Episode Transcript
<p><!--block--> Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple O' Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey, and life can be very difficult, especially for men. It can feel like hevel, a chasing after the wind, and we know that through grief, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, all these things that men are especially, uh, bombarded with these emotions and oftentimes feel like they have to suppress them. And we're gonna talk about one of my favorite topics that has really become a lot more common than it was in the past few decades, which is intentional men peer groups, men's retreats, all of that authentic brotherhood that we seem to have lost. And in a two-edged sword, so to speak, the internet has divided us more than ever before, but also provided a space for connection more than ever before. And so while a lot of men now feel even more isolated, there's also so many online and in-person groups and resources now than ever before. Here with us today is a guest who works very intentionally in the men's mental health space, and we're gonna be covering a couple different interconnected topics here with Baruch Halevi. You know, so great to have you here and to be talking about this stuff, and I'm just super excited to get into it, starting, of course, with who you are and what got you into this field of work, of course. Yeah, Mr. Whiskey, thanks for having me, and just to let you off the hook, you can just call me B. Everybody calls me B, so going forward, but I appreciate you. Um, so yeah, I've been guiding men for about 25 years. I did it for, um, probably 15 years as a rabbi, and when I got, uh... felt like I kinda outgrew that, I wanted just to reach men in general. I had gotten a doctoral degree in counseling and went back and studied my teacher, and I consider a mentor, though I never met him. He's been sort of a guiding light for me. His name is Dr. Victor Frankl, pretty well-known, wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning and created a whole school of psychotherapy called logotherapy. Logos means meaning, so it's meaning, purpose, or as he would've said, "It's your why." And Victor Frankl said this in the Holocaust of all places, "Those who have a why can bear almost any how." And I have found that to be true, um, on my journey, both personally and professionally. When a man has a why, he has his way, and when he doesn't have a why, he has lost his way, and I've seen it firsthand, um, with my father, who was a s- very outwardly successful man, and 20 years ago, he killed himself. Um, 20 years prior to that, my grandmother had killed herself, and lore has it that my great-grandfather killed himself. So I have a whole personal legacy of this, and I set out to do what Victor Frankl said, transform my tragedy into other people's triumph, and that's what I've been doing now for the past 15 years, focused, uh, in therapy and then in coaching, and now really bringing it to a more, uh, macro level. Um, and that's, that's my work. Yeah. Right, very along the lines of something I, I've shared a lot on this show from some of the domestic violence and sexual violence survivors I've worked with, which is, you know, we're recovering loudly so others don't die quietly. And I think, you know, the, the big why we have from Ecclesiastes, you know, the ending of that beautiful historical account of wisdom, you know, it says that there is but one purpose, to serve God and others. And, you know, people read that, and there's, there's great solace in it, but there's also that question of, okay, but what... how do I do that? And, and what is the s- the m- the smaller why, the, the smaller why that plays that part into that. And I think it's definitely true in, in all fields. You know, podcasting is a great example. I recently spoke on a podcasting panel, and a lot of podcasts that fade out and just drop is because they don't have a why. You know, they started it because they thought, "Oh, I'm just gonna make money," or, "We're just gonna do it and figure it out," and they didn't have a plan or a purpose behind it. Same with the gym, you know. You see people maybe get motivated from a YouTube video, and then they fade out because it's not in alignment with their why and their identity. I, I think that's super important, so I wanna go into, you touched upon it a little bit there. But let's break down kind of how long it took you to figure out your why and, you know, the process you had to go through to really discover that. Yeah, I mean, you touched on it. There isn't... Well, there might be a capital W why, but as Viktor Frankl taught, we can only know that retrospectively looking at our ba- our life backwards to really understand how all the little whys fit together. And I'm very clear with that, you know, working with men, that it's... We can't make it so big that it feels I can't, I don't- Right ... you know, where is that. So it's really looking at the moment, first of all, because there's a why in front of us every moment that is ours and ours alone to actualize, and that's... You know, there's meaning in it. There's purpose in it. And particularly as Frankl taught in the mountaintop moments, you know, like with great moments, those are obvious though. It's the valley. It's the shadow. And when we go through those valleys, those dark moments of our lives, when we go into them, I... In my experience, that's where I start to begin to sense my why, find my meaning, my purpose. If I can find the things that I've struggled with, that have brought me pain, that have, um, really just sort of eaten away at my, at my soul and can really sit with that, look at it, and then go into it, I have found so much of my why in that. Like I mentioned, my father's suffering. Watching a man who had outward external power- Had the business, the cars, the family, the white picket fence, and he didn't have, you know, these core values, this anchor inside of him, and I just watched him degenerate. It's the most painful thing I have ever experienced in my life, to watch my f- childhood hero, my father, not have anything to grab onto. And so that became my why of, first of all, you know, before you can help other people, you gotta help yourself. And to answer your question, it took me a good 10 years of really searching and struggling and looking, and then I started, it started to come together when I realized I could take that experience and not feel like a victim, not feel powerless, find my way, my purpose, start to help other men find their way, their purpose. It began small. It's turned into something very large, but I, you know, it's taken a very long time to get it to where it is And, you know, the whole reason we're having this conversation is so that someone else listening right now, you don't have to go through that 10-year