Rabbi Dr. Akiva Tatz - Q&A Part 4 (Zoom)

[Music] and i want to just welcome ramats all the way from london again the world has got much smaller with covert and we very fortunate that rawatz lives in london is only five hours later than the new york so we can have the pleasure of hearing him around all of america and much of the world so robert thank you again for your time uh this week is uh uh opportunity for us to hear some of your thoughts about the holiday of shavuot coming up uh i know we've got a couple other questions so maybe we'll start off with a shavuot question uh the first question i want to ask you uh which might leading some other questions is why at all is it called chavort so what means weeks we know it comes from the fact that it's seven weeks after pacer but you would think because it's such an important holiday that we would have a different name like the giving of the torah for example so can you just give us an idea of what the connection uh between the word shabot and the holiday of the giving of the torah is okay good question but first of all let me start by thanking you for hosting this session it's a great pleasure to participate with you i must say i missed visiting you in chicago as we've done for many years was a great loss to me even though the traveling is exhausting and you run around like a headless chicken but it was a great pleasure to be with you in chicago you're a wonderful host and i must say i missed it so i hope we'll be together soon in the future secondly thanks to rabbi rittenberg for this um these series of sessions about which he gave me no choice at all and we hope that he's very successful in his fundraising and running his wonderful organization um the festival of shavuot you are quite correct let me mention another strange feature about it and then we'll answer both the questions together it does not have a name that seems to indicate its essence shavuot the weeks that you've counted since spacer and secondly very interestingly shavuot has no date only time in the jewish calendar there's a festival with no date in fact the talmud says it could be on the fifth of uh sivan it could be the six could be the seventh the date's not not specified very interesting the torah gives a specific date for shoshone a specific date for yom kippur specific date for pesach when it comes to shavuot no date at all the reason is the date of shavuot is 50 days after pesach there's another date in the calendar that's irrelevant it's 50 days after pesach it is seven weeks later the essence of the festival is the weeks let me explain i only have five minutes for each question so let's try to put it in five minutes the concept of shavuot is torah torah is beyond counting taurus beyond anything in the world completely and utterly transcended it's from another world entirely but the only way you get to that world is through this one the only way you get to the spirit is through the body the only way you see god in this world is by looking at the world carefully and here's the mystery and the secret the way you get beyond this world is by counting carefully through the world i'll give you a very brief analogy the only way you can play music is by playing notes amazingly the notes are insignificant each note is ridiculously trivial it's a plonk or a blink or a plink or a plonk when you're the plinks together you get something called music and amazingly it's the only way you can play music so you put together the ridiculously insignificant notes or the words in a poem or the brush strokes on a canvas and what happens when you put them together correctly something becomes something manifest which is larger than the sum of the parts that's the essence of shavuot it is only the weeks it's only the days that we count adding up two weeks when you do that carefully even though each one may seem insignificant you get something called shovelward this should be the pattern of your life in a marriage a marriage is not just a string of events one kind action another kind action it's a string of events that amounts to something much much larger than the sum of the details in your own inner being you should develop in that way a person who studies torah understand a new idea stay up another night working hard on an area of torah years later what should emerge is not just a an assembly of knowledge it should be an intuition and a depth something that far transcends the parts and therefore the essence of shavuot is indeed the days that we count and the weeks that we construct that's all we do and then something happens that goes beyond which is called shavuot you're muted so we cannot hear you rama ted would you say or where would you put shavuot in terms of priority uh in the jewish holidays you know someone will say that yom kippur is the most important holiday so what does not seem to be in fact uh i would probably say that this is one of the least celebrated holidays in the jewish calendar why is that and and where would you place that in in terms of level of priority you know they're all the most important each one builds an essential that's asking me which is more important your brain or your heart or your coronary arteries or your jugular veins you're in trouble without any of those i can tell you one of those guys you're in big trouble so it's a circuit of which each element is important each one's important which is the most important element in a battery the transistor in a radio the transistor the wires the battery the speaker you're in trouble if one of them is missing so they're all equally important but let me say this you've asked a deep question why is it less celebrated if you walk up to any secular jew in the world probably know about passover probably not that's a very challenging and interesting question after all shavuot is the culmination of the process leaving egypt is the beginning that's possible but the destination you're leaving egypt seven weeks later you get the torah we talk about everything in judaism is commemorating the living of egypt zechariah but the point of the leaving of egypt is a journey that goes to your destination that's not celebrated i'll tell you one beautiful answer that i heard last night for my friend harry rothenberg you have a wonderful talk about this and people can access it we had a yomi yoon you know the usual one that we that we should have i know you were part of that instead of doing it live we did it uh virtually and harry was the last speaker and he said something beautiful he said he has a suspicion that people celebrate pesach passover because it celebrates freedom people like freedom but where does the freedom lead to a bonding in obligation to god at shavuot that's not so popular breaking out of egyptian bondage very popular but the fact that you're going to become a slave at the other end of the journey slave to a different master this time to god that's not so popular i think there's probably a lot of truth in that that's a great that's a great answer so let me ask you i'm not asking you to to uh play god in in any way but if if there was a committee that was going to be set up to celebrate shavuot you would think that we would come up with something exciting to do you know pesach is exciting you have to clean the house you have to break matzo