Rabbi Dr. Akiva Tatz - Q&A Part 3 (Zoom)

[Applause] well this is a great pleasure for me to ask questions to my primary teacher over many many many years and good friend of mine i'll try to keep the questions um as uh difficult as possible so i thought we'll get a little bit of a challenge so we'll start off with this one which i guess is covert related uh very good question that came in uh we understand that any physical illness is really a spiritual manifestation of a spiritual illness and the rabbis will often speak about the causes of uh illness as being a spiritual cause so why should we pray for someone to get well physically shouldn't we rather be praying for someone to be well spiritually what is the the torah thinking behind that idea okay good question first of all greetings daniel i didn't see you there before right okay nice haircut uh okay um and mordechai k has asked a question good thinking questions i'll come back to that if i can okay you are asking a question here about illness and the spiritual causes absolutely when you pray for someone to get better you mean pray for the cause absolutely it's like this every physical manifestation is an external revelation of something inside your hand your hand looks like the way it does because there's a spiritual quality inside called a hand by the way inside of that is a mitzvah there's 613 parts of your body each part of your body is a manifestation of a spiritual quality and each of those manifests as a mitzvah as well that's why there's a mitzvah for every part of your body when somebody's sick it means part of the spiritual body is not operating correctly and that reveals itself in the physical body so indeed if you if you knew if we knew the spiritual causes we would treat those before we treat the physical unfortunately we don't know there was a book called the safari forest sephora fort that was had the cure for every illness and it was hidden at a certain point in history hid that book and from that time on we no longer know the cures for illnesses this is quite a radical idea about khan since that time and speaking as a doctor i'm humbled to tell you this we do not know the cure for any illness we do not know the cure for any illness we can help we can give replacements we can set a broken bone we cannot switch on what got switched off a person's got diabetes we give them insulin it saves their life but we don't know how to switch on the part that got switched off we've lost connection to the spiritual source and that's part of living in a post-prophetic generation i wrote a book about this that's called as dawn ends the night i'll show you a copy because when you net when you when you uh when you get your credit card out to support emmett and jet you might as well buy a copy of this book at the same time as dawn ends the night i laughed at the artwork by the way so i hope you like the cover and my son did the chat at the back there's a beautiful chart here of jewish history rather fold our church shows you all the steps and stages of jewish history so great book anyway this talks about the problem of the darkness descending over time so let's summarize the answer to your question yes oh great daniel good good good someone's showing me a copy of the book on the screen good well done thank you made my day okay um so the answer to your question is when you pray for somebody you get better of course as a doctor i'm trying to treat the underlying problem if i can not deal with the superficial and therefore of course you are praying that the person's illness will get better because the underlying spiritual problem will get better and they'll be healed and that's why we always refer to goof and the shama right we're praying for hashem to heal the soul and the body because they always go together indeed can i take a question that's on my screen do you mind yes are you talking about the one about prophecy yeah can you see that yes so from what i understand i'll i'll read the question you can expand on it but the the question as i understand it is why is there no prophecy today uh we had profits in the past what changed and why don't we have prophecy today well the question is a little bit more specific the question says that there's an avramitsakan yakov in every generation the questioner seems to assume there must be such a thing and if they were prophets which have prophets today first of all i'm not sure of a source that says there's an avramitsakanyakov in every generation i'm not sure what source you're referring to although those qualities exist in every generation but here's the answer to your question modify those qualities exist in every generation at their level as the generations progress the level drops so we have the same qualities but a lower level in their generation they existed at a prophetic level there was a million volts around at the time as we move through history according to kabala we moved from the head to the feet now the feet have part of the soul in them as well but they're only feet we today are called ikvita de meshech at the bottom of the feet that's what we called so we are the thick dead skin on the bottom of the feet so we have all the qualities of the of the body they're at the level of the feet and therefore today we don't have prophecy we have insight we have intuition we have torah greatness we have rocha kodesh we no longer have prophecy and therefore the answer to your question is as we progress through history all the same elements apply but smaller and smaller and smaller at lower and lower and lower levels and of course the end of history is to complete the whole form i hope that's clear enough next question so uh another covert question uh which uh i think is very relevant not just in cover but in general it seems that judaism believes that there's something called hashgraph practice that that god watches over each and e every individual however it also seems that at times there's something that applies to the entire community in this case covert is implied uh apply to the entire world how do we understand the concept of a general hush a general you know providence and more individual specific what's called practice okay well let's let's try and approach that in five minutes there are two levels of one is called claudius and one called protis claudius means a general conduct of the world and it has many manifestations one is a conduct of the world to its final end the rambam says one manifestation of that is on groups for example species here's how the rama puts it he says when god is concerned about horses he's not concerned about each horse he's concerned about horses fish it doesn't matter to hashem where there's one fish more and one fish less he's concerned about the