period, right? You can hopefully figure it out a lot sooner rather than later. And I think one of the issues with that, one of the detriments and hindrances we have is, you know, you talked about that external success and the internal decay, and we see that more than ever now with social media and hustle culture especially putting forward some of the things you said, the cars, the house, you know, all this stuff, all this material secularism. You know, that's what the focus is on. And very few-- The platforms that are putting forward, you know, finding a wider conversations like this, the long-form content, which is successful in its own branch, but does it perform as well as these, you know, social media ads, as these, you know, scrolling seconds, you know, just a few seconds of boom, boom, boom, these highlights of other people's life. And what are we seeing? We're seeing not their why. Some of them will give a why, but for the most part it's, "Here's the success I have." So I, I completely agree, and I think unfortunately a lot of young men are really falling into that trap. And it's not anything new. I think it's just exemplified and emphasized now of your financial success, uh, equates to your value as a man. In fact, we've seen... Unfortunately, I, I catch all these glimpses of these dating shows. There's so many dating shows nowaday, and there are women who are asking or demanding, uh, a financial value of, "Hey, you need to be making 40 grand a month, 100K a month, 3 million a year." Very ridiculous numbers, uh, to, to start off with, but this is what a lot of young men are being inundated with, that, you know, their, their type of car and all this, um, even the clothing. You have to have designer or big-name brands and stuff. So I'd love for you to just make a little bit of commentary- Mm-hmm ... especially as someone, uh, much older than myself who has seen the progression and creation of social media, how it has really affected and changed, you know, the mental healthscape of men. And if you as a rabbi saw a shift maybe in people coming in and talking about what was bothering them, if it- was in correlation with the launch of social media got worse and worse among young men Yeah. Also, t- many good points. Why do you think I'm older than you? Do I look older? No, no, no, no. Um, so, um, numbers kill men, kill people. Numbers do. Numbers are- Mm ... the most devastating thing in humanity. Now, most people wouldn't think that. They don't even know what I'm talking about, but let me show you a number. Can I show this? Right, it says 119104 right there. That's Viktor Frankl's Auschwitz number. Um, they murdered his wife, his child, his parents, his family, his friends. They stripped him of his p- profession, of his possessions. They took everything. They put him... They took away his name. He was just a number. Because you can't murder six million people, but you can, you know, incinerate six million numbers. Mm. And when we reduce another human being to a number, right, Viktor Frankl said, "That is the concentration camp. We have become a Nazi." The problem is, Mr. Whiskey, is that we do it to ourselves, right? Oh. My father killed himself because... I wrote a book on this called The Guy in the Glass. Right. Yeah And it's about going to the mirror, and who do you see staring back? You see, my father saw a zero. He had millions of dollars, but zero times anything is zero. Wow. He quantified himself to a number. It was never enough. He was number never enough, so he terminated himself. He was his own Nazi. He created his own concentration camp, his death camp, and he sentenced himself to death. And where did he do it? In front of a mirror. He hung himself in front of a mirror. And I know that's probably harsh to hear. I think it's important to hear. This is the logical conclusion of turning others or turning ourselves into a number because, you know, um, you know, Viktor Frankl coined it, but you know this, you're a religious man. Um, he said, "They couldn't take my defiant power of human spirit. That was not anybody's to take. That's mine and mine alone, given from source, from God," whatever you wanna call it. And when a man has that, he has the beginning of his why, the foundation to stand upon. So my work is to help men stop seeing numbers, and it's dollars and cents and houses and, you know, weight and muscle and all the stuff. All of it's gonna be taken from us eventually, except the defiant power of the human spirit, and yet that's the one thing we give away. And so I, I imagine your podcast does what my work does, is to help men take back that as their why. You know, just listening to everything you said, I thought about a recent episode with Tien Wong. You know, we were talking about weight and gym culture and fitness and all the influencers and stuff, and we talked about the fixation on numbers of the scale, right? There's a lot of people getting fixated, and we talked about, you know, young women who are already, honestly, I, I'll say an unhealthy weight, an unhealthy weight, but this idea of skinnier and skinnier and skinnier is more beautiful, therefore women get fixated on if they're 75 pounds instead of 74 pounds it's the end of the world, or 100 instead of 99. We've seen it. Same with men. In fact, one of the defining numbers now that we really can't change is a lot of women are putting forward, and of course this isn't all dating culture, but there is a good majority, especially on social media and these dating shows, which again, they're a fraction of real life, but saying if you're not six foot you're not valuable. You know, like that number. If you're 5'11", it doesn't qualify for that numbers. We get so fixated on them, like you said, and thinking about social media, how many people like... We don't even care about the people behind the like. We just care about showing those numbers on, you know, Instagram, X, on Facebook, whatever it is. You know, we don't care if they're strangers. We don't care if they're criminal. We, we don't care. If they liked our post, now that number is greater. And so we've become so fixated and, and trained on it, and I, I think a lot of people don't recognize it because we mask the numbers as something, as some kind of value. And I, I think that's just, it is truly sad to see that, and I, I love the way you phrase it, you know? In fact, I'm very conscientious about this kind of conversation in the sense that I recently did an episode on s- suicide statistics in Japan because while the national average has gone down, the completed suicides by students has gone up, and it's very unfortunate, and they're now implementing AI mental health services. So, you know, it's a, a controversial topic that I got into. And when I was speaking about tho- those numbers I said we get focused, and, and Steve Wright, he's been on my podcast, he