The Mysterious Fast of the Ninth of Tevet By Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

okay hi good morning everybody um good to see you and thank you thank you for coming uh uh we're still going through the difficult struggles but should show us um it's really kind of touching that even when you're sitting on the bus they make announcements that you know we're with you all the way you know it's kind of kind of nice the sense that in this difficult time there is so muchus there's so much Isel and as I've said many times already this is the silver lining in our dark clouds and the hope would be that even when things get better which we hope will be very very soon we'll hold on to the and theat is that we learned uh during this difficult time that would be the Raa that would come out of these difficult uh difficult situations um obviously you also know I mean everyone knows this that uh the war has taken uh very very difficult turn we've lost more just in the past few days uh than in the entire uh since October 7 and uh therefore theim and the hostages that remain in captivity uh certainly need ouros uh you know more they always needed it and they always need it but more than more than usual and our Torah should be dedicated uh for their hatah their Yeshua in addition I want to announce that um our she for the entire year uh is dedicated by rever foil and Sharm Sharon Alman in memory of their parents Edith and Riner almana y Ben s and Esther Bas Rafel as well as in their son again we very much appreciate uh the generosity may it be a uh for their parents and for their for their son and today the entire day of Torah learning all of the shorum together are in loving memory of mother grandmother great-grandmother Bessie leor Le nishas Basha Bas P by Reena and Yakov Kaufman and David and Talia I'm sorry David lebor and Talia eisenstein so again uh we're very grateful this should be um we're kind of always the middle of the topic but I I I do have to digress I don't think I mentioned this it's such an amazing little thought it's really connected to a Sor Bas but I'm going to take the license a little bit of going going backwards uh we know that last Friday last ER of Shabbat we had the fast of of AES uh but it's actually recorded in the uh MOS that there were sadik that would fast three days in a row they would fast the eighth of Taves the ninth of t Tas and the tenth of tavas they would eat at night but they would actually fast three days in a row and we know that the tenth of tavas is the only fast that is mandatory uh right the other ones are not mandatory but sadikin would fast those two extra days and Theos of makes reference to a three-day fast but the three days have nothing to do with each other on the tth of T was the day as you know from last week that netar began his Siege against Jerusalem which culminated in the destruction of the basam mikdash it's 3 years later 3 years and a few months later the eth of tavas is a later event that was the day that the 72 Elders completed the translation of the Torah into Greek you know the story that one of the successors of Alexander in Egypt talai PT o uh me talai in in Hebrew uh had what was like the national library or the Library of Congress he wanted every single book in the world of course there weren't that many books then but every single book in the world to be in his library to be translated in the language that was spoken then which was Greek and therefore he commissioned 72 sages and he put them in separate rooms and he directed that they translate the Torah into Greek and we actually have this this is called the septu agent which is Greek for the translation of the 70 although technically there were 70 72 and the gamar and Milda tells us miraculously even though they were put in separate rooms and they weren't talking to each other they came up with exactly the same translation including deviations as I'll I'll indicate of course I once heard that if they would have been in the same room and they would have come up with the same thing that would have been a bit bigger bigger Miracle because Jews always fight when when they're when they're together but still uh the gamar gives a few examples of deviations from literalness that they did for example the very first three words of the Torah Bim now if you translate them hyper literally the syntax in Hebrew would be the beginning created God implying that God was created so they in converted it to say God created the beginning or another example it mentions that the when the Torah lists unkosher or non- kosher animals so it mentions the arvit the arvit is a rabbit a rabbit is a non- kosher animal now apparently the Greek for rabbit is the name of tmi's wife which I think is Bernice I think Bernice actually means rabbit in Greek uh and therefore if they would have said Bernice is tra n is not Kosher that would have been a big insult to the queen so instead they used a euphemistic expression for rabbits such as uh that creature that dwells in in the rocks or what whatever it would be they were mishana they were mishana various things now what do kazal say kazal say the day that the Torah was translated into Greek it was finished on the eth of tabas uh the world was filled with darkness and the righteous fast on that day