When Avraham discovered Hashem by Rabbi James Kennard

partly a introduction to this week's parha which is which starts with Abraham appearing on the scene and hasem speaking to Abraham and I want to ask the question when at what age did Abraham recognize Hashem at what age did Abraham realize that there was a God in the world we know that he lived in a world of idolatry the midrash tells us that his father was a professional idolator who made and served Idols we know the story story of Abraham smashing the idols Abraham at some stage realized that the idolatry into which he'd been born and which was all around him was false and there was one God one God to whom we should worship when did he realize that how old was he now there's a well-known answer most people would answer based on one of the sources we're going to see that he was 3 years old and indeed the midrash brings that as one of two options for how old he was so if we look at quote number one we have a pasuk from par toot as it happens where Hashem blesses yak and He blesses yit and he says Hashem says I'm blessing you in the Merit of your father Abraham because Abraham followed my mitzvot and the P says AEV which here means because Abraham listen to my voice he guarded what needs to be guarded mitv my Mitzvah my statues for T and my tat or my teaching Abraham did all those things and the word AEV is particularly interesting it's not the normal word we would expect here and perhaps why that's why the midrash dash on the word and it says like this if you look in quote number two the bit Raba starts with and then it says perhaps we can close the door maybe R and both of them say that Abraham was 48 years old when he recognized Hashem we'll come back to that and we'll ask why what's the significance of 48 but r r don't say he was three years old they say was 48 years old then in the third line of number two Abraham ATO he was three years old when he recognized his creator minan AEV vet uh the number of AEV which in gatria is 172 Shar Abraham Abraham listen to my voice sorry AB listen to the voice of his creator in other words ra lakish looks at that P and says it doesn't mean AEV sh because Abraham listen to my voice in addition it means something else AEV 172 because that's the GATRA of akev Abraham listened to my voice what's the significance of 172 how old was Abraham when he died 175 so if he was 175 when he died and he listened to hashem's voice for7 72 years that means he discovered Hashem when he was three and that is the second opinion in the midash so the first opinion is that he was 48 and we don't have at the moment a reason for the significance of that number the second opinion is that he was three which is the traditional view now one of the things I want to explore is what's the difference between appreciating the god at the age of three and appreciating God at the age of 48 and we'll come back to that question but in the meantime the midrash gives both possibilities now I want to go to the rambam so the rambam writes the mission Torah and the mission Torah is a book of laws it is not a book of stories however there are a few occasions when the rambam waxes lyrically and tells a story and the beginning of hilara is one of those occasions hilara the laws of idolatry and the rambam tells us how it came to be that the world was full of Idol Idol after all Adam Harish knew who Hashem was Noah knew who Hashem was 10 Generations later Abraham is in a world of idolatry what went wrong and the Roman explains that people started ding to Hashem and then they looked up in the sky and they saw the stars and the planets which Hashem had made and they began to think that these stars and planets are Servants of Hashem and then they began to think that rather than ding to the big boss I'll D to one of the servants and the servants will as it were pass on my message instead of seeing the CEO I'll see the secretary and the secretary will forward my complaint or my request to the CEO so everything's okay people still know there's a God in the world and they're only doing to the stars and the planets in order that their messages be passed on to Hashem but then in the course of time people began to think that the stars and the planets were independent deities independent gods and people sced to do to the stars and the planets and not to Hashem himself that in a nutshell is how the rambam describes the beginnings of idolatry in the world and then he goes on to say but something happened to break out of this situation if you look at number three he continues the story and he says about Abraham when this giant this spirit spiritual giant nigal was weaned now weaning didn't happen um I think weaning happened a lot later in olden times than it does today and we'll come back to the significance of that later but when this giant Abraham was weaned H he began to wonder w n d r in his mind and he was young and he began to think by day and by night and he was wondering he was surprised how is it possible that this planet our planet Earth keeps going round and round constantly and it never doesn't have a person making it go round who is making it rotate small because it's impossible but it's rotating itself there must be some other power that is causing the Earth to go round and round and he didn't have a teacher he didn't have somebody to influence him to to inform him of things he was immersed in the place called and it's idolatrous culture amongst These Foolish idolators and his father and his mother and all the people were worshippers of Idols literally stars and he worshiped with them as we say in the originally our ancestors