A Jewish Billionaire's Advice on Money and Life

And she said, 'What are you going to do?' I said, 'I'm going to go into real estate.' She said, 'Why real estate?' I said, 'It's the only thing where you don't need any degrees. There's no barrier level of entry and it seems people make money.'

I asked my mother-in-law, does it create any like constonnation or any type of conflict with you, knowing that one of your parents flew in and what he spent on the trip back and forth is more than you make in a year. There's another part of impoverished is when you're making less than your neighbor. And he said to me, "David, I'm going to make sure you never get alone the rest of your life in the United States of America. I have made a lot of money. Thank God, right? And I've sat with some of the wealthiest people in the universe. And their level of unhappiness equals any other demographic. Why continue working? Meaning, you've reached a certain level of success. Why not just learn and spend time with family? Being a Jew, awesome. Managing personal finances, not so awesome. Welcome to Kosher Money.

>> Okay, we're here with David Likenstein. Let's start from the beginning. Where did you grow up? What was life like?

>> I grew up in um Brop Park and Madison, Sheep's Head Bay, New York. My father was an itinerant rabbi. in many different cities. He was a very spiritual person as is my mother. And we grew up without any money. Itinerant rabbis don't make money. But there's two parts to impoverishment. There's times when you people who are poor, they don't have food, they don't have shelter, clothing. We always had enough to eat. We always had a roof over our head. We always had clothing. There's another part of impoverished is when you're making less than your neighbor. There are studies that show that the majority of people would rather be earning more than their neighbors and a much smaller amount. They'd rather earn 50,000 and their neighbors earning 30 than earning 300,000 if their neighbors are earning 500,000. Right? It's the keeping up with the Jones. So we weren't in we always had what to eat. We always had roof over our head. And as far as the main empowers, which is what a lot of Americans suffer from. My parents never spoke about money. It had very little value to them. And when I got married, my wife's parents were the same. My wife's parents had a a Shiva in my called Bashraa. And it was sort of like small and a lot of care. And they got people from a lot of the world sending there. And one of them was the Reichman family, Olympia, York, who at that time was the wealthiest person in the world according to Time magazine. And I remember being there for one, you know, Saturday, and during the week, he had flown in on his private jet to see his kid for an hour and then flew back. and my in-laws who really lived very simply that a dining room set with 10 chairs around it, each one from a different set. I asked my mother-in-law, "Does it create any like constonnation or any type of conflict with you knowing that one of your parents flew in and what he spent on the trip back and forth is more than you make in a year?" And she looked at me with like such shock in her eyes. She said, "I would never change places with him." And I would say that that's a real value. And I would say many yeshiva people who I studied with over the years if you told them look we'd have to give up your studies and you would get Musk's place in life. Many I wouldn't say the majority would say no thank you. Let him have what he has. I'm really happy with what I have. my studies, my spirituality, my relationship with God, my play, you know, my impact on you know gen future generations learning that has a much greater value to me. So we never suffered from the second part of impoverished right and it was a real lesson.

Does that mean that there were no financial challenges? Meaning you didn't have a lot of money but you were also you also had your necessities or were were there struggles from childhood into your early marriage?

>> There were times when they struggled to pay the bills. Yes, they did. But my father just he just it didn't mean much to him. In fact, my father when I went to work and I started making money rather quickly, he didn't understand it. He said like, "How many pieces of chicken can you eat at dinner? Will you eat whole chicken now? Two chickens." He just didn't get what the value of it was.

>> Where' your parents grow up?

>> So, my father and mother, both both Americans. My mother grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. My grandfather was sort of the chief rabbi of Providence. And my father grew up in the Bronx.

>> Okay.

>> The Yankee Stadium. So it wasn't they didn't have that necessarily that war mentality that many survivors have when when they come here.

>> So

>> but I'll tell you something interesting. My father would tell me how by the seder Passover by night there would be 30 people by the seder each one the last living member of their family. So he was very aware he grew up during World War II. It was by mitzvah. My father's bitzvah was by Pearl Harbor.

>> Wow.

>> The day of Pearl Harbor. My father was was very aware of it and I grew up very aware of it too of the Holocaust. And I I would say the day doesn't go past. I don't think of it.

>> Right. Wow.

>> Wow. How long ago did they pass away?

>> My mother is still alive and her

>> and my father passed away around 16 years ago. When you were first getting married in the early stages, you didn't have much means. Where did you live when you first got married? And what was life like?

>> So, we got married. We moved to Israel and I studied there for a little over a year. I lived studied in Israel like 5 years all in all, but after marriage, a little more than a year, we lived on very little. You know, we our our rent was $270 a month, which was not a lot even then. and we rented a semi-furnished apartment, like an unfernished pretty much. It was uh and then afterwards we came to America and we lived in Lakewood for like a year and a half and then I went to work.

>> What was your first job?

>> Well, my first job was pre Yeshiva was pre-going to work. I actually sold encyclopedias.

>> That was a thing.

>> That was a brutal job, let me tell you. Going from house to house, uh really brutal getting a lot of doors slammed on you. But I I did learn a few things from that till today. One is that um labor without a vision is just exhaustion. And the second thing I learned was if you don't have a story, all you have is pages stuck in a book. Bricks on a lot. You don't have a building. Everything needs a story. And I still believe that at work as well as personally. I think everybody has to write their own story. And when we write our own story, uh, doors in our mind start to open.

>> Was that discouraging those doors, even if if they're actually opening is one thing, but now they're getting slammed in your face. Did you leave that job quickly or you found a way around that?

>> Um, you know, I I stayed with it um a few years, you know, off your when I was off from Yeshiva to support myself.

>> Mhm. And um it's discouraging to get a door slammed on your face, but also very you learn a lot from it too. We learn more from adversity than from success.

>> How'd you get into that business?

>> I saw an ad in the paper. I was looking for a job on Bayman, but that was all from school.

>> And it just said, "We're looking for encyclopedia salesman." And I showed up and they said, "You have two legs and a mouth. You can have this job."

>> You qualified.

>> I qualified. So when you got married and you went to work, what was what was that job?

>> So my first job when I went to work is I worked for six months managing a building in Newark, New Jersey. And it was scary. I mean, you know, I was I was the only white person

>> in a sea of black and we love our black brothers, but it still could be intimidating. And um I was there for six months and I said, "You know what? It was a pretty tough boss. I said, you know, I'd rather work for myself."

>> What was money like? Were you making some money? Did you have

>> Actually was I mean, he paid me.

>> Yeah.

>> Um and we needed it to live,

>> you know. And I said, um I just don't want to work for anybody. I just I want to I want to walk my own path. And I went out on my own after that. You've spoken about food stamps and a particular story. I'd love for you to share it. Uh what happened?

