Yigdal Elokim Chai | Rabbi Dr. Aaron Adler | July 2 2025

But let's just pick up where we were. I was talking about that very interesting theory of Rabbi Shiman Schwab Zan who was the successor of Rabbi Joseph Buera at the Ber's community in Washington Heights. Um and I mentioned that he was u elected as associate rabbi when he was 34 years old thinking that Rabbi Buer is now 75 and uh you know it's a visa he'll be a chief rabbi there soon except nobody told him that Rabbi Buer was going on till age 99 and to serve as the rabbi. So when he became the chief rabbi of the community he was already collecting social security for two years. He was 67 years old. But anyway, there was a Jubilee dinner. There was a Jubilee dinner and book that was put out and Rabbi Schwab wrote this very fascinating article comparative calendar in which he he contrasted the what we might call the Jewish calendar using Tanakh as the basis and then whatever was known about the second beta mikdash era because Tanakh takes us to the destruction of the first beta mdash and just a little bit into the beginning of the second beta mdash and then we're we're just uh out in the And that there are different discrepancies in what happened exactly in the second beta mcdash era. So we know that in general history the first beta mikdash was recorded its destruction in the year 586 before the common era which means 70 years later we have the beginning of the second beta mdash which would put it at about 516 B.CE which would make the second bet mikdash until its destruction in the year 70 of the common era something that lasted 586 years. 55 years 56 years but that's that doesn't jive with what khazal say that the second big madash stood for 420 years and the theory of of Raf Schwab while on the one hand not negating the general historic record and the other hand not contradicting what our Kazal said was to propose a type of in between view of some sort and he claimed and this was a dramatic uh suggestion that Khazal hid deliberately hid hid 165 years from the second bet mikdash era because they felt that there was a possibility of discovering by interpretation of sukim in the book of Daniel when exactly Msiah would come and they wanted the kazal wanted to mess this up it's a phenomenal theory but if it's correct then it turns out that today we are in tian pihei which is 5785 tack on another 165 years to that And we are actually in the year 5,940 which means we're we're just 60 years away from the magic number 6000 which according to one opinion in the and I'll tell you right away the Rambam doesn't even make record mention of it but there's such an opinion that by the year 6000 Msiah comes whether we deserve it or not. That's like the endgame and as we move towards it we're going to sense that we're actually moving towards that era which to a certain degree in the last uh 120 years we do have that feeling uh with so many things happening with AmI and specifically here in Erit Israel um so 60 years that's that's that you know we're we're all uh most of us here sitting here across the age of 40 already and so so 60 years is a a little bit off, but it's not way off when we talk about our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Not way off at all. And and that means that we're almost there. So again, I I don't know if Rabbi Schwab was correct or not. I guess history will tell and time will tell, but it was a phenomenal suggestion. But yeah, the Rambam recommends not to do it. recom Ram bomb recommends not to do it, not to forecast because he says you're going to fall into the trap of being wrong more often than not. And I can tell you that Ararbanel who's living at the time of the expulsion from Spain in 1492 is a is a real Rambamist. He's really in line with Rambam's thoughts and yet in 1492 he sticks his neck out, makes a prediction that in 1506 Messiah is coming. And you know what happened in 15 1506 and Msiah didn't come. He said he was wrong because the calculation is really 1521. And what he was actually doing was buying time. He he felt that AmI is in such dire straits that if they didn't have an immediate type of prediction of coming of Messiah, they would have just let go. They would have let go completely. And uh by 1521, the situation, you know, somehow eased up and uh we were able to move on. Um look the the the Satma Rebba was of the opinion that the whole Zionist enterprise was just an extension of Shaitvi and Shapiti came around as a result of the 1648 pumrums the Kmanka pgrams where Amisel really needed something to hang on to and the feeling of some was that after the Shawah you know we needed something to hang on to except that um things are very different very very different today. Yeah, right. We have certainly hung on and the Quran saw this if you read his ko do of yasm speech of 1956 how he saw the uh the spiritual connection between the aftermath of the shawah and the kum dinina. But anyway, let we we we got off the tangent there three weeks ago, four weeks ago, whenever it was. Um and and we were talking a little bit about Mashiach in uh uh topics which will pertain to Yigdal. Let me just go through the Yigdal again. The whole thing we'll see all the 13 principles of the Rambam as poetically rendered by Rabi Daniel bin Yehuda Hadayan of Italy of the 16th century. A lot of people don't know that this is uh the 13 principles of the Rambam, but they are in his poetic way. Um it was pointed out by some scholars of Rambam that the cither actually contains contradictory philosophical ideas because the Rambam