Rabbi YY Jacobson Interviews Ben Brafman | My Career, My Life, My Faith

the yeshiva.net how are you thank you so much you're welcome jacobs i just introduced myself why why jacobson how are you ben brashman yes i think we've met before indeed yeah maybe at an aleph event or somewhere else i don't remember maybe at the botched looking convention named oh yeah we there when i spoke you see i was listening you were well that's an easy guess when you're at a bad convention right yeah ms ms so thank you very much you're welcome giving us the honor to be able to chat with a figure like yourself i guess i could begin with some questions with your permission right sure okay so who inspired you most in your life that's a it's a tough question and it matters and in what direction and what area you're talking about my my law life of my life in general both your life in general and your low life i think my father oliver shalom is uh a good answer my brother allah was a good answer um i think depending on what year you're talking about i grew up next to the chabad and i uh used to see the rebbe every day for 20 years before you were born how's that did your parents move to crown heights i was in crown heights from 1956 to probably 1966 12 years i think yeah and i live i lived at 788 eastern parkway which is the apartment building that we became the lobovich headquarters and i used to hear the bring from my room you got to have the cake and eat it too you could sleep on shoppers right right did you ever meet the rapper as an adult nice to see him every day he used to pass by and we were playing on eastern parkway and he would walk by and he would tip his hat to my mother who was watching us because we were little kids then so i saw him every day we stopped playing when he walked by so god forbid you know the baseball wouldn't hit the rebbe because i knew that would give me a direct uh trip to gehenna so uh we were respectful even at that age did you ever you could also see he was a special man to be honest with him in all seriousness he had a glow about him when he uh even when he walked in the street you could actually see what now i understand to be uh part of the shrine on his uh face when he just when he walked by did you ever meet him later in life or just as a child i met him but i don't think he remembers me i mean i met him along with uh you know tens of thousands of other people shake his hand got a piece of cake [Music] gave him a dog got a dollar from him once he didn't remember you yeah i don't think so maybe who knows i never asked him i actually was there when he met uh uh robert kennedy or john kennedy i mean i lived next door and you could tell something special was happening because there were police and secret service and it's kind of an interesting event for a little kid yeah which yeshiva did you go to i went to tour with us elementary too elementary and high school very vadas wow yeah had zero influence on my life it's interesting the two brothers you and your brother one goes to become a russian shiva and one becomes one of the most prominent criminal attorneys in the united states how does that happen uh i don't know but we were we were very uh we were very close uh growing up and in later life very close i mean so many people your age who grew up in yeshiva but later left orthodoxy because you know being integrated in the larger secular america it was too difficult what allowed you to have this resilience or or fortitude or faith to remain uh airless hashemite mitzvah like which kool-aid did you drink that a lot of your buddies did not i think it was mazel more than anything else and i think it was uh my brother's influence a little bit later in life and my father you know i saw what uh he went through and i figured that if he had such seriousness uh to you know risk his life and uh came here and you know continued to be shomachabas there wasn't much for me to you know do in the you know in the easy life that i really had in america what are you most proud of when you look back you know a career of so many years reach achieved a lot of prominence a lot of fame controversial outspoken what do you call yourself a short jew from new york sometimes yeah yeah who was growing up am i most proud of yeah well personally i'm i'm most proud of the fact that uh in june of this year hashem i'm going to celebrate my 50th anniversary uh today bo biome is the anniversary thank god not the art site of my fall i don't know if you know anything about it but last year today i fell off the top of the staircase in my home and i landed on my head and bar hashem i'm alive and uh i don't have any i don't have any bad uh effects from a fall that could have killed me you almost did and could have left me uh brain damaged or in a vegetative state then thank god i'm okay and i actually uh i'm learning that fiomi see so you started my secrets yuma last week yeah i did but i'm making a cm tonight on shkom so uh thank you thank you so i'm glad it's uh as opposed to your site how's that for my written syllabus amen and my son i'm very proud of my children but you know i built the theater in there at chisro in my brother's memory and my son is the man and uh we now hashem have 250 tell me them will you inherit and most of their parents are sitting in kawaii learning so it's an interesting adventure for me yes yes they say it's one of the hardest schools to get into in israel very hard i get calls twice a week from grandparents easier what easier to get into harvard than to get into your heyday much much easier to get into heaven in terms of your career your vocation what are you most proud of that uh there really were no shortcuts i i worked very very hard for uh maybe 25 30 years and i tried uh probably more cases uh to verdict than almost anyone else in uh you know the contemporary and uh people ask me you know what do you attribute your success to so i said uh really hard work um a lot of muscle and you know i developed a passion and i also realized that i have a grave responsibility um doing what i do and people think i just do high-profile cases the cases i'm most proud of are the people who no one will ever hear of who i kept from uh being indicted being uh prosecuted who came to me early in the investigation and together now they're with their families and you know they invite me to weddings and uh you know they take me in the middle of the circle and they cry on my shoulder and it's very touching moments and no one knows that i ever represented them so i'm proud of that too amazing and 16 grandchildren if i may ask what