>> So when I was in yeshiva and I loved yeshiva, remember I was in yeshiva till I was 28. Um I saw that what between what the yeshiva paid which was $40 a week and that was nothing even back in the 80s. So my wife worked but then when you know she was expecting our second kid it got hard for her. was going back and forth to New York. So, um I said, "What do you do if you're impoverished? You know, you really just didn't couldn't pay our rent pretty much." And they said, "Well, you should try going on food stamps. That'll help." And I remember I went to Tom's River, the uh the uh office for food stamps there. And I remember filling out the form and looking at the form and um I was surrounded by a lot of other people and the vibe to a certain extent was one of dependency and fear. People just needed to survive. And I said I have a choice. I can embrace fear or I can embrace what taught us which is taught all of life is a series of bridges. We're always going from where we are to someplace right and the biggest impediment of getting to where we want to go is fear. I said now is a decision. Am I going to embrace convenience and comfort or am I going to take that leap and saying, "I'm with you. I'm not going to let fear rule me." And I picked it up and I tore it into pieces. Said, "Rinkle into the garbage p." I said, "Umman, this one's for you.

>> I'm jumping into the Red Sea."

>> You get home, your wife says, "So, are we on food stamps?" What was that conversation like?

>> Um, my wife was never pro it, but um, she didn't have to worry about paying the bills either, though. And she said, 'What are you going to do? I said, 'I'm going to go into real estate.' She said, 'Why real estate? I said, it's the only thing where you don't need any degrees. Um there's no barrier level of entry and it seems people make money and that's what I did.

>> You think you picked up on that because of your management job where you were open to that world of real estate that pushed you in that direction?

>> Well, it started the other way around. It started with the food stamps, then I went into the management job.

>> Oh, okay. Got it. That makes sense. So, you get into real estate. How does someone even get into real estate just because they walked out of a food stamp office and says they want to get into real estate?

>> So, what happened was I started looking said, "Let's start small with houses." I found a two family house in Lakewood, New Jersey. And one guy was paying like 700, one guy was paying 600. I and they were paying their own utilities and I could buy the house. I think it was $91,000. I said, "Hey, I'm going to get a mortgage and it'll pay for itself. I'll even make money every week." Went to the bank and I said, "I have a house I want to buy. Can I get a loan?" The guy says to me, "Sure, we give loans, mortgages." I went to Nat West and I said, "Um," he said, "What's your credit like?" Now, I know it's hard for people to imagine this. This is before there was something called the internet.

>> Mhm.

>> And I looked at the guy and I said, "Excuse me, what's credit?" He said, "You know, credit is a type of thing if you have a credit card, you build a I said, I I don't have any credit." He says, "Well, you have any friends who will sign in on a credit card?" I said, "All my friends are in yeshiva." He said, "Well, I can't give you a credit card then you to build up credit." I went home and I said, "I got to figure this one out." And I locked myself in a room for a day and I came back. I went back to the bank. I said, "You know, we have $3,000 in savings from our wedding that we didn't use. I want to open up a passbook account." That's what they did. It was like a book in those days. And he did. Came back a week later and I said, "Would you give me a loan and I know I have no credit, but secure it with the passbook which you hold in your bank."

>> And the guy said, "Yes." He said, "But on the passbook, you're going to pay 5%. And we're only paying you 3% interest. You're going to be losing money." Said, "I think I know what I'm doing." I wasn't sure, but I thought. So, he said, "Sure." So, he gave me um gave me a loan and every month I paid the loan and uh for three or four months. Then, I I went then I went to a second bank, opened a second passbook and a third bank using the same 3,000. did like four or five banks, paid everyone on time and I came back to the first bank three months later. I said, "Can I get a credit card?" Said, "Oh, I went I went on to whatever screen I used." He said, "I see you have very good credit." Said, "Yeah, what type of credit card would you want?" Said, "Can I get a gold card?" He said, "No, not with I went to all five banks. One gave me a bronze card, one gave me a blue card, one gave me a yellow card, one even gave me a gold card out of five. And then I took out the maximum cash on each one, and I bought my first house. I can already see that you're choosing not to embrace fear in this first big job and you're crossing those bridges possibly with some level of trepidation, but there are many that would have frozen up or this is not an industry I'm super familiar with. I'm not going to do that or I'm not going to take the chance and and start losing 2% or whatever the numbers are and and cross that bridge. Did you feel gutsy? Did you feel confident? Was your wife pushing you? What what people People People want to know a successful person how they got their start? I want I want to know what was going on inside of you during all that time. I believe to the depth of my soul that everybody was brought here for a mission. Everybody is a one-time event. that there was nobody ever like you before and DNA science teaches us that there'll nobody ever be like you again both the Talmud and science teaches both of these all of us have a mission and that has many times in life given me the impetus to do things like if you were here for a mission was it to just sit around and do X or was it to actually accomplish so whenever in doubt that's my retreat I retreat back to And now let's talk about artificial intelligence. You've heard about it. AI, it's everywhere. Companies are building wildly cool applications, but there's also a lot of AI noise. What do businesses really know when it comes to AI? And what's your competition doing with it? What technology are organizations taking because of smart softwarebased solutions? This all sounds good, but you don't know where to turn. So, let me tell you about Bitbeam. Yakov and I went to their offices and saw them up close and personal. They sit with you. They guide you. They learn about your business and they create a softwarebased solution at an affordable price. And because of AI, it's even more affordable than it used to be. So, if you have a tech project, an app you want to build, a back-end system that needs to be customized and built for you because you're special, because your business is unique, I highly recommend taking a look at bitbean.com. Initiate a conversation. What you're going to get is premium software without the premium price. Even if it's not a good fit right now, I recommend checking out bitbean.com anyway because you can see what is available, what other businesses have done, their case studies. Really cool. Scan the QR code on the screen or click on the link in the show notes. A short break with a note from the best dressed folks in town, Twillery. More and more of you are scooping up their new arrivals with firsttime deals and free shipping. Twillery's clothing is being spotted across the world from New York to the Coell. So, if you want to visit a retail location, I've got good news. They have one in Long Island and soon in, drum roll, Lakewood, New Jersey. I took a tour two weeks ago at their Cedarhurst, Long Island location and was quite impressed with their new polo designs, the texture. They're innovating and oh, they're very, very comfortable and oh, they're durable. So, if you're in the market for a new fit, check out twillery.com/cosermoney. Links in the show notes. Use code kai 20 ch ai20 for 20% off for a limited time. You can even scan the QR code on the screen if you're watching on a computer or a smart TV. That's twillery.com/coshermoney. And now back to this week's episode. After all these years, what do you look back? And we'll get into the what happened after, but what do you look back at fondly of that you miss? Right. People didn't know who David Likenstein was. They didn't know who David Likenstein was. Yeah. you didn't necessarily have tons of financial means, but is there a simplicity to life that you miss? Is there anything that you do miss from that those those pre-working days or the the early starts?

>> I mean, there are times when I think back what would have been if I hadn't gone to work like what would what type of rabbi could have I made?

>> Um, that's about it. Well, you have written and Jewish books and

>> you have a tremendous Halaka headlines podcast. So, the dissemination may be a little bit different than you anticipated, but certainly influencing quite a bit of people.

>> Agreed. A good point. But my teachers are much more traditional.

>> So, you have that building, you start making money. What happened from there?

>> So I I I bought one, then I refinanced that and I bought another. Then I refinanced that and I bought another. Then I refinanced that and I bought an 18 unit. Then I did a 47 unit. Then I did a 70 unit. Then I did a 400 unit. And it just sort of builds on itself.

