Iggeres HaGra #19 - Clarifying the Gra's Position on Praising Others, Going to a Cemetery

this torah class is brought to you by torahanytime.com okay good afternoon everyone so malaysia mybomb um so today we have a number of very important issues to discuss in the safer igar sagra lately we've encountered a number of statements of the gra that are hard to understand or hard to uh absorb and deal with in our current society and in contemporary society first of all one of the things the gross said is the the main thing is not to speak about anybody's praise and not to disparage anyone so that's difficult to understand we understand you can't disparage anyone but not to praise anyone as we mentioned it's a very big mitzvah to praise sadhikam to speak about um how import how how great tamir khame or eurasia mayan balay midos are the next thing the degrasse says is that for a woman it's better to daven in the house because it's impossible to be spared from jealousy and to hear advantage and one is punished for hearing dwarm battalion and certainly shabbos and yamtiv where women gather and they speak it's better not to daven at all that is what the gross says better not to davin than for a woman to davan in the show that's also hard to understand in today's contemporary society and then the big whopper was be very careful not to go a set to a cemetery ever because in the cemetery you have the clip ice and certainly women should not go there and all ills and sin come from visiting cemeteries so all of these three things need a lot of analysis and i remember that actually art scroll came out with an addition of the iguara sagra so you know i finally uh succumbed and i went out this morning actually i had a bit of a bug so i didn't want to share with anybody so i i called the the store i said you have igara sagra i paid and uh i said just drop it in my window i i swung by and here it is igaras hagra and the igaras hagras edition is by rabbi shai groucher or graucher by the way he has a lot of difference forum of reprimand koniewski he's a ben bye it's by johan kanyevsky by the way his father is daddy you ever remember the singer daddy that's his fa anyway um so he writes a number of interesting things in the introduction and he addresses all of these three points so number one he writes an introduction that there are two versions of the igarasagara and he brings something that i did now i was completely unaware of number one their edition number one of the gara sagara is found at the end of messil susharam that i know if you look at the end of any muslim you have the igarasagara the other one is recorded by rabbi yosef zundel of salant a student of the gra and there's a third version known as the aram sova version i'm not mistaken the aram sova version is um rav goldberg has this edition in the back of his the garrosh hagra the aram sova edition now what's the difference between the silsio sharma edition and the aramso and the rezundo salant edition the main difference is repsondo's edition is written in feminine and the sociocharm is written in masculine so the question is so what did the write it in and what i was not aware of is the grudge did not write it in either the wrote it in yiddish and these are translations now what i would like to know is who translated it that's the million dollar question i don't know the answer to that but that may open up an entire uh new understanding of the gara segura but be it as i may let's take one thing first what about the fact the gross says don't speak about anybody's praise so grouchy brings over here the gemara and erichen that ravdimi taught that one should avoid speaking complementary about their friend it might lead to his detriment meaning this person is very smart and very kind and very this and very that but he's a little but he's a little naive right you're bound to but you're bound to so that's what the gemara says that's praise a person partly in their presence but the kula you shall live upon them not in their presence say their whole praise so that indicates that a person's not around you are allowed to praise them so rashi learns that when rabdimi says one should not praise somebody rashi says you should not praise someone excessively because praising someone excessively is is going to bring to their detriment and basically regarding this issue this is how he explained it and i remember singing that regarding praising someone it's only excessively however if you look in the gemara ambassador on the base the gemara says that rabshiman was once sitting in front of rebbe and what rebbe was reading etihalim and rebbe said it's a very nice stab and rib schumann said no i didn't write it wrote it so rebbe said shimon why are you speaking lashin hara so the question is not to english are you speaking washington he's saying that i didn't write this beautiful my friend wrote it so the gemara says that i'm quoting ravdimi and erichen that you're not allowed to speak about someone's praise and this this is not excessive he's not praising him excessively just saying it's a nice sab so the mug in avraham and apparently the learns this way is talking it says that praising someone is prohibited in front of an enemy and the gemara baba basra that says that rabshiman was told by rebbe don't speak lashing hara it's because it was made publicly and there were some of rebuked hayata's enemies there so the bottom line is one cannot speak about someone's praise excessively and even in front of his friends and one should not speak any words of praise in front of an enemy that's the conclusion in other words if you know somebody doesn't like someone do not praise that person in the in the enemy's presence by the way let me just tell you what that means um the gemara says a plumber hates all plumbers and an electrician hates electricians and an accountant hates accountants and the rabbi apparently extrapolate but that's what the gemara says people don't like members of their own um of their own occupation and therefore to an account to an accountant don't praise another accountant to a lawyer you're not going to praise another lawyer it's now if there are no enemies there your ladder praised but not excessively however if groucher quotes the so that's how we learned it but i'm just uh i'm reading to you just to have a definitive uh sort of approach to this rib groucho quotes the chivas i'm that we know there's an idea that while you're performing a mitzvah showing one who performs the mitzvah will not know anything evil but he says that if someone is um he says in the gemara where where rebbe was just praising the handwriting so that's not necessarily a conversation of a mitzvah so that's a problem because