Q&A - Angels, the 13 Midos, Shofar (Rabbi Dovid Gottleib) (Jewish Philosophy)

yeah um okay so um one of the questions that I have is um if you had if it took divine intervention for you to come back towards hasem does that affect it in any way like is that any worse than coming back to hasem on your own without Divine interv absolutely absolutely B said he he said a double Kish a double new idea first of all he said sometimes you have to do Chua for the is that you did and you say wait a minute the mits was the right I did the right thing yes but you might not have done it in the highest possible quality and if you are capable of doing it with a higher quality then there's something there to fix something there to improve not that you're guilty that's to say you haven't done anything wrong but the thing you did right you didn't do it in the best possible way that's a general idea and then when you apply to to Chua specifically the idea was some people do Chua when things go bad that's good at least you paid attention that things are going bad and you didn't say it was by happen stance and took responsibility and you improved your improved your your life that's a good response but then you have to ask yourself why did it take me why did I wait until things went bad to realize that I I could have could have and should have improved why couldn't I have figured that out responsibly on my own before things went bad and then you do chuva on that Chua because it's it's it's not the highest level of Ju Just to respond to disasters that take place that's exactly what you're asking and the B said yes yes you can go back and say I did but I should have done better is there a way to get back completely to the normal spot to be after doing toua on that toua are you is it well the that the that substandard performance is then the substandard aspect of the performance is going to be wiped out whatever you do for Chua whenever you do Chua it's you're no longer responsible for that failure whatever level of failure it was of course you now have to take positive steps to make sure that you improve in the future yeah there I think they're called like different sages throughout the ages that the I'm not sure what word you're using in Hebrew but there are periods yeah yeah and the right but the periods are artificial they're really artificial their responses to certain levels of scholarship and certain uh levels of leadership and so forth and so on but they don't have any legal significance this is extremely important they have no legal significance for example the scholars that came after the time of the mishna can disagree with the mishna and come to conclusions that disagree with the mission mission is not binding on them the gim who were the first Scholars after the close of the talud are are free and do disagree with them and and come to conclusions that disagree with the gim and Theon who roughly the last 500 years some are they're allowed and some actually do disagree with the Rishon there's no point at which you say well you know he's 300 years before you can't disagree with him that's simply not correct you hear things differently and people behave differently but it's simply not correct the only spot only break where everyone afterwards can't challenge the conclusions of the prior period is the the comp composition of the Babylonian T later Scholars can't challenge conclusions that the talwood came to and the r writes the that the reason for that is is two factors were functioning one factor is there's a certain title that people have of the certain quality of scholarship and that ceased after the close of the they were called and he he called them literally those who could copy and the T was circulated among Jewish commun communities and it was accepted as binding but that happened once in history only once in history so give you a little example suppose the T raises a question and leaves it open doesn't give an answer postu Scholars can offer answers they don't say well Scholars the to couldn't figure it out we're hopelessly inferior and we can't figure it out no they don't say that and when the T discusses an issue and various views and sets up a a a a discussion between them but doesn't come to a conclusion doesn't say later generations are resp are required to try to give a definite law on the basis of that that statement that discussion of T which didn't come to a definite conclusion so the only the only break that sets up a barrier is the Clos of the Babylonian talud not the Jerusalem tal only the Babylonian talud and the break is very narrow when the the says which means that they this is you can't challenge that as for the reasons that I said but beyond that any scholar could disagree with any scholar how how much is known about throughout those times well um in the whole tamic period we have for many of them both their scholarly output and stories about their lives what what they did what they leadership that they exercised the sacrifices that they made that they interacted with people so you know it's hard to hard to measure these things you know would it fill a 500 Page biography no it wouldn't but when you take in into account what the commentators say on those passages which give you additional information additional insight into it I think I would say that it's considerable and later generations for sure yeah yeah um well just answering you know there's by the way you know it bothers me I'm sure it shouldn't bother me but it does when when you hear that a certain Rabbi takes a certain position it almost never tells you how he was and who is so on and so on and especially when it says he changed his mind it doesn't tell you how much