Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Truth Shall Sprout from the Earth

Okay. Hi everybody. Thank you for coming and we're getting a few more people. Uh the COVID terror is uh receding perhaps. And uh today's sheer is a dedicated Aliyah Neshama of Benjamin Benyamin Yisrael ben Halevi and we want to welcome uh the Gancher family who are here for 3 months and may God give you much much uh Nachama. In addition, Aliyah Neshama Avraham ben Yitzchak Yisrael and the sheer should be to his zechus as well. A uh refuah shleimah for Yeshua's and refuas to all who need. By Zev and Chani Gervel. I know that people complain I add too many uh autobiographical notes when people dedicate, but I do have to add a little autobiographical note. Uh Chani Gervel grew up in my community of Hartford. Her father was a great uh person who was mekariv me. Uh Rabbi uh uh Philip Finkelstein zichrono livracha who by uh profession was a lawyer, but by uh avocation was a person who brought many many people to Torah and mitzvahs including uh me and really uh my family as a whole. And Chani I remember as a very cute little little girl in the house. She was the baby of the house. And Baruch Hashem she herself has grown up to be a great mechaneches of great distinction. And uh we're certainly very very proud. So, very very happy to uh be able to have her have her husband and her be the ones who dedicate the sheer. And uh this sheer was also sponsored uh by uh What's what's all all all is a is a name or is a all family? be entire family. Of the the Freifeld and Slomianski family. All of their families for the Geulah Me'irah of all of Klal Yisrael. We can all say amen to that. And then finally sponsored by Devorah and Yaakov Shore uh who again a very good friend of mine dear friends who was overly effusive in praise for me so I'm not going to read it but there is a no such in the YouTube description and again I thank you for the hesbits and we very much appreciate your support for the for the sheer. Finally Yibaneh will be having a Pesach seder this year and God willing I hope to participate and for information about the seder there's an email address Pesach p e s a c h at yibaneh.com and you can get all the information about the Yibaneh Pesach Pesach seder. So this week we are entering of course Adar Sheini and Chazal say "Mi shenichnas Adar marbin b'simcha." When we enter the month of Adar we have great joy. We've already had it on Adar Aleph so as a result Adar Beis we're building on the simcha of Adar Rishon and of course the holiday of Purim is primarily celebrated in Adar Sheini. So this is really will be a great great month of simcha. I have to say that although obviously the world is going through a difficult situation right now and the the aggression of Russia against the Ukraine is of course a matter of world security but in particular we are very concerned about the Jews. There are quite a a number of Jews in the Ukraine. Uman is there for example but other communities as well and many of them do feel in an endangered situation. In fact, even Orthodox Jews traveled on Shabbos to get away from the fighting the zone, the military zone. And our tfilos are that this aggression should be resolved in a good way very very soon with shalom for the Jews and really for everybody that's involved in these difficult situations. And the month of Adar is auspicious for Yeshua for Geulah for redemption. We hope that that will be the case. I do have a lot of stuff to talk about for Purim, but since we have you know a few weeks to Purim, so I'm going to not talk about Purim tonight. I want to talk about something that kind of is a little off the beaten track. It's not directly connected to the parsha, but it is connected to the end of Shmos and it's connected to the chet ha'egel. And that is we are told that when Moshe Rabbeinu came down the second time through the with the luchos, these are the second luchos. And that was on Yom Kippur. Those were the luchos that were not broken. There was something new that happened to Moshe physically. His face had a shining, a shine. And of course the phrase that the Torah uses has been mistranslated and misapplied in famous art. The Torah says ki karan or panav. Karan is a lashon of horns. There were horns of light, which we would call beams of light that were coming out of his face. There was a giluy of the Shechinah on his face. Ad ki de kach that Moshe had to walk around hooded because people could not gaze at his face because it was the face of the radiance of the Shechinah. And only when Moshe Rabbeinu communicated from Hashem he would lift up the masveh, the veil, and would be able to talk. Now, as you know, if you've ever seen the statue of Michelangelo's Moses, it's a beautiful statue, but there are like little horns coming up, and this resulted from a mistranslation. Ki Karan or Panav, Karan means Jews have horns, and indeed Michelangelo did not portray it as a sinister thing, but in later anti-Semitic caricatures, there actually was a strong belief that there were people who believed in the South of the United States, for example, that Jews had horns. In fact, they even explained that's why males, at least, wear kippahs, wear yarmulkes, because under the yarmulke there's going to be these little horns popping up, and that actually comes from a mistranslation of the phrase Ki Karan or Panav. Obviously, Karan means beams of light. So, here's the question. Why did Moshe only have the beams of light when he came down the second time? Why not the first time? Now, you could say, "Well, the Luchos were broken, the cheito eigel." But, there's a medrish that says the following. The medrish says, "Where did Moshe Rabbeinu get the beams of light?" So, listen to what the medrish says. The medrish says, "It was the leftover ink in his quill, and the leftover drops of ink gave him the light on his countenance." So, first of all, in a literal sense, the medrish literally does not make any sense. First of all, what drops of ink were there? What I mean, whatever Moshe Rabbeinu did would be engraving in stone, and Moshe didn't do the engraving in the stone, anyway. Moshe Rabbeinu cut out the Luchos, and Hashem engraved it. So, there was no quill, there was no ink. And anyway, leftover ink doesn't generate light anyway. So so what what is the metaphor? What is the mashal? What is the meaning that Mosha was zoche to the beams of light because of the leftover ink in his quill. What quill? What ink? And how does that generate light? Right, what is the meaning of the madrish? By the way, you have to say this idea that Mosha Rabbeinu had a countenance that radiated light. So we think this was the unique feature of Mosha Rabbeinu, which of course Mosha Rabbeinu had it to a degree that no one else ever had. That's true. But the truth of the matter is, even today in this day and