Speaker 1We just left Hanukkah, and next week is the first of, sorry, the TV, let's see if we can, let's see if we can try and think through the issues that are happening now at this time. You know the idea of Greece and Greek thinking, Greek philosophy that we had the chance to discuss a little bit during Hanukkah before and during that is a, we are living now, we live now in the legacy of the Greek, Greek way of thinking. The Roman Empire, which you know, what we call Edom, the western culture, the western block of nations among whom we live, excluding for now the Far East, which needs a separate discussion and excluding the world of Islam, which also needs its own, have a own specific approach to eye to action with them. But the culture that we live in immediately, and particularly this time of year, when the culture expresses itself in a particular way, we need to relate to what's the Jewish approach, let's say, to this culture. There's a particular difficulty with the subject, and that is that we, the essential difficulty tried to develop it is that we have to try to understand these things from a Jewish perspective, and yet our perspective is theirs. Our minds have been trained, right? We, what the effect of Greece on us is that it affects us internally. So we have to do the almost impossible job of analyzing a situation where the tools have been denied us, not all we deny ourselves, those tools, perhaps. And therefore, the real work of this period is the work of refining the tools themselves. That means it's not simply a question of applying perception to a situation, it's a question of revising that perception. That obviously is an extremely difficult thing. What you try to do is modify the tools with the tools. That's easy to use tools to modify. Now you can, you can modify a piece of wood with a suitable tool, but when you have to use the tool to fix the tool, when the tool is broken, that's problematic. So let's slowly see if we can work our way through this. First of all, you know that the measure says, the measure says that the, that Greece, the, the Possex says is a verse that talks about different types of Gary. A Gary means, I guess, a stranger or one who dwells really. The Gary, stranger, sometimes means a stranger, sometimes means a convert, a dweller, the root, the Hebrew root means to, to live with or to dwell. So the verse talks about different types of strangers, or sojourners, or dwellers, and their four expressions that are used, and their stages in the measure analyze each of them. Each different expression of different types of stranger refers to a different type of exile. But the one that we look at up yourself, it's in the, it's Tom Humber, but on the part of the, of the treating strangers and those who dwell among us in a particular way. But the measure says that, that Greece of the four exiles that we've experienced, Greece is called a Gary Toyshoff. Gary Toyshoff is a remarkable concept, I don't know if you have a parallel concept in, in, in Asalovtaro. A Gary Toyshoff means a person who is a stranger to dwells among you. A holachically such a person has a very interesting definition. It's a person who's not a Gary Tsellic, a Gary Tsellic is a convert, not a righteous, Gary convert. That means somebody converts to Jews, such a person is Jewish in every sense of the word, all Jewish obligations, privileges if that's the right word as well. In fact, there's a mitzvah to live such a person perhaps doubly because of their various reasons. That's called a Gary Tsellic. But there's an interesting category called a Gary Toyshoff. That's a person who lives in the land, he doesn't apply today, it's dirty. We don't have our lucky status like that today. It applies only when the ureval applies because of the jubilee cycle. We don't have that today. That's a person called the Gary Toyshoff. This individual lives in Israel together with the Jewish people at a time where the country is governed by Torah law and their obligations are to keep the laws, to keep certain of the laws of the Torah, to keep certain of the laws in a particular fashion, to be specific. Their obligation is to keep the seven laws of the non-Jews because it says so in the Torah. In other words, an interesting cross here between a person who is not Jewish and a person who is. The person who is not Jewish has to keep the seven laws of the Torah. We understand that the Torah is binding on all of humanity and just as no two people are of the same, the different spiritual realities you're occurring, you're Israel, you're a man, you're a woman, you're a Jew, you're a non-Jew. Each of those categories has its own binding, particular unique set of halachic definitions and obligations, and non-Jew has to live according to Torah law. According to Torah law for non-Jews, it so happens that the system that required is a system of seven commandments which have particular unique definitions. They are clearly defined. They have very strict tolerances, much more strict than for Jews, for example. We have six out of the thirteen commandments. It's a Jewish, six out of the thirteen commandments. With certain tolerances and certain leniency and certain stringencies, non-Jews have seven, and as it happens the stringencies of their seven are more exacting than ours. As it happens, their seven. But they are more strictly enforced and enforceable. It's a different spiritual system. Jew and non-Jew are two different spiritual entities, and the non-Jew has that system. Incidentally, there are non-Jews today. You live by those laws, do you? Are you aware of that? There is a church today. There's a church today that's not as an Ahad church that was originally a Southern Baptist-American church, fundamentalist Christian church, who discovered these laws, and they now, in fact, live according to these laws. They call themselves the "Nahad" so they have dismantled all the steeples on their churches and have taken out all the Christian symbols, and they live according to the Torah law for non-Jews. In fact, that personally happens to know one of the rabbis who teaches them. They are attached to certain Jewish rabbis, who have taught them according to their request, have to live according to Torah law for non-Jews. Not they have, in fact, are familiar with some of one particular family where five boys in that family ended up converting to Judaism and studying Torah in Jerusalem. The father comes to visit and he's a non-Jew. And he is a righteous Gentile. He lives according to the laws of the Gentiles. These people have very interesting interaction with their family. If you think about children, it has difficulty with his family trying to explain why he suddenly become an observant Jew. Can you imagine how these Southern fundamentalists explain to their Christian families what exactly it is that they've discovered. It's not simple. Not simple at all. It's a heroic pathway, but that's what they do. It's a very interesting pathway. They'll try to live according to the system of seven laws, and there's literature, and they have their own publications and their own recorded material. You can, if you're a seducalist. That is what a non-Jew is required to do. Then there's a situation called a characterization. This is a non-Jew who lives in Israel when Torah law is binding, not like now, not that Torah law is not binding, but when the land is run according to Torah law, when the yoghurt cycle is in effect and so forth, which is a redemptive situation that we don't have now. This gaitosha is a non-Jew who lives among the Jews, and is required to keep the seven laws of the non-Jews, but with a difference. Unlike a regular non-Jew, he is obliged, if he wants to achieve this particular unique status, he has to keep the seven laws of the non-Jews because it is given in a Torah at Sinai. In fact, the Ramam goes so far as to say that if a non-Jew does that, doesn't necessarily have to be a gaitosha, but if he identifies himself with the correct spiritual root of these laws, he has a show in the world to come just like a Jew. It's one of the reasons that we don't seem to convert people. It's not necessary. We don't only believe that there's one specifically Jewish way. We believe there is only one Torah, of course, but it doesn't mean you have to be Torah of that unique spiritual grouping that we call Jews. This person, if he lives or she lives that way, he or she is living according to the seven laws of the non-Jews in Israel because it says so in a Torah who has given it Sinai. In