The Ramchal's Essay on Fundamentals - Part 20 - Rabbi Yirmiyahu Ullman

so we are we have started the final section of this essay which is dealing with its dealing with basically the the oil the oil da and and in the Talmud it's called being in a tour about pay the shafts and basically the points that we saw so far is that the Oral Torah is considered to be an integral part of the Torah's teachings because if you look at the tourist teachings on any matter you'll find that it's inadequate based on the description and tort itself to know what to do and therefore since the torah is to come and tell us what to do Torah means hoorah and also promises us reward for doing so and punishment for transgressing if you look at any of the mitzvahs or the transgressions they've errors in the Torah just based on the way the disorder describes what you should or shouldn't do it's a non-starter in any case and God could not promise us reward or warn us about being punished if he doesn't tell us what it is that we're supposed to be doing or refraining from doing where's all the information about the do's and the don'ts if it's not in the Torah how would you know what to do so the answer is it's in the oral torah and therefore that's an indication that the Oral Torah was an integral part of the tour itself when it was originally given to the Jewish people only was not written down it was given orally and this would be the difference between what came to be written down in the five books of Moses and what we call the Oral Torah which was not written down until after 1,500 years till after 500 years when first admission was written and then another 2 300 years when the gomorrah explanation on the mission was written so when you had the mission and they work together they comprise what we call the Talmud the Talmud is the composition of the Mishnah and the more the mission itself is divided into six general categories that we call shas shisha starring we spoke about what those six orders of the Oral Torah are the explanatory Gamora on each Mishnah was later inserted between each mistress so that the tractates became full of written a court accounts of what the oral Taurus teachings were on any number of mitzvahs and things in the Torah okay so this basically idea that round the year 1300 before the Common Era BCE the Jewish people had the Sinai experience God gave them the Torah via Moshe at Sinai they heard the first two mitzvahs the other ten of the commandments they did not hear and the rest of the Torah they did not here either Moses went up the mountain for 40 days 40 nights no eating no drinking and he received the entire body of knowledge that we call Torah part of which became written down in the five books part of which remained oral and he taught that to Joshua Joshua to the elders and so forth and so on from generation to generation and we spoke about how even though about 1,500 years elapsed between the time the tour was given because it was given around the Year 1300 of the Common Era and it was written down for the first time around the Year 200 totaling 1500 years even though it was an old tradition for approximately 1500 years by and large the integrity of it had been preserved it was not lost and there are several reasons why this is so number one the argument about the telephone game doesn't apply here because that game is a game first of all the other day it's just a game yeah you messed up deliberately is yeah but but you know but the transmission of the Torah from generation generation was not taken lightly thank you seriously it was no game number one number two it wasn't whispered from one person to another it was shouted right among thousands of thousands of people simultaneously so was very open and therefore for these reasons it was taken very serious it wasn't a game number one number two it was open it wasn't hidden it was shared and therefore openly transmitted from generation to generation there's every reason to assume that it was preserved and not lost number one number two since it was being transmitted by great tour sched stages in telligent people who viewed themselves as being responsible for an accurate transmission of the torah from generation to generation for the purpose of preserving it they would not have waited till it was lost to write it down they would have written it down much earlier out of the concern that it might be lost which is exactly what happened they wrote it down not because she said honey was later it had been lost because by that time it was clear that it was in danger of being lost that's point number 2 1 / 3 you see that when they wrote it down it was not out of a state of crisis because when they did so they wrote it down in the very very terse terms of a mission oh right they were very economical about writing down this information and that would not have been done by people who were concerned about its having been lost or its being in the state of being being lost it would have and they would they would have written down much more than they actually did so 50 years later what he did was they started writing down the skeletal format of the Oral Torah in order to preserve the framework within which that very vital oral tradition which had been preserved until that time could continue to exist in a relatively free style which was true to the original format of its being an oral torah while never less assuring that there would be some structure right that would help help it be remembered along the way if there were ever any concern serious concern that might be forgotten a few centuries later the decision was was decided to head and write down the rest of it but clearly that was not written down by people who would irresponsibly have waited until it was lost to write it