you have to get ready for the city you got to come up with questions you got to there's such an excitement about it everybody gets excited about even support you have to go around collecting wood you have to build things you have to get the four species why on earth did god not give us anything to do on shavuot maybe we could have you know built a little mountain in our backyard and camped outside you know for three days we we could have come up with or you could have come up with something why is there i mean the only thing we do and maybe you'll talk about that also is we stay up all night to learn torah we eat cheesecake it seems that uh we could have come up you know with something better if we were the ones making this up on i think he wanted us to concentrate on the cheesecake [Laughter] but i think the answer is this what's unique about shavuot is torah not mitzvah the other occasions you mentioned are all built around mitzvot commandments practical things that you do that builds another reality the point about shavuot is it's out of this world that's the point it's not mitzvahs are means to end they build spiritual things they you they construct something using a material substance in this world a mysterial object a part of the body they they turn a handle in this world that reaches up into another world but on shavuot you enter that other world let me put it you this way all of torah reaches god indirectly indirectly you do a mitzvah you connect with god you eat matzah you use a part of the body a part of the world you reach god the only two things you ever do as a jew that connect to him directly one is called filler prayer where you speak to him directly and one is called torah where he speaks to you directly no intermediaries and therefore the the essence of shavuot is exactly the fact that it has nothing in the world nothing in the world it is torah torah means you reach up into the sinai dimension what happened on shavuot we died we stood at sinai our souls flew out to god our bodies were blasted back it was their most intimate of bonding experiences and we re-celebrate that every person every shabbat and therefore what we do on this day is we live torah doing mitzvahs would be a distraction it would be using something in the world to get beyond the world we've practiced that for seven weeks now we get to the time when we simply lift off and therefore there's nothing to do except immerse yourself in torah on this day the rest of the year is means to an end this is torah that's the end in itself thank you very much so for those of us that are listening and those who will listen to maybe a recording later show what's coming up this uh thursday night and as i mentioned the customer is to stay up all night and learn torah can you just talk a little bit about what the purpose of staying up all night is and also do you have any suggestions what we should learn on uh on shavuot is any particular passage that we we should learn and in general what torah material should we uh should we be learning depending on the level that we're at okay well first of all you should know it's important for your listeners participants to know that it's accustomed to step you know it's not it's not a law you know it's not on the same level as not committing adultery and uh you're not stealing and killing you know it's a custom and if it's going to lose more than you can you should not stay up all night i know people who don't stop because they feel they lose more time than they gain exhausted the next day shows throws their whole sleep cycle out and they feel they lose more than they gain and certainly if you're going to stay up all night and be crabby and unpleasant and yell and snap at your wife the next day you should be sleeping so obviously there are more important things but all else being equal it's a showing of a love for our shaman is torah the jewish people in some sense were asleep the night before the torah was given whatever that means and the correction for that historic and historic event is to stab all night it's a you know it could be the night before your wedding you might not you might not sleep you know the tension and the expectation it's a showing of a love that you're anticipating giving of the torah and it's an immersing yourself in torah for that night there's also deeper level the rambam explains that torah at night is kabulistic torah it's the depth of torah it's the time of of deep connection and therefore there's something special about doing that what should you study on this night that's the same question is what should you study in general the answer is what you love torah has to be enjoyed torah has to be enjoyed a love that doesn't feel good is very strange you don't get married to feel good that's not love but if it doesn't feel good too there's something wrong with it and the law of torah learning in fact there's a lucky principle in torah you need to learn what you like and where you like and therefore that the person who loves salahi study they should be learning allah the person who loves gemma of course their basics of course of course their basics the things that are more basic and you need to have a sense of order of what is more basic but even in the basics like learning talmud so everyone has their own different path the area their style that they love there's nothing as motivating as doing something that you love and therefore what one should choose for shavuot it's not only the things that are necessary like knowing principles that govern your life the most important guide for shavuot and forever is what you love about khan can i take a minute to answer a couple questions on my screen yes please and so your participants can also 100 here's a question from jerry i did say once and this is a bit challenging to answer in five minutes but jerry looks like a black belt so we'll say this yeah i did say once that in the first part of torah bereshit in the description of the six days of creation we have an interesting principle taught by the arizona actually it's mentioned in the gemara the taurus they're not talking about a superficial level here's the principle and this is very relevant to schwarz the torah always talks at a superficial level what it says it means beneath the superficial level are endless layers of depth there's one exception in the description of the creation the tar is not talking about superficial levels with layers beneath the torah there is talking about the layers beneath you think it's talking about a man and a woman in a garden and a tree and a fruit that's not what it's talking about it's talking that's true at a very distant level i'll put it to you like this the torrent general speaks shut that is literal meaning and beneath the surface is kabbalah the first six days of creation of talking kabbalah and somewhere out in the distance as you americans call it left field is um is up shut and the reason is because the torah is beginning with the genetic inner core of reality therefore talks about it openly and that's the structure that's the structure for jerry's benefit i'll say one more thing there's one more place where the torah does that as well the very end the very beginning is discussing a reality that came before this one the rambam says you cannot