>> Were people magically wanting to become your friend as you were progressing?

>> I don't I haven't found that.

>> I have found that um for the most part I've kept the same friends that I've had from when I was back in those days. Um, I never hooked up with quote unquote a fast crowd.

>> Um, I had very no interest in like the Hamptons. It doesn't interest me. Um, I think I got from both from my teachers in yeshiva, my rebum and from my parents and from my in-laws a real value about what money is. And they saw it just as a tool and nothing else. There was no accolades that surrounded it. There was no pride that surrounded it. There was no huge boost of consumerism that surrounded it. No, you know, um, uh, token uh, virtualization. It was was pretty much it's a tool. Just like a doctor has tools, you can have tools, too. And if you have more powerful tools, you can do more powerful things. But it it never I don't think and everybody it never came to me like oh type of boss and you you become and I think that I think that a big part has to do with religion too

>> right we have we have different values so I do imagine someone who's in those circles even if they're not running in it there are yacht dealers that are reaching out um Hampton real estate broker is, you know, is it just a lot of saying no thank you to to people or that they're not even reaching out?

>> They don't even reach out. They know my persona. You know, it's like uh they don't, you know, you have to give off a certain vibe, a certain availability, certain interest. I've been thinking about that because I am very impressed by people with means or without means that that give saddaka. So they're able to provide for people and help people. But then there's something called fame. And if you if someone leans into the fame and the fortune and the fame part specifically, they might enjoy it for a little bit, I imagine, but then it can become really tedious. They're being photographed when they're outside. People are walking up to them. And I admire those that have the sensibility to stay out of the spotlight. Do you think that there is truth to that or it really depends on the personality?

>> I think it depends on your value system. If you need others to tell you who you are and you're going to lean into it. There are many people who don't like you know I remember years ago I had a big company called Prime Retail. was one of the largest uh it was like two second or third largest out mall company in the United States. So we a lot of our tenants were some of the fanciest tenants in the country, right? we have in the world and I remember meeting one of them he said is my biggest success is in China and he was racist this guy and he said um imagine you have a billion and a half people who can't differentiate themselves in any way but if they're carrying my bag now people know who they are so a lot of these buckles or labels people who don't know who they are and they actually need somebody to affirm to them their existence. You know, my father once told me a story. He said in the city of Helm, there was a guy he was about to go swimming and he said, you know, usually you recognize a person by his clothing. If I take my clothing off, nobody know who I am. And I'm going swimming in the in the, you know, in the in the river. He put a red band around his arm. He says, "This way when I come out, I'll see. I'll know who I am." He came out. while he was swimming, it fell off. And another person put it on, he looks around, he says, he says, "I got mixed up with somebody else." He says, "Oh, that's me." He goes over to the guy and he says, "Listen, I know who you are. Could you please tell me who I am?" Well said. And that's that's how all these big brands make their money. the person who's wearing that Hermes uh you know scarf or that Birkin bag is basically announcing I don't know who I am but Burkin told me who I am thank God and if I lose that bag I don't exist anymore and there's something really bad about that I think right it's this let's call it American culture and the interest slash growing need to by designer clothing and things of that nature has somewhat slightly or more than slightly seeped into Orthodox Jewish culture at times. Have you seen that?

>> Well, we live, you know, we we integrate to the to the world. They say what the Christians are doing, the Jews are doing. And um yeah, I mean look, but but self-image is a very very is a very key important thing and it's a shortcut to self-image when you wear a big buckle with somebody's name on it. I can tell you that I don't think I have a single brand quoteunquote brand name. Maybe I do one or two suits that happen to be but because it's I find it repugnant, right, for somebody else to have the tmerity to say I'm going to tell you who you are. You know who you are. you wearing my name.

>> Wow, that's deep, but shouldn't be deep. It should be at the at the front center. So, you also had a lot of credit card debt in the early going. What was that like? How did you accumulate that and how did you get past that?

>> Well, desperation, you know, doesn't have boundaries and credit cards are often driven by that. But, you know, over time, I started making money. Business stabilized. I paid off debt. There's there's no shame in debt, right? There's a shame in seeing debt as a dum as like an end. But otherwise, it's just like a hammer or a screwdriver to a carpenter.

>> Why Why do you find that debt in the world is so mismanaged though if it's a tool that craftsmen can use?

>> Well, you know, credit cards are like sugar. You can get happy in a hurry. It takes a mature person to sit around, you know, a table of sweets and saying, "I know what I can and I know what I can't." Many people can't. I mean, just look at the weight problem in this country. It's the same idea, isn't it?

>> We have to find the ozenic version of for credit cards.

>> Yeah.

>> Um, so why did you move out of Lakewood eventually?

>> So Lakewood when I was there, and it's changed a lot, was a very holy city, and it was a city sort of onedimensional. It was about, you know, people who were living for another world, right? And after I went to work for a few years, I realized, you know, I'm not living just in that world anymore. I'm living in two worlds. And the terrain here, it's wasn't fear for my neighbors, you know, and it wasn't fear for me. And when I say it wasn't fear for my neighbors, it's like, you know, I could take the family to Israel or something for and it was more than my next door neighbor earned in a year. I didn't think that was right,

>> right? So, and it wasn't right for me because at a certain point, you want to fit into your environment. And and I was doing another Jewish thing, I migrated from doing the Jewish thing which was living in the world of spirituality doing another thing that Jews do very well which is living in two worlds and you know the Ramban in the beginning of Genesis says that the word Adam means man stands for two things. It means which is earth and it also means eljun that I am a mirror of what of of the transcending god on high and both part both components are what we are created out of and um I was starting to lean into the second one too. Wow. I I feel like I ask simple questions and I get very thought out answers. I assume this is not the first time you've thought about the things that you you're sharing today. Um, okay. So, you start building a portfolio, 20,000 apartments. Where did work and your career develop from there?

>> So, I started off in multif family, right? And then I migrated to um retail. I'm a big retail landlord in the United States. And then from there I migrated to hotels with some fiascos along the way.

>> Yeah, I was going to ask. It sounds like it's a the linear shot to success.

>> No, you know what it is? It's that um I think we're taught what we're taught as Jews about the power of curiosity. What's the core or the beginning of teaching our children? What's the first lesson we see where we teach our children in Judaism is by the seder. And what do we teach them to ask the first question four times? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? So curiosity, right, goes to the essence of who we are. I've seen funny like real estate companies in the United States. You go to companies like SL Green. It's the biggest like office landlord in New York City. They'll buy real estate anywhere in the world as long as it's between 14th Street and 57th Street, Park Avenue and 6th Avenue. Anywhere in the world. But you know for me it was like why like why not try that and why not look at that and why not look at that and so all the wise kept pulling us in different directions.

