#47: Behind the Bima - Special Guest: AJ Jacobs

from boca raton florida rabbis ephraim goldberg philip moskowitz and josh brody are taking you behind the bema the brs rabbi's schmooze about contemporary issues and talk to special guests who give a behind-the-scenes look at how they got to where they are and what keeps them going welcome to behind the bema good evening it is wednesday night nine o'clock i am rabbi from goldberg joined by my dear friends robert phillips moscow turned by josh brody and we're here to take you behind the we're here to take you behind the bema welcome back we're so grateful you're with us and we don't take it for granted in the least thank you for another wednesday night i want to thank our generous sponsors reena bensmian in memory of her grandfather morton kaufman mort was an amazing man a great business mind a father a grandfather and uh his family should have wonderful memories and continue to learn from him he was very special and thank you to rena a young lady for sponsoring tonight and her grandfather's that might be that might be our youngest sponsor yet i think arena is our youngest sponsor yet so rina thank you for that deeply appreciated and sponsorship yet again by beepermd beepermd is an amazing uh led by a member of our community to be able to take tests at home free at home pcr tests and rapid antigen tests schools business non-profits throughout south florida have been using beeper md so check it out check out beepermd's website check out their social media handles and take advantage of those opportunities rabbis gentlemen how are you have you recovered yet from purim covered yet i'm taking perm with me perm was amazing thank god a little different this year on a friday a little rushed going into shabbos i'm not going to lie but it was beautiful it was how do you feel how did you manage the timing how did you manage the pacing well barak hashem i have a wonderful asia style who helped me along with the pacing and reminded me about shabbis but it was nice i wrote about in my article this week how nice it was for the first time in really a long time to just laugh and to be with people and to have a good time it was really really nice it was special and it was uh it was purim so it's always inspirational how about you guys i love it i loved it it was really really really just nice to to finally see a little bit of life like you haven't seen seen a lot of life on the circle and uh you had that big parade and you see everyone outside and it's nice families or families are excited to be outside and being able to celebrate another jewish holiday hold on you referenced the parade i have to give our listeners a little bit of background to this for maybe the first nine years i was in boca every year as a running joker that goldberg wanted to do a perm parade and every year in our staff meetings we would actually laugh right in his face and last year you got your dream came true and you had your perm parade and this year was the second year tell us a little about the broke up perm parade goldberg well i appreciate that and that's that's as close as a bostoner comes to saying you were right so uh we did have an amazing second annual purim parade the inspiration for the purim parade came from rabbi freifeld zazal of sharyashev the founder of shayashiv because i read an article a few years ago about how throughout farah away the five towns rabbi freifeld led a parade and the idea was to bring purim to the streets to the masses that at that time the you know the faraqui the five towns were overwhelmingly non-observant jews who probably didn't even have on their calendar and necessarily know was purim so by bringing this festive musical fun parade to the streets you were bringing the purim joy to the masses and that was the idea we have the weather we have the layout montoya circle the perfect circle start of the shul we have the phenomenon jason zhangri a great volunteer of the boca raton synagogue has a golf cart company and rents golf carts on purim and uh so we did it last year we did it again this year we had marshalls last year this year commissioner weinroth and pam weinroth were the honorary um honorary marshals of our purim parade grand marshals of the purim parade and um it was it was fantastic lots and lots of golf cards bicycles scooters cars all lined up some people decorated music blasted police and sheriff escort as we made our way around the circle poor ben shapiro was delivering us and got stuck in the parade but he probably wrote like three books while he was sitting in the car and stuck he banged out a few books few articles and started a new company but um it was a fantastic success and we're looking forward to the third annual perm parade in yerushalayim irhaka dish we hope amazing you don't see a lot of golf carts in usually you don't see a lot of golf carts yeah that's right yeah that's true i will say one of the nicest parts and you mentioned it was you know you mentioned the police and sheriff escort but they were all there was an enormous presence here and they were enjoying it they were having fun they were waving and they were getting into it and so it's nice to be able to include them in the perm festivities as well it was and with porn behind us now we're looking forward to pesach and like rabbis everywhere we are always every holiday that comes comes with enormous pressure and responsibility to try to navigate lead the community how to observe the holiday in a way that's safe and many many many members of our community have been vaccinated certainly those over 65 now in the state of florida we know we have listeners in our global community around the globe but in the state of florida they've now invited i believe teachers people with other conditions and the vaccination list is growing and the cdc please god is apparently coming out saying that those who are vaccinated can be indoors together without a mask so like rabbis everywhere we're debating what does that mean for us do we start a vaccinated no mask minion uh we're gonna try to create a buddy system last year people were alone unimaginably unthinkably they were alone alone alone alone like people by themselves for the seder and on pesach and this year nobody should have to be alone we can partner and buddy and ensure that even those who can't travel or be with family can nevertheless have a full pesach passover experience so we're starting to think about that as people are everywhere yeah and one of the things as you mentioned that's that's a little tricky it's just you know you got to balance everyone's sensitivities everyone's in a different place and some people feel more comfortable and some people feel less comfortable so really is going to be like a service where we're going to do an intake and figure out what people are comfortable with those who are in need of meals and we're going gonna have volunteers who are willing to offer their homes um as destinations and we're gonna match people up to make sure that everyone is comfortable with the you know the the protocols in place and that everyone feels safe and secure but as you said most importantly that hashem this year people should feel alone on pesach would be a great travesty exactly we got a great show we got a lot more to talk about we'll come back to this and we have some aguna talk laguna conversation about what communities responsibilities are timing and uh even here in our own backyard we'll get to that but first we're going to welcome momentarily one of my favorite authors i've read uh several if not all of his books i love his articles and i'll tell you why i love aj jacobs the reason i love him is because he's insightful every book you learn something it's thought-provoking it challenges you to look at a different angle think about it differently but at the same time you know i love we we share this in common by we hear i mean rabbi moscow it's rebecca is still learning that reading is fundamental but rather moscow said i love reading production right we like reading productivity books and we like reading efficiency books and we like reading the kind of books that challenge our mind um but aj's style is to be entertaining it's witty it's smart it's insightful it's challenging he immerses himself in his experiences so i always walk away having learned something and having laughed he's the author of four new york times bestsellers he's written the know it all where he spent i think 18 months reading the entire encyclopedia from a to z trying to become the smartest person alive drop dead healthy these are not in this order so i don't know who wrote this bio but drop dead healthy where he was experimenting with different things and different aspects of living healthy i read that one i was healthy for like 20 minutes after reading it the year of living biblically which we'll talk a lot about tonight where he read our bible literally tried to take it literally literally is one of the favorite words of the show behind the bhima he literally read the bible literally and tried to live it um and other buxi's most recently written a book about gratitude thanks a thousand traveling the globe to personally thank everyone involved in what it takes to get a morning cup of coffee from the barista the farmer the logo designer the truck driver everybody else did he actually read the entire encyclopedia he tried it he did it i actually tried doing that also i read the book i read the know it all that was one of them i was much younger and i said you know rabbi where'd you where'd you stop at a or b or where no i got i don't think i made it to the second page of a but i it was something which i thought yeah it was boring i got to the first page and i was like this is not exciting so yeah there's been four ted talks of totaling uh the listeners of his four ted talks more than seven million people he's a frequent