Yigdal Elokim Chai | Rabbi Dr. Aaron Adler | June 11th 2025

of the share as usual is sponsored by the first family in memory of Alisha. Um, we're going to do a poem today that's in every sitter. It's almost uh page two of every sid right after adonal lam. And uh I'll just mention at the outset that once asked the question why do many shuls on Shabbat conclude with adonolam and Friday night with yigdal. Thank thank So what's the significance of uh you know it appears at the beginning of the sid so some people who before they get rolling with or even so you have all these preliminaries and it includes anddal so why in Shabbat are we singing adonam and jigdal what does this have to do with the end of dvening says precisely because it's at the beginning of the sitter he said there is a It says that um you know we we have we're anchored in our in our clock you know the um but the theory that perhaps we should be engaged in 247 round the clock every moment but that's obviously impossible so what we symbolically do at the end of dvening on Shabbat which in itself is a long davening we flip the page flip the sid back to page two and say let's start all over again. It's a it's a symbolic gesture of saying you know we re really never finish we never complete dining. So um as if to say we're going back to the beginning and explained the concept of saying boru at the end of ding the same manner whether it's in the morning here in so we have that minute at the end of shak the end of my the kazin or the person who's saying kadesh will say boru and boru is at the beginning of the dening and it's the the very same idea that it's as if we don't want to leave I know that there are some people most it's in the German Jewish community the ekis before they walk out of shul they're all standing because of aleno Shab and everything they sit down and then they walk out. That symbolic gesture of sitting down is as if to say we really don't want to leave. I mean we have to leave because it's the end of ding. We have things to do and so on. As opposed to the um the the flip side is to give Alen Shabayak a nickname because it's usually said with one foot out the door, you know, and so on. So okay. So you have different attitudes and so on. Now Jiggdal we know when it was written and who wrote it. His name was probably Daniel bin Yehudahan Italian from the end of the 15th century. Um and basically it has 13 lines and each line corresponds to one of the 13 principles dictated or wrote written by the Rambam. Now when did the Rambam write his 13 principles? Well, it's actually it's a it's a integral part of his Mishna commentary Pusha Mishna and that we know he wrote between age 23 and 30. So it's part and parcel of the Perua Mishna and we're going to see on the pages where this come from. But u there's even another poem that was written about 200 years after the Rambam's life. We don't know who wrote it, but we do know the poem and it's also in the it's at the end of in practically every it's the listing of the I believe with firm belief that and there 13 paragraphs. So if you just look a look at the page. So under the first page it says right and it goes down. So if you look at towards the bottom of the page it's most probably the most famous. Right. You believe with firm faith in the coming of Mashiach and even though he may be delayed I'm on the first page on the bottom of the first page where it says you bet even though he may be delayed. Delayed is an understatement delayed. My uh my grandfather of Shel used to say it's a shame that there's a tradition that Mashiach is coming on a dunkey if it would have been in a m Mercedes you know it would be a little bit faster than in a dunkey right the Maharali Prague 16th century Maharali Prague 17th century says that theore mentioned anamor as a as from Tanakh as being a reference to Meliach arriving that kamar comes to the word which means the material world that there's no absolute tradition at all that the Msiah will come through the uh agency of miracles that there'll be some supernatural event that will bring the coming usher in the coming of Msiah but it's going to be a very natural type of progression of historic events and that's based on the Rambam and we'll see that as well so therefore the kamur means yeah out that the streets are so narrow in Jerusalem, a donkey is the only thing that will get you. There you go. That's if that's if Mashia's going to come in what we call a sima in an alleyway in a sima. But you know, we also have the bean highway and a few other things here that probably that bicycle pass. There you go. He's going to come on a bicycle today, right? Okay, we'll have to be patient. We'll have to be patient and see, you know, what's going to happen. But if you flip the page to the s before we get to the yigdal and just look at what I have here as source number one, right? It's on the second side of the first page. It says Mishna Sanin Mishna Sanin perigude Mishna Alif. This Mishna is also very famous because it made it to the siddh and any Mishna that makes it to the sidd is by definition famous. Like I always ask people what was the first Mishna that they've studied in their lives and many people say pavote because that made it to the mishnaote and so on. So is this Mishna as an introduction to Perkyote Israel. Every Jew is born with a reserved portion in olaba. We're going to have to see what is. We're going to try to see it through the the 13 principles of the Rambam as envisioned by these poets. So you