#82: Behind the Bima - R' Dovid Bashevkin

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 ladies and gentlemen it's wednesday night nine o'clock i'm rabbi goldberg joined by rabbi josh brody and we're here to go with you behind the bema it's um you know this is a live show we bar hashem we thank god have full-time jobs and uh this wonderful exercise behind the bhima is a beautiful hobby it's fun enjoy it but we fit it in and um the evidence that's live is sometimes we squeeze it in and have to have difficult transitions so rabbit brody and i just came from a uh a large and massive to helen gathering in our shul there are two young people in our community 24 year old corey reichenberg young man amazing fantastic young man who's been um facing some really difficult health challenges he's just extubated today but he's been on and off a respirator and este moscow it's eight years old beautiful daughter of our beloved rabbi moscow it's rebecca moscowitz facing a uphill battle with health challenges and we had a big tale on gathering because they both need our fellows our prayers so we ask you our audience whether you're listening live or listening later to continue to dive and to pray everyone's prayers matters they all make a difference they all contribute these two beautiful special people carmilla shai ben reza esther labas ariel zappora so please darwin do good deeds take things upon yourself pledge and promise to improve all in their merit and please god we should hear good things and good news and celebrate good occasions with them so it's difficult sometimes everybody brody it's the life of the rab in it you go from it to him gathering where you're crying and davening you go behind the bema to a program and a commitment that you have and this is the rabbinic we've talked about this it's so hard it's so hard it's like an emotional roller coaster and the the crazy thing is you never know what's coming next you know what's going to happen after the show what's going to happen tomorrow we just never know it's the challenge of the rabbit you have to try to live life and you have to be present in the moment and you have to fully experience whatever you're in even while there's so much going on still in the background you could be on behind the bema doesn't mean you stopped thinking about those two young people or you could be at the wedding you're still thinking about the funeral you could be at the funeral and you're preparing for and planning to celebrate at the wedding but as much as things are in the background we you know to be present and live in the present even while simultaneously you're sort of compartmentalizing things because otherwise you couldn't live you couldn't live that is the life it's everybody's life but it's the life uh perhaps a little more intensely of the rabbinate right and that's the struggle that even when you show up into that room and you see hundreds of people that are there simply to dive in like how do you how do you break out of everything you were just involved in to just focus just to be there just to be present and and feel the pain feel like that that that pain that those families are going through right now it's so hard it's so shut everything else out yeah shut it all out and um but it matters that's so you know i tried to give some words before we davened yeah and um that was the message i hope so you know it focuses me i hope it focuses others but that was the message is that sometimes you could be on a whatsapp where people sign up for telum or you can get another name that's sent to you then excuse me it needs prayers and you could think well what's the difference my prayers you know who i am i'm so imperfect i'm so inadequate do my prayers matter just another person just taking another group of tehran does that make a difference and so that was the message tonight is that it it matters it matters and it makes a difference and uh we have to know that we have to know that you know actually it's a transitional start telling you a little bit about about the week first of all today's a big day which we'll get to in a moment rabbi josh brody and simone brody's 25th wedding anniversary today on the gregorian calendar secular date so we'll get to the brody's secrets to marriage in a moment but i came back late last night technically early this morning from an extraordinary trip we were a couple dozen guys from our community right on a mavakshem fly and the word mavaksha means seeker searcher yearner you know moscow was very helpful in putting it together and said that he couldn't be with us this year but we've done it several years in a row ideally you go to israel you go to eretz israel where else is there to go to try to soak up all the holiness and meet the holy people but it's hard it's hard to travel 6000 miles and time difference and expense and so a i won't even say a small version of that but its own version is to go to new york and there are very righteous holy people all over russia shiva rebellion rebels and we have a whirlwind trip 6 a.m flight monday morning last flight back tuesday night and just pack pack pack on the go on the go on the go and meet personalities from across the spectrum from rabbi eitan finer it was fire got us started with fire to uh to then go to brooklyn where we met with we went to torvadas and met with ravi sir reisman and and ravitzi lichtenstein and then we went to go meet with ravelia brudney who was on the mutters de la torre talk about jewish communal issues he goes to you every year he gives a cheer there schmooze there is their politics how could we create more unity how can we work together how can we focus on our commonality it's a great conversation then we went through of david cohen the vulavits sat in his basement gave us teacher's latest safer beliara this was safe for a number what do you think's safer do you know what number he's up to i'm saying let's say it's 10 it would be amazing tense so this was say for number 70 that he's written and and he's rea and he's in the middle of nowhere and everything else written he's got he's got 10 more swarm he's working on right now i think i've learned 70s for him and his warmth and his smile and his encyclopedic knowledge each of these people you know greeting us in their homes living simple lives seemingly simple lives but there's nothing simple about their life at all and then we made our way to muncie my dear friend my good buddy shai stern hosted us his father's your site we had an incredible dinner and barry webber and a choir and then refrained waxman came and he sang one of his original songs and rocked the place and touched on the shamans then about midnight we went to see the square rubber got some brachas skaraba for the second time made a donation to the boca raton synagogue so the global campaign has begun and among the first donors the global campaign because none other than the square reba so i don't know we'll stream that starting next week we're doing our brs global campaign for those listening everywhere but the rebbe and then we weren't done yet 1am with the division at cemetery muncie to the rivnet zoreba and rip gildzahler if you haven't read shirley besser's book on rob guild dollar a book that rabbi ari mirzo says changed his life and he is a great educator so reblazer gel dollar it's worth reading that book and we got the better on 2am monday night but no rest for the weary tuesday morning back at him 7 30 shiner domining breakfast with daniel gibber do you know daniel gibber rabbi frant right isn't there classic story with our very own dear buddy we have to get him behind the beam with rabbi gibber our dear friend or by gibberish your friend colleague and partner or brother here in boca raton daniel gibber he's he's what others would say a regular bala boss he's just an ordinary guy again nothing ordinary about him he's on fire i say if you follow his twitter daniel gibber it reads like a shana olive guy he's a middle-aged guy going through life i know he shared his story really inspired our guys then we met with uh rottenberg it was the hasidis you remember two years on chanukah two years ago a rub in his house was lighting the candles and a terrorist maniac came in with a machete killed someone in fact the rebel's own son was injured um so we met with him in his house there's a plaque on the wall where this terrible event happened that's the bracha you say in a place where a miracle happened and if you recall there were ambulances police cars there were bodies still being taken away and he went on with the chanukah people didn't understand why is he continuing so he told us he spoke to us about that if you look at my youtube page put up just the recording of that conversation of when he of when he told us about that and then uh from there we went to wyu we met with rabbi willig met with uh rabbi leibowitz and robert menachem penner his farm sale then we went to revolve from shore in brooklyn fire unbelievable it was just an amazing trip the all-star trip what did the guys feel like were there moments where these guys just said you know this is like it's just too much i do this is like overwhelming let me summarize let me summarize with this because we got a lot to talk about an amazing guest my cousin is coming on tonight family reunion night on behind the bema and you will see the resemblance you see the reset points very very little um he's much smarter and more handsome and has a head full of hair um but i will tell you this at the amunish this morning uh one of the wives who of a guy on the trip came up to me afterwards and she said to me she said you know last night she goes i don't know what you guys did she said but last night i got a text from my husband on his way home and he wrote to her he wrote honey you have a brand new husband coming home you have a new husband coming home so you know again we got to be careful pace ourselves and not take on too much but i think the message is revolving he said why did god create the world with gravity i mean it'd be much more fun if it were if it were there were no gravity if we floated through the air you know this traffic you just jump right over somebody why why do we need gravity in the world and he said the message of gravity is that we're constantly being pulled down we're being pulled down to this earth we're being pulled down to material being pulled down to the here and now and you got to fight that gravitational pull if you're going to climb and you're going to elevate then you know you don't start a neutral you don't start in power right we're gravity's pulling us down and you've got to fight to rise up so that's what this trip was is that you know sometimes we're on this autopilot habit wrote or davening our learning our life maybe we're not dominating or learning or even living life so this was a breakout it was a disrupting trip disruption and that's what it was these conversations so some of them were halaq questions some of them were life questions some of them were shirum and some of them were talking about you know big picture jewish communal issues right so different conversations a lot of singing and dancing and a lot of personal time finer sharing personally waiting 12 years to have a child and having a child who's who's ill and and what that means and how do you maintain your your faith and your happiness and life it's the most powerful thing that touches right into the soul and rabbi penner and you know each one in their own right i'm