#54: Behind the Bima - Special Guest: Matthew Hiltzik

from boca raton florida rabbi's ephrem goldberg philip moskowitz and josh brody are taking you behind the bema the brs rabbi's 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 welcome to behind the beam it's wednesday night nine o'clock i'm your host rebecca from goldberg joined with my dear friends and colleagues are we phillip moskowitz and rabbi josh brody and we're here to take you behind the bema we're here to go behind the beam it is another great wednesday night another wonderful week we uh marked we marked pesachini we're going to be marking lagba omer many of us are super excited to get a haircut possibly trim the beard it's still being debated and negotiated and to hear music again super pumped for like bowmer gentlemen how was your week what's going on in your life so excited i actually got a call this week from a big yeshiva i can't name the name and they said they would love to bring bring me on to their uh to into the sheer tomorrow morning so there is a classroom somewhere i can't name where it is you might get someone from behind the bema showing up in your classroom tomorrow morning wow come to school wow now we've actually discussed going on the road and doing live shows soon maybe we should start doing that soon guys yeah i'm a little less convinced than the two of you that anyone would show up but brody what are you being brought on to speak about what are you going to be so i'll i'll be honest i'm going to kind of narrow it down it's a 9th grade there's i guess you could say there's honors classes and there's not honors classes so this might not be the honors class which is exactly the class that i used to teach and i might have been part of back in the day and we're just going to have a schmooze session you know they have questions i said the one thing it's going to be clear you're doing the you're doing the rabbi cop out which is like i don't want to prepare so we'll do a question and answer no it's even better than that i told them i told the rabbi i said listen first of all we're going to be honest this open and honest discussion i said i don't want you to guide the questions i want to give them the floor whatever they want to talk about that's what we're going to talk about so i'm very excited is there something you're hoping they're asking and is there something you're hoping they won't no no there's really no question that can't be discussed and i'm just hoping that the rabbi doesn't doesn't uh cut me off in the middle i'm not gonna ask you this question this is not a topic for us tonight but you know this was in the news in certain jewish institutions but what if they ask you it's on the minds of a lot of young people not necessarily because it directly affects them but it affects their outlook they want to know what judaism says about lgbt let's say so do you have a formulated a good compelling sensitive reasonable answer because it's a complicated one it is a complicated one um i'm gonna review a lot of your classes tonight just to make sure that i have things to say no in all seriousness it is it's a serious question and i do have an answer i don't know that it's a good answer it's an answer that that works for me and i think that's the most important thing with all these types of questions first of all you don't know the answer you got to tell teenagers i just don't know a lot of times people try to fake them out and teenagers see right through that so it's going to be an open and honest discussion and i'm very excited about it that's a fantastic that's interesting because what i used to do is every year prior to covert i used to speak to the high school students the seniors um were i used to give a schmooze to the boys before they graduated and i purposely my whole stick was that the teachers had to leave the room right my whole thing was i'm not your teacher there's no consequences for the questions that you ask i know the teachers there automatically you know suppress some of the questions they want to ask them like the first thing i would always do what i would say i want to ask the teachers to leave and then i would tell the guys they'd say the reason why i asked the teachers to leave is that you could feel comfortable asking anything under the sun and he usually took one nakshon ben amin one kid to like ask a question and then the floodgates open and these kids have lots of questions they want to know jewish perspective on things they want to know our insights on things and i agree with you robby brody a lot of times the answer of i don't know i struggle with that also is a great answer for them it's a perfect answer for them because they're living in the information age a little bit of an arrogant uh age that says you know what i can google google and i can get millions and billions and trillions of answers and i have access to everything at my fingertips and when there's a person in a position of authority a teacher a rabbi and you say you know i don't know that's a really difficult issue i struggle with that what do you think about it how do you feel about it let's try to explore it together and i found i i know that i feel myself that when they're people you admire and look up to the greatest moments i've said this often and of shakhtar share and why you were not when he was quoting the within breath of torah all over encyclopedic genius mind it's when someone would ask a question he'd say don't know it's a good question those were the most powerful moments refreshing moments i'm like not bad that also i i admire my rebbe even more sometimes i'll call rabbi newberger with a question and they'll say you know what i want to think about it i want to check with reshacter but will it can get back to you and to me that's a sign of greatness it's a sign of humility and it's a sign of someone who's not just looking to impress you but someone who wants to give the most sensitive and competent answer possible great it was great it's exciting we're looking forward to hearing the report about how it went i can't wait maybe everyone's going to show up at school tomorrow or everyone's not going to show up at school tomorrow they don't know they don't know which school it is they don't know what's how how was your week what do you have to report my week was uh was great i'm looking forward to log bowmer definitely looking forward to shaving for me music is a big thing i i love background music i miss it i know i notice a definite change in my overall mood because of a lack of music i love having it around the house i love having when i write just as background music and so i miss it a lot so i'm looking forward to friday putting on the music and being able to to enjoy it i know if i know i think you feel the same way we've spoken about this haven't we music is a powerful medium one of the things we could talk to our special guest about he's worked in that industry is almost every other music's a medium it brings us back to our childhood camp a bus ride a vacation you hear a song and it transports you it's an absolutely powerful medium it can evoke emotion joy sadness um what's your go-to because i'm with you by the way i struggled the most that when i've have some creative work to do writing or preparing a drusha i always would have music playing it's what gets me going who's your who's your go-to playlist for well so that's the beauty part about music no the beautiful part about music is it really is tailored to your mood so sometimes i just have classical music on i grew up in a house with a lot of classical music so for me that's soothing for me if i'm writing and i just need some noise in the background a lot of times i'll listen to classical music rebecca goldberg has a wonderful playlist that i that i listen to a lot as well not all the songs i love but many of the songs that i love so it really depends on my move again if and i'm in like in a sentimental mood sometimes you'll go to some of the oldies like the old school miami boys choir ones just to get you so that's the beautiful part about music to me is it you can tailor it to your mood if you're in a pump up mood you can go to a certain genre if you're in a mellow mood you can go to a certain genre it's a different world with music too because today we have playlists once upon a time we had we had records we had tapes we had albums i was talking i was actually speaking to a high school this afternoon and i was telling them a story about when someone gave me once a tony robbins cd i guess they decided i needed to be more motivated and then i had to pause and explain to them what a cd was so today yeah it's life our playlists music is a great symbol or example of the rest of our life where you don't have to endure both sides of the tape you don't have to make it through i don't know how many songs are on a typical album 10 10 yeah 12. they say 10 right so there's like two fantastic songs two other you know pretty good songs and the rest of them were fillers nobody thought they were good songs probably including the singers themselves so in the old days you had to listen you didn't fast forward and then stop it and go back and catch the song in the really old days you had to catch a song on the radio and hit record play at the exact same time it was on the radio anyway sorry there's no idea what we're talking about the dual exact clue play no but it also you know i i i talk about this with my kids it also forced me and my siblings to negotiate with each other because my favorite songs weren't always their favorite songs right so we were in the car on a road trip there i'll call it a negotiation to be nice but there was a lively negotiation taking place over which songs were playing and then again you got to go back you got to go forward not everyone's happy nowadays everyone's got their own device everyone got their own set of headphones they all have their own playlist and you lose out on i think it's that skill of trying to figure it out with other people i i just met recently with a wonderful young man who's you know living down here it's a large recovery