#92: Behind the Bima - Saul Blinkoff

from boca raton florida rabbis ephraim goldberg philip moskowitz and josh brody are taking you behind the bema the brs rabbis schmooze about contemporary issues and talk to special guests who give a behind-the-scenes look at how they got to where they are and what keeps them going welcome to behind the bema it's wednesday at 00 pm i am rabbi from goldberg joined by my dear friend and colleague by josh brody and we're here to take you behind the bma we're here to take you behind the beam a very special behind the bema episode uh with saul blinkoffs and blink off animation director producer uh disney dreamworks voice amazon mtv voice overs uh somebody who is deeply and profoundly steeped in torah and navigates a complicated world but is such a source of inspiration a teacher and a mentor to so many really excited to go behind the bema with him and learn more about his journey and his encouragement how we can navigate the complicated world and his view and take on so many things really excited but uh until then rabbi brody what's going on in your life well in a crazy world that we're in right now officially we are in bear market territory there are still some bright things happening someone's getting married i know uh somebody is coming up in our community we're both very very excited and what's it like to count down to this one how is this one different than the others um yeah they're all exciting i mean we don't take for granted we wish and bless everybody who is looking to get married or have people in their family get married everybody should meet their their bachelor and uh experience and celebrate only happiness for us it's an enormous joy it's a great privilege a little bit of a super speed one um as has everyone it's been easier or that's more complicated when it's when it's so quick for me it's always your wife and the difference i don't i don't have to get a gown or worry about hair and makeup so it's pretty easy for me um do you get a tie or not even a new tie get a new tie get into that everyone has a different frame or context so someone said to me your daughter they went on their first date after opening day and they're getting married before the all-star break so you have no idea what those words even i don't know what that means there's somebody with a baseball context to life they met after opening day and they're getting married but in fact just last night where i am i went to a really late marathon and i saw you in person they said mazel i said thanks so much for actually you know that's that's why we're here now is what i mean that's why you're here now like for the engagement i got out of the wedding like i'm wishing your mouth and stuff on the engagement they just got engaged i'm like actually well they're they're getting married so i'm just let me let me just redo the card it was an engagement card let me just get a wedding ring you know everybody has to figure out what works for them i don't think it's a right or wrong and there's no judgment in either direction too slow too fast but here's my takeaway is that uh it takes however long you give yourself to plan a sim event so if you give yourself three years you'll spend three years obsessing and pursuing and debating and meeting and if you give yourself three weeks then you'll get it done in three weeks so you know my feeling again we shouldn't rush engagements each of relationships needs stages they're important dating is an important stage courtship engagement they're all important stages they shouldn't be rushed and everyone's got to figure out their own way this is not a general statement for others but i do believe that if people are ready you know if you can get it done quickly in our case it was you know let's have a beautiful wedding and a happily married couple and then we'll have a beautiful summer or it can be after the summer in which case we'll have a miserable summer of planning and organizing or whatever so it takes however long you give yourself some might argue that's an oversimplification some with many more responsibilities towards this right um but i really do think and and i think others were persuaded which is why we've done it this way and i think they're happy they did and you know we've got phenomenal mahatanam who are old dear friends and so it's just it's easy it's exciting it's beautiful and i wish and bless everybody we should have only only happy occasions and each time it's amazing amazingly emotional you know where we get countdown now and to sort of say say goodbye to your daughter and and hand her off and and obviously they don't they don't go anywhere you know that but hashem you have a very happily beautifully married couple um but it's a different stage you know you said that the um are old friends did you know the uh the future son-in-law i did not you know we go back a really long way but we haven't necessarily been very in touch more recently um and um so it's it's really amazing to have that history and to feel that connection and to share so much and uh our new son was fantastic first of all is he is a little intimidated at all was there like that intimidation factor where he's like rabbi goldberg i don't know first of all his father is a you know prominent mechanic master educator and principal at drs so i think he grew up in such a home and has been exposed to such leadership and i don't think i'm a intimidating person in the least um so i don't think there was any of that also he's 6'4 and i'm not so you know it's nice to look up physically someone and he helps the goldberg basketball team so we're excited about that great and um yeah so i i sent you i said our listeners should know i i was somewhere and i saw a store named under 510. i took a picture and sent it through by brodie's men's clothing from men under 510. so that's what i wrote back to you i said that's not going to help me i need under five five but i happen to know the guy that owns that i think there's a chain of them is ellie robinson is a guy from near niriakov started that yeah there's um i'll pose this question as a thought-provoking question and then i want to bring on our our guest and have this conversation with seoul who really is so amazing and the reason so many are tuning in but um they're they're so where i am right now there are so many resources for davening you know there's a shul that started a davening on the hour so from the earliest you could have a milk every day there's every hour on the hour then mar of every hour on the hour and the schedule in shabbos is like five minutes on shabbos three maravs ten minutes before shabbos is over when shabbos is over robin utam you know later time for when shabbos is over and i look at it and i say wow that's so convenient you can wake up any time in the morning afternoon night you can it's amazing it's unbelievably convenient on the other hand what does it do to community meaning when you have aymen hamarev or a couple of them so you see the same people the regular someone notices hey i didn't see you at minha maybe you're all learning together with a certain learning center snippets or something else between minecraft so and it just got me thinking a lot about convenience versus community can you have convenience without sacrificing community can you maintain community even while introducing lots of modes of convenience it's an interesting question it's a it's a post corona one of the things corona taught us is everything was convenient you know having very local mignon at the times that you want and rolling out of bed or we're not going to minion because when the world was shut down and you couldn't it was the ultimate inconvenience and comfort how do we find that balance between convenience comfort and community in terms of the priority eyes and in terms of um of how we blend them and how we find that balance between them right there was a time on shabbos afternoon we had one minha now we have three or four and yeah having you know them in the evening and there's earlier later i guess someone could criticize us on the show this morning we have eight million so you know there are eight choices and um we don't believe in putting people in a box we let people choose what they want and um so someone could say that's us i'm not even coming to a conclusion i am not offering an opinion i'm just telling you how i responded how i felt and i've been sort of thinking about it since then is that would be and for me right now is incredibly convenient but hey what what's left of feeling like you're part of community and which one is more important and how do you find the balance between them there's no opinion or judgment of them you know another thing that was in the news the jewish news uh this week um an arena in philadelphia was rented out and there was a celebration of torah no see them it wasn't a sigma wasn't a major milestone bmg baseball chicago lakewood it's 8 000 students took over the arena sports arena in philadelphia and filled it to capacity twenty thousand people just celebrating gibore torah they were just celebrating total learners celebrating the centrality the primacy the significance the learning of torah and it got me thinking a lot again was it tied to any dates or anything significant no no no there was there was a reason for it that precipitated it but there's no major milestone it was marking there's no cm conclusion of learning that it was marking and that's what partially i think what made it so beautiful is there was no reason other than let's get together and celebrate torah let's celebrate the learning the significance of torah and and what it means and it got me thinking you know i'm a big advocate we've talked about on the show and others the notion of the shah hakolo of of not being in a box of not being labeled but a feeling you're part of the whole jewish people you're part of the entire total jewish people religious and non-religious you're part of the whole orthodox community with its different stripes and and and different segments and different spectrum of orthodoxy and to say you know what i have my beliefs and i have my values but i don't need a label and i don't need to be different it doesn't have to be the other that i'm part of everything because when i saw those videos or i watched that feeling i i wanted to be there myself i said i'm also part of that you know i'm part of yom yoshilai however you want to i don't even want to try right now but all the different parts of of of the jewish world and the orthodox world why be on the outside of something why not want to feel i'm an insider and part of so much why not want to be counted among those correct when there's something that's so beautiful so anyway that reinforced my belief of that because i'm not sure i'm not sure that outside the community that hosted that event let's just say i'm not sure that outside of them if we would announce we're hosting an event for toronto we could pack an arena with 20 000 people i don't know right maybe they couldn't pack an arena to advocate for the state of israel and we could but life shouldn't be in either or why can't we go to both events why can't we go there's no more policy conference but why can't you go to an apac policy conference to be with 18 000 people standing up and fighting for the state of israel and go to an arena with 20 000 people singing