describing that that's stabbing right in front of his eyes fearing that you're about to die what that means what that's like so this was very real very raw and it was really powerful it was a great trip do you think i mean you brought a couple dozen guys but there's still let's say another 900 men that are members of usual that didn't go would this trip benefit them would you say let's do more of these types of experiences good question i like that i'll tell you my answer to that is no not every person will be benefited by this trip you have to be in the right place you have to be open we had a waiting list from our own community to get into this trip so there were that many people in that right place but you have to be in the right place right you have to be open you have to be looking searching you have to be right your antenna has to be extended if you're going to pick up the signal but there are other trips there is a trip that can get to everyone that's what i would answer i think 900 families there's a trip for every man and every woman and we need to do women's trips and we've pledged and promised i don't know if my wife is watching right now but we are going to make it happen we need to make those those women as well they need those opportunities a hundred percent but there's a trip by moscow has ran a trip for fathers and sons to new orleans where they volunteered you know so there are there are trips that you can go that you will you gotta disrupt and interrupt your life sometimes why do kids have such an impact when they go on the year in israel why summer camp our good friend jeff klein you know good friend jeff klein the former ceo of the federation of west palm beach always loved to tell me he said you know the research shows as important as day school is camp jewish summer camp because you got to get out of the house out of your environment got to get out of the you just got to disrupt your routine of life and and get out and see what's what's out there so i think that you've seen it right brody you're not the trip master what are the trips but i think it's so amazing because we've done adult trips and we've done much of the livings and birthrights and but when you see what it can do for this age group and we do it for momentum we do for the wives we do for the men but there's so many that have never experienced anything like this and you see what it can do to someone when you started i didn't even know what you were going to say when you said that you know one guy texted his wife and before he even said what it was already i got a chill because i know as a guy that that's something which we don't do enough and as soon as you say a guy just simply texted his wife for something that's not you know related to the to anything that you know functional within the marriage but you can tell it's going to be something special worth every penny right with every moment that he was there life-changing right yeah big deal listen revolver shore talk to us about and i'll share it another time because it's worth it first was amazing he didn't he didn't berate us for having smartphones and his world and his worldview and nobody's smartphones um and and had choice words to say about it but he didn't he knew who we are where we're coming from instead he challenged us not to look at your phone before you david right but he did it in the context of divreitora put god before you and he talked about you know if you can if you can make sure not to do anything for you before you darwin including satisfying your curiosity to see what happened overnight right in the world news what emails with text came in right he said that's a fulfillment of bikuram you're giving your first to god it's the first of your day that you're giving to god you know kadeshly you're you're you're achieving your holiness by giving your first so every day you could wake up and sacrifice your first so to say and the first thing that you sacrifice is your urge and instinct by giving to god it was it was unbelievable it was unbelievable so um you know one of the people on the trip is texting me right now he said someone on the fly was deciding if he can call it a vacation ultimately decided he could because it was vacating his routine to break out of it that's what a vacation is meant to be vacate you gotta vacate out of your routine break out of that mold oh i'm not telling you that because this morning i wake up and again you know you have this what's that when you have these trips like this a guy's like didn't look at my phone till i dive and i feel like a different person you know and then it gets challenges the next guy and then it's just about it's with our children it's every one of us could do it and it doesn't you could just drive to another place i was on the whatsapp group so i got to see all the up-to-date up to the minute updates so one of the pictures i think of what i don't know where it was but it looked like it might have even been the airport and this is after two or three days everyone's exhausted and you see a bunch of guys sitting down with they're just sitting down let's just if i have one regret it was a lot of hard work putting this together and having access to these people and all the details it was a wonderful little committee that worked on it and helped out i'm very indebted to them for it um but if there was anything i regretted that went wrong it was there were there were weather problems at the very end and and um we had to scramble our flight was significantly delayed i could have handled it better i feel bad as the leader of the group and coordinating everybody reorganizing i feel bad and i apologize to them for that but but everyone kind of went there went their separate way and then there was a whole group that was on there's one very late flight so you think they'd be like passed down the floor after two days like watching something on their phone you know like at the bar in the airport right drinking thrown back something you know what they did they found the table and they were sitting around and they were learning right and there was a guy who scrambled to finish a bunch of mishnays donnie oppenheimer just incredible guy he made a scene on cedar's rhyme in the middle of the jetblue terminal deep into the night is that unbelievable and you'll love this while we were there joining us right now on youtube rabbi reuben bashan i came to rob he was back and better than ever so we got a great guess give us a couple words before we bring him on about a 25th wedding anniversary what is your secret you and simone 25 years of bliss so i'll give you three things and i'm just gonna tell you quickly but these are by no way anything that i've achieved any level of success and i'm still trying every day number one is communication always communicate with your spouse someone said where are you reading from right now simone sent oh good simone yeah because i said i said listen he's going to ask this he never gives me any warning this is one it was a good thing here's my can i guess the text you ready i guess the text is how well i know the brodies hun hun efrom's going to ask me three secrets to marriage what should i say can you write it for me all right it's me right now but you'll see they're totally me this is not like this is not her talking this is totally like absolutely i get it and i'm still working communicate talk to each other share your feelings which she's very good at i'm not so good at but it's such an important ingredient number one number two don't sweat the small stuff every day there's gonna be little things and each one of these little things can expand and explode into something much bigger and the third one which i think is very interesting and a lot of us get this wrong is that you know we sometimes think when we get to we lucky enough to find someone and marry them that you know maybe they're not exactly where i hope they will be maybe someone might have felt this with me but at some point maybe i'll change him or i can change her and they'll become someone else the point is realize that this is the person we're marrying and we've got to love them for who they are but understand when when we want to do something for the other person don't do what you want for the other person do what you think that they want or something that they their love language yeah speak their love life thank you there you go the three big big all right there it is listen to me young people old people listen take notes the brodies they're always smiling they seem to have worked 25 years 25 plus another almost 12. i've known just seven years yeah it's a long time can you and with this we'll welcome our guest but is there one year which is the best year out of the 25 that jumps out at you it's funny my mother-in-law was over before and she says she remembers our my wedding day and she says i remember that day and you just kept saying over and over i can't stop smiling so that's my blessing to you and to everyone just every day just keep smiling and and well enjoy the moment so that was definitely a big day well you are in for a big treat tonight we've got a special guest who happens to be my cousin david david bashevkin rabbi doctor david dove bishopkin soon to be is the director of education at csui which is everyone knows the youth movement of the orthodox union he's a professor at yeshiva university teaches public policy religious crisis rabbinic thought he is the founder of the very popular podcast 1840.org which is a serious podcast unlike ours but is a serious podcast tackles really serious issues and brings a very prominent guest and it's his brainchild he's put it together yes michael from uh from hawaii from ritz a master's from revel and he's pursuing his doctorate so maybe not doctor yet unless he completed it already he's the author of several books synagogue used to write the top five lists for mishpacha and put that out as a book as well he's done many things to far surpass his cousin and uh he's just a brilliant funny great loving positive force and energy in this world a real influencer if you could use that word on twitter from twitter but beyond and it's a real privilege we're excited to be able to welcome on so without any further ado rabbi david bashevkin it's a real privilege and pleasure a personal excitement for me to welcome my dear cousin the great the one and only rabbi david bishop and welcome and thank you for agreeing to go behind the bema with us this is an absolute joy for me to be with mishpacha on uh on a podcast behind the bema no less is really exciting and my old friend rabbi josh brody so this is really a pleasure that i've been waiting for for a very long time so robin shaving we're not going to make any charts or spreadsheets or grids to explain to people but just to remind people we did not grow up maybe even knowing each other but certainly didn't have a closeness although our families obviously did rabbi bishop and i are third cousins right that means our great grandmothers were sisters i think is the yes we share a mutual great great grandfather who's uh who's grogger who's poor mcgrogger still in existence he made a grogger and there were three sisters and three great-grandchildren one of them is me one of them is you and the most famous of the great-grandchildren is stacy schiff who is a pulitzer prize winner correct and somehow the beshevkins ended up with the grogger but we'll leave that aside also i'm looking at the family resemblance i mean