28 Jan 5 VITAL QUESTIONS. 5 IMPACTFUL ANSWERS. AN EXCLUSIVE Q&A WITH RABBI EFREM GOLDBERG

Rabbi Efrem Goldberg is the Senior Rabbi of the Boca Raton Synagogue (BRS), a rapidly-growing congregation of over 1,000 families in Boca
Raton, Florida. BRS is the largest Orthodox Synagogue in the Southeast United States. Rabbi Goldberg’s warm and welcoming personality has
helped attract people of diverse backgrounds and ages to feel part of the BRS community, reinforcing the BRS credo of ‘Valuing Diversity and
Celebrating Unity.’
Rabbi Goldberg is the founder of Yeshiva of South Florida and co-founder of the Florida Chesed Network. His weekly shiurim on parsha,
emunah and more can be found on podcast players and youtube.com
Rabbi Goldberg along with Rabbis Philip Moskowitz, and Josh Broide, have a weekly podcast in which they go “Behind The Bima” and
shmooze about contemporary issues. Every week features an unscripted and lively discussion, special guests, and a behind-the-scenes look at
leading a large and dynamic Jewish community.
Rabbi Goldberg has been a weekly columnist for The Jewish & Country Vues for the last six years.
Rabbi Goldberg, his wife Yocheved and their family live in Boca Raton.
This past Friday Ari Hirsch from The Jewish Vues sat down with Rabbi Goldberg in BRS to discuss many different exciting & relevant topics.

Thank you, Rabbi, for taking the time to do this interview and thank you for being a weekly columnist of The Jewish Vues for the past six years. There’s no doubt that you have hundreds, if not thousands, of fans who read your article each week, and we truly appreciate it. Klal Yisrael and the world at large have been consumed with the Hamas-Israel supposed ceasefire deal. Obviously, we want all the hostages returned. The question is whether Israel is giving away too much to secure their return. From a halachic standpoint, how much is one hostage’s life worth? If Hitler Yemach Shemo were alive today, should we be willing to give him up to save a hostage? Where do we draw the line?
It’s a complicated and difficult halachic question. This is discussed all the way back in the Gemara and the Rishonim, including Maharam MiRottenberg, one of the last of the Baalei HaTosfos, who himself was held for ransom. The Gemara teaches that you don’t pay more than necessary, as you don’t want to incentivize the enemy to continue capturing and holding hostages. There’s
halachic literature to answer this question, but the most important thing I would say is that halacha dictates that a person needs to know all the facts before making a decision. Many people who are pontificating, debating, and worrying don’t have access to all the facts. We know the numbers—how many terrorists were released to secure hostages—but what are the other parts of this equation? We don’t know where the hostages are held. Is there another way to bring them home? What are the broader implications of the war? How does this affect the end of the war? What promises, if any, did President Trump make to Prime Minister Netanyahu regarding securing Israel? For example, I don’t know this and I have no reason to know, but if Trump assured Netanyahu that America would help Israel confront Iran, which could potentially be the salvation of the Jewish people, that would be a very different calculation. So, there is halachic literature on this, and it’s a significant halachic question. But
the most important halachic principle is that anyone making a halachic decision needs to know all the facts. The average
person following from afar doesn’t have all the facts and, therefore, shouldn’t feel entitled to an opinion.

