Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend XX
[0] Conan O 'Brien needs a fan.
[1] Want to talk to Conan?
[2] Visit teamco .com slash call Conan.
[3] Okay, let's get started.
[4] Oh, man. Hi, David.
[5] Welcome to Conan O 'Brien needs a fan.
[6] Hey, David, how are you?
[7] Wow, I am so nervous.
[8] Oh, don't be...
[9] Oh, okay.
[10] Well, David, do not be nervous.
[11] You will quickly realize that we are idiots, if you haven't already.
[12] And it's really nice to talk to you.
[13] Where are you right now?
[14] I'm in New Rochelle, New York, right?
[15] outside of New York City.
[16] Okay.
[17] I grew up fantasizing about New Rochelle because my favorite show when I was a really little kid.
[18] It was on in reruns was a Dick Van Dyke show.
[19] He was a comedy writer and I remember thinking that'd be the coolest job in the world and he lived in New Rochelle.
[20] That's right.
[21] That was...
[22] That just made me think, man, if I could live in New Rochelle and be married to marry Tyler Moore and write comedy?
[23] Well, one of those came true.
[24] So how are you?
[25] Tell us a little bit about yourself, David.
[26] I'm great.
[27] So I live in New Rochelle.
[28] I'm a congregational rabbi.
[29] Oh, okay.
[30] Three children.
[31] One is, he's a freshman in college, one in a junior in high school and a fifth grader.
[32] Wow.
[33] And I'm a huge fan.
[34] Oh, that's nice.
[35] All three of you.
[36] Oh, no. Yeah, primarily me. Yeah, so not.
[37] Well, David, it's clear, though, that it's like, oh, it's Conan.
[38] And then yes, of course.
[39] Well, we don't know that.
[40] The others.
[41] We're yes, of course.
[42] We're the yes, of course.
[43] Listen, David, let's get back to the main focus, which is you're a huge fan of mine.
[44] Of ours.
[45] We'll never get past this part.
[46] Rank us.
[47] I'm curious, you know, because I was raised, as you can imagine, and as I've mentioned on the podcast many times, and it's no secret, I'm Irish Catholic.
[48] But I grew up in an area.
[49] right outside Boston, and my school was surrounded pretty much on all sides by temples.
[50] And so many of my really good friends were Jewish.
[51] And I think I went to many more bar mitzvahs when I was a kid than first communions or any other Christian ceremony.
[52] So I grew up really liking your religion a lot.
[53] It felt very user -friendly and comforting.
[54] Yeah.
[55] So, well, you ended up.
[56] up in a good place then, in Hollywood.
[57] What the hell?
[58] You know, the truth is, it's...
[59] Hey, tone it down, David.
[60] Okay, okay.
[61] It's not true.
[62] Relevant.
[63] There are no Jewish people in Hollywood.
[64] None.
[65] It's all Mormons.
[66] It's the Mormons that control Hollywood.
[67] And some Baptists.
[68] Mennonites, but that's the, so, but I'm curious, first of all, what, when did you decide that you had this calling to be a rabbi?
[69] Is that something you knew when you were a kid?
[70] No, no, I was not voted most likely to end up in the rabbin.
[71] I did not grow up in an observant.
[72] And yet I was.
[73] And it was, you know, I went to India for a year after college, and I, and I was, you know, I went to India for a year after college, and I, I worked in the Jewish community there.
[74] And that was the beginning of, you know, really thinking about serving the Jewish community in some capacity.
[75] But I was not, you know, it was like a slow, circuitous route to the rabbit.
[76] And I lived in Baltimore for a year, teaching.
[77] I lived in Israel for a year.
[78] And eventually I found my way to rabbinical school.
[79] Okay.
[80] And then it just felt like you knew right away like this is it.
[81] This makes sense for me. No, no, no, no. I mean, there's.
[82] How is it feeling now to be around?
[83] by.
[84] I get the feeling any minute now you're going to say, you know, I think being a glassblower might be the way to go.
[85] You know, your question you asked about being called to this work.
[86] And actually, most Jews I know don't really feel called to this work.
[87] So I think that's one of the differences between Christianity and Judaism.
[88] You know, we sort of like, we care a lot about Judaism, love the Jewish people, don't like all of them, but love them.
[89] And, you know, I care about the Jewish intellectual tradition.
[90] So this could be a good, this could be a good career choice in that sense, as opposed to feeling called into this work.
[91] Got it.
[92] Got it.
[93] That's interesting.
[94] It's more real.
[95] It's pragmatic.
[96] Yeah.