species of fish some of fosheem say the reason you should not kill an animal and its child on the same day that's genocidal again again you shouldn't kill a cow and it's cough on the same day what you're doing is destroying the transition from one generation to the next that is an element of genocide in it and god wants every species cows horses fish whatever it is to exist now don't make a mistake according to kabala god is concerned about every fish there's no unnecessary fish in the world he didn't throw any nuts and bolts into this creation unnecessarily every blade of grass is necessary but he relates to them in a different way than it relates to human beings human beings he relates to in a very particular specific way that's called ashkapratis that means you are important as a world unto yourself he does not relate to the world in the same way when it comes to grass or fish or horses but here's the thing you can choose to live like a horse or a fish and then you dealt with like them if you live like a statistic you don't live above the natural plane you don't build a relationship with him personally then you could dealt with like a statistic and if a plague sweeps through a population and the statistics are that 20 will get it and you happen to be one of the 20 then you get it and you register that as a statistical phenomenon that is part of the natural world but the reason is because you didn't live above the natural world conversely if you live above the natural world then the natural world dances to your tune what's the source for that when avraham avinu abraham was told he would have no children so god said to him you'll have a son he said god that's not possible it says otherwise in the stars uh excuse me who are you arguing with right you look in the stars no sun god appears and he says you'll have a son god that's great but the stars say otherwise what are you saying what he meant was hashem you control the stores that's how you operate in the world through the stars you're riding the future of the world and the physical dispensation of the world you're dictating it through these mechanisms through these natural forces so you're contradicting yourself you tell me you'll have a child and you're telling me in your stars that i will not and hashem said you're making a mistake you don't dance to the tune of those stars they dance to your tune it says hashem took him outside and he said look at the stars the simple translation is you see took him outside look at the stars as many as them you'll have your children the cabalistic translation is he took him outside the stars and he said look down upon the stars they dance to your tune you live beyond the stars then you live on a transcendent level and therefore the basic answer to your question is ashkaka practice is something that applies to human beings but you have to earn it if you insist on living like a statistic like a part of the chemical and physical universe you get dealt with that way that's that's the difference between the specific and if you live on a high enough level which means there's nothing besides hashem at all nothing can touch you nothing can touch you rashi says in the governing sanhedrin that's some sign to kill him review wanted to do very very powerful magic she came up to him she wanted to take some sand from under his feet rashi says she was powerful enough to kill somebody that was decreed to live can you imagine that she was powerful enough to kill somebody that god decreed should live go figure that out he said to go right ahead lady ain't not melville in this only god meaning i'm living at a level where magical stuff is not real at all do whatever you want not going to touch me if i die it's because because hashem did that to me and of course she was unable to touch him but you've got to live in a very special way to earn that thank you erotic just maybe following up on on that question do you have any practical suggestions for each of us to build this uh dependence on hashem to raise to rise ourselves above this this level um and and see that hashem is guiding our individual lives i do have some yes i do there are a few exercises you can do number one is torah study the more you get to know hashem the more you can relate to him how do you get to hashem in the world through torah that's who he exposes himself he reveals himself to you but it takes deep dedicated torah study not between one nap and another it takes deep lifetime commitment to his torah study since hashem reveals himself in torah you want to know then you read his book you know i wrote a book you want to get to know about me read my book hashem read his book he puts himself into his book right the word i am is an acronym for the sentence ana nafshik siba i myself have written myself and given myself to you so nothing beats torah study you can be a man you can be a woman you want to know god told to study but torah study with new year's torah study with the same old ears useless let me speak about this is very important people come to torah study usually with the same old ears that means they hear things a certain way the more torah they hear the more it goes into the previous way they used to think about things in the first place that makes you worse not better you come to torah with certain preconceptions you've got your ideas about the world and about god about judaism about religion the more you study the worse you become the first thing tara should do for you when you hear it is open new ears king david says name karita lee hashem god you tore open ears for me and moshe shapiro used to say you see the boys come to yeshiva you see from the beginning the ones who will go no place why they're so confident they understand things everything they learn they fit into the same concerts and all it does is make them more confident of the way they see things the first thing you want from a torah teacher is to break open your consciousness you want to smash open your preconceptions if possible you want it to destroy your way of thinking of course you have to be strong enough for that if you're going to get offended okay then you need somebody who's just going to caress your ego but new year's you have to come you're not listening for new information you want new ways of thinking about the information prepare to learn torah like that you get to to to know god secondly pray prayer talk to him once you practice it you got to practice it you got to talk to him building a relationship not mumbling words building a relationship with a commitment and then you see the results and once you see the results it strengthens your relationship and thirdly and finally you need to hang out with people who do it if you're going to hang out with