Rav Yehudah Ha'Levi: Kinnos, Kuzari, & the Cairo Genizah

[Music] and welcome back rabbi dr eliezer broth it is nice to be with you once again for this special episode we are just a couple of days now before tisha b'av and you suggested that perhaps we speak about ibudha levy and we titled this episode of the halevi kinos kosuri and the cairo geniza so before we begin i just want to thank we had somebody who reached out and is sponsoring this episode it is being sponsored by the baum family rabbi dr eliezer brought shlita so thank you very much anybody who would like to sponsor future episodes please reach out to myself at schwadem schwedmu.org once again if you have any questions comments suggestions reach out to myself or eliezer brat eliezer brought gmail.com so why don't we jump right in give us a bit of a background what the connection of a behavior levy is to tish above right now and why you picked this topic to discuss okay fair question so the reason is this follows about 15 years ago one tish above i decided to investigate a legend that i heard many times over the years especially on tish above when right before um the saying of the kinna see in halloween and that legend i'll quote it in the way art scroll kinis because that's what a lot of people use but we'll use other kinesis today so it won't be just art scroll um it says his follows an ancient manuscript states derby levy composed his kennel while journeying towards architrave and recited when he reached damascus facing the direction of sin although historians believed that ryuga levy only got as far as egypt never even reaching damascus tradition has it that he finally reached jerusalem 1145 there he fell to the ground in a state of ecstasy as he was embracing the dust near the temple mount he was trampled and killed by an arab horseman this is how it's found the art school and there's all diff and now this is a legend that i always heard and i decided i want to trace the source for this legend and what we could find out about it i was also fascinated by the khuzri now this topic seems to have drawn me into a rabbit hole which i never came out of i published some of my findings in hebrew and in english but i always find more and i need to keep in mind okay so yeah you keep that in mind even though we'll keep coming back to you for more information on more topics so why do you give the audience a brief biography of abu dhabi as you said certainly not in today's episode but who was abu dhabi when was he born where was he born when did he die and how did he die but that certainly seems to be part of the legend so a brief biography okay so just to make it very brief he's born in approximately 1075 in spain he dies in 1141 which we'll be discussing more about that he's famous in history for being one of the greatest python he wanted hundreds of beautiful pewter pismainim that became part of davening in certain places in certain filas in yamnaram and other times more by aspardom but even by ashnazim and he's more famous for amongst many for authoring one of the most important jewish philosophical works that is the kuzuri was written in the dialogue form between a king and a jew who's persuading who's persuaded to convert to judaism of course there's all types of questions if the legend is true of that itself if it happened didn't it happen beyond the scope of today anyway this yid defends yudiska dealing with many issues of philosophy and various myths among other topics it's it's simply an incredible work it is with the test of time and it's worth reading and learning properly very very carefully till today it was written by revue da levi in arabic but it was translated after he died in hebrew to translate from arabic into hebrew in 1167 apraxia by reb tibon the one of the famous translators of of many philosophicals farm and it had tremendous impact on marshava throughout the generations now just to mention the marshall there's a quote found in the sephora tyson that the grass said about it they shall learn it because he was kaddish vitar and ike such a quote powerful quote um definitely his son also was familiar was very familiar with the kuzuri and many many good islam throughout the generations from china and onwards were familiar with the khuzri and use it as far as this bismaynum le muscle we have a source from delianzo writes in his that the minigestrol in certain places was on el shabus they would sing a different tasmanim of his the one referred in hashem referring about him and until today he this endless literature about him books about his swarm purusha manisfarim keep on coming out early manuscripts of works on the the kosovo has been published in recent years just to mention a recent edition of the sepha kuzuri from professor michael schwartz it came out about five years ago it's already in its fifth edition another edition came out to make it a little more user-friendly for the the masses but in short the kuzuri has been people have been fascinated with the kuzuri and probably will continue to do so forever okay now that's just the introduction fine it seems like we need to have a separate episode or episodes just on the kuzuri hashem there's time still ahead of us hashem okay let's focus on what we want to talk about today so you mentioned that in the art scroll there is a story a legend about a behuda halevi about one of the kidness so that kinis is the kingdom of um maybe now's the time you want to get into what that kina is and why we're having this conversation today specifically about that kinah and the story of you the levy okay so first like this um as a way of a little introduction the kinis is something we say every year on tish above and it's very hard to understand regular us irregular american jews we're not so familiar with the fancy hebrew of the kinis and it's always very people have always find found it very challenging to say it and understand what's going on um and understanding these rich putin and whatever you want to kindest whatever you want to call them in many in recent years a lot of places have rabbanum give up give different they say they they they don't they pick a few and then they give the background behind the few that they are going to talk about now salvation versus salvation it seems in the pr i don't know when he started this minute but he had a minute that he would give shirum from early morning till late in the afternoon where he would discuss the kines now these it seems some years they were recorded um and eventually they were put out by rabbi jacob shack rabbi jacob we'll just get it right because i don't want anyone to have complaints or jake rabbi jacob jacob j this is called this is the first book it's called