Speaker 1for this uh thanks for this opportunity let me ask you to mute yourselves if you don't mind just so i don't get the feedback you're welcome to uh unmute yourself if you um want to ask a question um and thanks for showing your face those of you who do it's easier to speak to people than black boxes of course i fully understand if you haven't curled your eyelashes today then uh you know then you you're free to yeah so um what i'd like to talk about today is an aspect of jewish history and let me explain what i mean and a a a facet of jewish history which is fundamental in understanding all of judaism and all of the jewish religion and torah and that is the juncture we find ourselves at in the year which is between chanukah and purim and that's an opportunity to think about the meaning of chanukah and purim and this uh the time of history that was introduced by those two by those two festivals something unique about them which is an opportunity to explore a fundamental tenet of judaism vested in jewish history the references and the technical details in the background you can find in my book my most recent book that's called as dawn ends the night and probably to give a the best graphic overview if you take a look at the back of that it's a fold-out chart you can use which will show you a sort of a graphic picture of uh of history actually i asked my oldest son to produce this chart and uh it's a it's a sort of a fold-out which you can you can sort of get a picture of what happened when in jewish history and i want to talk about this phase here which is the men of the great assembly that the great assembly were the characters in jewish history going back about 2300 years who instituted purim and chanukah by the way if you're interested if you email me i'll download you the graphic of that chart and you can have it printed out for yourself you can laminate it or you can put it up on the wall very very useful to see to tell the truth many jews don't even know whether purim happened before chanukah chanukah before purim what was the history what's unique about them so please feel free to email me i'll very gladly uh send you the graphic on the back of that chart by the way is a another pullout of um which of the same sages lived in which era you see we've done it we've done it in terms of timelines of their of their lives so you can see you know what we call the rishonim you see each timeline plotted against the years of jewish history and then you can see who overlapped with whom you know who was alive who preceded the rambam who followed him you know who was his teachers who were his students very nice to see that graphically and um of course we've only got a handful a few hundred of the sages over the eras but it nevertheless gives you a picture of um that that that that facet of jewish history so let's talk about the the time in history in which purim and chanukah were instituted let me show you some of the the difficulties and problems with understanding it correctly and what a key is you know what um someone's just is that is that charles you need to email me at suzannetats at gmail.com or tatsmed is the easier one to remember tatsmed at gmail.com and i'm very happy to i'll send you the the stuff you might need to get it printed because it's not an a4 you know it's a long a long thing so you might need to get that done at a sort of printing place but um very useful chart to have sorry to
Speaker 2interrupt we could buy the book again
Speaker 1you said you can buy the book but then you'll have to cut out you'll have to cut out the chart to put it up on your wall so yes what's the
Speaker 2book what's the name of the book
Speaker 1the book is as dawn ends the night
Speaker 2uh hold on i'm just taking pictures
Speaker 1you're probably seeing it backwards on my screen no no
Speaker 2that's fine no that'd be correct
Speaker 1okay good good and of course the solution michael is to buy two copies uh that's that's always highly recommended um so um anyway this is a book that deals with 20 or 30 issues that depend on the correct understanding of this single principle one of the great principles i learned from my teacher of moshe shapiro whose your site was only a couple of weeks ago uh at my website by the way you'll find a talk i gave on him and his life and what we learned from him uh if you just go to akiva tats.com and scroll down on the welcome page you'll see recently added and there you'll see my talk on his um on his teachings but one of the things that he taught us that you don't find elsewhere is an encyclopedic approach to that phase in history and what it means the reason you don't find it elsewhere is that most of our sages and rabbinic personalities take it for granted and they don't take it for granted and they don't take it for granted and they don't take it for granted that you understand the significance of that period but he was a genius at presenting exactly what it means and what it what it implies in terms of all that we understand about our judaism let me talk briefly about the history and then try to show its importance and its many ramifications the span of jewish history we understand to be a model of six thousand years right that is the that's the axiom in the talmud again there are different opinions about this but the normative opinion which you find in the mora in parik chalek which is the last chapter of sanhedrin is that jewish history as we know it will last for six thousand years we of course are in the year 5782 so we are extremely close to the end of a six thousand year span we have the beautiful opportunity of hindsight of looking at all of the prophetic predictions that happened in the beginning of that of that history and see how each of them has come true in exquisite detail except for the final pre-messianic predictions of the showdown that will occur at that time in history but all of the predictions about exile and the nature of the exile and the redemption all the prophetic predictions we have seen come true in the most amazing detail so we have the we have the opportunity of looking at jewish history not with anticipation but with high hindsight and seeing how it's unfolded and there are many ways to break down that six thousand years the talmud in one place breaks it down into three sets of two thousand each of them having a unique character and of course there's a great deal to say about the six thousand years of history just to bear in mind our date in history is is is virtually at the end point you're talking about late in the in the sixth or the fifth thousandth millennium right of six thousand years so that's where we placed now these six thousand years leading to a post-messianic thousand years which is equivalent to a shabbat thousand years and after that there's a kabbalistic discussion about what happens but the six thousand years of history as we know history has a very important watershed moment and that was that we have a very important watershed moment and that was that we have a dark line you see on the chart which is labeled the men of the great assembly and shake knesset the men of the great assembly when was that in history we're going back about 2 300 odd years it was a period that lasted probably for 100 years or 200 years more or less it was a normative convocation of 120 sages which constituted that that assembly it included personalities like ezra mordechai by the way uh yeah the right at the end of the