What happens when a two week courtship culminates into a life-long commitment? On our latest episode of Intuitive Choices, we invite you to share in the journey of Abba Moshe Zell, a student at Beth Medrash Gevoha, an elite study program for Orthodox Jews in Lakewood New Jersey. Abba doesn't hold back as he tells us about his brief engagement to his wife, Shoshana, and their life together. From the exchange of dating resumes via matchmakers to the importance of goal-oriented dating, Abba uncovers a world that many of us may not be familiar with.
Life, as we know, is not without its trials. In the heart of this episode, Abba boldly shares the story of his son's medical struggles following his son's birth at only 24 weeks of gestation. Despite the arduous journey, Abba and his wife's unyielding optimism shines through as they navigate their way around the challenges that life has thrown at them. Their inspiring resilience and the strength they derive from their faith will make you reevaluate the power of trust and the human ability to endure.
What happens when a two week courtship culminates into a life-long commitment? On our latest episode of Intuitive Choices, we invite you to share in the journey of Abba Moshe Zell, a student at Beth Medrash Gevoha, an elite study program for Orthodox Jews in Lakewood New Jersey. Abba doesn't hold back as he tells us about his brief engagement to his wife, Shoshana, and their life together. From the exchange of dating resumes via matchmakers to the importance of goal-oriented dating, Abba uncovers a world that many of us may not be familiar with.
Life, as we know, is not without its trials. In the heart of this episode, Abba boldly shares the story of his son's medical struggles following his son's birth at only 24 weeks of gestation. Despite the arduous journey, Abba and his wife's unyielding optimism shines through as they navigate their way around the challenges that life has thrown at them. Their inspiring resilience and the strength they derive from their faith will make you reevaluate the power of trust and the human ability to endure.
Hey everybody, I'm Kimberly Dobbs.
Speaker 3:And I'm Jacob Miller.
Speaker 1:And we'd like to welcome you to another episode of Intuitive Choices.
Speaker 3:Kim and I are mental health therapists working in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1:But wait, jacob, that's not all we are. I mean, I'm blind and you're an Orthodox too.
Speaker 3:Yes, kim, that's correct. That's what makes our podcast interesting.
Speaker 1:But what really makes this podcast interesting is that each week we invite a guest to speak about how their own intuitive choices have led them to live a more meaningful life.
Speaker 3:We hope that this conversation encourages you to make meaningful choices in your own life.
Speaker 1:All right, off we go.
Speaker 3:Let's do it. I am so excited to speak with today's guest. Today we have the pleasure of speaking with Abba Moshe Zell, a student at BMG in Lakewood, new Jersey, the second largest Yashiva in the world and the largest Yashiva in the United States. But he's also my dear friend. The more time I spend with Abba, the more impressed with him I become. Abba and I met probably a little over a year ago now, during what I would think would be one of the most stressful times in his life.
Speaker 3:See, I live in a pretty unique Jewish community which is in West Philadelphia, in which the only Orthodox synagogue is at the Hillel at the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. Since the University of Pennsylvania is so close to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, it's not uncommon that families were taking care of their children along with the world-class medical staff at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Often join us at the Hillel at the University of Pennsylvania, and that's exactly the position that the Zell family found themselves in when I met them. One Friday night. I walk in for Friday evening services and there's Abba Moshe sitting there wearing a beautiful black fedora and the most welcoming smile, welcoming me to my own synagogue. But that's Abba Moshe. I'm so grateful not only for Abba's friendship, but for him agreeing to come on to Intuitive Choices and sharing his story with us and without further ado. Abba, welcome.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 4:Thank you, thank you. I really appreciate the honor, the gift that I was able to come out here and give people the opportunity to hear my story and get the courage to go on and enjoy their life and whatever it comes with. Beautiful.
Speaker 1:So excited to talk to you.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 1:So let's begin.
Speaker 3:Yeah, let's go.
Speaker 1:Okay, so Abba, first of all, I want to say welcome, because I'm so excited to meet you. I've heard a lot of really great things about you from Jacob. What brought you to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in the first place?
Speaker 4:We started off. Let's start from the beginning. We did not start off in CHAP. We started off in Mammoth, new Jersey. My wife was 24 weeks pregnant to be exact, 23 weeks and five days pregnant, and it was Eriven Kipper. Literally she woke up, eriven Kipper, with stomach pains. Now we were in. It was our first kid. I was married for nine months Literally nine months. I knew basically nothing about labor and delivery.
Speaker 1:Okay, wait a second, we have to stop.
Speaker 3:Don't stop the recording. There's so many things to explain at this point.
Speaker 1:My mouth just dropped, my jaw just dropped, because you just said you were married for nine months and then you said I knew very little about labor and delivery, which I thought is very funny, because I thought what about marriage? Let's back up, Okay, because we're going to put the pause button on what landed you at CHAP and talk a little bit about can you tell us what's your wife's name?
Speaker 4:Sure, my wife is.
Speaker 1:Shoshana. So you and Shoshana were married for nine months. Yeah. And when she was just shy of 24 weeks pregnant, she goes into labor. And so now, as essentially newlyweds now, how long did you guys know each other before, before you got married?
Speaker 4:Not a long time. So we were engaged for three months and we dated for maybe two weeks.
Speaker 3:Okay, so, so so from the time you met your wife until your son was born was probably, was actually almost exactly a year.
Speaker 1:Okay now, maybe some context here would be important guys that Abba, can you describe your religious beliefs?
Speaker 3:Okay, so I grew up maybe describing the communities a part of is a little easier than describing the religious beliefs.
Speaker 1:Thank you for the clarification, because I almost said is that even like what I'm, what I want to? Know is you, Jacob knows me so well that.
Speaker 4:That's not what I want to know.
Speaker 1:I want to know tell us the community you grew up in.
Speaker 4:Right. So I grew up in the I guess they call it black hat community and we have a very close community, extremely close, very intertwined. We pray in the same synagogues mostly, live very together, send to the same schools, think along the same lines, of course, with everybody with their unique part and their personality, but generally we have the same ideas and goals because we all are following strictly the Torah and all that it's laws and its ways. So we do have, we do have a like a blueprint our life before, before it starts really, which is very it's already paved, there's a lot of boxes to check.
Speaker 4:Yeah right, yeah, it's a paved road. Yeah, it's a paved road and, like we're all basically following that road, we all try to do our best to follow it. Of course, everybody is going to have its own uniqueness in that road, but there's a road generally, you know.