community addiction recovery community in south florida he's very interesting background i won't say where he's from the new york area but a very intensely religious community now he's got long hair and and some piercings and he's finding spirituality religion in another way but part of his recoveries he's a musician but brody i don't know if you connected yet with him to jam he's very excited to jam with you and he played some of his music and and showed it i said to him i said you know you sound a lot like john denver he's like how do you remember john denver is oh so you know how i know john denver because my dad loved john denver exactly so the rule is driver gets to pick the music right i try to i try to give that rule to my kids today but i don't know today it's kids get to pick everything in the world but driver driver is the dj whoever's driving gets to pick the music so when i was growing up the music was rocky mountain high john denver that was it so but i'm with you got to have your go-to music different different moments we already one of the great innovations we had at brs it's not a major brilliant breakthrough but you don't see it a lot of other communities is we have speakers in front of the shul and in the lobby and there's music playing 24 6 24 6 you come to the boca town synagogue campus and there's yoho goldberg's playlist there's great music playing and at first there were people if you're from another community it's kind of weird you came to dave and you came for a class kid for a meeting why is there music playing you know you came up 6 a.m or at 9 00 p.m there's music playing but even the most cynical people say you know it's fantastic it changes my mood when i open that door even before i cross the threshold and walk in the music changes a mood so i'm with you really excited really looking forward to bringing it back so we have a great guest tonight i'm gonna bring him on momentarily really really excited to have him i've known matthew hilton my entire life our parents are dear friends and have a long history and i would say not only our parents our dear friends his parents are dear friends to me i think my parents probably to him we've known each other a really really long time and he's emerged to be a mentor of mine too really really accomplished in his field tremendous amount of wisdom and i'm really excited to be able to share that with the two of you and to bring it to our audience tonight before we even bring matthew on i'll tell you just a little bit about about him we both grew up in t-neck together matthew is the president chief executive officer of hiltic strategies which is a communication consulting firm uh they deal obviously with communications in general and media relations and media strategy but i think his real specialty i'm excited to get his wisdom tonight on crisis management a lot of high profile people and this part he's not necessarily public you don't necessarily know he's behind the scenes but celebrities high profile people they get into trouble they call matthew he's their go-to guy how to think about it strategize not just to pull one over on the public but authentically and genuinely be able to and maybe we'll talk about some of the cases he's done and at least one that i i know of um he's an advisor to politicians to leaders across industry a active member of the new york state bar he began his post law school career in politics actually press secretary and deputy executive director of the new york state democratic committee he worked in the party's successful 98 coordinated campaign he was on hillary clinton's listening tour for a u.s senate campaign and then ran the jewish relations for her presidential campaign but he's also worked with ivanka trump he's worked with the left and right looking forward to exploring with him how a person can serve in a bipartisan and have the trust of both it's got to be a special person he left politics he went to miramax films promoted the senior vice president of corporate communications government relations and went on to found hiltic strategies and was appointed by the mayor of new york about five years ago six years ago to the board of new york economic development corporation the list goes on a non-active board member of the ghetto film school of montclair school university school of communication jcrc of new york jewish community relations council member of the natan notable book committee and this is really cool to ask him about he's produced five documentaries one many have heard about paper clips it is a must-see this documentary um which really helps understand and you can talk about how it came about but the magnitude the volume of the holocaust you should not be allowed to go and march the living person studying about the holocaust to see paper clips documented holy land hardball and a recent film that has come out about the 67 uh war which is exciting so uh without any uh further ado it is our pleasure to bring on my dear friend matthew hilton matthew great to see you tonight thank you rabbis i appreciate it my music that i like is uh if i'm ever just needing a break it's uh from israel's 70th anniversary there's a great rendition of alcohol halo with 12 000 israelis and i just that is my favorite single favorite thing to listen to the it's the song itself it's the lyrics on the screen and it's the uh just everyone together uh ruby rivlin i think with the president yeah it's it's just the whole thing was great so i i appreciate appreciate you having me and and uh it's hard to follow mr craft from last week who even though i hate the patriots i he's an incredibly good man and i've gotten to know that and the henders said i have to say hello to them that's a must whenever lester is around anything that i'm doing so i scored my points lester and now you can uh you can know that and you can tell me about your special parking guy on 28th street in new york city still so who you have so you know i did my part right i earned my parking i want the guy's number tomorrow the cloud of lester henner sits over behind the bema an amazing amazing and amazing way so the hilton family growing up were famous for being jet fans like crazy crazy jet fans like like walk to the meadowlands jet fans so um that's got to be rough having to have at least i'm sure the dolphin fans are as well it's for the draft so there you go there you go so matthew it's great to have you gave a little intro before you came on um i mentioned that we grew up together in teaneck our family's really close and you went to yavina ramaz a strong jewish education obviously a proud jewish family talk to us about the work that you're in which is dealing with athletes celebrities musicians politicians really high-profile people first of all at first was that enamoring and have you grown tired of it have you realized that not only are they normal and human you sometimes see them at their worst you realize that that in fact they're they're more human they're more fallible they're more vulnerable often the times that that you see them um but just in general being exposed to that world how is your judaism influenced all that you do well one thing is i've always been you know very proud of the community i came from the certain uh jewish phrases that i sort of incorporate into conversation i find that i bring into it um there are things where i try to explain the concept of gamsula tova which can also be used as you know interpreted as a crisis uh you know a crisis is a terrible thing to waste and and adversity breeds opportunity it's sort of the different version of gonzalo toba but there's also ones you know is another favorite because it's i think in the world we live in the uh from my legal background i try to be as fact-based as possible and from my political background try to be as precise about audiences and so those sort of who need to know know uh is can be a powerful thing and a lot of the times those who tweet don't know um so there's a a a gap there but um yeah to answer your question i mean i've been really blessed and fortunate to to work with a lot of talented people um on the the political side it was people who broke uh barriers my my boss at the democratic party in new york was a woman named judith hope who was the first woman to be the head of a major political party in new york she was the first woman elected town supervisor anywhere in long island and he's tampered in the 70s she's a tough old lady from arkansas she was just an amazing role model uh to me you know hillary was the first woman elected in new york and i got to deal with the jewish relations on her her senate campaign and approach things differently and and uh you know just over the years with different high-profile people i've worked with you just get to see a more complete picture of who they are um you understand the insecurities you understand in some cases um you know what goes along with the celebrity and and the opportunities and the you know financials and everything else um is also you know a little more vulnerability i dealt with something just earlier tonight where there was an issue um where someone did like someone tried to call in something about a celebrity to try to get them in trouble with and uh it was with a public organization um and because the person was a celebrity the issue could not just be closed right away because of a fear that if they did close it right away as they probably would have for a regular person um that it would seem to be favoritism towards its celebrity and so all of a sudden a situation that should have gone away fast is going to linger um so i i think the you know from a religious perspective when there are people who do things that aren't at their best i i think i try to use a bigger sample size in terms of and i try not to judge people and i think i'm not going to work with anybody unless i'm comfortable with them and who they are and what they do and to be able to understand that um with those in that part of my my practice that involves crisis um it's usually not going to be there's a small portion who are preparing for a