purim during the purim story mordechai was he's he had another name in in in tanakh which is balshon but that was the mordechai ezra by the way is identified by the talmud according to one opinion as being the same personality as um as uh um as uh boaz or boaz lived around the same time always ezra is identified in the talmud as being the same personality as malach. the three last prophets among the jewish people were were hagai zacharia and malachi malachi is identified in the gemara as being the same personality as ezra and ezra as you know was the was the person who led the jewish people out of exile from the babylonian and subsequently persian exile after the story of purim when esther's son or grandson cyrus allowed the jewish people to continue rebuilding the temple that started rebuilding the second temple before the purim story there were anti-semitic and anti-jewish elements that convinced the king darius to put a stop to that a khashverosh of course maintained that and after khashverosh's time when the rule was taken over by his son cyrus ii he allowed the jewish people to go back to continue building the second temple and the people who led them the person who led them was ezra ezra and ezra is is is the same personality as malachi which is uh the same personality as malachi which should be referred to as malachi which means that ezra was means that ezra was means that ezra was both the last prophet and the first of the both the last prophet and the first of the both the last prophet and the first of the sages of the great assembly who were sages of the great assembly who were sages of the great assembly who were explicitly and expressly not prophets explicitly and expressly not prophets explicitly and expressly not prophets we're talking here about the transition we're talking here about the transition we're talking here about the transition from a prophetic era to a post-prophetic from a prophetic era to a post-prophetic from a prophetic era to a post-prophetic era and it's no accident that the same era and it's no accident that the same era and it's no accident that the same personality malachi who's the last prophet personality malachi who's the last prophet is also Ezra who's the first sage so to speak. And it's very noteworthy if you have any feeling for these things, that Malachi is a book of the Torah which is prophecy like all prophecy, but the same personality, the same persona as Ezra wrote the book of Ezra. And the book of Ezra, Michael I hope you take note here, your namesake, the book of Ezra you know is written in Hebrew and Aramaic, which means a very clear indication that we're moving from the prophetic revealed mode to the Aramaic translation. Translation mode or commentary mode, post prophetic mode, very very significant. Another personality who lived at the same time and was part of that general era of history was Daniel. Now Daniel you may know was a prophet, right, we have the book of Daniel, but the book of Daniel is written half in Aramaic as well. In fact the famous prediction about the messianic advent in daniel are written in aramaic so daniel is also transitional personality and also was a member of the persian court so we're talking about transition that's the name of the game we're talking about transition from prophecy which is revealed divine presence open in the world to a post-prophetic era where god does not reveal himself at all how does he reveal himself through the hearts and minds of the sages their commentaries on the torah their own opinions the incredible idea of the oral law where rabbinic opinion somehow meshes with the divine a divine plan very mysterious but no longer prophetic daniel of course the talmud says explicitly in perikhelik was on the one hand a prophet on the other hand an inspired individual that type of inspiration we call ruach ha-kodesh ruach ha-kodesh means some sort of intuitive insight into things which is larger than life and but not quite prophecy and daniel has some of both again he's a transitionist personal personality so on the one hand he has some of the prophetic potency on the other hand he's a personality who is and incidentally the same argument applies exactly to mordechai and esther there the gemara has a discussion where mordechai and esther prophets or not on the one hand they must have been prophetic because they wrote a book of the bible they wrote a book of the torah which is called which is called the megillah and to be included in tanakh in the 24 books of scripture you need by definition to be prophetic that's the definition of what a book of the bible is on the other hand the Talmud debates it. Were they prophets? Were they not? What's the proof that they were? After all, the Megillah doesn't describe any supernatural events. What happened in the Megillah? There was an anti-Semitic king who wanted to kill all the Jews. That's perfectly natural. Happens all the time. He had a sidekick, Haman, who wanted to kill the Jews. It happens all the time. Where was the miracle? Well, he couldn't sleep. And on the night that he couldn't sleep, Haman arrived, and a whole sequence of political intrigue events lead from Jewish destruction to Jewish salvation. But no open miracles. The whole point of the Megillah of Purim, you have to realize, the uniqueness of the Megillah of Purim, is that unlike all the other books of the Torah, it describes natural events. Right? What could be more obvious than the fact that the Megillah doesn't mention God's name? Show me another page of the Torah where HaShem's name is not mentioned. The Megillah talks about the king. We have a deep tradition that when it says, HaMelech HaKashverosh, it means the Persian king. When it says, HaMelech, it's a hint to the divine king of kings. But it doesn't say his name. And the name of Purim is "luck of the draw." Purim means "the luck of the draw." Purim isn't even a Hebrew word. It's an Aramaic word. Right? The Megillah is a long story of political events where there's no divine revelation that's clear at all. God doesn't speak to people. No prophet comes forward and says, "Thus saith the Lord." Right? It is, from beginning to end, a book of hidden intervention, what you don't see. The heroine of the book is called Esther, which means "the hidden one." Esther is the one who -- the word "Esther" means "to be hidden." In Persian, "Istahar" means "the moon," which is the one that gets hidden every month. Right? And so the whole story of Purim -- in fact, the Talmud asks, "How do we know that Molochah and Esther were prophets?" And it eventually comes up with the proof that there's a line in the Megillah that says, "Vayomer haman belibor" -- "Haman said to himself." Well, how do you know what a man thought to himself unless you're a prophet? Oh, they were prophets. But it's debatable. There's no other book of Tanakh where the Talmud debates were they prophets or not. No debate about King Solomon or King David or any of the great prophets. They wrote their books, Divine Dictation, they put in the Torah. When it comes to Purim, big debate. Was it? Was it not? The sages -- Esther and Molochai wanted their book included. The sages were not so happy to include their book. And finally, only under duress and under certain -- with certain specific motivational elements, Purim was included in the Torah. But it's extremely transitional. And what happened after Purim, which occurred about 2,350 years ago? About 150 years later, you get