and dancing and celebrating torah and it's not either or you don't have to label me you're that or that i'm everything anyway got me thinking i'm just sharing deep thoughts but i love it can't wait can't wait for next year gonna be some big things coming it's great but those are all my thoughts for uh for now um really excited to bring out soul blink off hollywood filmmaker he's worked for as we said disney dreamworks netflix amazon mtv animated disney films pocahontas pocahontas hunchback of notre dame milan tarzan winnie the pooh uh many many more uh award-winning and um inspiring observant incredible person so we're really really excited to be able to welcome a monster without any further ado saul blink off what a great honor it is to finally be joined and be together with the great saul blinkoff when i say finally it's because we've been overlapping for years and we have many mutual friends who've been trying to make introductions we've not yet had the privilege to connect and to host you in our community which we will but at least it begins to go behind the bema so thank you for agreeing thank you for doing this with us well it is such a pleasure uh to finally meet you and uh rabbi brody you and i have known each other a long time and uh look there's a great buzz with this incredible podcast video podcast youtube channel what you're creating and uh it's just an honor to be here thanks for having me thank you thank you so much so so i want to dive right in there's so much for our audience for us to listen to learn your story your journey and i know there's so much wisdom about success and motivation your motto for life we want to get into all that but i want to i want to come out the gate with the question i'm thinking i think many years of thinking also which is that you know saul blink off you're you're synonymous with this capacity to balance this incredible award-winning hollywood career animator director producer uh disney and and netflix and amazon and dreamworks and this journey towards an observant jewish way of life and raising such a beautiful family um i know your children are also involved a little bit um in in hollywood as well um but you're raising them steeped in torah jewish values just a little bit just a little bit uh you're raising them and you're living as a model of torah valley's jewish values and hollywood seems at least from an outsider's perspective to be an increasingly complicated place to navigate as hollywood studios hollywoods and studios themselves are now taking political positions they're taking moral positions they're introducing relationships and identities and characters not entirely consistent with our tradition and view how do you navigate all that and how do you continue to raise your children um in a way that you can have them be proud of your career and and their involvement in that world and at the same time not feel they're compromising or corrupting what is their beautiful jewish identity and values too yeah i mean you're asking the most important question and it's such an important question because it's not just for me who lives in hollywood but it's for all of us wherever you live in the world you know especially if you're living in america united states you know you're there's influences no matter where you live there are influences how do we keep those influences from changing our values um so for me personally you know people ask me a lot you know how do you balance living an observant jewish life in hollywood how do you balance that uh well it's very simple um it it actually comes from you know pierre caovos you know you have to set up a fence for torah you have to set up a fence you know and when i i sat down years ago um i didn't grow up religious i grew up kind of conservadox i guess you could say uh in new york and when i started to become observant i came out to l.a and uh i met with rabbi shalom denbo who's a memorial out here and we sat down this is i don't know 20 years ago with pierre calvos he sat down and showed me that mishna of setting a fence for torah i'll never forget he says to me what does a fence do and i'm like well i guess it like protects things he goes what else does it do i'm like i don't know he goes well it also keeps things out right it keeps things in and keeps things out and the mission says you have to set up a fence for torah what does that mean torah doesn't move it's not like an animal there's nothing trying to kill it but torah is your values and that's something that we will be tested with every single day of our lives and if we think that our values are safe think again there's going to be something that's going to test us do we protect them by the way i tell that to single people all the time when you're dating find out what a person's values are how do you know what their values are what is it that they value well living in l.a living in hollywood especially today um i do see lots of i see lots of things that make me nervous first of all you know like you mentioned before that my kids are in the business a little bit my son asher he's 13 now but when he was six um we noticed that he had a great voice and he could sing really well and actually his older sister mira she also did some voice over uh in some disney shows she did phineas and ferb which was a very big animated show if you know that show and i remember taking my daughter to an audition once she must have been about seven six six or seven years old and we're in this audition and there's all these kids and their moms and it was a i don't remember what it was for but i see all these girls who are like a year older than her with their own iphones and like and they're like kind of ordering their parents around the parents are like walking on eggshells around them and i'm like that's not how it's going to be in my mouth you know and my wife and i made a decision at that moment like i don't i don't think we want her doing on-camera stuff just voice over would be the way to go as a matter of fact she had gotten uh cast on a major tv show it was going to be a show called outnumbered it was going to be like the next modern family big show huge show out of hundreds of kids and they picked this girl our daughter mira she must have been five at the time and i remember uh we started negotiating the deal because they picked her and the deal was going to be huge numbers and it would pay for her school pay for her wedding pay for her children's wedding i mean it would have been it would be huge and i said to my wife i'm like before we sign this contract you should probably remind our her agent that she doesn't work on shabbos you should probably remind her that i mean she knows like we're from and all that but you should probably tell her so she tells her and the agent's like oh you know that's that's not going to work because they shoot on friday because the way that they work in tv on this kind of thing is like monday they get a script tuesday they learn it wednesday they block it out on the studio and then blah blah friday they shoot it in front of a live studio audience for that kind of show so she calls us back and she goes i just spoke to them and they're gonna pass on your daughter i'm like all right that's how it's supposed to go that was it she calls us the next day and says they called me back they're changing the shooting schedule to thursday they think they can get it done in less time they want your daughter for this show really badly my wife and i hug each other we're like oh my god is amazing right and then i say to my wife you should probably tell her that she doesn't work during the game either and then you look at the game circus lots of yomtov's in there right so we give she goes can you just give me the calendar of all the days she can't work we send that to the manager the manager goes okay this is crazy it's so many days you can't work let me send it to them i'll tell you what they say she comes back to us an hour later they're passing on your daughter so they passed on her so that was it can i interrupt you that's all cause what a lesson for your daughter for children to grow up at a young age and say my parents have instilled in me that torah is worth compromising sacrificing for yeah fame money future but it pales in comparison so to steal and to model that wow yeah let me tell you and be unemployed and be unemployed right well let me tell you first of all a lot of people hear that story and they're and how many times are students come up to me by the way it happens all the time i'll be speaking at a shabbaton somewhere ncsy some great kid will come up to me be like i got a job offer i have this internship but they say i have to work on shabbat what do you think i should do and that's they ask it that way right and i say to them well here i'm not going to tell you what to do but i will say one thing if you believe through and through that torah is true and that the creator of the world has your best interest in mind by telling you you can't work on shabbat then there's there's no choice but if you're not a place right now where you find that that's reality that god is real that he wrote the torah then you're going to have to figure that journey out for yourself i can't tell you you know but i want to go back for a moment to my daughter's story after that happened i'm sitting at a shabbos table and one of my friends who's a big writer in hollywood big writer he was writer on shrek his name is uh david weiss he speaks around the world david's a great guy credible writer and director and i was telling him what happened and he said to me tell me about that show so i tell him about the show he goes who's directing that show and i tell him who the director is i'm not going to mention the name he goes you're the luckiest person in the world i said why he says because the last place you want your daughter ever being is on the set of one of that director's shows because you can take everything that you've put into your child all the values all the nurturing that you and the school have put into this girl and you could kiss it goodbye because on the set of this person's shows the languages crass it's like it's not the place you want to raise your kid and by the way he's so right because the contract we had to sign it was a seven year contract we would have had to take her out of school for seven years that's her whole childhood right and they'd have a teacher from the school like they have a teacher like that's how they do it like there's a lawyer a teacher on set with them and then you can bring in a tutor but there goes everything there goes every forget homeschool this is called set school you don't want that right and it was from that and other experiences like that where my wife and i were like that's it it's not worth it we don't want to put her in that situation and we decided no more on camera it would just be voice over and when my son eventually as you mentioned before my son has done some acting um he was cast at six years old as the voice of dennis the main kid in hotel transylvania two wow eventually hotel transylvania three and four and um it was a great like after school activity for him he did i mean thank god you know if it paid well and it will pay for his yeshiva one day even though someday he's sometimes he's like no i get that money when i turn 18 i'm like that money's going right to