down but people who took it seriously enough we're intelligent enough a responsible enough to write it down long before it become lost and that's that would be the the Talmud those are my focuses but that's not nose is this that's not necessary because it was forgotten base shopping based on how many miles did they have 18 and you're talking about reams and reams on his information right so right relatively speaking right there wasn't really a lot that was forgotten and a lot of them a lokacin right a lot of of cloaks did that was part of the old tradition that was part of the wall just hammering out what it means what the tradition of each one has what the proofs far here and there and ultimately that you know there was a way of resolving what the actual practical Halawa is the proper understanding isn't but we're introduced to the focus in order to engage us in that dynamic of oral torah which is a conversation no this is a dispute that isn't resolved um it isn't I mean it may or may not be resolved when I'll focuses dispute okay again i'm not saying that nothing was forgotten but just in the by and large the integrity had been preserved and tried to illustrate reasons why right so the two points here you can't say that it was made up by the sages because they're explaining things in the Torah which according to the dora easy get rewarded for is apt for but if you look at the torah God doesn't reveal what you're supposed to do in order to get that reward or transgressor you do that that's how would you know it's a non-starter that's the old troll the Alturas coming to compliment the written Torah in which case they were both received simultaneously number one number two that role Torah even though it was written was not written down the week we discussed among ourselves maybe 10 of reasons advantages for the tradition being oral and not being written right but ultimately it was it became clear that it should be written down but it was written down not after it had been forgotten but in anticipation that it might be forgotten certain inaccuracies and things that were forgotten along the way but by and large remained intact now the second part of what we said here is that the the torture Bob does three things the first thing that it does is um it adds like we said detail to the written Torah that the written Torah emits the second thing is that it clarifies things which in the written Torah are doubtful it could be read one way or the other the third thing that it does is it actually clarifies where the meaning of the Torah is actually different than what it seems okay and that's the third function of the old tour so it's clarifying the tour itself either by adding detail clarifying cases of doubt or sometimes even showing you where the simple reading of the text is different than what God really had in mind the road tour is telling you that and that brings us up to 180 80 the second paragraph on the page Lumi magique hablo Shulman ambulatory is Bochy mo cosa vuole turkey meat protein bahu ki mahadi and what we have received the tradition that God who is the owner the master of the Torah wrote it was visit you know in a specific way and according to special laws vika Cheniere teyla haveen covino's ballot voting boho and we want to try and understand the intention of the one who's behind the words that's God's will in its action ha left by a mile pia hukum ahem uma draw him ahem we will have to understand the words of Torah according to the laws and the principles that govern that body of information that everybody's information has its lost has its ways of analysis and the same thing with the Torah there are ways in which one is in is intended to understand what the tour saying and derive with the torus meeting is in order to do that properly we need to know those rules missoula Z alpha P chakra I am sure she knows and pepperoni cheese ball no soha me lo SE Ted there Sean che tori no al of the user Harvick oh oh mama couponing lo 'yeah purusha Who am et bateau mmm Kevin Chappell Advani van van qivana shahnaz possession aviso he says here nevertheless as well as they even though though it would be possible to give explanation to these words and this explanation could in fact be suffered by the words themselves meaning they could be held up by the words themselves could be fit in it's still possible shatori no allowed by you sir haha and it might even be so that this explanation would fit into the words better than some alternate explanation nevertheless room mom I'll component never less loyal parish 180 Pedroia man still that this explanation would not be considered to be the real explanation of those words Kaman ship ballads volumes even ramco vanish our team is 0 since the author of the words intended something different than what seems to be the correct meaning I think he's elaborating here on the third part of the the third aspect of the old tour which comes off which sometimes comes to give and and a meaning which is different than what you think the actual meaning of the tour is boom Navajo chemo la vie joking M clow harsh Lucius we meet osha torrented Russians behem these ways or rules of the Torah are included in the 13 principles by which the Torah is towards meaning is deduced with all of his details so there are 13 principles are cutting the 13 laws of exegesis the 13 laws through which one derives out of drives meaning out of the verses and there's cava home air and 13 of these different tools well often they enhance the literal meaning of the text but it also happens quite often that they take the meaning of the text out of the little meaning in order to tell us something which we would not necessarily understand and since these are the rules by which the Torah is to be studied the the teaching which