The Creation & Reception of The Shulchan Aruch | Rabbi Anthony Manning | December 31st 2025

Thank you Josh. Um I'd like to thank our sponsors for today. We have a lot of sponsors to read out. So thank you to all of them. The Wednesday morning bet Midas program here is dedicated um for the academic year. Leu Nishmas Daniel bin Davidid um and Limudbat Ara Strauss mod raisel bin Yseph Mayor Marcusa. These are the parents of Judy and Manakim Marcus. Today's morning of learning is also dedicated in memory of Joe Palansky Lra Israel Ysef Mayor Benyakov Schlommo Vadina by the Palansky and the Drein families. Um it's also dedicated today the morning of learning by Estelle Harris in honor of honor of her grandchildren her children her grandchildren her great-grandchildren Kenu my year is sponsored as usual for this academic year leu nishmas brandit and zelik Benhan also in loving memory of Jack beer yakov zangville beni Ari and that's by cookie and how myself thank you very much for that dedication as as well. So, uh, lots of people, but there's no limit to how many people. I suppose a limit is when I'm just reading out the dedications for an hour and there's no time for the shar. But until until we get to that stage, then, uh, I think we'll be we'll be okay. Uh, today we're we're going to do something a little bit different than our normal uh, standard fair. It's going to have a little bit more history. Um, and we're going to be looking today at in the last part of our series on the development of Halaka. Two weeks ago, we talked about rabbitic law and the Sanhedrin. Last week, we talked about the ceiling of the Talmud, when the Talmud became accepted as the bottom line for Jewish law. And today, we're going to be looking at the Shukhan. Everybody knows, I think, in this room, what the shar was, the code of Jewish law written in the early 1500s, published in the 1550s, 1560s, actually. Um, and, uh, we're going to be looking a little bit more at why. Why was this book written then? uh how was it received? Why hadn't it been written before in exactly this way? Um and I think this is going to cast a lot of light on the way we understand halaka uh explain some of the difference between the and the Ashkanaz in today and uh and hopefully give us more insight into just the way the halaki process works. So in order to uh in order to get into this, I'd like to give you a 12 to 15 minute historical overview, maybe less. We'll see if we can keep it to 10 cuz I we need the time for the sources. Last week we left off the story in around the year 7800 CE. The Talmud had been sealed, had been finished. The Savoreim or Rabenu Savarai, Raban Savoray, who were the final polishes of the Talmud, put together all of the Shacklear, the back and the fourth and the questions and the answers etc. Uh and then you had a period of consolidation under the what we now call the Gaonim in the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th century. Uh the gaonim uh were really putting together the final touches to the Talmud and spreading it as far and wide as they could. And their period I mean there's a lot more we could talk about there, but they lived in Babylon uh in the great yeshivas of Surah and Pomp Pedisa. And that period of leadership if you like came to an end in the the 10th and early 11th century. How exactly that happened is an interesting story. Again we're not here to give a history sh and I'm sure you've heard uh the shirim also from Rabbi Wise and other people as well. But there is a uh a story. Maybe it's more of a mythical story. Maybe there's an element of truth to it of the four captives who were four great rabbis from the Babylonianmies who were taken captive by pirates in the Mediterranean and sold off to different communities in Spain in North Africa um and established new communities if you like independent of the Babylonian Goonet. Whether this story of the pirates is true exactly true or not is not relevant. But we know for a fact that these communities were established. This is their like foundation story. And by the time we hit the sort of medieval period, the 11th 12th century, we have very established cahillas all around the Mediterranean, which we're going to look at today, which were largely independent of the Babylonian onate. Even though the Babylonians felt that they still had that kind of role to play, it's very clear by already the year 1050, 1150 that they did not. Who were these communities? And this is what I want to look at with you in the just in five or six minutes. We I've highlighted here uh three communities. Spain and North Africa which of course is Sardi, France and Germany which of course is Ashkanazi and also Provence. Provence was something of a bridge in between in the south of France. Uh we'll see some of the the key players there as well. Of course there were other communities. There were the Yemenes and we mustn't forget that they were doing their thing down in Yemen. a little bit isolated but still in touch. They were still the Babylonian, Iraqi and Iranian communities, the Persians, but these communities that I'm focused on today were really the ones that fed into the Shuan much less so the other communities. So what I've done is I've divided the um 500 years into sort of rows here of a century each and literally we could speak for a whole hour on each of these centuries which we're not going to. It's going to be a very brief overview. But if we look just for now for starters at the 11th century. So looking at the Jews of North Africa and Spain, you have the golden age of Spain. And the key halahic figure which I want to bring out for you here is the riff Rabenu alasi Yitzkak Alfasi who lived in the in uh in Morocco in North Africa and he turned around and basically said look the Gmorrah is great but it's enormous and not everybody has the time and the training to master the whole of the shas. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to write a safer which is what he called his work and I'm not going to write a separate book. I'm just going to go through the garra in order following the order of the mat and I'm going to white out basically all the bits that are not relevant in in sakala maybe add a few comments here and there we pass in this way we pass in that way but what you're left with is a much reduced shass cutting out all of the midrashim all of the uh arguments back and forth cutting out the opinions that we don't follow and you're left with a kind of truncated userfriendly Mini Gomorra. Okay. And this is what we call the riff. Of course, he said you can still go and you should still go and read the real thing. But for people who need like a bit of a shortcut, this is what I'm doing. And that's the riff. Okay. Meanwhile, up in Ashkanaz, Rashi and his students and grand students were beginning to write commentaries on the Gomorrah. And of course, Rashy's commentary is perhaps the most famous of all of them. And we'll see that that became more the Ashkanazi Derek uh certainly in this period to write commentaries rather than separate works. The next century there are two characters I really want to focus on really one particularly is the Rambam. And again we could talk all day about the Rambam. He was the most remarkable Jew probably that ever lived since Mosher Rabenu. And on his Kev of course it's written Mosha Moshe Mosha. And they wrote that for a good reason. He did something a little bit different. In fact very different. He did something that no one had ever done before and no one's ever done since in the world of Halaka. He said, "I'm going to upload to my mind the entire rabbitic corpus all of the garrai, all of the usi, the cifra, the cifray, the makila, all of the midrashim, everything, all of the onic works and the commentary up to his day. He's living in the 1150s, '60s, '7s. I'm going to rule every single on every single issue that could ever come up in Jewish life. Not just practically, but also how to build a bas mikdash, how to do and Tara, how to deal with. I'm going to answer every question and I'm going to reformat those answers into 14 new volumes which were later called the Yad Kazak, okay? Which he called the Mishnet Torah. This is the second Torah because he says now you just need the written Torah of Mosha Rabenu and the new volumes of Mosha Benmmon which some people thought was a little bit like uh overreach in comparing himself but okay for good reason maybe. And these 14 volumes comprising a thousand chapters and over 15,000 new halot said everything out that you could ever want to know about Judaism in very clear do this do that do this do that fashion. Okay. And that was the Rambach. So now we had that work in addition to the riff. He largely agrees with the riff. He's from the school of the riff. His father uh Rabenuon was a student of the Rei Gash who was a student of the riff. But the Rambam's also independent and he forges his own way and he does his own thing. But largely he agrees with the riff. Meanwhile in Ashkanaz, what's going on? So all the students and grand students of Rashi are writing what we now know as the ballet of Tossphus commentaries on the Gammorrah line by line question by question you know they say Rashi is there to make your life easier and Tossphus is there to make your life harder all the questions that you hadn't thought of that now you think of you think oh gosh that's how are we going to answer that the sarity in the Ashkenazi worlds was still quite separate it was hard to move from one to the other even though he lived a hundred years after Rashi had never read anything directly that Rashi said because those commentaries did not get to him. He quotes some of his opinions but I don't know if he knew who he was. But we have uh in that century as I said the Rambam the Balatosphus and others the riveted in provence who was uh who was his own important character certainly in the in the growth of Kabala which we'll come to soon um the 13th century um I just want to deal with very briefly the 1200 to 1300 because in that century we had a lot more travel between the two parts of Europe already the the the rabbis in Spain the Ramban Nakmanades and his school, the Rashbah and the Ritzvah, they already had seen lots of the Ashkanazi works and they'd incorporated a lot of their methodologies and therefore you have a consolidation if you like in that century of a lot of analysis and the Spari and Ashkanazi world meeting up with each other. The last of the Balatophus was the Marram of Rottenberg and we'll he's important for what we'll see in a moment for one of his key students. He of course was taken prisoner. He died in prison and he was if you like the end of that era. And really lastly and again I'm doing this very fast in the 15th in the 14th century 1300 to 1400 you have what's uh what I would say is a consolidation of all of these ideas. The key moment in the middle of the 1300s of course was the black death in the 1340s and life was never the same after as it was before. 25% of all Jews died, 33% of the general population. And in hakahic terms, if you like, it was a line. Many commentators see this as a line which is difficult to actually uh cross because of the the of the decline of the communities after that. And the key character that comes before that is the rash. And I want to talk about him just for a second. Who was the rash? Rabenu Asher was the student of the Maram of Rottenberg. He was Ashkanazi. He lived in Germany. He and his son who became known as the T rabakov Benh Harash that's one of the origins of the name Benerosh okay the the rash raasher and his son the Torah they lived in Germany in the late 1200s early 1300s and he composed commentary on the Gomorrah as well but much more hak commentary not line by line commentary but a but a ma by ma summary of all of the haki conclusions and what's important for our purposes is he had to run he had escaped Germany. His his master, the Maram of Rottenberg, was languishing in prison. He knew that he'd end up there if he didn't get out soon. And he ran with his family and they went to Spain. So he's a major Ashkenazi who has transferred and transported himself, transplanted himself to Toledo. He became the rob of Toledo and he became a major figure in the Spari community. But he was this kind of ashkafi in the sense that he came from one place, he ended up in another place and his son the tour who spent most of his life in Spain although originally came from Germany was then a little bit he was more faranage canazi as rather than ashkavadi you know