what are those things that you regret most that you wish you could repeat in a different way but i didn't get uh involved in learning until i was uh 70 and that uh every time my brother oh shown would ask me to learn with him even a few minutes a day i would find an excuse because i was too busy and it's one of the things i i regret um i regret uh you know a lot of things that are more personal that i don't want to share but not many things not many things like and i think i uh pretty much couldn't go back and undo a lot of things i'd be more careful on the staircase that i can tell you but uh what motivated you all these years you as you said you put no no shortcuts you worked hard what motivated you i'm sure it wasn't just to make a nice living that's also a good motivation but what's really the fire in your belly well i i graduated from a relatively unknown law school and then i went to you know one of the best law schools to get a master's of law and criminal justice and you know the the schools the education i received was on an equal part but when i was in law school was the first time i've ever been a full-time student i went to brooklyn college at night i worked full-time during the day but what motivated me was i didn't want to be just another lawyer i wanted to you know be someone uh i thought i had talent uh but you know talent without the hard work uh doesn't mean much because i know a lot of talented uh people who don't really work hard and as a result uh they're really uh not uh well recognized in in the legal profession so i don't know what it is i think i i worked very hard um that i don't regret and i've had a lot of muzzle too in yiddish inspired you most in your work and career what aspect of yiddishkai do you feel cherish most i think uh we do probably more qaseb than any other religious group or non-religious group that i've ever come in contact with and i've come in contact with just about every group because i you know i live in practice in a non-yiddish world but you know the kind of facet that our people uh do uh doesn't often get recognized and you know the the media and i mean the international media the none you know yiddish media um i think they have a lot of intellectual dishonesty when it comes to you know reporting about the jewish community and jews in general and i don't think you ever see any stories about the women every morning who come off a uh picacholum bus in front of uh nyu a memorial hospital what yeah so you feel that you have social media bias and anti-semitism do you see that i think there is i think there is a level of anti-semitism that i don't think can be denied and i think it's pretty much uh apparent from the way uh israel is covered for example in the media and international international media i mean i speak about this often i think israel is the only country in the world who every time they get attacked by a terrorist or by someone setting off a bomb the first response by the united nations or by uh the united states um has basically been uh don't give don't let your response be disproportionate i've never seen that advice you know given to any other country that's trying to defend itself so you know it's it's it bothers me i speak about it a lot i have you know kids and grandchildren living in arizona so it's a you know concern you know i have and yet it's quite a remarkable country which i think the world recognizes just doesn't admit so kids in yeshiva often ask me rabbi jacobson why should i learn gemara i want to become a lawyer i want to become a real estate broker i want to become a dentist and here one of the most prominent lawyers over at 70 he's not doing it for social pressure to conduct me why what do you get from it well because i think what you find in the study of the law is there are some rules but the law is not a rule book you know the law is a is a moving is a moving target and i think you need to be able to argue you need to be able to find you know a way to get to a conclusion that you know supports your side and i think if you do it honestly and you do it with intellectual integrity it's a lot like the gemara you know what i found when i started doing daphyomi and thank god you know outscroll has these uh you know has the torah now in english because you know i could never do it otherwise and you know nelson sherman who was a close friend of my brother and whose grandchildren are in my father every time i do one of these talks i give him enormous amount of credit because as a result of him people like me you know can uh become well not a tom huffman but they can understand and when i find out what i find in the study of dr me is it's not a rule book uh the gemara is a moving you know document and sometimes you wish you could get to the end of a discussion but what you find is there's this agreement there's a argument and there's a lot of conversation and ultimately when you get to the end of the discussion you pretty much admire the different positions and how those uh arguments are maintained i wish i learned this you know much earlier but what i found is my training whatever little training i had in the gemara when i was in yeshiva i think helped me um in the study of law and uh what i'm learning now it pretty much shows me that the american legal system and the gemara have a lot in common so you know the law in the united states of america uh when you go into court you get to argue your position and depending on how well you argue how prepared you are you don't always win but you know your argument is uh more often than not understood by uh most courts there's a give and take there's a discussion and you know i i find that on almost every duff now that i'm learning the igumura i find it a lot uh almost on every duff there's discussion there's this agreement and yet it's argument it's not my way or the highway as we say it's you know it's they try and you know come to a consensus and what you have in the gemara you know until they figured this out you know they have uh almost every ten minutes you find a barista and a bryce says a story ever i say is a you know i i saw this in my home i saw this in my uh yeshiva i saw this in the rav told me and when you understand that the gemara was a moving document as it was being written um you get to appreciate the barista a little bit uh more so you know my son explained it to me my son-in-law explained it to me i have grandchildren who explain it to me and uh i take a little bit from everybody wow it's interesting that in every mishna mishna was written by a descendant of hillel rabbi