Journey to France: Paris - The Location of the Burning of the Talmud in 1242

this torah class is brought to you by torahanytime.com okay thank you mayor uh there was a lot of discussion about the appropriateness of the mccoymus that we're visiting now especially to come out and to tour during the three weeks and during the nine days but actually what could be more appropriate than to go to the spot which is the subject of one of the most stirring and moving of the kinase kingdom members written by the maram of rottenberg mayor of rottenberg who wrote the kinos chalice rufa baesh so you could stand here in the streets of paris and it seems like a busy city but the stones of paris are crying out for the burning of the talmud that occurred in the year 1242 the king of france at the time was king louis ix he's known as saint louis not for his righteousness but rather for his zealousness against jewish people and especially uh the favor he showed that to jewish apostates there was one such jewish apostate by the name of nicholas donon who was especially vicious to his former co-religionists he for he himself personally caused the baptism of 500 jews of anjou and potiers which is by the way which is a rarity in french jewry because rarely did jews of france convert this was something that we read about we read about in spanish story but to have jews in uh france convert and the majority of jews 3 000 and all in all converted uh were murdered now this is very important nicholas donan the apostate realized something that even we don't see clearly namely what is the backbone of the jewish people the backbone of claude israel is talmud is the babylonian talmud and therefore he made formal accusations to pope gregory ix that the talmud contains passages heretical to christianity the pope ordered all the copies of talmud to be confiscated and march 3rd 1240 while the jews were in shul all the copies of shas in paris were confiscated on june 12th there was a public debate held between nicholas donan and four of the most eminent rabbis of the time including rabbi hello of paris ravmosha of kusi anybody you know who is rebecca the smug and uh the verdict was a foregone conclusion uh now the talmud would have been burnt immediately if not for the one friend we had in the courts and that is the bishop of sens who tried to defend the talmud however uh immediately the bishop of sen's convulsed in a grotesque death right in front of king louis and the monks convinced king louis that this was a heavenly uh punishment for him defending the shas and the king then put into the burning of the shots into uh motion manuscripts of the talmud were condemned to be burned you have to understand this is 200 years before the advent of the printing press one volume of shots could take many many years to write including works of re-showing them kiss fayada reshowing them that because they were burnt they were never again recovered and the burning of the shasta occurred arab shabbos parshas and they made a sheila as i'm sure many of us are familiar with and they asked via the heavens why this occurred was this in fact decreed from the heavens and they received the following three-word response da zeras erisa which is the targum and parsons and still till today many years in fast arab however what's very interesting and which really caused us to think is that even though they received this supernatural response that this was a heavenly decree rabbi hillel of verona stood here in 1242 and he was watching this and he recognized that this was not an isolated occurrence that there was actually a reason for this and that is because a few years earlier there was a great debate between the rambam and the rabbis of northern france the rabbis of northern france were vehemently opposed to the works of the ramadan especially the marine and they made a formal accusation against the word the works of the random now the sages of provence many of them agreed with the rambam but there were a few sages that were very anti the ramba most notably and rabino yonah himself and there was a formal accusation against the works of the rambam and right here in this square only a few years earlier they burnt the works of the rambam so in 1242 when they burned the shas the ashes of the burnt shas mixed with the ashes of the rambam and therefore says rav hill of verona it is clear this was not an isolated incident that the burning of the shas was heaven standing up for the honor of rabbenu maimon now the one thing we need to think about is how is this consistent with with the message they received from heaven that there's no reason for this that it's a mystery it's like a para duma and yet rapido verona's saying there's a clear reason for it it's a punishment quid pro quo neither can i give me them for the burning of the works of the rambam and we see from here a very important principle that even when the cachim give reasons for jewish tragedy that's not the the full reason it doesn't make it fully comprehensible there's still an element of mystery an element of hoik an element where we have to abandon ourselves and recognize this is xero and this is an important principle whenever it comes to jewish tragedy be it the paradum itself we know the producer and yet rabbi darshan from narbon from the south of spain provided a reason for the paradium but it doesn't mean it's not a hike and even in those who attribute reasons for the holocaust that doesn't mean that we understand it that it's comprehensible ultimately we have to recognize nistura darke hashem so in in only two weeks on tisha when you say kin of members remember you stood here opposite nochidamas by the hotel the devil the what hotel devil and we stood here but the city hall actually actually this building and we'll remember the the tragedy that we stood on at this moment and we asked who shall we through to take up the vengeance of tara saint darshan thank you very much you've just experienced another torah class brought to you by torahanytime.com