Conversation - The Goldberg Brothers: A Conversation with Rabbi Efrem and Rabbi Dr. Judah Goldberg

okay sorry about that i apologize no worries thank you so much for uh for joining us my pleasure uh we're very honored uh for you to be here with us and uh we're honored to have both of you the truth is rabbi dr goldberg we're honored to have uh all year round so that's always a big uh a big pl scores and treat for us so i there's a lot of boca girls um a lot of both the girls on the call and are they they are well they're very excited that you're joining us today but i don't know if everybody else on the uh on the call i'm sure many people know uh have heard of you and and and you're sure um do you want to just take uh robert f gober you want to take just a minute to introduce yourself tell everybody who you are sure besides your claim the flight of fame of being rabbi dr judah goldberg's brother i was about to say that goldberg's brother that's my uh by far my claim to fame um i live in boca raton of florida until we make aliyah to israel which uh hopefully will be one day in the not far distant future not to start any rumors not not tomorrow either um we live in boca raton we've been here for 20 years um my wife jorge and my wonderful children and um what would you like to know our shul has close to 900 families very diverse shul people of all backgrounds ashkenazims fired him old young lots of children people who have different levels of observance different orientations politically people of different knowledge and background educationally and um one community one sense of unified one campus one group of rabbanim and we really function together as one community it's amazing i just wanna i just would like to see how humbled i am to be uh part of this phone call uh both both goldberg brothers are people that i i uh i'm inspired by um rabbi doctor by your your again seeing you in the in the basement as well as being a doctor at charity tedec is something that's very inspiring and uh rabbi from goldberg we don't really know each other but you should know how much of an impact your show uh has made on the world uh i myself who live in ramot uh we've been doing a lot of programming in arsenal and it's been a lot of his credit to uh trying to replicate what you guys are doing in boca so like yasha kwok it's uh it's very humbling being here with you guys and uh it's it's exciting i'll be honest last last year at the end of the year we did uh we had we had brother and sister we had uh mrs moskowitz and her brother david bashevkin that was also very exciting and i was also humbled to be on this call and on that call as well as this call and uh i'm just gonna i think we'll ask a couple questions uh if you guys want to add something the girls want to ask something but i'll start us off with a couple of a couple of questions if that's okay um and the first question is uh you both have taken on you both take have taken active roles in the jewish uh community um i was wondering like what is was there something in your home in your upbringing that uh pushed you to doing that that uh has been they know that that was essential in your uh decision making and what would your credit to that that's a great question by the way the beshevkins are cousins of ours so we could have done a four-way panel oh could have had a whole family reunion here i've done a whole family reunion rabbi dr why don't you take a stab at that first uh sure thank you um rabbi bell excellent question and uh i i'm thinking about it as i start to answer i think we grew up in a home that was very actively involved in the jewish community and i would start not even with my parents but i think the uh the stories that we grew up in go up be before my parents um my great grandfather was a shohei in the city of elizabeth new jersey and uh he and then my grandparent my grandfather and my grandmother were all very very active in that community in uh in elizabeth and that in their own home that we grew up in um my parents also both very active in the jewish community in various different ways it's i imagine i think about here's something to think about my father was the president of the shoal in teaneck of vinay sharon the year that i was born now if i think back my father at the time was about 33 years old in my generation sorry [Music] for anyone who's missing the atving um activities in kuala lumpur you have it right outside but back to the story so my father was president of the show when he was 33 years old i am quite older than that and i have yet to be president of anything in the jewish community i think about the generation of my parents um who in many ways i think their parents before them were building post world war ii and then they picked up the reigns and really were very very active in building institutions and running institutions when i was very young my mother was running benefit concerts for yavin academy and for any yavana graduates out there my mother was very involved in jewish education adult education people who had not had the privilege of having education in their youth and now we're circling back or we're new to judaism and wanting to learn about judaism um my in addition to be the president of the show my father became uh as an honorary lifetime president of a local minion that ran in teaneck for many many years um and even after i would say he had climbed uh the ladder of uh of corporations and with a very respectable positions he was still taping up sedum in the basement with duct tape on his own taking them home moving this basement minion from from uh house to house uh every several weeks um and really uh i guess the puzzle that comes to mind is that uh that the puzzling parachute now says [Music] to help transport the mishkan and god tells mushroom to split them up between the the name marie and the banay gershom and he says banay kahat should not get any any paren because bakate fisao they uh they take it they they carry the iron on their own shoulders and i think it was a model for the viney kahat it's a motto for involvement in jewish community uh forever after but people wanting to assume burdens and take them upon their own shoulders and uh i would say in ephraim i'm sure you'll agree that uh it's very much was the message of the home that we grew up in and i can only say for myself that uh i i can only hope to to uh exert myself on behalf of my local jewish community on the national jewish community uh to the extent that i saw my parents doing uh when we were growing up i totally agree it's a great answer you really said most of it first of all i want