because of the awful thing that happened so the question is what's so awful I mean the Torah was translated into a language I mean it was the art Scroll of the time there were many many Jews who actually unfortunately could not read Hebrew this this helped them in fact Pho of Alexandria who lived in Alexandria actually records an interesting thing that the eth of tavius was a young in Alexandria because it was the day that everyone got access to the Torah the very thing that the alexandrian Jews considered to be a the considered to be a tragedy by the way just as a little aside although the sepin the tumim which is called uh was translated by people who were considered to be kazal rabbis nevertheless it never really entered the Jewish M that we have tumas we have other things but the tarum hasim did not have a great influence on halic Judaism it was however extremely influential in Christianity uh meaning many of the I mean some of the church fathers knew Hebrew many of them knew Hebrew but a lot of them learned the Old Testament as they called it via the sepen so the sepen although it is a Jewish work um is M was much more significant in the history of Christianity than it was in Judaism and you know if you have a sep then you can actually get it online as well you will actually see that it's on other books of the Bible as well but that came later meaning the original sep of talai was only the Torah uh the other books are different people uh Etc and therefore they're not it's not really the same word so the question is why is this such a tragedy what is so there are different reason you can offer there are three reasons that commentaries offer reason number one is that by translating it you're making it accessible to the non-jewish world and once the non-jewish world has possession of the Torah they could then introduce different distortions and the like so it would have been better not to give the goam so to speak access uh to the Torah that's reason number one so the concern would be accessibility to the non-jewish world world of course today it is accessible in a million translations right but uh that was one of the first the second reason is an interesting Paradox I remember when the very first art scroll came out I don't know if you remember this this goes back to like 1977 or 75 I don't remember it was on millas Esther and it was so interesting art scroll was a uh lwit was a graphic artist and he did cassos and Ventures I think art school still has a division but that was the Arts grow business and he lost a friend and he thought he would do a one-time thing L Nas's friend he would do a millas eser with anthologized English commentaries it was absolutely intended to be a one a one-time event that uh for schlo I'm sorry I hope okay for schim and that would be it then he would go back to the wedding invitation onua business and the rest is history of course Aro became a gigantic thing maybe the biggest harbas Tor in the history though since mosha rabo since the history of the world and again I know that people you can have all sorts of criticisms and art schol you know there are many many different criticisms but you know uh you cannot cannot deny the impact they have had on Torah learning uh just it is phenomenal yeah it's not perfect only god is perfect you know that's true uh but just tremendous thing now I remember yeah yeah so I remember in 1977 there was the Jewish Observer you know still publishing and somebody said what a great Sim it is that now you know we have English translations that give Rabin literature and Mos and now everybody could read what kazal say and the maam say so someone said well is it such a Sim remember the translation of the Torah into Greek meaning we we actually have two feelings about this it's very very interesting on one hand we rejoice when Jews who cannot read Hebrew or go to the originals are able to see the wisdom of Torah on the other hand we're very sad that so many Jews are not able to go back in lashan hakodesh and understand things it's like crutches you know if I ask you the question um are you happy that there are crutches and wheelchairs in the world well it it kind of depends on how you ask the question uh if people are going to have broken legs I am very very grateful that there are crutches and wheelchairs in the world but if the choice would be that people wouldn't have broken legs that would have been better so on one hand it's a great Sim on the other hand there's a certain Sor that we're not able because remember kazal say there are 70 faces to the Torah now a translation by definition cannot pick up all of them maybe one of them you know so by definition no matter how good a translation is and a commentary there's so much you're going to miss and I have to say too that Alexandria uh was an extremely wealthy Jewish community and an extremely assimilated Jewish Community kind of like uh many parts of the United States uh that some say Philo who is a very learned person and a religious Jew what whatever that meant then exactly may not have known how to read Hebrew himself some have said this you the the jury is out on that particular question and there's some evidence that even the crias Torah was in a Torah written in Greek that's why you know when you learn M Milla the gamar