your torah education young man you know it's not going for sports cards that's what he did i'm gonna get his fortune you ain't getting nothing right you know you get yourself a honda civic and you drive yourself to yeshiva that's where you're going right but i will tell you when they had the premiere for his big movie um it was on shabbos and we told him you know he can't do that so they on a sunday like gave him sony studios got a huge theater and invited all friends and family for a special premiere and it was so cool because when you went to sony and you saw pictures of the cast of that movie on the wall you had adam sandler selena gomez andy samberg and asher blinkoff and as a matter of fact one time it was arab shabbos it's friday afternoon crazy i pick him up from school and we're hosting a big shabbos meal that night and my wife is like honey i know you just picked him up but i just got a call from sony studios they want you to bring usher by he's got to go record like two lines i said honey i'm in the minivan he just fell asleep he's got his big felt keeper over his head he fell asleep from school like how am i gonna wake this kid up to go do this we gotta get home for shabbos i gotta set the table because i'm not like ocd perfectionist when it comes to setting the table right even though the kids can help i know every fork has to be perfect this is my own michigan you feel bad for my wife right so i'm like honey i pick them up i get over to sony studios which is only like five minutes from our home i pull into the guard game this is a huge movie studio this isn't a building this is right like 50 sound stages each sound stage is the size of a gymnasium huge and i know what they're going to do because i've done this before i'm going to have to pull in check in they're going to tell me to park right there and then i have to walk him across 50 sound stages like a huge like college campus to get him to the sound stage where he's going to be recording that day but he's asleep i got to get on for shabbos so i say to the guy at the guard gate i'm like excuse me he's like yeah can i help you i'm like yeah i got the main character of hotel transylvania here do you mind if i just drive right like can i just drive all the way right to the place because i know cars can go there but it really helped me he goes well who do you have i go i have asher he cuts me off and he goes no problem bring him right in i'm like wow thank you as i'm pulling in i hear him say to the other guard you know who he's gotten there who usher well that's right they thought i had the r b rap star usher i did not correct them they didn't know i had sleeping they didn't peek yeah in the background so we made it home for shopping but look i'll tell you this like i said earlier setting up fences you know i i mike i i know what's valuable in the world you know movies are not the goal movies are a means to sharing stories that hopefully will impact the world i can tell you when i the first movie i directed at disney was the winnie the pooh movie winnie the pooh springtime with rule i was reading the script and there was a moment in that movie where i didn't feel like it was really reflecting torah values it wasn't the kind of values that i wanted my kids to have so i changed the scene i went with the writer we changed the scene i wanted to show that a character was being more that that uh rue the little kangaroo was being empathetic with tigger as opposed to rue going well this is what i want we changed the scene to well you know what i feel really sad that he's sad how do i help him get what he wants you know and it was with him and rabbit was the whole way to the pooh easter movie actually interesting the first movie i directed was an easter movie that's another conversation um actually in remember that you you snuck some jewish eggs into that movie oh you heard about yeah right i put the easter eggs right that's not interesting they call me easter eggs um yeah in that movie uh it was the first movie i directed i know you know people who are listening are aware but like a lot of times disney artists will hide things in the movies right they'll draw something in the movie that no one knows about it's just in their little easter egg we call it so uh some of them are real and some of them aren't some of them are fables or legends which aren't so true but some are it's like our highest high school yearbook there's a ton of stuff in there right you just get in there yeah so i go over i look at this drawing of the hundred acre wood where winnie the pooh lives and winnie the pooh lives in a tree with a little door that opens up and my job as the director is to look at this drawing this layout and see if the proportions of everything are correct i'm like yeah that's good and they want me to sign it because i signed it so it can go to the color department to be painted so i sign it everyone's good everyone leaves the room meeting over the drawing is still in there i'm like wait a minute don't disney artists hide things in the movies let me do that i take the pencil sharpen the pencil and next to winning the pooh's door i hid i drew in a mezuzah that's right now he's not winnie the pooh he's winnie the jew right and actually the second movie i directed uh kronk's new groove the sequel to emperor's new groove i was reading the script and it says cronk gets married i'm like let's give him a cuppa why can't he be jewish and uh so i got my wedding album that had the calla lily flowers that my wife picked for our choppa you know and when you see the movie there's that scene where it's arjupa literally with the same flowers he's got the kittle on you know he's got a hat on and steps on the glass right muscle tub it's in the movie later on by the way years later 15 years later they disney has gone down that avenue where cronk is jewish and there was a challah baking something online that someone sent me like because i don't work at disney now my dream works but disney did something where cronk was baking the collar doing something with challah uh this is about like a year and a half ago i think so um yeah but look you have to set up a fence for torah to balance it my kids know that i'm not going for the gold statue i'm not i'm not in to get working for oscars or awards or those kinds of accolades i just try every day as a filmmaker to remind myself and identify not just as a filmmaker but as a jewish filmmaker and how do i take those values that i buy into believe subscribe and live and learn and put them into everything that i do and you know look in today's day it is difficult you know sometimes you look at hollywood and the values are changing in a way i don't subscribe to you in some ways and um you know i'm very careful about the projects that i take you know i try to stay in preschool which i think is one of the safest places for me um but even that has had its challenges so let's see what happens for tomorrow but i will tell you that i do try to not just put the values into the work i do but even in the leadership positions that i have and you know people know like you know i wear a keep out work you know i worked one of the jobs the first jobs i had was at mtv you're talking 20 years ago and let me just tell you starting at disney and then going to mtv and he was actually the first directing job first i started as an animator at disney six years then i went to mtv he was living in manhattan living in the upper west side in the key west building some people listening know that building my wife then girlfriend was at the westmont across the street and had an amazing shabboses there but working mtv everyone around me every day was using swear words to communicate things that you did not need swear words to communicate i'm not saying like a big heavy thing fell on your foot and you scream out oh whatever it's like hey wear the blank you want to go to lunch like this it just became in the everyday i mean it wasn't like that at disney but mtv whatever the culture was like people used swear words in almost every sentence until they met me and i never told people not to swear but when they saw oh this jew wearing a keypad they saw me as a rabbi you know because i wore a keeper and all of a sudden people stopped swearing and one time there was a producer who slipped and she goes ooh i'm sorry i go why did you apologize to me because i i i didn't mean to do that in front of you again i never told anyone right to or not to so interesting but you know we have the responsibility to realize that we can elevate people around us just by trying to live a morally centered life it's a beautiful model of outreach yeah outreach is not always uh you know the bible codes in the front of the room and lecturing and preaching but sometimes when you just uh are identifiable as a jew and and you act that way so but so i want to follow up with with um one other one other quick thing one time i was recording uh actor mark hamill do you know who mark hamill is sure what movie mark hamill was in uh a little movie a little known movie no no no no no i know mark hamill come on like star wars there you go right star wars uh you know rabbi goldberg he played a character you may have heard of called luke skywalker yeah oh yeah that one right so he comes in he does a lot of voice over and we took a break he was doing a voiceover for movie i was directing and we ordered all this kosher food because that's i was the director and you know i had that ability to say hey let's get kosher food and all the burgers we had had this packaging that had cashier in hebrew or in the packaging ever and he's like what what is this and he looks to me because i got to keep on i'm like well this is hebrew it means kosher and he goes oh what's kosher how do they kill the pig i'm like no no they don't eat pig you know we don't eat big we're explaining the whole thing but i became luke skywalker's rebbe you know i was the real yoder for at least that day so you were able to say luke i am your rabbi anyway so yeah so for the record i was not trying to look like i'm really from i don't know movies i had a i had a return of the jedi birthday party as a kid i just don't know that's great i just don't know the names of actors don't worry it's just better off now so i want to follow up that you know they say i think it's true because it's been documented the head of a lot of technology companies who the technology is designed to create an addictive response in us social media technology smartphones that many of the ceos and founders of these companies in their own homes and their own children they don't allow their kids to use these devices they have incredible boundaries around them they know what they're intentionally doing to us and they protect and inoculate their own children to it so i would ask you similarly um as much as you're engrossed in or connected with the hollywood scene what kind of fences do you put for your children your family in terms of what level of culture pop culture best questions i love it well okay wow let's get going let's have some fun you ready to have some fun guys let's do this let's do it let's do it okay so first of all you know and this is just my personal opinions okay i'm just sharing you my own opinion my this is me and my wife this is our hush guffa this is our outlook this is how these are the fences that we've set for our