time would buy 20 minutes 20 years tell you so uh there are rare exceptions where someone says something is challenged and he says oh I made a mistake and the next day he goes into the base matress he makes an he makes an announcement or he said yesterday was a mistake and tell you that is but but other other times you know A and B will have an interaction and then another place B is on record and say what he says it's clear that what he said to to a he doesn't hold and all we know is he Chang his mind we don't know often often the person himself changes his mind and the just says he changed his mind do say why what new thoughts he had did somebody argue with him how long did it take I find it uh challenging that we don't have any of that information obviously if the r Rashi who the editors didn't put it in they felt you don't need that information well I don't have yet good understanding of why we don't need it that's that's why makes me feel frustrated yeah um so we learned earlier today that they're they're I mean and I've learned this before but I don't remember how it's set up so there's 12 hours day right there's three hours that are th right the first three hours of the day are supposedly th and then what are the next um n hours you mean the next I I don't know what you're I don't know what you're referring to and of course you have to be very careful with the idea of hours there is a concept of that means to say it's not hours it's a quarter of the daylight period four quars of the daylight period which in the winter time is like two and a half hours each and summer time it's four hours each so it's not hours it's not hours on the clock otherwise you'd slip over into the nighttime you understand what I'm saying or it's not clear what I'm saying yeah no I AG okay so it's really splitting up the day daylight period into four quarters not 12 hours on the clock that be that means the experience will be different than the winter and the summer but what exactly you're referring to in the daytime I know the night time is split up into sections but I'm not aware of what what the split is in the daytime yeah this is open Q&A so yeah talk about Free Will with the yeah Free Will with the Mal this is a very interesting issue I did make a half a line Yesterday by saying that our uniqu is the way of Free Will and that respect was Superior to both the squirrels and the angels um there are sources that indicate that angels have some sort of minimal free will when we set up the contrast the contrast is based on the following thought that when when a Mal is ordered by to do something he has to do it the word Mal now I'm going to say something which you may not have heard and if so you have to realize that there's a weakness there Mal does not mean messenger the Hebrew word for Angel does not mean messenger Angels do lots and lots of things and many of them are not carrying messages from Wom one person to another or one source to a recipient Mal in Hebrew has a meaning very similar to the word sh in Hebrew which means agent is a kind of physical performance and a Mal is something that's created to perform so when he's given an direct order by the Creator to perform he performs per se there's no way that he can rebel against that but in the context of caring out the command from above there may be other things which he can make decisions about in terms of how to do it so there's one that's indicated almost directly in the verses and the oral tradition emphasizes it when the two angels come to Sodom um which ends up in the destruction of Sodom um one of them says toot you have to leave because we are destroying the place really you're destroying the place you the angel you're destroying the place so when they're leaving and trying to get him to hurry up and get and get out the angel says to him you have to leave because I can't do anything until you leave oh you can't do anything so you're not really doing things are you andal say you see he had to admit at the end that what he said before was not correct he pictured himself as doing it or he portrayed himself as doing it I'm going into his mind but he portrayed himself to Zulan that was an incorrect portrayal so there and the and the tradition holds him responsible having done something wrong so obviously it means at least in that tiny aspect of what's going on he had some um some Agency on his own and he would be called responsible for a mistake there is a Zohar in which says that the end of our stage of History God will destroy the Satan there are four types of judicial execution and God will use each one of them on the Su so the question arises if the Su is AAL which he is and he's given orders and he carries them out why should he be St at the end now there is a saer called B was written by the ra this is like a second volume it's not clear who wrote it something that he wrote it and something that one of his students wrote it definitely expresses his Torah so to speak and in it he says the following it's quoting starts by quoting a Zohar it says one um say portrayal of of what the yet is it's given by the following scenario there there was a king who was becoming elderly and he had a son and he wanted the son to become his successor but he wanted him to be tested to see whether he was worthy of it so he hired a prostitute he said to her I want you to to do your best to try to seduce the prince well King St here that's what she's supposed to do so that's what she has to do but how does she feel about it how does she feel about it zor is describing the ideal case the ideal case is she should do her best because that's what the king says all the while hoping that she will fail in seducing the Prince