have um this introductory Mishna that the tradition has it that we say it before priote. And one of the reasons is because it's a little shocking to learn that there are some people who forfeit and lose their right to. So it's nice to know that up front we actually have a reserved portion in as it says [Music] that is a nation who the bottom line is at least potentially but even the Mishna admits and there are those who have lost their section of and the whole par continues continues with a long list a celebrated list of individuals and groupings of people who have lost their ola. And I'll just say about uh non-Jews, gentile world, the goyam of the world, they're not born with oolaba, but the ra believes that they can earn it. A a non-Jew can earn a section of maba and that is by accepting the seven mitzvot of Ben Noah. And one of them is the um acceptance of monotheism of one god. the re the re, you know, complete rejection of idolatry and every phase of idolatry and living a decent moral life um you know against uh feed against stealing and um against adultery and living a moral decent life and uh and and believing that this is all from the non-Jew will receive also a portion of but a Jew is is is born into it. And because this Mishna talks about and talks about somebody who denies uh various things about Torah to the Ram feels obliged at this juncture in his Mishna commentary which is as the same the name says Mishna commentary to sometimes be expansive and digress from the purpose of the book and include into his Mishna commentary what I call a book within a book. He does it several times over in his explanation of his commentary to he but writes a book as an introduction called the eight chapters. So you do have introductory material in the Mishna commentary that he apologizes and he says I'm going to digress at this point because I feel this is very important. And if you look at source number two, here's the the the the digression. I saw fit at this juncture in the book to write about to write about fundamentals of our belief and this will have great value. In other words, the ra I'm saying, "Look, I I know I'm writing the commentary of the Mishna, and I know you want to move on to the next Mishna, the next Mishna, but just be patient. I have a few things of great importance to write, and it wouldn't hurt if you would read it." and and he goes on before he even gets to the 13 principles to tell us things about about Yamote Mashiach about the era when people are going to rise from the grave and what all this means and so on and then he finally gets to the point and he says what's fitting and appropriate that I should mention here the Ram is ramming home the point that I I just trust me. I think this is just a great opportunity to talk about this. So bear with me and I'm going to be very expansive. The most fundamentals of our pure Torah vod and its foundations. There are 13 such fundamental ideas and he's going to go on to enumerate them and we'll get to them in just a moment. But I have here a quote from Rabitak Shilat Ravis Shilat. Um I have a great of being acquainted with him. I actually taught one of his sons in my yeshiva. He is um today currently one of the Rashiva at the Hezer Yeshiva in Mala Dumim. It's known as Birkat Moshe. Those of you going turning the clock back to Flatbush, remember Flatbush? That's a neighborhood in Brooklyn, right? A lot of Jews live there. Uh in the early 1970s, there was a tragic car accident on Ocean Parkway. We're on a Shabbat afternoon. Remember this? That's right. Gersium bombs of things that there was a a husband and a wife. Three people of the family were killed. One was her name was Bra that was a Hebrew name and the man's name was Moshe Mars. Mars Gersonenbomb. Anyway, the Flatbush Mazrai took upon itself a project to uh underwrite the new yeshivate there that had just opened up in Malay and they called it Birkat Moshe. The Birkat was the Braha and the Moshe was Moshe and um and this yeshiva was named after was named by the Flapush branch of the Misrai of of New York Moshe. So the founders were Rafim Sabato and Ravitak Shilat. They founded the yeshiva. They then brought in an illustrious rashiva Rabenowitz who had at the time been the president of the Jews college of London before having been a Rav and Rashiva in Toronto and before that in Virginia. Don't ask. But um Ra was a towering towering individual. I we call him a great physically what also physically he was a very tall and very his presence was known known when you were around him. U he was a very humble person very humble person and he was one of the greatest and we call him Rambam Mistim. One of the great Rambam scholars of our generation. He actually publishes an entire version of the Mishnet of the Rambam with his own perouch called Yadut and the version of the Rambam is based on the latest that we have in manuscripts. Um and it's it's a phenomenal work. uh and when he passed away the two original uh founders of the yeshiva assumed the mount mantle of rashiva and they are Rafim Sabat and Ravit Shilat no small Rambamist in his own right who also publishes his own edition of Mishnetto after Rambam and he also publishes Rambam's introductions and Rambam's letters and and he's just uh he's out there with uh being phenomenally important So in his book called Hakdam to the Rambam and one of the reasons that I have it at home is because Rafilat gave it to me as a gift when he asked me for a copy of my doctoral dissertation on the Rambam. So