Welcome to Judaism Demystified, a podcast for the perplexed.
Join us as we explore some of the most fascinating Jewish and
Torah related topics with our esteemed guests.
By tackling some of the biggest questions you likely won't find
addressed elsewhere, we aim to shed light on important issues
and inspire a return to the fundamentals.
Enjoy the show. Thank you for joining the
Judaism Demystified podcast. Rabid Grossman, could you start
by briefly introducing yourself and explain why demystifying
halacha is so important for contemporary Jewish practice?
OK, well I'm Avi Grossman. I'm not necessarily a full time
demystifier of halacha. I am actually more full time
Coel student, part time publisher of sparring.
I have my own sperm. I'll tell you about it a little
bit afterwards. But why do we want to demystify
Haloho? Why?
Why is it important? Because I guess we've
encountered certain malaise in Judaism.
When you have Haloho that's mystified, as you guys would
would put it. It leads to the situation where
you have an elite can can control the masses in I guess a
sinister way. OK, it's like any other any
other system where the knowledge is kept or the bit or perhaps
the the authority to decide certain things is kept by a
select group, A minimal group of self selecting group.
And the the people who should perhaps be deciding on their own
or at least having a say in the decision or at least knowing how
the decision is made. They, they have no say and they
don't even know if they're perhaps being taken the wrong
way. You know about the whole Das Tor
controversy from about 220 years ago or so, right?
So if, if Halafa is kept in the realm of only a select few who
can somehow decipher it. So obvious role becomes
paralyzed when parts of Halafa become rusty.
So I don't think we're at a loss for certain examples regarding
this. The most important one, which is
now, thank God, we've already gotten past that.
It was an issue that for a while was a major one was holding back
obvious role and actually perhaps even killing obvious
role. And I mean that most literally
led to the deaths of millions was let's say halachic anti
Zionism. Let let's let's move back a few
years that there was an idea that obvious role should start
its own state in the land of Israel, right.
That that seems like a pretty interesting idea for you.
For those of us who grew up in the 20th century and now the
21st century, this is something that we're used to it.
We know about this we we had basic flag waving Zionism as
part of our education back in Jewish day school.
But let's say 100 years ago, 120 years ago, that idea was almost
far into many Orthodox Jews, right.
Even though you can possibly study Torah on your own and
realize yes, like the right bar him says I'm Segula.
If you want to be a mammoth at Kohanim, that means a Kingdom of
the priests. A Kingdom has its as a country,
it has a land, it is a people and its own defined borders.
Those these are basic premises of keeping the Torah.
But because Amy's role was in the diaspora, not as a
functional nation, but as just an ethnic group that kept to a
certain cultural standards, what we call Torah, so they were
distanced from this. And then when those who were
detached from the Torah came up with this new idea to perhaps
found, found a state just like any other, any other national
group. So this suddenly became into the
realm of Halwaha. And many of those who were in
the know of Halwaha were saying that this type of idea is
forbidden, right? They said that we cannot have a
state. We're not supposed to be doing
any of these things that these secular Zionists were proposing.
And what happened? What did that lead to?
Like Rush after said, this led to the mistake that many Jewish
people, especially in Europe, when the threat of Nazi
annihilation was at their doorstep, they still stay put in
Europe because they'd put themselves into this box that
we've been told that this whole evacuates to the land of Israel
try to found the state, do something, maybe even create an
army to defend ourselves. All of these things are part of
one forbidden package. And that's that was a big
problem, right. And I think the the analogy
today is we're holding ourselves back from proceeding with
prosecuting critical war because of this.
There are many people. We're stuck.
I think the overwhelming, let's say Haredi world, I think
rightfully so to a certain extent, believes that we cannot
be. We cannot join an army and fight
for our defence, right? It's either IDF or bust.
They have this false dichotomy. The IDF is puzzle and it can
give you many reasons. I have a list on my computer, 30
reasons right off the top of someone else's head, which I've
added. But we do know that we have to
fight to survive. So we're holding ourselves back.
We're holding ourselves back from hold building a base of
mikdash because we've been told the the rabbi's told us you
can't go to Harbias somehow, even though we read the Torah
all the time and we're commanded to build a temple and have a
functioning temple service every single day, right?
What's the most important classic in the Torah according
to ghazal consistency? That's what's the most important
classic in the Torah. And the one of the candidates
was lamb in the morning and lamb in the afternoon.
So these are basics of Torah. But we're now stuck, right?
Too many, too many Jews, too many rabbis believe that these
are things that are off the table.
Somehow the only way, the only way we could 100 years ago get
back to the land of Israel and have a country was somehow or
other a miraculous Messiah would come.
Only the Messiah could bring us to the state where we could have
a country. And nowadays, they say only
Messiah could somehow prosecute a war against their enemies.
Only Messiah could somehow let us back to the Temple Mount and
build a temple. And without Messiah, it's off
the table. By the way, this is the position
of the now former chief rabbi. He wrote this explicitly, and
he, what he's writing is, if not the explicit opinion, it's the
implied opinion of the masses of Orthodox Jews as as you know and
as you can figure out. So, yeah, the mystified halacha
keeps us paralyzed and demystifying.
The halacha makes other people wake up, makes the masses wake
up too. Perhaps halacha as we know it's
there as we perceive it should be different.
I think, by the way, that's one of the things that Rabbi Barhim
has been trying to do. He's been trying to get people
to wake up, perhaps think on on their own, or at least go back
to the sources, wake up and realize that God wants more from
us. A mystified halafa.
Just, well, like I said, you could, you could choose your
paralysis or you can you can escape it.
Can you, you mentioned this Hazal with one of the three most
important sukim, the Torah. I wasn't familiar with this
Hazal. This, is this in the Gomara
somewhere? Is this something to drop?
It's in the Gomara. Can you, can you just two
seconds? Just go through that one because
it's really interesting. Oh, OK, You wanna let let's
diverge here. I don't have it in front of me.
It's just so interesting you you brought it up, but I wasn't
familiar. And I'm like, wait, I want to
hear more about that. I'll.
I'll give you I'll give you to you outside because normally I
prepare rushing it on the screen, but that's not one of
the things I have here. I thought that I don't piss off
and other stuff. So let let's go through this
'cause I'll have sometimes like to simplify things.
They like to give you a list and they give you mnemonics.
The mission itself is a sing song.
I don't mean I don't mean that in any flippant way.
I mean that's the way it's saying that the children would
chant and then adults would continue to sing it over and
over until they memorized it. The mission is shorthand,
Halafa. And from your knowledge of the
mission, of my heart and then your ability to analyze it, what
we call Tom would, you could understand the halafa and that's
the way it existed for quite a few centuries.
So as part of the Tom, would we find these shortcuts, Shortcuts
for memory. Rabi Akiva, sorry, then Rabbi
Akiva was talking about how, for example, after rare Hakimotha
that Claude Godola Torre Now that's a good that's a good
starting point, because once you have that Allah, you could
perhaps derive all the other rules you need to know about
Binodum la Avero right base not be Shami, actual Shami.
The the people are trying to convert and they asked Shami and
asked Hilo. Shami wanted to didn't have any
patience for someone who's telling you, you know, teach me
all the Torrellajas. But Hillel was able to sum it up
and say, you know, once once you understand this general rule,
which is a concise rule in the Torah, perhaps you can become
more interested and realize how all the other rules flow from
that. So Khazal had this idea that is
there are there perhaps. And by the way, we shouldn't
hold this way Lahala, because then we'll actually take it to
the the wrong conclusions that perhaps certain mitzvotes,
certain verses of the Torah are more important than others.
Now we certainly don't believe that right?
That's that was a problem with people standing for the
recitation of the 10 commandments.