age, this day and age, you can sometimes encounter that tzaddik whose face radiates light. I remember in my lifetime, I remember Reb Mosha Feinstein, his name was also Mosha. I grew up in Hartford, again I mentioned that a lot. Uh forgive me for repeating it. Uh and Reb Mosha Feinstein used to visit Hartford for a few summers, for 2 weeks in the summer, because he had a relative there. Our joke used to be, Reb Mosha wanted to go to the one place where nobody would bother him with any halachic shailos. So he couldn't go to New York, you know. Baltimore, people would ask shailos. Hartford, Connecticut, like nobody was asking him any shailos. So that would be a little vacation for him. And uh he was obviously honored to speak at the Young Israel. He spoke sholosh seudos. I I didn't understand a word. Uh I was not that fluent in Yiddish, although I knew some Yiddish. Um and but but his Yiddish was very very heavy Yiddish. It was a Russian Yiddish. It wasn't even the standard uh Yiddish. So it was hard to understand him. I didn't I didn't understand a word. Uh but I couldn't take my eyes off him. And I And I I I will attest, I was not only 9 years old when he the summers that he spent 8, 9, and 10 for the two summers. And I distinctively remember having the feeling that I saw a shining in his face. I saw shining in his face. And I have my own Reb Moshe story. Again, I forgive me, I probably have recounted it before, in which I was in fourth grade, and I would daven in the Young Israel and then walk to school. School was like three blocks away from the shul. So, I had this zechus as a 9-year-old to be in the car with Reb Moshe Feinstein. In other words, we'd pick him up in the morning, and we'd go to shul. I would be going to shul with him. I mean, he didn't talk to me, but you know, we'd go to shul together. And then I'd daven, and then I would walk to school. So, one time um it was raining, and we'd finished davening, and I was still davening. I was still in shul. I was a little precocious. I had my own my own my own my own my own my own key to the shul and everything else. And I was planning to walk to school. I was going to daven there for, you know, a little 10 minutes extra. So, after everybody left, there's a knock at the door, at the shul door. I open up the shul door, and the guy that drove us to shul was there, and he said, "Reb Moshe Feinstein remembered that there was that you were in the car, and he asked me to come and take you to school because he didn't want you to walk home in the rain." Or not walk home, walk to school in the rain. Now, the truth of the matter is, it was only a three-block walk. It didn't bother me then to walk in the rain, and it actually doesn't even bother me now to walk in the rain. It's no big deal. And all the people in the car who knew me had no hava amina of going back to pick me up. They said, "Ah, the kid'll walk walk in the rain. What? He's 9 years old. What's the big deal?" So, who was the only person who noticed, and the only person who was concerned, and the only person who was worried about a 9-year-old walking three blocks in the rain, it was the Godol Hador in which all of the problems of Am Yisrael were on his shoulders. They used to say, "Every Rabbi that got smicha in America, in the back of his smicha was the phone number of Reb Moshe Feinstein." Now, I I know that's not the literally true because I know from my own smicha, I don't have Reb Moshe's phone number. But, it's kind of a mashal for the fact that every shaila, every big shaila came to him. And yet, he was concerned for the relatively minor discomfort of a 9-year-old. And I'll tell you the truth, that little story a kind of spoiled gedolim for me in the sense that, you know, I you know, I mean, you know, of course we have we have great great gedolim and there are many things I don't know about our great gedolim. So, I can't I can't say there wouldn't be others that might do the same thing. But, in my experience, there was nothing like that. No one like that. And to this day, you know, it gives me a feeling of of warmth and connection. And I can tell you that his face shown. His face had a radiance. His face had a radiance. It wasn't only Moshe Rabbeinu. Even the gedolim of our generation can have what's called a hadras panim. They say by certain Chassidishe Rebbes that their face physically changes when Shabbos comes in. There's like the light of God shines from their face. Okay. But, be that as it may, I think it's important to remember that because, you know, here's the thing. You read biographies of gedolim and usually the genre kind of emphasizes their brilliance, their phenomenal Torah knowledge. Uh so, it might say, and indeed by Reb Moshe was an example of that as well. You know, he knew, you know, finished Shas by 8 years old and finish you shall me by 9 years old and knew the whole Shulchan Aruch by heart by 10 and then he went to the Zohar and the Ariz writings. And you read about like phenomenal brilliance. And those are like amazing stories. Amazing stories. But at the end of the day, what do we learn from those stories? Because we're not on a level that we or our children are going to be that way. They're not going to be that way. We're not going to be that way. So it's entertaining. Wow, how great, what amazing thing. The guy knew Bobly and knew Shulchan Aruch, you know, etc. But we sometimes don't emphasize the middos of these great people, their Ahavas Yisrael, their caring concern. And that is something that we might try to emulate a little bit. In fact, Rebbetzin Feinstein herself used to say it. She she used to she used to tell Yeshiva boys. She says, "You know, she used to say she was a very open woman. She would say to like Yeshiva boys, "You know, you're probably not going to be as big as Talmud Chacham as my husband." She said, "You know, it's going to be pretty hard. But you can try to be, you know, a mensch like he is. And that would be something pretty pretty impressive to try to strive for. She would actually tell tell the Yeshiva guys, "Uh so try to be a mensch like my husband maybe and maybe you'll approach being a Talmud Chacham like him like him as well." And it's very very true. That's that's that's what it was. Okay. Um so again, uh every time I think about Rebbetzin Feinstein, I have to just mention this story a little bit because it's a story it's a type of story that sometimes gets deemphasized in the hagiographic literature about Gedolim that emphasizes brilliance above everything else. In fact, sometimes there are biographies that will praise a Gadol and I I believe these stories are not true, but they'll praise them. He didn't even know the names of his kids. That's how great he was. He didn't know their birthdays. As if to say, that's praiseworthy. Now again, I believe that a lot of that is not even true. But the fact that