the lord is righteous in all his ways this is a transcript that he worked on very hard of the shiiram it's a beautiful read very very it could change one's tisha buff a little later and this is printed by i think that's have and maybe and some other places a little later cohen issued based on those here and then other nurseries of the very shirum something of kinase messiah sarah and there's a lot of overlaps the user of shakhtar's materials but they also have other materials and when one goes through this you get a tremendous insight into the chemist and on this guinness and um this is the by way of introduction now there's at the end of the kinis there's about ten kines that are called the the um they referred to as the p putin of zion and this is the kin noise i think that you're referring to right that oh you press put out together with cohen which is he went through it and he did an excellent job and wandered has been making these presentations on tish above for years and years and years um actually very fascinating in fact this year he actually i got to thank you because he called me and asked me every year he likes to speak about certain goddamn that passed away and this year obviously he has to talk about kanyeski and he asked me if i could speak for a few minutes and draw upon some of the things that we discussed together so thank you and anyone who tunes in will see a short presentation regarding about him again like we said we're not here to masturbate but the perspective of his farm so so those so these kidneys it's a it's a credible it's a very worthwhile buy if someone to go to go through on tishbov even not during tish above now or salvatrik in the in the uh it's called on the kin on kina number 36. so he begins saying about that and some of the aspects will get back to throughout the presentation today but he says like this he says this kinah reflects the principle in review levy's important philosophical work the kuzari that the land of eretz israel is unique not only in a metaphysical sense but in a natural sense as well the ear is clear and charged with nature is more beautiful and magnificent than in searing than anywhere else the rain the soil the stones are all physically different in the land of earth israel when the entire describes land of israel being a land of flowing with milk and honey the intent is that there is a unique quality in the nature of the land itself then he goes on and he says rebuke the lady was in love with the land of eretz israel while there are many pilgrims who traveled towards israel none expressed their love for israel as passionately as he did for example the rambam he mentions the land only once in marina vucam the rabbina becca in his classic workhorse of this doesn't talk about it's australia at all now we know the ramban was a myriadical lover of tion but rabuda levy was perhaps the most zionist as river salvation says of the torah scholars in the middle ages he says that ramban described his love for its israel and hallachic terms which are familiar to us but rebuked allevi expressed his passion somewhat differently basically levi lived in a comfortable existence in muslim spain where he's well connected with the government and was held in high regard this is something we'll return to soon anyway and just to conclude one last point about this kinna is where salvation says a fascinating insight he said that these kinos which are about 10 which is how we're messian guinness is an important aspect of tisha there are two elements of the observance of tisheba one is we say the kinis and it's to remember is to remember the destruction but there's another aspect which is to remember the magnificent prior to the destruction up to this point when we said eichen kinis was focused on the first element the destruction of eret israel but then it shifts and we discuss about before the khurban and that's what these kindest they discuss in glorious terms the beauty and holiness of jerusalem and the wisdom of our people now this second element is necessary because in order to appreciate the magnitude of the corbyn and what was lost we have to be familiar with the beauty of the basal mignon in jerusalem before the disaster occurred just to conclude this is reflected in salvation when he talks about different aspects of um let's say by lulu we take it seven days to zach this is to show us that there's different aspects certain types of zikarin hamikdash remembering of the temple around simcha and nara and this was his goal to expert in ex english okay for this forever salvation puts down and he goes through the guinness unbelievable um all types of lashings pages and pages it's it's kadai just even to read those few pages about it just to conclude with a lotion about when he talks about he says review the levy he wrote poetry beautifully he was a jew who loved judaism basically and so this is so these guinness are very important and rebuked is the first and then the next few are sort of copying rabuda levy's um kenneth now the question is why did he write this did he write it for tish above how did it get him into the into the say there are kinus that we have it's unclear exactly when this happened but we could say with certainty that already um franco has an article and another and other people have noticed that in from let's say 1272 and the 1330s even different markzware and he lists out a bunch of them in ashkenazic circles they took this piot that we don't know why when we're going to discuss whenever you leave he might have said it but it might not have been for tish above even and it got put into the master and so much so that the mirami ruthenberg is one of the next um is one of the next kindest that we say on tish above he's capping rebu da levi's kinna he's also from isha ashkenaz less than a hundred years later he dies so we see that it got accepted pretty fast and it said as part of the chemist maybe before you go on i know i'm sure this is a sugiya on its own maybe a drop of a background basic when the kidneys were put together and where would they put together from is there you give anything on that it would be too far out of the presentation today but i do think on sfarum chatter um nahi had someone talk about it maybe last year or two years ago to give some type of into to give some type of back basic background but that's way we're going to be going on too many tangents as it is so to do that is way too tangent way too many tangents whereas i call it tangents and tangents into tangents okay anyway so i can this is the first um part basically becomes accepted it's in the kinna and we say it basically everyone says it i think even people that make a very short that cut out a lot