16- Rambam's Shmona Prakim - 6th Perek - Mitzvos and Middos (HaRav Yitzchak Breitowitz)

above impaired club again raises the interesting question of the hasid versus the kovacious israeli and the rambam that in some instances the higher madrega is that you have no desire for evil at all and your only desire is for the goods and as long as you desire evil that is a pahisos that is something inferior within your neshama and for some mitzvoth we say the other way around that there is a higher level to have a desire that your kovech because the rambam pointed out that in ghazal there was a contradiction there are absurchim and michele that say that if one loves evil if one has an attraction to something evil they are a russia even if they control themselves and yet we have other ghazals according to the pain according to the struggle is the uh reward and uh the ghazal that rashi brings that a person should not say although the ramen was a slightly different gear so the rambam's gear says a person should not say i hate buster bakalov but he should like it rashi says a person shouldn't say i hate krazer and it mentions khazr or bashar of kasras and then it mentions shotness and it mentions arias so the rambam which implies in other words that it is superior to struggle and be kovach rather than reformulate your desires and your yearnings and the rambam skillet was that it depends on whether it's something that's relevant to me doesn't character or it's a simple prohibition when it comes to midos rose midos tovos such as rachamim versus anger then it is not enough to behave virtuously once you try to change their personality in which they literally want to help people and the like in fact this is one of the just to just add a little bit to the rambam skillek you know there's a famous kasha that even the reshinam already asked and that is why is there no bracha before we put on stitches before we put on filling before we light hanukkah candles even though it's rabanan we make abraca a share kirishanu commanded me to do this mitzvah so how come before i give stukka i don't say a share kirito shaniba mitzvos when my father or mother asked me to bring them a cup of tea why don't i make the bracha deshawn so you actually see that the birch mitzvah is only on mitzvahs main author it is not on ben adam now bishop are on negative commandments because there's no missiles so for example when i don't when i don't eat rafe when i walk by uh you know uh bacon store or whatever it is i don't make the bracha a shark in his shoulder mitzvos that's true uh or if i didn't kill you today i don't say ah sharokina but ivanov otherwise we would maybe we would make breakfast all day so that's another rule that's a rule that simply says you don't make a bracha on the fulfillment of a prohibition okay that's uh that's a general problem by the way even there i don't want to digress too much even there we seem to have one notable exception perhaps and that is the bracha that we recite you will experience it because some have experienced that the barakah that we recite under the khupa what do we say mitzvoth it's evanu al-haraj think about that that god commanded us to keep away from forbidden sexual relations the ossarlano essa russos and god commanded us that even a woman that's our arusa until we recite the brachus we're not allowed to be with right now then it says he monitors the nesua et cetera but it's interesting that the bracha and is the only birch mitzvah that actually picks up the fulfillment of a negative commandment okay that's a casual you can think about but generally speaking we don't make bronchos on negative commands but we do make brachos on positive commandments and yet in the realm of the positive we don't make a bracha on mitzvos we don't make a bracha on stalker we don't make a bracha and keep it of the aim right how come we don't make a bracha on benadom so the bashing them themselves give a lot of answers first of all they say by stakka maybe it's a brachlavatala because you have to make the bracha before the mitzvah and if the yoni doesn't like what you're offering he won't take it sometimes you offer a person too little money they'll throw it back at you right so i can't make the barakah before i give it to them because maybe he won't take it and i can't make the bracha after i give it to him because the bracha has to be over lassie i said that's a weak teres really i can just show i can show the honey ahead of time will you take this if he says yes i could make the brahman but the altar of slobatka says the terrorists the alzheimer's has a beautiful turrets and it's real i think it marmish fits what the rambam says when you say ashikirishanu bemitsuvaisov what you're saying is the only reason i'm doing this is because hashem commanded me to do it if hashem wouldn't command me to do it i would have no desire to do it i'm putting on filling because hashem commanded me i'm putting on situations because hashem commanded me right i'm lighting chanukah candles because hashem commanded me no midrabbin as the rambam says that even on rabbinic laws hashem commanded you to listen to the fulham so if i were to say by stakka i'm giving stakka to the ani because hashem commanded me to give stucco in some ways that misses