that's what you identify as praiseworthy. So some call on a guy who wants to be a godel says, "Ah, I'm not going to go to my kids' birthday party. Rabbi so-and-so didn't do that." Yeah, well. Is that good or is that bad? I can tell you Remus Feinstein knew his kids' birthdays and his grandkids' birthdays and his great-grandchildren. I know Remus' grandchildren. Some of them in They live in Baltimore. Tendler family. Remus Tendler's sons. And he showed me pictures of Remus wearing a fireman's hat and kind of on the ground on the floor playing with the kids. And he still had time to learn the prima godem a thousand times. He had time. Meaning, you can become godel adora, you can become, you know, a master of Torah and be a person who knows his grandchildren's birthdays. It's not a contradiction. And sometimes in the godolen biographies that we produce, we kind of say it's an either/or. Oh, you want to play with your kids? You're not going to become as great as you could have become. When in point of fact, you'll become greater. You will become greater. So, that's my little little speech about that. But But I want to go back to the medrish because that's the main the main subject. What does the medrish mean? Moshe was zoche to the hadras ponim of the carne ha'od, the rays of light because of the extra ink in the quill. What is the extra ink of the quill? So, the first thing to understand is this is a beautiful beautiful drasha from the Beis Halevi. This is not on the Beis Halevi al ha'Torah. This is in the Sheilos u'Tshuvos Beis Halevi. In the middle there are some drashos on Chumash. This was kind of a an advance to the Beis Halevi on the Torah. And this is drasha, I believe it's drasha Yud Ches. And it's really a very very phenomenal drasha. The Beis Halevi was Rav Yisrael Yosef Dov Soloveitchik. Uh he was the father of Rav Chaim Soloveitchik. Uh interestingly enough, Rav Yisrael Yosef Dov Soloveitchik didn't have the Brisker derech of learning. Although he was the Rav of Brisk, he didn't have the Brisker derech of learning yet because that was invented by Rav Chaim. So essentially uh the Beis Halevi is pre-Brisk. But quite literally he's grandfathered in, so he's admitted into the Brisker canon uh because as a kind of preliminary uh to Brisk. Although I have to say Rav Chaim was extremely upset when anyone ever was meramez that they thought Rav Chaim's derech was deeper than his father's. That was kind of an unforgivable sin uh to Rav Chaim to talk that way because the Beis Halevi was a great great great gaon. Uh really certainly a great uh one of the great great gedolei hador in the generation before uh before uh Rav Chaim. But what the Beis Halevi is going to bring out here is a first of all a very important general point. You know, the Rambam in the Hakdamah to Perek Chelek says, he talks about Aggadah. He says there are three different views about Aggadah. One is foolish. One is heretical. And one is true. The foolish position is every word of the sages is literally true. If Esther had a tail, Esther had a tail. If Moshe Rabbeinu was said to be 10 amos high, which is 20 feet, Moshe was 10 amos high. Now, the Rambam writes about such people. They are well-intentioned. They are religious. They are God-fearing. But, they are foolish. Because obviously a lot of these things didn't happen. Uh and they're not meant to be taken literally. Now, there's another view that says the sages intended everything to be literally true. And since they can't be literally true, the sages are superstitious. And they're bubbe meises and their stories. And it's devoid of inner meaning. It's nothing more than superstitious. The Rambam says that's worse than the first group. The first group are naive. But, at least they believe in the wisdom and insight of the chachamim. The second group are apikorsim. Because they basically say the chachamim are foolish superstitious people. Or what's even worse is if they're not superstitious, they're trying to fool I mean they're either if the chachamim believed this stuff, they're naive and foolish people. And if they don't believe this stuff, they're simply liars trying to impose this on their audience. So, either way it's apikorsus. If I believe the sages were foolish people, I'm an apikorus. And if I believe they are deceitful people, that's even worse. So, the Rambam says those that say every word of aggadah to is emes in a literal sense are well-meaning fools. And anyone that says aggadot that don't make rational sense are simply lies are apikorsim. So, the Rambam says the true approach to aggadah is the following. Every single thing the chachamim say is emes. There is truth that is being conveyed. But the truths that are being conveyed are not always meant to be literal truths. The khakhamim use metaphor. They use mashal. They use parable to bring out deep spiritual ideas. So, the way you have to approach a midrash is to understand that there's deep truth here. And then try to understand the symbolism in which that truth is being conveyed. Now, the Rambam then says, there are some midrashim that are indeed meant to be literal because khazal had traditions as to certain events happening and the like. Like Avram being thrown into a fiery furnace. This was a tradition khazal had. Other midrashim are really metaphors and meshalim for deep spiritual truths and the khakhamim never meant it to be taken literally. The big question is, so I learn midrash, I learn aggadata in gemara, whether it's in the gemara, whether it's in midrash, like how do I know if something is literal? And how do I know if something is metaphorical? So, here the Rambam uh tells us, be ezrat Hashem, I will write a book which will go through the aggada at least in the Talmud and I will show you when is something meant to be literal and when is something meant to be figurative and metaphorical. Let's are in a godol, we don't have the book. Uh either it got lost or more likely the Rambam never was, you know, wrote so many other things. He didn't get around to writing this one. So, we don't have the book. We don't have the definitive text that kind of tells you. But we do have, you know, many commentaries aggadata Maharal, for example, is an outstanding example who often unlocks the symbolic language of Aggadot. This is very, very key. You see, the Rambam is telling you, don't be don't have a binary choice here. Now, there's Aggadot is true or Aggadot is false. That's a false binary choice. Aggadot is true. Always true. But, not always in a literal way. In fact, you can even use the phrase which sounds like a real bad, but it's not that if you understand the term. Aggadot is myth. Now, we use myth in modern English to mean, "Bubbe mayseh, false." But, that's not the authentic meaning of myth. The authentic meaning of myth is parables that are designed to convey deep spiritual truths. In