to also um acknowledge it's wonderful to see some of our boca students it's great to see your faces or your names those who are not showing their faces and hope you're doing well we've been following the mmy corona spread and davening for everyone and hope everyone is feeling better and wishing you a foolish leima i think you're having corona might have been harder on your parents than it was on you in some ways having seen them age over the last few weeks and days but hope that everyone's feeling well and wishing you well and it's really really great to see you see the boca students first of all and see the non-boca students so i know i see friends of my daughter leora who's in israel for a year and who's your age and then to see some people whose last names i recognize and i probably know your parents even if i've never met you so it's great to see all of you and to be on this uh to be honest together i think that um rabbi dr judah you said it exactly well the other piece i would emphasize which i think you touched on is that we grew up in a home where our parents mom and dad were involved in jewish communal leadership and there was no goal of honor or glory or some kind of kickback or feedback there was a real sense of humility and modesty to it our parents are very very humble and until today their involvement in jewish communal life is in such a way that they don't want recognition there's a mesora in our family my parents have been asked several times in several occasions from several places to be honored at dinners they never ever accept they never say yes which i think is evidence and testament to what they do they do because they care about the community and they care about continuity and they care that things be done right and i think my brother said 100 right my memories as a young child are of dad who was climbing the ladder of corporate life and and building a family had a lot of other responsibilities but like you said on mozai shabbas folding chairs and taping sudurum and boxing them up he obviously recruited and enlisted us against our will at times but i think that even though we resisted it it taught us at a young age we served as a gabai in that little neighborhood minion for friday night in shabbos minka and we learned to lane and to daven and and to serve and i think that's what they taught us is that our mission and our goal is to take the talents that we have and to be of service to the jewish people with no expectation of anything in return no honor no glory no name no recognition nothing in return um our mom also professionally i'm not sure if you touched on this but she did adult education she had an adult bat mitzvah program where she taught women with no background about their judaism and celebrated an adult bat mitzvah she did about outreach and we had we had our students that are at our yantas table and at our shabbos table and even though our parents were not involved in outreach per se in in some large scale or public scale but our home was open and we welcomed all kinds of people and saw the diversity of the of the jewish people and a love of the jewish people and non-judgmental love of the jewish people and i think that probably seeped into us also i love the idea of turning this into a zoom about mom and dad so i'm just going to continue with this a little bit longer um i think one of the things when i do also reflect upon my parents i learned i don't know i don't know what's going on behind me so i apologize either collecting the garbage or there's a duck being choked or something i don't know what's going to be in the sukkah it's part of the success experience um i think one of the things i learned from my parents is that you don't have to do everything and you have to be part of everything but you pick those projects and you and you do them with dedication so for instance um amongst the different things that my father was involved in um in teaneck 40 years uh a little less thirty forty years ago my father took on the tikkalev chevus program and he did it with such love and subs zeal it was his project to set up speakers for every lil shavuous he find a keynote speaker he was very excited about long before there was graphic design easily available and you can get it on your home pc he was putting together little uh flyers or threefold flyers advertising the chevouz program um that was his that was his little uh piece and i think i saw the same thing with mom ephram as you said and a really important point is that the degree to which our home was open to others um we grew up in a home i uh i took it for granted i don't think i realized until i was older that how much our jantav table always had um other people other families often it was in the category of of yosemite almanos of different kinds people who were alone in the community families that could use support and then as you said people who were on their way to learning more about orthodox judaism either that mom had met through her teaching program or knew otherwise i remember our uh a piece of state with her hairdresser uh because it was just natural that she was gonna include him in in our yanteff unforgettable for several weeks go ahead what is that unforgettable for several reasons for so many reasons that's the point and that's uh and that left such an impression upon us my mother also for many years in addition in addition to teaching the adult education she taught holocaust studies and she taught it at a school for public school kids sunday morning the uh bergen county high school for jewish studies and my mother was a holocaust teacher but i can think of several people and some who are i think are proud to to say this about themselves who found their way to orthodox judaism through mom and through the holocaust if you will um again who came through our shabbos table just recently got an email from someone in high school who mom had uh encouraged and uh so robbie bell coming back to your question i you know and thank you because i haven't stopped to really think this through in in a long time i don't even know if i could articulate it without being prompted uh yes our house was saturated and saturated with jewish communal service and it probably is the inspiration for so much that that we try to be involved in it's uh it's interesting as i i said my my parents are on right now also so if everybody's talking about their parents i feel like i should speak about my parents for just one minute i think an interesting i think a common denominator that i find for myself as well when i think about what pushed me to go into like again clay kodash