understand it says hide it because that glory of a king that glory of hashem cannot be understood by us in this world the torah talks about it kabbalistically the end of the torah as well the messianic era very vague and the post-messianic era the next world not mentioned at all in the torah those are from another dimension that we cannot relate to from here jerry that's a brief answer to your question next question is mindful meditation good or not everybody should be doing mindfulness not mindless meditation mindful meditation before you pray you should be doing meditation absolutely i see rabbi rittenberg is sneaking in onto this into this conference he's probably made his couple million dollars for emmett and richly he deserves it so it's nice to have him here um the uh meditation one shouldn't waste time of course some people spend many many hours in meditation i'm not sure that's the right balance but meditation can center a person get you in touch with your own inner wisdom and if it's done correctly it's a very good idea why not in proportion your jorgevit's asking me a question how did it take 49 days for the jews to get from the 49th level of impurity to the 49th level of purity as if to say that's about 100 days 98 days every step out of contamination is a step of conduction you know there's not two processes it's the same thing every conquest of an area of darkness is a building of light in yourself they will need more time to to go into but the 49 days are what were required last question on my screen what are the ten commandments not to be jealous how is this expected of human beings that's a very very good question so let's discuss this briefly in five minutes indeed again a very accurate shavuot question after all it's one of the ten commandments what do we receive on shavuot the ten commandments the tenth of the ten commandments is not to be jealous rabbi quran these are excellent questions spot on spot on jerry's question beginning of torah last question the last of the commandments you have a real set of black belts here in your emit participations participants no question so the answer to your question is this here's the question how can the torah command an emotion you're not allowed to be jealous do not covet how on earth can the torah command an emotion can come on me not to do something don't commit adultery but how can i command me not to be attracted to somebody's wife how can it again it can it can come on me not to steal i can have self-control but not to want what something someone else says how possibly can the torah control an emotion that's a wonderful question i'll give you the easy answer and the deep answer as well oh one second there's another nuance to the question for example someone found a spouse who has more money when you're having a hard time so how do you not feel bad about that okay good good good so let's answer this question in layers first of all when someone else has something and you feel bad about it and you want that thing no problem that's not called jealousy let me make this clear somebody says a lot of money and you also want a lot of money no problem someone has a fancy car and you'd like a fancy car no problem somebody has a beautiful wife wonderful beautiful woman and you want a wonderful beautiful woman no problem the problem is not when you want a wife like his problem is when you want his wife that's the problem when you want a house like his no problem would you want his house that's the problem now wanting a house like his is immature that's keeping up with the goldbergs or the cohen's that's not the way to be as a jew but it's not the prohibition of jealousy the prohibition of jealousy is not wanting one like his it's wanting his and even worse wanting him not to have it that's even worse okay so just to clarify what we mean now here comes the easy answer and here comes the difficult answer according to most opinions like the rambam and many many opinions in judaism listen listen well to this layer you're not prohibited from the emotion or more accurately the prohibition is only when you do something to get it not when you just want it i walk into your house and i see something that i'd like i say you know i'd like to buy that object from you you say it's not for sale i say plea i start pressurizing you emotionally in front of your guests and eventually you're just so embarrassed you give it to me you sell it to me that is coveting i did an action a man covets another man's wife so what does he do he tells the man you know she's not a good woman you should divorce her he starts he does something to get what he wants that's coveting it's simple let's be clear about this when you want somebody's object and you pressurize him to give it to you you're guilty of the coveting in the heart but you're only guilty when you do the action i hope this is clear the torah does prohibit the feeling but it doesn't make it an actionable applicable prohibition until you do something right you're not expected to control the emotion you're expected not to do something that puts him not talking about stealing stealing's another prohibition doing something that puts the person and the emotional pressure so that he gives it to him and here comes the difficult answer ibn ezra says the torah commands you not to have the emotion in the first place amazingly and then he asks your question how can god come on me about an emotion and listen to his answer he says you never covered something that you think has no relationship to you there's who covets jumping to the moon it doesn't enter your head if you covered something it must be that somewhere in your mind you think you possibly could have this thing if you correctly disposed you know that god gives you what you need and he gives that person what he needs it wouldn't occur to you to want it he gives an analogy which is very old-fashioned but i'll tell you his analogy he says the peasant on the farm the heavy earth-bound farmer never conceives a desire to marry the princess just out of range he wouldn't dream of that of course today when i give this talk in the basiaco they say rabbi the peasant always marries the princess maybe in their stories yes but not not in real life they absolutely believe if you understand your obligations correctly in the world that god has given you what you need it wouldn't occur to you to on somebody else's stuff anyway we don't rule that way we rule that you are uh you are you're obliged to to have your mind disposed correctly and be careful not to do something and your question when someone else has money and you don't and you feel bad and you want to have this sort of blessing that's a different issue entirely next question robocon uh rawat you mentioned the ten commandments i just wanted to ask a couple of questions uh maybe i'll ask one or two together we all know that there's 613 commandments uh why was it that god only gave 10 commandments to moshe abbayyanu to moses he was up there for 40 days apparently he was he was taught the entire torah why was he only told to write down 10 and why did he have to write it down on two tablets you know god was you know could have given him one tablet probably difficult to carry two tablets down easier to carry one down what's the what's the significance of of