#90: Behind the Bima - R' Berel Wein

from boca raton florida rabbis ephraim goldberg philip moskowitz and josh brody are taking you behind the bema the brs rabbi's schmooze about contemporary issues and talk to special guests who give a behind-the-scenes look at how they got to where they are and what keeps them going welcome to behind the bema good evening it is wednesday night 9 p.m i'm rebecca from goldberg joined my dear friend and colleague rabbi josh brody brood however you pronounce them he's a great guy and we are here to take you behind the bema behind the beam someone sent us this week a podcast being done elsewhere called behind the something and uh the reaction was that there is uh no greater compliment there's no greater form of flattery than imitation so we're happy to go behind the bema everyone can go behind what they want to go behind to share their stories but uh i love it yeah we uh we were at a wedding this week the other night and the great house in shulem lemmer sang under the chapa he happens to be a wonderful guy so we caught him before the chuppah in the corner his gemara was open he was catching up on the daf we took a nice picture posted that picture online today which he responded who knew behind the bim allah is a great photographer it was very cute that's very nice anyway we start as always with our attitude of gratitude we thank our generous sponsors this evening first of all we have a very special sponsor dear friends rabbi seth and esther grossman s z g investments in honor of the hospitality of the brs community despite his having made aliyah 13 years ago seth can regularly be found in boca raton apogreton synagogue grateful for his friendship we had him on in our marathon show because we acknowledged that during the pandemic he continued to say kata she didn't miss a minion he went straight he covered for hundreds of people who needed a cottage set around the world really uh heroic so um seth is um is very devoted big heart good guy thank him for his sponsorship his generosity and uh i do have to admit i left out of the language for the sponsorship but it's possible when he was in boca recently we played tennis carved out a little time and it's possible he utterly humiliated and embarrassed me i won't even say the score that's so embarrassing it was now granted i get to play tennis once every few months and he plays about three times a day but still there are no excuses and uh hats off to him he did deserve it tonight's episode is also sponsored by khaim yehuda mayor in honor of shabu is the brs and he says how lucky we are that shibuya's knight is longer in boca raton may the extra learning be for all of claudia's troll and he's right you know when i was growing up in the northeast probably you two rabbi brodie in elizabeth new jersey uh you know to shibuous night is a little bit shorter you diving a little bit earlier in the morning down south down here in boca raton where we live down south we begin dominating like after six a.m it's a really long night when we say we learn the whole night starts at 11 15 p.m we go till 6 a.m it is a long night of there are parts of the world remember in israel and years in israel you know you basically finish dinner you learn for a couple hours it's time to walk to the hotel or it's time to get ready for the nate's minion and so you stayed up all night learning it meant you know by the time you had a coffee slice of cheesecake you were ready to go but here it really is a long night and we're lucky i love jaimie to mayor's attitude we are lucky to have that and lastly we want to continue to encourage everybody if you've not yet signed up for the one-on-one campaign our beloved dear esther moskowitz the daughter of rabbi and rebecca moskowitz is continuing to neither for schleimer and we started our campaign one and one a dollar a day of giving and a minute a day of learning you can go to brsonline.org the number one a nd number one one and one join up we're partnering with our friend dr donath the daily giving and incredible platform brs are not recipients we don't get this is not a ploy for brs to raise money this is purely in the merit of esteem which you should have a speedy refusal and i do want to add that every person who signs up a dollar a day of giving and the minute a day of learning so it's been adolescent and all those who are ill the mosque which is get an alert for everyone who signs up they know you signed up it means something to them so all the people reach out all the time what can we do for the mosquitoes what can we do for st the answer is one-on-one campaign dollar a day of giving everyone's got a dollar a day everybody's got a minute i don't mean to be cavalier everyone has a dollar a day but we can dig deep and hopefully hit a dollar a day everybody has a minute a day to learn and join the one-on-one campaign the moscow tools will know as you signed up and it'll mean a lot to them yes growing up i remember and elizabeth you know they would have uh the guy walk around with the pushka the billy goldfisher right and you always remember that the real like the the we called the govers right the guys like the mockers yeah you know who they were you know they were the ones that put the dollar in the push cut everyone else you weren't allowed to put a dollar in there you couldn't afford it a little you know they see the guy with a dollar but today i think times have changed inflation who knows you know everyone everyone can find that dollar yeah you know the beauty of the daily giving is that who walks around with dollars anymore you know right depending on your age you may not have ever seen a check in your entire life um your credit card you don't even have to swipe it anymore you tap the credit coin with the credit card and uh people are used to venmo and zell and transfer money through all kinds of other means so but that's one of the sad things because part of shule culture used to be that men kamara of a child walks around depending on the shul the age the demographic the attendees but it's beautiful when a child walks around it's also a lot harder to ignore a child walks around shaking that push a clink and that pushka now nothing clanks anymore but you know someone actually said to me several months ago they said you know rabbi they said they were willing to give me they said i'll give you a stack of dollars they said you'd be a great role model if you know because what happens is the person walks around with the push go you're still gonna could be an adult no but if you don't have cash on you or you don't have a dollar on you you kind of look away you sheepishly you're shy pretend you don't see that person so this person said to me you know rabbi everyone you sit in the front everyone's watching you the kid comes near you it'd be a beautiful thing if you know you put a dollar a day said i i'll go to the bank i'll get you stack of dollars so i didn't take his dollars i took my own and it happens to be it's not a matter of being stingy it's just a matter of who has the stack of dollars even if you have bills in your wallet you know do you have dollars you start making change but i took that lesson to heart and i tried to to be able to keep those dollars with me and when we have somebody who walks around put it in and i don't know that inspires or motivates anybody else but there's something special about it it's a minimal amount