#27: Behind the Bima - Special Guest: Ben Shapiro

good evening ladies and gentlemen it's not our ordinary wednesday night it's tuesday nine p.m but we are here rabbi from goldberg together with rabbi phillip moscow's in rabbi josh brody and we're here to take you behind the on cue again as usual really perfectly timed thank god for you gentlemen how are you how was your week so far we're earlier in the week than we normally are it's only tuesday night my week is phenomenal we had a fantastic really inspiring simplest tour at brs and now the empty season of 5781 rabbi goldberg is it's in the books in the books it is absolutely in the books and uh we couldn't be happier prouder more relieved than ever that this year went off without a hitch and there's a lot more to talk about and hopefully we'll be able to get to that tonight how this sun castora ranked against others especially all things considered but we want to begin by thanking our very generous sponsor tonight he's sponsored several times he's a very loyal listener and fan and that is donnie oppenheimer of the oppenheimer law firm who takes care of any of your legal needs we have some swag tonight i'm sure he'll happy to provide it for you too you can utilize the services be in touch with him at oplawfirm.comdoni thank you for your generosity thank you for your sponsorship we really appreciate it tonight and and always we've got a very special guest coming on tonight gentlemen there's a lot of excitement a lot of buzz i think more than ever rudy's got the shirt donnie's already commenting he's loving the shirt rabbi brodie we've got i've got the shirt but my tie didn't go with the shirt so i didn't see they've been wearing all day the packaging for the swag was just as nice as the swag by the way yeah it was lovely donnie thanks for sponsoring tonight and on several occasions we have a a great guest we've had wonderful guests until now and we're so grateful for all them and all their time our guest tonight probably has the widest audience and the loudest microphone of anyone we've had yet uh even bigger than behind the bema and that's not easy for us to admit uh but his podcast has just a few million more listeners than ours but we're climbing the charts we're well on our way and that is of course ben shapiro ben is beloved by many even to the degree of uh idol worship particularly within the orthodox community and equally unbeloved by others who disagree sometimes with his opinion in style but one thing we can say is it's really extraordinary how he has climbed the ladder and built a media empire and is an enormous influence uh in the world who listen and and he shapes a lot of public opinion so i want to take the time now i don't want when he joins us to take the time to give a little bit of his background so let me tell for those who don't know and maybe you're among the few who have never heard of ben shapiro um but the chance i hadn't heard of him until he came on behind the beam either so ah nice try ben shapiro is an american conservative political commentator a media host and he is an attorney uh at the age of 17 he was the youngest youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the united states editor emeritus of the daily wire which he founded and he grew to an enormous subscription uh he hosts the ben shapiro show which is listened daily by millions uh not only america america but around the world i think it's syndicated on 200 stations daily podcast and live radio show we editor at large at breitbart news from 2012 to 2016. he is the author of 11 books 11 books um really what's i think really gripping him for tonight we're going to go behind the bema on this particular is that he grew up in an orthodox jewish home and he lives a observant orthodox jewish upbringing and maybe he made it big today and we'll talk about some of his statistics of how many people listen how many people follow him but he was an ordinary young man he graduated yula wyu's high school in l.a where he grew up he skipped two grades and that way maybe a little unusual maybe both of you skipped grades i did not i skipped great the other direction all being held back right by brody ben shapiro skipped actually two grades and he graduated uh high school at the age of 16. he then went to yula where he graduated summa laude and and then went to harvard law school where he graduated laude in harvard in 2007 he worked as a lawyer and then he launched and began this media empire and today he is i believe the largest conservative media group he personally and the company that he founded i think it has surpassed even fox news and others and so it's really shaping a lot of public opinion and he does it all with a yamaka which is one of the things we're going to talk about he does it representing torah and observing judaism which places a huge target for those who don't like and gives him a huge microphone and there are a lot of people who love who love what he stands for but it's really amazing you know he's born in 1984 i think he's 36 years old 11 books millions of followers he's accomplished a lot at a young age and as i said love him or hate him agree with him or disagree with him you have to admire what he's accomplished what he's achieved his prodigious mind and and and how he skipped those grades and he climbed that ladder and he did so with a lot of ingenuity and a lot of creativity and i think it's it's something really impressive and we're excited that we're going to be able to bring them on tonight and we certainly welcome your questions your comments many shared with us in advance uh and others uh can submit now whether on youtube or on facebook we see all the comments aggregated so feel free to share if you're listening later to our podcast don't forget to rate and review ben shapiro doesn't need your help we do so rate and review behind the bema and uh and let the world know we've had phenomenal guests who really inspired and our goal one of our guests earlier on um was um stretch we we who taught jamie the am the great host of jm and the am nachm siegel and he taught us that you want to try to get your interviewee to share things that you're the only address that they would share it things that you can't hear elsewhere and that's going to be our goal tonight and we've been privileged to have that goal so when you rate and review when you share about behind the bema you help us get that message out even more broader and one of our avid listeners points out the ben shapiro also has a hobby that i dropped at a young age he plays the violin he was a violinist i think he once actually performed with eitan cats i think the two of them performed together when he was a young maybe rabbi mosquitz and him can do like a special concert one night no i'm the clarinet he's the violin no i'm saying you could bring out the whip out the clarinet that you haven't played in a couple years and that's right you know i would love to interview together where do you go from here i mean you've got the biggest now like who would you get next week oh we've got it only takes months and years to get to this point you've done it overnight we've got other people who are lined up we're getting to the point that people are actually contacting us how do i get on behind the bema i'd love to be interviewed i'd love to tell my story and many have extraordinary stories to tell and we'd love to have them so we've got we've got some exciting things lined up for next week and two weeks from now we are going to be broadcasting from a brand new venue in boca who will be sponsoring and uh featuring some of what is to come in boca we will be socially distanced of course uh being very different backgrounds different backgrounds different places distance from one another by the same venue and premiering a new venue in boca raton which we'll be very very excited to be able to share so we've got some exciting thing coming down the pike exciting things that are that are coming very soon near us what kind of excitement have you seen for tonight's episode of you have you seen stuff online people talking yes twitter is live i mean every every moment you get back on twitter and you see another you know dozen people just commenting on what they want to know what they want to ask tonight yeah i'll tell you when my father-in-law knew about it that's that's how i knew we made it big [Laughter] told my wife he said you haven't been shapiro on time it's pretty impressive and uh my wife had to google him but after she did she uh but the fact that my father-in-law knew about it that to me was dayenu i've made it i've arrived i might be the favorite son-in-law right now so just to set the stage and we'll repeat this one when ben joins us shortly we are not talking politics tonight