were idolators it's a debate in the when we learn the ha there a question whether Abraham is included in that as well says the ram he was included he was serving Idol with the rest of them but End of Line fouret his mind was wandering again the rambam uses the word schet which occurs and it means to be restless to wonder and eventually umin and he understood end of line four until he reached the way of Truth and he reached the right answer from his correct understanding and he KN knew that there was one God for whom manal and he was the one who makes the planet Go Round and Round by the way I feel just in the interest of intellectual honesty I should point out that this is based on a medieval understanding of physics that something will only rotate if something's making it rotate new Newtonian mechanics from the 17th century onwards has helped us understand that that's not correct if you start a something to rotate it will carry on rotating by itself until there is a alternative force that slows it down um however we can understand this idea metaphorically or we can understand it according to the science of the time uh the rambam says that the Abraham worked out there must be a force making the World Go Round even though today's science would would learn differently so Abraham reached the conclusion that there was a power a God one God that rotates the Earth and that God created everything and there's nothing in the except him by the way we've got a few of the principles of Faith which the rambam says we all must believe as a as a Mitzvah but there is a God but there's only one God and they there's there's no other God but him and Abraham understood Abraham knew that the whole world making mistake and the thing that was making them make this mistake that they were worshiping stars and they were worshiping images Star Planet sorry sorry um statues and drawings of the Stars until the truth was completely lost from them so that's the intellectual scientific pseudo philosophical process that Abra went through and at what stage did he finish this process number four Abraham ATO Abraham was 40 years old when he recognized his creator once he did recognize and he knew he began to give answers to the people around him in and to tell them the truth IM and to have arguments with them about the nature of God and to tell them that the path on which they were traveling is not the way of Truth the way they're going on and he broke the idols it's interesting that the rambam quotes what we know as a midash um to help to to explain the development of Abraham because the breaking of the idols was his response to the idolatry around him and his technique for awakening people to the real nature of God and he began to make known to the people around him that it's not fitting to serve anyone except Hashem and to Hashem it is appropriate to bow down and to offer sacrifices Okay so we've had a description there in the rambam of how Abraham came to the conclusion that he did but we're told at the beginning of paragraph 4 explicitly Abraham was not three when he recognized Hashem but he was 40 why 40 where does the Rama get the idea of 40 from now so far if you've been keeping track we've got three different numbers and we're going to have a fourth by the end was he three was he 48 which is the other view in the midrash or was he 40 which is the rambam's view now we might find later the significance of 40 but straight away I want refer to I want to refer ref to the KF mishna in number five so the KF mishna is a commentary on the rambam it's a written by Rio of Ciro who's also perhaps better known as writing the Shar and The KES of mishna one of the things that he tries to do is to try to find the sources for the rambam's words the rambam in the Mish Torah famously didn't give references there are no footnotes the r derives his halaka that he presents in the Mish Torah from the gamarra but he doesn't say where he got it in the gamar and that was one of the reasons why his book was quite controversial at first one of the things the K missioner does in his commentary and others do as well as we will see is to provide sources for what the rambam said so in number five the K of mner says Shah Gores you need to say that the rambam had a different text of the midrash that we quoted in number two that his version read as follows RAB that his version of Alid had not three and 48 as the two options but three and 40 his text said 40 below Ben and not 48 K as we find in our books in other words if you get look at the mid it will say 48 but we suppose that the rambam had a different version of the same text and his version said 40 so that also explains the source of the rambam's number it's I'm now going to say 48 Stoke 40 between the two variants for the KF Mission tells us there were one variant says 40 one variant says 48 they're essentially the same rambam in his midrash had 40 and that's why he says Abraham was 40 years old but now let's see the rivid now the rivid ra Abraham B David was a contemporary of the rambam and he commented on the mission of Torah in very short um pithy comments and they almost always are very disagreeing very antagonistic towards the words of the rambam it's interesting that if you open the page of the rambam you get the rambam in the middle you get the commentaries on one side and on the other side but the commentary of the Rivard because it's so sort of integral to learning the ram is right inside the text of the rambam itself and the rivver makes these short comments um sometimes he says the the Ram's got it completely wrong in terms of his understanding of the Haka sometimes