people who are problematic people small-minded people people with issues and problems the whole time you're going to think that way when you hang out with big people big people emotionally big people spiritually big people and the more you get to know them the more depth you see there is it builds you that's my uh five-minute advice so you mentioned something that i want to just pick up and and and continue this this line uh a question came in uh particularly talking about a parent but this could be you know for anyone including a child and maybe even in today's times people are suffering more uh with this how do you help someone who has got low self-esteem who doesn't feel good about themselves doesn't feel that they are capable of reaching great spiritual heights or are depressed uh anxious in times like this well there's a lot of questions you just asked me there anxiety depression low self-esteem times like this well only five minutes okay i'll give you six minutes i think you should give them something good to smoke okay daniel do you like that okay look let's talk about your the the general theme of what you asked first of all to help somebody who doesn't want to be helped i'm not sure it can be done so to help somebody with low self-esteem if they're not willing to be helped you know i have a policy as a as a rabbi and a counselor i don't speak to anybody who doesn't want to speak to me people call me and say you've got to speak to my child speak to my spouse right somebody someone called me recently i know a young man who's giving up his judaism he's going off can you please speak to him i said no if he calls me i'll speak to him imagine this young man who's losing his jewish connection he wants to get a phone call from some rabbi telling him what's wrong with him no it's not good listen if he reaches out i can talk to him and therefore the first thing is the person's got to want to change right they've got to want to develop their self-esteem can you skillfully suggest and work with them in such a way knowing them very well how you can help that yes yes when you get to that stage what should you do you need to show them their greatness show them their greatness listen to what the wrath says in rosh hasharan he says the two ways to rebuke somebody listen to this it's amazing what does he say this in the ninth rosh i believe fantastic well working through well worth working through he says the two ways to rebuke somebody what is to tell you what's wrong with them the second is to tell them what's right about them show them their greatness when you show a person they say but you want to rebuke somebody for something they did wrong you can either show them what they did wrong or show how way out of tune that was compared to who they could be shabbat does both he creates the jewish people he describes their failures and their greatness their both rebukes so to surround somebody's greatness and show what they're capable you know there's an amazing story rebbe the great tanner author of the mishnah he had a son who unfortunately was not living up to his father's standards you know he'd gone off and he was problematic you know what they did they sent somebody to give him rabbinical ordination smikha you are now called rabbi whoa you better yeah you had to live up to that you had to live up to the name you give somebody there the confidence can i tell you a beautiful story rabbi khan this might take if it takes me over the five minutes rabbit written but can follow me when you put someone in a certain situation then it's an invitation to grow to that situation sometimes we find ourselves in situations we don't realize we're capable of that listen to this story you know rabbi luna i'm sure rabbi khan you know rabbi listen to this story he was a young man in college it was the time of the vietnam war and young american men were getting drafted you know getting drafted he saw a poster one day saying that instead of being a soldier in vietnam you could join the police join the american police they give you a gun they train you you're in a dangerous situation in the inner city you live in baltimore and you join the police you serve your country that way he figured that's what he'd do so he went through the police training program i don't know a couple years whatever you know gun gun gun skills and you know what a policeman needs to know and finally after all this rigorous training there was a ceremony where they became registered police officers it was in city hall in baltimore and he arrives there for this ceremony in his full dress uniform you know with his gun and like you know the whole bright you know shining brass and all that stuff and after the mayor gives them their badges and like they're now official police the ceremony is over he's walking down a side street in baltimore city to where his car was parked and suddenly a lady comes running down the street please police how about rabbi luna said he started looking around she's got to be a policeman somewhere [Laughter] the message is you wear the uniform play the role very nice yeah thank you very much i want to thank everyone for sending in questions and keep the questions going they're really good i'm going to ask one more question roberts on this theme and then we'll switch to uh something else the question is and i know you've spoken about this in many of your lectures and maybe and you've written some of your books this idea that god does not give anyone a test that they cannot pass so along these lines how do you explain a mental breakdown or a suicide because we're hearing now reports of more suicides more uh mental breakdowns is that not an example of a test that someone cannot pass well this needs careful analysis let's think about it first of all i don't know any official source that says you never get a test you could not pass but it's logical it's logical the cabalists say that a farmer who has a load to send to market he doesn't put it on an animal that could not carry the load god's going to load you up in a way that you can carry the load it's logical but i'll tell you where the problem arises you have to understand what the test is so again let's say a person is given a mental or emotional burden that's beyond what they can carry then the test was not to carry it the test was to smile one more time or complain less or see proper treatment again let's talk about the medical perspective i sometimes deal with people who are dying and sometimes these people are convinced that the test is to get better but maybe it may not be the test is to to make a reasonable effort the test might be complained one time less or too small one time more you've got to know what the test is so let's say a person goes through a mental