Speaker 3:So part of that road is, you know, people, men on average are praying three times a day morning, afternoon, evening. Right, they're, they're learning, they're studying the Torah for extensive like periods of time. People are keeping kosher. People are, you know, celebrating all the holidays and because there are so many holidays in Judaism and there's one holiday a week, which is Shabbos, which is Shabbat, there's just a lot of social cohesion that emerges from people living aligned with traditional Torah Jewish values. Yeah, perfect.
Speaker 1:That, yeah, both of you love this, and so I would. Then you know I okay. So in Judaism, right, for those of us who who are Jewish, like myself, I would then say this sounds very orthodox. Yes, this sounds very orthodox to me. Okay, yes, I don't know if you would call yourself.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you can't get more orthodox. Okay.
Speaker 1:All right. So circling back to what we were talking about with you and Shoshana when you said that you had been basically like you've been together for a year, so can you give some more information around? What is it like to like? What is the courting process and the dating process and the marriage Like? This sounds very different than I would say what most people in America, probably how we do it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so you do have it's a very different structure it's it also is built on very different foundations, so you have from day one till your dating experience. We try as hard as we can to separate the men, the boys and the girls. Mm, hmm, we have separate classes, we have separate when you're separate classes, start any practical purposes. You don't need the boys and the girls to be together past like first grade.
Speaker 1:Mm hmm, oh, really, I would have assumed bar mitzvah age. But okay, keep going.
Speaker 4:Right. So really the best ideal is we try to keep the boys and the girls separate.
Speaker 4:They both have their own jobs and the girls are more like the people that have to bring up our children and give them the heart of Judaism, which is more of the feeling and the love and the warmth and like the the home, so they're being taught more to build the home and to be a good mother, as opposed to the men are going to be the guys that are going to go out and they're going to help other people learn and they're going to study more rigid laws and for the purpose of what.
Speaker 1:I guess what I'm asking is what is the greater per? I don't know, jacob, what. I think you know what I'm trying to ask, right.
Speaker 3:Okay, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is what you're trying to say. What is the point of learning so much Torah if it's not just to answer questions about Torah? Amazing so.
Speaker 1:God, you're so good at that, jacob.
Speaker 4:Right. So basically, the there is an idea which is very, very important in our community that learning has a point of its own, even if you'll never actually use the knowledge, because all the knowledge that is oral and written is the word of God. So we want to come close to God however much we can, and definitely the way to understand God and come close to him is definitely to learn and understand his words.
Speaker 1:That is exactly what I was. Yeah, that was what I wanted to know. Okay, so all right. So when it came to when it came down to you. So, circling back to keeping the boys and girls separate, right.
Speaker 3:Should we go back to the dating itself?
Speaker 1:That's what I'm doing, so we're going straight at it.
Speaker 4:Let's go so the boys and the girls are separate till about the age of 20. Okay Well, for the boys it's going to be a drop older, for the girls it's going to be under 20, for the boys it's going to be over 20, for the girls it's going to be under 20. The girls generally are going to go into the marriage process younger than the boys. What age?
Speaker 1:So there's a marriage process.
Speaker 4:Right it comes around, the girls would start dating somewhere between 18 and like 19.
Speaker 3:And what does it mean? To start dating Like? Is that like?
Speaker 1:they're walking down the street and they're like J Swipe and they're swiping on their phones.
Speaker 4:No, no, so it's a different process. It's not online or anything like that.
Speaker 1:I want to know your process of how you met Shoshana then.
Speaker 4:Okay, so I have a cousin. Okay, that has a friend. So the cousin is a woman. She has a friend that's a woman. That friend is Shoshana's cousin, okay.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, this is so Jewish geography. Right now, it doesn't even matter how orthodox someone is, it's like all the same. Yeah, I think I have a crazy.
Speaker 4:This is so now the two, the two friends my cousin and Shoshana's cousin were talking. They were discussing my cousin was discussing me and her cousin was discussing her and they're like, well, it's pretty similar, like we have personalities in common. We're both like loud and jolly. So they're like okay, sounds good. So they don't call me and they don't call Shoshana. They call my mother and they call Shoshana's mother or father. That's typical. That's typical. Okay. Okay.
Speaker 4:So then you have this exchange of resumes through your parents through the parents, with the matchmaker, meaning the two parents. I haven't talked to each other, yeah.
Speaker 1:So she's, she serves as a liaison. This match, she's like a real right, she's a real Perfect word, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah. A realtor.
Speaker 3:I am buying a house now so.
Speaker 4:I compare everything to real estate. Okay, she's a realtor Right.
Speaker 1:This. This lady is a realtor of love.
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly Like a full time real. It's amazing to see how similar they are. Okay, and after the exchange resumes, both mothers you hope that they know what their kids looking for and the mother would do the research. So and but of course with the boy totally involved, like the boy would discuss every part with the mother throughout the process of looking into this girl. They would call friends and we're, as I said earlier, we're very close community. Everybody knows somebody that knows somebody Right. Yeah. You'll always find somebody. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Like you'll get and also you have the names on the resume so you can do your pretty good research. What's research mean? So you call, like try to set up a phone call, like, let's say, my mother would call the girl's friend. Yeah.
Speaker 4:So she would ask questions like what's she like in school? How does she? Is she like more of like a studio student, or is she more of like a loud student? Is she like a mischievous? Yeah, what's her personality? Is she loud, is she quiet? Is she joyful, is she talkative, is she quiet?
Speaker 1:Why wouldn't your mother go directly to Shoshana and just talk to her herself?
Speaker 4:Honestly, it makes things a lot more. We have a word snis modest, modest. Okay. Like things are more calm, then things are more, because it's Well it sounds like it makes things more transactional.
Speaker 1:It does, but you have to allow for you to make a more logical decision.
Speaker 4:You'll have. Oh, so then my mother did the research and she, her mother, did the research, and we're both ready for a date.
Speaker 3:How many girls did he did? I don't know, I don't know, I did. I married my third.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 1:I did two girls before my third Third time's term.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and both. It's interesting.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you meet Shoshana.
Speaker 3:What was the first date?
Speaker 4:First date with Shoshana. Yeah, so the way it works is is right. So when you when you're both of your mothers see that this is the right one Hopefully the right one you have to understand you're coming into this first date with, first of all, a lot of knowledge about the girl you're dating and there's a huge possibility. This is the one, because it's not on a fly, it's not like you met her in a park. You know her whole life story. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. Yeah.
Speaker 4:So it's a very big possibility, when you go on a date, that you're going to marry this one.