is doing something for the jewish people is the same uh idea of of of them being involved um very heavily in the community and having an open table and and just being very accepting of everybody um i think these are very powerful uh i'm happy to see that this is a across the board and i think it's a very important lesson for all of us here um who are going to build families the importance of of of of how we uh i guess open our houses if we ever can open our houses uh at some point again but opening our houses and being active and i think that uh by by seeing instead of being told uh is always very powerful so thank you for that i just wanted to add that as well before you before we move on to the next question i want to i want to echo what you said because you know in talking to to these uh young women who uh may feel like they just graduated high school but also are probably not too far away from please god building their own homes i i can't emphasize what you said enough which is that when you build your homes know that what you how you spend your time and where you dedicate your resources and where you donate whatever discretionary time you have will not only be the contribution you make but will likely mold and shape your children again i'm looking at some of the bokeh um students the young women on here and your parents and the selfless devotion that they have across committees organizations institutions in the community have undoubtedly left the same indelible impression on you and i've already seen it that the the parents in our community who volunteer their time their children at a young age start to volunteer their time and join the young adult leadership of different organizations and committees and it's something that's really important to think about when you build your home and it's important to think about even when you begin to date and to bring up on dates is you know are you focused inward and are you only caring about your nuclear home or are you going to build a home are you going to look for a partner who also is excited for getting involved in community and volunteering and doing and that can that can be on many levels it could be for the hesse committee and making meals for the bereaved or new mothers or bikrolem it could be to rise to the level of leadership of president treasurer of organizations it could be to found a new school or a new program but i think that there's a major world view or attitude that you bring and it's important to find a partner and to already be very mindful when you're building a home even before you have children of the impression you will give you will give to them because if you pay it forward a generation i'd like to think that our children have seen in our homes what we are trying to replicate from our parents home they've seen some of the same thing and i think our children do step up and they're quick to volunteer and they're eager to lead and to do and it's something that comes naturally because hopefully they saw it as a model and there are parents who give that time and their energy and their resources and their miserable complaints um that are joyful and their children follow and are joyful as well i just like to give a shout out to i see my our parents mom and dad who have just logged on hi mom and dad welcome dad well listen don't listen to me you just missed they just missed the uh rabbi ephraim can i ask you having said that can i ask you to actually expand on a theme i know it's very close to your heart of the challenges in a changing world of keeping people involved in community in a world and increasingly so during corona when uh you can be digitally uh connected and where i'd say institutions are already very well built and established and people don't always easily see a place for themselves the challenge of having a younger generation get involved and stay involved that is a good thank you so much that is a great question um so i'm a big believer and a proponent of community and you'll say well who isn't and the answer is that's the growing trend is that most people are not most people today are what you'd call making shabbos for themselves everybody's setting up a steeple in their home on their block in their backyard and i'm not talking in corona times where it's for health or wellness or safety or necessity i'm talking about even before corona and i hope not but i fear after corona is that people are very in it for themselves and they want to be with the people who are exactly like them and they're eager to have the kind of davening that meets their needs and and i think that that's a tragic loss um the breakdown of a sense of community because a community is so much bigger than the sum of our parts a community and people a nation is is something so much more powerful and something so much stronger and again that's the that's really the the principle behind our community i see hana russ grossman is on here her uh great grandparents the titus and elizabeth certainly built that in uh in elizabeth the notion of community where even though there were satellite shules they were under one rabbinic structure one sense of community one sense of men hug him one sense of practices one sense of of shared history and destiny and that's what we're trying to create here also is that not stifling people and not putting them in a box and not making people sacrifice or compromise their differences of diversity accommodating them on a shabbos morning in brs before corona we have eight minions each different nusa each different vibe each different people each different energy but yet one campus one team one family one sense of a community and with young people unfortunately this is really a struggle a lot of young people move to a community they don't join a school you know when they pay membership and join the schule when they need some benefit of the school when they want their mazel tov listed or they want to get the member rate to rent the hole for their bris and that's a tragedy because giving and participating and drawing from a community is so much bigger is something which is so much bigger and it's really really important it's really important to the future of the jewish people because i'm not gonna take this prompt which i appreciate from you rabbi dr judah but i can speak about this for hours um it's really really important to the fabric of who we are and and it's a great danger opposed to us if everybody's making shabbos themselves and the stabilization of judaism where everyone's making their own steeple making their own minion we're losing that that nuclear sense of of