the 10 commandments and where did the 613 fit in relative to their 10 great question rabbi khan is a wonderful compare and emcee he can certainly answer these questions himself but he's very graciously allowing me to answer them um that's a good question and here's their answer when moses came down the mountain roshawna came down the mountain with 10 commandments the question is why wasn't he bringing us the whole torah that's another version of your question after all he went up the mountain to bring us the torah and as you say he received it all how come he brought down ten some people think well you know they were heavy so i brought ten here's the deep answer very deep much more than a five minute discussion but here's the deep answer the torah always is a recursive process unfolding from a source it's always like that everything in the world of meaning begins that way the conception of a child begins with a speck of conception then it becomes a fetus and then it becomes an embryo a fetus and it grows until all the details are revealed torah always unfolds organically like that there's a moment of inception conception essence it expands the details become apparent until all the details are revealed it's always like that at successive layers of expansion the ten commandments are not the most important commandments in the torah let's get that clear people think the two commandments they the biggies the bigger moral principles stealing adultery murder etc they the big principles the basis of a moral society that's wrong for example for example coveting why should coveting be one of the major principles equivalent to murder and and theft why is false witness against a person one of the ten commandments there are many ways you can betray people and damage them why should that be one of the ten commandments here's the answer the ten commandments are not major spiritual principles ones that are more punishable more serious the ten commandments are the ten basic categories that contain the whole torah the torah begins with one source of essence i am god that expands into ten categories when mushroom came down the mountain he was bringing the whole torah it was bringing the ten packages the ten categories that unfold and unpack into all the details great capitalists points out not 613 there should have been a thousand after all the testimony the torah is a recurring decimal process he says indeed there are a thousand but only 613 or 620 need our work that the other ones are recorrected already okay interesting discussion but the basic answer to your question is moisture render brought the torah down to us he brought down the 10 essential categories those were not written those were carved in stone carving and engraving always is much deeper than writing writing means one medium on another forming a contrast engraving means that the medium and the message are one the tablets of the torah by the way they weren't engraved they were bored through the medium and the message were completely one of the same those are the categories of essence and finally why were there two sets of five many answers to that question but here's one the first set of five are the mitzvahs that command your relationship between you and god the second set of five command your relationship with other people two separate categories in the torah two separate categories with a bit more kabbalistic depth two versions of the same thing all you relate to is god but the two formats in which you relate to him one is directly the first commandments keeping shabbat knowing that he's god not worshiping other gods not using his name in vain and the second are relating to god also but in human beings understanding the divine spark inside a human being and those are the two if you permit me one extra minute i know i'm only supposed to speak for five minutes but robert rittenberg's not here right now so that one's gonna fire me so here's just one extra minute think how beautifully the two correspond look at the two sets of five and you'll see their direct correspondence take the first one for example i mashem defining spiritual essence what's the first of the human interaction commandments not murdering recognizing the divine spark inside a human being ultimate meaning second one don't betray me and worship other gods don't commit adultery betrayal in the most important of human relationships third one don't use my name in vain don't use my essence for yourself don't steal don't use other people's things for yourself shabbat testimony that i created the world testify that i created the world by taking your hands off it that acknowledge that on shabbos to not bear false testimony against another human being you see the parallels are exact the fifth one needs a bit more explanation on your parents and don't cover it that will take a little bit of time to explain with your permission i won't go into now because it'll take more than five minutes unless there's a question about that later yes any other question so uh rama ted's just uh if you can answer this as well the the the jews were given some mitzvahs before they came to to uh harassing and they got all 613 and we're reading now the the torah portions uh that talk about uh more mitzvahs that are given to montreal in the in the mishkan but not all the 613 what how do you explain which mitzvahs were given before why they were given and and what's the nature of the mitzvahs that were given afterwards why were they necessary if everything was given uh to moshe already on on mount sinai okay so first of all it's important to know they became binding at sinai that's when we became bound however we were introduced to them gradually in fact the rambam says it began a long time before with the seven commandments given to mankind adam was given seven commandments in egypt there was an expansion to more they became aware of shabbat in fact they kept shabbat in egypt and shabbat was commanded to them more specifically at maura right honoring parents it was a sequence of gradual introduction to the commandments why the particular ones were given at the particular time each one has a reason i'll just single out one to illustrate this principle and i hope you'll find this beautiful the mitzvah to redeem or release slaves you know when that was given exactly at the moment we were redeemed from slavery that's a powerful educational message when did god tell jews to tell the jewish people about not about how to treat a slave and how to release and free a slave exact moment when you're going through that that's very powerful so now that's an easy example each of the others needs of course it's it's example but a very powerful message i was part of a youth movement in my in my youth in south africa and the educational principle in that youth movement was not to teach principles but allow the students or the children or the young people to experience them you know when you i had the privilege i had two experiences one was being in a youth movement where we actually lived the program not just listen to lectures especially for children that's very important and i'll tell you another interesting experience you know rabbi khan and i share we share many things one thing we share is that we were both participants in an exchange program in