Q&A With Rabbi Efrem Goldberg, moderated by R' Ari Koretzky

boy that's it eddie you're coming at it that's it give me the good don't know softballs no softballs okay i don't want any layups i want to have fun all right let's do it good luck good luck everybody am i going to take a pass am i allowed to like that's a steward to your first uh the rules on behalf of our soul our community i would like to thank again you'd see an nc predator and the whole family for putting together this magnificent special shabbos that we've had [Applause] and as always you have created a shabbos of inspiration shabbos of growth hashabas to learn and to become better people from and all of the growth that we experience my use of this mic and uh and i want to thank very very much rabbi from goldberg i haven't had a chance to welcome robertson goldberg and family rabbi gobert keeps apologizing for speaking too long as i explained to him first of all the longer you speak the better i look and uh but more importantly i think it's it's uh fair to say that we are happy happy not just to hear you speak as long as you want but happy to hear more torah and more lessons and more more opportunities for growing and learning together tonight we're very privileged as the grand finale i supposed to have aviary karetsky host of the jews you should know podcast and all around great person um and the goal of tonight though i have not seen any of the questions on your list so i am somewhat trembling in my shoes here but the goal tonight is to talk to talk about some real things talk about torah in real life talk about issues that face all of us and we may not have all the solutions but by considering and discussing and learning and learning from ruby goldberg and his ideas and suggestions and thoughts we come away as better people more educated people so we look forward very much to hearing your thoughts i'll be karetsky the floor is yours okay welcome everyone can we hear it can we hear out there in the back thank you uh i'm gonna use the laps there we go how about now keep it away how about now fantastic okay special thank you rabbi rose mara dostrom and um in particular another special thank you to my dear friends nancy pretter for hosting this whole shabbos for inviting me um i was so good to know your father yitzi who unfortunately was taken from us in what feels like all too early but i know that all the chasse all the incredible work that you do in the community locally nationally internationally all of that is a uh this is a uh and for uh all the inspiration hashem will gather here tonight that will accrue from our conversation and has accrued from all the conversations over shabbos should likewise continue to be a credit to his hauling the shama and with that rabbit goldberg welcome thank you so first of all how was your first shabbos i think ever in baltimore first i was ever involved and by the way i live now in silver spring so you could be honest how was it there we go fantastic amazing amazing community a huge thank you to the murda for generously hosting and allowing and enabling me to speak over time too long but thank you so much for sharing your holy pulpit and to the predators dear new friends for hosting us incredible hospitality what a beautiful beautiful shabbos and continue your leadership here in baltimore and beyond but baltimore community is a beautiful community and obvious it seems like the easy thing to say when you're sitting in baltimore up here but the truth is that you have a beautiful beautiful community and the people that we met and interacted with uh our leaders are scanning but with humility and modesty benetora it's a torah community with total values and and we walk away so inspired with so many ideas that we want to bring back to boca so thank you thank you so much for hosting us the show this is beautiful given how few visitors pass through boccon on a regular basis i'm sure you remember an encounter that we had outside brs about a month ago i was there on vacation right surprisingly and um we met you were running out of shul and i quickly grabbed i said i'm going to be interviewing you next month and you said remember what you said to me he said i'm an open book ask me anything you want and your wife was standing right there and she gave you a little look and you said he said well my wife thinks a little too open so so we'll try to balance but we're going to go with your sheet but not hers tonight and uh but we'll start with assault generally smart man he's been married a while so let's uh let's start that with a softball and then we'll we'll ratchet it up um just give us a little bit of a brief biographical overview and tell us where you grew up what what your your background was and particularly with maybe with an emphasis on some of the torah personalities that influenced you along the way sure so first of all the disclaimer before any of this question and answer is i don't necessarily have authority on any answer these are just my opinions right or wrong but hopefully they stimulate as the rav said us to think and continue conversations not about my biography and life but the questions i'm sure that will follow afterwards i grew up in teaneck new jersey um you go thank you to the one team person here yeah i grew up in teaneck new jersey um went to yavin academy i went to fresh for high school i had an experience in 11th grade in particular that got me to really reflect workshop i grew up in a from home with parents who are wonderful role models to me of yiddish skype but got really really got me to think about and address my own yiddish kite a little bit more seriously to take it more seriously there's an interaction i had on a school bus trip with some of my friends and my peers that age i was disturbed by something they were doing they challenged and threw it back in my face why are you disturbed by what we pick and choose you also pick and choose and you know sometimes someone holds a mirror up to you like we talked about this morning and when you see in the mirror you have you have a choice to make and that summer really set me on a different trajectory of life i went to marcia cola that summer from there i went to karen biavna for two years i went to ship university i was in shechtershire for three years bar hashem got married to an amazing wife went to gracol and learned there under of david miller who is another amazing influence in my life shakhtar of course is is a gone is a is a goddess it's an enormous time of post sake what impressed me more and continues to now we have discussed i never dreamt this when i sat in the shear but we host him almost every year he stays at our house we interact informally when the camera's off and the lights are off and and shechter's gone this is unbelievable his encyclopedic memory and knowledge is extraordinary it did then and it still now gives me goosebumps but it's his midos it's his it's his humility it's who he is in reality which continues to um inspire me even more rav david miller also of david miller in the in the groups calling you shalom enormous very very special special person had it and has a huge influence on my life um came back to uh to boca we hadn't heard of boca at the time we hadn't heard the book all the time nobody had it i try to rate where bokeh is on the map by all the jewish organizations and magazines that list the candlelighting times in cities across america and i just book a list that is boca not listed so we hadn't heard of bokeh but we heard there was a cola we were considering the colonel colomboka this gave me the opportunity to continue to learn while also beginning to teach and explore i thought i was going into it's a separate conversation i'm sure we want to get to other things but why i decided to give my lifetime voter sakodesh what inspired me to do that that was not always the trajectory i was on it's not the family i come from um whatever the reason was but i thought i was going to go into china when i came to boca i credit my my amazing wife who really redirected me and thought who i was my skill set and my tolerance level when i go now to teach and occasionally the schools in our community invite me in to teach one period one class question and answer i'm like done for the day i can't i have such awe for our mechanic our ebay him who can go for hours on end or period after period and and deal with trying to hold the attention of these young people all that goes into molding and shaping these neshamas i'm absolutely blown away but while i was in nicola i already started to get my my feet wet in the rabbanus and in boca raton the assistant rabbi at the time was rubbed by yeshua fess who left to start nephesh benefish and i became the assistant rabbi and then rabbi brandon my predecessor left and i became the thereof in 2005 and so i said at my installation then i know there was a recent installation i said then that i approached this as i did my marriage that i intend for this to be forever this is the level of commitment this is where i hope to be and this is the only relationship of this sort that i that i hope to know and hashem they haven't thrown me out yet why do you mention rabbi fess um you know this was this is the second time we were supposed to do this uh there was a false start before a couple a month or so ago um so i interviewed him for the podcast right before and uh he i saw hey this mostly shabbos i'm going to be talking about rabbi goby old your old buddy he said please give him a big hug send them regards so i don't know if that still applies for the second time i can't i can't him for it but he does send regards at least he meant to before there's no power on a hug that's it okay so let's uh let's ramp up the degree of difficulty now a little bit um solve the tuition crisis um so i think what's really interesting to me at least you know having followed your journey somewhat from afar and seeing kind of where you have stationed yourself in sort of the broader constellation of the torah world so you seem to be a person who values balance and who specifically wants to straddle multiple worlds multiple circles let's say and you're not afraid of tension points or of areas of dissonance two values or situations that might seem at odds with one another but that perhaps can generate some sort of synthesis so i want to ask you a series of questions that sure uh speak to some of those topics so we'll start with a i think a pretty difficult one because you know our community has been rocked not just recently but in particular recently by quite a few scandals and difficult challenges charismatic leaders who have fallen who have they failed us and on the one hand we know that passion and charisma are vital to attract people especially young people to draw people in to light that fire i know that you know i was in boco and moshe weinberger shalita was there for shot for uh for brendan i was in the crowd and the level of animation and power was amazing and my my high school age son was there and he was you know he was lit on fire from it was beautiful on the other hand there's a tremendous danger to the worship of the hero worship and the again the charismatic leader persona how do you as a community how can we sort of balance those two how can we embrace those who have that kind of talent that dynamism but also be careful and mindful of its pitfalls and as dare i say a person who maybe has some of that charisma how do you personally solve for that and ensure that you are staying in a in a safe and healthy place that's a great question that's a great question i don't know if i have that charisma at all i aspire to not have charisma but i aspire to tap into whatever the tools that are necessary to try to inspire myself and through that to extend that to hope to expo inspire others i think that we have to place an emphasis on substance over form form is important as a delivery mechanism for the substance but it has to be people of substance people of value people who are adding value and adding content and the form is the vehicle to get the message across but when it's all about the form and it's all about the glitz and it's all about the lights and it's all about the influence and being an influencer and when you examine the substance you say what's there it's hollow it's empty it's really much more about the fame than it is about the content is when we should have concerns when when the flag should go up for us so who we admire and whom we should get our children to admire who we should follow literally or figuratively online or offline i think and what i try to do in my life are look for people of tremendous substance of depth people of humility the kimora says that arabia has based on apostles in malachi that we should pursue people who are hashem we should pursue people which is a very high standard for those who are trying to communicate and transmit torah it's an expectation a standard that's hard if not it depends which maybe you know that's true that's true but i think that that's an enormous guiding force for us is that the torah and ghazala telling us it's not just about who's got the most fame the most followers the most glitz it's not just about we're going to go this way okay is that better okay great we got upgraded upgrades we're flying business class 2.0 um so it's not just about it's not just about i had this epiphany a few years ago when we bring in a lot of speaker