it was a hamliff parab you know he's and and and he was the stronger one not me believe me. So in in in the um of the Rambam to Mishna he talks about the three introductions of part of Mishna. One is the general introduction to Shas of the Rambam. One is the introduction to the eight chapters and one is the introduction to the chapter is so it's called the pericle and that's what we're going to do and see the poems of the and the poem of Yigdal and how they follow the Rambam's 13 ikronote that is his principles of Jewish foundation foundations and Rashid Vlad writes as follows. He divides the three the 13 rather into three different categories. The first grouping which is from one to five with the existence of God and his unity. That's going to be the first five. The second uh the second grouping is going to be to 10 that is number six to number nine with the notion of Torah being revealed from and the third grouping from number 10 to number 13 providence divine providence and um reward and punishment. So he's got here basically 13 which breaks down really to three groupings or I'd say it the other way around three groupings which expand to uh 13 and and and the truth is Rafel didn't have to think a lot in terms of the grouping of the three groupings that he headings that he has here for all 13 because there was a book that was written um about 200 also 200 years after the Rambam his name was Rabi Yoseseph elbow from uh Spain and he has a book called Sepha Haikarim. This book talks about the basics of Judaism and guess what it divides into three chapters. The first, the second, the third are exactly what Rafilot writes here that if we can somehow summarize the Rams 13, we can break it down to three units. So the three units are precisely the Rambam's Ravioseph Elbow's division. So Ravios elbow is not challenging the Rambam by saying they're only three and not 13. It's just that the Rambam expands the three into 13. And if you take a look of source number four and this is a thought that I saw by Rafilat as well. The Rambam in the laws of Israia pericualid where here the Rambam is talking about conversion. How does a convert come to become Jewish? So there's a process and there's a teaching syllabus the syllabus of what you teach a potential or candidate for conversion. And it's not. You can't teach a convert the entire Torah and then test them and say, "You know what? Study all of Torah and come back when you're finished and then I'm going to uh give you an examination, give you a test because then no convert would ever be ready to take the test. How can you do that? C can you sincerely ask a to study which in all likelihood hardly a Jew has ever covered the syllabus and here you're going to have a learn kola so the Ram understands that and he says this is what you have to um teach a non-Jew after you do a certain preliminary and the Ramom says the preliminary is a crash course in Jewish history because if he's joining the the the jumping on the bandwagon of being part and parcel of am well he should know what where am where we've been in the course of Jewish history and and and therefore very very important that you teach him the the the the main junctures of Jewish history and then he saysare you teach him the most important part of what our religion is all about that there's one God the negation of any form of idolatry. Fine. You you know spend some time on this because this is really really important. And then when you see that this potential convert he's with us on monotheism the negation of of idolatry You inform him about some of the let's call it lightweighted mitzvot and heavyduty mitzvot. Now there are 613 mitzvot. The ram doesn't he doesn't think that we'll ever get make any progress with this uh potential convert if we're going to have to teach him 613 commandments. So what we do is we give him a a type of um yeah little a little bit of this a little a sprinkling of mitzvot. You know some of the mitzvot are defined by kazal as mitzvot easygoing mitzvot and some are defined as mitzvot more heavyduty mitzvot. So the Rambam himself in his Mishna commentary to say have a you should be as careful of the easy lightweighted mitzvot as you are in the more heavyduty mitzvot. So before the rabb even goes on to explain what that why that's so why we should take we should be careful and of the details of even what we call the lightweight. Ram says I have to define what is a lightweight mitzvot and what is a heavyduty mitzvah. How do we how do we come to terms with that that there are some lightweighted and heavyduty mitzvot? What are they? So so he gives um some type of um indications what might be lightweight what might be easy weight. Says one of the indications would be the schedule of punishments of the don'ts of the lotas. So if you see something carries with it a capital punishment offense, you know this is pretty heavy. And if you if you see that something has the loss of that's pretty heavy. But if it's only uh malot lashing in bet that's already lightweight and if it's a type of a that doesn't even have any punishment written in Torah that's even more lightweight. Okay. So it's some it's some gauge some table of of of gauge of of how to figure out what might be lightweight and what might be heavyweight. And then the Ram says if the said that a particular mitzvah is equivalent to the entire Torah, that's heavy weight. That's for sure heavy weight. And you know how many times say that? Anybody want to guess how many times used the phrase or