Speaker 3:So I'm just looking for like an emotional connection at this point or level of attraction, as opposed to like where do you want to send the kids to school? What are your life ambitions?
Speaker 1:How many children do you want Right?
Speaker 4:You know, usually that's all before, right, you have to basically just work out socially, right, chemistry, right? Yeah, they call it.
Speaker 1:So so, going back to so, your first encounter with Shoshana was what?
Speaker 4:Oh, so we had our first date. Okay, a date is around. Table discussion. That's like something like this All right, just a little more romantic.
Speaker 1:And you're referring to our podcast. Situation Sit around yeah. Yeah, like a meeting, a board meeting.
Speaker 4:But not so official. We like to do it in a park and in a nice, in a place that will bring out the best of both of us.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's lovely.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we, we're not. A lot of marriage in our community is a lot about the more than just the like. The romantic part and the physical and the pleasure part is more the minds, it's more the goals, it's more the the deep meanings of life. You want to make sure you're on the same page in areas that you value it's. It's very much like you want to make sure like her looks is number one important to your wife, your future wife. You can't, you can't have a marriage without a physical attraction, because that's marriage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you also part of marriage, right.
Speaker 4:It's a big part of marriage.
Speaker 3:Did you see a picture of Shoshana before your first date? No, right.
Speaker 4:It's a culture. So that's why I started off saying that we don't see, we don't interact with the girls beforehand, and that's a big piece. I mentioned it because if you were all mingled up with girls beforehand and you guys, I had like, let's say, I would have friends that were all females, so it would not be possible for us to do the system because, like you're, you have so much ideas and expectations and so much like other ideas.
Speaker 3:It's comparisons comparisons.
Speaker 4:And also the whole goal oriented when we're going to date. It's, it's a lot, it's a lot more focused.
Speaker 3:I think all the separation is not entirely, but a tremendous portion of it. Yeah. Is for the sake of of thriving marriages. Yeah, yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there's like for people that don't grow up in this culture, right, that is kind of an ironic concept, right, you know cause for in a typical American culture, right, like you're all together with boys and girls all the time, you know, and you know marriage is still a big thing in American culture, but it's like it just seems so contradictory, but it's not.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and can I? Can I on?
Speaker 1:this line just to drop a shell but into enough.
Speaker 4:Think about this, think about the dating process. There's no, there's no physical touch. So when you're going to get married. It's, it's an explosion.
Speaker 1:So so you don't have, so you don't have sex with your fiancee, Right?
Speaker 3:Well, it's not just that they don't hold hands, they don't hug.
Speaker 1:There's no physical touch at all, zero.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're never alone together Right. Okay.
Speaker 4:So that's the bomb. But think about this, think about the beauty of it, Think about what we gain from this is that when you get married, you're on such a high. That high is supposed to last you for the next 70 years. Yeah. This is like glue. This is like. This is like good stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know it really holds a couple together, yeah.
Speaker 4:A big part of the dating process is more trying to see if your minds can think together and can intertwine to bring a generation to the.
Speaker 3:It was your goals and her goals lining up Right and you both had of what it would be to be married. Right, we're in sync, right.
Speaker 1:When so much of the work that we do as therapists is, you know, working with people. They're struggling in a relationship or they are single, they want to be in a relationship, those kinds of things. And the one of the biggest challenges that I come across Jacob, I don't know about you, but is is kind of that, that incompatibility in terms of like. Do you want the same things, not just a value system, obviously that's huge too, but like versus, you know, like when two people are doing, let's say, like you know, a profession, that are, that are just like kind of opposing one another. I'm trying to think of an example of that. There are all these factors, living factors that can be so challenging to a relationship, and what I'm hearing is that that your community just takes all that off the table right Through the research through the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to call it the dating process. That's, that's incredible.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's incredible. Okay, yeah, so when did you propose her? I'm, I'm very.
Speaker 4:I'm very goal oriented and and I'm very focused so I don't need much time right Most people. Generally it can take 10 dates. You're going to laugh because my own friends in the community laugh at me for dates. We're engaged.
Speaker 1:So, but how much time was between your third date and your fourth date?
Speaker 4:A few days. Okay that's it, did you?
Speaker 1:buy her a ring, of course, yeah. So in that short amount of time you're like, okay, I'm gonna get her the ring.
Speaker 4:Oh, so no, we had. On the fourth date, we decided we're gonna engage. We had one more date prior to the engagement.
Speaker 1:Oh, wait a second. So so you decide together to get engaged, yeah okay.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's before the fifth date, which is not really a date. It's the proposal. We both know we're going into it.
Speaker 1:It's like a reality show, it's just reality Kim. Not my reality. She's Louise, Okay so so then you have the proposal which, like immediately I think of the bachelor, like the show you know, which you might not know of, but that's okay. So. So then you proposed to her, did you, was it? Um? What kind of proposal was it? Describe it.
Speaker 4:It was in. It was in a beautiful restaurant.
Speaker 1:It's gorgeous.
Speaker 4:I went into the restaurant before and I I picked out like a beautiful cake and beautiful flowers and I put it like in the back of the restaurant and then we walked in there and it was like I wanted to be like more of like a shock. Okay.
Speaker 4:So we went down, we went for drinks we really just like and we sat down for drinks. We were talking about her family and then all of the waiters was like a very. It was a ton of waiters, I don't know why. They all came in with this cake and the flowers and we were engaged.
Speaker 1:And then did you hand who puts the ring on her if you can't touch her.
Speaker 4:So the ring comes later.
Speaker 1:What? Yeah, this is crazy.
Speaker 4:So we went for the engagement, okay, and then the ring has to be made and she has to pick it out. Oh, she gets to pick it out, she gets to design whatever she wants you guys, honestly, you guys are doing something right. I'm just saying Okay, keep going. It doesn't get that intimate until you get married.
Speaker 1:Okay, I get it yeah. That makes sense to me.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Wow, I bet it makes beautiful.
Speaker 3:How long from the engagement to the wedding? It's like three months Now.
Speaker 4:it got a little longer. It could be four or five months these days.
Speaker 3:Where is it that takes a long day to hold, like what?
Speaker 4:Like Lakewood, new Jersey, new York Bar Park. There's so many couples.
Speaker 3:How many weddings do you think happened a day? In Lakewood? Every hole has a wedding every night. How many halls are there? At least five, six, every day, every day.
Speaker 1:Wow, okay, so that's what took the longest, otherwise you would have had a wedding sooner.