our youth both of us we were raised in south africa i know that's a big unfair advantage but we had that advantage and then we both became participants in this international exchange program we went the united states for a year i was i was sent to saint louis saint louis and louis missouri and i was in high school in that high school there was a gifted teacher a very gifted teacher the subject was sociology let me tell you the genius of this teacher don jones his name was here's how he here's how he did it he wanted us to study the great social philosophies nietzsche marx in rand here's what he did he divided up his the whole class into groups of five and he told us you five people are isolated on a desert island desert island probably ever gonna be saved you're gonna have to live on this desert island for the rest of your lives here's 20 questions you have to answer and there were 20 questions defining a society how would you organize marriage how would you organize justice would you tell your children about the world you came from how would you organize trade very challenging questions we had to make our answers to those questions then we studied nietzsche then we studied march marks then we studied ayn rand and after each one we had to come back to those questions and each time the answers were very different very interesting exercise so rather than teach us about them we lived on a desert island for a young person that's an amazing exercise you're building a society right so we actually we actually we were taken through the steps and that's a very and hashem educates us in that fashion wants to talk about release from from the mitzvah of releasing freeing slaves let's see what it feels like to go through it so that's a beginning of an answer to your question can i pick up one or two on the screen robocon just just to finish off the question is that does that answer the same question of why we were taught mitzvahs following um uh our sinai the the the parishes that we're reading as we progress over time we get introduced to different things is that a similar idea that hashem was trying to teach us something at particular points in time yes indeed and some have very specific reasons for example when it comes to a certain form of inheritance for women so it was the daughters of slavka who merited to bring that into the world that's incredible right or the person who was collecting wood on shabbos whatever it is so certain all the people who are tami impure after pesach and wanted to bring their own passover offering their request their burning desire to serve hashem in that way brought a new law into the world hashem waited for that he wanted to hear it from us so each mitzvah that's given a particular time has a psychological and spiritual and emotional element and is introduced to us in exactly that fashion yes all stemming from the ten commandments which are the root categories of all the others in a perfectly organized array of detail yes any other question uh so i wanted uh there's there's a lovely question here from rebecca and i want to encourage you if you have any other questions please send them uh in the chat but just before i get to rebecca's question uh to lead into it really a two-part question the we know that that god spoke to the entire jewish people on mount sinai uh but we told also that we were unable to listen to the entire ten commandments uh as you've said many times in in uh lectures that i've heard once we heard the first commandment our souls you know flew out of our bodies and and hashem had to revive us uh what's the meaning uh behind that why were we not able to absorb the entire torah and then after that i'll lead into rebecca's question which has more to do with the soul the general concept here is this that the gemma puts it like this we heard the first of the commandments ayam hashem and we died then the shamans flew out to their source when they were faced with that source hashem revived us with words of torah again the second commandment we died again at that point the jews turned to moshe and they said to him we're convinced okay not easy to die exploded out of your body we'll take the rest from you that's the simple level of the story the deep meaning of course is that torah comes through moshe awareness he is the conduit that brings it to us we needed to hear the first to establish his credentials the rambam says we heard god say to him hear the laws go and tell them the following laws but we needed a prophetic experience of our own the reason for that was that no time later in history could anyone come along and say you were influenced by a very good speaker by the way the run says that's why moses could not speak normally so no one could ever claim that he was a brilliant orator right that's what the right that's what the run says and therefore and therefore we heard the first two that was richly enough the deeper answer to your question is the first two contain everything as we said the point of origin always contains all i am hashem all the positive commandments don't betray me and have other gods or the negative commandments from there the rest all flow but the details as they flow through the system flow through moses through moshiro and other details of mitzvahs given later during the era of the prophets as well that's the basic structure so yes yes rebecca's question and it's such a great question i don't think i've heard it uh expressed in this way she asks i was wondering what makes up a soul is it considered to have a divine origin it says god blew into us a piece of himself that's obviously not to be understood literally but how then do you understand what is the substance of the soul how what what is its makeup i would say that it is meant to be understood literally not physically you shouldn't see it in pictorial terms but of course if you breathe into us breathe into us what does god's breath look like well that's that's not so easy to understand the answer to this question is something that can never be put into words these are one of the deep things that you can understand relate to in meditational terms you can't put it into words your soul is what you experience know that you're alive you know that you exist could you prove that in technical terms no but that inner consciousness your knowledge of who you are that you're a man or a woman that you're jewish that you have free will that there are such things in the world as love and meaning these cannot be put into words but that's the experience of the soul and therefore the fabric of the soul if you like is a divine breath it is where you identify your projection of something cosmic and you know that deeply if you don't allow yourself to become distracted and obstructed by childish things now the soul has five parts it will take a long time to go through them but very briefly the lowest part of the soul is the part that connects with the body and that's the easiest to understand that's called the nerf fish five parts the lowest part the nephesh connects with the body how do you experience that when you're hungry when you're tired but your body speaks to you i don't mean the i don't mean the physical sensation i mean the the inner awareness of hunger the inner awareness of pain or lusts or cravings right that's