Chanukah. And Chanukah is completely outside of Torah. There's no book of Chanukah, at least no divine, no prophetic book. There's a book of the Maccabees, a famous book of the Maccabees, which details the guerrilla warfare that they engaged in, and the woman who was forced to spend the night with a Greek governor who cut his head off during that encounter and began the revolt, and then Matityahu, and all of -- the whole story of -- of the war. The whole story of -- of Chanukah comes down to us in a book known as the book of the Maccabees. And it's not a part of the Torah. It's collect -- it's included in what we are -- we conventionally call in English the apocryphal literature, the apocrypha, which is -- which is stories that are 100% valid. But they're not -- they didn't make it into Torah. Why did they not make it into the -- into Scripture, into the canon? Because they're not prophetic. They're historical documents, inspired, amazing, authentic, authoritative, etc. But they're not -- they did not make it in to Torah. here's the key as you pass through 6 000 years of jewish history the light of prophecy fades prophecy and miracles begin to fade and sputter out until finally by the days of shimonot tzaddik right which is the the remnant of the great assembly the western light that used to burn miraculously in the temple occasionally burnt miraculously and occasionally did not and then it went out completely he at least had seen prophets but in the next generation he handed over to an era of people who had not even seen a prophet and by the time of yosef and yosef and the two great sages who lived in israel at the time of the of the greeks there were no miracles and no prophets left at all and hanukkah happened in the era of darkness with no prophetic insight and no prophetic reference no divinely inspired on the breastplate of the coin goddle that was not present in the temple anymore no prophets you could ask for a divine revelation hanukkah is deep in the era of the oral law where the only authority we have is rabbinic intuition and rabbinic wisdom you know i always say to myself i think to myself you know what was the first rabbinic decision made in jewish history you have to remember up to mordechai and esther there was some aspect of divine inspiration mordechai and esther were prophets they were receiving although it's not explicit as i said they were still in the era of prophecy they had a friend called daniel daniel was a prophet and advisor to the king at the time so there was a there was a hotline if you like to the tail end of prophetic experience in the world and then 150 years later when no prophet has been heard of for many decades then you have hanukkah and hanukkah is the beginning of a rabbinic tradition where the rabbis make up their interpretations right loyal to the correct techniques of course and they interpret and they apply what was the first major rabbinic decision matityahu he's right he's living in a certain part of israel where the greeks are are dominant and the greeks eventually push them too far they insist on idols in the in the temple and uh you know attack the jewish religion in modine is where the revolt began and matityahu gets up one day and he says gentlemen as the leading rabbi of this of the he was the coin he was the high priest as well i've made a decision rabbi what's your decision we declare war on the greek empire uh rabbi you and whose army well there's me and my sons you know there's five of us we've got a few friends about 13 of us we found some old swords in the olive jars i think we can do it rabbi the greek army 10 000 war elephants you know trained legions of soldiers etc they've just taken over the whole middle east like yeah i i think we can me and my boys i think we rabbi did you ever practice warfare no we the kohani we've never held a weapon before uh you think rabbi did you ask the prophet none of them rabbi did you check we haven't seen those anymore rabbi what makes you think this is the right decision you know boys according to my rabbinic understanding i think this is the right thing to do you know war and they won and they won the war you're not talking about a rabbinic decision you know to a different recipe for the colors you know or like uh you know what with spices we're going to spell on saturday talking about war on the empire right that is the chutzpah that's the chutzpah of the oral law the oral law is that we and we make the decisions and and that's where it began so let's take a step back for a moment you're looking at a phase in history where the prior phase of hit of of prophecy and miracles ended ended by purim which is transitional and then sealed by hanukkah 150 200 years later which is deep in the era where there is nothing and that's why there's no book of hanukkah because because a book of the torah by definition is written by a prophet and that that's its creditor credentials that include it in the Torah. Now let's take a closer look at some of these elements. First of all, before Purim, we have an era known as the revealed era. Giluipanim, the revealed face, God reveals himself in the world. What does God's revelation in the world look like? Prophecy and miracles. Now let's stop for a moment here. Why do prophecy and miracles go together? What do they have in common? Why those two? Why do those two stand or fall together? And the answer is that there are two ways to express yourself. You either speak or you act. Those are the two ends of a continuum. You can speak, which is very little in the way of action, but it's very articulate and expressive. You can express great subtleties in great detail, or you can act. You can move or gesture. There's a lot you can do in expressing yourself with the Bible. Of course, if we Jews, we do both at the same time, right? But be that as it may. There's the expressions of the verbal expression and actions. God expresses himself, Hashem expresses himself in both ways. He speaks speaks and he acts. In fact, it's very interesting. If you look in the description of the creation or the description of the giving of the Torah, you'll find both of them parallel all the way. You'll find that the creation was effected by God speaking, Vayomer Elohim, God spoke, let there be light, etc., and it uses expressions of what He's doing with His hands and His fingers in bringing the world into being. When the giving of the Torah occurs, you notice both of them occur again. God speaks and we hear Him speaking, but He also hands over the tablets with His hands to Moshe Rabbeinu. He gives the Torah to Moshe by dictating it to him and He gives it in the form of an action of tablets that He actually hands over with His hands. These are the two modes of expression. When Hashem expresses Himself directly in the world, His speech is called prophecy and His actions are called miracles. Again, when He intervenes in the world directly, the two modes of expression take those two forms. Speaking in the world is either prophecy or at the very highest level we hear His voice at Sinai. And the second way He expresses Himself in the world is by producing miracles. And note carefully, both of those require the presence of a prophet. This is found in a number of our commentaries, most famously probably the Ra'al Bug, going back to the 14th century. He points out that you will never find an example of a miracle occurring in the Torah without the presence of a prophet. That's remarkable. When