kids i'm not telling you they're right for your kids but we've put a lot of thought into it first of all i firmly believe that in this year you cannot and should not how about that i'm going to come out that bold you should not put your kids in a bubble where you give them no content i remember years ago i went to a very from rob's home this is about 12 years ago they didn't have a tv they had no content before iphones this is where laptops were around and i was teaching their son guitar he was 12 years old and i'm in his room teaching guitar and he has as i come in the room he's like hold on i got to put this under my bed he has a laptop and he was watching content his parents didn't know about on a laptop that they didn't even know we had at 12 years old i'm like what show are you watching goes the show friends and i'm like no 12 year old from kid or any kid for that matter should ever be watching a show about you know five 20 year olds that are just sleeping with people and that's not appropriate from or not but guess what his parents didn't know he had a desire to watch this stuff and how much stuff out there is being hidden so my wife and i subscribe to the to the the method of we want to teach our children how to navigate the media world and the content world you see when i was becoming religious we didn't have a tv my wife and i we we our first home we got married we're like you know we're not having a tv but like today you have an iphone you have a smartphone you got a billion tvs and they're playing live everything around the world the same time and don't think you're going to give your kids a flip phone and someday that's they're going to stay with unless they're living in maya sharim the most religious community in the world unless they're in that community yeah there will be no desire to have any other phone than a flip phone but if they're living anywhere else in the jewish world they're not going to buy if they're going to have a career at all you have to have a smartphone i mean i can tell you just for me in a creative field i have work come in all the time and i look at video i look at audio i look at graphics i look at spreadsheets on my iphone it's a tool for work but i do subscribe to the idea that you have to teach your children how to navigate it so how do we do it well it's easy to say to a kid you will never watch any movies it's harder to figure out what the movies are that are appropriate to sit with your kid and watch them together it takes more time but by the way movies can be an incredibly powerful and effective tool to teaching torah values that's right torah values look at the movie like the lion king that movie is all about teaching responsibility that movie is literally an example of suru acharai lev avram yacharene don't go after your eyes in your heart don't do what feels good don't think being a king means you can do whatever you want simba goes and lives in hakuna matata world remember that it means no responsibilities you remember that song rabbi goldberg right hakuna matata what you've seen the lion king right again religious oh so you're the one religious because i'm too cool that's why just to clarify yeah what happens to mufasa his dad do you remember i don't want to spoil it although you know it's been it's been 30 years since the movie came out so you deserve to have it spoiled but okay so daddy dies did you know that mufasa dies i did not know that you know how many people are watching this right now that can't believe you're saying that do you know who luke skywalker's father is by the way just curious yeah there you go thank you you're back in you see you're saying you're saved okay so lion king symbol wants to be king one day he wants to be king and he thinks being a king is you can do whatever he wants and mufasa his father who is the king says simba there's more to being a king than getting your way all the time simba's like there's more what could be better and then daddy dies simba goes off to hakuna matata world no responsibilities and it's lush it's the garden of eden it's beautiful midway through the movie one of the characters nala shows up and she's like simba you gotta come back with me he's like no no i'm staying here she's like no no no you gotta come back with me scar's taking over everything everyone's gonna die if you don't come back and you're responsible he's like i'm staying here hakuna matata well she leaves him he's left alone he sees his father's reflection remember who you are rabbi gober you need to see this movie you're going to love it powerful movie watch it with the grandkids you're going to love it and he goes back defeats scar and lion king becomes the biggest animated movie of all time bf before frozen why not because we love movies about lions because that movie gives us a taste of what true greatness is what is it taking responsibility for the world taking acharias that's it that's responsibility and you can see those values in that you want to teach a kid about that you want to teach a kid about responsibility how about the movie cars cars is a disney movie that shows it's all about the gate sahara there's no villain it's about the gate sahara the villain's right here inside me and you see i'm not going to ruin this movie for you because you got to see it but the ending of this movie is the most selfless beautiful story you will ever see it's incredible so what am i saying i'm saying that as parents we have to find the content that is appropriate for our kids that is in line with the values because they're going to find it anyway at the right age so let's show them how to navigate it we also have a little family mint hog that we have a show that we watch together as a family we don't just put our kids in front of a device and say go watch this we watch it together we hit pause we talk about it it's one of the greatest shows ever made i think the firmest of the firmest kharadi family in the world maybe they shouldn't watch it but everyone else should it's a great great show for firm families to watch together with their kids it's called here we go josh you're ready i'm i'm ready it stars charles ingalls laura little house possible the goldbergs have the dvd set of little house is that how great is that show ralph michael landon michael and that show has solid judeo-christian values and it's every episode there's so much torah in every episode and to watch it as a family by the way i have parents they'll say to me but my eight-year-old would never watch that well that's because you've already shown them things that they shouldn't be watching at that age if you start them slow and watch things together you decide what they watch by the way i have parents all the time i'll be like well i showed my kid lion king they're six years old how can you show a six-year-old lion king they're too young to see that scene where simba comes up with the dead body of his father and he's crying they'll be like well i fast forward through that like well then you just killed the movie you just killed the movie because now they're never going to go through the emotion of experiencing that scene and seeing the ending so you don't show them that movie at six you show them that movie at 12 when it's the right age for them don't think just because something's animated that it's appropriate so what do you have to do as a parent you got to do the research how do you do it you go to this website imdb parents guide you type in any movie mary poppins and then type in i m d b parents guide boom they will show you everything that's in that movie that could possibly be inappropriate whether it's language or anything that's inappropriate visually that'll list it right in there there's also an incredible app which my wife and i discovered this year called vid angel have you guys heard of vid angel you pay like six seven bucks a month for it yet something else to take our money but it lets you watch movies or things that are on netflix or whatever and it takes out whatever you think is inappropriate you go to this page and you click on i don't want them to hear that word i don't want them to see that thing that's inappropriate you decide what your parameters are it re-edits the movie cobra kai they could watch cobra kai now because we're a big karate kid family but they couldn't watch that before because there's all this inappropriate stuff and it re-edits the movie it doesn't just populate a list of movies that don't have that it re-edits it live so you can watch it and it has all your restrictions boom so my kids can now watch cobra kai anyway so you said so you said you feel that not you feel that parents not only could but they should um expose or allow their children in an appropriate way because they're going to go anyway would you say equally in the other direction that parents um should not allow children unfettered accents to access the culture pop culture kids who have um devices that got to be careful oh yeah well i mean first of all it's obvious you got to set up there's all these restrictions you can set up as far as inappropriate language inappropriate music and it's got that little e for explicit lyrics i mean that's a no-brainer you got to set up those fences you know and in all of our devices there are those preferences where you can take out everything that's inappropriate i mean i i don't have my kids they can't they can't get to anything rated r on their devices that's number one all the websites that they're able to go to are not anything that's explicit in any way there's all those fences you can put on those but you know what let me just say let's put all that aside for a second you got to raise kids that you trust you have to raise kids that trust themselves not just about putting fences up constantly around them because they're going to be like well you're not letting me choose anything anyway you're just controlling everything and we have two high school girls and we have a huge amount of trust with them and you know they know what's appropriate they know what's not you know one of my kids gets something that's sent to their phone like mom dad can i open this like no can i open this yeah if they don't know they ask us because they know that we're partnering with them to help them stay ashared straight on that path so it that's the whole thing it's not just setting up fences to keep them limited where they can't do anything it's ultimately creating a relationship with them where they feel comfortable open and eager to engage and to bring their parents in to help them navigate this big crazy world of content and by the way i'll let me end with one thing even if you had uncle meishi videos and all the from videos of the world i still don't think it's a healthy thing to have our kids on devices every day anyway right it's still not i don't you know look you have to have a little bit of it but i think you have to i think you have to be careful how much you know it's like our kids they do other things there's art in our home there's music in our home uh we go outside we go to the park you know we do we go to the beach we live in la right we go to malibu we go hiking there's so much to do and and i will say as parents who are listening know it's quite often very easy to give your kid a device because you want to catch up on work or cleaning the home or whatever you're doing and how do i occupy