scholars in residence rabonim rashashiva series and i had this very sad realization one shabbos because there was a few scholars in residence space closely together and there was one person who had enormous depth substance brilliance but their delivery mechanism was somewhat dry and stale and slow and a few weeks later there was a person who was all show and glitz screaming and modulating their voice and flailing their arms and drawing everyone's attention i thought about could i repeat what they said did that really have an impact on me and i i didn't find that there was a lot there and after each of those spoke i heard our mespaum the members and the contrast of the reaction was that the second was amazing it was amazing the first was so boring it was terrible why'd you bring him don't bring him back again and i realize that it's up to us the consumer it's up to us the the ones who are listening and looking is to try to get past the superficial now don't get me wrong i try to work on my own speaking style and to tap into that which will attract attention and keep people's attention and get the message across and enable it to penetrate i don't think there's a mitzvah in being dry and stale and boring and monotone i think it's a mitzvah to learn the tools necessary to get it across but we have to be able to to cut it open and to see what's really there so the first thing is really substance over form form is really wonderful and it's important to communicate the substance but we should we should be drawn to the people and turn to the people who have the substance number one number two there's an incredible joshua iran writes mushroom it's totally makes no sense whatsoever that hashem would recruit someone specifically with a speech impediment a horrific orator to be the leader of the jewish people who has to march into the palace and make demands of paro and stand in front of an entire nation and convince them with their slave mentality to see themselves as free people why he couldn't find a charismatic speaker the joshua saran says an incredibly important episode he says wanted to make clear lest we generations later say you know what maybe these miracles never happened and maybe the torah kedosha doesn't have truth and maybe moshe was like the amazing motivational speaker of his time so he stood on the stage and he stood with the mic and he got everyone's attention and he pulled the wool over everybody's eyes so kirsh morocco specifically positioned somebody who no one would ever suspect nobody could ever accuse nobody would ever say it was his charisma it's not because of the truth there's truth and there's depth so we need to be very very careful and cautious we have to have high expectations of our leaders we have to be exceptionally exceptionally careful i'm not going to say when there's smoke there's fire because that's an unfair position to take their innocent people have been falsely accused and lives that are ruined even when there was smoke so i think we have to hesitate before we go all in and i think this is where you were headed in saying where there's smoke this fire however where there's smoke we should pay even more careful and close attention when there's rumor and innuendo when there's behavior and attitudes that stand out to us that something doesn't feel right or seem right you know again without speaking about anything head on but you know why would aurov be meeting with young girls alone secluded late at night without the what what the general secular world knows today are the best practices of a window of a camera of an open door of never being alone and if that's happening and there's a pattern of it happening even if nothing egregious took place but that poor judgment alone should raise flags so we have to be vigilant as a community in terms of our expectations and demands of best practices best behavior we live in such a world that we need to be above board and above even suspicion and as consumers we should look for personalities who practice what they preach and i'll close because this will be all night if i answer every question you see the theme that's emerging the showers but i'll close by saying this for a long time we've bark hashem had amazing speakers come and many of them stay with us in fact early on when i was an assistant rabbi and i was in charge of the adult education program i would recruit and invite people not based on the community but who i could spend time with but their phone number in my rolodex have access to learn from them and turn to them going forward now we know where the maccabeats came the next week then i would have to over there exactly so so i did that early on and i've continued with it but i saw two patterns emerging they are the people who practice what they preach whatever they give speech is about you see them living it even more when the lights on camera are off and there are the people who are demanding and they're high maintenance and they're difficult and they act totally different when no one's around and it's such a turn off and it's really deeply disturbing and just one example not of the second but one of the times that rabbi crone came to speak and i remember him he he intentionally made his way to find our custodian to thank him for setting up that night and for cleaning up that night and for enabling his visit to be possible he didn't do that because i was going to tell this story or someone would write it in a book about him he did it because it's who he is he practices what he preached when he talks that's his life is what he's talking about and not everybody is that way so we have to be educated and careful consumers just because someone has a lot of followers or a lot of listens a lot of posters puts out a lot of cds just because they have a lot of follows doesn't mean that there's somebody who's hashem who's worthy of our attention and worthy of our learning from them i think the burden is on us to be very careful and very very vigilant in it i remember so i guess if each answer is as long we can give a clap for it but otherwise so uh beautiful answer though i i you know you mentioned all the speakers you've brought in um i remember once being in boca a couple years ago and i i just picked off you know the shelf one of the uh the guide for the year of all the speakers coming in it was like it's like a phone book and it was like it was everything was rabbits in young great uh la shalom was there and it was many many famous personalities and it was incredible who passed through there and one of the amazing you know observations i had was that the sheer diversity um just when i was there this past month it was the shabbos before i came was a rabbit bender from from darcy and then it was remotely weinberger during the week and then it was the maccabees like i mentioned that afterwards for the uh for the i guess the nightcap or whatever you'll call it and it's really diverse but i think that is a reflection of again the way that you again if i could presume the way that you want to position yourself and see yourself and and in that regard i want to ask you how you see the trend of the of the modern torah world because i i i personally perceive sort of competing in certain ways um dissonant trends one is is kind of a flattening of the world right the the internet has been a democratizing force people can listen to why utorra if they you know grew up going to lakewood or ponovich or wherever it might be and people have access to all kinds of speakers um you've written for mishpochah magazine you've you know been on headlines and which tends to have a more maybe right center or right of center audience you have people like rabbi y jacobson who's you know straddled the chabad and other worlds you have these kinds of trends you have these these pockets yet on the other hand we live in this incredibly polarized world where the walls seem higher and higher and i feel like both trends are happening at once do you do you agree that there's two things happening or do you think one of these strains is really the dominant and where are we going another great question thank you these are great questions um you should have a podcast i agree it's fantastic you should listen to the podcast okay how do you know i don't it's fantastic jews you should know they're fantastic everybody should listen to it rate and review thank you for not allowed to say that about my own but i could say it about yours right it is a great question and and i thought and think a lot about this a lot about this because as you've suggested several times tonight this is you know what you see is what you get about me and maybe to a fault maybe i overshare uh too transparent in some ways um but this is this is how i live my life and i think it's a beautiful way for others to live their life and it's not for everyone and i don't judge those who don't choose it but what i have found is there is enormous community that don't have a voice and don't have a vehicle they're not organized as a community in a movement who believe in it what i'm talking about is this what i call the shahrukh kholel based on the arizal there were 12 tribes and 12 entrances to the basement but there was a thirteenth for the character the one who didn't know who they belonged to and there is always three letters for the thirteenth gate for the person doesn't know which this notion of this gate for the jew who says i love all the other gates i've walked through them i visited them i feel connected with them but i don't want to be put in a box as i've written and i've quoted several times or blackman already cambriana says you'll put me in a box when i'm dead but while i'm alive don't limit me and don't put me in a box because i feel connected to authentically and genuinely not out of fear for my kids shidduchim and not out of fear because i don't want to feel insecure not out of fear but because i genuinely can feel simultaneously ashkenazi and sparty simultaneously yeshivish and call it the best of the hawaii world i can simultaneously feel lit fish in hasidish i could simultaneously feel hungarian and i'm a yucca i could take the best of each of these communities and the rich tradition of torah of these communities and blend it and synthesize it into who i am not in a competing way but in a way where i feel connected to each so it's not that if you say when i wrote an article about this and i titled it to get people to read it but also got a lot of not everybody loved the title where i said i'm not a modern orthodox rabbi and in the article i said i'm not ashamed or embarrassed or apologetic of having gone to esheba that i see the miracle of the modern state of israel and i thank hashem for it and whatever other things you want to identify or associate with it it's not that i'm embarrassed or ashamed or apologetic or defensive i just refuse to be limited or put in a box that that's who you are that's where your community is you just listed a series of speakers but in that same month we also had the kalavarebe and in the same month we also had a night for israel which you might have heard about that had partnerships and fill me in i'm not going to say and it was a beautiful night ambassador david friedman spoke and our governor ron desantis and senator scott and ben shapiro and and others so there's an enormous diversity and they're not in conflict and it's not living you know writes this on a letter to his talmud who says i feel like i'm living a dual life when i go to work but um he said you know if you have a room in a hotel in a room at home you're living a dual life but if you have multiple rooms in your own home you're living one life one home that has multiple rooms so there is a synthesis and the ability to have all of that and what i have found both in trying to to to live this and for a long time in our community provide this what i mean by that is the diversity of the people who come men and women leaders people of different backgrounds and there to speak to different things is to try to educate the community and expose the community to different people and different ways of thinking so they can make a choice and say you know that's not entirely me but i had a lot of preconceived notions and i learned something and i feel connected to at least part of that and to expose the community to the beautiful fabric of claudius earl of torah and davar masora and of different components it's even outside of it i don't mean antithetical to it but i mean not necessarily towards that towards that goal so we've been doing it for a long time in our community and then with the ability to publish and corona providing the ability to really be able to share using using technology and the platforms available i've really tried to espouse this a little bit more and live this myself it's who i am and the feedback has been enormous and extraordinary so here's my takeaway there's a polarization in this divide and it's because the extremes on both sides are screaming the loudest there are extremes and there are those who are interested and they profit off of dividing claw israel there are zealots there are canoeing there are extremists there are fundamentalists on each side and in every direction and it's true by the way politically and it's true religiously and it's true in the torah community but it doesn't represent a necessarily the ms and it doesn't represent the masses who are intimidated or