crisis and are unfairly targeted but there's a lot of people who you know weren't at their best at the moment and um you know there's a balance between people there's a couple of people who had been accused of anti-semitism who i was proud to work with like myers leonard who you've talked about and um who the two of us have gotten to speak to together and and you've been just incredibly uh wise and and very sympathetic adviser to him by applying the same philosophy about respect and opportunity to speak and appreciating you know forgiveness but also wanting to empower somebody to be able to to to do well from there and and i think that one of my one of my colleagues has consistently pointed out that people respect uh my faith and practice because they see there's a certain discipline that goes with it and when people know about uh like i was uh had lunch once at a a with a major sports team uh and they instead of understanding that i would eat salad there they had chicken salad and i had to explain to them like respectfully that i was not going to eat it and i i've been through this enough but it leads it leads to other conversations and i think when it comes to to empathy and and uh and forgiveness and perspective uh you know that's something that i've learned a lot of and i've thought a lot about and and there are people like you and and uh you know other rabbis that probably looks dean uh you know here in uh kj in new york and and we have you know really had a great group of rabbis here um so i've been fortunate to to learn from wherever i can and uh religion and being proud of who you are uh is important because certain communities you go into uh and they're not used to seeing jews so they're gonna base their you know they're gonna judge based on the example you set and so that's something where it's uh additional uh burden but i think it's a great opportunity and i try to be optimistic about that i'm curious if you could further unpack for us what are the criteria when there's a potential client they reach out to you or you see the opportunity to help somebody in crisis um you know we had ben broffman on a show and obviously it's very different as a defense attorney determining who you'll defend and it was just about everybody except you know like a neo-nazi would cross the line for him um you're not a defense attorney but you are helping people manage crisis so help us because even as private citizens when we're reading about or hearing about or exposed to either a public crisis or within a community a neighborhood a family someone who did certain things when do we hold their feet to the fire when do we hold them accountable when are we more understanding and more flexible and giving them some room and realizing they're human when do we zoom out the lens and see it as part of a bigger picture when do we zoom in the lens and say this is intolerable what are some of the criteria you use to determine who who's like who's a client you want to help and who's acted in such a way that you don't want to be anywhere near them um i guess the best place to start would be a client who i didn't want to work with which was there was a uh the the long time reporter in the white house correspondent this woman named helen thomas who would always sit in the front row and during the white house briefings and she was much older she had an issue where certain anti-semitic things that she said came out and i was i was called about it and i would say probably around 95 plus percent of what it is is incoming calls and that was something i had no interest in doing because i really believe she was an anti-semite so i had no interest in in working with her because i i don't i don't need to spend my time on that um you know you brought up ben brofman and and you know i know ben well and uh you know he and i have had i've learned from him on as he's somebody else who's been a great example about being you know very proud about his background um and uh how he goes about things and i am a defense attorney of sorts i'm actually i'm a lawyer but uh some of the times i am actually doing you know making the case uh but in the court of public opinion um instead of a specific court so there are some similarities but um you know for me it's um there's been examples of cases like uh with ray rice the football player who had the you know the um the incident with his wife in the elevator um i worked with his wife first and then with ray and a situation like that i spent uh mult several hours um in you know the house with their whole family and then i said i wanted to spend uh time just with janae his wife and uh her mother uh with a woman who worked with me who had been through some some uncomfortable personal situations of her own and we spoke for over three hours and i asked a lot of questions and i was extremely comfortable with working with both of them and janae first and then uh with ray and and ray's one of my favorite people um you wouldn't think that based if you only had that sort of small sample of knowledge of of that but he's somebody who looked internally and he used it as an opportunity he'd been someone who's his father was killed when he was one he had been through all sorts of situations never got trouble in new rochelle where he grew up or at rutgers or anywhere or baltimore with the ravens and but he took the time not to there's a whole other part of the story but he chose not to focus on that and he chose to focus on what he can do better about himself and we sat in a lot of different sessions with different people and learning about you know children who are in abusive households and and then he went and i was with him at um at ohio state and usc and a few other places where he spoke about um two college football players about decision making and so it went beyond his own situation without getting help it was about you know how you handle yourself how you have people around you and and things like that are valuable um we worked with man tite who's the football player had the whole fake girlfriend thing there's going to be a i have a cameo in the netflix uh thing about that later that's going to come out later this year but you know manti was a very religious person of his own the the polynesian community has a lot of people who are part of the uh you know the church of latter-day saints with the mormon community and um it was amazing to learn about some of the crazy things that went on in that community between like battles between families and it was almost the equivalent of like us having one rabbi from a group apologize to the rabbi from the other community of what happened and um and you know even with ray his mom raised you know pretty religious guy and um it just was sort of the power of the church or the power of um other um the power of the church or the power of other uh you know types of religious um institutions that really mattered so i was you know i was it was it's not easy sometimes but i think i try to look past what other people should think and you know my um my parents gave me very good uh value system about not judging people um and i think in a lot of cases um you know people can find themselves in those situations i mean the hypocrisy of certain you know elected officials if you look at you know there's one in particular in new york who was the first to be critic who's the first to be critical and how someone andrew cuomo should resign and then you know the person had their own incident that came up today so if you applied their own standards to them then they should be resigning but i'm sure they won't because no but they didn't do it so i don't know what the truth is or not but i think that those who are so quick to want to judge others need to be a little careful because it comes around on them too and it's uh it's ironic how that happens sometimes yeah there are so many places to pivot to and i want i want the other robots to ask but just to follow up what you said because i i was honored that you invited me to be part of um a relationship with myers leonard who was playing for the heat at the time here in south florida we've spoken about him and in in in a gaming uh atmosphere where people were watching play a video game he said something which was horrific but and we'll come back to this hopefully matthew with you in terms of the anatomy of a good apology he really took ownership he apologized and i'm grateful to you for introducing him to me and he's been to my home and we've had lunch together and one of the one of the incredible things he shared with me and not to violent his confidence is that while at first it was devastating it was so clear how sincere he was first of all the moment that you were working with him that's all i needed to know that you believed in him that this wasn't a big picture personality flaw but was a specific incident um he he oozed sincerity um and emotionally really at such such contrition about what had happened but but over the time i've gotten to know him he's now at a point where he says you know not that he's grateful that happened or it's a good thing but he's learned so much about himself about the jewish community about the world about the power of forgiveness and and that's the difference from if you vilify someone versus if you educate someone you could turn them around they can become the biggest advocate the strongest advocate for the things that we that we care about but i know we have so much more to talk to you about so yeah i think that with him like we had met actually um initially we do a lot of work um with different athletes and sports and we have different agents especially uh ca creative artist agency that we do a lot of work with um and so we've worked with athletes in in basketball and a lot in basketball and football um we've worked with tony parker and and paul george and and some others a lot of football players a whole bunch of coaches in professional college football and um and a couple of hockey players couple of baseball worked with ryan braun which was his own situation he uh had his time down at the u before he was um before