discusses is a Torah scroll kosher it's written in Greek and I always thought to myself when I learned that you know uh who on Earth would ever think of writing a Torah scroll in Greek like you know why why would that question come up the answer is it actually may have happened in Alexandria and the like so that's the secondaries I'm sorry did you want to say yes I just wanted to say that I was was going to do this yep wow that's amazing so it's 100% true fog was the impetus foris lwit to do the art school of Milla tester and from Milla tester it is spread to to everything to Shas Yi medish and yakob and you know more and more projects every single day even cookbook but those you know maybe would be of lesser importance but art SC branches out me who you ask but art SC branches out to to all of those all of those different different things so those are two reasons so far that there was a ESS one is accessibility to the go the second is boning the fact that in an assimilated Jewish Community people were not capable of reading the Torah hes and the third reason I think is a bit more subtle and that is theim found it necessary to introduce certain deviations from the literal text now they had good reasons for it but that creates a real dangerous precedent because once you kind of give yourself a license to deviate from the text then God forb now get luckly nothing was affected when they did it but people could use it as a precedent to delete things from the Torah that are not comfortable so when the Torah says in VRA about not having Mish Z some well let's let's take that one out you know it's not so maybe K saw with rues that this was a very dangerous notion of tampering with something even though it may have been innocuous uh when they did it but it could lead to very drastic consequences so that is is the fast of the eth of Tes and that is after the event of the 10th of Taves right the 10th of Tes was surrounding the city before theban this is already during the second temple during the bay sheni okay we then have a fast of the ninth of tavas what is that about so here the makus uh of the Brisa say a very strange thing the ninth of Tes was proclaimed they fast as well but the didn't want to tell you why very very strange we're not telling well that's pretty strange now in the it says the ninth of T was the yart site of Ezra haser now Ezra haser was the leader of the Jewish people the spiritual leader there's a book of Ezra at the very beginning of the second temple he was the founder of the the an Kessa hola the men of the great assembly the 120 Elders who essentially revitalized Judaism upon the shivat the return after the Babylonian exile Ezra was considered to be so great that kazal consider him a second Moser rabenu and they actually declare if the Torah would not have been given via Moser rabenu Ezra was worthy enough to be the one that was Mel the Torah and therefore the same way sadik fast on the seventh of Adar which is Mos renu's yard site there were sikim who fasted on the yard site of Ezra well that's a perfectly good reason but the problem is why would that be a mystery in other words why would the say we're not going to tell you why it's a fast if it's simply the yard side of Ezra over what's what's there's no secret about that per se so because of this mafor have uncovered all sorts of other mysterious reasons why some people fasted on the nth of T and when you when you hear these other reasons you will understand why the didn't want to talk about it reason number one I guess I could say it's almost Ina is that according to some the ninth of T was the Hebrew birth date of yesu of yashka Jesus of Nazareth which actually fits if you go back to the year of his birth the ninth of Tas was his birthday his Hebrew so it's interesting so someone asks you you know why don't Jews you know celebrate Christmas it's just a stupid question but you know the answer is we do commemorate Christmas this is the fast this is the fast of the ninth of Taves we commemorate it by a fast but you know we commemorate it we we you know as it were um now you obviously the in light of the fact that Christianity was such a source of persecution for the Jewish people over centuries and centuries and centuries so you could understand that the birth of yesu would be considered to be kind of a tragic event uh for us uh but they didn't want to reveal it because that could cause a pgam or whatever it would be that we're fasting on on the day of uh yar's Birth by the way one other thing about Yash I want I want to mention because it is fascinating you know there are many many not many but but there is considerable material in the gamorra and in the medish about Yu yeshua's name is yahushua the word Jesus is just Greek for yahushua in fact yahushua B nun in the septu agent is Jesus you know son of nun so Jesus is not anything more than the Greek form of yua uh the other word uh Christ one should not should not say in in connection with that because Christ means the Messiah the anointed one so it's the Christ that is the improper title to use but the first name is just a first name but we call him yesu yesu is an abbreviation for his name youate orka or whatever it is uh that's that's not important but he was of course Jewish and there was a lot of material