Rambam's Letters | Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz | December 9th 2025

Air uh is dedicated anonymously for the refu LMA of Balina Batgalina. Again, may she have Israel. Um we began Is the mic working? Oh yeah. Okay. Uh it seems a little little low for some reason. Uh but we began uh last week looking at uh the letters. Again, we're now moving to a more personal side of the Rambam. the letters that he wrote uh to his very beloved disciple Yoseph Ben Yehuda. And Yoseph Ben Yehuda uh was a person who was a poet. He was a philosopher. Uh he even had some medical training. And uh he wrote the Rambam a fan letter. This is what it started off. He wrote the Rambam a fan letter. Uh and the Rambam invited him to study with him. And Yose Penhuda spent two years in Fustad in old Cairo learning with the Rambam and then eventually he moved on to uh Syria and eventually to Baghdad uh Iraq etc. But he maintained his connection to the Rambam and as you'll recall the Rambam actually dedicates the Morinim to Yoseph Ben Yehuda. uh and he writes, "If I had nothing else, no one else but you as a Talmet, that would make my life worthwhile." And throughout the letters and every single letter, he constantly talks about Yose Buda as his son. And the Rambam says, "I am your father." Uh again, it's actually based on a teaching of the Mishna, right? The Mishna says that uh if you have two lost articles that you could retrieve, one belongs to your father, one belongs to your rebi, you should actually uh give priority to returning the aveda to your rebi because the father brought you to haz and the rebi is even more of a father. He brought you to Maba. But let me hasten to add that the postkum say that if dad is paying for tuition uh it's actually true. So dad gets the olabar credit too. So at that point you have to give priority to uh the father even over the rebi. But be it as it may the notion that a talmet is really a son is we see this uh from the >> you put that the stand down. >> Oh take the stand down. Okay. Uh we see this in keshma, right? There's a mitzvah to teach to your children. But darian, this is not only your children. This is also that students are supposed to be like like uh like like offspring, like children themselves. And that's really a message to the rebies themselves to the teachers themselves that the teachers should feel towards their toidim uh as if there's kind of a parental relationship and the Rambam constantly refers to Yoseph Yehuda as a son. You remember just to remind you of of what we looked at last week when Yoseph and Yehuda wants to stand up for the Rambam and defend him against attacks. So the Rambam very touchingly says, "Don't worry about me. you know, I'm used to this and this doesn't bother me very much. And I know it is so hard for a son to hear the humiliations of his father and not respond. But I'm just telling you, don't get into that. I'm doing okay. You don't have to worry about me. But again, a ben is not able to hold himself hold himself back. So uh in the volumes of the letters of the Rambam now obviously it's it's hard to know exactly where we found all these letters. Some of them were actually printed very early on. Uh but even they had to be found somewhere because the Rambam lived before the invention of printing. Uh many are from the Cairo Genea the very very famous Kairoa that to this day is still yielding new documents. It's quite amazing. It's been uh around 150 years since uh Salman Shakar opened up the Cairo Geneza and there are still fragments that are coming out of there. Uh it's quite amazing because for a thousand years people were putting Sheamus in that Genea and all sorts of things are there and many of the letters of the Rambam were retrieved uh from the Cairo Geneza other sources. Now obviously we have to assume I mean for example in the volume I have of Igro Rambam which is two volumes there's a total of 80 80 letters obviously we assume in the Rambam's lifetime he wrote a lot more than that but not know obviously not everything has been preserved for posterity and maybe some of them didn't have to be preserved for posterity and the like so we don't know perhaps he wrote more letters with Yseph Yahoud and it would have been nice as well we never see the other side that that's also unfortunate It would have been nice to see what he wrote to the Rambam, what other people wrote to the Rambam. Uh unfortunately we only have one side of the correspondence and you can you can infer what was said in the letters by the Rambam's responses but we don't see this uh bufferish but we do have in the collection of the igro taram we do have a number of letters uh some longer some shorter uh dealing with different themes. I mentioned last week that technically the dedication of the morbukim was in the form of a letter because remember how the morbukim was written. When yose ben yehuda left the ram after two years of study the rambom promised to stay in contact with him and the rambom wrote the morim as a series of chapters which were long letters. He would send Yoseph and Yehuda a chapter at a time of the Morinim because Yseph and Yehuda was confused with the with the contradictions between Aristotilian philosophy and the teachings of the Torah and the Rambam wanted to guide him through this. So really the morim was intended as a series of lengthy letters uh to Yseph Ben Yehuda uh and uh the first letter is the statement that why I'm writing this for you and then eventually when the Rambam decided to publish it as a safer before printing but to send out the manuscripts to a wider audience the letter the introductory dedication to Yoseph Beyuda uh was