Parshat Netzavim Vayelach, Recalibration by Rabbi Ari Kahn

we're going to start which is Source number one so little historical context both of those are terms for idolatry and I'm not particularly interested at this point of being overly technical in the translations that you're going and and you saw these things that they worshiped eight so literally wood and stone silver gold which essentially means is that people who were involved in idolatry went and worshiped all kinds of things the Vil of gon has a remarkable commentary to this and in Source number two that had to do with the worship of the people from Ammon so he's getting a little more technical but then he says this is a part which is interesting and he doesn't explain it so asov is generally in Jewish theology at least am I talking about genealogy am I talking about history I'm talking about Jewish theology as of is connected to Rome and as of is connected to Christianity so he said they worshiped the eights eight we'll get to the Rock and you you're skipping you skip you skip the crucifix okay so the eight he says is a of is so therefore he says that's that is a reference to Christianity which has to do with the crucifix and Y that has to do with worshiping The Rock and uh again that's why he's the vone and then he continues to explain but as I said really interesting comment I I again this is the kind of thing you don't know what to do with it mean he's trying to say that's or this is remes or this is what becomes emerges later on in history no matter what you say I'm going to say it again that is a really interesting comment of the continue L you have among you a man or a woman sh or family or a tribe I share l p now that's already going to be the interesting part what does it mean Lio P their hearts will be open that their God their hearts will be open to leave to deviate from God they'll go and worship the gods of these other nations lest you have have among you Ro now we have a little bit of a challenge to translate those words I'm going to look for a second at the tarum unus on this and again what specifically concerns me it's towards the end of that verse lest you have among you right so he writes there are people who are contemplating within their minds sins which sounds to be sins which are more accidental which of course you can all ask me how do you contemplate accidental sins that is interesting o zadon or things which will be deliberate now thing you should note over here is that the words of the Torah did not say anything like that and nonetheless unas has this reputation of translating things literally so we need to readjust our understanding of uncus and I've said this many times that unus will explain not what it says but what it means which means 90 something per of the time he's going to be quite literal because what it says is what it means means but whenever something goes a little bit more poetic then he's not going to tell you the Poetry he's not going to give you the mashal he's going to tell you what it means so over here as well he's leaving this uh this these words again Shish P Ro which really sounds much more agricultural things that will grow astray and so on and he's saying is really the things that are growing or the things in your mind which are growing and he go and as I said he goes straight to what he believes that it means if you look at the taraman which is source for which is the KET yonatan which is the taram yonatan translated back into Hebrew now just a word about the tarum yonatan there was a famous tarum yonatan right this is not it tarum yonatan we have today only on Navi we do not have it on the Torah the Publishers who were a little bit overzealous found a tarum and they called the tarum yonan most likely it was a tarum Yi and a t tud and they decided it was the more famous yonatan but it's assumed that it really is a tarum from ER Israel we'll see why that may be interesting in a moment so here it goes back and translates as I said back into Hebrew the again the things which are planted he has the planting in your heart sorry SH now that is so interesting because as you noticed I hope that he just stuck a whole bunch of words there that were not in the Torah but again he is very much taking a metaphor and extending it a little bit and explaining a little bit and he talks also about the beauty of sin right sin has a certain type of beauty to it it has an attraction to it and over here he speaks of the beauty of sin which initially it's sweet and at the end becomes like a poison which leads to death and by the way some of this was actually in the words of the Torah very little of it but he as I said is is extending the metaphor that idea of sin initially being sweet and then becoming bitter actually is found ironically or not in the Tudi as I said the tarumi that may tell us a teaching from the Tudi should not be terribly surprising in Source five again a different verse God will remove all the illness that's the evil inclination sh Show that it's beginning M it's sweet and at the end it becomes bitter so till this moment all that we've done is we've looked at a you know some verses and the verses tell us something about how we always seems to be within a larger context where there is idolatry and we need to stay away from it and we can't be influenced by the various kinds of societies that we have been in contact with we need to stay away from their belief system we need to stay away from their idol worship and we need to realize that among ourselves as well there is this capacity and again I want to look back at source number one back at that POS Zan lest there be among you and it again delineates a person a man a woman a family A Tribe and so on I sh Lio their heart and I want you to pay attention to that their heart because of course the heart is not just talking about a pump or valves