yahood hanasi but he always first first puts the opinion of beishamai who is the opposite opinion always first right and i find one of the best ways to get a judge to focus on your argument is to try and undermine an adversary's argument and to show the weakness in someone else's uh position as long as you do it uh respectfully and so long as you do it like a mensch judges uh appreciate and sometimes you help a judge you know come to your uh um position um if they can what do you feel about this earnestly and sincerely what do you feel about the future of jews and judaism in america i don't know you know to be honest with you i i every year when it comes time for pesach my brother used to say you know maybe will happen this year and um you know when it didn't happen and when he was you know when he died i really always thought that my brother was such a sadiq you know that hashem would uh find a way to give him a pass that he would never die and then that tesla by i said that you know i didn't know whether i could say it and not get people angry at me but i stood there and i said you know i never thought that my brother would die because i really thought he was such a sad against such a pure and ashamed that i thought you know hashem would you know look at him and say you know maybe it's time and i don't know what hashem's uh schedule is and i don't think anybody else does but you know when you i just finished reading my wife is a retired librarian so i read a lot and i learned to read quickly so i just learned a i just read a book um and it's written by a jew who lives in arizona named joel rosenberg and you know the the book is called the damascus down and it's a book that deals with you know eric's troll takes a foreign pre-emptive strike against iran and literally the entire entire world is then in flames and ultimately you know obviously israel survives but they take enormous casualties and throughout the book there is discussion that maybe this is you know time for mashiach because this is uh you know the the final battle if you will i think there will always be room of uh you know jews and eres israel more and more my friends uh you know talk about maybe it's time for to make aliyah uh but i think they do it whenever there's a mass shooting you know in uh in the united states and whenever whenever there is such you know disregard for human life but you know what i say to them is you know during the intifada you had the bombs going off on every corner you know of eric's israel and you used to say well maybe it's uh you know not a good time to live here and you know eventually you find that you know i think there are these issues wherever jew lives but the united states i think and still believe is the best country in the world besides eric israel for an orthodox jew uh to live and work when i started out in this profession it wasn't and i used to have to fight uh argue with judges for the ability to have off shabbos and and youngtif when a trial was going on and there were times when i stayed in a hotel and i used to walk to court if a jury was out or if the time of a trial couldn't be adjourned and i used to speak to my brother about it and he would say i understand so do as little um as you have to let someone else take notes in court don't speak into a microphone and and walk uh to uh the courthouse and you can see that there is a way i think to to you know practice your religion today it's much different when i walk into court and a judge sets a trial date for april or for october uh the first thing they say you know mr braffman what days can't you work so a lot of things one um i maintained i think my integrity about it and i they took me seriously also i don't think they want to start up with me over something where ultimately the laws on my side and i think ironically part of what made a change is for example in prison a jew now can get the glock kosher meal and that started we used to have to litigate that 30 years ago and the bureau of prisons was notoriously not interested and then believe it or not the muslims started occupying prism and they wanted a pork-free diet and then the government could not distinguish because that's discrimination you can't give a muslim a pork-free diet and say no to a uh a from person who wants a kosher diet so it it evolved and today you know religious freedom is a big issue and no judge in his in his right mind want to dance with that issue in a public forum so it's a lot easier but it's not it's not a big deal to them they don't you know to them so they'll stay in their chambers and and read and write something they don't have to have a trial on on rosh hashanah and believe it or not some of the judges who still give you the hardest times jewish judges who don't practice and really don't know and they argue sometimes that there's only one day uh russia shall they asked you why you know it's just troll is that one day you know pesach from the united states you have to have through this i don't understand you know the reason so you have to learn with them right you have to learn with them a sex debate sir they know right there's sometimes i know you have represented you know people quite high-profile people of different uh different backgrounds different persuasion persuasions different career choices was there ever a moment you turn to yourself and like reboyner shalom why did i get into this mess i wish i didn't have to represent such a person well nobody forces me to represent anyone i can say you know what i'm not interested last week i turned down the case not because they were not nice people i just didn't want to be involved i'll spare you the details but you know the case wasn't for me um and um i can do that thank god uh now you know i don't always do it and sometimes the people i represent you know have a degree of notoriety but i also think that you know the way the system is set up is you're not supposed to pass judgment as a lawyer that's first second and i think that's important and i think even as a from jew you know damlakovskus you know i learned that a long time ago you give people the benefit of the doubt they've done this right okay so yeah right so you know people get the benefit of doubt from me second i have a i think i have a big heart so when people have the government on the other side it's very scary and the people who tell you it's not have never been in that position and i am sometimes the right person to help level the playing field and you can't win every case but sometimes i do damage control and when someone tells me 18 months is