TRANSCRIPT
*Transcripts are auto-generated and reviewed for accuracy, but there may be some errors in punctuation or words. Listen to the podcast at https://rabbidaniellapin.libsyn.com/ for clarification
The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Exploring Marriage with a Remarkable 20-Year-Old Young Man
Date: 7/19/24 Length: 1:06:00
Daniel Lapin 0:10
Greetings, happy warriors and welcome to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin, show, where I your rabbi reveal, as usual, how the world really works. Thanks for being part of the show, and thanks for your promotion of the show. Thank you for subscribing. If you've not already done that, go ahead and do so. And thank you for becoming a Happy Warrior. And if you haven't yet joined our Happy Warrior community, I want to welcome you, and hope you do that very soon indeed, today's show a little bit different, as you know, it's not often that I make the show a conversation between two people, and partially that's because I find that I remain dedicated to the mission of conveying to you how the world really works, and that's usually not so much of a conversation as much as a depiction of information, but today is a little bit different, because right with me today, here and now, is a grandson. His name is Eliyahu Masinter and we spend a fair amount, we have, for a number of years, spent a fair amount of time together. We'll perhaps talk about that, and he is visiting for a short while before returning to the Jerusalem College of Technology, where he's studying computer science in obviously, Jerusalem, and I don't think it's, it's any secret that we suffered a grievous and hard, hard loss. 10 days ago, Tia Rena Baron passed away. That is Eliyahu, Aunt Rena, and my second daughter, Rena. And I think, to tell you the truth, I think we're probably both reeling in in a state of sorrow and shock, we just haven't dealt with it, although we have gone through the first week of mourning, it's called the Shiva period, and I really want to recommend this to anybody who suffers a tragedy. I simply do not know how I would have managed without it. Let me tell you what that is, the the the mourners, Rena's sisters, our other children, and and Susan Lapin and myself, for the first week, directly after the burial, she passed away on Sunday morning, in Susan's arms, and we try and do the burial as soon as possible. We try and return the body to God. It was given to us on loan. We look after it as best we can. And once the soul returns home to the Lord, we try and return the body to God as quickly as possible. And so the funeral was about going to say, 24, 26 maybe 28 or 29 hours after she passed, which was just enough time for the siblings to gather and all get together. And then directly after the funeral, we all and her husband and her children. Of course, it was quite a collection. We all gathered in her home and the community. People know that that we have, we receive guests, and this comes from the second chapter of the book of Job, where Job suffering his tragic losses, finds that he is almost inconsolable with grief, and his friends arrive and they don't talk.
Daniel Lapin 4:42
And this is not uncommon, by the way. My great uncle, who was also one of my teachers, I saw him pay a Shiva call where he visited a rabbi who'd lost his wife. And I don't know if I've ever told you the story. Oh, I did talk about it a. He He walked in, and he sat down in front of the rabbi in mourning, and they sort of acknowledged one another's presence with a nod. And then not a word was spoken. And about 45 minutes later, he got up and I followed him, and we returned back to our school. So conversation isn't the thing. I say guests, but we do not, we do not serve food or provide hospitality at all. It's an opportunity for somebody to come and, well, maybe just sort of lift some of the grief off of our shoulders, and some people talk. We we didn't. None of us felt like talking very much at all, and and we didn't. There were a few people with whom we did converse. Some people asked us about our daughter, but people came literally from all over. People came from across the country, as somebody came from Israel, a friend of ours, Reuven, picked up from Jerusalem, and as soon as he heard about it, he went straight to Tel Aviv airport and flew, and he arrived here in time, actually, for the funeral. And so I really, I recommend this process from we started at eight o'clock in the morning, we usually finish at about 10 o'clock at night. We took breaks in between. We took a lunch break. We took a little hour to rest in the afternoon. But by and large, we had 30 people. At least
Eliyahu Masinter 6:56
it was a large crowd,
Daniel Lapin 6:58
All literally, from between eight and 10 every day, eight in the morning and 10 at night. And that was for just seven days. I say just about seven days because she--the burial was on Monday. And so Monday afternoon we started. We sat Shiva Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday. We break for Shabbat, and then Sunday, just for an hour or two, and that and that concluded it. But I can't imagine what it must be like going back to work, you know, within days after this kind of a loss, as I say, it's 10 days now, and to be honest, I'm not finding this quite as easy and as enjoyable as I usually do, but, but I feel it's important and it is a healing process for me. And I invited my grandson Eliyahu to join me for this conversation. Firstly, because he's been through what I've been through. And secondly, we have had many, many hundreds, if not 1000s of hours of conversation over the years and and here we are. So I thought you might find it as interesting to hear him as I do. So I guess I'll start off and we'll converse. Okay, we'll ask each other. But I've often said on this show that what a man does between the ages of 13 and 23 have a great deal to do with what the rest of his life will be like. So you are almost 20. That's right, almost 20. So you you haven't had all the 13 to 23 you haven't had all those 10 years yet, but would you talk a bit, a little bit about what your life has been like between the ages of 13 and 23 and there's, there's been significant changes during that time. It's not right. It's not, you know, when I say what a man does between 13 and 23 it doesn't in any way have to be, or expected to be a steady, unidirectional path. For most of us, it's a time of exploration and trying to understand and see where we're going. But from 13 to where you are now.
