TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Expand Your Family For As Much Joy As Expanding Your Finances
Date: 04/05/23 Length: 32:54
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Greetings, happy warriors, and welcome to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show where I, your rabbi, and solidly dedicated to revealing how the world really works. And here we are. And I start off by thanking those of you who have helped to promote the show. I really do appreciate it. I should mention it more often I should mention that every show, but I don't. But I really should, because I really do appreciate it. I just love seeing our numbers grow. I love seeing how many people subscribe. And yeah, by the way, if you haven't yet subscribed, go ahead and do so right doesn't hurt doesn't cost anything. And all it means is that the number of subscribers shows up. And many, many good results are based off the number of subscribers there are. So whatever platform you enjoy listening to the rabbi Daniel Lapin show on, please do go ahead and hit subscribe and do that. Okay. So as some of you may be aware, I and my wife, Mrs. Lapin have been blessed with seven children. And they are all wonderful. And we are very grateful, they are really one of the the, one of the best things about our lives. And we are really just truly blessed. I would say this, that we are very, very conscious of the fact that the way they turned out and we're proud of each and every one of them, and they all turned out well has very little to do with us. And you can do, you can be the most wonderful parent to do everything right. And things can go wrong with a child and, and you can have great bitterness and aggravation. On the other hand, there are horrible parents who, who really do nothing right in raising their children. And the end result is they end up with, you know, one, one group, sometimes more than one wonderful children. And I speak to people all the time, who have built incredibly successful lives, but speak about very rough childhoods and very poor family backgrounds. And it's just a reminder that, well, it's a reminder that God is a partner. I mean, it's nothing more nothing less than that. You know, when I speak about the five s being friendship, and fitness and finance and family, and faith, that's because in spite of the fact that for many of us, it's really difficult to sort of build a relationship with God. A lot of people feel self conscious. A lot of people feel unworthy a lot of people deep inside, feel that they're being judged if they do that, that this unseen deity is judging them, whatever it is, there is considerable awkwardness about it. And, and I'm not going to go into any depth now. But it is something that I do encourage folks, I mean, I totally understand the challenges and the difficulties. I don't want anybody to think that all of a sudden, people suddenly wake up one day, and they've got faith. There are some people who discover and get faith with with almost very little effort on their part. But there are other people who struggle and and have difficulty building faith and getting to a point where they feel a genuine connection with God and with the world of the Spirit. And it it's helpful for a number of reasons, including the fact that the faith muscle, once it's developed, is incredibly useful for other things as well, right? I've spoken about this in the past, starting a business, buying a house, getting married, bringing a child into load, all of these are actions that draw on enormous reserves of faith. And the person who has built the faith muscle, over a period of time by connection with God is at an enormous advantage. They have this faith muscle ready to draw on when the time comes to do something that is anxiety provoking, like getting married or building a house or you know, whatever, whatever else it happens to be. And so, children Yeah, you can't you can't really tell. God is one of the partners. It's a man and a woman created child with God as a partner. And sometimes it goes well, sometimes it doesn't. And In our case, we were blessed. And, and it did, I will mention that, as I said, we have one son and six daughters. And a number of people have asked me about this, I thought I would talk about it for a little bit, just give you a bit of a background on this, because what what does happen is, obviously, is that, you know, if you want to start a business, you're more likely to start it with your son than with a daughter. And part of that is because there's a realization that you would like her to become happily married. And when she does, she will take on the name of her future husband, or of her husband at the time. And naturally, she becomes part of, of that family, to such an extent that it is fairly common, that, you know, if a woman becomes widowed, particularly if they've sadly and tragically, it happens early and she's young. Initially, it's very common for her to remain closer to her husband's family than to go back to her own family for protection and help as a as a widow, there is a realization that