of the kidness they like to say this kinda and we'll be discussing some more aspects with it as we go on so you mentioned there's a legend and you want to tell us why are you suggesting it's only a legend i mean i guess i could ask the question pretty bluntly it's pretty clear in arts girl that's what happened i'm sure it's written in other places as well so take us take us behind the scenes over here okay so as i said when i began the introduction that i i got curious is i saw this legends i wanted to see is it a is it real or is it a legend or as you know some pessimistic people would say oh it's an art scroll legend but of course it's blown anyway so salvation returning back to the shirem at one point he br he himself brings down these this story and he says um a story is told and his lesson is i do not know if it's true and then at the end he says there's that they say there's documentary documentary evidence that he died in egypt on his way there to israel i do not know about it okay but he even he and his shiren brought down this legend so upon him i decided i want to look into this legend now asking around it's it's definitely one of the most famous legends associated with rita levy it's quoted in all different contexts and i'm not going to mention all the different people that bring it down through the ages just to mention one that i came across in recent times is so it was it's such a fascinating um um legend and we might even end up seeing that there's truth to the legend actually is that in a in the advertisement for the hummish that was about to be published in the 1770s from moses mendelssohn so at the time he had a partner a very hush of a yidd kosher jew according to mahajan mahajanas illustrated in a beautiful series of articles in yeshurin was the ibrahimovic eventually breaks off from mendelssohn that's not the parachute of today's discussion but they put out some samples of how the parish is going to look to get subscribers and in the back they had a few extra pages so so slammed put in a parish on the piyut and he brings down this legend so and and so you see that even though he's talking about but he felt there's some type of attraction with this um piot and with this story i'm not here to discuss all the sources for but what is the earliest source that we do know um in print so the source for this is is the famous safer which is known as the chalce ball chancellor brings down the story and it's first printed in approximately 1587 and he says that he has a kabbalah from an old person that when he comes to jerusalem he did kriya and then he was doing um as he said he was bowing down and everything and in short while he had kinna he said a kinder that he which was seeing halloway to shali but not that he then made up the kinna it was it sounds like he already had this you know and the artistry was always on his mind we know and then a ishmaeli an arab comes and because he saw his great vehicles he tramples him to death this is and now it becomes so accepted in the major um from historical works of great adult such as the career diaries to say that diaries and rabies of schwarzenegger's arts and numerous numerous other people it's brought down as a given that this is the story okay now in general we'll just uh we're not to go into either the shells already writes and numerous and numerous numerous sources say we don't trust a lot of the material found in the safer this um full of mistakes there's even i think a lotion when we see one second what the lushen is um so much so what there's some this one russian early lashing since but um does not use such a strong russian but he uses a pretty strong russian also against the safer however some have people have said that even if you could say that there are problems with the safer so but you have to understand that a lot of times there still could be sources for some of the things that he said so not that everything is wrong maybe a lot of things are wrong but you still have to take in val you have to you have to evaluate each thing the goofy show okay but so that's the first source and as i said it got it gets accepted through the head so hashem today we're going to discuss tracing a little bit through different ways if we could see anything about the story now who uh so as i said um right and this is many times people already said the story can't be true one such person was a great tremendous person the great son of the rashash already at the young age of 19 he's already married for a few years and he's already incredible and he's writing letters and in the letter he has a three-page passage where he deals with this story of the shape of me yehuda sorry and it's incredible just to read his yada and everything under the sun and how he's doing it we're talking about but we're not going to go into every aspect of it where do you find this these letters to read it so if one wants to read it there's a collection of some of his writings was printed by meister cook called mikhail so in the m um printed by meister of cook in the 1960s in page raish tests um it starts on page test it goes through ratio designs three sala pages tiny letters where he goes in depth with every ass of the story but the the the and even this he goes in tangents he goes what i call tangent and tangents he's one of the kings of this he actually writes about it in a place somewhere that that's how he liked to write even um and maybe i was influenced by it on some level but he's writing like that i talk like that but anyway um and he did he had a tremendous impact on me so i must probably psychologically somehow got from there but anyway one mushroom that he says is we know that at that time there were no arabs it was mostly christians okay but anyway he he he um is not so into the story because in this piece also in other places he's not very a big fan of the shashank a drop later shaddaal who was very oyster in review da levi who put out um various manuscript material of his butum also says the story he he writes more sharper again similar reasons that there wasn't arabs already in there anyway there's a lot of discussion i'm not going to bore you with all the details of all the different aspects of of of how to how in-depth they take apart this poor piece of this messiah that the shell sacavala brings down but i'll say is this foul the when we when we want to check into a story we like to find other evidence that might suggest similar sources or other people rebuild allevia is a beyond famous person so are there other earlier sources of arabia levy that mention something about this when they talk about them so we have bar hashem we do have sources that men should read levy because the levy is very