quoted someone else who said, you know, um, like one, one death is a, is a tragedy. You know, you know their name and their family and everything. But 100 deaths or 1,000 deaths, it becomes a statistic. And sometimes when we're looking at statistics, like people say 22 to 44 veterans a day, the number always changes, but when we put that number to them we forget, and I mentioned this in that episode, hey, this number of suicides, almost 10 or 11,000 just from January to July in Japan this year already- Each one of those numbers is a human being, and each one of those human beings has, whether they thought they were completely alone or not, they had people in their life who were affected by them. And they say on average, not to, to use a number, but they say between eight and 15 people are affected by each suicide. Because we don't realize the impact we have. Uh, when, you know, we're gonna get into isolation and self-worth and all that conversation in a bit here. But, you know, when we're talking about numbers, like you said, we could turn it from a personal tragedy to a statistic, and then it becomes analytical, and it becomes something to analyze and fix instead of sit down and care about. Totally. This book is, it's a heavy book at the beginning 'cause I talk about my father's suicide versus Victor Frankl, who had every reason to kill himself, and he lived. Mm. But then I go into a bar, and it's a guy walks into a bar, and he's asked six questions that he used to ask as pickup lines. He's a middle-aged guy like me, or well- I'm north of middle-aged. But, um, it's simple questions. The first one, though, is always, "What's your name?" Think about when you ask somebody, you know, "Hey, I'm B. What's your name?" Because we, we under- we intuit at some level, right? You can't have intimacy, true connection with another human being if you don't know their name. And it's not your name as in my name tag, right? Because when you start asking your name, there's a moment in Exodus where, um, Moses says to God, "What's your name?" Like, it's a weird question. It's a, it's like a bar scene. Like, what do you mean? It's like literally your name. And what is God's response? "Ehyeh asher ehyeh." I am that I am, or I will be that I will be. And so it's an unfolding. It's an evolving, and that's... When you ask somebody their name, you're not really just asking their name tag. Who are you? Right? I wanna know you at some level. Whether or not we mean it is another issue. But it's the antithesis of what's your number, right? Right. And what's your number is a question, you know, in the book as well, but it's, it's incarceration. How do you incarcerate yourself? What's your concentration camp, right? And how would, how do we defy that number and get back to our name? And that's the work we all here, we're here to do. And, and to your point, we're here to help other people do it. Yeah, I think about, you think about prison or even looking at, like, fictional shows in entertainment industry. We're looking at Squid Games or when an alien race takes over, what do they usually do? They assign you a number, and you become that number. And so, you know, what we're getting at is identity is so important. The why is so important. With those, I wanna tie in, uh, a word I mentioned earlier, self-worth and self-love. We know that a lot of people are lacking that right now. Uh, another word I'm gonna borrow from Jerry Flowers, comparison wounds, and social media has exemplified that to, you know, uh, the hundredth degree. So let's get a little bit into that conversation, especially because numbers make it a lot easier to have comparison wounds. Uh, you know, obviously comparison wounds of who's better looking or who's smarter, whatever, you know? But when you have those numbers to compare, it just compounds it even further. So let's talk a little bit about self-worth, self-love, identity, why, and comparison wounds. They all are completely interconnected, and they all play a huge role in what can eventually be a suicide, a period of depression, or an addiction even. Yeah. So, um, one of the chapters in the book, it goes, "What's, what's your name? What do you do?" We can talk about that. Um, come here often, which is why are you here? Um, and then the next question is, um, are you single, right? But if you really start digging down into that, what are you being asked if you're asked are you single? I mean, yeah, in a bar maybe you're being, you know, you know, can we hook up? But at a deeper level, it's who's are you, right? Mm. And that's, that's the work that I do with men. Because if men don't start asking whose am I, they'll never get to self-actualization as Maslow talked about it, and Frankl and Maslow were contemporaries. They would argue over this because the, the pyramid, you know, the, of needs, the top is to be your best self, se- self-actualization. Frankl said you can never actualize your best self until you transcend yourself- Mm ... in service of someone or something bigger than yourself, and I think that's one of the challenges today is we're so focused on self-actualization, self-worth, being my best self, when we, we, we should talk about how do I transcend myself? Whose am I? Whose do I serve? Who do I belong to, right? For sure. I think that who do I belong to, you know, that completely goes into, in that conversation of, you know, who you are and getting past that number two, and I think that's so important, you know? And that response too is like some people will say, you know, "I, I belong to God, and that's who I'm serving." Other people will say, you know, on... A lot of them will have a surface level answer, but like you said, it's about that deeper level. And I think that's one trap a lot of people fall into, uh, whether it's in, in the military, uh, being attached to that identity of uniform, whether it's relationship hopping, going from one relationship to the next. Uh, some of us are afraid of who we will be on our own, you know, because we, we, we... How should I say this? We rather be owned or belong to someone who harms us than be alone. You know, a lot of people fear being alone, and so sometimes the answer of, you know, whose are you is actually, it's, it's a harmful answer, but it keeps the answer, you know, you don't have to say, "I don't know," or, "I'm figuring out." And I think some people are afraid to say they're figuring out. So what would you say in, in that regard around that topic of, you know, answering that question? And if w- if someone's listening right now and they're like, "I don't know whose I am," you know, what is the process of figuring that out, and, and what does that really mean on a deeper level? It's a great, great question. Um, so, you know, there's this buzz term going around, toxic masculinity, right? Yeah, yeah. I hate the term. Why? Because if