We read about mom and our sea night.
Now, according to our Minug 3 * a year in the synagogues, you
know, whenever the Parshas Visconti's roll around and also
on on Shibuyas. But there there is a practice
that may you've probably seen that that that's when the
congregation stands one that there's a slightly problematic
because it might be implying where we're demonstrating that
perhaps these verses are more important, so to speak, than
others. And there have been heretical
sects throughout history that have made such claims.
And we don't want to do like the heretics.
But there is this idea that Anuchia Shimelo Kefa has within
it, such a profound idea for which all the other ideas flow,
that in a sense it is more important, at least from an
intellectual standpoint. So there were among the sages,
those who offered what are, what's the, the main versus the
Torah, the ones, the, the, the slogans, the ones that can work.
So they suggested ones like Shumai Yasral.
You know that why is it that's, that is the declaration of the
faith. That's when you're supposed to
teach children first. Or like I said, and I like to
hit on the idea that all the all the ideas that were offered
until that point do have a certain centrality.
OK. God.
Yeah, Yeah. Well, Kevin Schmeiss role, those
are big ones. But this idea of as a Keva sahad
TA seba Volker with a keva sashnitas Sebi and Harvain offer
the first lamb in the morning and the second lamb in the
afternoon. A reference to the times when
the tambita is offered. That's the daily offering every
single day of the year. He's supposed to have a lamb in
the morning, lamb of the afternoon, offered in the temple
as a burnt offering. So that also has a certain
centrality to it because it teaches you a lesson of
consistency. In Abu Dadasham, the biggest
test of any Jew is what does he do?
Mode say Yom Kippur. All right, after all that chuva
Sarasomi, chuva are over. You've been saying sleeps, maybe
some people could say for 40 days.
And yet yesterday was the culmination and the day
afterwards, suddenly there's no sleepless, there's no no top.
And now it's time to get ready for a holiday.
Do people show up to synagogue on time?
Also first thing in the morning on the 11th of Tishrei, do they
doffing with the same kavana? No, every single day.
Yom Kippur, the service of Yom Kippur and the service of of
Wednesday are at least identical in this respect.
The first service and the end, the closing service, they're all
the same. Yet there's a lot in the middle
that's specific to Yom Kippur. But the beginning of the end,
day in, day out, same time, same place every single day.
That's that's an important principle in in in halacha.
We don't take vacations from from serving God.
You know, you don't get a day off to say you know what today
I'm going to sleep late and miss chakras and I'm not going to put
on to filling. There's no such thing.
That's why And also by the way you're talking with Torah,
there's no such thing as going a day without studying Torah.
Yeah, it could be some sort of emergency, but the law not post
facto. You should have taught Torah
study every single day. You should be educating children
every single day and there's no such thing as a day off from
Torah study from the for the children.
Even you guys, you guys heard about that, that perhaps the
adults, they can be excused if they don't have time to study
once again on Arab yantis or Arab Shabbos.
But there's no such thing as a day off for tinogos schulbase
rabble even to build a base of mikdash.
You don't take time off to teach the students.
I think the Zilberman's is those who followed his tariff.
They've taken this to the what the villain believes to be the
proper, not the absurd conclusion.
The proper conclusion that there really is no day off for Rishiv
except unfortunately T Shabab if it is a fast day and there is no
tall to it. Yeah, it seems like, I think to,
to echo your point, I think the the point that you're trying to
make, I, I hope I understand is basically that when it comes to
in order to become a proper, a proper Jew, we have to
understand that it's something that has to be ingrained in our
everyday consciousness in life. It's not something we pick and
choose when or have high moments, low moments.
I mean, that comes within a certain right.
We have a higher moments and Hagim and but, but there are
it's a it's a way of life. It's a way that it, it's a
dedication. It's a dedication to a certain
way of, of life approach. And by doing that, we also it it
refines us. Yeah, yeah.
We learned this lesson especially from the quinga doll.
You know, his day he has to work is, is Yom Kippur.
But every single day he's in the temple, the Rambab says he that
says go little fart to every single day he's at the temple,
he's wearing the seam, you know, glorious clothing.
Every single day, every single day he's in charge of the
service there. There is no difference.
By the way, I, I discovered this personally, when you, when you
have children, you have to keep a routine, right?
Even if you want to be slow one morning, you can't do that with
the kids. They're going to need to get to
school or whatever it is. So you can't take off from
there. One of the, one of the problems
that perhaps many men have in trying to develop this constancy
in serving God is the multiplicity of options where
you could dive in. Shoppers, how many of you know,
if you live in a good Jewish community, it doesn't really
matter what time you wake up, even on Shabbos.
You can, you can you don't have to set an alarm if you wake up
anytime between 4:00 AM and 9:00 AM.
You could run somewhere and find the minion for shoppers, right?
Absolutely. Thank God you know that it's a
good thing that we even have minion factories now that's a
good thing. However, if you tell yourself
that you were always going to dove in vasikin, let's say, why
do they? Why do the Vasikin?
Oh, they're known for they always dove in at sunrise.
By the way, that's when they offered the Corbin, Tommy, the
base makers, Why are they always dove in at sunrise?
What does that lead to? It leads to this.
A person commits himself to keep the Toro, to keep this
particular. So every single day, no matter
what, you know, the Rama brings an interesting minhook that I'm
surprised that people want. Sometimes their sticklers, they
find people, you know, Ramat says it's been a Dashkina's yet
to keep to it. The Ramat says that we have a
minhug to Davin later on Shabbos morning.
Indeed, that's that's you see, right, That's the minhug.
A lot of shul start at like 9930 because I think of that ramah.
OK, Yeah, or especially in Brooklyn.
I found that in Brooklyn they davin later than they do in
Queens, but and in Jerusalem they davin is slightly, even
slightly earlier. Here the late minion on Shabbos
is like 830. That's the late 1 except for the
Kabat menu. But you you understand that.
Wait a minute, let's say you have a minion.
You always daven Vasiken. How do you keep the ramaz
minhook? The ramaz minhook doesn't fit.
If you daven Vasiken every single day, then you cannot
daven later on Shabbos. And On the contrary, you're a
sika minion on Shabbos. Technically has to start
earlier. Depends on the fine start.
By the way, you're Vasika minion on Shabbos because you have
longer pursue to Zimro and you have Nishmas and even the beer
coast Keshvar slightly longer. You need to give yourself more
time to start If on Shabbos, if you want to hit, you know,
Basiken, you want to hitchhvon estray right at sunrise.
So it's it it it they're mutually exclusive.
It's either you keep this, this proper man only by the way, the
diving Basik in the morning among the postgame.
Is it a hitter mitzvah? Is it a humra?
Is it a Hasidis or is it Ikradin?
You could read the wrong Mama saying this is ikarden.
This is the only kilo way to dobb and every other time of
service, either dobbing, let's say 10 minutes before sunrise
because you got to run somewhere or dobbing an hour later.
Those are those are only post facto and perhaps not even
justified on a regular basis. So that doesn't work out.
You have to you have to choose Minhag Ashkenaz, as reported by
the Ramon, or you have to choose this, this, I guess, this
commitment to want to dove him the way they did in the temple.
By the way, it's reported that the only girl himself always
dove him Nates. So obviously he didn't keep to
this Minnock here. Why consistency and constancy.
So I found that my own. I'm not such a big Sonic.
I'm not I'm not into me dot classy dude, and I don't have
regular Hasidis practices, despite my my genetic roots.
But I found that because of necessity, because of the, the,
the family necessity and also societal obligations also things
relate to work and other commitments.