Eliyahu Masinter 9:40
So I was homeschooled until around sixth grade, and then I was thrown into a Jewish Day School for two years and a little bit, and then they chucked me out as well. And after that, that was kind of I must have been 13 or 14 at that time, and I kind of see that as the separation point between childhood and everything that has. Happened since, because after that, I started spending a great deal of time with you.
Daniel Lapin 10:06
Yes, that's That's true. We started studying together.
Speaker 1 10:10
That's right, I had, I had my online courses. I was taking online courses from online high school courses and from our community college. And we used to spend, you'd pick me up in the morning, we'd go pray, and then we'd sit at Starbucks or coffee bean, and we would work for many, many hours, and then come back to the apartment, and anytime you encountered something interesting, or I had a particularly difficult math problem, we would stop and talk about it, and you would help me with my school and and we did that for two years,
Daniel Lapin 10:40
I think, yes, I think it was and, and I don't think I've ever told you how much I enjoyed them. Well,
Eliyahu Masinter 10:46
I enjoyed them very much myself. I had looked back on on those memories so fondly. I wish, I wish we could have continued. But I guess that was the start of covid, really was when I was wrapping up. I finished high school quickly. I graduated when I was 16
Daniel Lapin 11:03
by yourself. You'd already been ejected from an actual school, [yes,] until you finish school entirely in this process of working at the Coffee Bean. Yes. And
Speaker 1 11:16
I suppose because of your influence, I saw how hard you were working, and so I took your lead on that, and I I didn't take Sundays off. I worked on school, over the summers and so I was able to focus.
Daniel Lapin 11:30
You were remarkably diligent. It was absolutely amazing. You you had the discipline to stay focused for hour after hour after hour. It was wonderful,
Speaker 1 11:40
and largely due to the fact that I was studying things that I was interested in, I never took courses that I didn't want to take. Fortunately, that covered math and science and a little bit elsewhere, but primarily math and science, and those were my interests and yours as well. And so we had quite a lot to talk about. And after that, I think I missed the deadline to apply to American universities. I had not yet understood the dangers of the American university systems, and I was set on ongoing I was going to go study electrical engineering or mechanical engineering, and fortunately, I missed the deadline, and I ended up submitting a application to the Jerusalem College of Technology. And my aunt lives, lives in Israel, and she told me about the place recommended I applied. I thought I would do a year there and then transfer back to to a university in the States
Daniel Lapin 12:38
I remember that was the thinking, Yes,
Eliyahu Masinter 12:40
and so I go. There I am 16. I didn't speak any Hebrew at the time. Fortunately, it was an English speaking program. It was an international program. It's a wonderful college, and it it they have about 6000 students. It's an Israeli college, but they have about 300 students, maybe in the international program. And so fortunately, just about everything was sufficiently in English. And so I managed to do very well there. And I studied computer science because it was the only degree they offered in English. They also offer business. But I was interested in more of the sciences and and and I did that for a year, yeah, I did that for a year. And, and I then I was in the process of applying to colleges in America. I was applying mostly in Maryland, where I lived. And this was you. You were 16. I was 16 at this Yeah, while I was applying and, and there were a few experiences I can share them, if you'd like that that on that made me understand exactly what the problems with the university systems were that you had told me about previously. I and, and I think I understood them, but I didn't internalize them until I went through the process of applying and
Daniel Lapin 14:01
yet, please do, please do Sure. I think I know one or two. I know a little bit, but I'd love to hear it. Yeah.
Eliyahu Masinter 14:06
So I applied to this was, this would have been either the University of Maryland or Baltimore County College, whatever it was. And I played the cello. And so I was working to try a to get a scholarship, because universities are prohibitively expensive. I have friends that will be graduating with $200,000 of student debt. One of the advantages of college in Israel is that you pay about $3,000 of tuition a year, and so I won't have any student debt when I graduate. But I was applying, and I I was in Israel at the time. I had my my cello with me and and we were on Zoom, and I was talking to the person who was conducting the interview, and she asked me and everyone else in the Zoom meeting to go around and and. To introduce themselves, tell them what their names were, what instrument they played.
Daniel Lapin 15:04
Oh, so this was somebody at a state of Maryland University, that's right, interviewing a group of people for admittance to the music program, possibly with a scholarship. So these
Eliyahu Masinter 15:15
were already people who had won the scholarship. Oh, but I think there was maybe a future round, or, yeah, some whatever.
Daniel Lapin 15:22
Had you been granted a scholarship ready at this point? I
Eliyahu Masinter 15:25
hadn't been told that, but I think I must have, because of the way that this interview, okay went, and it was a music scholarship, yes, and so I knew that the arts in colleges would be well beyond whatever the sciences would be in terms of of the the leftism that, yeah, comes from there. And so I, I wasn't terribly surprised, but it, it almost shocked me when they, they asked, well, what are your pronouns and, and, and I say that, well, I'll give you two guesses that should be more than sufficient. And they didn't think that was as humorous as I did. And so needless to say, the the interview didn't and as well as as it might have, but surprisingly, I did get the scholarship. But even with the scholarship, I remember that it would have come up to 10s of 1000s of dollars a year. I would have had to take out loans. Nobody has that sort of money offhand to spend and and at that point, I realized I was in a great program. I had already been there a year, I really wouldn't have been able to transfer many of my credits out. And one of the other advantages of college in Israel is that it's a three year program instead of a four year program, and you only have to take courses that are related to the degree that you are studying. And so I would, I realized then that I would actually get a better education in a shorter amount of time, staying in the place that I was already at. And so I've been there for this. I've been there for three years already. I actually extended my degree another year, so I'll go back next year as well, and then I'll graduate. So that's, that's where I've been for the past 13 to 20
Daniel Lapin 17:08
now, in addition to doing this, and I this isn't going to be a sort of general promotion of Eliyahu, but these are interesting things. You've also started a small software company.