says what he says about many many important and very fundamental ideas of Judaism about the nature of God for example and yet there were others who had slightly different takes on some of the things that the Rambam believe was very dogmatic. So the fact that the Rambam said it didn't mean that everybody just dropped what they had in mind and they went along. Some did, but many didn't. Uh and even though some will say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I I swear by every line of the igdal, you know, I'm I'm in there for sure." Yet there are things in the cider itself later on that actually consider cababalistic ideas that differ somewhat from what the Rambam had in mind. Um the idea that there is no divisibility in the word means that there is no divisibility. So if you just take a look at the first two lines of sod you know name will be great and what does the word means he's existing he's his existence and there is no time framework for his existence which means is eternal right he was is and will be and I believe I mentioned last year that the ra tells us in his to the perplexed theim that the word which we don't pronounce is really a contraction of those three words and he goes even further and says that if heard by the birkanimdash you would sense eternity there is there's a word what is called anamanopia that sometimes you have a word bakbuk bakbuk bakbuk and you hear the bakbuk right yeah so he said The Ram believes that the the articulation of the shame havaya generated a sensation of of eternity. Okay. So I I I just giving over what the Ram says. I don't think he heard it either, but it was a suggestion on his part and and this is clear that's not challenged by any Jewish theologian. What is challenged is by Greek philosophers who believed about the eternity of the world, the eternity of even those who did believe in a divine believed um well you know the the world was also eternal and went side by side. So the kadesh bahul wasn't there alone uh at the time of briata. That's challenged by Greek philosophers and obviously the raam takes them to task on this. But then in the second line He's one but not the same one that we are used to because when you say one it's it's against the system of numbers. It's not two, it's not three, it's not four, it's not five. There's no two, three, four, five about God. The the number one with regard to means unique. There's something very singular and unique about he's like gone. In Hebrew, they can translate means gone, but it doesn't mean gone. It means he's just not apparent. You you can't touch him. You can't see him. You can't smell him. The senses are not there. Yeah. Unknown. Okay. He is unknown. He's unknown because you can't use your physical senses to grasp that he's around. He's even here. How do we know that something exists? Because either we see it, we smell it, we hear it, we touch it, and and all this is you can't do that. So, how do you know that he's even around? It's just unknown. there's no end to his oneness, which means there's no there's no possibility of thinking of the oneness of um that they're going to be altered in any way or manner. You the Ram is taking a little bit of a stab at Christianity that believed that Kadosh Bahu revealed himself through a human being called Yeshu. So I briefly mentioned that when my daughter was in 12th grade, my daughter Hannah, she wrote a Jew a paper for Jewish uh thought Israel course and it was basically to take the 13 principles of the Rambam and divide them into four categories of challenges. Rambam had a challenge against Greek philosophy. He was challenged by Christianity. He was challenged by Islam. And he was challenged by the Kites which was a Jewish sect that deviated from some of the basic norms. Um and just recently within the last year I discovered that the very very important Tam Rashiva of Malim Ravidakil came up with the same idea and my only question is who came first right who came first so I looked at the date of the publication of Raf Shilat's uh hakdamote of the Rambam and it was 1996 and I asked my daughter when did you write that paper? I think she said 1997. So I said, "So you stole it." So she so she told me, she reminded me that that I told her this and she wrote it up and she actually has it. She was going to give me the paper. I said, "I'd like to see it." What what she wrote, but I was very happy to see that we were barking up the right tree that Rafilat also understood it as such. And we'll see another idea that Rafilot said in a moment. So this idea of if and then then I'm just going to go on there is no figure there is no human figure animal figure any type of figure of the of of what we call corporality of God that you know God is something of a of of corpus of a of a of of a of a figure of a shape none of that none of that now here the Rama of got into a little trouble because there were not only are there mam kazal that seem to indicate that you know we are small but maybe our kadu is so large but we don't see him because he's so large and and and the pro proof is that Torah says that we were born there that some type of reflection of a kadosh in mortal human beings. So the Rambam says Salem comes to the word sale which means shadow and it doesn't mean when you see a shadow. So yeah you know you can take a light source and put your hand there and you see a shadow of your palm of your hand with five fingers. So that's what you're going to see the outer imprint of the palm and the five fingers. But there's no skin there. There's no muscle. There's