Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb - Jewish Philosophy: Questions and Answers - 18

how you doing see you in a while yeah you'll be questions to you I have a friend of course if we just want to die he recently finished this PhD in solar panel physics and what is interesting about him he studied for a few months in Michigan Berlin and then he was religious for a few years and then he told me that one day he asked himself what what is he doing and he could not gear find and proper answer to this question and after that he became not religious but it's also interesting he's he's willing to discuss this religious topics and spent you know hours after discussing all these things and still I could not convince him that you know Judaism Orthodox of Judaism is the right path so uh he asked me questions which we discussed the question which which is discuss it also in the literature but kind of all kind of standard answers that would be uh given they can be still invalidated uh this probe so maybe you can give some other answers to comparing to what I could find so far so a question is like this that you know that the Jewish religion unlike other religions are based on Revelation and cyanide so all other religions are started like you know some one person experience itself no prophecy whatever and people some other people and other people and other people and they all just know it Google that and Judaism is based on Revelation and Sinai which was witnessed by entire nation between three million people and but uh what is interesting about is that you know about it only from Torah and there are no other sources non-jewish sources even though it's this climate to be one of the biggest advance in in a Time World in that time so you cannot find any you know Trace any other sources that yeah so one of kind of standard answers to this question is that you cannot so it's at the moment it's a seven generation knew about something and it was passed from one generation to another generation uh you cannot at certain point let's say it would be this event would be um possibly the wonderful guys oh you're shifting ground now you're starting off by saying no other sources exist is that the question yeah maybe maybe you can say that there are yeah write them down no no but that's not the only possible answer but but now when you talk about making it up at a later time that's a different question the answer is this whenever you want to base an argument on we didn't find X whether it's archeology or anything else you want to say we didn't find X so ABC you need an extra premise and the premise is we should have found it we should have found it and we didn't find it you need a positive reason for thinking that you should have found it only then can not finding it be a relevant fact if you cannot Supply the extra premise why you should have found it then the fact that you didn't find it as utterly insignificant you can't base anything on it so whenever anybody says I didn't find X you should stop him and say what made you think that you should have found it now let's take the revelation of Sinai you ask why don't other nations have a record of our revelation of Sinai I ask what makes you think they should have such a record here's something that you would be relevant it just isn't true did other nations at that time have descriptions of other people's religions that the Babylonians have a description of Egyptian religion did the Egyptians have a description about Syrian religion the the Persians have a description a Babylonian religion did any country have a description of somebody else's religion the answer is no no one at that time had any information about religions other than their own so I wouldn't expect to find a mention of the revelation of Sinai in any other culture so the fact that you don't find it is utterly insignificant nothing can be based on that that's exactly what you would expect no culture recorded the religion of another culture so it's a non-relevant fact it's not an argument for anything it's not an argument against anything it's just a fact about ancient history that cultures did not record the religion of other cultures so if that's an argument that he's using it's a non-argument it's a non-starter there's no weight whatsoever well uh besides the fact of Revelations now and so on there are many wars where carried out in in in in relation to it you know including the land of Israel and over with Amalia this Egypt the same answer is it's exactly the same as no country recorded its own defeats never did they write that they lost a war so we don't expect to find records of those people who lost the wars against us we don't expect to find that by the way we do find records of those who won Wars against us we do find that Memoirs of the wars that he won against us Egypt has a record of a campaign that they made against us they find records where they won we don't find any records where anybody lost the war so again I'm repeating the logic because the logic is is universal whenever somebody wants to say I didn't find X therefore you should stop him and say wait a minute before you draw you're therefore tell me why you would have expected to find X if there are no records like that at all in the whole historical period then of course you didn't find it you didn't find it because nobody made records like that and therefore not finding it can teach you nothing thank you very clear okay good that's that's one and then um you started to describe another thing and I'll I'll just answer this and go on to other people um it's another I suppose I have to take some responsibility for this even though I wrote it clearly I presented an argument and I I wanted to make the argument easy to understand so I presented a sort of intuition behind the argument and most people got tired after by reading 10 or 12 pages and they thought that was the argument that's not the argument at all the argument's not the intuition argument is something else entirely and it'll get to the end so I say it's a story that couldn't be made up clever people say I don't agree with you I think it could be made up I can give you a dozen scenarios how it could be made up or how it could come into existence without being true I agree with that I agree with that the idea that it couldn't be made up is not the argument I don't base anything on that I'm not