he was with the brewers and and that was a whole other experience there's a small chance he would play for israel in the uh olympics this summer i'm hoping he does that but it's because he's the uh he's the grandson of holocaust survivors but he um you know and and we worked with others in other sports where we we sort of got to see who they really were with myers the context i had originally was last summer in the bubble um his brother is a veteran and he was really struggling with how to be respectful because he wasn't going to kneel for the national anthem but he did really care genuinely about black lives matter and um and so we got to know each other during that conversation last summer so i wasn't really coming at it fully cold with him when this happened but i knew within five minutes of talking to him this time you know i knew it was real um and i think that the key in these situations is also to understand like with him step one of everything was really to learn about the community the federation was great there were um you know all sorts of rabbis rabbi penny down in uh mabby beach was very helpful and obviously you made a tremendous impression on him and um we had a couple of other rabbis from the reform community uh and we had this amazing event with the hillel uh kids at the university of miami a couple weeks ago where i interviewed him for the first half hour and then he asked the kids about their own experiences with anti-semitism and the stories that they told were like were unbelievable and reminders about how fortunate we are so many of us who who grow up in a bubble of our own where we have the chance to uh you know to feel safe and not realize the outside world and the challenges and how strong it is and um very much like the the people in whitwell tennessee who became you know sort of modern day versions of righteous gentiles they weren't saving lives the way people did during the holocaust but they were preserving memories and they were people who can be great emissaries to the community and and so the hope is with myers where we're already talking with the adl and we we work with a couple of uh companies in the gaming space to be able to pivot this towards uh removing hate and anti-semitism and other sorts of racist language on video games so that that's sort of the next stage of this to take this and use it as an opportunity we have folks at activision and elsewhere who who you know have shown real interest in it so my hope is that we can pivot to do that and i sort of view the world as like a dashboard and how can we connect people and find ways to build relationships that's great great transition to the next question wow first of all there's so many different directions that i'm thinking of uh taking this in but you know i want to make it a little bit practical for some of our listeners and obviously oftentimes when you're dealing with clients whether it's an athlete or a politician you're dealing with them in a moment of crisis and my guess is that part of what you're doing is unpacking the steps to take them out of a crisis to think things through for people in their own lives who are going through crisis we're going through difficult moments what are some things they should be thinking about what are some steps that they should be rationally conducting and going through in order to get themselves out of that crisis based on your experience what would you give to john doe who's listening on the street i think the most important thing is really to just be honest in your assessment of the situation and if you're not straightforward with somebody about what's what actually happened and the facts then it's very hard for them to help you by the by as an attorney even though i never practiced i keep up my membership in the bar it's it's an incredibly valuable um background and education i went to fordham i loved it there and um jesuits were extremely kind to people especially about jewish holidays and classes but the uh you know it's something that it's really helpful to understand which audiences actually matter the most to you um and what are the facts that you have most your favor you have to consider whether there are legal implications for for something you're involved in uh understand uh someone who's a little bit we deal with a lot of people who aren't necessarily as public but become public for things but to understand you know is it something that you know the i try to look at it from uh and encourage people to look at what are your medium to long-term priorities but understand that what you do in the short term can have an impact on that there's so many people that rush to just say something publicly or to rush to make some sort of an apology and the list of things that go into what you should consider it's you know where what point is it in someone's career what is the cultural issue you know with the cultural norms for a community um was this repeating a mistake someone else did was it something that was on video or on audio was it something that um you know there is a context of where this is the snapshot in the middle of it where there was something before and there was an after um and and i think with you know just more broadly we we help people with you know storytelling i guess the fact that i got uh you know got myself in plenty of trouble with things and yav and i learned how to build the uh the defense you know case in elementary school i got over it in ramaz but um you know and i think that it's a big piece of it is just being honest about it and knowing that someone's there to help you a lot of what we do is the psychology of just listening um and uh and so each situation obviously is different but i think the most important thing is who is the person that matters the most to you what are the facts you have uh and you know timing um legal ramifications uh those are probably the top things the company here because it's interesting just to dig a little deeper you know with the myers-leonard case and i don't know how much you want to divulge or not want to divulge but you specifically didn't parade him right after the incident my guess is you could have put him front and center some jewish organization would have loved to have hosted him for a big public apology and you know you could have put it on the front pages of all the newspapers again my sense is that's not what happened a lot of the work that happened correct until this point was behind the scenes so walk was that purposeful why would you do that when do you go for the immediate apology when do you play it a little bit slower yeah um yeah again i think each situation is on its own my general philosophy is to is that people really want to hear about what you've actually done not about what you're going to do and i think that there is a key distinction between the two because a lot of people can say i'm going to go do something and uh but they don't really care very much until they actually hear what you're going that you've actually done it and even in this case uh there were some well-intentioned rabbis not robbie goldberg who were like it was i had to do everything possible to be respectful but to explain to them no you cannot do this publicly no you cannot do this publicly and it was ironic because deborah lipscott was like quoted in one of the articles and she actually picked up on it and said i think it was a jta story and picked up on it said you know he didn't do anything with the media and i think the other thing is it's also much more powerful where you have third parties who can speak to your intentions and to what you did as opposed to it being you talking about yourself um you know i went through that a little bit with mike rice who people may remember he had been a coach at rutgers and there was a video someone really got him pretty good they took 121 hours of footage and took like around 24 seconds of that um of him throwing a ball at players and using uh you know inappropriate language uh it wouldn't be an answer to your lgbt question but it was offensive to the lgbt community um and uh and so that was something where you know everybody in the world wants to you know all the news outlets wants the big get like of that person who's going to speak then and you know my thing with him was look we got to deal with a couple of issues here one of them is um you know you need to deal with the language you used and to show that you get it even though there's certain language that you know people may have grown up using and didn't necessarily appreciate the power of it especially the kids who were growing up in the lgbt community and you used certain language and so uh this amazing organization called glsen it's the gay lesbian straight education network and i had helped them on something and so i got to know them a little before they do really great work on a very human level of educating people and um and so you know we set it up for him to meet with a bunch of high school kids in the area new jersey where he was living and these kids gave it to him pretty good and he learned a lot listening to them and he ended up speaking to other coaches at an event later that summer and uh and then he spent time with john lucas who was the uh well-known player on the houston rockets i think he's an assistant coach some would they be with them now but he who ran a great rehabilitation facility down in houston and and so he was able to mike was able to go down there and coach around the kids and be able to sort of deal with you know some of his intensity uh he did help all the kids at rutgers their grades went up um he really did care about them as students and this was like a significant misrepresentation he was but at the same time it was like let's work on it so by the time he did an interview uh we did concurrent things with the new york times magazine and then he did something with robin roberts uh on good morning america that by the time he did that he had something to talk about he had like real life experience that he could reference and relate to and i just think you have so much more credibility when