your daughter, in essence, and this is not the case. And and I don't mean any disparagement, I just want to give you the idea that people could be forgiven for thinking that raising daughters is like almost attacks, you pay attacks, in the sense that you are really raising daughters, for other people so that there should be a society and that other guys will have wives and other families will have daughters in law. But in a sense, you know, as I've said before, in small town, America, it used to be common to see signs on the top of stores along the high street or the main street, you know, Smith and sand Jones and sand. But it doesn't happen that very often, that you'd see, you know, Jones and daughter for this exact reason. The Jones's daughter very often became the daughter to the Smith family marrying young Smith, and she became part of that family. So you could say to yourself, gosh, you know, raising daughters, that's, that's really not. It's not for my benefit. You know, there is a blessing in having a large family. And this is very much on my mind, because as I record this show, we're only a few hours away from the lap and family sitting down for the Passover Seder. And thank God, they are going to be many people, more than 30 people around that table, and most of them are are lapping family members. And so there is a blessing in having a large family. I hardly need to stress this, but but there is a blessing in there. And you might think, and I'm going to correct some of these misimpressions but you might think that if you do want a large family, what you need to do is have mostly sons if you can, because they will then be part of your family, whereas we have Dorian again, you get the pattern. And this is one of the reasons that even in Los Angeles, and some of you may know that, I planted a synagogue together with my friend Michael Medved in the 1980s in Los Angeles, California. And we, we knew and had involved many young Jewish doctors in Los Angeles who became involved in our congregation. And, and I was told the most remarkable things again, I'm proud to say that through their involvement with our congregation, many of them stopped providing abortion services. But back in the 80s in West Los Angeles, this was absolutely normal and absolutely natural. And when I asked one of these young doctors, you know, So what made you decide to stop providing abortion services? He says, When I realized how anti female it was, the overwhelming majority of my patients asked me to abort after they discovered they were carrying a female fetus.
Daniel Lapin 9:46
You know, zero population growth was one of the moods Zeitgeist at the time, and many people decided they were only going to have one child and if they wanted one child, men had a huge preference for it. A boy, wives had a significant preference for being a boy slightly less than their husbands, but much more than 50% preference. So, not surprisingly, in in countries where there was a one child policy, mostly in Asia, the overwhelming majority of abortions were female fetuses. And one of these young doctors in Los Angeles said, Look, I just saw this happening. And I realized I don't want to be any, any part of that. And and he stopped and had absolutely nothing more to do with it. And so let me ask you, if I may, to, yes, be sure you, you subscribe to the podcast. And that way, you'll get told whenever the new episode posts, and also leave a review, you know, Apple podcasts has a place for you, Spotify reviews are really, really useful. And so if you have a few minutes, and you feel like doing a favor to me, much appreciated, go ahead. And as usual, of course, I encourage you to share it. Take take a minute out of your day to share it, share it with friends on social media, anybody who you get on with any like minded person is liable to find at least some value in the podcast. And our website, of course, is Rabbi Daniel lapin.com. And two resources that I want to draw your attention to make a note of them. Number one, there's a bunch of stuff on Passover there, including an audio program that walks you through the Passover experience. And secondly, there is an all a video program called the financial prosperity collection, strongly recommended in terms of basically changing your financial destiny, particularly in an era of inflation. And this is not just in the United States, it becomes more important than ever, to increase your revenue. It's as simple as that. If you're living with a 1% a month inflation rate, which is pretty much where the United States is right now, even though the official government figures much lower because well, for obvious reasons. That means you kind of got to increase your revenue by about 10% to make sure you stay where you are this year that you don't slide back down the down escalator. So financial prosperity collection and Passover resources at Rabbi Daniel lapin.com. And finally, do join us on the happy warriors community become a happy warrior. And again, you'll see how to do that at Rabbi Daniel lapin.com. And so, back to me, talking about having