[97] I think not for everyone, but certainly for me, it was.
[98] And for most rabbis I work with and I'm friends with.
[99] So tell me, what's your day like?
[100] Because I'm trying to imagine what I do know.
[101] And this would be true for a priest as well or for people in other religions who are walking the walk that you have a different, your day is composed of many different kinds of tasks.
[102] Is that right?
[103] You're not just teaching students about, you know, Moses and taking them through various steps of the things they need to learn, you know, in their faith.
[104] There's all kinds of stuff that a rabbi needs to know how to do.
[105] It's true.
[106] Actually, the way you said that reminded me of, so my wife, Tali, has a doctorate from NYU, and she was, as I was finishing rabbinical school, and it was six years after college, and Tali got accepted into NYU.
[107] My mother said, this is so exciting, the first shuck to go to graduate school.
[108] And I was sort of finishing six years of graduate school.
[109] So I asked her, you know, what did you mean by that?
[110] You know, I'm studying Aramaic and like ancient language.
[111] is.
[112] And she said, I don't know, don't you just, like, teach children about Moses.
[113] I'm channeling your mom right now.
[114] I know what the Moses!
[115] It's Moses this, Moses that, yeah.
[116] But what do you do?
[117] Like, tell me the different things that could happen in your day.
[118] Sure.
[119] So there's like, you know, we're building an institution.
[120] So there's 600 and so a few thousand people associated with the synagogue.
[121] So there's a nursery school.
[122] There's a religious school there's the kind of day -to -day life programming of the synagogue so i'm constantly working on ensuring that we're meeting the needs of the community in that way but you know people get sick they end up in the hospital everything you know you have to you get a call and you have to drop everything and you spend time with families offering comfort or presence through you know the death and dying piece of the life cycle there's weddings there's babies are born and you know you have opportunities to celebrate.
[123] I do a lot of pastoral counseling for people who are, you know, either have sick loved ones or marital problems.
[124] And so every day is completely unpredictable because you work with human beings and we're endlessly interesting creatures with lots of different needs.
[125] And so it's trying to balance the sort of day -to -day life of the institution and the human experience of all of the people associated with the synagogue.
[126] Are you always you know, wearing anything that would identify you as a rabbi?
[127] Can you go undercover?
[128] Are there times where you, you know, because I'm talking about.
[129] I'm curious, because, you know, priests you can easily identify because of the collar.
[130] So I don't know.
[131] I mean.
[132] That is exactly my question is.
[133] And it's because right now I'm talking to you and I'm thinking, well, if you wanted to, you could blend in and say, yeah, I just got off the boat from Switzerland.
[134] I'm here to repair cuckoo clocks and just take a little time off, you know?
[135] Yeah, no. There's, so, you know, there's two different pieces of that question.
[136] The first is, you know, if I want to watch, I'm a huge Philadelphia sports fan.
[137] I want to watch the Eagles game with my family.
[138] I run to the supermarket to buy Tostitos and I'm counseling somebody in aisle 6 around cancer diagnosis.
[139] That's someone I bump into.
[140] you know it's or because and that's because they but that's because they know you they know you're I mean that's the other thing is you can't go anywhere in your community without someone stopping you and saying hey we've got to talk I'm seeing someone on the side my wife doesn't know and then suddenly suddenly you have to like put the tostitos down and really get into it well you don't have to do that right no you do have to you can't be holding test tostitos no you need to testidos either no I never hold my stuff in my testes Stitos when I counsel people.
[141] Yeah, the other piece is when I am not in my local area, right?
[142] When I'm not in New Rochelle or in Westchester, I never tell people I'm a rabbi ever.
[143] Right, right.
[144] So if I meet someone, and when I, like, it's led to some really awkward, completely uncomfortable situations where I'm sort of found out in the middle of a conversation that I was lying about being a rabbi.
[145] and I was once in Arizona and I went to Sedona, I was by myself.
[146] You know, these like purple, those big pink Jeep trips?
[147] Yeah, yeah, I know those.
[148] I've been on one of those.
[149] They have these giant four -wheel jeeps and you get in there with a few other people and they take you on these insane, you know, sort of trips up pretty much at a 90 -degree angle up some rocks.
[150] It's pretty harrowing, but fun.
[151] Yeah.
[152] Yeah.
[153] And I just wanted to get away.
[154] And there were three couples from Chicago and me. And they said, you know, being friendly, what do you do?
[155] I said, oh, I'm a teacher.
[156] And they said, oh, what do you teach?
[157] I said, history.
[158] They, you know, they said, oh, where do you live?