other words, they are living as a non-Jew because they are observing those seven laws, but they are attached to what we would call Judaism in the sense that the source of those seven is very specifically because the Torah says so. Now, the alaqq status of that non-Jew is a fascinating question and it's unright and now it's not the time to go into it. There's a very interesting debate among our early authorities where the such a non-Jew has to keep Tabas or not. Rashi holds that such a non-Jew in the Jewish situation like that has to keep Tabas. Man has to keep and rush his reason is because there is a notion that one who does not keep [BLANK_AUDIO] Shabbat is idolatrous. Shabbat, after all, is the dedication to the creator of the world, who created the world. Shabbat is, as it were, an adversary of creation. So, desisting from creation one day a week is tantamount to asserting one's attachment to the creator, right? That's why Judaism is virtually synonymous with the status of being a Shabbat, keeping Shabbat. And therefore, what it doesn't keep Shabbat, in a sense, has an idolatrous element. So, Rashi says that this character has to keep Shabbat, but Rashi is a lone voice, the other third is hold that such a person does not keep Shabbat, because the Shabbat is not one of the seven laws. It's a fascinating, halaki debate with its own very, very interesting questions and issues. However, what we need to extract for this evening's discussion is that there is such a person who is not Jewish, but is obliged in a certain way by Torah law for a Torah reason from a Torah source. This is a sort of intermediate zone. You have this gay Torah ratio. He resides in the land and he has his root there. On the other hand, he hasn't chosen to convert and become that Jew. The question we need to ask is, what does Greece have to do with that? Why when we identify the four exiles? Why do we call that particular exile, that particular culture that we once suffered through and we still suffer the legacy of today? Namely Greece, what was the, what is the connection between that culture and its ideology and this intermediate status of being somewhere between the non-Jewish and Jewish worlds? What does that mean? Furthermore, you know that what we celebrate next week, celebrate if that's the right word, is three days of sadness really, right? The eighth, ninth and tenth of Teves this month is the fast of the tenth, which is the tenth year next week, is the three days really celebrate or commemorate if you like three days of darkness that descended upon the world, due to the translation of the Torah into Greek, right? What happened was we have three days, we only really fast on the third of them, the tenth of Teves, but the eighth, ninth and tenth celebrate three commemorate three events, the eighth of Teves is really the commemoration of the translation of the Torah into Greek, the ninth really is commemorating the death of Ezra, Ezra and Hamiya, the last members or among the last members, the men of the great assembly, the transition from the prophetic age, really post-prophetic age in a sense, that is the passing of that sage or those sages, and the tenth is the beginning of the siege, commemorates the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem in the, in three years before the final breaching of the walls and destruction of the first of the first temple, but the siege in fact began then, and that is the day that's been fixed as the universally practiced fast day among the Jewish people on the tenth of Teves, but in fact, the commandment says that three days of darkness descended upon the world when the Torah was translating to Greek, each of these days has its own uniqueness, I do not know, time to discuss all of them, what the connection is, why these three days have a connection to the land of Israel and the siege and Jerusalem's destruction, have seen this time, we will relate to that as well, the day before that the ninth of Teves is the death of Ezra, our sources indicate, our sources indicate that on the day that Ezra died, the found of Christianity was born, at the same dates, the found of Christianity, which is its relevance to this time, a viewer again needs to be analyzed in detail, really Ezra was one of the men of the great assembly, and one of their prime functions, and certainly one of their last functions, was to end prophecy and close the canon, my scripture was closed in, as opposed to, in large measure, because of the notion that the Christian world would come along and reclaim prophecy and reopen the canon of scripture, in order to make it absolutely clear that there's nothing to the Judaism, yes, that's not anything added on to the scriptural, to the 24 books of Tamakh has nothing to do with Torah, so there was a clear, and of course that is exactly the moment of dichotomy or schism, is on the day that they died, and that work was completed, is when this new energy began in the world, which of course we still, we still invest the culture of the West, and it's what week spreads around us today, the translation of the Torah to Greek, which took place on the eighth, needs to be understood, the paradox is that the sages themselves translated the Torah to Greek, and yet it's regarded as a tragedy, three days of darkness descended to the world, the devil says the reason that darkness descended was because you could not translate the Torah, right, insha'Allah, you howl, the hit Torah game called Sorka, you could not translate the Torah adequately, you can't, you know, translation is always problematic, translation is always problematic, but certainly from Hebrew into any other language is not problematic as impossible, Hebrew is the Holy language, the Russian credit, in which each word organically traces itself back to its root, not only that, but the nuances of each possible, let's say, emanation of the root are all contained in the meaning of the word, it's neither language like that, all other languages are fragments of Hebrew that fragmented off during the experience of the Tao, when all human being spoke one language, and human unity was fragmented by different languages coming into existence as sparks of the original language, so by definition you can't translate Torah into another language, all you can possibly hope to do is translate what appears to be the very simplest meaning of the narrative, so to speak, in the words, right, but you can't translate Torah into another language, and therefore when Torah was translated, there was a fracture and there was an incorrect revelation of that, which should have been the correct spiritual revelation, and it came down to the world, and therefore there was a tremendous pain. The mystery is, if it was so painful, then why was it done, and why was it that the Torah learns, and listen, the Gomorrah says like this, here in the paradox well, the Gomorrah says that how do we know that the Torah is permitted to be translated into Greek? Listen carefully to this, the Gomorrah says we know you can translate the Torah into Greek, because it says so in a verse, the Gomorrah derives the permission to translate the Torah into Greek, from a verse in the Torah itself, it's not a rabbinic notion, but the Torah itself has an or a point of origin in the Torah that tells you that you can translate the Torah text into Greek, not only that, but in Greek it has a holiness, it's valid, we are talking about that you can't translate it, we're talking about translating a safe of Torah into Greek, and that Greek document hairs apart from beauty, nothing more says the second most beautiful language on earth is Greek, it has beauty, Greece has an innate beauty, but apart from that it has the holiness of a safe of Torah, the laws of a safe of Torah, which translate, and it's learned from a verse, the verse is Yafat, Elohim Leyefat, the Yisquan Baha'uha'le Shaym, Yafat Elohim Leyefat, Hashem should give beauty, or will give or gives beauty to Greece, Yafat is that third sun of Nayak, who was the founder of the Greek and later Roman genealogy and idea, Hashem gives, God gives them beauty, or they are invested naturally with beauty, the Yisquan Baha'uha'le Shaym, and the function of that beauty is to reside in the tents of Shaym, the Semitic peoples, namely us, another one we have a verse in the Torah that says that Greece is invested with beauty, and its proper place of residence is in the tents within Torah, in other words, among us, so you have here, first of all, what does that mean? What does it