contributor to npr he's in the new york times he's an editor of esquire magazine the list goes on and on and on but really if you read his things not all of it language does behind the bema endorse not all of the language and themes but mostly um really you will be challenged you will be entertained and you will get a lot out of it uh it's always a lot of fun to be able to read and one of my favorite articles of his hopefully we'll get into is his article about radical honesty which i sent robert brody today he read an article and i was completely radically honest the first thing i wrote back to you was it's a very long article can you just summarize it for me that was radically that was radically honest when i first read that article many years ago i thought about it i read it trying to practice it for a little bit but that is a bad idea so there's a movement called radical honesty we'll talk about it with him momentarily and he tried to live that movement another great article he wrote about outsourcing life he spent one month where he outsourced his life to somebody overseas using a technology where uh oversees somebody i forgot what country it was a young woman read the books to his kids to put him to bed he even had them fight with his wife on his behalf he outsourced every aspect of his life could you imagine we could send somebody to shul to pray in the morning for us outsource every part of our life just each one of these is is fantastic it's thoughtful it's insightful it's fun and it's uh it's really a great place next week welcome to our program next week you're going to see rebecca moskowitz's place you can see some guy from india exactly on the show he's going to out on the show outsourced by the aj welcome to buying them thank you thank you i didn't outsource my interview i'm here i am here in person uh i appreciate that i yeah well i'm honored to be here uh i'm outnumbered by rabbis but uh but i'm honored um oh can i give a quick shout out to one of your listeners kyla krauser at cats yeshiva in florida who's uh listening and with her class hello shalom wow uh all that other jewish words shout out that is a big shout out aj thank you for being with us i want our listeners to know like i told you i've been a fan of aj and i found him on twitter and i direct messaged him thinking like several other people who i've tried he would never get back to me he's you know a powerful prominent uh author and he wrote me back and agreed to come on the show and for that we really really appreciate it so aj i'll tell you i want to begin you've said on many occasions and you've written that you're while you're jewish you did not grow up with a strong jewish background and you said you're jewish in the same way the olive garden is italian yes i i stand by that i stand by that so they are yeah so you know it's not like uh when you go to br to olive garden you're not you're not getting the uh you're not going to uh venice or florence you are you're getting a watered-down version right so what i found fascinating though is in your introduction to year of living biblically you mention your orthodox aunt that you have an aunt who is an orthodox observant jew so obviously you have some exposure to orthodox or observant life and one of the things i find fascinating is that a lot of what you've immersed yourself in experientially experimentally and written about really overlap with jewish values so whether it's the concept of learning and study and trying to be smart and memorize the encyclopedia whether it's your most recent about gratitude whether it's the book about how we're all related and the value of family whether it's biblical so you make fun of yourself that you're jewish in the same way the olive garden is italian but your books really in my case enhanced my religious experience caused me to think religiously and in my relationship with god with family and with these character traits and so there's a lot of overlap there and i'm wondering from you is that coincidental or do you think that there is some meaning that is a that's a you know i'm delighted to hear it and i've been told that and and i see it too i see it uh and uh yeah i you know i grew up a cultural jew so i do have it soaked into me uh and they're i'm also always learning because i wrote this book on gratitude uh and the premise i think you might have mentioned i went around the world and thanked a thousand people who had anything to do with my morning cup of coffee so i thanked the barista but i flew to south america and thanked the farmer i thank the logo designer the truck the guy who drove the truck you know just the guy who made the traffic lights for the truck you know anything uh just to show how interconnected we all are how much we take for granted and it was interesting because when i started that project i did not think of gratitude as a very jewish value uh because my cultural judaism you know the the emotions that i most thought of you know were like confetching that was like very constitutional guilt completely right exactly right um but just in researching and talking to wise rabbis like you uh you know i was i was enlightened that it is a tremendously jewish emotion not a lot like very name judaism comes from judah the word which comes from being grateful so and and i'm told i uh that the first prayer that orthodox jews say every morning is a prayer of thanksgiving so uh yeah it was interesting i mean that i didn't plan but i but uh but it became clear as it is a very jewish notion exactly and um you know i heard you in one of your videos and in the book you talk about the fact that you've incorporated it into your daily routine because gratitude is something that we struggle to be mindful of but you'll wake up and say thank you that the electricity is working thank you that i have breakfast and that is exactly the jewish concept we make a blessing before and after everything we eat which is an exercise in being mindful to say thank you we wake up the first words on our lips are i'm grateful to be alive so it is it is a core jewish value i love that and one rabbi told me and you could tell me it was wrong is that there is a prayer there there there are dozens of prayers of thanksgiving and that there is actually a prayer of thanksgiving for the concept of gratitude which i think is very cool and meta it's like there you know i'm grateful for gratitude grateful that i can be grateful that's it there you go so i love that how has how has been being grateful changed your life first of all would your wife and kids say that you've kept up i'm asking you a personal question but well it's always i mean it's a struggle i don't think parallel in our world parallel in our world the parallel in our world is that is that our wives accuse us that we live our lives in order to be able to give sermons so that all of our experiences or anything that we do is just way of material like i planted a garden during corona and my wife and kids make fun of me you don't really care about the garden you just got your sermon out of it so do your wife and kids basically say you got your book and your article out of it but then it disappears well that is funny yeah everything is material that is fun but but you know some of it does sink in and i'm sure you you ate the vegetables you enjoyed the vegetable so it wasn't just for a sermon uh and the same with my books you know it really did change my life and i didn't give it up it's still a struggle because i talk in the book about we all have our two sides we've got our our larry davidson and our mr rogers side you know the the pessimistic uh side and sort of the optimistic hopeful side and grateful side so i still have a very strong larry david's side and um it was but it's too strong you know you want some larry david in you but you don't want uh you don't want too much because it's fun to watch a show i do enjoy watching but i don't want to be in his mind that's not a fun place to be so uh so it is a struggle and it is a discipline that i practice every day you know as you know i'm not i'm not an observant to orthodox jew anyway but i uh but i do say thanks i make it a part of my day i say thanks ever i when i go to sleep i go through the alphabet and say thanks for everything uh every letter gets its own thanks you know a i'm thankful for the apple pancakes my son made you know v uh uh i'm i'm delighted to be on behind the bema uh oh i don't know i think we just lost him we lost a rabbi first of all i love that i love that trick or that a little um you know tool to go through the alphabet and basically find something that you're grateful for for each letter i'm curious where you get your ideas from you know obviously people who are also generating content fairly regularly so you know we compare it to the average person goes to the world with glasses on but rabbi goes through in like 3d color because everything they're looking at has to be like can i use this for a sermon can i use that for a sermon what's your process walk us through the creative process of like how do you come up with the ideas like every time i read one of your books i'm like ah why not think of that it's so obvious but you think of it and you make it happen and you're so worried about it and so insightful about it where do your ideas come from and how do you bring that to fruition well i love first of all welcome back rabbi thank you great welcome behind the bema when are you going to do your article or book on like the perils of technology and the technology 20 years ago i thought about doing a book where i would only communicate by uh electronics just to see what it was like and i never ended up doing it partly because my wife was like you're not coming to our niece's bat mitzvah you know on skype we didn't have zoom then it was sky um but now like yeah i don't need to do it because we're all living it um right