you can you know once you do speak that you can talk based on you know really uh specific details and uh and it really makes the lesson stick with you and i think it helps make the lessons stick with others as well queen matthew can we pivot over to um the film you know robert brody maybe he'll take us there because roberto's been very invested and involved in holocaust education how many trips have you taken to poland josh 15 trips almost 15 trips of kids so yeah powerful movie i remember when we showed the film at that brs you mirrored it yeah you can take the question i'll i'll follow up with something else okay so no i just wanted to give every audience a little background to paper clips how you got involved in it it's really a life-changing film when you watch it and you're wondering you know but the magnitude the size of the of the people murdered in the holocaust how it can happen and you know a town that wasn't familiar with it you really in a very creative way got them involved and then captured that through a documentary so give us a little background about uh about paper clips if you can i think that's a great example of of having friends who have values that are similar to yours so that was at the time i was i was working at miramax i i worked in the communications department so i got to deal with issue based films over time i got to deal with a film called ararat that dealt with the armenian genocide and we got a ton of hate calls messages emails from the turkish community that denied the armenian genocide ever happened we dealt with issues uh it was a film called rabbit-proof fence where we had dealt with uh there was a policy that the australian government had until the mid to late 70s where they would take aborigine girls away from their parents so i got into it with like some minister of something in australia um and so we sort of mixed it up on a whole bunch of issues because we weren't the great thing about miramax was that we weren't afraid to take on uh there were not great things about that happened involving one of the co-chairmen but uh in terms of the films we got to work on uh we got to work on amazing things and make a huge difference to people in telling their stories and in raising awareness of things and and uh and so it was a project which uh my friends um donnie epstein and ellie landau and eshai gross they had uh who were friends by new york they had uh received a seven minute reel that had been shot by a group called the johnson group and this guy ari pinchot um who who worked with them at the time and has gone down to produce some other things as well and so basically the johnson group was based in northern virginia they were had uh heard about the what was going on and what well uh they sent a film crew they'd captured footage of when the survivors from long island uh who had been invited down to this community of 1800 people that's around 30 miles outside of chattanooga it's within 100 miles of where the clan was founded and where the scopes trial happened and um depressed community some of the mines down there had closed and so they wanted to educate the kids down there about um about um how to be respectful of others and tolerance and they decided to learn about the ultimate example of intolerance and so um as it sort of spread around those who saw the film these german white house correspondents wrote about it and then a woman in the washington post uh had written something and so they went down there they captured this footage they had a seven minute reel they were trying to figure out what to do with it they were maybe going to make it into a documentary for tv and um so they brought it to me and it was the one project i ever brought into miramax i announced all the projects by doing press releases but it was the only one that i ever brought in um and and uh you know i convinced the weinsteins to to buy it and then to buy the rights and and then it became sort of my thing to do with a friend of mine jeff tyler who was in there there's a couple of other executives who were super helpful um and we brought it in i got to it was a big difference between what the first cut was and and what ended up later i i learned use some of the editing uh skills that i learned from uh being around some of those films and um and then when it wasn't and it was named one of the top five by the national board of view which is a really great honor it's sort of like it's very it's these among the highest honors other than getting an oscar nomination we screwed up the uh the nomination uh process the eligibility but for the oscars but we um the other four were all nominated there was a tupac documentary that took the place of paper clips which you know it's understandable it's gonna go from one to the other but um so uh i bought the project and uh so we distributed independently and then over the years we stayed very close uh the love of his family of chattanooga started a non-profit down there uh called one clip at a time that uses the film as a training tool for teachers around the country and um we are in the process now of finding a way to be able to uh of to do a follow-up film about what happened there um i there's i've come across some fascinating people i've been very fortunate in my life so john meacham who's the presidential historian and speechwriter so uh he's from tennessee he's from chattanooga he was familiar with the story and and he and i have gotten to know each other over the years on some different things and and so you know he's taken an interest spoken to the folks at vanderbilt about ways that they potentially could do things about it and i'm working on a follow-up to it which i think there's a pretty great way we can do it but uh it has been a little bit of a struggle getting there and also you know having a day job so hopefully we will get there and paper clips did better in the box office and had more support in south florida than anywhere in the country or the world for that matter and so my hope is that we will uh we have all sorts of alternate types of distribution now where there's ways to do it theatrically and also you know different screenings and uh hopefully in person um and to be able to really use uh break it down as an educational tool and and people like myers he's from a small town in illinois and he really related to the film when he saw it and my proudest moment of it was um uh we had done some work with dreamworks a while back and and uh got a chance to spend a little bit time with steven spielberg and he was incredibly complimentary about the film and and that was probably the greatest thing about it i mean the the difference we made is the greatest thing about it but in terms of having a moment where it really meant a lot um it's better than you know he's talked about it so it was yeah he's he's an incredibly special man and i know he just uh started summing through the shaw foundation to be able to to fund additional uh projects that and so he has not given up on this even well after schindler's list so um so that's how that happened and and from there you know i sort of got you know i was asked about things was great film holy land hardball about the attempt to bring minor league baseball to israel um and then there were other sorts of ones i i worked on one with my friend jose antonio vargas who was one of pulitzer of the washington post he came out as being gay in high school and we had worked with him on coming out as being undocumented back in 2012 and um he had been from the philippines and his mother had sent him to live with his grandparents in northern california when he went to get his driver's license four years after he arrived he found out that his papers were uh were fake and people helped him through school and there were a couple of states at the time um i think was washington new mexico i think it was i think it was washington washington oregon uh that allowed you to have a driver's license even if you weren't documented he ended up when he pulled or he was covering like political races like the and he was in the white house like that and he was able he paid his taxes but he lived here but uh and when these different you know things happened we we also had a uh i'll i'll send that to you separately is my uh connection between uh bamidbar my bar mitzvah parsha and vaishev which i read every year i read those two parches every year and by midbar is uh you know i was all about counting which i thought was really really boring uh and vaishev is his yosef joseph was the i think original dreamer not just in his dreams but also for the fact that he like many dreamers was sent by his relatives to live in another country uh and he worked he was a trusted person working in someone's home uh and then at the end of it he was forgotten so there were different parallels and and jose is probably from the same shores of you know yosef anyway but um there were definitely really great lessons he came to our seder and talked to and and was with our family and and so when you sort of get a chance with one documentary then people sort of trust you with others and um my friend phil berger had a story uh that was you know really powerful um uh rachel ramaz graduate her she went to find the the barn with her grandfather where he had been saved and hidden by a family and so that was another project that had actually premiered at the miami jewish film festival a couple years ago so there's no shortage of stories where can somebody the people who haven't seen paper clips which is like nobody but if somebody hasn't seen paper clips or the barn where can they where can they find that uh paper clips is available on amazon you can see it there and the barn uh we can work it out to send a link that anybody who watches we we have to try to give special prizes for anybody who goes behind the vemma and so you know we can provide i think we should have like a screening series with that where you can extend your brand and that will be your way that you can take it on the road and you know we've talked about this so i think when we get out of this movie theaters