included. So uh in a sense what he did was he proclaimed to the world uh as it were his great love and affection uh for this particular uh this particular Talmet. So in the different letters that we have to Yosephuda there are many many different things. Some of them are frankly straight hala because again yoshi benyud at one point lived in Baghdad and as we already know Baghdad had a very very large yeshiva and a very eminent and famous roshiva who's not too known today we really only know him from the Rambam's letters but at the time he was quite quite famous as a great talam his name was Ravu Beni like a hakoen and Ben beni argued with the Rambam on everything whether it's philosophy the nature of Habah the nature of resurrection and uh Yoseph Ib Jabar as not a learned person was trying to defend the Rambam and Yoseph Beyuda who was more learned was also trying to defend the Rambam. Uh so some of the letters are actual hakic answers. So let me just mention uh one interesting letter about the laws of Shabas that is actually quite interesting in it has a a very very important impact on uh and that is in hilos shabas there is a very important mahlo between rabbi shimon and rebi yhudah about something that's called now again this is going to be a little far a field from the rambom letters per se but it is such an important concept that I'm giving myself permission to be a little off topic although it is within the letter itself what is the meaning of right those are the forbidden acts on shabasa now we know that the 39 m of shabas are derived from the 39 activities that were involved in the building of the mishkan harvesting, writing, all of these things were connected somehow to the building of the of the Mishkan. So the rule of is let's say I do a forbidden act on chabas but I do it for a purpose that is different than the purpose [snorts] for which it was done in the Mishkan. I'll give you an example in a moment. So according to Rabbi Shimon under Torah law that is actually permitted and it's only forbidden rabbitically. According to Rabbi Yehuda it is a Torah violation. Now once you start thinking about this this opens up a whole avenue of possibilities. Example one let's imagine I dig a hole. Now what is the mala of digging a hole in chabas? If I ask you what exactly is the mala of digging a hole. So digging a hole is considered to be strangely enough a subcategory of plowing because when you plow you make furrows in the ground in order to plant when I dig a hole and I want to use the hole for some ray that is also considered like plowing in the sense that I want to use the kalal that's created. Now let's say I dig a hole not because I want to use the hole but because I want to use the dirt. Now in a sense that is not why they plowed question. How they plowed in the desert is another question but basically they plowed in order to get plants from which they could generate dice. So they plowed in order to use the furrow. Right? That that right? So ma it turns out when I dig a hole in order to use the hole I am doing the mala for the same purpose as the mishkan but when I dig a hole to use the dirt I'm doing the but for a different purpose. So according to Rabbi Yehuda is according to Rabi Shimon is I'll give you a difference for that in in in a short minute. Another example uh carrying is a malika. Carrying from a public domain to a private domain is forbidden because for building the Mishkan as well they had to transport things on chabas to get the kashim get the boards of the mishkan from point A to point B. Now, let's say I carry something out of the house, not because I want it to be somewhere else, but because I don't want it to be here. Let's imagine something is stinking, something is disgusting, and I take it out of the house, not because I need to use it in the new location, but I simply want to get rid of it here. That is I did the ma of carrying but not for the purpose of carrying. Again, Rabbi Yehuda and Rabi Shima. A third example, one of the mal of Shabas is hunting or trapping. Trapping is the more accurate uh right on. You're not allowed to trap an animal. Now, in the building of the Mishkan, they trapped various animals to obtain their hides, right? That was the again, how that worked in the desert is a bit of a problem, but that is the malika. They trapped to get animal hides. Well, what if I'm trapping an animal not because I want to use the hide, but simply to protect me from the animal harming? Let's assume, for example, you trap um flies. Fly trap. A fly trap. Now, you're not trapping the flies in order to use them. You're trapping the flies so they shouldn't bother you. Once again, lagua. A fourth example because I I want you to get a sense of the cl here is we know that not only is there a mala of making a fire but there's also a mala called extinguishing a fire. Hav is the making of a fire. Koi is extinguishing a fire. Now we know they made fire because they had to form metal and gold and silver. But what was the mala of extinguishing in terms of contributing to the mishkun? I mean, of course, they had to put out the fire, but was that involved in making the mishkun? The answer is yes, because they would extinguish fire in order to create charcoal. Meaning, if you burn wood and it gets charred, then you put it out, you now have a better source of fuel. So the key the purpose of key boy was to make a so let's assume I put out a fire just because I don't want the fire not be I'm not talking about or anything with that that's a separate thing but I put out a fire because I don't want the fire I turn off an electric light for example not an LED but but let's say an an old