no nerve. There's no blood vessels and there's no anything. There's no life to that shadow. So all it is is just a basic external figure of what your fingers look like. So the Ram says human beings are just a a slight shadow of what a kadu is. And he defines what that is and he says it's human intellect. that the human intellect which is but others have suggested that because in Tanakh there are so many figures that are associated with Goddah and so on finger of God great hand of God and so on and so on right there's just infinite number so the one swipe answer to all of that is the Torah speaks in human language, human figure. So we can just get a gist of what's going on but we have to explain all of them where one it means power one means uh you know being connected and so on. Yeah. Right. That that's how the Rambam understands in he spends a many many chapters explaining all of these figures. Yet in the in the of the riv says one second you can't call these all these people up a kim who had different opinions on this matter about goof body of shape because there were some greats out there who actually thought so and you're really going to call them all apicorum I mean so it's not that the rivid rabam disagrees with the raam all he says was when the raam starts calling them names and saying if you don't believe this, you don't believe that, you're an apicy, you know, and you don't have and and and the rivet reminds us that there are some great people out there who now the Rambam is putting into this category of kofim of of heretics and the rivet doesn't want to do that. Yeah, it's implied that God had a figure that be something. So Timsum is a cabalistic idea that you will not find in the Rambam. Timsum means contraction and it means if we try to describe this that is is is everywhere that we in kindergarten they taught this in America. Hashem is here, Hashem is there, Hashem is everywhere. Right? Okay. So all there is is a kadoshu. But then according to the cabalist a kadosh bahu retreats from wherever his existence is and opens up a hole and that hole is the creation of the world where voluntarily is gave up on that hole but and expands that hole. That whole becomes the created universe but is interested to be invited back into the whole and that's really according to the cabalists the job of bringing kadusha into this world. Every time you say abra you bring a kadosh back into this world. So that's the concept ofum raam doesn't have that doesn't have that at all. So there there are things that you have for example with regard to you know the in the so we have coming up in but the big time in the month of before I mean does a great piece on and basically it's calling on the angels to take our trilot and bring them to a bou you know Vgoyne said, "Do not dare say that section because it's uh it it goes against the grain of of what the Rambam is saying here of any type of intervention between you and a bulah and uh you know it almost sounds Christian where you have to have the church to get you can't work between you and God in Christianity. You have to work through the church and the priest becomes the the medium to do that. We don't have that. We don't need that. And and the Ram even goes on to tell us that the whole issue of Corbonote was something that Israel coming out of Egypt, they didn't know anything better or anything else. So Kadoshbu, you know, lets us have it, you know, Corbonote as well. But in theory, is a higher order of connecting with a kadoshu. So in the same sid you're going to have the Rambam's um directive here about how to believe in God and and we're going to have other things there that actually contradict it. I'll give you some examples later. But let's go a little further on the line was before everything that was created. He's the first and the type of first that doesn't have any equal. There's no other first that it that it comes close to the concept of the first of God [Music] is the master of the world over all created things which means because he was the one who created everything else as he is now the master and and and therefore he is instructing us of his greatness and his monarchy. Now, that's a poetic way, nice poetic way of saying something that we actually can't snuff it out from this line um of heam. So, let me just say a word about adonam. We have a a a song that we sing on Shabbat. The um the idea that is the he owns everything and everything. Um, ownership in ala, how is ownership created? You go into a store and you buy something, right? To take it off the shelf. So, at what point do you u do you own it? I remember stores that had uh signs if you broke it, you bought it, right? If you dropped a dozen eggs before you came to the checkout, you're you might actually have to pay for the dozen eggs or not. I mean the store is basically telling you you're responsible for damage. If you dropped it, if you broke it, you bought it. But that's not the way the Gmorra talks about it. So at what point do you become the owner? So what's the answer? If you learn bats, what you paid money, that's one opinion. So the answer is it's a what? Of course. Pick it up, right? So pick it up is called Mik, right? You take hold of it. So let's assume you you have it in your your you know your agalad you know your wagon in the supermarket. So for all purposes you know you took it. If somebody comes to your wagon and pulls it out you're going to yell. You're going to yell. You're going to say I it's mine you know because you it might actually be yours already. You actually