mean that the beauty of Greece, which we always present as an atheist, I mean, the Greeks were immoral, they stripped the body and demonstrated its nakedness in a worship of the physical world, of pure hedonism, they detached the world from its spiritual source, that's exactly what the Khannikabat was all about, and yet the beauty of Greece somehow has a proper residence within Torah, what does that mean? Secondly, you see it's a mixture, you see it's not, it's permitted, you see the Torah actually says itself that it's done, and yet we find that when the sage is translated, that don't agree, darkness is said, well, we fast for that, what exactly is going on? If the Torah itself allows it, and invests to a sanctity, the translation of the Torah into Greek, and yet we fast for what happens? What what exactly is, what does this mean? It's a very, I hope you're beginning to hear already this middle ground of something that that is not but is, it's outside and problematicly so, and yet it has a residence within us, I mean, this is the problem with our minds, of course, this is the problem with this mixture in our minds, that's our problem in it, trying to make that clear, or rather make the confusion clear, if you know what I mean, and if you don't, then you know exactly what I mean. When the Torah was translated, what happened was, "Tolamy, king, the king of Greek", happened to be the Greek ruler of Egypt at the time, the Greeks were split into three domains, not in Greece itself was one set of rule, there was another domain that the Greeks held sway over which was located in Syria, and it was the Syrian Greeks who invaded and controlled Israel, and therefore Hanukkah was really the battle against that third of the Greek Empire, which was represented by the Syrian Greeks, and there was a third column of Greek rule which was based in Egypt at the time. King "Tolamy" was the Egyptian Greek ruler at the time, and he forced the sages of his day to translate the Torah into Greek, and what happened was he gathered 72 of the elders of the time, talking about a very, very great period of Jewish history, people at tremendous depth, perspicacity, Torah wisdom, and without telling them why he had captured them, taken them, he put each of them in separate rooms where they had no possible contact with each other, and then he personally went to each room and he said to each sage, "I want you to translate your Torah into Greek." What he wanted was a translation that he could verify, by seeing, yeah, its points have occurred and discord. He didn't want them to get together to make a collusion, an effort of collusion, so he separated them before he told them what he wanted, and then he went into it and he said, "Translate your Torah into Greek, your hummus, right, into Greek for me." And what happened was the sage has all translated the Torah miraculously exactly the same, most specifically, most specifically on a number of points that were problematic in translation. There are a number of points that are very problematic in translation, and in those points they deviated. The sages deviated, each sage, instead of translating those words accurately, changed the literal translation into a Greek version that made sense in Greek. Right, because each of those, at this time, as we go through some of those, each of those particular issues, had it been translated literally, would have caused philosophical religious or anti-Jewish problems, and therefore, but the miracle was that each of these 72 sages made exactly the same changes. Got? I mean, it's very bitterly being joked. A very bitter joke in this generation, which is not just one of those jokes that is so true that it hurts, is that the sages all sitting in different rooms agreed, right? The real miracle would have been, had them all sitting in the same room and got them to agree. Now, that would have been a real, to get 72 Jews to sit in the same room and agree on what the changes should be. That would have demonstrated a real miracle, right? You get them to sit in different rooms and agree, no, you know, that's not as, not as funny as it, you know, that is my fear. But, at the level of those sages, of course, it wouldn't have been an issue. Each of them miraculously was mahaban, that means he struck, directed himself, or how do you say, "intuitive," the correct, the correct alteration to make so that the Torah was translated. And those alterations were ones that the Greek mind could only get wrong, but that the Greek mind could not perceive accurately. For example, they changed, for example, the very first verse of the Torah. Very first verse of the Torah is "Barashi's Parah Elohim" in the beginning God created. So they changed to say that God created in the beginning, because they were worried that if you translated it literally in the beginning, Barashi's Parah Elohim. If you translate that literally, it means in the beginning created God. So you could read that horribly wrongly as to mean that there was some being called in the beginning who created what we call, you could, and then it sounds wild and outlandish, but there is such mistakes can be made with certain, certain cultures, you're not talking about excluding foolishness, obviously. They didn't miraculously hit on the same alterations to exclude fools. These are very deep issues, and they translated that. And similarly, they mistranslated, they deliberately all mistranslated the verse that says, "Nase, or on let us make man, let us make man in the plural, because they thought that the Greek mind would read that and understand that there are multiple gods as the Greeks in fact did do, and therefore they could not bring themselves to translated that way. So I translated, "I shall make man," right? They translated the verse that says, "Have a narrative and novel or shams, let us go down and confuse their language." Very poignant verse, the verse that means the, in fact, the origin of Greek, not along with all other languages. The gods said, "Ashem said, let us go down," right? In English it sounds natural, because we have the royal, in English we have a royal expression, the royal "we" in English we used to express in a royal plural, right? So it doesn't sound, but of course literally in the Torah there's no, that royalty is the ultimate royalty, and it means to put it in the plural, this is problematic. In fact we need to discuss why the Torah puts in the plural, it's not so simple. Why does the Torah phrase it in the plural? And I have to think about that, but nevertheless the words, if you get time, perhaps we'll try and go through that, but the words say, "Let us make man, let us go down and interfere with their language." So translating that literally would have been very problematic, so they're translated in the singular, "I shall go down and write in the singular in order to avoid that problem." And there were others, there were others, there were other things that raised issues and problems, there were philosophical problems and moral problems, there's one word in the Torah that happened to be a translation of an animal, meaning "arnevit." Arnevit in Hebrew is one of the species of hair or rabbit or jackrabbit, that is, discussed in the Torah and the heading of kosher non-kosher animals, told him his wife was called Arnevit. Her name was that, in the order that they shouldn't think that they were mocking the queen, they translated that in another fashion, each one had its own particular reason, they translated them all. The Greek mind could not hear certain, when we say Greek we mean, yes, not just those Greeks, we mean us Greeks, we have trouble hearing, we have to relate to certain depth in our Jewish nationalism to understand that. We are, as I said before, we are children of the culture in which we live it, unfortunately we're not children of, truly children of Jewish culture or thinking, but the Greek said trouble. Why just to take one, we don't have time to go through them all, and I don't have the depth of knowledge to tell you the depth band, all of them. But for example, when it says that they're translated, let us make men, right? Nah, say other men, say it's quite clearly in the verse, nah, say other men, you don't have to be Hebrew expert to know, that nah say it's plural, let us. So the marriage deals with this, the marriage in fact has a fascinating discussion, the marriage says that when God dictated the Torah to Moses, when Moses was writing down the Torah, God's dictation, when Hashem said to him, right nah, say