there is a there is a resemblance people get me confused all the time not just on the opposite side yeah exactly upside down stuff's got the gray hair on top i've got it coming out at the bottom so yeah other than that if one of us is upside down but it is great it's great to be together and uh rubber bashed and everybody knows you are a prolific author and speaker and and uh tweet and in so many ways you you are from twitter so to say sort of the gutla from twitter um starting all kinds of phenomenon and fads um and so we're excited to get into that and to talk a little about that um i want to get into your story your childhood your background your life people can listen to you've spoken about that elsewhere but let's get right into failure you wrote the book on failure uh literally and you've opened the door for people to feel comfortable and to talk about their failures you courageously did and for that were indebted to you for that and so much more have you seen that take off have you gotten satisfaction of hearing from people that they're becoming more comfortable not complacent and comfortable with failure as if you know somehow you're you're you're stopping growth but meaning is it giving people comfort to know it's okay to fail and you can come back from it have you gotten positive messages about it i i got an email a while ago and it's really from the foundational way in which i spoke and encouraged people to share their failures uh they're they're especially when you're on the speaker circuit like uh you certainly are both of you and myself so there's this custom that you write and you send in a bio blurb and it's like the little bio blurb and when i began speaking publicly it dawned on me for the first time that everybody writes their own bio blurb you don't have to admit it now on air but the imagining and i was doing it myself i'm sitting alone in a room and i'm like writing you know like those words like sought after speaker world renowned you want to get all your titles in there all your books in there and i realized that it kind of is this fun house mirror of how we present ourselves and i started in this initial article that i initially published in first things and then elaborated on in my book synagogue that when we tell our stories we should include um failures in them and i said it playfully and i got an email uh two months ago from the dean of a medical college and i shared it actually online who said i i wrote one of these myself uh it's not he doesn't use it as a professional bio he uses it for himself the notion that your story includes difficulties not that you have to glorify just your failures but that failure is a part of your bio blurb so to speak um is is a perspective that i think is healthy for all people we shouldn't look at our lives as an espn highlight reel of just our successes we should have our misses our injuries our difficulties as a part of that story because it's a part of who we are for sure and um what are some of the failures you've you faced that you're overcoming you know it it's funny when it comes to failures the ones that that stick with me are the ones that were most early in childhood and you know i i've spoken about them i i was a very anxious child i come from a family you don't have to speak about your own family i come from a family where mental health issues anxiety depression i grew up knowing about these things this is something on both sides of the family uh one of which is yours was something that was very real and we spoke about in our house and as a young kid the two biggest difficulties i always think about because it made me feel different um was i was afraid to sleep over i was i had a terrifying like traumatic fear of sleep away camp of sleepovers any time that there would be a conversation and my old friends remember this my childhood friends where are we going this summer camp monk manavu i would like somehow like sulk out of the room i would like crawl under like i'm like an army soldier crawling off the floor just i need to get out of this room but i was afraid to go to sleep away camp until i was well into my teens the other failure um and it's not these things were they weren't failures they were the realization that there are things in your life that are out of your control um and i've mentioned this before but i talk about it because i know other people have things in their lives that they feel the same way about was when my hair started turning white as a 16 year old i felt like i was going through a midlife crisis as a teenager i was a good looking kid very popular and all of a sudden um your body starts to change your hair starts to change and it feels like this message of like i didn't ask for this and it's not a glamorous failure it's not uh they don't have special camps or organizations supporting people whose hair turned white and it was lonely because nobody could relate to it and that contention with dealing with something that feels like it's out of your control was a formidability can i give you a pushback though is that really failure but both the examples you gave are those failures meaning a failure is i tried i i submitted a book to a publisher they rejected it i applied to college or camp i wasn't let in i proposed to a girl she laughed at me right those are those are failures you know we launched a program at the shul it turned out to be a flop we thought it was the best idea ever it turned out to be the worst right your hair prematurely going white and i'm not minimizing the challenge of that and the struggle with it and i'm being serious or even a phobia of going to camp both of which are are legitimate and painful and need to be navigated but but they're sort of as you said they're out of your control there are things that you're struggling with and now you need the support to navigate them as opposed to something which was in your control you gave it your all and and you failed you know a couple weeks ago robert brody was talking about running in the miami marathon it was really hot day some of the people didn't make it to the end they might have trained the entire time and that day they failed they didn't make it they didn't cross the finish line i was explaining to my wife because i read the story about a woman who what is it 26.2 miles is a she made it 26.1 miles she didn't make it the last like point one mile so i was like i wouldn't i wouldn't have made another ten steps i'm just telling you if it was i'm exhausted just listening to this this is this i'm not i'm not i'm nick of water my wife you just you get a sense the difference of us i'm a little bit competitive and she and i and i say this with envy of her is not so she was like okay but she was close enough like so she could just tell people she ran the marathon 26.1 26.2 so you understand if you trained and that was your life and you need to frame the picture of you and the jersey crossing that finish line she failed she came up short so the two examples you gave are those really failures and there's a failure the way you come back or think about a failure different than the way you think about struggling with something that's not a failure but it's a challenge that you have i'll say something i don't know that i ever said publicly before but we're among family i have crohn's i have crohn's disease i was diagnosed several years ago i navigated i figure it out thank god it hasn't helped me back in life it it there are struggles there are times when i'm supposed to speak somewhere every time i'm inside a condition i know everywhere i go in life i know exactly where the restroom is and i need to so that's a chat and i'm always ready to step in and i'm always i always sorry bro if i disappear you just get up there so and i'm not sure why i spoke about that now not that i'm shy about it but i've never spoken about it before but but having to navigate something out of your control is different than a failure no well um no because i i want to make a distinction between failure as a verb and failure as a noun i think that what i was contending with was with failure as a noun i think a lot of people talk about i failed an exam that's a verb i felt like a failure what does it mean to feel like a failure that's a noun you feel like a failure when your internal sense of self is in dissonance is in conflict with your external signals that could be your hair that could be your marathon i could fail a marathon and i would not feel like a failure because my internal sense of self never felt like i'm the kind of person who could finish marathons but i was the kind of person who felt like i should be independent enough to be able to sleep over at camp i was the kind of person who said i should be the good looking cool kid who shouldn't have his hair go white but that made me feel like a failure a noun and i think that we often get confused between the verb failing and the noun feeling like a failure and the experience of feeling like a failure really is the same experience whether or not it was within your control or out of your control it is a reorientation of your sense of self who are you am i still me even though this external signifier a failed exam a missed promotion a relationship that fell apart or uh i look different now are you able to have a self-definition that has the resilience to withhold even those external signifiers okay good i like that that's a good that's good could go back to your comment about the the byline people writing their own do you agree with me and i have not read your byline recently so you'll excuse me if if uh this is insensitive but when i have the privilege and it really is a privilege to speak elsewhere and they ask they'll email me they'll email my assistant like what's my what's my bag i just say rabbi booker it's on synagogue like no no no no like what else you have what boards you said what else you say rabbi booker it's on synagogue my experience is that the people who need to inflate their byline with a million things just just keep it simple like that's that's is that your experience i i 100 agree with you the more purpose and focus you have in your life the shorter your bio is and i think like i i always notice that you know time time magazine which i don't even know still comes out used to have this time 100 where they would ask famous and important people to write bios about other famous and important people and the more important and the more focus you have in your life the shorter your body was the president's bio um was the president comma 44 45 what president of the united states of america it's a one-line buyer this you know college or whether or not they graduated i think that when you have a short bio it shows a certain culmination and focus in your life my bio has gotten shorter the only things i add is i use my bio sometimes because i am a relentless self promoter of my own books uh which we can talk about self promotion a little bit but i i'm a relentless self promoter and i write my books in my bio because free advertising why not why not get that into a shul newsletter agree 100 that's different that's different right so author of this this and this and also i you're also adding value because if somebody hears you is exposed to you and they say i would like to consume more where can i read more learn more listen more so i think that's actually adding value as you said as opposed to like where you went to camp what your babysitter's name was or adjectives you were once