the sea splits, it's Moshe Rabbeinu holding out his staff. When, when the man of. all of the 10 plagues in Egypt, there's a prophet. And the obvious question is this: Hashem, you're operating in the world directly. You're blowing away the natural. Why do you need a human being to be the agent or the fulcrum for this, for this event? You want to make the sea split, make the sea split. What do you need an attendant human being for? In the most extreme example, at the giving of the Torah, where God is speaking directly, He still needs a human being to be present. Moshe Rabbeinu is to climb the mountain and be present. What is the meaning of this? The meaning is that the creation of the world and all of human history is for our involvement. The purpose of history is not for Hashem to demonstrate what He is. The purpose of history is for us to bring the world to its perfection. The whole point of creating a human being was to give him the responsibility for bringing history to its perfection. And therefore there was never an example, apart from the creation itself before there were human beings around, of any significant event in history, particularly the revealed events like prophecy and miracle, without requiring the presence of a human being. And without the human being, it doesn't happen. And therefore, a prophet is required for both modes of operation. He is required to hear the divine message as a dictation and speak it. And he is required to be the agency for prophecy, for miracles. And therefore no miracle occurs in the world without a prophet being the one to raise his hand or raise his staff or whatever action is required for the human being to make. And therefore, prophets are the agents of both prophecy and miracles. And therefore they die together. When prophecy, the era of prophecy, comes to an end, from that moment on we hear no more divine words spoken and we witness no more miracles. Think about it. When the last prophet died, Malachi, during the era of the Great Assembly, at that moment the Bible was closed, so to speak, the canon ended, right? The canon ended. No more books added to the Torah. And so the Torah and no more miracles occurred. From that moment on, right, there were no more open miracles. There are closed miracles. Let's understand that. You have two types of miracle in the world. What's called revealed and hidden. And there are two types of prophetic revelations, so to speak. The revealed, which is called prophecy, and the hidden, which is called the oral law, where Hashem speaks, but He speaks in the clothing of a naturalistic, legalistic discussion. Where you delve and derive and understand what He's telling you, but He's telling you in a hidden fashion. These two modes go together. Let me explain what I mean. There's revealed Torah, that's called Torah Shebek Tav, the written Torah, and Torah Sheba Alpeh, the oral Torah, which is a tradition that's handed down, but not divinely revealed openly. And there are two types of miracle that parallel those two modes in the world. There's the revealed miracles, like the sea splitting and manna falling from heaven and dead people being revived. And then there's the hidden miracle, which is what appears to us as a natural events in history, right? When a baby is born, believe me, that's an unbelievable miracle, but it's a naturalistic process that we're used to. You know, as I always like to explain, when a child is born, the moment of birth is something that is beyond biological credibility. You know, a child in the womb is living underwater with no air to breathe, with an anatomy completely opposite to your anatomy. This is the natural miracle. And then there's the hidden miracle, for your anatomy. The anatomy of a child in the womb is life and death opposite to yours. The child in the womb has holes in his heart. He's got the blood flowing in the wrong direction. He's got no lungs. If you take an unborn baby and look at the lungs, they are tiny little nubbins of tissue with no expansion at all. You know, the normal human lung looks like a sponge, like a very aerated sponge. I don't want to be morbid, but just to tell you, when a dead baby is found and the police have to decide, the police, the police, the police have to decide, the police have to decide, the police have to decide, the police have to decide, was the child stillborn or did it die after birth? Important question in medical legal work. Here's a newborn child that's found. Was this child dead in utero and then stillborn? Or did the child live and then die? You know how they tell that, gentlemen? They take a piece of the child's lung and they put it in water. If it floats, the child was born. If it sinks, the child never lived. Charles, you follow me? Because the lung is like an expanded, aerated sponge. If it's breathed, if the child ever breathed, the lung has been popped open and aerated like a sponge and it will float. If the child never breathed, the lung looks like liver. It looks like a very dense, liver-like tissue where the air spaces have never been filled with air. And if you put it in water, it sinks. Very, very interesting. That's the test they use. The child has no lungs, tiny little liver-like nubbins of tissue, which expand to many times their volume when the child is breathing. He has blood vessels coming out from his umbilicus to the placenta. He has a major blood vessel in his body, taking all the blood from the lungs in the opposite direction. The lungs don't need a blood supply. They're not oxygen. So the child lives underwater in the womb in an anatomy opposite to what you have. If you, if you gave an adult in the world any of those features of the child that the child has, the fetus anatomy, you'd kill him. And if you gave any of the features of an adult to the baby in the womb, you'd kill him. These are life and death opposite situations for completely opposite modes of being. What happens in the child's born? Listen to this, gentlemen. Gentlemen, ladies, I don't know who's with us today. When a child transitions from in the womb to outside the womb, all of that has to change instantaneously. Otherwise, he's a dead duck. When that child's born, he has to go from adapt, adaptation to that underwater situation within the. a minute or two, to being completely reversed in the world. Otherwise, he's dead. And what happens is the child's born, you know, speaking from personal experience, I've delivered dozens of babies, okay? So here you deliver this little baby. You hold him in your hands, this little purple creature. He starts making these terrible gasping movements. He goes from purple to deep purple. There's no way. He's bleeding furiously through these umbilical vessels. There's no way this child's going to live. There's 10 different reasons that guarantee his death. And suddenly, as you hold that little baby in your arms, and you hold him in your arms, and you hold that baby in your hands, the umbilical vessels clamp down like a cable of steel. They stop the bleeding. At exactly the same moment, the holes in the heart close and the blood reverses direction. At exactly the same moment, the blood vessels away from the lungs clamps down and the blood hits the lungs. At exactly the same moment that the lungs start getting their blood supply, he takes his first breath and the lungs pop open. And about two and a half minutes later, it's all reversed and he's doing fine. You know, that must have taken a good few orangutans