Journey To France: Provence - Meet Gersonodies, The Ralbag, Rebbi Levi ben Gershon

this torah class is brought to you by torahanytime.com okay everyone we had an amazing time at the various makaima sakadoshim that we visited today especially the last one uh this will be uh the final personality that we're going to discuss somewhat in depth for the trip i appreciate your indulgence thank you for your attention and we're going to speak about rabbenu levy ben gershon now he had a very interesting name uh secular name we refer to the rambam as maimonides we refer to the ramban as nachmanidis and we refer to rabino levi ben gershon the bag as your sanity's gara sanity son of gershon he was born in 1288 in bagnol in provence and he passed away in 1344 in papua nyan the raw bag was known for aristotelianism which basically means he explained various miracles in the hamish and he was heavily criticized by the abar banel by rav almost wanted to put his works into his works on philosophy the muhammad sasham were criticized by torah scholars that they had more aristotelian content than torah content among his greatest critics the morale of prague but among the peers of the raubag he was recognized as a great sadiq a pious jew and a great intellect he was an astronomer for all you astronomers out there uh he invented jacob's staff if you know about jacob's staff and measures angles heights of stars you could go to any museum jacob's staff is the invention of thralbach he was a mathematician he's a doctor and his works on astronomy mathematics medicine we're all translated from hebrew into latin now i want to share with you two really amazing uh thoughts of the rabbagh and you'll see uh how novel he is in thinking in a number of ways the rabbagh analyzes maishwa banu shirak and he points out here mushroom the greatest ever man who ever lived had a hard time finding a shidduch and he married akushi he married akushi and even though we know iraq she says that rashid does not interpret it literally there about does and basically rabbi says we learn from here very important concept now it's interesting throughout bag actually and the shiva that i learned in they uh they learned very much in depth as far as i know it's the only yeshiva that they learned the raw bag but there are bag on homeshore and the vm has tai aliois the benefits the limu then we can learn from the so the bag says the toilets that we learned from moisture being married akushi you know what akushi is is that in life in general in all areas if you can't get a then you gotta do b and there are boxes from here we see that you can't allow perfect to get in the way of good now it's very interesting because who said that voltaire that is the teaching of altera 1694 to 1778 who is very an english um a french enlightenment thinker and he was the one who authored don't let perfect be the enemy of the good which was basically the uh the cliche or the state the famous statement of the last cm hashas don't let perfect be the enemy of the good but here is where the rabbagh's thinking is really very uh very interesting you know the gemara says and the morgan avrom quotes this which basically means don't push the hour slide with the hour and we'll see what that means or as i'll say if you see a russia that's being successful don't start up with them and rabbi ki veger says this is a halakhah that when someone is not being successful don't push the hour when someone is being successful take advantage of the hour by the way the baneshkai in the in some additions brings really an amazing story about two brothers who inherited a big estate and they were not being successful the stock market was uh not doing well and one bro brother said okay it doesn't matter it's not doing well i'm going to try here i'm going to invest in this i'm going to invest in that and the more invested he invested the more he lost and he tried harder and he invested more and he put in more efforts and he just kept on losing till he lost all his money and the other brother said look it's not a good time i'm not being successful right now you know what i'm gonna wait off so he took all his money and he buried it he took all his furniture and he sold it and he got a job as a menial a laborer and then all of a sudden when he saw that things were turning around that's when he invested and he made one good deal after another and he became an oyster muffler and the rest is history says the beneshkai from here we learn a very important principle in life they're ups and downs and when things are down it's not a time to act it's not a time to invest it's not a time to be proactive and when you're being successful ada robbie you should take advantage of that and the raubag um interprets based on this concept an amazing episode in small bays park says the king of tyre sent messengers to david and he sent david and wood and materials and david built the base hamikdash and the pasta says david saw that god solidified his kingdom and that he was being successful and the sovereign was powerful you know what david did when he saw it was a good time he married more women venusian more ladies he had more children and their names are shamu and says why is the navi telling me that when david saw that his kingdom was solidified he married more women and he had more children says ralbag an amazing thing this teaches me that if somebody senses that he's being successful that's the time to be proactive go out buy a lottery ticket then marry more women have more children says the rabbi vaharaya none of the children david had before survived none of them were kings but then when david realized that it was he saw the hour was shining on him he saw he was being successful he said now is the opportune moment now i need to marry mourinho maybe now i'll have children that will continue my reign and sure enough says bag who was born to dove it at that successful time i laugh says they're all bad they're different times in life and sometimes person has to realize you know what i could tell i'm not going to be successful now so maybe now is not the time to get involved in this venture other times everything's going your way now is the time to get involved in the new venture and this is an idea that we see very clearly during the nine days of tish above where the gemara tells us we have absolutely no idea we have no record the second baseman which was destroyed on tish above but because we know the first place to make this was destroyed there's no question if the temple was destroyed it must have been at that time because and even in jewish thought they're good times and they're bad times there are times when mazel is not good and that's a time maybe not to get involved in certain ventures and there are times that your muzzle is good and that's the time to get involved in certain things by the way then yodo says that the gemara brokers tells us that was appointed the nathia over claudius and the vanessa asks what what does it mean that day what what do you mean it happened on that day it says abandon what the german means that on that day for the lessons on that day he turned 18 it was his birthday why do you think he became the nazi that day because it was his birthday on your birthday your master is strong and good things happen and that's a time to get involved to be proactive so we see at least in the makshava of raubag of venezuela and the mughal abraham passkins is there's a concept of sean michael we were talking about this before sometimes a person has to sort of have a certain sense is now going to be a good time to do something or is now not going to be a good time there's a certain supernatural even though of course we don't believe in supernatural but there's a certain supernatural i guess this was a good time to say there's a certain supernatural uh sensitivity that a person can have that certain times are good certain times are maybe not predisposed to get involved in things and how this plays out la mysa you'll ask your local french rabbi but now we're just uh dealing with it in a matter in a manner of jewish thought that there's a concept of good muzzle bad muzzle so on this note even though here we are in the nine days but i think uh on this trip despite all the challenges we had the good muzzle of it was very easy travel because we didn't have to bring any luggage with us because uh our friends held on to it for us and is guarding it for us until we get back and bachelor we had the good muzzle to to really to darwin by all the mccoymays that we set out to your zakha to be at the cover at least the supposed cover of rashi rabino tam of the rihang and all our all of our twilights should be niska bell everybody would dive in for what they needed everyone should be paranoid you've just experienced another torah class brought to you by torahanytime.com