breakdown beyond their capacity to bear the test was not to bear it the test was what's the best they could do in those circumstances again let's say a person's put in a marriage that is hopeless so the test is not necessary to make the marriage work no it may be to make it as good as it could be it may be to get divorced again you've got to know what the test is so let's take a person you talked about you talked about someone who goes through a mental breakdown if that's an organic mental problem it may be beyond their control not every situation in life can you become victorious in the way you think that's not the test or somebody committed suicide either that person was beyond control they were not being tested in that area or they failed now we assume that anyone committing suicide was so distressed that again we don't make a judgment about that right for example somebody committing suicide in a fully culpable way we wouldn't mourn them we bury them differently we take a very severe view of that but we don't do that we assume that somebody took their own life must have been so distressed so depressed so okay we we give the benefit of the doubt so we can't judge somebody else's ordeal in their response to it but the principle is whatever god gives you oh by the way it only applies to what god gives you not what you chose if you walked into a moral ordeal that no one asked you to do and then you caught in the grip of a temptation that is beyond your control that's your problem that's not god's problem but when god sends you a test an illness that you didn't do anything to deserve you believed a healthy yeah that's a test but what is the test is it to get better is it to not make too much medical effort but to make just enough is to complain less you've got to know what the test is so once you define the test correctly every no one's given a test they cannot pass but you've got to know what pass and what failure is and that takes objectivity how do you get that objectivity ruthless brutal honesty about yourself and i say like you need a rabbi you need somebody more mature about you more mature than you not afraid to tell you the truth about yourself more life experience to show you what's expected of you in that circumstance thank you robotics we're going to change tracks a little bit but i do want to encourage everyone you know uh when our rottenberg came up with this fantastic series uh it's giving us an opportunity of just getting a glimpse into rawat's ability to answer these questions in a short period of time but they really deserve much longer and i think robots you mentioned last week the website simpletorremember.com that's got many of these classes in greater length and i encourage everyone to look at that so one of the classes on that uh site and i've listened to raw texas classes for many many years one that i found uh which i handed her before uh was something about mermaids and unicorns and things like that what's the torah understanding of these uh animals that are mentioned sometimes in the talmud when clearly they appear to be mythical and similar to other stories in other in other religions or mythological ideas okay a few points here one is that all the fairy stories and mythologies and folktales of the nations very many of them has see have a seat of truth and you will notice that they come from torah okay whether it's the mythology of achilles having a vulnerable heal that's a kabbalistic idea again those these stories that have stood the test of time very often have seeds of truth in them or they are metaphors for very deeply true things they could be disordered some of them have violent and immoral elements in them reflecting certain national characteristics sometimes so the mythologies of the of the nations very often come from a true source absolutely they could be but let's turn to your question about the talmud when you come across mythological things in the talmud the first thing to decide is are they being meant literally or they're being met metaphorically so let's say for example the talmud will make some statement about a fact a scientific fact about some animal you mentioned or some fact in the world question number one is is the talmud talking literally or was it speaking metaphorically let me explain a bit better what i mean in any this is a very important principle when the talmud is discussing a matter that has a lacking significance practical legal significance any scientific or practical fact that it talks about is 100 literal and if the talmud says there's a biological or physical fact that operates according to a certain rule it is 100 accurate whether you understand it or not is not the point if you do a scientific study and you come out you figure it's wrong you're wrong it's something you didn't understand by the way the examples of those are so few there are so few i don't think you could count them on one hand examples where the talmud mentions a scientific fact and we don't understand what that means or we have facts to the to the country whereas there are hundreds of examples in the talmud of unbelievable knowledge of scientific fact that the mishnah says that there's no fish that have scales that doesn't have fins even today we haven't discovered all species of fish how do they know that and it's never been found to be untrue you know that the ghazal worked out the period of the moon the monthly cycle of the moon to within two-fifths of a second of nasa's calculation and i think nasa's probably wrong but anyway be that as it may so when the torah when the talmud talks about a scientific fact that is connected to a halachic application you can bet your life on it it's torah and the fact is necessarily true but when the talmud talks about a scientific fact biological fact not in connection with but in connection with mysticism philosophy it was never meant to be true the talmud is using wild wacky way out extremes of folklore which were never meant to be true at all why is it doing that it wants to give you something that you can latch on to as an analogy for something kabbalistic i'll give an example in modern physics today just an example that comes to mind in modern physics today there's a principle called the goldilocks principle goldilocks do americans know what goldilocks is robocon goldilocks is a fairy tale they tell children by the way what's the principle mean the principle means that when you observe the universe it's not too big and not too small it's exactly the right size exactly the right force on the atoms are exactly any more or any less we would be here it's not the goldilocks principle now do you think it means when a scientist tells you that the universe operates according to the goldilocks principle he