>> Parents sometimes get frustrated when the kid in the car says why this why that why this

>> but that's you know there was a a Nobel laureate his name was Izzy. It'll come back to me his last name, but he lived in in Brooklyn and he won the Nobel Prize. And after he won the Nobel Prize, uh, a journalist asked him, he said, "Is he said, "How did you win a Nobel Prize from growing up like in Brighton Beach?" And he said, "When all the kids came home, their mothers would ask them, "Did you have a good day today at school?" He said, "My mother asked me, Izzy, did you have a good question today? Right? So the power of the question, right, both in ourselves and our children. And if we show them how inspired we are by it, right? We're in effect asking them to leave their box,

>> to go beyond the four corners that defines themselves right now. And once you leave what defines yourself right now, where do you go? Anything becomes possible, including Nobel prizes. I heard a question that someone asked their children when they got home. They said, "What did you fail at today? What did you try doing but didn't succeed?" And it inculcated this idea of trying and that failure is not an end, but it shows that you gave effort to something. So what was what was something you think back a mistake a mishap that you made in those in those early real estate days that you look that you look back on and say you know I didn't understand it then but I I see why it turned out to be something positive.

>> Well, I have a book at home and it title is stupid things that I have done, cool things that I have done and it's a very thick book, right? So, if I were to start enumerating my mistakes, we'd be here for a while, but you're track you track that. It was Yeah, I keep track of it. And it was like but I but I think there's a message there too is like mistakes are fine. If we're not making mistakes, we're not growing. If if you're sticking to the true and tried, it means you're not experimenting and and if you look at both talmudically and secularly great people or success like when we when we look at the Tal we look who's considered great well the greatest rabbi of our recent generations was Haim Brisque right and what did he do he thought of a new way of teaching Talmud Right? And because of that new way, he broke ground. He he he changed the world and he really became considered the success. And if you look at in the secular world, like today who's successful, Bezos, Musk, they all broke Guadaglass. I mean, Amazon's a crazy new idea, as is SpaceX, as is Tesla, right? We don't get rewarded in life for being part of a crowd, right? And the only way to do that is by tolerating mistakes. In fact, Bezos said on a call after he had the Firephone, the Amazon phone was a big failure. One of the analysts asked him during the uh call, he said, "Can you explain the failure of the Firephone?" And Bezos responded during an analyst call, he said, "Oh, we're working on much bigger failures as we speak."

>> And I think that's fabulous. And I think that's something that as Jews we embrace. We recognize failures. It says, What does that mean? It's not It's not a liturgy. It's not a eulogy either. It's saying the stepping stones to success are through failure,

>> right? So, you're one failure closer to your success and I keep a book of my failures and it's big and I look at it and I say, "Thank God. Hopefully, we're working on bigger ones now."

>> That's special. So, I can understand taking a risk on a smaller level. In 2007, you acquired extended stay hotels for and I think it says B billion with a B $8.1 billion. So, how do you how do you square the two? Right. Okay. Risks. Take risks. Hey honey, I just made a big purchase. Oh, did you max out the credit card? No, no, no. I bought a hotel or a chain for a lot of money. Oh, what are we talking about? $8 billion. I You see where I'm struggling in in the sense that you could have said, "Hey, I'm I did it. I'm not going to risk anything more. I'm comfortable." What What gives you the confidence to take a risk like that or you didn't think of it as a risk?

>> I'll tell you that risk came after I said uh Torah, Torah thought, and I followed my Torah thought and it didn't work out.

>> What was your Torah thought? My Torah was it was right after Pesa, Passover. And um I I noted that the Jews left Egypt as slave people had been there for 210 years as as slaves and they according to the Bible they walked for 49 days and then they accepted the Decalogue Torah which is the foundation of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, many other religions as well, right? Mormonism etc. right? How does a slave people make that jump? And my thought was, it seems that if you have a backbone, you can go from 210 years of slavery, you can take that huge leap right into bringing the decalogue, the Bible, the Torah to the world. Said that thought and then two days later, the head of investment banking for City Bank walks in and he says, "Would you like to do a deal? I have a deal for you. It's eight billion dollars." And I said, "Geez, I never did a deal this size before." And then I said, "But that doesn't mean anything."

>> Mhm.

>> And I made the leap, the jump, notice the story. The the chief rabbi of the city tells built the building according to the qualifications and dimensions of a tophus in Araban. According to a commentary exesus on he built it and it fell down. Somebody came over to me. He says, "You followed to how did it fall down?" He says, "I checked afterwards and I see that the Marsha asked ontosis a question."

>> Right. I said a stickle. I bought a deal based on it and it probably wasn't the best. That's that that's my response. You know,

>> had it fall apart? What happened?

>> Um, well, what happened was it wasn't it was iron, you know, I bought it at it was impossible to know at the time, but it was sort of like June08. It was the peak of the market. I mean, you couldn't have timed a peak better than that. Then during right afterwards, you know, Fanny May went bankrupt, Freddy Mack went bankrupt, City Bank, Bank of America, all of them would have gone bankrupt if the Fed hadn't supported them. Lehman Brothers did go bankrupt, right? So, I was just in the company of a lot of other companies who didn't realize what a bubble they were sitting on. Like, I thought it was business as usual. Business would have continued as usual, I would have done very well. But um you know the timing was just awful. And looking back it's like it wasn't that I was off by 10%. Between the bubble to the depths of the crash the uh the buildings were devalued by 50%. Like you can't underwrite that in business school. Yeah. Wasn't a bet. It was a bet on workingclass Americans

>> that they need hotels too as opposed to you know upper class or upper middle class. But the timing was terrible and it was it was brutal.

>> I read that you were exposed to up to $100 million in personal liability.

>> It wasn't just the guarantees. It was like I was on the front page of the journal a bunch of times

>> and it didn't bother me. It bothered me more what my father would think when he saw it

>> ironically, you know,

>> but I it didn't bother me much. You know, I've I've always lived with the logo that um you're not right if people tell you you're right, and you're not wrong if people tell you you're wrong. You're right if you're doing the right thing, and you're wrong if you're doing the wrong thing.

>> And if you're doing the wrong thing, you should be embarrassed if nobody sees you. And if you're doing the right thing, you should be proud if nobody sees you.

>> Beautiful. So, what happened with the uh regional manager at Bank of America?

>> So the Bank of America was one of the banks that had bought invested in ex in extend say they held $2 billion of the paper.

>> Mhm.

>> And I I had a conundrum that if I didn't put the properties into bankruptcy, right, we wouldn't meet payroll because the bank was the serer withholding all the payroll cash. And he said, "You can't put it into bankruptcy because we're going to take a hit, the $2 billion, and it could affect our ability to survive as a bank,

>> right?" And it was a conflict between doing what the banks wanted and my stewardship, which I was sort of keep the hotels functioning. And I did. And he said to me, "David, I'm going to make sure you never get a loan the rest of your life in the United States of America." And I said to him, I said, 'You know, you intimidation is not going to work. I said, um, because ultimately, if you do what's right, you'll be rewarded for it, and if you do what's wrong, you own, and intimidation is not a factor here. And I did put it into bankruptcy, and he and he actually lost his job,

>> sadly. But um it was a very difficult period. I mean it was um very difficult period.

>> Sleepless nights.

>> Um, yeah like like like what did he say? He said I slept like a baby.

>> Mhm.

>> I woke up every two hours and cried. Uncle Miller.

>> Yeah, I mean that's hard emotionally. Probably takes a physical toll also.