other men, let us make men, Moses stopped writing, we should only couldn't bring himself to write the words, let us. So Hashem said to him, what's the problem? So Moses said, I couldn't write let us talk about you, because people may make this error and think that you are more than one. So Hashem said, listen to these amazing words, the marriage says, Hashem said, "Maysheh, say, Moses, write, buy right, say little, and the one who wants to make an error, y'all move here to let him come and make an error." And Masha'a been a wrote down the words in the Torah that we have today, let us make men. Then the marriage says, but why? But why? Masha'a, you have to understand, you're talking about the highest human being you ever lived, you perceive that a human being could read these words and read them wrongly. So why did us Hashem, why was he insistent that you should write, let us make men introduce the problem? The marriage explains, the marriage says, that the Torah writes, now I say, oh, don't let us make men in order to teach you an important principle. What important principle? That when you make a decision, you should confer with your subordinates. That means when Hashem wanted to create men, he consulted his subordinate beings, the angels and his omiters, his own, the marriage says, he asked the quality of truth and the quality of peace and the quality of justice, he called them all together. In fact, the marriage says that Hashem called together the qualities of truth and peace and justice. And he said, should we let not us say, or shall we make men? And then broke out an almighty argument. The quality of truth said, don't create him is full of lies. He'll be full of lies. The quality of shalom said, peace, don't create him is full of friction, full of conflict. The quality of misplugged of stockers said, creating, he'll do kind deeds. And the matter says that while they were having this cosmic argument Hashem created men. Right? And of course, the misstake here, the insensitive here, hears that he bypassed the argument. While they were arguing since they couldn't resolve the issue, yes, he did not take the advice and left them to argue our secret down the side. He made men. Of course, the correct understanding is he did take the advice. He made men a product of this conflict. He took exactly. The advice was, you know what's happening, man is, in fact, a creature who is born of the conflict between his desire to be whole and at peace. And the conflict that he has, right? The struggle that he has to maintain truth in a world that urges him to to speak lies. He made exactly that man that their argument dictated. Right? That's what he did. But be that as it may, you learn from this, you learn from this verse that when you make a decision, you should not make a unilateral decision. If you're a family person, you should ask the members of your family did not bound to take their advice. You're not bound, but you are directed by good conduct, but it's all a good conduct to confer. You run an office. Before you do anything significant in your office, you should ask the people who work for you, even if they are very subordinate. And if even about rights they should have no say. And even if you override their view. But you should take them into account, calling together and ask them. It's called Derek Eradz. Derek Eradz means good, what you call good, etiquette or good Torah manners. A refined person who operates in that in that fashion. Don't steamroll and bulldoze through people's opinions. You call them together, you get their opinion. And therefore, Nas, the Adam teaches you that. Now, the medris asks the following question. "And the later commentaries are heard from Rostin Khavassanman and equal to his father's name and with the Khavass I'm said about it very interesting." The briskerov said is that you have your very interesting thing. What is the advantage? What's the advantage? Why do you want to write? Let us make men. Why do you want to teach me a point of good conduct? Don't make unilateral decisions consult your subordinates. What do you stand to lose by writing Nas, the Adam? Everything. Does that make sense? Again, what are you going to gain by writing the plural? You teach a minor point, not even a mixer, just a minor point of good conduct when you run a communal effort. What do you stand to lose if people read it wrongly? Faith in our show, you think it is too. Well, I simply used to say the analogy would be, if I said you want to go into business with me, so you say, "Well, if we are successful, what do we make?" You say a hundred pounds. A hundred pounds. Then you say, "If we lose, I say you lose." everything you have. Who will go to a business deal like that? No, you won't go to a business deal like that. What is the toilet doing? The toilet wants to gain here a very small point of human good conduct in personal management, personal management, and it's prepared to risk the most basic aspect of all spirituality, belief in one God. Did you hear the problem? That doesn't make any sense at all. But listen to God's answer, listen to Hashem's answer, he said, "My share, Moses, your right, these words, your right, the one who wants to make a mistake, the one who wants to make a mistake is not stopping him." The person who wants to read those words wrongly, "How great is a litus? The person who has got a vested interest, the one who wants to retire wrongly, you will never prevent that person making a mistake." Y'all will be hit and he'll make a mistake because no matter how cautiously you guard your words, the person who's go reading with a vested interest will always read in what he wants. If you put let me make man, he's going to take the word Elohim, God, which is a plural word, he'll say, "You see his mouth." There's no stopping them, one who has yet ingested or he has unobjective eyes. And therefore the words are so clear, "How great is a litus? The one who wants to make a mistake, we can't prevent him." The Torah is not written for fools or willfully wicked, biased and subjective eyes, not written for them. It's written for those who want, the one who wants to see a right will see a right. And the truth is in all two or three thousand years, over three thousand years of Jewish history that we've had the Torah. No Jews ever read those words wrongly. No Jews ever come up with those words and said, "You see there's more than one God." Because the one who wants to make an error, you won't stop and the one who wants to see a right can be trusted to see a right even where the words could be taken wrong. But they couldn't trust the Greeks to read those words thus. And therefore the sages translated that word conveniently for non-Jewish eyes or Greek eyes that translated it as. And so forth will it come to all the other, to all the other, let us, let us for example, Baratius Borre in the beginning created because the Greeks had a theory of constant permanent existence, the Greek theory was in fact that matter had always existed. And if anything there was a Godhead that, that, that so to speak, worked with primal matter, there was an error the Greeks made and therefore the sages changed that and so forth and so on throughout all of these, all of these changes. So you see that the Torah is translated into Greek but it needs to be translated in a certain way and that way introduces these problems and that problem of translating a Torah into another language even though it's Greek and has incredible beauty. Darkness descends upon the world. At best you can only translate the literal meaning. You know there's a fascinating gemura, the gemura says in McGillah, this is as well from a synchron. The gemura says like there's fascinating gemura, the gemura McGillah says that when the, when Nath was translated. You know Torah consists of the first five books which we call humash and then you have 19 other books of judges, prophets, kings, tahinim etc all the way through what they, we call the baryomim chronicles. You have a number of other books. When Nath was translated, when the rest of Torah was translated after the first five in what what's known as the targum which is an aromake. Aromake is a fascinating language. It is a sort of a sort of descended Hebrew. Aromake is like an impure emanation of Hebrew right which is many of our countries are written in Aromake. The Talmud is written in that language. When we say Caligion Aromake, when the, when Nath was translated, the gemura says there was an earthquake in Israel over 400 passes. 