being together of being united of having a shared future of having shared principles and values and vision of combining or collaborating around them of giving our part to the community i'll just end by saying this we do new member event every year mark hashem we still have many new members who are moving to the community um and every year i announce the same thing i say to them you know you're coming to a community that has hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people and you'll say what difference can i make maybe they come from a community that is 50 families or 150 families where they were the big macher or they were in charge of this that or the other and they say i'm coming to a community seven eight nine hundred families i'm invisible i'm inconsequential what difference can i make and i always highlight every year at the new member event i'll take two or three families who had moved in within the last couple years who even though they already moved into a system that was so rich and full they found their niche they introduced something new they led something or they became the example you have that person who's the amazing doctor who's an example to everyone who's the most men in the basement or you have that woman who's volunteering with a woman who started a greeter committee she saw an opening and instead of complaining about it she stepped up and created a greeter committee or who launches some other effort some other institution some other idea some other series some other learning opportunity men women adults children you can find those uh avenues those opportunities and you're able to and you're able to make those those introductions so you know whether it's the case of the rabbi or the immeasurable contribution of the rebbetzin um or the partnership between them um because i know we're not speaking over here to to a yeshiva or speaking to a seminary but the rebecca or clay kodesh or leikodesh even if you're a volunteer you don't have to be part of the formal professional infrastructure to step up and say i see something missing and i want to get involved right before we started i was emailing the two women who run our welcome committee because somebody's moving into the community today and i want to make sure that they get welcome maybe i'll drop off dinner for them these women selflessly run this welcome committee in a buddy system there's no shortage of amazing new ideas out there everybody can step up everybody can add everybody can add their voice everybody can contribute their unique perspective and everybody can make a difference i i just want to take the opportunity to echo uh whatever goldberg said uh i don't think you have to wait until you're back home and part of a show to be an active member um i think that right now we have a we have a source of being in an mmi in an amazing institution with so many different types of girls so many talented girls and i also uh challenge people now this year to already take on leadership roles think about what you're good at and and bring it to the table uh just i'm going to give out one shout out we have uh anybody who wants to join the ruach committee uh at mmy uh after this call please reach out we can join you can add you can be added to the rock committee especially now what we're going through uh to be able to help out and to come up with ways to use your talents use other people's talents don't wait don't wait the people will become leaders there's no way to become a leader become a leader now and that's my one shout out uh just to uh for for that ruach committee and uh and throughout the whole year to bring your talent to the table 100 mmi is a community it's not you're you're not you're not just a group of individuals how many girls are in mm-hmm rabbi about a shell of 100 girls right so you're not a hundred distinct voices you're a community you're one you're united as one and your power as one is so much greater than one plus one plus one it doesn't add up to a hundred it adds up to so much more and even if you're there for one year maybe you'll be there for longer but you are a community for a year and by the way the kind of year that you're having you will remember this forever and the fact that you've gone through a challenging time with illness and please god have all are on the road to recovery and that you have this year ahead you have to figure that out whether it's in the dorm or the bate midrash or in the classes or every one of you brings a unique you're positioned uniquely because of who you are where you come from and the dna you have to add and contribute something and part of your goal is to look in the mirror and decide what is that what is the legacy you'll leave at mmy that they'll be talking about for years to come all right while we're on the topic i guess of corona we know that corona has taken a real toll on the jewish people and there's been tremendous hardships and pain um but i was wondering from from uh from your guy's perspectives again as a rabbi and as a rabbi and a doctor um what's what have been some positive things that you've seen um that we're learning from the situation um what like what particularly has impressed you over the past six months and given you khizuk um that's uh again for both of you again from your two uh avenues of uh how you view uh corona where my doctor go ahead nana you got it you're in the hospital um i think the first thing that comes to mind is something actually that um i'll quote from my wife shayna um shayna teaches in mcdonald's and i think she was giving a message to mcdonald's uh alumni before rosh hashanah and she said something it's very simple but very powerful in my mind on on the video she said that every year we're looking to change in this season and season of ello and tishrei we find it very difficult we think we're so set in our ways um how can we ever change them and she said one of the experience of corona is just to teach us apparently there's another way of doing things that there's things that we could adjust that we never ever ever could have imagined that we could adjust to and lo and behold it's possible and the point is not the adjustments per se but the very uh possibility of adjusting both on the personal level on the community level uh of doing things differently and it once you kind of break out of a mold it lets you rethink a lot perhaps too much we joke about all the things that have i don't know about uh rabbi the minion boca there's been all kinds of innovations in uh alone with them and yet some of which seem to be uh corona inspired and some seem to be things