Eliyahu Masinter 17:22
Yeah, I didn't want to sound arrogant in any sense, but that's the reason I extended my degree so that I'll have more time to focus
Daniel Lapin 17:33
on the lesson on that be under less academic pressure.
Eliyahu Masinter 17:36
Yes, one of the reasons they're able to offer a degree within three years is because it's taken very seriously. We have class, we have we're expected to be in the program from nine in the morning until 9pm. It's quite rigorous. And so I did two, two years of that fully, and then I split my last year up so that I could focus on this. And in short, we developed software to to help schools with their scheduling.
Daniel Lapin 18:03
When you say we
Eliyahu Masinter 18:05
So, there are some I have three other friends in college right now who are working on this business. We're called schedule, learn, and they are, fortunately, a lot more talented and smarter than I am, because they, they, they did all of the difficult and technical aspects of the business, and we've been working on this for about a year and a half. And actually this was, this was something wonderful. Another wonderful thing about our colleges that they actually inspired this, and they helping us along the way. They every year they have a hackathon where different companies provide different challenges to university students, and you have to come up with a solution. And And two years ago, or a year and a half ago, when they had the hackathon this there was one of the companies proposed a question very similar to what we do about school scheduling. It takes school administrators a very long time to do and we came up with a solution to that. We didn't win the hackathon, but we thought we had something there. And so for the next year, we developed the software, we started reaching out to schools and and it's, it's been going very well. We're working with about almost 10 schools now, and we, we hope to to have many, many more in years to come.
Daniel Lapin 19:19
That is, that is amazing. It's amazing because you know you mentioned yourself. You could have said I left high school, but you didn't. You said that they evicted you, or I
Eliyahu Masinter 19:38
didn't Middle School. Yes, I
Daniel Lapin 19:39
forget. Well,
Eliyahu Masinter 19:40
I was expelled, yes,
Daniel Lapin 19:41
right? And, and, and, so it's no it's no secret that that in your younger years you had a very rough time. Life wasn't easy. You. You were not able to adjust to school, to socially, family wise, you you just really had a rough time. Can you point at any thing or any period that sort of turned things around?
Eliyahu Masinter 20:16
I know. I actually can point exactly the conversation. It was because it was with you.
Daniel Lapin 20:21
Oh, that I didn't. I wasn't angling for that. Well, no, I
Eliyahu Masinter 20:23
hadn't. No idea what well say, Well, we were, we were in the car. This was 13 or 14. It really all started. I remembered exactly. I was at home. I was taking classes, and you gave me your America's real war to you wanted me to read it and market for me, yes, market to see if there were any things that I didn't understand, so that you could explain them
Daniel Lapin 20:44
a little. You know, we wanted to do a new edition of it. That's right, I do remember that. And
Eliyahu Masinter 20:49
so I did that. And after that, I just stayed for the rest of the next two years. But we used to, whenever you had Aaron's turn, I would, I would go with you, and we would get many opportunities to talk in the car. And you told me that something, you told uncle Ari,
Daniel Lapin 21:07
thats our son
Eliyahu Masinter 21:08
that if he would treat his family the way he treated other people, a lot could be gained by that. You mentioned it just by passing but that really made me think, because I was much happier speaking with people who are much older than in me and more prominent and not prominent, but more educated and smarter than me and and I very much enjoyed that, and I Still do. I found my peers insufferable and part of my family as well. When I was, when I was younger, and so when I was, when I started to think of my family, my parents and siblings in the same light. That really shifted a lot, because before then, I honestly did not think of my parents as particularly smart people I thought never even occurred to me. But after that, I started to notice, and obviously, that they're a great deal wiser and smarter than I am. And that was kind of the inflection point that
Daniel Lapin 22:17
I didn't realize. I also, during that period that we were spent at a two year period, you were playing the cello, and you were gaining a huge amount of knowledge in in math and physics. But you were also, I remember doing, was it history or American Constitution? [Yeah] but you because I remember you read the Federalist,
Eliyahu Masinter 22:49
That's right. I took a wonderful course through there. There are many online high schools, and I was taking courses from a wonderful teacher. It was one of my favorite high school teachers. His name was Nate Gilbert, and he had an AP US government and politics course. It was one of the I learned a lot in that course, and so, and this was online. This was online, yeah, we had zoom classes once or twice a week, yeah. And we had a lot of a lot of reading to do. We read the Federalist Papers. I think we must have read some of the constitutional arguments from from Jefferson and John Locke, and quite a lot. We had to read a lot of Supreme Court cases and that that really
Daniel Lapin 23:35
and you at this point, you were like, what, 15?
