Q&A With Rabbi Efrem Goldberg (Hosted by Nachi Gordon) - Part 6

all right welcome back everybody to thursday night live with ray ephraim goldberg question questions and answers try to get to as many questions as possible um i appreciate you joining and you know how we like to do we're going to jump straight into this on here not waste any time it's not that type of show ready we're going to jump right in are we at from goldbrick how are you doing good it's it's it's uh good to see you again always good to see you there's actually i'm in my office but there's a thursday night's at show we have a challenge thing going on and they're right and loud i don't know if you can hear them if you can it's a plus i don't hear them unfortunately i don't hear them all right we'll see if they get louder how are you all good i don't remember did did we have off last week and we were on two weeks ago so exactly it's been a couple weeks all right okay so there's a lot of questions saved up from uh um to from the island all right look forward let's dive in let's bring it on let's dive right in okay um for everyone who's watching as you know uh you can go ahead and send in questions in the question thingy below right over there or you can comment it and we'll try to ask it the question i'd like to start off with this evening it's a little bit broad but i think it's something we can discuss is our yeshiva system failing our youth wow then you want me to turn like short sound bite nuggets is are you sure failing our youth i would say that overwhelmingly our yeshiva system is succeeding our youth we have selfless uh rebellion mora's teachers administrators they're dedicated they're devoted they're selfless every one of them could be making much more money in another field another line of work they've given up themselves and they've entered a life a choice that is benefiting and we have such a beautiful rich tapestry of jewish continuity children who are not only educated but inspired and overwhelmingly it's successful that said of course there are many tweaks that we need to be offering to the system um the first of all when we talk about the system which system there are so many systems within the total world the hasidis educational system the lead vision system there's the shivisha system the modern system there are so many different systems so it's kind of hard to pinpoint specifically but i would say if i had to mention one thing it's this and obviously tuition and what used to be called the tuition crisis before there was a virus crisis there was a tuition crisis um let's not touch on but if there was one thing that i could revamp the system and introduce into the system it would be this talking about the reboner talking about hashem i think absolutely every every topic in limu de kodesh if you're learning hamish rashid or unbound the ibanez how are each of them understanding this story or this pasuk or this halacha differently so that they can catch more what is their message what is their lesson in what way does this leave me feeling more connected to him when we learn gemara when i'm just learning abstract esoteric my ox gore is your ox it's what is god's vision for this world how do we understand what it means to take ownership how does it understand what it means to take responsibility to protect how do we understand what hashem's vision for us is when it comes to uh all laws criminal towards civil laws so every area of torah we learn from the bottom line in every classroom should be we don't close the book of the safer we don't close the lesson of the class until we extract it how does this change my relationship with him is god part of the conversation is he the author of the story or the law does it enrich my understanding of who i am and my role and my mission in this world and i think that tragically all too often total learning becomes an intellectual exercise where there's so much pressure to cover ground or learn facts or information or qualify to get into that seminary that you achieve at the next stage and therefore we are not really rooting it in its source and what's the most important thing that there is to talk about which is that all of this torah is supposed to bond us and bind us to hashem leaving us feeling closer to him so if i could revamp anything if i could introduce something and i think the challenge is that so many of our mechanics our extraordinary outstanding self they weren't educated this way so they lack the vocabulary to educate the next generation so we need to disrupt the system we need to disrupt the cycle we need to bring some of that conversation some of that sooner or later he wakes up from his sleep and he says god is here i had no idea i didn't realize god is outside the bishop i didn't know god's outside the show i didn't realize god is in the mundane god is my pillow in my nap but i forgot the the which said says messiah i didn't realize god's inaugural i don't realize god is in partial i didn't realize god i didn't realize that my torah learning is supposed to leave me feeling closer to god i know you don't so that's if i could make a change that's what i would put the focus on sounds very fair uh moving on to the next question i'm gonna keep you on your toes not gonna sit with any topic too long um this is an interesting one okay um [Music] out there in in the jewish world exists extremism uh they exist people who who are doing things that are wrong take me to a karate for example i think i hope a lot of us can agree what they're doing is is absolutely terrible i once was speaking