incandescent right the older folks remember uh incandescent light bulbs along with um cameras and all that other stuff. Non-digital cameras. I'm aging aging myself. Uh but the thing is uh turning off a light when you don't want to you don't want to the charcoal is so if you think about it there's a huge number of things which technically you're doing the but you're not doing it for the purpose that it was done in the Mishkan. So according to Rabbi Yehuda it is an iser according to Rabi Shimon it is an isan. Now you may ask okay bottom line is it's forbidden. In other words nobody says it's m we have a if it's or but it's still forbidden. Well the big difference is this. When something is only user mid on shabas, then you are permitted to violate it for someone who is ill even if it is not a matter of life and death. So a very simple example, let's imagine you have a man that has not a man or a woman, a person that has a bad flu, not life-threatening, not life-threatening. If it's life-threatening, you know, not life-threatening, but he the person cannot sleep and there's a light on in the room and in order for him to sleep, he needs the light off. Are you allowed to turn off the light to enable a to sleep? According to Rabbi Yehuda is an you would not be allowed to do so unless it's a matter of [snorts] nephesh according to is only you would be allowed to do it but for again if it's That's that's a dra pit m. Now, same thing with uh putting out uh fly traps or mosquito uh traps or the like. Uh if the mosquitoes are mafia you very very much and it creates what's called sarodole. This is trapping not for the purpose of using the thing. According to rabbi shimon it would be mut bim sar godole. according to review or not. So again I I don't want to give give you a whole show on hashabas this is way beyond our our topic. Yeah >> isn't a shinui is >> yes a shinoi might be another factor. Yeah. But but but but this maka says even if you didn't do a shinoi you are correct. Shenu would also be Yeah. Yeah. >> Torah. >> Yeah. >> Like a piece of wood or something. Does it say specifically because you use it or >> No, it it it does. It does not. It does not. But but but remember, I mean, let me just remind you that the vast majority of the 39 malos are not even listed at all. Meaning, if I if I were to ask you where does the Torah say you're not allowed to cook on Shabas, it doesn't say. Where does the Torah say you're not allowed to write on chabas? It doesn't say. meaning [clears throat] kazal as part of the or oral law had a tradition of what was involved in the mishkan and what was the purpose of that activity in other words you're not going to find a written text anyway uh there are a few mahos that are mentioned in the Torah the Torah says don't start a fire that it says it says don't plow and don't harvest uh and maybe don't carry although that's a mlo as well but the vast majority of the vast majority of are not even mentioned in the Torah. We just have the generic prohibition do not do and then we have the oral Torah that defines what Malika is. So you're not going to know what the per I mean so so part of the Msurra that Khazal had was number one what were the malos and number two what was the purpose of the malos? How were they used in the Mishkin? Okay, so this is a little bit of a digressive introduction, but the point I want to make is ruba jeruba meaning 99.999% of all postkim rule like rabi shimon that is only and as a result there can be leniency for sick people and for great sar. The Rambam is the only of course he's a biggie but the Rambam is the only one who actually follows Rabbi Yehuda that Mala is an Iser and this is a very very strict view and as you would [snorts] imagine Rabi calls the Rambam to task for that particular linity. Now here I do have to say the uh history of actually follows Beni on this particular point and we beda do not paskin like the Rambam on but the Rambam goes through a defense of why he pasined this way. You see you have to understand that people don't realize the the greatness of writing the Mishna Torah. It's not just the systematization and the organization which is unparalleled but also you know the Gomorrah gives you right the Gor gives you the Gmorrah very often does not give you a Gmorra discusses at great length Rab Yehuda's opinion Rabbi Shiman's opinion and it'll go on many many pages it never tells you what the haka is so how does someone like the Rambam decide what the haka is and how does someone decide the other way. This is not directly from any explicit statement in the tom. Rather the Rambam has to analyze a lot of texts in which oh we see a later text without attribution that seems to follow Rabbi Shiman or seems to follow Rabie Huda indicating textually that one is a preferred position. But you understand it's a very indirect process. Meaning once in a while, okay, maybe more than once in a while, but know there's a a relatively low percentage of time where the Gmorrah will tell you somebody. And we also have certain rules in that it doesn't have to be said all the time and shi is like basil. The is like Rabi. So there are certain rules in the Talmud that guide postkim. So the riff the Rambam the Torah uh obviously the gaim they they have lot they have a number of rules to follow but very often there are no rules and we don't have any particular rule that the law is going to be like one or the other. So there's a lot of inferences that have to be drawn and once you're working through inferences you know people can have different understandings of what the proper inference is. So the Rambam defends himself with various proofs which uh I'm not going