the point because what you're basically saying is i really don't care about this person but hashem commanded me to do it so i got to do it i'm kobe chesseyetzer i think that the elder of slovakia's terrorists fits the rama the rambam says when it comes to medos of rakhim in compassion you shouldn't be motivated because god commanded you you should be motivated because that is your mita that is your nature that is the person that you become which ultimately is the rats and hashem but your motivation is not deceiving your motivation is the medatova and that's why by being if you were to make a beer kasamitsu it would almost be the opposite of what it's supposed to be same thing with my parents like what a hey mom and dad you know i'm bringing you a cup of tea because god said i gotta do it whether i like it or not now that happens to be true you've got to do it whether you like it or not but the point is you got to like it the point is you have to have a meat meet up right you're not mock your toe because hashem commanded you you're making because of the hathaway right so i so this is again it seems to me that the altar of stabatka is his site that when it comes to midos tovos hashem doesn't just want the action in which you force yourself to act a certain way or not to act a certain way because hashem commanded you rather you try to reformulate your desires and your urges and your personality so you're not to me sava to those things now again don't don't mistake this here of course to be kovacic is a very high madriga meaning to say we're not disparaging that if a person uh doesn't really want to do hesed but he makes himself duhasen durhasen hashem that is a madriga but it's a parque madrega it's an inferior madriga because hashem's ultimate goal is that you change yourself and you become a certain type of person came the rambam says which are kind of meaning ritual commandments or ritual prohibitions where if i do them or i don't do them it's not a question of me dice so in such a situation one should only do it because of hashem's commandments you shouldn't say i hate hazard i hate buster bachala rather i really love a good cheeseburger and i love the italian suit with sharpness in it but hashem says not to do it i'm not going to do it so the rambam is miyash of the stira by positing these two different categories of commandments for some commandments kovacies yitzray is the highest madrega for other commandments it is badass the changing of your immediates that is very very important uh in other words i think we said at a much earlier point in this discussion that it's almost as if in some ways the changing of the media is more important than the virtuous act in other words we would we would normally say why should i be a kind person because if i'm a kind person i will do kind things the rambam might might actually express it the other way around the most important thing is to be a kind person and you're mechanic yourself to be a kind person by doing kind things in other words the icker is the ticking of the media instead of looking at the media as the msae for the action which i think is the paschal shot actually the round bound looks at the action as the m soyee for the tikka and hamidah so if there's no tick and amida you're not really accomplishing what hashem's goal is okay this is again philosophers call this virtue ethic rather than action ethic i mean according to the rambam the primacy of ethics lie in the inculcation of virtue even more than the action and the action is seen as a mechanism to educate yourself to achieve that certain level of virtue now all of this is connected and let me point out i mean this is a very interrelated system because the rambo will then discuss in the next parac that when you have bad medos that is a wall between you and god and since the purpose of creation is to connect to hashem i gotta remove the walls in other words because otherwise you could ask me akasha well does it even make sense to say the purpose of doing good is that you should have good meals well why is it important to have good meat us i mean i would have thought it's important to have good meals so you'll do good things but i wouldn't have thought i mean you understand i wouldn't have thought that the purpose of doing good things is to have good meat of what is the value of good meatos and the abstract but the answer is in the rambam system it actually is extremely important because good medicine leads to yadiyas hashem right so the purpose of good medici is not that you will do good things the purpose of good meat ice is it enables you ds hashem but mimaila you acquire good meat us by doing good things and so by doing good things it leads to good meet us that's the training right the moa the mind which dictates the actions educates the heart and by perfecting your heart you remove makhitsais that will really be the theme of perak zion by removing the makhitsais you achieve what is called idea again i know i'm repeating myself but the truth is this is a little bit of a kiddish the rambam's understanding and it is actually not the simplest way that we would look at life we i think we would normally look at life as the icker is the good deeds that you do but the rambam seems to say that the good