believes in goldilocks no he's using a story that is useful to convey a point when the talmud talks about some wild wacky non-jewish mythological story to illustrate a cannibalistic point it's not taking responsibility for the scientific fact he just wanted to use the story that people knew and therefore when people come and say hello the talmud says that there's a you know a bird big enough that it's egg drowned 60 cities they were not talking about that literally they wanted to use it as a metaphor for something there was never a claim that this the fact was scientifically true however i say again when the fact is linked to a lucky consequence what you can do on shabbat well what you can eat and what's kosher fish scales fins etc the fact is a hundred percent true if the talmud says you'll never find a fish with scales that doesn't have fins you can bet you're bottom tolerant because it's a halal connected fact i hope that explains a lot of the fact of what you're asking thank you very much i'm gonna just ask you just very quickly just in particular mermaids and unicorns are those mentioned at all in the talmud are they referring in fact to some creature that might have existed or are those also those two particular examples are those metaphors as well i'll take a pass on the mermaids if you don't mind okay if somebody sends me an explicit source i'll deal with it yes emerges does say that adam sacrificed an animal that had one horn in the middle of its forehead right it had a horn but there's a deeply kabbalistic idea this is before the sin of adam the phrasing in the majesties it was a it was a certain kind of an ox or a bull that that whose horn preceded its feet again it's a deeply kabbalistic idea what exactly it means i'm not sure one central horn carrying it carrying in kabbalah always means a sort of a crown dimension which is single which leads to the rest of the of the form what exactly that example is i'm not exactly sure but that there is at least a mention of such a thing whether they survived the flood or didn't survive the flood i don't know but that's the limit of my knowledge on that subject okay so i'm just thinking while we on this i can't help but ask you know the following question which might clarify things for people let's just say um let's talk a little bit about the midrash so let's say for example the crossing of the red sea the the the torah will say that the sea split and the jews walk through the sea the midrash will say that there were 12 separate channels and there were one for each tribe and there were trees growing out with fruit for the or an example of uh basically sticking out her hand to reach moshe and the midrash says that her hand miraculously extended are those also metaphors that the rabbis are trying to teach us something or are we supposed to also understand that those were literal and there actually were 12 lanes and blasia actually did extend her hand and maybe maybe i'll just uh put in a parenting question when you teach your children this you know what are you teaching the same way you know in the non-jewish world they'll teach stories about goldilocks you know to teach a lesson and one day they'll find out that it's only a story but how do you teach that to children and when do you transition and tell them well really it's it's not uh exactly literal yeah that's a sophisticated question um let's talk about it like this first of all it's important to know that when the torah talks about miraculous things butcher's hands stretching out etc very often the main point of the story is what it means not the miraculous fact so that's the thing to focus on for example for example she stretched out her hand right the the the musa authorities always said means that the child was out of reach but that's not relevant she put out a hand god did the rest the bala musa said ask not if a thing is possible ask only if it's necessary it's impossible that's god's problem it's necessary you do it once when i wrote that in a book i went through moshe shapiro and i said to tim listen i want to quote the right authority which of the great balay musa said that he said they all said that you can quote any of them [Laughter] okay so that's the important part of the message but let's talk about the literal part did a hand really stretch out or not so there's a famous argument about this in our torah literature there's the maharal for example and the ramhal for example who take the view that you don't have to take these things literally they're not meant to be literal right they're meant to teach you a deeper point the spreading of the ocean means that the jewish people are born in the dimension of water there's a deep cannibalistic idea and not all of these not all if not all miraculous events in the torah or indeed all events in toronto altogether need to be understood literally there's another extreme view and the most extreme view on that side is the gone of illness who writes and i think this is basically the basic way we should go that every single incident that mentioned in torah or the oral torah is 100 literally true that may not be the main point of what's being said here but it's literally two as well with only two exceptions the two exceptions are the sabe atona which is a classic talmudic discussion between the wise men of greece and the philosophers of the jews where clearly they're not talking about they're talking about salting the afterbirth of a mule and and all sorts of very um deep riddles which are teaching philosophical this is anybody can read that and see there's never was an intention of a literal story and the other is the summer the uh rabbi barbachana they're wonderful stories of in traveling through the desert and coming across you know all the stories of him that there was a bird that laid an egg that drowned 60 cities there clearly i give an example he says we were traveling on a ship and we got off onto an island and on the island we made a fire and started cooking and the island turned out to be a fish and it turned over we all left floundering in the sea he didn't mean that happened he's trying to teach you that this world looks solid but it's actually not solid you get settled down here one day it's going to show you that okay so and that's clearly clearly that's a section of metaphorical stories that never was meant to be literal at all but says the god of illness any other thing that the torah tells you that was miraculous but apart from a spiritual message it happened literally as well why not it happened the c split one channel 12 by the way i hate to tell you this but it's even more wonderful than that says that the miracles of the exodus were even more than you think he says that the sea split and did not split