to somebody um i was speaking badly about natori carter and the person said to me you know what's the craziest thing is that hashem loves them just as much as he loves you and i really like this happened to me many years ago i still just sit with me like hashem loves them just as much as he loves me so we obviously know that when someone does something wrong down here we don't know what that does ultimately it does does does you know let's say there are people who created this awful hashem netflix show whatever it is there are people that we look at down here on this earth and we're like these are the worst people there's a special place for these people but is there is there does hashem love them just as he much this just as much as he loves us what's what's what's the answer to that that's a great question it's a deep question i didn't give my usual disclaimer that i give every week which is i don't have all the answers and i'm not an authority but i can only share my my thoughts and what works for me on these types of questions um how much hashem loves each of us i'll leave to hashem to this i think the moment that we start to project or we start to reflect or we start to guess um from hashem's perspective we're trying to play god and there's only one infinite one omnipotent god the reborn shalom is he's he's everything so to think that we can get inside his head and we say as a parent do i love all my children equally of course i love my children equally if one was an axe murderer would i love him as much as the one that you know uh knows kolo tarakula or found the cure to cancer we're trying to think in a very human sense and then project that on to hashem let hashem do his job he asked us in this world to do our job and to clearly have those boundaries stay in our lane don't try to be him so does he does hashem love us all equally that's for hashem to decide hashem is the one of the unlimited uh unlimited love but what i would say is the following in life our job is to always ask ourselves what am i meant to do so there's an italian karta and the toure karate the rambam writes that while everyone's human and everyone's fallible and everyone has faults and generally our attitude is to say that people are good people who do bad things rather than say that they're bad people but there is such a thing as bad people there are people who are bad people the rama describes that there are people who do such bad wicked things that they've actually purged whatever salaam alaikum they had inside themselves they have actually they've pushed out and they've purged whatever godly so whatever godliness was in them do nature carter meet that definition i don't know i'm not sure i'm smart enough to know i know what they're doing is dangerous and damn i know that they threaten the safety and well-being of claudius by supporting and aligning themselves with people who are our enemies and want to see our destruction that's pretty bad to me are they bad people is it just bad things i'll leave that hashem to decide all we know is our mission and our mandate is to be good people to the best that we can but is the mission to be good to them though i i don't think so i don't know that we have to be good to them i think that we have to offset them i think that when the turkarta are setting back our mission the hashem of what look like religious jews in the news who are on the horrifically wrong side of issues just makes our work even harder and we have to double down and we have to do even better to be able to make a kiddish hashem and to be able to outshine you know they're making the world a little darker so we bring even more light so we can fixate on them and we can try to determine from hashem where their special place in ghana is or we can feel the responsibility ourselves to be filled with light to offset with light to fill the world with light and to do light what i will say is is that and also there's another connection to our partnership that we're reading if you'll notice both with migdal bubble when it came to the tower they were building to compete with god in the heavens and again in uh in last week's parashat or in this week's parasha rather with stones god keeps saying let me come down to take a look i'll come down and take a look at the tower in this week's parachute with stone let me come down and take a look at stone why does god need to come down that's perfect god is omnipotent omniscient he knows everything he knows it from where he is what does he have to come down and take a closer look sarah she quotes the mentor that tells us it's a very important lesson for us don't ever come to a conclusion without seeing for yourself how often do we hear second and the third hand and then we take that as well we take it as fact go see for yourself examine hear both sides don't come to a conclusion without seeing for yourself hashem didn't and we shouldn't either but i'll leave you with this nahi not all together i'll leave this question with this our schwab writes in a safer you know why it says god comes down because from the place of perfection from the place of the internet of the internet for the place of the infinite we have no tolerance for people who are imperfect from the place of the infinite how can we tolerate people who make mistakes so hashem comes down and he says you know what in this world that's filled with temptation desire in this world that's filled with complication hashem comes down because when we're able to lower ourselves and realize that people are human and they have failures people are