deeds i don't mean the mitzvos generally but the goodies of stockholm are primarily to enable midos tovos which take away the merchitsa some of the ice the walls of separation that allow you to have your dias hashem yeah yeah so the problem is the the problem is that uh midos rose are makitas but they're not the only mechitas meaning to say you could have removed a lot of walls you still have other walls uh seikel and and say meaning there are many many maniacs and the rambam isn't saying that midos tovos inevitably will lead to uds hashem he is saying if you don't have stovers inevitably you won't have eds hm but so it's a necessary condition but it is not a sufficient condition and the light and anyway that that issue about uh mitosis well um i told you the story before so forgive me for repeating it but i think i said it a long time ago and this is one of those stories that a lot of people hate they really hate the story some people see it as a nice mice and some people see it as an awful misa and i think the rambam would actually see it as an awful nicer the rambam so if you don't like this story you're in good company because the rambam almost certainly would not like this story and here's the story there was a khasidharabi who gave out stucco all the time people brought him a lot of money every single penny that came through his house for many many different reasons was all given with stucco he lived beyond eus he lived with dhakras because he had such a lathe tove that every every single person who needed something got from him one day the rebbe seemed to have changed people came to him for stucco he didn't give anything he didn't give anything people would cry and they would stop and they would beg and he said get out of here i don't want to do anything for you and this went on for a while nobody understood what happened to the rebbe and then one day after a while he just started doing everything that he was doing as in the old ways so what's the shot somebody asked like what is what's going on here so the rebbe says when people came to me i felt so sorry for them i felt so much so i was giving stukka but i wasn't giving stukka because hashem commanded it i was giving stuka because of my personal emotion but the rebbe says that is not after hashem and evan hashem does things because of hashem's commandment so the rebbe said i wanted to train this is where people hate this i wanted to train myself to be cruel and unfeeling and not have rakhamim at all and i trained myself by being selfish and when i reached the bottom level of just not caring anymore i then said now i'm going to give all that stucco that i did before because now i'm doing it the shame shamayim and not because i feel sorry for people it's a mice i don't know if it's true you know you get a lot of mice and you know we have no idea if they're true in fact i have a feeling it probably is not true but the point that it's being made here is i think a 180 degree opposite point of the rumble and the altar of slobodki as well because here it's saying i'm doing not because i feel sorry for you if i feel sorry for you that's my my lishma means i don't feel sorry for you but i'm going to help you anyway and that's the highest level wouldn't the rambam say exactly the opposite yeah that's a level that's the level called kovacies israel which is good which is good but the much higher level is to be mahapracha so how can you say that it's better for me not to care of course in a way it's self-defeating because as the rambam says once you start giving again you'll get back to the rachmanist okay i don't know how you're going to i don't know leshi tusks i don't know how he's going to adjust that but okay uh and it's also for character from the altar of slovakia right the altar of sabotage said the reason why we don't make a beer mitzvah and is you shouldn't be motivated because it's a deceivally you should be motivated because you have recommend for people that are suffering okay so it's a strange misa but but it does indicate a philosophy that you can hear in the abstract that's kind of the opposite direction of the rambam uh in fact the egolate towel just to go manually indian the egolate he was the father of the shame ishmael but he himself was a great christina rebe he was the son-in-law of the katsuka rabbi interesting enough and the uh he's uh and he wrote the shayla chooses troubles which is a great great safer for and the egg layton shabbos which is also a say for your site tremendous tremendous tremendous guidance but in the hakadama of the yegley tao it's interestingly enough he says that his whole derek and learning he got from his father-in-law the cutscene rebbe which is fascinating because because rebbe is loved off ganon i mean he's known for all sorts of unusual things but he's not automatically known as a tremendous guide the ugly tile was a tremendous kind and the ugly towel writes his whole derrick and learning he got from the cutscore so it shows you how great the enigmatic cutscene rebbe was but being as it may in the egg lake tile he just writes a hakama where he says some people think that if you enjoy learning torah that's a kisarin in your lashma because you're not doing it for god you're doing it because you like it you