stressing this because many people get I've answered at least an Infinity of emails maybe two Infinities I mean I was getting this wrong I don't base anything on the idea that it couldn't be made up nothing is based on that if that's what its objection is he hasn't understood the argument the argument is based on an empirical survey that there are no such failed Traditions anywhere in human history it's an empirical survey it's facts about real cultures histories has nothing to do with whether it could be whatever it couldn't be made up the fact is people don't make up things like that they don't that's a fact about history and if they don't make up things like that so say ours is made up would be to say this is the only case in all of human history where such a story was made up that's very unlikely it's very poor it's it's very improbable if all human history all Human Experience shows that stories like this don't get made up than to say nowhere nowhere not the eskimos and not the Chinese not the Nigerians not the South Africans but not the Germans and not the the not people Los Angeles nobody made up such stories the only people who ever did in all history is the Jewish people that's very improbable so the person who says that is desperate he's not basing himself on evidence not basing himself on logic he's just saying I don't want to accept it so I say it was made up if you don't have any empirical evidence the stories like that are made up then you have no reason to think that this one is made up people always think up ways it could have happened I agree it could have happened I give that away if he has anything could have happened leprechauns could be true also anything could be true my question is what evidence do you have that it's really true that could be true but really true and the critic cannot point to a single example of a story like ours that is really made up that's the case he's just you're asking destroys he's just saying it was made up because he doesn't want to accept the conclusion but he has no evidence no reason and no probability in favor of his position now that's actually in the book that I wrote and it's in the articles that I wrote but it's towards the end it's towards the end and I say it exclusively I said why should you accept this not because of the intuition but because of an empirical survey that real cultures didn't make this kind of mistake and no one has ever provided a real example you tell your friend find a real example living up to the truth it's on my website you can download straight away I have a much much larger version which I haven't yet published but I can share it with people who want it um and the on my website there there's a a tab called miscellaneous and there's a thing called introduction to the kuzri principle I think it's the first article under that tab which could be read about the nature of memory at any rate the critic always says I can imagine using drugs I can imagine a wicked King I can imagine uh myths changing over time and it's all imagination all the objections are imagination imagination doesn't count you have a good imagination write a novel and sell it I'm not talking about what you can imagine talking about what happens in the real world there isn't a single case of a culture accepting a story about a national event that's turned out to be not true which that yeah but without the rabbis so you take a story of chambronim or samarits so when they climb that Revelation at Sinai happened to them that they have their own version of Torah which is a little bit different from Jewish Torah Mao Torah and they have a books of Nadeem or only Yeshua but it's little but also a little bit different and they climb that yeah everything happened to them but not the Jews they don't say they didn't happen to Jews they said it happened to them and they it did happen to them they were part of the Jewish people and then they separated well according to you know when some some other sources they consider them as normal as kosher Jews and afterwards now is that they are not Jews and they can have there is opinion about them that they they were brought by okay what's this got to do with anything the fact is that they were a part of the Jewish people and they were there until after the time of Joshua and then they separated when they say it happened to their ancestors it's true it did happen to their ancestors I think that's one way to look at it right and and and uh they just separated and then they didn't accept the rest of the tradition indeed the showroom are a big problem for the critics because they say that Deuteronomy was written much much later in our history after the books of Kings were written in after King David and all the rest that's when Deuteronomy was written and they they have Deuteronomy and they have Joshua and nothing else the the critics can't explain why if they have Deuteronomy which came much later why they don't have the books in between show me my problem for them anyway I'm just telling you that people are making mistake about thinking that the argument is on the base of intuition it's not on the base of intuition thinking of possible counter examples is irrelevant you have to find real cases in real human history and that's written in the chapter it's written in the chapter it's right there but people don't read all the way to the end and then make up their make up their minds after the first five pages yeah okay okay so then if he's asking about that you should really it's really okay but let's go on somebody else we really have to have to give something else a chance sometimes unfortunately it happens that you find people in positions of power or influence who sometimes have their thoughts in movies does that disqualify them employer should be hoping to the higher Center because the teacher or should we just admit that this is their fault and and false yourself well um I don't know the way you started off made it sound as if it was either or and there you put the question in absolute terms a person can teach me if he knows more than I do a person can inspire me if he's better than I am even if he's better than I am than I am in one particular area he can inspire me in that one particular area he doesn't hurt me better than me than everything you know I happen to be a musician I would not require that person is going to be my rebby musician um