it's not just talking about the blood flow going through the body a again what a heart means again metaphorically that their heart deviates from God so it's really like a wild something wild which is growing but it's something which does lead to poison that's really what this metaphor is uh is being used over here if you want to read the next verse Shalom and if you know when you hear this Covenant that we're about to enter into and you kind of bless yourself in your heart and say no no I'll be okay I'm just going to follow my heart's desire and what's again again what's going to happen this is going to be the thing which will lead to destruction which is really what the rest of this chapter is going to be telling us I'm I'm choosing sorry Source number six is Rashi so let's look there because it's always the first and best place to look perhaps which means this is the reason that a person may not want to enter in a covenant with God because the Yahara has taken over for them and it doesn't allow them to go down a path which is going to lead them towards serving God see some kind of a plant which is going to grow something which is bitter it will cause this increased like it's this element which causes evil to grow in our hearts so again yes a lot of this is metaphorical nonetheless there's some really important religious philosophy which is underneath all of this and it's that religious philosophy that I really want to focus on I chose Source number seven which is the Bor sure and I'm going to again say this is a general rule when we learn gamarra for whatever reason it is and maybe it's not the best reasons you have the page of the gamarra and then you have Rashi on one side most of the time and have toot on the other side of all the rehon him Toot's not the easiest Reon to learn Rashi explains what's on the page and toas explains how this page fits in within the larger Corpus of Shas constantly bringing in references from all kinds of places and therefore if you were lost on one page and then you look in toast vote now you're lost in terms of half of Shas because you have no idea what he's talking about and therefore to learn one page of gamarra requires of you very often to learn six seven 8 10 other Pages just to reference that one page yes learning gamorra is very easy after you do it for around 10 years the problem is staying with it till those 10 years and by the way just a knowing that larger Corpus and then B knowing how to negotiate within any given page in the inner logic of the gamarra but toot is a really challenging commentary because it's trying to work out this page within a larger context in the Kish whoever published the molo shows again whatever they thought would sell best that's really what it is let's never underestimate that it's it sales and toast vote is somewhat underrated there are M by the way just like in the gamarra there's actually multiple tovote authors tovot last lived in multiple countries France Germany England Italy over hundreds of years when it comes to the commentaries on Kish there's also a whole bunch of commentaries from the toast school now one is I'll tell you they're always interesting two I'll tell you there's a lot of overlap between them so we're going to look at the B is one of the again you the most famous one will obviously be the rashbam rashbam right as a kid and I say this all the time as a kid he learned Kish in Rashi yes because his grandfather was Rashi so he learned Kish with Rashi and um that's unparalleled and he doesn't always agree with Rashi and sometimes you don't realize when you learn in too that his younger brother 15 years younger is rabam so again that's that's like a pretty impressive family and they really are different Generations by the way and ruam had far more influence than the rashbam did rabam had a combination of two things one is he was the greatest Rabbi of his age and two he knew it by the way sometimes someone doesn't know that but he he knew it and he used his authority and and he used it well he also had the advantage of having someone who did his writing for him who was a nephew a great-grandson of Rashi who's the r the riak so the r who's the riak he's called because it's a younger R the Rakin there would not be no rabeno if he didn't have his re writing and taking his notes for him we always need our writers to uh to keep the information and to put things together in a way that other Generations understand it but when it came to each place where the students of tovot and then later on they were called the Balia tovot where they they were asking the same questions they had the similar methodology they were bringing in a lot of the same sources and they sometimes gave different answers but this is a good representative of six other commentaries of to or the various to over here V right we understood that they going to serve other gods to now this is what I want to begin to stay with they're unable to distinguish between good and bad now I'm going to pause right here good and bed to is something which should take us back to back to the Garden of Eden right we have an also for those of you you don't know I have at least seven books where the word Eden is someplace in the title so that should also be a hint that we're always going to somehow get back here but this is too easy but what I I want to also delineate for us right now three sets of terms which we need to think a little bit how they work the first will be to and ra the second will be EMT veker to good and bad EMT veker truth and falsehood and the third will beim life and death um if you think about all of this hopefully you'll realize that all of these elements are a here they're right here if you don't know if you don't recognize you don't remember then look through the par if not then pay attention when they read it and sure all those elements are