I had to dive in Basiken for a few years every every single
day, including Shabbos. And I found that the benefits of
doing so were much greater than, let's say, keep to schedule
whereby I can go dive in when I, whenever I want to, even on
Shabbos, depending on when I get up and what happens with the
kids, etcetera. Sticking to Basiken.
And I even saw this, those who succeed most in scholarship in
learning and Haas model stick to the first thing da vining first
thing in the morning right at Vasika time.
And by the way, if you haven't, I encourage even balabatim, you
will waste your Shabbos if you're going to da vin American
style. Let's say you start at, you
know, like you said, 9:00, you're wasting your Shabbos.
You miss so much time for learning.
The Icor of Shabbos is to have, by my calculations, once again
within the Rambam, is you should be spending about 9 hours total
between chakras, minhkah and base beverage time every single
Shabbos. 9 seasonal hours by the way.
And if you do not wake up from a seek and start the day right
then you will miss out. How many people wake up late on
Shabbos and then they go to long Schlep Ebaal baadsh minion and
eventually afterwards they're going to eat and they're going
to eat some heavy food and maybe even drink something that's
alcoholic with it and then will knock themselves out for a long
Shabbos nap in, you know, that's leading the after.
Maybe they'll learn something or other, but they missed such a
great opportunity to maximize their Torah study.
Whatever that's a that's a different subject.
I find that the constant built into the mitzvos actually our
guide. They help us maximize our
potential in Torah study and a question there.
Yeah, no, I was just going to say that this is even a
universal rule that the early risers in general and just in
the real world, they they're more successful.
I mean, I don't think there's statistics that show like you
don't, you won't find billionaires who wake up at 9.
You know, it's just not. They're all, they're all usually
they're early risers. Success follows early risers.
Sorry, whether it's what? Does all of an example of late
risers we're the late risers by the way, this man Kashma you
could you could Kashma is up up until the end of the third hour,
right. So has all said, how do you know
that? Because the the the biblical
standard of man Kashma is of Kumar when you get up in the
morning. So.
Regular person Rob says regular people get up at dawn and dawn
is an hour and so before before sunrise.
But they're bini Mulakhim. They even wake up later in the
morning and three hours later than everybody else.
So technically speaking, it still is Makrishma.
We're the Bini mulakhim. Bini Mulakhim don't have to work
for a living. So they they they're they're
pampered. They don't have anything to do
they don't they're not trying to get anywhere in the world
because they were giving it on a silver platter.
But for the rest of us, perhaps so we shouldn't be waking up
like Bini Mulakhim, even though all of aamisra are technically
been able welcome to the extent that they have that dignity and
they're deserving to be respected as such and other
other Halafiq naf kaminas, but they're not actually been able
welcome to the extent that they're all incredibly wealthy.
So. All right, you emphasize that
the entire Torah was always meant to be practiced, even the
ones that don't seem to apply today.
How does this concept shape our understanding of halacha?
Well, first of all, we ought to keep the entire halafu, right?
Isn't that? I think Rambam even has it as
one of the articles of the faith that you're not supposed to say
that, OK, some of the Torah is now no longer in practice or was
not meant to be, even though the Sages did tell us that yes,
there were some mitzvahs that were not Ledoros.
Example you guys read yesterday. There was this rule in the
parsha at the end of Massey that it's said that if a woman were
to somehow inherit real estate, real, real property from her
father. Why?
Because the father doesn't have any sons.
So she's supposed to marry within the family so that the
estate doesn't eventually fall into the realm of another tribe.
All right, that seems to be a pretty, pretty strong statement
in the Torah. It seems to be that that's what
Moses commanded the children of Israel.
Yet is there such a halaf on the books today?
If you have a man who owns, let's say, quite a lot of
property here in the land of Israel and he passes away
without any sons and his daughters are his sole heirs,
are we going to tell his daughters that they have to
somehow marry within his known family?
Is there such a Aloha? No.
So what was going on? What was what was this
commandment there? The commandment was a one time
dispensation. But we also know that everything
else in the tour was actually given to be kept in all times
and places. And by the way, this is one of
the, I think one of the major reasons why people like the
Rambam did say that this is a fundamental principle of our
faith, that the Torah is eternal and there's no such thing as
commandments falling, you know, I guess falling into disuser is
no longer applicable is because there was a major offshoot
Jewish heretical sect that became a major world religion
that actually made such a claim. That's Christianity.
Christianity basically said now if you want to be, I guess
again, I guess what they call God if you want to get in God's
favor. So what do you what do you have
to do just have to believe and a few other things.
But you definitely don't have to keep the whole slew of
commandments that the children of Israel still keep perhaps
mistakenly according to their claim, right.
So we need to keep the entire Allah too much what what I call
public policy Halafa whether it's within Karidi land or
religious Zionist community says that the ways for example, once
again, if temple times are not for us, Yeah.
Does anybody here keep Tumantara?
What do they call someone who used to keep the laws of
Tumantara within his house? He would eat his food in a
ritual purity. They called him a Javert
literally means a friend or a member, a member of a distinct
club of scholars or those who are being pies who wanted to
keep their their food in their houses up to a standard.
So that Kopani kwanim who have to eat their food within with
impurity, especially if they have true around the house could
also eat of their food and also so that they would be ready to
eat of sacrificial foods. Now this practice of keeping
ritual purity within the house was something that persisted
even a few centuries after the destruction of the temple.
It even persisted in places in Babylon, despite the fact that
if you're an heir to Amim the the abroad, you're outside land
of Israel. The sages instituted, they
enacted that just being there contaminates you.
Being an heir to Amim contaminates you ritually to a
certain extent all the time. But aside from that, people used
to keep these hollows. This was a critical part of
Judaism. Nowadays, most people do not
know or have any concept of ritual purity.
There's one with one 1 1/2 glaring exceptions.
The first exception, the actual exception is to MAF needa.
People still keep this really know that a woman who has had
her usual cycles, so she eventually it does have to go to
the mikvah for immersion, the ritual bath for an immersion in
order to remove a certain extent of that impurity.
And there are men who go to mix up for their own reasons, no
personal reasons. But even then they don't really
go to the real mix and they don't try to then keep
themselves ritually pure afterwards, right.
That's actually the problem with the with the Hasidic's idea of
dunking too much carry every single day, because the point
originally was the inconvenience of having to remove the ritual
impurity and going to the ritual bath would keep one from
immediately re contaminating self who's supposed to learn.
Oh, I now want to stay in the state of impurity and perhaps
reduce his activity, reduce his activities that would involve
becoming ritually pure. I'm saying this in very, you
know, PG type of method. The point was we're supposed to
avoid certain things. They didn't want a person to be
like they say like a rooster. But now we've we've confused
ourselves. We made it easy to purify.
So now there's no reason not to become impure.
And that's not the intention of ghazal or of the Torah.
So these I mentioned that temple times.
Also why do people keep keep themselves ritually pure?
So they could involve themselves with temple related
commandments. If you're not a cohane, you can
each room around the house. The only real reason you would
need to maintain ritual purity is that when the holidays roll
roll around you could participate in the consumption
of the sacrifices. Or when you go on pilgrimage,
you can participate in the consumption of the sacrifices,
right? But nowadays we don't do it.
It hasn't been done in quite a while.
It wasn't done in Europe. It wasn't done in Morocco and
Tunis. So what's happened?
So people, people forgot about it.
And they're even saying that perhaps maybe it should not come
back. Like I, like I told you guys a
few minutes before, they, they make this claim.
So Messiah is not here. Only the Messiah can somehow
bring these Halafas back. But for now, they're not for us.
And they're, they're missing out there.
There are some who make this claim by the way of living about
living the land of Israel and keeping the commandments
concerning the land of Israel, what they call mitzvotat Leo
barets, which are usually the agricultural commandments.