you know what I mean he was he had more roots in sparad and less roots in Ashkanaz but he decided he was going to write a summary as well and he wrote something called the arbatim uh and he had a new system where just a practical haloka and he summarizes lots of the opinions that came before him. Rashi, toasters, the rash, the ram bam, the rift because again he felt he straddled both of those Ashkenazi and spar worlds. Okay, Adan are summary of three or 400 years. But the key figures you need to bring from that are the riff if you remember who wrote this kind of truncated garra the ram who set out an entirely new uh um you know system of sac which is just the appictic kind of do this don't do that and then finally the rash who went from Germany to Spain and composed this commentary on the gammorra summarizing all the hackic issues now the 1400s was a disastrous time for everybody In Spain, 1391 was really their what you might call their cristallnak. That was the moment at which they realized it was just all going to go downhill from there. Mass pograms, uh, burning down of communities. And the hundred years from 1391 to 1492 was decline after decline after decline until eventually 1492 they were expelled. The Spanish Jews were expelled and exploded all around the globe. Most of them went to the Ottoman Empire. Some of them went uh to Eastern Europe, but Eastern Europe was just opening up then. Some of them ended up in Erits Israel through the Ottomans when the Ottomans took Erits Israel. Some of them went to the new world, you know, in the early 1500s. Some of them fled to Portugal, but Portugal was just out of the frying pan into the fire because only a few years after the Spanish expulsion, the Portuguese also decided they were going to ban all Judaism. They didn't expel the Jews, but they forced them to convert. So now you have converso communities living in Portugal and Spanish and Portuguese Jews all over the world. In the meantime, what was happening in the 1400s for the Ashkanazim. So as if the black death wasn't bad enough, they were basically pogram after pram um being expelled from one t forget Germany didn't exist then as a country. They were hundreds of tiny principalities and the Jews were expelled from one to the other to the other to the other to the other. expelled from England, expelled from France, expelled from every single bit of Germany and Switzerland that you could think about. And after about 150 years of dreing around in circles trying to make it work, they realized there was only one place that they could really go and that was east. East into the like uh the the the lunar landscape if you like of Lithuania, Poland. These were places Lithuania. They were still worshiping trees. the non-Jews in Lithuania in the 13th 14th century was like going to Mongolia but where else can you go you can't go to Spain the Jews are all trying to get out the you can't stay in Europe so they went east and they went to Lithuania they went to Latia they went to Russia etc so now if you take a snapshot of jewelry in the year 1500 everything is a big mess whereas 3 or 400 years before the Jews the communities were settled they'd lived there for hundreds of years they had the Masora you had the Spanish you had the Ashkanazim you the province provincial now in 1500 everyone's a refugee you have Ashkanazam and Sardim living together everywhere in the Ottoman Empire in Europe if they can stay there in Russia and a couple of people woke up in the early to mid 1500s and realized that this disaster had to be addressed in terms of halaka because you didn't have that clarity anymore you couldn't be in the shaw of your grandparents and great-grandparents and great great grandparents etc everybody was mixed all over the world. And this is where we pick it up on page number two. So, we'll see that there are only 10 sources on this week sheet, but some of them are real uh jumbo sources. And this is the first one. This is the biggest one. What I want to show you in the next 40 minutes is the bet of Yasf Caro's summary of why he's doing what he's doing and then four or five responses to that which will give you a a window onto what happened after that in the Sari and Ashkanazi worlds. So let's start off with a very brief biography. Raf Ysef Caro born uh in 1488 expelled with his family in 1492 goes to Portugal gets out of Portugal ends up in the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire in what's now Turkey and he lives there as a young man and eventually he comes to Erit Israel in already in the 1120s he started a major work which he called the betf in a minute why he called it the bet and you'll see now what was that Uh >> 1520s, sorry. 1520s. Sorry, did I say 11? 15 the 1520s. He starts his Thank you for that. 1520s he started already um the work on the bet yourself and we'll see now his an excerpt from his introduction. We'll see what he was doing and why he was doing it. So we're going to read this quite fast. We don't need to dwell on every single word, but it'll really set the scene. Number one, [clears throat] the the life has gone on. The years have gone on so much. We've been upturned from one vessel to another vessel. He's writing this in the 1520s, 1530s. All these terrible and frequent tragedies that we've we've encountered. We gone from one to the other. Now we're in a state where we could say about ourselves the the the the wisdom of the wife is wives is gone the the hand the the mastery of Torah and its and its students is gone from us. years before elyuspar there are in innumerable Torah there are countless Torah has because there's so many books which have tried to set out what the Torah says we're just now in a complete mess there are so many different books and we're all over the place and if a person were to say on every I want to investigate every den back to the with all of the commentaries. This will be incredibly [snorts] difficult for anybody. All the more so if you want to really engage in finding the origins in the Gmorrah of all of these denim. Don't forget the Gomorrah doesn't set things out in a linear way. It doesn't have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Every page of the Gomorrah assumes that you already read every other page of the Gomorrah. It's like