are going to have like real problems filling spaces especially during the day so i am a strong fan of the fact that you can extend your brand by doing educational programming where you can get kids to go to movie theaters and you could syndicate programming around the country where you can actually have uh you know other other really good guests who can speak to the kids so i i'm really i'm very optimistic about the opportunities here i mean ninth graders are one thing but if you you know you can go like middle school and high school and and actually tell us who you're speaking to that that could open up a whole new set of possibilities for you so i'm in to work with you guys on that pro bono so that's perfect it's a perfect segue because first of all i want to say how excited i am to finally meet you for the last 20 years whenever there's some problem at the school my friend what we know is even before my friend matthew i have a guy for years we're hearing about this guy i never disclosed who it was matthew and his father they're my guys right absolutely i learned the truth george is the original guy like he was always the one who always you know it's a great example about giving his time and his and his and his insights to people so he said a very good example for me i just thought i just one second george hill's like story is my favorite story so my younger brother who's a hundred million times smarter than i am was the valedictorian of like every school he ever attended so matthew's father george was the president of yavin academy in the year that my brother graduated he was a valedictorian he was delivering a speech and george introduced him as the president of the school he gave a speech so george has always been concerned that you know i have a younger brother who's so much smarter how could that impact me so in his introduction to the graduation of my younger brother george gives quotes some torah and he says i was studying this with my javrusa ephraim goldberg who's brilliant just to make sure that i wouldn't be hurt that day anyway yeah rabbi brodie go ahead it's the second board and he felt you know really close to you being a second born son after having a sister you know an older sister so that may have been part of it too amazing first of all i'd love to hang out with you for a day i'm done we have so many people moving down to south florida i would love to do that i'm totally in so we will definitely do that i love it so i watched an interview that you did with ucla i guess it was one of their business programs and you mentioned something there which rabbi goldberg always says to the staff something which i've heard many many times i'm not i'm i'm assuming he probably got it from you just because you know you're the guy so he always says he always says you should know that the way it's always done is something which you'll never hear around here the way it's always done is not a a a a system that's the way we've always done things i hate that right you hate things you hate it rabbit goldberg hates it so i'm just wondering when you're sitting in a shul and you're perhaps a kj or wherever you might be do you ever say to yourself you know i understand that within orthodox judaism things are that's that's the challenge we have because you kind of have to always do the way we've always done but there's so many things right now that we could we could we could come up with like you just mentioned this thing with the movie theater there are things which you would say you know why can't they just do it like this now yeah we're always trying to reinvent and come up with some great things yeah i mean i i think that there are um yes is the answer um and i think in the educational realm there's a ton uh i've you know really appreciated my uh my friend uh seth greenfield's wife phoebe their their son jack greenfield started a program at frisch that um like a sports business management program and and so you know it's a great program they do a great job and you know it's something where they just bring people with different perspectives and to teach the kids you know i i i'm on the board of an organization called ghetto film school in uh which is founded in the south bronx and it is a program that's very very rigorous intensive program after school for uh kids it's it's means based but it's 90 minority uh in new york city uh we've expanded it since to la into london but it's a program that is teaches kids how to use content originally was a little more focused on film organizations 21 years old but it was it's an amazing uh it's an amazing group it's it's very results-oriented it's not just oh let's just make ourselves come by y'all feel good let's like really teach the kids uh and so they start and they have a program with widening kennedy the advertising agency where it gives them a chance to um to do short ads there's an opportunities for them of uh producing their own short film and then the way the project ends is that the kids um actually spend time uh they write everybody writes a script and then they do a short film they go to another country to do it and one of the great things is when they they went to tel aviv um i think was three years ago and one of the best things when they came back was that it was the kids came back and thankfully neither of the films were ones that were problematic from an israel perspective um but or to me they weren't um and one of the best things was talking to the kids afterwards and you go to the screening of it it's an amazing program like you have a reading where they go over the script and the kids voted to the directors and these celebrities will sit and directors and actors will sit and give them feedback and um and when they came back from israel there were a couple of kids you know grew up in the bronx and they said look i felt safer in tel aviv because i wasn't worried about what the police were going to do to me i saw how friendly the people were it was it was this like again this perspective of those who are not jewish telling the story of of us who are it's something where you know when you engage with the community and you can see the power um corey johnson who's the uh the speaker of the city council here in new york and he's somebody who you know a little more liberal than i am but he is he's someone who uh he his big thing was when he was 17 years old he was the captain of his football team outside of boston and he came out as being uh came out as being gay and uh he um he will not accept the endorsement seek the endorsement anything of anyone in uh anybody elected official or any group in new york city who's pro bds because he went on these jcrc trips to israel and he saw for himself about how tel aviv is truly one of the most tolerant cities in the world um and the country is um and um and so you know when i i look at those opportunities and we have a chance to engage with people like that and cory came to speak at ramaz and you know we're trying to work on some ways for the ghetto film school uh kids to be able to deal with some of the kids that ramaz with programs what frustrates me is the pace of being able to make that change that you referenced it's being able to understand what are the resources and and there are so many accomplished people in our community who really are do such amazing work on their own and you know do fascinating things with people and have relationships with people who would be happy to share their experiences and um you know i've dealt probably with like 15 jewish day schools and and then probably five or six other private schools and a couple universities over time we have a whole education practice and um the schools that don't create barriers to entry and are willing to say just because we it's a it's sort of the uh the related line which is just because we haven't done it doesn't mean we can't do it and there are some schools that say well we have it's also not just we've done it this way so we have to keep doing it it's also we haven't done it so therefore we can't start doing it right and the frustrations there are just off charts the other thing i loved about it which i thought you may were going to bring up about that interview was i made sure to talk about um the the pride about israel during that interview i brought up uh a specific point where i talked about uh you know anti-bds stuff because i couldn't take the opportunity at one of those schools after the way they treated some of the jewish students without mentioning that uh in the conversation so i felt good about it even though nobody else noticed it you've been amazingly generous with your time there's so much wisdom we could talk to for hours more but we're running out of time i want to ask you one more question um you know we spoke a lot about tonight learning the whole person giving them space to be able to see was this a was this a bad moment or is this part of the character of who they are you have we alluded to it earlier you've worked with in politics on both sides of the aisle the very few people who can do that have the trust of both sides is it because you keep your politics to yourself or people understand that whatever you believe personally that won't interfere with your ability to help them but you know you've worked with high profile from hillary clinton to ivanka trump and i'm not sure how many people can say they've done that but i'm curious as we close with you if you have some thoughts about the cancel culture what's going on in the world around us today where someone who thinks or does or speaks differently there's all of a sudden an immediate knee-jerk reaction cancel them cancel them silence them close them down what do you see as the impact of that just not on your obviously on on your company and what you do but on the world that we live in and and what the unintended maybe consequences will be if we allow it to continue i started to think about this because i agreed to participate in a panel about this um one of the uh hollywood trades is called the rap and i agreed to participate in something at the end of may or beginning