in the gamorra about it but most of that material was censored by the Catholic Church the Catholic Church employed apostate juice Jews who bash and they gave them they gave them a a directive that when you come across these different passages take them out and they censored it and as a result a lot of the passages were expunged so you may ask so how so now in the newer editions of Chas they they're put back in so you may ask how did they get recovered if all of them were expunged so it's very very very interesting uh because saric chassan those that were printed in Syria North Africa which were under Islamic rule didn't Center those passages so essentially the ashkenazic chassin were able to recover the passages via the spartic printings or manuscripts of of Shas so there is a story there which is really really remarkable the gamor says it's a famous the teaching is a very famous teaching in gamorra this is very very important that in your relationship to your children and to your students the right hand should draw near and the left hand should push away now with apologies to lefties kazal always write with the assumption that the right hand is the stronger hand the dominant hand the more powerful hand so kazal are teaching us a very important concept about parenting and about teaching that the dominant most powerful influence that you have to have is one of kindness friendship love there has to be discipline there has to be responsibility but that should be with the left the pushing away should be the weaker response the stronger response always has to be in fact a very well-known therapist in the from Community she writes from mishak magazine too uh Sarah radliff you may have come across her very very good good uh astute uh psychologist she has an 8020 rule which I think most of us may not keep she says you try to get that 80% of your interactions with your children should be positive she says no more than 20% should be negative unfortunately sometimes we might reverse might reverse the ratios so that's a beautiful teaching y but of all things it proves this from the story of yka it mentions that yesu was a student of the Tana R yahushua benia he was a student he was a Jew he was a student of Torah and he was once with his rebi at an inn now the word for Inn in Aramaic Isa like usan guess buta can also mean a female inkeeper so when they were sitting and having a meal at the in re Yeshua said which he meant to say how beautiful is this Inn yashka assumed he was saying how beautiful the inkeeper is and he said I think her eyes are too close together so rabu PRI was kind of offended number one that yashka is thinking about looking at the women and number two that he thinks that the rebi is looking at the women so he kind of excommunicated him and he said he's not going to talk to him for a number of days and it mentions that for 40 days in a row yeska came to rev Yoshua and begged forgiveness and R Yeshua refused to accept it he felt that jka needed the discipline it was the last day on the 48th day yashka said this is the last time if he doesn't accept me I'm leaving this religion and rabi Yoshua had the same thought if he comes to me today I'm going to forgive him but lo and behold when yoska came to ask M RAB Yoshua is in the middle of saying the shma now I don't know why yoska didn't notice that but he says and therefore he couldn't answer him so yeska said that's it I'm leaving he went to E Egypt he learned magic and the Occult Arts now it's fascinating that kazal don't use this as a story to blame yashka they use it as a story to be a little critical of he was too harsh he was too rejecting had he been a little bit more accepting then yashka wouldn't have gone outra quite an amazing story that kazal used this as an example that the am should be m and the small who was he pushed him away with both hands by the way this the last part of the passage is also significant says he went to Egypt to learn magic now we know without getting into the issue is there such a thing as magic but this the simple meaning of k is and the Torah is that there is such a thing uh the Torah talks about of course the The Magicians of Egypt and if the idea is that yashka learned kishu whatever that means exactly that's an interesting point because the Christian Bible records that yashka did all sorts of Miracles now how do we look at that so people say well who's I don't believe it you know it's above am my which is no that's entirely possible but what's interesting is it may theoretically be possible that we could accept that certain things were done but they were done as like the meaning to say the gamar is actually telling us that you don't have to deny the historical reality of a miracle it just didn't come from Hashem it came from Kos of Tuma like the theim turned staffs into snakes Etc so whatever now whether that's real or whether that's an illusion that's another question that that's Aus is Magic reality or is Magic kind of hypnosis or Illusion okay that's an interesting mlus but whatever it is that is what yoska got engaged in right so um I know people discuss I know with the uh the Harry Potter books were were I don't know how if they're still as popular as they were but they were very very very popular books uh and you know even among