in the trees during evolution, you know, to get. But that didn't make it. I mean, that's to say nothing of the biochemical cascade that leads to this. What do you think makes that blood vessel close down and the holes in the heart close? There's an explicit sequence of biochemistry that takes place within two minutes. A whole sequence of reactions that never happened before, right? That cause all that stuff to take place within about two minutes. If it takes more than three and a half minutes, the kid's dead. That is called a miracle. However, we don't. When that happens, we say, "Muzzle-toff! Muzzle-toff! Another baby! No problem!" No! It's amazing! But we call it a hidden miracle because we're used to it. What's the difference between a hidden miracle and a revealed one? At root, it depends if you're used to it. If you're used to it, you think it's cool. You think it's natural. If you're not used to it, ladies and gentlemen, if you were sitting at the graveside one day in the post-messianic era and the ground started to shake and a few bones started to climb out of the grave and started to reconnect, you know, you'd be pretty impressed. But the truth is, it's only because you're not used to it. You know what the Talmud says? The Talmud says, "Resurrection of the dead is less marvelous than the creation of a child." You know why? Logically, because resurrection of the dead is reconstituting something that was. The formation of a child in the first place is building that out of nothing. When you build a child the first time, you're taking an original cell from a father and a mother, and you're using a program that manufactures a child out of raw materials. Resurrection of the dead is constituting something that was at least once existed. It's less marvelous. But the one we're used to, so we think it's normal. The other thing we're not used to. But there's a deeper difference between natural and supernatural miracles. And that is that what we call a hidden miracle is actually something that is statistically incredibly unlikely, but does not break what we perceive to be laws of nature. Whereas a revealed miracle breaks a law of nature. When something that is incredibly unlikely happens, statistically so beyond all probability, we call that a nes nistar, a hidden miracle. What does hidden miracle mean? It's unbelievable that this happened at this time. But a skeptic would say, well, you know, once every billion, you know, tries, you'll get it right. A revealed miracle is not something statistically unlikely. It's something where the laws of nature as we perceive them are broken. Let me illustrate what I mean. What is called a hidden miracle? You're going for a jog and you carelessly run off the edge of a cliff. Not good. As you fall, you grab a twig growing out of the cliff, and you hang there dangling over 5,000 feet of empty space with jagged rocks at the bottom. And as you hang there wondering what to do, you feel the twig snap. But just as the twig snaps, there happens to be somebody practicing throwing ropes over the edges of cliffs that day. And you grab the rope and he pulls you up. Now, that would leave you pretty religious for two or three days at least. Why? Because that is so unlikely. That juxtaposition of two events is so unlikely. That juxtaposition is so unlikely that we call it miraculous but it's not impossible if you speak to your convinced atheistic skeptic they will say well yeah you were lucky very lucky but you were lucky but if you go for a run and you run off the edge of a cliff and you drop and you hang on to a twig and it snaps and you levitate up and float back on which would leave you from for a week or two at least that is because you've witnessed a breaking in a law of nature and that we call a revealed miracle that we call a reveal in depth by the way this is not the time to go into it now in depth they're actually one in the same because what we call a law of nature is only a perceived repetition of events we call it a law of nature the the fact that objects fall when you drop them doesn't mean they have to fall it just means in our observed experience they fall down so then we phrase a law right there are many anomalous things in in in physics where the thing is anomalous we say well the law is that things fall except the occasionally they fall up things like that you know there are many examples you know that liquids all liquids drop in volume as you cool them from their boiling point to their freezing point right the volume goes down with temperature except water charles i'm telling you a rule of physics if you take any liquid oil mercury whatever that's right that's right all of liquids they but when you take water the rule applies till you get down to four degrees but from four degrees down to zero water starts expanding that's incidentally why ice floats ice floats because it's less dense than water that doesn't happen with oil or mercury if you freeze another liquid it freezes from the bottom up if you freeze water it freezes from the top down that's because of what's called the anomalous expansion of water of course once we observe it we have a theory it's due to the crystal lattice of the ice crystals how they form the sophisticated physical theories about why it works that way but it breaks the rule of all thousands and thousands of other liquids you can take methane and freeze it you can take oil you can take whatever you like they freeze from the bottom up water by the way as a complete aside water freezing from the top down is very significant because when lakes and oceans freeze they freeze from the top down which means the fish survive for next year because the water is warm underneath ice freezes from the top and it's also an excellent thermal blanket the fact that the ice freezes from the top down means that things get going next summer if water froze from the bottom up we wouldn't be here right because if you know life in the in the oceans left after everything froze the year before anyway that's another issue but in science they call it the anomalous expansion of water but this is a side issue you can think about for yourself what is actually a law of nature but be that as it may we have two categories now the revealed miracle category happened until Purim and Hanukkah that was the time of revealed miracles and then after Purim and Hanukkah just like Torah was closed and no prophet speaks anymore no prophet acts either no prophet we have no prophets since then to speak the word of Hashem and no prophets to do the actions of Hashem that we call miracles in the world and from 2,000 years ago 2,200 years ago all we've ever seen is the incredible coincidental events of history you want to call the six-day war miracle fine but it wasn't a it wasn't a miracle of dead people being revived or manna falling from heaven whatever event you want to call miraculous in the subsequent era of history we call a hidden miracle where no laws of physics and chemistry are broken just laws of probabilities that's a categorical shift from one phase to the other and the differences between the first phase and the second are legion right let me give you a couple of examples the most important thing to understand is revelation hiddenness until Purim you have a time of things being revealed miracles and prophecy transitional zone Hanukkah and from that time on nothing take take for example what happened at Purim what happened at Hanukkah at Purim a book