hopefully we're all getting those those daily emails you know today it's almost i can't wait till we get to the ten thousand dollar mark we're very close another few few people make a donation we'll be there they could sign up tonight people will sign up for one-on-one campaign and honor sd moscow could do it tonight but yeah there's diversified recipients and you get a daily email with where it went that day and dr donath i know you you mentioned before that you know brs is not a recipient i will say i don't know if he's watching but if he wants to make a thing to the outreach program i'm okay with that you might not be it's fine with me he wants to put brs outreach on there but the real question is if mark wilds is okay with it right for those for those who saw last week's episode mark you know what mark you could take it monday i'll take tuesday how's that there was no connection but i'm happy we had rabbi wilds on behind the bema because that might have been what interrupted a stop and desist letter exactly for the name of boca raton jewish experience that was a great conversation last week and i got a lot of feedback and and to our listeners those who are watching listening live or later love to know what you think we had a conversation with her by mark wilde who's built an enormous outreach engine in manhattan and we talked about what is the cost of acquiring an observant jew what is the cost in terms of the outreach professionals the organization what does it mean if you divide it by the people who actually remove the needle so and can you put a price tag on that what's reasonable to spend and how do you measure success so i got a flurry of emails from about when we invoked what we thought is the lobovich definition of success in kirov in outreach do we even call akira of is it outreach how do you define success so it was a great conversation and it's an it's an ongoing conversation it's amazing i went home after that that conversation i was just curious like how much money have we actually invested in our kids you know you think about it's not just 12 years it's preschool it's 16 years plus another four years in in call it a jewish environment for college it's 20 years and yeah i don't know you're going to say the average is 15 000 20 it's a lot of money per kid it's hundreds of thousands of dollars you're investing into into one dashama yeah what about right right right so if we do it for retention why not do it for acquisition of so to say new or inspiring additional in the shamans you know one of the goals of behind the bema and we're also very very very grateful for the people who who reached out when we shared last week that we've been on the fence do we continue behind the bhima you know there are people that the podcast is their career that is their entree into people's lives hashem we have full-time jobs and um incredibly proud of our opportunity feel privileged and blessed and wouldn't trade it for anything in the world to teach torah and we invite you behind the bema is fun but we invite you to the classes that we teach on a regular basis parsha and namoona and turn and so many classes to read read the articles and the like um but we got a lot of feedback about behind the bmi we should continue and our goal behind the bema you know this banter that we have before and after the interview is fun but we have about barrel wine on tonight amazing he's a legend he's a legend he's a hero um what he's accomplished and and what he's still accomplishing he's closing in on n90 bully iron hurricane yearboo zozan gazunt and starkish have many many long years healthy years and he's not done he's talking about his plans and his projects and what he's and what he's working on so our goal behind the bhima is to create and stimulate conversations and our hope is that it continues so um i recently saw my cousin rabbi bishop david bishevkin and the conversation we had with him what qualifies as torah what do you make of birkhasatora on what falls under the definition of torah it's a question we'll have rabbi wine do you say a blessing of torah on reading history is studying history a form of studying torah that became an ongoing conversation so so d bash my cousin was the sky on residence over pesach and he actually spoke about that the program he was on and he's still working on it we should give him a shout out he was in the wall street journal today had an opinion piece about the power of prayer wrote a beautiful peace making us proud way to go cousin so but but the goal is all of these guests all these guests bruce pearl you know when yom shall i am we shared the clip from our conversation with bruce parole where he talked about his his grandfather who didn't want to go to sleep during the six day war because he was worried he was going to wake up and israel wouldn't be there so if you're new to behind the bema go back listen to old episodes not for us but we just had remarkable extraordinary men and women guests we've got a great line of a guest coming up the next few weeks and months really excited men and women really diverse to bring you and the goal is to to get conversations going to stimulate and provoke thinking and conversations and to assess where we are and where we're going you know it's amazing i was thinking back when did i meet remy wine you know back in the day and elizabeth he visited a lot but i remember i was once at navay for shabbos and tell stone and this was back in the day where you could hitchhike from telstone back to back to you schleim and i was there with a friend i don't remember who it was but we were just at the entrance of telestone and some it was definitely like a like a like an american car like a buick or a cadillac or something you know the door swings open you know we hop in the back he's like where are you fellas going all right number one is that you who's that yeah listen rabbi wine and you know let's bring him on let's let's uh introduce because it is such an honor and a privilege this conversation but rabbi wine is one of those people that i look at as as a rav and i i just feel so intimidated and feel so small compared to who he was who he is and what he is accomplishing in his career for countless years he was in miami beach and then he was in months he wasn't even going to go into the rabbin he grew up in chicago he was a lawyer a practicing lawyer there's an extraordinary story with rabbi herzog how he even chose to dedicate his life to bringing jews back into serving jews so in the rabbinate in miami beach and the rabbit then in muncie for those years he wasn't just the rabbi bashul he was the russia shiva of shari torah of sharatora of of rockland of muncie and then he took up history studying it and sharing it and has written countless countless books on it who didn't grow up with rubber wine tapes before anyone ever heard of a podcast before anyone ever heard of an mp3 or youtube or streaming or the notion of reaching people who aren't physically in front of you but nevertheless getting in front of them and by wine was a pioneer of that many people exercising in their car while cooking we're on journeys through history jewish history and jewish destiny and and learning and the movie there was nowhere else to access that information it was you know you wanted history that was the address so how did you get it all done rabbi rashashiva historian author lecturer scholar lawyer leader