I'm trained in in mathematical logic I would not require that a person is going to be a rebby of mine would not should know mathematical logic as well as I do I don't want to be I don't want inspiration in that area from him and as my everybody told me that 40 years ago we've reached the age of specialization there may be one person who can teach you and inspire you how to pray another person who teach you and inspire you how to learn another person who teach you inspire how to be interpersonally sensitive and kind and and supportive of another person then you take the person as your teacher in the area that he's Superior to you and he can give you guidance and inspiration when you find a person who has faults well welcome to the club Moses had faults the King David had faults Abraham had faults everybody had faults so if I'm going to look at a person say oh he has that fault so therefore he can't be my teacher it's gonna be very difficult to find a teacher yes the camera says that you shouldn't have a teacher unless he's like a malach unless he's like an angel but like has to be taken there with quite a quite flexibly otherwise no one will be able to teach anybody now it might disturb you that the person has a particular type of fault and make it hard for you to relate to him that will be a serious problem you have to be really able to relate with confidence with um with respect with a certain amount of maybe even or for the person to able to receive the teaching of Torah we're not talking about mathematics now we're talking about Torah but to to demand perfection it's ridiculous you know Perfection is found in only one place that's in God that's not it's not found in any human being so we're going to be they're going to be the failures everywhere I don't think you can have a Criterion that the person who who you uh accept as a teacher should now there are ways to deal with this talks about how you confront someone even a teacher who's done something which you think is wrong like you do with your parents with your teachers you say it seems to me that I learned XYZ am I correct in thinking that that's that that is the way the Allah goes it's one way to do it another way to do it and of course this should be done in private should never be done in public you can say to the person I seem to see you doing ABC you're a teacher of mine I'm inclined to say if you're doing it it must be right shall I take it that way that way you give them the opportunity to say no you caught me in a weakness it's a weak thing that I do and no you shouldn't take that as something that is really correct there are ways to handle this in a sensitive fashion by the way um if a person's doing something wrong and he is rebuked and he continues to do that wrong thing then he is placed in a category of people who are much more Criminal okay said no one qualifies for that category in our times because no one knows how to properly give rebuke that only applies when rebuke is given properly and no one in our times knows how to properly give review so that means the person was never approached and confronted in a way which could be expected that he that should set him straight in what he's doing so we live in with weaknesses all around us um and that being the case if you approach the person with sensitivity but as I say if it bothers you if you can't take it that's a perfectly good reason to say I have to look someplace else you know I have to have somebody that I feel that I can trust that I feel that I can that I can learn from that I can feel can inspire me and uh I I with someone like this I just I just can't do it yeah so let's say uh let's say there's a noduous person who's a suicide bomber like all right it could be the Arabs whatever but uh so is he considered like uh like a sinner and like well can you answer that question first yeah you know you're asking a good question and it's quite a sensitive question and I think that people are not prepared to hear what one has to say about this but I'll tell you because you asked it because I trust you has an article on free will where he says imagine a child who is born into and brought up in a community of Thieves in their mountains the whole Community is the community of Thieves and he has taught the thieving is Right Stephen is good to the strong belong the spoils and he never heard any dissenting opinion says with destler he has no free will on stealing and he has no responsibility for stealing now if that's this example is quite striking because stealing is something we regard as against logic whatever is telling us is that a whole community that has a perverted idea can destroy your logic can destroy your logic so I think that probably applies to some of these suicide bombers they're brought up in a circumstance well okay maybe they hear that Jews think differently but they are trained to think they're Jews are not a source I would not hold an American Jew responsible for not keeping Shabbos on the grounds that he's read in the New York Times that Orthodox Jews those prejudiced ignoramuses from the Middle Ages you know have Sabbath restrictions he looks at Northwest Jews Like You Look At Zulu's you know okay so the Zulus do that but to me nothing to do with me and that being the case I think that there will be suicide bombers who are not responsible for what they do the ones who are responsible the ones who know better who are manipulating them sometimes they feed them drug drugs they've documented the diet feeds people drugs before they send them into battle so they won't be afraid to die and those people who are manipulating them may be responsible but the people who actually blow themselves up might very well be responsible that's not all of them the guys who were flying airplanes into the Twin Towers you know they they were Western they read English they so I don't know where you're on the line but there definitely is a position where a person's fed a certain line of of uh falsehoods and that takes away his responsibility yes that does happen like belief systems right so like in the sense that like unless unless someone's like actually like like really believes in like like true like Torah like yeah like they can't almost like like if everyone like does like the morally correct thing based on their own belief system can there really be be called doing like get a barrel or being like Health