he says the Ram's right but he didn't even need to bother to say it it's that sort of critical commentary and here he says the following in number six so quoting the words of the rambam where he says Abraham was 40 years old when he recognized his creator the next line begins alaf alaf which stands for Omar Abraham which is the way the riot introduces his comments says the river there is a story or a narrative that he was three the rabam says 40 the river says but there is a story that he was three there is a narrative in our sources we'll talk about what the sources are in a minute that he was three now what is the basis of this question how is it an attack on the rambam we have seen that the rambam's got a very fine source for his position the braus rabber number two on our page said Abraham was three or Abraham was 48 which in the rambam's view meant 40 the rambam's version says 40 so the rambam says I've picked the number 40 I take it from the midrash I build the story around it I say abam was 40 what's wrong with that the answer of what's wrong with that is as follows let's look at number seven number seven is the gorra the T B in the darim where we find the following says Abraham was three how do I know that because Abraham listened to my voice and the number the um the summation of the letters of a is 172 same idea we saw above so in the gamorra it says Abraham heard hashem's voice for 172 years which means hash Abraham discovered Abraham sorry Abraham discovered Hashem when he was three and that's it Al gamar doesn't say anything about 40 or 48 so the classical sources are as follows the mid Rush that we saw in number two says three or 48 the Gamora says three now although it's not absolutely clear what the rivard's question is it is commonly understood as as follows that we have sources in the ramb sorry sorry in the in the midrash we have sources in the gamarra and the gamor trumps that's not a deliberate use of the word today the gamorra trumps the midash in other words it is wrong to leave the gamorra and go to the midrash because the gamar is the ultimate source the midrash is a source but you cannot deny what's in the gamorra so what the riv is saying to the rambam is it's very nice that youve come up with this idea of Raam 40 but yes there is a story which means the only story that you will find in our gamarra is that he was three so the implied question is how can the rambam ignore the gamarra and choose to go with the midrash that is the question of the Rival and indeed it's not just one place in the gamarra uh it's implied somewhere else that he was very young when he discovered Hashem if you look at number eight a different gumar from Milla talking about who other was and who abrah was because they two names for the same person Abraham who Abraham and then it says who he was righteous from his beginning to his end says the gar Abraham was righteous for all his life from his beginning not quite sure what the beginning is but certainly from a very early age and commenting on this in number nine is the mara so the mara comments on well a lot lot of different things but he has a special section called where he comments on the narrative sections of the gar and regarding this Kar we just learned in number eight where it says Abraham was righteous from beginning to end says the Mar in number nine just like we the idea that Abraham recognized Hashem when he was three so when the number eight in mcgilla says he was righteous from beginning to end doesn't mean from his first breath because we don't expect a baby to recognize Hashem but he recognized Hashem at a young age where do we have a source but he recognized Hashem at a young age well we have it in the gamar that he recognized Hashem when he was three so we see actually to support the rivard's attack on the rambam not only is there one gamorra that says he discovered Hashem when he was three explicitly there's another gamar that says he was very young when he discovered hasm so again we turn the question back on the rambam how can the rambam ignore the gamarra that says he was three and go with the midrash that says he was 48 or in the rambam's case 40 now one of the commentators on the rambam is called the migdal Oz um and the M the start of the mdal is to always always defend the rambam against the rivot so if the rivot asks a question one of the places we would look to see how we could answer the question on behalf of the rambam is to look at the migdal o and the MD o in number 10 says so the first words are just a sort of reference point to where the r began commenting on this section of the ramb that we learned in number three says the M End of Line one of number 10 this is all what he the rambam collected in his mind his correct mind mean from other books and what's alluded to in the talmud so the mdal says you know what the number 40 or 48 doesn't appear in the talet but it appears in other books like the midash and it's alluded to in the talet now I don't know and I don't think anyone knows for sure what the mdal means by it's alluded to in the tud but the mdal is conceding but there's no explicit reference in the tud that Abraham was an adult of 40 or 48 but nevertheless says the mdal O It's alluded to in the tud and the rambam whose mind is correct he got it from other sources and me the mdal says in the third line there is a story that it's three he was three years old Min the gatria of the word akev is 172 and that's the end of what the rivot says and we've explained that the rivid is asking the ramban why he dropped the idea of three which we find in the gumar and used the idea of 40 which