a million piece jigsaw puzzle where you have the people throw the pieces in front of you and the picture is changing all the time and it's not even one picture. Uh and therefore the Gammorra is extremely difficult to go through even if you've learned all of the pages that you think deal with that particular hak question. There could be just three lines innocently hiding away at the end of a page in a completely random you don't think is even connected which change the whole way that you look at the so he says that's even harder we've got the magishna he says also an inkazi that went to Spain he said we do have some help along the way but it's not that uh it's it's not going to help anybody third paragraph If this is the case when we're faced with looking at someone who really wants to understand properly and understand all of the distinctions for him, he's just not not going to be able to do it. Even if you try and find every garra and every commentary, which is going to be an enormous work, people are so forgetful. People are living in like sorus. They've got no head for learning. Everybody's a refugee. They've got no money. Your your effort is all going to be in in vain. Shalom. You won't be able to do it. And therefore, comes now super rabbi to the rescue. Al therefore anadal balpi I'm just a a small one in my tribe ysef Ben Moreno Harav Ben Moreno Harav Ysef Caro now don't think his name is Cairo is he never went to Cairo as far as I'm aware is from the word yakar meaning precious okay it's the word even in in Latin k means precious I believe okay kamia okay fine I assume you're not talking to me you're talking to your husband but that's okay fine >> oh you're fine Okay, fine. So, I am who am I to do this? But I have become zealous on this. I've shaken off my cloak and I've paved a new path for his I've decided to write a book including all the which are practical. Meaning, I'm not going to go like the ramb into every single that ever existed anywhere. I'm just going to keep it practical. I'm going to tell you where they come from. I'm going to give all of the the reasoning that all of the commentaries give. I'm not leaving anybody out. I I decided I didn't want to make this a a self-standing book because then I'd have to repeat all the work of everybody that came before before I even got to my own analysis and therefore and therefore I decided to write my book as a commentary around somebody who'd already started the work so I didn't have to do that again. Now if you were the you were Ravias Caro and you were going to pick somebody the greatest hakic mind of of all time to write a commentary around who would you pick? >> The Rambam obviously and therefore for Alabadi and I first thought Rambam I'm going to write my commentary around the Rambam and here he's setting down his uh cards. As far as I'm concerned the Rambam is king. He is the greatest POS ever. And you'll see that even though later he's going to tell you I have a system of at the end of the day the ramam looms very large in all the of so I was going to use the ram the but I changed my mind because he only brings one opinion whose opinion >> his opinion okay and there's nothing wrong with that opinion he says but how does that help me with my great magnumopus I I want someone to start me off and and do some of work for me. I would have had to go on a great length. I'd have to write all the other opinions in and therefore so I decided to write my commentary around the T the B the son of the rash because he does a good job at setting out a lot of the opinions and that's true if you read the Torah Torah was written in the early 1300s and he's now coming 200 years later the Torah sets out six or seven opinions He says the Rambam says this and Rashi says this and Tosha says this and my father says this and etc. So that's a great place to start. Okay, fifth paragraph nimsa. So it's going to turn out someone who has my book in front of him. This is his list of things that going to be there. I'm going to read this real quick and this is not even the entire list. This is what you're going to get. He's selling his book. Okay. Haramifi all set out in front of you. So he did an un unbelievable exercise of collecting manuscripts. Don't forget every almost everything was manuscript. Printing had just been invented about 70 80 years before. He's going to refer to it in a minute. But almost everything he had was in manuscripts. He says so first I'm going to get all of these manuscripts together which was not straightforward if you think of the the kind of postwar environment in Europe that he was in. But he says, "I'm going to do that and collect them all together and then you're going to have everything set out in front of you and then at the end he says and in a few places mare zohar and I'm going to sprinkle in a little zohar here and there and that's already very very interesting little radical. He's going to bring some of the sakim of the zohar as part of his his endeavor in the bet. Now we had a whole bunch of sharing which I think we should redo on the relationship between Cababala and Hala. He doesn't mix them too much but he does a little and the Zoha then gets into the Hakic system. You should know that Ravi Caro himself independently of his hakic work was a high octane cabalist. He had a relationship with a maggot with a voice that spoke through his mouth. He used to have a little room in his house. I've actually been into his house. It's hard to get in in spat, but you can go there and you can go in the little room where he spoke with his maggidd. He spoke and the maggid, this voice spoke back through his own voice and people could hear it speaking to him for hours and days and weeks and months on end. And he recorded all of this in a book called Magged Me Sharim. Now, most of it's got nothing to do with Halaka. It's to do with Cabala and and the Spherus and other things like that. But he was a very accomplished cabalist. He was part of a whole group with Ram Mosha Cordo. uh as well uh Rav Schlommo Hale the alabets uh they they were together as the cabalists ofat but that comes a little bit later so let's put the cabala on hold he's already writing he's going to put a little zoh now then he has a paragraph I'm on I should have numbered the