at the same time the jewish people walked under the water on dry land why because the torah says that's what it says the jewish people walked in the midst of the ocean on dry land you've got to read the words it doesn't say where the ocean was it says they walked in the midst of the ocean on dry land it was dry land or was the ocean is that possible no did it happen yes because the jewish people began in a paradoxical state which is god's oneness appearing in a world of multiplicity that's what utk valve means this is a long subject but that's what he says so brief answer to your question it's best to take all things intolerant literally except where they're obviously not but not necessarily get hung up on the physical aspect of the thing by the way there's some things the torah clearly indicates the rambam says when the three angels appeared to abraham they were not didn't literally appear it was a vision of a prophetic vision it was a prophetic vision why would he say that because the words led themselves to be understood that way he doesn't say it about other prophetic and miraculous things in torah he wasn't afraid of admitting there were miracles in that particular incidents he believes that that was a prophetic vision the word suggests that to him so you need the subtlety of knowing how to read torah but a good way forward is when the torah tells you something happened you need to understand that it happened literally one and one final word if i'm reading listen carefully to this please i hope you all your listeners are listening carefully there's a big difference between the thing happening literally and physically example when that when the measure says that when yitzhak was bound on the altar the angels tears dripped in his eyes the angels were crying the tears dripped on his eyes that's why he was blind when he was old now listen carefully to this does it really mean angels tears dripped in his eyes yes did it happen literally yes did it happen physically no i have no idea what angel's tears look like in the physical world no idea again literally did angel's tears drip in his eyes yes why not it says so what angel's tears look like i don't know not to get confused between little drops of water falling out of the sky that's what people should not misunderstand i hope this is clear all right one i think we need to listen to this recording uh you know barak hashem this is being recorded everybody needs to listen to this uh many times to get these ideas you know rabbit hats we're just about to embark on a new book in the hummus you just mentioned the midbar and i can't help but notice and i'm sure you've spoken about this but the word by midbar and the word madaber to speak are very very similar and i wanted to ask we we're going to read all these stories and we have to believe them literally but maybe you can share some of the deeper more mystical ideas behind what is this book of bamidbar all about what are we supposed to take out of these stories there's stories there's laws but what's the connection first of all between the word bamidbar and the word madabeer so in five minutes i'll try to do justice to you your question let me say this according to kabala am i allowed to mention kabbalah no i think so i think so according to kabbalah everything in the world has five stages five stages that's why huma says five books five stages when it comes to thought first there's desire that sits here with it filing our own that's called razon then there's mark which is the root of the idea the right side of the head then there's what's called which is graphic thought where it actually comes to detail that's the third level then there's dibull where it comes to the mouth the fourth level and fifth is the words that are spoken without going into the background so the fourth level of all spiritual processes is called dibul the fourth book of the torah is called the book of speaking now listen to this as you go through the book of bamidba you'll notice and once you see this you could kick yourself that you never noticed it before the fourth book of the torah describing the journey through the desert is a story of speech one test of speech after another and in each case they were failed right or at least well let's go through them messiah named the people complaining argument using speech for argument with mashrabanan vilam using speech to curse hitting the rock instead of speaking to the rock miriam and aaron lash and horror about their brother los angeles speech the spies coming back from the land lost notice one incident after another in that book is speech gone wrong speech being used or misused you can't miss this and by the way the fifth book which you didn't mention is the book of devarim the words by midday bharara which is the speaking action and the fifth book is the words that are spoken so this very clearly if anyone wants to everyone wants to work on themselves during this time of year work on speech covert is a good time to do that because you learn silence perfecting your speech controlling each word so that is the theme running through running through the book let one more word you asked me what mid dibar has to do with speaking i'll just say very briefly a desert is a place where there's no speaking midbar in hebrew when you put a mem in front of a word you mean to take away from that thing like in hebrew you say echad one from a hundred right or meema come from this place to another midbar means to extract or go the opposite way from speaking in a desert there's no speech speech is a logical progression from one idea to the next midbar is a place where there are no roads the road is wherever you happen to go that's why the torah describes the desert but tohu yolail yoshimon in a desert is a meaningless wailing wailing sounds at night the midbar is a place of no speech during which you've got to make the journey the jewish people's role in bar mid was to go through the desert giving it meaning one logical step ten ordeals one after another they were supposed to conquer that's the journey of life and it's done by correct speech now again it takes a long time to go into the background for this but that's a natural answer can i tell you a beautiful anecdote here's an anecdote the correct version of speech is to have a lot of silence for every word a lot of silence not just to spit out meaningless words so here's a beautiful incident one day in the the time of the khasanesh khazanesh was speaking to a young man very promising talmudic scholar brilliant young man the khasanesh knew that he was very talented he wanted to test him so the husband he said to this young man the gemara says says mila a word is worth one dollar let's call it a dollar and silence is worth two