silenced but when they are given a voice will say that's not who i am and who i want to be when in our podcast we had ellie pelay the owner of mishbaka magazine and he talked about mishpacha magazine one of the breakthroughs of bishop magazine and there are legacy torah magazines alaya mashallah that are no longer here but mashbach magazines like it have had a staying power is that you never know from week to week who's going to be on the cover and what they found from their enormous subscriber list and those who buy it in stores all over the world is that one of the united things about clay israel is that they want to be exposed to other parts of cloud israel and maybe those communities or its leaders are afraid for them to be exposed or the extreme elements within it are trying to put up walls but now that they get around those walls or over the walls or under the walls or through the walls whether online or offline by subscribing to these torah magazines that have a rabbinic board and are guided by torah personalities but that you never know on the cover it could be a safari godol or lithuania or they're not afraid to put on the cover as well which i think is a great credit to them to not be defensive or afraid it shouldn't be something one gets credit for but sadly in our world it is so both of what you said are true there are extremists and there are those who profit and gain and benefit there are zealots who have an interest in creating divides and lines and putting up walls but what i see is that the masses of claustral even those who belong to ashar even those who say this is who i am and it's proudly who i am but they're happy and excited to be exposed to others they want to travel we were talking earlier today when tommy looks at him was i'm not plugging our podcast but in the conversation with wilson you know he talked about a story in episode we had a driver he wanted to drive to go to toronto to pick up his son and the driver said i can't he said you can't i pay you please go pick up my son in toronto and he said i can't because i don't have a passport and he turned to this driver and he said first what's the problem all the vibe we should all have but he turned to his driver and he said when you know a passport you're six year old retired policeman smart guy you don't have a passport he said no i've never left the country and he said how could you be in your 60s and and you never explored what else is out there you've never left this country and the same is true in torah there's a torah passport there's a torah passport that says it doesn't mean wherever i travel wherever i visit i want to live there i want to come home where i'm comfortable where i feel safe where i feel secure i want to come home but i have a torah passport and i'm willing to travel i'm willing to explore i'm willing to see what's out there what i have found what i think the subscriber base of mishpacha and others like it will tell you is that the extremists are the minority and the masses of clay israel even if they feel comfortable safe secure at home are excited to have a passport and ability to travel so i think it's a very resonant approach to again to a lot of people and i think this schule in particular has epitomized that for many years and uh passed more than however i know is uh someone who represents that as well but do you believe that this is an approach that can work for young people as well or do the younger people need to be grounded first in a particular ideology do they do they need the passion and the sense of called triumphalism even that their particular way their schnitz their lane their shower is the shower and then as they mature as they become more sophisticated and nuanced and they're thinking they can begin to take in some other approaches it depends maybe on the kid it depends maybe on the family and i think for the most part you are right this is something that you have to be mature and developed you have to have a strong foundation before you can explore what we're describing might be the third and the fourth and the fifth level of the house but if you don't have a strong foundation it will crumble so on day one you say i'm going to take my passport i've barely been at home i never grew up at home i never absorbed the values from at home from day one i'm leaving the home with my passport to travel and see the world so for a lot they'll walk away very confused they'll run into a lot of trouble they'll be attracted to the wrong things they don't know how to make sense or synthesize or not have it contradict you need to grow up first in a home you need to first have a sense of who you are and where you come from and a foundation and it can be built upon that i will just at the caveat that i think there are exceptions because as you said the democratization of the internet and the ability to be exposed to things that are out there there are young people who are precocious and curious who are inquisitive and have this thirst and whether they're allowed or not allowed or at home or the library or their friend's house or the other device that their parents don't even know about they might be exploring and searching so either you can guide that thirst with certain boundaries and safety to it or if you try to squash it they might pursue it in a different and an unhealthy way so there might be exceptions to the rule there might be a particular young person who needs to be given that flexibility in space even at a young age but i do think that for the most part i i didn't feel this when i was that summer at marsha cola i was figuring out how to how to make a landing on a gemara i'm not going to ask you for your rapid cone impersonation by the way okay i wasn't i didn't have heads or tails i didn't have which way to hold up the gemara in those days there was no art scroll i was working out of a sensino and a jastro there was mysterious nephesh for torah in those days it was on melissa and yugiya was a totally different world sure somebody came by in the base measures and told you gastro is a coyote correct they had that conversation too but the sansino mamash was was you know you needed a dictionary to translate the english and this encino to figure out what the gemara was talking about but you know so i didn't feel this way and i didn't know this language and i hadn't been exposed to those people but i'm proud to tell you and excited to tell you that now i am i'm not going to flex or boast but i'll tell you that i'm going from here tomorrow to new york cause i'm meeting a group of 25 guys from our shul every year we do a fly into new york for two days every year for the last several years rudely interrupted by corona but barack hashem was there corona in new york i don't think i've heard or florida for that parts of segments of it so we fly with 25 guys and we make our way around russia yeshiva rabbanim batte madris around new york florida has a lot of things and they're wonderful yeshivas and most those there and another one coming by the way mr shem another one coming but not not that legacy and not that stature yet um so we fly it and i'll give you an example of our itinerary for this monday tuesday with the risk that you're going to follow us to new york and want to join us and i share it not to flex but i share it to give you a sense of what we're bringing our guys and by the way i have guys on this trip i'll tell you afterwards the the diversity of the guys on this trip but we're going to see rabbit on finer and shame we're going back to shay yoshida yeager and then we're going to brooklyn to see riversman of the brother of david cohen and then we'll be in muncie with riv fry and waxman this claire reba and then we'll go it won't be a conversation in the basic forest but the rib nature and then we start out tuesday morning and we're going to you a meeting with a bunch of russian yeshiva rebellion nyu hit this farm sale and then we'll uh make our way back to brooklyn or from the shore and we'll go to the old of the rebbe pick up dinner to the airport and back now last time we did this trip last time we did this trip there was there was a guy who nyu who grew up bubba now lives in boca not externally still visibly sounds like a memoir it would be good and when we walked out of the base of meditation you and he met to russia yeshiva he turned that he said to me i totally should have gone here instead of baba which was a funny line but what he meant to say is who he was and what appealed to him and there's nothing wrong with bhabhav hala gebhav but whatever he grew up thinking he saw a bass madrish that was entirely different he had never been exposed to and there's a generic community who might be the poster man for modern orthodoxy fra brenta stark modern orthodoxy a beautiful way and you know i was a little bit nervous i'm sure his eyes can put a hole in the back of your head and i don't know what he's going to say how stark and strong he can be and he walked out of ravanashura and his life was changed he was blown away now you come back to my example with the passport my modern orthodox friend is not moving to rav mashore's shul in brooklyn but he's so happy that he had a passport and he got to visit there and he's so excited to go visit again now as a follow-up because of what it did to charge his life and the other guy is not necessarily sending his kids he's necessarily not sending his kids to you but he had a passport and he saw his base medicine it's russia he understood how closer together the total world is than far apart and i think having worked hard to develop relationships across those spectrum right i told our guys when i met with them i said we're going to new york i said the people in new york in their entire lifetime won't sit and have conversations with this group of people together you add that whole list together you could spend your entire life growing up in the huzu of new york and you won't have this chance so i've worked hard to develop these relationships and i can tell you that we're closer than ever together closer than ever together that torah unites and torah is a uniting bond and theme and there are differences and there are nuances and they're important and then but we're closer closer than ever closer than ever i remember a few years ago because here in baltimore i'll tell you this story i wish i could find it if anyone can please send it to me i don't think i dreamt it or imagined it i know i read it and i don't want to get into this from a controversial perspective but one of the great gifts the so-called modern orthodoxy again i hate that label in term because it means so many different things to different people and i don't even know yet left know what it means but one of the great gifts to it was open orthodoxy which much of the total world was concerned by and iran feldman in an interview was being asked all about it was all about open orthodoxy and then someone said well what about modern orthodoxy to which he replied and this appeared in the publication and i you know held my breath as i kept reading when i was reading this article he said oh they're basically the same as us what are you talking about they're like with us they're not this other conversation they're basically the same as us and i was like wow wow what a gift they gave us and an opportunity to differentiate and to create you know who was aligned and who was together and how overwhelming he has everything in common with so few differences in between and you know when sadly the zealots and the extremists they intimidate even our greatest gdollum i could tell you this for a fact having very recently gotten direct sock and encouragement oh can i quote rebbe multiple major postgame in america and eric's israel no don't use my name don't quote me because there's a there's a fear and these kanayam act in such a way that it's understandable why there's a lot to fear of them but when they're not around and when the lights are off the respect and the cooperation the collaboration in the total world with its different segments is inspiring so i'm very very hopeful about where we're going but the masses have to have the courage to find our voice to create a community and to actually silence and shut down the extremists who are not serving our interests next year i think you could do your uh be great to do your tour of new york on a bicycle imagine that you could raise money for high lifeline and like or bike for boca there you go um it sounds like an incredible trip and uh sounds like it's not open for uh people to tag onto so yeah but maybe maybe it could be replicated um you mentioned that you've cultivated more of a kind of a national profile over the last number of years i think with the writing and you know unusually active presence on social media how do you balance knowing how much time you should be devoting as a regular stutter of you're sure of you have iran and you have mcvos and all these different things and shylas and rushes and counseling and everything of course you have an assistant rabbi and other you know the large there's a team there i know but and i don't know if you have you actively cultivated this national profile or is it something that's just emerged and either way how do you deal with the the inevitable tensions that i'm sure arrived there it was an accident i didn't sit down with a strategy and say you know i'm pretty bored locally i really need to expand my