daughters. I'm gonna do something I don't often do and that is I'm not going to recite because I don't know it entirely by heart. But I've read it so many times that I know it reasonably well. What am I talking about? The poem written by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It's called Hiawatha and he wrote it in 1855. So you know, you think about what was going on in America in 1855. Think about in 1855 and a British explorer called David Livingstone came across the Victoria Falls. And well, it's a remarkable sight. I rode my motorcycle through much of Africa in the 1960s in 1969, actually, and that was the year in which the first moon landing occurred in July of that year. And I remember you know, the the incredible awesomeness of seeing Victoria Falls as I got there, in fact, long before I could see it, I could hear it and I could actually see the mist rising into the sky from quite a long way away before I even got to the actual waterfall which was spectacular. So Livingston discovered Victoria Falls in 1855. And even more importantly, the steel very important to eat with knives and forks made out of iron very problematic. If you need to fire a cannon made out of iron as everybody did every now and then, the cannon would burst open like A banana peel. And in iron, really, really not a terribly useful element in there. There's a whole lot of it. But what a huge breakthrough It was when human beings discovered how to do steel. And the so often happens with discoveries, remarkably, what's happened so often is that a discovery is made simultaneously by two disconnected people and aware of one another's work in two different parts of the world. You know, the calculus was discovered by Newton in England and by Leibniz in Europe, and the, the large scale process of converting iron into steel, which I mean changed everything. You know, gosh, I mean, just imagine, so difficult to make anything without steel. So that process comes 1855 and Henry Bessemer in England, and about the same time separately, WILLIAM KELLY in the United States, come up with come up with the furnace, the Bessemer furnace, or the blast furnace, that actually, you know, I won't go into the process of how you do it, although it's very, very interesting, but I'd rather get on with at that time, while the blast furnace the Bessemer furnace was being built and refined and developed in both England and America. And Henry David Livingston was discovered in Victoria Falls, the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published higher water, and I just, I want you to listen to this a little bit. It's very difficult to decide where to start because each time I looked back another few lines now you gotta hear that you got to hear that, but I'm gonna read a bit of it. I hope you enjoy it. You might even be inspired to get a copy of it and read it for yourself. But it has a very, very beautiful few lines on your daughter getting married.
Daniel Lapin 17:09
""... At the doorway of his wigwam
Sat the ancient Arrow-maker,
In the land of the Dacotahs,
Making arrow-heads of jasper,
Arrow-heads of chalcedony.
At his side, in all her beauty,
Sat the lovely Minnehaha,
Sat his daughter, Laughing Water,
Plaiting mats of flags and rushes
Of the past the old man's thoughts were,
And the maiden's of the future.
He was thinking, as he sat there,
Of the days when with such arrows
He had struck the deer and bison,
On the Muskoday, the meadow;
Shot the wild goose, flying southward
On the wing, the clamorous Wawa;
Thinking of the great war-parties,
How they came to buy his arrows,
Could not fight without his arrows.
Ah, no more such noble warriors
Could be found on earth as they were!
Now the men were all like women,
Only used their tongues for weapons!
She was thinking of a hunter,
From another tribe and country,
Young and tall and very handsome,
Who one morning, in the Spring-time,
Came to buy her father's arrows,
Sat and rested in the wigwam,
Lingered long about the doorway,
Looking back as he departed.
She had heard her father praise him,
Praise his courage and his wisdom;
Would he come again for arrows
To the Falls of Minnehaha?
On the mat her hands lay idle,
And her eyes were very dreamy.
Through their thoughts they heard a footstep,
Heard a rustling in the branches,
And with glowing cheek and forehead,
With the deer upon his shoulders,
Suddenly from out the woodlands
Hiawatha stood before them.
Straight the ancient Arrow-maker
Looked up gravely from his labor,
Laid aside the unfinished arrow,
Bade him enter at the doorway,
Saying, as he rose to meet him,
'Hiawatha, you are welcome!"
At the feet of Laughing Water
Hiawatha laid his burden,
Threw the red deer from his shoulders;
And the maiden looked up at him,
Looked up from her mat of rushes,
Said with gentle look and accent,
"You are welcome, Hiawatha!"
Daniel Lapin 19:19
"Very spacious was the wigwam,
Made of deer-skins dressed and whitened,
With the Gods of the Dacotahs
Drawn and painted on its curtains,
And so tall the doorway, hardly
Hiawatha stooped to enter,
Hardly touched his eagle-feathers
As he entered at the doorway.