of june about this and i need to approach it in a way where i am being appropriately respectful and not getting myself in too much trouble for how i say it but um you know i am i am linda hildsich's son and linda hilsick tells it the way she sees it so i'm very much her son and so uh i will probably do the same thing um look i think a lot of it goes back really to um to understanding who you're speaking to and understanding what you believe in and and understanding you know how you share those beliefs and and how you can make a difference and um you know there are some of it is um just in accessibility like i just believe that um there's a lot of people that complain about a lot of things but there's not a lot of people who are willing to actually do something about it and that they're they'll talk a lot and that their favorite thing to do is complain and we've seen it you know here in new york um you know during the pandemic on the upper west side there was you know a few different hotel owners who decided that they would make it through by you know offering up their hotels for um you know for the homeless but people who had like serious addiction issues and mental health issues and um and there were all sorts of people on the upper west side who you know and there were problems that resulted not surprisingly because they weren't being treated properly uh and so therefore they caused problems the community well that all of a sudden woke up people on the upper west side where we lived until four years ago we live up race now that like they didn't understand well by the way you have never participated in the political process so maybe now you should wake up and actually do it i mean we have a lot of turnover in the city council we'll have a new mayor a new comptroller um you know this year probably mostly pretty much everyone who wins in june in our primaries but like these people didn't participate and i think there's a need to be able to build coalitions with others and and so for me i never viewed it like we have a guy raul de molina we've worked with these on the show gordo will flock on univision and we've worked with the role probably around 12 years um he lives down to miami and he's amazing he's amazing he goes to israel and and you know he's actually incorporated into his show he's it's not just because his friends are jewish but it's because he also really believes in himself and and there's a theme with the things i'm saying about others talking about us and and i think we also have to understand and talk about them you know teaneck where we grew up people don't realize the history of teaneck it's it's one it was you know one of it was the first majority white community in the entire country to voluntarily desegregate the school system in the late 60s and who did it it was the jews who were at the teenage jewish center which is an extremely traditional you know orthodox service you know with mixed seating there with rabbi washer and and what they built and maddie feldman who's a state senator who's the mayor of scenic at the time and muhammad hamidu dean who was the muslim mayor of teenage two terms he finished last year who became a really close friend of mine over the last 10 years you know who was elected by the he was a muslim an indian-american muslim whose father helped start one of the first maasan tinak and he was elected by the black community and by the orthodox community and you know you just when you learn about others you know he learned about it one time i was meeting him during the summer and his thing was oh nine days not sure which restaurant you know he reminded me of that um and then when he went to israel and he dealt with this electric and father like crazy people who went after him when he was going to pray at the uh at the dome he you know we we talked about these things and and recently i was very fortunate to be part of a group um that was you know supporting and advising darnell fraser who's a 17 year old girl who took the george floyd video and so um there was a group that was a a lawyer in minneapolis who i had happened to dealt with two weeks before and so she brought us in as part of a pro bono team and an amazing woman kelly jackson down in atlanta who works on a lot of civil rights projects and and so we just got to really know each other and have like even them more than darnell but to really understand the issues that her family was seeing and and the feeling that she had of feeling helpless of taking the video but not being able to save him and and all these different things when you get to learn about other cultures that's probably the thing i enjoy the most and and it addresses a lot of the things you brought about which is when it comes to politics i'm able to work with people because i'm fascinated by people i'm fascinated by their stories i'm fascinated by what's happening i mean ivanka did not work on them politically like i am a very much a socially liberal person i have a lot of problems with woke people i think people who are you know woke they've made it a religion because maybe they should have had another religion uh and that they would have been better served but um you know i i'm always in a position where i don't really have very many political clients um i had a couple over the years but my attitude is if i'm asked to help with something then i'm going to help i had evangelical clients where you know we agreed on like probably 75 of things we disagreed on guns and we disagreed on a couple other things but you know i think it's it's really the human interaction i think that you know ivanka got to know in 2012 and and jared and worked with vancouver until until inauguration day in 20 uh i guess january of 2017 and um you know i got to see i mean i made it very clear to her i was voting for hillary i you know worked with hillary until he was at my wedding we i was giving money i made it clear i would not work on the you know things relating to politics but she was my friend and she's still my friend and um and hope hicks who worked in the white house that you know came from working with us and i introduced her to ivanka and and i'm really proud of that just as i was proud that another one of my guys who worked in the eric cook ended up being like catacombs for the speaker of the city council melissa marco verito in new york who is way probably way more liberal than i am but you know was a really dynamic woman who who you know got the job and and people went there and i think that all of us should be in a position that if we have something to offer and i think everybody has something to offer it could be at different levels it can be different ways but if someone calls upon you for your opinion or to serve or to support and it could be a thing that you're asking any of the three of you are asking your community to support programs you're doing and all the i mean you guys have really done amazing work of you know finding ways to get people through the pandemic and even if it's catching your ten minutes you know uh you know in one of the mornings or something else it's you found a way to serve and people could sometimes their service can be sharing that with somebody because they may want to hear it and i think that's where not enough people sort of pause and realize the impact that they can have by sharing their views i think that some of the leadership we have uh you are the three of you are absolute examples of the contrary um but one reason i i love the be able to be associated with um with kj and robert luchstein and other things that rabbi steinmetz and and um and army weinstock when until he left like and um and the krauses um they're people who try to do things differently and approach it differently and i think my hope is that you know ramaz can keep up that tradition um we need some work but hopefully like everybody else and hopefully they can do it and you know my hope is that overall that all of us can take this time and and realize um you know there's a lot to give and as the world changes and we try to embrace the things that are the good changes in the midst of terrible tragedies that the people have had over the last you know 15 months um for 14 months that like let's let's sort of get to the other side and and figure out how we can represent our community best how we can engage best and and my attitude is hey i'll take a question from anybody as long as they're serious um i'll take it but if the person's a phony uh that like this elected official who had karma today in new york then uh you know then it's you knew that was gonna happen because it was such a phony and they you know pretend to be so jewish but they're running after bds people you know that that doesn't work and um you know there's people like last thing i'll just say is like i you asked before about like do people come to me or i go after it um and usually you know someone asked me for something but um i asked to me and and have a conversation with richie torres a con congressman for the south bronx because i saw i'd been wanting to i heard great things about him before and um he gave a great speech on the floor in yom hatsumu on the floor of the congress where he talked about israel and the values and he's a he's a gay hispanic politician from the south bronx and that's not the first person you're going to think of as necessarily oh this is like a true friend of israel and he is because he has values and it's the way he's brought up and bds doesn't stand for what he believes in and and he's someone who kim jeffries is another person and and so but richie torres is a young guy and he doesn't have the relationships and i would just encourage people you know if you ever want to be politically active find time to support people like like that congressman because we need to show them that if they're going to think of us and we're not one issue voters but some people are and that that's their business but if you are that's the guy you want to support because we need to stand up for what we believe in and against negatives and and uh you know my hope is that when you do