400 passes are like a square measure of the area of Israel. It was an earthquake there when the land shook at the shock of the revelation of certain things that were being translated into targum. Why was there an earthquake? So the gemura says they're very esoteric. The gemura says because they couldn't translate the word Hadad Rimon. There's a verse in Nath that talks about a battle that took place in the valley. The Big Hat had that Rimon in the valley of whatever this word means, this, this place name. You couldn't translate that word and therefore there was a, there was a shaking of the ground right the land of holiness shook at the shock of the problem of not being able to translate this word. That's what it says. So Ravassam and that's what the gemura says. Ravassam and great Torah mind that he was. He asked the following question. There's no record of any earthquake taking place when the hummus was translated. You know the hummus was translated into Aromake too, right? The targum. The first five books, five books of Moses, hummus. They were translated into Aromake. There's no record of any earthquake. Surely you would expect more of an earthquake to have happened when the, when the center of Torah was translated. Surely more problematic things must have happened over there, right? Then when you translate nothing to Aromake, how come when Nath which is on a lower level? There's no question it's prophetic, it's divine, but it's not how much, right? There's no mixers in Nath, for example. Only qualifications are mixers. It's called Dibreik Kabbalat, it's called the received tradition. When that was translated as an earthquake, when Torah was translated now earthquake, the land was still. Ravassam and used to explain like this is a very beautiful thing to understand. Is that the difference between hummus and Nath is this. In Nath they are things that are untranslatable. Why? Because you see the word Hadad-Drimon is a mysterious word. It's a neighborhood place, but it means something too. And what it means is hidden. It's hidden because the scripture, the prophetic voice did not want to reveal what it meant. And therefore it couched or hid the meaning in a word that sounds like a place name. Now when you come to a word like that, how do you translate it? If you will translate the word and give its meaning, you revealing that which was meant to be hidden because in the originals was not revealed, it was couched in a word that did not indicate its meaning. So if you try to translate it, you're revealing something improper. On the other hand, if you don't translate it, then you haven't done a translation. You see, so there's an oscillation here between these two options, and that's what an earthquake is. It shakes back and forth here. But in hummus you never strike such a problem. And the reason is because the hidden meanings in hummus are so deeply hidden that you never have the conflict. Rough as we used to put it this way. You can hide a thing in two ways. One way you can hide a thing is called Nistar. Nistar means a hidden. But there's another way you can hide a thing and that's called Makhusei. In Hebrew Makhusei means "covered". The difference between "covered" and "hidden" is this. And I'll never forget the way he used to illustrate it. I mean, you have to see the comic humor in this. Not about it. A great sage made his 80s. He used to actually demonstrate it for us physically. He used to say, "Well, I go through customs." You know, through the two ways I can carry something with me that I do not want the man to see. One way is like this. You know, with a bulge under the coat. That's called Makhusei. That's called "covered". "Covered" means he does not see what I have, but he sees that I have something. There's another way called Nistar. That's when it's sold into the lining of the coat. There he does not see what I have, but he doesn't see that I have something either. He used to say this. "Nakh is written in such a way that the secrets in it are Makhusei. The secrets in Nakh, you do not perceive what they are, but you perceive that there's something there. When you come to the word "handadrimon", you can see that there's something bulging, and you can see that you can't see what it is. But when you read Khumash, there's nothing that bulges. The craft, as you used to put it, in the writing of Khumash. Understand, the divine emanation, the depth of Khumash is such that you can read the whole Khumash without knowing, put it more plainly. You could be a six-year-old and read all of Khumash and translate it all perfectly without any awareness of anything, yeah? That is the thing. Whereas enough, you'll come to these words that are essentially untranslatable and will lurch you to the fact that there's something. That's the problem with the translation. And therefore Khumash, you can translate simply, but there is to say you're not only missing the depth, you're even missing the fact that there is depth beneath the surface. Not even that would you realize. At least enough, you'll have an earthquake when you come to certain words, because you shake with a knowledge, with the desire to know what's being said. And ever when the Torah is translated, any part of Torah is translated, this darkness descended to the world. Greek is called, Greece is called darkness, right? British are young, darkness is Greece because they darken their eyes when they're decreased. And this is the darkness that descends to the world, the Torah is translated to Greek. Now, what's the meaning of this conflict that the Torah is translated to Greek? And we learn it from a verse which indicates that it has a condition, which means that it's allowed and carries the sanctity. And yet, there's a morning. Here's a fast and a morning when this happens, what does it mean? An answer is very, very difficult for us to hear, so let's try and exceptionally difficult for us to hear. We don't speak the language, in other words. The problem is this, Greece has a wisdom and a beauty that is, that is indescribably great, but it has to be attached to a spiritual source. The greatness of Greece, this makes it more plain. The greatness of the culture that we inhabit, the greatness of the ways, with all its technological wisdom, and all its philosophical wisdom that it derives from Greece, the Roman Empire, the Western culture has nothing, it's said what it derives from Greece, except what it derives from Greece. Its spiritual core is Christianity, and its external wisdom is its philosophy and its technology and its science, incredibly impressive. That comes from Torah to originally. That originally comes from Torah as well. The technology around us, the wisdom around us, that we see, the incredible proofs of tremendous insight and wisdom, technological ability and manipulation. That all comes from Torah too. The Torah describes that wisdom as handmaids to the inner wisdom, that there are seven handmaids, including mathematics and music, and there are seven sciences that do it. There are handmaidings to the inner wisdom of Torah. They're originally part of Torah. Our tradition in fact says if we want to know where the originally spid off was in the meeting between Jacob and Jesus, when Jacob and Jesus have met, you know the Jacob sent gifts to Jesus. He sent a carefully organized sequence of gifts, so many of this and so many of of that with a space between them, but in incredibly meticulously organized, one of the messages used to say like a re-burshield filling. You know, like a meticulously measured shape of filling, he sent us gift to Asa, right? And the verse says that when the Messiah comes, Malchai, the verse says that the kings of certain places, Mincha Yoshivu, the kings that are the kings of the legacy of Greece and Rome, Mincha Yoshivu, they will return the gift. They will return the gift, meaning the commentaries say that in the Messiahic Age, the non-Jewish nations will bring back these gifts into the world of Torah. And the sensitivity is it does not say Mincha Yah-Viu, they will bring a gift. It says Mincha Yoshivu, they will return a gift. They will not bring gifts yet to, in homage to Torah. They will return, what do you mean, return, meaning that these were the gifts that were originally given by Yakuwajyaku, gave Asav, were the aspects of Torah that became technological and scientific wisdom. They were also part of Torah. Torah is all knowledge. Torah is a cosmic knowledge, it is universal knowledge, it isn't only the spiritual connection. It is all