profile there's money to be made in fame and it's a i want my picture to hang or less or less cynically there's influence to have but it wasn't even that it wasn't that i have such an important message that's so more important than everyone else that i really need to find my voice to get it out there there was never we've never ever had that conversation i never sat down with that goal it all happened accidentally i'm happy to whatever degree it's there i don't know that it's it's there that much but i'll tell you exactly how it happened that happened by accident every single thing i did i started for artsy boar and then we live in a world that enables you to scale not in a way that competes or detracts or compromises what you're doing locally but i think complements it so we have a we have a you have a beautiful newsletter that's given out here in the shul we have one it's called the weekly that's given out in our community and uh many many years ago when i was sick and tired of people saying to me rabbi what do you do all day it's like a great question nobody would ever ask a doctor or lawyer you know what do you do all day like you give it to us i'm sure everybody's never come out with any good comebacks for that so what do you do all day exactly so what do you do all day so i started a column called from the rabbi's desk and i didn't you know it wasn't like a defensive posture but i realized that the average people in the community don't know the window into your life yeah so i didn't say well i met with this person because they have shown bias issues and i want to let you know how it's going you know i didn't i didn't write that update on the goldbergs right i didn't write that but i did talk about you know the time that goes into planning the programming of the school or i talked to wrote articles about what it's like dealing with the mikvah or kashrus the vad or whatever other community events and i would write every week something and then there was this thing called the internet and at the time blogs were really beginning and getting big and someone suggested or i found it i said you know i write it anyway it gets printed in our local newsletter with a click of a button you can also share it in a place that anyone can see it anywhere in the world that sounds like it's worthwhile and that's what i did i kept just writing the column but then i said well instead of just writing it about what i did this week to justify my salary instead of just writing about what i did locally i would try to take on issues and talk about them but it was still based on meetings i had with people so i met with a group of women struggling with infertility we had a local support group for a long time sensitivity and community and i sat there bawling my eyes out hearing what their life is like and insensitive things that are said and i said i have an audience and i have the ability to get their message out so i wrote an article about infertility etiquette and our shabbos tables and questions we have and things we take for granted and how we bathe and people with infertility all over like wow that's amazing and thank you and i was like i i didn't do anything i listened to them and i wrote this article and the same can be true about when you fight and work on behalf in laguna people can have all kinds of opinions about solutions not solutions ranging from the you know rabbis created this problem and they could have the solution to i'm against prenuptial agreements to but when you sat with someone and you worked tirelessly and they're chained and they're shackled and they can't move on with their life and they can't find the happiness that they deserve and they're literally being abused by the fact that they can't move on then then you have a voice to be able to so i was constantly having these meetings and i was like thank you because you're giving me my next article each time you know there's a person in our community a young person suffers struggles with depression so i said the most moronic thing you could say to someone with depression what do you mean but you have this that and the other thing your life is so good like just get out of bed and just just choose to be happy which is the absolute worst thing you could ever say to anyone with depression there is nothing more ignorant in the whole world more hurtful in the whole world than what i had said now he happens to be an amazing wonderful guy and a friend so he pointed that out to me in a way that didn't make me feel like nothing but educated me so i wrote a whole article about depression and mental health that there shouldn't be a stigma what we can do for those who are exposed to maybe avid that if you're feeling it you're not alone this is what you could do about it why i'm such a leader in the forefront that's why people say things to me your gratitude i don't know what you're talking about i don't i'm the luckiest person in the world that i get to meet people and then try to help by bringing that message out that's how the article started so i wrote one of those articles and i put it in there and then i put it in our weekly also so it's all still for our neighborhood and our community it's just scaled up and shared with others the same is true with every share i give online there's no share i give online that's not for our community every one of the shiram is for our community and then karana struck and everyone outside of new york maybe was locked down and shut down and distanced and we couldn't give the shirum so i took advantage of this tool called the internet and put them on there and other people maybe found them or like them but i'm not that's not a distraction for our community it's for our community every sure i give there's a camera but i'm giving it to the people in the room and if you're watching on the camera your secondary audience that's not who i'm talking to and then lastly whatever social media presence i had which i was on early because i was encouraged again by people and why was i encouraged by people early because in the end of the day basher husham there is a world you know this through your work there's a world of people when a mote shabbos are not being found in a shul from a lava malka to hear a couple rabbi speak their community the place that they live is online that's where they live that's where they get ideas it's where they get inspiration it's where they get saka lacha it's where they get guidance out of kashir pesach it's where they get it's where they live we could talk all night long we probably all agree is that a good phenomenon a bad phenomenon is that positive is it negative if we could turn back the clock and the option to never ever turn on this thing called the internet knowing what we know now would we turn it on or leave it off good debate good debate right but the reality is do you want to deal with the reality basher husham or you want to live in a make-believe utopian world of where you wish people were so i heard that early on and i went on and there were people who were critical concerned including people very close to me and i said look i don't use it i don't put pictures of what i had for dessert or then my kid kept me up all night or my flight's delayed and i'm sitting in the airport i don't my rule with the internet is if before the internet you'd never knock on your neighbor's door to start telling them all these things or showing them pictures of your kid on the first day of school then don't do it on the internet if you wouldn't do it in real life can you imagine walking around the whole neighborhood i just want to tell you about the card i gave my wife for mother's day and how she's the most amazing mother let me read that let me read that i want to show you pictures of my kid on the first day of school you go up and down the whole block who cares my kid also went to school for the first day today like who cares and there's someone on the block who doesn't have kids who doesn't have kids so my role with the internet was if i wouldn't do it in real life why am i doing it on the internet so i used it exclusively for shiurim and articles and to ask a thought provoking question or share a quote i thought might move people and you know what's happened fast forward to today fast forward to today and again without belaboring this point but many of the very people who participated or even hosted the ic about the internet have twitter handles and streamed their conventions on twitter live on twitter on instagram waiting for tick tock i go to tick tock the twenty-three yeah i don't think any of us should go there but the rochester dancing or something enough i don't know how i should go there but a good has an instagram page and a twitter page and and it's administrators and leaders do and they go to convention was streamed live on it that's where i happened to have caught it and watched it it was incredible it was beautiful and added so much value so that which everyone rejected at first realized that's where people are are you bothered by the maybe persistent hypocrisy of that that there there's a there's a call on the one hand to ban that or to mitigate that and yet it's being utilized yeah i have concerns about it because these are archedolum and these are abundant and i admire them and i want to listen and learn from them but i think that particularly young people feel you don't have credibility if you don't practice what you preach so if i if i don't listen to you on that and you don't listen to you on that so maybe the moet says puts out one messaging about it the internet or social media and then the very organization that supposedly is dictated by the moetsus is not listening to them well why why would i listen to them not only on this but on anything else so that the notion of maintaining credibility i think is a big question uh it's a question i'll leave it as a as a question mark but i share all this to come back to the original question to say i can't imagine things i'm doing other than coming to baltimore for shabbos that are not for my community because all the things i'm doing are things that are for the community but just scaled up where others get it so when i do write a post using social media i'm talking to the members of my community who that's where they live and they are i'm recruiting them to our programs i'm trying to stimulate their thinking and growth and if other people see it then great and if i write an article for our community if other people read it great and if i give a share it's for our community if other people can see it great so i know that there is that perceived tension even within our own community somebody might think well i want more of his time but if they take a moment to understand this they would realize that these tools are all just scaling up but they're not actually detracting from the enormous amount of time all the time which is really local except when i go to and i can attest that when i was there i went to i think it was a tuesday morning i was coming to the uh 9 30 show was maybe i was on vacation don't judge okay so i was going to the late shock and you were uh giving away i think a women's share maybe and there was like there must be 300 people in that in that room and they were all low come for the coffees free coffee at this year whether it's the coffee or the rabbit they were there in the in the shell so they were not on tick tock so um talking though about the fact that you are so committed to the local community i share with you if you're reminiscing a funny anecdote that somebody came over to me in the lobby of brs i just was there from india i stepped out to the lobby for a second guy comes over to me rushing in he's late mentally clearly he goes where do i go for minecraft where i go from i stopped myself i thought this is the most ironic question i showed up here yesterday and you're asking me where minka now happened to know because i just stepped out no that's i told him confidently it's over there second door thank you but yeah well you know hopefully i'll write a check or something but i i was a visitor myself i was a tourist myself you're you are running this community and this community is a community that is has so much of an influx of people you know whether it's from new york or maybe from baltimore or wherever else how do you balance that you have old-timers that have lived there for 20 30 50 years and they probably see the shul as their place and i'm sure you have new people coming in with fresh energy and excitement and they're probably also used to being assertive in their uh particular space and also want to look james chameleon they want to contribute their energies and they want to be a part of this community as well how do how are you navigating that that tension the committee is changing enormously the demographics have shifted and the biggest change is that people used to move to boca to be in boca they heard about the community they liked the diversity they knew the warmth they understood the pace and they moved it to be there over the last two years people have moved to boca to get out of where running from right so i i say all the time that we should be sending bottles of wine and thank you notes to governor cuomo and the governor of california you know knew some because they single-handedly the two of them really helped the jewish communal growth of south florida enormously so so people are now coming not