Speaker 1Approaching Chanukah is an opportunity to talk about a central facet of Torah, and that is the notion and the nature of the oral law. The Torah Shabal Peh, the oral tradition, the oral law, a very difficult subject to discuss, fraught with misunderstanding, potential misunderstanding, for disagreement and distortion. But it's really what makes us Jewish. It's really what, it's really where we live. It's really, it's really who we are, is in the tradition. The oral Torah which has been handed down. Chanukah is really the Yom Tov of Torah Shabal Peh. It's really the Chag, it's really the festival, if you like, that celebrates, more than anything else, it celebrates the oral tradition. You know, I think we've discussed, we've studied already together the idea that Chanukah is placed in history at that point where the written Torah ends. Right? Let's just get the context again clear so we can see this, get a clear picture, clear vision of what's happening. Is that our, our, our vision, the vision we have of history is that, like all human experience, it fits into two phases. The first phase is taking us from the creation of the world throughout all the generations that prophecy existed, that prophecy lasted. Around the time of Purim and Chanukah, right, the two post-biblical, so-called post-biblical or rabbinic festivals, at that time there was a transition. From the period during which prophets walked the earth and could see a higher reality and could transmit a certain vision of truth, that phase when the world was luminous, if you like, with its spiritual message, spiritual meaning, to when to some extent what the Kabbalists called the Oragonos, that hidden light shone in the world, to some extent, in some way, and then the world, so to speak, went dark. During the time of the men of the Great Assembly, on Sheikh Nasa Sagderna, the men of the Great Assembly. 2,300 years ago, something like that, the period of prophecy ended, and the world entered the phase of the so-called oral law, where the Mishnah was eventually edited and codified, where the Talmud, the Gemara, was eventually codified and edited. Not that these things hadn't existed before, obviously they had, but they came into their own in a way that had never been expressed before. The reason being that when prophecy was no longer alive, then human opinion, yes, then the work of human, the human intellect became, human Torah intellect became, to reconstruct, as it were, and fathom again, and penetrate the depths of Torah without prophetic revelations. Completely different exercise. The sources that talk about it express the distinction between the prophetic age and the post-prophetic age as the difference between night and day, between light and darkness. Right, it's a fundamental thing to understand. Prior to that, Torah was transmitted by prophecy. Yes, the way it was transmitted was through prophecy. The way Torah was given in the world, the way the Torah was transmitted from generation to generation was that it was transmitted. The Prophet, the Navi, received the truth as it was clearly manifest, the only distinctions being that each Prophet saw through his own character, his own personality, the lens, as it were, through which he saw Torah, gave it its own particular flavor. No two Prophets say in the same style, but each one was repeating exactly what was dictated, projecting that reality in the world. There was no room for human opinion. You know, we have the Torah, the Torah, the Torah, the Torah, the Torah, we have no record. If you examine the history of this, you see that we have no record of human opinion. There's no record. If you look at the post-prophetic era, you find that the way Torah is expressed there is, each thing that is expressed is attributed in the name of the one who says it, Rabbi Kiva's opinion, Rabbi Talva's opinion. The way Pekahavos begins is, The men of the Great Assembly, they said three things. Until then, you never had anybody saying anything, because people never said. No Torah authority ever said anything that was his opinion. All he did was transmit the Torah intact. It's for this reason that Ma'aral explains and many others, there was no argument in halakhah. There were no halakhic arguments. You know, can you imagine Jews without dissension, Jews without argument, there was no such a thing. There were no unresolved arguments in halakhah. That's because there was, when prophecy was around, the world was incandescent with its inner meaning. There was no room for disagreeing. Do you know the first time there was a halakhic argument? It's an incredible thing to think about. The first time there was an argument, a halakhic argument, was exactly at the time of Hanukkah. Do you know that? Yosef ben Yosef, Yosef ben Yochanan, the first two sages, three generations after the men of the Great Assembly. Let's get the history clear. The men of the Great Assembly, who included the last of the prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, the last three prophets. Malachi is the same as Ezra. The last of the prophets, the last vestige of, you know, they closed off the era of prophecy, deliberately, deliberately. They exorcised from the human consciousness the desire to worship idols. And of course, the same, that same work in the human soul, they closed off the era of prophecy. Denies the possibility of prophecy. If you can no longer transcend beyond yourself, right, in a meaningful, if you can no longer elevate yourself in that meditation that leads you beyond the self, then you can no longer hear the message that comes from, once you lose the, you lose the, you lose the tool, then you lose its transmission and receiving facilities. Once you take the organ out, you can no longer transmit, you can no longer receive. And the human mind, ever since that time, lost that innate drive to worship idols and lost the ability to worship idols. And that's what they did. Not going to go now into the reasons or the background, but that's what they did. After that, you had Shimon Ad Tzadik. We discussed this, I think, once in some, let's just at least get it clear. Misharei Anshek Neset Zagile. From the remnants of the men of the Great Assembly was Shimon Ad Tzadik. Shimon Ad Tzadik was that individual, unique individual, able to hold the whole of Torah in his own intellect, in his own persona, in his own spirit. He transmitted the teaching of the men of the Great Assembly. He was the junctional zone between the He was not a prophet, but he had at least seen prophets. He still witnessed miracles. When he lit the light, he was the Kohen God, he was the high priest. When he lit the light in the menorah, in the temple, in the Bezal Miktosh, the second temple, it still burned miraculously sometimes. The western light that burned miraculously when all the others had gone out, and it, although there was not enough oil, burned miraculously every night. That miracle continued throughout his lifetime. The Hanukkah miracle, the root of it was there. Of course, Shimon Ad Tzadik is the one who met Alexander. The deeper commentaries say that the word Shimon means to hear. Because prophets see. Prophets can see. A prophet is called a Chose. He sees. He has a vision. In a post-prophetic era, you can no longer see. You have to listen. You have to hear in the darkness. Seeing is clarity. He calls seeing is believing. In Hebrew, the word for Re'iyah is the same as Re'ayah. The Hebrew word for seeing, Re'iyah, is the same as Re'ayah, which means it's a proof. It's absolutely clear. Hearing is not like that. Hearing is your own inner construction. Vision, when you see something, all the components are laid out as they are. You see it instantaneously. There's no construction that's required. That's why seeing is believing. Seeing is knowing. Seeing is proof. Hearing is done only in the darkness. The way you hear is that you hear one syllable and it means nothing. Then you hear the next, the first one has faded away to memory. It still means nothing. You hear the third, the second has disappeared. And only at the end of the long sequence of hearing components do you reconstruct the meaning. That's why hearing is a completely subjective process. Seeing is called seeing. There's no subjective element. It's given. And then comes the phase of hearing, Shimona Tzadik. Tzadik also means this connection. I'm not going to go into now the background for that. So he is that junctional zone. He saw prophets. He saw the ending of prophecy and he introduced the new world that was post-prophetic. And in his day, there was no dissension. There was no halakhic argument. There were no breakaway movements that sought to modify or to distort. There was none of that. The very next generation, after Shimona Tzadik, the very next generation, the first generation in the history of the world where people had no longer seen prophets, the leader, the Torah leader was Antignois Ishocho. He already has a Greek name, Antignois, this great sage. And he already has a student who distances himself, who distorts. He had two students, Tzadik and Baitis. Tzadik was the founder of a movement known as the Tztukim, the so-called Sadducees, who distorted, broke the Torah tradition. And where did they break it? In exactly a denial of the oral law. Exactly that. What did they say? They said that what the written Torah says is true, what the sages transmit in the Mishnah, that's human opinion, that's yes, maybe yes, maybe not, that's subjective, that you can take or leave. That's what they said. Where did they find their point of departure? Because what does Antignois say? What is the statement we have from him? He says, So they came along, in other words, what he's telling you is, a Jew serves Hashem, a Jew does what he has to do, he does what's obligatory, because it's right and because it's commanded, not because they have any sense of reward, not because you're going to go to a world