Alei Shur: What Do You Value in Life? - Rabbi Guy Matalon

[Music] we're gonna continue with the topic that we spoke about before which is the two major functions of the intellect so for those of you who were not here for the first four this year we talked about that the intellect does two things one is to give us a report of reality we call that recognition cognitions right cognition then there is another part of another action of the intellect which is called evaluation and we said is that one of them one of these actions is theoretically supposed to be objective and the second is by nature subject the objective piece part is the part that we are trying to figure out what reality is cognition the Hebrew term is Hakata whereas the evaluation hahaha is something that is subjective how you value something depends on your personality or so we saw it but the ally sure says really the source of the evaluations of how we value things in life is really coming from our nefesh it's really tied to the nefesh and we ended with a teaching of urbane Ayana the Rev Adriana said that if a person values so they came righteous people good morals madoka Sodom active loving-kindness mitzvahs rabbis naturally that is what he will become how do you find out what is it the essence of the person le shoe says it's mo muto sheila damaged alabama she O'Malley's the essence your essence is going to be discovered when we look at what you value what you think is important tells us whoever you really are what you value tells us who you really are so if you want to look for a good marriage partner those are the type of questions that you should ask what do you value what do you find important what do you want in life now when God created the world some majors the Angels said to him why are you creating these beings what are they gonna do why are you paying so much attention to human being and the measure says that the colors Baro who said to them is there among you ever in the fashion eyes the value of the nefesh then he quotes a puzzle that is part I we talked about this passage yesterday but in a sense he says to them that this world is about values olam has there is about values whatever you choose in your life is about what you value and there's an example that he gives there's a very good example I thought it was a very very good example the intellect can look at a piece of paper that we term that piece of paper Harry stamp and says this is worthless it's worthless usually it's used already right it's got the stamp of the post office but on the other hand there's a person who values these used stamps and they he collects these stamps and to him they're worth what a lot of money some stamps the older they are they're very rare as they say are worth millions but in reality from a intellectual perspective means nothing but there is an aspect of value that is put into this little piece of paper this tiny little piece of paper that says this is worth a lot of money where is this value coming from from people so sometimes you see the connection between what the intellect says with regard to reality and what the intellect does with regard to value don't agree and that really this world is all about values in Western society we value people who could take a ball and go from one side of the court to the other and put it in the basket and we pay them a lot of money there are other people who can take a little stick and hit a ball certain distance and we are will throw more money at them and if there's 11 guys who can put helmets right and shoulder pads and go beat up 11 other guys they're not beating them up I know I've seen football but the idea is that those are the values that we say this is important this is what and we see the value if there's a guy who could sing but he only has one club who cares even more money right but that is a matter of values to matter what do we value and it tells a lot about who we are and part of learning loser is figuring out first of all hey what do I value and what is it and do I recognize that what I value is this the truth and if it's not then what are you doing about those this is what we're involved doing okay so we could see that the way that we value something can create almost something out of nothing take a used piece of paper called stamp and put so much value in it that people are willing to pay a lot of money for this little look at diamonds apparently diamonds are not that rare they're not there's some sort of a warehouse full of diamonds that they're just releasing and small amount to create that you know and that if you get engaged you have to give a diamond now I'm not telling you not to or to but it's a way that we take a piece of carbon right and we say this is valuable and then this is worth a lot of money and to every girl you want this on your hand cuz he really loves you then you know he should get you this piece of carbon now you can take can buy a piece of coal it's made out of carbon and say you know put it on your finger this is good turn into a diamond with enough pressure that's not gonna work we put values into things for different reasons marketing is all about value just ask mortified it's trying to get people to believe to have value something that doesn't have the value that it should have or it has more value than Internet this world is about values it's not a world about truth and falsehood there is reality we have the ability to decide what is true and what is false but when it comes to putting value everything gets garbled up but we have to be aware of this we have to be very open to the process of evaluation of where we're putting value okay for us there's a statement that we say in chakras and Chavez and camel ok noble amazi there's nothing more valuable than you God in this world that is what we want every Jew to recognize that is that he value the colors borrow who more than anything and if you recognize the veracity or the truth of this statement and you live by it that is the purpose of Judaism to value this is what we say on Chavez we pray to a shaman we say there is nothing more valuable than you God in this world bama's it if we say which we did that the IKAR the main part of our freewill is to reach the value that is true absolutely true then where do we go from you so we sat before the sake of the intellect has to be pure and has to work right that is straight can't work crooked and then if your intellect works like it's supposed to you will come up with true reality what reality is truthful not just perception sometimes you perceive something you think it's true but you know you realize that it's not never had that do you happen to you for example you thought it was a friend and you you know then you realize that's not and you put your hand in your pocket I keep walking because we perceive a certain thing and it turns out to be that it's false but that could happen in very serious things