oh yeah i mean it was just really really amazing what he's done and what he's doing my wife's uh grandparents arnold and edith goldsmith a blessed memory uh our our beloved oma and oppa were very close with the wines and dav and the shul for many many years and one of my early memories was they they lived in yerushalayim and rehoboth in yerushalayim it's a beautiful neighborhood a beautiful street we're having a friday night dinner and it was um was pregnant with raquel with my oldest and she was the ninth month and nearing nearing her term and so i'm trying to make conversation with her by wine sitting at a shabbos table with a prestigious rabbi so i asked him i asked him rabbi wine if she goes into labor what do i do should i should i call a cab ask for air do i what do i do in the future do i call before shabbos i only have to press redial on shabbos how do i call how do i pay what do i do it's like i had been studying the safe for tortoise i go lead this i'm asking these complicated questions remember wine just looks at me and he says your wife goes into labor you pick up get in the car and drive her to the hospital that's what you do he has a way of just simplifying things and making making what should be obvious obvious so we have many uh prominent members of our community who grew up in rabbi weinstein were influenced by him of hermann karl markowitz emailed me he's listening tonight uh my father's my friend's dear father and so many countless others we can't even uh say so without any further ado it really is a privilege and an honor and a pleasure to welcome the one and only the great the legendary barrel wine we are joined by the great rav author historian uh lecturer rabbi barrow wine rabbi wine is a personal mentor of mine i've known him by the privilege since i'm married he's close with my wife's uh family grandparents and whole family and it's a great school so it's a great privilege i want to have this conversation with you thank you for making time for us thank you it's good it's really it's an honor to be with you so robert juan you you've had an illustrious uh career and history and perspective on history and um we'd love to to talk a little about where we are in history this particular juncture this particular moment we're coming out of a pandemic and in the history of the jewish people in our history of of pandemics of plagues of how life changed as a result of them what do you think will be different for the jewish community for the jewish people what will we learn how will we change what will be different as a result of what we've just gone through well you're really asking for prophecy not for history and uh i'm not much of a prophet in fact you know i have i don't see very well anymore hashem so i have a dictating program on my computer and that program when i say profit it always spells it p-r-o-f-i-p it's like the anti-semitic so uh i don't know the only thing that i feel is uh that the the old normal is gone the normal of the 1990s or the early part of the 21st century i think that's gone it's gone as far as politics is concerned it's going as far as uh public uh interaction it may even be gone economically and socially as well it's a far different world today and one of the things that's taught us is that nothing is certain that what we thought was certain really uh it's all uh it's all air and it really is not nothing there to hold us so it's a question of values now total torah is a valued system aside from everything else that it is but the question is has the jewish people and particularly the orthodox jewish world uh does it have its value system if it has it's still intact or mostly intact then the future can be challenging but it is not uh it's not dangerous per se if however the value system is not there and we are back to the old value system of 20 years ago then it can be very lethal for us because the situation has changed radically i thought in my naivete that people would no longer make 200 000 weddings or 150 000 pesos i thought that our expectations would diminish but that does not appear to be the case and because of that therefore i think we have a lot of headwind ahead of us is this rewind you spoke about torah values and needing to navigate the world with torah values is the assault that we're living through now on our torah values in terms of the world the western world's new definitions of of basic biology or redefinitions of relationships or the immodesty that we're living in are some of these new definitions would you consider this an assault on torah values is it unprecedented how did we react historically to the values it's an absolute assault on torah values and uh the uh we're living through what our ancestors lived through in the 19th century in eastern europe and germany when a completely different value system swept the street whether it be the haskalah whether it be reform whether it be marxism that's what happened to us and you see what it left us with and that's the same thing that's happening now and the question is how do we adjust to it how do we fight it uh you know what will our schools succumb to it our schools also become woke schools do we have the courage to stand up and say that the emperor has no clothes and a man is not a woman a woman is not a man and that the breakdown of american society and crime is because there are no fathers in the family and are we so afraid of being tainted with all sorts of insults that we're not willing to say the truth you know the uh when the prophet diono was in the hold of the boat so they asked them who are you where do you come from what do you do for a living what what's your story and he answered them two words israel knows that's it that's all i am but are we willing to say that that you're willing to uh so to speak uh you know the jewish people have always been on the outside never on the inside one of the fallacies of american jewish life is that we thought we were on the inside you have a seder in the white house even like hunica candles in the white we're there you know we don't have any problems anymore it doesn't exist right well we're on the outside we're always operating on the outside well rabbit wine first of all it's a real honor to see you you know i was just thinking um growing up in elizabeth new jersey we used to have a scholar in residence come to jec to our school but unlike most communities where maybe there's a variety of skull and resident i i only remember you coming many many times you were the only scholars i ever knew you were the only guest we ever looked forward to i'm very close with the it was great so i'm just wondering now in in the united states that's a good example let me just okay they're up here for a minute why was a little bit different why didn't elizabeth succumb to becoming uh reformed conservative you know all sorts of compromises cause rabbi type said no and he was on the outside and he fought the battle and he took a lot of criticism a lot of guff and he was innovative i remember when he did the daffodil and he he taught gamora on the radio so the uh the left said it's what a waste of time terrible and the right said are you allowed to talk on the radio with talmud and both of them missed the boat they didn't see what was happening it's the same thing today with the internet with everything else we have to fight the battle and we have to fight the battle with the tools that