responsible for it oh yes because listen to the condition that I made I made the condition that they had never heard the truth or they've been trained to think that anybody who disagrees is not competent they're just not civilized they're not fully human or not competent but that's not always the case there's a big abortion but debate the United States about abortion most people realize that there are honest people on both sides intelligent people on both sides sensitive people on both sides and they have to admit that although I'm convinced this side is right I can't deny that there is another side that intelligent people believe it if so then the person can be held responsible more than that of Desta of what Wasserman says this I'm going to teach you a technique now this is a very very important technique it has many many applications when a person takes a position there are two ways you can attack him one way is you can say look at all these facts look at all this experience which is against you the other way is you can check is internal consistency you could say okay that's how you're reasoning about this but how come about that you reason a very different way Holocaust denial you see but they're all the gas Chambers and they're all and the Germans admitted in silver and so on they're lying they had to admit it because they lost the words over and so on they said okay okay I hear your position there's no there's no there was no Holocaust right was it an American Civil War American Civil War was there now this is going on in public he better say yes because if he says no he's out right he said okay why is it that you think you have more evidence for the American Civil War in 1860 to 1865 then you have for the Holocaust from 1939 to 1945. do you think people walked on the moon maybe it was a Hollywood gimmick to sell American Technology how he could easily State something like that why do you think your evidence for men walking on the moon is better than your heavens for the Holocaust so you're attacking him with internal consistency now you take this person doesn't believe in the Torah you say to him how do you make up your mind on economics how do you make up your mind on macrobiotic diets how do you make up your mind on politics do you read both sides of the issue do you discuss and debate do you get reasons to change your mind from time to time you do that's how you approach issues of importance and significance you do that with Judaism did you read both sides of the issue did discussed the issue with various people did you trade ideas did you ever change your mind no well then it seems to me you didn't give Judaism a fair chance that's not reasonable and you can be held responsible for that why would they think they should do Judaism a fair chance because there are professors of philosophy who will believe in Judaism and there are professors of physics who believe in Judaism and the professors of mathematics who believe in Judaism and their explorers will believe in Judaism and experimental scientists and business tycoons and so forth and so on so are they going to just assume that all those people are incompetent I mean there's uh indeed right indeed almost so like every other religion can have that argument about me saying yo you haven't adequately looked into my religion you know so like you're saying that I should go around and look at every other religion no it only works if it's in fact true you don't have to check every falsely I don't like maybe like they like they say they have the truth I haven't looked into it okay but I'm telling you this is only a complaint against someone who ends up believing something false there's no complaint against the person who believes something true the person goes to a doctor have you investigated Voodoo medicine in the south sea Islands no does that mean that you're making a mistake in going to a western doctor no it does not if you go to the voodoo document then you can be convicted of making a mistake here I've done it because I was born outside I was raised outside and I did check all the world's religions and I did analyze them and and investigate it so but I had to do it because otherwise I couldn't have made up my mind what what's correct no one has enough time in life to check all possibilities on all questions do you know how electricity works I'll bet you do and I bet you don't know the quantum mechanics of electricity so you don't have like how do you turn the lights with you don't know how electricity works there is enough time to check everything in the world so like for now there's people no they don't no they don't I get this is what I said I said you tell ask the person how do you make up your mind on economics you weigh both sides you discuss and debate with people how do we combine their politics you read you read issues of people who are arguing both sides and you discuss these debate you make up your mind right you discuss and debate and read both sides and you make up your mind now did you do that with respect to religion they didn't do that so they can't say I think I have a Right View because they didn't discuss and debate and analyze it the way they do everything else that they themselves investigate they themselves hold it it's important so they themselves are internally inconsistent atheism like you say religion so it's religious versus non-religion then or religion versus other religions it could be either life good so then I say uh I say okay does it does it if it were true would it make a difference you or a Christian Ramos or anybody if you stood at Sinai and heard God speak would that change your plans for the weekend yeah then it is important isn't it you yourself are admitting that it's important not that is important like based on their beliefs like some people say like oh I feel like each one's a variation of like like the actual truth good so like they're thinking all right so doesn't matter if I'm Christian or Jewish or whatever as long as I like do whatever but did they read about that question or they just think it over coffee and that was enough did they take did they take the attitude towards that question that they took towards economics to take the attitude towards health okay so then they they can't say I've come to a conclusion about this what they can say is I have a Prejudice about this right so up until why why they wouldn't