human they have temptation desires now we can tolerate the misgivings the shortcomings the failures of others much more so basically god is telling us get off your high horse come out of your ivory tower live in another person's shoes understand what they're coming from and now maybe you'll tolerate or understand a little bit better it doesn't mean you should accept doesn't mean you should accept necessarily but it means you'll be able to tolerate a little better okay uh next question ray goldberg this is always something that you were very involved in and there are some people who are commenting stuff which is just beautiful it's great um but we'll we'll we'll humor them a little bit and discuss the topic that you were very involved with which was the aguna crisis um one that you really you know went in head first you you weren't shy about you weren't quiet about it you made very clear what your stance was um and i guess really the question is is where do we go from here uh the fact that this happened in 2021 when there there are there are there were there are many women who are changed chained to marriages um abusive situations that they're not receiving it get a lot of people are calling for reform but orthodox judaism is not reformed so i i don't know exactly how that works um two-part question and you could really decide how how which part you want to answer first is a you kind of you know put yourself out there and um again even for people watching this live they're able to flip through the comments they can see there are people who don't like you for it they're people who how do you how do you uh i guess make that calculation and say you know what i'm i'm doing what's right so i don't care um and on the flip side what's going to be what's the future of lagunas there there are people who are still lagunas so what happens it's a great question it's a very painful question and and it's one that a lot of people have thoughts and answers to but they haven't necessarily set opposite naguna and they haven't necessarily sat with a woman who has gone through the process has done everything asked of her has cooperated is not practicing parental alienation is not vilifying the husband is not doing whatever she's doing as leverage or extortion and yet despite that for no reason at all other than to punish her her husband would give her a get and maybe he's moved on maybe he's running around maybe he's doing what he wants and she is trying to be a bastard she's trying to do what's proper and she can't move on and her child bearing years are passing and her youth is passing and she's wondering will i ever be able to remarry again that pain is extraordinary and it's not only her own pain it's her parents it's her siblings it's her friends who watch that that loneliness and that excruciating pain that seems there's no way out now some people look at that pain and they say this is a flawed system god made a mistake and you know what i can't tell you how often i've heard this if we came up with the pers bowl to avoid schmidt cancelling loans and we came up with the shabbos elevator to be able to make it to the top floor without sweating and we came up with selling hummus so we could keep our scotch collection then why can't we come up with a solution to the yaguna and and it's a very good question it's a very compelling question but the answer is that we have to work within the system we have it's a divine system it's a system we're bound by that hashem gave and we have to operate within its rules we have to operate within its laws and we can't distort or manipulate and each of those other examples are operating within the halacha they're all operating within the halacha here in aguna and yeah don't worry i'll get to these comments they're not they're not distracting me so do you want me to do anything or just let it be no let them be people should express those loveful jews and hashem loves them i love them even those who don't love me back so much so um when it comes to the aguna we can blame hashem and his torah but god didn't create this problem god created a set of rules and it's the people who are abusing the rules that create the problem in the same way that it's people it's human beings who are creating the problem by abusing and misusing his laws then it's we people who can rise to the occasion and we can be the solution we can be the solution so noah goona should ever feel alone first of all it should have the support and the love let me give this very very important um clarification not every woman who declares herself in laguna is a naguna it has to be a proper halachic system a based in a position of a dos torah that can attest to the fact that she's gone through a system she's reached that status that she's in laguna the woman says to her husband leave the house i want to get by tomorrow and says he didn't give it to me within 24 hours i'm in aguna doesn't make her naguna not every woman is innocent and every man is the villain there are cases i've seen them i've been involved in them where the man is the innocent party and the woman is the villain in how manipulative she's being parental alienation and it's very very difficult for a lot of men in divorce in the in the community where um they feel the community always sides with a woman and it's not always the woman is right sometimes it's the man who's right as well but that said with his bona fide case of naguna we can rise to her her her uh support we should be protesting there are what's called the hakas system for millennia for a millennia has recognized