>> You also wiped out 10 years of work. I mean I I lost a substantial amount of money there. So how do you recover especially also your credibility?

>> Yeah, I think that reputation is not what people say when you're successful. Reputation is people look at you when you have failed. Do you hide or are you come out in a very transparent and forthright? I didn't hide. I came out. I was forthright. explained. Um, and I met my obligations. I mean, I did have a hund00 million obligation. I wrote a check for $100 million.

>> Yeah. For some, for some reason, at least in American culture, people are very forgiving if someone apologizes, if someone is sincere about their apology, people are willing to look past that. But should we care what other people think? Meaning, if we're doing the right thing and we know we're doing the right thing, how important is it what other people think about me?

>> Well, I think it's important to the extent that you want to do business with them again.

>> Mhm.

>> And you know, you do you do have to go back into the banking world, right?

>> So, you didn't have the idea of pivoting or doing something else.

>> That's what I knew how to do,

>> right? You know, I also think that it was somewhat seen in context with you bought at the peak, world crashed. Um, a lot of businesses went bust, never came back. So, it wasn't it wasn't endemic to me.

>> Were you relying on counsel people to advise you or were you just going through with this solo?

>> So I did rely on a lot on counsel and I learned a lot from that. You know there are lawyers all the lawyers when you're paying type of dollars that know the law but some actually understand the implications of the law and many are just parrots of the law and you have to make sure that you don't end up in the world of parrots and end up with the woes who understand what tomorrow brings. A quick message from Florida. I'm talking about Miami Lakes. People are looking to move to Florida, but they don't want to settle for a shoe box. They're going to spend good money. They want an upand cominging beautiful community with a house that is not a shoe box. So, if you're looking for that from Orthodox Jewish community, that's still under the radar for now. They have about 20 families, a beautiful shul, a warm and growing, and people of all ages and backgrounds. It's Miami Lakes. They're building something real. So, let me tell you about the homes, or I'll let Barl Fulman of Miami Lakes tell you about it. He says it's unbelievable. Quote, "Where else in South Florida can you get 3,000 square ft, a private pool, a gorgeous neighborhood, and a solid for this kind of price? what you get here, you don't get anywhere else in South Florida. End quote. That's Miami Lakes. He says it's great homes, great people, a growing from community that's just getting started. For those listening on audio, we're showing photos of the neighborhood on the screen right now. It's nice, right? So, if you're done overpaying for tight spaces and ready to enjoy Florida the way it was meant to be, call Barl at 631-4854482. that number again, 631-4854482. Tell him Ellie sent you. You can find his phone number in the show notes and you can also Google Miami Lakes. Check it out on Zillow and enjoy. And lastly, a word from our friends at KA Kabad. Did you know that because of KA Kabad, over 47,000 families in Israel, let me say that again, 47,000 families in Israel have reliable access to nutritious food. That's literally hundreds of thousands of people being helped because of people like you. Parents should not have to skip meals so their children can eat. And Kabad is on the front lines fighting fighting for them. They've been around since 1788. Hundreds and hundreds of years. That's older than me. Crazy, right? The percentage of every dollar donated that actually goes to help the poor and sick is very, very high. Why? Because Kabad keeps administrative costs to a minimum. They avoid high rents and they have an army of volunteers. But they can't do it alone. Please give what you can to our brothers and sisters in need in Israel. Visit kohabad.org/cosher money. Scan the QR code and give what you can. It could be a dollar, could be $100,000. It could be five shekel. I don't even know what the exchange rate is there, but that's a little more than a dollar. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now, back to the episode. You're saying that with AI becoming or it is a revolution, do you see the world changing? Have you been impressed by AI? Because a lot of people do take counsel whether correctly or not from these artificial intelligence platforms.

>> Well, they're fantastic. I use them multiple times, dozens of times a day. Um, but again, if if you're going to use them as an oracle, you're going to be in trouble because they do hallucinate continuously,

>> right?

>> Okay. So, despite all this, you emerge from bankruptcy, you restructure Lightstone Group, you're ready to rebuild. What did you do practically to pay back that 100 million? Where did you veer Light Stone Group into next?

>> Um, I wrote a check. That's how

>> Oh, you had you had the you had the money? I wrote I wrote a check for 100 million and then Lightstone since then I mean we we stayed with multif family we stayed with hotels interesting we ended up building a lot more hotels and then we veered into logistics

>> what does that mean in English

>> um warehousing manufacturing etc

>> got it when I open up Twitter X I see a lot of tweets um or I often see tweets from investors saying they passed on a particular opportunity or Uber was presented to me. I moved on from it. I didn't think here's the email of where I said no thank you.

>> Do any of those um come to mind where someone presented something to you or are you not an investor into various other businesses?

>> We've invested in many of them. Uh we've had some success. There's so

Much you can do in life. I mean, you have to pick what you're doing, stick with it, and be happy with it. There's an element I think of, um, FOMO. People are always worried, what's the other one doing, and how could he get involved in that, and jump on that train, and the other train. And we have to just be happy with what we have, and, you know, the things that we have.

I think it goes beyond investing. It's the other person's wife, and the other person's house, and the other person's. And a person can say, "Look, this is mine. I'm happy with that." I think something that we don't do that well as Americans are saying is, "I am enough." Or, "I am enough, and I have enough." Both, "I am enough," and "I have enough." And, um, you know, the last thing by the Seder on Passover is, "Ne'erah," which is interesting. Like, where do we have this concept of "Ne'erah," uh, which means it's, it's good. And I think at the Seder, which is really emblematic of the whole journey of a person's life from the beginning till the end, the whole journey of the Jewish people from the beginning to the end, right? And at the end, it says, "And by the way, what you did is enough."

"Mhm."

"You are enough."

"Yeah." Cuz if you have 100, it says you want 200. You have 200, you want 400. If you don't tell yourself that 100 or 200 or whatever it is is enough, you're going to keep chasing. And if you keep chasing, you'll never have time to do things that are important. Do you find...

"Let me just go back to that."

"Um, I have made a lot of money, thank God, right? And I've sitting with, sat with some of the wealthiest people in the universe, right? And their level of unhappiness equals any other demographic. I have this, but he has that. I mean, because there's nobody. I mean, the wealthiest one right now is Musk. He may envy somebody who has a functional family. I mean, he has the most dysfunctional family in history, right?"

"So, there's nobody. There's always something else to envy. And there's no greater level of happiness by these people who have endless amounts of money, right, than your average strata of people, which is pretty astonishing. No."

"So for millionaires, billionaires watching this, and I know they do, how do you take saying, 'I am enough' or 'I have enough,' and actively live with it? How do you, how do you mean what you say?"