after this where you'll be rewarded. And it's for that reason, one of the deep reasons the Rambam says that the Torah does not mention the world to come. The Torah never mentions the world to come. In our oral tradition, that's richly alive, written but read between the lines of the Torah. But in the text of the Torah, the oral law is never mentioned. So he says, the Torah, one of the reasons, what he was expressing is, one of the reasons that the Torah doesn't express explicitly a reward in the next world, is to tell you not to serve for the reward in the next world. So he said, be like servants who serve not for the reward. So they came along and they said, did you hear what the Rebbe said? He said there's no world after this. Talk about a distortion. He said, don't serve for the reward. In the future the reward will be there. You should know there will be a reward. But don't serve for the reward. Don't change your observance into a mercenary thing. You love someone, you treat them correctly because of the love, not because it's good for you. It may also be good for you when you treat someone right. And there's no harm in knowing that. But there's a world of difference between treating somebody well because it's good for you and treating them because you love them and it happens to be good for you too. The Torah doesn't put into the contract the concept of reward in the next world. We discussed that in detail previously. Therefore he said, the Torah is indicating to you that you should serve because it's right and not for a reward. So they said, you see there is no reward. Why? How could they say such things? How could they distort such a tradition? The Mishnah is full of it. The Mishnah talks about people never sharing the world to come and people have no share in the world to come. The Mishnah is quiet because they are now moved into the phase of the oral law where human opinion becomes paramount, where Torah is reconstructed and transmitted and refracted through the consciousness of human beings. This doesn't change its divine validity one bit because if anything Hashem agrees. It's a remarkable thing. We'll have to discuss this and study it. But it is now up for anyone to say what they want and you can say whatever you like and there's no profit to say you're wrong and therefore, the first breakaway in the very first generation was a breakaway. The next generation, you have Yosef and Yosef and Yurhanan, the two great leaders of the generation. They lived exactly in the time of the Greeks. One of them was killed by the Greeks. What's called Pulmel Shel Yavon during the time of the Greek, the Greek dominion in Israel, the Syrian Greeks. And for the first time in the history of Judaism, there was a halachic disagreement. Yosef and Yosef, these two great sages differed in the whole Torah on one law, one halach. And that argument, that halachic debate was unresolved, continued for three or four generations until the time of Hilal and Shammai. Hilal and Shammai, four generations later, argued about three things, but only three. The Talmud mentions which three things they differed on. And in the generation of the students of Hilal and Shammai, you're talking now 180 years before the temple was destroyed, about 2,100 years ago, there were thousands of arguments. And now the Torah broke down into a fragmentation of human opinion. Of course, each of them divinely true, if they understand it. Mutually exclusive opinions, we say, this is true and that is true. That's another discussion we have to have sometime. How can two mutually exclusive opinions both be divinely true? Okay, let's discuss it. This is the nature of the oral law. But that's what happened. So, in the time of the Greeks, you have to understand this, is when the world went dark. They darkened the eyes of the Jewish people. That's what they did. They lived at the time when human intellect became paramount in the right way, in the oral law, in the wrong way in Greek philosophy. The Greeks were that era of history when they came along to say, there's no connection with the higher world. If you don't hear from that world, it does not exist. It's not for you. It's detached. If it exists, it's got nothing to do with you. Write for yourselves that you have no more share in the God of Israel. They meant the Jews. There was a decree. They meant it literally. Kiss for Lachem. Write for yourselves. You Jews have no portion. You've got nothing to do with him. That's what the Greeks did. Last week, I think, we discussed, no, the conjunction of sun and moon. We discussed that previously, how the moon reflects the sun and must reflect it. We reflect the higher reality. We are the moon to his sun, as it were. And that is how the. They interposed. They came to disjoin, to cause a disjunction between any notion of a higher world and a lower world. And I think we went into detail. That is why they decreed, for example, that Rosh Chodesh is forbidden. You may not observe the new moon, which is where the moon again begins to swell to reflect accurately the light of the sun. That's why they decreed that every Jewish woman getting married for the first time first had to go and live with a Greek governor before she could be with her husband, interposing there between male and female harmony, which is the ultimate vision of sun and moon. I mean, it's like Isaac Chavez says, that's why a girl getting married for the first time gets married on a Wednesday. What's the fourth day of the week got to do with the first marriage? Because the fourth day of the week is when sun and moon were created. So in that blessing of sun and moon being created in their primeval state of equality, where the moon can reflect all the light of the sun, that's a perfect time for a marriage. When male and female harmonize in perfection. Not like we live in a world now where the moon has shrunk and she can reflect only a part of the sun's light. And of course, every Rosh Chodesh is a woman's yom tov. That's what it is. That being, the female creature, that one who can respond, who lives in a time cycle, who lives connected to that root, as the moon begins its climb back. And that's why in Hanukkah there's a tradition for women, specifically, unique observance for women, Hanukkah, not to do any work while the lights are burning. Because that is the time in Jewish history where the moon began to shine in that particular mode that is the inability to reflect the light of the sun, but does the work of reflecting what it can and swelling, eventually, to reach those proportions that the moon once occupied before the diminution. That's what it is. Hanukkah is at that juncture. So it's the time when the dissension begins. It's the time when the movements of distortion of what Torah is broke away, antignois. Well, who is the next generation? Who is the next teacher in the next generation? Yeshua ben Prachia and Nita'a Beli. Because Yeshua ben Prachia was the next generation. We're talking again about 170 years before the beginning of the common era. Who was his student? The founder of Christianity. The founder of Christianity was born on the day that Ezra died. The tradition of Megalostanis, that's when it was. And he came again to found a movement that would take Torah into a different direction, into a direction that's not valid for Jews. That is when all of this happened. It could not happen during a prophetic era. You couldn't do that. You saw it. The world itself spoke of its message. Miracles were visible. Every time you went to visit the temple, there were 10 visible miracles taking place. There was no question the ordeal of that generation wasn't denying that there's a higher world. You'd have to be demented to do that. Only after that closed, the era of prophecy closed, the oral law came into its own. It is now an expression of Rabbi Akiva says this, Rabbi Tafel says that, a human opinion transmitting, recreating, if you like, reassembling the broken pieces. All we have is the shards of what was once a truth. And we reconstruct those. You know the Talmud is a remarkable thing. The Gemara, anyone who's had any exposure to Gemara learning will know that unlike scientific presentation, the Talmud always presents what's wrong, not what's right. Know that? We call it Havamina and Maskona. The way the Gemara, the way the Talmud presents a subject, how does a science textbook present a subject? Presents an axiom, proceeds to prove the axiom, and builds more and more complexity on the basis of the axiom until you get to whatever you're trying to prove. The Talmud takes the notion, establishes it firmly, and after four pages of proof shows you why it's wrong. And from your understanding of the fact that it's wrong, you begin to have a glimmer of insight into what's right. Who in their right mind would present something? Imagine a mathematics textbook establishing something firmly to show you it's wrong. That's the way the oral law works. It's a learning to perceive. Just saying the subtlety, the depth here, is reconstructing the truth from the shards of that which is false, from the broken down versions, from those. Yet the world at first glance does not tell you the truth. The world at first glance tells you that it is divorced from a spiritual reality. Look at the world at first glance. A person does look like an animal. The world does look like a physical place. There's no immediate evidence in the world that it's connected to a source. And that's what the Greeks said. The Greeks said the world is what you see is what you get. That's what it is. And you Jews are wicked for teaching that there's a manifestation here of something else. That's not what it is. And that's exactly what Judaism is, to give witness, to testify that a world that looks detached from anything spiritual is a projection of that spiritual world. That's exactly what we're supposed to do. I tell my Aida, you're my witnesses. That's the