fact, in every culture, myths are the vehicle that convey the fundamental belief systems of the culture. Now, a lot of that what we would a lot of those belief systems we would reject. So, I'm not saying everything in a myth is true. Uh but, everything in a myth is designed to communicate the deep foundational beliefs of a culture. Greek mythology was conveying the deep foundational beliefs of Greek culture. Again, a lot of which we will reject. But, not because it's a myth, but because the belief that is being communicated is not Emes. Right? If you are familiar with uh Joseph Campbell, Joseph Campbell was kind of a self-taught scholar of world mythology. In fact, they even had a even had a PBS series on it which I didn't see, but I'm aware of. And Joseph Campbell explored the idea that myths contain profound truths. So when I say Agada is myth, I mean exactly what the Rambam is saying. It expresses symbolic truth through story and parable. Although there are midrashim that are meant to be literal truth as well because I had misores. This is an extremely important and to this very day uh people fight over this because there are rabbis and there are groups that actually say Agada has to be understood literally. All I can say is that that was not the sheet of Rabbeinu Chaim Gaon. That was not the sheet of the Ramban. That was not the sheet of the Rambam's son. Obviously Rabbenu Rambam wrote on this. That is not the sheet of the Ramchal. Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto who also wrote a maimer on Agada and it is not the sheet of the Maharal or even of the Vilna Gaon who wrote several or at least we have several lengthy interpretations of Agada passages. In fact, the idea that Agada has to be literal is really a minority view. It is not a majority view of the greatest thinkers in in Klal Yisrael. Rabbi Yisrael Salanter actually gave a kind of a homey mashal for how symbolic language of Agada works. You know, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter lived in the 19th century and he lived in Tsarist Russia and in those years, particularly the 1830s, '40s, '50s, Jews were confined to certain areas of Russia. They could not live in other areas without special permits. Like a Jew could not live in Moscow without a special permit or whatever it would be. And the area that Jews were confined to was called the Pale of Settlement. That was the term that was used. That's where the shtetlakh were, etc. And the problem was that because of anti-Semitism, the boundaries of the Pale of Settlement were constantly being changed. So, there may be an order that says, "All Jews have to move 30 miles, whatever it is, west." And they have 36 hours to do it. People were literally kicked out of their homes. The whole town had to be had to be relocated. I mean, there was usually a fake reason that was given, security, construction, whatever it was, but these were fake reasons. Just like uh like in Chi- I remember living in Chicago, to take a trivial example, when uh Mayor Daley Sr., not Mayor Daley Jr., Mayor Daley Sr. was the boss of Chicago, and uh the policy there was, if he didn't like you, they were always doing construction on your street uh like 5:00 in the morning. So, that was very well known that any street that had construction projects early in the morning, uh somebody did something that got Mayor Daley angry. So, the you know, the Tsar was kind of the same way in a much more serious way, that you know, he just was changing boundaries. So, Rabbi Soloveitchik said like this, "Let's imagine you were a journalist with a flair for writing. And you wanted to write a lead story about how 100,000 Jews had to leave their homes in 36 hours." So, you might write a headline that says the following, "A drop of ink drowned 100,000 people." Meaning the Tsar's signature destroyed the lives of 100,000 people. Now, 100 years later, an archaeologist finds an old newspaper. And the newspaper says, "A drop of the Tsar's ink drowned 100,000 people." What is that archaeologist going to say? "What a primitive, superstitious culture this must have been, that they thought the Tsar was a giant and ink from his quill could drown a hundred thousand people. But the archaeologist isn't aware of how vivid this is if he knew the actual history. A god that speaks poetic, symbolic, metaphoric, colorful language to bring out certain points. Now, that's the god of generally. The base of levy is going to apply although he doesn't he's not married on the methodology but he's going to apply this methodology to this particular measure rich of the extra ink. There was no quill, there was no ink. It is symbolic of another process. Okay, that's the god of this. So what is that other process? So what's interesting that there's a time of you shall me and we don't really understand what this means that differentiates between the first look at this that motion was bringing down that we would have gotten had they had they not been the ego and they would have been smashed and the second look at this. And that is on the first look at this the time of you shall me says all of the Tyra that became part of the oral Tyra would have been on the first look at this. We have a dichotomy between the written Tyra and the oral interpretations that I am gave to motion. The time of you shall me says that dichotomy only existed in the second look at this. In the first look at this everything, I'm not sure how it could fit, everything was written down explicitly. The concept of Tyra about that that part of the Tyra would be an oral transmission? That was innovated only as a result of the cheito eigel. And that was invented only in the luchos shniyos. In the luchos rishonais there only would have been Torah shebiksav. But but the Torah shebiksav would have included everything that later became Torah shebaal peh. What's the explanation of that? So here, in order to understand this exactly, you have to understand what Torah shebaal peh is, cuz I think people sometimes, particularly in yeshiva sometimes, they have an over simplifica- simplified idea of Torah shebaal peh. They say, "Every single thing was given to Moshe at Har Sinai. And it was passed down from generation to generation like a relay race. And it when it when it was in danger of being forgotten, it's got written down in the Mishnah and the Gemara." And therefore people will say things like, "Every word of the Mishnah and the Gemara was given in those words by Hashem to Moshe and was handed down till it had to be written down because it's in danger of getting forgotten. Because after all, we call the Mishnah and Gemara the Torah shebaal peh. We do. And we say, "Moshe got the Torah shebaal peh at Sinai." So doesn't that mean he got the Mishnah and Gemara? But if you think about that, that makes no sense at all. I mean, look at a page of Gemara. You have an argument