equivalent to all of the or equivalent to all the Torah? That puts it into a heavyduty category. How many times? One. A guess. One. More than one. 13. Not 13, but not even far. Okay. It's seven for sure. Maybe eight. Maybe eight. It's seven for sure. And one of them happens to be living in Israel. Israel. So it's it's a heavyduty mitzvah. Right. I I talk about this when I'm in. It's a lot. Right. Right. Then I find out why they don't invite me back to the same place. That's what I say. That's why it's so hard for us. It's a heavy duty mitzvah. It's a heavy duty mitzvah. Right. It's look it's very tragic that sometimes we pay a bitter price and and for for but it's a heavy duty mitzvah. The mitzvah of Shabbat is a heavy duty mitzvah. Brit is a heavy duty mitzvah. is a heavy duty mitzvah of all things. It seems to be categorically a easy mitzvah both in terms of its performance and how much do you have to pay for a pair of sits. If it's it's it's within realm of everybody's financial budget and and it doesn't you know you're wearing you don't even know that you're wearing tit why should that be even the heavy duty because the garra says is called reminds me of all the mitzvah. So Ram has different ideas of what might be heavy duty, what might be light duty. You know what the Ram calls a a lightweight mitzvah? He says studying Hebrew. Don't tell that to the pan students, right? So is not so simple that that's easy because it carries with it a very very big of and it's linked to and that's not an easy mitzvah either. Yeah. So is not a mitzvah. Mitzvah is marriage. Marriage is a mitzvah. would be what's called mitzvah preparation for a mitzvah and I think the reason that the Ram wrote studying Hebrew where do you see a mitzvah in the Torah to study Hebrew the answer is that there are some mitzvot that can only be practiced in Hebrew like if you're a cohen you can't get up and say in the vernacular it must necessarily be in Hebrew and there are other things there's a Torah study by the way can be done in all languages as you can see we are and uh and can be in all languages but there are certain things that can only be in Hebrew and therefore with the absence of Hebrew you know you're really not able to perform some mitzvot and even and Torah study it's preferable in Hebrew so there's no question that study of Hebrew is in preparation for upgrading other mitzvot so you have um you have the idea of giving the the potential convert a a little bit of a tasting of some of the mitzvot which and then the Rama says don't spend a lot of time on this because you're going to turn him off when he's going to start hearing how many mitzvot there are this is going to be very discouraging but then he says you teach about the sin of these have to do with mitzvot of giving. Mitzvot of giving. And then he says you teach them about the punishment the the which means as Rafilad points out what you teach the g the potential g is exactly this triangular breakdown of what the principles of Judaism are all about the the big three and that is the existence of God and the fact that God is one and so on. you teach him about the essence of Torah and that can be accomplished through a sprinkling of certain of the mitzvot and then you teach him about the um that responsibility uh and that has to do with reward and punishment and so on. So Rah says it's really these three ideas that that break out that pan out to 13 principles is what we teach a gear in we accompanied a gear to the final exam. Okay. And one of the things they asked among others was does she know the 13 principles? And she knew them. She knew them. Yeah. And we did. I said, "Good that we were born Jewish." Okay. So I I had a of teaching uh um Russian olim uh Jews from sub former Soviet Union who were studying at the Amuna College and we helped them you know be brought to full Gear and I remember I almost fainted when one of the converts was asked a question about Nagelvasa that I I and she didn't know all the details and they told her come back in 6 months. It was horrible. It was horrible. There was a there's a bait in then in Ashtto. I don't know if it exists today that prided itself by saying we're not going to have one g pass our bet. And it's terrible. Absolutely terrible that to it's called Inu Hadin. The idea that uh that that that you know potential G studies and you know you don't you're not there to trip them up. You're not there to trip them up. Yeah. To to encourage them and guide them and so on. I thought we discouraged them. What? I thought you discouraged. No, the discouraging happens at the very beginning of the process by trying to scare the wits out of the person saying, "Look, have you ever heard Jew studied Jewish history? You must probably not interested in this." And and you talk about certain of the difficulties that we've gone through in history. But then when the potential g says I nevertheless I would like to continue at that point you encourage you don't discourage. In other words only at the very very initial stage just to try to um weed out uh people who want to jump on the bandwagon for reasons that are not sincere. You you try to scare the wits out of the people and suggest that uh maybe this is not for you. But once you're convinced that the person is sincere, then you encourage the person. Yeah. My granddaughter served in the unit which does uh guim go uh in the army for for soldiers who were not born in the process, right? And and they decide that they want to go through the process