the same as 20 years and i look at them and i say it's not because let me tell you when you'll know when you're on the bus coming home after 18 months you'll think to yourself oh my god i could have done another you know 17 18 years here then you'll know it's not the same so i do a lot of damage control and sometimes the government is reasonable and sometimes you have zealots um on occasion both federal or state prosecutors who feel like they're doing uh you know god's work and that's a dangerous uh that's a dangerous time when a prosecutor believes that they are doing uh you know god's work and they're not you know i was a prosecutor for four years i had that awesome power in my hands and uh sometimes it was frightening realization that you had the ability to destroy someone's life and you also have the ability to give them back a portion of their life you have been doing this for more than 50 years no i've been doing it uh i've been the criminal defense lawyer for more than 40 years and i was a prosecutor for four years so um in 1975 which is another four years uh it'll be 50 years hashem so it's a long time what's what's one or two most powerful lessons that you learned from your career that you would share with with young boys or young girls young jewish men and women growing up who want to go into law or want to have an impact on the community and the world in a different way you know well i'll tell you souls what would i tell you a quick story i'll tell you a quick story um i was trying a case in brooklyn a federal court very complicated case there were 600 tape recordings and my client was acquitted on an entrapment defense that's a very hard thing to do because you're basically admitting uh the crime and arguing that they were entrapped but it's a hard defense and i was doing a cross-examination of the government's main witness and in walked the class from a law school and there were you know 40 50 young law students in the room and they watched the cross-examination for about two hours and there are times when you are in a zone um as a trial lawyer i'm certainly you have those experiences where everything is thank god perfect and it's working and you know when the when we broke a young boy came up to me and he said that was great i want to do that and i'm that looks like so much fun and i said let me ask you a question what did you do last summer and he looked at me and he said what do you mean is it tell me what you did last summer june july august what did you do says well you know we rented a house in the hamptons we went sailing we went surfing we took two weeks we went to on a boys trip to europe and we traveled around the world and pretty much did nothing because i was starting law school and i wanted to take the summer off i said you know what i did last summer june july august i prepared that cross-examination for three months i sat in my den when everyone else went to the beach and i had headphones on and 10-12 hours a day i listened to tapes i marked them off because this was a very hard cross-examination to do and i said so if you want to do this be prepared to do real hard work because there are no shortcuts so you know he's sort of like oh my god and when i speak to a high school class or a college class or a law school class that's one of the first things i i say there are no shortcuts you want to do this you want to do it well i don't plan on becoming you know ben brathman because i'm not certain that everybody could do that because one i came up in a time when there were a lot of trials so i had in one year 11 federal trials today you can't do 11 federal trials in 10 years not for covet there hasn't been a trial in the last 15 months maybe one or two i haven't been in a courtroom in the last 14 months um and you know to be honest it's a terrible thing to say but if i didn't fall at the beginning of covin i would be out of business because for three months when i couldn't go to court there was no court and when i couldn't go to the office all the offices were closed you know so i hate to say barak hashem you know of course a lot of people died those three months but it was shared i think that i would have this terrible accident at a time when i would suffer and i would you know be very frightened and i would scare the hell out of my family but it happened at the time where at least i wasn't pulled uh professionally so i said to them and i say to high school classes there are no shortcuts so if you think you can show up on the day of the exam and cram life's not like that and if you continue to do that you're never going to be a success that's first and second gotta have muzzle because you know i believe that uh you know rule one is you gotta have muzzle rule two you gotta see rule one you know that's a real philosophy because i feel like anyone to have mazel i think you got a i set a sign behind it says pray big you see that you can see it i see it i believe that you need to you know be careful of you know who you are and who you think you are and recognize that you know there's always somebody watching uh what you're doing the other thing is i think you have to be prepared to do a lot of lesson not professionally but i think the if you become successful and you know you know bar hashem you you've made more money than you ever thought that you you got to share that um with people who are are uh needy and and organizations that need your help and you know a lot of people don't i know people who have made ten times more money than i have and comes an appeal for you know hatsawa 25 these are people who could give them 250 i know because many of these people i've seen their tax returns i i represent some of these people and you know gayam don't understand that yeah they're a very rich guy who give a lot of money to alma maters or to school so they do endowments and i'm not suggesting that's wrong where they built hospitals but you know uh giving sadaqa as we know it it's uniquely a jewish and i think uniquely a orthodox jewish concept so what does ben brafman's day look like no two days uh the same and um to be honest with you that's what i like most about my job because you know uh in kovid it's pretty easy relatively easy you know of course pre-covered you know i was on trial um your trial you know could start at 8 39 o'clock and you get out of the courthouse at six o'clock and then you have to go back to your office and run the practice i have you know 10 people work for me six of them are lawyers and you know they pretty much rely on me to give them work to do and see that they're