going to be here by the way not not EMT veker is the one you'll give me a hardest time with sorry truth and falsehood but that's maybe the most important um but you also recognize that all of these elements are also right there in the second and third chapters in braet although you can argue with me no you can't argue with me can't argue no no you could I'm saying you have a eight and what's the other eights the Zohar calls what does the zoh called the other eights so part the other eight is to so you say oh no the zor calls the other eights the other tree the tree of death if one is a tree of life then the other one's a tree of death one of them would have brought life to the world somehow to be sustained and the other one is the one which brought death to the world so therefore you really do have a tree of life and tree of death and you have again life and death I plac before you and so on these are terms which are going to be terms found here towards the end of the verm which which then in a general sense should cause us to start to contemplate to what extent what we're reading here has to do with issues that started long long long ago or maybe I'll put it like this you know and I gave you the title in the beginning is this a prep preparation for Asana well it could be a real good preparation for Asana could it also be a preparation for something much bigger which means fixing meaning am I fixing what's happened this year or is there a fixing which is much much larger taking place in terms of going back to the very dawn of History so that's enough for right now and let's continue in the B what's he saying they have no ability of distinguishing between good and bad now where did that come from why don't we have an ability of distinguishing between good and bad by the way you will have to know the answer well that's what happens when you ingest from a tree or your DNA has come from people who ingested from a tree which is a tree of to verra a tree of to verah causes there to be a confusion between to and raah and where there's a confusion between to and raah guess what follows well sin death which lies which means all of the negative remember I told you there are three pairs that we need to think about but all the negative seems to be somehow put together okay continue we're g to skip a little [Music] be and so on so what I'm going to say without reading everything over here is that sin he's telling us is going to emerge from a world view which is Tainted and now the question is why is that world view tainted and the answer will be that the worldview is Tainted because there's something wrong in the way that we are looking at things and again just the ability over here by saying how can I expect someone to choose good if they don't have an ability of distinguishing between good and bad how do you how do you do that how do you choose good which means that what he's pointing at over here is that there's something it's in the setup even but by the way you if I go too far with this you're G to say what chance do we have and you're also GNA have a wonderful a wonderful defense in terms of uh y hadin rash or any other y hadin to stand in front of God and say well what choice did you give give us you you you've created us with this ability to make bad decisions or if you want differently you've given us this wonderful thing called the yahar now what's the answer going to be the answer is going to be is that you must also have the capacity of going against the yat what's the answer there also must be a Yater to what answer is is not just an rather is also and what's the answer is that and you read that verse in Proverbs M you get M you get very quickly to the understanding that what is that a it's Torah it's that's the reason why you call the Torah it's Torah which means that we were put in a world where there is this confusion and there is this good and bad and we seem to in our hearts we get confused and want to move towards the bed but it's telling you no no you don't necessarily have to do that there is a way to move again away from that and make other kinds of choices now as I said there's a lot more in this B but all only reason I really went here is to show you that problem that he's already pointing it out the main commentary that I wanted to get to today is the sorno sorno for those of us who don't know first of all he's Italian the fact that he's Italian Ian means that he has good taste it means that he's he's stylish he is by the way this is true of all the Italian commentaries they have style I don't know what else to say about it and theyve creativity and they have creativity and the the Forno in C in a certain sense strikes me as being one of the earliest modern commentators even though he's not that early but there's nonetheless something very modern about him various understandings but there's also something very ancient now he does something here that it's a little unfair because I know what he did I'm going to share with you what he did but he doesn't tell you what he's doing but by the way again when you when you look something up in mcro cadan you see the sorno over there and he is one of the commentaries there there the sometimes the way to get to the depth of this and I didn't do this for this class it's just I happen to know this is that then you go to the editions of that commentary itself I mean I have four different editions of the sorno at home each one with their own footnotes some better some worse and enough introduction let's read again your heart will be influenced by again those Nations around you there's two different versions that either as you live with them and then you're going to come to the conclusion in your mind that you are best off canceling your Covenant with God and therefore all of you stand in front of God God who searches through every person's innards