do that in economic enough they wouldn't do it in their diet so why is that the best choice here I mean they should look into it but like until like all right so someone comes about chuva like like when he's 30 like he didn't know any better before 30. right so you can't kind of like kind of a cowboy so he turns to it like until he finds and finds out the truth he doesn't know he's not doing anything wrong you can't you can't like argue shoot you can't it depends upon why he doesn't know that you know when you make when you make statements like this my suggestion is always take it out of religion I talk about not knowing how a car works or not knowing what a doctor is or not knowing where to get the mail or so talk about that to say oh you know why I didn't see your email because I didn't think it was important to look at the email one second right he said what do you mean he didn't think it was important I send you emails I expect you to read them I needed your help what do you mean you didn't think was important when you take it out of the realm of religion where it's very emotional and very good built up built up with prejudice and talk about regulars I I left my dog in your care I went to the Bahamas for a month the dog got sick did you go to a doctor I didn't think it was important I'm gonna be very angry you have care for my dog and you didn't think it was important so now God's going to say I revealed my Sabbath to you and you don't think it was important to check what do you even think was important how could you not think it was important you know very well if you had been there you'd have been required to keep it and now there's a record of it having happened you didn't bother to check it out okay you can be held responsible for that indeed if something isn't important like whether Pluto really should be a planet or whether it should be a dwarf planet as it was demoted three years ago okay doesn't make any difference one way or the other but Shabbos is every week and if you if you really are required to keep it every Saturday you're doing something wrong yeah yeah I want to ask you to further elaborate on what I think he said it's like they can also ask the question to you like have you checked out both sides of other religions and if you just respond rationally to that question what should be your response to them like a rational answer not I feel honestly if you say like yeah but this is the truth then Maybe it will not be satisfying yeah well for me it's easy because I did I actually did read of the world's eight major religions I read their own people their own philosophers their own theologians I read them and I analyzed them and I classified them and I've written about it so I have actually done that electricity as you would with democracy you know most Americans will tell you democracy is the PO and end all of the world it's the absolute truth right I can tie a person up and not in the Democracy like that because I'm a philosopher he hasn't thought about it suppose everybody votes to install a dictator he said does democracy allow that or not you don't know you've got a clue right oh you're leaving democracy Democrat is so important and the first Elementary question I can make it in 10 10 words and nobody's thought about it so you say well look the people who are doing the best in the world believe in democracy that's why I believe in the other people people are suffering it's over so I don't have to go through all the theory I see the results I see that Judaism has survived whereas every other culture has disintegrated and disappeared including Christianity read what the Protestants write about the Catholics how they falsified the message of the founder of Christianity every group in Christianity says every other group falsified the message which means no one has a clue what he originally said and everybody says that almost everybody else has falsified the message all of it's going to pieces we know what Moses said we know what Moses wrote was long before Christianity so we have objective objective facts on our side which No Other Nation can claim it's also disintegrating well you have Sunni and Shiites and then you have the ones who are committed to religion to the end and those who aren't committed to Vision to the end um they have this gigantic disagreement about what what Muhammad taught what Muhammad really meant so the original it's very difficult to tell but the original was if there was an original yeah different such a little bit that's a very different type of question um what are we what am I in the eyes of God like I heard today that we're just hashems thought in a second if he was not thinking about us then we just cease to exist and that it's going to give me a feeling like worthlessness that like what does that mean what exactly what am I if if I believe in godfully then what does that mean what does God see me as one right how am I what am I doing for everything okay that's a subtle question and it's true that one sort of analogy that people make does have that implication um one analogy that they make is we are like God's dream right that's what I heard today well good so in other words and if you wake up all the characters in your dream disappear because they are dependent upon you now let me let me um shift the analogy a little bit you have a fluorescent light bulb okay it shines because electricity is passing through it right now suppose I I own the generator so I'm supplying electricity for the light to keep shining so there is a light there's a light but without my electricity it'll be dark it shines only because I keep pumping electricity through it so the light coming out of the light bulb is because I push electricity through it okay okay so God is so to speak pushing energy through us so that we can continue to exist now the second step is that pretty much confirms what you said that I'm just an offshoot but God gave us and only us nothing else in creation has this to any extent gave us the ability to act independently he gave us free will so that we can act independently that's what gives us our special importance above and beyond everything else a squirrel would have to be swallowed up by your picture just a throw-off I'm just a throw-off that's all the squirrel is is just to throw off an angel 99 is just a throw-off human beings are the only ones that have any kind of