48 Ways to Wisdom: Mishnah (6:6:15)

We are in Mishnah number six of chapter number six. This is the famed 48 ways to wisdom. We spoke last time about the way number 14, which was with scripture. And now we're on to way number 15. And that is Bimishnah with Mishnah with Aural Law. Mishnah, the Aural Law, the Cotification or a Law, this is a way to wisdom. If you want to be wise, one of the ways to do it is Bimishnah with Mishnah. We're going to focus on two questions. A, what is Mishnah? What is this Cotification of Aural Law? A, and B, why is it a way to wisdom? What exactly about Mishnah makes it a way to wisdom? How do we deploy this way, way number 15, the Mishnah? So, to understand the concept of Mishnah and Aural Law in general, it's important to go back to the beginning. Ramam tells us in his wonderful essay on Aural Torah, the way he starts off is by telling us that when Moshe gave us the Torah, he gave it to us in two formats. Torah was conveyed into formats. There is the written Torah and there is the Aural Torah. And the Aural Torah is broken down into a lot of different components. The written Torah, that of course, is scripture, the pantatach, the five books of Moses that we've been reading and copying and perpetuating since we got the final version from Moshe on the last day of his life. The Aural Torah, and it's vast and different elements that was perpetuated from generation to generation, just as the written Torah was perpetuated in a written format. The Aural Torah was perpetuated in an Aural format from generation to generation. As of today, most of Aural Torah was in fact written. So there was a decision that was made to canonize and write down and organize in a finalized format, the write down what was previously unwritten, what was previously only Aural. So to understand a little more about this, it's important to give some context. The Torah is the will of the Almighty. It's what he wants from us in this life. It is the manual for living. It is the complete comprehensive guide for life that the Almighty gave the Jewish people. At Sinai, there's the revelation, the nation signs off and accepts. We will do and we will listen. They are accepting all of Torah. They are succumbing or they're yielding. They are accepting to whatever the Almighty has planned for them. And part of it is what is written down and part of it is what is not written down and is instead conveyed to the nation. And on a basic level, you've written Torah and that serves as a framework for Torah. Torah in general is what the money wants of us. The framework of that is the written Torah. The body of it, the essence of it, the actual details of it is the Aural Torah. And this means, this very unusual means of conveying this collected purpose of Torah. That's unique. And is completely ingenious, of course. This is a way of perpetuating an enormous body of law and philosophy and really a complete comprehensive guide to life. To do it in a way that humans, fragile, fallible humans, humans who undergo a lot of trial, tribulations, expolitions, being marginalized in every way, we can perpetuate Torah and we can maintain what the Almighty gives to Mosheh and Mosheh gave to us. We can maintain that in its pristine accuracy for decades, for centuries, and for millennia. That's how they might give it to us. And that's how it was perpetuated for many, many centuries. There's the written Torah that everyone can read, everyone's encouraged to read and know really, really well. And that serves as the framework and then the understanding to actually understand what everything means and how it's applied. That is conveyed in the oral tradition, teacher to student, parent to child, generation to generation. The key point in time where the Mishnah was written down. The Mishnah is an element of oral Torah. It's not all oral Torah because you have the the Talmud and the Halacha and the Kabbalistic literature. A component of oral Torah was written down. It was written down under the ages of, rather, due to the prince, around the year 200. So to simplify it, about 1500 years elapsed from Sinai, from the times of Mosheh, until the times of Rabbi, due to the prince, and for about 1500 years, the oral Torah was completely conveyed in an oral fashion. And then it was kind of modified with the writing of the Mishnah, which is the subject of this way, way number 15. The Mishnah, it was finally conveyed 1500 years after Sinai by Rabbi, due to the prince. Now it's important to note, this is a subtlety that a lot of people miss. Rabbi, due to the prince was not the first one to write down the Mishnah. Everyone wrote, everyone kept notes. All the way back to the times of Mosheh, Joshua, the elders, the prophets, and the judges, and the kings, etc. Everyone always kept notes. The fact that there were written versions of oral Torah, that is as old as Torah itself, or at least Torah in our hands itself. What Rabbi, due to the prince, did was he codified it. He took the oral Torah and the part of oral Torah known as Mishnah, and he made a uniform, authoritative version of it. He assembled all those writings, and he organized it and systematized it, and made it in a uniform fashion and made it a finalized, canonized version of oral Torah, at least the Mishnah part of oral Torah. And he did this for a reason. Even though it is prohibited to codify, to canonize oral Torah, he did it because there was a pressing need to do so. Rabbi, due to the prince, and his academy, and the Sanhedrin at the time, they foresaw that the capacity for our nation to continue doing what we have been doing for 1500 years, to