[159] And I said, oh, I'm outside of New York City.
[160] We went through the whole thing.
[161] And one of them said to his wife, don't we know?
[162] How do we know that town?
[163] And they went back and forth.
[164] And he said, wait, Rabbi Schwab has a good friend who's a rabbi in that.
[165] town you know and so I was sort of discovered oh my god you know in Arizona you're in Arizona you're in you're in Arizona driving on a four -wheel drive over boulders and people are like we know you you're a rabbi exactly and I told them they said why didn't you tell us you were a rabbi and I said well then people start making me work and I'm really on vacation and they laughed and they said don't worry we would never do that and 10 minutes later one of the guys was like oh you know I wanted to go to synagogue when my mom died and I never really did.
[166] And so it's like impossible to go anywhere once you're found out.
[167] You know what it is?
[168] You know what it is?
[169] David.
[170] No, David, it is your life is exactly like that of a dermatologist, which is anyone who finds out that someone's a dermatologist invariably says they pull up their shirt and say, can you just look at this for a second?
[171] Because it's unlike most other, you know, if you're talking to a cardiologist, he can say, look, I don't really have the tools here.
[172] But everybody does that to a dermatologist.
[173] And now I see they do it to a rabbi.
[174] Yeah.
[175] I'd be a terrible rabbi.
[176] Why?
[177] Because I just wouldn't want to do anything.
[178] Well, that's a, that's not just, that's a reason why you'd be bad at a lot of things.
[179] But also, I feel like you would just, like you're in the hospital doing a brisk.
[180] and then somebody calls you and you have to go to the other part of the hospital to like for someone who's dying that's a lot emotionally I don't know if I can handle that.
[181] In my experience with the bris it doesn't happen in a hospital it happens out of the temple.
[182] Oh, I'm sorry.
[183] Is that correct, Rabbi?
[184] That's true.
[185] That's true.
[186] But Sona, I actually, you're very empathic and I think you'd be a great rabbi.
[187] Oh, okay.
[188] No, but she isn't terrible work ethic and doesn't care about doing a good job.
[189] So those would be problems.
[190] Well, if someone's like texting me and I'm watching a show, I think I'd just be like, I'll get to it.
[191] And then the person would die.
[192] That's true.
[193] You'd be a terrible rabbi.
[194] Yeah, see, David, I'm trying to.
[195] I love your people.
[196] I love your faith.
[197] I'm trying to help you here.
[198] You do not want Sona to be a rabbi.
[199] Do you perform brist's or does that a special, that's a special skill, right?
[200] No, that's a special skill.
[201] Oh, okay.
[202] I do not.
[203] Are you asking for a reason?
[204] I appreciate.
[205] My favorite joke when I met at Briss is to say, it's to say, man, this calamari's good at the dinner afterwards and then have someone say, there's no calamari, and I go, Oh, come on.
[206] It's hilarious because it means I accidentally ate the forest get.
[207] It's a hilarious joke.
[208] Boy, this calamari's killer.
[209] There's no calomari.
[210] Uh -oh.
[211] Try it out sometime, Rabbi.
[212] It's really funny.
[213] I will go to a Tuesday, Friday's and go, boy, this four skin's delicious.
[214] We don't serve forskinned here.
[215] I accidentally ate calamari.
[216] You know, after...
[217] This is the stupidest thing ever.
[218] No, after my son, my first son was born, you know, the custom in Judaism is the foreskin has to be buried.
[219] Right.
[220] It can't dispose of it in any other way.
[221] So the moyle who did the brisk for my son gave it to me. And I was like, what am I supposed to do with this?
[222] I was a rabbinical student living on the Upper West Side.
[223] And he said, you have to bury it.
[224] But I lived in New York City.
[225] So my friend and I went to Central Park, and we went behind home plate, this is huge baseball fan, and we buried it behind the first field in Central Park.
[226] And now there's a four -skinned tree growing right there.
[227] Every October, dropping foreskins.
[228] What a terrible image.
[229] But rabbi, and what is your last name, Rabbi?
[230] Shuck.
[231] There was a character actor named John Shuck when I was, he was in Holmes and Yo -Yo, the TV show.
[232] And sorry, I'm going way back there.
[233] He played, Look Up Homes and Yo -Yo, John Shuck.
[234] He was a very funny character actor.
[235] That sounds like a show you made up.
[236] Shout out to John Shuck, right?
[237] I don't even know that one.
[238] John Shuck, Holmes and Yoyo.
[239] Okay.
[240] Any relation?
[241] Matt has never heard of it.
[242] Yeah.
[243] You might be related to John Shuck.