history and that's what Hanukkah does. The work of Hanukkah is where we assert Torah and we assert the truth of those things in a world that doesn't have evidence for it. That's what the oral law is. Hanukkah is transmitted orally. You know, it's so much oral that it's not even mentioned in the Mishnah. You know that? Hanukkah. It's sandwiched in between the laws of lighting the Shabbos candles. It's not even expressed. There isn't even a Mishnah of Hanukkah. It's so much part of the oral tradition that it's not even written in the oral law which is the Mishnah. It's only oral. Only verbal. Let's try and examine the history of this process. There's little that's more important than this because that's what Hanukkah is. It's the place where we come into our own. Our work is not to become the pure vessels that transmit an ineffable light. That's not our work. Our work is to incredible though it may seem is to shine our own light in the darkness. A remarkable thing. That's what you're doing when you light the Hanukkah candle. So the history is something like this. Let's go back a few steps into the spiritual world and see if we can understand this more deeply. Again, we've looked at some of this from various other angles. Let's see if we can put it together in this context. Let's try and look briefly at the distinction between the written law and the oral law. That's where we're heading. The written law of course you realize immediately that the written law means only what the oral law says. Even when you're dealing only so to speak with the written law. It's completely inaccessible and meaningless without the written law. There are many things in the Torah itself that are completely unintelligible without an oral tradition to tell you what it means. On the contrary, the deep understanding of Torah is that the written law means what the oral law says even if it doesn't appear to be that way at first glance. An eye for an eye it says. The Gemara has 15 different proofs I think of why an eye for an eye does not mean you gouge out an eye when someone injures an eye but you pay. And why it could not possibly mean, but the literal meaning is meaning appears to be. Why was it written one way if it means something else? Discussion. It's not the time to go into that particular example. But what's written means what the oral tradition that was given together with the written law tells us it means, right? There's some striking examples. I mean, it says when a person gets lashes. The Torah says arbaim yakenu. That means he shall be lashed forty times. The Mishnah says it means thirty-nine. Forty does not mean thirty-nine. Forty means forty. And the Mishnah says thirty-nine. Why did Hashem write forty if he meant thirty-nine? Discussion. Good. Let's discuss. We have to learn it up. But the point is that the meaning of Torah in its application, apart from those examples where the Torah doesn't have any meaning without the oral law, when it tells you bind them for a sign upon your hand. What on earth? The Mishnah tells you what to find out. Apart from those things. There are things when what appears, what strikes the first glance suggests in the text is not at all what it means. And apart from many sources in the written Torah being mutually exclusive and mutually contradictory until you see how the oral law resolves. It teaches you how to read those words. You can't move from the beginning. It's absolutely essential that children's fundamental message in education, children learning Torah, from the very first word of learning Chumash, have to learn Rashi with the Chumash. Because a child who's taught Bible without rabbinic commentary ends up thinking that what it says in the Bible is fixed and firm. Rabbinic opinion? He's got his opinion. Rebbe Kiva's got his opinion. I've got mine. And so they end up thinking. That's what's absolutely essential. From the very first words that a child learns in Torah, he has to understand that it means what Rashi tells him that it means. Rashi opens his eyes to the meaning. Many people in previous generations, our grandparents' generation, many Jews in the modern era were brought up thinking that what it says, black on white, is real. That's Torah. Show me where it says that black on white I'm ready to accept. What the oral law transmits is human opinion. Take it or leave it. It's one interpretation. The fundamental error. You can see how difficult and dangerous and subtle this discussion becomes. You're talking about human opinion and yet it's somehow divine. It's a partnership. It here agrees to what we say. So let's see if we can try to feel through this very, perhaps most difficult of subjects. Of course, a real understanding of this only begins when one engages the oral law. Talking about it is almost hopeless in terms of transmitting what it is. You can't do that. It's like talking about a person. Meeting the person and engaging in a relationship with the person gives you a feel for who the person is. Talk about a person is very very, almost hopelessly inadequate. But let's if all we achieve in this discussion is the motivation for you, for us maybe, to engage, study of the oral law personally then that will have been enough. To talk about what it is, is inadequate. The concept is like this. If we take a few steps back the Torah was written, as it were, before the world. And we discussed this in many different contexts. The Torah is the blueprint or the genetic material that projects itself into the world. As we mentioned many times, every word in the Torah is the source of an object or phenomenon or experience in the world. That's why, as I pointed out before, the Hebrew word for a word is the same as the word for anything. That's not so in any other language as far as I'm aware. In other languages a word means a sound that is uttered and a thing means an object. In Hebrew a word means a thing. Because our concept is that everything in the world is nothing other than the word that the Torah projects. It becomes concrete when Hashem speaks, as it were. His Davar word becomes the Davar object that it connotes. It doesn't describe it like our language does. It brings it into existence and therefore the Davar, the word in the Torah is the object in the world. The modern analogy, perhaps you could say genes, the genetics are so to speak the words and they build a reality which yet the genes describe the reality but they're also responsible for making that reality. Genes for blue eyes look a certain way. If you know how to read genes you'll know that that's blue eyes. It doesn't happen to be blue if you know how to read genes. If you know how to read Torah. You read a word in Torah you don't see a picture or a model of the reality if you know how to read the words. But if you know how to do that, these genes mean blue eyes. But they don't only correspond to blue eyes. They don't only describe the blue eyes. They cause them to be that way. When the program is run they cause them to be that way. Perhaps the modern analogy would be that when you shine a light through a film on a screen what's on the screen is what was on the film and whatever's on the film will project itself onto the screen. There must be a correspondence. The Torah is like the film which you don't see. You see the screen. That's flickering images on a screen of the fabric of our reality. But in fact all the objects and phenomena on that screen in the world that we experience is nothing other than the root in Torah that projects itself into those things and therefore you could study either and find the correspondence. But here comes the depth and the error. This is where we have to concentrate and understand this deeply. The modern notion, unfortunately, there's a notion that Torah parallels the world in the sense that it is incredible in its depth and perception of the world and is exactly parallel to every detail in the world. There are two ways to express that and one is completely wrong. One is completely, a complete denial of Torah. In other words, stay carefully with me. The notion that one has to understand is that Torah is written before the world and it's the reason that the world looks the way it does. When you find a correspondence between Torah and the world, what should the response be? Take an example, again without going into detail. The God of Vilna has an example in his writings where he shows you that there's a verse in the Torah that talks about circles. There's a verse in the Torah, a verse in Tanakh talking about the construction of a circular pool. The words there give the proportion of the circumference to the diameter. The God of Vilna shows you that if you take the numerical value of the words, the gematria, then you get pi to many decibel places. That means the verbal expression, perhaps somebody that example sometimes fascinating to see. Did I once show you that? Did we once work through it? We did that? No? Forgotten? We'll have to go through it sometime. There, the verse, Hashem tells Shlomo how to build a circular pool and he tells him to make it ten amas across and thirty amas around. So the God asks the obvious question. First of all, it's unnecessary to tell me both. If you give me the diameter, the circumference automatically will work out or vice versa. Why does the Torah stipulate both? And secondly, it's wrong. Because if you do it ten, it will not be thirty around. It will be thirty-one, point one, four, one, five, nine, etc. So how does the Torah say something that's unnecessary and wrong? So the God shows you that the verbal expression is an approximation. But if you take the words that the Torah there uses for circumference and diameter and divide one into the other, says the God, it works out to pi to many decimal places. This shows, right, what's the concept? Listen carefully. The wrong approach is, and you might find yourself a little embarrassed here if you have to do this. You have to