if you want to know ben's political positions or positions on areas of life policies he has an extraordinary podcast you can listen to he is um a uh prolific author and you could read his opinions that is not the goal tonight tonight the goal is as we do with all of our guests to go behind the bema and to learn about him and see a side of him that we often or otherwise don't know and i think many of us are curious about and the goal is to learn the goal is to understand one of our themes seek to understand before being understood and the goal is to hopefully be inspired also just to see a person who's attained that position maybe learn something from it again whether you agree or disagree and there's definitely a need out there because we've all been flooded with more questions for this episode than any other episode it's not just because of his popularity or his fame it's because people genuinely want to know these types of things they don't oftentimes have a venue a platform to to speak to people who have millions and millions of followers and i think there's a real hunger out there to go behind the bema with uh with people like ben shapiro so i think it's it's definitely struck a chord well i'll actually add on to that it's not only people who have so many followers i think it's people who maybe are on in ways anonymous but the point is that when there are public personalities whether it's a a teacher a rabbi or some other public personality um people only see them frontally their lectures and their comments they don't really get to know them and so this is really an opportunity to get to know so uh without the truth we're going to welcome ben welcome thank you so much for being with us rabbi ephron gobert joined with rabbi phillip matt and rabbi josh brody ben how are you hi jim well how are you doing fantastic it's great to have you on we really appreciate you giving us some time tonight we know how valuable your time is and um and it means a lot that you're you're sharing it with us so um you know ben you were very public about your move from la and some of the reasons why you moved from la um i know your media company has moved to another place but like other famous people before you brought your talents to the south florida area what is it about south florida what excites you to be in in the florida south florida area well i mean i i think that it was a really easy move for us uh and we we lived in the valley in los angeles and we were able to replicate the same resources or better in south florida that we were able to get in the valley where we were living without a lot of the problems so obviously there's a massive crime problem that's hit los angeles they're cutting the police there's been a fairly severe uptick in anti-semitism in sort of the general area in los angeles during the riots uh there were targetings of shoals for example uh there are the taxes in los angeles are incredibly incredibly burdensome so you're paying a lot and you're getting very little in terms of social services both on the state and on the local level there's a massive homeless problem that has resulted in serious quality of life issues your ability to have your kids walk around the streets safely has really been impeded in a major way it's very very difficult to do business there so you know then it became an issue of okay we want to leave where do we want to go and if you're looking for jewish communities that have an infrastructure in areas that are more politically akin to where i am and uh and you know a tax structure that makes things a lot easier financially you're not limited to about two states right you can't connecticut new jersey new york all of that's off limits uh chicago is essentially off-limits uh if you want some places with with decent weather and we're from l.a right i mean we don't want to be in the middle of winter all the time uh then um then ohio is off levinson so now basically you're down to texas and and florida um and they're smaller communities obviously our company is moving to nashville i'm going to be spending a lot of time there flying back and forth but the national community is still pretty small i have three kids under the age of seven i want them to i have a lot of resources available different jewish schools i want them to you know be able to to as they get older you know date in a large pool uh and uh and so it was a really simple choice it was kind of hilarious because my my wife uh was kind of humoring me uh she she said okay we'll go visit and we'll check out south florida we had a vacation scheduled for hawaii for july then obviously thanks to cover that got cancelled and so i said okay well i've been wanting to check out south florida anyway so let's get on plane and check it out and so she said all right so we get on the plane and she's figuring that this is just going to be you know her giving me my do and then we all forget about it uh and instead we come here and we're in three weeks we bought a house we're getting ready to move uh she thought at the beginning we were gonna wait a year and that we were gonna start a transition and then became clear that there's no reason to kind of live in between and so uh we traveled to south florida in june we bought a house in like the first week of july and we moved in early october so it was very very quick it was great to have you and ben i'll tell you you will find it very refreshing to live in a place where your vote counts and it matters and it makes a difference and if we can figure out the hanging chads we actually determine presidential elections which is really refreshing and really nice so ben earlier today i tweeted that you're probably the most recognized observant jew in the world although jared kushner and ivanka might disagree but i think it's probably safe to say you're the most famous person in the world who wears a yamaka on a regular basis um you know charles barkley once famously said that he never signed up to be a role model and i don't know whether you did either as you were making this climb and this rise and and what you've done at a young age is extraordinary not only all the books that you've published the media company that you've built the followers that you have 3.2 million followers on twitter over 7 million followers on facebook millions of people who consume your video your information your influencing and i'm kind of curious did you ever consider taking that yamaka off were you ever worried the responsibility that when you wear a kippah when you wear yamaka you're not just representing your views but you now have this very public face maybe the most famous public face on earth of someone with a yamaka and did you ever consider taking it off as you made that climb up do you think you were ever held back or did it ever hurt you that wore yamaka were there times that you regretted you were wearing a yamaka during a speaking engagement or an encounter that you had wished maybe you weren't i know it never occurred to me i mean honestly it never occurred to me that's where yama because i've been wearing a yamaka consistently since i was 10. so there was no point where it was like okay now i'm going to make a decision do i worry yamaka do i not wear yamaka it was on my head it's what i believe there's no reason for me to take it off as far as you know being you know the the most famous orthodox jew in the world first of all pretty small pool uh they're not that they're many more famous jews inside the orthodox community than i am outside the orthodox community it's not like there are there are tons of people uh who uh who fit that bill mainly because most of the people who are famous inside the orthodox community are famous for being orthodox inside the orthodox community namely people who we all consider role models right on him and spiritual leaders and and uh you know people who create uh massive movements uh i'm mostly famous for things that have very little to do directly with my religion although obviously i think my religion shapes my values which which i think gives me a little bit more leeway to say okay there's a fair bit of diversity inside the jewish community politically obviously i think not quite as much diversity inside the orthodox community because i think there's an actual doctrine that you have to sort of uh that you have to abide by uh that does have some political ramifications um but as far as whether it ever held me back i never really felt like it did i this is an extremely philosomic country uh i i think any in in the same way that they're anti-semites but this is an incredibly philosomatic country uh you know i think this is an incredibly uh tolerant country for people of all shapes and all sizes and all different orientations and and i think