From Bokortem, Florida, this is Behind the Bima.

On this episode, the rabbis are joined by Matthew Hiltzik, president and CEO of Hiltzik Strategies, a strategic communications firm.

Matthew discusses working with clients like Hillary Clinton and Ivanka Trump,

shares challenges he's faced along the way, and talks about how his Jewish upbringing has informed his career. Also, the rabbis discuss whether or not they'll trim their beards after Lagba Omeh. And Rabbi Goldberg reveals some of his favorite albums. All this and more, Behind the Bima. Welcome to Behind the Bima. It's Wednesday night, 9 o'clock. I'm your host Rabbi Eiff from Goldberg, joined with my dear friends and colleagues, Rabbi Philip Moskowitz and Rabbi Josh Brody.

We're here to take you.

Behind the Bima. We're here to go behind the Bima. It is another great Wednesday night, another wonderful week. We marked Pesachshani. We're going to be marking Lagba Omer. many of us are super excited to get a haircut, possibly trim the beard, still being debated and negotiated, and to hear music again, super pumped for Lagba Omer. Gentlemen, how is your

week? What's going on in your life? So excited. I actually got a call this week from a big yeshiva.

I can't name the name. And they said they would love to bring me on to their, into the sheer tomorrow morning. So there is a classroom somewhere. I can't name where it is. You might get someone from behind the bema showing up in your classroom tomorrow morning. Wow. Come to school. Wow. Now, we've actually discussed going on the road and doing live shows soon. Maybe we should start doing that soon, guys. Yeah, I'm a little less convinced than the two of you that anyone would show up. But, but Brody, what are you being brought on to speak about? What are you going to be talking about? So I'll be honest. I'm going to kind of narrow it down. It's a ninth grade. There's, I guess you could say there's honors classes and there's not honors classes. So this might not be the honors class, which is exactly the class that I used to teach. I might have been part of back in the day. And we're just going to have a schmoo session. You know, they have questions. I said the one thing is, I just want to be clear. You're doing the rabbi cop out, which is like, I don't want to prepare. So we'll do a question and answer. No, it's even better than that. I told them. I told the rabbi.

I said, listen, first of all all we're going to be honest it's open and honest discussion and said I don't want you to guide the questions I want to give them the floor whatever they want to talk about that's what we're going to talk about so I'm very excited is there something you're hoping they're asking and is there something you're hoping they won't? No, no, there's really no question that can't be discussed. And I'm just hoping that the rabbi doesn't cut me off in the middle. I'm not going to ask you this question. This is not a topic for us tonight, but this was in the news in certain Jewish institution. But what if they ask you, it's on the minds of a lot of young people, not necessarily because it directly affects them, but it affects their outlook.

They want to know what Judaism says about LGBT, let's say.

So do you have a formulated, a good, compelling, sensitive, reasonable answer?

It is a complicated one.

It is a complicated one.

I'm going to review a lot of your classes tonight.

Just make sure that I have things to say. Now, in all seriousness, it is a serious question. And I do have an answer. I don't know that it's a good answer. It's an answer that works for me. And I think that's the most important thing with all these types of questions.

First of all, you don't know the answer.

You've got to tell teenagers, I just don't know.

A lot of times people try to fake them out. And I think that's the most important thing with all these types of questions. First of all, you don't know the answer. You've got to tell teenagers, I just don't know.

A lot of times people try to fake them out and teenagers see right through that.

So it's going to be an open and honest discussion and I'm very excited about it. That's a fantastic point. because what I used to do is every year prior to COVID, I used to speak to the high school students, the seniors were I used to give a schmooze to the boys before they graduated. And I purposely, my whole schick was that the teachers had to leave the room, right? My whole thing was, I'm not your teacher. There's no consequences for the questions that you ask. I know the teachers there automatically, you know, suppress some of the questions they want to ask them. My first thing I would always do it, I would say, I want to ask the teachers to leave.

And then I would tell the guys, I'd say, the reason why I asked the teachers to leave is

that you could feel comfortable asking anything under the sun.

...