the challenge of aguna and it has empowered us with socially ostracizing somebody who's not doing the right thing until they feel the social pressure give the get our silence and our indifference it contributes to that person's loneliness and to their being the victim of the abuse of withholding again so if we would all make our voices loud and clear and you know there were a group of influencers and there was a groundswell of support and i'm gonna say something controversial i wish they'd come back i wish they disappeared it was like a 15-minute influencer phenomenon organizing rallies making their voices heard featuring victims it made a huge difference why did it die because the next the news cycle changed and the next thing happened and it was corona and it was jantiff and it was this was that and i'm not criticizing anyone they were wonderful and courageous to have brought it up to begin with and we should all encourage them to renew their courage to bring it up again because i think that uh i think that we when we put that social pressure we see the impact that's made the real answer to the aguna crisis the real answer to the aguna crisis is uh the prenata now for a time the basis of america had a halal prenup it was written with rabbi yosef kanye goldberg major major post game for meredith earl and america if every single couple that got married signed the halal there would not be an aguna for a long time it was decided that was the yu world however today dying first in chicago the good is considering a form of a of the prenup magazine to the whole story and you will see that the more cases of aguna throughout the whole torah community the more the broader wider torah community will embrace and encourage the prenup and if we all use the halachic prenup whichever version it would ever form then that we can eliminate the cases of aguna most important thing the first thing i say is to feel sympathy and empathy to feel the pain to make that other person feel that they're not alone that they're not the one who's wrong and to rise up and to help them to defend them to care about them and to try to get them again in this week's pressure hashem says i'm going to tell abram i'm going to do this is it possible for me to hold the back impossible and why does he feel obligated to tell avraham i know that abram is going to tell his children to what it's taka why does he love avraham because he shuckles the longest he memorized the most mishnais those are all very very important things but the legacy we have from avram is justice and charity stand up for the underdog stand up for the victim make our voices heard don't let them feel alone and if we all did that we could make a change and a shift in this okay um and i guess the other part of the question which is the what yeah your involvement the backlash is receiving i'm sure that maybe before you you did this there are let's say people who are studying about other things but after this you know it seems like uh wherever you go there's some people trying to sabotage yeah i'll tell you the truth i am such an imperfect person and and if you had my wife and kids on and others they would tell you how imperfect i am there are so many things to be publicly critical about me about and it would keep me up at night it would break my heart and it would make me feel horrifically guilty and nobody beats me up more than i beat myself up about many of these things and offline i'm happy to share some of them with you but anyone who's criticizing me for caring about agunas i don't think a moment i don't think an iota i don't think i don't hesitate at all because my attitude and my approach towards it is is from my rebellion he's from das torah he's from ghidola israel i don't make a move in supporting aguna or a rally coming to her defense without understanding the whole issue and having the support of the based in or of the god of israel and so it doesn't bother me any criticism that comes that way doesn't bother me in the least i don't have the thickest skin and it is being a rabbi you see i used to have hair up here it not used to all not be gray down here i don't have the thickest skin and sometimes it hurts criticism hurts some of these comments be not because of the people writing or what they're writing but people who don't know it can hurt but on the aguna issue it doesn't hurt at all because i'm so confident i know what's right remember listen you're a public figure you don't get emails you don't get people who are critical how could you feature that minute how can you teach that person how could you not feature me how could you feature that ad how could you feature that story you must get criticism so here's my physique for you mordechai at the end of the story of the magilla he saves shushan he saves the jews and they have a vote for him and he's going to be re-elected as the rabbi mordecai and he's he only wins by a majority who voted who voted against them are you kidding me doesn't get a unanimous vote when he saves the entire shushan the answer is there's always going to be detractors there's always going to be haters there's always going to be it just means you're doing something right last the last question or last point on this topic before we move on is if someone were to be watching right now who was um a guy that was withholding a get from his wife um could you speak directly to him right now you know what would you say yeah sure arum i love you you're a holy jew you have a beautiful heart and you have a big nishama i know it i've seen it firsthand and you