we only find Outside The so says the m in line four I say the truth that the two ideas three or 40 they're both found letter by letter and here he put the literally the nearest of words the one that makes the most sense so the migdal says but the rambam says three doesn't make so much sense doesn't make sense that a little child would have this awareness of God it makes much more sense that he was an adult and since we find support for both of them as it happens not in the gamarra but in the midrash the rambam says I chose the one that's available in the midrash that is kurova is the most likely explanation if we turn over the page we come to other ways to support the idea that he was 40 so so far let's just recap what we're up to midash says three or 48 the rambam says 40 the gumara says three the KF missionary explained that the rambam is quoting the midrash that it was 48 but his version said 40 and the Rivard asked why the rambam ignored what it says in the gamar it says he was three so I want to to explore the number 40 and then explore the number 48 before we bring all this together how sorry so he's defending the rambam and he says the rambam sees two approaches in front of him they're there they're both there in the mid rush and he chooses the one which is more logical and that's why he says 40 that's why he doesn't say three now he hasn't the way I phrase the river's question is he hasn't really answered it the way I phrased the R's question was how can the rambam ignore the gamar which just says three and nothing else and go for the midrash that has the alternative but the migdal says I'm paraphrasing slightly and I I hope I'm being fair that it makes so much more sense that he was an adult that that's the one we'll go for can't do why not okay so the way I understand it and we'll we'll come up with a better answer before we finish okay so we can look forward to that but the way I understand it is the iid's position is the only source that you can really rely on is the gamarra but the migdal O is happy with the rambam might have used other sources like the midrash it's not that the rambam made it up from nothing it's the rambam adopted the midrash rather than adopting the gamar okay let's get back back to what might be the significance of 40 so in P vot there is a list of Ages where different things happen five you start learning Kish at 10 you start learning mishna at you get married you get various um character traits as you go along and amongst them is this in number 11 after the age of 40 you get Bina understanding so the basic idea is before your 40 you don't really have a full understanding a logical intellectual approach to understanding the world after 40 you do and we find in the Kish an interesting reference to this in number 12 at the end of moser's life when he's giving his final farewell to the B Israel he talks about what Hashem gave them what Hashem didn't give them talked about Hashem gave them the but he says in number 12 Hashem has not given you a heart to know and eyes to see and ears to hear until this day now when is this day this is very close to moshe's last day the B Israel have been in the midbar for 40 years they got the Torah 40 years earlier but rash but mosha is saying today is a special day only today have you got the ability to understand it and Rashi says in number 13 hasem has not given you a heart to know what does that mean a person does not literally reach the end of the knowledge of their teacher I would rephrase that as a person does not fully understand what they've learned from their teacher and the wisdom of their learning until 40 years and therefore Hashem has not been literally in Hebrew hasem has not been particular with you until today but from now on he will be particular now I don't want to get so much into the last bit I it because it's here on the page um but the implication is before you were able to fully understand the Torah you couldn't behold liable for not doing it properly but now 40 years have passed now you have a full understanding of the Torah so now Hashem will um pick you up if you uh transgress but the key idea I want to say is that Russia is saying that it takes 40 years to reach an understanding and maybe that dve tells with the rums idea that only at the age of 4 did Abraham reach the understanding of his tremendous discovery of the existence and the nature of AES and that also fits what we saw in the p in number 11 that Pina that at the age of 40 one is gifted a special level of understanding that we didn't have before but so that's a couple of ideas about the number 40 let's get back to a number 48 now just to recall Al midash gave two options 48 three the rambam said 40 the KF missioner said that's because his text said 40 it didn't say 48 but let's look at the number 48 what might be significant about Abraham when he was 48 years old now I don't know but there is an interesting observation made um in the in another midash that goes like this um we want to ask how old was Abraham when his ancestor pel died now at the end of last week's paraa end of para's Noah we have the genealogy from Noah through his son Shem all the way down to n Abraham's grandfather Terra abr's father and down to Abraham and how old they were when they begat the Next Generation and how many years they lived after that time so if we go go back to the generation of Pelle uh pel was the son of ever as in the aiva of Shem and ever uh so that makes Shem Abraham's Noah's son uh I think we go down four generation three generations to get to ever and then another generation to get to pel and Pelle it says here in number 14 in