anybody who fails to recognize that truly is is being rather ungrateful toward a system that has created so much prosperity and freedom for so many it doesn't mean that people don't experience incredible hardship and incredible difficulty at the hands of other people but you know i cannot say as an orthodox jew that the system is designed to harm me in any way or that the system is uh is is discriminating against me in any way unless i see actual evidence that that's okay okay so i i've never again i've experienced a fair bit of personal anti-semitism i was the number one targeted jew in the world in 2016 online according to the adl um but i don't attribute that to my country and i don't contribute that to western civilization more broadly i attribute that to you know people who are jerks and there are plenty of them right unfortunately and you've taken the heat for a lot of that and but i think it really is extraordinary that you know used this the segment that you used to have on your show where you talked about the weekly parsha uh the fact that you're not afraid to reference the jewish holidays you're observing and why you might be off the air or not in tune necessarily with what's going on the days that you're missing uh referencing the daphyomi referencing your moral values that are shaped by torah really does spread that light and whether the people who agree or disagree with you the haters and the lovers i think can all agree that it's beautiful that we live in a world where you're able to represent that and share that and be able to express that and that's something which i think is very special and um i wonder whether you draw a line between your jewish values and some of the other political positions are all your positions drawn from torah values do you differentiate or divide between the two are there lines that you won't cross because of your judaism or your jewish values do you have one of the questions people encourage us to ask do you have particular rabbis or those you consult with if you feel you're you know pushing the edge you want to make sure that what you're thinking conforms with your torah values so first of all i don't think that my specific torah values are uh are something to be crammed down on other people be a force of government i'm not a theocrat uh and so my values are shaped by judaism in the same way that i think that most western values are shaped in essence by revelation i mean i wrote an entire book on how western valleys have been shaped not not just jewish values western values in shape by by sinai in combination with respect for human reason that largely springs from from athens they tend to balance between jerusalem and athens that was first attributed to tertullian uh that's been used as a framework to sort of understand western civilization for millennia at this point i think that it's it's a good framework for understanding these sorts of things i think it also falls squarely within my monadian framework as well as a domestic framework which is the the basic notion that if you are looking at the world around you and you're using science and you're using reason to interpret the world around you and then it conflicts with torah then you're doing one of the two things wrong uh and and so the the kind of notion that that torah is the bible is in conflict uh with general principles of reason or science uh if you believe that the hand of god is evident in both then obviously the problem is with you right either you're interpreting science wrong and you're interpreting natural law wrong or you're interpreting the bible wrong uh and so it's your job to sort of rectify those breaches i think that you know in uh in mourinho and in god for the perplexed my mouth is quite clear about this and obviously aquinas uh is is writing very much the same thing for the christian world at the same time so that's something that i really do hold by uh as far as how that shapes my political values um you know again i can think that something is deeply in moral without thinking that it necessarily has to be illegal this is why i think one of the things i think that religion is good for is not ruling from above yeah i tend to agree with uh with uh schmuel when he is a very critical of a monarchy and the the basis of religion to me is is sort of more bottom-up than top down and and biblically speaking it tends to be more bottom-up than top down and that's why the jews are critiqued as a people not just their leadership as critique when something goes wrong they're critique does the people by the prophets repeatedly because what religion is meant to do is create the social bonds between us and to create standards that we all live by uh it's it's not necessarily particularly in a system that's as diverse as ours in the united states and that has lent so much room for people to practice their religion there's a vast difference between the creation of social uh of social capital uh and the uh and the crime downs of governments i don't agree with but the 2012 dnc slogan that government is the only thing we all share in fact i think it's the least of the things we ought to share interesting and do you have are there are there people you speak to directly or mentors rabbis guides who when you're trying to reconcile i know you studied da fiomi you're obviously on the path of learning and growing as we all are when you think that things are above you in terms of reconciling with judaism are there people that you will consult in order to make sure as you've as you've grown and take on this more public stage and in a certain way represent the jewish people um that will give you some some healthy pushback uh yeah i mean i definitely i've studied with a variety of robotim over the years uh and mostly because i i want to know that what i'm saying about judaism particularly is accurate um you know i feel like you know judaism is not my area of expertise it's something i live in but i'm not a rav and so when people ask me about halafa i will openly and obviously say i'm not a rav i don't pass in halal i'm not qualified to post in halal if you want to talk to someone who's qualified to post there are three people uh on this particular call who are all better qualified than i am uh so you know you should you should have it's one of them uh if you're asking me sort of like the general framework of where judaism lands on particular issues then i can give you sort of a general framework and then obviously there's a lot of play in the joints uh and uh the more expert you are it seems very often more play in the joints there is and the more complicating factors there are so i'm not somebody who is qualified to to rule in any individual case or any general case all i can do is sort of give the general philosophical framework for how judaism approaches issues and there i do try to you know look into the sources and determine how judaism speaks now as i say there are times when i think the public policy is is not to be shaped by you know specific so i'll take an easy example so i'm extremely pro-life right i've gotten pushback from obviously not not orthodox shoes but also some orthodox use on the basis that judaism provides for dispensations uh in a lot of early term abortions uh you know that there is a possibility according to certain there's a wide variety of opinion on this ranging from moshe feinstein who's quite strict on it to rav celebrate who's also quite strict on it uh to you know other about him who are looser about when they're willing to grant dispensation for early term abortion uh and the the general idea is that well if you're so pro-life and you want to ban abortion except under certain circumstances isn't that conflicting with uh you know the ability of a rav to to do a particular thing well you know again my my read of natural law might fall in conflict with how i would rule if i thought that this would be a jewish you know a jewish state in terms of a whole lot of state but i don't think it's it's america's job to be a holocaust state i think it's america's job to uh to fulfill basic dictates of morality and to provide the license for all of us to do so individually through uh through exercise of individual freedom amazing robin wow first of all ben thank you so much for being on um it's nice to meet you i wanna i wanna shift gears a little bit and talk about relationships um obviously as a very public figure relationships are probably a little complicated for you and uh and i guess there are two parts to my question number one um when you meet people which one do you prefer i guess which one aggravates you more does it aggravate you when someone disagrees with you and battles with you and argues with you or does it aggravate you when people agree with you