early on in the two of which item we have let's say the arrived seder kabbalah we have the and a few and a few a nice few other um works and not they all talk about levy none of them mentioned this this thing which just sounds like it's something they would have there are other sources that talk about abu dhabi after he died from his kufa people that knew him they don't mention it and just to mention one is there's a there's a murderer from the rajma and the rajma talks about i don't remember how he came across it at the time but he talks about him in my article of shyness um and he again he has a few lines about him and he too does not mention anything about this story i'm talking about people from spain that would have heard about it even though yesterday was a nice amount of time after but it's not mentioned anywhere okay but that's not necessarily a way to disprove a story just because we have a few people that don't mention it okay so so um but we'll return to this we'll return to a little more evidence if he actually gets started israel in a minute just to step back for one second and this in this messiah is one what part of the story is when is he writing this kinna so that already it sounds like from different sources he probably wrote it and hooks lords and that doesn't make it that's not a problem even when he caught so he could see he could have said it um when he comes starts to struggle something that he um made up earlier okay now another way uh in general of checking out a story we want to know is or salvation marshall brought down he's not even sure he said he heard people said he might not even have made it to arizona so is there any evidence that he makes it territorial from other forget about this story this dramatic story is there any other evidence so the answer is that for such a thing we check is we check we have lists from we're going to bury and they're all over too strong everyone knows when you make a trip territorial one of the big things is you go okay it's very important to go caver um taverhapping as they call it and many people go with different tour guides and and people always wonder how do they know who's buried in each caver and actually there's a story we talked behind every one of these people now what a lot of times we have a kabbalah they say from that result that arizona said this person's buried here okay but we're talking about hundreds of years that there's no messiah okay anyway there's lists early lists interesting lists of russian that visited air to throw and they kept lists of and and they described in certain places oh he's buried here he's buried here so we want to know are there anyone early on mentioning rabitah levy being buried in arts israel that would help our situation a little bit so there is an early um travels from um benjamin of toledo which he is it's printed at 1170 which is pretty close to after the death of herbuda levy and he does say that in tetheria he um he hold on second let me just see the exact question some of in some of the manuscripts of this hebrew it sounds like he was mavaker the caver of rabbi dhalivi okay what's significant is we're talking about a messiah less than 30 years placing him in here to throw so at least we've got some part of the story already is inert israel but as i said not all the manuscripts of this have it and there are other early sources that some have him being buried okay there's all different sources about it i'm not going to list out all the different sources just one important source the seifer yorkson who dies in 1515 he says that rebuda levy is buried next to the their and their relatives and they were buried in er citron that's a fascinating thing and so the question is did even the benezer get territorial but for that we'll get to maybe later on but bottom line is we have we have some messiah some sources that say reb you thought ladies better not too strong okay and and um there's actually a gniza fragment found from the 1400s that also says such a thing and there's a long list not going to bore you with all the details but the point is we could we do have sources that point to him being very artistical so so at least some part of the story might be true so okay that that's um i would say that's the first part of this um presentation okay so now we're trying to figure out deep diving whether the actual story happened um in recent years there's been a discovery of the cairo ganesa um i've heard about it i've read about it but i'm sure rabbi dr elijah brought has probably spent he may call it a rabbit hole is the chiron is a rabbit hole someplace he's probably spent many many many hours hours days months who knows how long studying the different information that's been discovered there so this may shed light on on the topic we're discussing today yes so so interestingly enough as i'm looking there as i'm in this rabbit hole i'm looking into this to this topic i come to the topic of the chiron is a well-known topic so now in short when we talk about the chirognesia again we're keeping in mind that we do want to finish today we don't we don't want to keep everyone here forever but basically to in short in the the chironesia there are documents that are discovered which make which are a game changer for our story and now i want to give a just a drop of a background as it relates to this i personally just find it very interesting could be some listeners will also find interesting basically in the 1890s there's a famous thing and chironesa is discovered in an attic in the benezer school okay now due to this incredible find literally every area of jewish literature and history has been greatly enriched just to list some of the many areas that were enhanced by this discovery works of gaining that were lost were discovered manuscripts relating to the rambam were discovered and much much more putin and areas of jewish history of kufus that we didn't know much about also were improved because of these discoveries okay many people worked on it and are continuing to work on it as we speak does the freebird project and all different things enlarged to discuss all aspects now someone wants to get a mamasha uh regular layman's understanding of what went on there's this bunch of books here's one book i would say that i personally enjoyed a lot it's called sacred trash from adena hoffman and peter cole the lost and found world of the chironesa a fascinating light read but makes it very very interesting okay anyway so this is discovery and this discovery rocks the world you should just to understand these people today even as far as people party measures hasidim that have been printing works of go in them that they're discovering from the