but anyway the uh uh the question rabbi uh i'm sorry grandma moscow sorry grandma moscow said ask about where i come up with my ideas and i love what you said i love that always having you know always being on the lookout it's a mindset uh so going through life looking for ideas not just being a passive uh like hoping that the muse strikes you but always uh one one friend of mine uh a jewish writer actually described it as having um almost like a second head next to your head like on the shoulder just like while you're living your life you're like oh that's interesting i wonder but a lot of it is also just my uh my family uh my father was the one who started to read the encyclopedia when i was a kid uh because as you mentioned you know he's not he's not an orthodox or observant jew but he is a person of the book he's a man of the book he loves the jewish value of reading and learning and he didn't make it he made it a little farther than you he made it to the bees like around bolivia or was it rabbi freud who brody yeah so um but i thought what if i finished what he began and removed that uh that dark stain from our family history so i got that from him my son was the one who gave me the idea for the gratitude book uh my wife gave me the idea for the book about health because she basically said when i got sick uh i had you know i was not a healthy person uh i ate what i wanted and i never exercised and she's like i don't want to be a widow and i'm 42 years old you better get in shape and i was like all right if i'm gonna do it let's just do it let's just go for it and try every single piece of medical and health advice i can find and see what works and see what doesn't wow so let me ask you if i could jump back in and i don't know if you spoke about this while technology made me disappear um but and again it's a little personal question so stop me if i'm if i'm pushing but your whole mo and the themes of your books are to immerse yourself in an area and then to see what you find to live it and not just to postulate or speculate about it so i'm wondering whether you've tried that with your judaism now you could argue in the year of living biblically that's exactly what that was that you took the bible and the old testament however there's a companion to it called the oral torah so the judaism and the way we live life which is obviously the conclusion of your book or or is the conclusion even though you know and you could talk about what it was like to stone somebody and obviously you grew your hair your beard no razor touched your face and all those things which were amazing and hilarious um but have you ever immersed yourself or why not or would you consider immersing yourself in your judaism most fully to really study to really experience the full gamut of rabbinic judaism i don't know your aunt but to live let's say like your aunt an observant jewish life to really immerse in that to evaluate it from the inside because at the end of the year living biblically you write that do you believe in traditional biblical god not in the sense that ancient israelites believed in him you can never make the philippe to accepting a god who rolls up sleeves and fiddles with our lives i'm still agnostic but a re reverent agnostic and then you talk about the things that you hope to continue to keep like resting on the sabbath wearing more white clothing offering the prayers of thanksgiving which i don't know if you knew then you were going to write that book so you know i guess my question is have you considered immersing yourself in a rich jewish observant life and and evaluating your own heritage from the inside and have you in fact kept up that pledge at the end of your living biblically of still trying to rest on the sabbath in some way uh well that is love that i i love that question i am not insulted at all i uh uh to answer the last part first i have you know obviously i kept up the gratitude but there were as you say i shaved off my beard and i did put away the pebbles that i threw at adulterers uh but there were tons of there were tons of lessons and uh and life changes that that project had on me and i do uh i do have been much more i found the jewish rituals much more meaningful so i we do now do passover we've got it coming up we're just talking about it actually what we're going to do uh and we sometimes try to to light candles on friday doesn't always work but we try uh and and again the resting um i i try uh i it's a battle uh but i do believe that it's a wonderful ritual and when i do do it it feels amazing uh it's like you know a detox um right so uh uh and then as for i i mean it is a fascinating idea i have to i'm gonna have to think about that doing the i do know that there was another writer after i wrote my book who did i don't know if it was a year of living talmudically uh but as i understand it it's not just a year it's like a seven years of living so i don't know if i can afford to write just the one book for seven years so that would be that's going to be a problem however we can help we would be happy to thank you grandma just wondering you know you have such great ideas they're very very excited each one of them i know that you know we always try come up with ideas among the three of us and sometimes i'll i'll i'll make the mistake by sharing it with my wife and then she'll say she'll say there's no way you're doing that this is not happening so i was like do you sit down with your family and say listen this is what we're going to do and and what is there ever a point you must have the greatest family you know like do they do they give you pushback or do they say no go ahead do it oh no no they get they get veto power and uh and which is a good thing i think i mean um there have been projects including that one about living totally through electronic media i you know my plan was to sit in my room and and raise my kids through uh skype and they my wife put the kibosh on that i've gotten a lot of sort of r rated or r plus rated ideas from readers and my wife uh definitely said no to those which is good i don't think the readers need to hear about that that's you know they don't that's the old tmi as they say uh but the um but yeah and the other thing is i reject a lot myself i mean uh i love that you asked about creative coming up with ideas because one thing i try to tell my kids is i do come up with a lot of ideas i i am very prolific but 95 of them are terrible they are just you know so it's it's a numbers game and creativity i really believe is a numbers game and you should you should be open to that you should realize that not every idea is a gem but you got to come up we just got to churn them out and there are going to be some gems in there so uh so uh yeah i i i don't um i haven't followed through on every idea uh for many reasons and i think the readers are are better for it what was your favorite story from the year of living biblically what was the the funniest or the most impactful or the most surprising from the whole experience of the year of living biblically well there are so many i mean one was the i guess um you know i'll give you one that was sort of like um the funnier you know weirdest and then one that might have been had a big impact so the the weirdest is the one that uh i have mentioned before which is that i was in central park and this was in the middle of the year and i was really getting into it so i had i was trying to dress like a biblical person so i had the robes and the sandals i had the huge beard and uh because there is something let me just interrupt for one second i just want our listeners again for those who have not yet read the book that again the premise of the book was to take the bible the five books of the bible and to read it literally and to live it exactly literally what's ironic is that our knowledgeable observant community can't even picture that because that's how different rabbinic judaism is from your experiment so that's what you're doing so yeah back to your story i apologize yeah yeah it was very that was fascinating to learn the differences between what i was doing and what rabbinic judaism says um and sometimes what i was doing was easier and sometimes it was much harder uh so but yes i was in the central park i had the robe and the sandals and a man came up to me and he said what's going on here why are you dressed like this i said well i'm trying to follow all the rules of the bible from the ten commandments to stoning adulterers and he said i'm an adulterer are you gonna stone me and i said well that would be wonderful uh it was very i was happy to have him volunteer so i took out some stones that i had been carrying around for weeks and um and he actually uh they were small like i didn't want to go to jail forever uh they were pebble-side he grabbed them out of my hand and threw them at my face so i thought you know an eye for an eye also in the bible so that's how i checked that off the list and they were as for the impactful there were so many um one was this weird idea i was really this weird experience i had where i was i was really trying to um really struggling with shabbat and this idea of not working and not doing anything and i had a sort of a weird enforced shabbat where i was i went to the bathroom and the doorknob fell off and i was stuck in the bathroom alone my wife and kid were out and i was just stuck there for like six hours with nothing no reading no no phone and i just had to become i had to sort of uh accept and and accept the peacefulness and the except you know realize this is this i should this is a gift this could you know i uh i can see it as boring or i can see it as a gift and i chose to see it as a gift this gift of like uh you know being unplugged completely having time to think having time to notice like even noticing things in the in in like the bathroom tiles that i had never