to, you know.
Marc:Oh, if you don't keep Shabbos at all.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's not a matter of the day of Shabbos.
Marc:If you're a guy that doesn't keep Shabbos, you can't touch any booze.
Guest:You can't touch any kosher wine, yeah.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're like a... You're like a goy.
Guest:Black magic.
Guest:No, if a goy touched... A goy cannot touch kosher wine.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It becomes non-kosher.
Guest:Unless it's pasteurized.
Guest:If it's not pasteurized, if it's like regular wine, then yeah, that's what makes wine kosher.
Guest:The only thing that makes wine kosher is that it hasn't been touched by a goy.
Guest:There's no special process to it.
Guest:It just has not been touched by a goy.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:It's so funny because Manischewitz and like Mad Dog 2020 was such a popular fucking, you know, wino, alky, street-level drunk shit.
Marc:Mad Dog was like, and that's a Manischewitz product, I think.
Marc:Yeah, but the Hasidians don't drink Manischewitz.
Marc:It's not kosher enough.
Guest:It's not?
Guest:No.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:There's actually a lot of very, very good kosher wines.
Guest:There's like really expensive kosher wines.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah, from Israel and from like France and yeah.
Guest:There's like a lot of really nice kosher wine.
Guest:I learned everything I know about wine.
Guest:I know from working in the kosher wine store.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:All right, so you get fired.
Marc:You basically exiled yourself from that community.
Marc:So how long before you had to pack up your shit and go?
Marc:Immediately.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Immediately.
Guest:I was immediately out while my wife kept the apartment.
Guest:I had nowhere to live.
Guest:Where'd you go?
Guest:So I was crashing in a friend's basement for a while on like a mattress on the floor in Muncie.
Guest:Another Hasidic guy?
Guest:Another like he was like on the fringe.
Guest:You know, it was like an older single guy, which is also very unusual.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he was living alone and the whole other crazy story.
Guest:That guy, like his dad is like a big deal in Vegas, like in casino business.
Guest:And his dad is not religious.
Guest:And he became Hasidic.
Guest:And then he became like modern Orthodox.
Guest:And then he doesn't know who he is, but he had this place in Muncie and I was crashing with him.
Guest:But he didn't go to your temple?
Guest:No.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:No, I just knew him through France.
Guest:Oh, all right.
Guest:And then what?
Guest:Yeah, and then I joined Footsteps, which is the organization that you see in the movie.
Guest:In Brooklyn.
Guest:In Manhattan, yeah.
Guest:They're based in Manhattan.
Guest:This is for Jews, Hasidic Jews who want out.
Guest:Yes, and they help you with shelter and food and high school diplomas, job search.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, because you come out there and you know nothing about it.
Guest:You don't know what a resume is because that's not how Hasidic Jews get jobs.
Guest:They don't have resumes.
Guest:They're like, oh, you know your Uncle Favish?
Guest:Oh, yeah, he's hiring.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You want to work for him?
Guest:Do you know how to use a computer?
Guest:Yeah, I'll figure it out.
Guest:Oh, good, you're hired.
Guest:That is literally how it works.
Guest:You can get any job.
Guest:They think of most things, they're like, if a guy can do it, I can do it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The difference is if I go to college, learn how to do it, then I can figure it out on my own.
Marc:Oh, right.
Marc:That's how it goes.
Marc:That's how it goes.
Marc:So there is a sort of like, you know, that sort of judgment.
Marc:You know, it's interesting because that idea of the difference between Jews and non-Jews.
Marc:is is not specific to chesidim and you know it is it's sort of uh that that thing is stuck you know through conservative jewishness and i imagine some reform jewishness that the chosen people that we're more educated that we know yeah well it's worse with chesidim yeah no i know yeah but it is it is a jewish thing yeah yeah it is of course yeah and it's it's actually it's it's it's worse by chesidim and unjustified too right from what you're telling me yeah because they're all dummies
Guest:Well, you know, the thing is they're street smart.
Guest:They're street smart.
Guest:They're very street smart.
Guest:That's why they love Trump.
Marc:Well, they're street smart in the way that, you know, the streets of Borough Park.
Marc:No, in general, in business too.
Guest:That's why they like Trump.
Guest:They don't like data and numbers and experts.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They'd go with their gut and they'd go, that's why they love him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're like, he's our kind of guy.
Guest:He's like, hey, fuck the establishment.