Eliyahu Masinter 23:38
14, or 15. And this, this was something that that really, really interested me. I didn't know anything about politics until I started talking with you and and the history of America, and what and the thoughts and processes that led to the the formation of America, was something that that always interested me. I remember I got a book by David Barton, the Jefferson Lies now that that those sorts of books were something that I would read, anything I could get my hands on and and that's still something that interested me very much, although, unfortunately, I don't get to do as much of it as I used to.
Daniel Lapin 24:20
Yeah, of course, I also remember Eliyahu during this time. It's not that long ago, but you developed an interest in card illusions,
Eliyahu Masinter 24:35
yeah, I'm trying to remember what, what spurred that, because I remember that you had a fascination with magic as well, right? I think you must have books here,
Daniel Lapin 24:47
just off camera. I have a whole shelf of books on that.
Eliyahu Masinter 24:51
Do you remember the magic tricks that you would perform for me and my brothers and Ellie as well? You bring us over here? And put on a magic show,
Daniel Lapin 25:01
yes? So it was usually an introduction to a Bible class. That's right, yes, that was, that's always what I used magic for. And although I would, just to make clear, I never achieved the the the level of expertise that you did, your your stuff was great. One
Eliyahu Masinter 25:19
of the things that helped was that, I think, because of my cello playing, I had a certain level of dexterity that that helped some of the cards. But this is also something that I let drop. And this was something that I was probably at my peak, when you and I would go out for coffee and we would show card tricks to say the Yeah,
Daniel Lapin 25:38
I did enjoy that.
Eliyahu Masinter 25:40
Those were, those were wonderful, wonderful.
Daniel Lapin 25:44
Gosh, it's really nice, sort of reliving that two year period as we talk about it. I think about it a lot, but that is, that is, that is good, okay, anything, anything you want to say. Also,
Eliyahu Masinter 26:05
I suppose one of the things we've been talking about, really, since I started that period, as you mentioned, we talked about marriage quite a lot. I suppose it's such a foundational part of the society that there's no way to skirt, to skirt the idea. And so it came up routinely, and we think of it as an institution that that goes back 1000s of years and and plays a cornerstone in western civilization. And in that sense, it really hasn't changed very much, one man, one woman, one family. And that's really what it has been since the beginning of time. And in that sense, it's unchanging. But I've been interested in, and I've been thinking about this recently, what sort of maybe there are things that are are plastic with as time goes on, that must be adjusted in order to keep the institution of marriage and marriage on an individual level whole. For instance, it used to be that a couple would get married at quite an early age, maybe even 18 or 19. Now, the average age of marriage, I don't have the statistic, but late 20s, maybe Correct? Yes, early 30s [in the United States, yes, that's right.] And so that is just something that, that that I've observed in that I've seen and part of that is, is what I hear from friends of mine, and I hear from people outside and they say, Well, I'm not ready yet. I need to first have a job. I have to go to college, I have to pursue my bachelor's degree. That's four years. And then, well, I have to do a master's degree. And at that point, you're still you don't have a job yet. You don't have a penny to your name. You've got maybe hundreds of 1000s of debt. Yes, quite the opposite. And then you have to build yourself up and be self sufficient before you could possibly think about that next step of marriage and I was wondering what your advice would be, and if, if maybe some they had it right back then that you would want to get married young, because you, I think you were married when you also I
Daniel Lapin 28:17
was a bad model. I was 32 when I got
Eliyahu Masinter 28:21
married. So that would be like most Americans today
Daniel Lapin 28:24
accepting when I got married at 32 it Yes, like it's like today. It wasn't the norm. Then, certainly most of my peers, most of my friends, were well, married and set up now, you know, I mean I, I always feel called upon to write an excuse, and so part of it is that I arrived in America when I was 26 and I only came for three weeks because I knew I wouldn't like it here and during those three weeks, I began to get a little bit of insight and knowledge about the founders of the United States. You know, the president of Yale University, Ezra Stiles, a man who was fluent in Hebrew, one of his best friends was Rabbi Isaac Caragal. I started discovering these things about the early years of America about which I'd known absolutely nothing. I was utterly clueless. Growing up in South Africa, oddly enough, the center, you know, the Atlas at school had the Greenwich zero longitude Meridian down the middle of the page. So America was this place way off, you know, to the left side of the page, and way over to the right side was sort of. Australia and China and so on. But right in the middle was Africa and Europe and England. And that was, you know, that was it so, and our, our cultural exposure was also more English than American. And today, obviously that isn't true. The whole, the whole world has adopted American culture. But at the time, the children's books we read growing up were all British publishers. And you know, you opened the front printed in London. I mean, everything, everything the mother country, was how it was. So I certainly had no awareness of any of this. So when I arrived this was all extraordinary and and very exciting, and particularly when I began to comprehend the the fact that the religious outlook of the founders was very similar to mine. Now they were Christian, and I'm Jewish or Hebrew, as I prefer saying. And so obviously theological differences, but in terms of understanding the basic realities of life, how human beings arrived on the planet, what male female relationships ought to look like business relations? Yes, exactly, money and business, all of these things biblically based. And not surprisingly, America flourished like no other culture has before. And so I realized I didn't want to leave it was just too exciting a place to be, and I wanted to become part of it, and I wanted to become an American, all of which happened, but I had to kind of reestablish myself. I arrived here, you know, back in South Africa, I had a job, I had, you know, a few minor achievements. To my name, I arrived here. I didn't only, not only have a job, I didn't even have a permit to work. It was all a long process. So, so it ended up being a while. But that's all a roundabout response to to your very pertinent question of you know, what are the things that might have changed? And you know, my slogan for this show is that the more that things change, the more you need to depend on those things that never change. And and I think that as we spend a couple of minutes looking at male female relationships, I think that the key to productive and healthy progress in this area is contingent on realizing that very little has changed. As a matter of fact, what progress has done is nothing more than camouflage, just how the same everything really is. And so yeah, to to marry late is essentially to deny your partner your best years.