wisdom in the world. He gave away to the non-Jewish nations, that wisdom they became very graded in. And we retained our function, which is connecting all of that wisdom to its source, showing that the inaxium of all those axioms is the connection to spirituality. But, in fact, it is not accidental that the statement, the verses, "Hain Yiras Hashem Yihogma." Listen to the beauty of this, "Hain." "Hain" is like, hard to translate, it is like a contraction of the word "Hine" behold. "Hain Yiras Hashem Yihogma." Fear of God is wisdom, meaning that the first principle in real wisdom is knowledge of Hashem. That means if you want to look for what they, to put it again plainly in modern physics, what they are looking for is what they call "gats." Now, looking for modern physics, grand unifying theory. G-U-T, the grand gats of the world, right? That's what grand unifying theory. They know that they must be one theory that ties everything together, how they know, don't ask me. But in their non-Torra, non-Jewish minds, they know that they must be one theory. They must satisfy because they have not found yet, there are a few candidates for theories, but not fully satisfactory. The current problem in physics is how to tie relativity and quantum mechanics together. Each one can be explained relatively fully, but you cannot, there's no x in the tides and both together. That's what's being searched for, sort. How do they know that they must be, why should they be one theory? Who would tell them that there must be one theory that ties all theories together? But you know how they know it? Because in the inherent, in this idea of wisdom is that there's an underlying cause that gives expression and explanation to all the outer details. In other words, what is wisdom? And take any science with which you are familiar. What's your field? Medicine, engineering, mathematics, whatever it is. In any field that you know, wisdom does not mean knowing the details. Wisdom means knowing the underlying principles. Is that correct? Wisdom does not mean knowing the details. If you happen to observe the details many times, and you can give them a right answer because you recognize the details that does not mean you understand anything. All it means is you recognize a pattern. Wisdom means you know the causes. If you hang around with a doctor long enough and you see that every time the patient goes like this, you give him a certain tablet. So the next time you see a person go like this, you give him a tablet. You probably be right most of the time. But occasionally you'll be disastrously wrong. Why? Because all you've observed is a superficiality and you've made observations. But the person who knows understands the underlying causes that give rise to these observations. That's the difference between knowledge and real wisdom. And therefore there's an axiomatic in the notion of science or logic in fact, is that there are underlying principles that are the main issues and they explain the outer manifestations. And therefore it's clear to them that they must be one set of axioms or in fact one principle that underlies all of this. The Torah tells us what that is and that's knowledge of Hashem. The Torah tells us that the underlying axiom behind physics, I'm not talking religion now, I'm talking science. The underlying axiom behind all of science is spirituality. That is the grand unifying theory of the world. Hain, you know the commentary say, "Hain Geras Hashem, you Hothmat." The word "hain" means one in Greek. The word "un", yeah, the word "unee". "Hain" expressed in Hebrew, the commentary say, "That word means one in Greek." Isn't that unique? Isn't that remarkable? What they're saying is that the ultimate underpinning of all wisdom is the oneness of spirituality. And what word is chosen in Torah to indicate that? The Greek word for one. Do you want to say this amazing thing? The Torah had a resort to Greek. The Torah had a resort to a word that has a Greek nuance, but that's exactly the point. Greece, the function of Greece, the beauty of Greece, is to unify all wisdom in the tense of shame, to be in the spiritual habit within the ethos, within it, within that arena. Yes, of spirituality where all is one, is the correct and most inexpressively beautiful place of the Ephesians. That's where you shouldn't be dwelling. The beauty of Greece, it's aesthetic notion, and its scientific wisdom, it's deep philosophy. All of that belongs under the umbrella in the arena of the spiritual oneness with that is Torah. That's where it should be, and that's where it's allowed to be. But the problem is when you bring it in, the problem is when you bring it in, then it starts speaking for itself. And if we have this oscillation, this paradox, the function of Greece, the function of that incredible perception and wisdom. You know the Rambam and others, they point out that the Greeks in the sphere where they were fit to deal, in the sphere below prophecy, they saw as far as any human being can see. Their perception in philosophy, their perception in the observations that they made of the world and their analysis of the world, were beyond description, in terms of its depth and correctness and perception. But there's prophecy too, is that which links it onto a higher source? When it's correctly disciplined and it's a true handmaiden, then it's part of Torah. And the problem is that it speaks for itself, it doesn't want to be there. It's this character, you see the connection. It's this person who is half in the world of what Torah and Judaism is, and this person who's half not there, is observing the laws, yeah, is observing the law. This is what Greece is and can be and should be and is not. And of course, that is the subjugation of the Jewish mind. What Hanukkah represents. What Hanukkah represents most deeply is the subjugation of the Jewish mind to this conflict. If you understand that where the problem is in here, the problem's not out there in Greece. The problem's in the Jewish mind. The problem is that the tools, our tools, our Greek tools. We don't have that unifying concept there is Torah. Even when we think we think religiously, we are thinking Greek. And how do you speak to a person with things like that? How do you speak to him in a language and let me give you an example? Let me give you an example. You know, what are the three days? The three days or three days of the beginning of exile. The Torah is translated on the first day, goes into exile. Mark of the Sarabagoyam aint Torah, right? There's an exile of Torah. Torah's now gone out into Greece. The Torah's been exile by Greece, you know what that means? It's living under Greek influence and domination. So you have no access to Torah. You try and learn Torah like a Jew. But every concept that you come across, you hear in Greek terms, right? The culture around us and what you see out there and what they celebrate now, right? There is a tremendous hold, tremendous hold on this. I don't want to speak too much about it. And the third element you see, the third element is Israel itself. What was the third day? When Israel became besieged of when it exiled, there's a problem with a land too. Where these things happen in Israel, the problem's far accentuated, far accentuated. And it happens inside Israel, the exile of Torah and the exile of Jewish mind in the land of Israel is far sharper than it is elsewhere. Put it this way, the clue, the Gaye Taisha is only valid in Israel. That's where he lives. That's where the conflict is. May we try and illustrate this as best I can without getting political. May we try and illustrate this? What happens when you try and speak to somebody and the language is perverted? Please stay with me closely. Imagine you're trying to express your love to someone you love. And as you say the words, you're writing a letter, all you have to communicate to this person is a letter and you pour your heart out in depth with the tremendous uppouring of articulate expression of your love for this person. But the letter gets censored. But it has to pass through a sliver. And what they do with a letter is they translate into the concepts that they think are proper to be expressed. And the more deeply you pour out your intensity, the more it gets translated to somebody else's concept. And then the person writes back to you and it goes through the same process. What kind of relationship can you have? What kind of relationship? You think you're relating. You opt to all writing a letter and you're receiving