of Abaye and Rava. Was Abaye told what he was going to say before he said it? Like, Hashem told Moshe, "Abaye is going to ask this question." And that was handed down generation to generation to generation till we get to Abaya, and it's still oral, of course, so somebody whispers to Abaya. Hey Abaya, or Rava. Rava is Abaya's Rebbe. Abaya, we have a tradition that you are going to ask this question. And Rava, we have a tradition that you're going to give this answer. I mean, that I mean I mean that literally makes no sense at all. Obviously, Abaya and Rava were people. They lived in a designated century, the 2nd century of the common era. They debated, they argued, they asked questions. Right? They didn't They were not told what they were going to say before they said it. So, in what sense do we mean that the oral law was given to Moshe? Well, we mean something much more modest in a way. God gave Moshe general principles. God gave Moshe methodologies for interpreting the Torah. Such as, let's say, the 13 principles that Rabbi Ishmael mentions. But it's then left to the Hakhamim of every generation to utilize those methodologies and apply them to new situations. And Tanaim and Amoraim are arguing over how to apply the how to apply the language of the written Torah and the principles of the oral Torah to new situations. So, Hashem did not tell Moshe specifically about the new situation. I mean, for example, uh electricity. I mean, this even happens today. Is electricity mutar to use on Shabbat? Well, what did Hashem tell Moshe about electricity? I would submit, and this is really based on the dress of Saran. Hashem didn't tell Moshe anything about electricity. Hashem gave Moshe principles from which the Hahamim will be able to determine if electricity is also in Shabbos or not. But Hashem did not give an actual ruling on it. See, this explains an interesting question people have. Every page of Mishnah and Gemara is filled with arguments. And the arguments are usually mutually exclusive. One says kosher, one says treif. One says forbidden, one says permitted. One says hayev, one says patur. Right? The sages are arguing over things. Now, if you're going to tell me that God gave Moshe every aspect of the oral law, then how could there be an argument unless somebody got it wrong? And yet, the Gemara says, "Oh, who's right when there's an argument? Even if halachically we have to follow somebody, but in pure truth, elu v'elu divrei Elokim hayim, they're both right." The kosher and the treif are both right. Well, what did God say? The answer is the Ran answers, "God said nothing." Meaning to say, God gave principles. And this is what the Ran explains. The Ran explains a very important idea. He says, and he brings the whole Gemara in Bava Metzia, that if a prophet has a message from God or a heavenly voice says the halacha is like so-and-so, we don't listen to the heavenly voice. Lo bashamayim hi. Remember Rabbi Eliezer uh argued with the Hahamim, and he had miracles to support his position. And finally, a voice from heaven said, "Halakha is like Rabbi Eliezer." And the Hakhamim said, "We don't care, God. The Torah is not in heaven. It's not your business." And that sounds pretty arrogant, khuts pa. But, Eliyahu Navi, somebody asked Eliyahu Navi, "What was Hashem's response when they said that?" He says Hashem was laughing. And he said, "Nitskhuni banai. My children have bested me. I'll stay out of this." Reminds me a little bit of the tell a joke about an Orthodox shul that was becoming conservative. The board of directors voted to get rid of the mekhitsa and whatever violate halakha. The rabbi was a firm rabbi. And uh the rabbi was also a member of the board, and the rabbi was opposed to it, but the president said, "Sorry, rabbi, you're just a member of the board. Uh it's three to one. So, you're overruled." So, the rabbi was crestfallen. This is not just a board vote, he says. This is Torah. This is halakha. So, he calls out to the Almighty. And he says, "Hashem Yisbarakh, this is your Beit Mikdash mad. A synagogue is a miniature Beit Hamikdash. It's being desecrated. Your Torah is being trampled upon. Hashem, please do something." So, a voice comes from heaven. And the voice says, "Don't dare change the halakha. The halakha is forever." So, the president just says, "Well, that still makes three to two. Uh So, I'm sorry, you're overruled." No, the truth of the matter is, lo bashamayim hi, that's exactly it. The pasqo says, "Halakha k'Rabbi Eliezer." The Hakhamim say, "Sorry, God. You know, you don't count. Your vote doesn't count. Now, the Ran asks a simple question. When we try when we have a halakhic question, whatever the Halachic question is, can I use baby wipes on Shabbos? Uh is microwave cooking considered be forbidden for meat and milk? Now, yes, I use human reasoning, I use analogies, I use precedents, I use texts. But ultimately, I'm trying to ask myself, what is the will of Hashem? Good, I don't have direct access to the will of Hashem, so I have to use intermediary reasonings. But I'm trying to figure out what is the ratzon Hashem? So if Hashem tells you his ratzon, you're saying, "Sorry, God, your ratzon doesn't make a difference in determining your ratzon." That appears to be the question. I mean, imagine uh kids are deciding what they want to get their father for his birthday. So one says, "Abba wants a tie." And one says, "Abba wants a shirt." And the other says, "Abba wants a a safe pair." Whatever it is. And Abba walks by and he hears the kids talking. And he says, "Well, you know, you don't have to get me a present, but if you really want to know what I want, I want something this." And the kids say, "Abba, with all respect, please stay out of it. This has nothing to do with you. We're discussing what it is you want. You know, you're what you want is not relevant to what you want." Lo bashamayim is a problem. Now, you could learn that maybe we don't listen to heavenly voices because maybe they're fake. Maybe they're hallucinations. Maybe they're not real. That is a possibility. One might say, "I don't admit heavenly voices because who knows that they're genuine." But that's not the mashma of the Gemara. The mashma of the Gemara is, Hashem did say the Halacha is like Rabbi Eliezer. And we still reject it. So the Ran explains that there's a big difference. Again, this is a dangerous idea, you got to be careful, but it is the run. There's a difference between mathematical truth and Halakhic truth. Mathematical truth, at least basic mathematics, only has one answer. 