Rabbi Yom Tov Practical Spirituality: Mystical versus Intellectual Judaism

hello and welcome to practical spirituality here in a shatori old city of jerusalem overlooking the Temple Mount right now we're discussing intellectual versus mystical Judaism they seem to be quite a quite like kind of opposite traditions and you often meet more Jews that are intellectual and less Jews that are of the more mystical types it turns out that originally every Jew that was intellectual was mystical they were the same guy it was like one-stop shop when it came to these things meaning meaning whoever was the wisest Jew mean he had the most information of the oral tradition he was also the same person who had the most intense mystical facts we got a couple more guys in here we got any more chairs back there okay you got a chair that's amazing so just shut that door anyway if he knew the most he was also the most mystically oriented now can I just mention something that a lot of us don't think about and that is leadership in Israel has always been a double thing meaning biblically it was a king it was a prophet the King didn't it wasn't necessarily the biggest scholar in the world and he wasn't necessarily most spirit today in the world but he was a game always from the tribe of Judah and then there was a prophet who was the most learned and he was the most spiritual and he would basically call the shots regarding the big stuff when they needed to ask really big stuff there was a high priest had a breast plate that had crystals on it 12 different precious stones each precious stone had one of the names of the tribes on it and you could actually ask it questions and it would answer you which is really weird but you can ask the stones questions and they would they would give you answers of national importance like you don't mess with that thing unless it's really important you're not supposed to you know you don't just ask like things about the stock market or anything like that which we can talk about later with David anyway would you yes I don't know how it answered exactly it was something lights they were lighting up and stuff yeah it was pretty cool and anyway it used to me that the most learned people were the most spiritual people and but the other thing is they were leading us and what we've got today is weekend what are we supposed to do we have to look to the scholars to lead us but they don't necessarily have that the mystical tradition - meaning meaning there are those who have the mystical tradition and they can look at you and just tell you like everyone you've been in every incarnation that you've had there were people who could there was a Jew in Jerusalem when I got here there was the last living Jew on earth that used to be able to do this there there were many at one point who he was a I think it was a Yemenite in a bookshop in the bar in Quarter do you ever get to you know what I've done did you ever get to meet yeah I never got to meet him but you wait in line at the bookshop he's the guy who's bookshop it is no one ever bought a book I don't think because everyone just wanted to know who they were in a previous life and he would just look at you and tell you who you were in prevail in lifetimes there were people could read beards beards tell a whole story like I I guess they could then there's plenty of people can read faces which helps if you're a woman it's a little hard to read your beard but the people can read faces the anyway but there's there was these kinds of people were guiding Israel today you have scholars guiding Israel which which is wonderful we do need to know a lot of details and we and thank God we got people with incredible clarity whose minds have been literally honed by Torah in such a way that they think like no one else in the world there's two reasons why Jews have always been at the top of the fields of most things one is that we have that and they have a hundred and fifteen average IQ which is absolutely and totally unheard of on our planet it is one entire index above the rest of the planet and that that's that's just weird I mean things like that shouldn't exist on our planet but Jews are are at 115 average IQ which is which is just figure that out like had that happened that's one reason why Jews wind up at the top of every industry because every industry is a hierarchy of competence in some of the very thank you is gonna be very confident and they're gonna rise to the confidence they're gonna rise the confidence ladder however obviously there's other things that don't require the intellectual confidence they require more instinctual competence like for example sports art counseling it's not gonna be you know you know no one here like wants to go speak to someone who's really smart they want to speak to someone who's really heart yeah when they're when they're gonna get counseled and with a lot of intuition in that process so so that's that's a different kind of person anyway the but yeah Jews have those numbers but the other thing that Jews have is is that they have they have brains that have been honed by Tony look study Tom Munich study basically takes away the cobwebs in our thinking it is very very very hard to follow a line of Tom Munich study and and it could go on for pages and it's it could also get interrupted cuz the Talmud thinks like your mind on sativa meaning meaning it's a new subject every 30 s every 30 seconds there's a new subject that gets dealt with and then another one in another one another one so the Talmud could follow a line for quite some time diverged into some really crazy sci-fi type story for a while which is really only there for Kabbalistic reasons meaning for us to understand deeper stuff and then it shoots right back to the story and your brains got to stay right with that story as otherwise I'm sorry right where the point was before the story because otherwise you're gonna have to go review the whole the review the it's kind of like guys I don't know what that game was it was like it was called a pachinko machine where the ball goes shooting up and it comes through all these all these channels of little pegs that were on the thing people is kind of a version of that I suppose but um but it not just ball coming down this