Goldberg, Rabbi Efrem

I heard an unbelievable drusha, unbelievable, and I'm not going to do it any justice, but here's what I took away, just a small line from it.

I believe it was Rabbi Goldberg from the Boca Raton Synagogue to give you some insight into where I am.

He said over Rosh Hashanah that there is this idea, and I'm sure you heard about it last week or the week before, where all of a sudden these AI experts are coming out and they're saying that they're really concerned that what? That AI is going to destroy humanity, right? That we are all going to be overtaken by AI.

And what Rabbi Goldberg said was that that's not so much the concern.

It wasn't so much that AI was going to become human.

It was that we humans were going to become AI.

But most of you know me by now.

And perhaps only rivaling Rabbi Goldberg, I might be the most competitive person in the world.

But the only one I'm competing with here is myself.

I made a commitment.

And with that in mind, our personal work begins.

Rabbi Ephraim Goldberg.

Man, you know, I, I was trying to think where to cut this.

Maybe I can race through it, race through it.

Rosh Hashanah's on Shabbos? What does that mean? Do we blow the shofar?" And, uh, I was then, um, forced to actually look at the calendar.

And no, we do not blow the shofar on Shabbat.

So Rabbi Goldberg brings down these thoughts, and I'm gonna credit him all the way through, um, that there's moments in life when we suddenly become aware of our breathing.

I'm jumping in here and telling you on Friday night while I was negotiating with God for not just another year, another 120 years, um, I was very aware of my breathing and that my breathing might be keeping my husband awake So Rabbi Goldberg goes on and he says that, you know, a frightening diagnosis, a phone call in the middle of the night, turbulence on an airplane, waiting for news about someone we love, a siren in Israel, or an anti-Semitic incident that once would have seemed unimaginable can make our chests constrict, our hearts accelerate, and our breathing becomes noticeably shallow.

Uh, I think Rabbi, uh, Go- Goldberg, I think it is.

Efrem Goldberg.

Efrem Goldberg, right.

He coined the phrase, you know, aliyah snobs.

[laughs]

Torah is the only arbiter of Jewish identity, and that's it, you don't get to call a Jew, you don't call them a ham sandwich.

So Baruch Hashem, there was a very well-prepared and well-delivered shiur from Rabbi Goldberg from the Boca Raton Synagogue.

And he took, when somebody forwarded it to me on my WhatsApp, and immediately I saw the title, Machlek is Ben Shapiro and Rabbi Sheis Tav.

I was like, uh-oh, let's see what this is.

Okay.

So, because I just want to make sure that in the course of defending one Jew, I didn't offend another Jew, you know.

But at any rate, So Rabbi Goldberg made a very nice share and he explained, the part where he explained what my point was about and that the Gemara famously says that even a Jew who sins is still a Jew.

But I think there's much more to bring out than even that because it's not just about the debate about who has the right to say about a Jew that they're no longer part of our people, or they're not our brother, or not our sister.

Um, and you know, some days it's easier, some days it's harder, and you know, people tell you things like, "Time heals," and, "You're gonna be okay," and you don't believe them when they say things like that because how could someone ever be okay? Um, and then you are okay and you get up another day, um, which I know is, doesn't happen for everyone, and I am very grateful to Hashem for that.

Um, I know that my mother casually mentioned in passing that like anyone who asked what they could do for us, she's like, "Can you please daven for my children?" And I, after she told me that, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I'm literally riding on tefillahs." Like my okayness is probably 'cause everyone just is davening for me, you know? Um, I, we had, um, [smacks lips] Rabbi Goldberg came and sat with Yodi-

Oh

... and myself.

[laughs]

Okay.

Um, anyway, Rabbi Goldberg came and he sat with us, and I was, we were, I guess we were schmoozing, and I said something about being okay, and he's like, "But if someone has the flu and they can't get out of bed, no one like says like, 'What's wrong with you? Get out of bed.' Like, 'Okay, you have the flu, like, you know, get up.'" He's like, "Understand that if you were in your bed and you're depressed and you're sad and you can't get out of your bed, that's also totally normal." Um, and I, it shifted my perspective to realize how lucky I am that that's not the version of he- or the road of healing that we're taking.

And, um, [smacks lips] I think the kids also really kept it, you know, real.

I'm not the guy who learns Gemara.

Well, have you tried it? Have you come to Rabbi Goldberg's new which is built for all levels to really acquire how to learn Gemara? Have you really enveloped yourself in it so much so that you could say that you're not the guy who learns Gemara? I'm not a minion guy.

I'm not a guy diving at home.

I'm not a .

And so I guess that would be my challenge to you in this idea, is if there's something in your consciousness In Judaism, where you say to yourself, that's not me, or that's not the way I've done it, or that's not something that speaks to me, or that's not something that inspires me, that's not meaningful for me, I hear this all the time, right? Come inside, try it.

Try it for a little while.

You know, when Rabbi Goldberg first started, his whole shal shud is kick, and riving, deriving, you get it, right? So I didn't know that I fully appreciate it.

It took me a little while to come on board, right? But what happened? Part of the reason why, I never came.