their hearts by the way doesn't that remind you of a rushishana type of theme of of course it does which means how many of the commentaries are also influenced because they're also working on their Rashana you know DHA they're also working on on themselves they're also thinking wor is coming next couple of days so I'm saying that's also interesting and it comes out now and again mean you're not going to fool God meaning in your heart you're going to get to this again he hasn't yet said what it is you're going to get to the confusion you again you're going to find corrupt thoughts you're going to stand with all the other Jews here and accept in your in your mouth you're going to accept the Covenant but nonetheless in your heart you're going to say well I don't really mean that shom instead you say to yourself I'll be okay I'm gonna follow my heart Shalom so again you hear very much talking about not even in a conflict but a a conflict in terms of there's a larger group you're standing with the rest of arm Israel you're going to say whatever it is in that context that nma and yes I will do and yes I will obey andhim and whatever it is that you need to say but in your heart you're not there in your heart you're someplace else in your heart you're still there is this corruption let's move a little bit more now and by the way if you want to add a fourth I told you a couple of terms you also have now now over here this is this is the end of days we we just now skipped between chapter 29 to chapter 30 in chapter 29 we're standing in front of God about to make a covenant and in Chapter 30 were many many many years many generations later when we've broken the the Covenant we have consequences from having broken the Covenant and now you have spread out to all kinds of places gone off into Exile something is going to happen there's going to be return you're going to return to your hearts perhaps that's how we should translate it but something's going to happen if you want a more of a cabalistic concept there's going to be an Awakening cabal speaks sometimes of an Awakening from below and sometimes an Awakening from above but sometimes you have an above an alarm clock which wakens US below like God is God is calling us God God stirs something in our hearts and then you're going to return to God but notice of course the beginning I'm going to say it again the there's a return the word sh is written in this chapter multiple times so you again to say are we talking about chuva now we talking about shash now and the answer is yeah again the reason why put it here right you're G to come back so again something has changed you'll return to God and God will return to you and he's going to gather you from all over so you see that there's something here very very biblical there's something over here A Gathering of the Exiles and we're going to skip a little bit more because this bring you back to the land that's really important come back to the land and God is going to somehow perform if you will a circumcision of your hearts whatever that means and cause you to love God and that will cause you to live we're going back to life and again in the next verse you're going to come back to God with all your hearts and all your souls in last week's paraa I may or may not have made me mention of this in ver number 10 said right and it said there we're going to begin our journey really with the fororo and look at source 11 it's back in last week's para you're going to do all of these things in order for it to be good for you so no you can understand clearly without any question that it is worthwhile to do his will so again he's dealing right here and and I I want to make sure that we're clear that we understand this and then we can hopefully to get deeper one of the great qualities that Humanity has is our ability to make justifications right excuse me it's our ability to make justifications we can justify anything right we can make excuses for anything we are terribly creative how creative are we is we can look at something which is objectively bad by the way I used a really bad word now objectively objectively bad imp excuse me impartial objectively bad impart ially objectively bad and convince ourselves that this is absolutely wonderful for us yes that's right that that's that's who we are now now again the question is how do we do that I want to go back to my various terms just to keep them in mind again we added a fourth one blessing and curses truth and lies right life and death which other one do we have to right mean just keep on thinking about all those things and now I want to read this thing in the Sno again he used the word good that you will recognize without any doubt know that it is worthwhile for you to do the will of God what did he just now say he's saying you're going to get to this point that you know you cut through everything and you know that what you're supposed to do is to serve serve God which means these things this again which brings us away from serving God which justifies all kinds of things that we do it's when again what verse is he explaining that you're going to Ser serve God with all your heart and all your soul what does that mean that you have absolute Clarity CL by the way that is a key word Clarity you have clarity as far as we're supposed to do and all the confusion and the fog that we live in gets cut away and now you know and again in a certain sense what I'm reading here was already in the bore there's somebody else who explains all of this a much more and as I said hopefully we'll get to that as well but now let's go to the sorno in Source 12 which was inic lamid which by this week's para we talked about all these issues of return okay so now I again I want to insist he knows something he actually has a book opened in front of him and he doesn't tell you what the book is I'll I'll