of New York, right? And she told me that at least 50% of those who start drop out. Okay. Okay. they drop out for whatever reasons they drop out. But I can tell you the framework in the army what's the name of the word native nativ program is was most probably the most encouraging program possibility for a gear in this country and we know that many of the khadesim who came in the '9s and you know some with small families and now their kids are army age and they finding out that they're not Jewish because for whatever reasons the mother wasn't Jewish or and so and they were able to come into the country because of the law of return. But uh it's uh it's a wonderful program that they try to get the kids to uh to become hakically Jewish. Right? Okay. So with this brief introduction, let's just look at source number five and then we'll go back to ydal. So source number five is the first fundamental and in parenthesis I have the word and I'll tell you in a moment why I have that in parenthesis and that parenthesis word brought about the poem the second poem. The all 13 as found in the sid after alenu the 13 principles of the Rambam which the Rambam never wrote the anim it's an unknown authorship we don't know who wrote it but we know that it's about 200 years after the Rambam an so whenever we're talking about the Rambam's Mishna commentary we have to be aware of the fact that the Ramom didn't write it in Hebrew Ram wrote the Mishna Torah, the codes in Hebrew, in the language of the Mishna, but the most of his other writings are written in Judeo-Arabic. Now, Judeo-Arabic is not the Arabic that you'd hear today on the street in Misraim. Judeo-Arabic is a literary language just as we have in many languages. You have the language that people speak on the street and then there's the more formal language. You go to Switzerland on the street you're gonna hear Swiss. That's a dialect of German. That's not uh proper German, but it's a dialect and that's the language of the street. Swiss. When I was there, I never wanted to learn that language, Swiss Dutch. But German is the official language and of the media when people make speeches. So, they speak German. So you even have in English you have a more literary um and then you have the spoken. Somebody asked me um are you planning to translate your book on the conversations with the RV? I said it's already in translation. I said really I wrote it in Brooklyn and Rabbi David Shapiro translated it to Brooklyn English. That's a different language. Brooklyn Boston English is a much higher level of English than what I grew up in Brooklyn. Right. Brooklyn, Brooklyn uh has morphed into a new language called Yeshivish, which is the language of many Yeshivot in America, which is bad English with Yiddishisms thrown in, Gumarra language integrated, and then somebody's supposed to understand it. And then some people write books in Yiddish. Some in Shivish. Somebody actually wrote a dictionary for Yeshivish and I have home a um a authentic translation of Lincoln's Gettysburg address to yesish and it's an absolute panic because do you remember the um the last lines of the Gettysburg's address where Lincoln says for the people of the people and by the people. So it's translated into yeshivish as by the by the and by the by. Yeah. By the translation of the constitution. Yeah. Yeah. Inhibition into Yiddish. Okay. Fine. That could be funny also. But yeshivish is even better because they think it's English. That's the thing. They think it's also have a bit of an accent. Okay. Many American boys. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Have an accent. when I was asked once by Wu many years ago to speak before the SMA students about possibilities professional possibilities here in Israel in the rabbinet and in Jewish education. So I me I sat with Rabbi Lamb afterwards the president of the yeshiva and he asked me what did you tell them? I said I told them for first and foremost they should learn Hebrew because this is their so lamb said did you tell them they should also learn some English? Never, never, gone are the days of the orators, right? Gone are the days. So, you have you have um um the idea of Judeo-Arabic. Judeo-Arabic was actually the Rambam's quote unquote Yiddish. What does that mean? So when we say Yiddish, we mean a dialect of German that Jews have used in from the 15th 16th century until today. You can very clearly detect from somebody's Yiddish if the person's background was Germany, Hungary, Poland or Lithuania. Just listen to their Yiddish and you can hear it first of all in the intonation in some of the words that some local words and idioms that infiltrate into the local Yiddish. That simply means that we didn't want to speak goes. We didn't want to speak the language of the of the land. And this goes back to the midrash of they didn't change their language. So they didn't speak local Egyptian. They still spoke. They spoke Hebrew. And and although people since the days of Bay Cheney haven't spoken Hebrew, but they've spoken they don't want to speak Goyish either. They don't want to speak the language. So Aramaic kicked in. Aramaic is simply the the local language of the Middle East, Aramaic, but it's with alphabet. It's with Hebrew letters with Hebrew words mixed in. So it gives it a little bit Jewish flavoring to it. So that's Aramaic and there's a difference between the Aramaic of the Talmudi the Babylonian Talmud and the Aramaic of the Israel Talmud the Talmudi just like there's a difference between