you say something is toxic love, is it love? No. It's no longer love. Toxic masculinity is no longer masculinity. Mm. And so when you talk about toxic something, you're talking about a toxic relationship in this example, right? But I would argue that's not love. That's not whose am I. I don't belong to them. I don't serve them. They don't serve me. This is something beneath that. When it's true- Mm ... service, right, service of other, it is divinity. It is self-transcendence. It is unconditional love, right? We've entered into this sort of rarefied space where they say it's like, you know, pornography. It's hard to describe, but you know it when you see it. When you're in self-transcendence, it's hard to describe, but you know it when you're in it. And it doesn't have to be only a person. It can be an animal. Right? It can be a cause. It can be... There's so many things it can be, but it only raises your vibration, your level of being. It doesn't diminish you. So I wanna start there, because if, if we're talking about somebody saying, "Whose am I? I'm my abusive boyfriend or girlfriend," well, I would argue that's not whose you are, and you're 100% right. Mm. Find out who you are, right? Get back to you. But that's partially whose you are. I'm mine. I am my beloved. I look in the mirror, unlike my father, I respect that man. I love that man. It has taken a long time to get there, but if you don't have that, you're 100% right. How are you gonna serve another? How are you gonna be in a relationship with another? So yes, start with relationship with the guy or the gal looking back from the glass, for sure I love that, you know, because some of us never leave that space or time to figure out whose we are. You know, we're just running from one thing to the next or suppressing and suppressing, or some of us fall into the trap of, you know, uh, I would call it false productivity, just because things seem productive, especially in the case of being a workaholic or going from project to project. Uh, you know, all these placeholders. You know, it's kind of like people... Some people continually push off a career or becoming independent because they fall into this trap of, "Well, as long as I'm going to school, I'm productive, so I'm just gonna keep pursuing higher education, not because it's what I wanna do, but because it prevents me from having to confront that question of, who am I now? What am I gonna do? Who am I gonna serve?" And so I think that's so important, and it's something that a lot of us don't address, unfortunately. And, and like you said, I think one thing they talk about, and one... You know, I've done hundreds of episodes now, a lot of them addiction recovery, and a lot of people have put forward one of the number one ways to heal yourself, uh, not just with addiction, but with a lot of things, is to serve others, to serve, like you said, a bigger cause. And a lot of addicts actually get into volunteer work and helping, and I, I think that is such a beautiful thing to do, you know? So we've talked about- Yeah ... a lot of different aspects of men's mental health. You mentioned, you know, the term toxic masculinity. Now, I use a term that I really like to use called biblical masculinity, because I believe the Bible gives us a clear blueprint of what it is to be a man and how you're supposed to be a man, and I find it to be a very good balance compared to, you know, we have on one side, like you said, toxic masculinity, which is no longer masculinity. It's something else, something much w- y- I don't wanna say worse, like masculinity is a bad thing, but you know what I mean, where it's a different degree. And then we have on the other side people who are trying to make men into women. Um, not just talking about, like, transgender stuff, but just, like, feminizing men or changing the way that th- they're supposed to behave and act. And I b- believe biblical masculinity is at the center of these two in, in a perfect balance. You know, the Bible gives us a... You look at people, obviously, and they're flawed, you know, historical figures, but people who are well-balanced. You know, I think of King David as a great example. He was as, as I like to quote all the time, you know, he wasn't a gardener in war. You know, he was a warrior in the garden in the sense that not only was he a warrior, but he was a poet, a musician. He danced, he prayed. You know, he had all these different, uh, you know, aspects of both things that people would say is very masculine and things that nowadays people would say is very feminine, you know? And we've feminized a lot of things, like poetry, like music, like gardening. We've, we've attached all these labels to it that God didn't. Now, that's not to say, by the way, that King David was a perfect person. We know he was far from that. You know, he- tragically failed his family, uh, and he did some terrible things that we would not consider the, the ideal man or, you know, perfectly balanced. But there's a lot of biblical masculinity, and I think, and I hope to see a revival in that because we have so much, like you said, what we are calling toxic masculinity, which is really something on its own, and then we have the feminization of men on one side. And it's really not even these- Big social wars, but really just these influencers who have a lot of following on either side that really just these young men latch onto as role models. In fact, let's talk about that aspect. A lot of young men compared to, you know, times of old don't have an initiation of manhood, or if they do, nowadays it's really twisted. And so what can you speak to about mentorship and parenting and even in the religious community, you know, being a pastor or a rabbi or a leader, how important is that? How vital is it to how these young men develop and ultimately how they find their who they belong to, their why, their identity? Can you speak a little bit about that? Sure. Can I, um, start with the biblical reference that you mentioned? For sure. It's a good segue. Because, um, y- you know, you said that these weren't perfect men or whatever, you know, they, they failed in some level, but they- Right actually are perfectly imperfect, and that's the point. You know, cancel culture is no different than the reducing somebody to a number. You're reducing them to, um, an attribute, to a- Mm ... moment in time. You're taking- Yes ... a person's humanity, and you are literally canceling them because of that m- their worst moment, right? Mm-hmm. And you, um... people want to look backwards and do cancel culture, like judge people by today's standards, um- Mm ... back then and say how imperfect they, they were. But the truth is we're all perfectly imperfect. And what the Torah, what the Bible, um, reveres is not perfection. Noah was the only one in the entire canon of the Bible to be