worship you um and and and try to do everything to it you know to to to to make you think that they're on your side so kind of like how do you approach relationships in that regard and i guess there's a second part to that which is how do you have relationships right how do you have friendships when you're such a public person and people want to get close to public figures and certainly you're moving into a new area and i'm sure you've had this in la as well um how do you gauge what's a real relationship what's someone that shares your values that you want to have that type of relationship for and when do you say you know what you're just looking for uh someone that you worship someone who has a lot of followers on facebook i don't really want uh that type of relationship with you so um it was a little bit difficult to hear because picking up just a little bit my connection isn't fantastic but uh if i got your first question correctly you were basically asking uh if in a relationship i'm looking for somebody who disagrees or somebody call greece or how much that makes a difference uh is that correct is that what the the question was uh first pretty much yeah yes yes okay okay so uh so so my uh yeah i forgive me the the connections thanks um but the uh but the uh the basic answer to that one is um if i think that somebody is interested in best for me just like you know you consider any family or or friend uh then then it doesn't matter to me whether they agree with me or disagree with me on a particular issue i want people who can tell me when they think that i'm doing something wrong and maybe better i hope that i've been trying to do that on a day-by-day basis and there are many cases in the past several years where friends have come to me and they said you know three four years ago on twitter you said something really nasty about something and you really might want to rethink that and i've actually gone out of my way in many cases to publicly uh recant or to specifically call the person and apologize for it um and uh you know i hope that i i always have room in my life for friends who are able to do that and not just sick offense so that that's that's an important thing um yeah look i'm i'm lucky enough that i met my wife before any of this happened right i was i was 24 and she was 20 and we've been married for uh 13 years almost and so you know i don't have a lot of doubts on on the score that she is willing to to tell me where to head in when i'm incorrect about something so that's that's helpful i tend to be more of a family person than a friend person by nature i have usually a couple of close friends and that's about it uh and a lot of my friends are people who i've known really since childhood um and so that you know tends to alleviate some of the risk of people who just want to get close because uh prominence or because it's fun to say that they're friends with somebody who has some notoriety um but honestly i think that most people don't want that and the way that you can tell you know is really about how much people ask you for things frankly if people are constantly asking you to do things for them uh then you know just like anything else you're now you're now a service provider as opposed to a friend right does that mean does that mean that we can't be friends there's a number of people in my life get to ask me to do something but they're all blood relations uh does that mean after asking you to come on behind the beam i think it's all over it's all over well let me ask a follow-up which is yeah exactly you you shattered the vessel it's all done take our listeners like what's it like for you when you go to shul you go to sholana shabbas obviously you're very public about your opinions throughout the week um do you prefer people smile and not at you when they see you do you prefer people coming over saying hello trying to connect to you do you want to when you're in shul on chavez that you're kind of in your sanctuary and you don't want to be bothered by that stuff or do you go to show like so many other people for a little bit of the hawk for a little bit of the conversation and you're curious how what you said during the week plays out amongst the people that you're sitting around and chill yes i mean some of that is obvious obviously fun so i i've gone to show with my dad since i was a kid uh my parents also moved into the area and uh my my dad and i have sat next to each other since i was you know since before i was born my dad is an extremely social person uh i am far less social than my dad is just as a human being because my dad is this almost like my dad's the kind of person where you're getting an elevator with him and by the end of the elevator ride he knows your entire life story he's your best friend and so my dad really does get you know want to want to interact with people in that way um during dropping i don't like talking at all like during dominating it's my relaxation time actually um so i'm either dominating or i'm reading which are my ways of both connecting and disconnecting uh depending on you know what i'm doing at the time uh as far as after show i'm happy to talk about you know anything and everything with people uh so long as uh they're they're always you know unfortunately you know without naming any names of course uh there are people who sometimes monopolize your time uh they're always people there's always a couple people who kind of buttonhole you uh and most people don't do that most people are respectful of your time they just wanna you know they have a quick question they wanna get it answered i don't have any problem like being part of a of a conversation with one person or many people um but what what is always uncomfortable is having to tell somebody when people can't pick up social cues you know when it's like okay well i need to move away now and go check on my kids uh that is a q4 okay this conversation needs to needs to cease for a moment uh and sometimes there are people who can't pick up on the social cues um it's not their fault i mean it's if i were you know they're people i'm sure i would do that too too i'm frankly bewildered that people want to do that for me and i find it flattering that people want to hear my opinion on things i mean that's a nice thing it could be worse people could could definitely not want to hear my opinion on things i suppose you know your father's brilliant and a great conversationalist and i could talk to him forever um i want to ask you an extraordinary section of your website something very unusual among media personalities um certainly unusual may be unheard of among politicians which is the section on your website where you reference the things that you regret saying or writing and you um and you and how you would do it differently and my question is the following um you know your style online sometimes can some might interpret it as being a little bit of an agitator uh there's an edge uh there's a confidence maybe even an aggressiveness to the positions that you take and it's been successful you've influenced countless and you've built an empire doing it and and and i've come to know you a little bit offline to see the softer side people don't know the kind of extraordinary that you do that you've used your fame and celebrity to really positively help people um and and the kind of generosity that you and your wife have shown with your resources they don't necessarily know that other side of you um so it's a two-part question number one is what are the parts of ben shapiro that you wish people knew about you the offline not the tweets and not the daily podcasts and not the policy positions what are the softer sides of you that you wish people knew and my other question is that part of your website which again i think is really extraordinary in a reflection of your deep jewish values um where you are willing to reference the things that you regret are there things that you don't regret what you've said but you regret the way you said it meaning you believe in the policy and you believe what you said but you you think maybe it could have been said in a way which um might have been more sensitive or had less hurt to people that you unintended to hurt for sure i mean uh of course and in fact one section of that article i believe is about things that i say are true but i wish that i said in slightly from what um so there's stuff that i've said that outright is just stupid uh and uh and that i think is idiotic and wish i had never said it most of it happened between the time i was about 18 and the time i was about 23. and then there are the things that i've that i've said uh where i agree with me i just said it in an uncomfortable way and and sometimes i look back at all tweets and i'm