where that's where the soul makes contact with the body that's called effect nephes means where it comes to rest vahina that's where it sits in the body animals have that too then there's a high level called how do you experience your work that's got nothing to do with the body that's your thoughts your emotions your inner life your concepts your philosophical ideas your consciousness of existence that's called can you prove it can you demonstrate it can you pluck it out and show it to me no but you certainly know it you certainly know it and there's a high level called the shaman the xiaomi is so high that we virtually do not experience that today that floats around the head it's above us it's a tremendous power of holiness to experience it at all today maybe in a rare moment of inspiration just the instant of getting an idea solving a problem connecting deeply spiritually lost only for a moment and then the two higher levels called these are what we try to represent with the trillion right much higher than the head in the place where the baby's head is open and that is missing those are the two higher parts of the soul the highest one is called yikida where we become one with hashem we haven't seen that for a long time not since the son of adam that's a very brief introduction to the parts of the song ted thank you very much we still got time for a couple more questions i wanted to ask you something um uh about the oral torah we were given uh the entire torah on on mount sinai but we only wrote down a small part of it can you talk about what the oral torah is and what the connection between the orator and the written torah is what's the what's the difference between two of them and then maybe we'll lead into why it is that we spent so much time studying the the oral torah okay first of all let me promote my own book if you don't mind because i wrote a book about this i don't know if i showed it on this program before but there's a book i wrote about that that's called as dawn ends the night my latest book i hope you appreciate the artwork done by my wife painting right and the back of the book my son gavriel did a beautiful chart i don't know if i showed this to you before this is a chart of jewish history so it pulls out here and you can see the different eras right of jewish history where all the individuals lived and the different rabbis and the great authorities the back it has a list of all the um the eras of jewish history anyway fantastic chart that you can actually pull out because it goes to jewish history so this book goes into the process of the darkening of history how we met hashem personally at sinai and then the light fades over history the disaster that that represents is our distance from him and walking through the darkness but the incredible amazing illumination of that is where we ignite torah ourselves that's called the oral law where we have the genius of jewish creativity where hashem trusts us to create his own torah unbelievable thing of course it has to be created from the principles that he gives us you're not talking about making up your own ideas but we're talking about a tremendous explosion of jewish creativity and that's your second question why do we spend so much time doing it that's our share we take in rugby terms take the ball and we run with it you know it's given to us and he gives us those principles and then we create the game we take those principles loyally and we run with them through history as dawn ends the night that's the name of the book you know you know why it's called that as dawn ends the night the thomas says an amazing thing listen to this amazing metaphor the gomorrah says as dawn ends the night right just like my shaka sofa lila just like dawn ends the night esther ends the miracles the period of esther two thousand three hundred years ago that great woman she and morocco stood at the cusp of jewish history going dark before there was a written law prophecy miracles after them darkness no revelation at all so she stands at that interface between the revealed point of history and the dark unrevealed part of history that's where she is that's when miracles end so the talmud says just as dawn ends the night esther ends the miracles but the question is obvious as dawn ends the night is not bad it's good as dawn ends the night that's when the light rises the night is over you use that for a metaphor for for the world of miracles ending and us moving into historical darkness sounds like the rabbis have got their wives crossed the meaning is this in that darkness when hashem recedes behind the veil and no longer reveals himself in written torah and in miracles that's where we ignite a light of human genius that's a real birth of a light the world was not created for hashem to show what he's capable of there's nothing in that there's no novelty in that he created the world for us to show what we're capable of to receive his torah at sinai and be blown away by the light and what will you do with this now you walk through the darkness of history and you shine the light you produce an illumination and that is called the oral law and that's the answer to your question why we spend all our time on that basically because that's our creativity that's our engaging in a world of darkness and that's why he gives us a world of darkness can only channel you can only shine a candle in the dark and therefore the tragedy of jewish history no miracles no revealed torah no prophecy but the upside of that is we we get to shine the light okay a lot more to say about it read my book thank you so much i've got another great question from penina and it might open up a whole bunch of other questions which we might not have time for this time we might have to do another one next week i believe that next week is the last of five but we're trying to negotiate with robot tats to uh do more so if all of you on your on the chat can uh uh please give a shout out and oh and tell robotech how much we we're loving this series we'll try convince him to do to do a couple more it's no use i've already told you everything i know [Laughter] i think we're only just getting started uh so this is a question which i i guess i was you know thinking asking a little bit but earlier you mentioned esther let's talk a little bit about women you know and the torah uh it seems you know in the torah it's all about the men the the they are the protagonists they the ones that are sort of front and center and uh torah learning is a mitzvah for men where is the role of woman in in the torah and i'm going to add a second question from peninno uh when you're done with that question which relates to that uh and the oral law this is too much for five for five minutes and we need a good woman to answer that question but it's true that men are front and center in terms of visibility and that relates more to the modesty of a woman not exposing herself and her beauty so we put them not front and center in in terms of being on public view but there's no question that there's an equal part in terms of cabalistic teaching no male phenomenon can ever be brought to the world without a woman to give birth to it and therefore you'll notice that taurus always dealing with the duality sometimes the male takes precedence and is front