religious you know religious kids enjoyed Harry Potter B I enjoyed some of them too when my son was growing up you know so people say are you allow to to read you know a Harry Potter book it's about [Applause] hogworkz Jupiter Zeus all these different things so ra mosha gives a very interesting idea ra mosha says that any reading about idolatry that nobody in the world takes seriously whatsoever is not a votis her anymore so for me to read about Christianity that would be a problem because that's a religion that still has millions and millions of adherence and God forbid I don't want to be you know I don't want to be converted you know to that type of religion but nobody is going to become a worshipper of Jupiter or or whatever it is so then it just becomes above a my said just becomes stories So Stories are stories I mean maybe they're he but they wouldn't be considered to be a Zora anymore uh because they's simply not a religion that anybody that anybody uh has so the same thing would be would be true uh true for for her kesef and and the like okay so Harry Potter is okay by the way I even uh have aish that um let's assume you got accepted to Hogwarts but they didn't they didn't let you off for chabas so are you allowed to do magic on chabas so I have a Rah from toas uh toos says in M that on the last well I'm sorry the gar says on the last day of MH renu's life he actually wrote 13 Torah in which one was put in the arodes and one was given to each shave it so toos asks the Kasha how could Moser rainu write 13 the last day of his life we have a tradition that mosha rain who died on chabas right uh so if mosha died on chabas how could he write seph Tas so TOA says Since By definition if he wrote 13 Torah it must have been a supernatural miracle that you do by Supernatural natural Miracles are not considered M for the laws of chabas the Torah prohibits it does not prohibit so that would mean that you know Hogwarts I mean there may be an is of Kish that's a separate is but you wouldn't be M shabas by doing these tricks okay but be it as it may this is reason number one for the fast or the mysterious reason number one of the fast of the ninth of Taves it was the birthday of [Applause] yesu again not again you understand not has become to mean Christian but really not originally just meant from Nat seret because neret was his place of a place of birth okay now there's a second reason that's even stranger and that is it is a yard site not a not a birthday but it's the yite of a man called Shimon keepa Shimon kipa and therefore we we commemorate the death of Shimon kipa by fasting now who is Shimona so keep in mind that the word kipa in Aramaic not in Hebrew actually means a rock rock Shimon The Rock okay so rock is obviously a nickname the Greek for rock is Petra so Shimon keepa is a man who was Simon Peter now Simon Peter uh as you know uh his name was Shimon he was he was jewi he was Jewish as all of yashka tum were early tum were and uh his name was Shimon and yoska designated Shimon as his successor as his malal Mak Shimon eventually came to Rome and became the first Bishop of Rome which made him the first he was the first pope Peter was the first pope and yoska named him Peter because he says you are my rock I can rely on you you are the rock right so Shimon kipa is Simon Peter the Apostle Peter so why on Earth Earth now again this is not saying we're fasting the day he was born we're fasting the day he died like we're mourning him like a sadic why would we mourn Shimona so here we have a medish now this is a very important point the word medish has a bit of an indefinite meaning there are what you might call the official midrashim the official midrashim the medish RAB the medish [Applause] tanzar the P the alimon which is really an anthology of midashim these are the midashim that have the stamp of kazal on them uh these are like the gorah these are authoritative it doesn't mean they have to be literal that's an important Point like if you were to ask me do I have to believe that all midrashim are true the answer is yes every medish is true but the definition of Truth is not necessarily literal see it's a false dichotomy to say midr are either true or they're not true no they're true but they can be true in many many senses so for example do you have to believe that vashi you know didn't go to the party because she grew a taale do I have to believe that vashi had a tale you actually don't but the medish is expressing a certain metaphoric idea so this is very important all midashim are repositories of very very deep truth they're not bbam mises they're not just things but truth can be non-literal too truth can be symbolic this is a point the rambam himself makes the ramb makes in the hak to per the Ramba makes the point that there are some people who think Al M rashim are literally true and there are some people who say if it offends their reason it's false and the rambam says the first group are well-meaning idiots and the second group are R because they have no respect for kazal and the truth is in the middle all midrashim are true but truth can also be symbolic now some are literal and some are symbolic and the rambam then promised es us talk about a lost opportunity that he will write a book going through midash manag and he