You need a land in order to keep these commandments.
I don't know where you guys are sitting right now, but I do
remember that when I what? We're in New York.
In New York when I was living in New York, I even in Russia
Yeshiva say I remember I was hearing a speech you do not have
to move to Land of Israel because you could keep you could
keep all your commandments here in New York and you could
they're not forcing you to do any of eras, but that's not
entirely true. You you can't keep shvita.
You can't can't separate true with some ISIS from your food.
You can't do anything at the Torah actually wanted you to do
here in the land of Israel, and you certainly can't be involved
in the rebuilding of the Temple, which by the way, according to
many who have now actually looked into this and they're
waking up to this fact. We are supposed to be building a
temple even today. Yes, it's a commandment that is
incumbent upon the community and its leadership.
So a guy like me, I can't just do anything about that.
But there are people who are taking concrete steps toward the
reinstitution of the temple of the sacrificial service.
People look at Mahone Mikdash. They think that they're a little
bit kooky, a little bit on the fringe, but they have created,
as you know, Killeen, the actual temple implements for use in the
temple that that's a very good, that's a very good thing that
they should do. I know that they're collecting
funds to rebuild the temple and it's.
An amazing place. It's an amazing, amazing place.
I was in Eris, Israel in the summer last summer.
I took my daughter's there and especially my older daughter,
she was, it was like mesmerizing with unbelievable.
You just see it all of a sudden with your eyes and it's like all
of a sudden, like, wow. And it's it's, it's, it just has
some sort of effect. It's hard to explain what, but
it kind of makes you, kind of makes you want to realize it,
you know what I mean? Yeah.
And it's just a theoretical concept.
It's it's there, you know what I mean?
Horror is not meant to be theory, You you'd ask that
always meant to be practice. How does it shape our
understanding? Palafa, if you were just reading
tomorrow for the sake of knowing what the Gemara says, that's
that's kind of good. That's that's considered a
certain to a certain extent with schma.
But the schma also involves the Bode Lasote Ulukayen.
You have to want to be able to put this into practice.
You have to go beyond. OK, so how will this affect me
in real life when you praise God every morning.
Oh, Bharkhasham, we learned the Rama serial said your main Torah
study of halafa should first start with the Ramba.
You know, beer goes the Torah in the morning.
You're supposed to praise God, say it can say the blessings
before studying Torah. The Rambam formulates that is
one who wakes up early in the morning.
Mashkin will mode someone who wakes up earlier than normal
pair of services. Why?
Because if he wakes up, he just has enough time to get to
chakras. So there's no specific blessing
on studying Torah before staying Torah?
He's not not to study Torah. Apparently it's covered by the
blessing that immediately precedes Kriya Shima.
Correct. And that's what we see it is,
which more or less so, you know, it involves learning and
teaching and trying to somehow keep these these commandments
and to guard them and pass them on to the next generation.
These are all facets that have perhaps been, I, I dare say,
lost on many people. We, we, we've become so
disconnected from certain aspects of the Torah.
So how does it shape our understanding?
Palaha, if you, if you open up your Mara and realize that the
sages here we're actually talking most part, unless it was
an, a Gothic passage, they were actually trying to get to the
bottom of what should be done. Halacha is not a word, by the
way. But if I'm not mistaken, it's
not Tanakh, right? Halacha is, is, is comes from,
it's a new Hebrew word, relatively new.
It's from, it's a Mishneh Hebrew that comes from the Aramaic
Hilkatah, which is just halacha in Hebrew.
But what what Hilkatah mean to the sages who are using it and
it's from the Apostle. It's the path now upon which
they should go. Halakhah.
You can see the obvious Hebrew word there, Hebrew shores, the
root word halama cuff. That's how one walks the Torah
and when, when it refers to commandments and what we refer
to Allah. Let's called also to use the
word Torah, torot or torotav and torotai.
The shores there is good Rashang.
It means instruction. What's the difference between
instruction and halacha? Instruction is I guess from the
point of view of the one doing the speaking.
Moshe Rabin who instructs us, he gives us, Torrey tells us what
to do. Halacha means when we put it
into practice. So Torah is more of the study
and Halacha is once again how you put into practice.
If you disconnect halacha from Torres study then you will not
know what to do ever. And that, like I said, leads to,
once again, paralysis. There are many people they like
studying about what to do in anxious role.
But when they just stayed in New York or other places in
Flintstar, it's that doesn't it had never crossed their mind.
Perhaps someone's waiting for me to actually put this into
practice. Yeah.
On the on the topic of practice, you want to get into Mission
ATUR for a minute. I'm going to combine 2 ideas
that you can that you can elaborate on.
So can you elaborate on how Harambam's Mishnatura differs
from other Halachi codes, particularly in its approach to
describing practices like observing Pasak with a paschal
lamb and what to do in its absence?
And also if you can also explain how does the Mishnatura aim to
compete complete code to be a complete code for all
generations and all aspects of Alacha?
Well, I think that was Brahmam's goal.
He wanted to include the final bottom line Alacha as understood
from all the Tamudim. By the way, he says how do you
get to you follow the Rishami, the Bhavli, the Tosefta and the
Mishnah and everything that's post Bhavli is not necessarily
binding. And you also have to know how
the the Gaonim understood these things.
The Rambam's main gaon, his main tradition was that of the riff,
as you know. OK, it was his father learned
from the RE Megash who learned from the Rif, and that that's
how that's how the Rahman learned.
So he's trying to make it a compendium of everything that
was ever possible before. And he doesn't leave anything
out. By the way, although the
Ashkenazi do possess certain practices that makes you scratch
your head. How is it that these things
disappeared among certain groups?
I'm referring to, let's say, reading the other Megillahs.
Everybody has a clan Ester, but there's three other Mcgillis
you're supposed to read on the holidays.
And we have a tradition. It's mentioned a set of so from
that's what they're there for. Yet Rambam seems to not have had
these things that must have must have been lost.
By the way, the Rambam assumes that we will have a Jewish
country in the land of Israel with the Jewish king and a
proper Sanhedrin and also a court system and the temple and
the priesthood. And that's why that's how he
writes it. He writes it and, and as though
that reality is, even though if it wasn't in front of him, he
knew it was going to become something in front of him.
And then only afterwards does he have.
But if you don't have such an ideal state, then here's what
you'd do. Otherwise, the best example I
found was I remember when I started studying this 14 years
ago was Pesach Lacquilo. And this is actually something
that that's close to my heart. The way the Ramam describes how
you should be conducting your Seder, Everybody, everybody
who's Jewish and not Jewish hasn't had an experience with a
peace out Seder, right? And we all, we all know that the
basics of the Montes Tana and there's matzo and even bitter
herbs and they're singing, everybody knows the tunes.
But the Rambam does not describe that.
If you open up in Mr. Torro at the last chapter of Hilchlist
Thomas Matzo, he actually describes how to conduct the
Seder in Jerusalem with the Corbin Pesach on the table.
And that's why I realized, you know what, when we have Corbin
Pesach, we'll have to get ourselves a new hagadah that's
actually updated. You can't take your Maxwell
House Haggadah, the one that Moses gave us from Sinai, or the
the arts for Haggadah. You can't take those to your
Seder with Corbin Pesav. It actually tells you to do the
wrong thing. It's incorrect.
That's what you do when you don't have Corbin Pesav.
And by the way, even in temple times, there are many Jews who
did not have Corbin Pesav and anybody who was outside
Jerusalem and anybody who was contaminated in some way, even
Jews within Jerusalem who did not qualify Corbin Pesav, they
did the Seder that we have done in years past.