results for them is considered to be the correct teaching even if it's different than what we would think logically yeah or intellectually or academically that's part of the the tradition of the Oral Torah that's presented to us by the sages the sages of the of the Talmud had the tradition of the old Torah dating back to Moses preserve these 13 laws of exigence for us do we have any remedy some of them look more of the brings brings examples of sources for the tour and at least for some of them I'll give you one example you mentioned kava home are you familiar the term Carvahall Muhammad means lenient and stringent simple thing is it's kind of like if somebody who is tall can't reach something all the more so somebody was short yeah or if somebody who was short can reach something all the more so somebody was tall called the home here the mo brings the source for col de hablar from the Torah where I believe it's Moses says to God the Jewish people are not accepting me and you want me to go if appear before fair and he should accept what I'm saying the Jewish people who I represent and who have every interest in accepting what I have to say which is redeeming them do not accept the fact that you sent me so you're going to send me to Pharaoh expecting Brooks to accept my word when he has every reason not to accept what I'm saying and he's not part of my people such as example not to find his formal logic uh I think it's more it's more than just an example cava home its use an example this is an example of alcohol mare is a accepted method of logic in the Torah it's truly the example that use is not a legal example ya think maybe that's the point you're getting at but it's still recognize them like ma che is giving God a valid logical environment based on a kava Homer yeah they have more reason to accept me and they don't all the more so farrah want that's the cobbler home that's kind of like I said somebody's talking to it all the more so somebody is short you can find more about these 13 principles if you'd like in the english sitter at the beginning of the morning prayer service they're listed and the article has some commentary about what each one is and a little bit example how they're used in what the source would be in check that the time should take that odd and it's further more important to know shaheen a EK haddenham Coulomb all of the laws mashable mitzvahs hace umar mitzvahs lotus a those which included in the positive commandments the do's and those which are included in the don'ts the Lotus a Coulomb mokuba lima me moshe rabbeinu a lava Shalom they all go back to Moses may peace be upon him meaning all of the 613 commandments the do's and the don'ts and there are 248 do's and 365 don'ts right the 248 dues are described in the Jewish sources corresponding to 248 proactive limbs of the body and the 365 prohibitions are described as corresponding to the 365 restrictive ligaments tendons in the person's body to say that just as a person's organic holistic being is comprised of both proactive activity and also restrictive forces restricting that activity so the Torah is a combination of both pro action within the context of restriction and in fact you need the restrictive quality of the ligaments to execute the proactive movement of the limb so to you need the restrictive quality of the prohibitions in order to properly express one's my proactive interaction the world so for example a person has a proactive tendency to eat or let's say be involved in the act associated with reproduction if a person has no restrictions then those tendencies can become self destructive and harmful so it's the very restriction which enables them to be directed in a positive right in a positive direction and and and and the idea is that therefore the do's and the don'ts in the Torah the composite of the dues in the dope represent an organic body which is like a since synthesized whole which enables one to live organically and healthy in a productive type of away these are the 248 and 365 um you know another analogy that I like to you sometimes to explain this is if you think about for example this a vessel the the restrictive quality of the of the walls of the vessel actually enable you to have the productive purpose of maintaining right the valuable liquid inside and so to the restrictive parameters of the Torah enable you to hold within it right the the actually the valuable content of what makes life important what makes life valuable and it's the very restrictive walls which enable the for example if you want to hold water that water rises if you didn't have the walls the water would spill and be wasted and so to God's productive potential and and in an influx and energy is all contained within the restrictive quality of the don'ts and if a person is operating within the parameter of the don'ts then he'll be able to be elevated within the context of the deuce but if he engages in the dues yeah without that that that restrictive kind of parameter the result is going to be a wasting in a dissipation of that potential energy so this is a 365 then 248 all of them come back they all come from moshe they were not made up Oh monkey blows upon the rock oh sheeeeeit ibrahim essaouira removes mhmm vitara should've tov remembers him shown him however the sages of blessed memory have a tradition that the matters which were given over in the tradition or themselves that is hinted to in the Torah meaning the 248 and the 365 are explicit but the explanations they even if they are not explicit or at least in tinted at in the Torah Apodaca tamizha you do to him according to the different types of hints and suggestions that was known to them Mahayana for some the Moose commit slam shut ode Vania shun shun amo gambas ethylic and it was