you were quoted by accident in an article somewhere so now you know as appeared in the new york times my biggest pet peeve and i i hate that i'm gonna say this is when people write for the rest of their lives they started off on wall street and the rest of their lives they write x wall street in their bio i'm like does that make you feel better and more touch of like i don't need to know every job you have what are you doing now brother recovering wall street so rabbi we have some yeah i'm just gonna say i think there's two bios is the bio that you do professionally and this is the bio you give to your parents you know my mom loves reading that long long bio there's there's the naka's bio that's right right we have so much to talk to you about we want to talk ncsy and working with teenagers inspiring them in reach uh publishing her barry kaplan's works recently 1840 your podcast there's an endless map but let's jump right into social media let's talk twitter tiktok a little bit and let's talk about some of the phenomenon some of the positives that have emerged and some of the challenges that maybe are i would say definitely are unintentional and i'm talking in the firm world right outside just generally social media we all know the issues of addiction we know the issue issues of information overload we know the information of people who are consuming information without actually filtering it i don't mean filtering it religiously but i mean filtering it it's not peer reviewed do we know if it's really authentic or not authoritative or not there's so many issues that that apply generally but let's let's hone right in directly as banay torah as people who are i think the three of us um consider ourselves benetora we aspire to be total personalities guided and formed inspired by torah part of a masora we turn to arabella we feel we operate within certain boundaries so within those boundaries is everything happening on social media really positive or to put it differently which i think is a great barometer a dangerous but a great barometer to ask ourselves when hashem looks down at everything happening is he smiling so when he looks down at the amount of torah being learned the proliferation the interaction provoking thinking i happen to think he's smiling when he looks down at your tweets that are humorous and and funny and could bring a smile on people's face in the middle of a difficult day i have to believe hashem is smiling when he looks down and he sees daf reactions is he smiling rabbi bishopkin i um i have thought about this a lot i i doff reaction is the new tick tock account um that that uh i don't i don't know let me before you continue i'm interested for one second because i want to be very very clear i want to say this as clearly as i can my question is not about the woman who produces dof reactions i don't know or i've never interacted with her i'm sure she's lovely i'm sure she's purely intentional i don't know her background i don't want to talk about her i don't believe in talking about people i don't want to talk about her i don't want to talk about her account i want to talk about us i want to talk about the platform and the audience and the culture we've created that enables or celebrates certain things and i know it's hard to entirely divide between the two but i want to importantly give that very very important disclaimer that i don't think we should talk about her as a person but more the phenomenon or the culture so there is a foundational story that animates the way that i approach social media that comes from a gemara in brachos a talmudic story in brachos where there is a student in a bass medrash uh who is stuttering he is unable to speak out he's unable to speak out because the gemara says that this student um the night before what was it was up to no good they they weren't involved in holy activities and they're studying and one of his rebbe comes up to him and he says you know what's going on he says look i'm stuttering i don't really feel comfortable saying torah and he says open up your mouth via erudica and allow the words to come out holy and beautifully and to illuminate uh the world i think that a lot of people on social media are still in the stages of uh stuttering where in those stages feeling that sense of comfort feeling that sense of ownership and being a part of the jewish story very often begins with a stutter of sorts where it doesn't come out clearly it could sometimes come out very negatively and i believe it's the responsibility of people who have found their place in torah to go up to them even either directly or indirectly by example and show them open up your mouth you have a perspective to share even if you never studied in yeshiva even if you don't have a perspective on this illuminate the words with your experience because i do believe that part of the tradition that we have torah shabba al-pere is not just the oral tradition that we were handed down but it is the torah that emerges from the alpaca from the speaker from their own experiences so when i see people who grew up and had experiences that were negative traumatic and they're sharing things that seem to be overly negative i bristle at it i find it difficult but i look at them as someone who is almost stuttering to find their place within the larger canon of torah ideas and my first reaction is how can i through my channel and my platform serve as an example to show them and encourage them that you too can find a place here and that's really everything that i try to do and i believe with my whole heart and soul that it can be done and i feel like you're doing that every single day uh when i when i watch your torah and what you share and what you know what people share collectively on on on from twitter on on social media i think by and large the positive example is showing people that even with your experiences even your own nourished kite even your own trauma there is a window to share something positive and so long as i stay laser focused on highlighting positivity i think it serves as an example for other people who may still be stuttering with finding their place to know that that place can eventually be found it's a beautiful insight but what's your red line where are your boundaries who what person with what set of beliefs or communicating with what messaging or language for you would you say they're no longer stuttering they're they're mocking or you know this is not a person stuttering searching this is an outsider shooting arrows where's your again without speaking about people or a specific example what type of a behavior what type of a language what type of a provocativeness what type of a profanity where would you draw your red line to say that this is no longer part of the conversation this is not a voice in our basement so is twitter a bass madrish that we have to be careful of whose voices are included in our bass madrish if twitter is not a vase madrish then what is it like into what is the metaphor is it a shul do we have those voices now we have them in our shul right rabbis all over last week and again this weekend two weeks ago we talked about the torah right the beautiful incense that was so beloved to god at 11 ingredients 10 were pleasant and the 11th was repugnant and we all know that our prayer is incomplete if it doesn't include the 11th but there's a difference between including and saying there's a place we have a seat there's a place add your voice sing with us and here's the microphone give it to our torah or dresha speak it shall issue we don't do that so so why do we do that on social media why would we celebrate or why would we follow or why would we somehow see it as positive if the person who's stuttering or searching and and and the search that i don't know that they see themselves as searching you do you're favorably seeing them as searching maybe they say i've completed my search i've completed my search and there is no god not i'm agnostic not i have doubt and i'm searching i tell you definitively my search is complete there's no god this framework of talmud is still worth studying and gives me a platform to use what are profanity and often vulgarity and use it to talk about bigger issues that i care about but aren't really part of the the truth or the fabric of the text and the and the sense of reverence we're intended to bring to it so where is that line for you so i have three different lines because i believe that different settings and environments demand us especially in the you know hyper connected world that we live in to have different lines i i have one line that is in my personal life personal home the shoes that i dive in what i bring into my home what i have my kids listen to that is a that is a very limited line of the holiness and sense of kedusha that i want in my lived physical universe and life um and i am fairly um i fairly well curated that line there are two other lines which i think more closely relate to your question i have one line on my personal twitter account which is who do i personally follow who do i personally interact with who will i personally retweet and i will retweet non-orthodox rabbi i will interact with people who do not believe in god i will amplify people who do not have a yeshiva education or not yeshiva orthodox adjacent why do i do that i believe that social media gives us a unique opportunity it is not a basement and i think people get confused with that social media is a public forum it is a rashus harabin a public forum of ideas that you need to know that the voice that you curate in there can be seen especially with people with our followings can be seen by everybody i want my twitter account and again i have a sizable following kanai nahara and i take it very seriously with a very serious sense of responsibility i want to have a twitter account that i could feel comfortable showing to my teachers to my rabbeam but can also be seen by not only an unaffiliated jew but by a non-jew and look at this and say wow this is how i don't want to uh self identify as a bentora but this is how somebody who was raised and as a product of orthodox institutions and shiva's interacts with others and because of that i deliberately have broader lines the analogy i use is that twitter is a place where you can pass notes in the back of the classroom it's more like the kiddush where anybody can kind of come in it is not a basement it's not so it's the coffee room and in that coffee room we can pass notes to people who i would not feel comfortable daving with who i would not step foot into their institutions i would not necessarily uh dive in together with them i don't know that i'd learn one-on-one russo with them but i would absolutely find nuggets of positivity in their ideas there are many non-orthodox rabbis there are many unaffiliated and non-religious and non-jewish people who i interact with constantly because i want to amplify positivity and i deliberately manicure it that way there's a third line which is really where your question is getting at is how do i relate to things that i find negative i believe that in order to be successful in the public domain on social media you need to set firm boundaries on what you weigh in on and i deliberately do not feel a sense of responsibility in this public space to weigh in on every negative thing that i see and it has to go both ways if i'm not going to weigh in on everything that a from jew does that i find deplorable or negative and there are