perpetuate the Torah in the written and oral fashion. The way was done since Sinai. That capacity was diminishing. There were fewer sages, and there was less stability, and there was more expulsion and dispersal, and there was a fear, there was a concern that the nation would forget parts of Torah. And of course, that would be a catastrophe, because if the Omanid gives us the Torah with the explicit command to make sure that we perpetuate this and never forget it, if there is a threat to that continuity, that is a critical, existential threat to the continuity of our nation and by extension to the continuity and the vitality of humanity. And therefore, these great sages made a consequential decision to codify the oral Torah, at least the mischievous part of oral Torah, and thereby ensure that the nation can continue. And I want to stress, this was a decision that did not make lightly. The Torah itself prohibits the codification of oral Torah. You are not allowed to do what they did, but just as a surgeon would apetite the leg of someone to save their entire body. So too, it is better to violate one law on a Torah to preserve the entirety of the Torah and to preserve the continuity and the vitality of the nation. This example, by the way, of the surgeon and to let the saint of the body is the exact example that Ram of himself gives. So you have an incredible decision done by Richard the Prince, who was the head of the Sunadron, together with his colleagues to codify the mission a part of oral Torah. And the reason why they did it, even though it is prohibited to do it, you are allowed, in fact, required to violate one law if that is the only way to maintain the entirety of Torah going forward. And therefore, we have an incredible work done by Richard the Prince and his colleagues. It's known as Mishna. And it was, again, as I mentioned, a finalized, codified, canonized version of oral Torah. Today, well, today, then it was broken down into 63 different books, six different general sections. And this is a succinct delineation of oral Torah. Now we'll note that while the great sages wrote down codified, canonized oral Torah, they only did it to Mishna. Mishna is almost just the laws, just the abstract, just the heading of oral Torah. They took, let's say, if you imagine all of oral Torah, you imagine it as a encyclopedia with 5,000 books. They'd just be, you know, the first couple of lines of every entry. None of the details, none of the applications leave out a lot that still maintained in its original oral fashion, but right then, just the laws, just a quick, very, terse succinct version of all of oral Torah. That's what they did. And about 300 years later, the decision was made to continue the codification of the oral Torah by writing down the Talmud. And what Talmud does is it fills in the details. Every Mishna is like the heading. And then you have the many, many pages that accompany a few lines of Mishna known as the Talmud. But again, we have this Mishna. And it's the collection of all the teachings, of all the laws, of all the traditions, of all the centuries, taking the headings of all the laws of oral Torah and cutifying it in a finalized version. And this monumental effort was done by, of course, by Richard the Prince, he was the leader, but it was done in collaboration with hundreds of sages. And it took a long time to do it. But ultimately it was done. And the Talmud, in fact, tells us that really only one person could have done it, could have spearheaded this effort. The Talmud tells us that since the days of Moshe, 1500 years prior, there was no person like Robert Drutheprince, who was in the same person, the greatest sage in the land, and the wealthiest Jew amongst the whole nation. He had power and wealth and influence and a very collegial relationship with the Roman emperor Antoninus. That unique combination allowed the flexibility and the stability and the security to do this project and thereby stave off the destruction of this nation. It took about 50 years for it to be done and they looked at all the original writings and they came up with systems and formats for how to do it. And again, they left a ton of the oral Torah still oral. And that's why there's a need for the Talmud and other future writings of oral Torah. And they wrote it in a way that still maintained the flavor of the original oral form of instruction. But everything was organized and systematized for the first time. And of course, the result is an absolute masterpiece. It's all of oral Torah. Again, not the details, just the mission of the layer of it. And this incredibly lucid writing, the Rambham himself writes, that Robert Judah, the prince, was the greatest writer we've had in our nation's history. He was able to infuse all this meaning into these words. And I see this tells that every word of Mishnah is replete with insights, with laws and with secrets. And I see this have also told us that it was written with tremendous divine assistance. And of course, a couple of years later, the Talmud was written to continue this tradition of when there was a need to add more to this corpus, they added more as necessary. And just as the Mishnah left over a lot of the oral tradition, still oral, the Talmud did the same, but it expanded the base of oral Torah, that was in fact, canonized and written down. Now, it's really beautiful about it, is that it's written in such a fashion that it necessitates further study. So for example, this is a classic example of Mishnah. You have one Mishnah in one book that says a law. And you have a second Mishnah in a second book that says a