doing it correctly but when i was on trial you know what i decided to do long ago because my kids were growing up in the house i used to bring the work home and i would come home at six seven o'clock and you know i spend some time with my kids and then people say you have an office in your house i said no but i have a big kitchen table and you know when i was on trial my kids could come down for a glass of you know water at the 2 o'clock in the morning and i'd be sitting there and there would be 15 binders on the table and you know they would see that it doesn't happen by accident you need to really work hard now i now i don't have the same kind of workload one i have really good people here so i can delegate a lot more and you know i'm not a kid anymore and i'm still barf hashem in good health and in good shape and i work out three times a week with the trainer because i think that's important but i almost died you know today a year ago i was essentially in an icu unit in a hospital where everybody around me was a covet patient and i would lay there thinking to myself i'm going to survive this terrible traumatic brain injury and i'll get covered and die so people were dying all around me it's very very uh a very um emotional uh um traumatic period i think i came how long were you in the hospital for well the first uh after the fall i was there for five days and then i came home and i had a seizure and you know then they put me on you know new medications i was in a uh another hospital for another four days and then i had the you know therapy at home and you know to be honest with you um i took it seriously and after uh is interesting i had physical therapy which i thought was the most important and that i did for three months and then i had uh uh occupational therapy which lasted like you know two days and i you know i said to this kid it was not serious i said you know what are you gonna teach me to put on a tie you know i'm not gonna wear a tie for the next uh six months so he he was excused and then i had a from woman who was a speech therapist and she worked with me for uh four weeks and after the fourth week she said to me you know you're from guyana for a woman i must tell you i feel like this is geneva i feel like i'm stealing i said you know so do i but i didn't want to say anything because i don't want to embarrass you she said you have a better vocabulary than i do i can't teach you and i was very lucky to be honest with you you know my wife really didn't know whether you know i was going to live and when i was laying on the floor when hasela came they you know uh buses nias monitors the you know the hatsawa um radio and they you know had me dead because you know that solo you know they saved my life but they also you know there's chatter that goes out you know i was unconscious and you know was bleeding from the head and i'm you know you can't even tell um that i had uh you know an accident like that but you know my wife she was you know amazing i mean she here for many long happy and healthy years i'm me amen so my son my son taught me how to say hashem everybody time that somebody asks me how i am because there was no medical explanation you know i have i am convinced that the children in his head they had 250 kids between the ages of 4 and 10 were diving for me all day long wow and i think that that that made an impression and i think you know hashem said boy i thought this guy was a big shot criminal lawyer why do we need a big shot criminal lawyer down here but look what he's doing so i think i figured it out maybe i'm wrong but what else do you want to talk about what do you feel about people sometimes the orthodox jewish community of being very focused on ritual halacha learning but when it comes to ethical matters there are some shortcuts i don't think it's a fair criticism because i think one of the things i think you have to understand and and our community has to understand is that and i and i think it's a lesson for them to be more careful when a firm person you know gets arrested in a fraud case or in a sex abuse case or in something which we don't we shouldn't be doing um the world sees it and multiplies it by a million and when the new york times or the post does a story about it i think the average person believes that if someone in a beard and paius can do this then how is that possible and maybe you know there's a there's a real virus in that community and i think for example last year when you had the you know the community in buru park they weren't uh they weren't wearing masks so they had the levias with a thousand people in a room that maybe holds a hundred um it was a bad message to the world uh because when covet was rampant you had an acharyas not to yourself than to the other people who you could infect and when you see these you know 17 18 year olds having you know a wedding where there'd be 2 000 people inside when the limit my grandson got married in my backyard there were 15 people at the wedding and he had six siblings and the two adam and a couple of uh friends and my sister watched the wedding from across the street or the neighbor and the rabbi of our shul where the kid grew up wasn't there because he had a uh you know a from rebbe that was his uh rabbi and that's who was the masada kadusha but we had it in our backyard if it wasn't coveted there would be four or five hundred people at that wedding so i think that's part of the problem but i also think that yeshiva mindset is a good one but it's also a dangerous one i'll give you an example because i speak about this all the time and i've been part of a group who used to be involved with rabbi cutler and a number of other people and i used to say to them you know a kid grows up in the shiva world and then he goes to lakewood and he never works in the real world and then he gets married and he's got 10 kids before he turns around and then he needs uh parnasso and for the first time in his life he's filling out a bank loan or a bank loan application or insurance application and he doesn't have so instead of seeking guidance he makes up stuff and it's good and it's good and it's good until it's not good and suddenly you know what they never thought would happen happens and then sometimes i'm in the middle and i look at this kid who's a real sadiq and a talmud but in terms of sometimes it's by accident sometimes it's by ignorance and i think there's an acharyas on the curriculum in these from yeshivas or in the families that you can't just throw a kid into their they don't live in the shtetl anymore and the shtetl