called an Ish, uh, Tsadiktem or something like that, a perfect righteous man. Mo- Abraham wasn't. In fact, the rabbinic tradition says Abraham had 10 tests, and some argue he failed them all. What made him great that on the 11th, he was up. He was taking responsibility. He was moving forward, and King David and Moses, and you name it. And that's masculinity, taking radical responsibility for your choices and improving and bettering and growing and committing to going forward in service. And that to me is what we need now more than ever, radical responsibility, not perfection. And to come to your, to your, um, point, you know, do we need that? Of course. How do we learn anything in life, right? Either by the people around us, who by definition are just our peers, and they tend to be idiots when we're looking at them in high school and college and those younger years, or looking forward to examples. And you're 100% right. If we don't have those examples, then how do we navigate the world? And so we need to bring back radical responsibility. We need to bring back men to look up to who are taking responsibility, and those men need to take responsibility for, you know, ritual, bringing those younger generations into the, the conversation. How do we do that? I'm happy to tell you about that For sure. And you know, I think of Rehoboam. You know, I did a sermon once about a year or two years ago about the downfall of Rehoboam. And, you know, for those who aren't familiar, you know, he's gonna be taking the throne after the death of King Solomon, and he has a choice. You know, he consults the wise elders who served with Solomon, and then he consults his young peers. You know, as, as you said, they're not the best people sometimes. And, you know, I think a lot of us are gravitating towards, um, peer-on-peer mentoring, which can be great and beneficial if you have successful people around you who are aligned with your path. But more often than not, you're surrounded by people who aren't in alignment with what you want, or people who don't even know their own why or how or self-worth, and you're taking advice from them. And we know Rehoboam, first of all, his big mistake was not consulting God first. You know, we see throughout the Bible, especially the Old Testament, what happens to those who don't ask God first and those who do. There's a big difference. But even looking at the human level, one group gave him good advice, the older generation who made their mistakes and learned and, you know. And then he liked the young bucks more, you know, those punks, and he took their advice, and guess what happened? It was not good. You know, I won't spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it yet, but it did not turn out well for him. So I, I think it's so important that we find the right mentorship. And in his case, he didn't listen. But there's a lot of young Rehoboams, so to speak, out there right now who don't have that older group to go talk to, to even listen or consider. And so I think it's really important that we, we go out and serve that role. So I'd love for you to share about that. Yeah. And it's not really fair to victim blame the younger, and I know you're not, um, the, the younger generation because it's what happened to the generation ahead of it who shirked its duty, who no longer initiated or have stale initiation. You know, so many of the modern, um, initiations are just rote, right? We just do them. I did bar mitzvahs for a very long time, and most of them- Yeah ... are just going through the motions. Or, or you have, you know, maybe well-intentioned people, but they're just not anchored to something deeper, to something wiser. And- Larger for something ... I think, um, I think there's a generation of men who've, you know, probably are kind of my age, I imagine I'm your, sort of your father's age, who need to find our way back so that we can model this for our sons. Mm. Taking response- And this isn't to blame my contemporaries. If you don't have it, okay, you're Abraham. What are you gonna do on the 11th test now that you know, now that you have, you know, taken accountability of your life? Then find your way back to ritual, to initiation, to core values, to communication. And this is the big one, Mr. Whiskey, is, uh, a teacher of mine, Warren Farrell, if you haven't read the book Myth of Male Power, it's like the bible of the men's work. Just amazing man. Um, he wrote another book called, um, Women Can't Hear What Men Can't Say. Mm. I love that You know, we can easily blame the feminization of things, but who, who outsourced our power to say poetry is not masculine? Men did, or we sat quietly, and we sit quietly by as our sons are losing their way. We're not communicating to them. My s- I have two daughters and two sons. My oldest is 24. He and I have talked about his sex life since the time he started masturbating until now, the time he's getting married. There's nothing off limits. We talk about everything. We explore it from a spiritual perspective, from a moral perspective, from an ethical, from a physiological perspective. He comes to me and says, "Abba, Dad, what do you think about this issue I'm having with this girlfriend?" Now his fiancée. And I have taken it upon myself to give voice to things that most men aren't talking about to their sons. It's time to give voice to these things as much as anything No, for sure. You know, and it's funny because men will often say to women, "I'm not a mind reader. You know, I can't just, uh, solve what you're not saying." And I think a lot of times we're not seeing when we're doing that same role of saying we're fine, of suppressing, of just redirecting or brushing off. And, and so I think that's really important. And to your point exactly, you know, even looking at Catholicism and Christianity, uh, a lot of Christers, like I call them, you know, uh, people who only go to church on Christmas or Easter, or they, they don't teach religion, they just tell religion because it's a tradition. In fact, one of the things that surprised me was I met Jewish people who were atheists. And I said, "What do you mean? I thought you were Jewish." And they said, "Well, culturally we're Jewish, so we do all the religious stuff, but we just read it, you know, we don't believe it." And, and that really shocked me. And there are Catholics like that, and Ba- you know, that's for all, all denominations. And it really surprised me. Like you said, so many people are just following routines and generational, you know, tells rather than being taught or learning. And I think we're seeing a revitalization with Gen Z and maybe the, uh, generations below and above it a little bit of craving that deeper connection, that knowledge and the truth. And, you know, what do you think about, one thing I've heard before is, is a saying, and I'm curious about