vertical thing and and anyway our minds get honed to him by that fact I even make a a THC challenge it's called the THC challenge which is that all the people who were smoking cannabis whose brains don't think Tomita Clee so if they learn 10 pages of Talmud by heart in English you don't deal with the Hebrew just in English if you can follow the argument for 10 straight pages and memorize the argument that that not only will there be no more effects of any overuse of THC but but they will have they will have there will be thinking in ways they never ever ever ever dreamed that they could think and that's the mind on tone now when you hear about Jews rise in the tops of Industry it's two things one is the IQ thing but the other thing is that is that usually when you hear these great names they were usually born into very observant yeshiva families very observant Ashima thin it's like for example Karl Marx grew up in ich in yeshiva Albert Einstein grew up in in also in yeshiva the what was that other guy's name what oh wait wait Einstein was not raised in yeshiva but in a full yudish world so like his everyone raising him was thinking that in these terms Mason is Shiva he was raised in your TV's a smart guy but the but the thing is what happens is if these people drop out of Judaism with that IQ and those brains they're gonna head to the tops of industries automatically they're just gonna see through they're gonna thread the needle through all of that industry and get to the top of it and sadly because many of them have dropped Torah they don't have the moral the moral voice which can wind up blowing up into a kind of a desecration of God's name because everyone knows the guy's Jewish but now he's up to no good you know so so if we never liked it when Jews are in the news when it's the rich and famous powerful types who have misused their their power because they were not guided by Torah and they didn't have a mentor who was a rabbinic figure and so some trouble yeah speaking of having a mentor a rabbinic figure there's a famous story of the head of Starbucks it was a Jewish man what's his name Howard Schultz he met with the rochev of the Miri issue with the biggest issue in the world he met with her a Shiva there he's the CEO of Starbucks and he met with him and he asked the rabbi what the lesson of the Holocaust was like what lesson does he want him to get from the Holocaust so he said that the lesson was that that there that when the Jew when there were like five people on a little wood bed there was no way to survive the night without dying there was only one blanket so and you know you put this guy pulls that way if you were on the ends you weren't gonna live that night and in freezing temperatures one blanket and so what the Jews discovered was if they all kind of pile up together they could get the blanket to cover everybody and you might have a very uncomfortable night of sleep but you at least are alive and so is the guy next year and so that's how they lived and so he said to Schultz he said with your wealth God has given you a blanket make sure you're covering everybody that's what he said to him but imagine every wealthy person was getting those kinds of that kind of mentoring going on speaking of which tonight's the night where my mentor teaches he's this great Kabbalistic person who lives very reclusive Lee it's almost impossible to get to him unless you'll be in my van tonight I had a 10:30 at 52 Shmuel Hanavi or I can swing by the old city if that helps anybody old city swing by so I'll swing by Jaffa Gate around yeah he has Shabbos guests who are female but tonight's the Kabbalistic journey you have to be born Jewish to be in there because he's teaching some of the secrets that a Gentile is not allowed to hear so so he won't teach it to people are not Jewish and if they're in the process of converting they have to come after they finished their conversion comforts are great he has plenty of converts hanging around yeah anyway if it did but he's like the great Merlin of Israel and we're gonna be with him tonight I'm gonna come by Jaffa Gate around 10:30 you my van we have to go out to the mountains okay um now for us what are we supposed to do and the answer is we are all I mean what do you think you should focus on the intellectual property of Torah or the mystical property of Torah which one both but what have you had to choose between the two if you had to choose between the two which one okay all in favor of the mystical raise your hand I'm asking which one's not I'm asking which ones writing up which one you want yeah which one would be the right one if you only had time to choose one okay all in favor the mystical raise your hand everyone's got a vote all in favor the intellectual raise your hand okay yeah almost got it so the answer is depends if you're male or female if you're female then it would be more important to study the mystical tradition if you're male then and you only have time for one or the other then you should be studying the intellectual what's the tradition what's the difference yeah well they if you're studying the mystical tradition you're going to be connecting yourself deeply to God what's really deeply excuse me for men and or winning oh yeah it's because the the men have an obligation of Torah study that's commandment in the Torah no we also have a commandment to cleave to God which you have commandment both ways but but we have to because we run households I mean where we are the voice of Torah in our homes so they're so you can't even get no offense against anyone not raisin observant you can't even get near the dating pool of observing women with that tour in that lunch because because she they don't have that level of detail in their upbringing in their studies they don't get that level of detail they're counting on their husbands to know all that stuff so if you're male in this class you want to know more of the intellectual property and spend your times like Thursday nights like we're going to in Shabbat and maybe other late nights learning the mystical tradition but the meat and potatoes of your day should be spent on the intellectual study so that you have knowledge so that not only can you get married but once you're married your home has a