Russia it's a bit of arithmetic to go through P Maham when pel died Abraham was 48 Ah that's interesting because the midrash said he discovered God when he was 48 maybe there's a connection let's just go through the arithmetic Kad how do we know this P sh so pel had a son called R and who's going to be an ancestor of Abraham and after Ru was born pel lived for another 209 years and then he died so remember that samem LED bet kuk so let's look at the time from R to be born until Abraham was born so Ru was 32 years old when his son Sur was bornish Mish shad lumed and when Sur had his son who was called Nar Sur was 30 years old so from the time ru was born we've gone 32 years of Ru 30 years of uh Sur that makes 62 and was when he gave birth his wife gave birth to ter was CET 29 years old so from the birth of R now 91 years past Abraham and how old was ter when Abraham was born and the answer is 70 a so if you add up all these years so so from the birth of R son of pel to the birth of Abraham was 161 years so if you add 48 years after the birth of Abraham you get to 209 years from the birth of suu and that's when pel died which means and if you're not totally with me that's okay just get to this point Abraham was 48 years old when pel died now why is that significant because there's something else we know about at the time when pel died why was pel called pel Rashi says his father had some sort of Na some sort of Prophecy that in his son's lifetime the world would be Nia divided there will be a division between all the tribal groups when was there a division of all the peoples of the world at the time of mdal B building the tower of B hashem's response was to mix up people's languages and then they all spread out into their different groups and Rashi also says in last week's para that if Pelle was called pel because the world was going to be divided it was going to be at a particular time of his life not the beginning because it didn't happen then so it must be at the end of his life and that's what it says in Rashi number 15 Shu we've learned in the S which is another mid that at the end of the days brackets of pel in other words when pel died then there was the division of the world so if we put all this together we find something fascinating Abraham was 48 when pel died which was the year of migdal B the year that the Tower of B was built ah maybe this sheds light on our original midrash that said according to one opinion that Abraham was 48 when he discovered God what does this mean well maybe it's like this see there are different ways that you can discover God the rumbum has given a picture of intellectual scientific analysis but there's also an idea very differently that Abraham looked around at the world and said the world is corrupt the world is depraved the world's in a mess there must be something better there must be a way to make this go away and make this corruption and this perversion better there is a fascinating midrash which is for another time that compares Abraham to a person traveling and seeing a palace in flames and the P The Traveler looks at the palace in flames and says there must be somebody in charge of this Palace and the nyal the the meaning of this midrash is that Abraham looks at the world in Flames and says there must be somebody in charge who is going to put the world to rights and it turns out that the person is God and God's way of putting the world to right is to appoint Abraham to do it but that's for another time so maybe we see a similar idea here why did the people build the Tower of B so again last week's paria Russia gives three answers one is because they wanted to fight with Hashem they wanted to climb the mountain and fight with Hashem we'll leave out one of the answers and the other one I want to mention is that the people calculated that every 1656 years there's a flood and they wanted to as it were reinforce the sky to ensure that that wouldn't happen again which sounds quite a clever sort of uh technique in terms of to avoid climate crisis but actually it means something very different we know there was a flood because the world deserved it because the people behaved so badly but they had to be punished there's a way a much better way of avoiding another flood which is reform yourselves make yourselves better people don't behave like the generation of the flood did but they chose a different technique to avoid another flood to reinforce the sky means we can carry on behaving however we want without fear of punishment so however you cut it the people building the migdal B had nefarious intentions and Abraham who was 48 at the time sees this world and says there must be a better way it's interesting uh the MIM give different reasons for why the people build the Tower but actually the posk is quite clear posk gives an explicit reason the people said we don't want to be scattered on the face of the Earth and we want this tower that we're building we will make a name for ourselves we'll be known as the people who built the Tower of bavel people will remember us as great builders we'll make a name for ourselves fast forward to the next chapter in the Kash and I mean the next chapter in The Narrative is Abraham and Abraham arrives in ER Israel and he goes here and there and he builds altars and when he builds an altar the P says for bash Hashem he called out in the name of Hashem he told people about Hashem the people building the tower wanted to make a name for themselves Abraham who sees this and who's 48 years old realizes there must be a better way and instead of making a name for themselves he sets out to make a name for Hashem