Guest:I know how to do this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So what?
Guest:You're an expert.
Guest:That's it?
Guest:That's in the Talmud?
Guest:No, but then the proof is in the pudding.
Marc:Well, he's a billionaire, so he must know something.
Marc:But aren't there rules about business in the first five books?
Marc:Yeah, there are.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And they don't have to deal with that?
Guest:Well, but those only apply to Jews.
Guest:Jews dealing with Jews.
Guest:So when you deal with goyim, you don't have to follow those rules.
Guest:So there's actually, the law is, the Jewish law is, that if you go to a Jewish store and they give you the wrong change, you have to return it.
Guest:But if you're at a non-Jewish store and they give you the wrong change, you don't have to return it.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's in the book.
Guest:That's in the book.
Guest:It's an actual law.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They say that you should return it to give the Jews a good name.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But if you don't give a fuck.
Guest:But if you don't give a fuck, then you don't have to return it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:We're not going to hold you responsible.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's between you and God.
Guest:And I was arguing like Noam Dorman from The Cellar.
Guest:We were arguing about it.
Guest:He's like, well, they say that because I said that the law, the Jewish law is that you cannot violate the Sabbath to save a non-Jew's life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said that, well, that's not in the book.
Guest:And I said, well, let's look it up.
Guest:And we looked it up and it says, like the latest ruling on that is that you're not allowed to, but you should.
Guest:Because otherwise the goyim are going to say that the Jews are not allowed to violate the Sabbath to save a goyim's life.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it's like it's optics.
Marc:So legally you can't.
Marc:But it's also adaptation.
Marc:It's not just optics.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because there's something about those kind of rules where it's sort of like, because always at the core of this, certainly in modern Hasidim, is that we don't want to make trouble with the goys because they're going to kill us.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And here I am spilling the secrets, and now they know.
Guest:It's like, now they're definitely going to kill us.
Marc:The ones that want to kill you know.
Marc:They already know.
Marc:That's the problem.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What about you and your kids?
Marc:Yeah, that's the... Now we're getting there.
Marc:Was that heartbreaking?
Marc:It's got to be heartbreaking.
Guest:How long did you know them for?
Guest:Well, my son was almost three.
Marc:My oldest was almost three when I left.
Marc:So I didn't know them for that long.
Marc:And they have the option, like theoretically, her family and her, that if they can keep you away permanently, they'll have no memory of you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they know, they know I exist because they know they have like three sets of grandparents.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Oh, so your parents are still part of their life.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They let them do that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And also like when they get called to the Torah, when he gets bar mitzvah, you know, he's going to be called to the Torah.
Guest:They're not going to call him, you know, his name and his stepfather's name.
Guest:They're going to say my name.
Guest:They have to.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he's going to know, he's going to know that his father's name is not.
Marc:So what's your relationship with them?
Guest:I have no, I have no relationship.
Guest:I haven't seen them since.
Guest:Isn't that horrible?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I think it's best for everyone that way.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's hard to explain.
Guest:Because it would complicate things with no solution.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Because I still think that the most important thing in life is to be happy.
Guest:I think it's more important than the truth.
Guest:Hmm.
Guest:which is weird coming from me.
Guest:And I think that even though my kids are being raised in a community and in a faith that I don't believe in, that I think is morally wrong, I think that their mother is a lovely mother and their stepfather is a lovely dad and they're being raised and they're gonna be happy.
Guest:They're not gonna have a horrible childhood like me.
Guest:And they'll grow up to be happy Hasidim maybe.
Guest:And if I just come in and confuse them, I don't think it does anyone any favors.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because you're not taking a stand in the sense that you want to out the community you came from to destroy it because you know you can't.
Guest:yeah i would like for it to end yeah you know but i know i can't and i and that's not what i'm trying to do i'm not that's the other thing like i'm not an activist like there's some people who leave and they become activists i'm not you know i'm in it for myself you know i'm building a career you know i'm building a life yeah but but like but see the the sort of premise of of responsibility and following the rules no matter how
Marc:bizarre and limiting they are, you know, give you a sense of, you know, I guess on some level, there must be some good chassids.
Marc:Oh, there are many.
Marc:There are many.
Marc:Like that rabbi you knew in Yeshiva that, you know, that are doing good in the world or at least honoring God in a way that isn't cruel.