things that i find absolutely disgusting but i don't weigh in on every single thing that i find negatively i'm also not going to weigh in on everything that i see somebody who is not affiliated with the orthodox community to do that that they do something negatively instead in that third category um i i try to just uplift in my world and i curate it very carefully um that people who walk away from my account and i get criticism nonstop but i know that the criticisms outweighed from people who look at the way i interact with my what's known colloquially as my haters my detractors i drive people crazy because i am fiercely on the pal unapologetically positive where people say you're an apologist you're not looking you need to weigh in on this and i say no i want to show you that you don't have to weigh in on everything and when i see somebody do something that i find either hurtful or cynical or negative i don't necessarily find a need to weigh in on that the way that i weigh in is by amplifying my own positive perspective because if there was just haraban and i think a lot of people particularly in the orthodox community confuse the coffee room of social media with the base madrid and they weigh in on whether it's unaffiliated jews non-orthodox jews in a way they say you could talk that way in your own private shule there are people who are watching us this is accessible to everybody you are making a massive kill hashem about the way that you are talking about non-orthodox rabbis it's disgusting and it hurts me deeply and i don't take somebody seriously if they're only bothered by you know a a a non-orthodox rabbi or a non-orthodox person and they're sharing torah in a way they find offensive but they have no problem with an orthodox outlet poking fun in a very public way with unaffiliated jews and that doesn't bother them at all in a public square then to me you think this is a base mattress you think this is your own private living room i don't take you seriously anymore you need to have a real sense of responsibility that you're making a kid of hashem on both ends of the court and that is the responsibility that is very real it weighs on me it is not easy but i do it every single day i try at least it's a great description i agree with the overwhelming majority of it i guess my follow-up question is your perspective of only being positive and not weighing in in either direction is that what you think is right for you or it's what you think is best for everybody meaning do you believe that there is a place for somebody to respectfully sensitively eloquently at times weigh in and and i asked that because i i would love to have the luxury of taking that perspective and and maybe i do maybe i do nobody cares what goldberg has to say about anything just stay quiet keep your head down big seriously i care i don't know who other than my mother who says anyone cares about what anyone has what i have to say about anything but i will tell you that you know on this phenomenon that i recently wrote this article about and i tried to do it respectfully and not targeted about a person but talk about a culture and talk about certain developments that have happened that i think we need to be much more aware of i can't tell you how many pieces of feedback i got and i get when i do something like that that says thank you for being my voice i'm watching this i'm reading this i'm seeing this i'm seeing orthodox jews celebrating a an account that speaks about my sacred torah in such a way that's deeply bothering me i'm seeing people who i otherwise admire who i think are are not thoughtfully doing this but just are swept up and i bothered thank you for writing that article thank you for giving a voice so is it a mistake that i write that article should all of us only be positive all the time and not weigh in or there is room and there are people and there are times where someone needs to weigh in because there's a time to make a macha we also have an armasaur history of it's important at times to make him in both directions by the way i wrote maybe the most maybe the most viral which for me means you know a few people thing that i ever wrote was after the the rabbi in texas was held hostage and so quickly after he was released people were like well what he believed about israel you know that's why it happened so i wrote a post that that again the most viral thing i ever wrote basically was like what is the matter with you and if you knew what he believed about israel you wouldn't have prayed for him while he was held hostage is he not your brother or sister because you disagree on policies about israel so i try to i try to save my voice for when i think it's really needed but use it at times for when someone needs to say something because there are people who need to know that there's a expression for how they feel and sometimes they think hashem is waiting and saying hey people anyone down there want a way in here anyone want to have my back anyone want to say something i i i agree with you that there is a time to push back and to make him there's certainly a place my feedback to you and i i said this publicly i wasn't talking about you because it was before your article came out it came out of um i spoke publicly about somebody else who wrote an article about this phenomenon about how we share torah in a particular way my my my pushback is that you can't just critique what you find wrong in the same article in the same breath you need to promote people who are building a window into talmud for the audience that this person is trying to reach and is doing it well and my opinion is that within our community and i'm talking about the orthodox community which does an incredible the the level of torah that is going on in our community is breathtaking it's unbelievable but and there are other people push back on this it's become more difficult for people who don't have the language the shared language that we have to get into here so it's not enough to say this is not how it's done and like come on in listen to uh eight minutes off listen to my share listen to why you torah i don't know what the word here means which means a class but let me finish i think that what you need to be doing is amplifying you want a window into cutting edge wetting your experiential world with talmud let me give you three examples of how it's done and frankly this is what i'm doing meaning i write for tablet magazine you may absolutely hate it and i don't know if you've ever read it i write for tablet magazine a thematic essay with daffy ome at the end of every massacre if you were to ask me what torah am i most proud of sharing of everything that i've ever done and put out there it is these essays because what am i trying to do i am trying to bring the themes the values the ideas of gemara to an audience that does not need a yeshiva background than yeshiva education you know you're doing it phenomenally well and and i have read it and i enjoy it and rev david you have to recite a birkha satora before you read your tablet article it qualifies as torah you can't read it in the bathroom and you'd have to say a birkha satora before you read it do you think you have to say birka satora before you watch a dof reaction video are you allowed to watch it in the bathroom no i don't think you're allowed to watch in the bathroom honestly because because i i i this is a longer conversation i i think that watching somebody grapple with meaning in the gemara um is not it is it is not the torah that we seek to preserve promote or highlight but i do believe that that qualifies as torah and if she asked me uh do i need to make a birkha torah before i endeavor this my personal answer uh would be would be yes i believe that you need to share torah you need to make a berkshire torah before an ncsy club before you build a chocolate sukka i think that they should be making a beer satora i think that anybody who is attempting to find their place even if they fail in their ultimate product anybody who's attempting to find their place within the masonry where's the bar of somebody who's who's now you're below trying to find your meeting is every conversation that quotes torah trying to find your place in torah that's where that's where we're going to disagree here is that when you say you should provide several outlets we have a history rabbi tight's going on the radio with daffodil and again i'm not saying he wasn't trying to understand it now who's doing it now meaning my my frustration is that all the people who came out and who criticized it's good to criticize it it's good to draw you you have you have phenomena the entire chabad platform the entire age platform the entire torah live and video series and there are incredible platforms i don't think would i i think we have to be very careful what we even qualify as torah when just because somebody is referencing torah doesn't make it torah i i i think we may disagree on this it's a very to me a very philosophical somewhat mystical disagreement that we are having that we could probably unpack in a in a much longer conversation i believe that somebody who's grappling with the messora um is they are involved and trying to find their place in the you know the divinity of taurus hashem even if they fail um is still in that exercise for them is a part of torah well i don't know what they produce she's talking about stories in the gemara i i i couldn't listen to that without making a beer satoru in the morning i wouldn't i wouldn't deliberately i'm making satoru right away there's a reason why i make a berkshire torah specifically on birha's koa nin why do i make it america's konam i've written about this we we say yuvaraka shambhish because i want people to feel not only i want people to feel blessed with torah and i'm not sure and i understand why people don't feel that blessing when they listen to this in particular but i think the exercise in finding your place in the missouri depending again there's a subjectivity involved in this but even watching somebody trying to find that place when i make a berkshire torah before telling a first grader um a very basic rendering of the purim story with a lot of silly pictures and this and that at what point is and again i want to move on because we have a lot more to talk about even though i think we could have this conversation for hours and i love it because because i love you and i have such admiration for you so it's not it's not a heated conversation i really this is i think that we're trying to get to the crux of one of the big issues of our day and i think we need to set up some definitions and parameters and i think it's very important to establish the vocabulary of what is torah and what's outside of it because we have these outlets and platforms that we never had before we need to i think do a better job of defining and honing in on our vocabulary and our definitions what what would then be outside of torah if somebody is is if if there's a a group of unclothed naked people you and i'm again i'm not comparing anything right now i'm trying to give an extreme example to try to find some place where we can agree if there's a group of people who all proclaim there is no god and they're sitting in a state of complete undress and they're using vocabulary that cannot be broadcast on air and they happen to be referencing torah sources as the the words they're using for their conversation but they're doing it often cynically sarcastically