mentality that work in you know prisoners or in you know kiviash doesn't work in the united states it's such a regulated you know society and you need to understand that the rules are important and they have to be followed the other thing is you know i used to have people tell me well if my grandfather wouldn't bribe an inspector they would have sent him to auschwitz and i would look at them and i said you're not in poland there is no auschwitz there the government was the enemy the police were killing jews and there was a halal that you could do this you got a dispensation that you could do this to survive today the enemy is not the government you take advantage of every program that the government provides free lunches and free tuition and section 8 housing assuming you qualify but part of the problem i've learned is that you know the the very firm community in bara park in williamsburg in lakewood in a couple of different places they don't really provide guidance for some of these kids and i can't do it i can't afford to do it uh people don't really listen to me until they have to and i've had these conversations and it's very hard and the perception of that world is not a true perception the perception of the prison system i helped create otisville when you wanted to have from people in one place where they could have a minion where they could have kosheros the prison that's true yes so instead of having one in minnesota and one in ohio and and then have these people have to sue have them on the east coast there's a small camp so out of a hundred people in this camp there are 40 who are from most of the bureaus most of the prison system where there are two million people you have 40 50 60 from people but if someone goes up to otisville and takes a look they would say oh my god the whole prison system is uh is populated but it's not it's not and if you're going to give them a muslim a pork-free diet give the jews a kosher diet give them a place where they could stop and where they could have their own minion and eventually the bureau of christians you know said you know what you guys are right we're not looking to make your life miserable these are soft-spoken honest people they're not february think that they got caught doing it's unfortunate and there's federal sentencing guidelines when they were required right they didn't care if you were from right but um my my honest question to you is that you feel do you feel that many from jews still think they're in the shettle and and government institutions are anti-semitic and and therefore you have to be uh ibrahim and outsmart the system well that's i mean are you feeling that it's just the media blows up every from jew the criminal i i think i'm feeling it a little i think the media expands it but you know i spoke i used to do these conversations uh i spoke at anacepha it was called in borough park yeah but you've listened to those tapes where it's like this conversation except it went on for days they had five parts but you know the good uh put it together and it was terrific and there were a number of different speakers and you know after i spoke for an hour to 2000 people i was leaving and trying to you know make my way out and i i i must have given out 50 business cards but i i got one question and the question was from a i see his face in front of me it was a nice kid and you know i don't know that he was a hasidis a guy he was but he asked me is there anything wrong with having two social security cards and i looked at him and i said why would you need two social security guards do you have two names were you born at two different times do you have two different families what would possess you to ask that question this is i heard from a guy i heard from a guy that it's a good idea and then you could have a you know different identity because you need a social security card to get a driver's i said i don't want to have this conversation i said it's a great idea until you get caught and then you go to jail for 10 years you want that you won't really want that oh no no one's going to put me in jail for 10 years i will say i didn't know okay i i don't want to have this conversation but i you know i came home and i was very i was very i was very depressed the evening could not have gone better you know they gave me a standing ovation the only question i got that night was from a a kid who asked that question and i i think it's a terrible thing but i i speak you know a lot you know and i think it's part of my uh obligation uh because i you know people don't see me as a rebbe they don't see me as a talmud and even though i can you know quote a little bit from here and there i'm not someone you're going to ask a shiloh to but i think they also see me as someone who look i represent puff daddy and jay-z and they're people who they know are not from guys you know they are uh entertainers and you know they so they they they listen so i speak in in yeshivas and i speak about you know high schools and you know next week i'm going to speak in a syrian school in in brooklyn and um you know i i don't charge money for these uh speeches and sometimes not this this is easy because i'm doing a zoom from my office i you know i leave out an hour of the day it's not a big deal but you know when i say i sometimes i say yes and my wife says to me sometimes sometimes you should say no because after you you know do it you come home 11 o'clock at night from brooklyn you haven't had dinner yet and you haven't you know and so at the end of the day um i i ha and you know i also i'm a master of ceremonies or keynote speaker i i've done this over a hundred times not this conversation you know whether it's a you know my shule or uh you know chevron or one israel fund or friends of israel defense forces um i i am the master of ceremonies and these are organizations i support they do very good work and this is my way of you know helping them besides writing a check and i think i do it well and i i don't need a lot of time you know to prepare for that kind of event i need a little bio of the guests of honor and i can i can do it but but when i speak at schools high schools and and i i sometimes speak about you know people tell you uh not to text while you're driving i'm telling you be careful before you text before you hit send on an email or a text you know somebody and i don't remember whether it was the chat or the rambam said you know before you speak think before you write something think twice i think it was the realm and when you write something it's forever and today is technology