Speaker 4:Well, it's good that time. You know you don't want it that fast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you want to enjoy the engagement.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you want the engagement, you want things to fall into place. You need to organize.
Speaker 3:More dates yeah. More dating, more yeah.
Speaker 1:When do you? So? You do you live together after the marriage, After the after you get married, so not during the engagement period.
Speaker 3:Okay, so you never spoke to girls growing up. Then you go on dates with three, four girls, then you get engaged and married within a four months. Total experience and now, for the first time, having never socialized with girls outside of your family, hanging out with girls ever, now you're just like completely moving in with a woman, right?
Speaker 4:So you're trained for it. You're. You both go to classes beforehand and you both are. Are really your minds are being like imagine a therapy session before marriage. Yeah, you're trained for it, you know what you're doing.
Speaker 1:Who's teaching you, a man or a woman?
Speaker 4:So I go to a man.
Speaker 1:She goes to a woman.
Speaker 4:We, we. There's a way to do it. It's like it's. It's like no surprises, right, we're trained for it. We're going into it together. Um, what do you go over in the?
Speaker 3:classes.
Speaker 4:So everything from so. There's a lot of laws in marriage. You learn all those laws when you, when you get engaged. Mm, hmm. And on top of that, the actual we call it, shown by it's peace at home classes. Right, we have many classes and these classes don't end just when you get married, like there is endless classes on just peace at home. How to love, what does love mean? How do we, how do we deal with our spouse? How do we understand their spouse? How do we appreciate our spouse?
Speaker 1:Man. This is wonderful and also what I really. I think this is so valuable for, like the greater American culture that it's them. It's interesting that these things are not.
Speaker 4:Right. So it's unfortunate because it came a time that people want pleasure but, in the long run. It's not pleasure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I think that's actually a really wonderful segue. You and Shoshana get married and very soon after you get married, you become pregnant with your now almost, you know, in September he'll be two. Yeah, and then go through this experience where what's your son's name? Yeshua.
Speaker 1:Yeshua, so I can name his name. So she goes into labor prematurely at almost 24 weeks and like, walk us through that a little bit Like when she went into labor. How, how? Let's just start there. Like Erev Yom Kippur, which you mentioned earlier why is that significant? And then talk us through the labor.
Speaker 3:Erev- means Eve, just to put that in there. So it's the afternoon leaning into the holiday that begins at sundown, which is Yom Kippur, so Abumoshi take me there we can give a little bit of a background on Yom Kippur.
Speaker 4:Yom Kippur is our most meaningful holiday. It is a one day holiday and it's the highlight of the year. It is the year that we try to come the closest to God as possible. It's a day we fast and we basically the men and all the women that can, if they're not, if they're not grounded by their young children we spend our day in Shul in Senegal, from when to when, from it's from seven, eight till sundown, and it's a serious day. It's a really serious day and it's a very meaningful day, right. So I'm standing there the night before we have. Also, the night before the big day, we have some more prayers. So I'm staying there a half hour before I'm supposed to go to the synagogue. Then I'm wearing my suit and everything and I'm ready to go.
Speaker 1:And you're gonna walk there.
Speaker 4:I'm gonna walk there. And why are you gonna walk there? We don't. It's just like Shabbos. We don't do work on Yom Kippur and all the holidays, so don't drive, don't drive, don't turn on electricity Right, right, half hour. Well, it has that's that itself, you know, has it's billions of laws. But yeah, yeah yeah, so we don't even right. The way it works is that unless you have danger, unless you have life, life threatening or life risking scenarios, then you're not gonna drive.
Speaker 3:But you're allowed to drive if you're gonna. You can potentially save someone's life, right.
Speaker 4:So you can do anything if there's danger, even if it's a very far away, potentially maybe. If there's any, if there's any worry that somebody's in danger, you can do basically anything.
Speaker 1:You can break all those rules. Yeah, there's no rules. So a half hour right Before you're supposed to leave, to go to synagogue, to begin it, you know, I don't know if I was gonna say celebrating, what's the word?
Speaker 3:To begin the experience of Yom Kippur. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, okay. So I'm like all fired up. We ate the whole day.
Speaker 4:Leading into it yeah, leading into it. We ate a lot. We're like, our minds are like in another place. Seriously, wow, we're spending the month for this day and we've been working for this day and we have a job to do and we're super on it. And I look at my wife and she looks at me and she's in pain and we have no idea what this pain is. We don't know labor, we don't know nothing. So I turned to her and the pain was going on for a few hours that day and I don't know if pain and we're like we have no idea what this is like. We thought it was a regular pregnancy side effects. Yeah.
Speaker 4:So at that point I was gonna go to synagogue and I look at her and she looks awful. She's like you're not going anywhere. I'm like call the doctor. So we call the doctor and the doctor's like you're coming in, you need to be examined. So I start driving, we get into the car and it's really awkward. It's like your whole life is like on your head, like it feels really weird to drive on your holiday.
Speaker 1:I was just about to say, like what was that? Like to like you're in one mode, right, and just how you described it. It's pretty clear, it's made clear to me, like the intensity and like devotion to this holiday, to all of it. And then, and also like when we talk about breaking the rules and even though there's a part of you that can go, okay, I know I'm allowed to do this, like I know this is okay, but again, you know, yom Kippur is the most significant holiday in Judaism. So to you know, it's not just Shabbat.
Speaker 3:It's actually called Shabbat Shabbaton. It's the Shabbat of Shabbats, the highest, of the high.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, Was there a part of you that was like there better be something really wrong with Shashana for me, right, Like you know anything like that? Or were you like, just okay, my wife's in pain, Like what was the experience like on the drive?
Speaker 4:Awesome.
Speaker 4:So there's a great point here, yeah, the all the laws we have, yeah, and everything we do has no value. It's what I mean is it is all just for God Meaning, if God wants me to stop tomorrow, stop, no problem, I don't have an issue with that. We're not doing ourselves a favor. We're not trying to play games, we're trying to serve God. So if God says it's game over, now you gotta turn around. We're pretty. We were trained, or we should be trained. We hope not Something into routine. That's very hard to stop, but we try to do this with the right mindset. That and this helped me through the whole journey in the hospital. It's not about what you want to do, it's about what God wants. So at that point I was like okay, god wants me to go elsewhere. So I was more than happy doing that, because God tells you right, he puts you in that situation and he's like okay, so now you have to drive your wife to the hospital and take super good care of her because she's in pain.