very similar law or very similar circumstance, but not exactly the same, and opposite rulings. So you have two scenarios that seem to be very similar. And in one case, the law is X, and the second case, the law is Y. Both of them were done, were canonized by the same group of sages under the leadership of Rebidjud of the Prince. This happens all the time. And that was done on purpose. Because one of the means through which the Mishnah was written or one of the systems that Rebidjud of the Prince employed was deliberately talking about the exact point of departure, the point of separation between X and Y. And it'll present just the two cases that seem to be the most similar, most parallel to each other, but fall on either sides of the law. And that forces us to notice the nuance that separates the two cases from each other. And all that's by design. It's forcing us to ponder further to understand the fine difference that separates the two cases and thereby to preserve the law in its original way. What results is a handbook. No one says that all of Oral Torah is found in the Mishnah. And all the headings, all the subject matter of Oral Torah is found in Mishnah. And perhaps this is why it is a way of wisdom. The word Mishnah means repetition. The reason why Mishnah is called Mishnah is because it's important to repeat it that the study it over and over again. What did Remedure the Prince do? He took Oral Torah and he took just the laws of it and he wrote it down and canonized it in a way that it can be reviewed and it can be adopted and absorbed as a framework for all of Oral Torah. And when you review it and you review it again and again and again, you now have the complete framework of all of Oral Torah. You can maintain it and you can remember it and you can hold onto it. In effect the Mishnah is a framework for remembering all of Oral Torah. And of course all the details because you need the Talmud and the other writings of Oral Torah to really round it out. But the skeletal outline of all of Oral Torah is found in Mishnah. And perhaps this is why Mishnah is a way to wisdom. Because really we are encouraged, if we were to pursue any wisdom ourselves, we are encouraged to it. have a mission of framework for everything you want to maintain. You want to study something, you want to understand something. It is imperative that you review it and that you develop some sort of structure, some sort of framework that you can kind of keep. And every idea that you encounter, every thing that you learn, it fits into your pre-existing structure. If you just have some scatter shots, ideas here and there, it's not organized. You may amass a lot of knowledge, but your path to wisdom is closed. Remember, sure, the prince did a half job. He wrote down all the top of the body, only gave us the laws and the so much left unwritten. Yeah, that's by design. What he did give us is a framework that if we review it and understand really well, everything else that we encounter can fit in neatly in that existing structure. This is a requirement to wisdom, to have a structure in which everything can fit in. And that structure is not going to be fully fleshed out, but it's going to be comprehensive. And if you have a comprehensive structure that you repeat and review and study and really understand, then every little node, every little bit of wisdom that you are able to absorb, it has a place, it fits in to the bigger picture. Now, there are other works that can fall under this category. So, for example, my monodies, Rambam, where he wrote the 14 books, The Mishnit Torah. That tool leaves a lot unsaid, but it does present a comprehensive framework in which every bit of knowledge can fit in. The Shokhanara, similar thing. It takes all of Jewish law and organizes it. And in every law, you know where it fits in. But I think in anything that we want to study, we have to have the big picture. And the big picture, the more comprehensive it is, the more it is fulfilling this way to wisdom of Mishnit, where you study something and you understand it, you understand the structure, the outline, the framework of what you're trying to get. And once you have that inside of that framework, you can actually build the edifice of wisdom that you're trying to build. So, of course, the Mishnit Self is an integral part of Oral Torah. And the writing is a total masterpiece. And the work was, in fact, successful in ensuring that we are able to perpetuate the Oral Torah to the next generations. But it can also serve as a way to wisdom, because the function of the Mishnit, it's not to give us all of Oral Torah, but it does give us a comprehensive framework for Oral Torah. And in that framework, we can add more and more. And that principle is needed for every pursuit of wisdom. Every pursuit of wisdom, you have to understand where the pieces of wisdom fit in. And if you just have a lot of isolated discrete little bits of wisdom, and it doesn't fit into one big picture, you're not going to be able to complete what you set out to accomplish. This is way number 15, Bimishna with Mishna, which we are understanding as with a framework of knowledge, a framework of wisdom. Even if it's not comprehensive, there's lots of things that are not written down, but the structure, in fact, is comprehensive. And inside such a structure, the details can be filled in. And the path to wisdom can be blazed. I appreciate your attention. And listening, it's great to be back here in the torch center in Houston, Texas. I look forward to your questions, your comments, and your feedback. And you can always email me [email protected].