paragraphs 1 2 3 4 5 6 paragraph number six but everybody knows he says that all of these ashkanazi postkim They generally just follow and therefore if I leave them out from time to time don't judge me. Don't judge me because I'm going to leave a load of Ashkanazim out because they kind of all say the same thing. It's not going to go down too well that statement. Okay. because if I bring you the view of I don't need to bring all those other great holy rabbis that they normally follow. So that's one thing he's like laid down and said I'm not going to get too much on the uh the Ashkanazi postkim and then I brought you a couple of lines which I'm not going to read now and he said and I've already picked up let me just read the first line the balad and I've got hold of some of the responsor of the rashbahel written in an iron penet on a printing press says I've got hold of a print a book a real printing book of the chubis of the rashbah and he's going to go on to say and on the front it's just all wrong. It says it's the chubis of the ramb and and you see already that the printing solved a lot of problems but it created a lot of new problems. Don't forget printing doesn't make any mistakes. You know it prints exactly what you programmed it or set it to print. But if you set it wrong then it produces thousands of wrong versions of what you just printed. And he's already alluding to this and says don't worry I'm on it. I know it says the Ramban and it's really the Rashbah etc. but that's just that's the nature of printing. Next paragraph, paragraph seven. And it occurred to me after all of this gathering of information, I'm going to ask and I need to make a decision between all of these opinions because isn't that the purpose? The Jewish people need one Torah, one ruling. No more Ashkanazim, no more Safaradim, one rule for everybody because this is going to be the new reality. Now, it could be argued and some do argue that he didn't really think he had authority over all the Ashkanazi communities up in Poland and Lithuania, but they were they were new communities. They hadn't been there for very long. They were refugees themselves. His area of authority was what he called Arabistan. Arabistan which was basically the Ottoman Empire plus the Middle East as we know it, Persia, Saudi Arabia, maybe Yemen as well, Egypt because of course there are no Jews left in Spain anymore. So he I'm not sure he thought he was going to be a POS for the Ashkanazim, but I'm not even sure he thought the Ashkenazim were worth being a POS for but at that stage. Okay. And I thought and I realized If we're going to make the hakic ruling batus with claims and arguments various tal and talmudic um arguments pillpool going through if we're going to do that look at these people that came before me to the ramban the rashbah the ram they're very analytical they are filled with all of the arguments of every single um view there could Who who who am I to add to what they've done? I mean, I can't do it any better. You see all of the different arguments laid out in those other both and Ashkanazi postk because don't forget the ran and the rashba they' already taken on very Ashkanazi styles of argument from the balattosas because there was a lot of mixture and therefore who am I to do that? I'm not going to do that. Who's going to stick his head between the mountains? This is a rabbitic phrase, the divine mountains. I'm going to contradict them. I'm going to reanalyze. I'm going to say what they didn't say. I'm not going to do that. I don't feel I can do that. I'm not worthy of doing that. Meaning, he sees that the line a line has been drawn. He even though we said last week that in theory after the Gomorrah everybody's on the same playing field as long as you're not arguing with the Gomorrah you can argue with anybody if you can prove it he says no I don't feel that I feel a line has been drawn maybe that line was the expulsion maybe that line was the black death because the ram the last one he writes about was just before the black death and he said I'm just not able to to argue with these people I'm not even going to try I'm not even going to put myself in that position for our many sins the base of our of our intellect has just gone down in just understanding what they say all the more so being cleverer than them I'm not going to try and do that not only even if we wanted to try and do that I just don't have the time one lifetime is not enough to to reanalyze the whole Talmud so what's his secret weapon he says I'm going to come up with a new system, a formula, a formul for what's the word? Formalistic system. I'm not going to argue all the points. I'm going to take a new a new way of sack. What's what am I going to do? I'm five five paragraphs up from the bottom. I've made a decision. The three great pillars of sackabel. The whole Jewish nation rests on these three pillars. Who are they? The riffam. I'm now saying to myself, if if I can find a majority and two out of three will agree, that's going to be the meaning. I'm not even going to argue it out. I'm just going to see if two out of these three agree. That's the If three out of three agree. Oh, wow. That's like, you know, Vegas. It's like three cherries in Vegas. Whatever. Not that I've ever been on the slot machines in Vegas. Okay. It's is that's that's a jackpot. But if even two out of three agree, I'm going to go for that. I'm doing that. Uh one second. Lost the place. Unless there are situations, unless I know that this opinion, even though it's two out of three or three out of three, it's it's not the accepted opinion. Okay, fine. If that's if everybody doesn't follow that, if there's a min in Israel that we don't follow that opinion, okay, okay, fine. I respect Israel, but that's never it's rarely going to happen. Also, I'm not even sure if he was clued into all of the minhagim of all of the different places that could be. in a time when one of these three doesn't tell me what he's thinking about. What am I going to do if I only have two, the third one doesn't give an opinion and the two disagree with each other? I I've got no way of asking. So what am I going to do? Then I'm not ignoring the other people. Haraman, there's the Ramban. Harashbah, there's the Rashbah, there's the Ran, there's