to go into now but I just wanted to call your attention that one of the unique of the Rambam in Shabas is that the Rambam is a Y an isolated view who actually rules is an iss It is not only an is the punishment for the I was >> oh of course of course we we don't administer punishments anyway today but in the time of the Bikdash when there was punishments for an issa if one was given requisite war warning theoretically they could be put to death uh for an israan there would not be generally there would not be a death penalty uh for that um yeah >> uh well that that that's that's a possible reading but but the Rambam seems not to say that the Rambam seems to say that he brings riyos that the is like Rabuda not not because it's a suffic now what some postkim say for us is that since it's if you like or not. So we should be because of Yes. So what what you're saying does come in uh but it comes in in terms of how theim for the opinion of the Rambam but the Rambam himself took the position say again like >> absolutely >> there's no more straight in the rise because of >> because of the ro Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. But yeah, you know, you're right. You're right. But some still say it's even when they're rokim. Okay. Now, a second aspect of hashabas that's wrote up is also very very interesting. And uh this is a bit of a subtle uh sor uh one of the malikos of shabas is called zora. You're not allowed to plant something. So the Rambam writes that if you put a seed in water, a seed in water and the seed germinates, it starts germinating, it starts growing, the Rambam says that is an issa of Zora. Now here Rav Beni brings up an interesting question. We know that just as there's an isser to plant, there is also an issa. Whether you're harvesting grain or you're harvesting fruit, whatever it is, you uproot something from where it's growing. Now with harvesting though it's very very clear that the isser of harvesting is only if something is growing from the ground. Let's imagine I have a flower pot. Let's imagine I have a flower pot and there's a a tomato plant in it or there's a little fig tree in it, a sapling. and on Shabas I harvest from the tree or the plant that is growing in the flower pot. So the Gomorrah makes uh an interesting distinction between flower pots that are resting on soil that have a hole in the bottom, assuming it's on soil, let's say, and a flower pot that does not have a hole at the bottom. A flower pot that has a hole at the bottom. We consider the plant to be still getting nurturance from the dirt and therefore this is called you are for being coats there or even if it's a but it's in the house or it's on a plastic tray or a metal tray you're not because requires that you harvest something that's growing from the not something that's either hydroponic or growing in a flower pot that's not connected to the ground. Now that's clear and the Rambam himself follows those rules. So Beni said, "Well, if you're not on unless it's growing from the ground, why would you be on Zora if you didn't plant it in the ground? You just plant you didn't plant it at all. you just put it in a jar of water. Uh, shouldn't that be just like a flower pot without a hole? In fact, it's even worse. There's no dirt there at all. So, the Rambam says without fully explaining it, but the he's right on this that you cannot compare the Malik of Zorea with the Malik of Cozer, meaning they're not symmetrical. The law of Kiter is only violated when it's growing from the ground. But the mala of Zorea is anything that facilitates the growth of something whether it's attached to the ground or not. And therefore the Rambam says the way we resolve the inconsistency is by understanding that the dynamics of the two malot are different. Now again logically I think Rashmo actually has a point. Uh perhaps there ought to be a symmetrical relationship between planting and harvesting. And yet and yet here um again it's [clears throat] not for me to say who's right, but the Rambam is actually the dominant view of old postkim. Uh and that is why for example uh putting flowers in water when they're not opened up yet. If they're opened up, you can put them in water because you're just preserving them. But if the water is going to cause the opening of the flowers, that would be considered to be a mala of zora, a mala of of planting because planting is whatever facilitates the growth of a fruit or a vegetable or a flower. So what's important about this little lesson is that it does remind you of the subtleties that the rules that apply to one mala are not always going to be the same rules that apply to another another uh mala. Right? So those were two criticisms of of Benelli uh that Yseph Ben Yehuda asked for the Rambam's responses and the Rambam gave responses to answer it. Now whether the rashiva of Baghdad agreed or didn't agree, I don't know. My guess is he didn't agree. But okay, so so be it. But the Rambam at least wanted to defend his position. So that's that's one letter. That's that's a hakic letter. Most of the letters are not dealing with concepts per se, but this was one exception. A second letter uh is he's encouraging his student to study the Mishna Torah, not just be a philosopher. Yoshi bin Yehuda's primary interest was philosophy and hence the mor of uh but the Rambam encourages him to study the Mishna Torah in order to understand to in order to understand Jewish law and the ins and the and the outs and here I have to say u some of the Rambam statements at least from coming from someone who went to yeshiva are are absolutely astounding and uh they are totally against the narrative that are norm