chirognesia lost works of saudi arabia have been coming out and and we're going to be hearing that more and more in in the future still in private space army stroll that's a hasidish a journal from the hasidim of stalin they put out recently a bunch of pieces have been published from this chirognesia by yehuda zaival so it's it's not only in the academic world it's everywhere anyway like long story short they went through the ignis fragments and crazy numbers of fragments have been discovered and they processed it over a period of let's say 50 60 years and okay a fellow named sean of goaten in in the 1950s he decided to ask i guess at one point he was near where the the fragments were he said do you have any pieces that maybe were not used or maybe not looked at so he said yeah we have a bunch of pieces that were were which according to all the people that looked it up tonight i was garbage we have place so we didn't throw it out you're more than welcome to look at it this fellow goten goes and starts looking at it and literally within minutes he finds material of of the rambam he finds material everybody that letters that was law that no that was missed up till now by people that had gone through sorting the materials and slowly he does incredible works on the gnisa and he realized that through this material that he found in the 1950s so he was keen to a rediscovery of the same needs of fragments what was deemed to be garbage he hopped as beyond important and he was able to create the to discuss a few hundred years worth of the world of every aspect of life in this period of time and the for example he's to say at breakfast his kids would hear from him um he would say the stories that he discovered he would find that was a story from a piece of fragment and then he'd say okay but i don't know what ever happened a few months later he find another fragment he's able to put together different stories from all these different pieces of these materials that were deemed to be garbage anyway i'm just cutting to chase one of the people that he found a lot of material related to indonesia in these in this material was of abu dhabi so much so he always dreamed of putting out a book he published articles of some of this material but he did never put out a book about it um however maisha gill and ezra fleischer two great professors who worked a lot in the gynum and and griezmann materials especially put out one such book based on 50 such documents relating specifically to abu dhabi levy from from this ganesha material in the 19 in the 2000 approximately 10 years ago martha akiva freeman revisited those 50 documents that they put out and he published approximately a hundred documents relating to review on so in some level relationship without leaving you say not every letter is written by the lady but review delay there's an important figure in these letters also so what happens is like this they put out a fat volume i would say 6 700 pages and then came up of and the anal so first is like this the documents are in arabic they transcribe the documents into hebrew and then they analyze and have tyra to explain what's what's going on in these documents and it's fascinating what we're going to see in these documents comes with a friedman and he goes through discovers more documents and he puts it out just to understand two fat volumes of material revisiting re-analyzing with better caleb figuring out and the dairies called tagsheba tag literally of everything going on in these things and this unbelievable parishes relating to rudolph levy and more that one can learn from in these documents now i'm obviously not going to abort today with all the fines and all the different things just to mention one thing that it comes out is why did abu dhabi leave even write the kuzuri for us the kusu is considered one of the most hush of the things that ever came out interestingly enough he did not look at it as such a significant um safer and one of the letters hold on let me see if i can find the lushen right now okay i'm gonna have to quote it anyway it's a translation because i i can't read no arabic but anyway something to the fact that he a friend of his found out about this keyboard of his he said to him juan you tell me about it and he's like ah it's nothing what was he he me say he was to this keyboard that he wrote because we're like okay whatever and he says you'll you'll be i'll show it to you no problem you'll see that it's nothing special um it was in response to requests by someone who was um because of some fera and everything and of course this letter is analyzed to death translation of every single word one has to understand this is written in arabic so what these professors have been arguing about it deals with you have to have a major understanding in arabic of of the medieval period of time and what it means and every nuance okay anyway bottom line is from these documents we learn as false we learn about review da levy that he was he was a major he was a he was a doctor he was a tremendous question he was very close he might have been a talmud of the rift he was a close friend of none other than the remy gash and and everyone was fascinated by this person he comes to visit mitsrayam and everyone wants to have him at their house and they talk about him as a murderer shamayim it seems everyone hopped with talking about a tremendous tremendous over hashem now he meets a friend he becomes very friendly with his person um just for for practical purposes his name is um hold on just to give his exact names khal but anyway this kaufman is where a lot of these letters that they discovered is what is between this half and fellow who's a businessman who travels all over um anyway accompaniment what let's get cut to the chase what what do we learn from these documents that relates to our story so what's amazing is that we let's say a person like rubida levy we know nothing about his regular life until okay we could they stay all these different historians they try to analyze this put them in different things but all of a sudden from these chironesia documents we learn about his last few years of his life unbelievable in-depth things and i'm just going to be makatsur in short basically like this it seems in when he was about 54 years old he decided to make a journey territory he began his journey he was supposed to travel through egypt in the end he didn't he ends up somehow north africa he become good friends with ibn ezra and we'll return to that for some no reason he ends up back in spain why we don't know and he decides to make this journey again which is 10 years later which is 11 40 and and these documents discuss a lot of the happenings of those