my kid for an hour let me give them an ipad and go into the other room and close the door and sometimes that's something we need to do but sometimes it's what i call subscribing to lazy parenting yeah it may be easier but it doesn't always mean it's better yes it takes more work from us to be able to engage our own kids we can't leave it to the devices whether they're watching kosher content or not it still has to be a limitation technology yeah i have a million questions for you i have a million questions for luke skywalker's rebbe but i'm gonna let brody jump in here let's go let me just a quick question you know you you mentioned before about taking responsibility there are many many jewish men and women in our orthodox communities that are professionals they're not necessarily working in in dreamworks but there are a few that i can name let's say like charlie hirari who's involved in in business and finding a good friend of mine like a friend of yours yeah you got harry the lawyer you got ari shabbat again business there's a few of you guys that have taken responsibility to to teach in spite of fact you're not rabbis you go out there and you really feel like like it like a haray is like a responsibility to be there for those it's almost like another job or maybe it's the same job but it's yeah so where does that come from and why aren't there more you know men and women doing that in in tell our listeners though tell us where you're teaching and what capacity all these people and you in particular well um you know charlie harrari harry rothberg ari shabbat and i uh our four uh trip leaders were trip leaders on a program called momentum which josh knows a lot about and momentum is a program where we take a couple times a year a hundred or so dads to israel who are not religious we take them to israel and it's basically a boot camp to not just show them the land of israel the jewish people but to give them a boot camp of tools to help them become better men better fathers better husbands by the way it's stemmed off of the women's program the momentum program formerly known as the jwrp and that was uh founded by you know laurie plotnick and her team and that was the program where they would take all these you know unaffiliated women to israel get them inspired by embracing their jewish identity when they come home the goal was they can now change their home change their community change the world so once these women and you have over 30 000 women have gone already it's incredible it's incredible so then there were husbands were like well what about for us or else you have these women who are coming home and they're like yeah but now we're inspired to keep shabbat or maybe light shabbat candles but what about our husbands we need a trip for them so charlie hirari started it uh and then they brought me in and then harry and ari and now what we do like josh was saying was we'll take these guys to israel and we will show them not just the land and show them the potential of who they can be and the reason it's effective is because we're not rabbis someone hears the word rabbi in front of a name with all due respect to the both of you and the rabbi gets in front of an audience a class a group of people and people think a rabbi has an agenda especially if the rabbi's wearing a kippah they want to get me religious but they're a rabbi and there's already a chasm of space between the rabbi and me but if they see someone like charlie hirari or ari shabbat or me or harry in front of them they're like hey this looks like a normal guy he's wearing a baseball hat you know this this is a normal guy this is the kind of guy like i can hang out with this guy and that's that's really what the goal is to show these guys that you know what you can like you said rabbi brody perfectly you can live in the world and yet embrace your jewish identity and by the way that's that's the one goal i have when i do lead my trips and whenever i speak you know i speak here locally in los angeles i also travel as you know i speak around the world around the jewish world and even the secular world now i'm speaking now for corporations and doing keynotes and no matter where i speak if it's the jewish world i have one goal just one goal how do i say something that will inspire the listener to embrace their jewish identity and not just want to be jewish but want to live jewish that's the goal how do i take my jewish identity and let that transform the way that i live maybe it'll be lighting shabbat candles maybe it'll be just that something comes up on the news on israel and i go hey that's not just happening in a place far away that's happening in a place that that i connect to that my grandparents have connected to that'll mean something to me maybe i'll listen to that a little bit more or how do i bring jewish values into my home you know i'll just give you an example there's we talked about the mezuzah and the winnie the pooh world i hid a mezuzah in the movie i remember when i learned about masons i knew what a mezuzah was growing up but i didn't really know the purpose of it when i went to israel in the mid 90s i was animating on the film mulan the big disney movie and i get to israel and i learn with these two rabbis for ten days rabbi benny friedman and rabbi david aaron right they have a program now a shiva called erita and it was the two of them along with rabbi nathan lopez cardoza who is an incredible brilliant rev and and i remember benny walks in rabbi freeman walks in and he starts talking to us about mezuzah and he says you know what's in the mezuzah it's part of the torah it's the shema and the shema comes from the torah which is a love letter from god to humanity it was beautiful then he said this to us he goes why would we take torah which is the most valuable thing we have and why would be we'd be commanded to put it on a doorway it doesn't make sense think about the most valuable things that you have in your home you're not putting them in doorways they're in a safe right they're at least on a wall with a frame why are we taking the shema which is the mantra of the jewish people the last words we will ever utter and we're commanded to take them and put it on a doorway this is what the rev said he said a mezuzah is not a thing that we put on a doorway it's an opportunity it's an opportunity i'm going out into the world there's a mezuzah to remind me to stop for a moment and ask myself a question i'm going out into the world what kind of a world do i want to create what am i living for you coming to your house at the end of the day you're about to come into your home you know i work in hollywood people think oh he's got a cool job oh he has a cool job he lives in hollywood there's palm trees where he lives he gets to hang out with mark hamill luke skywalker right all these amazing people some days quite often i'm driving home from dreamworks or disney or wherever i'm working and i've had believe it or not a hard day yeah that's because it's still called work and what makes it difficult well it's hard to write movies it's hard to direct movies it's also hard to work with people we all have that in our lives and sometimes i could pull through that canyon because you have to drive through cold water canyon to get back to the beverly wood beverly hills area i'm about to walk into my home i've had a tough day i'm about to walk in i could open that door come in and my wife could see my face you're like oh i could tell he's had a tough day let daddy sit in this chair everyone all the kids leave him alone kids leave him alone leave daddy alone i can my wife could and i could be like huffing and sign honey i need a cold drink everyone just keep everyone away from me i've had a hard day yeah but i'm but i'm a jew you know what that means there's a mezuzah there that means before i come into my home that message can remind me oh you know what you had a tough day how about this grow up grow up why don't you keep your tough day at the door and the first thing when you come in is go over to your wife and say to her honey what kind of a day did you have oh because it has to all be about you no there's moses that'll remind you to grow up or what about this i'm going to walk in what about my my nine-year-old daughter naomi what she can't have a tough day well it's easy to be a nine-year-old no she goes through emotions even more than i do so i'm going to leave that at the door that was a reminder leave it at the door you see that's what i remember learning years ago that torah is it's not a history book beautiful thing that remnant weinberg said who started ashitara which had a big impact on my life is he taught so beautifully torah is tools for living it's like there's a mezuzah you're commanded to put one there why to help us before we go out into the world to clarify what am i living for to come into my home and stop for a moment and go wait a minute what kind of a home do i want to create what are the values i want to have in my home why do i need a partner to help me create a home torah became tools for living to help me elevate every aspect of my life and that's one of the things that i love to share with students that i meet whether one on one or communities that i get to lucky enough to go share my stories with and that's always first and foremost the goal so so let's take a step back first of all it's amazing thank you everything you're sharing is really really inspiring and really thought provoking and you know there's room for debate not everybody's going to agree with everything particularly culture and standards and family but i think the conversation is so refreshing and healthy and you're really in a position more than most to have it um walk us through what's the difference between an animator director producer i would think that being a good animator being creative and artistic doesn't necessarily make you a great director or producer are those similar skill sets different skill sets and and how did you know that you have both had it emerged for you to have both which which ones you enjoy more what are you still doing these days first of all this podcast is do you call this a podcast it's a podcast right yeah it's popular right so this podcast could go on for four hours because you guys literally are asking the best questions i've ever been asked i'm not kidding oh thank you for real yeah i i mean these are thought-provoking and i i've never been asked that question you should see how much time he puts into preparing these questions maybe that's what you know absolutely he's great well i'll tell you quickly so look you know when i grew up i wanted to be an artist i was trained in drawing that's what it was it was drawing then when i went to art school it was drawing from life drawing humans and animals from life going to cafes going to bus stops going to the zoo drawing elephants everything drawing from life that's the portfolio that got me into disney people think in oregon and disney have to draw cartoon characters is they say don't draw any cartoon characters no mickey mouse you know oh boy you know they don't want any of that right they want you to draw from life once i got into disney i was studying animation i never animated anything until they taught me animation animation is not just how well you draw it's the acting it's the performance that you put into drawing after