is normally presented in the yeshiva world and it really confirms in my in my opinion exactly what the rivet accused the ram of rabi bendavid known as the ravid often the ravid is the way we often pronounce it lived in province in southern France and uh he was a great great he actually was a great great god it's almost unfortunate that he's only he's mainly known for one particular thing but he did many many other things but the thing that the rivet is most well known for is that the rivet wrote an a series of criticisms critiques on the Rambam's Mishna Torah. So if you open up a Rambam you will see every few paragraphs there will be a few lines very short very brief lines uh by the ribbit which typically begin alf which means Omar of Rahim. So the ribbit is known as Balahot the author or the master of criticisms. Now again it's a little unfortunate because the hassot was actually a sideline of the writer. He did not devote his life. I mean, you see from the Hagot that, you know, he went through the Rambam probably in six months and wrote what he wrote. I mean, the rabbit wrote commentaries on all all parts of of the Torah, but he's known that he's best known for the hassot. Now, the Hagot are very very interesting. Uh the Rabbit had a style. The Rabbit was a very combative person. Uh again, some historians even speculate why that was so. He didn't come from a great rabbitical family and it was hard for him to break in so to speak or whatever it is. People say even psychoanalyze uh the rabbit's personality. Uh and the rabbit is often very assurbic. The rabbit will say to the ram say about a given law in the Rambam uh this is this is utter foolishness. How much paper did he waste? So the rabbit was green right? He was an environmentalist. Don't waste the paper. Uh he would say there is a lot of confusion here. Every once in a while uh oh when the Rambam says for example philosophically that anyone who believes that God has a body corporality is a kofair is a heretic the rivid says a lot of people better than him had that belief. So he agrees with the Rambam that it's an erroneous belief but he says don't call people heretics because there are people greater than you that have made that mistaken mistaken belief. Every once in a while the riv will give a begrudging compliment. He would say this is good. You know imagine like you know you have this teacher that was always berating you and always belitting you but every once in a while says you know good job. You know you really feel feel great. Uh so every once in a while the the rivid gave the Rambam uh a little bit of a compliment but not too really not too often. Now the rivid does not argue in every there are many that the rivid passes over in silence. So there's an interesting mlo in aim if the silence of the Rambam implies acquiescence and agreement or the riva just didn't feel he needed to address it. Meaning this is important because when we're trying to do a headcount of what the position of great rebbitical authorities are, can we count the rivet as a solid as a silent agree agreeer with the Rambam just because he didn't critique and that's a big mloim the rules of whether the silence of the Rambam is like we say being ayat is like agreement or no he just didn't bother to put down every single critique that he had. Now the rivid went through the entire Mishna Torah and he writes from the beginning to the end but interestingly he even writes a saga in the introduction of the roundup. So he starts pretty early. He starts attacking the introduction. I mean you figure I mean let let the author write an introduction and then you and that is when the Rambam calls his book Mishna Torah. Remember there are two names uh of the Rambam's code. The Rambam's own title is Mishna Torah. The title that was given to it later by printers is Yadaka. Okay, these are two different titles for the same work. Uh the Rambam himself called it Mishna Torah which actually means the second Torah because the Rambam said all a person needs are the five books of the Torah the for the written law and my book which is a compendium of all of the rulings of the oral law. So your bookshelf can have two books on it. A ksh and of course even though mishna is multi volume but if you just got all the commentaries the mission tora can be in one volume. Indeed it's been printed in one volume and mishna tora and you got the whole Torah. You got everything you got uh the written law the oral law and the misa without any discussions. So this raised the rivet's eye. The rivet got very upset about this and the rivet is a little bit of a diet trip. He says, "Oh, so that means the Rambam says we might as well get rid of the Gammorra, get rid of the Talmud, get rid of all of these discussions. Who needs Gomorrah?" Which goes on and on and on with discussing different views. We now have the definitive view. Is the Rambam trying to replace study of the Talmud? And then the Ram the rabbi goes on and the Rambam does not give me his sources. He doesn't tell me where he gets his things from. So why should anybody accept this without going back to the original sources? Now the Rambam actually responded not to the rivid but to this particular criticism in a number of letters in which he said, "Oh, of course I'm in favor of Gomorrah. I just meant many simple people are not able to follow Gomorrah. So I give them a a guide, etc." And then though he does express an interesting thing. He says it wouldn't make sense for me in my code to provide source material because then I would essentially be repeating the Gomorrah. I mean my whole purpose was abridgement and simplification. So