But those who actually merited in the state, millions of people
actually did this every year. Those pilgrims who actually had
from Peso, they did a Seder that was entirely different.
That's why I decided to publish such such a thing.
Basically what looks like a standard Ashkenazi Kakadah
trying to keep as many of the texts and hugging and I even the
whole office with which we are familiar, but making it fit the
way the Rambam and others describe how we were supposed to
conduct the service if Gordon Pesach is already on the table.
So that was the that became Pagoda Pesach, which by the way,
you could get some bookstores and you could also get it from
me. I'm very proud of it.
Thank God I wasn't. I wasn't a one man show.
By the way, after I put it together, I ran it by Rabin
Moshe Suriel and Rabi Ilya Weber of two rules.
The ball of oats rose. He passed away just this year.
We it's now been 12 months since his passing.
And I want to talk about that too much because it makes me too
emotional. And they, they had a lot to say.
They they changed around a few things.
They had their additions. There was some back and forth.
And we published it right at the beginning of 2020.
And I said that this year we're going to use this about every
single year. We've been excited.
It's going to be we almost are this close to Abnorman pass off.
I would think from a strictly halachic standpoint, if we
haven't had Corbin Pesoc, certainly in the last decade,
it's not because of any technical halachic reason.
All the the pieces have been in place according to those who
have been studying the matter. Corbin Peso is something we
could go through with. We have Kohanna, we have big day
kahuna, we have a way to build an altar.
The only thing that's stopping us is politics.
Basically the the regime does not let us do it.
They send policemen to stop people from doing it.
By the way, when you read the Rambam and mission to Torah, you
see that what he's describing is the seder with Corbin Pesar.
And then he says, and if you don't have Corbin Pesar because
Monaze, you're stuck somewhere. So you do.
And then he describes what you find in your art scroll and Max
with house hagadas. So that shows you that unlike,
let's say, if you'd open up the tour or the, the, and all the
commentaries on it, including and up to the Mr. Burr and the,
and all of well, I don't have the bookshelf behind me.
Now I'm not on the base matters, but I have a bookshelf behind
me. You know, all those halakhs for
him are discussing how to conduct a seder without Korbum
pesos, right. Everybody who's everybody there
and, and even everybody's who's a nobody has his own haggadah
shell pesos, not haggadah pesos. Haggadah shell pesos.
You've seen every, everybody's published his own.
They all assume there is no Korbum pesos.
The Rambam doesn't. You also look in Hilko
Sanhedrin. You can open up a Yoridaeo,
sorry, you could open up in a Hosha mishpot, and they'll tell
you about how to run Jewish courts, how Jewish courts have
been run since late Talmudic times and throughout medieval
times and times of Shulkin Arkin, even until today.
The route was the world. That's how, that's how a beaston
is wrong. But the way the Rambam opens it
up, what he calls Hilka Sanhedrin, not beaston, he calls
it Sanhedrin. And he talks about the, the
corporal punishment. He even includes that in the
title, the punishments that they're supposed to inflict on
people of which they have. 5:00 And then you see that the Rambam
is actually imagining a Jewish community in the land of Israel
with a properly functioning son, son Hedren with minor son
hedrens in every town. And from there you could it it,
it's basically, I guess it's, it's, it's like a fractal system
that includes law rats. The butt.
They didn't that they have are offshoots and they, they're
working on the authority of what's supposed to be the butt
aiddin and the sun Hedrin within the land of Israel and how every
tribe is supposed to have its own sun Hedrin.
That's how the Rambam starts. And then he gets into it,
Hillcos, Edus, etcetera, just like you could find the other
codes. But for the Rambam, the Khilo,
the starting point is we have a Sanhedrin, and only if we do not
have a Sanhedrin, we don't have proper base batadin in the
cities. Then he talks about other
situations. You look in Hills Mullahrim,
it's also the same thing. What is the Romba's assumption?
Hills Mullahrim, what are you supposed to do?
Jewish people are supposed to have leadership, right?
He doesn't take the approach that a king is perhaps something
that's only like Nassib said, perhaps it's fitting for certain
societies and certain places. Perhaps maybe that's a monarch.
If you translate king as monarch, yes, I would agree that
perhaps a monarch is not saying we're supposed to have all times
and places. But if you translate king as,
you know, central leader, like a yuushua who didn't wear a crown,
it wasn't anointed and didn't have a lot of the trappings of
what we, you and I imagine as a king, then we understand that
yes, this is something that is critical saying that's.
Eminently necessary and only if you don't have a king.
OK, then we have to somehow get along some other way and by the
way, it led to another mistake there.
Those who think that in order to conduct a war of defense Amis
role to defend itself from an enemy, let's say a Nazi Germany
or imagine somehow there was Nazi Germany next door to the
land of Israel today that was actually trying to destroy Amis
role a few Nazi Germany's they would there are some people
honestly believe that because we do not have a Davidic king, we
are stuck. We cannot organize an army to
defend ourselves and I with with none due to respect.
I think that's nonsense. I'm always supposed to defend
themselves. It's already Halaf and
Shoukhanarov and we are to organize an army if we don't
have a king. So we have to have some other
leader to or get us, get us to fight against those who would
try to destroy us and their families and our and our
country. What's ironic, what's ironic is
a lot of these, you know, anti Zionist, let's say Haridim.
I just pose one simple question to them.
Why do you observe Hanukkah, the holiday of Hanukkah?
Because it should, it really goes against everything you,
you're saying, right? You're being a hypocrite.
So you know, and, and, and I find that usually that stumps
them. That's not something they know
how to respond to because. Well, they could just say, well,
the Sages institute Hanukkah and the Sages haven't instituted
anything else since then. That's the one I got.
Yeah, they can say whatever they want, but the the fact of the
matter is a group of people united to create a, a military
to take back an occupied, you know, part of the land.
And it became a holiday. So before it was, it was given a
stamp of approval by the rabbi's.
This, you know, they did this. Post facto.
It's post facto. Exactly.
I see the Oldham like the Rumbaan says I I tell people if
you do not keep Yomat's mood, by the way, not because I'm a
statist and I believe that there's anything inherently
holding to the state or that people should have unwavering
loyalty to the state. I also make a distinction
between state and government, which a lot of people.
Well, that's a different lecture.
I think that if you do not celebrate Yomat smooth and
called Homer, you should not celebrate Hanukkah at all,
especially if you you understand the problem.
And if you do not celebrate Yomer Shalayim, then you should
not be celebrating Perm. And I also know that, you know,
Perm teaches us that when we have mortal enemies like this,
who led the battle against Haman and all the other Malachites,
all the other enemies of Jews throughout the Persian Empire
who would have rose up to destroy Amirul.
Instead Amirul preempted them. Who led that fighting?
Was there some, was there some? We know that Mordecai was and
Esther were sitting with Akash Ferwich at the time.
They weren't the ones who went out and fought.
Well, I don't know if Mordecai even killed a single Amalekite
and he only he only asked Esther to have Mordecai's sons Hunk.
And it wasn't even Mordecai was involved in the hanging of Hama.
But who? Who?
Who led the obvious role in that fight?
The fact that obvious role smoked to their enemies in
Parma? That we have a name of a Jewish
leader or military commander who did that.
No, obviously, but you have to fight.
You have to you have to do something.
You can't just you have to sit around.
So and you look also in the laws of let's say the Rahman has a
whole book called say for Abu Dhabi.
It tells you about what Carbanos and also say for Carbanos.
They they they're like, they're like a pair there.
I guess it was only because of technical reasons.
Maimana is actually divided the two into two separate books.
And you also have right after that the was of Taro.
How many Jewish people open that up and think of this as their
Sholton Ara? It's it's not touched on by any
of the other codes, anything in Avoda Carmanos and Tara or maybe
just a little bit of, you know, even Nita itself.