enjoy it and therefore ideally in order to learn tyrol ishmael you have to hate what you're doing but do it anyway that's the person i admire he can't stand learning but he still learns hours every day wow what a great guy now the egg laytowel says of course if a person forces himself to learn that's a madrega i mean we have to respect and honor such a person but the egg lay towel says it's a stuss to say that the optimal way of doing this mitzvah is by not enjoying it because hakadosh parkour's whole mitzvah of terror is that we should be masonic we should get pleasure from the torah that's the whole goal the torah should give us the pleasure of being connected to god and of course the obvious raya to this is none other than birja satyra that you recite every morning what is the second book is technically the second half of the first hashema keno esther make the torah sweet how can you possibly say that the mitzvah is do it for hashem even though you hate it right so the same point that the ugly time makes by talmud tyra at the rambam much earlier made it by mithra spain and the like so this khasir shamisa is a bit of a sorry and again i i don't know if it happened but it reflects kind of an opposite attitude to what the rambam himself uh is is is discussing okay so now let me just uh talk a little bit i mentioned yesterday i wanted to talk about the balatanya a little bit because the balatanya has something that's very nogai here as well yeah so just really quickly yeah um that that is actually a very very excellent question you know he keeps on going over over and over and over and over again uh he actually never never actually defines it uh he gives michelin but the michelin themselves are not so uh illustrative he says for example the same way when you know a person when you know a person you can visualize how that person is distinct than other people meaning uh you see somebody from the back you don't know but when someone has you know you see them from the front and you know them you can differentiate them from ruvain from shimmer so ideas hashem is you reach a level of understanding in which you understand how hashem is different because you see in our normal vocabulary we don't understand that because we say uh you know ruvain is strong and hashem is super strong i mean all i can do is i multiply by infinity things that i see in human beings and i apply them to god right god is stronger god is bigger god lives longer but the rambam says that's not your death hashem yet because you cannot identify how hashem is distinct from anyone else but again that that really doesn't help us that much because indeed none of us have achieved that dshm but the rambam points out says that there is some madriga in which you would understand the uniqueness of al-qaeda and then you would be connected to him and that creates uh a biblical idea right just like it says adam nu khaba for taj mahal so that refers to an emotional hebrew that's by the hebrew of the mind you feel emotionally connected to god and then it turns into love it's a very interesting point you know people look at the rambam as a philosopher and they which he was and they tend to look at a philosopher as cold unemotional rational computer-like but the truth is for the rambam a philosophical understanding of hashem actually leads to a passionate love which you cannot tear yourself away with the rambam uses frankly sexual imagery in where the rambam says a person should be so lovesick with his connection to god that it would be like a man that is obsessing over being with a woman but you get there by this intellectual contemplation the intellectual contemplation itself by the way the bola tanya was very very influenced by this type of model of khabad so the truth of the matter is uh it's not as as fully defined as we would want but the rambam does say there are many mosquitoes that separate us and medici rice are one of the primary mechitzes that separate you from that communion with aqua uh everyone knows uh you know it's gotten uh more popular in recent years than even in the literature yeshivas people learn safer tanya which which makes sense in many ways the balatanya was the alta rebbe of near zalman was a litwak that's what he was known as the lithuanian installment of the measurementure magette and uh the the title of tanya tanya is only the first word of the book tanya he's quoting a prize right so the tanya has several khalakhim but the first and largest of tanya has its own name it's called seifer shel benonim the book of the middle of the rotors the book of the middle of the rotors that is by far the largest part of the tanya or one might even translate it the book of the mediocre that doesn't sound so inspiring actually but here is the thing we have three terms hazal use sadiq russia it's very no gay rosh hashanah right sadique we're inscribed for life and rashawn and scribe for death and banone are given a preliminary judgment on rosh hashanah and a final signing on yom kippur even the word seabor it's a famous force i don't know the original makara of this sibor congregation is rasheed sadiq a congregation of jews has all types sadiqam baynon richard what is the translation or the definition of sadiq russia so the rambam has a very kind