few months before he made his journey different aspects okay bucketzer on september 8th he had intended to leave from egypt to israel immediately he was delayed he ends up leaving a few days before schweiz of 11 41. so he ends up i would say he ends up staying close to a year in before he ends up going it could be those issues with the with the with traveling we don't know exactly everything but in these letters and these books one's more than welcome to read it um now a letter written about six months afterwards indicates that he was no longer alive it seems that he was alive for a few months in arts israel and he died in either ave or or thomas now we don't these letters don't um sadly these letters don't have what happens to merit israel did he make a territorial or did he die right away okay so why am i bringing it up there's a letter that they discovered and this letter actually was discovered earlier um but it was dismissed that some of the scholars of um i believe it was maisha gill and as a fleischer they seem to say that from it there's a lotion talking already about him of being dead that he's dead he was left already and it says on alasha is how they interpret it and a few lines later in these in this in this fragment it says shara you shall i am so now let us understand when we have these fragments a lot of times they really are dot dot not because they're fragments sometimes and it could be very unclear words to read so from the context of the sentences that they had they suggested that it's possible we see something going on shari you shall i am in this fragment and we see he's being referred to something unusual kaddish why would it be called a kaddish it's not so common unless something happened that that he is that he died so they say that it's very possible at least that some that maybe this um legend so to speak of that the shell shell is a cable brings down might be true now they can't say for sure because this letter is fragmented you can see pictures of it i believe today you can probably see pictures of it online but in the books both of my shagil and of martha akira freeman yeah martha akiba freeman when he reads this very carefully says it does not say that he's not willing to accept that that's what's going on the letter you have to read the letter very carefully the context but it's referring to him as a in uh uh could mean it's not that he was um kaddish that he died he was a kaddish and that's crusader we see has been referred to so it's not necessarily that a kaddish means um but the point is that sometimes people are pessimistic about letters about legends and here we see that there's a possibility from the discoveries of the chironesa from this letter some some of even the academics who a lot of times are more skeptical they're willing to suggest as a possibility that there might be muckum for this legend um but now we no longer could call it a legend we have some we have some possible proof so first of all is that he gets started to throw it sounds like from these letters that he got there to strong so we now have evidence he got to throw besides the yorkshire and the different curious if he's buried there and or not we now have some more concrete evidence that he's there and there's a possibility in this in this fragmented piece um some people are willing to accept that he does make it through to trial and maybe that there is story behind there is some truth to this story okay anyway i'm not going to go into all the shyness and all the yukim of the different professors how to do it but that's um one aspect um relating to this okay now um but there's a let's step back a minute and ask a greater question why does review delay go there too strong la maisona it's almost unheard of during that period of time for anyone to guard this trump no one goes even a little later the rambam goes and he leaves pretty much right away the ramban is a little later and rambam barely found the minion but rabuda levy it seems to be so central to his um being as a person so to speak why did he go so some people say it has to do with um he wanted to dive in at the forum which it sounds like even in the in this kinetic scene i like to challenge talks about okay but he it sounds very clear he was planning on living there so it's not just the davina kwaram and and you have to understand there was a major sacrifice on his part he was a very successful person a very famous person why was he going anyway so different suggestions have been given one suggestion was by a review delayed gerst he writes that since at this time jews were very down especially better to struggle he wanted to reawaken love for its israel even though it was dangerous to go to time and it's he seemed that many tru he says maybe many people probably try to convince him not to go he still gave up everything family friends and comfortable lifestyle to go and so even if the story of the shelter is not true but he was makada shame by actually going because he was one probably one of the first great people to actually go now that's an interesting point and um just to add on this it it seems when one learns the kuzuri so i would like to suggest even more it's not just that he was trying to do this and give his which is very important because he it's clear he was a big player in in claudia's role at the time everyone knew about him and this is interesting because they didn't know about the kuzuri we know about him as the kuzuri but they knew about him because of through other ways um as i said in wall over matriarch everyone knows about that this guy is this incredible python whatever this is before youtube and you know he didn't have followers on facebook or wherever else there is okay anyway so i i i want to take this a drop further and that is based on i'm fond of quoting from a rep seven if seven has a safer lara in the safer he has a piece where he turns the kuzuri and he deals with him as an isha we know everyone knows the kuzuri is a safer a philosophical safer so to speak but there's a lot of halacha in the safer if one reads it very carefully you can find all different things and the rep seven shows how certain pieces of his became arnage and i'm going to talk more about this momentarily but as far as artistrol goes so review the levy not only was he a person that was a verity strong and he taught and chosen to say for kusuri and in his putin it's he held that one has to go that's israel if one looks very carefully at his p at the pieces it's in the end i think it's he uses the shyness that even though it's a sakana one has to go there too artistrol now what's interesting is and we shine them already in acronym one of the theorem for people not to