attackingly they're doing it with vulgarity and profanity they're do like my point is just to ask you where is that lie is there for david bashevkin for rabbi where is the line that it's not part of the stutter the struggle the search the yearning where's the line where's the line that hashem says i didn't give you the torah for that right how do you reconcile the mammary hazal about awe and reverence and attitude how do you reconcile this notion that torah is not like any other discipline that torah is unique in the sense of what we have to bring to it and protect it right torah is not like any other discipline like i tell my kids i know you hate math i don't care if you like math i don't care what you're wearing when you do math i don't care what words i do care but i don't care what words you use to describe math just learn the math but that's not torah tone is not the same thing is it it depends which line you're talking about and i think that you're it's a little bit of a bait and switch meaning what is my line what do i read i read things that for me personally give me a constructive sense of awe for being a part of of torah shemba alpe and torres and that helped me a cultivate that awe and i will promote things that are sometimes silly sometimes real that i think will help people better appreciate their experience either vis-a-vis the jewish people or vis-a-vis torah itself what is outside of my lines are things are pieces of content that i think are going to make people feel cynical about their own lives about the people or feel about torah it is a separate question in my opinion about whether or not that very exercise qualifies in a halachic sense as torah and i think we need to separate those two questions meaning my boundaries of what i promote the boundaries of what i am involved in is are two different sets of lines and then there is a separate question of the essential definition in theology of what torah is and that is the question if we're both honest with ourselves and all of your listeners are probably going to turn off this podcast is one of the most technical philosophical and mysterious questions that i wish more people wrote about because i don't think people have the guts to write a real essay to talk about what is what is torah what is the divine line what is this we talk about torah as such a generality that when you pick up that individual grain of torah and somebody says if you fall down seven times you gotta keep getting up and you don't know if they're quoting michele or kanye west or of hutner i wanna know what is the essential definition of torah that's a deeply philosophical question and it's one that from an outsider and knowing how complicated that very question is was part of a polemic uh in the pages of the jewish observer when rabbi lamb's torah umada came out and people accused rabbi lam are you going to make a berkshire torah on a science textbook people accuse them of that and they said you're you're you're you are destroying the boundaries of what torah is and it was a really important dialogue my only frustration is nobody answered it nobody came up with a very clear line of what qualifies as torah at its very heart and to me that very question kind of is a testimony to the mystery of torah itself it's engaging with something that is very hard to define and hopefully one day maybe you'll invite me back not after this conversation but to get to the heart of of what the actual philosophical definition of torah is well we're looking forward to reading your article and i'm sure we'll have to make a birkha satora before we read your article um i'll just say because i know we have a lot more to talk about but this this particular question because i want to qualify my position is to be very clear such a person would absolutely be invited to our shul and to my shabbos table and in my life atheist agnostic someone in the search someone who speaks about torah in that way of course they're invited to participate they have a place in the community i'd welcome them warmly i'd want to have a conversation i'd want to have this dialogue with them my objection is not to the individual's existence or place in a community it's to a they're having a microphone to speak to teach to share it and then my whole conversation is not about them at all it's about who's listening should we be celebrating promoting and listening is that and that's how my whole article began is not about even the person or what they're producing but our culture that is not as i think discerning or judicious or filtering as we need to be where it's kind of like well that's cool or that's funny or someone sent me this you got to check it out without actually stopping and saying wait is this making hashem smile before i forward this before i share this before i like this before i follow this is this giving hashem do we stop and ask ourselves that question and that was my point rabbi brodie let's get you in here what do you want to know from my cousin so first of all you guys are brilliant and i listen to rabbi by shafkin and i say you know what that's exactly what i'm thinking i agree with rabbi and then i then i hear rabbi goldberg respond i'm like hmm yeah that's actually i agree with that now and it's like a ping pong match here and i agree with both of you in many ways but i will say i agree with rabbi bhashovkin on one point that he made that there is a lot of uh there are a lot of people in our community that just don't have that entry point and that access and even with chabad and even with aish and everything that they're all trying to do and all the beginner programs there are certainly a lot of people arguably the overwhelming number of jews in any one of our communities that are not learning any torah according to anyone brodie and we can't get them in without f-bombs and we can't go there's no other creature i'm not saying it's f-bombs but i'm saying there is something that we need to figure out how to do it there's got to be a way they're tuning into something they're not tuning in to torah and that's my point the best critique is to show show the world how it's done and i think in many ways you've done this it's what i try to do but instead of instead of showing the world the line i'd rather show the world the doorway and that's everything that i try to do on social media it's everything that i put out there and it's everything that you do frankly um there are lines that animate what i write about i don't use uh that many f-bombs in my articles if you go through my books they're far few between not that many um but i do write to a different audience than that i think uh yutora or even khabar or even is addressing to and i have sensitivities in my articles of who i am quoting that are deliberately fashioned because i know i'm not just talking to the people in the basement i'm talking to the coffee room i'm talking to people who are now post-based mattress in this analogy they're in graduate school they're living their lives it's a distant memory for them and that's an audience that i think more us need to be thinking about and you're doing an amazing job with it so let's move over to teenagers give us some good news there's a lot of people concerned about disaffected observant orthodox teenagers who are just the world is their oyster and there's so much opportunity and they're so entertained and they're so inspired by things outside of our tradition um in your capacity with ncsy and working tirelessly and for that we're so indebted and we thank you give us some good news what what's positive what's coming up where do we see teenagers and and where do we see right there's apparently studies that are not released but we that are spoken and referenced a lot about what's really happening with orthodox kids going to secular college campuses is there any good news or is it all doom and gloom i i think there is amazing news but having heard me speak on uh tick tock you're probably not gonna take it all that seriously because i am an unrelenting optimist when it comes to this stuff but i think our jewish day school system uh i think the the educational system that we have built that really took off in the 1950s that neither of my parents are a product of uh is doing better than ever and it's because of a shift that frustrates many but i think it was a healthy shift in our sense of educational responsibility to the wider world and that is the shift away from ideology towards experience i think that people who went to yeshiva high schools in the 1970s and 80s uh they probably got a stronger basic jewish education they probably knew the details of jewish grammar better they probably had even a stronger grasp on how to break apart a text that in the mass jewish high schools that we have now you have so many graduates who come out and their level of jewish knowledge to the naked eye has never been weaker however i think we did a deliberate shift and i think it began in the mid 90s where we are emphasizing the experiential component of building a jewish identity and while i think the quality of hebrew judaic studies education has suffered a drop because of this shift of emphasis i think that the products of our schools have never had a stickier more culturally rich relationship with yiddish kite and i'm not saying jewish culture like bagels and lox the music that they're listening to what they feel proud of the unimaginable possibility of living a life outside of torah and mitzvot living outside of the torah community has never been stronger and we don't take enough time to take a breath we want everything at once and we think that we need more programming more of this mother let's take a breath let's take back and look at what a product who in any other generation would literally know absolutely nothing and would probably vanish into the you know just the the dust of jewish history and they're coming out with this deep love when you sing you see them singing songs at weddings and getting excited and that sense of jewish pride that is so palpable in every jewish high school i am very heartened that it's a debate that i have behind closed doors in ncsy that i personally am probably too heartened by this but it comes from a deep knowledge of jewish history i don't think we've ever had a hundred percent participation rate where everybody was involved everybody knew everything but we have developed an educational system where a 17 year old who goes through yeshiva high school they may not know a lot of the details that we take for granted we as rabbi sitting behind the bema but their visceral sense of joy about being a jew i don't think we had this in the 60s and 70s correct me if i'm wrong i mean this is not what it was the products of jewish schools they're excited to go to school they love their teachers they love their rabbian i think it's unbelievable it is good news it is good news but there's you know there's still a lot to be worried about so if you had to if you had to give one piece of advice to parents of jewish teenagers you know some think that we're too lacks and we need to tighten the reins a little bit something that we're too disciplined and we need to show a lot more love and flexibility obviously everyone thinks we need to be the personal example ourselves that it's what would you if you if you could give one piece of advice to someone who has they have children growing up they're about to become jewish teenagers with all the debt and tales as a parent what do they