of the Bible was added the Megillah transitional with difficulty by the skin of its teeth but it got in miracles well there was a miracle of Purim but this time a hidden miracle king couldn't sleep political events no hidden no revealed miracle like happened in the entire era completely completely transitional in nature and then Hanukkah nothing written at all what miracle of Hanukkah beating the Greeks guerrilla warfare defeating an army amazing amazing but not a change in the law of physics or chemistry yes a light burn for eight days that's true which was a wave goodbye at the very very tail end of the phase of possible miracles and by the way that light burning for eight days was totally unlike all the reveal miracles that happened before number one did not occur in the presence of a prophet there was no prophet at the time number two had no function for saving the Jewish people nothing to do with saving the Jewish people the miracles that happened before even the Purim miracle of all the political intrigue events conspired to save the Jewish people from genocidal attack by the Persians the light that burnt at Hanukkah nothing to save a Jewish people because after the war was won the Greeks had already been evicted from the country no one even saw that miracle except the Kahneman the one that burnt at Hanukkah in the temple was symbolic right it was simply a wave goodbye this is the last time you're going to see me until these lights are lit again at the end of history with the messianic era and therefore it's completely utterly unlike all the previous miracles of history and since then we've seen none this raises many questions let me share with you one of them one question is how are the sages able to add Purim and Hanukkah you're not allowed to add to the Torah think about this for a moment there's a mitzvah in the Torah called baltosef baltosef means it is totally and utterly forbidden to add to the Torah you want to put five strings on your tzitzit instead of four Torah transgression you may not add to the Torah the worst way of adding to the Torah is literally to add to the Torah to add a new shall we say testament a new book to add some new claim prophecy right and add that to the Torah nothing could be worse the main adding illicit in an illicit fashion is as bad as taking away right the famous halakhic principle yet there cannot tool dummy adding if you if you have an extra finger if you're born with 11 fingers you're not better you're not you're not better that's that's that's an efficiency in the human form to add a word to a poem that's unnecessary it doesn't make it better to add some splashes of paint on a great painting because you're putting more paint on doesn't make it better a great work of art a great work of art of physics or mechanics as Charles no doubt will tell us is where the right number of components are there in the right places a few extra nuts and bolts doesn't do you any good and a few mass missing nuts and bolts is equally problematic the perfection consists in all the parts being as necessary not too many and not too few you damage the Torah is just as significantly by adding to it as by taking away and therefore how could they add anything to the Torah the Torah is complete and given at Sinai the rabbis come along and add a book to the Torah the book of Purim listen to what they did they added a book to the Torah which is very problematic and they added a festival you get to add festivals to the Jewish calendar the Torah tells you your festivals Pesach Shavuot Sukkot etc come along to add a festival you're adding to Torah and they added mitzvahs to add a mitzvah to the Torah you got 613 mitzvahs what are chutzpah you're adding mitzvot Purim and Purim they added four mitzvot you got to give to the poor you got to send gifts to friends you got to listen to the Megillah you got to eat a mitzvah they're mitzvahs we make blessings on them the rabbis of the time adding to the Torah is an explicit Torah prohibition when it comes to Hanukkah they didn't add a book that's true that's true but they added a festival and they added a mitzvah you light the Hanukkah lights that's a mitzvah and you make a blessing on a mitzvah get to add mitzvahs to the Torah completely forbidden this question question, my friends, is raised in the Talmud. The Gemara asks the question: So here's what the Gemara says. When it came to Purim, the Gemara says, how could they add a festival, how could they add a book to the Bible, to the canon of scripture, and how could they add mitzvahs, complete transgression against the prohibition of adding to the Torah. So the Gemara answers as follows. The Gemara says, well, well, true, it's forbidden, but if we can find a source in the Torah itself, then we're not adding. If we could find a text, a suitable text in the written Torah that is a hint, after all, there are many instructions in the Torah that are not explicit, many things, or the laws of Shabbat, for example. 99% of the laws of Shabbat are not written openly in the Torah. They're written by exegesis and derivation. As long as we have a verse and a tradition about how to read that verse, then we could, we could find a source. And the Gemara actually goes through a derivation of which verse it is. First, the Gemara tries to say, we know why we should add the Megillah of Purim? Because it's a form of Halel. Now, Halel is a mitzvah in the Torah. We know the Torah says that you have to say Halel, and that's why we make a bracha. When we say Halel today, like, for example, Rosh Chodesh, whatever, well, that might not be a perfect example, but when we say Halel on Pesach, for example, we make a blessing. Why? Because it's a Torah mitzvah to say Halel. Not exactly the words. The words are up to us to compose, but the fact that you have to praise and thank, at certain times, a miraculous salvation, that's a mitzvah of the Torah. And therefore, the Gemara says like this, to add Purim as a part of the Torah, what's the mitzvah we're adding? Halel. And then the Gemara starts debating that. How do we know we should add Halel? The Gemara says like this, when we were saved at Egypt from slavery to freedom, we had a mitzvah of Halel. Well, it's a culture cane. That means, if you have to say Halel from slavery to freedom, then certainly from death to life. Right? It wasn't slavery at Purim. It was a genocidal decree. So when the Jewish people survived from genocide to salvation, of course you have to say Halel. And the Gemara breaks that down. Eventually it comes up with a source, okay, vested in verses in the Torah that the Megillah is authentic and you're allowed to add the Megillah and you're allowed to add the mitzvahs of Purim because we find a source in the Torah. And therefore, without a source in the Torah, there's no question that we would, true, they're rabbinic in nature, Purim. The rabbis of the Great Assembly added Purim. It's true. But they only added it because they had a source in the Torah that enabled them to make their rabbinic addition of a composition of a Megillah that takes its place in the canon of Torah. You know what's amazing? When it comes to Hanukkah, the question's not even raised. Hanukkah, the mitzvah of Hanukkah with the menorah, the mitzvah of Hanukkah, the mitzvah of Hanukkah, and the festival. True, there's no book. Granted, that's true. But there's a mitzvah and there's a festival that Talmud doesn't even raise the question. Not even raise a