deserve happiness and you deserve a bright future and you deserve only positive public publicity so give the get give the get what you want you've gotten whatever i'm not going to share details right now but whether it's the opportunity to have a day and based in court whether it's the opportunity financially to be able to uh to possibly get what you're looking for it's available do the right thing give the get a chain let your wife move on the way you've moved on and then you'll be fully embraced and celebrated because the real you this is not me the rambam describe it's the person inside themselves the pentalia wants to do the right thing and sometimes we get emotionally involved emotionally invested and we have to go down and see from that person's perspective maybe they feel abandoned or violated maybe feel lonely or hurt maybe they have their own background that leaves them feeling they need to do that you don't need to do that you don't need to do that you you can go through the rest of your life for the next period of time as a villain or a hero step up do the right thing and and turn around the story entirely become an advocate for this that people deserve to find the happiness the happiness they're entitled to awesome uh for everyone watching if you have any questions you'd like to ask we're entering the final stages of this week's episode so go ahead and just comment or you can request to join the live and if we have um a lot of faith in humanity maybe we'll actually bring you on here to ask a question how do you deal with the hate what do you do with uh you have no what would what would you do theoretically to be a criticism of meaningful people meaningful minute um it does exist um and i guess it used to be a lot more difficult to deal with um i don't know i have a good support system you know good people around me people who care about me people who uh who i actually i listen to i um i uh i think it's important for someone who's receiving criticism or hate is to really call it what it is you know um and to not for a second think like oh that's that's good that's criticism i should take sometimes there's stuff that's being said that's so crazy and you just have to you know like a quarterback you know gets to the gets to the line and he and he says okay that guy's blitzing that guy's there you know so you got to call it out for what it is that's hate you know that's that's hate that someone is trying to be destructive and you gotta like you know as the uh well-known singer once said you have to shake it off there you go that's it i'll tell you one other thing that i think about with this is to try to separate out the messaging from the message and the messenger and what do i mean by that so the public personality who puts a lot out there you get a lot of emails a lot of text a lot of feedback and some of it is not communicated in the most um productive way or kind way or respectful way i don't mean respectful to a rabbi i mean respectful to any human being and every time i get that i try to look at i try to separate out the message from the messenger and the messaging sometimes you don't like the messenger it's somebody who you know is hyper critical as negative they're hater and and therefore you don't really want to listen to the message because you don't like the messenger sometimes you don't like the messaging they're using very harsh language abusive language obnoxious language they're not being sensitive respectful but i always try to say but what about the message is their truth to the message maybe there's something in the message i need to listen to anyway because if the message is meant for me and i'm meant to hear it it's from hashem i need to grow from it we recently had on our uh find the bima of course shameless plug we were sitting out on the behemoth of emotion weinberger for the second time and he told a story when he was a kid that there was a classroom when he was a kid that had a divider down the classroom it wasn't a full majita it was like a divider and it was at lunch and he heard two kids talking he heard his name and he recognized their voices it was it was two of his best friends and they were talking about him he came home that day he was shattered and he said to his father's father so he was also broken he was all miserable what's the matter what's wrong he said you won't believe it at lunch i overheard they didn't realize i was standing there and could hear they were talking about me so his father said to him let me ask you what they were saying was it true did it have merit and he said you know i guess when i think when i hear yeah it did so his father said it doesn't matter who said it or how they said it you were meant to hear the message because that truth for you so i think that sometimes we can take that criticism and so and it's important to be surrounded by people we can trust and love spouses obey and friends and say look i got this email i got this criticism you think there's some a lesson in it for me forget it or how they said it something to learn the person says no you did nothing wrong keep going you're good then you know you're good sometimes the person might say spouse might say look the person and the way they said it delete but what they said there's something to think about maybe there's a way to grow from it absolutely no i definitely i definitely appreciate that uh the last question i want to get to before we finish up this evening is rabbis in politics should rabbis be using their position the pulpit uh their positions and communities to um be