Independence in that respect I'm quoting now lutzato in the way of God chapter two in that respect only human beings are similar to God in a crucial respect of being self-determined in any way whatsoever squirrels have no self-determination angels have almost no self-determination because they don't have free will for real is precisely free and free will means free from Divine causation free from being caused by God free will means a will by which I make my decisions which isn't caused by God that means when I make a free will decision I'm the one who's making it and that's why it has importance that's why it has significance that's why it has value and that part doesn't fit the picture you started with because that part god supports in US that ability to make free decisions that being said there are people who are disturbed by the idea that God might need us because their thought is if a needs B then a depends upon B a can't function without B a is not complete opposite I don't agree with that I believe that SM does not need it I understand but the one I don't know why we're like okay but what's leading you down that path is the thought that if I admit that God needs us then God won't be perfect God won't be self-conf won't be self-contained self-defined right I think that's a mistake I think that's a mistake the original move is a mistake to think that a needs B implies that a is dependent upon d that might not be correct isn't it possible that a needs be and a can provide B for himself all by himself yeah but I don't think a does need B I wanna I think I'm trying to explain to you why you think that I'm reading your mind you think that God doesn't need it because you're afraid that if you say God does need us that's going to mean that he isn't perfect a perfect bee shouldn't need anything other than himself that's what's leading you to thinking otherwise I don't think why should why should you say think that okay but I'm trying to show you that to say that a needs B doesn't imply that a is less than perfect because it might might happen that a needs B but a can provide B for himself without any help from the outside and then that need will not mean it is less than perfect let's suppose that I need music I need music or I can't go on I need music or I'm gonna I'm just going to deteriorate right okay but I sing and in fact I sing beautifully and I sing to myself and that's how I get the music that I need I'm not dependent upon anything not dependent on anyone I'm totally self-sufficient am I listening perfect because I need music no I don't think so so I don't think there's any push to deny that God needs us if God needs us whatever we have to do but he can guarantee on his own without any help from the outside that is going to work out in the end that means he's not less than perfect that's one way out it's questioning an unspoken premise in the argument that if a needs B then a can't be perfect I'm saying that that's not correct if a needs B but a can supply B for himself as well God creates us without any help from anything on the outside now um there's another another way out it's related but it's a little bit different um the word need is ambiguous let's think about things that I want to do lots and lots of things that I want to do some of the things I want to do have as their goal something good for me if I'm doing a to get B for myself that means right now I don't have B for myself and if I'm doing it to get B for myself presumably good as B for me B is good for me and if B is good for me and I don't have it then I'm missing something sometimes I do something I do a for the sake of B and B is for somebody else not for me I'm gonna do everything for myself I do something for myself and do some things with other people if I'm doing B for somebody else you can say I need to do B you could say I need money to do B you could say I need energy to do B but he is B isn't for me is for somebody else that need is only to provide for somebody else the need to provide for somebody else doesn't make me less than perfect indeed one aspect of perfection is goodness and goodness in practice is better than just good and simple to reality a human being who's kind and sensitive marooned on a South Sea Island along with nobody else around is good and potential someone is living in Manhattan and does acts of kindness to other people in Manhattan is good in actuality not just the potential goodness in actuality is better than just goodness and potential so a being that's perfect which means a being that supremely good will be giving to others because he's perfect now if you say well then he needs the others to give to sure but his needy never is an expression of his perfection without the others he couldn't be perfectly good he couldn't be perfectly good because his goodness would be inferior it would only be a potential it wouldn't be an actuality So when you say he needs it he doesn't need it for himself he needs it for what he can do for others that need also doesn't take away from perfection so these are two ways to acknowledge that God leads us yes he does he does need it but it does not touch his Perfection at all did he create the concept of giving in the first place yeah so why would he create the concept of giving like I I can follow this like this is like a little deeper and try to go all the way down okay I'll link that to the side but uh fine so why did he create the concept of giving you mean created so that your means can understand it is that what you mean I mean no like he said he's he's good so because like what defines perfect it's good so he and part of being good is that you give to other people right so he created the other person to give to right right so did you so like didn't like God perceive everything clear like Concepts themselves like didn't he make the concept of good yes so why did he Define the concept of good that he needs to give to someone like like why why why do you forgiving in the first place like well those are not the same question um why did he Define the concept of good that means to remain otherwise it wouldn't be the concept of good why did they Define the concept of Chess that it isn't chicken soup all right so because it would be chest it would be chicken soup Concepts have a definition it's good so good good why call it good why not just call it chicken soup but then then you're not asking