of literal definition a sadiq is any person who has more mitzvos than averos so if you're 5149 on the mitzvosite you're a static if you're 51 49 on the avera side you're a russia and if you're 50 50 that's a bayonet a bain on a is 50 50. now the truth of the matter is this is a very very difficult definition now first of all the rambam does make the point that this is not strictly numerical rather hashem has a qualitative handicapping of mitzvos and averis meaning sometimes a mitzvah might be equal to 10 million of heiress because of your messier snapper and sometimes an aveira might be so bad that it's equal to 10 million mitzvos in other zarama makes the point hashem is not just counting things but there's a qualitative weighing that only hashem is aware of and that is why you know even a russia technically numerically might have more mitzvoth but his riches outweighs it okay that's fine but at the end of the day according to the rambam after you apply the handicapping after you apply the qualitative weighing you are dealing with the weighing process more averos however defined russia more mitzvos sadiq 5050 benoni but the problem with this definition is that that is a status that can literally change second to second to second i mean i wake up let's assume i wake up and based on my prior day i'm 50 50. let's just make up a number so i dive in chakras so now i'm exotic i yell at somebody now i'm a russia i mean uh i mean in in the course of the day i do mitzvahs i do availas so is it mistavra that a fundamental classification system such as static russia banner is so unstable that it changes by the minute changes by the seconds like what's going on so because of this the and other reasons as well rav schneer zalman the balatanya has a very very radical reformulation of the definition of sadiq russia bainuni it does not refer to rubo's being at sadek or being a russia or marsa or he basically says a banane is actually a we would call him at sade gomer a banerney is someone who doesn't commit any sins at all we would call him a perfect sadiq but what makes him a banane is he is still struggling with the yetzer hara so benoni is the overwhelming majority of jews who want to be good and try to be good but as long as you live in the world of struggle you are obeying me a sadiq is someone who has either killed the eight zahara or doesn't have a yates or says there are unique souls that may not have the hr now what's interesting is here's what the balatanya says you can't i mean this is where the ramkhan would argue the balatanya says you can't make yourself with sadiq in my sense sometimes god will give you the gift and sometimes god will not give you the gift sadikim are created they are not self-made there is no such thing as a self-made sonic rather a person that is a banana who lives in the world of struggle can fight that war and win that war and persevere with that war and he gives tremendous knockouts to god much more than maybe the sadiq who doesn't live in that world of struggle now let me explain this if you look at the tanya you actually see that the tanya was written as a psychological manual of khizuk for his hasidim you know the altar rebbe was getting more and more popular more and more people were coming to him for guidance for kizok and the light and at some point he was not able to see that many people in person he just didn't have the time right too many people were coming so he wanted to write them teachings that they could absorb because he was not able to see them in person essentially it's kind of a counseling session now what were the types of questions that were bothering these facilities they were not maybe some of the questions we ask here they weren't asking how do i know there's a god how do i know the oral law is ms how do i know my midhar sinai everybody who came to the altar rebbe didn't have any problems there they believed in hashem they believed in tyra minnesota they were not questioning turish about that so what were they asking the rebbe where they weren't asking him for proof for mahmoud harsina they were expressing a spiritual pain they were saying i'm working on myself i'm striving to serve hashem i'm doing chuva i'm davening i'm learning why am i still struggling with my yates or heart why can't i vanquish it why do i seem not to be making progress in conquering my eight zero and what the altar rabbi kiddish was is don't look at that as a failure that is your tactless in the world your topless in the world is to fight in other words don't think that you're supposed to graduate to be a sadiq in his terminology maybe yeah maybe not that's a matana that's a mata skeenam and that's meaning sometimes hashem will give you all of my in this world you can't expect it and if you don't achieve it the message was that doesn't mean you're failing that means you're giving nachas to hashem by the struggle that you're going through now this i think may be going a little further than around them this might even refer to struggles in my middles as well so you understand how i mean the tanya is very profound there with a lot of kabbalah and it's very deep but the if we have to like reduce it to like one sentence safer shall ban on him it is telling the person who lives in the world of