will explain which ones are meant to be taken literally and which ones are meant to be taken symbolically he was going to write a book to that effect unfortunately the book was never written the rambam was busy with other projects so we don't have such a book of the rambam that's a that's a bit of a of a but those are what I call the canonical mid those are the the official mid that we have to be maab on one level or another however in the Middle Ages there was a variety of other books that sometimes were given the name medish and we don't really know who wrote them and we don't really know how reliable they are different fragments of them are quoted by some ronm so essentially if Rashi quotes some of these fragments we would assume that it's reliable uh many of the M by the way or that way the M of KH that are called medish are not really in the med Raba or t in fact there's a two volume work you even get it on hebrewbooks.org it's called idim I think it's even still sold in the stores it was put together by revie Huda eisenstein a very interesting whole story r on the Lower East Side going back to the 1920s and and before and he collected all of these odd fragments of midashim from all over the place and he put it together in two volumes you know these are like 100 m each of them is like two pages or whatever it is so in one of these unauthorized midrash there is a story about Shimona so is it true maybe not I'm not saying it's true but this is a story that is quoted in medieval sources and that is the early Christians were of course Jews they were Jews uh yoska was a Jew and as a result they doed in schs many of them still kept Mitzvah just like a Messianic Jew today you know he may be from I mean you have Messianic Jews who have beard and pis and cus and the like now that posed a tremendous danger for the Jewish people because when you have people who subscribe to Christian beliefs who are within the Jewish Community itself people could be poisoned people could be influenced just as indeed happens to this very day right there were stories just last year two years ago about a couple that was living within the fir Community uh that way so Shimon kipa proposed the following proposal to the Sanhedrin he said listen I want to take Christianity out of Judaism I want to make it a separate religion in which they're not going to be in our synagogues they're not going to be in the shows they're not going to be in our communities in fact I will even cause them to hate the Jewish people and in that way they will be separated so what I'm going to do is I'm going to become a follower of yashka and I will will establish a church you know I will establish like a separate religion now he said tragically I know that I am cutting myself off from the Jewish Community I uh this is Simon Peter Simon Peter uh and I know that I'll never be able to be in the Jewish Community again but I am doing this in order to save am Israel from being infiltrated by Christ Christianity within the Jewish religion itself and indeed the medish goes on that he separated himself he became a bishop of Rome he created a separate Christian religion separate Christian Church as it were it mentions that in private he would continue to keep Mitzvah he would work filling in private and the like but publicly he actually attacked the Jewish people so that the Christians would not be connected to the Jewish people in any way and in memory of a righteous person who essentially sacrificed his Jewish identity for the benefit of clusel some sadik fasted on the ninth of Taves but they didn't want to reveal the reason because once again it wouldn't be understood by the Jews like why are you fasting for Shimona now there's a second statement that's uh even more crazy and that is he also had one other request he said now remember my yite and he said I composed a prayer I composed AA can you have thisa recited in your shs so that way I'm still connected to the Jewish community and the med says the prayer that Shimon keepa composed was nishmas the prayer of nishmas a beautifula that we say on shabas and nishas is also one of those Sig for example rebon Kanki would often tell people who needed a sh or want needed children or whatever it is like say nishas for 40 days uh and you'll get schas so according to this medish the author of nishmas is none other than Shimon keeper now I want to point out that sometimes uh now there there is a saer that was written by one of the tum of rashi rashi lived in France vit just a city in France soim of V compiled a book of minhagim of and n and yam and the like and this is called maor vitory it's a very famous safer and Mak vit has many many of the minhag of Rashi so Rashi didn't write it but a of Rashi wrote it and Incorporated now you'll often see thator vit is the source of the statement that Shimon kipa is the author of nishmas so I need to correct that uh it is true that in M vit you will find a statement that some say nishas was written by Shimon kipa but Mar vitri says that's untrue in other words he says it and then says it's sham so I'm obviously not telling you anything uh that I know is factually true meaning there are some sources that said such a thing and there are some sources that say that's absolutely impossible show them to say it so I'm