your opinion on it. They say that, you know, hard times make strong men and then strong men make good times and good times make soft men. What do you think about that cycle? I mean, I think there's a lot of truth to it. I see if you just take wealth as an example, right? It's very hard for somebody who's extremely wealthy, self-made to then pass on the values and the grind, the ethic to the next generation. Malcolm Gladwell's actually has a whole section in, I think, in Outliers on this topic. Mm. So there, there's a natural truth to that. But so what? So that's natural, okay? But we're not here to be natural, right? It's, my, my body odor is natural, but I put on deodorant, right? Natural thing is to lay on the couch and watch TV. We're here to defile our nature. That's the spiritual impulse. I'm not an animal. I don't have to just end up what's, what's natural. I can go against that, but that is effort. That is work. That is commitment. Yeah. That is intention. And that's where I think, you know, great men do rise up. And one of my favorite sayings, I think it's from a pastor, um, in a book called As a Man Thinketh, James Allen, who said, "Circumstances don't make a man, they reveal him." Mm. And I love it. Love it. Because the men I see, circumstances, hard circumstances, you know, the victims blame. The s- the, the, the survivors, the warriors, they take responsibility, you know, especially in those circumstances Yes, sir. And that goes back to exactly why I said one of my favorite quotes is, "It's better to be a, you know, a warrior in the garden than a gardener in war." Because in that same analogy, uh, the garden can quickly become a war zone or vice versa, and one situation is better than the other. You know, that goes along those lines of the circumstances. And, you know, that's why I think we should always be preparing for whatever the challenge is. You know, we never know what life is going to, uh, hit us with or what we'll be facing, and we need to be ready. Uh, you know, and another thing too we talk about all the time on the podcast is unintentional mentorship. People are watching us, you know, whether we, we... Maybe we, you don't have a son. Maybe you're like, "Well, who, who am I inspiring?" You know, "Who am I teaching or leading? I don't have kids." You know, people are watching us, and you represent, you know, as a man, you represent men, and as a woman, you represent women, uh, whether you're meaning to mentor or not. You know, young people are looking at your behavior and thinking about it and mirroring it. And one of the things that we've talked about on this show is how quickly and easily and so much so that children will think that what their father does is a standard for all men. You know, and I'll give some examples. I had a man on the show, his dad used to get so angry he would rip all the furniture in half, and he was shocked to find out one day that his friends' dads didn't do that. He goes, "I thought all men just, that's what, how they reacted to situations." Or, "Hey, I thought men always had to have a beer after work. You know, my dad always did it, and his dad always did it, and you know, my friend's dad always did it, so I thought as a man you have to have a beer after work." You know, and some women, you know, same for daughters saying, "Hey, mom always has a glass of wine after, you know, this time of day." Or there was a woman, her dad never hugged her, and she saw one of her friends getting hugged by her dad, and she said, "Something weird going on. Like, what is that? Why is he hugging you?" She's like, "Your dad doesn't hug you?" You know, our role as parents and mentors can profoundly shape what our children think is the standard Yeah, that's why I don't care what somebody believes. I truly don't. I care what they do. Mm. I, I, I don't know what... If your beliefs don't line up with your, your actions, then it's empty words. And, you know, your kids don't go to college because you tell them to go to college. They tend to go to college because you go to college. They don't stop smoking. I mean, yeah, if you have a first generation, somebody who defies the nature and... But by and large, statistically, we just do what we're shown, like y- you're describing very well. Don't tell your kids not to smoke if you're smoking. They'll smoke, right? So live the values, right, and people follow, whether it's your children or the people around us. And that's self-transcendence, by the way. It's not about my progeny, my kids. It's about other. Mm-hmm. Right? And we've lost the other, and we're so isolated, and we're operating in these silos, and then we wonder why we don't have a why, a meaning, a purpose, connection. Because of all the crap that you're describing, and hopefully we're trying to, to resolve. Right. And I can tell you as the son of an addict, you know, hypocrisy kills respect in parenting so fast. And, you know, it's, it's hard for you as a kid to just say, okay, you know, to someone who says, "Do as I say, not as I do," you know? It, it, it's really hard when, like you said, they're saying, "Don't smoke or don't drink," and you're actively doing it. And you're saying, "Well, just don't be like me. Be better." You know? It's really hard for children to just hear that and be like, "Okay, Mom. Okay, Dad. You're right. I, I should not be like you." And the thing is, it's, it's sad, I believe, for a parent to just constantly put forward to your children to not be like you. I think there's some semblance of, you know, they say a, a parent's reward is, is a child who respects them and is on the right path and wants to be like them. And I- Let me give you a par- Let me give you a parent's perspective on that. Y- you know, and that's a great- Yeah ... child looking up. But I've said to all my kids, "I love you. There's nothing you can do to not make me love you. You could kill somebody. You could violate something. I will love you. I will not respect you." Mm. "My respect is, my respect is earned." Mm. Right? And that they want my respect more than th- they want my love. Wow. Yeah. And there's something primal and masculine. My wife would never say that. That is not her role. My role is to demand respect, and her role is to provide unconditional love, and we need those polar opposites to hold the tension for a young man in particular, or else it's a free-for-all. You know that. Right, and that's why we... And that's the issue, especially with my generation, the generations below it, you know, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, Gen... I don't even know the new generations, right? But you look at all those ones, even Millennials, a lot of them came from single-parent households, divorced households. A lot of them didn't have that, you know, those two, two parents. And, you know, it was made that way for a very specific