these conversations and people could take things away i mean mr craft is a amazing man on the stuff that he's done for the jewish community he's been proud he's brought athletes and that's a trickle-down effect you know when those athletes go to israel and they get to see things um and they trust him and um and so i just think that the more any of us can use what we have that's better i think we can change things i think it's uh you know it's i'm a very i'm an optimist and i think we have to appreciate what we have in this country so i appreciate the time here also so hold on before we wind up hold on because robbie gober's about to wind down i have a very serious question you can't leave us tonight without a really good rabbi ephrem goldberg story from when he was a child he doesn't have any he doesn't have any i was always one that reflects poorly on me probably so i'm gonna leave it we we uh we played all day he had a very very good left-handed shot uh in basketball when we played um in my driveway um and and if you could if you could go left in that driveway with the limited room on that side then that was a true you know that was that was a move and he had long arms was able to uh you know to go really very well there so there were some epic games in that driveway daniel miller you're all your neighbors there was some epic epic david spicer yeah we had all the boys over there absolutely matthew thank you for spending your time sharing your wisdom thank you for standing up for the jewish people for israel and i love the message don't cancel connect educate and um and and use our voice and our gifts to be able to make the world a better place so and i definitely look forward to having dinner with the three of you so sometime during this calendar year we'll do that we're going to make it happen thank you so much for being with us matthew thanks so much thank you very much thank you thank you lefty goldberg oh lefty goldberg hours more matthew's filled with so much wisdom so much knowledge and uh you could go in a billion directions that we didn't even know my mind is like racing where should we go wow you know this is you know it's funny because matthew is sharing his wisdom with us by talking about all the connections the people and using those illustrations of what he does he's really humble and modest and generally you have to pull it out of him and and he's available for people i think you can't do what he does if people don't trust you as a confidant if they don't believe that whatever they're telling you you're a lock box that you're not going to name drop and you're not going to exploit the connection that you are that lock box that's what he's been for me and uh his dad also and you know his dad gave me another one of the great pieces of advice um george heltzig who was who's a great in this he said to me a while ago he said as you as you rise up in the rabinet you're going to get invited to go speak elsewhere never say yes don't go so i was like why george like it's it's very flattering it's a big compliment why wouldn't i go she's like because you'll never live up to whatever they're hearing about you so why ruin it if you go and speak you can never match it you're just going to disappoint so let them believe it and stay where you are at a distance it's great advice it's great i'm canceling my gig tomorrow at that school i usually i was gonna ask him that because you know when you do so much stuff behind the scenes you're not really taking credit for it you're not in the limelight that's not always so easy it's not always so easy you're letting other people take the credit other people take the limelight you're manipulating events behind the scenes yeah but let me tell you how it works in that world i'm not telling you that from an absolute knowledge but what i suspect is in that world when someone gets into trouble there's a short list of who you call and matthews on top of it okay so your agent or you're this or you're that they've got matthew on speed dial for the day that that person gets into trouble so he he doesn't need to take an ad out nor weekly right you know he's he's got it he's got it covered he's great you know we're gonna we're gonna continue that conversation look forward to this being back in south florida and continued over dinner or on on the golf course there's a lot more to talk about we're out of time already but just to touch on it quickly um one thing is big announcement from the cdc some changes and how that might impact us i know the schools in boca raton will be announcing some right significant safe careful and um rolled out very carefully incrementally but some some big changes including for vaccinated people what might be different different sections um taking away some of the obstacles navigating negotiating the different interests that people have um you know the different populations there are some who are still very concerned there are others who are vaccinated and now feel a little bit more adventurous as the wrong word but but ready to um take on so again we've shared this many times over the last year plus how complicated challenging we've got a meeting that's going to start as soon as we're done here and who knows how late it will go to try to navigate that update and rabbi dr glatt who's been for us a very bright star that we turn to for uh information has put out some more information so we're looking forward to that a lot of other things going on last week saw the birth of the vad of boca we have a lot of rabbis we vote we have never needed a vod because we're best friends we all get along we collaborate we co-sponsor we do amazing things but there was a negative and unfortunate that happened last week but it brought about a good shout out to our dear friend rabbi gibber the nussie the founding of the of the um vad vaude of south florida was taken but i think yeah lot of boca raton yeah so rabbi gibber showed a lot of leadership and uh really turned what was matthew was talking about what was it turning adversity into opportunity and um and what was interesting about that again without disclosing too much of what took place in the meeting in the context of it but there was not uniformity amongst the rabbis on the specific topic that was being discussed and there was a very lively conversation that was taking place and the most amazing part about it was the mutual respect that pervaded the entire conversation even rabbis friends colleagues who were vehemently disagreeing with each other and coming to it from very different perspectives i mean rabbi brodie you were there also it was really amazing and inspiring to see the level of um respect that was underlying every part of the conversation and even when people were disagreeing they were doing it respectfully and we were able to come to a consensus in a very respectful way and people were humble they deferred it was really a magnificent it's very special and i i just for the record i agreed with everything rabbi mosquito said and i'm not just saying that now but i really did because you know we're buddies i spoke exactly where he goes i'm not disagreeing with him you know sometimes you know friends blood on blood we stick together i might not have agreed with it maybe to myself but i said this is what he's saying i think i'm gonna agree with him i think it's a great example and an important point to make which has kind of been the theme of the evening that you can take something that was a negative and based on how you react in the leadership you show and again shout out to our good friend rabbi robert gibber you could turn a negative into a positive and the birth of of something good hopefully at the future meetings of the vat of boca lunch will be a little uh improved but we are uh we're excited for that future a lot of is going on and even even as you've just referenced i mean there's a conversation taking place right now between the synagogues about what is changing and it's only happening because everyone wants to hear what the other one's doing in other communities it might be oh they're doing that that's what we're not going to do here at least there's a conversation absolutely absolutely and a lot more to talk about maybe we'll save some of it for next week some responses to the article i wrote on i'm not an modern orthodox rabbi some got stuck at the title some actually clicked the clickbait and read the article some interesting feedback i'm just stuck on the title the movement within judaism that we that it's worth talking more about that was exciting and um a lot more aguna update we have a big prenup posting up event on sunday night very proud of our young leadership committee who's done an outstanding job it's going to be a very very powerful event three course meal wine pairing outdoors safe fun informative but ultimately everyone there is signing a prenup or post nope if you haven't signed one already and um that's the best antidote that's the best answer if every single card i will be signing finds one you will be signing i don't have a prenup something years ago yeah before it might be the oldest one there i think no it wasn't popular wasn't it no you were not allowed to from where i was coming from no nobody pushed us i still looking back don't know exactly why we did but i'm proud that we did and it's the best answer and and you know again we could talk more about it in future weeks but it's identified or associated with the modern orthodox world but there are other versions of the prenup that have come out there are major rabbinic organizations in the uh so-called haredi or ultra-orthodox or right-wing or whatever you want to call it the bottom line is the more cases of aguna and the more spotlight is shined on it the more that we need to pursue the solutions within the within the boundaries within what we can but to take matters you know to be able to make a difference in the the prenup is is one of them so we are excited about that and uh much more so we thank you for being with us tonight and we look forward to continuing to learn with us until next time stay happy stay healthy