Guest:Did you know that every hospital in the New York City, Triestad area, has a room called the Bikkachoylem room, which means visiting the sick.
Guest:And there are buses full of volunteers that go from hospital to hospital every single day and fill those fridges with free food.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:You can go to any hospital and you will see some door with Hebrew letters on it and a combination lock on it.
Guest:And everybody knows, the people in the community know the combination lock.
Guest:And if you're like a Hasidic person or a Jewish person, for that matter, who is in any New York City hospital, you find the big Echolim womb and you can eat for free if you're visiting family.
Guest:And there are people, volunteers, mothers with big families.
Marc:And this is any Jew.
Marc:This is not a missionary work.
Marc:This is just, this is pure volunteer.
Guest:It's pure service.
Guest:And if you get a flat tire in Borough Park or in Williamsburg or Muncie, you call Havayrim, which is an organization, all volunteers, and they will come and they will change your tire.
Guest:They'll give you a boost.
Guest:They'll dig you out of the snow.
Guest:If you get locked out of your apartment, they have locksmiths, volunteer locksmiths.
Guest:Only Jews?
Guest:They only come for Jews, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They have their own ambulance service, all volunteer, you know, less than two-minute response time.
Marc:So given that, so you have to acknowledge in your heart and in your mind that despite your problems with the insulation of the community, that your kids have a shot at being okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think if I came into their lives, I would, you know, the chances would decrease.
Marc:But how do you rationalize the selfishness of your pursuit?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, well.
Guest:I rationalized it by the fact that I wasn't given a choice.
Marc:Because the rules were as such.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That they wouldn't allow you to live in both worlds.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If I impregnated someone now, I would deal with it a lot differently.
Guest:I would take responsibility because now I know.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you were saying that on some level that you were stifled and indoctrinated by the confines and cult-like nature of the community.
Marc:So how did it unfold with your father, the falling out again?
Marc:He just...
Guest:Well, he called me up and he said, oh, are you in this video, one of us?
Guest:So my father, he obviously has never seen a movie.
Guest:He doesn't, like, for example, when Felix and Mira came out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The Canadian film about the Cassidy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That I was in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was actually Canada's entry for the Foreign Language Oscar that year.
Guest:You know, it did really well.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I told my father, we were talking at the time, I said, I'm going, because we premiered at Toronto Film Festival.
Guest:And I said, I'm going to Toronto for the...
Guest:premiere of the film.
Guest:He's like, oh, so you're going to go and act the movie over there?
Guest:I said, no, no, no, no, no.
Guest:We're going to go and play the movie.
Guest:He's like, oh, you're not going to act it?
Guest:Dad, I already acted it.
Guest:They're going to show a video of me.
Guest:Oh, they're going to show a video?
Guest:Then why do you need to be there?
Guest:You know, he just doesn't understand like play, movie, video.
Guest:He doesn't get it at all.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:He has no idea.
Marc:It would seem that he would enjoy the Yiddish show.
Guest:And my dad is very, very funny.
Guest:My dad is very funny.
Marc:You can't get him to come to a show?
Marc:No.
Guest:Even if I could, he wouldn't want to be seen.
Guest:I mean, he's the Rebbe.
Guest:I mean, it's like the Rebbe going to a show, a mixed team.
Guest:But that's where the fight is though, dude.
Marc:Right, to get your fucking siblings to come see something.
Guest:Some of my siblings come.
Guest:I'm not going to out with one of them.
Guest:But it's fundamentally Jewish.
Guest:Not to them.
Guest:You don't understand.
Guest:I didn't know who Sholem Aleichem was.
Guest:I didn't know who Isaac Bathsheba Singer was.
Guest:That's the thing.
Guest:Even secular Yiddish literature has no place in that world.
Guest:There's only Hasidic literature.
Guest:you know i never heard of like the borscht belt i found out about the borscht belt 10 years ago yeah i didn't know about those comedians huh i didn't so are you doing any writing a little bit yeah a little bit here and there i'm working on uh we're trying to uh to get uh to uh uh kind of like bounce off of one of us and trying to create a series based on the based on the loosely based on my life
Guest:on a guy who left the community and trying to make it out of the world.
Marc:But it seems like that philosophically, to sort of bridge this gap, because your struggle ultimately
Marc:since you can't completely extricate yourself from the community, you know, both as a character and as somebody who grew up in it, that, you know, and the only way that you become a real threat is, you know, it's the struggle you had with your father-in-law where it just becomes down, if you're not going to be religious, you got to tell me.