speaking about politics to take us take a side on on candidates or on policies and should they you know use that i guess authority uh to impose what they what they feel is correct the great question longer than for two minutes maybe we'll start with it for now at least um how do you define what's politics one person's politics is another person's it's obvious and we all need to speak out and stand up for it so for example a few years ago when the iran deal was entered into the obama administration though some people consider that politics no rabbi should speak about it from the pulpit and others considered it existential israel's well-being life and death how could i not speak about it so it's complicated because how do you define what's politics and what's not politics bring it very uh contemporary let's say there's a video that goes around with with rabbis uh speaking about vaccines or masking right there are many many people that could feel like you're my rabbi you're my rev this is maybe for the cbc to speak to this is maybe for our local um you know health health officials to speak about but my rob shouldn't be speaking about this right yeah it is complicated so what's obvious to one person is political and people should stay away from controversial to another person so who gets to define it how is it defined i'll tell you my general rule personally this is my my rabbinate myra bonus this is my rule i think irav speaking about politics in the pulpit is an abuse of the pulpit we are empowered and we are charged with sharing torah and masora with trying to inspire and uplift with trying to make the comfortable feel uncomfortable the uncomfortable feel comfortable that's our job to stand up there and specifically about politics when there are legitimate debates and legitimate different points of view is i think to misuse the pulpit that's not our job i also think strategically it's foolish because every community and every congregation is going to have diverse people with diverse political positions so by definition when you speak about politics you're alienating a certain segment of the community and why do that i'm not talking about vaccines right now i'm talking about who to vote for or republicans versus democrats or certain policy decisions immigration and the like when you get up there you are you're unlikely actually influencing people why are you entitled to believe that your political position is more authoritative than someone else's this is not torah um and and you're automatically gonna make a certain segment of the community turn off shut off stop listening or stop coming all together because they don't align with where you're coming from is that really why they come to shul you turn on any device any smartphone any computer any tv and all the headlines are politics it's pundits and talking heads and politics all the time is that why people are coming to shul they can read that they can get that they can think that everywhere else when you come to sure be uplifted be inspired be transformed be challenged to leave your comfort zone be a better person break out and break free so there's an enormous downside to doing politics in the pulpit i think there's very little upside now the argument will be well robotimentora has a position on these political issues and it's our job to educate the people what they are so write an article if you want to do that hold a separate class where the people who come will be self-selecting but on a shabbos morning to use that pulpit what for some people is the only time of the whole week that they set aside to learn and to talk politics it's toxic it's poisonous it's divisive it's not our job it's not our role it's not productive it's not helpful that's why personally i stay away from it so in short the answer is no it shouldn't be done my answer is no there's a room there's room input meaning should be active in politics i think we we advocate we we try to pursue our interests there's a lot of room for abundant to use their position to try to advance the jewish interests within politics but i think to speak or to share politics from the pulpit i think is wrong okay we'll go over one more thing really quickly i want to let you go we had a question asked by schlemmy zions in the comments said what safer should i be using learning every single day for daily improvement what's what's the go-to so you can go old school like classic muscular safer like messily sachar and path of the just the ram khal had it right it's timeless it's brilliant the grass city walk across europe barefoot to have had the chance to sit down feet it's got everything in it read it slowly think about it meditate be mindful on it it's absolutely fantastic it is it is phenomenal um there are other contemporaries for them which are which are outstanding if in hebrew revita meyer's forum bianda are having a huge impact on me today of hoffman's far enough coming out in english if you can get rid of hoffman's insights into how to be the best version of yourself today really go to great stuff okay awesome rabbi goldberg really appreciate you coming on this evening look forward to the next time and i hope you go ahead and enjoy the rest of that comes over there and brs thank you naki thank you for the opportunity thanks for all the work that you do and i'll tell the people for you for me we all hear the negative nahi thank you for the amazing work you're doing you're inspiring claustro keep it up we all appreciate have a great job thank you so much thank you everyone who joined have an amazing show with us