that's what says speak a word it's worth a dollar silence is worth two two dollars said to this young man so which is worth more again listen to the quran says speech word every word is worth one silence is worth two so which is worthwhile more this young man thought to himself well the cousin she obviously doesn't want me to say the obvious answer he's not asking me a question like that for me to repeat what the talmud says so he thought about it and he said words are worth more i it says the words are worth one silence is worth two you said words are worth more you know why because for every word you get a dollar you can only be silent once the casually said that's exactly what i didn't want you to say that's exactly wrong that talmud means what it says you know what it means for every word you get a dollar for every word you do not say you get two daniel do you like that huh that's beautiful we're not talking about being silent once every wise word that was not said is worth to everyone yeah next question so just again next week is uh the week before shavuos and the the torah was given in the midbow so i think next week we'll we don't have that much time today but next week maybe we'll spend some more time talking about tour in general and what we should be thinking about going into this uh unique chevus uh and and how we can prepare ourselves for it but just uh to maybe lead us into that uh what what is the message for us after having just told us that uh what the midbrain is all about that that the torah was given in the desert there's many way i'll just give you one beautiful idea a desert is a place where there's nothing else nothing else at all one of the messages is torah's not one of many options tell us even when there's nothing else around young people come to tara they think very beautiful you know there's buddhism there's hinduism there's this there's that different spiritual systems i get a bit of turret too tell us the definition of truth it is a direct voice into the world it's given in the desert to show you it's not in competition with anything else the message you want to take her message you're dedicated to toe just to be total this is a love a love relationship you know you don't relate to your life part of the time there's other ladies you know this one here this one this weekend this one the next weekend so what a marriage is you know it might sound exciting but that's not what a dedication is and by the way while we're on the subject i'll point out to you that faith faithfulness loyalty like it or not it's measured in absolute terms absolute terms you know a man comes out when he says to his wife darling how long have we been married she says 25 years he says darling have i been a good husband to you she says yes treated you well she says yes any complaints about me no he says look i'd like to spend the weekend with another lady just one weekend just just one weekend and then we'll get back together is that okay 25 years once one weekend 25 years pretty good average right loyalty isn't managed by averages doesn't work that way treachery once is a treachery and therefore and therefore the desert is to show you it's one not one among many it has to be all or nothing you want to become a bentoro it has to be a total dedication everything else has to be ancillary and fit into that you know where this comes to um comes to practical expression is when you fix your time for learning it has to be fixed so let's say you've got a job and you've got to work from eight to four no that's not what you're doing you're going to work for the half hour you learn torah at lunchtime that's the fixed time the rest of the work you fit in from eight to four the attitude has to be that's the fixed time of your day i have a good question on my screen rabbi khan yes go ahead can a female see a male therapist there's another question about amalek with your permission i'm not going to deal with that now just too sensitive a topic to go into into details so you'll have to ask me again when we have a bit more time and of course by the way that mitzvah does not apply to us today we could not relate to it but let's talk about a a female singer male therapist with great caution great caution and i'll tell you why first of all everyone knows that in the intimate bonding of a a a a therapeutic or medical relationship relation your relationships are set up unfortunately this is why we have a set of your laws keeps people separate but there's something more important here when a man and a woman are put together things tend to happen but in a therapeutic relationship there's a particular problem and that is in deep therapy in effective therapy by definition the relationship is set up in psychological terms psychiatric terms is called a transference there's a deep relationship that is set up that's the nature of the therapeutic relationship the therapist often takes the place of the patient's husband or father or whatever it is and therefore you are by definition engaging in an intimacy now that may be very therapeutic but it's also very dangerous and therefore yes a male can see a female or female can see a male but with great caution let me put it to you another way in every male-female relationship there's always a male female element is that what you want in the therapy sometimes it may be necessary and sometimes it may be good but especially for a child to see a female therapist could be more gentle could be there are but in general it is preferable if possible to seek um to not put yourself in a situation where those dangers are all too easily uh all too easily boundaries transgressed i would also say from the therapist's point of view it's a good career decision to never never put yourself in situations that may develop improperly or even be accused of developing improperly one of the things i learned as a medical student we're going out into medical practice not only do you have to be absolutely scrupulously meticulous in relationship with other sex you have to do it in such a way that no one will even accuse you not because you're going to do something wrong but somewhere along the line somebody's going to accuse you of doing something wrong and therefore you're alone with the patient no your nurse should always be there there should always be a chaperone-type element not because you're not trustworthy but because along the line these things do crop up or at least accusations made better to steer clear of that area if you can okay i see we've got time for maybe one or two more questions uh this may be tying up a couple of things that we've been speaking about you know with what coming up uh the times that we living in torah study uh it's very difficult in these times to set fixed