need to do to hopefully graduate a young person from their home who'll be passionate about their judaism what would that advice be don't wake up when your kids are teenagers and look um bored and disgusted and cynical at yiddish kite do the groundwork when they are much much younger invest in your four-year-old and five-year-old and absolutely overwhelmed them with the values in your home of what is important to you and what you love and the joyfulness of shabbos and sukis i think behind many burnt out cynical teenagers were five-year-olds and six-year-olds who saw their parents hating shabbos who saw their parents hating yanta they didn't see people looking forward to a to a shabbos together to a jantip together they just heard fetching about uh prices and costs and politics and shul i think that if you invest in four year olds and five-year-olds then no it's not a guarantee that your kids gonna get a little frustrated but the way that they assume values is not by pulling them by the ear and saying okay now we got to get serious now we got to learn if they grew up in the first 10 years of their life and they saw their parents loving torah and they saw their parents loving shabbos and i am blessed who have grown up in such a home i always say that if i took all of my rabbayyam and all of my teachers and i learned in very serious yeshivas i put them on one side of the scale it would not outweigh the jewish education i got from my parents and the jewish education i got from my parents was not the one on one learning i learned you know shabbos with kahati in eighth grade with my father and i tapped out like a ufc fight when we were done i didn't want to do it again but i walked friday night in my house was my parents learning i saw them learning i saw them loving learning i saw them loving davening and when you grow up in a home where it's very clear what your parents love and what animates them that trickles down i one time asked my brother-in-law who is a uh a a rebbe in in rjj in edison uh when to start bringing your kids to schule i said you know your kid's a little old you know you don't bring him to schule and he said i am not worried about this he says my kid knows exactly the importance of going to schule but he sees me doing it and he sees me loving it and he's going to come exactly when he's ready and encourage it and that's exactly what happened there was a joyfulness in the routine and what shabbos became and i think that parents like send off the alarm when their kids are 16 years old like mission alert mission alert like we got to get our kids to get into learning and dominating and this and that where you been the last of the first 10 years that's where the magic happens and i think that's when the love is instilled and if you fill up that gasoline tank when they're 10 years old with values and when they're 15 they're gonna know what those values are and even if they stray a little bit they need a little bit more breathing room they know the home that they need to come back to what what do you think about this growing trend right now that you see many of these high school yeshiva graduates that are going to israel spending time making aliyah and going to college why you just announced they're going to be having a campus now in in israel i i i actually love it i don't want to get myself into uh into trouble i i think it's i think it's wonderful that we see people paving new pathways for graduates of uh of our yeshivas and our high schools i i think the system has gotten a little we need more roadways for long-term religious growth my only gripe with the yeshiva and seminary system is that people very often spend the rest of their lives looking back and thinking the religious climax of their lives were those two years that they spent in seminary and yeshiva and a constant theme that i come back to my tell me them is that you can't spend the rest of your life the next five six seven decades of your life with just those two years as the religious climax of your life and i think we've set up a system where we subtly reinforce that and i would like us to move away from that system i think the boca raton synagogue does a nice job of this where the best years the best religious years of your life to always be ahead of you you could reminisce you can love you can look back fondly at your yeshiva years i don't want to hear from people saying my best years were my years in yeshiva you had great years in yeshiva your best years are yet to come wow i love that and we just came back from a two-day trip we had a couple dozen guys we went to new york for two days we met with russia shiva from across the spectrum and all there were it was the mavaccion trip it was all about that it was that you don't go from the shiva bukhari bus and you're done but our best is always always yet to come you reference shabbas the beauty of shabbos i feel the same way by the way about about my parents um and the education and the the discussion that we had earlier um where it was respectful and and passionate was the typical conversation in our home at our shabbos table at every age on topics ranging and to learn how to how to think and to analyze and dissect not everybody appreciates or looks for that style but i learned a lot from it as much as from from anyone else so i share that so your shabbos today obviously includes a fair amount of reading and we know that because on mote shabbos you take to twitter to post what you read on shabbos and intentionally or unintentionally i guess that's a question to you it started a trend where people will post this is what i read on shabbos so the cynic will say and does say why do i care what dova bashev can read why does he feel a need to post the sincere person and i fall in this camp say i'm kind of curious to what's he reading and maybe i should be reading it someone i like and admire if it's interesting to him maybe it would be to me um a and b if he's prioritizing it maybe i should too it's not just about schluffing it's also about challenging ourselves and and expanding our mind so i take that position rather than the cynical one but what would you say to the cynic why should they care what you read on shabbos what led you to first post what i read on shabbos what was the motivation and did you anticipate what would happen which is now a growing trend of others who are posting what they read on shabbos and first of all let me ask you this off the record do you really believe that many of them really read what they post on shabbos how do how do you do it you've got a beautiful family kanai nahara who is the thai you stay up all night you don't sleep friday night how do you have the time so so uh a few things a uh i i post i read this over shabbos i am i've said this a few times i have to make an important disclaimer i don't always finish the book over shabbos this is what i read over shabbos i don't always finish the whole book i sometimes post it on monday on monday night i try to read a book a week um i've been doing it for a long time even before i was posting i am absolutely fascinated by the cynics who it drives them crazy they get so worked up like why are you sharing this this and that and i always say brother sister take a breath do you feel this way if i posted my avocado toast on social media do you feel this way if i post a silly meme why is this making you so upset and i would submit and maybe this is my own cynic in me i think they feel insecure and there's no reason to feel insecure my twitter handle is d bash ideas and it is deliberately so i share ideas on twitter i self-promote my own ideas i love my ideas i don't apologize for sharing ideas on twitter i don't share posters of myself i don't share advertisements i don't share where i'm speaking that's the difference between to me self-promotion versus idea promotion to share a book and to talk a little bit about the ideas inside the book much as i can as much as i have time for why isn't this the best expression of what social media can offer and can become and i'm so heartened by the trend that i got a text message from somebody who is i don't think is is from i know is not from um but somebody in a non-orthodox rabbinic school and and this past mostly shabbos a non-jew said i'm watching this trend and it's making me fall in love with shabbos and i want to convert and this other dm that i got was somebody saying um i want to bring this on to other platforms can we partner together i say how beautiful is this that we are transforming shabbos and reminding people of what you can do over a shabbos some people post in silly ways which i also love you post the safer that you learned on shabbos you post the shnayamikra that you accomplished over shabbos i think this is wonderful and the way that i read if you come to my house i do read depending on the summer or the winter i stay up late on friday night and i read after everybody who goes to sleep i read about a hundred pages on friday night and the next day i dive in very early on shops i dive in at 7 00 a.m i give a shirt at 8 30 a.m in the young israel's tea neck i'm home by 9 15 a.m so i have time to do daffy ome and then i have time to read another uh 50 to 100 pages before the meal i tap out of meals no matter how long it goes for after two hours like the good ufc fight like i did with my father after learning wish night's kahati the meal could continue but i'm gonna start reading i'm gonna move to the couch i don't go to my bedroom and lock the door i'm sitting in the living room i think it's it's not i mean i don't really eat out that much we eat with the same couples every shabbos so they know that they know the routine and i read over shabbos and at the end of every shabbos to develop a relationship with a new idea with a new book to me it shows the beauty and and it's flattering and it's heartening that it's not about what doesn't beschev can read over shabbos it's about what you can do to better and develop yourself over shabbos you want to take a nap instead because then to hate you want to read a safer instead kusum to hate wonderful beautiful but it's really about making shabbos a destination vacation for your mind for your heart for your soul every single week i'm with you on this one you won't find any pushback for me i think it's great i think it motivates inspires it gets people to think and even if it makes them uncomfortable with the fact that you know this is what i binged watched on netflix this week is what they would post instead of a book they should feel uncomfortable about that not we're positive so they should also feel comfortable in a book they read so we'll keep it positive we're getting a little bit of a halal pushback and i got a little i got a shout out from you got a shout out from you about the question that a lot of people are asking is where did you get that shout out i got a shout out in a i believe in the smith's cover program which that doesn't count that's not posted online that's a private that doesn't count that doesn't count that doesn't appeal a lot of people have been asking me about reading you know i read them all jewish histories i'm going to read ideas um about the permissibility of of uh of reading this and i say if somebody wants to be strict and they don't open up a mesh magazine they don't open up an amii magazine they're they literally are only reading divrei torah and gazunta hate you should be posting i grew up in a home which is a little bit more permissible a little bit