go was because there's always considered he says no if people were for for jobs people do put themselves in sakana um and other things and he talks about this at length and basically it's not that he only was a verity stroller and he went it's because he held the halacha one has to go and he was putting his as they say the expression put your money where your mouth is he was acting upon it he held one has to go and that's where he went he was giving up everything at the time he was giving up a comfortable life and as i said he was very famous very successful person and he went and there was nothing going on there it's not like today you make aliyah and you know you have different places okay i live in ramaphe so we have to throw out ramapi cherish no he was giving up everything it's enough to there was nothing there but he was such a vertistro and he held that one has to go so i'm building off disrupt that it's uh that not there was evident that that the kusumi was also held to go now and that and it's so much so that this piece interestingly enough i recently came to this piece of the kuzuri the travis yarn is an incredible save from karkhaim and archaim he brings it down it's not clear what exactly he wants from it but he it seems like he's he's and using it about dealing with if it's a sakana and travel etc but the point is that it's with artistro so this if we go back to it comes out review levy which he deals with and also because he wants to guarantee strong now i want to just to at this point just to discuss one could just elaborate very briefly which i'm saying says you know showing him is in the light of isha so i came across a very interesting thing in the sugi of datelines so first of all the the quesadilla is quoted by many different people even the lamash even there are quotes and chuvas and the singing of the datelines um which is a incredibly complex sugya and rock the world different times especially when the mir yeshiva was in shanghai it was a very famous topic and different robot got involved but it was already discussed different aspects were discussed earlier so one of the famous people involved with the shiloh of the khasanesh and throughout the country he wrote a countries called conscious judge throughout the countries i believe he quotes the kuzuri something like 20 times now and it's clear it sounds like he's using the kuzuri as a allah dikha source interestingly enough some of the people that discuss the study of the date lines they don't they hold not to bring a riot from the because he's not isha now happens to be when we learn when you learn through the safer kuzuri you could see that this he was he was holding in the suggest he knew what's going on doesn't he maya scummer so to speak but he was as they say god's fine but we now know through the kaioken he's very close to the remy gosh et cetera et cetera now the khazanish what i'd like to point out is his followers had to hold that ish what the world am i talking about so there's an incredible conversation which needs a lot of varicose which is that it has held that there's no such thing as someone being a bala god that he knows he knows the agatha you mean say someone could be a mashiach he doesn't know how to learn well but he gives good schmoozing and inspirational schmoozin was very scared of such people he helped those people are dangerous you have to be isha and in order to and only could a ish and it's a very big um conversation relates a lot of different things it relates to hazardous times of muslim possibly um there's these pieces of the kaznas that were edited out of the moon and not everyone accepts um but this is the kazanish's opinion so if he's using the kuzuri in the dune of datelines it's because he held no there's no such thing as if someone wrote a classical work and philosophy and he's a hashifier no no he must be that he is a ish and and now so going with that he held now could be today it's a not everyone agrees with it in the series of mitsubishi verizon making aliyah but he held one has to go even if it's sakana and this is what he talks about in his in the because he talks about it in a safer so this is a arrow of mine you could take it or leave it i have no problem with someone okay so ad khan this is the story this is the legend and as we're saying that there's um something that there's something behind the legend okay um so we're basically saying that it's just because art school it's not a problem and there might be truth to the story it might be truth even though you didn't bring rice to every single point of it right every last detail right but the overall concept okay right so just i mean off on a tangent that drop you know we talked about we shine them i'm sure this is a cigar on its own every person who lived in that generation of the roshanim was a russian who we rely on i'm sure that's also a topic of discussion correct there was it's actually a very big discussion and people i believe i heard such a thing that um people some people were upset i think let's say article put out this incredible book called the the reshanam and they have a book on them very excellent books and people were upset because they listed tons of people and he said some of these people they shouldn't be called we say just because you live in a certain period of time doesn't mean you're rid for raj ramban and and it happens to be there is a lot behind that story and it relates to this kazanish as i said and it's its own conversation are there people that were bali mikra so to speak they were excerpts of hamash but they didn't know any alaka and is it possible to rely on them and commission so to speak but you're 100 right it's a huge topic um maybe one day some will talk about it properly okay that's somebody we have to find that somebody okay um any other legends with the view that levy before you finish out yeah so i just to conclude the last few minutes of this of today's presentation is this files as a relay it's because it relates a little bit then we'll be able to get back to with the chirognesia drop um as follows if you look there's a inverse again going back to our saliva where he has these shiorim that he gave on the guinness so one of the one um he mentions something to the effect like this let me see if i can find it hmm oh legend has it that rivarami benezra was the son-in-law of bermuda lady he says like this when i was a little boy i was told that review da levy was writing a poem appeared and did not have time to finish it so he left it on his table in the meantime he left the house and ezra came home looked at it took a pencil out of his pocket added something to it when you da levy came back and saw the audition he became