Speaker 1:When you say God wants me to, I'd imagine it's not an auditory thing that you're hearing. Abba, you need to go like it's not that right. So, it's gotta be a feeling in you.
Speaker 4:No, so it's not a feeling at all. It's not so what is it?
Speaker 1:How do you know?
Speaker 4:It's an understanding that everything that happens in our lives is not just haphazardly. If you, we understand that everything that happens is super designed for us.
Speaker 1:Okay, so interesting. So you're driving to the hospital. Yeah. And you get there and did she go into labor right away?
Speaker 4:So she was little did we know she was in labor for a few hours already. Right, we come into the hospital and she's the doctor. Actually, this is a little bit of a trauma story. We come to the hospital and we were using a practice that had three doctors. They hired a fourth doctor while we were using the practice. The doctor was on shift that day for the next four days was the new doctor. To make life great, we walk into the doctor. This is literally her first patient on the job, right? Okay, she had a lot of experience before, but this is her first full responsibility. And my wife gets examined and you can see all over her she's nervous, she's literally shaking and that doesn't make anybody feel good.
Speaker 1:The doctor shaking. Oh my goodness, yeah.
Speaker 4:So I went to the restroom. I come in and I see that my wife was examined. I see the doctor there stuttering. I was like what's going on? She turns to me. She tells me your wife's two centimeters dilated. So she's giving orders and we get rushed into a room. What happens to be? Of course, everything that she did was perfect. Yeah, she, she was good, she was on the ball. It just gave us that feeling. But everything was great. She did the right moves. She put, put her on the right medication. Everything was perfectly planned. And she got a room and she went on magnesium and some other medication to stop the, to try to stop the.
Speaker 4:Contractions contractions for as long as possible. Now the gain of stopping, the one of the big gains of stopping contractions even for a short period Of time is they give steroids. Now the steroids help the babies lungs, because when babies are premature the worst Problem is the breathing. Their lungs develop last. So they give these. They give these steroids for 48 hours. They give two doses, 24 hours a piece. So we thankfully which this probably saved my son's life he got both doses of the steroids and after four days the baby was breach, was coming out. So she got rushed to the OR and the baby was born 24 weeks. C-section. C-section.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then and then. How long did he? He? You should have to stay in the hospital, in the NICU so we were.
Speaker 4:All this gets us back today when we started. We were in mameth for three weeks. Okay a lot, a lot went down there the hospital in the house, where she delivered where she delivered, went down to the NICU, spent three weeks very exciting. Three weeks there, exciting, and Then we got airlifted to chop.
Speaker 1:Why'd you get airlifted?
Speaker 4:my son needed a heart surgery. Wanging wait let's. He was born at one pound. One pound and six ounces. You can't even it's hard to explain that how small that is if you can put a Marriage band up his arm till his shoulder a marriage band. Oh my god. That's how small is armist. It's, it's. You can't find it. The head is the head is smaller than a punch ball. It's tiny. Wow.
Speaker 4:It's, it's, it's, practically it's. It doesn't make sense that they can even do it. Yeah, yeah so we he needed a heart surgery at that point and they couldn't do it in my mouth. Okay, so we got. We had to go.
Speaker 1:Would that heart surgery have had to happen anyway, or what did? Did something emergent happen?
Speaker 4:No, so that was. It's a standard issue for preemies. Okay.
Speaker 4:But yeah, he had to the valve that. This is beautiful, the valve that, when every baby is born, his lungs are not working. When he takes his first breath, his lungs start to work and there is a valve that Connects the heart to the lungs. When the baby's in utero, the lungs can get oxygenated blood from the heart. When the baby's born, there's a, there's this hole that has to close and it close with. It closes with oxygen. Okay, now that hole didn't close. Right so we had to close it.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then how long did you guys spend at chop at Children's Hospital Philadelphia?
Speaker 4:That's seven months.
Speaker 1:Okay, wait. So all three of you, or just you shoo uh, like what you lived there right.
Speaker 4:So this is how we did it. We had the first three weeks in mammoth, were there awful lot, but we did sleep at home was a one-on-one nurse, extremely intense care. Yeah, we didn't feel the need to be there Except to give him love. Yeah, that was our job. The doctors did, the did what they did with it. We had no, we had no way. We couldn't even hold them. He was, his eyes were sealed shut for a week after he was born. He, we just we just Touched him and just showed love and so how old was he when you guys first held him?
Speaker 4:like least, I would say about two weeks. Okay and then when we touched him, it was a huge deal because he was on the ventilator and the oscillator which is like the ventilator is like the step under oscillator is more intense and. When he's on oscillator we couldn't hold him, but when he was on the ventilator, we ought to hold him on our chest. We have to do skin to skin. Yeah, keep his body temperature. He was in a incubator incubator.
Speaker 3:So, Then I'll tell I'm like I've heard this story a few times and it's still just. It paralyzes me when I hear every step of the story. Why if I may, how old were you when? When?
Speaker 4:shoe was born, okay, so I was 22. Oh, my wife is 19. Okay, huh, take things better.
Speaker 1:Okay, my gosh, I Cannot believe we let the interview go on this long before we even got his age. Nothing that's the right part incredible so.
Speaker 3:To navigate what you did with the doctors and continue to do with the doctors and advocate for Shua. You know I had my someone I'm 29 and my wife's a Doctor and I don't know if we would have been as brazen and bold with the doctors as you two were and I do firmly believe that helped Not only save his life but continue to sustain him now right 100% do you see it that way?
Speaker 4:Yeah, you do. We were. We were super Optimistic about this from the day he was born. Where does that come from? Honestly, it's, it's God.
Speaker 1:I was just gonna say haven't you heard anything he's saying is all about God, right?
Speaker 4:So these there's my father's a rabbi right. My grandmother, my mother is a son, is a daughter of a big rabbi. Okay, I was brought up With a lot of preparation for this day. My father is a good, he's a speaker and he's a good. He he's my rabbi, he's my role model, he's my everything.
Speaker 3:What does he speak about?
Speaker 4:So there's, there's trust. This talk. It's called betachen. Betachen is One of our biggest concepts in Judaism. It's the idea to trust God trust God to what?
Speaker 3:and so what does that mean?
Speaker 4:trust God Doesn't have to mean Trust him for the better that's right Trust God means Trust God means Keep back, let him do what he wants to do Now, cause now this is a big, big component of trust. You can't trust somebody you hate and you can't stress somebody that doesn't love you. So because we develop a sense, our job, we try as much as we can. The more we develop a sense that Hashem God loves us, mm-hmm, we're gonna feel that we're gonna love him. And the more we feel this relationship with God, the more we're gonna feel confident enough to be able to say whatever happens is good, I want it because God wants it.