more let's call it the two centric the great russian shiva volusion who you know maybe may have read a little bit more than others and uh but everybody should just read something that they love and enjoy and helps them fall in love with shabbos itself i agree with you i don't have a problem with that when i brought it up it was in passing and ingest not not a serious criticism which i would never do ever oh in a public setting now because i do agree with you with a more permissive read of that because that's in practice what people are doing and i'll point that that that's you lashi taska in your broad definition of what's torah yes would you make a satoru on these books that you're reading we'll leave that aside for another time the question of the bearcat but the mechanics of it does your family feel they're competing with the books do they say to themselves well abba or daddy or tati's got a post tonight on his twitter what he read so i guess he doesn't have time to play with me um so i am i have children at an age where they are not asking that sophisticated questions my kids want to sing with me we are zmeros is a big deal and we have done something i think really smart a pro tip is we don't sing smiros during the meal i sings mirrors with my children before the meal before the guests come and i have time where we go through our favorite songs before the meal as i sing this miros is usually when i am peeking at the arts girl footnotes i i do daffy deliberately with an art school gemara i find their footnotes absolutely uh absolutely fascinating and uh and then maybe i have the gemara open in front of me but i'm singing my heart out i promise you and the moment that they notice and say hey you're sneaking a peek at that footnote you're not thinking you're missing a line is when i will absolutely start closing whether it's my gemara or the book that i'm reading the moment they notice is when i will stop doing that but until then um i'm present i don't go off to uh to my side study lock the door say daddy needs to finish his book for twitter you'll understand when you're older um i i i'm reading at the shops table i'm reading at the living room i'm learning there i think the best educational example you can have for your children is learning in public don't keep it a secret don't hide off um don't go to i don't even go to school to the basement i i like i make an issue of learning at home so my kids know what that looks like and how joyful that will god willing be when they are older brought in some closing thoughts we we've been privileged but let me tell you something i mean there's so much more to ask especially you know aria kaplan we've got to have him back i'm pushing i'm pushing for round two on this wishing for for a round two yeah let's see what the follow-up is from this from this conversation and there's much more to talk about but let's let's close with this robert shevkin what's on the horizon for you um first of all is twitter your thing have you expanded to other platforms do you see yourself expanding do you think that these are short-lived technologies that by definition they're always moving have you played with going on some other way to find an audience i am working on now uh with 1840 which is the media site podcast that i do uh to develop uh more video content i see the power that youtube offers i post very infrequently on instagram because it only is the medium of pictures uh for me everything i do on social media comes back to the same mission and the same goals so it's not about twitter it's about having a public platform to share ideas and whether or not twitter disappears i hope it doesn't but whether or not it disappears for whether it's a youtube it is the ability and the gift that this generation has um to share so widely and so broadly um and knowing that it's a gift and knowing it's a responsibility no matter what the platform is is something that i am going to continue doing i hope for many years to come beautiful and our world is much richer for it so i want to thank you for that again there's a lot more 1840s some of the guests you've had some of the topics you've covered there's a lot more to talk about with that but we'll have to leave and what people's appetite for when you will be back again uh cousin of david great to be together great to spend time together thank you for and people should know that i asked you beforehand if you were comfortable with our having this conversation i would never want any of our guests we are not a hard-hitting show that we try to make people uncomfortable to get to the truth so until this week this has been such an absolute joy and i only regret that we don't get to see each other more and talk more uh both are rabbi brodie and rabbi goldberg this is very mishpacka i felt it felt like a shabbos table the whole time and i enjoyed every second of it so thank you so much for having me we've got the top five behind you are we gonna see top five i didn't even notice best friend i'm so embarrassed what a coincidence we're gonna realize that i don't even realize are we gonna see it come back a lot of people missed the top five was that a case of quitting while you're ahead no it was the case of i felt there was a mission and a purpose to the top five which were these like weekly a funny list that i shared on uh in this bacha magazine and collected into a book and right now the responsibility that i have is sharing the themes of da fiomi uh with the tablet audience and we'll see what happens when that is done do you ever have a great let me ask you a question you must still have like the top five it's where you think something's funny you make up a top five is there a secret top five what's app group of like certain people that when you have the itch you still come up with a top five i i still here and there come over them i i'm hoping that somebody else takes the mantle there's nothing more flattering than having other people continue the mission continue the program uh maybe we'll come back to it in a couple of more thank you again for joining us cousin it's always a pleasure to be together you make us all think you make us all strive you challenge us and we're appreciate for everything that you do for claudius sorrell and definitely let's uh let's try to get together again soon thank you so much thank you so much for having me love him so my uh people i'm very close with related to let's just say we're texting me the whole time that like behind the beam is soft and gentle and sweet and we uh cuddle and welcome our guests and like what happened tonight so i first of all i apologize if i can't if that didn't mean to come on i will say it's the ultimate compliment that i feel so comfortable rabbi bashevkin you know he's mishpache's family and he's so smart and insightful and he's so competent and capable that i just thought a really and i hope that it modeled that we could have a discussion it's not even a debate it's a discussion that we could be passionate but respectful i i respect his position i respect him enormously and you know it's good to mix things up once in a while on a show so it's the ultimate compliment to him that i that i felt comfortable i would say we felt comfortable but you sort of went awol from i was just enjoying the conversation whenever your mic was broken no it was great i'm just telling you both are brilliant and i meant what i said and and and you're both passionate about your opinions and i'm not going to say you know who i think has a better argument but i think they're both very good arguments listen our job in life you know his thing is debash ideas and i like to start conversations not try to you know um coerce people or try to make people believe what i believe but to get conversations that generate thinking growth leaving your comfort zone not everybody has to agree with me and there are plenty of people who don't but hopefully we have conversations that improve ourselves so i do apologize cousin cousin david if i was strong but i am grateful that he came on and it's a long time coming for sure and uh look he's you know i i don't like the term influencer i don't think it's a very torah term but if we have influencers he's uh he's high among them he's doing great things out there yeah he's using the technology and the internet to have conversations introduce ideas and there's haters haters are a good sign that you're succeeding anybody's got a problem that he's posting what he read you read something like what like he said if it were avocado toast or his dessert or his uh exotic vacation everyone would be like oh that's so cool he's like what i read why don't we care what you read it's great great i can't wait right i care what he read curious what he read and it motivates me you know why why aren't i reading more i also like his two hour rule i love that i already told him you know the same rule i think don't you it's complicated you know for sean bice i stay at the table i we benched this week at 5 30. i benched because i had to go to minha i'm saying that's not but that's you know sean mice you know you try and try your best i'm leaving it's hard it's hard that's that's how you made it 25 years i made it 25. let me just tell you something i grew up in a house where our shabbos lunch if it lasted 15 minutes now my mother's going to disagree but i'm just telling you i remember meals didn't take that long if she's calling you right now we would never know but uh you know simone has uh helped me understand and appreciate longer meals and i'm doing my best to stay at the table not two hours i go a little longer but uh but he's he's doing great stuff i would love to hear about this aria kaplan he's doing his library we're going to bring him down to boom at some point interact with our teens adults parents he's a thought leader he's he's doing great stuff and he's funny he's funny he's very funny great but it's interesting when you think about all the new technology and you think about let's say 10 years ago 15 years none of this existed like where are we going to be in 10 years in 15 years from now it's it's who knows i mean a different world like we think we're on the cutting edge five years we're gonna be if we don't keep up we're gonna be whatever we're doing today will be obsolete tomorrow exactly anyway we um thank god thank you david for coming on tonight really appreciate the opportunity to have that great conversation and the very happy anniversary rabbi and rebecca brody wishing you 75 more years at least together happy anniversary to you too 25 yeah not yet we're getting there not yet and um continue to dive in for we ask everyone to dive in for if you take nothing else away davenport carmilla benreza esther thielebas ariel sipora should hear only good news and i think while we've been while we've been streaming while we've been coming to you live yeah i'm watching it right now russia might be going into the ukraine so it's crazy you know one one of the major total personalities that we met with last couple days said if if you study why how world war one and world war ii started they weren't seismic monumental events they were relatively small things but they spiraled they escalated and who knows you know this isn't small by any measure but things can escalate and they can escalate quickly so there's a lot to pray for and we dive in for peace in that region and around the world and until next time wait till you see who we have next week stay happy stay healthy