Eliyahu Masinter 33:20
Yeah, and I from I hear that myself, I need these years for myself,
Daniel Lapin 33:25
that you hear that from people, you know, right? Sounds very selfish, yes, that's what people say. And in in that mode, what is clear from what they say is that they believe that marriage is somehow the end of living in a way that you've got to get your living in first because when that comes around, well, you're settling down. And the word settling is almost never good, right? Buildings settle and get cracks. People settle for second best? Yes, that's right. And so I've never liked the word settling down because it it's music sounds wrong to our ears. It sounds negative. And so, so, so that's one thing I think that that hasn't changed. But nonetheless, what do you do with the basic reality that that you may not have finished your your career programming until who knows you know you might be close to 30. So what? What does one do? And this brings us to something that that I've got a feeling we may have touched on in past years, but I'm going to say it again anyways, for the benefit of all the happy warriors listening, and that is that the. Happiness of a marriage obviously dependent on a number of things, but one of the things that it depends on, and it's a very prominent and and very relevant and powerful factor, is financial disparity between husband and wife. It works. Marriage is happier when the husband is more financially equipped than the wife is. Now I don't need to issue all the caveats here, because these are real concerns. People say to me, Well, I've got a daughter, and if I follow your advice, she'll be married at 20 and and if she gets divorced, which 50% of the marriage is not a true statistic. But no, the statistic is bad enough anyway, if and when she gets divorced, she's going to have nothing to fall back on, whereas, if she'd first go to college and build a career. You can't argue that logic. It's true. However, the it also increases the likelihood of that eventuality because you're planning for it, you're kind of planning for it, that's right. And of necessity, what happens is, and it doesn't have to be, and it isn't this way in every community and in every culture and in every faith family, but what is very, very common in America today is that she ends up having a number of physical relationships during that period while she's working on her career.
Eliyahu Masinter 36:40
That's another thing that's different today than, say, 1900 Oh,
Daniel Lapin 36:45
absolutely. And also even different from 1950 Yes, 1960 1960 being very much a Tony, as you know, I say 62 because it was the birth control pill, okay, came on the market, but that is now, if you could say 60 as well, you would say 63 the the assassination of President Kennedy, but, but that also diminishes the likelihood of successful marriage. In other words, the more partner, particularly the woman, but it's also true for the man, the more previous physical partners that she's had before coming into the marriage, the less likely is the marriage to succeed. These are shockingly obvious, if you think about them, if you know the nature of of a man. And you know that, right? That every, I mean, in almost every epoch, there have been times when there have been polygamous marriages, where a man is married to more than one woman, yeah, but never has there been a functioning, polyandrous society where one woman is married to two men. We men are created in such a way as to require complete exclusivity from our woman, and its exclusivity theoretically throughout time, and this is one of the reasons that it was not uncommon in Indian culture, Hindu culture, prior to the arrival of the British, who stopped it to for prominent men, their widows would die on the funeral pyre. You know, brutal and savage and barbaric. But I get the idea, which is that for somebody really a big man, yeah, nobody should touch his woman, not afterwards, and certainly not before. And so for that reason, for instance, when today, King Charles met Princess Diana, and it seemed almost even quaint back then, but part of the vetting process was that she was a virgin. That had to be, because nobody else should walk around or the King, the future King, shouldn't meet any men who are not necessarily saying the words, but are thinking, Oh, I know your wife very well. Also, we mentioned the assassination of President Kennedy in 63 very few years after, I think it might be as short as two years afterwards, I have to check that number, but it was shockingly soon she married Aristotle Onassis. Aristotle Onassis had one major. An advantage in my major drawback. His major advantage was he had a few dollars. His major drawback was, you know
Eliyahu Masinter 40:07
what it was? He was not the looker.