admit, did you ever thought this way? A person is exposed to that sort of material. It's amazing. That's amazing. The Torah knows pi to so many decimal places. The Torah has it measured accurately. You're a fool if you say that. The Torah doesn't know it. The Torah caused it to be that way. Again, again, again. Circles look that way in the world because this verse says so. You're a fool to think that the verse knows circles. Again, I don't see enough enlightened faces. If I do some genetic studies, yes, I take an individual with blue eyes, and I take a few scrapings from the inside of his mouth, and I study the genetics of his cells, and in my analysis of his genes, I find that the genes code for blue eyes, and I say, wow! Amazing! The man has blue eyes and his genes correspond. You're an idiot. They don't correspond. They're the reason that he has blue eyes. Do you understand? He'd be an idiot to be. On the contrary, if they didn't say blue eyes, you should be amazed. But you should yawn when you find that they. Do you understand? When you read a passage in the Torah, and the verse in the Torah talks about circles, and gives you the exact measure of a circle, you should fall asleep with boredom when you see that. People, what could be more obvious? On the contrary, what the God of Yom is amazed at there is not that the verse specifies pi, but in that it's a verbal expression that's wrong. That's why he comments on the verse. Because if it's 10, it's not 30. That's what's worthy of not. How can the Torah say something that's wrong about circles? How can the Torah say something? Not because the Torah always gets it right, but because circles look the way the Torah says, because the Torah draws the circles in the world. So how can it be inaccurate? That's the problem. So study that go on, very interesting. I'm only going to go into it now. Interesting. Why did the Torah give a mathematical exactitude and a verbal approximation? Fascinating subject, okay? We'll have to talk about it sometime. Remind me. But the point we need to identify is that the Torah is not a description of the world. Not at all. The Torah is the cause. I hate to say it, but sometimes you go to seminars. You ever been to one of these impressive outreach seminars? Where they prove to you that the Torah is divine and true? You don't want to admit it, huh? Well, the truth is those things are very impressive. But they sometimes unfortunately, the people who teach sometimes put things in the wrong way. Example. How do they prove to you that the Torah is divine? I'll give you an example. The Torah mentions that there are three kinds of non-kosher animal that have a particular, you know, a kosher animal has to have a cloven hoof and chew the cud. And of course, one or other sign is not enough. You need both. Then the Torah proceeds to tell you which animals on earth have one but not the other and specifies exactly and exhaustively. The Talmud says that this is the list of all animals that have those features. Now, how could anybody other than a divine wisdom, yes, how could somebody 2000 or whenever years ago it was, have said these are the following species that have these features, these and only these. How on earth would he know that deep in the Amazon base in some place, there isn't a toe, split-hoofed sloth or whoever, whatever it is, that doesn't chew its cow? How could he know that? Right? It must have had divine, it must be divine. Only God could know. Listen carefully. It's so unfortunate, it's so mistaken, it's such garbage. Only God could know. Only Hashem could know that there's no other creature like that. And therefore only He could write that in the Torah. Wrong! He first wrote that in the Torah. That's why there are no animals like that. Because the Torah doesn't. The Torah has a list of animals that are like this. When the world swims into existence, it reflects and mirrors and becomes what the Torah says. The Torah is not describing the world. Do you understand what's wrong here? The people who put it the other way around think that the world is the way it is. Why is it that way? I don't know. It happened to be that way. Evolution. That's the way it is. Now the Torah, with its unbelievable insight, looks at the world and describes it accurately. Garbage! The Torah came before the world and said the way the world is. So when the world appears, it therefore looks that way. Of course the Torah knows it. It caused it to be that way. Are we together? And you hear this all over the place. And you know what the outcome is. Of course it's obvious. Here's an example. You know the Torah is amazing. The Torah knows which animals are unkosher because you know why? Because those animals are not healthy. You ever hear this argument? You see, this is where it goes. The Torah knows, for example, why did the Torah outlaw eating pork or shellfish? Because the Torah knew that they're dangerous to eat because pork has tapeworm and the shellfish swim along in the schmutz under the bottom of the sea. They soak up all the hepatitis virus. They're very dangerous and healthy. Big outbreaks of hepatitis C and so forth when you eat the shellfish. So the Torah amazingly knows that. Long before human science ever studied those things. And the Torah with its amazing penetration and insight tells you don't eat those things, right? Nonsense! Antisemitic garbage! On the contrary. The Torah doesn't know the world. You see, the error is to think that this animal is unhealthy and this shrimp, whatever it is, it soaks up the garbage. That's the reality. Why? I don't know. The Torah comes lately, looks at it and says, don't eat this, don't eat that. On the contrary. The Torah said that before these animals came into existence. The Torah said that, you understand, on the contrary, when this shellfish becomes created, he looks in the Torah and he finds the Torah saying that you, on the contrary, he says to himself, gee, I'm a time-made fish, I better swim around in the schmutz. That's the order of business. It's not that he is what he is. And the Torah brands him as such. The Torah brings his spiritual nature into existence first and therefore it could be that he's unhealthy because he's uncautious. He's not uncautious because he's unhealthy. If anything, if anything, if anything, he's unhealthy because he's uncautious, maybe. You know what the next step in that argument always is? I mean, this argument has a motivation. Make no mistake. It's not philosophical. It has a motivation. The next step always goes like this. These foods are uncautious because they're unhealthy. The next step is, but today, now that we can tell whether this meat has tapeworm and we can assure ourselves that this shrimp or crab or snail or whatever it is, ants or whatever they eat now, is not unhealthy anymore, so now it's okay. The thing was never forbidden because it was unhealthy. It was forbidden because spiritually, it acts with the Jewish soul in a negative way. As far as we can understand the reason for mitzvahs. That's why. The fact that it happens to be healthy to eat kosher food is a fringe benefit. It's very good. If you live a Jewish way of life, an orthodoxly Jewish way of life, and you observe what you should, you'll be healthy, your wife won't get cancer of the cervix, and you won't get. It's a very healthy way of living. But it's a fringe benefit. Of course the Torah doesn't lead you into a path that is unhealthy or damaging. But that's not the root. The root is a spiritual essence. That's what it is. If these things apply, they are fringe issues. They. They. Yes? Are we together? There's an assumption that the concept you have is the right one. Yes? Shabbos. I mean, it runs throughout the whole time. Shabbos. Shabbat. What's prohibited on Shabbos? Work. Not a lot of work on Shabbos. Why can't you light a fire on Shabbos? Because there's not a lot of work. Today, lighting fires is no work. You just flick a switch. But of course the whole concept is. That was never the issue. The issue was a spirit. The issue was Shabbos means desisting from creative activity. It's got nothing to do with whether it's hard work or not. It's not the issue. It wasn't called Avodah. It's called Malakha. Malakha in Hebrew means creative activity. That's what it means. The whole notion begins in the spiritual world and then it comes down into physical reality. So, in summary, what have we said? We've said that the Torah is a spiritual source. It's written thousands of years before, as it were, before the world's created. The mystical notion that was created 2,000 years before time was created. But, that's what the Torah is. And then it projects itself onto the screen of reality and we see the results. We see what physical, material representation is of those things and therefore, you have to understand that the fact that the Torah mirrors or reflects or accurately describes the world is not because it knows how to describe the world with perception but because it's the point of origin and projects itself into the world that way. And therefore, the way the Torah says is the way the world is. So far, so good? Now comes the difficult part. When Torah becomes expressed in the oral law, where is this Torah? Where is this Torah that determines the way the world is? In the oral law, especially after the prophecy leaves the world and Torah is now maintained and transmitted in the hearts, through the hearts and minds of the sages, of the Jewish people, that's where Torah is. And if Torah is the origin of reality, then it comes out amazingly and incredibly that the hearts and minds and awareness and consciousness and opinions of the sages determines reality. Because if Torah is not a monolithic carved, carved in stone someplace or put on a book on a shelf, but rather it lives within the dynamic of the opinion of a sage, then he becomes the creator of reality. That means the Torah transmission, the sages of the oral