Speaker 1:Okay, so in other words, you're just kind of turning it over.
Speaker 4:It's totally that. That's the most beautiful part of this, because people ask me how do you manage it? A lot of the time, okay, it was my personality and things that I do, things that I try to work on, but a lot of it was Leaving the rings leave it and let it go. You keep it in your mind, you keep it in your heart. I'll be honest with you. Honest there.
Speaker 4:I Don't usually say this, but for the interview we're gonna say it okay through the I could come across as a ruthless person, but this is because of my contentness. Through the seven over seven months of this whole episode. I Never went to sleep, couldn't fall asleep. I went to bed. If I'll sleep, mm-hmm, I was. I never Lost sleep, I didn't. I cried my heart out. Don't get me wrong me and Shoshana, we had our days, but at night I wasn't. I wasn't a wreck, I was. We cried because pain hurts, but we were in a state that enough that we're able to say well, listen, we're gonna do everything we can do. That's where the advocating comes from, and we don't stop. But at the same time, you have to understand that you're just, you're just being a messenger. God's gonna take care of whatever has to be done.
Speaker 3:You're saying and that doesn't mean the outcome is gonna be pleasurable. It's not gonna say positive, right might not even be.
Speaker 1:You know God forbid. You know that the your son didn't didn't stay alive, right? I'm very blunt.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know that's.
Speaker 1:that's not an ideal, that is, that is suboptimal, yeah to bring at your point.
Speaker 4:I was, I was in, my wife was in labor for four days. Yeah. I was hanging around the hospital, you know, and I met a cousin of mine who had twins, mm-hmm, and we were in the we're eating together and I turned him and I told him, if my son doesn't make it and for me that was an obvious Option, it was yeah, it was definite. I was surprised that he made it and I thought, if got, if my kid doesn't make it, I'm okay.
Speaker 3:I Was what kind of?
Speaker 4:okay, I'm gonna cry my heart out for days, but I'll move on. Life will move on and I'll accept it and I know that's it.
Speaker 1:I will accept this as a possible outcome.
Speaker 4:I'll accept, because God has endless options, meaning there's a million reasons why he decided I should have a stillborn. I don't know. There can be endless reasons and all those reasons could be the best thing that ever happened to me, now that my son's alive and doing great. Of course that's the best option, but if he didn't, that would also be at that point. Obviously that's what he wants.
Speaker 1:How do you? I mean because I think about what happens with couples that go through something like this, and also given how your age is, because that is a thing right, you guys are young and really your relationship with each other is young, One another is young. How are you guys still together? How did you make it through? Let me actually ask this. I do this so much I ask a question and then I follow it up with another question. How would you describe your relationship with Shoshana now? Stronger, Not stronger? Are you kidding?
Speaker 4:me If I would live another 100 years and not have this episode with her, I would never be able to be as strong as I am now, because when you have an episode of pain or trauma in your life, it's basically like a rocket ship. If you direct the rocket ship up, you'll fly.
Speaker 3:If you direct it down, you go down, so you're saying the event itself is just the energy for the system. The event is the energy.
Speaker 4:Where you take it, you'll go.
Speaker 3:Abamoshi, I speak with my clients about this kind of concept so many times. I don't know if I ever spoke about it with you, but we hear a lot in the news or people walking down the street whenever they talk about post-traumatic stress disorder or post-traumatic response. Whenever I feel it's appropriate, I try to highlight with my clients there's also something called post-traumatic growth.
Speaker 1:Love this.
Speaker 3:The growth that can happen post-trauma and pain, and or pain. So what you're describing now is the incomprehensible trauma that you and Shoshana and Yoshua went through. You had the tools and you made the correct choices to funnel that to growth 100%.
Speaker 4:Even to start, we were in the hospital for MKipfer, right? Mkipfer is a dead serious day. It's not a time for jokes.
Speaker 1:It's a time of atonement. Yes, it is.
Speaker 4:It's a time that we want to become closer to God and try to erase and change our ways and become better. Now I was in the hospital. Think about I'm saying I don't know how much you can picture this, but I'm in the hospital, terrible setting for MKipfer, nothing Jewish there and basically my wife was in labor. Now I knew that if I was to cry, my wife would cry. If my wife would cry, she would be bearing down on her stomach and it would hurt her and it would probably aggravate the kid and cause a baby to be born. So I spent the whole year dancing around like a clown, understand.
Speaker 4:Because, it's not about what you used to do, it's about what God wants. So I literally made jokes to MKipfer.
Speaker 3:Wow, because that was my job. There's no training for that.
Speaker 1:No, so where's that come from?
Speaker 3:No one said oh, by the way, have enough intuition and understanding of your wife to be able to.
Speaker 1:And yourself yeah.
Speaker 4:And I was fasting. Think about this.
Speaker 3:You were still fasting? Yeah, you allowed to do all the work, but you're not going to eat or drink.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I was fat, shana was eating plenty of it. She was in danger, but I was in danger and I was. Generally, when we fast, we sleep the whole night. I didn't sleep that night. So I fasted 24 hours without sleeping.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh, I mean I even fast, and let me tell you, that sounds hard. No, it was horrible.
Speaker 4:But I'll tell you what. Let's be real. On a random Tuesday I can't do this. The amount of adrenaline you were talking about, energy that's going into this moment you're not with reality at all. Let's be real. You're totally in a cloud somewhere. It took me months to get out of it.
Speaker 1:I almost feel like that's I mean, I know that was that in and of itself was a miracle To be able to kind of transcend you out of reality, like out of body. And maybe you don't subscribe to this, but I do To allow yourself to move through that experience and to circle back to what you said, jacob, because I don't know, I don't think Abba really answered you when you were like, where does that come from Something and I know the answer might be God, but just something in you, right, it's like let me make this decision to make jokes, to make light, right.
Speaker 4:So it is really, I have a good. My personality is jolly, my personality is fun. My personality is happy time. That's where I spend my time Now, when I feel it's necessary. It's my go-to Right, so that aspect a little bit is my nature. Okay. But definitely it is a life of preparing in a way, Because of course you're not preparing for this moment, but you are preparing for being authentic, being real, loving God and, with all that, being able to take on opportunities.
Speaker 1:And for.
Speaker 3:Take on opportunity, sorry, just. Yeah. Because it's you can't ask for them and you can't look for them, Right? But you just have a sense that there will be a time where you're going to have to really bring all of your best self into this experience.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, it always comes, it's going to be there.