Then uprose the Laughing Water,
From the ground fair Minnehaha,
Laid aside her mat unfinished,
Brought forth food and set before them,
Water brought them from the brooklet,
Gave them food in earthen vessels,
Gave them drink in bowls of bass-wood,
Listened while the guest was speaking,
Listened while her father answered,
But not once her lips she opened,
Not a single word she uttered.
Yes, as in a dream she listened
To the words of Hiawatha,
As he talked of old Nokomis,
Who had nursed him in his childhood,
As he told of his companions,
Chibiabos, the musician,
And the very strong man, Kwasind,
And of happiness and plenty
In the land of the Ojibways,
In the pleasant land and peaceful.
"After many years of warfare,
Many years of strife and bloodshed,
There is peace between the Ojibways
And the tribe of the Dacotahs."
Thus continued Hiawatha,
And then added, speaking slowly,
"That this peace may last forever,
And our hands be clasped more closely,
And our hearts be more united,
Give me as my wife this maiden,
Minnehaha, Laughing Water,
Loveliest of Dacotah women!"
And the ancient Arrow-maker
Paused a moment ere he answered,
Smoked a little while in silence,
Looked at Hiawatha proudly,
Fondly looked at Laughing Water,
And made answer very gravely:
"Yes, if Minnehaha wishes;
Let your heart speak, Minnehaha!"
And the lovely Laughing Water
Seemed more lovely as she stood there,
Neither willing nor reluctant,
As she went to Hiawatha,
Softly took the seat beside him,
While she said, and blushed to say it,
"I will follow you, my husband!"
This was Hiawatha's wooing!
Thus it was he won the daughter
Of the ancient Arrow-maker,
In the land of the Dacotahs!
From the wigwam he departed,
Leading with him Laughing Water;
Hand in hand they went together,
Through the woodland and the meadow,
Left the old man standing lonely
At the doorway of his wigwam,
Heard the Falls of Minnehaha
Calling to them from the distance,
Crying to them from afar off,
"Fare thee well, O Minnehaha!"
And the ancient Arrow-maker
Turned again unto his labor,
Sat down by his sunny doorway,
Murmuring to himself, and saying:
"Thus it is our daughters leave us,
Those we love, and those who love us!
Just when they have learned to help us,
When we are old and lean upon them,
Comes a youth with flaunting feathers,
With his flute of reeds, a stranger
Wanders piping through the village,
Beckons to the fairest maiden,
And she follows where he leads her,
Leaving all things for the stranger!"
Pleasant was the journey homeward,
Through interminable forests,
Over meadow, over mountain..."
Daniel Lapin 22:57
And, and so it goes. It's a it's a remarkable, really a very remarkable poem, and something that I think it was a triumph of Longfellow, but he really does capture this theme. And I just want to explain now why it is that, that image, the idea that you raise your daughter, and then off they go, and that's the end of it, and you really just raised her for another family to be built up. And, to some extent, obviously, that does happen. You know, Susan Lapin and I have grandchildren whose last name is not lapping. And that's fine. I mean, it's all good. But, you do understand why it is that there is this popular misconception. So let me explain to how Ideally, it should work. First of all, we have to teach our young people that you don't marry just because you fall in love. You don't marry just because somebody strikes you as sexy and attractive. You marry first of all, recognizing that you are marrying into a family. And so you really caught you get to know the person you are contemplating for marriage. And, you try and do this not when you've hit 35 and 38 and 39. But you try and do this in your 20s. And you try and get to know the siblings of the person that you are seeing, and you try to get to know his parents or her parents. And meanwhile, your parents are getting to know their parents. And eventually, if it becomes reaches the point where all signs are propitious and everything is looking good. Then the parents meet. And here's a key thing. And this is something which is not well known and I'd love to know, to how many of you is this news to how many of you is this surprising and something completely unknown. And that is that a very real relationship is created between the parents on either side. And so we have seven children. And we have seven marriage children. And as a result of that, there are seven families with which we are connected. And so Susan and I have had the pleasure of attending wedding celebrations of inlaws of our children. In other words, we are so friendly with the parents, of the people, our children married, that very often, when they have throw weddings for various children of this, we get invited, and we get to participate. And we get to enjoy the celebration of of growing families. So that is an unusual