that people have had in mind for a long time and now is there a chance to break it out and give it a try some of it uh [Music] is uh is interesting and some of it is i i can't blame people wanting to experiment a little bit but this is almost an environment that says you had an idea he wanted to experiment with it you wanted to take things differently you wanted to see what it's like to make a different kind of wedding or bar mitzvah which didn't fit the standard mold here's actually your chance i guess that's one thing that comes to mind um i'll say two more things that's number one number two uh certainly um the the gevura the courage and strength that we've seen in all different parts of the world in all different ways people have stepped up about you talked about the mmi students have a chance to be leaders i think they all are leaders they all have become leaders you all started out in capsules of sex um i know that's kind of funny at this point about your your b dude not so long ago um and you had to step up and be leaders and then you found yourselves in a new kind of be do it and again having to be leaders or in fact the number of students i talked about who were racing to other people's aid on yom kippur because someone wasn't feeling well that's a form of leadership and i think this pandemic has brought out um a lot of a lot of courage in people that's what i've seen in terms of the met i've seen that in terms of the health care setting i've seen in terms of the community setting i've seen it in terms of the patients and their families and number three um honestly a great deal of shiftless a great deal of humility um i think everyone you know has that sentence that's that that jumps out at them from the yamanurayam or maybe each year there's a different line that's fila that somehow seizes them and uh for me i'd say this alone is yamamura and i kept coming back to um the line towards the end of salih as we say [Music] hashem who responds to those of broken spirits those are shuri leif we've been broken i i hate to be so so somber about it but we've seen tragedy we've seen the limits of human capability and human innovation and we've seen a virus god forbid get the best of us but give us a real struggle on every level and um no one asks to be humbled no one prays to be humbled but when it happens i think we have to embrace it because it's a a very strong moral lesson uh and god willing um that too sticks with us as we uh make our way through and hopefully uh one day emerge from this pandemic i mean i would echo the the notion of seeing the extraordinary acts of question i mean ordinary people have done extraordinary things who stepped up who responded who answered the call in our community whether it was coordinating dropping off meals for those who are shut in and can't shop for themselves at the beginning of this pandemic or so many other examples of people who've risen to the occasion in in ways that maybe they didn't know they had within themselves but you know it's the ramban's description of an islam and poet when we're tested we discover things about ourselves that we otherwise would never know and i think on the individual level and even on the communal level we found things about ourselves that we didn't know and the notion of humility that you know the deeper we get into this the less we know about it or think we understand about it and the idea that we can manipulate and control the world and yet here is something that kobaya olam over in the fun of kivnemarun you know roshana we say that everything comes before hashem and yet um i don't know and in a given year do we really picture kobay olam this is maybe the first thing in our lifetime probably or hopefully the last in our lifetime that we are experiencing with every other human being on the globe the entire international community universally is going through something together kobay olam and and that should humble us in some ways it unites us and in some ways it should humble us and it should give us a sense of the need to cooperate and to coordinate without which we cannot overcome this and that's i think another lesson to me the biggest lesson i spoke about is on rosh hashanah here in brs the biggest lesson there's a terminology that the world is using now that we total jews have been using forever and it's refreshing and remarkable and hopefully will be lasting that the world is using and that is defining the difference between essential and non-essential from the very beginning of this we talked about you know essential personnel can go to work non-essential left to stay home if you're going out to buy essential items you can go if they're not essential you have to stay home and i have to tell you until today everybody's trying to decide what's essential and worth taking the risk what's non-essential and i should mitigate the risk meals on yantif in the sukkah with others is that essential or non-essential children having play dates is that essential or non-essential going shopping for x y or z is that essential or non-essential so the the the vernacular the language that we're all using across the world is trying to determine and define what's essential and what's not essential and that's the that's the essence of yadus of judaism is understanding from hashem what's essential what's not essential in our lives what matters most and what is and what is a luxury what's a necessity what do we need and what's nice to have right if i have to invoke the theme of sukkas my brother and i are both sitting outside in our sukkahs right now and i see some of you also right the whole idea of leaving the diras cabin going out to the dsri is that you know that that brick and mortar that home with all of its possessions and things ultimately are all non-essential what comes out to the circle with us which is our family or our friends the conversation the people the relationships the experiences that's what's essential so we spend one week focused on the essential and then we're entitled to go live and enjoy the non-essential but if we confuse the essential and non-essential then we're not entitled to enjoy it we're not entitled to live with it my uh my wife johan made a great point actually incorporated into my russia um on the first days of sukis which is that normally we focus that the suk is the dear sarai we're going out to the deer sarai the importance of deer sarai leaving the keva maybe this year we should remember that success is one week and when it ends we're going back into the dearest keva that we also need to know the difference between arai and keva there are