why why should she hope that because having a king a worthy King for the kingdom is a benefit to everybody in the Kingdom even the prostitutes are benefit from it so she should be enlightened enough to realize that if she fails in her efforts it'll be good for her also she has to do her best that the king charged her to do her best but her underlying motivation should be that he should resist me and the efforts to to to sedu should fail if that were the case then the um the Su would be operating on the highest possible motivation and that would be superb performance now the Su wasn't commanded on motivation he was commanded to seduce so this effort to produce the highest possible motivation comes from him and the B says that those sources that indicate that the S is going to be destroyed is because the S didn't have the highest possible motivation the sudden got into the spirit of the of the contest of the competition I'm trying to seduce him and he's resisting me so I'm going to work as hard as I can to seduce him and hoping that I've win the battle and if he gets into that state of mind then he deserves to be destroyed because it's not the outcome that K wants so he would have free will on his motivation to do what he does not the actions that he does so these are indications that even malim can have some very minimal degree of Free Will and be responsible for it but that's all there's probably a lot more about this than I know but that's what I know about yeah um when it comes to the 13 attributes of saying is there anything you can give us as to what we should have in mind yeah lots of commentaries on the on the 13 attributes you know it's very interesting Ram in the in the guide part one chapter 54 has his own perspective on this on this interaction that God that Moses has with God Moses asked God two things show me your essence I want to understand your essential nature and show me your MOS your um principles of action and God answer it in two different ways he said show me your essence God said no no man can see me and live see there means to comprehend no man can see me and live so if you're paying attention and you're thinking independently you say aha there's a qualification there no make it see me live does that imply that after death you can see God you can comprehend God and says yes he says it explicitly the eighth chapter of the laws of Chua which we may or may not get to next week he says that when the kazal described the the condition of the soul in the world to come for him is the soul then enjoying the shine of God's presence he says that means they have have joy in knowing God's Essence so it's the connection to the body which induces a kind of weakness in the intellect of the Soul so that it can't perceive God directly it's like a filter but when the filter is taken away then the Soul can can perceive God directly and understand that's one question that he asked the second question that he asked was show me your ways meaning your principles of action and to that God said yes and that's when he announced before him the 13 attributes of Mercy but the says Moses is described he's familiar in my whole house meaning that he knows all of God's principles of action ra says that that that Moses knew the whole of the cre cretion everything about it that human being can know including all of God's principles of action now this time when he said show me your principal act you get the list of 13 well that's not all of them number one and number two he knew all of them before so what is he asking for says Moses was a king Moses was a king and he's asking specifically which of your modes of action should I as a king use in ruling over the Jewish people he was asking for the particular modes of action that are appropriate for a king and then God portrayed before him the attributes and my manes doesn't treat the list the way we do he talks about the 13 attributes but he doesn't call the 13 attributes of Mercy because what's written at the end that he visits the sins of the parents and the children my minties takes that as one of the attributes that Moses received is as instruction for um for um well poke OS to to punish the wicked as one of the attributes that he should use in in in exercise rulership over the Jewish people and he points out that one thing he should learn is 12 attributes of mercy and one attribute of punishment that gives you an idea of the balance between mercy and Punishment in the attributes that you should use for ruling over a a nation that's Ra's understanding of of what those attributes are and how they should be understood so uh there are many different by the way there are different ways of listing in that passage the capitalistic sources don't count the first two names as as attributes at all so there are many many different um different uh ways to explain them I'll add one more thing which I'm not sure how how how well known it is um after the spies um God Moses praised to God for Mercy but God says I'm I'm going to destroy them all and make a new nation out of you and he prays for God for mercy and he recites some of the attributes of mercy and then he includes in his speech visits the city of the of the parents and the children and the the third and fourth Generations so the question arises wait a minute God's threatening them with disaster and Moses is praying for mercy so why doesn't he just recite the attributes of Mercy why does he include also this description of very strict accountability and punishment that bothered me for a long time and maybe eight years a ago or so it hit me that the answer is very simple by the way when you something bothers you in the in the text and you look at the