1 + 1 is 2. If you say four, it's not a question of you have a different opinion, you're wrong. Although, somebody sent me a video. This is hilarious video about the woke culture. You see Did you see it? About There was this kid, like first-grader or kindergarten, who said 1 + 1 or 2 + 2, 2 + 2 is 22. And the teacher said, "Well, 2 + 2 is 4." And she tried to show him with her with erasers and pencils. And the parents come in and say, "Who are you to force your values on our kid?" And the principal sided with the with the whole big thing. The teacher got fired. Uh because it was all it was a very very very very very brilliant, very funny little skit how they say, you know, "We can't impose our value systems on uh on our on our students." So, at the end, uh they fired her, and they had to give her severance pay for two periods. They go, "We owe you 2,000 for the first uh month, and 2,000 for the second month. So, we're writing a check for 4,000." She said, "No, you owe me $22,000." That's how she does That's the That's how I view it now. But okay. But be that as it may, generally speaking, most of us would say that mathematics, at least lower No, basic math Basic Basic arithmetic has an objective truth. The run says, "Halakha does actually does not have an objective truth. Halakha is process-oriented. Hakadosh Baruchu gave us foundations. Hakadosh Baruchu gave us methodologies. Now, presumably, Hashem does have an objective answer to every question. Right? If you ask God, he'll give you the answer. But operationally the answer that God wants is not the objective answer. But the answer as determined by the sages utilizing halachic principles, which means even when they get it wrong it becomes right. It becomes emes. It is the emes that Hashem wants in this world, not the objective truth of the heavenly realm but the emes as coming through the process of human reasoning and argumentation by those authorized to do so. Now now again, I'm I'm asking a great great question. Who's authorized? What's the process? Although those are very difficult questions actually, but that's the halachic process. It's like a professor giving you full credit for the right process. And the Ram says, that is how we can have elu v'elu divrei Elokim Chaim. Because even mutually exclusive positions can be true in the sense that they followed the halachic process with integrity, so the talmidim of the different rabbis could follow their different rabbis. That is why there could be machlokes generally. It's not a contradiction to the Torah coming from God. An amazing idea that Hakadosh Baruch Hu modifies his will in accordance with the decisions of the halachic process. That is why the Mishna says in Maseches Rosh Hashanah member the Sanhedrin sanctified Rosh Hashanah on a day that Rabbi Yehoshua was convinced was impossible to be Rosh Hashanah. And as a result, Rabbi Yehoshua's Yom Kippur the 10th of Tishrei would be a day later. And Rabban Gamliel, the head of the Sanhedrin, ordered Rabbi Yehoshua to come to him with his money and with his cane on the day that Rebbi Yehoshua's Yom Kippur. And Rebbi Yehoshua was what was so distressed. How can I violate Yom Kippur? And Rebbi Akiva told him, "It's not Yom Kippur. Astronomically, you might be right that it's the 10th day of Tishrei running from Rosh Hashanah. But halachically, Hashem changed his will. The holiness of Yom Kippur came on the wrong day, which thereby became the right day." The truth is, there's a quote from a secular from a secular Supreme Court Justice that the Lahavdil describing the US Supreme Court, Lahavdil a million Havdalas, but it describes this process exactly. Uh this was Justice Robert Jackson, who was a very very uh he died in the '50s. He was a very very eminent Supreme Court Justice, a brilliant man. In fact, he was the last uh Justice uh in America who did not go to law school. He still apprenticed. Now, law school's uh you know, uh he didn't even have a a legal degree at all. I don't think he had a college uh degree, but he became a a very eminent Justice on the Supreme Court. Uh he then took off like a year to be a lead prosecutor at the Nuremberg Nazi trials. And I understand he got in a lot of trouble in the Supreme Court. He just took off a year from that job uh to go to Nuremberg, but he felt that was important enough uh to uh to run that run those trials. And he said the following about the Supreme Court. And just plug it into Chazal, and I think you'll see the emphasis here. "We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible because we're final." Meaning the following. Jackson is saying, "It's not that we got it right. It could be that a lower judge may be smarter than us, may be greater than us, may have gotten a better answer. But institutionally what we decide becomes the final ruling. So we are infallible not because we're great. We are infallible because our role in the legal structure is what we say is final. Now obviously the come in my great come in my holy. But you have to understand it doesn't mean they got the right answer. But it means their answer is right. Not that they got the right answer. But their answer will be right by definition. That's the run low by shamayim and that's why we don't listen to a passel come because even if God is giving us the objective answer. But the operational answer is what the come in come up with. The precise in close the passel in the heaven. This is the meaning of MS may tismah. Truth sprouts from the earth. It doesn't sprout from shamayim. It sprouts from the earth. An amazing thing. Now So where does the wisdom come? Huh? The drashot run. Drashot run. Yeah, the drasha and I mean I I think it's Yael. Now here is the thing. Fascinatingly God has no preferred role in halachic adjudication. But God is permitted to sit in the base medrash like everybody else. We don't discriminate. So we have from one of the baalei Tosfos a very strange book. The safer is available. It's called shailos u'teshuvos min hashamayim. Questions and answers from heaven. One of the Bala Tosfos would have dreams in which he would ask Hashem different halachic questions and Hashem would give him answers and he wrote the answers up and printed as a safer. So, one might ask the question what are you talking about here? Halacha min Hashamayim, we don't accept heavenly responses. The answer is you're right. If it just would have been I asked Hashem mutar or assur. Hashem said assur. We wouldn't pay attention. But, Hashem goes through the rayas. Hashem says, well, based on the Rambam, it would appear this interpretation and you know, I have five rayas against Rashi in favor of Tosfos. So, we can look at those arguments and if God made a good argument we can accept it. In other words it's not in fact, she's min Hashamayim does not have the Now, you would you would figure that would be the final authority. No, it's not. It's just another book that we look at. Now, obviously, objectively Hashem is always right. But, Hashem himself told us that's not how you decide Halacha. You decide Halacha by human reasoning. So, Hashem has an admission in the Beis Hamedrash. Only if he convinces you by