what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to bring in all of the apparatus that I specifically excluded to facilitate simplification? That's just going to make it it's going to make it like the Gammorra itself. And therefore the Rambam said clearly I was justified in not bringing in sources but the Rambam says I regret not having a companion volume that would give detailed sources for every that I said and the reason is the Ram says actually it's a bit amusing almost because the Rambam was sometimes asked often asked what is the source for what you said and often it's relatively straightforward. A discussion about the laws of cooking and Shabbat is located in a certain place in the Talmud and the Rambam would say that. But sometimes the Rambam's reference was very obscure because it's the nature of the Talmud that the Talmud discusses things you know in mass kaducian it may discuss something about chabas in mak's kitten it may discuss something about kashras and the raam sometimes could not remember the source of where he got something from. He actually says, I mean, you can see his frustration. I looked here and I looked here and I looked here and I looked here and I was sure it was here and it wasn't here. And he said, I should have made a note of where things were. So on that level, I'm sorry. >> U sorry on that level. >> Yes. Yeah, on that level the the let me just Yeah, on that level uh the Rambam did concede to the to the rivet. Thank you. That there would be a need for sources, but he said he did not want to put it back into the um into the Mishna Torah itself. That's fine. But the thing is when you read the letters that the Rambam wrote to Yoseph bin Yehuda, I almost hate to say this because this is so against the uh the narrative of the yeshiva world. The Rambam basically says that prolonged Talmudic study is a waste of time. Uh he basically makes the following argument. He basically says the need to go through discussion was in order to come to a definite conclusion. It was not for the sake of debate. It was not for the sake of abstract the theorizing. It was a necessary evil. He says it was a necessary evil in order to come to some conclusion. But the goal is not the process. The goal is the conclusion. So the Rambam says, "I did that for you. I gave you the conclusion." So you have it. Why spend all of your time going through the process? Now I want to point out the notion that the process is not so important. It is the conclusion that's important. Is 100% the opposite. of let's say the vil nagon's of the who essentially in his book nepheshim authored what is called the mission statements of the Lithuanian yeshiva world and that is almost the only thing that's important >> is the process of debate the process of discussion and okay you're supposed to know but the truth is that's secondary you go to Yeshiva today you're learning a let's say even this and we'll analyze the different logic and the different positions and the like and the tom might ask the rebi what's the who's like the rebi might say that's not the thing we're discussing now we're not doing that's a separate che we're trying to understand according to the ramam that would be an incoherent statement. The Rambam says Tmudic debates were not intrinsically desirable. They were necessary to establish but the only thing that's ultimately important is the bottom line. Uh I don't know based on my training my background this is an absolutely astounding astounding statement and uh if a rabbi were to make it today uh he would be condemned as noticorus for sure uh and yet uh I I think that this means the rivid's instinct was correct. The rivid's instinct that the Rambam did not truly value Talmudic study even though the Rambam denied it. I actually believe that the rivid had an instinct which he did have the Rivid did have a good did have a very good instinct for the jugular and um he hit the nail on the head actually and in fact the Rambam even quotes a Gamorra again again but I don't want to take this to far of an extreme it is absolutely the case that the Rambam was a total master of the Babylonian Jerusalem God forbid it's not like know sometimes when People say today they don't like to learn tomorrow. That just means they're ignorant. You know, they don't learn tomorrow. I mean, the Rambam totally mastered this. In fact, the Rambam's code is based on his mastery of the Talmet. But the Rambam simply says the discussions are a means to an end. He says he says the way he says the way people study Talmud it's as if they're going to a school for debaters uh and they're trying to sharpen their debating skills instead of coming to conclusions and he says that's not that's not the purpose of it at all. Again as I say this is to me this is absolutely a revolutionary statement. Now some of you may have come across uh a statement that Alan Jowitz made uh [laughter] you know Duruitz has a podcast but uh he made a statement about the Ramba which has gotten some attention. I don't know if you uh if you heard about this and he had to defend he had actually had to defend he had to defend it whatever it would be I mean and that is he made the point that the Rambam was very very great but he accused the Rambam god forbid being arrogant by by the Rambam basically saying hey we don't have to discuss things anymore I've given you the bottom line this is it no need for any discussion so was making the point that uh how can you do that the whole nature of Jews is to discuss to argue to debate how can you simply take the position I've given you the answer no further debate somebody approached me and they said can you respond to professor Dur Ders's accusation