question. It's a bigger adding to the Torah. Rashi raises the question. And listen to what Rashi says. Rashi says, well, let me, before I tell you Rashi, the Ramban deals with this question. Nachmanides. And the Ramban says, there's no way the rabbis could add Purim. Hanukkah, there's no way you could add Hanukkah. You're adding to the Torah. The Ramban says, the solution must be, there's only one possible solution. There must be a verse in the Torah. Obviously, it may not be mentioned in the Talmud, but there must be a source in the Torah itself. And the Ramban shows you where the source is. Quite amazing. The Ramban shows you where the source is in the Torah. What's his opinion about a source in the Torah? Classic and amazing. The Ramban says this. The Ramban says that when Aaron was watching the Nassim, the heads of all the tribes, bringing their initiating gifts to the Mishkan, right, the gifts that they brought as inaugural gifts when the Mishkan was ignited, so to speak, what do you say, inaugurated in the desert, he was incredibly distressed. Here are these princes, leaders of the Jewish people, bringing their gifts that will begin what we call Chanukah Samizbeach, the inauguration. Chanukah means inauguration of the altar and the temple. He's standing aside and not doing anything. And he was tremendously distressed, almost to the point of losing his sanity. And Hashem said to him, what are you so distressed about? Your share is greater than yours. You know why? Because you light the lights. These people are bringing gifts, gold and silver plates and platters and sacrifices and so on. It's a one-time thing. You will go into the Mishkan, into the temple and you will light the lights of the menorah, right, which is the job of the high priest every day and your share is greater than theirs. That's what he says. And therefore Aaron was appeased. What's going on here? These princes are bringing a one-time gift and then they're out of it. Aaron is told that he will have the role in the same Mishkan that they're inaugurating of lighting the menorah every day. The Ramban, that's what Rashi says, the Ramban asks a list of questions and demolishes that thesis. He says, first of all, first of all, when they're bringing a gift and Aaron is distressed, had he forgotten that the Mishkan is all his? What's he distressed about? They're bringing a one-time gift. He goes into the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur. He performs the daily sacrifice. He and his tribe basically run the Mishkan. What's he upset about? He wants a role to play in the functioning of the Mishkan? The whole thing revolves around him. He's distressed because he's not because they're bringing a one-time gift. And furthermore, if that was his problem, if his problem was that he wanted a role in the Mishkan, he was distressed because he didn't have it, how does lighting the menorah help? It's one more function. Why is going to the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur not good enough? Why is the daily sacrifice not good enough? Why is this daily service in the temple that in his tribe do not good enough? You light the menorah, oh, now he's happy. And the Ramban has a whole list of questions on that thesis. My friends, listen to his answer his answer is beyond amazing. When he saw these men bringing their gifts, they were bringing Hanukkah. Hanukkah means inauguration, ignition, a first moment of flaring up. When the Mishkan, so to speak, is commissioned, when it begins its work for the first time, that's what he wanted. He wanted to be there in at the beginning. That's called Hanukkah. And Hashem was not offering him the lighting of the menorah in the Mishkan. Hashem was offering the lighting of the menorah at Hanukkah. What Hashem said to him was your great-grandchildren will light the lights in this temple after it's been defiled and your great-grandchildren of the Maccabees, they will purify it and evict the Greeks and they will re-dedicate the temple and that light will lead to a Hanukkah mitzvah that will be lit in every Jewish home and every Jewish window until the Messiah messianic period in history, that's something to look forward to and that is greater. In other words, says the Ramban, Aaron was not being offered another function in the temple. He was being offered what's called Hanukkah. Hashem was not referring to the here and now. He's referring to the fact that this is a one-time thing, the blaze of glory in the desert when the Mishkan begins. But hundreds of years from now, when the Greeks have taken over and there's no prophetic revelation and you feel like you're on your own in a tremendous darkness of an exile, your tribe and your grandchildren will begin a thing called Hanukkah which is a mitzvah that will last until the Mishkan and that's when he was appeased. Now, there's a lot to say about it but what the Ramban said is you see, the Ramban says you see there's a source in the Torah. This incident of Aaron craving a function in the Mishkan and God giving him a function, that's a source of Hanukkah. So the Torah does refer to Hanukkah so they didn't add something they found a source. That's the Ramban solution. A different solution is this. After the Great Assembly sealed the Torah, there's no question about adding. What I'm trying to say is this. To add a mitzvah to the Torah or to add a festival for example called Purim, you dare not do when it's possible to add. When the Torah is open so to speak and it's possible to add, there's a prohibition. Once the Torah is sealed and the Great Assembly have sealed off the Torah, the scripture is put on a shelf, there are 24 books of the Torah, it's not relevant to the Torah. It's not relevant to the Torah. It's not relevant to add. Let me put it to you this way. When you come along to add something, a mitzvah or an observance or a festival thereafter, what are you doing? You're simply making an enactment of Jewish. This is a good thing to do. You're not claiming that the Torah has an added piece. You know, throughout history the rabbis have added commemorative events. Right? Let me give you a controversial one. Yom Ha'atzmaut. Yom Ha'atzmaut. How can you add a festival? During the counting of the. You're going to start playing music and having parties and saying, how can you do such a thing? My friends, it's not a halakhic problem. There were big debates about it. Very controversial between the ultra-orthodox side of things and the. There are big debates about it. But there's no halakhic problem. Nobody's claiming that Yom Ha'atzmaut is a Torah festival. No one's claiming that. It's an opportunity for thanksgiving. The State of Israel began. That's unbelievably significant. We make a day and we celebrate it and we. No one's claiming to add a festival to the Torah. Right? And the rabbis have the power to. add events they can make commemorative events they can strike coins they can they can make up prayers once the Torah is closed the the question becomes moot and therefore therefore the adding of Hanukkah at that time in history was something akin in the modern I would say the modern context like adding Yom Ha'atzmaut right again I'm not getting into that debate and that controversy and where the blessing should be said or party should be held that's not the issue the issue is there's no religious prohibition in the formal sense of adding anything to the Torah and that those are the two two sides of the same coin Purim