reasoning. Now, there are many things that God does that are beyond our reason. And there are many things, tragedies in life that we do sometimes have to accept. So, obviously, much of life is an unconditional acceptance. But, in the halachic process, paradoxically God says, if you don't agree with my opinion okay, then you got to follow your own. Again, within the parameters of the Torah. That's Halacha min Hashamayim. So, she'ilos u'tshuvos min Hashamayim is simply God joining a Beis Medrash and kind of giving his svaros which the chachamim could accept or reject depending on how they understand it. An amazing thing. Now, you may ask a question. What kind of crazy way is that to give us Torah? Why doesn't God just give us the rules? Right? God gives us a process where we figure it out and we argue and we debate and we discuss and we come out with many different opinions. Why didn't Hashem just give us the rule? The answer is this is a sign of great divine love. I've used this mashal before. Let's say you're making a cake for your four-year-olds. So, the easiest and best way of doing it is not even to make the cake. Just go to a nice bakery and get a nice cake. If you're going to bake a cake, bake the cake when the kid is asleep or in bed. Right? It'd be a good cake. But the deepest way of showing love is when you involve the four-year-old in making the cake. Now, qualitatively, the cake that you're going to make with a four-year-old will probably not be as good as the cake you could have made yourself. Right? There'll be cocoa on the floor and sugar on the counter and eggshells in the batter and part of it may be overbaked and part of it may be underbaked. If the point was just to make a cake, don't don't involve the kid at all. But if the point is to create a relationship of love and connection, you want to involve them. Hashem wanted us to be co-creators of Torah. Not just passive recipients of rules that Hashem lays down. Hashem wants again again within the parameters of the process. Okay, I'm not talking about reform. I'm not talking about that. Hashem wants us to be creators. Hashem wants us to use our minds, our svorah, our logic. Because the Torah is eternal. But the life is ever changing and dynamic. And therefore we live with the perennial paradox of how to take the unchanging and apply it to the ever changing. Cuz life does change. Life changes. Life is not a constant. New technologies, new inventions. We got to work with these eternal principles. And God says, "I'm not going to tell you how to do that." Well, I'll tell you how to do it, but I'm not going to tell you what the answers are. You got to figure it out. We're going to make the cake together. Now, going back to the base of Levi. That concept that we got to make the cake with God, that was the second luchos. After the cheida eigel, now again it's a little paradoxical cuz on one hand Hashem seems to be giving us a great privilege. But the other way of looking at it is initially Hashem would have given us all of the answers that would make learning Torah much easier. Uh you wouldn't have to go through a Well, I mean what what does Gemara do? In fact, it's so interesting. I mean the truth is I we have this question all the time. People begin you know, in our sematic let's say we have beginners who learn Gemara. So, they really face besides the language problems and you know, the difficulties of Gemara, but they have two preliminary questions. You know, because they hear that the Talmud is the meaning of life, the secret of life. And they figure the Talmud is going going them why they were created. You know, what is their purpose in in on Earth? All right. So, they're so excited. So, they open up a daf gemara about a chicken that lays an egg on Yom Tov or about a wild ox that that that gored somebody to death. And they're kind of wondering, where is the spirituality here? That's a hard question. And in some ways, the answer to that question depends on faith, meaning the Torah connects you to God and eventually it changes you. But initially, you're not going to always see it. Okay. But the other question they have is what's the bottom line here? I mean, after all, what's the halakha? Now, gemara is not a good I mean, all halakha comes from the gemara, that's true. But the gemara itself is not a good source of halakha because you have machlokes. Machlokes in the gemara, machlokes among the commentators. It reminds me of a story which again, you have to know gemara a little bit to appreciate the the this the the the humor in the story, but it is actually a very funny story. I was in a swarm store once in the States and a guy came in who did not look that religious and he bought a two-volume ArtScroll Maseches Eruvin. So, the owner of the swarm store said, you know, you look like you don't I mean, have you learned gemara a lot? He said, no, I've never learned gemara. He says, well, you know, eruvin is like the hardest maseches in the whole Talmud and like, why did you choose this one? I mean, I can give you other ArtScroll gemaras that might be a little easier to learn. He says, well, my problem is I live in a community without an eruv. So, I have to build an eruv in my backyard and I don't know how to do it. So, I figured I would buy a tractate tractate of the Talmud dealing with eruv and that will give me the exact instructions how to build an eruv in my backyard. You have to be a little sophisticated to get the humor of this. Uh but it's really absurd. If I needed practical lemisa step-by-step guidance how to build an eruv in my in my backyard, maseches eruvin would be the last book I would buy. I open maseches eruvin, I get the you know 10 machlokesim on all sorts of complicated cases, and then machlokesim among the rishonim as to what each of those opinions mean. I'm not going to get a bottom line from maseches eruvin. We have other books for bottom lines. Whether shulchan aruch, mishna berurah, or shulkhan aruch, those are not easy either, but they give you rules. And we have modern books that in English or Hebrew that at least tell you how to do it. So, the students might justifiably wonder if I'm not being told what to do, then what is it that I'm learning here? And in fact, not only that, but if you ask your rebbe, "So, what's the halacha?" The rebbe might actually say, "That's not relevant here. We're not learning halacha now." Maybe the rebbe doesn't even know what the halacha is, but he always says, "We're not doing that." You're not doing that? So, what is it that you're doing? So, the answer is gemara is not about knowing halacha. It should culminate in that. I'm I agree. It's about process. It's about immersing yourself in God's mind, thinking, connecting, being a creator, a co-creator of Torah with logic and reasoning. Uh So, here is the thing. That was the gift of the cheit ha'egel. Before the cheit