like yeah you know that was you know put not particularly well like the the factual underlying basis of is correct but yeah i could have said that better i could have said that nicer and of course i mean i literally get paid to say things i say i i write it used to be that i write literally hundreds of thousands of boards every single year uh you know i've hundreds of thousands of tweets i have written at this point ten books uh i've ghost written another nine uh there was a point where i was writing uh four articles a day uh there was a point when i was working for breitbart in the early years i was writing 10 to 12 articles a day so i've written a lot so i'm sure that there's plenty of stuff in there uh where uh you know millions millions of words were talking about i'm sure there's many of them that are misplaced many of them that uh you know i was writing in the heat of passion and which later that i hadn't written in the heat of passion um and uh you know one of the things that i hope i get better at is is speaking with with passion but without anger and that that's a hard one right i mean that is a difficult one because you're passionate about something and something deeply wrong is going on it's hard not to speak abrasively and frankly there's sometimes particularly with ideas where i think it's important to speak abrasively because it shocks people into awareness that something bad is going on or something that's worth noting is going on i i try to restrict it to ideas as opposed to human beings i think they're very there are certain human beings who i think deserve the critique as human beings um but i think that that's pretty rare uh and and if i'm making a joke i also don't think that a joke is the same thing as as you know me me kind of doing typical mockery of every single politician i mean i do impressions of everybody from bernie to trump i i don't put that in the same category as thinking down a rotten human being who deserves no so there's that the public persona uh i uh guard my private life pretty zealously uh and um so i i try to hold by i'm a big broadband fan and i try to hold by the edict oh well anybody else enjoying the fact that one of the biggest media moguls in the world is having bad wi-fi are we feeling a little better about things or are we not picking up social cues that the intelligence i just called his wife out and said get me out of here pull the plug possibly i felt like we're on like fox or cnn where there's always that delay between the question and the answer like when they're overseas and there's always a little yeah we're getting right into the heart of it i want to hear about the public persona and the and the private persona we're right there right there come back wait welcome to xfinity in south florida he's got the same same services purgatory right otherwise known as purgatory is that well let's until he gets back on robert do you have that you write a lot you speak a lot you obviously not as um you know in a very different way than he does ah there we go ben we're just playing by the way it's it's really validating tough to know that one of the media moguls in the world is having wi-fi it's not you know what let me i feel bad doing this but this is what happens when i run my let me let the router yeah i'm gonna get closer to the router i will be right back no problem no problem well then we'll take them off we'll let them back out in a moment when we have them does this happen i love the show also this is like if if you're like a hacker golfer and you ever see a professional golfer who like duffs the ball in the water and you feel bad for them they feel so good validated they're human that is amazing i'd love for them to be in them are we there yet we're almost there we're almost there people aren't pacing on facebook that if we need an extra guest they're available bring him on board [Music] is this better reception i have now moved much more much better and we again ben we can't reiterate how we thought maybe we weren't picking up on the social cues and we were done with the input but thank you so much for being back so we're talking about the the online persona the private persona what you wish people knew about the heart and soul of ben shapiro that maybe doesn't come across in the tweets i mean look i'm a you know i think i'm a good husband i think i'm a good dad um i try to be nice to people but people are going to gather about me what they want to gather about me uh i think honestly a lot of that does come out from the show like if you listen to the show on a regular basis i think a lot of this sort of stuff comes out and make jokes about my wife and my kids all the time i talk about you know what we do on a daily basis i think most of the impressions of me publicly come from you know the way our social media works which is these little tiny tiny little snippets right tweets or memes or uh or 30 seconds clips from my show as opposed to the hour-long show i know that the complaint of everybody who's in media is that you should actually listen to the whole show but actually it's kind of true you should actually look beyond the headline and listen to the whole show uh you know as far as you know some of the nice things that i do it's not up to me to talk about that sort of stuff because frankly it's self-serving uh and so you know when when we give tadaka i try to get tadaka fairly anonymously when we do nice things for people i try to keep it on the down low um unless it's a very public campaign in which many people are involved because otherwise again it's then it's about you know burnishing my image as opposed to anything else you know if if that helps get across a point which is that i think that a religious worldview makes you a better person which i i think it absolutely can uh or if it was about the idea that you know acting morally in your personal life is uh is sometimes indicative of or can be sometimes indicative of political leaning uh then that would be one thing and i will talk about that sort of stuff but if it's just a self-serving look at me look at all the nice things i do kind of thing i'm uncomfortable with that i think other people should be uncomfortable as well and and that's exactly right for you to not be sharing it and i'm not saying it's my or our responsibility to share but i think it's really a important reminder that the the people that we see in their online persona or the caricature of who they are is not the totality of who they are and even with their points not with you in particular but with others that we disagree with we should remember that there's a total picture there a mother a father a husband a wife a friend a neighbor and there's probably a lot more we agree with them we disagree with them we knew the softer side or some of the good things they did then maybe we'd feel different about them so that's why i think it's important for the world to know that about you or other public personalities you know one of the things that i think is definitely true and this this i have tried to get across publicly is that there's this image of you know there's kind of two weird images that don't really drop one is you know rabbit right-wing uh reactionary uh who's uh who's always destroying people online and all that and the other is the fact that i have conversations with people i disagree with literally all the time more than any other person i know who's not you know pretending to be an objective media you don't see a lot of people who are on the hard left having conversations people who are on the heart right i've had conversations publicly and i invite them on my show and i treat them with with great i think conciliatory uh tenor uh i've had on people from fox.com if an escrow client i've had i'm at iglesias i've had on larry wilmore from comedy central with whom i disagree about nearly everything i've had on jason blum the hollywood producer who is a far leftist i've had on people who are who are advocates for vegetarianism i've had i mean like and they're interesting conversations i mean i spent my entire life being around people who might disagree and so i actually enjoy those conversations and that doesn't really mesh with the other image of me which is somebody who's uh you know a blowtorch uh and uh and both both images exist i mean because everybody it's you know it's the old you know blind men feeling an elephant kind of thing if all you get is just the the snippet of you know one guy feeling the elephant's leg not quite the same thing as recognizing that an entire elephant exists so i don't expect that everybody's gonna make themselves familiar with the corpus of my work that's not really their job um but uh yeah it's before you make a fulsome judgment about somebody you should