and center sometimes the woman like devorah for example or an esther called shavuot ruth right the ones we read the book of ruth about a great woman who was the merited to wrench herself out of a previous form of existence and become the great grandmother of king david you know not bad for a convert to judaism and a woman so there's no question that it's a duel it's a team it's a team effort esther works with monokai ruth right and boyz it's always a team effort there are some interesting uh subjects in the peril that need to be discussed for example when it comes to avraham yitzhak and yaakov there are three great forefathers but they're four mothers that's interesting there's avra mitsuko nyakov they found the jewish people and yet the women involved are sarah rifka rahul and leia four of them fascinating issue why were there three men and four women fascinating discussion this is not the time to go into detail but the answer to your question is the women are absolutely as important nothing happens avram was nothing without his sarah you probably know that all our torah indications are that if anything a woman was on a higher level i don't like to admit this but you know sarah had to tell her husband a prophecy that he was not he was not able to hear rifka was able to know a prophecy that yitzha was not able to hear right rachel and leia knew you went to leave in every case the woman's intuition prophecy spiritual insight was greater and god said to the men listen to her she's the one who's correct so yes there's a difference in public visibility so to speak but not in depth and meaning and of course i'm sure i don't need to mention that there's no question about women not having the same rights as men or being possessed or mere objects i mean that of course is ridiculous as you know a woman has the same legal status in judaism the same contractual rights and obligations if anything i would say probably if you analyze it if you if you if you analyze it in detail if anyone has less rights it's the man if anyone has more obligations it's the man a man has a long list of obligations to his wife a long list of obligations he's got to pay for her fines he's got to pay for her burial experiences he's got to pay for a medical he's got to pay for her children if she has children from another marriage and gentlemen let me remind you you have to buy your wife a new outfit for every festival including shoes and a handbag you may not live in a city where there's no cosmetics and perfumes i mean it goes on and on rabbi how about it's too terrible to think about but anyway let's move to the next question okay so this might be also a longer question but penina asks how do we know that the rabbis who codified the oral law weren't influenced by the misogynistic culture meaning the culture that was that put women down we know that over centuries women have become more more liberated they they weren't treated that well and in fact in many cultures today uh women are not treated as equal citizens so how do we know since the torah it seems or the talmud is written by by men by rabbis how do we know that they were not influenced by the culture that they were in the only answer that question is to study talmud and i suggest that your question of whether man or woman should study those sections and make a make a personal judgment don't take it from me incidentally some parts of the talmud were contributed by women they wanted two great women who offered opinions that stand with a man in talmud it wasn't their primary interest so they weren't spending their lives doing it but devorah was a prophetess no less and led the jewish people in a war not that she was part of the fighters but led them so yes women have made tremendous contributions even in those fields that we classically think of as men but they chose to express themselves more in the womanly area is there a misogynistic element in torah i think your question needs to study through the laws rabbi muslims many years ago read a classic work on that that's called jewish woman in jewish law long time ago this must be perhaps 30 years old but in that book he works through the classic areas of women's rights obligations contractual obligations in fact from a year earlier than men men aged 13 enter legal status the torah reckons that women at age 12 reach the same level of maturity and so he works through there all the contractual and legal a man cannot marry a woman without her consent she's he's the active party that he gives the ring but she has to actively receive the ring can't marry a woman against her wishes she's not an object of of your possession so leia does a woman get a mitzvah totoro learning indeed indeed she's not obliged in the same way she's not obliged you don't take a woman away from her baby and say ignore your baby and learn torah at this point in time indeed but absolutely the rambam writes that although that's not her primary obligation she's totally rewarded with the mitzvah of learning he writes that explicitly absolutely why not yes do you want me to take some on the screen or do you have another's on your screen uh i just i want to encourage everyone we've got one from orlean that uh says please do more exclamation mark exclamation marks i think uh there's there's so many other questions about women uh in the torah but maybe this as we as we do start coming to to a close and we start uh approaching shavuot just talk a little bit about uh the nature of the the study of the oral torah meaning it seems that a lot of the oral torah is basically in a question and answer form now we know that jews always ask questions and there's lots of questions we can ask in the in the written torah as well but it seems in the oratory the entire structure of the talmud is basically one argument against uh one after after another what what is the secret to the oral law um that uh has to be in this kind of a format and just again tying into this woman in torah are women uh discouraged from learning the talmud and if so does it have something to do with this particular structure of the oral torah well before we get to the women element let's talk about the thing itself you you put in two elements in your question one is argument and one is question and answer they're both critical the reason for asking questions in order to build knowledge you can only really absorb something when you're asking a question when you try to load information into somebody's not interested that's psychologically not a good position to be in as a teacher the person must be asking a question how do we begin the ultimate jewish educational experience which we call the seder we do anything to get the children to ask questions do you know that one of the questions of the four isn't even relevant to the sade at all not only that we don't even answer it the question why do we dip twice on this night right we don't even answer that question during the seder the point is get the kid to ask a question you know sometimes somebody says rabbi you've got to talk to my son he's dating a non-jewish woman or you got it no i will not if he calls me i'll speak to him i don't care what he calls me about i don't care what question he asked me he's got to ask me something i'll call up the son and say you know i want to