can you refute it I said well the way he said it was very arrogant and disrespectful. But the underlying point happens to be correct. The point is correct. Again, to call the Ram arrogant that that that's crossing a line. I'm not God forbid we cannot talk that way. But to say that the Rambam wanted to foreclose Talmudic discussion and debate, I think is absolutely very very clear. [clears throat] uh the Rambam saw a certain in fact the Rambam basically felt I've given you the after going through all the Tmudic discussions now you should spend your life in metaphysics and philosophy interestingly enough >> what was that >> metaphysics and philosophy huh >> was there particular pressure at the time >> that he did what >> pressures at the time prod any specific pressures of >> well number one I I mean the morim was certainly a product of the time because there was Islamic and Christian philosophers under felt he needed to to address what the Jewish position was in terms of the uh Mishna Torah itself it seems to be a self-generated pressure the Rambam saw ignorance of the Torah the Rambam saw that number one So many Jews were not learning Torah. And number two, those who were learning Torah were preoccupied in dialectic and subtlety and debate. And they were making finer and finer and finer distinctions. And they were not coming to a bottom line of how to serve Hashem. And the Rambam says the purpose of learning is to know how to serve God. And therefore, if you're simply engaged in debate and discussion, Zello must be. So the truth is Duroich's point is absolutely correct. Lani estate albeit as an arrogant person he said it in an arrogant way. You know that's that's that's true and I I you know if you wanted me to I mean I'm not interested in condemning anybody but but if somebody wanted me to condemn the manner that he said it in that's fine but the substance of what he said is actually quite correct and I I would not be able to renounce it. It's clear that that was the Ram's position. Now I want to point out he actually brings a passage in the Talmud as proof of his position. He proves the relative unimportance of Talmudic debate from the Talmud. that is mase suka and again I I want to emphasize he was a master an absolute master of babi rushi right it's not like he rejected the tal because he didn't want to study it he knew it uh in a level of clarity that is unimaginable for us but then he went beyond it the gammora describes the disciples of hill right the great hill and it mentions his greatest hill had 80 Tomidum. The greatest of his tomid was Yonas son Benuziel who wrote the Aramaic commentary on the Torah or at least some say he wrote the Aramaic Tarum Yonasan and on the Vim. He wrote the Tarum. That's for sure. Tarum Yonison and Yonison was so great that um when he would be learning Torah and all the angels of fire would come to listen if a bird flew over his head the bird got burnt up in the fire of his learning. By the way liked to say that the difference and a misn is what is your reaction when you hear the story? When aid hears the story of the bird getting burnt in the fire, the says, "Look at the holiness of its sadic. Look at the kadusha of its sadic." That sadic is greater than the angels of heaven. The greatness of man and the uniqueness of the godly soul that enables him to reach the highest possible level. a misn who has to pay for the bird what's the liability what's the issue here on the one hand it's yonas and that caused the angels to come on the other hand this was supernatural damage right so a lizak always focuses things with in fact if you look at salv's classic essay salves's classic essay ish Andic was a complicated personality because on one hand he was following the tradition of brisk analysis is the only thing that's important and yet he had a certain sensibility mainly because his father made a mistake. His father hired a tutor uh who happened to be a kabad. So instead of doing Gammorraha he would sometimes learn Tanya [clears throat] with him and when Raosha Salves found out the tutor was fired but the virus was already caught. So throughout Salvik's life he had a certain love and attraction for as well. Okay that's interesting story in of itself but inhal he describes an a conversation with his father. He says, "Uh, right before Naila, we went out to the courtyard. There was a little break between Mina and Nila and the sun was setting." And he actually had a very beautiful description of the sunset and the colors and and the sky. And he was like 9 years old or whatever. And his father asked him, "What do you see when you look at that sun?" So the little boy described, you know, poetically, "Well, so beautiful, so many different colors." He says, "No, no, no. What you see is the bringing of atonement into the world because yum kipper brings kapora at the end." In other words, instead of being inspired by physical realities, one should be inspired by concepts, abstraction. Abstraction uh in fact he said about his grandfather of that his grandfather liberated Yoridea from pots and pans. Meaning instead of being a bunch of rules about pots and pans, he made it so abstract at a much higher level of understanding. So that was the traditional literature point in which the debate and the discussion uh was everything that that matters. Uh the Ram took the position that bottom line. Okay. Okay. But anyway going back to going back to Jonas. So after it mentions Jonas and Mizil was the greatest of the disciples, it then mentions the youngest of the disciples was Rabohan Ben Zakai who was actually the leader of the Jewish people at the time of the baikt. And the youngest and least