commentaries and they don't talk about it probably because it's obvious it may take you you know 10 or 15 years to figure it figure it out it's probably because it's obvious to them and they have to say it what is God threatening he's threatening to wipe out the whole people right there in the in the wilderness in the midmar and make a new nation out of Moses Moses says listen you're merciful and you're kind and you're forgiving and even when you're strict and even when you punish you visit the sins of the first generation on the second third and fourth Generations you're proposing that there won't be second third fourth Generations so even your attribute of punishment won't be fulfilled if you're going to follow your rules of punishment you can't wipe them all out in one shot there have to be future Generations I think that's very P very simple very simple explanation for why it was said because in their case this kind of punishment would answer the threat of annihilation but you see it's a complex situation and you see that it varies from circumstance to circumstance whether it's the community or whether it's the individual the only thing that we know the gar says uh someone saw an image of representation of the Creator praying with a Talis and saying those 13 attributes and said from there you see that when a human being says it it won't come back empty won't come back empty it will have an effect what an effect immediately or over time or for you or for your grandchildren but it won't come back empty it will not be just discarded yeah so I have a question on that like say that the sins of a father is visited upon for the second third generation fourth generation so but why is that so I mean our parents they they make the vessel right but technically it's God who gives us the Sal right so technically he's our father so the simple answer though I don't think the agrees with this answer but all the other commentators said by the way this is teaches something about methodology these words visiting the sins of the fathers on the children third fourth Generations occur four times in the five books of Moses four times the very first thing you do is look it up all four times because it's that always exactly the same and in one case it says uh Po and then adds the word for those who hate me the standard translation is when the second third and fourth Generations also hate God also rebel against God also are sinning against God then in addition to accountability for their own sins they'll be accountable also for the sins of the first generation but if they don't follow in the same path then they will not be accountable the sins of the first generation so it isn't as if this visiting the sins of the parents on the children means even if the children are innocent no it doesn't say that because it says in the text itself it says the soai for those who hate me so then you say okay okay I got that innocent people aren't going to suffer but what about the ones who are guilty why should this add to their add to their guilt and one explanation is this imagine that the first generation does something wicked that's new a kind of new Twist of wickedness from The River To The Sea something like that they make up some new application of of absolute evil right people do things that are wrong often because they can't anticipate their consequences they don't know what what it will bring and that to a certain extent is a an excuse you don't really know what you're getting into but the second generation that sees the first generation and sees what the outcome was and then continues they're more guilty than the first generation and time goes on as the consequences are are further developed so then then there's more guilt and that's why they could have extra guilt for the sins of the first generation but that there's I'm sure there's more literature on it than that but that but the question is a good question given the the Seventh Generation reward is preserved for 2,000 Generations 2,000 Generations Alim the the least of plural is two so it's 2,000 and from this at says that the attribute of goodness and mercy is 500 times the attribute of punishment because it's 2,000 to4 yeah um how should one view friends or family members who aren't on and AR interested aren't on the DK well there are at least two different categories of people who aren't on the DK one is they didn't know they just weren't weren't trained you look at them as people who um you look at them with pity and with uh and with sympathy the Raman really writes about this in the second chapter of hilus M the laws of rebels and he talks about the Kites and he said those people who founded the kite movement knew very well what they were doing they were rebelling against rebic Authority they did it for their own personal uh Advantage the carites was a group uh started maybe 700 years ago 800 years ago in the S lands who denied the oral tradition they and their position was the or tradition was invented made up it's not genuine it's not it's not Divine and has no Authority um there absolutely no evidence for this isn't they found a a a a clay tablet uh 500 years before of The Conspirator saying hey let's make up a new story so we'll fool everybody no they did it just to be free of it and they're free of it and they contay claim that they know the written Torah actual Books of Moses then they could say look we know what's written here and therefore we're the leaders and we can tell you what to do I mean it was a whole self-interested uh vicious regime they says the rambam are are are vicious and they're Wicked and they're they should be opposed in any way possible and certainly should be condemned but their