speak to you about your life not going to pay attention to that educationally you need to induce your student to ask a question once they put themselves in the position of receiving then you can give and therefore you're quite correct jewish education always is the answer to a question not only that when the question is asked the educational response is i'm not going to tell you you figure it out how does the talmud do it how does the gamora do it the students ask a question they ask the master question he says what do you think and then he guides them to discovering the answer a good teacher doesn't stuff in information good teacher brings it out so you you pique the student's interest you get them asking a question in very simple terms don't feed somebody unless they're hungry right the food's not going to taste going to make them feel sick and therefore question and answer indeed all of thor is structured in that way it's a question and then the answer is delicious when there's an appetite the food is delicious that's a very important teaching tool sit children in the classroom and bombard them with inter with stuff that they're not interested in all you're going to do is turn him off big time get the kid ask a question do something weird do something interesting let the child ask then you can teach secondly your question is what's the style of talmud why is it such an argument this is a long long discussion but basically the technique of talmudic study is to break things down and then reconstruct them and i'll tell you just one brief insight into why that is because when prophecy ended language broke you can no longer say things as they are you can't say a thing as it is you can never convey convey things of deep meaning in words can't do that anymore and therefore we now take those broken shards of language because once called prophecy which was clear language and we no longer have that we now use when you when your beautiful glass object ceramic object has broken all you can do is reconstruct the pieces take the broken pieces and put them together you have to assemble them let me leave you with a thoughtful shavuot which i hope you'll find beautiful i apologize to those who've given me a long list of questions on the screen maybe send them to rabbi khan for next week if that's not good enough email me with pleasure it's only due to your lack of time these are excellent questions by the way fantastic questions are you seeing the same screen as me robocon ah you're muted so i can't hear you but i've got a list of excellent questions on my screen your people are sending them directly to you so you can send them to me for next week if people want me to ask the questions they should either send it to me or post it publicly and rabbit just before you do answer the uh the last question uh you just mentioned and i'm there this was some somebody asked us when you say please email me do you want to give your email out publicly on this forum or should i send it to someone who asks me how would you like if someone wants to if someone wants to contact you how can they contact you they can reach me on any email that will be sent to me either through the jle or through you my private email is suzannettes gmail.com so whatever's convenient i may take a little while to get to it but i'm happy to happy to try but if they ask this question next week or i don't know how to send these to you but i wasn't ignoring them was only just uh you kept me busy so i wasn't able to get to them but let me leave you with this thought quite an amazing thought the process of talmudic study as you said taking broken pieces and assembling them you know there's something quite amazing about sinai the torah says we stood at sinai and we saw the sounds roy de sarcoides we stood there and saw the sounds what does that mean let's say we hear we heard the sounds we saw the sounds of sinai what does that mean very briefly seeing is an experience that happens in the light there's no construction to be done when you see all the parts are there and you see it clearly a prophet is called as seer he sees it clearly hearing happens in the darkness think about hearing when i talk to you you hear one word then the next word you still don't know what i'm talking about until the last syllable of the last word it all comes together in your mind so here's the secret seeing forces itself on you in english they say seeing is believing witnesses have to see when you see the facts they're all there they're assembled no place to move hearing is subjective takes place inside of you you assemble it one sound then the next then the next the end of the story you assemble it the hebrew word for hearing is shema means to assemble the torah says saul gathered the people together shema means to assemble parts what do you think shema israel means o israel the lord what does that mean hero israel in other words the rest of the torah you don't have to listen this is important so listen up and what it means shema israel means get ready to make a oneness hashem you assemble the parts you look at a world of broken down pieces get prepared prepare yourself to make you need to do that you need to take all the parts of the universe and assemble that it's a subjective exercise that happens now when we stood at sinai there was no assembling to be done hashem appeared all of reality was manifest there's no process left there's no place to go no circles to close no gaps to close there's no possibility of hearing at that point hearing is a process where you put it together subjectively instead of sinai the only thing you could do was to see and therefore the torah even talks about the sounds as having been seen there was no process the oral law is all you know when the zohar which means blinding light zoro means brilliant light how does that introduce the subject come and see how does the babylonian talmud introduce the subject tashma come and listen oral lord has to happen in the dark it's up to you to reassemble the parts robot khan let me thank you for this session i've enjoyed speaking to your black belts and our written words black belts let's save a few questions for next week and i wish everyone a wonderful shavuot uh inspiring and amazing time learning to see the sounds i on behalf of everyone here i've been hearing a bunch of comments including from lima who said these sessions keep me going during covert and i think we all feel that we're coming together to learn something do something important and it's a great preparation for uh for receiving the tour of this uh thursday night i'll put in the in the chat rabbi tatsu's email address for those of you wanted suzanne tetz with the z uh gmail.com and then i'll also put emmett's website it's emmet outreach.org e-m-e-t outreach.org i just looked on the charity campaign right now they are of their goal they have a little under six hours to go so i encourage all of you if you uh appreciate everything that emmett's doing including this fantastic series please go to emmett outreach.org and tell your friends i want to also take this opportunity of thanking rabbi ruttenberg and also wishing everyone a haksa mayor a very healthy and meaningful chabot and we hope to see you again next week at the same time thank you ravatz and take care everyone