the Morai, the Smag, Lefalenu. I have all those to fall back on. Wherever the wind of the holy wind of Torah learning goes, we'll go with it. And we'll go with we'll find a consensus or a majority of them. So, I'm going to go with riff ra. If I cannot find a majority of those three, then we'll look elsewhere and we'll see if we can find a consensus. Great. Um, when when when none of them told me what they think on this and then we'll have to analyze and we'll go on etc etc and then he says and if you have in your country you have a a particular custom to be mahmir then I'm not coming to tell you to be lenient because you have to follow your own opinion if you're Mahmir by implication by the way he says but if you're lenient and I want you to be mahm you better fall in line because that's the noosak and at the end he says for last paragraph and who is this book for the the value of this book is going to be clear to they'll use it and and some argue that he even said if you're a great you can use it to actually formulate your own sack because I've collected everything together maybe he wasn't trying to pass for everybody and if you want just a shortcut through the haki system. This is the long short road. This will get you the way and someone who doesn't have the background, who doesn't have the learning, who's really getting a bit scratching his head with this whole business, then at least you can use my commentary to try and use it as a an understanding of what the Torah is saying. Finally, he says, "This book is the food. This will sustain all the Jewish people. That's why I've called it. His name of course is Ysef. I call him because just like Joseph in Egypt was the one who sustained the whole world through his uh leadership and his uh the way he built up the food. You are going to get all your sustenance. Yes. Where? Where are you looking? >> Okay. >> Yeah. No, it's meant to be the Ramban because he he he wants to go to the Ramban. >> No, no, he said the Ramban before my monities before. He's >> This is the first time he's mentioning the Ramban in this section. >> Ah, in this section. Okay. But he's mentioned him before. Well, he said already, I'm going to use the Ramban. The Ramban, we'll see soon is a very significant Sarity Posic. He's not ignoring him, but he's not the Rambo. He's not my monities in the same way. Let's go over the page cuz we have a lot to do. What do we have to say? I need to go on. I'm not going to get this done in 20 minutes. You I I Let's just set out the material and I'm happy to stay back a little bit at the end. I want to give you six or seven responses to this and you'll see what they are. Uh some of them will speak out outside, some of them will read inside. So, how did everybody react to this? And of course what he did is he published this over the 1550s the whole bet and then he wrote a kitsur he wrote a summary called the which is literally this thick you can he wrote it to be reviewed every 30 days he divided into 30 sections he said this is just a really shorthand book you can stick it in your back pocket you can learn a section every day for a month and go through it every month it's really a small book it's just a summary of everything I said okay great let's start with the spardim number This is okay. So he is Greek Ottoman Empire Ysef Caro even though he's written this book and he says we have to follow this majority of the riff the Rambam and the Rash etc. We'll go with two out of three. But I've heard he says already, this is in the the late 1500s that lots of people really don't like this so much and they're disagreeing with him face to face on this way that he's basking and he he does this all through his book and whenever the riff and the ram say the same thing he that's how he pascates and by the way the riff and the ram almost always say the same thing. So it's already waited apart from the fick fact that the riff was far and the ram was far and the rash was ashkardi. Okay. So you have a heavy waiting. If you're going to say riff ram rash and whenever two of them agree well you've kind of weighted your dice because the riff and the ram agree almost everywhere that they go. So he says that's how it's going to work with him. Vafidas I'm naked. And and he's he's going with these two even against the rash and many other rabbis bail hakm whichever way this goes to be lenient or strict he's going with this majority what about the rash what about all his rabbis what about rashi they weren't reed cutters in the swamp what's going on here the worst thing you can call someone in the Gomorrah is that your rebby is a reed cutter in the swab. Meaning, you know, where did you learn to your rebby must be a a schleer? Like, you know, you're calling the rash a schleer. You're calling the rash a reed cutter. You're going to go with the riff and the ram against the rush like almost every timed. Who's going to be lenient against who's going to lightaded if you like against the rash? isra even to allow Torah prohibitions just because the riff and the ram agree especially in our countryardim the rash is the rov of the spardim now that's super interesting because the rash was originally from Germany so there are some academics that want to argue that the reason the shan or includes the rush is as like a throw a bone to the to the you know there's the riff and there's a Rambam and they're the real deal and there's the rash because he's the Ashkanazian. But he's saying no no no no the rash was a very authoritative figure in the sparard community. In fact, if you look into it, you'll see that depending on which Spari uh state or or principality you were from, you had a different kind of approach. Uh in Catalonia um and Navar and Aragon, they tend to go like the Rambam Mymones. But in Castilia, which is where the rash lived in Toledo, they followed the rash. The Spardian followed the rash. So this Spardy commentator is saying to the saying to the to the bet, this is great, but but you haven't featured the rash who is a sparse enough. So it could be that actually the rash is not a bone that's thrown to the Ashkanazim, but the rash is there because the shukan wants to have a kind of panberian sack. So let's go for all the people that sparred him like. But he says, "Even so, you