thing. There is even a word in Hebrew, for the relationship between somebody and the mother and father of the person your child marries, it is a real relationship. And so as the result of our daughters marrying six nobleman, we are now connected to six different families. And it's a real connection, we speak to them quite often as we share celebrations, etc, etc. And it is an expanding of the circle of life. And it's something very, very valuable. So, I just want to stress and make this point that we don't, we're not always careful enough in raising our children and in advising other people, that selection of a spouse is hugely important. The intelligence of your grandchildren will depend very much on who your children marry,
Daniel Lapin 27:09
the relationship they will all have with you depends on your child, especially if you have a son, your child marrying a good person, a person who's kind-hearted. But if your son doesn't marry a kind-hearted person is bad for everybody. And your daughters have to marry men who are men of honor, not boys, don't let your daughters marry a boy, they must marry men. Now, I say don't let you know, I recognize that there's limited control that we have in 2023 over daughters, but I can't tell you how valuable it is for a daughter to know that her parents are on board with her decision or not on board. I will share you know with you a few 100,000 of our closest friends that we did not agree with all the people that our daughters brought home. There were some we and you know, they accepted it. And it wasn't easy. It wasn't always pleasant. But yes, there were times where our daughter some of our daughters were courted by men, guys, boys, we considered to be unsuitable, and, and our oldest did not marry those individuals, they ended up to go on to marry men of honor and men of, of goodness, good men. So that is really the topic that I wanted to share, as I prepare to go into the Passover holiday, which is an enormously Family Centered holiday because as I've written about extensively, and many of you may have heard me talk about it in the past is that the cure the antidote to the damage of slavery is fatherhood. Because one of the things that gets most damaged in slavery is the role of the man because now instead of being the provider for his woman, the provider is now the slave owner, and the man is reduced to an impotent role. It's incredibly destructive. And so family is nearly always a victim of slavery. For that reason, as the Exodus prepares to take place in the book of Exodus, you will see that one of the requirements is a special family gathering to eat the sacrificial Pascall lamb the Passover sacrifice, and they all sit down to eat barbecued lamb chops, but how do they Sit down. It has to be reconstituted father-led household. The Hebrew is sometimes more clear than the English in these specific verses. But the Hebrew is [Hebrew spoken] a father led home, which means that all the the the situations in which they found themselves, they had to reconnect with Dad. Dad had to be brought back into the home. And the family celebrated meal before the Exodus could actually take place. The restoration of the role of the husband and father is the only way to cure the aftereffects of slavery. And that is exactly what happened. And that's why it is that of all the holidays in the Jewish calendar. Passover is the most family-centric one. And so you will find people who don't have a great deal to do with our families, and don't have a great deal to do with Jewish tradition. But yet they make their way home for Thanksgiving. And for Passover twice a year. That's very, very common. And so we have children and their spouses and their children coming in from different parts of the country in order to celebrate the Passover Seder in just a few hours, which Susan and I will lead as we sit at the head of the table and conduct several hours of rediscovering and re-experiencing what leaving Egypt meant, what the rediscovery of personal responsibility is all about. And we do our very best to convey that to the next generation of Latins that are growing up right now as I speak. So please do visit the website as I said, and take a look at the pulse over resources. Take a look also at the financial prosperity collection, which is truly life-changing. Don't underestimate the importance of money if and people do. If nothing else, it has the ability to convert a problem into an expense. And if you can make that expense and make the problem go away. That is a huge blessing. And that's why the five F's include the F of finance, so visit Rabbi Daniel lapin.com. And be blessed for a one more week until we get together next time. focus this week on developing your family, your finances, your faith, your fitness and your friendships. I'm Rabbi Daniel Lapin. God bless you.