running to something but in many cases running away from something and that runs the risk of changing a dynamic but we work very hard to say look this is who we are and if you come here be part of what we are and for the most part you know it's amazing the fastest growing element of our community although every element is growing and i know that because every school's at record enrollment every school is out of space every school across the spectrum but a very fast growing segment of the community you could call it the more hamish community older hasidim are buying homes to spend the winter or long periods of time and not just them then their children and grandchildren are they coming to brs or they're coming to other parts of the country now they come to brs so the early round who first came and loved it and it was refreshing for them because they were able to experience yiddish kite in a different way again this was their passport they're not ready to come and put their kids in our schools and hook line and sink or buy into this and i totally understand that totally understand that but they have a passport and they're traveling and they're a stage of life that they can they're not afraid of whatever other things that make people afraid at this point and they come and they love it we ran i ran a trip to poland several summers ago we had 40 50 members of our community and it's a perfect example it was across the spectrum we had on the trip members of the community who still drive on shabbos to people who wear stribels and the first night i got up at dinner in poland and i said because adults are just like kids just like kids and that first night everybody sat at a table based on their clique their friends their whatever the ice breakers it was exactly and i said you know it's going to sound melodramatic but when you run a trip to poland that's what you do i said you know when when our ancestors went to the crematorium when they went to the gas chambers they weren't organized by clique or by what kind of yamaka they wore or by who knew each other so the goal is by the last night we're not sitting this way we're all intermingled and integrated and we're sitting together and the kachov it was an amazing trip and there's no better place to do that than to walk through there of course and and there it is through all the trip stars israel but what happened there is one of those people who still today is not fully shamashabas became best friends with one of the hasidim and they go to each other simhas i love recently one of them made a sempra of a grandchild a great grandchild got married in brooklyn and there's a video of the dancing and it's mamash all hasidim and this one guy like right there in the middle and they're best friends and that's a beautiful beautiful image so our goal is that people move down and blend into what we have and buy into what we have not all of it the person i'm not asking you to have to subscribe to every person or go to hear every speaker or attend to every program but don't come down and try to change us so even though the demographic of who attends might be changing but the policies and the posture and the approach are hashgaff of the character is not changing we're not going to abandon our core values or what we do um we have outside of our shula and israeli flag hanging so this has never happened before i got an email about a month ago from someone who said i have a satmar client he wants the vacation he's thinking about coming to boca is there an israeli flag on your property i'd never gotten anything like that before and i said yes and we're not taking it down for his visit unless he's ready i didn't say that um and maybe he's implied maybe he made another choice and he went elsewhere so as i said he went to the satmar the san francisco down there somewhere but as it's happened in other communities all over where people take over a community that has not happened yet we're careful we're cautious we're concerned about i'm not gonna lie but it has not happened we continue to regularly pound this message all the time all the time we try to model it and we try to pound the message home and the people have come like i said what i have found and that's why i said it the masses they love it they're drawn to it they love to sit and chill next to someone very different to them and develop a friendship again not necessarily in their home base where you have to make certain choices about the school you put your children into and there are choices that by definition are going to divide us i also don't live in some fantasy world but at least on this in this way and on these occasions it's refreshing enormously for them to be exposed and learn and connected with a total diverse range of people so they may have been running from something right but once they got there they realized there's something special yeah they could have the most part that's been our experience now you mentioned over here of course that that you are building this community the community is growing by leaps and bounds and there's incredible infrastructure and i joked earlier that but it's true that you're bringing a yeshiva the yeshiva of south florida is coming to a boca near you in an el murtashem and it's a very prestigious lineup of of russia shiva and shpm that are coming and that leads me to my next question and i guess you'll let me know we have to start closed i'll be here all night but you can uh find with me but my flight's not until tomorrow that's right and he's uh good just needs to be somewhat awake if anyone is bored i'm not insulted i can't speak for you but feel free to call it a night but let's keep going so by the way i mentioned her yy jacobsen before right so he puts out these podcasts sometimes on his podcast feed you get like a six and a half hour for pregnant that he did with like rip chase chat tal which is like on double speed that's like three and a quarter it's not so bad but it's still you know i don't know so we'll see how long we go but you you are building this strong infrastructure right and it's a really powerful community and it's not just brs there is many other within bokeh itself you have many other schools i'm not going to list the ball i've been to some of them and up and down the the coast and yet i know i know that you are a person who is very very passionate about eritrea and who believes that really our heart if not our bodies belong in arizona and you have an israeli flag outside of the of the shul how do you how do you deal with this again tension point whereby you're all in on on building community you're not you know you're not building uh you know you're not putting up flimsy maybe they're in covert there were tents outside but you're building institutions and these are meant to meant to last and they're drawing people down and you know i don't know that you're necessarily getting up every shop isn't saying rabosa we're we're in the wrong place let's go you know and yet there must be a part of you or a part of your heart that that is stationed over there and a part of you that wants to be there your predecessor is there the person who your close friend rabbi fast went and founded the most influential aliyah organization for north americans how do you navigate that i robinson was that good she's like let's get up and go it's it's yeah here we go now let's get i thought i thought you're gonna have tough questions we're gonna have some fun with some controversy tonight we're not there yet so stick around but um it's a painful question we're doing a major expansion right now an enormous expansion of our campus and as we've been working on it and raising money for it i had this ache in my stomach like what are we doing we're further embedding ourselves here in hutzler it's isn't the writing on the wall anti-semitism the challenges that are happening why are we growing like if this energy is going in and we're going to raise this amount of money which is eight-figure money so let's use it and just let's all go but the reality is that if i got up and announced that our family were making aliyah this summer and everyone should come with us they'd make us a really nice goodbye party i hope i think how many would come with us maybe there are are there 30 tadika i think i would count on one hand with fingers left over i once asked her by risking people love to quote rabbi risking as the mahaya for all robonaut he got up at lincoln square synagogue he announced i'm making aliyah i found a hill and a frat come with me so i introduced him once that way and said he's making about him he got up and he said he went and he didn't correct me on the spot but afterwards he told me he said how many how many people you think moved with me he had to put a 5 000 deposit to have a home and a fraud so manhattan there were plenty of people who could do that and to humor their rabbi they did that but how many actually got up and went with him it was a handful a couple he didn't move a whole community the notion and what i call aliyah snobs from israel love to send me emails telling me to not talk about anything else but this and get up and announce i'm going because then everyone will come with me and we can move the whole show the reality is that's not going to happen it wouldn't happen it wouldn't happen so i feel very guilty how are we doing this project so i asked hector and he quoted the gemara magilla that i see comes all the shulls outside of israel will lift up off the ground and are going to be transported and those communities will be established in hearts as well so he said whatever you're putting into it now you're doing it for eretz israel not for now and that made me feel a whole lot better about that from a person who cries every time he says the word you're sure i am i think that absolutely has a lot of credibility absolutely so i want to be in israel desperately i have two siblings they both live in arizona my parents have a place and spent half the year in arizona the only goldberg left here on the side of the ocean and my heart is there i would be there in a heartbeat and go at every opportunity i have corona has been as it was for you unbearably painful limiting us from being able to go i believe it's the destiny of all the jewish people we're not here to quote all the makoros and kim mitzvah all the makoros about it but the reality is this is what we daven for and we have the opportunity and anyone who learns tanakh understands our failure and history of not answering the call then and of course it's where we belong and i say all the time in our community that the question is not if but when there are legitimate reasons not to make aliyah there's no legitimate reason not to struggle with making aliyah to me there's no legitimate reason to say i'm here i'm here to stay i'm comfortable i'm happy it's off the table i have no interest every one of us should ask ourselves in struggle and there are legitimate reasons that the answer right now is no family professional parents children robonus they're legitimate reasons not to go there no legitimate reasons to me not to be struggling with going so you know i think about it all the time and i desperately want to be there we advocate for it and there are i think ways that we can make a difference from here the truth is i'm not an expert of history but somebody should do this study that throughout throughout shas there were centers of torah inaudible and outside of it and i don't know if the torah centers inaudible were giving the jews above el alia snobbery where they were exchanging ideas and we have of course the mesora that goes back and forth between those two communities and i'm not saying that we don't all belong there but if there was no one to lobby congress here to send three billion dollars of aid to renew the iron dome or memorandums of understanding about superior military equipment with israel be better or worse that's not an excuse well we all should stay and just make sure you're involved in apac and norway and all that but i think these things are oversimplified and they're more complicated than they are so basically what i'm saying is i desperately want to be there and i will be there we will be there to sham one day we already own plots there but long before that i hope we'll be there alive back to that box thing yeah you know what too many people wait to make aliyah when they're going to be buried there and we should think about and consider a plan for doing it earlier but but my answer is that there are legitimate reasons to not be there yet but there's no legitimate reason that while we're here we're not helping and working on there and i don't care where hashgaffer you are and where you fall in the spectrum but hatsales israel and the example of the list of things i just said of advocating and lobbying for to make a difference to support these our brothers and sisters in our destroyer i think is a responsibility and incumbent on all of us what's interesting is that you know i i do think one of the reasons that people some people maybe don't go has to do with the point you made earlier about the shower hot coal the the 13th gate so to speak that where where would they fit in is there a place for that right so take it personally if you move territorial this summer which made mr sham with bushiyak but if you did it before mashiach where would you live that is a very good question and we struggle