haven't focused on the rash enough and we don't like that." Okay, that's one approach. Then I brought you in number three, a a littleknown rav called Yseph Iban Ezra. Uh he's not the Ibanzra that you know and love. He's a Ibanzra 3 or 400 years later. And look what he says. He's in awe of the the God has made appear in the in the land of Israel. This great light He's he's prepared the whole world with his brought everything into his house. He's done an incredible job and he's called this the bet. We've never seen anything like this in terms of analysis. It's amazing. even though this is such an incredibly big thing he's done. No one could who could have done this but nevertheless but there are there's lots of confusion in this book. He says he says if you you can't just shortcut the whole process. There's lots of issues on which he's kind of just summarized but that's not really the whole story. Nagar uben nagar you need a carpenter and the carpenter's son meaning in order to do this job you can't just hire the the guy you have to hire the guy and he has to bring his family you have to have a whole team meaning you can't do there are no shortcuts to these ideas you can't just give one sec you have to bring a whole team of people in to understand what's going on there are many cases he gives the impression that everybody's happy or everyone agrees but when you look into it further and it's not true. You uncover it a bit more deeply and he's kind of papered over the cracks. It's not so straightforward especially in monetary law you have to know all these other opinions. Why why is it so important in monetary law? Because in a based in on a monetary claim, one of the principles of monetary law is that the litigant can say kimley. What does kimley mean? Kimley means I want to follow the minority opinion. Meaning you claim I owe you the money. That's very nice. The majority sack goes with you. BUT I HOLD LIKE the dot dot dot and you can say that in monetary law. And therefore, are you going to prove to me that this is the wrong opinion? I hold like him. I follow him. Now, in order to have Kimi as a as a as a as a kind of weapon in your arsenal, you have to have access to lots and lots and lots of different opinions. And he's just narrowed them all down. He's just to push them all out. And he said like, you know, these are the only ones you need to to know about. And here the this review is saying, I don't know. There's lots of other people that you've just kind of pushed out of the door which we need to know about. If someone's going to have a based in case they need to know these other opinions and and he's in love with the work. He thinks it's fantastic. He's totally in awe of it, but it's just not enough. You can't be a litigant in a based in case with just the shor in your back pocket. Now, what's happened actually over the last 500 years is the range of opinions for Kimi has become basically what the bet Ysef brings. And now, if you're not in the bet Yosesef, you're probably not in. And he was afraid that would happen. And it did happen. So, he's not happy. But in principle, he loves the work. But now we come to the ra in Kraken. Ra Mosha Isilis woke up basically at the same time had the same idea. We're all in a mess. We're all living in Poland and Lithuania and Latafia and everyone's lost their misora. We were all from Germany and France and we don't know what where we're coming from. I'm going to do this. I'm going to write this work. I'm going to write this master work collecting all these resources and I'm going to pass. The story goes that one of his students, one of the remar students in Krakco came to him one day with this newly printed book, this beta and said, "Rebi, I brought you a present. This book is, you love this. This is your kind of book." And he opens it and he says, "This is not my kind of book. This is my book. This is my book. What am I going to do? I'm in the middle of writing my book." And so was just published. And of course printing meant that the bet yourself could be on the desk of every Rob in Europe within a few decades which had never ever happened before. So he writes he was very upset and he didn't know what to do. His whole life his PhD someone just come out with his thesis before him. Okay. But he says you know something I'm going to read it. And he read it and he said this is fantastic but but come on the Rambam the riff ubisardi the rash. Okay, maybe Ashkanazi originally, but like he's a Robert Toello and that's why everyone sees him. Well, what about all the Ashkenazi people? Where where are they? So, he wrote his book eventually and he he called it the uh the D Moshe because his name was Moshe Isodus. And he writes a long introduction which he writes in rhyming pros. Okay. and I thought of trying to translate it in rhyming English pros, but realized that I probably wasn't up to it and I had other things to do this week that needed to be done. But I brought you basically what he says. Look at number four. It doesn't completely rhyme. I'm sorry. But he said goes after he's really attracted to he passes like these two or three witnesses. These are the great and whenever they agree he goes with them but over the page to page four but the other great rabbis in he doesn't pay attention to them. But he goes just like two out of three. And even though his the ones he picked are the earlier ones. Yeah. The Rambam was 1100s. The riff was 1000s. The rash was 1200s. That's great. And he doesn't follow the later ones. He doesn't follow the the the ruling of the earliest of the early ones who himself is the riff. Doesn't the riff say that we always go with the later authority and not to follow the earlier authority. So he says I have a different approach. I don't go with your two out of three uh approach because it's way too first of all it's a bit random it's a bit ashwari and it's also focusing on the early authorities but I have a tradition from the riff himself and from the Gmorrah that we like the later authorities because they know all of the material from the earlier authorities and they take that into account fourth line even if the rav is going against the we go with the we always go with a later authority And there's all these because they solve all our problems and cast