exist and he can't fight them by ignoring it and listen uh you know the orthodox community is in jeopardy because uh the government will tell you what you have to teach in your schools what the standards you have to have uh for uh your educators you know they'll invent the hopefully you're gonna have to have equity equity means that you can't have rub on him from lakewood and that is the danger that we face and you know nobody can't say no one but very few people are willing to say it few people are willing to take it on you you get up today and you say uh the torah does not approve of gender choice we all know that to be true but who has the nerve to say and if we don't say it so then eventually it becomes part of us too like everything else has become part of us the the challenger by one the challenge is that the world we're living in has positioned it that of course we have to say it and you know here in boca we try to say it and try to write about it and articulate it the challenge is that the world has positioned this that if we speak basic truths then we're violating civil rights we're cruel we're not compassionate we're bullying all of these accusations have been leveled against us throughout history we never were compassionate we never were right we were the ones that killed their savior we were the ones that did everything wrong that we're the selfish ones but you know these are not they're not new what's new is that we don't have the self-pride to be able to stand up to it we don't teach it in our schools we teach a lot of knowledge but we don't teach them what it is to be a jew i remember when i went uh i was in seventh grade uh in the chicago jewish academy that was quite a few decades ago it's uh almost 80 years the rabbit would begin to share in the morning by saying we're going to first say and he would say no for you romero now we can sit down and learn today we sit down and learn right so judaism is not how much you know it's how much is in you and i don't know what the magic bullet for that is i was fortunate enough that i went to yeshiva and i had rabbit that somehow were able to inject all of that within us faith in the future i remember the poet of jerome came to the chicago yeshiva to speak with 1946 it was right after the show on and i remember he stood and it was at a time when in the land of israel the uh irgun and the uh laffy parts of the hagana were fighting the british and the british arrested and that he hanged the jews it was not any and it was not a nice time to be a jew because jews are supposed to be nice guys and what you know you're shooting at the british and he said as follows i remember it distinctly he said there are seven young men in prison in jerusalem who are determined to drive the british out of the land of israel and he says i have no doubt that those seven will do so he said if i had seven such young men who were determined to build a torah state in israel we would be able to do so that's the name of the ball game it's the worst time in jewish history they just took the luchos he had to break them there's nothing left give me some people that are for us who goes for us he said the number is in heaven and what does he hear from the angel what is he here in heaven whom shall i send who will go for us okay the heaven hasn't stopped asking that question who goes for us who puts us at the front of the line so you're right so we'll be gone we'll be called who we call the white supremacists will be called everything okay so what can we do you know the challenges are about wine we live in a world which is consumed by the word identity right identity battle identity politics intersectionality about identity and and for young people growing up in the western world who are not firmly rooted in torah jewish identity is only one of their identities that's part of their identity and it may not be the most important or the top or highest identity they have and that's it's this identity conflict which part of the identity will will come out to be the most supreme or to one the one that really supersedes the others isn't that the area where our education and our family should concentrate on yeah i grew up in uh i grew up in chicago in the 1940s the cubs have not yet worn a world series to come here i would live on a block there were at least a hundred jewish boys my age everybody on the block was jewish played together everything i was the only shoma shabbos for various reasons so shabbos uh my friends would come knocking on the door and they would say yeah you know cabero go with us uh we're we're going to the ball game or we're going out to play or we're going to the playground and my mother who was a very strong woman she said no he's not going with you today is our sabbath and tomorrow go with you not today and believe me i want it to go [Music] but uh that was always implanted within me so when i became a parent and i was around miami beach and uh my daughters were growing up in miami beach then and most of their friends were not show me shoppers even though they all went to the hebrew academy the rabbi gross's institution and he was able to attract everyone the evil academy saved the hundreds if not thousands of souls but they were not from there so to speak so they all had bach mitzvah parties so the bah mitzvah party then they had the boys come and they had the band that they had yeah they had it and my daughters wanted to go and my wife told them that is not what our family does we have a great family and that's not what our family does but that stuck that we have a great family and our family has values and that's not what we do and we just have to live with it there's a great road here in uh charizard rob rosenthal the turtle the bronco who i knew and i learned a great deal from him so when people came and asked him a question rebbe is it kosher or not kosher is it right or not right he would answer the answer in the yiddish but i'll say in english he would answer it's not for you that was his answer it's not for you you don't have to decide whether it's kosher or not kosher i don't have to repeat the every thousand sharks and three regarded it's not for you i think somehow that message has to be given i think rabbis have to give it educators have to give it parents have to give it it's not for us that's not who we are all right it's uncomfortable yeah whoever said that judaism was comfortable whoever said that we have to be liked by everybody we have to like everybody but who says that everybody has to like us is part of the problem being in the united states do you think the community should pick up i think the united states is changing greatly the united states was the great haven for jews we owe the united states an enormous debt of gratitude there's been no exile that has had the opportunities given to jews which the united history states me that every exile ends question is how it is how soft the landing or harder landing it is i mean the jews were 800 years in poland they're never going gonna leave poland there's three million jews in poland you got to guarantee you've got these shiva's company you got radomsky where in poland like somebody turned off the switch they're not knowing it's look what's going on in ukraine it's all part of it the exile is shutting down how how fast where i don't know that's not my job i don't think there's anybody that doubts that the future of the