really paid attention to and just seeing how lovely the the sort of the fake marble can be uh and uh so that taught me uh you know i don't lock myself in the bathroom but it was sort of a metaphor for uh for shabbat and it's actually i think about it a lot now because this covet as you know it's horrible and i you know it's got so many terrible parts to it but it but there are some small silver linings and one of them is i do feel it's sort of an enforced shabbat a year-long shabbat where we have to reevaluate uh our lives and and see what really matters for sure you have a lot of families right here where are your fans and and you have sorry fans in our community and fans who are listening online um but as a public figure as a public writer not everybody loves everything and i'm sure you've received criticism and i'm wondering you know you've spoken about the negative bias and how we remember the negative much more than the positive in fact you can maybe tell our listeners i've heard you speak about um why that is why we needed that in order to survive historic prehistoric times how do you deal with criticism how do you deal with whether it's in social media online reviews of your articles or books that are unfavorable i'm sure there are none but if there were any how do you deal with the criticism oh yeah well of course yes i get i get lots of nice criticism and i get lots you know i also get slammed uh and as you say uh we we do we do have a negative bias as humans like you hear a hundred compliments and a single insult and what do you remember the insult at least that's the way my mind works and i think most people's because as you mentioned from an evolutionary standpoint when we were you know cave people you had to be able to focus on that that you know the one poisonous mushroom you had to be aware of the lion like your life depended on but now it just is a recipe for a lot of anxiety and uh and sometimes depression so um yeah i can't say that i'm immune to criticism but i really do try to uh you know focus on the positive so uh the other thing is i do i've changed my i've changed my perception a little where i used to when i first started writing it was all about like you know glory can i become famous can i become you know someone who is uh acclaimed and admired and now my goal is more can i affect other people's lives in a positive way can i make the world better and that takes a lot of pressure off because even if some you know even if a few people hate my books or you know don't read them that's fine but there are a lot of people who do like them and who have told me that it makes their lives better and that takes a lot of pressure off of having you know one or two people who say uh you know you're an idiot so we spoke about living biblically we spoke about gratitude um one of my favorite schticks that you pulled off i guess was the global family reunion for some reason that resonated profoundly with me and the numbers are staggering 3 800 in person 6 500 around the globe it's really impressive and creative but i read an article a number of years ago about that you know about about your attempt to do that and you wrote the following there was an attempt to embrace humanity as family that your goal throughout events to prove that everyone is so interconnected is actually to bridge the divide that people feel that you feel that you look differently than another person or act differently than another person we're really i'll be one family we're interconnected we have a very similar genealogy um what are some ways that like in practice we can implement that um in terms of bridging that we live in such a divine culture and a society that's uh that's more polarized than ever really in history what are some of the tips from the book that could actually help us heal the divide and is there a place for division he knows is there a place to say we're allowed to be different even if we're all from the family you're allowed to go your way and i'm allowed to go my way we have to do there yeah well i love that question and as you say yeah that book was all about it started actually in a very jewish way i got an email from a man on a kibbutz in israel who said you don't know me but i'm your 12th cousin uh and i thought you know this is a scammer he's going to ask me to wire ten thousand dollars to a nigerian bank turns out he wasn't he was just part of this group who are trying to show that we are all related and they've got these massive family trees that aren't even trees they're forests um and and one of the reasons i love this so much is just what you said rabbi moscow it's about how it is um reframing humanity as one big family and i will say that um i've had rabbis tell me that they use this in their sermons because it is a very jewish idea i mean the idea of monotheism was really radical in that it said we are all family all humans are family as opposed to the egyptian pharaohs who said we're gods and you people are different from us like so it was a leveling uh that we're all god's children um so anyway uh yeah it it it's hard but i do find it helpful uh even uh in small when i get annoyed it's even if it's like someone cuts me off in traffic i try to remember you know what we share we probably share like an eighth grade grandparent our our descendants like are going to be relatives you know if you go the other way and you know our our 12th great grandchildren might get married um and uh so i'm gonna try to give this person the benefit of the doubt you know maybe they're in they're in a hurry maybe their kid is in the hospital let's uh and and i uh i hope she's not listening but uh judge judy for instance the you know the famous she always drove me so crazy i just thought she was so obnoxious and mean and then i found out she's really not far off she's like my fifth cousin and i was like you know what it changed it changed me it's just like you know she's just like being judge judy she's doing her shtick she's probably a sweetheart let me give her the benefit of the doubt and uh and so rational or not it changed my perception so i think it's a very powerful reframe so you have a maybe your books are like your children it's an unfair question is there a big book um well i would say the one i learned most from was the year of living biblically because that was you know i think someone described it as zero to 613 i did i knew very little and uh you know it was sort of um i'd say the one that made me that made me perhaps um you know saved me most from uh the the gloomy and dark thoughts was the gratitude book which uh you know i really this has been a tough year um and i don't know how i would have gotten through it without this gratitude uh so you know i'm i'm very grateful for that book you know it's getting late we appreciate so much your time it's really generous that you're with us i want to ask i don't know if the others have other questions i want to ask one more question from me so we are we are writers not publishing books and not on the scale of the scope that you have but we write weekly articles and and thank god we try to share it and from within our circle as a nice circulation talk to us about writing talk to us about the discipline of being able to publish and meet deadlines and you know you talked a little bit about creativity and where you find your inspiration but just the experience for for those who aspire to be writers in whatever capacity today you could have a blog you could write a facebook post you're a writer or you want to publish a book because i would like to one day publish a book it's it's on my bucket list i have several books that are written the problem is they're so far written only in my head so what what has to happen to take a book from a to z to take a book from your head and get it published and get it out there right give some tips to us writers and if i could just add on to that question do you ever feel creative pressure right like sometimes we have a deadline we write a weekly article and you're sitting there on a wednesday or thursday and there's just this constant pressure to be creative you ever feel that pressure and how do you alleviate yourself of it ah all the time i mean i uh i have to say i kind of hate writing uh which i know is a weird choice of professions for a writer but i love researching i love talking to people reading meeting people i love the post writing like having written that's wonderful talking to you i'm loving you know i love this experience talking about it but the actual sitting alone in a keyboard is it's a very lonely and it's not i i don't love it so um but as you say it's discipline so i really do every day i say when i'm writing a book like now you know i say from nine to one o'clock i'm going to turn off all electronics and that's all i'm going to do and one a couple of just quick tips to motivate myself one is it's just not seeing it as a book but seeing it as like you know i'm going to write 15 different sections and i'm going to tie them together so that it's not overwhelming like i'm i'm sitting down to write a book no i'm sitting down to write this chapter and the other thing is that i found recently motivating is you know i i hope and i hope i'm not deluded that these books people find some people as we've discussed find them entertaining and and helpful so it's almost like i'm doing a mitzvah to use the jewish lingo like this i'm doing this this is not for myself i may not love it but i'm doing it because it's going to have a positive effect in the world one one of our listeners wants to know uh what do you like to read we like to read your books what do you like to read for free um i do love to read uh i am i am i'm more of a not my wife is the fiction but uh i'm more of a non-fiction i just read a great book about the um about the history of chess called the immortal game uh by also just by