law, become the manipulators. They become their opinions. Amazing thing. Their opinions project themselves into objective reality. The Talmud has examples of sages who made decisions and a physical object changed. A physiological and anatomical structure changed in the world because they issued a ruling. The Talmud Yerushalmi is an example of a girl, without going into details, whose bodily features were one way, because she was a certain age. The sages then decided, to make it a leap year. So her birthday now retroactively fell a month previously, such now she was no longer three. She was prior to age three. And her body changed to the body of a girl prior to three years old. Why? Because her age, her age is subject to what the Torah says. Her ages. And the Torah says what the sages say it means. And the sages have the authority to decide whether it's a leap year or not. So when they issue a date, that becomes the date in the world. You know what that means? Rosh Chodesh, what the Greeks decreed against. You know what Rosh Chodesh means? That the sages declare today is Rosh Chodesh. Today is the first of the month. So Yom Kippur falls ten days later, and God judges the world on that day, because the sages say it's the tenth of the month. You understand what this means? When does He sit in judgment on the world? When is Rosh Hashanah? When is Yom Kippur? When are the festivals? When we say. Not Shabbos. Shabbos is Kfir V'Kaimah. Shabbat is fixed every seven days. Can't change that. But Rosh Chodesh, which means the festivals, that's why we say, Mekadesh Yisrael V'Hazmanim. We say Mekadesh HaShabbat V'Yisrael V'Hazmanim. Why that order? Because Shabbat comes first, because we can't change that. But our name, Yisrael, comes before this money, because we determine when there's money more. When it's going to be Rosh Hashanah, when it's going to be Pesach, when it's going to be biblical Torah festivals, is when the sages say so. Why? Because when they say the month begins, it begins then. Ah, what if His opinion was different? That's a change of mind. That's the nature of the Oral Law. It's this incredible partnership between His giving us the authority to loyally, of course, this is not subject to any idiot's opinion. We're talking about the people of Israel, the people who understand this and are loyal to it and do nothing other than the motivation of making explicit what it is that He wants. The people with that kind of motivation, that sort of purity, what manifests in the world is a human opinion with divine sanction, a remarkable thing, a fantastic idea. What's the source of this, the Talmudic source? Again, there are many ways to show it, but let's perhaps take one example. The Quran says that, without too much detail, there was a time when, the Sanhedrin were debating a certain, the status of a certain object. Now, I don't have to go into exactly what the issue was, the Talakhic status of a certain object, a certain vessel. And there was a certain opinion expressed, and the greatest of the sages, Rabbi Eliezer HaGadol, known as Rabbi Eliezer the Great, he was the teacher of Rabbi Akiva, he disagreed. Disagreed. He had a single opinion against the majority. He disagreed. Now, you know the vote, the law always goes by the vote. The Torah law is "Achrei Rabben Latos," you vote. So they voted, and he was held to be the minority, and therefore the definitive opinion was, but he didn't accept the majority. He did not accept the majority opinion. Why? Because he knew he was right. And objectively, he was the greatest among them. He was their teacher. He was the greatest. But the Torah says, that the oral law goes according to the understanding of the sages. And although they knew that he knew more, but they didn't understand that opinion, and therefore they had to say the way they understood, and they were in the majority. Remarkable dilemma here. Here you have a majority of superior, you have a majority. of competent halakhic opinion and a minority of superior opinion. Which one holds sway? One morning, one morning I came home 7 o'clock in the morning, in Yerushalayim, and I had a phone call from a hospital in California. It was 10 o'clock at night in California. It was early morning for me in Yerushalayim. The phone call was from a doctor in a hospital in California, standing at the bedside of a patient who was dangerously ill. As it happens, I happen to know the doctor and the patient, personally. The patient had infection of a heart valve. He was a young man. And if he wasn't operated on within hours, he was surely going to die. An infection of an aortic valve that needed to be replaced as an emergency. The problem is when you replace an aortic valve, do you mind an aside here? This is part of the oral law. It's part of the oral law, I assure you. I assure you. The problem is that when you replace an aortic valve, you can use one of two options, a plastic valve or a pig valve. That's the dilemma. That's the problem. The dilemma is because a plastic valve lasts for a lifetime. The modern plastic valves last forever. They're absolutely perfect. They're absolutely fine. The problem is that for them to work, you have to take blood-thinning medications which can be dangerous. You take too much, you could bleed badly. If you take too little, the valve can clot. If you take the right amount and have an accident, you could bleed dangerously. It's not simple. On the other hand, the pig valve functions perfectly. There's no castrous problem, obviously. There's no castrous problem, obviously, right? You can implant animal tissues. You can even eat them to save life. No problem. The pig valve functions totally normally. You don't need any medication. It functions just like a human valve. You can forget about it. It's perfect. About 10% of them need to be replaced in about 10 years. It's not easy to make a decision. So they phoned me to say, we need help making a decision whether to put in a plastic valve or a pig valve. What should we do? The situation was like this. The patient's doctor happened to be one of the finest cardiologists in the patient's cardiologist. Actually, you happen to be right. It doesn't matter. The point is that he happens to be one of the finest cardiologists in Southern California. Of course, he's a South African. But he was the patient's doctor, and he said that the way to go over here is to put in a plastic valve. That was his recommendation. They then asked the surgeon, also one of the finest, talking about a major hospital, great expertise, and he agreed that the right thing to do here is use a plastic valve, and in six or eight hours in the morning, that is what they were going to do. But these two doctors which you often find at the very top of the profession, in their humility decided to ask a third opinion. Although they're among the finest in the world. But it so happens that the hospital where they work is a world-famous cardiologist who's like a major senior figure. He's written in the textbooks and so forth, and they decided to seek his opinion. So this sage in the field of medicine came in and he said, use a pig valve. So they contacted me to say, what holds sway halakhically? A majority of competent professional opinion, or a minority of superior opinion? What do we do? Anyway, I was able to get hold of Rabbi Lashiv, Baruch Hashem, one of the great halakhic, perhaps the leading figure in the world of Torah sages today, halakhically, and within a few minutes fortunately I was able to be back on the phone with his ruling, and that's what they went ahead and did, and the patient is fine, and he's doing very well. You want to know what he said? He said that in this case the patient gets to choose. The reason is, almost certainly the reason is, although I didn't have time to hear through the analysis, but the reason is almost certainly that the way the facts were presented to him were not that this or that has a higher chance of survival, because when it comes to saving of life and survival percentages, then the decision, the question was which package of risks and benefits is more? You see, the reason that there are two operations in the first place is because in different circumstances the risks look different. If a person is 90 years old, they need a replacement of a valve, we don't worry so much about the fact that it has to be replaced again in 10 or 20 years time, right? Whereas if a person is 25 years old, they may have to go through this operation many times. It's a very different scenario. A person may get injured and bleeding, it's a very difficult package which is tailored to the individual. All doctors agree that both are perfectly reasonable. The question is which is more reasonable in a particular situation? And therefore in this situation and of course any good doctor knows that the patient's motivation is very important and therefore if he makes the choice of what he wants to live with and what he wants to deal with and that's what happened as it happens he chose a plastic valve and he told me later he's very happy that he did because the thought of going through open heart surgery again is very traumatic and so forth. The difference between this situation listen well now, listen well the difference between this situation of majority opinion against a minority of senior opinion is that this is not a Torah decision, this is a medical decision. In medicine, the majority holds sway because halachically, when two doctors disagree, halachically we send them for a third opinion. Why? Because the majority, why? Because the majority is more likely to be correct. In Torah majority it's not more likely to be correct. In Torah majority it forms the reality. Again, when two doctors say do X and one doctor says do Y, we go with the two. Why? Because the evidence is, after all, there's more evidence on this side. More experience, more expertise. In Torah we go with the majority not because