Speaker 1:For a moment, right, because I think, jacob, it's so funny we're kind of saying we're piggybacking on each other's, I think, thoughts here, which is like you've been preparing for an experience, you know, this intense or this incredible or extraordinary, extraordinary, right, so that when that moment comes because life brings us these moments all the time, these kinds of moments that you would be equipped, to handle it Interesting.
Speaker 4:You're not like going through a boot camp to go for war, but you are living a kind of lifestyle that will be preparing you for moments that you need to tap into it. That's beautifully said. You're having building a relationship with God and, of course, your wife through regular ordeal is in a way that if you need to get deeper it'll go.
Speaker 3:And so I just want to try to bring some things together that you said throughout the interview, just to maybe concretize it a little bit. If you make an assumption that there is a creator of existence and that creator loves you and wants what's best for you not necessarily what's pleasurable for you and that you can be a partner with that creator in sustaining that existence, and you're spending your time learning from teachers who are trying to do the same thing and building a community that's just trying to do that as an entity, as an entire entity in the best case scenarios right that, when an opportunity for meaning presents itself, you can't help but have the intuitive moment of like. This is literally what I've been preparing for. This is a unique experience in my life, in anyone's life, and this is where I can really tap in to that level of love that I feel from and have for the creator, and that I can be a conduit for love to sustain the people around me in this moment. Amazing.
Speaker 3:Beautiful. So, abba, could you let us know a little bit more about how Shu was doing now, when?
Speaker 4:Shu was born. That night I come down my wife's pumping and I come down to the NICU with the milk. I was the milkman. Okay. And it's two in the morning and I come down and it's frantic. Okay.
Speaker 4:I'm like what's up? They come running over to me. They tell me your stomach, your son's stomach, has a leak In some intestines. We don't know where, what. He needs surgery by the morning and we don't know what it's going to be. So they call down the surgeon at three in the morning and he comes over to me and tells me listen, I don't know.
Speaker 3:I promise you, although I can't, Meaning I don't know if he's going to survive the surgery.
Speaker 4:Right and the nurses tell us. One nurse asked did you take your pictures yet? And I was like you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's not what you want to hear, right?
Speaker 4:So we basically walked him off. Let's be real, yeah, we both blessed him and we were ready for it, and we went up to our room where we were. She was just past delivery, less than 25 hours ago.
Speaker 1:And like she's pumping milk for this baby you think is going to die. It is just that, is I? Just that's like incomprehensible to me, but God.
Speaker 4:So we were ready for it. I went up to the room and I told Shana we embraced the fact that we'll take it. We we tried to train our minds within those four days and also we were ready for whatever. Whatever, let it be what it is. That was our idea, Our whole, the whole time. Let it, let it be. But we were very optimistic, meaning this moment of when the doctor tells you that there's a slight chance, that's when you, that's when you have to just embrace the fact that he might not come out, but when there's a 50, 50 chance, now we're going to, I'll just take you. So he got out of surgery and he just had a small hole in his small intestines and it was able to be repaired and we saw him again. Just to move on a little further, how many?
Speaker 3:how many surgeries had Shua had? Since he was born Eight surgeries, and what and where were the surgeries? Just?
Speaker 4:like it was all within the seven months. Okay, he had two stomach surgeries, a heart surgery, three brain surgeries.
Speaker 3:And what's the? What's the prognosis for a child like this?
Speaker 4:Typically so like this when we were told about the brain bleeds. Yeah. He had two severe brain bleeds in both sides of his brain. Yeah, the severest. Mm hmm. My wife folks over to the doctor and she said what's the prognosis? Mm hmm, she's like, well, probably he'll be weird, we'll cheerbound. Mm hmm, cp right. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Cerebral palsy.
Speaker 4:Cerebral palsy. So we were like we were, we were, we were hit hard, yeah, and we were by the boardwalk. Then I took my wife to the boardwalk. We sat on our bench and all I said I didn't say much. We sat, we spent that like an hour there looking at just the beautiful waves and all I told her was it'll be okay. At that point already we went through a few like a month of it already.
Speaker 1:Actually, I think I need to ask a question. Sure, she had just had a baby and I think my understanding is that you're not allowed to physically touch one another.
Speaker 4:Right, 100%. There was no After having a baby. There was no physical touch throughout all this for about two, three months.
Speaker 1:So by no physical touch could you like? I mean touch like hug her. So hand on her shoulder, nothing.
Speaker 4:But. But this is an opportunity. This is literally one of the most amazing things that could ever happen, because when you can't touch, you have to really connect. You have to be here, there with her in her deepest emotions. If you can just give a hug and walk off, you cheated. You have to, you have to connect and you mean that's cheating, that's like, that's like you know it's cheating.
Speaker 1:It is cheating, you're not like really doing, you know, really connecting yeah.
Speaker 4:You're just hugging, that's not. You can do a hug on a Monday, right? So we, we were able to connect in a extremely powerful mental way in our minds. Right, we were able to understand each other. We were, we were at points that we didn't have to talk to each other. We were feeling each other because we you're feeling each other.
Speaker 3:We were not physically right and emotionally you were connected.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, and I like, I would say like energetically, a lot, of, a lot of the people that I work with would like understand that that you can feel the energy.
Speaker 3:There's like a high level of resonance between you two. Yeah.
Speaker 4:We we were very verbal. We're on the same page when it came to God. That's a big thing. Yeah, not everybody has that opportunity.
Speaker 4:I think I thank God for that. We were on the same page. We were both trusting and accepting and we were with, we were in beliefs and all of that. That doesn't always happen. That was a gift and we were with it together. We were, we were in it together and at that point we heard about the brain. We sat on the bench. Oh, I said it was, it's going to be okay. I knew it was going to be okay. I was confident. I was confident we had enough miracles already. That I was, I was, I was in love with God. I was, I was obsessed, I was just fine and I was like it's okay, it'll be, it'll be fine, now it's, it's not.
Speaker 3:So there's the potential for for the heart surgeries, the intestinal surgeries, the brain surgeries, and what was the video you just showed me before we started recording Right? So at this moment last night.
Speaker 4:Last night he stood up for the first time himself without holding down. Oh yeah, crazy story. The models have. That's the biggest. I don't even know what to do. He's, he's like, he's, he's taking his first few steps now.