there might be an enemy there however to praise at sadiq to to praise their good deeds or since that's a mitzvah we're not afraid it's going to lead to something bad again but that's uh his that if you're praising someone to so to speak uh raise up the madriga of those who serve hashem that would be permitted okay the next issue graveyards as many of you know that uh i do appreciate the visiting kibritsadikim and the question is the grass says be careful not to go to a cemetery so the first thing is it depends which gear so you use because in rav goldberg's first gersa he says vishmar you should be careful he's talking to his boys and then he says certainly women but in the girasa repsundo of salant and in iran it's the sushmari he's only talking to women that women are now to go to a cemetery but there's no prohibition for a man to go to a cemetery so let's discuss this a little bit um by the way not only does the gura seem to say one should avoid cemeteries vital quotes arizal that one should always be careful to remain dalit ammo is from a grave so that the forces of impurity do not do not stick to him now let's say over from the story from leo yahoo the guru once went to a cemetery to visit his mother and he went with his brother of dove bear so when they left the grass said did you see mama was very happy that uh we came to her kevin ravdov bear was surprised you know that the girl would be able to perceive his mother's presence at the cover a few days later the garage told me of deut bear that he was suffering from having visited his mother's caver with diversity what do you mean didn't you say mama was happy the girl said she was happy but it caused me much hardship so here's the bottom line the language of the grand implies all women should avoid a cemetery why apparently because women don't have the protection of talmud tyra now if you're going to go with the other gersa of the gura that a woman's talmud is samias then maybe that would offer her protection however the pisgre chuva the said say that a woman should not go to a cemetery if she is anida and she is tame only after they go to the mikvah i will tell you the khayodam says a man should not go to the cemetery until they go to the mikvah ramshaw kaminsky says that's not the custom but there is an indian not to go when when is tami the bottom line is that moshe stormbach has achieved and he says the gura is only talking about to kavarim in hudslawareths kivray sadikim are not um the varmin arts israel don't have tuma so the first thing is you allowed to go took foreign arts israel number two the guru was not talking about kyogre sadikim kybraid sadikim are like kivre aratsu israel and your fields are more accepted and therefore the grow was not talking about kibray sadiq and he was not talking about kibray or it's israel so common practice is that people do visit grace with sadiq especially if they're a relative or a parent and they are accepted more favorably but don't think that by um going to a cover you're fulfilling the words of the guru and arizal they are not necessarily big fans of it but it's interesting i saw in the introduction of the seifer that rev groucho says he once saw aaron leib simon rabaran's lapse that i haven't seen you lately where have you been and he said i just traveled to europe to visit the cover of the garage and review said really i didn't know young people have the uh the sense to visit the cover of the gura which by the way i would like to go to as soon as the the world opens up okay next what about women going to shoal because the grass says that to go to shawn to hear the the latest about um whether the vice president will accept trump's nomination or whether the senate will remain republican democrat so then it's better not to daven if that's what you're going to pick up in shula it's better not to diamond but the grow is not talking about men men are much leave to go to shul because it's a little bit zebra women have do not have a mitzvah um josh wants to come with me good you're in but um the gross said the the men have achieved to go to the to shul and therefore this does not apply to men and he brings a story over here that one time the guru in one part of his life he was wandering as we had in the tournament of the concept of pravagalas and one time it was yodalit adar and he found himself in prussia and he could not get a minion so he comes to a small city and he starts paying people to make his minion the mistake was that the grub paid everyone up front and by the time he got up to uh everybody was gone and the whenever he would think about the story he would break out into tears that he lost the merit of dominating with the minion by the way rob shimshin karelis in a moody shace writes that in the grass shul not only did women not come there was no women's section in the grosho the groud did not have a women's section says with moshe stormbach destler and kelm women did not go to shul and the reason is revdessler said because the righteous women found that when they went to shul it was hard for themselves to stay away from the balayla sinhara and therefore in europe in many communities women did not go to shoal oh there says this whole admonition of women going to shul is back in the day that if you follow the gru's advice and women don't leave the house then women shouldn't go to school but i'm told that there are communities in america that women do leave the house that's what they tell me um so in in modern society where women have jobs and women have uh go to work and women go shopping then whatever la shanhara and whatever stuff they're going to hear they hear anyway they're going to so says in his opinion there's no reason for a woman not to go to school i will say i think and i'm i'm not quoting a source i believe abraham knew his wife's wife not only went to show but david with the minion three times a day if i'm not mistaken um kenievsky's rabbitson would go to uh would go to shul but again if in your shul women are talking to you um by the davening then uh best to follow the advice of the gra and uh find somewhere else okay rabbi said that would be today's but so hopefully that gives us some clarity about what it means one should not praise someone what the restrictions of going to a graveyard are and in terms of women going to shul tomorrow we're back on with shimru at 2 30 the next malacha tonight this year is 8 30 and um sunday night there's going to be a hazak event about tu b'shvat and the good thing is there happens to be an english say fair that discusses uh tu b'shvat so uh sunday night is a hazak event and hope to see everybody soon you've just experienced another torah class brought to you by torahanytime.com