In a time when unity among Jews, achdus, is so critical, how can we overcome the tendency to judge, label, and fight with one another? What practical steps can we take to create greater understanding and mutual respect within our communities, despite our differences?
On October 8, there was incredible unity among the Jewish people, but it feels like we’re returning to October 6 when we were criticizing, marginalizing, condemning, and judging each other. That puts us in a very dangerous place. Our enemies have always known that when we are divided, that’s when they strike—that’s when we’re vulnerable. Whether it was Haman, or the modern-
day Haman of Hamas, they saw us on the brink of a civil war, and that’s when they struck. They didn’t anticipate that we
would respond with unity. That’s when we were at our greatest strength. Now, there’s a danger.
Going back to the last question, I think that when it comes to the ceasefire, people can have opinions and try to understand
[the political situation], but we can’t let differing opinions divide us. We have to remain united because that’s our biggest strength. It’s dangerous otherwise. The difficulty of unity goes all the way back to Yosef and his brothers. It’s not a new problem. We’ve been fighting it for generations. We sit on the floor every Tisha B’Av because we’re still struggling with it. I think it takes intention, mindfulness, and concentration to see in others what we have in common, not just our differences. Almost everyone has differences—Hashem made us that way. We vote differently, have different tastes, think differently, root for different teams,
and enjoy learning in different ways. We could focus on these differences and let them divide us, or we can look for what we have in common, our shared history and destiny. There is something common in every person that we can find to connect us.
When the pasuk says, “V’ahavta L’reacha Kamocha Ani HaShem”—”Love your neighbor as yourself, I am Hashem”— what does “I am Hashem” have to do with loving your neighbor? The answer is that every person has a tzelem Elokim—a divine spark. So, we should look for the godliness in others, for the redeemable and lovable qualities. For some, it’s right there on the surface—you see them, and you just want to give them a hug. For others, you might have to look deeper. But anyone who has tzelem Elokim has a divine spark. If we live with an Ayin Tov—looking for the good in others— we’ll find it. If we live with an Ayin Ra’a, looking for the bad, we’ll find something to hate, to disagree with, and be divided about. It takes mindfulness. It’s hard because sometimes we see a video, read a story, or meet someone who aggravates us, and we feel like responding. But we should stop, take a deep breath, and remember that we don’t always need to have an opinion.

Since October 7, I’ve been working harder on putting things in perspective. If someone you have a negative opinion about was kidnapped and held in a tunnel for a year and a half, would you not pray for them? If their child was killed on the battlefield, would you not pay a Shiva call? So why wait for that? Look for what we have in common, not what divides us. Look with an Ayin Tov, not an Ayin Ra’a, and we’ll find so much more we can agree on.

How does a frum family manage the financial pressures of society, with rising costs for yeshiva tuition, summer
camps, food, college, chasunas, and, for many, the responsibility of supporting married children? It can often feel overwhelming. This week is yeshiva break week, and it has become the norm—or even seen as a halacha—
for families to go away and spend thousands of dollars on a vacation. How do frum families, even those making over $200,000 a year but still struggling financially, navigate these pressures? Where do we draw the line on spending? How can we prioritize our spending in a way that aligns with our values? And most importantly, what message are we sending to our children?
It’s a great question. It’s a painful question, and it deserves careful thought. Some rising costs, like inflation, are beyond our control—everyone is suffering from them, like the cost of eggs and gas. Hopefully, there will be policies that will help bring those costs down. But there are other things we can change, such as how we make simchas. Why do we need two kinds of meat, three
chickens, seven side dishes, and fourteen dips at a Shabbos meal? Even the price of sufganiyot this year is out of control! There’s no mitzvah to eat sufganiyot, but we’ve allowed the standards of what a simcha has to be to escalate.

There’s also a broader cultural shift needed. I think, and I might get in trouble for saying this, that the message needs to come from the top. Many Jewish organizations and Torah institutions hold extravagant events—fancy food, entertainment, giveaways—yet they preach about living within our means and humility. We need to scale back, not just as individuals but as a community.
People shouldn’t go into debt just to keep up with the Joneses. Live within your means, work hard, and daven to Hashem. Going into debt to keep up is sending the wrong message, and it burdens the next generation.

That said, some things, like tuition, are non-negotiable. We must invest in our children’s Torah education, and communities are stepping up to provide scholarships. But we must also learn to live within our means. I remember growing up, we didn’t go on luxury vacations. We drove in a station wagon to Wildwood, New Jersey and had simple, meaningful family vacations. It’s not about luxury. You don’t need to fly halfway around the world to create memories.

When someone asks you about someone for a shidduch, how much are we supposed to tell them? How much should one volunteer, and where does lashon hara come into play?
I’ve written about this before. I think the situation is enormously out of control. It’s out of control because it’s both unwarranted and unhealthy, but also because it’s counterproductive. I can’t tell you how tragically, tragically, I’ve learned in the last few weeks about young people getting divorced just a few weeks or months into marriage, often after the discovery of something that, despite all the interrogations, references, and phone calls, was never revealed. The reality is that the system is so broken
that even with all these reference checks, people aren’t necessarily transparent or completely honest. So, not only is it not helping, in some cases it’s actually hurting. It makes no sense.

You have people who ask their Rabbis when they should disclose things like medication or personal struggles. The answer is often that it should be revealed on the fourth, fifth, seventh, or eighth date—never beforehand. But the reference is supposed to reveal it, while the person themselves shouldn’t? And this is the psak of the rabbi who’s answering the phone call? It’s a really broken system.