Speaker 3:Wow, it's, it's the most beautiful, with the biggest smile on his face.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4:He's literally the light of. He has these dimples that is big as a twin tower. It's both for each one. Oh my gosh and he smiles, a whole, his whole face turns into a smile, and you can't. I love him. Yeah, he's a gift.
Speaker 1:Okay, that is that's. That's incredible. Yeah, that I mean he's walking.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's, it's not. It's not normal, it's not, it shouldn't. Honestly, the scans that are the MRIs of his brain do not show this kind of ability. Yeah, the doctors themselves the doctor turns me. I went to. We went recently for a followup. He looks at the scans and he's like you shouldn't, you shouldn't be moving the right side of his body. Wow, don't take a look. Incredible, you know. And he's shot. He's. It's insane.
Speaker 3:And which? Which doctor is this? It's not like a regular doctor.
Speaker 4:This is the biggest neurosurgeon in the chop yeah.
Speaker 1:You know you're saying this. You're saying this about Shua. You're saying how it shouldn't be right. Even the tests are going well. He should, based on these tests, he shouldn't be walking, but he's walking. He shouldn't be able to move both sides of his body, but he's moving both sides of his body. And I'm thinking about your whole story, everything of like how, how you, how you grew up right In the community, the cultures, the culture, everything, and how really different than you would say like mainstream American culture it is, and all of it. I think to myself, like just growing up, like in the American culture, I'm like, oh, everything you're saying, like how did I even? Still, you know they didn't know each other. It just everything goes against. It's like this theme of like everything goes against what you would typically imagine.
Speaker 3:You're saying based over the norms of the?
Speaker 1:culture we grew up in. That's exactly right. Yes.
Speaker 3:Based on the cultures we grew up in, we and being told to do essentially the opposite of everything.
Speaker 1:Thank you. He knows me so well. Yeah, he can like hear, he can see my mind. I think sometimes that's exactly what I'm saying, is that? And? And then I say to myself okay, so, given the fact that most of the people listening to our podcast are people who are kind of, you know, like me, right, I'm not going to say Jacob, but kind of like you, jacob, you know the way, the way you were before you became more observant. They're originally you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was working back to that later. I don't know. That's not true. You're right.
Speaker 1:Okay, so what do you think the message here is for people? That that really don't, that don't. Grow up, you know, in with the, with the learning that you grew up in, and the structure and the, even the rules, right, the, all of these different things that have given you and Shauna such strength and will and perseverance, and even grit, all of these things, how does one find that within themselves?
Speaker 4:Right, so you really have to spend time with yourself these days. It's unfortunate, but I don't want to be critical. But we're living with screens.
Speaker 1:That's not critical, that is, that is a very that's a fact, right, so there's a nursery being critical.
Speaker 4:Where it gets critical is that that's killing us. Right. We don't have a thought process, we don't, we don't have a relationship.
Speaker 3:You don't have a relationship with other people, we don't even have a relationship with ourselves.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we are not, we're not. We have to intuition, right yeah, Spend time with your mind, spend time with yourself and, especially after you figured yourself out, spend time with your, with your partner, with your wife.
Speaker 1:So the first thing, your advice right these a, a, a, a pearl of wisdom would be maybe spend a little less time on your screen Right and a little more time with yourself. Yeah. How would that look? I know that might sound totally intuitive to you or, you know, automatic to you, but, like, maybe for a lot of us it's not that clear, Right? So what does that even look like?
Speaker 4:Firstly, everybody has to understand, like you have to think about what you want your life to look like, what your goals are, what you want to accomplish in your short period of life. We don't have forever, right. We want to form. You know, we get so distracted that we forget that we have something to do here. You want to bring up a family. You want to bring. You want to. You want to love a wife. You want to create relationships. You want to be. You want to make money. I don't care, whatever it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to help people. That's what I think. Yeah, you want to love people.
Speaker 4:You want to help people. Love is not natural. Love is furthest thing from natural. Loving yourself might be natural, but love is not natural. We have to work on understanding what we want before we do anything, and from there maybe we can continue to think about how we want to do what we want.
Speaker 1:What would you say to somebody who doesn't know what they want, right, that doesn't really have an idea or a sense of what would be meaningful for them?
Speaker 4:There's plenty of people like that. I'll say that the first thing for them would be to figure out what they don't want. There are things in your life that are not that good for you. Let's deal with those. If you get rid of enough things that you don't want, you'll figure out what you want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so simply yeah, but low hanging fruit, right. So I actually love that. If it's not screaming at you like super obvious, then it's usually the things that you don't want that aren't working are more obvious. So really spend some time on that, Right? Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 3:Abba what's up. You have too much wisdom for your age.
Speaker 4:I don't know what, should I do Teach?
Speaker 3:I'm here Good.
Speaker 1:I don't think it's too much wisdom.
Speaker 3:I don't think that's possible.
Speaker 1:I think it's shocking that you do.
Speaker 3:That's true. When I met him, he, just like I, walked in a synagogue Friday night. This guy has a big smile on his, like hey, I'm Abba. I was like, hey, I'm Jacob. And he was just like. That was it. And I honestly thought he was like I don't know my age.
Speaker 1:I was. I was probably like but do you have facial hair? Yeah, Little scruff.
Speaker 4:I shaved, but Okay.
Speaker 1:So a typical guy.
Speaker 3:He could pass for 30.
Speaker 1:Easy, I get it all the time, all the time 30 all the time.
Speaker 3:I think, uh, I think we can keep schmoozing, but, abba, thank you so much for coming on. It was the biggest honor and pleasure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this was really really enlightening and enjoyable for me.
Speaker 4:For me as well.
Speaker 1:It's so lovely to be able to have like open conversations like this, and I think it's so important.
Speaker 3:I have a motion. Are there any organizations you'd like our listeners to make a donation to?
Speaker 4:No, I think uh spend more time with yourself. Ooh, beautiful, yeah, beautiful Donate to yourself. Donate to yourself.
Speaker 3:And your family, your wife and the people you love. Abba Moshe, thank you so much for coming on. We are so grateful. This was fantastic, Thank you.
Speaker 4:Thank you so much for having me. It was an honor and pleasure. Thank you, bye-bye.
Speaker 3:We want to thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If anything in today's episode spoke to you, please like subscribe rate and review. Also, don't forget to share this podcast with friends and family.
Speaker 1:And if there's anybody that you know that you think would be a great guest on intuitive choices, please email us at intuitivechoicespodcastgmailcom. Finally, if you want to know more about our mental health practice, intuitive counseling and wellness, please check us out at intuitivecounselingofphillycom.