it's more likely to be correct but because when the majority say something in Torah that becomes the reality. It's a completely different dimension. And therefore when the discussion there was do we follow the majority or rebellious? The question was what is spiritually, what is divine from that perspective? Which is the correct thing to do, right? You see, the problem was that the sages, just to go one level deeper, can we go just one level deeper? The sages held that when you have an argument between a senior opinion and a majority what holds sway is the majority. Reb Eliezer held that when you have a majority against a senior opinion, what holds sway halachically is the senior opinion. Now you can't vote on that, can you? Because the sages who held that the majority opinion are going to vote that you follow the majority opinion. And Reb Eliezer, hold that you follow the senior opinion is not going to accept the vote because he holds you don't vote, you follow his. And they say the majority but Reb Eliezer decided that there's one way to solve this issue. What happens when the majority disagree with you and you the minority and they outvote you? There's one thing left up your sleeve. Prove that you're right. Prove it. Then you can't have a majority voting if you prove. This reminds me of the you know where Eunice and Iberschitz was a little child who was a halachic prodigy, genius. But when he was a small child he was already very gifted. And in the town where he lived there was a Catholic priest who wants you to try to convince this Jewish child to convert him to Catholicism. And he always had very clever arguments and this little child, six, seven years old, had the presence of mind and the genius to be able to deal with this ordeal. Once this Christian priest said to him, I will prove to you, my child, that according to your own Bible you should be a Christian. Now I'll prove to you, according to your Torah, you should become a Christian. Why? Because it says in the Torah you follow the majority. Now you Jews are a very small minority. And we Christians are a vast majority. So according to your Torah you follow the majority. So at the age seven he said to this priest, the law of majority applies only in a case of doubt. You can vote that two and two is five and the majority is. What do you do? If there's an objective reality, then the majority is irrelevant. So Beleza said, look, you may be the majority but I'll prove you wrong. Now how do you do a thing like that? So he said, look, if I'm right, I want that carob tree outside to get up and move. So the crew of the carob tree uprooted itself and walked a hundred hours. So they said to him, we don't have a carob tree in our crew. We don't have a carob tree in our crew. We don't bring proofs from carob trees. You understand? This is a Jewish discussion. Amazing. So he said to them, look, if I'm right, I want that river outside to flow backwards. So the water in the Amasamayim, the water turned round and flowed uphill. So he said, we don't bring proofs from streams. These must have been Lithuanians, right? These were not Chassidim. So he then said to them, look, if I'm right, I want the walls of the Basmarish to cave in. And in deference to him, the walls began to cave in, and out of respect to Rabbi Yeshua, who was the head of the majority, the walls remained suspended. They said, we don't bring proofs from the walls of the Basmarish. And then he said, if I'm right, I want a voice to be heard. What's called a baskol, a voice. You know whose voice? I want a voice to be heard. And a voice came out and said, halacha kamoto b'chol makom. Halacha kamoto, the law is like he says, in everything that he says, Rabbi Lez is right. They heard the voice. Yeshua got to his feet and he said, lo bashamayim hi. The Torah is not in heaven. And they out voted the voice. The Gemara says that subsequently, one of the sages met Elijah the prophet, Eliyahu Novi. And he said to him, at the time we took that vote, what was Hashem doing? When we outvoted him. And he said, Hashem was smiling and saying, nitskuni bana, nitskuni bana, my children have defeated me, my children have defeated me. What does this mean? me. You see, the concept is very hard to understand. The concept is that if you follow the Torah, we're not talking about your own opinion, we're talking about following the Torah. The Torah says you follow the majority. Hashem says, look, in my Torah, which is divine, and the essence and origin of reality, I give you an instruction. The instruction is you follow the majority. If you do that, that is what truth is. So the sages say, we are following the majority. And therefore, truth is that. And of course he agrees. What does it mean he agrees? It means reality becomes what the Torah says reality is, because that's what controls reality. So the amazing situation that human opinion, by virtue of a majority vote, becomes divine reality. That's what Judaism is. Judaism is the amazing interplay in the face of the oral law, not the face of the written. The face of the written or what the prophet says is what is. You can have all the opinions you want. Miracles take place only by virtue of the existence of a prophet, and reality is only what the Nabi says, whether it's Moshe or other prophets. But after prophecy leaves the stage, then reality is what the sages say. Chacham Adif Minabi. A wise sage in Torah is preferable to a prophet in this sense. Very, very difficult idea. And we stand or fall by that idea. We live, yeah we live in what the oral law is. Where does this lead to? This leads to the idea that what the sages think has a reality. Of course, you have to understand this goes in proportion to the greatness of the sages, goes in proportion to the generations, as the generations move on through history and become less and less. So the potency becomes less and less. Today, halakhic authorities are rendering decisions. You have to understand that the reality that they cause in the world is definitely, definitely true, but it's on a much smaller scale. You're going back to the authors of the Mishnah, those codifiers, transmitters, the Talam transmitters of the Mishnah, you're talking about the Mary says that anyone mentioned in the Talmud was on the level of being able to revive the dead. To revive the dead. We're talking about people at a level of cosmic, we're talking about level, it gets less and less as each generation goes by. Obviously today there's very little energy, very little power left. But the principle remains true. How potent and how powerful are those opinions? Let me share with you just one or two examples and we'll close with that. Again, very, very hard to inexpressibly beautiful but hard to relate to. Let me share with you an example. The Gemara says actually in more than one place there was an incident which occurred as follows. There was a man in the time of the Talam, time of the Mishnah who was known as Nechunya Khoifa Shekhin. That was his name, Nechunya and his special attribute was he dug wells specifically for the travelers, the people coming up to Jerusalem on the three festivals. He dug wells to supply water for those people. Nechunya Khoifa Shekhin, a very great man, that was his particular unique mitzvah. That's what he did. Everybody should have a unique mitzvah. Something that you polish and hone to perfection that is your unique, where you excel. That's what he did. One day his daughter fell into a well of water. Some commentary said it was one of her fathers. And they couldn't get her out. Couldn't reach her, they couldn't get her out. And in such a situation a person could survive only for three hours. The girl was drowning in the water and they couldn't. The people present ran to the leader of the generation, Rabhanina bin Doysa, the great Talakhic sage, that great sage of the Mishnah. They said to him, Rabnechunya's daughter is falling into the well, we can't get her out. He said, Shalom. Shalom. Shalom. An hour later, the second hour they ran into him, they said she's still in, it's getting desperate, we can't get her out. He said, Shalom. The third hour, the verge of the possibility of human survival, they came back and they said, look, it's not Shalom. She's in the water, she's in this tragic situation. He said, Kfar Alsa, she's out. They went back and they found the girl was out. How she got out, you should look up yourself. Fascinating, mystical story. The point is, she was out of the well. They went back to Rabhanina and they said to him, are you a prophet? How did you know that? Shalom, Shalom, she'll be fine, she'll be fine. And then she said, how did you know that? He said like this, Lo Navi Ani, I'm not a prophet but Lo Ben, I'm not the child of a prophet. But Kach Ama B'Liwi, listen to these words, they are absolutely amazing. If this doesn't move you, I don't know what will. Kach Ama B'Liwi, this is what I said in my heart. I said, it's not possible for a man to labor in a mitzvah and have one of his children harmed in that area. It's not possible. Here's a man, he digs wells to provide water for the Jewish people and a child of his will come to harm in a well of water, even if it's not his own. Imagine if it's one of his own wells. Impossible, that's not possible. And therefore I knew there's no way the child could die and I knew she'd be fine and so it was. Then the Gemara says, subsequently his son died of thirst. Now, this great man whose daughter was protected and saved in the water, his son died of thirst. So the Gemara asks the obvious question. Look, you told me, you told me that if a man's protected because he labors in a certain area, he can't come to harm in that area and his daughter's saved, then how come the son died? So the Gemara answers, Sviv Av Nis Arad Mahad. Around the Great Sandikim it is very stormy. It's a classic Talmudic expression. It means when you're on a very high level of righteousness, you are