it's for the rest of your life i have guys i know in this field forensic people they could reconstruct an email you sent 30 years ago after you've thrown the compute in the ocean because it's somewhere around the cloud and once you have it what i said it's near the titanic that's right they can find it and they they don't have to find it you know and they can do and today kids text notoriously without thinking and i've seen it in my i lecture on it then you know how many times i've almost had a heart attack where you hit reply all and you didn't mean to do that and suddenly the email you felt was going to one person went to 30 people and what so i'm very i'm more careful than most people and yet it's happened to me and when i say that in high school i get like not not laughter i could see nervous glances where people have done that and sometimes they take pictures and they send it to people and you know i just learned in uh what did i learn i learned it in human that the the second base madras the second base magdesh was destroyed for sin but then they explained that okay you're better than i am but i remember 9b and i'm telling you when i read it it was it was interesting because when you read the notes the notes say that there were three things that got the bass magnus destroyed there was um immorality there was um adultery idolatry idolatry immorality and sinister and they say that it was sinisternum that really sealed the deal that if it wasn't the sinister sin and it was not just it was um it was hurting someone gratuitously it was not saying la shanhara because you got anything out of it and i talked to you and my 70th birthday my wife made a party and at the party they gave out bracelets and the theme was uh be like ben don't talk lash and horror that was the thing and i said to i say to my grandchildren on yom kippur i said so here's the deal you go through the alfights i'm going to give you a pass on all the stuff that deals with sex because you're too young for that but all the things that you can violate or do by just speaking there's so many of them and all you got to do is shut up you don't have to put on citizens you don't have to eat something you don't have to bench you don't have to do anything that's a haircut just keep your mouth closed and if you can go through the alfred's that you can honestly tell me and last year you didn't do i'll give you a hundred bucks for each one and they look and he says but you got to be honest with me i don't want you to say oh i didn't do this and i didn't do that and they looked i said go ahead look through them you're fearless then you have to do that lush and hard you ever do that and they look at me and they don't they're a little bit uncomfortable and i i'm not a subject i know how careful i am and i said to my wife just yesterday because of my when i fell i took it upon myself to try and be more careful and 15 times a day i bite my tongue before i say what i'm thinking because i say it if i say it i'm going to embarrass someone i'm going to hurt someone i'm ben brathman they're gonna take it from me a little bit more seriously or they're going to you know maybe look for a hidden meaning and no hidden meaning it's just a bad thing to do and i see it happening all the time and i see it happening where people um speak candidly sometimes but sometimes too candidly and they say something which i think is is hurtful and the person you hurt i'll tell you what i found out and i i i don't know where i learned i learned it but i know you know what i have is i have these nuggets that are in my head now i found out that if you speak about someone and they don't even know you're doing it it's a worse of error than if you speak badly about them when they're in your presence and if you speak to someone else about them and then other people take it up to speak about it you can destroy generations of people who you don't even know children and grandchildren who are going to be embarrassed because they're going to say that guy who his grandfather was such a bad guy ben brathman knew about his avarice so you know i i have a little bit of uh fear in that that you grow to a degree of prominence where people suddenly think what you're saying is more important than the average person i think you have to be more careful so um i think it's a it's a good discussion for us to have from time to time out loud in your estimation who who was the who were some of the greatest jews of the last generation from your perspective i think monaco bacon was a great jew um i think uh trying to remember i i you know you're talking about in the firm world i think my brother was a general jewish world both i think my brother i think my brother was a great jew i think the laboratories he was a real great jew and he was not just the talmud but he was a smart guy he was a smart man and i don't just mean that he knew gemara and he knew tysonis and i mean he understood the world and i think you know anyone who could convince a young couple that they should go to vietnam and open a chabad center to me is wow i could persuade people to do a lot of things i could never persuade the kid to go there and how do you start and don't worry hashem will help you that's a lot of what how did he do it i don't know as you asked me who are the great jews and i tell you something else you know the chabad centers that are open throughout the world people like me and they go on vacation or they travel on business and they need a minion or they want to get a kosher meal there's one of these places everywhere everywhere and if you don't want to take advantage of it you don't have to but knowing that it's there i'll tell you a funny story it's not has nothing to do with but i'll show you how god uh you know like they say you know i speak yiddish so it's hashem fear to belt you know yeah so this is a good story when i was saying kaddish uh for my this was for my father some 20 years already when i was saying cottage i i had a real sense of obligation you know and i don't diamond with a minion every day now i diamond but i don't i just don't have the patience so i died in in my closet or in my room but when i was saying kaddish i really didn't want to miss any minion and my brother would say to me says look the halal is you have to say it once a day with dominion besides if you have another brother who's saying kaddish and you say to them you're going to wait tomorrow you're not going to be able to say karesh ferminha i can cover you i can have you in zin and i promise you i will so chakras was easy marav was always