children and their grandchildren whom they raised on their mistaken beliefs are like a child who is kidnapped and brought up you know a young child who's kidnapped and brought up by his captors who doesn't know the truth and they should be brought back to their creator with chords of love chords of love until they understand and they appreciate what the truth is so if if there are like the vast majority of American TRS you know they don't know an all from a tough um the um by the way I was a philosopher there's a field of philosophy called philosophy of religion and what those of us who are Jewish in philosophy see right away is that what they call philosophy of religion is philosophy of Christianity because that's the only religion they know almost never did they write about Judaism at all and when they make an off-hand reference in a footnote the Judaism is almost always laughably incorrect they they don't have no idea what what Judaism is about there are certain Jewish philosophers specifying philosophy of Judaism the separate subject and the others who are dealing philosophy religion generally take no pay no attention to it um so um so that that that's the case that's what that's the way they have to be looked at with with sympathy with with pity with uh with love with concern and I think also with a certain special gratitude that Divine Providence pushed you in a direction somehow that you are able to know so much more than they know but uh there shouldn't be the slightest hint of of criticism or rejection or superiority absolutely absolutely not they're victims they're just victims I told the story I remember whe who how many were here but was a fellow who told me he was in he was in he lived in Pittsburgh I guess 40 years ago and he was his family was conservative and he was going to the twice a week after school Jewish Education that they provided and at one time the teacher brought in a woman who she said was Orthodox and said you can ask her questions about Orthodoxy very nice to do so he said I read about fringes that you put on the ends of your garments strings and so and so on she said yes that's true it says in the Torah that it's a four cornered garment she put fringes and strings on the end no one does that anymore that's that's what she thought so what should he think should he go ask somebody else here his teacher brought this woman in as an expert on orthod that's what he told can't blame him if he never took an interest in finding out whether he where cus or not so that this is and I grew up reform it's even much much more Dreadful than that so uh I think that's what you have to look at I look at them with respect and with with kindness and with love and I I my Rec they is and don't say maybe I could save them um typically parents don't want to hear from the child whom they diapered how they should live somehow they think you know they're sort of beyond that you know as as one mother said to her daughter know I have been 17 but you have not been 45 so you know don't tell me how I should live so and and and there's nothing wrong with feeling that way you wouldn't take advice from 11-year-old would you hey I know what you should do 11y old said come on grow up that's what they say to you come on grow up you know earn a living for 10 years and see what you say then so um if they ask you questions and they want explanations I would do it with a kind of reticence and caution and which is good policy with children but it also works with adults as well every answer to the question should be as minimal as possible say as little as possible to answer exactly what they asked and let them own the discussion let them decide whether they want to go further into it or they don't want to go further into it let them be in charge of the discussion don't take control let them have control these are things which makes it Comfort it makes it com comfortable for them to ask they don't feel threatened when they when they ask and then maybe they will ask yeah yeah um I've heard a story about a rabbi who there there with the the link of the month um and the moon there some people came by to testify that the moon was B and the rabbi given out it said like it was too soon because um the oral tradition said something about the month being having having having the month down to like very very precise time like down the subc um duration I when you say Rabbi you mean tal Rabbi of 2,000 years ago well no one could measure seconds 200000 years ago so it's there's a misimpression there at the very least there were no precise time pieces like that and and the testimony that was given about the about the moon was not based on seconds after all the witness couldn't say I saw it at 9436 he didn't have a digital watch down to the seconds to time when he saw it so he can't give testimony in terms of exact time so there there be no way of checking the exact time but the rabbis did know roughly when the moon would be uh visible they also knew which way the cres would be pointing U and where the sky would be and they could ask him that gam had physical models and he said you know was it this size or this size and was it pointing this way or this way and that way you could test the general and not not a question of lying it's question there are lots of things going on in the sky sometimes there are clouds in the sky and sometimes you catch a glimpse of the moon but the Glimpse the moon it's distorted by the sky you know it's very close to the Horizon because it's coming going down right after the Sun the First with the new moon you know there more more air in between to distort it so they wanted to make sure that it wasn't an honest mistake that they weren't seeing