times for torah study you've got your work you've got your kids all bundled together you've got your wife at home all the time um it can lead to a little bit of despondency as we're coming up to shavuot which is supposed to be a rejuvenation we're counting up the 49 steps to shovel do you have any advice as we come up we've got now uh nine days left till shavuot how can we take advantage of these last nine days amidst the let's say once at the chaos but the the irregular schedule that we now have uh that we might not be able we have to spend more time with our kids doing their homework uh maybe our wives need us you know for other things where we would have had time to learn can we carve out five minutes a day is that good enough do you have any suggestions for us as we go into this this last week again amidst all the the other things that are competing for our time yes i think a lot of things to say i think the first thing is i don't think this will last too long personally i think that the rules are going to be relaxed very soon because not necessarily because we're confident that they're medically safe but because society cannot continue this way and we know from a jewish point of view impoverishing a society is also a life and death matter so whether you like it or not whether it's safe enough or not i think the rules are going to be relaxed anyway the good news there is that the technical expertise in the field feels that kids are probably not big spreaders of covered a lot of not a lot but a good few studies have been done and rabbi khan if you remind me i'll send you professor shrub's recent talk about this from south africa studies have been done showing the transmission of children in classrooms it seems to be very low particularly low so that's an encouraging piece of information and i hope very soon we'll have covered information about whether people have been infected can indeed be infected again if they cannot it'll be a very encouraging step in the right direction so i think first of all there's hope at the end of the the tunnel secondly yes five minutes is good enough if it's all you can do absolutely family comes first if they need you they need you five minutes before you go to sleep five minutes before they wake up you need a fixed time of your day that is torrent learning next point you never lose through doing a kindness to someone else especially your family never lose i want to sit down and learn i want to write a book somebody needs me i have to do a kindness it's frustrating you get resentful wrong attitude never lose through doing your hazard no you don't have to go out looking for unnecessary hazard when you want to learn torah no close the door switch off your phone but if you're obliged to do a facet like your wife needs you you will never lose through doing your lesson are you learned less today that's not what god wanted from you and finally during these days of covered chaos a little disciplined organization you know little discipline you can have certain fixed times with the kids as well you they need exercise you need exercise you can discipline at a certain time sleep cycles not overeating um uh you know there's a certain amount of discipline you can put into it you can divide and rule if they're kids in a house and two parents you can you can you can divide and rule but you're allowed to mix with your neighbors if that's legal you can do it you can take a bunch of neighbors kids to the park one morning one and then they can do next year a little bit of thought and organization you can make a big difference but if we're thrown into a situation you begin the session by asking me whether god ever puts you in situations you can't handle he wants you isolated right now that's the fact therefore you can handle it so you get a bit frustrated don't function as as efficiently as as before you can handle it we have to do it the solution is finally to be what the psychologists call a well-adjusted person well-adjusted person means you take any situation you make the most of it instead of complaining you see the positive aspect of it you can build a relationship with your wife that you hadn't have time to do you know the the irony is how many deep discussions do husband and wife ever have in the course of a marriage very few the last time you probably had a very deep discussion was when you were dating you know my kids tell me they got to marry somebody they want somebody who with whom they'll have a dnms you know dnm's deep and meaningful daniel deep and meaningful believe me from the day you get married you will never have another deep and meaningful discussion who's got time here you're recovered you're stuck with your wife you could talk to her about something deep share some thorough with her it can be done okay i think we have to call it yeah god arabic i want to thank you again very much on behalf of everyone else that's being with us today if you want to thank rabbit hats personally on the chat you can thank him and we're going to continue this next week we'll try to focus a little bit more on uh on torah and chabot but we'll take other questions i was going to ask my wife's favorite question about uh what's the torah view of vegetarianism but we'll leave that till we'll leave that till next week actually good pleasure can i speak i see on my screen people asking if they can email me with greatest of pleasure so just email me through emmett or through the jle in london i'll do my very best to respond with pleasure and i want to thank again rabbi akiba ruttenberg good friend of mine for many years for giving me this opportunity it's a it's the least i can do for the uh for them and i encourage you again to support their their campaign and i look forward to seeing you all next week grab that i look forward to seeing you again and uh also i will just mention this is the time of the year that i would have seen you in person uh with the ursumer ryomiyon which has now been going on i don't know for how many years 18 19 years but the good news is that uh on memorial day or summer is going to be running a yom ion with a star-studded line of speakers including ramatat so if you're going to automatic's website uh i think robot bridal withdrawal rabbi gottlieb harry rothenberg so even though we can't see you in person rawat we can hear from you and we we look forward to that as well so i'm wishing everybody a good week a good service uh and thank you robert for helping us uh get through another week of uh quarantine thank you please have some poppy seed cake for me buy some cookies buy some cookies for any kids who might visit all right i'm i'm conditioned you have some of moisture's bulltong for me pleasure thank you okay thank you then bye-bye bye cheers