Daniel Lapin 40:11
Yeah. He looked like a toad by all accounts, charming and and very successful financially. But at any rate, throughout the world, but particularly in America, there was a deep sense of discomfort that the glamorous and wonderful widow of President Kennedy is now going to share a bed with the Greek toad. That's what people said, you know, and it's horrible, and but people really felt that somehow, I think, I think they would have preferred it if she never remarried, but if she remarried, at least somebody closer to American royalty, yeah, It would have been better, but that was, you know, it was, it was an example. So these things are very, very real and and so the longer you wait on marriage, it's almost inevitable. And so today, men take it as an absolute given that their wife will have had, very often, considerable prior experience. And there's even a term used for this in the popular culture, which is body count. Yes, you know, which is ugly but, but it's a reality. So, so postponing or delaying marriage later, not a good idea from from every point of view. But how do you deal with the how do you deal with the financial reality? And
Eliyahu Masinter 41:55
just particularly given the fact that, especially nowadays, it wasn't always like this, you'll find that, out of necessity, your wife will have to take a job in order to pay the rent. May well be, that's right, you don't even have that difference in income. So
Daniel Lapin 42:11
again, advice, happy marriage, ideally a woman. And here's how I always put this. And I put it this way, even when I married grandma, a woman who will give you the privilege of supporting her, because the the nature of the relationship involves money, inevitably, which is why that even today, 2024 after 60 years of feminism, I can show you a copy, a current copy, of a woman's mag, a young woman's magazine, which tells women if the guy does not pay for the first date, or if he wants to go Dutch on the first date, and have you pay half, get rid of him. Kick him to the curb. Was there terminology? Why? Because it is fundamental. It's part of hypergamy, the desire of women to marry somebody brighter, taller and richer than she is, or at least two out of the three. It's a reality. And again, people say, Oh, that's nonsense. You know, you're trying to take us back to the 1950s now I'm trying to take you back to the 1730s but but no, just because you believe that there's been progress doesn't mean there really has. And the notion that, oh, we're beyond that now, men have to lose their sense of insecurity about successful women. It's not that we are insecure about successful women. We don't like being married to them. It's as simple as that, and the evidence is that where the financial disparity runs in the woman's favor, the marriages are pretty much doomed. It's very unusual. Now an exception might be where, let's imagine a guy is two years away from finishing his studies or his intern, whatever it is, he's two years away from having a good income, and during that time, he and his new bride agree that they will live on her earnings because she's going to be working while he is still wrapping things up career wise, that works, fine. So
Eliyahu Masinter 44:43
would you recommend then, in that scenario, the two options are, get married now live off of her income for the next two years until he gets out of school, or postpone the wedding until after he starts getting his first paycheck.
Daniel Lapin 44:56
I would, I would in. In almost every situation, unless there is a rare, specific circumstance, but in almost every situation, I'd say when, when you are provided the guy is sufficiently masculine. And by that, I don't mean that, that he has hair on his chest, but, but that, but that he is. He understands what being a man is, and he is a man. He's not a boy. I'd say, yes, absolutely, go ahead. And I'd have one suggestion ahead of living on her income. And I know that this is contrary to what my friend Dave Ramsey would say, but I would say, rather than living on her income, he borrow money, maybe, maybe from his father, maybe from a relative. It's two years living expenses. You know, you're pared back over the next, what, five years, or whatever it is, but ideally, why? Just because, oh, and not, not from her father, for precisely this reason. Yes, it really, really makes for a more successful marriage in every way, emotionally, physically, in every way. If, if she allows him to be responsible for the money, that works very well. If, if they choose to to rather live on her income, for the first you know, whatever it is, until he gets a job. You know, that's fine, but I would always recommend exploring the possibility that he secures a loan and and also, there are many financial institutions that that if a man is on a certain track, will be happy to to make a loan. I mean, you know, they're, they're sending out credit cards already anyway, so this would be a slightly more sophisticated level of financing, but, but yeah, I think that that is something that should, that should be done. So, yeah, I would go earlier rather than later. In almost every circumstance I you know, ideally, if you know, if I were doing it again, I've got no complaints. But if I was doing it again, and I had that part of my life more carefully planned than I actually did in reality, because relocating to the United States was sort of this major disruption, I would look to be getting married 2324 25 and I'd be looking to marry a girl no older than 21 and again, the advantages there are numerous, and I don't think I'm going to go into them right now on this, on this show, but, but a younger, you know, short, I'm not talking about immature girl, obviously. But again, in in the circles that you and I tend to sort of find ourselves moving in, for the most part, many, many girls of 21 are more than mature enough yes to to face marriage.
Eliyahu Masinter 48:24
Would you be hard pressed to find them on on a university campus, though, that's
Daniel Lapin 48:29
right, and that would be absolutely the very last place I would look for a bride. I'd run like crazy, you know, for exactly the reasons we've been speaking about and and that you identified from the questions they asked you. By the way, were there any more with any more clues you experienced at that, at that period that John
Eliyahu Masinter 48:52
sign off every email saying that we apologize to such and such a community because our our campuses are on their property, or their their indigenous property in the Indian people? Yeah, I don't remember whatever the tribes were, but yeah, things like that, they were very, very common.
Daniel Lapin 49:07
I mean, it's so meaningless, right? I also, where did I see this recently? I think a teaching hospital. I think also started off a ceremony with a statement of We apologize for. Look, if you really believe it, get off the lap. Yes,
Eliyahu Masinter 49:25
you can't have it both ways. Yeah, sorry, or you're not exactly. You can't say I'm sorry, but we're keeping it Yeah, exactly disingenuous, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Daniel Lapin 49:36
So at any rate, answer in answer to that question, I think that less has changed than than hasn't. And there's no doubt about it, technology is has made many aspects of starting married life in a family harder. You know? Like, what do you do if it was you? Let's imagine you had a 12 year old daughter, and everyone in her class has a phone. Yeah. Or for them, you know what? The problem actually gets worse if it's a boy, let's say you've got a 14 year old son, everyone in his class has a phone. Do you get him a phone?
Eliyahu Masinter 50:23
You take him out and homeschool him?
Daniel Lapin 50:26
I think so. That's what I would say. I would agree with you entirely. I think so, because you can't win, and you have more invested in a child than in anything else in your life, which is why the loss of one is So, you know, difficult, but yeah, why? Why would you leave the education of your most precious asset to, you know, what I call public schools,
Eliyahu Masinter 50:54
government indoctrination camps? GICs
Daniel Lapin 50:57
Very good, very
Eliyahu Masinter 50:59
I used to be able to listen to your podcast, be recorded live working.