the Yiddish of the Polish Jew and the Leish of the Lithuanian Jew. So you have differences sometimes in the spelling sometimes in the word and so on. So this is something which was natural and it's known and after we finished with Aramaic and we've been speaking Aramaic by the way from the days of the end of Tanakh. You have the book of Daniel is practically all of it written in Aramaic. You have parts of Ezra and written in Aramaic and this is Aramaic. And this will take us until the fifth sixth century. And all of a sudden you see that Jews are now speaking Judeo-Arabic. So Rafad Goon is writing in Judeo-Arabic. Ravudy is writing in Judeo-Arabic. Rajon is the end of the 9th to 10th century. Rudy is the 11th century. The Rambams are 12th century and they're writing in Judeo-Arabic. Most of the Rambam's works are in Judeo-Arabic. So what is it? It's Arabic with alfet with Hebrew words thrown in to make it a little bit Jewish flavoring. And this was the Yiddish of the of North Africa and Yemen. It was their Yiddish. So that's called Judeo-Arabic. So we we we lost contact with Judeo-Arabic certainly in uh in in European circles. But the Yemenite Jewish community never lost contact with Judeo-Arabic. Rafak Zatal, the famous Dian who passed away not long ago here in Eritus, bringing the tradition of the Yemenite Jewish community. He himself says, "I studied the Mishna commentary in its original 40 times before I set out to translate it again." And indeed from 1963 to 1967 we have Raf Kapak's great contribution to Torah learning because he re-ransates the Mishna commentary and he re-ransates the mitzvot the book of mitzvot he re-ransates the he re-ransates many of the letters and and it's a phenomenal phenomenal contribution. Now why is there a need for a re-ransation? Because the Ibent Tibon family in the days of the Rambam already started translating the Rambam's material from Judeo-Arabic to Hebrew. But the there's a history of the text and things moved from from one text to the other. There's a lot of corruption in the text in the copying and in the translation itself. in Ibon he saw these as amuna and he translated lamin but anybody today who's a expert in Judeo Arabic first and foremost kapak but others as well believe that the ra never used the word amuna he used the word dea and there's a big difference between amuna and dea means faith blind faith and dea means knowledge intellect So are these principles principles of faith as we somehow see them in the right am actually write amuna did he believe that these are based on faith you grew up your grandmother you know in inculcated into you got it in school and that's it and now he came to mitzvah mitzvah I believe I believe I believe in all this and fine that's it we believe and and and you You don't have to do anything but believe it. The Raman believed that believed that if you just believe in all these things, you've fallen short and you are in a very low level of commitment to you have to use your noodles, use to activate your brain and become a philosopher and try to figure out why all of these things are true to the best of your intellectual ability. And that's what the Ram believes is the mitzvah of which seems to be just a declaration in the de I am God. Ram counts it as one of the 613 mitzvot and he says it's a mitzvah to figure it out that a kadosh actually exists. And therefore what I have here in source number five the Rambam actually began by saying the first fundamental is the awareness of the existence of a kadosh the existence of the creator. Okay. So how does that show up in the anim? So let's go back to the first page. What do you mean by awareness? awareness that you are just like you are aware that you're sitting here in a room, you are aware that there are people around you uh and you're aware that now is daytime. Human beings have awareness, cognitive awareness. You have to be aware of a kadoshu existence. And how do you do that when a kadoshu is invisible? You can't touch him. There's no connection to any of our five senses which basically guide us to becoming aware of things. You know that something exists because you see it, you hear it, you smell it, you feel it and you touch it and so on. So all this doesn't exist with regard to but the Ram says you can achieve it by thinking and the question is how to cultivate that thought process to arrive at the conclusion that a kadu actually exists and Ram says that's the mitzvah and do you do it can you fulfill it overnight? No, it's a lifetime. It's a lifetime's worth of of effort to to achieve that. But the Ram did not write the word. But nevertheless, in the Iben Tibon original translation, that's what it says. So too for if you just look at scale down as I'm reading, looking at source number five, it says the oneness one, the oneness of Hashem. the purpose it's all it's one and in the third he uses the word other places but all right if you just go back now to the poems on page number one Nimsa vain. Let's translate this is we should make God great. What does that mean? We're declaring. It's not that we have to make God great. God is great. He doesn't need us to make him great. But we are extolling a virtue of a kadosh of his greatness. He is the He is here. He is to be found. There's no time framework that is to be associated with his existence. Elit 8 means time. There is no time framework. It's not like exists now as opposed to yesterday as opposed to a billion years ago. always existed and predates time and postdates