with it we spend a lot of time in eritrea and we ask ourselves that because also spend the night scrolling through the netflix benefits city city uh real estate listen my wife does that part of the challenge of variety straw is it's a lot harder to be outside of a box for example there are choices you have to make are you putting your son on a trajectory to join the army or to never go to the army it's very binary there's binary choices that that sort of lock you into communities i think there's a blurring of some of those lines too we're seeing some movement on that and the ability to cross certain communities and certain artificial lines there but it's still very very challenging i will tell you a project that we have is is once a day once uh once uh please god in the future we're not there yet we're working on other things but we've explored and we're continuing to explore being able to open up a brs presence in there it's australia not as a permanent we're making allies there's already brs west that's brs east west right east but with the following vision and it's along the lines what i was telling you before people who know century village in boca which everyone here is grandparents or friends or parents sisters in law or whatever century village in boca these are seasonal communities that people go to knowing that they thrive and flourish seasonally not all year round the equivalent of in the catskills called a vacation village are some of the bungalows where people go as a community for periods of time but may or may not include yemen tovan where they know this is not where we spend all year round but we go for units or periods of time and i don't want to go to the catskills for my two months three months i don't get two or three months off in the summer but if i could orchestrate and organize my life to have that time off in the summer it wouldn't want it to be in the catskills and century village is lovely in the winter in florida but wouldn't it be amazing if they were the equivalent of those in arizona where right now the way it's set up is essentially you either make aliyah you live there full-time or you're here and you can visit there for a few days at a time occasionally but can we create a community a cohesive community in a community that programming that allows those who yearn and long and want to be there but for whatever reason still need to be here to go for six weeks or two or three months in the summer certain yamatovan during the year go and feel connected as a community we're spending those units of times together who have something familiar of a rav or some programming that they connect with over there and understanding that the rest of the year they have to be here there were there was a series of years where we went in the summer territory has a sibling there and we have a lot of family there we made the effort to be there it's not easy it's not inexpensive it's a big challenge it's an enormous privilege if you can pull that off and those summers i would tell my children they laughed at me then and candida left me now i would say you know we live in israel i just work in america so we go back during the year right but i i said that and and you know they took it as a joke and but i don't mean it as a joke can we create that mentality that even if there are reasons we still have to be here that we live there but we just work here 11 months of the year which is it sounds amazing but all at the same time what's coming up for me is you're describing really a luxury product in other words you know i'll have a summer home in casaria no problem right it's definitely a luxury and we talk about the challenges of from affordability yes right now talk about layering on you know to to assuage people's guilt they'll say okay well i'll buy my place in israel right how would that even happen for most people no that's very important thank you for pointing that out because i want to correct that and that's a perfect example of an insensitivity so don't write me the email later i got it i learned from it but unless that's where guys to sponsor apartments for all of us speakers can sit on a panel and make a comment like that and somebody who's not sure where next week's meal is coming from is going to hear that and it's very offensive so you're 100 right i was not working off an assumption that everybody can buy that second home to use in the summers and fly back and forth several times a year with their whole family and be able to leave work for those years you're a thousand percent right i communicated that in an insensitive way with certain assumptions that are not true 100 right and the majority of of our brothers and sisters probably are saving up for years to be able to go when they haven't been in forever we have a dear friend in boca who hasn't been territorial he's about many years ago and he hasn't been there in 25 30 years i told him he won't recognize it you won't recognize it if you haven't been there in three years jerusalem is being built up and expanded out in every single direction you won't recognize the train and where it takes you and how it go there's a million things that you won't recognize so we should never take that for granted and we should work to be able to enable those who can't on their own have that opportunity to go also 100 so what i'm describing was not for everybody in fact it's for very few but there is that population i think who can't entirely be there full time but are yearning for an opportunity and it would be wonderful if somebody made that available to them once we're on the topic of affordability why not i know many people are fascinated by it and we've talked about the kosher money podcast a little bit over shabbos and things that are going on there um how do you see this you know playing out in boca is expensive i was in the you know and now it's not just bokeh it's almost anywhere in south florida and it's almost anywhere there's an erupt and that there's day school and some people make the argument for architectural based on finances alone which may or may not be species i i don't know but what's your approach to this entire subject and maybe on on one foot perhaps aristotle is not the answer you shouldn't you shouldn't come to boca because you're running away for something and kava home or binocular home where you shouldn't go to herzegov because you're running away from something because you won't find it it'll chase you wherever you're going and affordability is a perfect example where i'm not sure you're going to find a home that you could buy in the neighborhoods we would want to be in for less than what you're getting here so i don't think that's the reason to go there um what's the specific question is is it the tuition crisis i don't know i don't want to find too much of the tuition crisis per se but the fact that there is a a greater and greater like in the world at large concentration of wealth among a non-insubstantial number of people and an incredibly generous number of people upon whom the communal infrastructure is predicated right and then you have this much larger middle class and the the challenges that go into that and and the the tensions that can emerge when people live not in you know separate um enclaves but they live together and they daven together and um and there's this enormous pressure that people feel even if they can't necessarily generate much more income or do much to change their their plight do you have guidance for people even from an emotional or spiritual perspective well the first thing i would say is that and this is much easier to say than it is to live and to feel is that money is one metric and it's not the metric for success i said last night you know there's a great quote i forgot the author of the quote that nebraska there are some people so poor that all they have is money i think i heard it from rape from goldberg it's not my question but never there are people so poor that all they have is money we know we interact with any raw of rabbits and do people sometimes with extraordinary wealth extraordinary wealth by every measure and often comes with it extraordinary unhappiness extraordinary insecurity extraordinarily low self-esteem extraordinarily dysfunctional relationships there are enormous challenges that come so there are people who are so poor that all they have is money so money we should not hold out as the metric of success the only metric of success there are many metrics of success and they're much more authentic and they're much more real they're much more they're much more lasting now is money important it puts food on the table and roof over our head enables us to drive from point a to point b and pay our bills it's incredibly important it's incredibly important and there's nothing wrong with being ambitious and driven and successful it's also been part of our misura we've been we understand that its role in building jewish communal life but it is not not only not the only it's not the not most important but for some people it's not at all the metric of success they find a lot of success out of it and i think we need to emphasize that and celebrate that a lot more i think in our communities we have the ability to honor people not just with money but honor people who give their work or their wisdom not only their wealth whom we choose to honor at our institutional dinners and events and who we speak about and which hand we run to go shake and a willingness to pass by others is it always the ashirim or are we willing to also lift up and honor and hold up those who contribute other things that they can and by the way as i just interject as a rev are you cognizant of that in other words when you're shaking somebody's hand after davening are you thinking i'm going to mr cohen because daft i want to leave up with him you know i try to be i try to be we talk all the time and we honor and our shul sinclair's torah night the atahiresas are not purchased and they're not given out as a keyboard it's very stressful for me because i don't have a working list i don't know necessarily who will be in the room it's among the most if you really you really want to go like we're getting in the weeds over here you gotta go like behind the beam over here like the stressful parts of the rabbit are not the shabbos with russia it's out to harass the night very stressful you can't punt that to rape no although there are right behind me feeding me names but i give out each atta race a line and i acknowledge somebody this one collects the pushkas every day this one puts away the sudaram thank you for setting up the shiva homes so-and-so is the next line they're the one who organizes the beaker hollam it has nothing to do with money or wealth ataresa one of the biggest kibutum of the year were the packed sinclair night everybody's super excited kids are on their shoulders men and women everybody's in chule it's given out to looking around that room who are the people who do the little things that keep the community up and stable and happy it's not who wrote the biggest checker whose name is on the building it's it's all the other people and i'm not saying that we've got it perfect far from it or that i'm perfect very far from it but i think that's one way that we can communicate and really practice not just talk the value system and the definitions of success is it's not only or just money and i think communities we can do a lot better a whole lot better and standards of living or what people need to do to be keeping up the housing prices in boca are insane i wish i could control that i can't they're absolutely insane there are other costs of living that are very high tuitions are very high but one thing that has not come to us yet and we're hoping it doesn't make its way that does exist in other communities i don't believe it exists in baltimore it's one of the beauties i think of this community i hope i'm not speaking out of line but we don't have competition that our children all need designer clothing based on the new season you throw out last seasons and everyone needs as they grow sizes designer clothing and fashion and keeping up and being able beyond what anyone can afford and they're going into deep debt in order to be able to compete we don't have that and i think it's a communal responsibility to keep that out don't bring it here we have people who have enormous wealth and they're wearing i'm sure very expensive things and nobody knows and nobody cares it's just not part of the fabric it's not part of the conversation it's not part of keeping up and i don't know that we actively work on that it's the culture of the community and i hope it stays that way i hope it stays that way but we don't have that we don't have because we're out of town we're not out of town we're the new in town i'll give you one other example and pass it back to you but kiddushes we were at family in new york this summer and we learned about somebody who had a grandchild who was scheduled to make a kiddish and the week before a friend of hers made a kiddush for the birth of a grandchild and then this original person canceled their kiddush didn't have it in the end because the first person is kiddish that had a martini bar on sushi stations and charcuterie boards and i'm making this up but i'm imagining and we've seen it you know a kiddush that is whatever so the second person said you know what abusha will be the