a jewish writer whose great great grandfather was a chess master and so there's a whole chapter on jews and chess um but yeah i loved uh that's one of the things i love is uh sort of history nonfiction but i do recommend david shank the immortal game well that's good to know put it on your list right brody that is good to know aj thank you so much thank you so much for joining us you've been generous with your time we really thank you for answering me on on twitter it really was a surprising but really fantastic and i want to thank you for joining us um can you leave our listeners by telling them what they should expect to be coming out next from you i have a book um called it's called it'll be out not for another year but it'll be it's called the puzzler a quest to solve the world's hardest problem the world's hardest puzzles from crosswords to jigsaws to the meaning of life so that is uh and there is just to get the jewish angle in it's a lot about questions which i know is big with our people a lot of questioning passover yes yes coming up the holiday questions there you go four that mine has many more than four questions we will look forward to getting it and reading it and probably quoting from it in some class or something that we're going to give so aj wishing you an early happy passover thank you and if you'd like to immerse yourself in the full observant jewish experience and want a rabbi to study with we are all available and would be happy thank you i love that offer and and thanks for having me on that was it was a lot of fun thank you so much have a great night thank you that was fantastic maybe maybe the book will answer rabbi moskowitz's magic questions like how do they do those card tricks how do they do this card i'll tell you it was so impressive he had he had he was so humble so generous with his time coming on answering our questions honestly really engaged what a special person yeah yeah regular guy special guy and uh like i say we have to give the disclaimer not all every article its language is uh exactly you know fit for the jewish day school but they're entertaining they're inspiring the insightful and they will always make you get you thinking so brody will get them for you on audio so they're really great and really worth listening i don't know is it better to read those words if it's not being said maybe it's better to read and hear them use headphones use headphones exactly yes headphones so we had a phenomenal illusionist last week we're gonna get to the laguna issue a very serious topic in a moment yeah we had a phenomenal illusionist last week world famous it's been on every show but behind the bema was the pinnacle of his career so far he did a trick he is he was he's in cleveland he was very far from ruben moskowitz and yet over the technology did a trick where he figured out rabbi moskowitz's card so my nephew in israel my young nephew in israel who likes magic watch behind the bhima shout out to my brother judah and my sister-in-law shaina and their family they are big fans of behind the bhima and they even contributed to the global campaign in honor of behind the bema so they watched by the bema and my nephew sends me a youtube link and says this is how you do the trick and i like didn't know whether to watch the link don't watch the link i watched the link and now it's it's like being told there's no tooth fairy that that's you know it's so funny you said that that's the way i felt afterwards on the one hand i was so relieved to know that he didn't have some like magical powers that i could never figure out on the other hand it was disappointing there there's something nice about being awed there's something nice about sitting in a state of wonderment and the second that spoiled a little bit like robs you a little bit of the innocence of it um so on the one hand i felt very happy to know the answer to these you know uh significant life questions on the other hand it was a little like knowing there wasn't a tooth fairy but now you can go and do it on others if you watch that video though what i will say is there is enormous skill in the sleight of hand but it's not anything we didn't know none of us really i mean we didn't really think there was something called magic it's all of course you got to practice it's light of hand if you get that special i don't want to give it away but if you got a special deck of cards and you watch the youtube video about what to do it would still take hours or like hours yeah to pull it off seamlessly and and and wow us the way he did so there's still an enormous skill set involved there's a lot of skills i actually read an article a few a few months ago about like the most famous magician in the world i forgot his name right now but he was on a podcast i was listening to and he described the number of hours a day that he spends practicing his trade it's like 18 hours a day from the second he wakes up to the second he goes to sleep and you know on the one hand that's a little bit meshuggah on the other hand you admire that you know this is the trade that he is committing himself to he wants to be the best at it and to do that requires an enormous amount of effort and practice i remember when we were younger was it was it david mueller i remember when we were younger remember that this guy david copperfield and there was like this one event where he was going to make i think was the statue of liberty disappear and like the whole country tuned in to see this happen and on live tv he made the whole statue of liberty disappear i mean it was like a big deal like back then there weren't so many channels like this was like tv at night yeah i think that was before i was born should we spoil it by brody he didn't really make it disappear but i do want to take it he did i saw it i do want to thank rina ben smith again for sponsoring memory of her grandfather and our dear friend jeremy gilbert for sponsoring uh beepermd.com check it out b-e-e-p-e-r-m-d beepermd.com everybody wants to know they don't have corona check it out at home free pcr test 30 rapid antigen tests you can get them in mass and make sure to protect the whole a whole family a whole school a whole organization beepermd.com let's go over to very sensitive say we have some serious stuff to talk about tonight we do so um our community is one that has always taken very very seriously the aguna situation again a naguna is a woman who has been determined the timing is correct it's irreconcilable differences it's a marriage which can't be salvaged and it's been determined you could say by who and by what process by whom and by what process but it's been determined let's say by obeys then that the get should be given the jewish divorce should be given and the husband refuses to do so he's our calcium husband the origin of get when it comes to the talmud when it comes to the gemara was men would go off to war and if they didn't return home and you were unsure whether they were still alive the woman was chained she was unable to go on with her life and remarry because a woman cannot be married to multiple men and therefore she was not able to continue with her life and in the time those times it wasn't ever imagined that someone would electively that somebody would choose to torture a woman by putting her in that situation but tragically in our time that's exactly what's happened i remember during 9 11 and there's a whole book by the basin of america about this we have still lived through circumstances of questions of in fact i just saw a safer promoted and advertised during corona that there are people who uh died and they weren't they weren't identified because they didn't get a proper burial preparation early times of corona and maybe their wives should be aguna whatever the case may be so there are recalcitrant husbands today which is another way of saying real low-life people who refuse to give their wife a get and to set them free now just because a woman wants to be divorced doesn't make her naguna from the moment that she says to her husband we have reconcilable differences very very important to state and to clarify that a husband is not always the villain the husband is not always the devil that a husband is not always evil and that just because a woman wants to be divorced that doesn't mean at that moment she is entitled to be declared or be advocated for as an aguna it is it is reasonable for a husband to say i'll give the get when the civil divorce let the two divorces happen simultaneously it's not obligated it's more righteous more noble no reason the husband should give the get right away and take it off the table but if he wanted to time it with the giving of the civil it is reasonable it is legitimate and a woman is not naguna just because she or others declare her to be it's a body like a base then who examines and hears the situation and makes that determination and that's when the community should and needs to respond and our community has never hesitated we have had several rallies and we have fought tirelessly and advocated on behalf of several women in that position and unfortunately one we held dozens of rallies and only when he passed away last year shame rasham irkov only when he passed away last year uh dr abbas roar was his wife free despite countless meetings negotiations rallies kipper robbie goldberg kipper you and i spent hours in his office that was the most powerful experience i've ever had he chose to never meet a grandson rather than free a woman who he was married to for a short time and with whom he had no children but he's no longer here it took actually his death which is one of the two ways that the rabbi said that a woman goes free but in all the other cases we've rallied and it's not only our rallies we recently last year rallied we rented school buses and brought the children of school to the rally and our rally definitely