a letter back. But there's no communication at all. Somebody else's mind is interposed here. Do you know, let me try and make it as close as I can without getting lynched? Do you know that the Jewish people never spoke Hebrew? Do you know that as a spoken language? From the first episode, from the time of the first temple, the Jewish people never spoke Hebrew as a spoken language. I think one of the great Torah minds in this generation said that people should have gone out to die. Yes, to give their lives when Hebrew was adopted as a national Jewish language in the land of Israel. Why? Why did the Jewish people never use Hebrew? Let's get this absolutely clear. Do you know when Hebrew was lost used by us as a spoken vernacular? During first temple times when prophets were around and everybody spoke prophecy, everybody lived on the level of a revealed language, then only Hebrew could and was spoken. But from the time prophecy ended, from the time of that first exile, the Jewish people never used Hebrew as a spoken language. Even if they had to construct another language like the Spiderman Constructed and the Ashkenazi community. constructed village. They made up another language rather than using why. Stay with me carefully. This is so counterintuitive to us who have been brought up with the state and the knowledge of the pride of speaking Hebrew. It's so counterintuitive to us, which understand how this is Greek, not in Torah terms. You know why the Jewish people never spoke Hebrew? Because when you speak a language in the mundane mode, when you speak a language when you three and four and five years old, then the words become invested with the meanings of an age and a culture and an age and immaturity. And once they, once they impregnated with those meanings, the words can never have a higher meaning. If you speak a language, if you're not on a level of prophecy and you speak a language, then when you're older, you try to invest that language with the transenders and an abstraction. You never can do it. You never can do it. Let me try and make this plain. You know, the way we can do this exercise successfully, let's take it completely out of the emotional realm. Let's translate it into English. That's why neither of us will have any emotional problems. And once I've convinced you, we'll take it back into Hebrew. We do that. When happens when you use English words, the words come loaded with their non-Jewish religious and cultural significance. You can never escape that. All our notions of religion and spirituality are pictures of medieval Dutch and Italian paintings. There's no way. When you say God, when you say the word God, you see a man in the sky with a white beard. And if you say you don't, you're lying through your teeth. And if I say the word angel, yet, or hell, or any English word, it is loaded with, if I talk about a saint, you see a person in a medieval Dutch painting with a little glittering ring, levitating above his head. That's what you see. That's what a saint is. You know, when I first taught in Osama, we had to give an hour of day teaching to a new person. So once they gave me a new fellow, it was the beginning of my experience. And we started talking, so I said to him, we're going to talk about angels. Angels. And as I said the word, I saw a very interesting thing. I saw, in the back of his eye, flitting across his retina. I saw a little naked child, flapping across the sea with a little white pair of wings, followed by another one with a little, that's what I, so when I saw that in his eyes, this is a young American fellow. I said to him, of course, you realize we're not talking about little naked children with wings on their backs. I said, you realize we're talking about transcendent emanations of energy from the source of, oh, then we were flying. And so now that, then once we had agreed that we were talking about transcendent emanations of energy, everything was fine. And the next time I said the word angel, there it was flapping across his field of vision, this little child with his wings. So I learned the hard way. He says, no way you can communicate like that. So you know what happened? The next time I learned about the fellow, I retreated and escaped into Hebrew. I said, yes, I'm a young American. You have no Hebrew at all. I said, we're going to talk about maloching. He said, what's maloching? I said transcendent emanations of energy from the source of, there was no problem. We got through the whole lesson with that. Why? Because our words, Jamestan, our words are so contaminated, they so perverted, they so prostitute you by the culture, that you can't see them for what they, you can't see them spiritually. So when you say in any English word, right, countries up there's concepts that are so steeped in Christian imagery and most usually reject religion, reject them because they are quite right in rejecting the culture's version of those abstractions and they quite right to reject those things. The God that they reject should in fact be rejected, quite right about that, in the imagery that is set up. So what do you do? You're scrapped until you use the right language. But what happens if you brought up speaking the right language and you have the wrong ideas? What do you do then? You know what happens to young Israelis? They're brought up with a language, which is a holy language, which is steeped in those concepts. But what do you, what do you escape into? What words do you use? Right? When you talk Hebrew in a secularized country and you use that language, the Jewish people always avoid it so that the word should always retain their special spirituality. So they spoke English, they spoke Malina, they spoke any language. But they left that for Torah so that a child heard a Torah word, is he a Torah? What do you do with a person? I mean, how do I, you just write it for you? You take a Hebrew word, yeah? You take, let's say you sit down with a young Hebrew speaker and you want to learn some hummus. So you come across a verse that says that God made, when he made the world, he looked at the world in his, and he saw he took a toy of Ma'od, that the world is very good, tov Ma'od. That means that he looked at his world and he judged it as very good. The word tov Ma'od in Hebrew, Ma'od is a very problematic word, it means very. The commentary is asked the question there, why does the Torah say very good? If God makes something good, it's a, there's good as it can be. What does very mean? There's a problem here, you don't add words, the Torah doesn't add words that are necessary. If Hashem made something that's good, it's the ultimate good. There's not half-boots by him, and then there's something that's very good. So what does the word Ma'od mean very? It means bad. It means bad. It means the angel of death. It means the et cetera. It means this is what they say, the commentary say, the word Ma'od means the fact that it's evil in the world, because now you can achieve genuine good bug. There's amazing things that they say, the word Ma'od, in case you didn't notice, is the same letters as Adam. The word Ma'od, which means very, is the same letters as Adam, which means man, which means a creature who is always more. Adam, do you not do it? Adam means Adamela Elion. I shall be like that which Charles sends. That's what the word Adam means, which is what Ma'od means. One of the applications of the word Ma'od in Hebrew is money. Do you know that? Behold Ma'od, or death, or with your money, because money is a medium that translates itself into Ma'od. Ma'od in Hebrew has up to 45, because mine Hebrew is a question what? And a question in Hebrew is always the way you indicate that which can't be quantified. Since you can't say what it is, you simply say, what is it? Like we say Ma'od, Guadalu Ma' Sayah Hashem, how great are your works? What do you mean, how great? You see, you speak English, so you think it's like a rhetorical poetic Shakespearean, oh, how goodly and how great. Yes, that's what you think. But it's not, there's nothing poetic and it doesn't mean that. Intolerate means how great are your works, because I can't say how great they are. So all I can say is how great are they? Right? We say Mika Ma'od, about Elima Sayah Hashem, who is like you Hashem? So you brought up in a Shakespearean, it means oh, how, you know, who is like unto thee? But it doesn't mean that Mika Ma'od doesn't mean who is like you. It means, since we can't say anybody is like you, all we can say is who is? The way that Elohim