kiddush i was going to put out sticker herring and some temptams and some kettle and some demons no whatever i was going to put out i can't do that it's abusa so better i'll have no kiddush than they then what a tragedy for claw you saw the kid is just make a bracha i had an ankle make a bracha come share in my simcha by the way i love if anyone's listening or watching anywhere you want to get a gift i love dry meat i'm a charcuterie guy jerky it's made here i heard baltimore what's it called i can't even pronounce it yeah they had a big sale by the way i just ordered a whole case of uh of jerky you guys you know what to get the wrap right now teriyaki jerky it's fantastic i love charcuteries serious comments is coming up they got this i like charcuterie as much as the next person but i'm just saying the combination of all of this in an over-the-top type of way which creates this competition that you can't live up to to the point that you get to somebody cancels a kiddish or simcha because they're afraid they can't keep up and they'll be embarrassed so there are what the solution is to the tuition crisis there's a lot of people thinking about it talking about it for a long time i think by the way i'm not sure i'm not sure i have the solution to the tuition crisis or the housing crisis there are a lot of things that are out of our hands or they're complicated or they're you know it's hard to bring back but there are things that we can keep doing which is when it comes to fashion and clothing or it comes to kiddushes and simclas there are things that are in our control to try to maintain that culture and to say not here not in our backyard don't bring this here don't do this here you can have elegant you can have beautiful you could have enjoyable you could have delicacies but but with class not over the top not that you walk in a room and wow now i'm impressed because the competition that creates that people can't live up to that's what's disastrous and that's what puts people in debt it's personal and the accumulation of those small choices and and maybe the biggest ahrefs is on the people the most capable of doing it to hold back simpson himself yes it wouldn't put a dent in who i am and what i can afford to have an over-the-top outrageous simcha but i'm not going to not for myself because it will impact me but because that's my commitment to the seaboard now you can't do too little either you know when the enormously affluent person has too simple essentia they're also attracting attention i once heard someone make that insight it was fascinating if somebody who everybody knows is a major philanthropist veer can afford is successful not an ostentatious way but it's known about them makes an over-the-top simple simra everyone will also be talking about them and giving too much attention so there's a there's a fine line a person has to walk that balance between being elegant and appropriate but but not in a way that creates a pressure or competition that people can't live up to i want to ask you one or two questions that can start wrapping up probably itsy but one or two questions that are i think just because he's nodding off you have to wrap up marcus's wife is not it's wide awake he's wide awake um speed round lightning round we're getting there we're getting there but i but first i want to ask you one or two questions that emanate from my own personal interests so i'm up here so i'm going to be selfish for a minute but you know somebody who invests my own career and life and passion into into cure into outreach into the broader jewish world i often think about instruction can i take a second to thank you for that because you're at the front lines of fighting for claudius oil and you know robonus has a lot of pain and challenges but it also has a lot of covet and joy and satisfaction and i'm going to get a lot of jerky in the mail this week which i'm really excited about but but what you're doing we talked about last night when you're on college campuses and the amount of rejection that you take to trying to break through those few tommy dimming students you could get through and to be doing it how long are you doing it about 18 years 18 years is the front line of fighting for claudia israel to stop we all complain over our kiddush about assimilation and into marriage you're doing something about it so thank you very much but on that note rabbi thank you that was that was a masterful uh way to flip that back onto me but you must be a pulpit rabbi but i do want to ask you because in your uh in your shul you do something which is i think very unique and i'm not entirely clear about it exactly the parameters of it and what happens but you have an outreach rabbi on staff right brody i think he's been doing it probably longer than i've been doing it he's been there for a long time and i know he was maybe with the federation and i've kind of again watched from afar and read things and so forth but i think it's extremely unusual um you know it's unusual for any orthodox school and much less for one that is so large and could so easily claim a need internally you know and i hear this you know i argue with people all the time about communal priorities and what should we where does the money go and where should our time go and we have cure of crow of him and we have other and by the way i'm i acknowledge all of those needs and clauses but ninety percent of claustral bottom line eighty to ninety percent of clause was not you know darwining min brs on an average tuesday and you have somebody on staff who's designated to do something about that what inspired that where did that come first of all the person who that is right joshua was the youth director in this show well they lived in baltimore okay direct here little piece of information that apparently i'm a lot more excited about than any of you i think i was meant to generate an applause let's just be honest for a second give it up forever maybe it was a very bad youth track i don't think so right brodie is the president of our friend who's youth director here in baltimore there we go baltimore people don't even get excited about baltimore okay um in about 10 or 15 years everyone will start clapping that's the joke there's a great economist university of chicago friedman who said if you want to know what someone values then check what they spend money on if you want to know what someone cares about don't listen to what they say get their credit card bills go through someone's budget and you'll know what they really care about people talk all the time what they care about but what we spend on is what we care about so we made the argument to our shul that do we care about key river do we pay at lip service palm beach county where we live these numbers are astounding stuart listen to these numbers our beloved steward used to live in boca listen to these numbers where we're at now boca raton and del rey which are neighboring communities but boca raton the greater boca raton has and forty thousand jewish people that's more than most countries in the world palm beach county has more than a quarter million is about three hundred thousand jews the demographic study said came out the following result what percentage you think of them are affiliated 300 thousand jews in palm beach county what percent are affiliated now let me tell you the definition of affiliate definition of affiliate is not melchizedek brs definition of affiliated for the purpose of this study was if you work out at the jcc you are considered to be affiliated you don't have to work out your neshama you don't learn the daf you don't have to make it to colindre if you work out in the jcc you're affiliated and what do you think the percentage of affiliated was out of 300 000 in palm beach county affiliated affiliated i would say 35 with the jcc 90 you say 35 35 8 percent eight percent ninety-two percent are unaffiliated i think seven's at brs hello and i know now you have to understand you know why they're unaffiliated the the population of boca raton is 51 jewish every other home in boca is a jewish home it is enormously densely jewishly populated community good enjoy go for it take three shai take three go for it there we go i'm glad he's listening to you i'm not gonna deal with the repercussions 3 a.m he'll be up it's he is in north carolina jewishly populated that creates an opportunity it creates an enormous challenge you know what the church design if you live in des moines iowa if you live in kalamazoo and you're jewish and you crave seeing another jew interacting with another jew you have to go someplace to find a jew a jewish place which could be a shul a synagogue a federation if you're in boca and you want to see another jew you just look out your window so you don't have to come and connect the jews of boca worship at the altar of the country club they don't have to worship at the altar of a shul because in their country club over the lobster and crab are their fellow jews the intermarriage rate is astonishing outside of orthodoxy it's over 70 7 out of 10 jews are disappearing we are erasing ourselves faster than hitler ever could have dreamt of and that's not popular to say you'd see how we're talking about it used to be that you worked in a federation world or with on a non-orthodox and you had in common trying to fight assimilation and into marriage but in the communities that are suffering the most from that they've just created new definitions and move the goal posts so my colleagues in boca say that we no longer call it intermarriage we didn't lose a jew we just gained we gained someone else right we're not losing numbers we're gaining numbers with intermarriage widening the 10 to broadening the tent yeah yeah so you tell me can we afford to not do outreach 300 000 jews all around those 92 of whom are not affiliated whatsoever don't observe don't know don't keep don't do they don't have the gift and the luxury that we have and many of us not all of us grew up with what right do we have not to be doing it what right do we have what entitlement do we have not to be doing it i'm sure i'm not here to preach to baltimore i'm sure in baltimore there are non-affiliated people all around as well they're jews all around they're disappearing what right do we have not to i worked for a summer in asia torah it was after my two years in camby avenue i came back to you and the next summer i was a madrigal torah with kershaw cyprus and avi pollock and our job then you want to know how add the whole world has gotten then discovery was two and a half days now i think it's two and a half hours two hours three hours right discovery seminar today is two hours in asia then it was two and a half days so our job was go find people who had no plans for the next two and a half days go find somebody and recruit them so we're the natural places to go and do that we would plant ourselves at the hotel and find that backpacker and go up to them and where do they want us to do it they wanted us to do it on ben yahooda are you kidding me i spent two years in yeshiva avoiding ben at all costs i'm going to go sit in ben you and go up to strangers the way they're dressed with it and i'm going to invite them to the discovery seminar so i resisted i hesitated and they took us into the and i'll never forget ravnak looked like astoundingly and he said let me ask you a question you don't want to go to benjuna let me ask you a question he said you're standing on the platform there's a train pulling out it's going to auschwitz and a woman extends her hand for you to pull her off are you going to say i can't take her hand are you going to watch her go on a train to auschwitz he didn't say it as some i mean it was phenomenal creating guilt and it was an amazingly manipulative comment but that's not why he said it i don't believe i didn't know him well but i had the privilege that summer of a couple of conversations he didn't say it to be manipulative he said it because he meant it the trains are heading to auschwitz there's a famous video of him taking a group of tour rabbis to poland and saying the same i'm talking about he believed that he lived it he dreamed it and he and he created branches all over to fight it that's what he believes so i you know suffice it to say we spent the next few weeks on on benjuta trying to find people and draw them in and we didn't take anyone's hand but you know metaphorically we were willing to like the para duma the metame ourselves to try to be matter others because it was hatsalis israel because you see the numbers were not nearly then what they are now owner of next time into marriage was a fraction of what it is today i don't think we understand what 70 percent is 10 jews in a room seven of them are not going to have jewish church they're not going to be married jewish you understand what that means to our population to our future to our continuity and these are our brothers and sisters these are the neshamas and again there are many makotos and it applies physically it applies spiritually this is what it is so again i don't i don't think that we have a luxury in baltimore or in boca of saying we're focused on the froome we're focused on the from and we're prioritizing our inreach but we also have to care about and be focused on on the outreach how you do it and how you reach them and where you find them and what difference we can make that's our strategy that's a whole