not saying it as a certainty but it's such a such a fascinating bit of like obscure knowledge that I wanted to I wanted to uh share it with you yeah what was it about Christianity that attracted the Jews yes so it's interesting I I actually once heard this from my own rashash Shiva rakov Weinberg and he said the great attraction was that you know in Judaism we very much want to love God we want to be connected to God but God has no body God is without physical dimensions so it's very very hard actually it takes a lot of work to connect to a as a physical being to connect to a Kadesh who has no physical Essence Christianity physicalized Divinity now that's a mistake that's a distortion it's not EMS but on an emotional gut level it's enormously attractive in the sense that I have a God I can relate to now of course that's false it's false right you you asked me what's the attraction so I'm telling you what the attraction is but uh that doesn't make it emth uh all sorts of lot well in fact that was the attraction to AAR itself uh kind of having physical images of the to have a physical image of of divinity and Hashem says over and over again that you know you did not see a picture you did not see an image right Hashem warns us you did not see it right this is what aod Zar is all about but still people have weakness and there are things that are attracted now it's interesting I do want to point out that in the early years I don't want to get too much into the history of Christianity but in the early years of Christianity there actually was a m do they have to keep the Torah meaning uh there was a position that says we got to keep the Torah it was Paul now Paul didn't even know yoska Paul was also a Jew uh but Paul was the one who really said we're not obligated to keep the Torah Christian is no longer obligated to keep the Torah so that step of abrogating the Torah came later that was not the initial thing the initial point was you remains a mitzvot but you had this this this theology okay so as I say uh uh it's a little odd that uh you know to speak about inuma that are connected to the secular date but okay but nevertheless it's still Torah yeah no no the word the word medish is not so diff diffult to translate it comes from um investigation to bees we investigate the meaning of a text so you know that that's that doesn't convey any Authority one way or the other you know uh you can say that you know when I learn something myself you know I'm into the meaning of a PK in fact the truth is there there are MIM that that give their commentary is the name of medish the commentary of rabenu Baya which is one of the Great Torah commentaries uh is called medish so the word medish was used uh even for things that are not the genre of medish officially Lally accept it as truth well well this is the rambam's point the rambam's point is that um mides conveys spiritual truths but it is not always intended to be literal truths I mean that's the ramb and that was the approach of Mah r that maybe this deserves a whole series of talks in and of itself the symbolic language of medish and that's a very very important lesson uh again you see the point here it's not that a medish is not true a medish is true but truth exists on on different levels this is what the rambam is teaching Us in the hakama to per and that's when I say medish I also include the a in the gamar right there's medish and there's a but no they they follow the same the same types of types of of rules unfortunately AG is often uh people don't pay attention to it you know in the Yesa for example you're learning gamorra and the gamar has many discussions and every once in a while you have an aoic break for 1 2 3 four pages sometimes even more than that uh in a typical Advanced yiva uh that skips the rebi says we're going to skip it we're going to skip these four pages you can learn it by yourself because it's not it's not a discussion and therefore we're not going to spend our time and it's very unfortunate the vagon writes that in aad are the deepest secrets of the of the Torah the way rev cook describ it the is the body of Judaism and the a is the med I'm using kind of is the the values of Judaism come from the a the practical ways you have to live that comes from the that comes from the just in a side the reason we have to not exist without the Old Testament yes yes um well that's very very correct the new bills on the old of course we don't consider the build the building to be a good addition but yeah for sure for sure the foundation is this I mean one has to know that I mean again yeska is a complicated figure because a lot of the Theology of Christianity came much later meaning uh if you would have asked yha how did he perceive himself you know that would have been a complicated question it wouldn't necessarily be the way he was perceived at a later time okay so we're almost finished so let's just uh at least uh spend a few minutes on our topic uh but again forgive me for the digression but but I thought it was an interesting thing that a lot of people are not are not aware of uh again we've been talking a lot about being Moi somebody so I just want to mention one interesting Hala you may have heard that um well we know for Kish I say Kish the bottom line is that even if I've made