"So I'll tell you a story. There was a fellow, his name was Mman. I forgot his first name, and he lived around 250 years ago. He was a, a, a brilliant Talmudist, and he became ultimately a religious. He had questions. He got married at 14, etc. And he spent a Shabbos by the Maggid of, of Bezich, who was the, the Talmid of the Baal Shem Tov. And he said over that the Maggid said over a thought then. And the thought was, 'Your friend's honor should be as important as your own.' And he twisted it. He said like this. He said, 'Imagine if you would go into a room and you would talk to yourself for 10 minutes. You would say, "Oh, David, you're the most brilliant person who ever lived. You are the funniest person who ever lived. You're the best rack who ever lived. You're the best." But for 15 minutes, you would tell yourself compliments. Would it mean anything?' Worthless, right? So he says, 'The honor your friend gives you is important to you as the honor you give yourself.' It's about really, um, you know, you want a certain. Oh, he got that respect. So just imagine in your mind, you could walk into Yankee Stadium and 70,000 people would be screaming your name, 'Ellie, you're the greatest. You're the best.' An honest person would look at that and say, 'Isn't that stupid?' You could, you could do so. And you reach a point where you say, 'It's really not, it doesn't mean anything to me.' And just, you could, you could psychologically explain it to yourself. If, if I walked in, no, come on. Is that, is there anything of value really happening here? Is it just a bunch of sycophants, etc., right? So if you take that awareness, the way he learned the Mishna, and at a certain point, it doesn't matter. I'm interested. Thank you. I'd rather read a book."

"What does your daily schedule look like? Assuming that you've internalized this to the best of your ability and you aren't chasing every potential opportunity and you feel like you, you, you have enough. I assume you're making time for learning, family."

"My life is divided really into three parts. Um, learning, working, and family. That's about it. I mean, I guess part of learning would be davening, would be shacharis, etc. Yeah."

"Why continue working if you have money to pay for things? Meaning, you've reached a certain level of success, why not just learn and spend time with family?"

"I think that work, um, does a few things. For starters, it's a, it's a challenge, and we need challenges. You know, they say there was a fellow in, in Japan. Um, he was the biggest sushi seller. But he realized a problem. They would catch the fish in the middle of the ocean. It would take five, six days to come back, and by the time they came back, the fish wasn't that fresh anymore."

"He had a brilliant idea. He took an oil tanker. He emptied it out, and they put the fish live into the, into the water, and they filled it with water, and they would bring it to Japan. And right by Japan, they would take them out and kill them, and be fresh. But then he had another problem, that the fish had lost their tone because they weren't swimming violently through the ocean. He was about to give up, and then he had an idea. He filled up the thing with fish, and the depth of each boat, he would drop a few little sharks in, and suddenly the fish came in great tone to Japan. Right?"

"I mean, work provides intellectual a challenge. It's, success is a, you get a reward, and with that reward, you can do a lot of things. So it's both a challenge that provides the type of discipline, as well as the fact that money is a very powerful tool, right? Um, so could I go back to learning full-time? Maybe I could, but I'd be missing that challenge. I'd be missing the ability, that tool also."

"And it says a person was born to toil, right? There are certain elements."

"I mean, if you look at the greatest of the Rishonim, and they all worked."

"I have hanging in my study the letter from the Rambam. He writes to Yehuda Tibbon about what his daily schedule is. Have you seen it?"

"Yeah. Rambam writes to Yehuda Tibbon, translated the Mishnayos from Arabic into Hebrew, and he wanted to meet the Rambam, and he had spent so many. Says, 'I don't have time to meet you. Let me tell you my day. I get up in the morning at Ashray and I go to the, uh, Alexandria, where the Sultan is, this is the Khelif, and I take care of him and his family. I give them medicine. And then in the afternoon, all the people from the court come to see me. Then I come home at night, and there's hundreds of people waiting to see me. And he says, 'It's 10:00 at night when I'm able to close the doors and learn.' Right? Was a doctor, and Hassan, all the Tanaim worked. Rashi was a vintner. Rav was a vintner. We forget that post-World War II, we've accepted the world of Kollel, right? It's a, it's a really relatively new thing in Klal Yisrael that didn't exist for the, the great part of Klal Yisrael's existence."

"Even in Europe before the war, there were only two Kollelim. There was one in Radin, and there was one, um, in, I forgot where the other one was, right? In Slabodka. Two Kollelim. Today, I mean, and, and the combination of both Kollelim, maybe 50 people combined. So this is a new world that we've created that didn't exist for the greater part of Judaism."

"One could say it's almost Messianic, right? This idea of sitting and being one with the Creator. Yeah. I see AI as also somewhat Messianic, where we're approaching a world where things could literally be done without a human element. Do you see that or, um?"

"I have to think about that."

"I have to think about it. I like that you're, you're thought out, but also like Rashi, you're not afraid to say, 'I don't know,' or..."

"My Rebbe was from the Mir, and he said, 'I don't know,' more than any other thing."

"Mhm."

"Do you look for that when, when you're meeting people for the first time or a prospective, uh, business deal, you know, partnering with somebody? A certain level of humility goes a long way. I think that what we have at work is, it's, and we have it at life too, is that life is too short. You know, if you, when you're dealing with somebody who's comes along with so much more baggage, and you just say, 'Look, I don't care what the deal is. Life is too short to deal with this person.'"

"That's like as close as we get to what you're suggesting, right? There are people listening that that are in jobs where they're dealing with bosses like that. And when people come to you for advice, and and they say, 'Hey, so and so is in my life. It's, he's not an integral part, but it's a real annoyance.' This idea of, 'Hey, you can't be friends with everybody, so just cut them out.' That's real, right?"

"Real. And it's complicated because it's often somebody who's a family member or a friend. And, you know, these, these are difficult discussions."

"Do people come to you for advice?"

"Yeah, sometimes. I mean, I'm not the most available person, but I'm happy if I am available."

"How do you view this age-old question between the effort one puts into their work versus Hashem providing and having trust and faith that God will provide? Because people, and it's different for everyone, they want to know if after they come home from their 9 to 5, should they roll up their sleeves after the kids are in bed and work on a side hustle, or no, they went to work 9 to 5, believe in that, and then go to learn at night?"

"I think that um, Emunah is, you see that, you know, Yaakov Avinu, right? When, when Esav is coming, he divides into shalos maklos, right? He provides a big bribe. So he clearly is doing all that he can. And then he, um, davens. You see that when Yosef is taken down to Egypt, then, and he has to go down, Yehuda has to go down to get him. So again, Yaakov says, 'And then he says,' Rashi says, 'I did everything I can, and now it's time to be mispallel.' You see the importance of, there's also an importance of balance. I mean, if you're just going to come home at night and do more work and more work, so you, something inside of you is going to die."

"And it's not going to be a pinky, right? And I think that the balance of understanding that we live in two worlds, and we have to feed both of, both of us. You have to feed our spiritual soul as well as our human soul. And if you let one die, you know, you ever see that game of Sim City?"

"Yeah."

"You know, you build too much electricity, you don't have enough housing. You build, you know, you have to balance it. I think that we have an Adam as well as a Guf. And if we don't balance them both, then then you've lost, you know, uh, and I think in, in life, there are different times when you go out to work, and you're first getting your feet grounded, you say, 'Look, I, I, I just, I, I have to work harder now.' But then there becomes a time where you sort of establish, you say, 'Now I can do a second or a third business, or I could reestablish my relationship with, um...'"