drawing you could be an incredible draftsman draw like a camera like perfectly like the way a camera takes a picture you could draw that well photo real it doesn't mean you can animate you can animate really well it doesn't mean you'll be a great animator because you may not be a great actor we always say animators are actors with pencils you know one of the greatest animators of all time is a guy named glenn keane i gotta share the story with you guys you gotta hear this glenn keane is the michael jordan of animators and i found out years ago that he used a certain pencil and i thought if i could get the pencil when i was in art school if i could get the pencil that glenn keane uses i could draw like glen keane so i've traveled let me tell you rabbi goldberg has a pen that he uses to write all his sermons i tried grabbing that doesn't work it doesn't work well so what happens i find out the pencil that glenn keane uses gets discontinued you can't get him anywhere you can't find him nothing on the first movie i work on it at disney under glenn keane's leadership is pocahontas i get called into glen king's office he's showing me how to draw pocahontas remember this guy animated aladdin the beast and beauty and the beast tarzan right little mermaid these are his characters you've heard of them right big animator the man and as he's drawing i'm distracted because i'm staring at the pencil he's like what i'm like is that the pencil he's like yeah that's the pencil like wow can i hold that at least okay here we go it's got teeth marks in it's amazing and to me you know it was like michelangelo's paintbrush it's incredible and as i'm holding it he looks at me and goes saul it's not the end it's not the pencil that makes the animator he told me that when he started at disney disney had what was known as the nine old men these were the guys that animated dumbo pinocchio fantasia he goes they taught me two words and i wrote them on my desk and now i'm gonna teach him to you and he pointed to these two words and their words were be sincere he said if you don't feel it they won't feel it you know what makes glenn keane's animation incredible when he animates aladdin or the beast or tarzan or any of these characters it's not how well he draws it's he feels what he's doing he puts it all out there and he feels it i mean he used to walk through the studio with a cape running through the studio with a cape to see how a cape would settle because he was animating the beast and beauty and the beast incredible you have to put your sincerity into your work well i loved that that really taught me how to draw and what to put into my animation but eventually the thing that really got me going was being a filmmaker a director that's the thing where i get to wear all the hats my love of music art direction cameras lenses how do you move the camera to tell the story as a matter of fact the way it really happened was it was during the movie mulan i was animating shang he's the main character the main guy uh that mulan loves and during that song let's get down to business to defeat bum bum the huns robbie brody you know the song or no not this one before your time not this one blink off you had me there but yeah he went a little too far back to the olden days as my kids said you go back to fantasia you know pick up a few right well i was working on mulan and mulan we animated that movie in florida completely at the florida studio because at that point we had three disney animation studios one in florida paris and la and the actors for mulan were actors from la and the guy that did the voice for the villain miguel ferrara had this deep voice eddie murphy was in the movie he did the voice for mushu but whenever they didn't have the actors in la to do the voices because we made the movie entirely in florida they wanted to have animators do the voices that they could just time the animation to and then they replace it with the actor's voice later so they had auditions in the studio for animators to do voice-overs it's called temp voices temporary before they got the actors in so i auditioned i was like 23 years old i auditioned and i got cast as the role of the villain sean you in mulan and i thought it was the coolest experience i went into the sound stage into this recording studio the directors of mulan were there just the way they were directing me the way they would direct anybody and i had to go through these lines i'll do one of the lines for you right now that none of you will know but i'll do the line for you anyway there's a line in the movie see if i can still do the voice where sean you says a little girl will be missing her doll we should return it to her or here's another one my kids love i do this before they go to bed here we go how many men does it take to deliver a message so that's that's his voice like a really deep voice do people ask you to like record their voicemails sometimes you know i used to do a bunch of voices i do a lot of the winnie the pooh voices too how you doing real boy that's my tigger i do lots of little things thanks for noticing me or rapping no no poo do it like this you know lots of little fun voices so anyway i go into the studio to record some of these voices and the directors are directing me and as they're directing me the light switch went off and i'm like that's what i want to do i want to do what they're doing i can do that and from there i made a short film uh which got me my first directing job at mtv and ultimately returned to disney as a director i did lots of disney movies and directed a disney show called doc mcstuffins which you guys might know or maybe not a little before your time josh that's okay that's okay uh i got to work on a lot of fun stuff but the difference basically between animator animators really the actor the director is really responsible for all the storytelling and and many animators do not want to be directors if you think of tom cruise and steven spielberg they're very different roles right right but um yeah so i'm a producer and talk to us about producers well well there's many kinds of producers i'm a supervising producer a creative producer there's some producers called line producers they're the ones that handle the budgeting and the schedules that's not me i'm not into the excel sheets that's not me right i'm into the creative uh so that's so what i do as an executive producer or or a supervising producer creative producer is oversee the storytelling whether it's the scripts or working with writers or other producers working with them on the scripts the art direction the music working with composers songwriters uh camera all that stuff to just make sure the story is emotional and really delivers a powerful message so you shared a little bit your story in terms of um ravinir of noah and some of the things that attracted you in the west side um and and you know one of the things to go behind the bema on behind the bema for a moment we were talking before you know we could find your story you've spoken in so many places in your story is so inspirational people can listen elsewhere and we try it on behind the beam i ask the questions maybe others don't ask or have a conversation on people's minds but but that said you know give us sort of the quick version of what made you fall in love what is it about observant judaism i know you went to camp rama you mentioned you had a conservative docs uprising you were a proud jew it wasn't that you were disconnected and you had your first bowl of shawn you said this is it but something did did pivot you in a little bit of a different direction that's changed your life so what is it because there are a lot of people who grow up in the religious world and right and they want they want out and they want to run to hollywood they're like i could find if i had hollywood i'd be happy religion is making me unhappy if i had hollywood i'd have happiness you have hollywood and yet you ran to religion so what was it that attracted you yeah um another one another great question like boom you did it another fantastic question um you know i it's funny i talk to my mom about this a lot and hopefully she'll listen to this episode and she'll know that we talk about this a lot you know she tells me when i was a kid is like i wasn't so open to hearing so much about the meaning behind what judaism really was you know i was i was a normal kid i was out there playing sports or drawing or or doing something i shouldn't have been doing when i was 10 11 years old i wasn't like hey will you teach me about mezuzah like i want to sat there i think the thing that did it for me is when i was in my mid-20s i'd got my dream job as a disney animator and i had seemingly everything i ever could have wanted when i was living in the happiest place on earth that's what they call disney world i was making great money i bought a sports car i you know i was in a jacuzzi a school i had my friends i was living the life of everything that someone could want in life and i'd worked so hard to get it with lots of rejection along the way when i was there and i reached seemingly the top of this mountain it just wasn't enough there was something missing and that's when i remembered a couple years earlier it was during the making of hunchback of notre dame when i was in israel with my parents for a week and i met someone who was in a yeshiva program i remember meeting this guy in a bagel place and we were talking and i said what are you doing in israel because we were talking about sports and stuff he goes well i just is what he said he goes i just want to find out how i fit in to the jewish people i remember going what do you mean by that and this is what he said he said i was raised a certain way that my parents decided jewishly my parents decided what synagogue we were going to go to what we were going to eat in the house out of the house everything about how i live as a jew is decided by my mom and dad he said now that i'm becoming an adult i want to find out what judaism means to me and when he said that i remember being a little envious but i'm like i would never have the time to be able to go to israel and learn i go back finish working on hunchback then i work on mulan and between mulan and tarzan i had this break of like six months of what we call downtime you get paid to do nothing because they were working on the script they weren't ready for animators like me to come in and draw so i had all this free time besides in one of these pools at disney world it was uh at the beach club hotel it's one of those lazy rivers right you don't even have to be alive and you can swim i love those right and that's where i had everything i could have wanted but something was annoying at me and i'm like you know what i got out of the pool and i'm like i'm going to israel my friends are like why are you going to israel none of my friends are jewish like why are you going to israel because i want to find out how i fit into the jewish people they're like what are you a puzzle piece i don't get it i wanted to find out what judaism meant to me and i went on this program with these two rabbis rabbi benny freeman and rabbi david aaron i'm telling you right now when i stepped off that plane if you would have told me that i was going to change my life after that i would have told you you're crazy i was just there to learn i didn't