um brought it to a head but there was an individual in the community who also met privately with the recalcitrant husband and he primarily but a combination deserves the credit that afternoon he gave the get that afternoon one rally brody and i were there involvement it's featured on uh hbo i believe right big ones some documentary yeah i was featured on some documentary and i went again i want to give the credit not to the rally i want to give the credit to that individual who stepped up with leadership and got it done i share that only to say that our community doesn't brush it under the carpet we don't ignore it we don't neglect it and if a woman indeed is an aguna and has been designated as such from an appropriate and proper source we do not hesitate to step up to get involved and to do absolutely everything in our power and i'll give you one such example right now that we should all get involved naftali ayala sharabani who he and his wife have been separated since 2010 so 10 years he's been refusing to give her a get for 10 years so how do we know she's in laguna maybe there's another side to the story who says he's such a villain the answer is the based in siddik of colo evan ezra in lakewood new jersey issued a seirov they issued a document saying that he is her calcium husband she is a naguna and everyone should apply whatever social pressure they can and there's been a groundswell all over social media and elsewhere putting tremendous pressure appropriately enough tali sharbani sharabani who for 10 years 10 years torture imagine a woman wants to remarry she wants to date she wants companions right she's entitled to and this woman is unable to and to the degree that anybody can if anybody knows them ayal sharavani put that pressure share that post get that word out and it's tragic it's sad we don't want to air our dirty laundry and there are people who push back and say why are you airing dirty laundry why would you want to publicize or promote that there are such men but the answer is we're not airing dirty laundry we're actually promoting how the jewish community is a family and we step up for one another and as terrible as this is we won't rest until the people who deserve their get receive their get so why'd this come up tonight it came up tonight because in the case of mr naftali aya sharabani again if you know him if you can apply pressure social pressure if you can encourage whatever you can do to help his wife who for 10 years has been trying to move on on with her life but it also came up because there is a case in our own backyard and there's a local case of a woman who has a civil divorce despite what her ex-husband is in some cases saying has a complete and finalized civil divorce and who her best faith effort has tried through several means several abundant several but they din with marriage counseling with an attempt at mediation and all of it has fallen flat and the basement of america um one of the most reputable but they didn't outside of israel based in america i think issues the most gittin outside of israel um issued a seruf against him and said that she is in aguna and or the organization for the resolution of agunos which is a partner of ours and we support and is really a leader in this area and we long for the day that they can shut their doors and close down because they're not needed um but they have also put them on the wall of recalcitrant husbands i will tell you if there's any levity in this that the website apparently that lists is called recalcitrant parties and when someone sent me the link and i said that's what it was called my first reaction was how how wicked how incredulous are these people they throw parties these are councillor husbands have parties together and i was like these are calcium parties what is the matter with these people like is the stone vamora they have recalcitrant parties anyway foolish me they are they are the recalcitrant parties um so this individual is among them so some people became aware of this case and they started to promote him as well and then others have reached out and said hey rabbis where are you rabbis don't you care about a woman in your community so i want to just share and i know i've been speaking for a little bit i appreciate it and and i'll turn it over to you for your thoughts clarifications or questions or insights but i want to share something that's really really important for our listeners to understand the goal every single time the goal in the case of the naguna and again sometimes the men are in the right and the women are wrong in issues of getting in custody and divorce very important to also state not always is the woman the victim and the man the perpetrator not always is he either a causative party and the woman is the angel there are both directions and it's really important to understand the nuance and to trust the people who are who are competent involved very important to say that so we have to remember what the goal is the goal is when there's a woman in naguna who wants to get and wants to move on the goal is to get her her get that's the goal the goal is not to be right the goal is not to be popular the goal is not to look like a hero the goal is not to satisfy some social justice need within ourselves the goal is to get her to get and i will add the goal is not only for her to receive her get the goal is for her to do it without any unintended casualties and consequences like her children these online campaigns about men that have a permanent imprint and footprint in the digital world are not are painful for children who one day will google their father and if a person can achieve that result without taking that root it is much much much more desired if there can be conversations negotiations efforts it is much much more desired even after she's in aguna so woman's naguna and oda has taken it up and they're on the wall of shame but before there is unleashed a very public campaign locally in the community and far beyond every effort should be expended because we want to protect the children you want to protect a woman who doesn't want to be spoken about at shabbos tables everywhere that's the nuclear option it's a last resort and when i say it's the last resort it's also the last resort to put pressure on that recalcitrant husband and when you unload all of your options and you have no point of leverage or incentivizing left then you have nothing left in order to do it so for the sake of the woman that's what has to happen there's somebody who i admire tremendously a member of our community with a big big heart an enormous moral compass who is so disturbed by the notion of an aguna and wonders an excellent question that maybe some of our listeners have as well rabbis have come up with the sale of hummus and heteriska and the shabbos elevator and lots of legal loopholes why haven't we found a way out and a solution for this he's so terribly bothered so when he saw that there's such a woman here he sent me an email and he resigned his membership in the show he said i can't belong to a shul that is rabbis who do nothing so of course when i explained we speak to this wife in this particular case several times a day i have testified in court we have gone it's not me the rabbis of our community our colleagues in boca raton the other rabbis here abigail robertovsky the rabbis had been involved as much far more than i every day several times a day of course when he understood he obviously walked it back but the goal is not to unleash the campaign and i'll end by saying this when the time is right because we're still working several avenues when the time is right and when the wife the aguna in this case says yes it's time unfortunately tragically sadly there are no alternatives it's trying to go public and put it in the shula boltons and hang it all over town and put it in the social media and hang it all over where he's from in new jersey and where his parents and siblings live and put it everywhere when that time comes i'll tell you right now i promise you as we have before we will put everything we have into that campaign the entire world will know that recalcitrant husband's name they will know his name they will know his face and sadly unfortunately they will know his family's faces and names because they are if they don't encourage and uh help him to give that get sadly then they're part of the problem not the solution so that's a promise and a pledge but it has to be the right timing the goal here is not to feel right the goalie is not to shout the loudest the goalie is not to be the hero the goal is to get her again and if we can do it without ever doing that then that's the goal and she doesn't want it you have to follow the woman who's consulting several experts several bottom several other avenues and when the time is right we're going to do it all right thank you for giving me that time i i have a lot to comment in return but i do want to share a text that i received and i want to let you respond to that text because i think it's a very important point um and perhaps other people in our community are thinking about it as well so text me and said you know just to be clear i haven't spoken them in ages and i might get slack for saying this dot dot dot there are always two sides to the coin right how would you respond to that rabbi people who know him people may have heard a narrative and i'm sure this happens in so many laguna cases where friends were in the middle of it they hear two sides of the story they know that it's probably more gray than black and white how do you as a rabbi convince people that this is unequivocally something that is an abuse something that needs to end and that even if there might be a little bit of gray there then you have to err on the side of justice when rabbis and experts are telling you to i'm so happy that you raised that because it's