"And that's very important too, because if we don't do that, we, we have self-alienation. You know, that Shabbos means to rest, but it also means to return, right? Shuv. So, um, the Bal Ha'Tanya asks, he says, 'Where is God returning to, and where are you supposed to return to?' Like, where did God go that he's returning? And he says that when you imagine when you're watching a, a video, it's very engrossing, and you, like, really, you're you're stuck to the screen, and then it finishes, and you jump back, 'Oh, I'm here.'"

"Is when your mind isn't entranced in something, you become there. He says, 'Hashem was create, was involved in creating heaven and earth for six days.'"

"And then when it was finished, he came back to himself. He says, 'Shabbos is about self-alienation. We can lose ourselves to TikTok, to video, to our job, to sport, whatever it may be, whatever your yetzer hara may be. But the idea of Shabbos is, it's, it's a hard stop. And where do we, where do we return to? Well, in a simple way, we return to our family, return to our homes. And at a deeper level, we return back ourselves, right? And the greatest and scariest alienation is when a person has lost all contact with themselves, and they don't know who they are anymore."

"So, I think we have to wear that balance of, with him, you can have somebody who does the same, two people, they do the same level of effort, they pray the same amount, but there's some amount of mazal that one person will have over the other. Or you'll have seemingly a person with a lower IQ be tons more successful than the brightest kid in the class. And people have a hard time squaring that."

"No, I think that success has a lot of elements. One is risk. If there's no risk, there's no story. And a lot of times smarter people get frozen with analysis, paralysis by analysis, right?"

"Right."

"That's one element that sometimes, you know, they say over that there was a, there was a guy, he came back to his, uh, 50th high school reunion. An old Zalman came. He pulls up in a stretch limo with two gabbos, and he walks out, and he was voted least likely to succeed. They say, 'Zalman, like, how did you do it?' He says, 'You know, I, I was bringing in this widget from China. I bought it for a dollar and I sold it for three. And 2% adds up so quickly, right? You confuse 200% with 2%.' So sometimes, you know, being bright can actually be a deterrent, right? So, um, I think part of it is is risk, and part of it is mazal. But I, I believe that, I don't believe in mazal. I believe we make our mazal for the most part. People make their own mazal by being open to different ideas, by looking around, by that is sort of like, no, there is mazal that just hits you out of the blue, but I haven't encountered it really in life. There's this American mentality to look at the horoscopes and sort of like subjugate yourself to it, where I don't have any free will, you know, whatever. I'm an Aquarius, so..."

"Determinism. Yeah, we don't believe in that."

"Right. Right. Um, so how do you keep your children, grandchildren grounded in reality when there is a certain level of generational wealth? How do you instill in them the right values, the right way of thinking about money? I mean, almost like you had an advantage not having money growing up, where you weren't distracted by anything, and you were able to knock on the doors to sell those encyclopedias."

"Well, I think for starters, you're bringing out a very val-, good point that is that, um, when we bring our kids into a life of, you know, wealth, we're disenfranchising them because, you know, every kid wants to make their mark. Like, so when I made some money, I made a mark because I came from nothing. But they can't make that mark."

"You're actually damaging your children in that respect. And you owe your children a debt that you, you disadvantage them. On another level though, I think it depends what the family mirrors, or what's what's spoken about. Is consumerism spoken about, or productivity spoken about? Right? Is effort spoken about, or is, you know, beauty, wealth, uh, labels, you know, when somebody comes in wearing a very fancy Gucci buckle, like, is it your eyes roll, or do you say, 'Oh my goodness, what a beautiful thing.' Right? Or do you not see it at all?"

"Well, I think showing them that we, we look at people who need others to affirm their existence with sort of contempt."

"Tell the kid that that's not a good thing."

"Or that, you know, you can make a lot of money but not not put a halo around, um, consumerism, right? And we don't, we never put a halo around nothing. We never bought items that had labels on them. We never would say, 'Oh, did you see how beautiful their car is?' It's, it wasn't wasn't applauded. My wife drives a, um, a Mini Cooper. You know what I mean?"

"Released or purchased?"

"I think purchased, because we did the math and it was better."

"Right."

"Yeah."

"Do your children work in the business?"

"So, I have one child who's been working with me for a while. The other one just joined, but the rest do their own. My, have a son who has built his own business very successfully. Bar..."

"In what industry?"

"He built a company that does, um, fascinating business. Um, around 150 million Americans rent, and many, many of them cannot afford to pay their entire rent check in one shot. So he created a company that they lend you the money for the rental, and they, you make it, you get it back over the course of the month, they pay it back to you, but they save the 10% penalty that the landlord put, you know."

"That's interesting."

"Yeah. And he's been found really incredibly successful. Thank God. And I have a daughter who's in Israel who has a startup too, in equipment financing, virtual equipment financing. And her husband's a big Rabbi in Ramat Aviv. He runs, um..."

"And then I have another daughter who has her own startup. But my kids are pretty much, uh, yeah."

"Startup Nation."

"Yeah. Yeah. And I applaud it. I say, if you want to do it, go for it. Live your dream like that."

"So, how do you think about giving donations, individuals versus institutions? What are your thoughts on that?"

"So, um, I think that there, there are different levels of giving. There's urgent giving, you know what I mean? Uh, and then there's, uh, there's thoughtful giving, and then there's inspirational giving. But to me, it's mostly anonymous or half-anonymous, because if you do it, you want to do it because it's the right thing, not because other people are, notwithstanding the Rambam, right? Well, you know, Rambam says you should announce the names because it'll inspire other people to give. So we're not going with the Rambam, but, um, mostly, and it's mostly about, um, where the, you can have the greatest effect, where is there the largest bang for the buck? And to me, that's a very big focus, um, where, where can you do something that just, so I'll give you an example. A dollar that goes to educating somebody, right, is worth $50 of going to, of supporting somebody. Like some of the things that I'm involved, involved with are all about Jewish education, right? For both Klal Yisrael and for the whole, and, and, um, you, you spend a few thousand dollars, whatever it may be, getting a guy, helping a guy get his CPA."

"And the guy will make a, uh, 100,000 or 200,000 for the next 40 years. So think of the, think of the leverage you're getting on that."

"To me, that is the most important tzedakah, the leverage tzedakah."

"You're involved in a school in Lakewood, right? A bunch of different things like that."

"Yeah."

"Educating."

"Educating in Goliath, educating. Yeah. And it's the same idea. You get a, you get a hundred, get a thousand to one return on your money. Sometimes a million to one. You know."

"That's something that is to me was important. And then the rest of tzedakah that you stumble upon that are important. And, and, but to me, one of the really important things is, is that it did not go to overhead."

"Mhm."

"I've just seen, you know, I was a Rabbi in Ar'el, who I have a relationship with, told me he's trying to buy a building in Yerushalayim. And I said, and I see this all the time. And I said, and I said, he's buying it from a family. It's a yeshiva that's owned by a family. Said, like, 'What do you mean?' He says, 'Well, their grandfather opened this yeshiva, and he raised a lot of money for the building. Yeshiva closed down like 30 years ago.' So, they've been renting it out. Now, they want to close. They're selling it now. They think they can get $15 million for it. And I'm just thinking like, 'Just thievery, you know.'"

"Where's the guys going?"