It’s reasonable and understandable for someone to want to check into a family, a person’s reputation, and how they’re viewed. But I think we need to go back to the old days when the people making shidduchim knew the parties involved. When I was introduced to my wife, it was by a neighbor of hers whose son, Bobby Feiner—Rabbi Eytan Feiner’s mother— was one of my closest friends. She told me about this amazing girl, Yocheved Bruckstein, what she was up to, a bit about her family, and I said, “Great. You know me, and you know her. If you think it makes sense, I don’t need blood samples, tax returns, or to start calling roommates who won’t tell me anything true anyway.” That was enough for me to know that it was worth going on a date to find out more.

Today, we have amazing, selfless shadchanim setting people up, but the system is such that they’re setting up people they don’t know. Thanks to WhatsApp, you get a pile of resumes,  read them, and they call it “throwing pants and skirts together.” So, when
someone is setting you up, and they don’t know you or the other person, you have to do your own checks. I understand that. But I think we should encourage more people to set up people they know. Let’s go back to that. Let’s eliminate the need for interrogations by having people who know the parties personally make the shidduch.

I’ve wanted to work on a project where a group of Rabbis and I could compile a list of reasonable questions to ask, and have Rabbis sign on to say, “I will only answer these questions.” But when people start asking me outrageous or inappropriate questions that would violate confidentiality, I sometimes turn to them and say, “If I were your Rav, would you want me to answer that?” The halachos of lashon hara sometimes require you to reveal something that can be damaging, but I’m not saying that Rabbis or any other references should conceal significant mental health issues. It’s just a very broken system.

If a young man or woman is getting therapy, they’re incredibly healthy. We should admire that. If they have mild ADD or anxiety and take medication to manage it, that’s ok. We live in a world where who doesn’t have anxiety? The problem is that the shidduch world discourages people from seeking help, from taking medication, because then their references can answer, “No, they don’t take anything.” But then they’re not as healthy. They won’t make as good of a husband or wife, or mother or father. Don’t we want people at their best? Now people who need help are not getting it, just so they can say, “No, I don’t get help.” It’s a broken system, and it’s not working.

If you told me that these extreme measures were leading to people getting married faster, staying married longer, and being happier, then I’d say, fine. But we’re not seeing that. We’re seeing more broken engagements and more early divorces than I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. Maybe we should press pause on the system and say, “Let’s not add more problems. Maybe it’s time to rethink how we’re doing things.”

With antisemitism everywhere &the world as crazy as it is, should Rabbonim in chutz laaretz be promoting aliyah?
Absolutely. Rabbonim should 100% be promoting more aliyah.

So why don’t they?
I do, and I don’t know why we wouldn’t. A lot of people think Rabbis are afraid to promote aliyah because they’ll lose their members—and their paycheck. Baruch HaShem, there are a lot of members, and halavi that we’d all go. We could turn the lights off and go as well. I desperately want to make aliyah. I think about it every day. My family’s in Israel. My heart’s in Israel. I have a psak from my Rebbe, who got it from his Rebbe, and that tradition is that the captain goes down with the ship. If there’s work to
be done here, then Rabbis need to stay here. But, we should be pushing people to Israel, supporting Israel from here, and going as often as possible. But it’s not our time if we’re doing good work here. My heart is in Israel, though, and I encourage everyone. Every year, we have a dessert reception where we honor those making aliyah. We stay in touch with those who’ve made Aliyah, and we talk about aliyah. There are legitimate reasons not to make Aliyah, but there are no legitimate reasons not to be struggling with the question. The question shouldn’t be if, but when, and what needs to happen to make that aliyah.

The last thing I’ll say is, and I feel strongly about this, I don’t think Aliyah should be all or nothing. It’s not just about either moving to Israel or not. If you have business, family, or other reasons that require you to maintain an address outside of Israel, that’s okay. But you should get to Israel as often as you can. If you can afford to have a residence there, even better. If you can spend 90% of your time in America but live with the mindset that, “I’m connected to Israel. I might spend most of my time in America, but my heart is in Israel,” that’s also valuable. It’s not the same as citizenship or serving and paying taxes, and I’m not
equating it to that. If we create a binary system where you either make Aliyah or you don’t, then someone might think, “Well, I can’t make aliyah right now, so I guess I don’t care about Israel.” But if we set up a third option, where you can’t live there full-time, but you get there as often as you can and have the mindset that you’re connected to Eretz Yisrael, that’s a step toward aliyah too.