which was an addition and needed validation from a source in Torah and after the Great Assembly the end of the Great Assembly when Hanukkah comes and there's no more phase of revelation that is the that is the that's a different issue and this leads to many many other issues I think we've really we've expressed the basic point here but there are many other issues I'll mention just one in passing and that is that the ordeal the Jewish people faced during the phase of revelation was called idolatry tremendous temptation to worship idols that's not our problem today today we've transitioned into a totally different issue which is called atheism two different modes idolatry was an overabundance of spirituality desperately wanting to connect to something that is spiritual and transcendental and intermediary between you and God utterly forbidden but it comes from an abundance of spiritual the dynamic but after the Torah close and prophecy leaves the world and miracles leave the world people's temptation no longer is a temptation to transcend spiritually now the temptation is nothing atheism is nothing all that counts is me okay it's a death of spirituality in the world idolatry is is an inflamed overabundance of spiritual attachment in the wrong direction completely illicit that's true but nevertheless it's from a flaming desire to sublimate your your consciousness to something higher through an idol through something bigger than you right and make contact with the spiritual worlds after the great assembly right who exorcised the desire for idolatry from the human soul and at the same time closed the opening of prophecy the very same thing when prophecy dies the temptation for idolatry dies prophecy means you can hear a voice from a higher world idolatry means you can speak to that world you can relate it when one goes the other goes and for the moment that prophecy left the world the temptation for idolatry left the world what has replaced it no prophecy no voice from a higher world we are all that counts so my consciousness is the beginning and the end of all that I am and the temptation is a temptation which our generation struggles with which is atheism you do not have people today tempted to worship idols no one's tempted no one has a craving to worship idols today there are customs old cultural holdovers as the talmud puts it minna gava same here them they have cultural hindu and and and and eastern and and and other holdovers vestiges of cultural issues but no one today craves okay no one is uh you know sneaking out at night and and and betraying their their marriages you know to go and worship idols right the other temptations that have taken that taken that place which is a fulfillment of their own sensuality and the own the ego and the sensual aspect of the human being and therefore we transition from prophecy to the oral law we transition from idolatry to atheism and many many other parallels anyway for more details see this excellent book as dawn ends the night which documents it both graphically and then fills in all the correlates of these two phases of history absolutely fundamental to understand and when someone challenges you and says where is god nowadays you know you jews you talk about miracles man are falling from heaven you know the whole jewish experience where's god let him speak to me once this is not the phase my friends he spoke to us repeatedly for for the first three three and a half thousand years of history and then it went into hiding and the message is now it's over to you in the first phase i speak you listen in this phase you speak i listen you create torah this is a phase of the oral law where your genius and your jewish creativity is marching forward in history where we are the ones who create it no longer a voice from another world until the messianic era anyway this introduction to the subject rupert thank you for hosting this uh thank you thank you
Speaker 2very very much
Speaker 1pleasure pleasure best wishes to everyone
Speaker 2regards to gary thank you bye-bye a quick question well i wonder why the transition has to be so stark in other words you would think we'd have some remnants of prophecy now just to encourage us we have nothing we have you know we have to take him we have others perhaps but we're not the core of prophecy that's it have to be such a stark transition from everything to nothing
Speaker 1right so this is a fascinating question the truth is we do have vestiges in many ways let me give you one example only the stark transition was from when torah ended the five books of torah and the transition was taken then what we call 19 books of prophets which are transitional beginning with a joshua a disciple of moshe fading gradually over a thousand years to purim which is prophetic but almost in the phase of darkness so it wasn't suddenly in that sense and that's why by the way larry we have a mitzvah to read nach every day we have a specific concept that every day we are required to have some connection with the words of the prophets let me put it to you this way the prophets and the prophets of the prophets are the ones who are the ones who are the ones who are the the ones who are the ones who have three functions i'm not talking about khumash i'm talking about nach the books of tanakh three functions number one berating us and warning us with dire consequences to maintain the straight and narrow most of the words of the prophets are that number two hope there will be a redemption look look in the book of azariah many many prophecies of final redemption and three torah has an end to it and it's going to be a redemption and it's going to be a redemption ended torah hasn't ended suddenly there's an ongoing manifestation in the world albeit a much lesser voltage but there still maintains itself in the world i'll tell you something fascinating we say every day we say that prayer listen to the first line hope the redeemer will come only to those who repent this is my covenant that continues torah continues in the world in that prayer we say all of these three ideas of prophecy and you know when we don't say it there's only one occasion one type of day in the jewish calendar where we don't say that any day there's a haftarah when there's a haftarah and we're reading the books of the prophets we don't say that prayer but on any day where there's no haftarah look shabbat morning for example we don't say that because we're reading from the book of the of the prophets shabbat afternoon there's no haftarah we read the torah with no haftarah we say that prayer in other words the transition was when the prophets came and the prophets came and the prophets came and the prophets came and the torah ended there's a gradual transition through the books of the prophets and when that ends we move into the oral law where we tick up pick up the we pick up the slack and we move forward by a a not no longer prophecy but we call it divine inspiration that's rachal kodesh today we are very deep at the end of that a very gradual gradual transition down to almost nothing yes yes indeed but the watershed moment again was that 200 years between purim where it begins to end and hanukkah where it ends anyway gentlemen ladies gentlemen thank you very much for this opportunity all the best this gives a different insight to when we get to purim a little bit of a different vision of what it means all the best
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