the flicker of the sun and thinking that it was the moon um but that's that's the kind of questions that that they asked and they celebrated their Witnesses they made a very banquet for them they could violate Ric prohibitions on chabas to come um because the rabbis didn't didn't want to lose that that testimony um that that is cited in the mishna but not the question of the exact seconds that that wouldn't wouldn't be relevant there you have a list I did have a list but um forgot some but WR um do you what would you say we should have I mean I've heard a lot of rabbis say what we should have in mind while the chauffeur is blowing but do you have any particular thoughts yeah I was going to tell talk tomorrow about about Russ sh in general but I'll tell you one thing there's a lot a lot to say about the show um originally the chofar was connected to the special prayers you have in the in the mus prayer the mus of rashash that's the second one in the daytime period um unlike all other holidays which have seven blessings in the silent prayer rash has nine the middle is three instead of one and by the way that whole text used to be said in the first prayer and then later historically we moved over to the second prayer what we say musl used to be in Shak um and the Chau is learned from Words which describe the text of that prayer so the chaua really is an art is is a an expression of the words and ideas of each of those prayers now there are different ways to do it um the U as far as the prayer is concerned the ashkanazi way to do it is that you do it in the repetition of the prayer when the K is saying out the the prayer uh that's when you blow the chaur and also the last kades you blow one bunch of blasts thei tradition and have taken it over is to say it during the silent prayer and then during the repetition which means that when you come to the final Cottage they're left they're less left over it means that when you saying the silent prayer at a certain point someone gives a bang on the table and usually half a minute or so later the chauffer starts that gives you an idea where you should be up to or could be up to you don't have to speed up in order to catch up but you try to get to a place where it's comfortable for you to stop and you stop and you listen to the the sh for BL um and in both all those cases it's it's it's accompanying the the prayer and the final KES finishes it up now that's the way it was originally done at a certain point in time a section of of of of Kos was added before the mus starts um after the reading of the Torah you you blow a certain section of prayer which has nothing to do with any words at all what I heard from Boston you know about 140 years ago he said there's a difference between articulating something with words versus expressing how you feel with the sound of your voice when you cry and you yell for help you scream and fright there something very different going on when you have the words there's an intellectual conception you have an idea in your mind and the sounds give expression to the meaning of that idea now of course of course ideas cause emotions um when you're afraid it's because you have an idea idea that you're in danger otherwise you wouldn't be afraid you may scream but the scream comes from an idea but then there's just feelings feelings of love feelings of ecstasy feelings of sadness feelings of Despair and when you do that that in a certain sense you're like an animal you have feelings and they give out in sound and that expresses a kind of desperation where I can't talk because I don't know what words would do would do any good and that he said is what the first 30 colors are where it it instead of focusing on the ideas you can focus on your feelings standing before the Creator and I'm just out of words out of words I have an illustration of that it's my own idea I didn't see it in the commentaries but I think it's correct the brothers attacked Joseph and they sold him into slavery in Egypt wanted to kill him sold him to slavery um turns out he ends up the vicroy in Egypt he saves the family by providing for them in the in the in the famine and he sets them up in a situation of great nobility and luxury and they know that they've roamed him that they feel very bad badly about wronging him when Jacob dies and they bury him in in the land of Israel they come back and they think who knows how Joseph is going to feel about this and what he's going to do about it maybe he was holding himself but back because Jacob was alive so they sent him a message they say before Jacob our father died he told us to tell you don't take revenge on your brothers don't take revenge on your brothers now imagine you're yoseph and you get this message your father sent a message to you and here's the message after he's dead here's the message message is don't take revenge on your brothers you tell me is that message true or false it's dead false first of all it's false because we know from other texts that Jacob had no suspicion about Joseph but more than that it would be a colossally stupid thing to do if you're Jacob and you're worried that Joseph going to take revenge don't wait till after you're dead to send him a message by some through somebody else tell them straight before you die listen don't take revenge against your brothers it's dead false okay you and I are very clever we can figure out that it's dead false can Joseph figure out that it's dead FSE yeah sure now play some logical games can the brothers anticipate that Joseph will figure out that it's said false yes they can so why do they say it usually the purpose of saying something that's false is to get the other person to believe it because