reason, with those parents both, like you said, serving different roles. And that's not to say if you come from a single-parent household you can't be successful, that you can't learn from other people. But we do see it, and, you know, I'm not gonna go here and spout statistics, but look at, you know, the type of people who are incarcerated and what kind of households they come from. Look at the presence of a father figure. Look at certain women in certain fields and industries, especially, you know, stripping and pornography. Look at what kind of household they came from and what kind of masculine presence was there. You know, it's not a stereotype. There's a lot of strong correlation or really you could even say causation if you look at it over generations of information. And again, that's not to reduce any of this to statistics, but, you know, it just shows you how impactful and important it is. And then I wanna get into, you know, we keep talking about- Having this conversation to make an impact. So I wanna get into what are you doing now? You talked about the book. We know you're podcast guesting. You know, you served as a rabbi for a long time. What is the, for you right now, the why? What is your why right now? Um, to segue back off what you just said, so a te- a student of Victor Frankl's, her name was Edith Eger. She's had some amazing books. She was a Holocaust survivor, and she became a psychiatrist and logotherapist. And she said the difference between, uh, victims and survivors is everything you need to know in life. Because I s- do see in your generation a lot of victimization, right? Yeah. You just name things that say, "Therefore, I'm failing. Therefore, I'm..." Right? "I am the way I am." She said a victim says, "Why me?" And we all have to do that. We all are victims. You know, you lose a loved one, and you're gonna say, "Why me?" Right? But she said there comes a moment in time when if you stay there, you take up residence there. She said that's why it's called the victimhood, 'cause you live there. Right. Survivors say, "What now?" Oh, interesting. Right? That's... 'Cause I can't answer why me. My father killed himself. My grandmother killed herself. I did go through why me, but then you get to a point where you say, "What now?" And that is taking back my power, as Frankl said, to choose my response. And to answer your question, that's all I do. I help men take back their power, stop being victims, to choose their response. How do I do that? One-on-one work I call meaning mentoring, and I'm doing less of that, but I'm still doing it, by bringing men together in groups. I think you mentioned it before. They're called Men's Peer Groups. That's the name of the organization, and it's pre- pretty straightforward. We bring men together in peer groups to hold each other accountable and to take responsibility for our lives. You know, as a principle in Men's Peer Groups, we never tell another man what to do. I can't tell you what to do. Mm. I can just hold you accountable to yourself, to your mirror, to your guy in the glass, so that you can take responsibility for your life. And those are some primary ways that I think, uh, men are missing in their lives. 100%, for sure. And I, I really like your approach there. You know, at the end of the day, we can't tell another grown man what to do. We can only advise them and hold them accountable and listen, and I think that's really important. And we have a lot of men in isolation who are just making decisions, you know, without any guidance or help. Or most importantly, what this can do, uh, besides accountability, is it can help us slow down. And we live in such a fast-paced hustle, go faster, sleep less society that a lot of people aren't slowing down. They need to get everything out now, now, now. And a lot of times, and, and, you know, as a man, there are choices we have to make where we need to take a step back. We shouldn't just jump headfirst into this, especially as you become a husband, as you become a father, you have other people you're responsible for. And even as a single man, you have an impact on everyone around you. So I think that's so important, and I'd love for you to share how people can get in contact with you to, uh, be a part of that. Yeah. You know, I call it in some of my work, and it's not me, it's taken from, um, Carl Jung, and it was made popular by Robert Moore. It's called Being a King, Magician, Warrior, Lover. You've probably heard of the book. Um, I help men become kings and, and, you know, it- that's really sort of a middle age onward kind of a stance, and each one of these has its appropriate time. But to become a king means they do exactly what you're talking about, Mr. Whiskey, which is to take a step back, to see the bigger picture, to see that you're a part of a long chain that was before you, will come after you, to, and to play your part. And that means to have some perspective, to, to make that time, and to then, uh, bestow blessing. And the blessing isn't like hocus pocus. You know, the word Baruch, my name comes from it, it means blessing, but it really means power. And so a man's job at that juncture in life is to learn how to empower, to bestow that power upon others without telling them what to do, but to let them reveal their best selves. And so that's what I might- I would encourage, especially the men my generation and older that are listening to your podcast, to, um, really think about what does it mean to bestow blessing. And for m- and, you know, young men your age to not give up on finding that in a mentor, in a male figure, because they're out there, and we all need it. As young men, we need it from older men, and as older menent we- older men, we need to bestow it upon younger men. So, you know, that's the work in a nutshell. Uh, men's peer groups is a great way for men to learn how to do this, menspeergroups.com. Uh, B Halevi, letter B H-A-L-E-V-I, is my website and to get everything else I do. That's what I do, and that's my why. All right. And then real quick before we, you know, wrap this up, I wanna mention also the 13 Minute Mission, a 501[c][3]. Can you tell us about that, especially when it comes to confronting the male suicide epidemic? And I know a lot of people use that word epidemic pretty commonly, but I've done a lot of episodes now on suicide prevention and intervention, and it truly is. People don't realize, and I, I don't wanna use the word numbers because of our whole conversation, but if you look at the numbers, when you look at those people that those numbers represent, all those people who are committing suicide, who are feeling alone and isolated, uh, it's, it's truly, truly sad, and most of us don't grasp the reality of it. Most of us don't wanna confront it. Most of us don't wanna have that darker, heavier conversation. So let's get a little bit into that before we close off here. Yeah. Thank you for asking. Um, first of all, numbers aren't wrong. We need to communicate. They're only wrong when they're an end, not a means. Mm. Right? So this is a means to opening a very important conversation. It's not an end, just so, so clarity. Um, every 13 minutes in America, a man chooses to die by suicide. Most people have no idea. Every 13 minutes, 80% of suicides are men, right? 