at least take the time to like just look at their youtube channel for five seconds right get to know them a little bit robert brody yeah first of all ben big fan long time listener it's so great to see you in person right now so this is fantastic just got a question you know you you rose very quickly to start him you know with between almost 20 books between the shows and everything else you've been doing were there any parts or different points along that journey where you said maybe i thought i was going to go in a different direction it just didn't work out were there challenges along the way and also where where do you want to be in 10 years from now you know you've already 20 bucks the you know you've got the show already what's more what's left you know well like anybody who achieves any level of prominence it looks like it's sudden but really it's toiling away in the minds for years and then it's all of a sudden uh so it's it's all slow so slow and then fast uh and so if you look at sort of the the story of my career i was syndicated at age 17 i'd written a bunch of books before i sort of reached any level of prominence i would say probably just looking at sort of my career timeline the first level of true prominence um outside of just the conservative movement was probably that here's morgan interview in 2013. um but by that point i'd already written several books i'd already been to harvard law school i i've been doing this for a long time i mean i'm 36 now i've been doing this since i was 17. so i've literally been doing this for more than half my life and it's really only in the last seven uh or eight years that it's really started to you know pick up the way that it has uh so you know i think that every career story is is kind of like that nobody sees all the stuff like nobody wants to hear about the the uh the labor rachel wants to see the baby so that's the uh you know that's that's sort of the story of anybody's career um but you know as far as other directions yeah i mean when i went to college i never thought i was gonna be in politics my parents thought i was but i always thought that apparently from the time i was young uh which they've since told me but uh when i was a when i was a kid i thought that i was going to be in music i thought that i was going to be i was a pretty virtuosic violinist i was sitting with one of the top 10 teachers in the country uh and then i had to make a call when i was like 16 17. so i want to play violin 8 hours a day and the answer to that was i wasn't going to do it and the career prospects in music are not fantastic uh yeah and i knew this because my father was a professional pianist uh so the uh so i thought i was going to double major in music and genetic science when i went to ucla i went to ucla when i was 16 uh and so i didn't leave home i lived at home because my parents were like are you insane you're not living away from home at the age of 16 on a college campus that's not the thing that's happening so i lived at home uh and uh i thought that's what i was going to do and i kind of got roped into politics just by coincidence i was walking through ucla i saw a piece in the ucla daily bruin comparing ariel sharon and then the prime minister of israel to adolf eichmann and i walked into the daily bruin editorial board and i said i'd like to write a counter and that sort of started things off uh when i finished law school i thought i was going to go into real estate law uh even after i decided that i really wasn't you know going to do real estate law that working in a law firm was as it turns out a horrifying experience that i simply could not bear all right and uh it could have also been timing i joined a real estate law firm in september of 2007 which as it turns out was literally the worst time in the history of the world to join the real estate industry uh i i i figured that this was not for me i was not i'm not detail-oriented enough frankly to do pagination checks and and doc review which is what you're forced to do for the first several years it was miserable for me it was miserable for the firm i was amused that when i when i quit the law firm i remember sitting in the office of the senior associate uh and the senior associates saying to me um you know why are you quitting this firm you know you're making so much money here and i gave all my reasons you know this is boring i don't feel like i'm doing anything really important it just doesn't fulfill me and there's a second senior associate who was there and the second senior associate goes you know maybe i should quit and uh so you know i tried the real estate thing and then i i thought that i was going to be the behind the scenes guy i thought that i was going to be the business guy i i've been doing writing but i never thought of myself as sort of the in front of the camera talent and it took me hooking up with my business partner jeremy boring for him to say to me you know you're getting this all wrong it's particularly after the piers morgan thing where he said uh you know i think that we've got this backwards like yeah you're you're good at business and all of that but you know i can do business and we can do the business together but you really need to be the talent because not a lot of people can argue like you you're you're you're a good speaker you have really you know excellent command of the facts and so we need to put focus on that uh and that was really when we made the concerted attempt to to change kind of career paths that way uh and uh you know thank god it caught on i mean we started the podcast literally in his pool house uh there were i believe the first episode was downloaded three thousand times uh and uh and now you know our episode right after the vice presidential debate was downloaded and watched in excess of three million times so and that's in an average episode of the show we'll get 1.5 to 2 million views and downloads so yeah you're almost you're almost up there with behind the bema we are saying that you'll be there yeah it's an extraordinary story but i want to correct one thing it wasn't the worst time for you to go into law it was the best time because had you gone and during any other time you might still be doing pagination and and you know might not have moved on from them so it's all the hands of hashem which is directing you we've kept you a very long time and you're incredibly generous and gracious with your time we don't want to wait for that socially awkward moment but just uh just a lightning round quick question before we before we let you go could could you spend one minute just talking about what da fiomi and daily total learning means because i think there's a whole world of listeners who follow you jewish maybe even observant but don't have that dedication to daily learning and they should know that you know your opinions are informed they come from torah and what torah means to you so what is doing the daft why did you pick it up what does it mean for you how important is it to do it daily the other tour learning that you do and so we got to the end of the doff cycle and uh i had not been doing that family and as a result of publicity around zafiomi i figured why not just jump in and also if i talk about it on the show then presumably there are a lot i have a lot of from listeners obviously and people who are not as from uh who might want to give it a try uh and actually get acquainted with davio me and so i talked about it on the show and um i know that uh the the daphiomi site that i think that that day they had several thousand people who joined up to do daffy army uh which is pretty which is pretty cool uh and uh and then uh that was given sort of another boost when the vanity then he fared a piece on me and then behind me was a whole shelf of sparrow and so there was all the speculation online about exactly what the various pharma meant about my different you know discussion on twitter yeah that became kind of a thing um you know what what it means to me and i i can't say that honestly i hit every single day with daffy homie i try to keep up with most days still uh i got all the way through brachas it started to fade a little bit during shabbos it's starting to come back now um but it's uh uh what's meant to me first of all i i've missed out on having a skill set uh i've always i always like to increase my own skill set my skill set when it comes to just being able to pick up and read a gemara is is not up to par all right and so because i didn't go to yeshiva for a year i went to ula in in los angeles and then i went to record college i never had the experience of breaking my teeth over and off so being more familiarized with aramaic and really like learning how the phraseology works and how the logic