you have some advantage in his believing it why would you tell a lie which you know that the person you're telling it to is going to identify as a lie I think that's a good question I didn't see in the commentators but there are hundreds of commentators so obviously I didn't check them all and ask around see if see if you get an answer to this question I think the answer is they know they know that Joseph will figure out that they're lying and they want to create an impression impression is we're out of resources we have no excuses we have no justification we can't even appeal to Mercy we're lost we're lost there's a expression in English grasping at straws do you know what that means have you ever heard that expression when the ship goes down and the the people on the ship are going down also and they see a straw floating on the water they grab the straw why the straw is not going to hold them up the straw is floating isn't it the straw is floating so instinctively it's floating and I'm going down they're grasping at straws and the purpose of it is to portray their hopelessness we appreciate our guilt so vividly that we know the situation is hopeless and maybe expressing their hopelessness will have an effect on Joseph and if that's right you can understand very well why Joseph says to them you're afraid of me have no fear after all everything you did to me was a benefit to me I didn't suffer at all I ended up Vice Roy in Egypt and able to save the whole clan why would I take revenge on you if what you did actually benefited me he say say to them you also sinned against God that you have to take care of but that's not me I'm certainly not I'm I'm certainly not going to do you any evil so they got that response from him so I think there is that appropriateness of expressing a kind of hopelessness and um the hopelessness comes from I'll say one more thing the hopelessness comes from given where I am who I am what my resources are I can't do anything but that doesn't mean this situation is hopeless because you're my father you're my king you're my you're my Creator and you can save it so the situation is not hopeless only I with my resources if I had to deal with it alone I couldn't do anything to rectify that Chua is is a great gift it's a great great Divine gift okay that's something to think about when you're when you're hearing the Shau for both the first time and also when you hear it later when you hear with the words to think of it as an expression of the words nobody else no yeah I don't an example but I heard that sometimes the rabbis have kind of like a strong language towards each other maybe they'll say like you don't know what you're talking about something like that when they're saying this what are they saying it in a serious way or they're being playful so you see here's a case where my question from 20 minutes ago would be very relevant do you have the comparative ages of the two rabbis maybe the one who's saying the question is 22 and the other Rabbi is 71 then would be perfectly appropriate right and a person can can deserve a strong strong language a strong reprimand um I think there it's very hard for us to know the kinds of relationships that they had whether they were colleagues on the same court or whe they were meeting where they met only once in their lifetimes we don't have all that information it's very difficult for us to uh to uh to deal with that way playfulness sometimes you do have that so it could it's not not not possible to to have such a thing altogether but whether to apply it in these things I don't know in the medieval period you have very strong language and there it seems to be where the the SE the second author feels that what the first author wrote has to be strongly criticized lest it have a an inappropriate influence on others um ramban writes a few times like like that about the r for whom he had unending respect unending respect and honor and and gratitude and all the rest but certain things that he wrote he felt had to be opposed strongly precisely because he was so great he could have that influence uh on on other people U and that wouldn't be a a sum up of his of his scholarship or righteousness but simply a way of making sure that people don't don't get misled by what he said in fact um this is this is Da we talked before about whether you could attack earlier Generations my manes wrote the guide of the perplex that caused a lot of controversy there were people who came out against it as mistaken which is perfectly appropriate other people supported it some people changed their minds Bona in his early life attacked the r and later he changed his mind and he wrote shich Chua as penitence for having attacked the rabba um but um yeah so thean wrote criticisms of the guide of the perplex now the RV a generation later two generations later wrote responses to the rans critiques of the RBA wow the raan's like you know like power he's in all respects the r actually it's called that he wrote something that with with that with that goal is Monumental but one of the things he says there is that sometimes Ran's criticism doesn't accurately portray what the rambam wrote and He suggests that the ran understood that other people are going to read the rambam in this way that is to say misread the ram in this way and then because the ram wrote it they're going to think this must be right and then the ran says well I have two CH two choices either I can try to explain to them that they misread what the ramban wrote which may convince them or may not convince them and therefore might not save them from the bad effect of being affected by their misreading in the Ramba or I can simply reject the RBA and use