[244] Are you related to John Shuck?
[245] No, because he doesn't exist.
[246] No, he does exist.
[247] Holmes and Yo -yo, folks.
[248] I know a lot of fans out there right now going crazy that I mentioned your favorite show from 1970.
[249] I'm going to guess, eight.
[250] Holmes and Yo -yo?
[251] Yeah.
[252] Sorry about that.
[253] Oh, they're people.
[254] Yes, it's two guys.
[255] And here's the trick.
[256] John Shuck, the actor, plays a robot.
[257] He looks like a regular person, but he's a robot.
[258] I mean, some of these shows are dumb, though, right?
[259] Is this before Jaime on Get Smart or after?
[260] It's afterwards.
[261] It's after Jaime.
[262] It's a rip -off.
[263] Before After Small Wonder.
[264] It's a show I know.
[265] It's a great show.
[266] Before Small Wonder.
[267] Rabbi, I seem to have lost the thread here.
[268] I took us down a little bit of a rabbit hole on John Shuck.
[269] It's good.
[270] But I wanted to give him a shout out.
[271] I wanted to smugly drink water.
[272] You're out there, John.
[273] Is he still with us, John Shuck?
[274] Please say yes.
[275] He is.
[276] Wow.
[277] John Shuck, if you're out there, I'm a fan.
[278] Let's get him on the show.
[279] Holmes and yo -yo.
[280] And I'm your nephew.
[281] Yeah, you could be.
[282] Do you have a question for Conan?
[283] Yes, do you have a question for me?
[284] I do.
[285] How can I, rabbi, how can I counsel you?
[286] Oh.
[287] Yes, thank you.
[288] I never thought you'd ask.
[289] So let's just say, you are the senior rabbi, Conan.
[290] Oh, dear.
[291] And Sona and Matt are the associate rabbis.
[292] what would a clergy team meeting look like?
[293] Well, first of all, I'd be there, and I think Rabbi Matt would be there as well.
[294] Sona would not be there because she'd be running late and not caring.
[295] Oh, okay.
[296] I think that you would be eating up everyone's time by playing the guitar for about an hour.
[297] Right, but playing.
[298] Holding up the meeting.
[299] But playing songs about Israel and playing songs about.
[300] Yeah, but that accomplishes nothing for our clergy.
[301] It does.
[302] It doesn't cross anything off the agenda of the meeting.
[303] I would sing the Dradle song.
[304] I'm sending my rabbinical resume over to you, David, to see if I can get a transfer of some kind.
[305] Oh, no, you can't.
[306] Oh, no. I got to work under this guy.
[307] Because you're the guy that I bring with me to the Briss, whose job is to say, we didn't serve any calamari.
[308] Because I need someone to say that from my joke to work.
[309] But it's like a hundredth time.
[310] It's the hundredth time.
[311] We didn't serve any calamari.
[312] And I go, ugh.
[313] But sometimes you don't do it because you're so sick of it.
[314] So I have a little broomstick and I tap you with it.
[315] What if they are actually serving calamari?
[316] I know.
[317] It's a drag.
[318] That's a problem.
[319] Then it's Matt's job to make sure that they take the calamari out.
[320] Okay.
[321] And get rid of it.
[322] His job is to get there early and get rid of all the calamari that they routinely serve.
[323] At a bris.
[324] So is our meaning just?
[325] Discussing how we're going to support your bits?
[326] Yes.
[327] That would be, yes.
[328] If you need to know, David, all of the meetings would be, okay, I've got this bit I want to do.
[329] And here's what I need.
[330] I need you to ask me, I need you to say this, Matt.
[331] And then when Sona shows up, I need you to do this.
[332] So it would be a lot of that.
[333] You are going to do our son's brisk, correct?
[334] No. We've got other people for that.
[335] No one calls you anymore for anything.
[336] You're the only rabbi no one calls for anything.
[337] Your workload would double David because everybody from my, yeah, everybody who worked at my temple would be like, no, no, no, no, we're good, Conan.
[338] You'd be getting twice as many calls.
[339] Sad old lonely rabbi on the top of the hill that no one calls.
[340] You hear someone in your synagogues having like marital trouble and you go to them asking if you can help and they're like, no, we're good.
[341] Yeah, we're good.
[342] We're fine.
[343] I heard you just lost a parent.
[344] We're fine.
[345] No, no, no, we're good.
[346] We're good.
[347] Conan O 'Brien is rabbi without a cause.
[348] It's me and a red jacket.
[349] Color flipped up, James Dean style.
[350] No one comes to talk to me. You can't have a little bit.