which brings me to another um source which I felt I didn't have room for on the page but the mara whom we met earlier learns um that Abraham was 52 when he discovered God I'll go through the maths very quickly the gumara um in aara says there will be 6,000 years of the earth there will be 2,000 years of Taho which means sort of emptiness when the world's in chaos 2,000 years of Torah and 2,000 years of Messiah and when the gar says it looks like we're already into the years of Messiah and he hasn't come and that's our fault because we um haven't done toua properly then the gumar asks when did the 2,000 years of Torah begin so you might assume the 2,000 years of Torah began at Matan Torah when the Torah was given but the numbers don't work out and I won't go into all the numbers there but the gumar says that doesn't leave enough time for the 2,000 years of Torah they must have started earlier and they said they started if you calculate when abam was 52 and that's when he started propagating about Hashem that's when um in the beginning of this week's para we read that he went to ER Israel with sorry the souls that they had made in khon what does it mean to make Souls the Russia gives two answers one is that the word assu here means to buy and they were people he had hired to be part of his household but Rashia also says alternatively that the people whom they' made were the people whom they' converted is not quite the right word because they didn't become Jewish but they had shared with these people the idea of Hashem there is one God whom we should serve and they were the ones who went along with Abraham and by a various bit of calculation the Maria works out that Abraham was 52 at this point and says that that was the conclusion of his finding Hashem and I find that fascinating that according to the the r hinted at this but the mar says explicitly that finding Hashem only really happens when you share your knowledge with someone else and that applies to anything we learn we only really understand things if we're able to explain them to somebody else that's the best way to know if you really understand something but in terms of knowing about God it's not enough to know about God you could argue that maybe there were people like Sher and ever who knew about God but they didn't tell others about them they didn't go out they didn't do an outreach program like abam ainu did so a third answer three or four actually 40 48 52 is the answer fourth answer is 52 that's when Abraham not just worked out about God for himself but shared his knowledge with others now the Masha in that piece which I just quoted makes another observation which I'll wait I'll read in the name of the KF missioner number 16 so the Kess missioner says what I'm about to say but better than the Mas said it um the K of mission we mentioned earlier is ravos of Ciro better known as the auor of the Shar he writes on the on the rambam um we saw him quote earlier that the rambam's gear the R's text said 40 instead of 48 but here he answers the question of the Rival and if I'll remind you what was the question of the Rival the question of the Rival was Al gamara says three so don't ignore that and quote a midrash that says 48 or 40 stick with the gamorra that says three and because you didn't say he was three you've ignored the gamorra that is the effect of the rival's question says the K missionary number 16o Abraham was 40 when he recognized his creator kav AR Etc the riv say what the r said so the K Miss is referring to another book called The Who's saying something in the name of the r this is a whole chain of someone said him the name of somebody in the name of somebody but here's the point line two middle of the line it's possible to fulfill both opinions of the midash was he three or was he four he was both he was three when he began to thinket and to wonder in his thought both one Wonder with an A and wonder with an O he began to think and to wonder and to be restless about and to to recognize his creator but when he was 40 he finished the process of recognition so we have two opinions in the midash which are not mutually exclusive it's not a binary Choice it's not was he three or was he 40 he was both the process began when he was three and concluded when he was 40 Ru that's the Raam he wrote the main number which is 40 which is when Abraham completed the process of recognizing Hashem which was when he was 40 so we have an answer to the question of the Rival the rivot said you're ignoring that he was three the the gamar says he was three you're going with an alternative source that gives a different answer says the KF mission on behalf of the rambam it's not a different answer it's the same answer yes he was three when he started the process and he was 40 when he ended the process and I'm not adopting one or the other I'm adopting both ah the Rumba mentions 40 because that's the main part of the story that's when he completed the process but the process started when he was three the r was not ignoring the gamarra he's using the gamarra but says he was three as well as the mid Rush that says he was 40 so there's no rejection of the talwood he is in a he's just not totally explicit about it but I would actually say I think he is explicit because if you go back to number three the rambam who never wastes a word opens with the following four words kigal when this spiritual giant was weaned why do we need to know about his feeding habits why is it important to say that he was weaned the answer I believe and I haven't seen this inside but maybe because I hav't looked very hard is that's the rambam saying when