things that are temporary this pandemic it's temporary there's distancing and quarantining and lockdown it's temporary it's alright and just like sukis is not 52 weeks a year it's one week and then we go back this also is going to pass and we're going to go back and it's time to start planning and working and and preparing for when it's over and to dream about what our life will look like and to aspire and to have ambition and to never god forbid confused that this is going to become something which is permanent this is only temporary we're going back to keva but one of the things i i think i've seen that's come out of this is people understanding the difference between essential and non-essential and we should continue to ask that question not only on circus and not only during corona but for the rest of our lives beautiful i i just wanted to to see if we can elaborate a lot of girls have come to me or have texted me um disappointed about uh about this year you know there's the the shanna olive or shawna bad experience that everybody has and uh the the normal let's call it uh mmy experience or seminary experience is not in bedewed and it's not not being able to go to the hotel or to cavaraka or to go anywhere for that matter um what would you tell a girl who's who's struggling with that uh who's maybe doubting that that they came or you know they're losing out on something rabbi go ahead uh this is a really really really important point i wrote an article about it a few months ago because i've interacted with a lot of young people who've had a bar mitzvah or a bat mitzvah or got engaged or celebrated a wedding and a chevy broncos and it did not happen the way that they dreamt the way they planned the way they look forward to in the heart of this in in florida um which i know that you know you're going through in israel now a terribly difficult time and i have a nephew who uh we should be there we were scheduled and supposed to be there together as a family joining the circus and celebrating that upcoming bar mitzvah which we hope and pray he'll still be able to celebrate beautifully but there are young people who are experiencing disappointments and you and your in your seminary experience this is not how you dreamt it up i'm sure you heard from your parents and aunts and uncles and friends sukkas you're here in israel it's amazing and you're going to go do this and you're going to experience that you're going to stay with this one you can have a meal there and it's amazing and instead you're locked down and you're locked in and it's not so amazing it's not so amazing so the first thing i want to say is when people will tell you it is amazing it's what hashem wants for you smile accept it love it it's amazing say thank you so much and then end the conversation because it's okay for it to not be amazing it's okay it's not always amazing even if it is what's meant to be and even if i shruggle we believe it is what hashem wants it's okay to say this is not amazing this is not the way we drew it up it's not what we wanted i feel deprived or robbed it's not what i wanted it's not a contradiction or it's not an inconsistency to say yes it's what hashem determines is right and because of that i will find the joy in it but at the same time i'm not going to lie to myself and others and pretend something that's not amazing is amazing so that's all point number one and i think it's a really really really important point and point number two is then to say it is amazing we're in sukkah writes the word ah means that sometimes it doesn't feel so basimka and even then even when the might even when something's missing even then to be basimka you put a smile on your face we think that when you're happy you smile but science i could share this article later um you can distribute there's an article that just came out during corona that reminds us that it's not that when you're happy you smile when you smile it actually you you use these micro muscles in your face which release endorphins and when you smile it makes you happy even when even even when something's missing nevertheless make the effort to be happy and to realize that this is from above it's from hashem it's by design it's not coincidence it's the way that you were meant to experience sukis tough shin payal of your year in israel maybe you'll be here next year shun a bet and you'll have another chance maybe you won't you'll get married you'll come back to israel so maybe you'll make aliyah maybe you'll come with your family maybe there'll be many opportunities and maybe there won't but this is the way it was meant to be and it's the way you'll always remember it so i think that it's two sides of a coin that seem like they're opposite but our job is to is to synergize them is to find the balance between on the one hand not lying to ourselves and others and admitting when things are hard that it's hard it's not the way it was meant to be it's not the way you dreamt of it it's not the way you wrote it up it's hard and that's okay it's okay to lean into the fact that it's hard it's okay to recognize that and at the same time to work on even something's missing to realize that what you have how many girls would kill how many girls would have killed to spend a year in israel even in bidure how many girls were killed to be circus in israel throughout jewish history across jewish history they say that not to make you feel guilty for how difficult this is but to realize even within what we're in that there's good i'll leave you with one last i told the story yesterday the story was in this buckle magazine a couple weeks ago amazing amazing story the torah never has a mitzvah of simcoe it never tells you there's a mitsubishi with sukkas it's associated with three times with sukkas and it does appear at one time with with shibuyas but there's no mitzvah per se the whole year around despite rab nachman there's no mitzvah of sim calls one place for the torah references that why does the tokugawa come because we didn't live life with a smile with synchro so with yaakov kamenetzky there was once an old jew walked into a shore and yaki went over to greet him and this old jew with a european accent didn't know which way to hold the sitter couldn't read hebrew didn't had a dove and knew nothing so yaakov inquired about his background and asked him what he knew and he said rabbi i don't know anything the only verse i know is and he kept repeating that's not exactly like the first puzzle they teach you in kindergarten or in shader tags so the old jew told of jakov kaminetsky i was in a labor camp and the nazis