is me aile, yes, it's a question. So the word Ma'od is an incredible word. It's an untold death in the study of that word what it means. Right? Yet you, you know what happens when you learn within Israel? You come to the words Tof Mourad and he looks at it, you know, he sees in Tof Mourad, eight out of ten. Because Tof Mourad is what the Mourad gives a ten o'clock at night when she's tired and she's not giving me Tsuyana anymore. That's what it is. That's what it is. And a child brought up in Israel sees Tof Mourad, they see God looking down at the world and giving it eight out of ten. And you never get there now to be saved. That's what it is. And it goes on and on. It goes on and on. The word Agadah. The Hebrew word Agadah. It means Agadah. The non-Halakhic parts of Torah of the Talmud are called Agadot. Agadah means, it means the deeper level, the word God in Hebrew. The root God means to draw down, to draw along. Right? God means like the Goddah of a, the bank of a river is that which both abstracts and stops and draws the river along. It's Nagidun Aramaic means draw. Cool. Right? Good Asic. Good Asic or Halakhic concepts mean to draw up or to draw down. Right? God. God in fact is the name very connected to the Hebrew concept of Mazal. Mazal means take the word Mazal just while we're on the subject. Incidentally, you're ready to carry it away. The word Mazal is a Zodiac. Mazal translates as a Zodiac sign. The Mazalot of the 12 Zodiac constellations. That's what Mazal means. It's translated as "Lakh". Mazaltov. That means good luck. Right? So how do you hear? First of all, it doesn't have a Torah language. How do I hear Mazal? Do you know the word Mazal means to flow down. Not there when Hebrew means a liquid. Mazal means Zal. It means Tizal Katal. It should flow like dew. Mazal means that which flows down from the hidden world and flows like a liquid into this world. That's what it means. So when you say Mazaltov, you know what you mean? When you say Mazaltov, you mean that there should be an auspicious energy here flowing down from another world that should invest this event. You mean make this marriage or this event that we're discussing now, be invested with a high energy from the abstract world. Right? But you're not a person who doesn't know that he has Mazaltov. Good luck. You know that means you're marriage should be blessed. You should get three charities. When you pull a handle, you should get three. That's what you mean. My lady Lakh, yes, shine a face upon you. That is pure idolatry. It's even a pure stupidity. There's not even idolatry. It's insulting to an idolater. You mean good luck. You know what good luck means? That there's nothing governing this. You should be lucky. That's true, isn't it? When you say Mazaltov, you mean this should be governed by a higher power. Should be lifted, should be connected, not disconnected. Do you hear the opposite of the meaning you're in? The word agada means it should draw down, so the agadot, the agadot of Talmud, are those parts that connect with the deeper world. They connect this world with all the kabbalistic secrets in the Talmud. The deepest kabbalistic secrets, kabbalah means received from another place, from a higher thing. All the agadot, all these parts of the Talmud, are those that connect with the higher world. What does agada mean in Badan Hebrew, fairy tales? Agadot, Japanese, Fables, that's what it is. So if you're a little girl or boy growing up in Israel, you get a book called Agadot, Japanese, you got a book when you were four called Japanese fairy tales. That's what you got, right? Esobs, what's the name? That's what it is. Agadot. So now you take a young Israeli speaker, you put him down, you say we're going to learn agadot of Torah. You say he took him, you say fairy tales, that's what you say. So how do you? Do you know what Salam al-Okim means? Salam al-Okim. That means in divine image. The word Salam in Hebrew today means Matsleimad, means a photograph. The photographic image. So how do you begin to. And it goes on and on and on. Do you know what Khashmal means? Khashmal is one of the divine emanations of energy from a higher source, I don't want to say angels. Khashmal is one of these higher things. Today Khashmal means electricity, I think it's. So if you've grown up with the thing called electricity. So now you have this nine, this angel called electricity, isn't it? (Laughter) So. (Laughter) My Rabbi once said it's miraculous that Israelis can study Torah. It happens that miracle. It happens. It happens. It happens. It becomes great, of course, when they become great to have a tremendous advantage. Because they have the language. They have the language as wonderful. Of course. But you have to get around this. And while we have a good laugh at them, we should be laughing at us. Because that's just a problem with the language. But we have a problem with our thoughts. And as a matter of you speak Hebrew or English or Greek, it doesn't make no difference. You have got in your head. We have in our heads. The most anti-Jewish and non-Jewish, we have such humiliatingly anti-Jewish and non-Jewish non-Sans. That every time we look at anything, our eyes, our Greek eyes, our thoughts, our Greek thoughts, we have the perversion, we have it in us. The first work of spiritual development is to cleanse the tool itself. You have to use the. you have a broken tool with which to fix the tool. Now, but can you imagine how deep and troubling this is? Every time you walk out there, every time you look at one of their billboards out there and you smile or you think it's cute or you think it's clever. You speak in Greek. Every time you see something in the culture, every bit of immorality or stupidity or non-spirituality, everything out there that they love for, that they teach their children all the inconsistencies and all the inner fractures, those things that they claim are immoral and yet allow those things to be depicted. All those speeches they make about woman's dignity and rights of women and feminist ideologies offer. Then they prostitute them in every term and humiliate them and denigrate them. All those things are. those are your eyes, those are our eyes. And therefore, that's a problem. The problem is that there is beauty out there. There's tremendous beauty and tremendous depth and tremendous wisdom and there's Greek aesthetic and there's Greek science. It has its place intolerant, it needs to be brought in and it lives in the tents of shame. That's where you have to become the Yeface, where you should come by and I shame, that's where it lives and where it belongs. But it comes in with all its connotations and all its contamination. And it's not the images that I'll see and it's the eyes that see. And then for next week when we make our feeble attempt to lift that darkness just a little, what the work is and what it has to mean to us is that we are trying to take these old soiled eyes that look out and look in. And we try to use them to try and see something different. And the first thing that has to be seen differently is the self. We have to try to look in with differently. But we're not talking here about a rejection of the culture and rejection of its wisdom and its greatness. That's not the point. It is holically corrected, it needs to be translated. The Torah itself brings it in a translate. But when that translation happens, there's this oscillation between bringing in its beauty and its meaning and its correct application and its effect on the viewer at the same time. And there's this earthquake that happens when it's brought in. The earthquake is particularly potent in Israel, where these things are felt more sharply, where the exile, paradoxically, is more. is more intense, where the medium itself, the language itself, causes this polarization. But we feel it everywhere, we feel it everywhere. Maybe we privileged in one strange way to live in a place where we have a little more access to seeing its falsehood and its superficiality. And therefore, maybe we should just agree, we should resolve that next week when we fast and we celebrate or commemorate these events, that it should be an abstinence not only from food that we take into our bodies, but also those things that we take into our minds. And of course, if we do that properly, we can hope to achieve just the beginning of a process of not only purifying that which is viewed by the viewer, him or herself. myself. Thank you. [Applause]
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