a question why do you create um why did he create uh standards for himself to live up to yeah I didn't think I didn't say anything about creating standards for himself oh yeah I said Perfection has this as an implication he created the concept of reflection for a concert Perfection was killing people let's understand I don't know if you mean you mean what you're saying a person a person comes to to America he's never seen tables before yeah never seen him before doesn't know what they are indeed he sees this one standing here maybe the next thing is a piece of of wood that sits flat on the floor and maybe it's one that hangs on the wall he does not it comes so I said listen there's a cuts it here it's a concept of table because the table applies to things that stand off the ground that can hold things and so forth and so on right he doesn't have the concept that's not creating tables that's creating the concept of table it's not creating the reality it's creating the mental concept well of course we couldn't think if we didn't have Concepts so God created us in a way that we can understand God's create a conscious that's not creating the reality that's not creating goodness that's creating the thought of goodness thoughts are necessary to grasp reality a person who comes from a culture with no tables he comes here I don't need to create tables for him I need to create a concept for him to think about the tables that are here the table's reality doesn't depend upon his Concepts goodness is a thing we need the concept to think about it we didn't have a concept like dogs don't have the concept then they couldn't think about it does goodness exist if goodness exists separate to God is that like no but but why are you focusing on the concept cancer is a piece of mental equipment that's all so like what is goodness what's this like I think this is itself is a concept like a table is something physical this is not a concept goodness is a reality in the world when people give something to somebody else that's goodness in the world a concept of something but I have in my mind just like numbers in a certain way you have concepts of numbers right with no people in the world with no Concepts at all still there's a certain number of planets a certain number of grains of sand the numbers are a real Pizza feature a real piece of the furniture of the World concerts are just my mentally equipment to think about the world okay fine so it doesn't matter if it's Concepts or not whatever goodness yeah God created it so like and and by creating it he has to almost well he defines himself as good right so he has to like Define himself he that's what his reality is that is if he he has a dictionary he says under God I put good and then we had to learn the dictionary because he put those words together sorry are God and good the same like it's good like that's the same thing God is what he is and given what goodness is it is an essential feature of God that he's good but can you separate the goodness from God like I don't separate means put what in New York and one in New Jersey you mean imagine God not being good no that you cannot do God is necessarily good it's not accidentally good what's making uh good like what makes a square have four sides like that because that's what a square is so that's so that's his definition God is good that's good that's not a definition it's not a definition the it's simply what God is I don't know what else to say you know is that is that when you say it's a definition sounds arbitrary you get to find things as you like it's not a question of arbitrarily using words making up a code you're talking about a reality god is perfect and Perfection includes goodness the greatest possible measure of goodness that's part of what Perfection is right without Concepts it would still be true if there were no people and no conscious whatsoever there would still be planets there would still be galaxies there would still be space and time it isn't countenance that make the world conscious enabled me to think about the world that'll make the world if God gave us Concepts to think with that's because he wants us to be able to think give me like I'll think about this in the meantime okay are you trying to ask um did God create the reality well God created a a universe and that Universe has certain features you could create a universe with no goodness in it at all just create a universe of particles never conglomerate into anything other than than particles then there would be any goodness or evil in it so why just be neutrality good over reality because he's perfect and perfect requires the great greatest level of goodness and goodness means that you have to give goodness means otherwise it's only potential goodness it's not actual goodness anything even if even like okay first of all notice that you shifted around to an entirely different subject that's fine I don't mind but let's register that you've pursued a certain line of questioning and I have abandoned that line of questioning I just I like to keep track of where we are I don't like to just shift around on the map without knowing where we are fine good so now because I feel like something else so the answer the answer to that question is that there are different levels in God's existence so to speak and there's an ultimate level that we don't describe at all in any way whatsoever and one or two levels down where we can start to describe anything at all that's a level in which there's absolute perfection which includes absolute goodness okay let's keep that to a pause for now then all right in other words when you when you have contradictions the medievals used to say when you're facing contradiction make a distinction so if you have contradictions about God what's traditionally done is you separate out levels you say on what level we talk like this and another level we talk like that this table is solid right but you know that it's more than 99 empty space are you serious that it's solid what do you mean by solid so here's the answer one thing that's solid means is chock full of stuff nothing's like that except maybe an Electra the table is in chock full of stuff it's almost all empty space another meaning of solid is it's impenetrable when I bang my hand to the table it doesn't go in like in water it's not so in that sense itself what we've discovered is solidity is