broke our back slave labor we had to carry these these piles of of bricks of cement they were they were impossible to carry it broke our backs and there was an old jew in my labor camp and every single day not one hour not once one day and not one day but for weeks and months every single day when he carried that that load that incomprehensible weight he would mumble under his lips over and over again said to the man that's that's amazing this jew in a labor camp as he's carrying this jew who's broken his back has broken his spirit and all he keeps saying is takashi avarta a reminder that was to be the simcha do you know anything about him so the old jew told rabbiakov i don't know his name and i never really learned anything about him all i know is they kept referring to him as the kleisenberger that's all i know it was the kleisenberg arabah and the klezenbagareba who lost 11 children and lost his wife and was carrying cement across a slave labor camp all he muttered under his breath the whole time to the point that this other secular jew knew only one phrase in all of torah so on the one hand it's okay to realize that it's hard it's not the way that you dreamt it that's okay and on the other hand to say man i'm gonna smile and my smile will make me happy not gonna wait to be happy to smile i'm gonna smile and it's gonna be contagious because that's the also the other research that shows that smiling is contagious among others i'm sorry i was so long but i want to give you that physic is to lean in this again i was supposed to be on a little three month mini sabbatical i was supposed to be speaking to you in person none of you've been in school in kuala lumpus i was supposed to be able to visit mmi in person celebrating my beloved and wonderful nephews bar mitzvah and being all together as a family for sukis it's not the way i drew it up either but on the other hand it's the way it's meant to be and there's beauty in the way it is rabbi f from everything that you said in particular i um i really appreciate the way you always balance on the one hand acknowledging normalcy and people's real feelings and real struggles at the same time inspiring them and i think it's that duality that makes your uh your voice so important for our community in uh encouraging people to be real and be normal and be grounded at the same time trying to lift them further i'll add something just from my point and i'll try to be very practical and that's kind of the tactic that i've taken with my own students uh some of you may have heard this from me in mmy i imagine you all imagined your year in israel unfolding a little bit differently certainly the first of six weeks no one imagined if it's gonna happen exactly like this um and there's all the trappings of what you thought of we're going to meet up with our friends and we're going to be out and you shall i'm going to be diving sikkas and there's going to be so exciting and you know and and and so on and carrying through the year and as i said earlier one of the things that karen has taught us that we could do things differently some of those trappings we can apparently get by without some of those trappings it may be that in 10 and 20 and 30 years from now because that's actually what we're looking towards and that's what we're educating for um i'll speak for myself but i i think i'm representing all the educators at mmy and the truth by that matter all jewish educators that we're not educating for next year or the year after we're educating for a lifetime and the question is what do you look back and what do you remember from this year when um when you have grandchildren and i would contend that the two main things that you that anyone takes out of this year um have not changed at all and are just as accessible if not more so and it's that should continue to inspire you and for that matter inspire us inspire the the the faculty those things are torah and relationships first and foremost this is a year of of lima torah it's not supposed to end with limited torah it's not just a matter of mass of massing information but of deepening one's connection to everyone's experience the torah ones commitment to torah all that through talmud torah and number two i'll say this about myself um i'm sure my brother will say the same thing about bay bell i'm sure you could say the same as well that some of the most significant relationships in your life probably trace back to uh this post high school year of uh of uh of learning and those are the two things that despite corona despite quarantine despite everything i think are just as accessible just as doable as they ever were the torah is real and the torah is stable the torah transcends any given circumstance and whether we get to do it in person or on zoom i'm teaching the same curriculum that i would teach otherwise and i feel even more committed to teaching it and teaching it with the same intensity because that is our anchor that is exactly what can anchor us specifically when things are so unstable in other ways that is what really can keep us on track and number two again relationships you might have imagined yourselves sitting with all 85 china 11 15 shinabet and reaching out to everybody and being friends with everybody and all of a sudden you've been in the same room with the other three girls or maybe you've been by yourself i don't even know what some of you been through over the last couple weeks um but i can i can guarantee you this you will come out of this year with strong deep meaningful real relationships that have been forged not through not only through a year of growth and year of learning but also a year of challenges that uh were not foreseeable and that is what doesn't only just build your own character but builds and builds bonds between you and i think those two elements um 10 and 20 and 30 years from now there may be an asterisk on mmi 5781 that did you know some of the challenges they went through over you know what would happen during the pandemic but in terms of the quality and content of the experience did you learn torah did you grow through torah did you come out closer to hashem closer to his torah and closer to each other through this i think your experience will be indistinguishable from any other year if not even stronger so it may be hard to believe and to see right now but i gave you that that was a vision and with fortitude i do believe that it will come to pass i have a lot more questions but we don't have any more time so i want to do the following thing first of all uh before i before i let each of you give your your closing uh a