"The guys who to the family, the guys who donated for this Yeshiva. So to me, it's a big thing about, um, making sure that the money goes to the intended recipients and not to overhead and family members, etc. It's like."

"Yeah, I have a friend, Shalom Goodman. He started a nonprofit called Collective Kindness, and they have this, they help families get back on their feet, but not necessarily with a handout, but with trying to understand their situation and giving them the proper tools to, 'Oh, you have an issue with debt. Why are you in debt? Let's help you with that. Oh, you're having an issue finding a job. What are your skill sets? Let's build up your resume. Let's get you that job.'"

"That's teaching somebody to fish."

"Yeah."

"Right. Right."

"Um, I, I can ask you so many more questions, but have to be mindful of the time, and we got to get you back in here, uh, to do other episodes, but want to end off with a few more. Um, you're close with Rabbi Yitzchak Jacobson?"

"Yeah, we've learned together for 11, 12 years already."

"He's incredible. We've had him on a couple of times. Um, what's something you've learned from him that..."

"So, we, we come from very different places. I spent a lot of time learning Machshava from, I learned Parashat Ha'Shavua and, uh, Chassidus for him for many, many years, and, uh, Shapiro, etc. But I was sort of underexposed to, and I've learned from him a lot of, you know, the Chassidus parts of Machshava. I think maybe he may have learned a thing or two about mine from the, uh, the Litvish part of Machshava, and I, I got from him a lot of Chassidus."

"I also wanted to ask you, um, I see you're on Instagram. You have an account, 'We Are Off the Page.' What, what is that all about?"

"Even though I never met the Rebbe, because my family was too Litvish. My mother's song."

"I have to explain that in the subtitles, but we'll put a paragraph there."

"Yeah. My, you know, she was like, you know, it was classic Litvish, you know, 'Oh, you can't go there,' blah, blah, blah. I think it's changed a lot. I mean, he was about spreading Torah, Mitzvah to the 90% of Jews who know nothing about it. What happened is it was, it was, um, right after October 7th, and a friend of mine, um, Adam Grant, who's a big, you know, psychologist, writer, he said to me, he said, 'David, if you want to do something, why don't you try to bring some religion to those who just found out that they're Jews?' And the way to do it is Instagram, YouTube Shorts, TikTok, etc. And I, I knew nothing about that world, right? So starting, sort of like in January of this year, we started a page called 'We Are Off the Page' on Instagram and on TikTok. I think we're going to bring it to YouTube Shorts still. And it's to teach Torah, to inspire, to people who have no religion whatsoever."

"And to sort of see, is there something they know, they know they're Jewish, right? They, they've just realized them. And there's something, by the way, in the Jewish soul that when you attack it, it comes back at you. You know, we say in that, one of the things we have to give thanks for is for the mos, for the wars. Like, what thanks do we have for wars? And the answer is, you know, what thanks we have to wars? We become aware of what we have to fight for. We start to cherish what we have to fight for. He said, 'You got to bring some Torah, some,' he didn't say Torah, but some religion to those. So now we post five times a week, a different thought. Each one is a minute or less."

"Mhm."

"And it's called 'We Are Off the Page.' And, uh, my goal is to turn it into a yeshiva of sorts, or the secular. You don't have to know nothing about Judaism to understand it. We're going to link off to it in the show notes, but the amount of people that you can potentially reach with content like that is astounding."

"Yeah, I understand your brother has a million followers on, on YouTube. Sure. It's just astonishing."

"I don't want it to go to his head. He's here. So."

"That's like, that's more than double. That's like almost like the eight, you know?"

"That's one way of thinking about it, right? You mentioned Yankee Stadium, 70,000 people. I think we sometimes forget what an internet number is. There's a human view looking at that and..."

"We, uh, we don't realize the power we, we have."

"We have headlines, right? I do a Halacha podcast, right? It gets over 100,000, 125,000 listens a month."

"Wow."

"When you think of that, that's like two Yankee stadiums, you know?"

"It's incredible the reach."

"Yeah. So we should, the goal is to try to use these pro-, these new advents, this new modernity, to try to reach the neshamas of all the those that were lost in the wars and, right?"

"So do you think as Jews we need to be a little bit louder about our Judaism, share more about it?"

"I think we have to be louder and kinder, because at the end of the day, the part about religion that will affect people the most is where they see that you love them and that you're kind. I'll give you an example. Something that I started to do recently. Whenever I go to a restaurant, I sit in the worst seat. Everybody wants to sit in the, I'm mock, but I take the worst seat."

"On the table or in the restaurant?"

"No, in the, on the table that I am."

"Okay. Whenever by a door, I make sure to be the last person to go through the door. I think that we have to, you know, what's half the Torah? The 613 Mitzvot. There's one Mitzvah that's 50% of the Torah. What is that? That's, this is the, this is almost everything. The rest go learn, right? We have to, I think that we, we don't do a good enough job of respect for the non-Jew. Like, they, there's this feeling is, 'Oh, you do everything for other Jews.'"

"It shouldn't be that way."

"It should be, Hatzalah should pick up a non-Jew. If there's a guy broken down by the thing, I'm going to go there. I'm the door, I'm going to be the last one. There's somebody who needs, who's begging money. I'm going to make, we have to do acts of random kindness louder. That's what the Lubavitcher Rebbe would say, and I agree with him. Rebbe, for those listening that know Rebbe from work, David, cannot thank you enough. This has been incredible. Easily one of my most enjoyable, insightful episodes. Your demeanor, your insights, your wisdom have, uh, I usually listen to these episodes two, three times. I might listen to yours four times, but..."

"Thank you. I'm honored."

"Uh, would probably want to do an entire episode just on business building, but we can talk about that. And cannot thank you enough."

"Rabbi, keep up your, your..."

"Thank you so much. What a ride with David Lichtenstein. From his early days selling encyclopedias to managing billions of dollars in real estate. I hope his story gave you practical lessons on life, your career, money, and what's truly important. Remember what he said, labor without a vision is just exhaustion. So don't just work for your money, work with a mission. And that's how you build wealth with purpose and you avoid burnout. My thanks to David Lichtenstein and his team for making this happen. A fantastic interview, and I cannot thank them enough. Be sure to check out 'We Are Off the Page' on Instagram. They're on TikTok, YouTube. 'We Are Off the Page.' We're going to put a link in the show notes. You'll get more of David's Jewish wisdom for free. What's better than that? If you want a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card, just drop a comment below using the word David or story, or use both of those words. You'll double the impact. Big congratulations to David Zweibel 8656 on YouTube. He is our latest $100 Amazon gift card winner. David, reach out to us on livingheime.com, and we'll get that prize over to you. By the way, visit livingmarterjewish.org if you would like a free coach who can help guide you on the opening of investment accounts, retirement accounts, savings accounts, help getting out of debt if you need resources. I cannot recommend them enough. I got a lot of recommendations for you. Right. If this episode brought you value, and I'm sure it did, please hit like, tap subscribe, and share it with a friend or three, because every time someone clicks, it helps tell more people about these impactful conversations, and we can reach even more people. So, until next time, live inspired, think deeply, and oh, give generously. See you. Living. [Music]"