light on our darkness by doing what he did. The bet Ysef has gone against all the minhagim that we follow in our Ashkanazi communities and they're based on this idea that we follow the later authorities. The Ashkanaz followed the Maharik and the Mahari and the Mahar. Sorry, I just did that. And we don't criticize those later ones and I don't want to criticize them either. Therefore, I've written I've written in his in in my book, this is what the is and I've given my reasons and I've written who said this if it's not me, etc., etc. So, he said, "Look, I love your book, but too far, too early, doesn't take account of the later Ashkanazi authorities or even the earlier ones for that matter. I'm not going to contradict it. I'm going to write a gloss on it. And he wrote to the shar to the of Ysef Caro and he said, "Can I rather than writing my whole thing from scratch? Can I just put my comments into your meaning I'm going to write my own commentary on the Torah which now appears on the Torah together with the bet the Moshe, but I'm instead of writing my own, can I just put myself in yours?" And Ravio said, "Fine, you can do that." which was very humble of him because this was an Ashkanazi from the middle of nowhere much younger than him and he was the rob of these of Arabistan which was also all the Jews nevertheless he said he could do it and that's what we have so now if you open the you have the sack of these and you have a gloss here and a gloss there of the ram bringing in the Ashkenazi min okay last and really we need 15 minutes to do this but I'm not going to take 15 minutes to do I brought you the views of those Ashkanazi authorities that basically said the whole exercise is inappropriate. Look, look at the Yamcha Schlomma. He has probably the strongest wording. Number five, a relative of the Ramon in Poland in the 1500s. We've just This doesn't rhyme, by the way, so I don't have to say it in rhyming pros. Okay. We've got a hold of this new book of these. He brings all these new ideas from ancient books. We didn't have them until he collected them. He's brought all these unusual. I mean, he's not criticizing this, but we never heard of all these people because they were manuscripts from afar. He didn't leave anything out. He really achieved what he wanted. What could you say against this? What am I how am I going to criticize this? It's amazing. But he's made compromises. But he's come up with his own system of this kind of two out of three and with Sporus Sporuses. He's just kind of go, you know, oh, we'll go with two out of three. That's how we do it. But when it comes to many times in etc. And it goes against our traditions as Ashkanazim as well and the kids, the young, the young, they love this book and they don't realize that they read it at their peril. because he often goes against the people that we pass like here in Poland and they're making a big mistake. They say this is what's in his book and that's the they say this is explicitly in the that's what they say and that's the evil that's before them. They believe something because it's written in a book. Who believes something just because it's written in a book. And if someone stands up and stands and squawks like a crane the bird yeah that's not the but he brings real proofs or real traditions no one pays any attention to this other person the oldfashioned type and I've written about this gets a bit cynical now especially these days he says for our many sins lots of people have but not a lot of them have any brains. [laughter] Okay. And that's why that's why they like this book because they don't need to think. They don't need to learn. They don't need to go through the whole Gmorra. can just read in the book and now are like and kids are like elders because everyone can just look it up in the book and he says number six this is not the way this is not the destination from the days of we never pas like any specific authority because we have to whether the early ones or the later ones. Someone who is able to do so has to do what? You have to learn the garra and relearn it and relearn it and become a talmudic genius and pass in the way you think the is based on the and if there's no clear answer in the bley then look elsewhere meaning how do you pass in not from a book not from a system of you become a talmudic genius and you base your hala on the talmud and if you can't do that then ask someone who can and this was an approach really of almost All of the 16th century Ashkanazim, I brought you the the Marsha and on the last page on number five, the Bach. All saying the same kind of thing. You can't pass them from a book. You have to pass them from the Talmud. In number 10, the Mahar the Maharal rather, which I I'm not going to read with you now because we're out of time. The moral says even it's it's better for Kim to do his best and pass it from the Gmorrah even if he gets it wrong than to pass it out of a book and get it right. Because the way halaka works, the way you keep halaka fresh and responsive and and and in innovative is by basing it on the genius of the Talmud, not on somebody's kits that they wrote based on the sack. Okay. Who won? Well, it depends on who you ask. uh in Sari land the bet won and the methodology the bet uh became uh you know authoritative and if you look at Rabadi you know miman and the bet is is king >> okay that's a bin that's a bit different in the world of the ashkanazim who won so I just want to leave you with one little visual clue the Ashkanazim eventually said you know something we're not going to argue with who's going to argue with the bet yourself but this is a page Now they just turned it back into the garra meaning they they did they didn't reject it but they got their own way by saying yes we passing the but here's 15 commentaries on the as to what it really means which is exactly the opposite of what yvar wanted. He wanted a book that you put in your back pocket and then they made it back into 15 volumes of closed small type. So who won? The ashkinazi won but they won kind of the khma in the end. Okay, fine. It's not It's more complicated than that, but we don't have time. Uh, next week we're going on to other things. Uh, let's leave it there for now, and I'm happy to answer questions. Thank you.