80%. If this were reversed, we would definitely have a pink ribbon sort of effort towards it, and as we should, but since it's men, we don't. Um, men are four times as likely as women, obviously the 80%, but that's only in some demographics. 30 minus younger and s- and 70 older, it starts escalating. You know, if you're 70 and up, it's 17 times more likely that you'll kill yourself than your female counterpart. Divorced men are eight times as likely, uh, as women to kill themselves. It is an epidemic, and it's silent. And because of my backstories I've already shared and because of my commitment, uh, I'm shattering the silence. That's it. That's the only, the only way around it. So my mission is to push back, um, that 13 minutes to 14 minutes. You know, people say to me, "Well, why not get rid of it?" Because we're not getting rid of it, but I can push it back. I know I can. We can. And that doesn't sound like much, one minute. Back to numbers, that's 2,888 men this year alone that would choose to live, 2,888 men. And actually, the science, the data says for every suicide, 135 people are directly and forever impacted. Wow. 135. That's 400,000 people this year alone who are gonna be forever altered like me. And guess what happens when you're me and your father kills himself? You're- 10x, 20x, whatever it is, more likely to kill yourself. And then your grandmother had killed herself. And it, it's hard to explain to somebody who hasn't had this, but it opens up Pandora's box. Well, like your friend who's, you know, or that man who saw his father breaking couches, you mean other people don't kill themselves? Like, my, my worldview is built around this. So there are so many ramifications, and you get into, you know, all kinds of societal implications, cultural implications. But the bottom line is we're pushing back the clock. Um, we're doing it through education. We're doing it through, um, men's peer groups, is, which is, by the way, a nonprofit. The book is raising money for it. It's under the nonprofit. So we wanna bring voice to this voiceless space. We wanna shatter the silence. We wanna push back the clock so that 2,888 men this year alone will come home Right. And, you know, not to be morbid about it, but for everyone listening, uh, you know, this episode is approaching almost one hour, which is, you know, 4.6, so between four and five men who just committed suicide as you were listening to this. I know that's really morbid, but I hope that gives you a little bit of the reality of it. You know, I've stopped some suicides. Uh, I even stopped a homicide-suicide while in the military, and it's not always the person you expect. In fact, most of the times it's the person you don't expect, the person who, like we mentioned at the very beginning, has the external success, not just in their finances, their family, but they're smiling at work, they're caught up on training, they got good grades, whatever it was in the military, you know? And we always, y- you know, we talk about why would that person do that? You know, they, they had a wife or they had a husband or they had kids or, you know, they had this success and that. And, you know, I talk all the time, suicide is so internal, and all the questions you've been asking us to ask ourselves today, they address those internal situations and questions. And I, I think that's the thing. We have a society of people who are externally living and internally decaying and dying. And so I encourage everyone, a- and I rarely have met someone who hasn't been affected by suicide already. I feel like at this point most people know someone who has. But if you haven't, you know, it is v- it just affects everything. Not just for that family, but just our society is affected by each and every one. And the more people do it, there's this idea that maybe I should do it too or more accepted, kind of like you mentioned. You know, there, there is this ripple effect that is going to slowly decay and destroy our society. So, you know, V, it's so weird to just call you V, you know, I, I really appreciate you shedding light on this and having these conversations. You know, people ask me all the time, uh, how I do it, because these are not easy conversations to have, but for me it's not about easy, it's about necessary, and it's about not how is my day affected, am I gonna be down for the rest of the night? That doesn't matter if someone was saved by this conversation or if multiple men or women heard this and their lives were impacted. So thank you for what you're doing. I know it's not easy work, but it's necessary work to help hold people accountable, to inspire, to lead, to empower, to bestow. So thank you for your time today, and if you have anything else you'd like to say before leaving, we would love to hear that. I would just end with Viktor Frankl. Um, you know, he was a psychiatrist, and he would ask his patients after the war when they walked in who were dealing with these, you know, serious life and death issues, he would ask them one question, and it would never pass muster today. It would be like a trigger warning, but, "Why haven't you killed yourself?" And people are shocked. Like, how can you ask that? Because he would say, "The only thing I know about this person is they have chosen to stay along for this life, to walk through my door. There must be a why." And for people listening, I call it your why not. Why not kill yourself? You haven't. You're here. You're listening. Find one thing, one solitary thing that you can hold onto. Everybody has one thing. It's not an endpoint. I came close, um, years ago when I was really down and dark. My why not was I would not do that to my children, right? Now, it wasn't an end game. I started there. I rebuilt my life on that foundational stone, but everybody needs a why not to hold onto. So go find. If you ha- if you don't know your why, I guess is a good way to bring this to a close, then start with your why not Thank you so much. I think that was such a, a really impactful way to end this conversation, and I look forward to continuing to be in contact with you and see how your work is affecting and changing the lives of not just men, but the lives of everyone that those men's lives touch. So thank you so much again. Mr. Whiskey, thank you for your service. Thank you for this podcast. Thank you for showing me that the next generation is in good hands </p><p><!--block--><br><br></p>