significant knew everything. And then it enumerates all the different things that he knew including how to talk to the plants and the animals and the secrets of creation. And it culminates the list a long list of everything raan benzakai knew. It says he knew great things and he knew small things. The Gomorrah says, "What are great things, the secrets of creation and the secrets of the divine chariot." And the Rambam has a definition of those terms. Ma batius he basically says is science, how the physical world operates. Msa is theological speculations about the nature of God. Metaphysics that's dubberg guttle great things to understand the scientific structure of creation and to understand ideas about god what's >> what is a small thing the give and take questions and answers of course way after that that were later exemplified by the tmudic debate of a var. So the Rambam says the Talmud calls of a rava diverg metaphysics and even the scientific structure of creation tomudic debate was absolutely necessary in order to know the because you have to know the will of God. But once you know that will of God says you don't have to keep on revisiting and going back. Now again again I'm not I am not giving you my pos I'm not giving you my position and indeed my mur is very very much connected to uh and the tidum of the vil nagon and that's what went down but to me I I try to be honest with you to me the ram's positions are absolutely astounding. I really this is absolutely uh totally the opposite of everything uh that that we learn and I do want to point out though that in a sense the alabas who preceded the Rambam actually made the same point and it's funny people learn these and they don't realize that these are saying the opposite of of what they follow the gives a story that a certain Talmud asked his rebi a very complicated convoluted question about a get. Okay. Well, what happens if this happens and that happens and that happens? Do you use this reasoning or that reasoning? Kind of a very complicated deep involved question. And the says the Rebi said back to him, why are you wasting your time with questions that will not happen in a thousand years? Why don't you ask me how to serve God with love and fear? Which is exactly essentially the Rambam the Rambam's point. I think I mentioned before the was written in Arabic and it was written several generations before the Rambam and the Rambam is actually made that the Halovas was his father's favorite safer. His father loved the safer. So if I'm elaborating on this too much, it's simply because you know it just strikes me as such aish uh and uh it's an interesting approach because I think pragmatically pragmatically now I'm not even talking about ideologically it can actually help a lot of kids that are struggling in different ways because we have a certain curriculum and the curriculum is modeled in a certain direction and certain kids are not always going to fit with that curriculum and the message they get is oh they're bums they're you know they're not learning Torah properly but if you understand that according to the Rambam at least there is indeed a different type of model for what Jewish education would be again I'm not telling you which ideology is better that's not that's not for me to decide but at least to be aware that there's an option of a more practically oriented type of which would emphasize and not necessarily all of the different debates that would actually be a structure of that the Rambam would endorse although he would also want there to be a lot of metaphysics that okay that's a separate thing but but at least in terms of the learning uh the Rambam's approach is very very different and as I say the rivet hit the nail on the head uh the rivet intuited that the Rambam's approach was actually revolutionary and could have negative repercussions for intensive talmudic study. Uh and even though the ri the Rambam denied it but I think from these letters I think it's very very clear that uh what the rivet said is exactly uh what the Rambam actually maintained. Yeah. >> Um in Pavos it begins by saying there was one tradition and then this tradition begins to split multiply [snorts] and all there's all these disagreements and whatnot. Could not the Ramb be seen as wanting to go back to the one tradition that unifies people and goes forward without all these >> Yes. Yes. That that's very very true. In the haktama to the Mishna Torah, one of the points that the Rambam makes in addition to the need to simplify is the need to unify the need that we shouldn't have different religions. Now in that way I want to point out that although the Mishna Torah is a magnificent magnificent book but in terms of the Rambam stated goals it was a failure. Uh did the Rambam unify? It's almost as if Hashem is basically saying the Torah cannot be contained. You can't close it up. You can't put it in a box. Every time you try to put it in a box the box explodes. That's the nature of Torah that and and later the Torah tried to do it and then the shorak tried to do it. Each one is trying to simplify, give you a bottom line, forget about all these makim, but the makim break out. Which is why, as I say, I cannot be too critical of Ders, even though he's he spoke in a very disrespectful manner. But his point that the lifeblood of the Jewish connection to Torah has always been discussion. And the Rambam to some degree wanted to stop all of that discussion [clears throat] I think is a fair is a fair observation. Okay, so forgive me for talking too long about this, but again it just strikes me as such an unusual thing. All right, be well, have a good week and take care.