Kish a lot of times I can make it again for someone who didn't hear Kish because call Isel Ravens since every Jew is responsible for every other Jew so if you didn't hear Kish I'm still obligated so the fact that I heard Kish and then my wife didn't hear Kish no problem I can make it again or she can make it but but if she doesn't want to make it I can make it for her but you may have heard an interesting thing that that's not true for havdalah that when they make havdalah in SCH you may notice I'm not sure but you may notice that they will often make a point of having an unmarried person a single person makeala in rather than a married person because the married person will say I got to go home and make it for my wife now you may ask the question what's the big problem let him makea and show for himself and then he'll make it for his wife after all he could have done that at KES if he was in show for shabas morning KES and he made kdes to eat and his wife was not in sh when he goes home he can make Kish again so why can't what's the problem with ABD why would there be aak and indeed the that uh the the the havd in besset should be said by an unmarried person so let me explain what the issue here is we know for sure that women are KES because even though Kish is a but we know if you'll remember we compare Z and Sh were said Zar is the positive commandment of Kes Shamar is the negative of not doing so have whoever has the negatives of chabas also has the positive so there's no question a woman and a man are equal when it comes to Kish however they're actually is a if that includes some re a minority actually say a woman is not in because a and it's not in the which is going on Kish others say a woman is because the same wayar obligates her that in the beginning of chabas to honor the chabas it also obligates now so there's actually Aus there's a woman have to sayala now let's say she's by herself so what's the going to be the is going to be that she says by herself reason because if she's she has to do it and if she's not she's allowed to do a just like taking a so bottom line is we have Aus if a woman is in but even if she's not she's allowed to do it therefore she should do it but here's the problem if I as a man was Y and now I'm going to say it for her if she's not my saying it again is aala because she has the right to do a that she's exempt for but I don't have the right to be mo her in it because if it's not a it's a so so if we knew that she was like she is and Kish there'd be no problem with the husband doing it again that's why Kish there's no problem because she's in Kish but since havdalah is a suff so in such a situation he should not make the bra if he was already because for him to say a on a mitvah that a woman is would be a bral from his perspective so the bottom line therefore actually is if a husband was y y with his wife should make abdalah herself and let me hasten to add there is absolutely no problem with her drinking uh the wine the Min hug that a woman does not drink the abdlla wine is only if somebody else is making abdulla for her when a woman whether widowed divorced uh or college students or her husband already made Abdullah whatever it when a woman makes Abdullah for herself there is no question that she does drink the wine right so people don't worry about a beard huh say again yeah yeah so so uh there are different reasons uh some say that uh know the of thead brought death into the world and the woman was the one who gave adam theas and and the the wine According to some opinions theas was was a grape was a Vine so therefore she should not participate uh as in the thing that she caused death to come into the world after shabas yeah so the Min is this is a Min the minog is that when a man makes havdala for a woman for his family she should not drink from the havdala wine although she would drink from the kdes wine so again as I say part part of it is it's connected to the idea that uh the theas According to some opinions was was a Vine and the woman caused Adam to be n that's the main reason that's the main reason but but that but that's a minog again and and I want to point out this idea that a woman grows a beard is a is above a m that's not uh that is not Ms uh but as I say if a woman makes abdlla herself she absolutely drinks the wine she must drink the wine under those circumstances so this is the Naina do you see the difference between the Kish and the havalah a woman is 100% obligated in Kish so the husband can do it again and again and again and again if she's not she could do it but for him it would be a and since it's a suff if she's it's better for him not to do it if he was y if he wasn't y then of course he can do it for her because it's not aala because he has to say it for himself as well yeah um I was told that if I'm making for myself I don't use H okay so that's another Shad maybe I'll have to talk about it next week uh there are those that say that even if a woman makes abdala she does not make the braa over H over H uh there is such a sh we actually don't Pas in that way we actually pasin unless you know if you have a that's your uh but but but weing a woman does make the over but you are correct there is there is such a view okay you all have a good week and thank you for coming