The Rambam surprisingly didn't include hill close Nita in safer
Tara. Where do you put it in Kedusha?
So Kedusha talks about kashmirs. It's kashmirs and and Nita and
the forbidden relations so that you could find in Yoridea,
right, and in Evaneser. But everything else that the
Rama put into these three books, it's not spoken about by
anybody. But for the Rambam, this was
real. This was something that you had
to do. And by the way, the Rambam says,
say for a vote on that. In one of the first sections,
Silva's based Bahira, he talks about the midst of Mora Mikdash.
For many people, Mora Mikdash is not a mitzvah.
That's on the radar. And like I pointed out last
week, I got good news. There was an organization that
called themselves Mora Mikdash to them, Mora Mikdash reference
for the temple. You know what their their shtick
was telling people not to go to higher bias, right?
Just stay away from horribaius out of respect that of
reverence. The temple, you can't go there.
Where is the Rambam? What's his definition of Mora
Mikdash? Have you seen this?
He says, yeah, for the Rambam is Mora Mikdash means going to
visit the temple, which he quotes by the even its state of
destruction like it is now, it's still the temple visiting the
temple and going to the parts of the temple complex which are
permissible. So these are pieces of the of,
of Havasa, basic Jewish practice that had been left out of other
codes. That's why you have to learn
Misha Torah because you see it. The Rambam, when he begins to
tell you about the law, plus he tells you what is the kafila?
What is you're supposed to do from the outset, Rabbi Rahim
said says much. Also he said that at least for
the future from now and going forward, the Rambam and what he
wrote serves as I guess an even better Shulhanar starting from
being the same. We can knight all of I'm Israel.
Yes, perhaps there are certain Olafas that there are major my
focus in the starting with the Ravad.
Perhaps not every single Olaf is exactly as Rama said, but As for
framework, he's the rush of Shiva.
So we could we we should begin to study from there.
Yeah, Rav surreal told me he always studied the Rama for
alafa. His son said after he passed
away that when they were younger, he made sure that
they've just study as much rhombam as possible, read
Mishnatura said that we weren't reading other things and he just
made us read. Mishnatura finished Mishitura.
By the way, I don't think Rabbi Barkhim is too wild about
Kabbad. There's some issues there, you
know. But thank God, I don't know
Kabad next like that. I don't know any messianic types
or anybody who has to show him worships the Rebbe.
But I do know among the good ones, the ones who are not like
that, they also tried to study Mishnah Torah on a regular basis
and they even tried to finish their their study of the entire
halacha, the entire compendium on a yearly basis.
And I'm not telling you you should you should become a Kabad
the. Voucher, I'll be instructed, is
to see them to do that. Yeah.
So that that's a very good thing.
I think that yes, aside from everything else, you should be
learning on a regular basis and have a yearly cycle.
You should study the Mishnah Torah and the Mishnah itself,
the Mishnah Torah and the Mishnah with the Kamats.
Those are all things that you should really put yourself to.
I think it's of all that even I tried to study these things and
there's so many things I forget. It's a shame we didn't do these
when we were younger. You know, I, how can, how can
you have that? The Jewish school system doesn't
drive these into the kids heads at a young age.
That's what you're supposed to do with machnice.
That's what you're supposed to do with Tanakh and whatever.
I'm not going to get against the system, but thank God here in
art school we do have that as an option nowadays.
You could send your son to a school where they will have him
reciting sukim Tanakh, Torah Mishnaeus, and even some
halakhas. And even this like cool trick,
they have pewdim that encode halakhas and lists of
information like the target mitzvahs and all that.
I think it's a wonderful thing and I strongly encourage
everybody to get out of there. You should.
It's worth making aliyah for your family's sake just so that
your children can be educated in the land of Israel That tell it
to everybody. Yeah.
I don't. I don't know what your
considerations are while you're living in America for whatever
reason or anywhere else puts large snow for your children.
The best thing to do for them is to send them to study Torah in
the land of Israel and study in Hebrew there.
At least in my own experience, they'll say the fellows who are
graduating Israeli high school just a regular yeshiva system
here in Israel, even toy not the non Koradia system.
They are years ahead of their counterparts in America.
It's undoubtable. Yeah, it's far, far ahead of
them. Undoubtable, and being that we
only have I think about 10-15 minutes more left, I want to get
to a question which I find interesting here.
There's a belief that if certain practices are not done anymore,
it must be God's will. How do you address this all and
out of use fallacy in halacha? I think it's human nature.
I've heard it used as a as or as a resort by quite a few Robundum
asked the question why don't we just do this?
Oh, we don't do that anymore. So I guess we don't do that.
Yeah it started happening more more frequently after I made all
the I thought that this is something that's endemic to puts
Lawrence but actually happened even more so since I came here.
I'm thinking of certain people consciously, you know, that they
said this, you know, like, why why not to Mataro?
I let's get back to the to the mikvah issue.
I had argued with quite a few of them and there are many who who
now, by the way, came to this without my intervention.
They realize we have to open up the mikvah oak more.
Why? Because Jews who want to keep
the olives of tumatara know that you have to go to mikvah on a
regular basis if you want to be working in agriculture.
You want to produce wine and you want to be able to keep that
wine pure or you're making olives.
Here you have you have an olive press.
You are the olive producer and you want to be able to give the
truma to a cocaine. You want your wine and olive oil
to be used in the temple. What do you, what's the first
thing you have to do? Produce that wine and oil?
Impurity, right? That requires people to go to
mikvah. That requires also, you know,
people to get the ashes of Pardew.
My God willing, we're going to get in with that.
If you were want to have people consume sacrificial food, which
by the way, technically you could do nowadays, if we had a
temple service, we would go through the temple service also
without removing the impurity caused by contact with the dead,
the whole part of human thing, that's also beyond the scope.
But just to know, Rambam isn't the only one who says this, that
if everybody is contaminated with this two-month mate, the
contamination from contact with the dead.
So we just ignore it and we go ahead with the temple service.
But we still have to remove other forms of impurity, which
are all removed basically from immersion to mikvah.
So I was arguing and I wasn't the only one who said this.
We have to open up the mikvah for women.
Women need to go to the people just like men.
They want to consume sacrifices. They want to attend the temple.
And this is also for young women.
Teenagers need to go to Mikva. They have to know this.
There's a there's a, a policy in place since quite a few 100
years ago that we do not allow single women to go to immerse
themselves for obvious reasons. All right, all say, oh, there's
no helpless, you know, now they'll think that this is a
chance to sin. But the Sages never had such an
idea. The Sages used to have private
Mikvaugt. Anybody who had a farm had to
have a mikva so that he and his family could go immerse
themselves when necessary. There was no such thing as
telling, let's say, a 17 year old girl, oh, don't go to Mikva
unless you be enticed by sin. We tell her no, you have to go
to Mikva on a regular basis so that you do not contaminate the
produce that we we have around the house.
Or if you're the Cohen's daughter, you have to know to go
to Mikva so they could eat of trauma like everybody else in
the evening. This was part, this was part of
life. So you had to begin to open up
the Mick vote so people could get back into this.
I I wouldn't even quote a routine, but a regularity of
purifying themselves beforehand. It's human nature to say that,
oh, we don't do this anymore, so now we're just not going to do
it. It's too easy.
And we could come up with like Rabbi Dr. England says, quasi
helic justifications after the fact for what we see on the
ground. There's AI like to say if it's a
it's a muscle that turned Tyrannus Rufus brought up to
Rabbi Kiva. He was the Roman governor, the
the procurator all right along the somewhere around the coast
where he lived exactly might have been near in or near what's
today Java at the time Rabbi Kiva was in Binay Brock.