judged very exactingly. Your judgment goes like a hair's breadth and the slightest error could mean that you are, you're very, very severe punishment. The more you move up in spirituality, the higher the voltage, the higher the voltage is, the more dangerous. That's what it is. Now the Shittimu Kabetsis, one of the great medieval commentaries, asked the obvious question on this piece of Talmud. What does that answer mean? That he was judged very exactingly. What on earth is going on? Look, if you tell me the man was on such a great level that he was judged so exactingly that his daughter could die, then what's that his son could, what's that the daughter? If you're telling me that on a level of greatness you could be judged like that, then what was the assurance that the daughter would be? And if you want to tell me that he was great enough that his marriage protected his daughter, how come not his son? What's going on? And he answers an unbelievable answer. In his very short way, which is the habit of the Rishonim, he says like this, that when the girl was drowning in the well, the great sage of the generation of Hanina Mendoza was alive and he was the jinn. When the boy was dying of thirst subsequently, od lo chai oisad tzadik. That great righteous and deluderous Rav Hanina Mendoza was no longer alive. What does this mean? Listen carefully, I'm unbelievable. When the girl was drowning in the well, the great sage of the generation of Hanina was alive. Sometime later when the boy was dying of thirst, that great sage was no longer alive. You know what it means? When the girl was drowning and he was alive, he said I say, listen carefully, kach amabalibi, I say, it's impossible for a man to labor in a mitzvah and have a child of his come to home. When he is alive to say such a thing, it is impossible. When the Torah leader of a generation holds an opinion, that is reality. Do you understand what that means? Listen carefully, there's nowhere in the Torah that it says if you labor in a mitzvah, your child won't come to home in that area. There's no place that it says that. There is no divine assurance that if you labor in a particular area, someone in your family does not say that. He said it. He said it. I say it's impossible that a man should labor in a mitzvah and a child should be held in that area. Hashem says to him, do you say that? Hanina, my child, my son, you say that? You are Torah in your generation? If you say that, my hands are tied. The world runs according to Torah opinion of the sages. Later, when Hanina is no longer alive, and the boy is dying of thirst, then Hashem runs the world the way he sees fit. There's no longer a Hanina in the world to have a particular human opinion, which is Torah and formative and causative in the world. Hashem reverts to the way he sees it. Do you understand this? The opinion of a Torah sage emanates into the world, and the world dances to his tune. Literally. Can I keep you for another example? Two more? Apart from the sages' knowledge of reality, apart from their knowledge of reality, that's another issue. We're talking the depth of perception. We're talking about much deeper than that, the energy to be able to cause, to be able to. I have to understand what a Torah mind is. It isn't only knowledge. It isn't only perception. It's also. It's the genius of. There was once a. I'll tell you a story. Raph Moshe Feinstein, right? One of the greatest that we had the last few years. I'm privileged to have him. He was a person of indescribable level. How does a sage handle a situation? So there was a family in which there was a young man who wanted to go and study in Yeshiva, and his parents wanted him to go to college. It happens. It happens. He very idealistically wanted to go study Torah. His parents wanted him to get a college education. They decided to go ask Raph Moshe Feinstein. The parents decided, they'll take the boy, they'll go ask Raph Moshe Feinstein to resolve this dispute. But the father knew that he's dealing with the most famous Torah sage of his age. He clearly expected Raph Moshe to tell the boy to go to Yeshiva. What's the rabbi going to say? So he prepared himself. The father prepared himself. So he sat down around the table. Raph Moshe Feinstein, the boy's father, and his mother, and the boy. So the father said, Raph Moshe Feinstein, we want our son to go to college. You no doubt want him to go to Yeshiva. That's what we expect you to say. But I would like to prove to you. I would like to prove to you that according to Taurus he should go to college. I'd like to show you that from a Torah perspective, he should actually go to college. So the father said, he said like this, look, he said, the father said, the Gemara says, he's arguing, he's telling Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, the father says, the Talmud says that when a person is formed, there are three parties to his formation. There are three partners in the formation of a person. There's his father, his mother, and Hashem. Three components that create the person. The Talmud actually goes into which components of the person are contributed by each party. This child sitting here, this boy, has got three elements in his creation. There's me, his father, this lady, his mother, and you, Rabbi Feinstein, you represent Hashem. Now, I want him to go to college, and his mother wants him to go to college. You, no doubt, want him to go to Yeshiva. But the Torah says we follow majorities. We learnt that, right? So the three relevant parties here who form this child, out of the three of us, there's a majority, two of us want him to go to college, and one wants him to go to Yeshiva. So is it not true that according to the Torah's ruling you should go to college? So much says to the father, he said, you know, you're right. Each person in his formation has three people. But think about it for a moment. That means you also have three parties to your creation. So does his mother, and so do I. Let's think about that, he said. Of you, you the father, the two parts of you that are your parents, no doubt, want him to go to college like you do. But the one part of you that is Hashem certainly wants him to go to Yeshiva. Good, let's look at the mother. The two parts of her that are her parents probably want him to go to college. Good. But the one part of her that is Hashem, certainly wants him to go to Yeshiva. And all three parts of me want him to go to Yeshiva. That's five against four. So the father sent the boy to Yeshiva on the spot. On the spot. He said, if that's what he's going to learn, that's where he goes. You know, Ramesh was once involved in a case. If there's time, I'll tell you about it. First, let me tell you about it. I'm going to give you the background. Just as briefly as I can. The Talmud has an example. The Gemara has another example. It's also mentioned in more than one place. Which is the scenario, again, without all the halakhic details, the scenario of what happens if a person disappears and is presumed dead, presumed drowned, but the body is not seen. The person falls into water and we do not see the person emerge. The problem is that, for example, is his wife allowed to remarry? Or will she be what's called an aguna? In other words, if, you see, the problem is, if you see the body and witnesses testify to the fact that the man is no longer alive, then she can remarry. The problem is that if he's circumstantially assumed to have been killed, but there's no direct evidence, it's circumstantial. We saw him disappear in a situation where people could not survive, but we do not see definitive, is that good enough or not? That's the debate in it. So the Mishnah says like this. Isn't that absolutely amazing? The Mishnah says, according to Torah law, listen carefully, according to Torah law, if a person is dead, because if a man falls into water and witnesses watch long enough that he could not have survived and he does not come up, that's good enough presumptive evidence, he's no longer alive, his wife can remarry. That's what it is. However, the sages modified that law. The rabbi said, the rabbi said, depends what sort of water. Is it what we call Mayim She'esh L'Aim Sof or Mayim She'en L'Aim Sof? The difference is this. Water that has a border, an edge, means like a pool or a lake, where you can see the periphery of the water. In such circumstances, they said she may marry. You know why? Because we saw all the water and it never came up. But Mayim She'en L'Aim Sof, for example, if a person falls off a ship and you can't see the, the water extends beyond the horizon, you can't see the land. The rabbi said, not so fast. Maybe he got drawn under by a current and he went under the water and behind the waves and maybe he came up beyond the horizon. Maybe he's alive. We can't allow the woman to remarry. Maybe he survived. After all, the first thing he did as a function of the rabbis is to make protective laws around the Torah. They put fences, right? The rabbis put a fence around the Torah. The Torah enjoins them to do that. When something is risky or problematic or given to, the rabbis say, we take it further. We make a protective law and therefore, although the Torah allows her to remarry, we are concerned in case her husband's alive. We don't want him to marry and then her husband arrives. That's a very disastrous situation. Therefore, she cannot remarry. Comes along the Dibre Yecheskel, the Shinova Revi, the great, great Hasidic master and he asks an amazing question on this Talmud, this piece of Talmud. Listen carefully. In all the laws of women remarrying after their husbands disappear, we always take the lenient view. We never take astringency. We are looking to allow a woman to remarry, not to prevent her from remarrying. So we'll take evidence from a child. We'll take evidence from people who are normally invalid. We take all sorts of leniencies to allow the woman to remarry. So