conversation but it matters it makes a difference and baltimore can be very proud that rabbi brodie is being successful each and every day here we go give a hand to blood finally and then we'll get to the lightning round i just want to ask i have to many people have now come to know you through your podcast behind the which is uh the triumvirate of yourself and mosquits and rabbi brodie just mentioned and you've had some very interesting guests of course i'm sure the least popular episode ben shapiro you didn't get any feedback i'm sure on that one you had cheryl sandberg for a few minutes you got david look at the scene not to answer any personal questions but you got him on you've had some wonderful guests and many are up on him and many interesting people i imagine this began as a pandemic project and and something you know born on a wednesday night kind of thing but now i'm sure that it's been a journey and that you've actually learned quite a bit from it and you know as someone who was invested in the world of podcasting um and it's taken off yours a life of its own you know what what do you what do you enjoy about it and what opportunities is it offering you now that are different than all the other teaching opportunities even the live streaming and the use of technology everything you were doing before that which was scaled as you said but podcasting in some ways is just different so like everything i told you before we started this for our community we were shut down i'll never forget that friday coming on the two year anniversary of it where our local hospital asked us remember two weeks to flatten the curve if we would shut down two years to flatten the curve then we got together right or wrong but we had a meeting in my office and we were close to a minion so we recruited two more to go dhavan in the shul before we announced to the community we were shutting down and and that it was historical and historically painful i'll never forget it so we felt distance from our members so what do we do we pivoted for our shirum online and that we were streaming but membership is not just about the shiram we were talking about this earlier today also i forgot which great odom godle it was who gave a shir after the holocaust and would sit with survivors and before he began the gemara shir they would say they say about it to which he responded why does every masekta start on daft base because daf aleph is the conversation every massacre starts on death base because duff aleph is the schmooze the conversation how are you how you children are your parents what's happening in your life so with corona we weren't able to have that you could give a shirt online but you weren't able to have that so the three of us started this we called the coffee talk we did it wednesday nights and what's going on mike myers this is what's going on in our lives this is how we're making our decisions this is how we're handling things and just to feel we were connecting with people and then we started bringing on a guest and now we've had 80 episodes and we've had an enormous array of great rabonim leaders judges nfl owners prime minister of israel chief rabbi of israel facebook we've had enormous diverse array of of personalities and it's free our communities had the greatest gun residence program in the world 80 guests that we haven't spent one penny on we haven't paid one person one penny we don't spend one penny on advertising or promoting and what makes me the most excited about it is nothing that i say on it we just banter and have fun and i can't believe people watch it or care about it actually can't believe people watch it or care about it but the guests we have have such inspirational messages they're of markless we went archer a couple months ago and one of my daughters who's here spent a year and a half volunteering in remarkable's home and took us late one night right before we left to go see him and my conclusion was when you come to art israel okay maybe go to different kevray sadiq and maybe go get brachas from different godolam but go to the syria of machas go to syria you want to be so i'm still doing it it's it's unbelievable so these episodes each of these people last week we had this woman who's a farmer narcissist keeping shmita and she's describing the nicionas and the mysteriousness but also the brachlets come into her life of keeping shemitah and i got emails from all over people you're crying when you listen to their interview so i don't care for me but bringing the messages of these people out there is amazing bob craft the owner of the patriots and i was a new yorker i hate the patriots this was the hardest super bowl because i didn't know who to vote i didn't know who to root against because even brady wasn't even in it on another team so like it wasn't worth it so but bob craft on the interview we had with him he his whole childhood he had a tremendous affinity picture of us the whole interview without prompting he just kept quoting perciavas so you have an nfl owner who's talking about arts and style and talking about pinkie i was talking about anti-semitism and talking about intermarriage he does not run in a circle where it's easy to comfortable to talk about we've stopped into marriage but that's all he talked about so the the exciting part to me about the podcast is interacting with but really bringing the messages of people out there that hopefully get us to think differently and inspire and stimulate us beautiful okay we're on to lightning round yeti okay you ready if these are 30 seconds or less answers if we'll see uh where we go so first of all where do you where do you go for your news getting getting good quality news new best news site that you like it's a disaster there's nothing that's why i'm asking you hey 30 seconds remember i like drugs report okay even still he kind of switches from right to left he's actually coming back now he's coming to the center we used to subscribe and it was a good job whatever reading the week which i also lost the week used to represent it was a great way to catch up on news without having to actually read any of these it's hard to find objective accurate news these days so i don't subscribe to maybe the broken newsletter from the rabbi's desk it could be it could be i rely on people to send me articles that they think have value okay favorite jewish book and then favorite secular book and jewish book let's let's make it more contemporary not uh you know obviously don't give the from answer basically exactly um or what did you read over shabbas as maybe your your cousin might say yeah favorite um jewish book i was recently reading um the book of arabic grossman who we had on behind the bible i'm working on that one too by the way i love these books that make you feel so small so i like biographies um they're tremendous inspiration tab and shakha who taught the happiness the happiness class at harvard the most popular class in harvard's history when he spoke at our shul he said he said i make a living off the self-help genre don't read self-help books my books he said if you want to grow and change and be inspired read biographies biographies are the biggest tool to break out and change your life read biographies and we have no shortage from rabbits immaculate and rabbits and kanyevsky and ibado thomas grossman rabbi and many many others amazing amazing books and then secular secular book is whatever i'm reading at the time but there's a book that had a huge impact on me called essentialism greg mckeon how to reduce your life to the essential the art of saying no i'm still trying to practice it but i think about it all the time and there's a great great book some habits highly effective people we quoted this morning covey there we go the hobby you rely on to de-stress i know you i know you got out there on the tennis court on on air of shabbos it's not gonna ask for the score yeah the score gets only because he's the host he's very good you have to let him win he's right good he's cohen he sometimes beats me sometimes yeah what's our record we split usually yeah and i played four sets on friday without taking a break for a drink he's very intense about that because each of us that's part of the other thing well it worked because it was hard to get up here on the stage tonight so it worked i like to play tennis i don't have a lot of time um i will tell you i like comedy i like listening to favorites your favorite artists there are clean comedians ryan regan who's your who's ryan regan jim gaffigan there's a few stephen wright for the most part is a very sharp witty there are a few clean comedians ever go to dry bar comedy that's the great mormon site they have it's a mormon comedy bar no out of utah dry bar really rabbitson your new date night dry bar comedy good check it out thank you mike to my wife malcolm okay the best gift you've ever received it's like tim ferriss here best gift i've ever seen is a charcoal not something you put on the mail in the mail right now uh what's the best gift i ever received you heaven best gift i ever received from my wife she's going to blush right now and kill me for this is a beard trimming bib so you don't get it all over the sink it has two suction cups that go on the mirror and a bib that connects behind your neck and as you trim it collects everything i don't know if that was a gift for her but best gift was that on amazon robinson okay if you could post a link in the show notes afterwards i think a lot of wives i'm trying to be eternally grateful i'm in trouble and gift [Music] okay and a little bit more seriously and then we'll wrap it up um and again six we'll give you 60 seconds on this one okay we're going to be generous most challenging failure that you've that you've experienced we won't start the 60 till you start talking what would you say phone a friend yeah yeah i'm finding a friend um most challenging failure we've tried all kinds of things at the show that haven't worked programs that we thought were brilliant and amazing will break through and we were the only ones who thought that and we learned every time from it there was a summer in my life this was the you know bar hashem the only time but it had a big impact on me it ended up being very good where based on my experience one summer in a camp the next summer i was not entirely invited back but because of that i'll tell you offline the behavior of that but but because of that it sent me in a different direction so even though it was painful in the moment it changed uh changed me tremendously so i'm grateful for that okay just two more scholarly residents who has not yet passed through boca if it's possible i don't know um it could be a religious clergy of any persuasion i'm just joking it could be any any guess who has not yet passed through pokemon we got late it was late i figured i could throw it out there okay anybody still paying attention but no any any scholar in residence who has not yet uh passed through the halls of a brs that you'd love to see many there's countless who haven't come to boca yet who we try to get that we haven't gotten how about you jake okay why why if you're listening you're blind this is your invitation very hard to get we're trying to get him um there are there are still russia shiva we haven't had speakers who else have we tried to get that we haven't had yet again maybe a non let's try a novel we don't i don't know from answer like uh no no we don't really take no for an answer very well so when we want to get someone we we basically can we try it's not always successful but we try really hard to be able to get them and bring them and for the most part we've been zoha to succeed we've had an enormous array we have a base measure as part of our shula based membership brs and we have a rosh hashiba series and monthly we bring a russia shiva and we've had russia weissen an enormous array and we try to not take no because and by the way just to be fair i mean it's not that hard to say no to come to boca for a javascript correct and we don't know what to do in july in august we haven't had them i don't have to come up with some good answers for these questions in the future but i'm not sure we don't take no for an answer so if we want someone we'll run it we'll run it back next time and then finally of course you may you may be aware that our our gracious host and a partner over here own a uh a wonderful kosher establishment in town pliable's assa ebola there's like 16 names for it let's give it together there we go and free advertising if you're ever in baltimore it's in the quarry right it's in the quarry great blueberries right here great blueberries favorite acai bowl uh concoction i've never had an acai bowl in my life as as you might guess it's more of a meat and potatoes guy actos you know like most ashkenazim lactose intolerant so you know you have power of things there anything anything meat flavored a charcuterie i'm in i am in smoked but not i've never had one yet okay i've got to go for a power baseball after this you're still open i think i think they have the keys though they can probably get you in there yeah okay but uh never had one yet but look forward okay well to come back to baltimore and raleigh effort thank you so much for joining us thank you this is a lot of fun thank you and thank you for staying so kind of you this is really great all right thank you enjoy dessert i think everyone