And this Roman fellow used to give Rabbi Kiva a lot of
problems. As a matter of fact, he might
have been involved in Rabbi Kiva's eventual execution after
the bar after the bar culpa revolt.
So he challenged Rabbi Kiva. He said basically, and this is
an argument that is echoed in the early Christians and
continues by the way, for those really from Christians who
believe in God rejected the Jewish people, right?
We're no longer the, the, the, the, the, the chosen ones.
So to them we're cursed. We're the wandering Jew.
The way Tyrannus Rufus had it was he went to Rabbi Kiva and
said if the king threw someone in prison, demand that someone
be imprisoned. And then there was someone who
came and, you know, this guy should also be starved in
prison, subsistence only, or maybe even below subsistence,
subsistence rations. There was someone who went
against the will of king. And when I was waiting to
somehow smuggle food to this prisoner, wouldn't the king be
upset at this person? And he was implying that the
Jewish people have been exiled, their temple has been destroyed.
God has rejected the Jewish people.
You're trying to help the Jewish people get back on their feet.
Isn't that against God's will, so to speak?
And Rabbi Achiva said we're not God's prisoners, the mushrooms,
more accurately, what we are God's children.
If the king threw his son out of the palace one day, you know,
out of anger, he didn't really mean to completely disown his
son. As a matter of fact, if the the
Prince was stuck somewhere without any food or any shelter
and someone came and showed him some mercy and fed the Prince
and sheltered him that tomorrow when the king calms down and he
wants his son back, he'll be very happy with this fellow who
helped his son in the meantime. And that's that's the proper
muscle. That's how I'm that's how God
looks to omnius role. We look at, let's say certain
commandments. You see, Can you imagine a
fruitless person would say, oh, those orphans over there,
they're left without parents. They're dirt poor and no one
takes care of them. Perhaps that's God's will.
God. God made them into orphans, so
we should not go out of her way to help them.
I think there was some people who believe this in the Far
East. They had this idea.
They didn't believe in our God or even one God, but they had
this idea that people who are down, they're the lower, the
downtrodden, they're meant to stay there.
You're not supposed to raise them up.
You remember hearing about this in India.
They had the caste system that those who are in the lower
castes are meant to stay in the lower cast.
Those upper casts are meant to stay in.
They're not supposed to mix. You're not supposed to try to
bring the people out upon Verdi. That is an idea that still
exists in the world. Now take this to mitzvahs.
There people look at the the commandments and say, well, we
have not had a temple all this time.
We have not kept human Tara all this time.
Perhaps that is God's will that we are not supposed to have a
temple and by the way that that loses the distinction between
God's will and what God allows and what God what God's hayfens
is. Gereo Novi says that God wants
someone to have proper behavior, right?
God desires certain things. Yes.
If we see that something has been allowed, we see a murderer
has taken place. We don't say well, God controls
everything. It is God's will that this
person to be murdered other Robin.
No, God's will is that, On the contrary, people not murder each
other. Even Gentiles are not supposed
to be murdering each other. Yet God has done what in this
world, He's allowed man free will to sin.
There's the opportunity to sin and to do wrong.
So if you see that murder has been committed, you don't say,
well, this was God's will. It must, it was supposed to be.
No, it was not supposed to be. It's, it's actually against the
divine will, but he still allows it to happen.
So too, with these commandments, maybe that the commandment has
fallen out of disuse. It may be that God has allowed
his temple to be destroyed, but that's certainly not what he
wanted. And it's actually he.
He puts the blame on us. He looks at us and say, why
haven't you rebuilt my temple? Why haven't you come back to the
land of his? Why aren't you keeping his
commandments? But too many of us fall into
this. It's just their basic human
nature. We see what is around us and we
assume that this was meant to be, that this is God's will.
That's how it does. Look, all of Migila Tehi is, oh,
I understand the Migila the the lamentations of of of is
basically longing for the for the temple's restoration and or,
and blaming the the sins or or. It's certainly not something
that is that that when you're reading a high, you don't get
this impression that like this was like God's will in a
positive sense. It's it's it's an unfortunate
consequence of thin of many different human error.
Human error exactly. And we long God literally.
Why'd you make me do it? OK.
I wish I didn't have to take out my wrath upon you.
It would have been much easier. God.
God gave us the broth, He said. If you keep the Torah, here's
here's a whole set of broth. It's actually quite concise, but
it's also all-encompassing. And if you don't do what is
right, here's a Tokalas God, cruel so to speak, that he gives
4049 different forms of punishment in Leviticus and 98
such punishments at the end of Deuteronomy is because he's
cruel. No, it's because he's trying to
tell us that the consequences of our actions, our mistaken use of
free will, will lead to these consequences, that that's what
happens. It's not.
It's not that God wanted that to happen.
He allowed it to happen because that's part of the test.
If it was there was no test in this world and free will, then
there'd be no reward and punishment.
But yeah, it's unfortunate to want punishment more than than
than reward. We only have a few minutes, but
this is actually something we have come to notice more and
more. And the more I speak to people,
the more I realized how much, you know, we, we talk about free
will and then we talk about like determinism, right?
And what I've noticed is, and I've, and I've spoken to a lot
of people about this, they'll be like, no, no, no, we really have
free will. But there's also determinism.
And I'm like, OK, explain that. And then you start hearing like
an entire pill pool, like you know this and, and it leads to
absolutely nowhere. Because at the end it's like
they just kind of circle back around.
Like you have to understand free will means free will.
That means no determinism that they're, they're mutually
exclusive concepts. You can ask how can how can a
Shem know the future while we that's that's a separate
question then from saying, you know, my actions don't have
consequences. It's it's two separate
theoretical issues over there. But I just noticed that
especially in the From community, they're kind of
misguidingly accepting both notions that don't work, and
it's kind of just leads them into a hodgepodge of weird
ideas, right? Like, yeah, we have free will,
but everything is a sham, right? But, but, but all the sham's
will. But I have free will.
But interestingly, interestingly.
But yes. But no.
It's not, it's not a, it's not a straight way of thinking.
But interestingly, they don't see the, you know, emergence of,
of, you know, post 1948, the land of Israel as the, as God's
will for some reason, for some reason that's not God's will.
You know that that doesn't make any sense here.
Yeah, it's kind of interesting. Thanks to, I was thinking
Einstein in physics, people begun to understand the nature
of time. OK, Did you notice how there's a
multiplicity of imaginative literature and other forms of
pop culture? They actually, they, they, they,
they explore this concept of time trap, the idea of time
trap. So my children read novels and
they tell me about traveling in time, time trap.
And you probably grew up with prominent movies that also
explore this as a plot device. So for many of us growing up
where we did, the idea of time travel is, you know, punish it.
Yeah, if, if you could travel too, time you, you, you'd be
able to accomplish this and that it would lead to paradoxes and
things like that. We all, we all speak like we're
Doc Brown and other other imagined individuals.
The idea of time travel, by the way.
But if you look in, let's say literature from before the 20th
century, the the latter half of the 20th century, the idea of
time travel did never existed, right?
It's not something that people use it.
People have been writing imaginative literature and other
creating all sorts of other culture, entertainment even, and
they didn't think of this. They didn't they didn't use this
as a device. You know, war and romance Haas
vu Shalom have been used as starting points for narratives,
fictitious narratives and even romanticized versions of how
actual events in history happened.
Right. Those are actually the biggest.
I think that most of our, I guess, literature, at least for
entertainment, revolves around these ideas, especially war,
right? But the idea of time travel is
not something that you had in humanity or even in Judaism.
I don't know what they did in the East, but this isn't the
concept that they even talked about yet.