jewish people is in the land of israel one way or another does that mean that uh rabbis goldberg embroidery should pick up tomorrow and leave boca raton and come here i would not recommend that first of all here they would be unemployed but we still have a podcast we could do but you can't do that but there's a recognition that something is happening right and that recognition is part of it so that the goal of the american jew should not be i want my son or daughter to go to harvard yale or darkness that time has passed you did that already we proved we can do it but that's not going to preserve the jewish people not individually nor not as a group and if we don't have i spoke about values the main value is the preservation of the jewish people and the only way you preserve the jewish people is through self-pride through torah observance through a national sense of mission you don't preserve it by making more organizations and committees and conferences and studies and few senses and stuff that that's all i have a muscle for that when i first became a grandfather girlfriend chef many years ago so uh my oldest grandchild was gonna become three years old and he was precocious as all my grandchildren are and great-grandchildren so i told my wife i'm gonna go to the store i'm gonna go to the toys r us and i'm gonna buy him a toy that will be educational entertaining it will last it won't be dangerous at the out of my list and i went to the store and i put in a good half hour finding the toy that i wanted that met all of my superb criteria and then the day came and i presented it to my grandson and he spent the next half hour playing with the box that's great and i want to tell you that to me is the metaphor of the jewish world they're playing with the box right okay but eventually circumstances force things about it you spoke about corona corona forced things upon us i don't know it made me look at synagogue worship differently and maybe look at the the community differently and i think i i mean our show my school here in the show where around the senior rabbi and i'm getting more seniors uh we never closed the board wanted to close it a few times i made a personal appeal not to close the show because once you close the shoe it's hard to reopen so the shoe is not still not what it was before corona though it's 90 percent but in retrospect the shul is what held the people together that there still was a show there still was a road there were zoom classes there still was story there still was something you let it go it goes and so that's your sense of mission right i think i think uh boca raton synagogue has shown us what a sense of mission can accomplish you don't have to you don't need this podcast right you can you can be on the golf course we're trying we're trying so that's all we can do that's all we can do with trying the food sarah agra the reward isn't detroit you know you have to also believe that heaven wants us to win otherwise you wouldn't be here everybody else is gone you were the only ones around i mean mark twain had a famous essay about that 150 years ago what should we say now i mean if you every day you come through shalom and you look at it you shine that was almost a million people enormous city skyscrapers buildings bridges tunnels everything a bunch of shoemakers came and made this place how did this happen oh you know we understand we know the zionists that's playing with the box and somehow that has to be communicated i think that the sermons are very very effective tools but you have to say the same thing over and over and over again you have to say in a different way and you need a different story and the lord is on the side of rabbis he always gives you stories things always happen but you have to hawk the same message sooner or later it sinks in and then it's a whole different ballgame or or the stories are true they just haven't happened yet right rabbi wines true but it doesn't have to happen just as to get the stories our imagination we live on imagination i mean the reason that we're announcing soil is because in eighteen hundred years of goal as we imagined what ericsson would be robbie yeah you you mentioned 1800 years imagining what eric's role could be i'm just thinking you know 1800 years 2000 years imagining what actus could be well why are we missing out on the octave it depends what your definition about this is there will always be a spectrum all right my definition of actors is you have an opinion or you do something i don't agree with it i think you're dead wrong for doing it but i don't hate you for it i don't say uh you're an apocalypse because of it okay you have your opinion i have my opinion and we're never going to always have the same opinions now when we define actors as having the same opinion we are precluding any actors from occurring right but are you friends with are you are you friends with the person that you disagree with can you be friends with that person i have no friends can you be friends i didn't depend your definition of friends again a person i disagree with needs help i will help him god willing [Music] i'm giving money to the tourist character because they need it because this this person from the touring character is asked to go through a serious operation it needs a hundred thousand dollars then so i didn't say uh you know i wouldn't give a nickel to natori carter to put an ad in new york times but as an individual as us as a jew that needs help i'm not going to ask him his politics so there's an act who's there even though i don't identify with it i don't approve of it and i i think it should disappear but nevertheless i mean that's how roma venue i mean the simple lessons of the hummish i don't have a goldberg gives a partial share that i nosh on every uh every week but uh the truth of the matter is that kuma shrini doesn't need all of the layers that we give it to who speaks directly with that i'm rumbling i can't get over a verma venue plays from stone what's wrong with him it'd be me and he'll drop the nuclear on him goodbye do the world a favor well maybe that's 50 40 30 40 it ends up there's two it's going to be root to nominal so all of that is worth it so we don't know heaven's uh calculations but so then we have to do what we have to do in the house about roman sora three bedouin arabs walk in and they walk out as angels they you talk about after so you know it's all in the definition of what it is well i'm speaking speaking of the actors with there's there's a polarization going on right now where it feels like in the jewish world we're either going to the right or the left it feels like there's a big move to the left conservative is disappearing reform and even less than affiliation where do you see with the with the perspective of history as a historian is this polarization of the extremes is there is there a center left to be had are we going to continue to go far to the left and far to the right will conservative disappear and and morph into the liberal streams we'll all be one direction and orthodoxy is going to continue to go to the right where do you think the future is again that's a great question depends on your definitions uh i think one of the greatest tragedies of american jewries at the conservative movement is bankrupt i know that sounds heretical but if i'm appearing on your podcast i'm already already but uh there was a time when conservative