realize i was there to grow to change what i actually did how i live my life after that trip learning about judaism the light switch went off it went off for me i remember and actually rabbi benny freeman still tells the story he remembers when it happened for me a light switch went off for me that torah is true boom that torah is not just a great piece of literature that literally letter by letter it's written by the creator of the world now how did i believe that how did i come to know that i started learning it that's what i tell people all the time never believe torah is true because some person tells you it's true open it up and read it and see what it does for you and once i realized torah was true it changed how i approached life it was like well if torah is true the creator of the world is telling me that i should be keeping shabbat i better find out more what that is and friday nights all i did friday nights before my israel trip was i went to movies with my friends i worked in the movie business that's what you did friday nights you went to because movie is always premier the first is always a friday night and me and my buddies were always ten rows back right in the middle every friday night i mean every friday night i come back from israel i tell my friends i'm not going to movies anymore friday night and i went and bought myself a book it's a bestseller if you guys haven't heard of it you should get it it's called the hamish it's amazing it's called torah and i get this book and i start opening it and i'm reading the parsha of the week the portion of the week and i'm connecting to the jewish people around the world and i loved it i loved knowing that i was setting up this different life for myself friday night i was going to have a taste of shabbat and yes i grew up with shabbat and my mom lit shabbos candles my dad made kittish but it was always my parents and i have great nostalgia and great memories but now that i was an adult i wanted to find out what meaning i could glean from living this way myself and making it real it's one of the things i learned from one of my rubs rabbi shalom denbo who i mentioned earlier he always says to me you know it's one thing to know something it's another thing to make it real to make it part of us look we're commanded to say the shema twice a day so what's say to shema every day why to learn something new hero israel the lord our god the lord is one i said it yesterday twice i've been saying it since i was you know however 20 years i'm not going to say it again today because i'm going to learn something new if i told you a piece of information right neville chamberlain was the prime minister before winston churchill you'd be like oh i didn't know that okay cool i want you to say it again tomorrow neville chamberlain is that you'll be like you already i know that already we don't say the shaman because we need to know something we need to say it because we have to make it real every single day because when i close my eyes and i say that sentence which is the last sentence we hopefully will ever say in our lives you know at the end of the shema is actually a sentence in itself hashem god is one that itself is a sentence in itself that's actually the last sentence we will ever say god is one and you know what it means god you run the world you run the world and some days when i close my eyes at the end of the day and i say that or the day that i get a big promotion or i get a project to work on that excites you my god of course you run the world because look what you gave me all the success what about the days when i lose my job can i still say god you run the world well that's when the test comes and every day that i think i have it down there'll be a new day tomorrow that's gonna come to test me and some days i might be thinking oh god you run the world some days i might be thinking oh god i'd like to think you run the world that's okay too that's a real relationship and that's what i started to learn and that it was the switch for me that torah is true the creator of the world has my back in all things and i try to make it real it's amazing that that really is yeah i think we're all on fire listening to that what what when you go speak in in um non-jewish settings you're doing the business circuit the keynotes yeah the messages there are about drive ambitions success what what what's the key takeaway it's a little bit of that but let me tell you i'm delivering a message that they don't hear you know in the secular world the messages you will hear is go for abundance how can you be more successful at career how can you get that's it's all about that i always say even in those even in those keynotes and even in those environments where it's not a jewish talk at all i always say to my audiences don't go for a life of happiness because what makes you happy may not be what's good for you you look at look at judaism for a second what do we say in our new year we say shana tova what do they say in the secular world they say happy new year they're giving each other a bracha i got a baraka for you i want you to have a year filled with happiness we don't say that because what makes you happy may not be what's good for you what do we say shana tova you should have something better than happiness go for a life of goodness because that exists there's something out there called good and evil and i want you to have good not what you think is good i want you to have what actually is good and i say to these audiences all the time go for something that's better than a life of happiness go for a life of meaning and how do you have a life of meaning it's not what you accomplish it's what am i striving to accomplish and it has to be one thing not what am i getting it has to be what am i sharing what am i giving how can i impact the world let's go back to winston churchill for a second that's right i'm throwing out reb churchill you know he had an incredible quote listen to this quote amazing he just just quoted him last week in the drasha right that's right rabbi goldberg didn't you do it yeah yeah did you rabbi yeah of course he has the best quotes right the best absolutely tell me if you've heard this this is one of my favorites he says we make a living by what we get but we make a life by what we give that's the message i share when i talk to organizations companies like don't think that life is about getting and getting and getting yeah you should learn perseverance if you want to get but it's who do i become along the way how will i impact how will i take responsibility to make an impact you know someday my kids let's talk real for a second they're going to see a gravestone and they're going to see my name they're going to see my name yitzhak benbara on a gravestone what are they going to say oh my dad worked on disney movies that was cool no that's not what they're going to care about they're going to want to know one thing did my dad try to become a better father did my dad try to become a better human being did he care about other people you know i host a podcast called life of awesome that's the name of the podcast and everyone listening that is a shameless plug go subscribe to my podcast life of awesome it's a podcast that has jewish content but it's all i don't talk it like that it's judaism it's just torah values and what i do is i take movies and i bring movie clips in and show you life wisdom from film and i play the clips from those movies incredible it's so much fun one of the guests i had on my podcast is a man named let's see if you know who he is george foreman who is boxer grill there you go see is he known more today because of the grill or because of the box the grill the grill the grill this is where i get goldberg so you say you say boxing right but yeah today they just know him as the grill guy but look at the guy's accolades for a second gold medal boxer winner gold medal at 20 years old becomes the heavyweight champion the world beating smoke and joe frazier 20 years later becomes heavyweight champion again that's never been done the oldest ever become heavyweight champion george foreman does it again incredible makes 138 million dollars his first year on the grill the guy is successful in everything that he touches i get him on my podcast and i say to him at the end of the episode george got one more question for you what is the legacy you want your children to remember about you what is the legacy you want the world to remember about you without blinking an eye he says one thing i want people to know that i loved human beings that i loved humanity that when i walked down the street i could smile at someone and affect their day that's all i want people to know about me boom incredible amazing and then and then you got to hear this this is crazy you got to hear this after i'm editing the episode i find the fight the night that he became heavyweight champion world he was 20 years old the day before that he was in poverty he grew up in poverty no money poor on the streets he becomes heavyweight champion in the world and in a second he just won the lottery he just got millions of dollars he's owned the he's in the ring like the end of a rocky movie everyone's coming up to him this is like a moment later the emotions are flooding he becomes heavyweight champion the world beating his idol smoking joe frazier and in that moment a sports commentator comes up with a microphone and says george you just became heavyweight champion in the world what's next for you what's going to be next and george goes the first thing out of his mouth without even batting an eye he says the first thing is i want to tell all the kids out there that you can achieve your dreams if you believe in yourself that's the first thing out of his mouth is i want to impact someone else not the first thing is like wow i'm so excited look what i did look what my accomplishment no first thing in his mind is how do i take this position i'm in and impact another person and when he says that check this out the sports commentator doesn't like the answer he's like no no no george i don't mean that no no i mean in the ring what's next for you in the ring and without batting an eye george says the world is my ring and i'm gonna spend every day of my life sharing this message wow boom that means this guy had clarity he knows what life is about it's not about gold medal belts and grills it's about how do i take whatever position i'm in use it as a responsibility to impact humanity i want to give a shelf let me give a shelf selfless plug back when we had mariana rivera the uh hall of fame new york yankee champion greatest closer of all time on i'm behind the bema um and we kept talking baseball and then we were up to what he's doing in life now which is he's obviously retired from baseball and he's he's a pastor he's promoting god's name i've never heard someone talk about loving god as much as he does and he has this children's home and he's advancing and working on behalf of children and we're talking baseball and he said alain also he goes baseball baseball is just a game what i'm doing now what i'm doing now what i'm doing now is life and here you got a guy first first unanimous hall of fame baseball right greatest pitcher of all time close of all time and he says baseball is just a game what i'm doing now that's life so sometimes people think if