something which was well known and accepted unanimously upon that upon them that it was good in God's eyes that we should exert ourselves in this particular part of Torah learning which is not only learning what's explicitly there but learning the details about what is only hinted is suggested and that's a lot of what the Oral Torah is doing parish what this means is the UDS maakoa new rims de hitori Shabelle pay but tasha bathtub in order to find the suggestions of the teachings which are in the Oral Torah as they are rooted in the actual written Torah and therefore when you learn even more you find so much an experience of learning the Gomorrah is to look at the verses and understand where within the verses or the wording of the verses or even the addition or even the omission of a letter or even even a even know a vowel yeah ads changes the meaning of of the tour text and the suggestion is yes God wrote the entire Torah in a way which would include the entire tour the actual mitzvahs are explicit but the details of them are often only indirectly derived from the way that tour that Miss was described in the tour itself and it could literally be hanging on like we say the letter would the point of a letter good coat social yard now can you to hoco lakad mayhem the vacation was in LA and therefore the sages worked very hard in order to understand these hints and suggestions of the details of the tour within the tour versus themselves cafeé maschi yoga halo yours are not one according to what would seem according to each particular sage to be most correct but also was in the context of a tradition that he received from his rabbis was a marsh attempts upon me robbery shots and that's what you'll find in many times learning the Talmud Masamoto navika shreyas the den we Nadine him the going back and forth the argumentation as it were in search of proofs for any particular law of the of any of the laws look for haben am McLucas al haria and there are actually Malaga's in meaning differences of opinion about where the din is derived from so that in other words there might be there's an agreement about the fact that the general law of the Torah includes detailed a the question is where does that detail they come from so there'll be a discussion and sometimes even argument that a comes from the addition of that word or the omission of that letter or through the principle of what's called the heck ish org 0 shava or call the home air or any of the other 13 principles written Sahara yachtsman shown on the fee dark Ivana Hipparchus low yo cfa and it turns out there for that through these tools of understanding the 13 principles for example it might turn out that the meaning doesn't really fit in so well with the way it's actually awarded ah hi Union ooh ma chère Martha lava but the real matter is as I've explained she neared in Atlanta Kabbalah that they understand this law in other words they know that there is such a law because they received it through tradition it exists question is where is in the Torah I like it's a hood of a cash flow Iran is better ship if Tom they want to find out where it is hinted at in the Torah because it's a detail of one of the 613 how the show nourishes the part of the mother and that will be based on the foundation which we described earlier DNA lawyer to be Osama to whooshing feigning low gear sue boy some high pollution it will not be intention of those explanations scheisse scheisse Cavanaugh's hem chiffon mcgaha who a vulgar to sheilas a given ballot or Abajo what does it mean to say here in a low-yield server solution which i saw those Cavanaugh's hem chef Colicchio ha who it's not the intention of these explanations to say that this was actually the explicit I think that anybody means here the explicit meaning of the verse but rather about YouTube is a given by adorable kubinashi lots of demos badar chemical but rather this is the way God intended to hint at these matters in the Torah even if it doesn't always straight in doesn't seem to fit in perfectly logically haha Murdock erm is that's the way that God hinted at these different teachings in the Torah noise awful not sure what to the rabid dog kept shot in addition to what God had in mind when he wrote the open explicit meanings of the Torah vicaroo the funny awesome actor and sometimes this principle is called in a smarter generally speaking honest mata is when the sages wanted to add rabbinic legislation to the Torah legislation what they would do is they would find some basis in the wording in the Torah as a source for their a bennek for the rabbinic law and that's generally a corny my understanding call Dennis mokta for the word sumith which is they use some torah word or some implication from the Torah as a kind of source upon which to lean right there their rabbinic legislation and the context theory seems to be saying that the tremor a smack that can sometimes be used to refer to a hint from the Torah to a torah law which is not explicit fina cozy shinee moudaber oughtta hooba helica mitzvahs why didn't all of this discussion that I'm saying either authored notes is only in the part of the mitzvahs the part of the tour which is the commandments and the loss ah the kulluk goddess but in the part of Torah learning which is haggadah which is not really the laws but it's more like the philosophy the theology of Judaism yes Oh decorum of herring there are other principles brt Makabe mo Cowan is not smell and I've clarified them for you in a dove in another place separately on its own i don't know where he's referring to ok but the 13 law the 13 principles of exigences are specifically applying to law to halacha but there's a whole nother set of rules governing agata how to learn out the theological and philosophical the ethical