easy because there was always an early shot there was always a late mar when you're in my world very hard because midfield in the winter is three o'clock four o'clock five o'clock you're in the middle of court you're not getting you know suddenly they're gonna break so you can run out and get a minion so i said to him one day he says look i haven't missed the cottage yet the whole year um but i got to be in pittsburgh tomorrow and my flight connections are not going to get me to any shul uh for minnehaha so when i got a dominica you're going to be able to dive in for me and i'd like you to cover for me he says all right don't worry about it so i'm uh in the airport in pittsburgh and it's around the mingle time and i'm depressed it's the first scottish i missed and i took it seriously and now suddenly i'm not going to be able to go through the year and say i never missed the cottage so i go into the bathroom and there are 24 see them in the bathroom washing up and shouting and they have that sits and so on they're washing their face some of them are trimming them and i said i thought it was an illusion i said where are you guys coming from i said don't ask we had a chart up flight because we had a convention we're in the electronics business and we had a crack in the windshield and we're waiting for a pot there's an emergency landing so we've been here all day i said do you guys want to dive in he says yeah we're going to knock him in about 15 minutes why says you're not going to believe this he said i believe it me i can believe it i couldn't believe it i tell that story wherever i can because i think it's a great story and uh you know so uh at the end of the day i went through the year and i don't think i missed the college wow wow both of your grandparents were in the holocaust no my uh my mother's parents uh died in auschwitz and my father's parents after kristallnacht they were all arrested by the gestapo and um my father saw the issue on fire they ran in to the shul and he saved the torah and that torah is now in the shiva farakkaw where my brother was the mana health for 50 years and they use it only twice a year on tishaba then yom kippur because it's your father's family got out my father so that night uh one of the nazi guards who was guarding the cell they were in my father's brother was his math tutor so he saw my father and my father's brother and his parents and he dragged them out and he said to them come with me you dirty jews and they knew he was a one of the good guys and he took him out to the back and he says just don't come back just get out of here. and they went through switzerland they went through cuba they were in vienna they went all the way around the world and they came to the united states well my father was in london and he had signed up for the hasherat to go to eritshis row and he was going to be on one of the new keyboards and they have his name on a on a a stone in kibbutz tyriad sea and then they had a quota and they couldn't send more jews territorial so he came to the united states and the minute he got here as soon as he learned english he was drifted of course japan had just attacked pearl harbor and he went to the philippines he was there for three years and for three years he was fighting he became a combat sergeant and i'll tell you why it was pachette that he goes to the philippines now the war is over took them three months to get them off the island because right took hundreds of thousands of jews and they needed boats so he got the army corps of engineers and they went for a ride into manila and he grabbed the guy and he said you have to have a shul in a city this size and they said yeah that was a shoe but it was destroyed by the allied bombing raids so my father got the army corps of engineers to rebuild the shul and my father's company they have a plaque up there for his company and the president of that school his daughter married my brother-in-law because she went to stern college so go figure this out right so they came to america and my grandfather had a you know a white beard down to his waist and he raised my brother because my brother was born my parents were married my brother was born before my uh father went to the army so he raised him and he learned with him and he had an influence on him your father was born in vienna or in germany my father was born in vienna they grew up in vienna and then they left after he left when he was 20 years old right after crystal now they were not only your mother your mother is a friedman right my mother's a friedman from czechoslovakia they were gassed her parents were gassed her parents were danced and one of her sisters and a husband and uh they had a baby and a little baby right the head was smashed and thrown into the movement i heard that yeah wow so and my mother turned out to be the only one who became who remained from she had my mom and she had two sisters who went to the concentration camp and survived and she had a brother maya friedman who went from liberation to harris israel and he spent 50 years in sahao he fought in all of the wars and he uh retired and was admitted about 10 years ago wow what kept your mother from after such experiences i think her family was from and i think she believed that uh if she weren't from there'd be none of us from because my father wouldn't have married her so your mother was in auschwitz right no my mother tell you the really show you how hashem saved her her sister simmer the one who was murdered in auschwitz they were going to send one daughter to america and they had affidavits and the fair sports and everything for her because she was the oldest and she was going to come here until they got all of the paperwork she got married she had a baby she wouldn't leave her husband and a baby so my mother came to america and two weeks later simma and her husband and then the baby were taken to its and killed from murder jack from czechoslovakia we're in czechoslovakia wow right on the hungarian border and the majority who's now lives in eretz israel and his grandson is uh rebbe and my fader my son's hair the majester emmy was the masada conducion of my parents in williamsburg i have a picture with him with that mandela that's in the 40s 1940s 1940 uh 43 42 yeah wow i gotta wrap this up pretty soon i want to thank you so so much for your wisdom your time hashem should bless you with irish to continue to be the shame thank you i appreciate it this class is brought to you by the yeshiva.net please help us continue the classes 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