ha'egel, we were so close to God, we were like angels. Angels don't have to think. Angels don't have to process. Angels don't have to figure it out. They're given their mission. The Luchos Rishonois gave us the mission. The Luchos Shniyois, based on the Yerushalmi Shekalim, we have to discover the mission. So, on one hand, it's a yerida. On one hand, we were demoted. On the other hand, Hashem is making the cake. We make the cake with God. As opposed to Hashem giving us the cake. Again, one has to explore this. Like, why should the sinner benefit from this gift? But, it is a yerida because it creates ambiguity and confusion. Ah. So, now the Beis HaLevi says, "This is metaphorically what the Medrash means. Metaphorically, when it says the Luchos Shniyois had extra ink in the quill." What that means is this. The extra ink in the quill is the part of the Torah that God did not write down. Meaning, the Luchos Rishonois would have had everything. The Luchos Shniyois, Hashem withheld. Right? Withheld, as it were, the Torah that He left for us to figure out. And that means we become partners with God. And that is the source of Moshe's heavenly light. Because he now is a creator of Torah with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And as the Zohar says, every talmid chacham is a part of Moshe Rabbeinu. Meaning, there is a There is Moshe Rabbeinu is pashtusha d'Moshe. B'chol dor, every talmid chacham has a chelek of Moshe Rabbeinu. So, understand how beautiful this is. The divine light that comes from being a creator of Torah came from that which Hashem did not write in the Luchos Shniyos because he left it to us to figure it out. And therefore, it's not ink per se, but so it doesn't say the the extra ink in Moshe's quill. Just as the extra ink in the quill, the Beis Halevi says it means Hashem's quill. What Hashem did not write, the chiddush of Torah sheb'al peh. And again, it's it's a it's quite an amazing thing, but I it highlights again based on the Ran that Torah sheb'al peh is not simply a matter of transmission. There is a creative dynamic aspect of Torah sheb'al peh. That's the role of chiddush. Like, the statement in the Yerushalmi In fact, there's a Yerushalmi that says any chiddush, any innovative thought that a talmid will ever say was given to Moshe b'Sinai. That that doesn't mean the actual chiddush was given to Moshe b'Sinai. But that means any chiddush that's true is rooted in the principles that Hashem gave Moshe b'Sinai. Uh in fact, that explains another Gemara, a famous Gemara that Hashem did show Moshe the future generations. And Moshe had a vision of Rabbi Akiva who was darshaning all sorts of things, and Moshe didn't understand what what all any of this meant. And Moshe was uh depressed. I don't understand. Until Rabbi Akiva said, "This is a halacha l'Moshe mi'Sinai." So, people ask the question. I mean, if it was a halacha l'Moshe mi'Sinai in the sense that Hashem gave it to Moshe, then why didn't Moshe understand it? What did What didn't he understand? He was told it. So some people want to learn Well, Moshe didn't get it yet. In other words, he was seeing a future vision of something God didn't tell him yet. But I think Al Pi the Run the p'shat could be very, very simple. The term Halacha l'Moshe miSinai in this context only at least doesn't mean Moshe got the actual p'shat. But Moshe was given the foundation out of which this implication was drawn. And therefore it could very well be It's hard for us to understand this that Moshe himself may not have been fully aware of all of the conceivable implications that could be drawn from what he was told. He was given the totality of Torah in the sense that every principle that is necessary for any Halacha to ever be decided was given to Moshe. So Moshe was in full possession of all of these principles. But the principles have infinite applications. And it could very well be that Moshe was not fully aware. Again, they say this in a lot of things. They say it about Rav Chaim and the Rambam for example. It's an interesting issue. You know, Rav Chaim Soloveitchik has very analytical, deep interpretations of the Rambam. And the question becomes gee, if he would meet the Rambam and say over his explanation to the Rambam, would the Rambam say, "Oh, that's exactly what I meant. How did you guess that?" Or would the Rambam kind of say, "I have no idea what you're talking about." Again, I mean I I mean I don't know and I can't judge, but some have said that the Rambam essentially would say, "I You know, I don't know what you're talking about." So here's the question. So does Does mean Rav Chaim's pshat is false? Well, number one, it's not false because it even if it's not a pshat in the Rambam, it is a separate autonomous svara. That's one approach. But there's another approach in which sometimes we, even great great people, don't fully articulate the final implications of their thought process. Meaning, the Rambam came to certain conclusions out of intuition. And Reb Chaim kind of is articulating the process of the intuition. So, it's a very interesting point. The Rambam may not have been aware of those conscious steps because the Rambam just saw it that way. Reb Chaim is explaining the basis for why the Rambam saw it that way. That's a fascinating point. It underscores the idea that we are not aware of the entire process of our own thoughts. And that's true in Torah, too. A gadol can see something intuitively by their grasp of Torah, but you'll sometimes have a later acharon who will articulate the steps. And and and the the gadol who's being explained did not necessarily consciously articulate it that way. Okay? And what I'm saying is, again, I hope it's not apikorsus, that Moshe Rabbeinu himself was in that situation. He had all of the rules, all of the klamen, all of the methodologies, but he didn't necessarily consciously see all the implications. And when he's hearing Rabbi Akiva, he was initially confused until he understood everything is based on Moshe. And this is the karnei orah. The karnei orah is you are now God's partner. As the Beis HaLevi puts it, you become the safer Torah. Instead of getting the safer Torah, you become the safer Torah. And that is the carne ha old that Moshe Rabbeinu got by the hidush of Torah she baal peh based on the Yerushalmi. So again, this is a a little off the beaten topic, but I think it's important to understand Torah she baal peh, the carne ha old, the Medrash, and of course it also teaches you it's a beautiful example of the symbolic metaphoric language of the Maggid of Mezeritch. So it's one of the great drashas. I mean I added a lot of stuff in there. I don't I don't think the Beis HaLevi even brings the Ran in, but it's very very clear that the Beis HaLevi's mahalach is connected to this drasha of of Rabbeinu Nissim. Okay? All be well and thank you for coming.