Daniel Lapin 51:02
Oh, that's right, you were, you used to work in studio where I was taping. Yes, I do remember that. Yes, yeah, right. Well, gosh, you've
Eliyahu Masinter 51:12
graduated from that side of the table to this.
Daniel Lapin 51:16
You really, well, you've graduated a whole lot more than that. You really come an awfully long way.
Eliyahu Masinter 51:21
One of the other aspects that you mentioned things that that might be more difficult now is the fact that everybody around you is doing something different. This is kind of like the phones. If everybody around you was doing something, the natural thing to do is to do the same thing, follow the herd. And if everybody around you is getting married when they're in the 30s and and 20, whatever the number might be, of divorce, of marriages end in divorce. That begins to feel as if, well, that's just the way it works, normal. Yeah, exactly. That's, that's, that's the way it should be. And it was no fault divorce, and was since, I guess, the 1960s dependent on the state the American culture right now makes it very difficult to have that marriage from under all of these ideal conditions that you are describing, you are not going to be average if you do that,
Daniel Lapin 52:11
right, that's right. I distinguish between normal and average. That's why I said average. Yes, exactly right. I want to be normal, even though it's not average. Yes. And normal doesn't mean what other people are doing. That's right. And there was something that you said then that triggered a thought that I wanted to come back on and, and I don't recall. It'll, it'll, it'll come back to me, I hope, and then I'll bring it up then. But it's both, it's bothering me, but at any rate,
Eliyahu Masinter 52:57
relating to how things have become more difficult.
Daniel Lapin 53:01
Yes, yeah, that that's right, that that's that is. It was somewhere on there, and now I will try, and I will try and recall it, but right now, where, where you are. You are shortly returning to Jerusalem to continue with your degree and also with your software business. Yes,
Eliyahu Masinter 53:26
it's easier to keep things moving when you're all in the same place. Yeah, right.
Daniel Lapin 53:31
And by the way, are all your partners in the business at your same at the same school as you? Yes, oh, really, that's amazing, and the school encourages it very
Eliyahu Masinter 53:40
much that they've been there? There's a Entrepreneurship Center, and they've been quite helpful. They've got us interviews with different places. And
Daniel Lapin 53:49
what is your response to somebody who would say you're going back into a war zone? Israel is at war. Well,
Eliyahu Masinter 53:56
it's not entirely fair. In my case, I live in Baltimore, Maryland. My family does. So every time I come back, I got back here on the Fourth of July, if you remember, and I didn't realize that at the time, and I heard all the firecrackers going off. I was like, it's good to be home. I This is just what it sounds like every night and and so I feel far safer anywhere in Israel than I would in Baltimore. I can walk in the streets at night in Jerusalem without even thinking about it anywhere, really. And I would never dream of doing that anytime of the day in Baltimore. You're just always on your edge here. More, more things happen here. The threats of physical violence in Israel are always, almost always from from the outside. They're they're never internal. That's not true in Baltimore or the rest of America. You have, you do not just have enemies outside. You have enemies inside America too. And that's that's a much more worrying problem, and in that sense, Israel seems like a much healthier society and a much safer place to be
Daniel Lapin 54:59
going back to marriage. My understanding is and I again, I can't point to any specific news items, but I guess I've just imbibed it from talking to people. I want to know if it's your sense as well. My sense is that marriage is much healthier in Israel today, so much so that I believe there have been many, many, many marriages of soldiers who get two days leave before they have to rejoin their unit and get married.
Eliyahu Masinter 55:35
You've met my friend Daniel. He flew back to Los Angeles for a wedding of his.
Daniel Lapin 55:40
Oh, that's right, I did, yes,
Eliyahu Masinter 55:42
he left a few days afterwards to go back. He was deployed in the army. He's a lone soldier there, and he's always on call. He might be going back soon, actually. And he spent many, many weeks there. So, yeah, there. That's not unique at all. There. There are a lot of people like that and and and part of it is that Israel as a whole is seems to have a healthier view of marriage and the intended purpose of that marriage. You can see that based off of the fact that Israel is the only country, when only western country that has a birth rate that's above replacement level, I think even among secular women in Israel, it's, it's above two, I think three.
Daniel Lapin 56:25
Yes, it's remarkable.
Eliyahu Masinter 56:27
You don't have anything like that anywhere.
Daniel Lapin 56:29
Yes, yeah, that's actually right. Do you find or would it be true that, as you mix and mingle in the streets of Israel, you get around a fair bit
Eliyahu Masinter 56:47
every now and then, yeah.