jews all had a kosher home and they had a friday night dinner and their children didn't marry out and they supported orthodox yeshivas and you were able to talk to them the moment that that disappeared so they're doomed history is doomed them not us history is doomed them reformed there's no reform left if you watch the friday night services from the central synagogue in new york you don't know whether to laugh or cry but the one thing that i notice is that it's a parody of the orthodoxers they have a myriad they sing with odi they say cottage they read from a safer torah everybody's wearing a tolerance the ladies everybody that's reform reform was in the 19th century in germany that you know no hebrew no mention of israel no prayer service we're open sundays not saturday so that disappeared it had to disappear this is also going to disappear unfortunately all the wokeness and everything it's all you know it's all going won't make it never have so when you look at jewish history but if there always has been like this that you know the ghazal fought that stoking and then stoking miranda based on migration you have to make the coin go don't think of an airbnb that he's going to do it right he's not going to play the organ and then we have the carolium we always have had you know it's that you know my rebbe used to say to us that when we were in ninth grade and puberty struck us so he would tell us that we did not invent girls they existed before us and therefore you'd be wise to hear what older people have to say on the subject so i don't i don't see you know you know it's disheartening every it's terrible to say that 70 of american jewry won't be here 50 years from now but that wouldn't be the first time that such things happen if all the potential jews in europe remain jewish there'd be uh 250 million jews in europe wow what about in the other direction what about the move to the right move to the right you know it depends what you call the right at the great extent it's playing with the box in my opinion yeshivas may be full but i don't see the own him coming to you you're making a yeshiva now i hear that i mean but the gemara said hell if mr if you were successful out of a thousand to make one wow you did a good job so that's the yeshiva system that we have right yeah yeah lakewood has thousands okay so whatever you know where so what i think uh here in the uh i mean there in the united states at least eventually most of them blend into society become you know learn a living family they're not dependent so much on the charitable aid here in israel it's a much more difficult question but when you say they move to the right i don't know you know move to the right again a lot of it is politics a lot of it is organizations a lot of it is turf it's still all playing with the box and uh i'm not yet i i my teachers uh 75 years ago in the chicago yeshiva were far more to the right than i am or my children are but we didn't understand what the right was or the left was etcetera it took 800 years to make eastern european jewelry it disappeared in five so an uh sore you gotta leave the jewish people alone a little you know it's not that uh really it's like uh the 24-hour cable news if there are no crises you got to invent crisis because you got to keep keep on you know having the experts say something so we invent crises here too not so bad not so bad can we pivot to history i want to ask you about wine first of all what what you've contributed i'm it's mind-boggling to me when i think about your rav you're a rosh shiva aside from the career as a lawyer before that um an author of of countless books and an expert on history in jewish history and at a time uh here at brs we've had some courses on history and and we rely on uh on google and we rely on the research of others and we stand on the shoulders of giants and and you were producing and you were lecturing and and the thousands of tapes that everybody listened to without those tools at disposal it's mind-boggling and it's extraordinary but i want to ask you right one as a historian somebody who's written and promoted um the study of history why does history matter why is it important and why is it a bitter torah if i could put on another torah podcast or i could listen sort of by wine speaking history why is it valuable to listen to history and what is the role from the torah perspective of history schwab famously at a perspective that we don't have to share the uh you know the ugly parts of our history because we're not sharing it to preserve history accurately we can present hey geography or we can present because we're using it educationally do you agree with that or do you believe that we have to share the good the bad and the ugly that history is of value even the parts that we're uncomfortable with it depends whether you're teaching history to third grade elementary school or you're teaching it to seniors in high school or you're teaching it's in yeshivas and seminaries it depends uh you know i don't have to burden uh eight nine ten-year-olds with uh the story of the caroline or the story of uh chopsticks me but i don't think that any intelligent jew can grow to maturity without knowing those stories without knowing what happened without knowing what can go wrong if you know what can go wrong then you somehow have a sense of what could go right right you know if you have uh waze or google tell you don't take the next exit so that has value even if they didn't tell you yet which exit you're supposed to take history tells us what so that's part of the problem today i cannot imagine why anybody in their rational mind should be a marxist after 150 years of disaster and 150 million people dead because of marxism between china and russia and all the other communist countries and venezuela so what do you want from it why will it work now the answer is that nobody teaches them i did a a lecture series eight lectures on marxism in the jewish people i recommend that series to all marxists and non-marxists because it to me preparing the lectures well you know i yeah i have to do things that i didn't do before so i got to have fresh series so you know i just said i'm doing this series i didn't have in mind what it's going to be but when i started to work on it wow what a different world so i i'm trying to put it out there i mean you can't bring anyone to listen but i i think that these are important things and so what is it talmud torah well you know i i say what trippy soil salam to the famous quip that one of the anti-muslim russian yeshiva asked him he said if i have 10 minutes a day to learn should i learn baba kama or should i learn moosa and if you saw said you should learn moosa because then you'll know you have more than that okay and that's true of history too if you know history you'll have more than 10 minutes a day to learn you'll understand what learning does well would you make a birkha satora on studying history i don't do things that are not the children i try not to i'm not an innovator i think that the show on earth is pretty heavy the way it is but uh i told her the study of torah to the torah siva moshe so first there's still receive a lot of motion that's primary but there's also marosho and it's in the same person and the torah said it i didn't say it so i don't think we should be nervous about it and part of the problem is that we gave history over to the epic