Marc:But it seems to me that there is a way to, the way you become a real rebel without being an activist is
Guest:is to you know is to engage elements of the community in your creativity oh i am i am like like i i i meet people all the time like if i go to bar pakistan's i miss the food and i go and get some chulant or some kugel or you know and uh someone would come up to me and you know and tell me that uh they saw you know felix amira and they're really inspired i have met people who are still in the community
Guest:Yeah, when Felix Amir premiered in London, I had these kids who came to the premiere and they had no payers, no beard, and said that watching my growth and watching me go out there and quote unquote making it in the outside world helped them to leave.
Guest:People are leaving because of me.
Guest:People, they get some encouragement from it.
Marc:Yeah, I just wonder if it ever becomes like Catholicism or something where exceptions have to be made to where they can expand their horizons.
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:That eventually, but it's so insulated and so genetically kind of like a closed system that you would think that eventually just to integrate, but they don't want to.
Marc:No, they don't want to.
Guest:And it's funny, going back to what I said about all the good things they do, even that you have to compare to North Korea.
Guest:He does give his people health care.
Guest:He does give his people education.
Guest:Yeah, but the Rebbies are not hanging their people in front of other people.
Guest:No, but they're hanging children who get sexually abused.
Marc:Hanging them out to dry, you mean?
Marc:Basically.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, that's a whole other story.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did that happen to you?
Guest:Yeah, I've talked about that in the past, yeah.
Guest:By who?
Guest:By a private tutor.
Guest:Three years from now, when I was nine until I was 12.
Guest:And did you tell your father?
Guest:No.
Guest:You didn't tell anybody?
Guest:No.
Guest:I didn't tell him because he was the only guy I trusted.
Guest:And I didn't get along with my parents and he was my only friend.
Guest:and that's how he took advantage of it yeah and did you know other kids that were in the same situation no i didn't know it and so i i didn't find out about uh about that he was doing it to other kids until my parents called me and told me about it and that's when they asked me like oh we know he does it to other kids did he do that to you and what happened to that guy nothing it's still teaches heinous yeah well i'm glad you seem okay and i'm glad the career is working out
Marc:Yeah, for now, yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm staying negative, you know.
Marc:Don't.
Marc:I mean, I don't know how much guilt you carry.
Guest:A lot.
Guest:I listen to you and sometimes the thing that holds me together is like, I just hope it doesn't take me until I'm 50.
Guest:To figure what?
Guest:To figure it out.
Guest:To figure it out.
Guest:Figure what out?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Like you seem to, you know, figure it out.
Guest:At least figure out your shit and how to deal with it and how to contain it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, you know, I mean, success helps with that a little bit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And also, but there are some things that, you know, they're unreconcilable.
Marc:And I think some of them,
Marc:You know, seek spiritual solutions to enable you the freedom of mind and heart to at least let go of some things.
Marc:And I don't necessarily engage that.
Marc:And I and I fight that myself.
Marc:And you live with that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, you have to compartmentalize something.
Marc:But but, you know, that's one of the reasons why people.
Marc:choose spirituality or have some sort of, even if it's a dogmatic system for processing shame or guilt or righteousness, if you're just winging it, it's a selfish endeavor and there's still emptiness there.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But that's something you have to accept.
Guest:Yeah, or try to figure it out and just drive yourself insane.
Guest:I don't know what there is to figure out.
Guest:I don't know either.
Guest:It's very confusing.
Guest:It's the whole thing.
Guest:It just doesn't make sense.
Marc:Yeah, and if this were a Hasidic tale, it would end with, so what do we do?
Marc:Let's go talk to the Rebbe.
Guest:And then we had a l'chaim and some cake and the goyim died.
Guest:All right, buddy.
Guest:Thanks, man.
Guest:Thank you.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:Man, that's something else.
Marc:Religion.
Marc:Huh?
Marc:Really, uh, I guess that the Hasidic community is sort of a version of extreme religious nerds.
Marc:Is that possible?
Marc:Probably not.
Marc:I mean, I think probably the cult model is more, uh, more correct.
Marc:I got the Telecaster back.
Marc:I strung it up.
Marc:And I just tuned the guitar.
Marc:Okay, so let's do this.
Bye.
Guest:Boomer lives!