determined to find out who had written it he finally concluded that ezra was the only person in the world who could have done it so avraham and ezra married okay salvation brings down that in one place in his commentary in hamish the ebenezer says yehuda levy may rest in peace asked me so he obviously knew him very well this is what salvation says so the question is is there any truth to this legend and what's the source for this legend so we're not going to go into a deep dive as you called it correctly into this legend just mentioned once again who's the earliest source the shashanos okay uh-oh so we got to get worried of course um and like everything else there's different versions of this story and different aspects of the story and they say similar story with rashi and okay like everything else hashem there's a safer written about appeal just the way the story goes it was a specific that inspired them have a minute to say um of course in the past few years a book came out all about this period and deals with this legend um it's called me from a fellow let me see if i can find his name would be strawberry leo a nice small countries and he deals with this legend he basically discusses if it could be true natural anyway fine but bottom line is they were very close this is clear and he's quoted a bunch of times in his writings in lebanese writings something i think someone quotes maybe even twenty this is discussed by enough taliban who was very sick in the benezer okay now does review why is this negaya is does the benezera make a territory shrill so i had mentioned earlier a sort one of the sources are discussing the different lists of the of who's buried where the um the yorkshire brings down that they're that they're related and they're and there are other sources that say such a thing so it sounds like he made a territorial interestingly enough recently there was an article written by a professor uriel simon one of the world experts in ibn ezra and it was incorporated one of his recent books on the banezra um called the yukon shell parshan he has a whole chapter is why didn't rebuke why didn't he divine azer go with tribute levy and he has a whole discussion based on these chirons the documents and incredible ideas in in the benezer's story um and dealing with and he says it's better that he if he would have gone we might not have been zaika to have what we got from the vanessa and he documents this in his article but but it could be that at the end of the day he as i said is the yorkshire and his other sources that he is buried in earth israel so even though he might not have been his son-in-law but he definitely knew him they seem to have a close relationship and this is not this is actually yes documented now just to mention one last uh two last naples about this and we'll finish we'll conclude so we already mentioned that in the in the knees from the gnesa fragments and other materials we know they met also so it's besides for the um it's besides four that they met and they had a close relationship as it's known lebanese quotes them as their salvation says one time but it's much more okay now interestingly enough again in the early sources of reshainam that we have like the ravens say that kabalamir you when they talk about them they don't mention that there's any relationship between them starting later on uh maybe the babanelle might be the the earlier source or bizarre eminem others they do start mentioning it that there is a connection between them okay now the shashadows are kabbalah his story gets accepted by certain makaires such as the maybe the cedar dairies and others when he talks about the story says cause of who okay fine even though then ezra brings down the the yuda lady a lot but he says he doesn't ever refer to him as a um that he's my father-in-law fine so he says it doesn't sound like that maybe maybe after if you want to say the story story's true even though he says it's because of who he's maybe later on he got married to reuben okay now like everything else where is there a possibility that there could be some connection between rabbi levy through marriage and and ebenezer so that's what we'll conclude based there's an interesting character that is the son of the benezer and this son his name is yitzhak now this yitzhak was interesting person seems to be he was also a great python and it's clear from the documents that he was close also with tribute and it seems that there's a good mukbang to suggest that this person was a son-in-law by ravihuda levy so there really was a family connection but again it's not 100 it's still ongoing as they say they're handling all the the details and working out in the analysis of the different documents relating to this now this person was a python sadly there is a source that says supposedly at one point distributes it went off to derek also questionable um why what we don't know necessarily but we do have some of his um miraculously they did discover some of his putem and we don't really know if he really did go didn't he go off but there is makkah to say that he was actually a son of abu dhabi so there is some again some type of truth but not the truth of that yes as the way salvation was saying over which is sort of from the shakaballah so it's basically there's like this there are legends with really there are other legends this legend got different legends took upon did not they they sometimes switched the name it might not be the leviathan's rashi others because these are the heroes of of our of the hours throughout the generation so that's why legends are attract attached to them but sometimes one should not make fun of legends because sometimes at least some aspects of legends are true and maybe all aspects are true um and just like there was the chironesia discovery it could be there'll be more discoveries even in the chironesa maybe who knows that will shed further light on the story of this great python uh and so this is giving you some insight but as i said make sure to learn through let's say or salvation others when you're saying these putin and thinking about arabic add cam for today we'll have rachmonas thank you so very very much rabbi drillies are brought i would like to once again thank the bound family who sponsored this episode please reach out to us there is much more that we would like to do and barak hashem rabbi dr elijah brought is here and ready to prepare much more content to be shared on various platforms so reach out to us comments questions suggestions and may this episode maybe inspire somebody to think a little bit more about the horror bond think about architectural and we should be had to be together narratives thank you very much