teachings of the of the Torah that I'm personally that's familiar with and I'm not sure what reference is referring to if I could think of like a example maybe to what we're talking about I don't know you remember the sugi that we learned on 88 news of me we learn together Eden's on me yeah we learn it together oh you went there yeah um law Cecil oh yeah VAR seasonal cash Arizona so Sahib you shall do to him as he intended to do to his brother so in that verse itself there are many many different dresses for example glassy solo you shall do to him to him you shall do but not to his children yeah and the Gamorrean rocco's uses that as an example to derive a law where the detail law within the law of a team's opening which is that um you can only do reciprocal punishment on this false witness if it's not going to end up punishing his children Val Cecil okish Arizona law says that he did to him but not his children so for example in the case of the yeah in the case of the been crucial in case of the game the been Gousha so two witnesses come and they say this person is the son of a woman who had been divorced before marrying her current husband who's the father of this person which means they're basically saying this guy who's growing is really a disqualified cohen he's not a mom's here but he's what we call the hollow the vein trying to do so so now if these witness themselves are corny even though normally would say they wanted to disqualify this Cohen by saying he is a halal so they should also be drunk allow we say no you can't do that why because the result would be if he's a hollow then his children become hollow all right so you want to arbitrarily make this person a disqualified Cohen because they wanted to disqualify somebody else he'll result in making his children is qualified in which case it would not be vastly solo you have to do to him Timmy should do but it can't but the punishment can't be extended to anybody else so this is the example how the torah law is talking about Ian's on me but the the oral law is coming to do to base to qualify that Torah the Torah halacha based on on this type of a Ramos ya sea solo or for example it says a car shares among not such love Heath as he intended to do to his brother good morning Josh it's his brother and not to a sister meaning their scenarios where the law would be different between a male and a female and in such cases the din of aliens only would not would not apply okay for example the discussion there is talking about if the dog of a Cohen commits an act of adultery her punishment is going to be different than if a man commits adultery and if it's a man who gives testimony about this woman which is false testimony right we would actually not be able to execute the law of Aden zoning on him right because you can't do to him the punishment that would go to her that is a specific punishment for her and it can't be in which case you know you would not do that you would applied in London but rather you do something else you do the lashes for example yeah these are different examples of this type of a thing so that these are laws which the sages that the Talmud had a tradition on they knew what the laws were but according to the way the author here is presenting it they had to unless they had a clear tradition about where the source and the tour wording was for each of these laws they had themselves to try and find out where in the tour's wording would there be an indication for the set of laws right that they received through tradition this would be the type of thing that he's talking about okay um another one came to mind I think within this context of a time zone as well but uh oh hui on Duchamp hui a nose job a person who kills by accident he is going to go to the City of Refuge but if somebody said if edible but the but a team zone even come and say we saw him kill somebody by accident when that was false and didn't really happen and now that in falsified we say he goes there but this only meme wanted to send in there they won't go there instead rather they get the lashes I can't even imagine who would be chasing after these people to you talk about the witnesses yes ok so the point is what would they have done their testimony would have resulted in this person's being sent to and forced to remain in the city of refuge so now they've been falsified perhaps what we should do is force them to go and stay in city refuge as well this city of refuge is known as really a punishment it's not the Polish resist the refuge from so that's the whole discussion it's it's also viewed as being as a punishment and the truth is that he's forced to stay there because of because there's a go all adan meaning it in a real scenario somebody dill can somebody by mistake so the avenging relatives are allowed to pray around that city of refuge and that's a way of making sure the guy stays there because if he leaves he's going to be sniper yeah so so what we do is in a case where somebody killed by accident and there are no blood avenging relatives based in actually appoints people to be responsible to make sure those people stay in it have like headhunters you know and so Zoey's so you know you might think to do the same thing here as well these people didn't actually kill but maybe we would cause them to stay to go there and stay there but we say that's not the case who yuh new shaman who the low some of you know those were coming to to anyway these are just a three different examples within that that that sugah evading zalman which give it which illustrate what we're talking about here okay I think we should pause here before starting this next paragraph was a bit long I don't want to end up rushing through it unnecessarily so it's what can you continue best audition tomorrow