time and that's what we have in in a matter of fact the Ram tells us in the guide to the perlex the shame yud and that we not dare even utter it was used in the context of beta mikdash when the kuanim did bat kuanim So, Hashem's name wasn't the way the kanim do it today as if it reads but it was read as it says yud and so the raom says when the shame the this perfect name of was pronounced it sounded like eternity. It sounded like Yeah, you got the picture. You got the feeling, the sensation of eternity because the shame havaya yud is nothing but three words sandwiched together. That's what the shame havaya is. It's those three words sandwiched together in one. It it is a kadu forever, but forever before and forever after. So much so, so much so that the belief in the created world which is going to be one of the u ecronote one of the y isod the belief in the created world where the ram is taking a real stab against those philosophers Greek philosophers who believed in the eternity of the universe um which means that god and the world existed simultaneously and there was no real creator leader uh at a certain time the kazal was so adamant and they were so pmical against the Greek philosophers not only did the world have a beginning but we can even believe that the world could have an end and that's why there's actually an opinion this is not something that's what's called Moshe Mai ironclad uh belief in in a Jewish value but it's a thought thrown account by one of the found in the last chapter of Masadin that says that the world is 6,000 years and the 7,000th year is going to be the epic of Messiah and then God pushes the delete button and it all comes to an end. Now, why would we even have such a belief? Is this something we really have to believe in? The answer is no. We don't have to believe that. It's an opinion by one of the that the Msiah era must necessarily come by the end of the 6,000 years. It can come earlier. It can definitely come before the end of 6,000 years. But if it doesn't come by the end of 6,000 years, it's going to happen automatically. It's going to happen and it's going to last for a thousand years and then poof, it ends. Why poof and it ends? So I once heard from one of my great teachers at Wu, Rabbi, Professor Mayor Hershkowit. He said this was Kazal's attempt to undermine the Greek philosophers who believe that the world is eternal concurrent with God. And we wanted to say not only is the world not concurrent at the beginning, but it's not concurrent with God even at the end. It can have an end. it can potentially have an end. And you know that there are all kinds of uh traditions mentioned in the Zohor that we are the seventh world that there was a first world and a second world and a third world and we're the sixth world. We're the seventh world which means God put an end to worlds which according to the cabalists it's already happened. The push the delete button it has happened already and and God can start all over should he choose to start all over. So again, that's how I'm placing it in should he choose to start all over. He could. He could. That doesn't mean he's going to do it. That does not mean that he's going to do it. Let's say the Ramban who is a cabalist also looked at the six days of creation and said that the word, what is? It's a battle plan of 6,000 years of the existence of the world where each day of creation reflects a millennium. And then he goes on to explain it. What you see in day one of creation, what the first thousand years was all about and the second millennium and so on. And the end of the sixth millennium is going to be Shabbat. and Shabbat is going to be and the Ramban knowing fully well that he's living in the beginning of the sixth uh millennium and it's going to be another few hundred years until he sees Msiach. So he he does something very very interesting that kind of whips out a of you know people not mean from but on the seventh day of Shiva people don't complete the day of Shiva but the Shiva culminates in the morning after the first hour right the Shiva people get up from Shiva because of the part of the day is like tantamount the whole day and the Rabans says he thinks that he may see Yamote Mashiach even though he knows he's not going to live 750 800 years he knows that but the 6,000th year you know can end early can be shortened can be abbreviated. That's uh you know very very wishful thinking uh on his part and it didn't happen. He died a long time ago but uh nevertheless the idea that 6,000 years so how many years are we to the end of the 6,000 years? Let's let's bring this up. How many years are we right? So we are I mean why do we have to think? You don't have to think anymore. You have uh okay so today is 5,78 and 85 tin pay and we subtract it and you get 215 years. So we have Einstein is sitting right here. Look at that. You don't even need a calculator. I have to tell you I said I read Einstein. Okay. He wrote a book about God disappearing at the end. There you go. Okay. See, it's not Pakyus. There you go. God disappearing. Okay. So, it's a nice book, isn't it? Right. So, 215 years. How many of us are going to be around in 215 years? I expect to live. You expect to live. See, we have an optimist here. Okay. Good. So, I'm going to make this very optimistic. again quoting um Raf Professor Mayor Hershitz who Ira who I actually learned so much from um he brought to our attention an article by Rabbi Shimon Schwab. So do you remember you know Rabbi Shimon Schwab? Those of you