really important there's not two sides to the story there's three or four sides to every story we do marriage counseling and we do mediation and business and we do and and you know there's his side there's her side and then there's the truth there's definitely multiple sides but what i think it's important to understand here is that there can be multiple sides to a story in some of the elements of the story but when there's a fundamental part of the story where there's only one side we need to focus on that so am i going to tell you in any i'm not talking about this particular situation in any situation that one side is entirely innocent and did everything right the entire way and bears no guilt absolutely not but i will say is that if you divide and conquer if you look and recognize and say just on the aguna issue let's say this woman did other things that are wrong let's say her parents did things that are wrong or hurtful let's say there were mistakes made but right now given where we are right now without the ability to turn back the clock right you say to someone so therefore what she should live without her get the rest of her life she should be in laguna forever and suffer what justification is there sometimes maybe there are justifications but what justification is there ever to use a get as leverage to extort or exploit using the get and and so you have to narrow in and focus in this particular case i can tell you that he has told his friends outright and blatant lies now i promise you that if we get to the point that we need to publicize this she will be on behind the bema i've already spoken her if we get to that point she will tell her story i'm behind the bema the whole world will know his name we will do everything we can so just like tonight we are trying to free khafa and we don't hesitate to mention the name natalia and to call anyone who knows him to publicize into pressure socially pressure we'll do the same in this case we're just we're not there yet so yes are there multiple sides to a story there are multiple sides to components of the story like i don't know a murders b so would you say well there's two sides to the story because it turns out that b really made fun of a's mother and really stole money from him and really made him feel bad and insulted him yeah there's multiple sides to the story there's a lot of background to the story but if we just focus in on the act of the murder that was so unjustified that's indefensible there's only one side to that part of the story and the same is true true with this get again i can't disclose too much but in this case you know he's sharing absolute lies and the evidence is piled up and and and the way i know that is not only because i know that firsthand but a based and examines that a bayesian doesn't issue a serif a basis doesn't come to this conclusion without examining and without looking through it so again the woman's not always right and the man's not always the perpetrator there are one of my friends is texting me right now there's such a thing as a male laguna there's a woman who won't accept to get and yes there are men having out of a heteromayor abundant other things that can be done there are men who are tortured by women who do not cooperate or who in custody and in court torture them the man's not always the the perpetrator the one is not always the victim there are cases that can go both ways but when a bayesian has made when a reputable based in that's also important when a reputable competent mason has made that determination that element there's only one side to the story on that element and and you know the only thank you first of all for addressing that and the only other thing i'll add i mean i have a lot to add but i want to give a brody advance is i don't think people fully appreciate just how much time energy and resources our rebellion have used throughout the years in order to solve countless issues so whether it's with 11 that you were addressing i was in remember willie sheer nyu during 9 11. i remember he used to come into sheer every day and tell stories about what was going on in the basement and the types of questions that he has as a member of the basin was dealing with and grappling with the enormous complexity of them the halal questions the sensitivity of it how many hours of literally blood sweat tears rev willing spent on that well there was a ravage yosef who in israel was but you know was really at the forefront of freeing so many agunas and a lot of his pesky halacha enabled many women to go free to our rebbi rashford i remember when ora started um i was in yu at the time was actually my neighbor the guy in the next room next to me josh ross and now rabbi moshe davis um in fact my mom bought the first seduct boxes for ora at the time we asked we needed 75 dollars we none of us had a penny so she fronted the money for the first aura tzedakah boxes but i remember josh ross every single day every single day nyu would go up to her and if she was guiding him how to do it how logically how to do it appropriately how to do a way that was in line with our tradition and and they're enormously invested in this and so sometimes people see it and say why aren't the rabbis doing more i want to flip that a little bit and say i don't think people appreciate just how much our rabbi arabeam our obey him right me you our obey and our communities for him go out on the limb and spend so much time and effort to resolve as many of these cases as possible well there's a story of a vagina saves that's all there's an amazing story whenever you was older he had a problem a heart problem and he went to the hospital and he was examined and he was told he needed surgery that day the surgery his life was it was so in the balance he needed surgery immediately he insisted his son bring him home and he went home before the surgery against the doctor's advice and when his son said to him like abba they say that you need the surgery you need it immediately he said there's a case of an aguna i'm writing a chuva on and this surgery is is dangerous it's potentially lethal and if i don't survive the surgery there's no one else alive who's going to write the chuva that's going to free this woman the saguna i need to go home with all the risk upon himself i need to go home and write this response i'll write this chuva in order to release the saguna before he underwent the surgery so these rabbis are heroes they have much bigger and broader shoulders than we do what do we have a megaphone and we stand on a street corner that's a pretty big megaphone they it's a big megaphone but that that's easy they are the ones who really take this on but we can't talk about the subject without also talking about the fact that there is a solution there is a solution and again it took the creativity of goldberg and zacchael and ibrahimovic weiss and rabbi willig and and many many and others who came up with the prenuptial agreement and if every couple that gets married signs a halachic prenup the basin of america told me not me they've declared publicly but my friend is the manager of the basement of america every single time a halal prenup has been signed a get was given every single time because according to halacha a man is obligated to provide what's called mizonos for his wife a man is obligated to pay for her living expenses we waive that today because we have joint accounts and we live together so if a baseline passkins that a couple should be divorced and the husband says i refuse i want to remain married. what the heck does is it says oh you want to remain married in this case it's time for you to start providing mizonas for your wife 150 a day and 150 a day start to pile up quickly so when a husband is signed it's binding into civil document binding in secular court and a husband it's held up in court in fact and when a husband signs a halachic prenup if a based on paskins that they need to get divorced and he refuses essentially saying he wants to remain married he will be bound by 150 a day that will add up quickly and every single case where a man signed that the get was given i was involved in a case where right before the wedding the husband did not want to sign the prenup i remember that and i was not the masada conditional massager and i were up until the wee hours of the morning the night before the wedding pleading cajoling begging urging him to sign and telling him that we i at least in my case wasn't going to attend or participate if he didn't sign and it was in the last minute he signed and the couple got divorced and he was not so prepared to give the get and when the when the prenup was invoked and he was told he had till 5 pm to give the get or else he would start to have to pay that money at 459 he gave the get that day and if there were not a prenup i don't know that she would have a get so there is a solution and rabbi should refuse to officiate unless the prenup is used and i just want to be clear none of us just uh to state the obvious none of us would have shared a wedding if there was no halachic prenup signed in advance and i do think it's also important because this i see this question pop popping up a lot there is called a pope we were fused back uh wanted to run a post not party where we invited everyone in the community who has not yet did not sign a prenup before they were married to come get dressed up in in their wedding you know gowns and their wedding clothes and to come to shoal and we would have a post-nut party where we encourage people to take that on to protect those marriages so we we missed an opportunity we missed an opportunity but it's not too late we should bring the blue fields back on to sign a post nup [Laughter] that would be great 80 years married married 80 years 100 years old late not too late to sign a post nope never where could people find a postnup rabbi if they're uh