very serious things that have implications about life and death so how did the rabbi's define this type of intellect so I'm going to share with you what the Rambam wrote in the guide of the perplexed if you want to look it up it's it's book 3 chapter 51 he says like this this intellect that was bestowed upon us by God is the connection between us in him so the way we connect to God is through our intellect it is not through our tummy it is not through our eyes our ears or other bodily faculty it is through the intellect it's very important and the reaches the ability is given to you if you want to strengthen that connection and you have the ability to weak in that connection up to the level that is disconnected completely it's up to you you have the ability to connect to the cutters borrow hope you have the intellect to connect to him and you could take on occupy yourself with ways of connecting to the cutters barkal more and more and more thereby strengthening that connection or you can weaken that connection you could do it slowly so the problem says or I would add you could probably do it more quicker you could do it quickly if you want it it's up to you but the question is what do you want are you going to use the intellect for the right reason for the wrong reason so the Rambam gives us a very very clear understanding of what the intellect could do if you use it right if you use your intellect correctly it can connect you to the cutters bar hold that's what its purpose it was designed this way but you can also Diskin you could change its use and use it for other things I don't want to give you ideas so I'm not suggesting anything but I think you can figure out what you can use your intellect for like inventing bitcoins or forex trading which now is going to be illegal in Israel reversal of Elvis says that the way the intellect works is to connect God with the human being that was is the intent of God the intellect is the tool that we can use to connect to God and it is creates this intellect which is if connected to God creates the desire to want to connect to God even more ok so it sort of builds and once you have the connection then it wants you to have a bigger a better connection and a better connection and a better connection in the Vatican because you want that connection so the seco says that issue is the mahkum for CIT - Maya in the human being this is the way that you get the idea - mind through your intellect see either the smile is help from shaman then you get an idea in your that you should do something like this and it works like wow that's the either the schmeyer sham helped you well that's a little too far you're getting help but it's through the things that coming into your mind see I'd the dish mine it is what wakes us up listen to what he says wakes us up to do a good deed it warns us that we don't do bad deeds and it is also has the consciousness the conscience that attacks us if we did something that we shouldn't have done all those three and it comes from the intellect and we see that even with regard to making money making a living the posix says and you should remember the Lord your God that he gives you strength to succeed Casso trial right so if you look at the targum it says there that God gives you eight gives you ideas to make money to Succeed in Business mortify you hear this that's the theater dish Maya and the Drake is the place where we connect to God is the pure intellect but you have to make sure that it's pure so now let's talk about the different parts of the intellect we know there's hokhmah there's been and there's dad okay talk Mabini and dad three terms what do they mean we're gonna talk about we're gonna talk about that okay so let's talk about bina first bina how would you translate bina anybody application knowledge understanding so the reason I didn't I didn't define it is because I'm gonna give you definition and then we'll come up with a word that actually works bina is the ability to understand one thing from something else bina is understanding one thing from something else differentiation it's it's more probably inductive knowledge deductive knowledge so listen if you understand something from something else understanding one thing is not called bina but understanding this thing from the first thing that you understood I'll give examples that is called bina because now you have something new max you have something new that you didn't have before and that is veena veena is when you are building new buildings new ideas correct you say one thing and you go okay if that's true then this is gonna be true how'd you get that because it's like this ah how do you get that because it's like that and you're learning one thing from another you knew this now you're learning from if it's like this but this means that which is you're creating something new that is called bina says in the Torah via Morelle Hakeem now say Adam B'Tselem a new container we shall create God and God said shall create man or Adam in our image in our likeness if you look in this puzzle what is Rashi say Levine bina Levine to understand we'll ask it Satan and what does that mean that once we are able to look at what our senses present to us which is all sorts of information our senses present us with all sorts of information right we call that home a matter we then abstract room strip the matter in order to come up with a principle so if I show you a lot of different books or chairs or dogs eventually you'll come up with an idea of what a dog is or what a chair is what a book is even though they're different shapes different sizes have different but you have we have the ability to take sensory data the things that we see in our world and abstract from it take from it an idea okay and then we become why is it because we learn something from something but if a person has an intellect that is not pure that is not thinking straight you will not be able to do this accurately you'll come up with things that are crooked you'll come up with things that are problematic because then you're not getting a true picture of reality you're getting a warped picture of reality and the whole system becomes skewed now but if you read Rashi Rashi says this kita Moutinho sera she brings a measure that says that with this God implanted in us the ability to be like God he gave us an intellect to learn one thing from another and that ability that ability is supposed to lead us to what to imitate God recognizing true reality should create in us the desire to imitate God that's the idea that and what is that imitating God he's merciful you'll be merciful you take care of the poor that is it's supposed to make us similar to God in our moral virtues you see there's a direct connection between understanding universal truths understanding what reality is and our moral behavior that's how it's supposed to work if you're not crooked [Music] [Applause]