grew up in the Washington Heights neighborhood, he was the successor to Rabbi Yseph Buer of the Beru, famous Buer's community, transplanted Frankfurt upon Bennett Avenue in where they still speak German, right? Okay. So Rav Bruer turned 65 which in the United States that's like retirement age but he wasn't planning to retire but they felt that there was a need to bring in an associate rabbi which some schuls will do and they invited a young ro he was 34 years old from Baltimore who had gone back before the war to me and studied in Mir in the town of Mir in Bellerus which becomes the Mir yeshiva later. So, u and he comes back to the states. This is all pre pre-show. So, he's invited to become Rabbi Buer's associate rabbi and he makes amen. He makes a calculation. How long is Rabbi Buer going to be the rabbi there? Another five years. At 70, he's going to be before 40 years old. The Rabina, the grand Rabina of this great gam, this great community called the community. Except that nobody told Rabbi Schwab that Rabbi Buer is going on to live to age 99 and function till age 99 as the Rabina, the chief rabbi of the community. And the time Ra Schwab becomes the official rabbi, he's already collecting social security by two years. He's 67 years old. He stayed here. He stayed for a few more years. Yeah. Yeah. He became the finally. Finally. But uh okay, I heard Rabbi Buer say a shir Mishnay between M and my grandfather took me there once in a weekday. He was 98 years old and he spoke German. Gave the Shir and the Mishna Gitten in German. I couldn't understand what he was saying but because he he didn't have a voice you know power any longer but it was still to hear Rav Royer and I heard him. So uh Rav Schwab was honored to write an article in a festri fest means a safer hay a type of jubiley volume in honor of Rav Bruer's 75th birthday. So of course Rav Schwab thought that Robuya was going to announce his retirement at that time which he didn't and uh but nevertheless the article is called the comparative calendar very very important article where he discusses the problem of the bay sheni era second temple era where we're a little bit at a loss we're a little bit at a loss because we have historic data that cannot be challenged when was the end of the Babylonian era, when was the destruction of first beta mikdash, when was the Persian era, when was the Greek era, and when was the Roman era? There you can't ignore. It's not just opening up the Britannica. I mean, there there is archaeological evidence. There's historic data of of how long each one existed. And if you open up a general history book, you see that the first beta mdash was destroyed in the year 586 before the common era. And then you have to take 70 years between the first and second beta mikdash. That means the second beta mdash already gets going in the year 516 of the for the common era. It's also common knowledge that the second beta mikdash was destroyed in the year 70 maybe 68. Little bit of a two-year discrepancy but that's already small change 70 of the common era. That means if that's true then the second bet midash stood for 516 plus 70 years which is 586 years maybe 55 years okay 585 years but you know the gimmar tells us that the second mdash stood for 420 years not 585 years the first mdash was 410 that you can just go through tanakh and plot it out you don't need a va going For this one, you can see how long the first B mdash existed. But the second mikdash, we don't know what happened because there's a tradition and it contradicts the historic data. So Raf Schwab says you have three options. You can say Khazal knew what they were talking about. All the historians are liars. They don't know what they're talking about. Fine. You can say that the historians know what they're talking about and Kazal weren't historians. So they made a mistake. That was the second option. says, "I reject the first and I reject the second." There's got to be a third path here. And his third path is that the building of beta mikdash stood for 586 years. It functioned as a beta mcdash for only 420 years. and that there's some sources to show that Beth Mikdash was out of commission here and there and that there were dark ages in the Persian era that Khazal deliberately blotted out from our history books. It's a phenomenal charge to suggest this. And he says that they did it because if you um if and and and he says exactly how many years were blotted out? 65 years of the Greek era and it was done in order to protect the book of Danielle from allowing us to um perhaps figure out when Msiah is going to come to distort some of the numbers there in the book of Daniel. It's phenomenal phenomenal thing because if you take Rav uh Schwab's uh answer resolution then if you take today um the if you take today 57 85 and you 5785 and you add on you add on um the 215 years that are missing but now take off. You're going to have to add 165 years. These blank years, this is going to bring you to about 50 years. We are 50 years from the year 6000. That's all it is. Not 215 years. That means maybe some of us here may not make it, but our grandchildren, our great grandchildren are going to make it. And that's within grasp. So think about that. Think about that. About this. So we got on to this because of this was important. This was important because of Msiah. Because of Mashiach. Continue this. Please bring these pages next week. And if you don't, hand them back to me and I'm going to bring them next week. And I think that