struggle that you will not be able to be ethic in the sense of not having the desire for evil but you will be ethic in the sense of fighting it and being victorious and that gives hashem more narcissism indeed because of this the balatanya writes that the bananee may give hashem more than the sadiq because the sadiq is not working now again if the saudi killed the acara because he did go through the work that's a separate thing but some people are born without those yates or harvest some people are born without certain types of visa harvest so this is why it is called safe air show benonim because the by latonya's point is a boehner knee is not a 50 50. a banyani is any person who struggles and that can range from the sadiq to the russia if you're living in the world of struggle now it's sadiq is someone who no longer lives the world of struggle and a russia is somebody who's so far gone that he's no longer struggling he's totally surrendered to the evil now there is a tradition that the altar rebbe wrote a companion book to the tanya because the tanya is the guidebook for the banoni the benoni is as the balatanya defines it would be close to a hundred percent of the population meaning you can be the god of ladar and you're still obeying him because there's the ace of hearts you're struggling with in other words it's not a measure of how righteous you are you can be absolutely righteous but you're a baner name because you're struggling so legend has it that the altar rebbe wrote a companion book called safer shall sadika because you do have a real problem what's the purpose of a sonic's life don't have a sahara why am i here good question i mean it's not a practical question for us we don't need to have a practical answer because we're not that but like why is it why would a sadiq even be in the world so the altar ebby said wrote a book for the sadhikim as well and that book got burnt and we don't know we don't know what it said and then also has a messiah that lakute maharan rav nachman of brazlav is the safer for ashayam now that that sounds uh very insulting or negative it's not not really in other words when a person is so far gone that the azaris seems to have possessed him so the kute maharan can take him out of that imprisonment and then he's ready for tanya because now he can be abandoned so basically moda that breast love is for the you know the people without any hope restlove might be their only hope but then get them out of restless and get them into khabad once you've taken them out of their their prison okay so the point basically is that the balatanya uh or the safer latanya again it's very deep but one should also understand that the altar rebbe had a pedagogical and psychological reason for writing this and that is to give khizuk to people who even after many years of awaiting sasha are still struggling with things and the rebbe says that doesn't mean you failed and that doesn't mean you didn't graduate into the higher madrega this is your madriga this is your avaida this is your sahara this is the nakhas you're giving to hashem that's a that's a very a beautiful idea that can help people again it's built on the rambam's idea of kovichitzer but but i think it goes beyond it because the rambam looked at kovacies this may even be true for the being yeah well he says the following he says he says the bano knee is expected by hashem to perfect himself in speech in myself and even thought so until you do that you're failing as a bainuni you are a banuni but you're failing because you haven't achieved your topless and that is your goal your goal is not to become exotic but your goal is within the framework of bennuni to perfect your dibor your my son even your your makshava okay and again the point basically is now i do want to point out that la nia steity it seems the ram khal and masili shasharan seems to be hylic in this because uh the highest level in music is the madrega of kedusha and katusha basically is you know you've you've conquered your yetzer hara you no longer have these struggles and the ramphaul writes that every single person can reach the madrega of kadusa it starts off with yurish toddlers and then it becomes a matana it there is a matana like about makes available to everybody you put in who put into work so you have to be misplanted a little bit in other words according to the balatanya the madrega of sadiq is not attainable by a human being at all it's almost hashem has a husband who gets it who doesn't get it it cannot you cannot expect it as part of the end of your aveda again that can make a person a little sad but you can also remind a person that my struggle is not a failure the ramachan seems to say that there is kind of a natural graduation process that one could eventually reach so there are different different deus about this yeah is there any resort like what's the point of his life yeah i mean uh the messiah is just his job is not to perfect himself his job in other words it's like he's perfect his job is now to be magala hashem in the world meaning it's a different albeit i mean we look at our vitus kind of working on ourselves that sadiq is not working on himself but the sadiq is there to bring hashem into the into the world it's more of an externalized item