why in this case are the rabbis being strict? The Torah says she can remarry. What more do you need than that? Hashem himself. The Torah made no distinction between which sort of water. The men fell into water. You saw adequately. He didn't come up. She can remarry. The rabbis come along and say, well, no, maybe he survived. They're putting astringency, preventing a woman marrying. When it's not asked for, the Torah doesn't do that. Why? And he says an amazing thing like this. Listen carefully. If the Torah says that she can remarry in all circumstances, it means that in all circumstances he could not remarry. He could not have survived. Because the Torah determines reality. I mean, the Torah says a man could not survive when he falls off a ship and you watch and he doesn't come up. He did not survive when the sages come along and say, maybe he survived. We're concerned about it. They just saved her husband's life. Because they just made it possible. When they issue a ruling, the world becomes the way they say. Hear this? The Torah says, such and such circumstances, she can marry. What's the conclusion? He couldn't have survived. Come along the sages and say, well, maybe he got drawn by a current and so forth and so on. If the sages say that, that maybe becomes a possibility. And as it happens, the Talmud goes on in that very place to describe two people to whom it happened. One was no less than Rebbe Akiva. He fell off a ship and they mourned for him. He fell off a ship. They saw him go down. They mourned. Sometime later, he arrived in a seaside town and Rebbe Akiva said to him, what happened? What happened? Rebbe Akiva says, I was sucked under by the waves. In fact, it's a classic analogy. He says, I held on to a plank of wood and every wave that came put my head down and washed over me and that's how I survived. It's always been used as an analogy for Jewish history. Each wave of history that comes to attack us we put our heads down and it goes over us and we survive. And then the Talmud says an amazing thing. How great are the words of the sages. The unschooled ear hears like this. How great are the words of the sages that knew that a person could survive exceedingly under unlikely circumstances. These people were incredibly sensitive. Absolutely wrong. How great are the words of the sages not who knew, who made it possible, who changed reality in this way. A remarkable interpretation. Whether you accept the interpretation or you don't, I'm trying to show you here that the way of thinking in Torah, the way of thinking is that what comes first is Torah opinion and what follows is the reality in the world. Can I give you one more example? Not too late. What happens when sages disagree? What happens when the sages disagree? What happens when you have two opinions? What do we mean edu ve'elu divre'el o'kim chayim? The words of this sage and the direct mutually exclusive opposite of another sage are both true. What does that mean? There are many meanings here and the depth of this is beyond the scope of tonight's discussion. But I'll give you at least one superficial meaning. How both can be true. There are different versions of the story but I'll tell you a commonly known version of the story. There was a man in Israel during the life of the Chazanesh. This must have been around 1950 or something like that or prior to that time. The man had a problem with his lung that was a very serious problem and the doctors told him in Israel there was very little hope but they recommended that he go to some place in Europe. Some clinic in Switzerland or some place in Europe he should go there and there maybe he would have hope. So the fellow came to the Chazanesh to ask him the doctors tell me not to stay in Israel but to go to Europe. What should I do? The Chazanesh said stay here for sure. The individual stayed in Israel and as it happens he got better. So they went to the Chazanesh and they said are you some kind of prophet? How did you know? The people thought maybe the spiritual vibes of Israel you know that saved him in Europe is like negative and I. Chazanesh said no, no, it's a pure halakhic matter. Just listen to this interpretation. It's like this. When the man told me about the problem with his lung I recognized it as a pathological situation a problem with the lung a disease that the Talmud talks about that animals sometimes have. In the laws of Kashrut when you examine the lung of an animal it can have this particular the Torah says that many animal problems are the same as human problems and one can be learned from the other under certain circumstances. The animal can have a problem with its lung. Is an animal with this problem with its lung kosher or not? You know glut kosher means that the lung is smooth there's nothing wrong with the lung. But if there is some problem with the lung under certain circumstances it's kosher under certain circumstances it's not. This particular problem with the lung happens to be a debate in the Talmud about whether it's kosher or not and that debate follows itself through all the halakhic eras and it remains a debate in the code of Jewish law in the Shulchan Aruch. As it happens the Bet Yosef the great authority of all Sufardim the author of the Shulchan Aruch rules one way he happens to rule that this is a kosher animal. There are more Rav Moshe Isseles the great Ashkenazi authority rules definitively and Ashkenazim follow that ruling that this particular problem with the lung is not kosher you can't eat the animal. That's what he says. Chazni said to himself look I reason to myself like this what does it mean? That means you have a problem with your lung that is the subject of a halakhic debate between the Beis Yosef and the Ramoth. That's what's wrong with you. Now, I said to myself like this, you know what kosher means? What is a kosher animal? A kosher animal means an animal that has a problem, if it has a problem with its lung, that is not a lethal. You know what kosher means? A trace animal means, an un-kosher animal means, it has a problem with one of its organs that will kill it within a year. That's why it's not kosher, because it will die within a year. It's a dying animal. But if it has a problem with its lung that will heal, that it will live, then it's a kosher animal. So if the Vesuist says that this is an un-kosher animal, he's saying that this is a lethal problem. He's saying, in effect, that an animal with this problem with its lung could not live for a year. He's saying it could. There are more saying it's an un-kosher animal, he's saying that this is a lethal problem and would not live. So I said to myself like this, look, the Vesuist is the great Sephardi authority who is the Moed Asra of Eretz Yisrael. He is the halakhic authority who holds sway in the whole land of Israel. There are more as the European authority whose opinion holds sway for all European Jews. That means, the cow who has a lung with this problem, if it lives in Israel, is going to live because the Vesuist says so. But no self-respecting cow in Switzerland could possibly survive because he has a problem with his lung that there are more, says his tribe. You hear that? An animal with the same problem, if he lives in Israel, where he's under the sway of the halakhic opinion of the Vesuist, he's alive. An animal in Europe where the reality is determined by the opinion of the Ramon, he's dying. You better stay here. You go there, you go to a world where that reality may well be lethal. You stay here where the Ramon, where the Vesuist's opinion holds sway, this is not a dangerous condition in Israel. You hear what's going on? And therefore, and therefore you have to understand that the Chazanish understood what we're saying here is he understood that the opinions of these sages were not opinions assessing reality. They were opinions formulating the depth of Torah. It's not that it looks at the world and comments. The depth of Torah is that it's in the root structure of the genes of reality and forms it. Let's finish with this. The battle of Hanukkah, of course, is exactly this. The Greeks came to say that what you see is what you get. There's nothing else. Prophecy no longer exists. Human opinions are merely human opinions. And Jews came along to say that we give our lives. That's what we battle, the Greek Empire. And to this day we fight that same battle. We give our lives to say that what Torah is is not a description of God. It's a description of reality. What Torah is, is bringing down into the world that energy that makes reality the way it is. Where does the Torah come from? It's not between the pages of a book. That's not where it is. It lives in the hearts and minds of those who labor to understand it. When you engage Talmud and you labor to understand Torah and you live a life that is simple and not given to where your consciousness is in the learning and when you're focused on understanding the depth of what Torah means and you bring up your children that way and the effort is to understand the spiritual depth. Incorporate in yourself. You don't become a person who knows more about the world. You become a person who incorporates within himself some of the genes of reality. That's how deep it is. And that is what we like that Chanukah like to state that case. That's what we say. Is that the Greek, the culture around us is a culture that divorces all sense of root from experience. The world is what it is. What can be measured and seen and examined in the lab and so forth. Access to human intelligence. That is reality. And we say it's not like that at all. Those tools are important and they're valid. But reality comes from a much deeper place. It comes from Torah. That is the definition of reality. It began with a prophetic revelation but where it now lives is in the hearts and minds of the sages and those who are able to understand.
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