owe money like a loan. The fact they didn't pay it. So it's like a halva. It's a loan. So you have to pay up. Fine. But in terms of who owns it, the store can't really tell you uh sorry um we're not selling this today, take it out. It might be yours already. On the other hand, there is an opinion that says until you pay, it's not yours. And it makes a world of a difference to know when does an object the the ownership when does it come transferred from point of view in terms of responsibility for that object for geneva for stealing and so on is very important to know. So you have fine. So like everyone so you know there has to be some decision and basically the decision is that it's the mash the the great grabbing it or picking it up or if it's an animal pulling it you pull it you're not going to pick up the animal but you have to pull it. You have to do some demonstrative act to show that it's yours and then then it becomes yours. The fact that you owe money fine you owe money you have to pay for it. There's no question about that. That's how you transfer ownership. But how does ownership begin? If a carpenter makes a chair and a table so it's his he can keep it he can sell it. So selling what's called the whole process of kenyan or transfer by kenyan is the mechanism that says you can transfer ownership doesn't create ownership what you're buying is something that was owned by somebody else. So the store owned it before the store got it the wholesaler owned it. And before the wholesaler owned it, some manufacturer, some some some uh factory that made the product owns it. Somebody's got to own it at a certain point at an original moment. So the rough said when somebody creates something new, he's the owner. So if you draw a painting, that's yours because before there was no painting. Now you're the artist. And if you make a chair or a table, so you wasn't there was no chair or table before. So you're now the owner because creation creates ownership. And that is adonamu created the world. So he's the owner of the world. Now he can transfer ownership if he likes to. And he does it. He does it. This the famous it says on the owns the world. Owns the world. And then in it says gave it over. So what's the mechanism of transfer of ownership right says yes you can have it when can you have it says after the food is not yours belongs to God but if you just acknowledge says okay now it's yours go ahead enjoy it enjoy it so this transfer of ownership by acknowledging that a kadosh was the original creator And that's what the says. So there's a mechanism of transfer of ownership and it becomes yours and you can do whatever you want with it as long as it's within reason. So is the sole boss if you may. But if you take a look now at the anima means that I have down below on the same page which is a different poem. We don't know the author of but it's the same again the Ram didn't author these words but this is what's found in the at the end of he created and he leads he directs all the creations again he's made it all he's was and will be of all human of all action all created action He's alone. There's nothing like him. No oneness like him. Was is and will be. And is not a body in your thoughts. You can't fathom anything that relates to human figure. You you can't fantasize anything about what God looks like. He's first. He's eternal. Which means there's no there's no there's eternity of God. There is no eternity of the created world. And then five. Hey to him. That's standard to him worthy to. And there's no worthiness to pray to anybody else to anybody else. So this number five matches the line above. What's missing in the you don't hear anything of that has some of that it's the one who's worthy for us to pray to. So where did the author get this from? So now I'm going to ask you to keep turning the next page but it's going to be so on source number five that's the Rambam now no poet here but I'm if you I bold letters it says next paragraph you might be on the next page or in the third page and then it says are you with me where it says the fifth fundamental who he is God above to serve is the one only the only one fitting to serve to exalt him and to publicize his greatness and his significance anything under God you don't do There is nothing that you serve in any way anything below the status of not angels, not constellations, not anything. [Music] Everything about all the things you just described now, angels, stars, constellations on the fundamentals that the world was created with have no free choice and no will whatsoever except that wills their existence. You can't use them as mediums. love. You can't use them as mediums to arrive at au only towards au alone. Your thoughts should be directed. Just blot out of your memory any other intermediary possible intermediary. This is the fifth. This is the warning of idolatry. The majority of the Torah came to warn about this. Again, in the I didn't see a word about Abu Dhab. In the min he said something about where it's worthy to daven who's worthy to but the Rambam goes further and explains why he's telling us that the only one to daven is to do any other intermediary is idolatrous practice including the ke of wowam idolatry And there were so many PKIM who knew this Rambam well and were very acquainted with the prevalent customs of going to Sadikim Kadikim and turning to them that they should intercede and so on that theim said what you're allowed to do is stand there and that he should tap into the overdraft merits of the sadic. You figure that