he was three because I I don't know exactly when weaning was but I know it was later than uh it is today I know that the ramb made sorry Abraham made a feast at the birth of yak and the mosim say it was after two years when y was weaned so it fits quite well to say that Abram was weaned when he approached three and the rambam uses those words to introduce the story of Abraham because because as the K Miss said that's when the process began when this giant was weaned H he began to think and to wonder about Hashem and when he was 40 he completed the process which means there is a part to be played by the three-year-old and also a part to be played by The 40-Year-Old the way the K missions explain the rambam it's not three or 40 it's both because you need both what do a three-year-old what does it mean but a three-year-old child recognized Hashem so that's the version I'm sure we've all grown up with maybe before maybe we were aware of other positions as well but three has always been sort of the dominant one in the story what does it mean for a three-year-old now let's assume that Aram was not like a normal three-year-old which I think is the case let's assume that Aram was super smart but still a three-year-old is a three-year-old so what does a three-year-old recognizing Hashem mean it means a three-year-old world has that wonderful sense of curiosity that sense of wonder that sense of excitement and with those emotions a three-year-old if they're on the level of Abraham can begin to wonder about who's running the world a 40-year-old has a very different approach and the rambam gave this whole long scientific explanation who's making the World Go Round AR realizes somebody must be making the World Go Round that that's not a three-year-old a three-year-old can't understand that a 40-year-old has the intellectual depth has the maturity has the profound has the mature version of curiosity to reach that conclusion and the rumbum is saying that we need the Wonder and the awesome the awe of the three-year-old the excitement the Curiosity of the three-year-old and the intellectual depth of the 40-year old one can say that sometimes we ER on one way or the other sometimes we focus on the emotion of the three-year-old and our education system doesn't develop that idea any further there are kids going around in some of our schools in our Jewish schools who relate to Hashem as a three-year-old even when they're much much older Hashem is Big Hashem is powerful and that's about it and there are others who relate to Hashem as a 40-year-old with the intellectual depth with the academic approach and they miss out on the excitement and the Wonder and the awe that a three-year-old has we need both now I included here part in number 17 part of Ric's uh book on it's called Abraham's Journey Reflections on the life of the founding patriarch um I I'll read it but then I I realized probably the most important part I didn't put on the page but we'll read what he says and by the way um R solic um whose uh Brilliance it's impossible to to describe but the book which he commented most on was the rambam and it's very interesting and very clear that in this section that I quoted here from a much longer essay that he is rewording reworking the words of the rambam into a a different type of Pros but you can see clearly that he's got the rambam open in front of him when he writes the following how did Abraham discover God as a young lad when he was a Shepherd he used to spend the night in the fields he could not sleep because he was Restless that word schet he particularly counted the Stars Abraham discovered God With the Stars through astronomy God communicated with Abraham constantly the intuitive insights and sudden flashes of his mind were words the almighty addresses to prophets they constituted a message from the almighty to him Abraham discovered God all by himself no one taught him no one guided him those words came straight from the rumble he drew his conclusions from premises his own mind postulated his knowledge was matured by intuitive flashes from within Abraham had to disc to devote some 40 years to The Bold and heroic Enterprise of joining the infinite so it wasn't that it's something happened when he was 40 it was a 40 year process from beginning to end just like Rashi said in number 13 that people don't get the ability to fully understand what they've learned until they're 40 or until they've been learning for 40 years number 20 man manifests his questing for God through his restlessness that's the ra solovic understanding of this Chet which from time to time results in unwarranted unjustified nervous physical movement in a word a child's restlessness represents the spontaneous drive to God that every human being experiences Abraham did succeed in converting volatile imal emotions into advanced knowledge he converted this restlessness into thought so when did Abraham have volatile primeval emotions when he was three when did Abraham have advanced knowledge when he was 40 and the rambam is describing the process from one to the other he's using not just the midash but the gamarra as well that says he started when he was three and the rambam adds that he finishes when he was 40 and as Ric makes very clear the process started when he was three but but did not finish until he was 40 and the reason for that I would suggest is because we need both we need the Primeval emotional response of a child and we need the intellectual depth of a advanced scientist at the age of 40 we cannot have one without the other but between the two we can all come to our recognition of Hashem thank you very much