Torah base to it your wife can count on your knowledge what yeah well that's that's what we're here for we're here to connect to God and so and so since you can rely on your husbands you know Halawa ability to figure out things in the house your jobs to be the most spiritual person anyone ever ever ever met every single girl in this room has to be the most spiritual person that anyone ever met and all the guys in this room you have to be the most spiritual person anyone ever met and you got to know a lot of Torah yeah you gotta know a lot of turret and and so it's a pretty big obligation it's pretty big obligation but I have a feeling I mean let's get a short your hand I'm not gonna put the camera on y'all but how many of you dedicate how do you dedicate I don't know what would be called well I would you think the average Jew from just your experience since you've been here for a little while how many hours would you say a Jew should spend on a week focused solely on the mystical traditions out of a week out of seven days how many hours would you give it a fully observant Jews should be spending no we after that study that we have to we also study the laws and the intellectual stuff how much would you say what would you say twenty hours a week on the mystical know there's there's specific miss this just this yeah there's just specific stuff you're not supposed to him not we're not time of cleaving to God every man has a commandment to cleave to God he's gonna have to learn a lot of mystical traditions to do that mmm I like the way you said that that's very nice but they but there is a lot of study that's necessary to up it to up it beyond just the emotion like they into the mystical tradition of Judaism we have a massive tradition yeah I mean the most famous mystical traditions is called Kabbalah in general but there's that's broken into like book after book after book after book a lot of oral tradition in the Kabbalah it eventually got put in layman's terms which makes it really easy on us which is called classy dude the books of classy do it and and and there's also writings of other stuff the ROM howl the Vilna Gaon and many greats of rishonim wrote there's a lot of great traditions there and that stuff we have to know that stuff ok here we go raise your hand if you spend five hours a week doing that five hours a week doing it yes no nuts hands up very good not four hours a week three hours a week on missed mystical traditions no you're studying mystical traditions or in practice on your own sure three hours a week she's on the three hour a week two hours we nice tourism a one-hour week what am i grande good they raise your hand at the beginning okay anyway the bottom line is as you all could see almost very few people raise their hands and we all have to we have to know this stuff we got to know this stuff now [Music] they're not really against why is there like Hasina mr. Ogden yeah they what happened was they just to tell you brief history used to be everyone knew everything I mean he ever knew both the mystical and the intellectual and what happened was there was a false messiah about 400 years ago you guys ever heard about the false messiah you heard of him shop dates fee you can look it up it's crazy but there was a false messiah who was using the mystical tradition and like wow everybody and and he made this whole messianic thing and it just totally like fell apart and was a terrible you know ended badly and so what happened was there were people who went who went against the mystical tradition or at least wanted to lock it up amongst the scholarship only like top-level scholars are allowed in no one else and that was called the MIS nog Jim at first it was everybody but what happened was then maybe I'll say it like this there became this it was called rationalists movement there was a rational period in Jewish history it didn't last that long because within a hundred years of it there were these masters of Kabbalah who who disagreed with it and said that we need to bring you know if like the intellectual side of Torahs the meat and potatoes the Kabbalah is like the the gravy and so there were kabbalists who said high level kabbalists who were not Hasidic who said hey we got to bring it back and so they brought it back and that became known as the Hasidic tradition and then the ones who said we should not bring it back I either mr. Ogden those the ones who said we should not bring it back we should let it remain amongst the scholars they're not against it they're just saying let it stay at the top of the tower of the Torah scholarship and they were never against some of the greatest Kabbalists ever lived were from that camp well the while the Hasidim had this far reach of like trickling it back into the jewish world they were just putting the gravy back onto the meat you know sometimes people pour gravy on to meet that dried up and you know serve it again you know and that's what because see this has just resurveyed that got its wetness back it became moist again and that's all it's I understand both sides of the argument they both you know they both make some sense but uh anyway that but that's how that went and so the whatever the scene him where that's who the know today I mean the words I see them doesn't mean it have anything to with a Hasidic movement today I know people have nothing to have class see them or the biggest person I ever met and I know people are total I see them who don't know the first thing about Casillas and so today Hassidim some it's a it's committed community identification you know yeah there's a community identification but living Hasina I live in a non Hasidic neighborhood that's you know it's a whole courtyard of non Hasidic people these people are way bigger if I seen them listen to my note there real hood seed in these guys and they're and they're not but they don't they're not part they're not card-carrying member of the community of custom that I'm part of their non Hasidim were very facility in their approach deep meditators into the mystical tradition extremely learn it into Kabbalah of all ages yeah I give a whole list before let's let's go down to the next question it's on that Facebook and YouTube and all those good things in tour anytime okay