saddak has got whole load of of excess bonus merits. So you want to ask a kadu if I am not meritorious and I don't have in my file what's good enough for a kadu to deliver the goods of what I'm asking for maybe he'd be so kind as to tap into the the reserve sources of by the we don't know but this was a type of limut where knew darn well that this is very problematic custom very problematic so much so that the vilgoyan went even further and you might say this was an anti-asedic step most probably the case he said no grave visitations after the funeral not even for parents can you imagine no grave visitations not even parents and he says this is the root of why Mishraenu's grave was never known. So people shouldn't make an aliel out of going up to the grave of Mosher Rabenu. It's exactly what the Vil Nagoy was worried about. It's exactly what happened in the world of Yeah. With regard to Raasha Feinstein, I cannot comment. With regard to the RV, I can say the following. My great reb Rav Hershel Shaka wrote in the first book that came out a year after the Ruv's passing in 1994 about things of the RV's life and he wrote there categorically that the RV had the opinion of the vulnery not to go to cemeteries. I approached my dear Rebby and I love him greatly and I said, "Rebby, you know, we all know, you know, I know that after the Rebbitson passed away in 1967, he went to his wife's Kev every single Friday. Every single Friday. And he never stopped saying cottage for her. Never stop saying cottage for his wife." Now that you know maybe a psychologist would be able to write a book about about this very very close intimate relationship that the rel um he was interviewed there if you saw the 2007 movie that was made about the RV's life it was called lonely a man of faith so somebody was interviewed and and and who asked the rv about this how does this jive with the with the min you know so on he says um I can't help it I can't help myself other he realized that the family did it differently and it's in the spirit of the vagoy he just felt I can't help myself and he went every week but furthermore in the days that I was the rough's driver so on one gimlmat when he had the yardite for his father in 1975 now the exact date so it was tough lammed hey the ruff asked me in the morning it was a Wednesday morning if I can take him to a Brooklyn cemetery to his father's grave and I took him and and I write about it in my book on the conversations of the RV where it was the most I called it uh litfisher ascora I ever saw saw in my life who was the most uh unemotional as you can be he just stood there said a perkillum and that was it the kadisha was called ane brisk which meant made sense. There was a from those who had you know uh came from the brisk town of Bris where his family came from and it was in it was in East New York if you know where the Brooklyn neighborhood is where you don't want to walk there in the daytime the um so then afterwards DV takes my hand like a grandfather and he starts giving me the grand tour of other mat vote there and introduces me to this guy and to that guy and he says and this fellow was a real Tom and then he says this and he was a joker and then and he goes telling me all times it was so funny it was so it was so entertaining entertaining and then at one point I um I told the ro I said Reb you know we're 10 minutes away from 770 you want to drop in by the rebba unannounced and he stood there for 10 minutes and thinking about it and then he said no let's go back to the and I told him I said by the time you decide we could have been there already but he didn't want to goal he thought about it he actually thought about it but I told this Rasha. So the Rasha says apparently after the reb rabbitson passed away he changed his hanhaga his his character in this one his behavior. So so he said he said that u he said that he will correct it in a subsequent book or add on to it and if not he said I should do it. So I did it and I got his blessings and that's it. So that's the r's opinion with fine I don't know one way or another. Yeah. The Rabbam believes to turn directly to a person who passed away and ask for his intervention is is is is idolatrous practice because the Torah calls it elameim. You know what do means? Turning to the dead and ask for a favor. It's it's clear. Yeah. No comment. It's to to daven for autim to work in our favor. We even have the famous story of Almanbach who was asked if somebody can recommend a real kev sadic in Europe and he said why go to Europe we have kvit sadikim here init is he said fine so suggest where I should go here and he said to go to harzel to thearim of the soldiers because he says they are real koshim yeah right so going That's correct. That's correct. So the villagy had a problem with all that and he felt that it can lead to behavior that's inconsistent with the Rambam. Okay. But I agree with you. You have the medish on. Okay. It doesn't say that in the it says that's all it says. But Rashi as the taught us we somehow mixed with Rashi as all one big you know. says that he went to the so this concept of something that has basis it has basis there's no doubt it has basis and in the world of there there is even of going to on talks about it but never to address the person who's buried there never to directly address the person who's buried there because that would be a problem of data alim speaking to the asking requesting from the dead and worse yet asking as an intermediary. The Ram believed that this is a a problem of of avoid. It's very serious. But the fact that a lot of people say ydal every morning and so on may most probably not be aware of the significance of every line. And that's why I'm pointing out what the Ram actually wrote in the fifth, the fifth fundamental idea or the fifth is that the reason that the only being to dive into is only and not to split it and so on. You know, it's not to say that uh you know there are other powers out there and just to be on the safe side. So I'll I'll I'll turn to this one. I'll turn to that one and turn to that one and I'll also dive into that's called Abuazar. means I believe in God but I also believe in ba and right a friend of ours Dr. Brian tells tells me always that because she says I I'm into baseball and she said she says it's BA right. You said all right there's something to that also. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, let me tell you where Kla started. The the idea of the baltov the balto of let's let's try to put this in perspective because I also come from stock and we're from the sansza stock of uh of my great-grandfather was aid of the the son of the of the reb of sons of halbashtam. His name was Shra Halbasham the reb of the reb of Shenev. Some of you were on the trip with me. We actually went there to the Kev of the Reb of Shenev and we actually went once to the Kev of the Vilago and I stood there and I asked Ma I said I know I'm I know I'm not supposed to be here but but you can see by the Kev of the Vilago people don't realize and by the Kev of Rime from Brisk and and the from you know they never received a Whoa, that's an old thing already. That's an old thing, right? They'll tell you about that. No. So, what did you ask again? I want to get back. I was about the fiddle, right? So, let's go back to the u let's back backtrack to the balmto 300 years ago. So Baltov comes up with an idea and this is what really where modernday kasidut takes off that the galut itself the hardships of galut basically is a barrier are barriers to the between ourselves and a kadosh there's a blockade we can't get through and that's not something that the balm of invents it's a puk in the third chapter of migillat that the destruction and the galut myote are barricaded are blocked and the question is so if the are barricaded why bother davin or you can say well keep it writing keep it going so one day the barricade will fall and the tilot will get there so that's one way of handling it the other way is to b basically say and this is what the balm of believed that Every generation had one and one and only sadik. Absolute sadik. Absolute sadik. And he had the spiritual ability to rise over the barricade. He can get his filot to the khakavote to the throne of god. And all we have to do is do you remember we used to have uh if you're called here from Israel you had to do you had operator dial you didn't have direct dial so the Rama believes that is direct dial and the baltov said for everybody else it's operator assisted and the sadic is the operator so all you have to do is get your request to the saddic so that when he davins with hisot are going to piggyback on the tilot of the saddak that's how it starts that right he's alive the saddak is alive so when the bashtov is alive and when he dies his prime student who's dove do bear the mag from mezich is the next and when he dies it now goes over to here's a who's the third generation the second generation is no everybody knows it's the it's the mag so if you're it's clearly the founder of Kabad Schne from Leadi the founder of Kabad the author of data but he moves to right to Russia Russia but in Poland it now moves to one or two personalities the most famous was elim and the less famous but contemporary was Mendel from Rimmanov both places are visitable today and ultimately it's the noalik who becomes more domin minant because he had more and they branched out more. So Polish in the third generation of aftermto and bees now hits Polish soil and it spreads out from there. What happened was takes over Poland and it begins really to proliferate in the fourth generation of Polish of of ofut in the city of Lublin. You have to realize Lublin wasn't a it was a it was actually the capital of Poland at that time. And when when it makes it to the fourth generation and that was the from Lublin who makes it to there then it's here to stay. But so many people couldn't see the Reb personally. So what was developed already in the days of the write your request on a piece of paper and have a courier get it over to the Reb. So then the Reb is going to read it before he davs and he knows what he's supposed to daven for. That's how started because they couldn't meet up with the Reb every time they had a to get to a bul but he would be the of the generation. What happened was started proliferating to different towns and each town had its own today we call it reba but they still call them sadik. So they became regional sadikim. But the v the the balmtov never believed in regional sadikim. He believed in one and only in any generation and not no such thing as regional. He was the only one the bashtov and the bag from medish was the only one. But already in the days of the melik there already two. There was the medal of ribbon. Yeah. So the finishes and and and and other places started having their own and what became common was each one who had their own sadic whether it was in Bob and whether it was in the vision later and so on that one was the only one and until the show of a particular brand or we call it a never recognized the saddic