statement or something that you want to tell over to the girls before we end um you can think about that as i just uh first of all say thank you to the two of you uh for giving us uh your time i know that it's not easy on uh and uh during especially uh i know we're maybe a little more focused on the family but i guess also we have nowhere else to go so but either despite that thank you so much i also extended the invitation of israel to do this in person all right ephraim when you come to artistrol that we can continue this conversation i have a lot of questions i have i have my uh resources in boca they told me i have a list of questions i need to ask you but we'll reserve it for another another time in person um and also another invitation that if you uh you mentioned you started off saying that you want to come to architectural if you want to come to remote and you want to be a rabbi we got i got i'm going to i will do i'm a mover and shaker i will make everything happen you just tell me when and we're going to make it happen and everybody here can come join our amazing boca let's call it boca east boca east community in remote um and i've been saying this already you don't even know robert i'm from government i've been i've been uh i've been waiting i've been waiting we're waiting for you to come you're tempted you're really tempting me you tempted me to pack up my stuff if only israel would let me in right now yeah well i'll get i'll even wait to get you in now also if you want and we'll get rid of judo to come to ramon also amazing if you have any final words for the girls uh please rabbi dr judah go ahead thank you my last words for you i guess in this context is that we talked about torah and we talked about relationships and the last thing i'll tell you tell you is that um family is everything absolutely everything um it's uh it's good to be here with my dear brother who um has done of everything he's done for me in in my life one of the things has gotten me a a job working in hospitals in south florida it also gives me the opportunity to see him and his family when a pandemic is not happening um we are not identical we do not look identical my brother is eight inches taller than me um my brother rabbi from learned in shiva karen biavra i learned in shiba haracion we're not identical and yet family transcends absolutely everything mom and dad if you're there listening uh we credit you with this i think it's a lesson that you taught us and continue to teach us and it continues to be true um a shout out also to our older sister with the three of us i am the youngest rabbi ephram is above me and our older sister daniella who also along with my parents is a a role model of involvement engagement in jewish community uh she is one of the uh pillars of the uh of the buchmann community of modi and if you ever get a chance to go visit there you can invite yourselves over um but family is everything and uh it ends up being the anchor for everything uh people um torah is stronger yiddish kid is stronger um everything is stronger because family is strong and so if there's anything i can encourage you to do i hope for all of you that uh i'm about 25 years or so from my year in israel i'll be at them a little bit more i give you all breakfast that the 25 years from now you find yourselves on panels with your siblings speaking to uh the next generation amen what a beautiful bracha and a hundred percent um we are barakasha i'm a very close-knit family and family going back to the theme of the essential and the non-essential with all the impact and the difference that one can make in the world but it begins with one's family and loyalty and love and um and connection and time and uh it is a great course that we're all we're all so close there's a great quote the best things in life are not things and i love that quote and it's 100 true the best things in life are not things it's relationships it's people it's experiences it's not things and uh and you should all there are the people right behind me there's some people and you can hear some people right here it's a perfect time to end apparently our families have passed and it's time for us to end um i'm hiding in a room from my four children so please maybe we should keep going i i i said this i saw a different article recently that talked about um for many millennials this is the first time in their life they're going through something difficult um millennials are classically thought of as their parents helicopter parenting come in bail out make everything easy make everything comfortable but nobody could bail you out from this quarantine and lock down and if you were you know if you had corona and you struggle with some of its symptoms the parents can't bail you out particularly in your case you're six thousand miles away from from your parents at this time um and the article was saying that that's that's actually a good thing that there'll be a growth spurt that comes out of this and that people will will be tested and will be better and i think that that's the message is that right now this may feel challenging and it's hard to picture a time when you will in the future 10 or 20 years reflect back and you'll laugh and you'll smile first of all i understand that the places that you were staying in during the lockdown were not too shabby so she have a lot to smile about but um to live a life right now that in 10 or 20 years from now you'll have good memories of this don't experience this in a way that you'll live in the future with regrets and with negativity live in a way now that you'll look back with nostalgia and you'll see the way that you grew and improved and how it made you better so stay close with your family understand the difference between the essential and non-essential get involved and contribute your uniqueness and fulfill your distinct purpose and mission in this world and whatever you do don't worry be happy always smile the world will smile with you smile and you'll find the happiness of this it's great to see all the people i know and love from your parents and it's great to meet the people i don't know and i look forward to being there in person hashem take you up on that invitation later this year as soon as we're allowed in ready or not here we come amen thank you so much and for everybody whoever we might be and uh for everybody from mmy in five minutes there's going to be an update zoom so please uh uh check the announcement groups for that information thank you everybody well thank you thank you for your hosting you're moderating huh thanks my pleasure thank you guys