arson right he gave it over to gretz so no rabbi comes out whole he gave it over to the scholars the expert one thing corona taught us there are no experts on anything they're opinions they're smart people and dumb people but there are no experts there's no experts on jewish history either people say to me what was your degree in jewish history i said my father used to tell me about it which is again what the torah says want to know history ask your father ask him what it was to grow up in new york 60 years ago 50 years ago nobody asked [Music] so how can you know what's gonna you know how to deal and when we're transmitting history when we're giving the answer to that to the next generation when we're telling them about a bit events and places and people do we tell them the glory the positive are we willing to share the struggles the challenges the imperfections absolutely we're willing to share what what is not what was not accomplished because that's who i was saying that's what's left for us not to do that again not to be guilty of that again and uh i think one that final point uh is that uh history should teach us what is important and what is relatively unimportant and you know the i like grabbing goldberg's yarmulke but it's not my younger kid i like uh somebody's got a knitted yamaka it's not my young kid so what and we like to judge people and things by again by the box and not by the inside we're so grateful for your time rabbi wine and we're gonna we're gonna wind down just a couple more quick questions maybe not quick um you've written so many books you've authored countless articles volumes is is there anything you regret writing or you wish you would have written differently everything can be improved about it that's one of the lessons in life and so i guess there are things that could have been written better but on the whole uh the whole one is pretty satisfying is there is there someone from history or a time period that you think is underrated or underappreciated is there a personality in jewish history or a time period that we don't begin to appreciate in the united states it's dr rebel i don't think that would be orthodoxy in america if it weren't for that wow in uh believe it or not of time is underrated too you know the the the world serves you know uh that the khan mesa braginsky was so great agon that it hid his sitkas his righteousness and the time was so great exotic that it hid the fact that he was a gun holder and i think that's true with a lot of great people so that the person himself is not underrated so to speak but he's rated for only a part of him not for the whole person because the whole person is too great for us to encompass so so rabbi wine i guess with this closing question should have gizunt in good health and long years into 120 and beyond but as you stand today with so much still more to accomplish and contribute in that rich legacy which is overwhelming and intimidating for me and countless others in rabbanus of what you accomplished and achieved and the roles that you had what do you think is your biggest impact or influence how do you want to be the most remembered for the difference that you made because i'll say yeah me to tell me them harvey they have a lot of tell me tell me are different so basically it's our family and our town media and it's our congregants it's the people we come in contact with that's how we we are remembered that's how we have that's how we have true effect so the books are books and the movies are movies and everything is wonderful but there's nothing like uh human contact and personality and dealing with with live people and i think that that i i i think that that is what has motivated me all the years and why i continue to fool myself to think i could be an effective rabbi the one you're you're the greatest you're the best it's been a tremendous host to be with you and to spend this time where can people find uh that series about the marxists is that on destin is that on their destiny jewishdestiny.com and if you want the phone number you can call her name is mrs elaine gilbert and it's the phone number is 732-987-9008 and if you tell her you heard it on the brs podcast she may give you free shipping that's great thank you thank you for your time for your wisdom for your insights this was a really a fascinating thought-provoking and in some ways challenging conversation and and a good way to go into shavuot thinking about it thank you for all that you do and continue to do and we look forward to continuing to listen and learn for many many more years to you with yoshiko for everything cold too thanks the great rabbi wine rabbi barrel wine what a privilege to have this conversation with him um i i have a big regret that um it was a very sobering take on the world the jewish world today and my regret is that we didn't end by asking what's something to be positive and hopeful about what's a a good trend what's progress what's something that he sees as positive right overall it was a fascinating conversation yeah bring him back i mean there's so much more to talk about there's so much to think about he has a perspective himself because of his age and his life and what he's experienced and he has the perspective of knowing history when he looks at the world he's looking at it through a very different lens than we look at it through right like he actually knows what he's talking about i was most blown away as i said earlier that rabbi wine is approaching kanai nahara kenya 90 years old and he's like i just did a new series helping me get it out there next project what i'm working on right his eyesight is suffering but he's not slowing down he's not retired by any stretch there is no retirement for him he's uh super active and still sharp as attack and and funny and sharing his thought-provoking insights for the world i love his humor but again like you said he had some very very important things to say you know the fact that in was it 50 years 70 percent of american north american jews are going to be uh gone there's no uh that's just based on history that's based on those those numbers it's it's disappearance and what about the fact that he um well he talked about our destiny being in israel he did say you and i should stay put in america he did say that i didn't want to push him because he did make aliyah so i was going to yeah he made aliyah when he retired from the rabbinate in muncie became the rub of hanasi in in rehabili it was a different stage of his life and he also was incredibly perceptive and prescient in seeing the direction muncie was going right and getting out while on top which he actually did was very very wise but i i regularly am the recipient of venom of what i call the alias nobs the people who made aliyah some point in life and even though maybe 30 40 50 80 years they lived in america two days after they moved to israel they don't understand how anyone could still be living in america right so anytime i try to write anything positive online about israel or advocate or celebrate so they'll come at me with you know goldberg if you'd only announce you're making aliyah the whole show would come with you if you really cared about israel you'd be here which hardly motivates somebody to publicly care about israel if they're going to be the recipient of that attack but it's not a simple thing for anyone there are a lot of considerations there