works i mean it's it's a complete foreign language not just because it's aramaic but also because the the syntax the the i mean you literally have to read entire lines of reasoning into a seven or eight word phrase sometimes and and that can only come with just sheer immersion so you know i i would like to do more than daffy on me i mean at some point uh when i take a summer off i'd like to actually go and do it full time for for a while actually get really familiar with it but even being immersed in it um is uh for for an hour a day or for 45 minutes a day is is really useful and i stumble across chestnuts that i'm able to use and that i'm able to bring to bear and they're that's the thing about gemara that's that's so weird and interesting is that they'll be in the middle of a discussion about very specific halal codes surrounding exactly how you should go and then all of a sudden you're in the middle of a conversation about why bad things happen to good people all right and there are various takes on it like okay well this is this is interesting uh and sometimes that's that's useful in in broader conversation i honestly uh it was more for a skills thing and when it comes to partial study that's where i tend to get more of the direct meaning i get a ton out of i mean my book right side of history is very heavily steeped in in a lot of uh tanakh um and um i've written entire screenplays about avraham avinu and uh you know i'm i think tanakh is i think virtually every important message that has ever been conveyed in human history can be boiled down to many of the stories in in tanakh and and even more specifically in in what we're about to read uh in in upcoming weeks uh i think that i'm probably going to go back to i took a couple years off because the only problem with doing the torah cycle uh every year on the show doing the parsha every every single week is that then i have to come up with a different torah so the good news is that it's been a couple welcome to the rabbit exactly exactly so now it's been a couple of years so i can just use all my old material and assume that most of the audience has never heard it so i i was planning actually and starting again this week since we're since we're back to the beginning so um that's uh that'll be uh that'll be interesting uh and then i study missionaires with with somebody for about 10 minutes a day um and uh the nice thing there is that the language is easy enough that i can do that while i'm in the car and the person can kind of talk me through it i don't have to i don't have to have the text in front of me but uh listen i think it's important to re-engage and i i feel bad when there are periods of time during my life when i when i haven't engaged as much and obviously this this all comes with the humility of knowing that i'm one of what this is one of the things that's you know just generally amusing is that well i may be one of the more prominent orthodox jews on on planet earth i am also in the bottom third of orthodox jews probably in terms of knowing things and so that is uh that's a it's good it gives me a room to grow as long as you're learning you're heading in the right direction i want to thank you for the time you spent with us well beyond what we talked about you've been generous with your time and i want to leave you with a bracha we we had a great rabbi of usher wise the men kasha spoke in our shul and he talked about the mission of a jew is to find the balance and the blend between passion and compassion and you were talking earlier about the importance of communicating with passion and so the barak i want to give you is that with your yamaka on and representing torah and judaism that hashem should help you continue to find your voice to communicate passion with compassion and to be able to influence and shape things in a positive way positive direction uh for us here in america for israel and around the world thank you for your time welcome to south florida florida mazel tov on being eligible to vote in your first election that that matters and uh we'll look forward to uh please god continuing this conversation although i want to make it very clear there's no no pressure on you to reciprocate and have us back on your podcast but thank you so much welcome to south florida and uh we're here for anything you need it's great to have you i appreciate it i'm into the brother and good luck with that one god we'll see how it goes thank you so much have a great night thank you have a great night wow okay you did it you weren't nervous for this one that was great you did it that was great it was a lot of fun great challenge it's what i found in all my conversations you know that that i've that i've had yet with him which there's not many i don't want to pretend like we're best friends offline and apparently for asking him to do this i might have just ruined any chance of a friendship um but um you know he's he's a regular guy sometimes we see somebody's name in lights or we see how big they are and we we've had we've had big speakers big robotum prominent people political and and we now have two campaigns who have been speaking to us about hosting events and and there's the public persona and then was you sit in the office before or after the speech and you schmooze and you realize people are regular people and people all of their own insecurities and people all of their own even at the end when he admitted in terms of his knowledge base that he has to fill in about you need something i thought that was amazing and and you know if any of our listeners i hope and spa i'm great here's a person who's achieved such famous notoriety prominence and he's still hungry he's looking to grow he's looking to challenge himself to me that that's amazingly inspiring and i hope a lot of people took that lesson from what he said at the end yeah i hope they do and i hope people take up daily daily learning and uh hopefully in future podcasts we can have three people who can pascal not just i'll tell you what us i thought was amazing was um was when he described how he was at ucla and he wasn't planning to go into politics and he sees an article that he disagrees with and he walks into the office and he says can i write an editorial and that takes a lot of confidence even for someone as intelligent and well spoken articulate as he is it takes a lot of confidence to be willing to put yourself out there and to speak your voice and and we need more jews like that we need more jews again whichever side you're on whichever perspectives you subscribe to but we need more jews that when they see something that bothers them in a newspaper on college campuses that they feel confident and comfortable stepping in and writing something and to disagree and to represent the views that they hold by or put more simply he found his voice he didn't know he had his voice he thought his expression was on the violin we have that in common um definitely was never played eight hours a day probably never played eight minutes a day um he thought he thought his voice was on the violin and then he found his voice and all of us all of us can find our voice you don't have to skip two grades or be in college at 16 to find your passion and there's no shortage of things to be passionate about and advocate for in whatever direction with respect passion with compassion and um and i thought that was impressive too i think people love it now people just i keep reading first of all we've never had so many comments flowing through the screen flying during a show dropping off precipitously right now after he got up we've got a brand new audience by the way every week for our audience behind the beam especially wednesday nights 9 p.m and you know it's it's growing it's growing he's at 3 million we're at like 2.8 right right it's growing but people love his honesty you know and it's you might disagree with him it doesn't mean you don't want to tune in because you just want to get an honest opinion today people don't people aren't honest they're not telling you what's the truth so it's just nice it's refreshing there are people who their public persona is humble kind and sweet and when they're asked to do favors or to give their resources they are absolutely obnoxious jerks and there are people who their public persona might include something that seems as an agitator or aggressive but offline they're ready to step up help do things they have a real classic personality you and i talk about that all the time when speakers come to brs we talk about speakers that are a little bit primadonnas we talk about speakers that you just want to sit in the backyard you know and schmooze with and are so generous with their time and with their wisdom and with their guidance i mean i still