i climbed there i'd be happy and the people there they're finding you've been amazingly generous with your time we could so we could talk for hours and hours i want to end with one last question which is you've overlapped you've mentioned even some names some jewish celebrities jewish actors is there any jewish actor celebrity out there you've interacted with who has more jewish depth than we would know anyone who you've had conversations anyone who's jewish identity is strong you mention adam sandler adam sandler weaves a lot of judaism into his movies does he carry a strong jewish identity could they be doing more to stand up for israel are they knowledgeable jews that do you ever use your relationships to host for shabbos meals or to try to encourage or promote more judaism with them yeah look it's hard i mean i i i adam sandler i don't think he really does it's hard to know what's going on someone's heart obviously but in a public forum he doesn't really embraces judaism other than in the uh novel song that he wrote you know uh what was the hanukkah song right put on your yeah yeah put it right so i i but i will say we we all know steven spielberg made schindler's list um but as i just want especially if there's any observant jews listening i want you to keep in mind that maybe public maybe he's not observant maybe he doesn't keep shabbos but in his own way he has done so much for the jewish people and his jewish soul has come out in so many beautiful ways in the films that he's made first of all in collecting the biggest library of survivors from the shoah from the holocaust their testimonials he's responsible for that that's literally one man who collected while most of them were still alive this is we're talking the 80s he started the biggest archive library much bigger than john hashem of survivor's testimonies that's a huge deal that's number one and i always go back to schindler's list specifically because while it is a holocaust story there's that one moment when you see that little girl in the red dress you remember that yeah and there go the goosebumps i just gotta show when you said that yeah and there's it's just this scene by the way anyone listening right now just you know just go turn on youtube and type in girl in the red dress go to youtube and just watch that two-minute clip it's it's man i get emotional i can't even it's this it's this scene it's like they're gathering up the jews there's gunshots going on where people are being shot in the streets jews are being taken out of their homes brought to camps but and this little girl is just walking without her mommy and daddy aimlessly through this little town square and steven was like how do i get you to really see the entire holocaust through the perspective of one little girl you don't know her name you don't know what happened to her you don't know what will happen to her all you know is for this moment i want you emotionally to connect with this little girl because i want you to see the story through a relation with her but that's not the only time he uses color in the movie uses it two other times remember anyone remember what it is the shoe the what the shoe no shabbos candles uh-huh there's a scene where their shabbos candles are lit and he chose it was his decision to make those in color also well that's a religious thing shabbos isn't it right it's not just the hulk this is religious that's shabbos that's torah that's god that's where he has deep inside him he has this his neshama knows that there's something beautiful here and uh and he knows that shabbos is the light the torah is the light and as a creative artist he was able to express that through film and share that with all of us of course at the end is the last color scene you have all the scene at the end when all these survivors in the movie the actors are walking they're walking the ones that are saved and all of a sudden it turns from black and white to color and it's the real survivors right and they're walking over that hill in eretz israel in israel and they're walking in color and what he did so beautifully is he showed us that this past is not just our present but it's our destiny it's our future so i i even though we all know that steven spielberg does embrace his jewish identity i don't want anyone to overlook the depth and the spirituality that he has tapped into and brought ultimately to the world really really beautiful that is beautiful so thank you for your time this has been enlightening and uh challenging thought-provoking and inspiring and uh we we're just so grateful for your time we're grateful for you grateful for what you're doing through momentum and other opportunities and everyone's got to tune into that podcast for sure and we just wish you a lot of bracha and in continuing to uplift and entertain and inspire in all the ways that you do and we're just really really grateful for your time so thank you for letting us go behind the bmw with you thank you both so so much it's a huge honor for me to have been had this time with the two of you and especially i just want to just give a bit of gratitude to all the listeners who are listening i just want to share one final thing you know if you're listening to this interview or to any interview to any ted talk to any drush sheer any book you're reading whatever it is your your inspires you be careful if you only end with inspiration because inspiration slips through our fingertips one moment you hear something you're inspired oh charlie herrari said this and uplifted me and the next day you're like wait what did he say when you hear something that means something to you that talks to you you need to write it down and have the moment in your day where you figure out how do you turn that inspiration into action we have to change how we actually live our lives that way you're not just you know feeling inspired you're living inspired that's the goal and ultimately i really have one goal in life and that is how do we grow as a human being how do i become a better version of myself well there's only one way taurus tools for living i wish every single person listening to wake up every day whether you're the most reformed jew in the world the most from jew in the world whether you're living in maya sharim or living in las vegas i don't care where by the way i know a lot of good from jews that live in las vegas but wherever you're living it's how do i embrace my jewish identity every single day to grow as a human being to take responsibility for the world what a perfect place perfect place to leave it's all thank you for your time we could look forward to continuing the conversation thank you so much and we're back rabbi brodie wow thoughts yeah i'm just wondering how we can get a behind the bema like a btb logo maybe on the next uh disney or some winnie the pooh let's go let's get it behind the bema logo snuck into the next winnie the pooh so that might be the coolest thing that would be a big milestone listen there's a lot of um a lot of room to agree disagree a lot of food for thought about culture pop culture um should you let it in do you teach do you watch together do you try to shut it out all together a lot of discussion that you can have but i don't think there's any debate about how inspiring saul is when he talks about his journey and discovery and wanting to know his place in the jewish people and i don't know have you heard someone speak so passionately about torah like really you have rabbis because passionately i wish there were more more leaders talking and he's just a guy that's he's working he's trying to support his family next thing you know he's traveling around the country around the world trying to inspire people so yeah he went from going to movies on friday night to telling his daughter you can't be in a movie who knows what you're giving up we don't know seven figure eight figures who knows what future what finance what what's what fame uh but he taught her like there's nothing to think about you we keep shabbos there's just nothing to talk about and what made him what made him go from one place to the other is torah it's the role of torah that's what torah does okay and he's the real deal because i've seen him on these trips and i see when he he talks in front of hundreds of men and they just it's like a breath of fresh air they've never heard anything like it before and knowing that he's not just about like something you know people will criticize oh you get inspired and then it's done he's like no i'm not the inspiration i'm living inspired it's about making sure that you don't just take the inspiration and then dump it it's let's keep going so yeah what's interesting is there are a lot of bale chuva who it sort of you know slows down or it can wear off they're amazing on amazing journeys and their amazing inspiration to me you know every time you meet about shoot who's radically changed their life to embrace what so many others are running away from it's inspiring but but there are people he i didn't know him then but i feel like he's as much more on fire now than he was when he first discovered observing jewish life and he wants everyone else to taste it he wants everyone else to be part of it he wants everyone else to benefit from it that's that's really impressive that's great i love how he just uses his career as a platform to to to advance the message it's such a great move and i think i want to do that yeah you wear yamaka and then the people around you stop cursing and apologize right and you don't say you don't say a word you just have to be the role model be that person and i think i think instinctively many of us will try be in that world like we know people in our community some were wearing yarmulkes to work you know you've spoken about your father i spoke about my father right back in the day things were different whether they did and they didn't right but today you live in a world where you can get away with it but many still try to hide it right and not not feature it and you don't realize it's like a it's a great opportunity you never know what's going to happen just as a result of that right you could be in hollywood and you don't have to be apologetic or defensive right right and i agree there is no judgment of anyone in the past the world looked very different then and the threat and the danger and the risk was much greater than but today and and you know we're seeing anti-semitism on the rise from that perspective but in terms of career and opportunity here's somebody who's very successful but he's not apologetic or defensive he wears that yamaka and and that very subtly changes environments that he's in and that's that's a really a beautiful and powerful thing and should cause all of us to think about how what difference can we make what is our legacy right and i wonder what we wanted to remember specifically in the hollywood world you know which which i guess there's a disproportionate number of jews certainly that founded hollywood i don't know what the numbers are today but you know is it still considered a very jewish world even maybe more ish than jewish but uh but he's definitely uh he's definitely part of it he is there we're gonna have to leave it right there it's been another great episode great conversation great evening to be together until next time tell all of our listeners stay happy stay healthy