status. They may have been great people but they weren't the sadic. The sadic was my rebba to the exclusion of every other rebar part of this. Yeahbi like this. Why? Because they were lying. This was the big problem that the vilgoyan anticipated and was trying to ward off before it even happened. But he lost the battle. He lost the battle because became the way to go in Poland. The question was why didn't it what what did you ask again? Why the question again? Ask the question again. Why are they not considered why aren't they considered intermediaries? According to the Rambam they are intermediaries. The Rambam would say and that's all the litfox all the misnagim said you don't have to go to a sadic. Right? So the idea of the cottel by the way of putting a pekk in the cottell that already is not it may or may have to do I don't know exactly what generation that started but kasid comes to Israel about 250 years ago the one who brings it over is actually my great great great great great great grandfather 10 I'm 10 generations from gerin kit rag kit who was the brother-in-law of bashtov sends terrael to spread So maybe maybe I'm not even sure about this. Maybe that's where it starts. But there's a chuva from Rabosha Feinstein. You asked you mentioned Ramosa. There's a cha from Russia Feinstein who says that they heard from the name of the RV's uncle whose name was Rabbit Zev known as Relv the R from Bris that you can't put a quiddle in the cottell because your finger is going to go into the cracks of the cottel and maybe your because we're to maybe the kaduca of harabay begins in the outer side of the cotel so while you might be able to touch the walls of the cotel. You shouldn't put your fingers in the crevices of the cotel. So rainstein takes the task. This is the task and he says there's no such thing because there's a min to put kitl in the kotel generations and generations and it shows that there is no kadusha in the outer side of the kotel and therefore you can still do it. So this issue of the makes a showing makes a showing in the of so here you have and then when the your of the rebba and the b of reba dies so it doesn't stop you go to the kev and you start putting your on the kev of the rebba if the raam would have and or the vnagoy would see this he would rip ka he said this is zara How can you do this? You go to the kev of it's piled up piled up with with I mean there right it's no different than but by the way no is a is is is an important station for by the way there are people who go from there just what same Right. So I was at the airport here. I was at the airport here before leading a group and boarding a plane and there was a guy and he was collecting money and I asked these guys, "What are you collecting for?" He says, "I'll tell you the truth. I I need a braha and somebody so makub said that I can only get the braha by melik and I didn't have money for the flight and this makubul said go to the airport and a kadu will be with you and you'll stick out your hand and you know I looked at this guy and I said you know I I appreciate your honesty and integrity here's $50. I don't know if this is going to pay for the whole ticket, but at least it's something. And and you see that the Makub was right. I said, I I was so happy that he leveled with me and he told me what he was doing, but the ticket so you can go to the and give a and with all that, one of my daughters um got married a little later than some of the other daughters. Won't go into the details. And I was at the kev of the no and and I'm a ramba mist but I believe in bahu and I told the kadu you know where I'm standing you know if you can just put in a good word you know about a good shak and so on and within months there was already a successful positive resolution to that so I'm not going to tell people not to dash But I was very careful with my language. I was very careful. I said, "You know where I'm standing, right?" You know, take it from there. Right. All right. So, you have this um and and one more point on that last phrase ra actually talking about the prohibitions against idolatry and all forms of idolatry. And this led the RV to suggest that when you read the wrote in the second. So here you have different descriptions of idolatry the the celestial bodies and so on. Celestial bodies those are examples. The fundamental idea of aod is the first verse. him alan there should be no other deity before me mean there's no toleration of any type of deity other than a kadoshu the RV said that's a concept that's a concept so something has got to be the most important thing in your life it could be an avoid a a physical you know a statue it could be celestial bodies it could be a concept it could be an ism used to talk about communism democracy, even Zionism. He says if the most important thing that you woke up in the morning is for something other than a kadu, it's a it could be yourself a person and the and the always said that doesn't believe in atheism. You have to believe that something is the most important thing in your life. If it's not a it's a it's idolatry. So it's not practice of idolatry. That's another thing. And idolatry comes in many different packages. When the rabb writes, so under the headline of any he tells us how many mitzvot or a wrote are he's going to talk about in that unit. The gold medal goes to 53 and a 613 mitzvot six 53 mitzvot which are 51 don'ts and two dos are factors in the world of and there are some that the Rambam philosophically also believes a part of and doesn't write them there so it's