almost all empty space surprise surprise so on one level I talk about a solid when I talk about how it behaves in my world talk about his empty space though let's talk about the atomic level it's a different level and and both are true so God can be talk about God can be split up between different levels and in different levels will say different things that's all true just have to divide the level the levels okay yeah couple questions uh what would be Torah alishma studying what would be a definition of machine and also the three things that are perpetuating as the sins that eliminated us or that destroyed the temple excuse me yeah and foreign like an example of how we're doing that okay I can I'll answer the first and the third the second one is strictly capitalistic I'm not gonna answer it um the third is just based on a mistake the three transgressions that you describe are attributed to the fall of the first temple the first temple the second temple was destroyed because of causeless hatred sorry okay it causes hatred so we don't have to worry about those three perpetuating themselves and indeed Prophet Jeremiah says no one knows why the temple was destroyed ask this ages he says and ask the other prophets if they know nobody knows and then he reveals and he says because they abandoned my Torah there's a whole literature on that so maybe the three were contributory and the one that broke the camel's back was uh was abandoning the Torah at any rate that's so the what's at work today is caused this hatred and that's what has to be opposed and rectified and everybody says if that would be rectified then the temple would be rebuilt can I change my question to that what the hell is that well I mean that's pretty easiest right that's pretty obvious that people have hatred for other people that that is certainly cause us in our camp people have competition between various different groups and their different emphases and priorities in serving God and uh too often they're prepared to say the other guy is just out he's because he has to agree with me you know he's a he's a throwaway instead of saying there are different ways to to approach God and different things have to be emphasized and we have to recognize if it's like the original 12 tribes we had had different Dynamics each tribe had different Dynamics yeah Rizal said that he had different their order of prayer was different they had a different dynamic in their relationship with God so that's that's not uh not too difficult now the first one that you asked about was totally small the word I'm quoting the rambam now there's a lot of misinformation about this the Shema means doing any mitzvah Shiva applies to every mitzvah is doing a Mitzvah out of love for the Creator who commanded it out of love for the Creator who commanded it that's in chapter 10 of the laws of repentance by my moneties and that means that God commanded me to do it and I recognize that he's the Ultimate Reality he is the source of all that's valuable good pure appropriate just productive contributing to the Perfection of the world and that's why I do it now what would that mean in practice this is an undiscussed subject in many in many areas I have a couple of suggestions but I think you should ask this other people as well they may have they may know of applications that I'm not aware of and it's a very important far-reaching question what does it mean to do one thing is to try to reduce the ego that's invested in the study of Torah here's an example you and your favorite study partner are studying a difficult passage and you're tied up in that doesn't say fine we'll come back to it tomorrow you go go home wherever you go and you're thinking it over and suddenly the answer hits you it hits you it's obvious it's you come in the next day say wow listen I got it I've got it here it is yeah you've got it you're terrific you're wonderful how about saying instead you know I was thinking it over last night and I remembered something that someone told me two years ago and I think that would do the job then it's not yours you didn't take credit for it it's more amidstv to serve God than a vehicle to build yourself up to make yourself more successful or get yourself more respect another example that's right that's right and it is permissible to lie in these circumstances it's permissible to lie in these circumstances um another example it's an Unwritten rule in yeshivas that if you are stuck you can stop anybody else and ask them for help some yeshivas pay people to be there all the time just to answer questions but sometimes they're busy because other people are asking questions you can stop any advanced student at any time and ask them for help the unwritten rule is he's got to stop and help you now that advanced student how does he feel about helping you have two options maybe there are more but they're two for my purposes one is oh nuts here he is again asking me how to read that Rashi I'm in the middle of barbecue Vegas which is very taxing very difficult I've invested 20 minutes to study myself in organizing the ideas of my mind and he wants to read this Russian but I have to do it I have to do it God commanded it and I'm going to do it I'm going to put a smile on my face I'm gonna do it because I have to do it the other way to do it is to say what am I doing here concrete intellectual worlds inventing new brilliant ideas I'm supposed to be serving God this is what God wants me to do right now I should welcome the question of the beginner with the same enthusiasm that I am thrilled to learn a very sophisticated commentary because all of it is serving God to work on doing it that ways to do it because of Love of the Creator who commanded me to do it rather than having some selfish gain from it to be a vehicle for selfish gain um means doing it as a Mitzvah doing it because God commanded it and because ultimately means because I love the one who commanded it I want to do what he wants me to do that's that's what the Shema means and it's very very important because is I would say spiritually crippled it's worth doing it's worth doing and one hopes that one graduates from the talmud promises that under certain circumstances but one has to know that there's something to strive for instead of just doing it mechanically or with a heavy dose of ego doing it in a way that's doing it as service of God thank you