For now, it's it for us. This is something that people
know about. Why would that be the case?
What happened, What changed? People understood physics.
Einstein introduced this idea and now everybody kind of
piggybacked up. Yes, it became, and even if we
don't understand physics that well, which we're all a bunch of
Amaratsu with that, we were told there's a fourth dimension just
like it could move right to left and up and down and you know,
forward and backward. I could also somehow do that in
time. Yet we discovered, like Hawking
says, that time has an arrow, even though we know there's a
backwards and forwards in time, One of the laws of
thermodynamics, the fact that entropy is always increasing
means that there's this arrow of time as he described.
We can't seem to go backwards in time, but we do know that
there's a past, the present and the future, Right.
And we also talked about God. God is, you know, that perhaps
his name is encoded. He's he's timeless.
Yeah. He's beyond time.
So it was never something that we could actually think about
moving backwards or forwards in time.
We're skipping ahead, be able to somehow go to the to the future
somehow and then have knowledge of what's going to be and then
come back here with that already acquired knowledge and changing
the present based on that or going to the past and somehow
changing the past to affect where we are now, which somehow
returning there. Those are crazy concepts that
most people now because they've read something or they've seen
some sort of movie, now they have a concept about that and
that for some reason doesn't affect our free will.
You know why? Because we know that's just
science fiction. Many of us know that yes, now
God has a knowledge of the future.
It's all a book. He's seen the movie already, so
to speak, whatever it is, but for our intents and purposes,
there is just a now. We can't break it.
We can't break out of the time we're going to.
We can't go back. We can't go forward.
We're stuck here now. So being that that's the case,
we have to use our free will right now to decide what to do.
We, it's all, it's still resting on us.
We still have the, we have to live with the consequences of
actions. There's still reward and
punishment. Even these people who believe in
determinism, when they say that they're when they sort of
believe in a deterministic idea, what are they really saying?
They're saying that someone's read the book.
Someone is aware of the future. God is not a someone that he is.
He is removed from time. Lamaze said everything you do in
your life, you are stuck here right now.
There's no there's no other being that is timeless, that
could time travel or that could have any knowledge of the
future. God's knowledge is not like your
knowledge. So your determinism doesn't
really matter. It's your.
Determinism. Science fiction.
Exactly, the whole point of of the foreknowledge and the hero
thing is to basically end up explaining that Hashem doesn't
know in any way in which we know.
So the question never starts. You have to the knowledge would
be something towards how we conceive of knowledge for that,
for that for that contradiction to to exist.
But when you understand that God's knowledge is absolutely
nothing to do with anything that we can conceive, the point is to
get to a point where you understand that it's a non
starter, that that's the whole point.
Instead people just they keep, they keep taking the idea of
God's foreknowledge and to and kind of putting it into their
conception of what foreknowledge means.
And so then they have a contradiction staring them in
the face. But like, no, the the point
isn't like you said, the point isn't saying God is not a
someone. God is not a brain and God
doesn't know in the sense that we know.
The whole idea is to basically remove all these understandings
of God from the picture so that you understand that there is no
real question here. That's that's the real point.
Yet this anthropomorphic tendency that we tend to to
bring into ideas like knowledge of God and what we, we
anthropomorphize it to a point where then we're stuck in these
really, really debilitating contradictions that lead to
strange ideas, strange notions, inaction, all the all the things
that that you don't want that that, that that's upset of what
Judaism preaches. By the way, and I'd like to add
that don't we have prophets? Don't we clean that the prophets
had knowledge of the future? I think it's a very big mistake.
I do not believe that God gave knowledge of the future.
The way we understand it now from our pop culture idea, He
did not give even to Moses knowledge of the future in that
in that sense, what he gave to the prophets was promises of the
future and instructions for the future.
I'll give you an example, the messianic era.
The prophets envisioned the messianic era, but they didn't
actually see what the future would be.
They were telling us that it is our job to make our lives the
messianic era. They were telling us to keep the
commandments so that you bring about this messianic era.
And they also were telling us that if we do exactly as God has
told us 100%, then we will merit to have this state.
But Ezekiel didn't see, let's say flying cars and modern Tel
Aviv. He didn't see that.
He was told, Tommy Stroll, if you keep the Torah.
Well, what was the main thing that Ezekiel did see, by the
way? He lived in Tel Aviv.
He lived in Tel Aviv, in Blauville.
What did Ezekiel see? What was he told to tell people
about the future, the temple? He totally saw a whole vision
exactly. Many chapters of here's the
exact specifications and all that.
But the Hamim told us and the Ramapaskans this way, that when
the king time to actually rebuild the second temple, they
didn't know what he was talking about, so they tried to
incorporate it. What Ezekiel's telling you is
this is a goal you're striving for.
Try to build a temple this way to the best that you can, and
God will do his part and put his divine presence back in that
temple. But he didn't see.
What the actual temple will look like, he's telling, instructing
you how to do it and how to get a promise and you use that
principle. Also, Moshe Rabinu was not
shown, let's say I don't know whatever the messianic era will
look like. He was told to tell us how to
bring about the messianic era and a requirement to do so.
By the way, this is AI guess, if you could sound, I guess almost
Zionist people think that you look at the prophecies of the
Torah and Naveen, they'll come true.
You know that that's the way it's going to be.
It's somehow going to come true. So you just sit back.
No, the prophets were giving you a commandment.
They were giving you orders. You.
It is your obligation as an individual and as a community,
as a nation, to bring about this messianic state.
That's been important. Yeah, that's fundamental and
fascinating. Yeah, I really like that.
I really, really enjoyed that one.
Well, we, we want to thank you. Sorry that we ran out of time
and we, we want to do this again.
There's a lot of topics that we want to discuss with you.
So hopefully we can do this again.
Before we go, can you tell everybody how they can find you
and find your book? Yeah.
And your books? Yeah.
What book? Yeah.
OK, I I guess we'll put that in link.
If I'm a book, my website israhambenyuda.wordpress.com.
I guess it's out date people. Some people tell me I have to go
to the Substack. So send me an e-mail to
mahoneshiloh.org. I guess office at Mahone
shiloh.org. But you can also find the line
and you'll get my contact information there.
And also you could find the website.
Just Google Haggadatta Pesa and my name and you'll find a way to
order a copy of a Gadada peso. It's a very simple and also we
have YouTube channel, but most of my content now is on the
Mahon Shiloh YouTube channel. It's also very easy thing to
find if you know how to use the Internet and you contact me
through that. And also you should look at the
videos. I'm not the only one, obviously
I'm I'm just a minor part of that Channel.
It hosts, most of it hosts all of Rabbi Barking's content.
And now there's other other creators and other contributors
there, especially Jonathan Pollard, who has a lot to say
about our situation right now. I think you should listen to
him. And also Doctor England is
there. Doctor England.
Thank for for making this between us.
So, Doctor England, thank you very much.
Yep. Yeah.
He he's the smartest Jew I know, so it's worth listening to him.
Absolutely. We had him on the podcast.
He's phenomenal. He's yeah and.
Every time I listen, I just realized how how brilliant this
man is. Unbelievable.
Yeah. See, there's a Brock.
You see, on seeing really wise people, really wise tourist
ages, you know, there's all. We're joking.
You're supposed to. You meet these people.
You're supposed to thank God. You're supposed to praise him
for creating such great, phenomenal minds.
Yeah. There you have it.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
We hope that you stay safe. We hope that the matzah.
Should get better and our our hearts and our thoughts are with
you and with everyone in earth Israel.
And we hope you have a Shavuot tov.
And we thank you so much for your time and much success.
And hopefully we'll do it again. You mean thank you.
Good. To see you guys.