my authority against his to protect them from Simply accepting it as uncontested part of the Jewish tradition and he did the latter he attacked the the Raman raman's criticism sorry he's understood what the Raman was doing was criticizing a misreading in the in the guide because other people will misread it in that way and he didn't want them to be affected by that misreading and and the the was pointing that out pointing out that that's not what the ra really meant you do have this in the talud at least one CA one case which occurs a few times let's suppose there's a a dis of opinion between rabi hood and rabish shiman and a certain scholar knows the law really is like RAB Huda now he comes to a town and they discuss this issue with him and he hears that they've got it backwards they've Associated huda's opinion Huda oh now they're going to be in trouble because they believe you should always follow rabuda but in this case what Huda said isn't reab Huda it's really rabish shim they got it backwards so he tells them thein decided that in this case the law is like because if he tells them that their scholarship is wrong you really mixed it up and you got it associated with the wrong names they won't believe him in which case they will in their Fidelity to Ruda be doing the wrong thing and he'd rather mislead them about who said what then leave them doing the wrong thing doing the wrong thing is worse and of course he only going to be misleading those who aren't Scholars has has to be a group of people who don't who aren't really Scholars because if they had a real scholar there either the scholar would know who said what and correct them or he he could speak to him in scholarly terms and and show him that the was so so this was a question of um misrepresenting a certain aspect of the truth in order to save from a from a from a disaster so you know I once was speaking to my about something similar and he said would you lie to save someone's life I thought yeah I would actually you know if he's gonna die I can save him by telling a lie yeah I would Li to say okay so can't be always wrong to lie can't be always wrong to lie Manuel k something they say the greatest modern philosopher wrote that it's always wrong to rine always the footnote and the good luck so I I when I was teaching universary I I asked my classes okay you got a rapid knock on the door you open it up Peter standing there he's saying George is out to kill me he's coming with a gun and he runs and he hides in your closet 10 seconds later George appears at the door with his gun drun have you seen Peter what am I supposed to say oh sure he's there in the closet thanks bang and he's said is that what you should do tell the truth I don't think so right thing to say is yeah I saw him 20 seconds ago he ran around the house go quick you'll catch him and then close and Bolt the door that's what you should do should always tell the truth question is what do you lose by telling the truth what do you gain by by by telling a lie so that being the case um you um you can do this but of course it's not the kind of decision you should make on your own you should go to atic Authority ask him in particular case whether you should do it or not in marriage you'll see that there are times when you could tell a white light you know why do you do that because you want to show appreciation for the person and if you will say the truth the literal truth the person is going to misread your attitude and it will cause a rift in the relationship and that'll be false so either way there's no way to actually communicate with full truthfulness then you have to choose the choose the difference between them my again another context my example is this you live in Boston you have a cousin in Florida who's coming up to visit you and it's November and he the cousin has heard that it's snowing in in the in um in in Boston he wants to know should he take his boots or shouldn't he take his boots the problem is your cousin is convinced that you exaggerate so if you tell her there's eight inches of snow on the on the ground they'll say Ah that's Freddy's always exaggerating he says eight inches it's probably four inches and he won't bring his boots for four inches he'll only bring his boots for six inches so he says how many inches of snow on on the ground what ought you to do if you say accurately eight he's not going to bring his boots and he's going to be discomforted say 10 or 12 they say ah saying 12 is probably six but for six I'll bring my boots what should you do either way you're going to cause him misinformation there's no way out now that that's a kind of case where you tell what's called a white lie because if you say you know how's the new hat the new hat well um actually actually it's awful my husband thinks it's awful he must not like me he doesn't doesn't my appearance no no you were just comment take on the hat that's not how she's going to take it she don't take it a comment on the hat she might but she might not you know if not or the supper that she cooked for you one of the new WS you know and cooked it and he said oh it's really wonderful so the next night she cooked it again the next night she cooked it again after the third night he said you know it's really wonderful but I'm sure there are other things that that you could cook that are also wonderful a little later into the relationship when they understand each other better and they can share better you know then then that might not be necessary but sometimes it is necessary and then those times it's definitely appropriate okay okay so tomorrow I'm going to talk to you about rashash and then M next week we'll go back to the laws of chba [Music]