even more than 53 like the Ram believed that the cooking of the goat's meat in the mother's milk is fundamentally pagan and we have the older the laws of meat and milk where he writes about it in the laws of forbidden foods. But the Ram believed that its source was in the pagan days and Ram figured that he gave it as a hypothesis. He was absolutely right because there was a stone that was ar that was excavated in Syria in 1920 written in an ancient Semitic language called Ugaritic. Ugaritic and we can we scholars know how to read it today and it actually said as a fertility right ri ceremony to promote the the fertility of the land take a goat's meat and cook it in its mother's milk exactly what the Torah says which means when the Torah gave that people knew what it meant it's not like today what does that mean I don't know take out your you know And yeah and wait six hours. Really that's what it says. Exactly. We take it literally. So So there is that's the And the one paran who really really really hit it was the Ezra. You got it right. You got it right. Everybody else has just all kinds of things around and around and around. But the rabb suggested it as a hypothesis. And it was confirmed in 1920 that this indeed is the mo. There was such a and and also furthermore there the rabbenezra got right the second point you know where that p is found twice in once in parish once in as the second half of a you should bring to the mdash what in the world does that have to do with not cooking meat and milk so the understanding is the per the idea of bikurim was our mitzvah to promote the fert fertility of the land and says do it my way don't do it their way that's our way their way if not for this understanding we'd never in a million years understand why in one you've got two ideas that have nothing to do with each other I mean to could have given us puk and then start another poke and then we'd have to ask why in the world is there and some of the postkim say you know instead because it's yum the talks about you cook a lot you know so so you cook a lot so you have to have the laws there really I mean there's a third time where it says for a where there's talking about and that's where it belongs and that's where it's supposed to be but all right the so this phrase of means that the majority of the thrust of is to get us out of the mode of idolatrous practices and thinking. Yeah. So in Judeaica Jewish Judeaica art so in Judeaic art there are two schools of thought some say there's no such thing as Jewish art it's goish art with a kipa this mode you take and there's something to this because Jewish art and music sometimes you can see local themes that you might even see in churches and you might even see elsewhere in the our world of arts. and Jews gave it Jewish themes to it but it's the style of others. Rafuk didn't believe this. Rafuk believed that there's a thing called Jewish art and begins with paratuma and tit the building of the Mishkan and the big and if you study carefully the the artistic messages and sensations that radiate from parot you then can cultivate Jewish art. And there are Jewish artists from the Bate Madrash of America Zarafkot that try to try to develop this kind of Jewish art. The idea of figures in Shul. I can tell you that some communities forbade it. Forbate it. I you may be familiar with the famous uh illuminated Hebrew manuscript of the Hagada where you have human beings but would have rooster heads. Right? It's something that was done because human figures were not going to have because of so some shs and some communities had it allowed it were more lenient and some were more strict and what what can be discovered is that those communities lived in those generations where there was an issue of of oda then you see the pkim are more harsh and more strict and those communities where it's just not an issue any longer so they let up a little bit and they allowed for some human figures and so on. You can see at the Israel Museum here and you can see it in the Polish museum if you've been to Warsaw beautiful reconstructed shulles from uh which were originals in Poland that did have figures even human figures. So this something had a lot to do with um what was current in those days whether there was a really a soft emphasis against any type of idolatrous practice and they said no even in in shulles and some places it was less so and and and it becomes interesting to see it. Yeah, people who are obviously those who are saying no you can't have pictures of human beings or animals or whatever but lead to idolat. Right. Right. Okay. These were messages. They were messages to the greater community. I mean you have many shs today that have a luot with lions on the side because of guru that may remind you a little bit of that's why they have lions. It's not because you know the mayor of usim his name is Leon or um or or because uh that why is sign symbol lion because of guru and for sure we know that um you have uh all kinds of figurative interpretations of the birkot yakov and mohe in shagal windows and uh and so on and that's in a shul in uh in in hadasa you know it's it's there and you can see it. And if you don't want to pay money to see it as a tourist, go for Mina. Min. They don't charge you. You're allowed to go in there and have Mina and then you get to see them for free. Okay. All right. Uh I am going to highly recommend you to hand back the papers because we're not through with these. We're not through with these pages and I don't want to print them up each week. So I will be