if they're interested the prenup.org the prenup.org is the website to do a halachic prenup before you're married or after you're married and um and i will say this what began people had the impression that this is a why you think a modern thing first of all yosef and revashah weiss and islam nakani goldberg are very far from modern um and they back the prenup but today has grown mishpakha magazine last year two years ago had a major piece about how the prenup has caught on in the more yeshivish world as well and um and why is that by the way because the moment that you've had to deal with naguna the moment you had to look in the into the eyes of a woman and say yes you're chained you have no hope no future no companionship and we have no way out is when you never want to have to do that again so you begin to require or endorse the use of the of the halachic prenup so there are different versions of it dying first in chicago as a version of the prenup it has been said that um the chubas van gagas or sternbacher doesn't hold of the prenup what he doesn't hold up is 150 a day because in israel mizono's the daily cost is less it's not that he's against the institution of it so there are people who have claims and maybe there are people who are upset about the money component but you could have a hollow prenup that just names the basin that doesn't even involve the money component for those who object to it there are people who object and say the couple's not even married you're bringing up i love this one because i say to them oh i guess we're not going to have a tsuba at your wedding they're like what do you mean exuberance like an artistic document the wall it's the best part of the wedding you give it as an honor to read i said do you know what xuba says the exit is about if you die or get divorced your estate needs to provide for your wife it's so unromantic i guess we shouldn't do the ksuba either if you're willing to have a suba you could sign a prenup and i never signed the print about the wedding some people try to make a whole ceremony and kibudim and the khasenstesh again to me it's not about you know the cause it's about the result i always ask them to do it in advance it doesn't need a spotlight to the degree that we're you know it's not going to get more people to do it and so there is a solution it's called the prenup you know it's interesting yeah sorry they're going that's fine no no it's just wondering you mentioned that there was a member that said you know he wanted to resign his membership because he's so disappointed in the way that the rabbis in general have dealt with with the laguna crisis is do you ever meet women you know call it religious women that really want that get but then there's a point after waiting a year or two maybe even even longer where they just say you know what the heck with this whole thing i i'm done with this religious life i just gotta move on or do people kind of stick with it and they just live a chained life but here's the problem is that if they want to move on they have to find a man who's willing to move on and live i'm saying not a religious man woman they don't they don't they just give up on the whole but even judaism yeah it's tragic and even the non-religious man might need to find a rabbi he's going to officiate and the rabbi might say are you divorced and was it get given we we have reforming conservative colleagues reform and conservative colleagues in town we're very close with them we have wonderful relationships who have asked us about getting for their community some people assume that reformer conservatives don't believe in a get but they they do and they have and they've used we have a wonderful massager getting in our community rabbi flug who's competent and kind and sensitive and professional and timely um and and so you know a person who wants to ignore it has to be willing to get married with no rabbi sometimes but yeah it's a tragedy imagine you lose that person to religion it is an absolute absolute tragedy but when people tell me that that you know why can't the rabbis do something the answer is we can if rabbis would refuse to officiate and if everybody who got married had a lache prenup we would eliminate the case of agunas and there's something we can do if we apply social pressure and all get involved and don't excuse and don't say you know there's another side to the story if we hold our friends accountable and and we require this then there is something we can all do so we have to throw up our arms we don't have to be angry sometimes god says i want you to be my partner i'm inviting you to step up and show leadership and so you're right you know you're frustrated but but there are things that we can do we're not helpless and there there are other situations there are tragic situations parallel to aguna because people think that this is the only one you know so it is it is absolutely tragic it's absolutely absolutely tragic um we shouldn't stand for it we have to step up and do something about it and um and you know we ask everybody to help naftali ayasha arabani free to free his wife 10 years 10 years frijava 10 years is a very long time one year one month one week one day one moment is a long time ten years is is forever and it's where does he live it's acceptable he lived in l.a but apparently he's kind of on the run from the social pressure that's become it's probably in florida with everybody else now trying to bring him in so if you see him in florida if you see him in florida let's let the world know so you know i hate to end with this downer but it's important it's critically important and we haven't done a shame on you in a long time but any again anywhere counselor and husband and anyone is an accomplice to them shame on you and and that's our promise and our pledge but we also wanted to offer that clarification and the clarification is that in the case that's happening with us we're following the will of the woman you can't care more about the woman that she cares about herself you know and you can't sacrifice her children on the alter of i i stand up for social justice you have to follow her lead and what she wants for her children her own name pursuing the different avenues the pace that we're supposed to be going and so on and so forth that is um that's really important you know it's funny we talk about that a lot with leadership um is oftentimes you know people want to go faster and you have to slow people down right i remember you know sometimes you'll hear about nil someone will get very sick in the community and there's this like bad rush to do and to do and to you know and sometimes as a rabbi where your initial inclination the reason why you got into the wrapping is to help people sometimes we have the unfortunate job of actually telling the community like slow down right right let the let it play out a little bit let's you know we have to organize we have to see what the family wants sometimes you need to slow down people's passion as a rabbi which is counter-intuitive and it happens behind the scenes and you oftentimes get flack for it but but that's what leadership means sometimes it is a great great point because you're right the rabbit is the balance between sometimes people are indifferent and apathetic and complacent you're like where are you sometimes you have to light a fire and sometimes you have to lower the flame because it happens to be a big lesson in life you know we my father has always taught me and and constantly reinforces this idea in business in in jewish communal life in every aspect of life that you know going to every meaning and con every conversation and say what do i want the result to be and what's the best way to get there you could be right or you could be effective it's true in politics we're living in such divided times and and people are more interested in being right than they are being then they're being persuasive so do you want the result or do you want to be right and that's really important this case in this case also so when when the best thing for the result is to have a public campaign uh believe you me the world will know will know it and they will hear us but when we're not yet there and that the wife herself is determined we're not yet there then then don't don't try to be more right than the wife because the result is going to impact her life for the rest of her life don't sacrifice her children or her life and don't set it back sometimes if you're too public or in the wrong place the wrong time you're going to set back the whole cause and the goal is the result the goal is for her to be free so that is what is all about thank our audience for staying with us a little bit longer because we promise and pledge to get back to the hour aj jacobs if you've not yet read his books or articles check them out look them up and you will enjoy you will be entertained informed inspired they really are fantastic i want to thank our sponsors again reena benseman in memory of her grandfather mort kaufman and beepermd.combeepermd.com free at home who doesn't want free at home testing who hasn't had a nightmare of corona trying to figure out how you can get tested so free at home testing beepermd.com b-e-e-p-e-r-m-d dot com is that a briefer okay i'm just wondering is that what is beeper making fun of our keyboards here yeah well listen i love jeremy that's that's the way to drive my sponsors what is that easy one to remember give us money sponsor an episode and we'll make fun of your products i'm saying when you go to the website and it dials a beeper like they call you back with one of those episodes we should have quit while we were anyway on that note thank you all and let's all step up and stand up for justice and do what we need when we're asked to do and make sure that nobody suffers under our watch until next time stay happy stay healthy and stay holy