is no we've shared many times there's no legitimate reason to not struggle with when not if it's not an if it's a when we're going to be there but there are legitimate reasons there are financial reasons professional reasons family reasons in our case i think we're serving a purpose here i have colleagues we have friends who've made aliyah are lost they've not found themselves or they don't feel they're making the same difference there that we could be making and they're people who need needs you know love and leadership here so we didn't set him up for that but it was interesting that he said that it is it is hard but i guess what i'm struggling with is the fact that he said he was very clear he said to you he's at the mate it says don't go but on the other hand he did say every gullis has its end and it seems like the gullis in america he again he's not a prophet he said he's not giving you dates but he's it he's very clear that things are happening very quickly and we're getting close to things turning things are turning all over the world i mean he's looking at these signs and he's saying things are turning in north america yeah he is saying that his question is when do you go so he's saying you do go that he's saying that for for the ah for the masses and we agree we promote and push and shivers is our annual dessert reception to celebrate the people may calling yeah right but i will i i will say that and again i was watching this really day parade you know and and and we flew in one year it was a lot of fun and i was watching all these vid live feeds about yom shalom there's definitely a feeling that you don't get in the united states about celebrating these important days which you feel when you're there and like we try to duplicate it and replicate it and it's not the same of course of course you know when you're uh rabbi wilde said it last didn't you say it last week that you know when you do outreach in america you're like talking about judaism right israel you're showing you're living judaism you're living it yeah it's a big difference yeah you know my mother had a uh a big birthday last week happy birthday shout out a big happy birthday she turned 39 again she had a big birthday but uh and very grateful and how many times has she turned 39 now she's a couple couple she doesn't look a day over 39. so for my mother the biggest celebration was the whole family uh the whole family who lived in israel which is my brother and sisters whole families my daughter was there with her family but they went to shelian for shabbos sunday yamushala and for my mother to be sitting on the side and watching and celebrating and singing it was the numbers i don't know if you saw packed streets thousands and thousands of people singing flags you know the jewish people with all the challenges and all the problems that we have in the world when you see that image of tens of thousands maybe more of jews waving flags singing screaming it's amazing the torah learning the yeshiva's your shalom is being rebuilt is alive it's there's a lot that's positive and a lot to celebrate a lot to be grateful for it's really really powerful really powerful and it's hard i mean here here unless you're in a school where they're celebrating it i'm saying even for the adults that recognize the the the value of those days right the ones that that that are that are it's important to them how do you market how do you feel it how do you right what do you do you know right right yeah yeah but it's again it's a very exclusive group of people you end up having bounce houses and barbecues and a yomi yuan and you know issues of you shalom learning that's not the same feeling walking through usually fireworks but we can't we can't we can't recreate that right we can't recreate that there are certain feelings that you have there you know for example i know there are neighborhoods in america that have a siren on friday i've been asked many times montoya's circle at this point what percentage of montoya's circle is keeping shabbos it's over ninety percent yeah it's gotta be the nineties it's gotta be right listen we have the golf sirens anyway right now some people say why don't you put a sign on top of the shul and candle lighting why don't we have a siren like you're shallam and my answer is we're guests here right i don't care if we're a hundred percent shomer shabbas a montoya circle there are things that you do in israel that don't belong outside of israel right we're guests we're visitors that's what he just said right that the difference is that we don't recognize it like we think we're we think we own the place no it's when we think we own the place and we start having those sirens and double parking yeah and act like we own the place and uh whatever that's that's when we wake up enemies to want to get us out right so you know sometimes it's so interesting it's a big conversation do we lay low just do your thing don't remind the world you're there or do you stand strong and how exactly you navigate that complicated but i think this the shabbos siren that should be a yerushalayim thing you don't experience that no matter how saturated you are with show marie shabas in america the mentality has to be here we're guests we're visitors we don't we don't blast the shabbos iron that's not what we do not what we do wishing everyone a great yanta for great shavuous should have a kabbalah receive the torah not commemorate it from the past i got big news just reminded me i just counted 47 tonight i don't think i've ever made it this far how about a doctor update you have a dof update for us yeah i got a daff update thank you uh ellie and this is great okay it would take a whole whole uh i think to get into it i give you like the daily uh the daily update it's just an amazing thing one day i don't know if behind the bmw will still be going by then but we're going to we're going to go live from your cms and we will point back we will point to that one episode yeah that you hadn't opened the gemara in a long time i'm not embarrassing you and that and that ellie stefanski challenged you in the middle of the interview and you went on the computer during the interview signed up the next day and you haven't missed a day of the hardest massachusetts since you are caught up on yavamas but i'm actually feeling good about it like i feel good i feel great i'm telling you it's very hard when you're traveling and you you it's it's hard to you you miss a night and then you oh catch up tomorrow without the bra it's not about the duff right now i'm talking about the sphere the daffo it's all the same thing it's just just keeping just plugging just consistency just consistency yeah it's the message of all these things consistency consistency consistency right well it's a great conversation great evening with rubber barrel wine thank another good friend who made aliyah seth grossman seth and ester grossman thank you for sponsoring the mayor thank you for sponsoring if you have not yet signed up brsonline.org one and one a minute a day of learning a dollar a day of stucco the moscow to find out each person signs up means the world gives them a lot of physique you're asking what you can do for them that's what you could do for them take one moment sign up dollar a day minute a day we've got that no real house everybody can do it wishing you a great yantif until next time staffy stay healthy stay