[351] You know, David, you don't seem nervous at all anymore.
[352] You got over that really quickly when you realized who we were talking to.
[353] It's just amazing how our clergy meetings are so similar to what we just.
[354] That's good.
[355] Is that right?
[356] Is that true?
[357] Really?
[358] No. Well, yeah, Holmes and Yo -Yo comes up.
[359] There's a lot of Colomari jokes.
[360] Sometimes I can be so naive.
[361] Hey, is Hanukkah going to be a busy time for you?
[362] That's coming up.
[363] Is there a busy time?
[364] Okay.
[365] It's a very joyous, festive time.
[366] It is.
[367] Yeah.
[368] It's a fun time.
[369] Yeah.
[370] It's a time for us to, we actually have a holiday where it's not a, about people tried to kill us and they didn't and let's celebrate it.
[371] Well, actually, it's precisely that.
[372] Okay, forget that.
[373] Yeah.
[374] You know, we have a lot in common, like the Irish and the Jews.
[375] Like, it's hard to be optimistic as in the Jewish community.
[376] So anytime we have a holiday that's like eat greasy food and light candles, it'll be great for us.
[377] It'll be fun.
[378] I think the Irish and the Jews are linked in many ways.
[379] I think we both have a guilt as a big motivator and kind of in a weird way, a rocket fuel, like an Achilles heel, but also a strength is our guilt.
[380] And then the other thing I've found to be very true is sense of humor.
[381] Like, you know, so many of my favorite funny people are either Irish or Jewish.
[382] And so there's something about humor as a defense mechanism that I think.
[383] also unites us completely and you know i have to say i often hear you say like oh we're just doing silly shenanigans meaningless things here but the truth is the work that you do as as a comedian is really important work in the world for like for me getting through this pandemic which hit new rachel really hard that's right new rachel was like ground zero right you guys had yeah we're hitting very hard tell us about that we had so we had so we had We had a lot of losses in this synagogue, and I was, you know, I was doing sometimes three funerals in a day.
[384] Sometimes I was officiating.
[385] I buried a husband, and then a week later, his life.
[386] You know, it was traumatic here, and these were losses, you know, the technologies that Jews developed for so long about dealing with our grief.
[387] You know, shivas and big funerals and coming to synagogue to recite, you know, a prayer.
[388] of mourning, we couldn't do any of that.
[389] So it was really like people in this community just disappeared from the community.
[390] And, you know, I think in so many ways, my job now is to help people look forward and people feel really optimistic, you know, with the vaccines and so on.
[391] But there's a piece of me that feels like part of my job is also to say, like, we've lost a lot and we have to make space for that loss too.
[392] So it was really tough.
[393] But I listened to your show, and it really in so many ways and your friendship and your banter in so many ways it really got me through the most difficult time of my life.
[394] That's really, that's lovely to hear and it is really it means a lot to me when I bump into people who say that we're in any way, you know, making them feel better.
[395] Sometimes they feel better because they know they're not us.
[396] Yeah.
[397] But it is really, that's very meaningful and that's nice of you nice of you to say and I'm glad we were able in our own way to be there for you I'm really sorry for what you went through but I think the people of New Rochelle and are just very lucky to have you and it seemed like a really great you seem like a really good person who's very giving and very empathetic and I think you're doing a great job and so I salute you I do salute you thank you and a salute from me is I don't know if it's very mean I mean, there's room to go up.
[398] I'm not an admiral, but, you know, I'd still salute you.
[399] You can aim higher.
[400] Hey, David, it was really lovely talking to you, and I hope your community continues to heal.
[401] And I just wish you a great Hanukkah holiday season, really.
[402] I hope you have just a lovely one, because it sounds like you deserve it.
[403] Thank you.
[404] Thanks so much.
[405] All right.
[406] We'll talk to you later.
[407] Take care.
[408] Bye -bye.
[409] Bye -bye.
[410] Conan O 'Brien needs a fan.
[411] With Conan O 'Brien, Sonam of Sessian, and Matt Gourley.
[412] Produced by me, Matt Gourley.
[413] Executive produced by Adam Sacks, Joanna Solitaireoff, and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson at Earwolf.
[414] Music by Jimmy Vivino.
[415] Supervising producer Aaron Blair.
[416] Associate talent producer Jennifer Samples.
[417] Associate producers Sean Doherty and Lisa Burm.
[418] Engineering by Eduardo Perez, please rate, review, and subscribe to Conan O 'Brien Needs a Friend on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded.
[419] This has been a team Coco production in association with Stitcher.