think that the greatest moment i think with uh with a speaker since i've been here was when brett stevens was in your office and he looks up and he says yeah i was once related to a rabbi grozinski and you're like you mean that picture over here of course one of the greatest rabbis and he was so enamored by that and here i'm like here's a guy at the time i think he just switched over to new york times i said here's a guy who has a a voice a mouthpiece to thousands millions of people and he's sitting here schmoozing our office about a great rabbi from lithuania named rojay moser such a great conversation which which to follow up on that i want to say with great pride that we spoke to him for for what 40 minutes a little under 40 minutes we even had the wi-fi working for part of it and i wanted to say that um people challenged us we said this was not going to be politics he brought up abortion but we're not going to go to who he thinks is going to win for president or what are the liabilities or assets of either of the candidates or what's his position on the political issue and people challenged us there's no way you're having ben shapiro on and you're not talking politics that's who he is cool politics and and i hope this was an example it was an effort but it wasn't hard that you can talk to someone about the things that you have in common talk about what daily torah learning means to you talk about your journey to where you got where you are talk about how you forge relationships and what they matter failures challenges failures and you weren't done you have another hour of questions we've got to tell them that that was part one who wants to hear the questions we didn't get to anyone here you got to say i want to thank our listeners our listeners submitted questions the last few days a ton of questions and um i wanted to ask him a lightning round which included what is the most what is the most accurate or the best news source to read other than his if he had to suggest another news source which is objective but that would that would teeter on politics i stayed away from that what's his favorite safer what rabbi or teacher had the biggest impact on his life i was curious if he could go back to any point in jewish history what would it be if he could go back and relive any point in jewish history what would it be the bees in question not because i already saw that the other day and i was i was curious about it wondering how his teachers dealt with him in high school i mean this is a guy that seems to know everything like imagine if you're in 19th grade and you know way more than your professor i mean it's it's been hard you can call my teachers ask them how they dealt with me yeah exactly i don't know i had another question one of our listeners submitted that we didn't get to or which was um you know if you follow him on social media you'll see and i don't know and i wouldn't have asked on this online whether he is actually writing every tweet or there's a team um but it's he's engaged in consuming as well as producing information all day long six days a week and the question is four letters a day he said sure that was i thought great he said i come to shul and when i dive in that's that's my weight that's connecting by the way it should be like that for all of our i love how he said i've written 10 books and already that's amazing he's like yeah that ghost wrote another nine could he go through one for that for me i'll tell you no but you know you spoke about kind of our agenda with that interview i think one of the other things is what's made our show as successful as it is is people don't often times get to see the other side of people right so see people see that the rabbi from goldberg who teaches classes and gives shaba shuba rushes that 4 000 people listen to and sitting up at the pulpit no no but people see that public side of you but they also they don't oftentimes see the schmoozy side of you the side of you where you're talking about your family and what it's like to plan a wedding during covid and you know i think people um people gravitate to normalcy and i think they appreciate when they see that even people that they admire in public figures can also be normal and you know i found it great when he was talking about his wife and his children i think that's i think that's phenomenal right i i um that's behind the bema the whole theme of behind the beam is getting to see the real people take off the mask take off the persona take off the the inhibition and and see the real person and have real conversation and we're going to continue to have those kinds of guests and i think we've succeeded until now mixing up nfl owners with great prominent rabbis with a media celebrity and uh and being able to really mix that up with the ceo of a public company and you should see we're just getting started who we have to come i regret that we're almost out of time we got a couple minutes left and there were so many other things we wanted to talk about i also wanted to ask him by the way whether he always was those political positions or did he move who's the famous quote that if you weren't liberal when you were young you didn't have a heart if you weren't concerned or you'd have a brain i'm not saying that that's correct i'm not endorsing that as accurate but i'm curious whether he shifted or moved who's the biggest influence his parents rabbis things he read you know what what was it that did it but other topics that we had to talk about which we're going to have to get to next week include the minniga brs for kondarim and the sad reality in fact that how many people were still dominating for and the gift of healthy children which no one should take for granted and the importance of continuing to dive in an act of sensitivity we'll come back to that in a future week talk more about our simchas torah and why some thought that sinclas torah corona was better than any other we ever had some thought not even saying that we did some thought it was the best ever why did they think that you may notice that we didn't make a lachaim tonight why didn't we make a chaim we're done making lachaims we are all using thank you danny oppenheimer oppenheimer law group again for your sponsorship and uh we are we are drinking out of our our swag over here but it's water and mine why did we stop having the lachem's important conversation of what motivated that and maybe we'll end on this note because we always give the latest on fighting anti-semitism and advocating for israel facebook's policy this week excellent well done facebook some might say it's about time and where have you been you don't even get any ashika but i want to say yashikawa which should be a given is not always a given the fact that they said they will not tolerate holocaust deniers and if you think that that should be a given then no the spanish river has reinstated a principal who is unwilling to go on record and say unequivocally the holocaust happened living in a district with holocaust survivors we talked about this last week and we should hold accountable there's an election coming up we will share with our listeners at least for those who live in our district and can vote who are the individuals who voted to reinstate because we should vote to not reinstate them anyone could reinstate somebody who denies the holocaust that is a hate crime that is an anti-semitic crime that is deeply personal and deeply painful to all of us particularly to our survivors and it's intolerable which makes facebook's policy all the more important and we should express our gratitude and our thanks to facebook so on behalf of rabbi moskowitz and rabbi brody and our staff behind the beast those three names overlap with our staff that's right right there thank you donnie for sponsoring again uh we are we have a bunch of sponsors lined up but we have room for sponsorships if you'd like to sponsor a future episode of behind the bema please be in touch with lee lee brsonline.org huge thanks to ben shapiro love him or hate him agree with him or disagree with him you have to be impressed with him of what he's built and that he's grown and worth getting to know the whole person not just part of him listen next week back to wednesday nights at 9 00 pm we got a great show lined up for next week until then stay happy stay

Channel: Rabbi Efrem Goldberg

Views: 65,308

Keywords: ben shapiro, jewish, conservative, boca, meaning, mindful, music, judaism, efrem, ephrem, efraim, efrayim, maarow, marrow, bone, donation, feynberg, rbabis, rabbinic, podcast, podcasts, chat, discussion, inspire, rabbi, rabbis, sermon, drasha, motivation, motivational

Id: TkI42V33Hu8

Length: 60min 40sec (3640 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 14 2020