Daniel Lapin 56:50
Would it be more unusual in Israel to find single people in their 30s than it is in America,
Eliyahu Masinter 57:00
by far. And one of the things that struck me so much when I got to Israel, having never been there before, before heading to college, was the number of children that you'll see. There are playgrounds every block in Israel you go large, large things. Here in America, they tear them down because they think they're too dangerous. So they, they produce weak children here because they they've they don't get any chance to to explore danger. But that's not a problem in Israel. And you have, you see so many children around and and part of one almost as important as the birth rate itself. You also have how often and at what age people are having children. If you have one population that that has their children in their 20s, and one population that has the same number of children in their 30s, the population in the 20s grows at a much faster rate than the population in their 30s and and people in Israel have children when they're young. I I'm on the younger side there, but even people who are only slightly older than me are are are looking to to get married, and that that's that's not something that they're they're waiting to do that. This is something that many of them are already trying to do when, when they're in college,
Daniel Lapin 58:11
and they're purposeful, whereas over here, that's right, I talk to people and well, when it happens, it'll happen. No, they
Eliyahu Masinter 58:18
when they date, they date to marry. And that's also a big difference between America. Is the same thing with colleges too. You can't get a degree in Israel without knowing what you want to do. You can't have an undecided major. You wouldn't be accepted into my college without knowing what you want to do. And that's not the case here. I have friends who are undecided majors in colleges in America, and they've been like that for two years, three years, and so maybe they'll switch between this degree and that degree. They don't really know what they want to do. So you have to be more decisive. You have to and I think that probably helps with the marriage question as well.
Daniel Lapin 58:52
Yes, what I was going to say earlier came back to me, and that is that we have to be very careful of those statistics. You know, there's a 50% divorce rate. Well, there isn't but, but, you know, you might say, well, 30% of the marriages taking place this year in the United States of America will end in divorce within 15 years. And I don't know if that is statistic, but even if it is, it doesn't worry me. And the reason is because, and this, I think, was really the subject of my book, the first book of mine that you read, America's real war. There's not one America. It's no longer one nation indivisible under God. It's not true. It's two nations separated over the question of what Bible based, Judeo, Christian values, what role they should play. It's two nations. So what I used to say when, you know, while we were raising seven children, I used to say on my radio show and. Look, my wife is raising seven children. Four miles from us. There's another woman raising seven children. Now, the only difference is that her seven children were fathered by seven different men, none of whom are in the picture, whereas grandma's seven children were fathered by one man who is very much in the picture. But if you were to say and publish the statistic, do you know that having seven children is a real danger sign, because 50% of the women with seven children are in poverty, have drug abuse problems and are unemployed and and so on and so yeah, and that's true in that little sample I showed you, 50% of the women are living horrible lives, yeah, and one of what the other 50% is living a wonderful life. That's the big thing you've you can't look at the statistics for America as a whole. You've got to look at a much more granular picture. That's right, and, and this was also understood in politics. You know, people talk about red states and blue states. It's meaningless. There are about 3000 counties in America, and what we really need are county color maps. Yes, when it's brought down to the that makes a little more sense, because then we can understand that Colorado is has many, many counties that are very conservative, but the counties that contain Denver and Boulder are very, very woke, and they have larger populations. And Texas is like that as well. A lot of counties are conservative Austin, where the University of, you know, universities cause the problem. Yeah, they really do that. One is, but you can't see that on a on a statewide chart. So again, if somebody says to me, Look, you know, X percent of marriages of young people fail. My answer is that is true in one part of America, but totally untrue in another part of America. Yeah, because we have friends who are Mormons, we have friends who are Catholics, we have friends who are Orthodox Jews. We have friends who are evangelicals, and their children all getting married in their early 20s and no problem at all, or rare at least. And so that is why I always stress the importance you know, we speak about family, faith, friendships, finance and fitness. Friendship means building a community, making a community of for yourself so you're not alone. And you know, if you're in the if you're trying to build a successful marriage, don't hang around with divorced people. That's no good. Yeah, if you're trying to raise healthy children, hang out with people who are doing the same thing. It's hard enough to begin with, but to make things even harder so identifying, selecting and participating in a community people who have the same outlook as you on faith and finance and family and fitness as well, and friendship, finding people who are like minded in those areas totally changed the statistics.
Eliyahu Masinter 1:03:48
That's a very good point, because it's so easy to make the mistake of thinking that your life is going to be predetermined by the statistics and your surrounding circumstances. Not true. Nothing. Nothing Nothing could be further from the truth. Maybe every woman, the average woman in America, has 1.8 children, but there's not a single one that does you can't exactly, yeah, it's wrong to think of individuals as just a dawsonist, drastic
Daniel Lapin 1:04:17
yeah. I remember many years ago, I was trying to schedule a meeting with somebody, and he was in London, and I was in New York, and he jokingly said, Let's compromise, you know, and we'll meet in the Azores, exactly. But, you know, there's so many things I would like to have discussed more, and I've got a feeling that a lot of people are going to comment and write in saying you really, you know, you should talk some more with your grandson and and I'm sure people really enjoyed meeting with you, and I'm sure they will say so, but we have run out of time, and so we do have to wind down.
Eliyahu Masinter 1:04:55
Thank you for having the minute. It's been fun talking. Privilege.
Daniel Lapin 1:05:00
Thank you very much. And my good news is that I still have What about 12 days of your company before you go back? That's
Eliyahu Masinter 1:05:08
right, something like that good. We'll make good use of the time.
Daniel Lapin 1:05:10
We certainly plan to, that's right. So everybody, I hope you are happy with today's conversation, different from usual, but one I hope is useful to you until next week, when I hope we will return to some degree of normality. As far as the show is concerned, I want to wish you a wonderful week of great progress onwards and upwards with your family and your finance, your faith, your friendships and your fitness. I'm Rabbi. Daniel Lapin, God bless.