tell you don't worry and he says that you should have the ability to separate to distinguish is there a better word Forin to distinguish what distinguish from from EMT to sheer so that that that just like broke through something because people again I I I can ask you about you know endless amounts of things how How could somebody smoke right I can ask such so what's the answer is that they're addicted okay how do you get to that addiction how do you get to the point of doing something that you know is bad for you because what why is it bad for you it's only statistically bad for you right it it's that you never see people smoking a cigarette and dying on the spot maybe that would help more but but being that it doesn't happen immediately so then you can start to justify okay it's only and and all kinds of other things could take place and I'm using that as an example because that's low hanging fruit because I guess most of you don't smoke and therefore most of you will agree with me but there's all kinds of things that people do that are bad bad they're not right and they're bad for them but nonetheless we have this wonderful capacity to again what's the problem is that we sometimes confuse these things and and again over here when we're talking about returning to God what's the first thing we need which means that when you're off in Exile one of the things that's going to have to take place in order to try to make a historical tikun to fix everything is to stop the influence of these other nations and in terms of our thinking process and how we look at the world in order to stop and to say un of I'm a servant of God and now how do I okay what what's the word what's the title for today how do I recalibrate and get to a point where my mind has Clarity in order to be able to no longer be influenced by again I can ask you this I can ask you the simple question and you know we're getting there sooner or later how in the world is somebody know that there's a tree of life over here and there's a tree of death over there and says I think I'll have the death one right I'll have one from column B I'll take that one how in the world do anybody ever choose death over life and the answer is that we can look back in the Garden of Eden and say look how primitive look how silly and yet we know that people are doing it all the time yes do I need to go into details or no people do this all the time how do they do this so what's the first first thing first thing is that there's confusion and how does that confusion take place so let's let's let's keep reading because he's saying if you're going to serve God then there needs to be this type of recalibration to take place and that I am a servant of God that's that that becomes the new motivation instead of inner motivations things that motivate me no I'm a servant of God now this is really interesting and you I'm going to say this again you always have to be careful with the sperno by the way he lived a number of years within the shadow of the Vatican he has all kinds of negative things to say about the beta mikdash he does not like big buildings he does not like gold and silver being wasted for religious purposes he does not trust people who are on high religious um influence people with big jobs like the pope and so on and so forth he does not like any of them and all of this influences but look what he says over here you're not going to need you're not going to need educated people knowledge of God will spread in the world and you're not going to need someone to teach you he'll come clear to this more he says once you understand the the real issue over here the severity and so on that's going to help calibrate that's going to help get you in the right way again we talked about this circumcision of your hearts now that word that's a great word it's a great term that confuses the mindia what's inia what does it mean AR what's ar ar is a combination of day and night right eror the evening it's combination of day and night is this confusion it's all of these mistakes that prevent the intellect from knowing truth so again these terms over here em and so on they're staring at you that once you get clarity once you're recalibrated then everything else becomes clear and God will give us this ability and he brings this to this place of finally getting to a Messianic age is there anything else that I want here no we'll leave that for now we go back to Source 13 and yes this is going all the way back because this is chapter in by the way what does the word mean excuse me yeah the question is what's the it here give me a second and God commanded man lore saying that's a commandment eat from every tree do not eat now we have this concept of to don't eat from it because that's going to bre bring death and we know that already if you go back a couple verses there's another tree that was planted which is the tree of life which is interesting you have the and L for man to be by himself but let's go to the sorno in Source 14 God planted all these trees he planted all the food that would be accessible where there would be no pain involved in working it but again very simply you pick you pick the fruit from the tree again and so on so causes there to impact the heart as it were go back to the heart of a combination of to and therefore subsequent eating eating from the tree again this will get a little bit clearer in a moment so what happens when you eat from the tree the fruits of this tree of good and bad you will then have the ability to choose something now AR is interesting because it could be mixture or it could be something which is mixed up and therefore it is uh it's tempting you're going to be able to choose that which is tempting even though it will hurt you here you have eating from the Tree of knowledge of Good and Evil causes you to have a world view that you will choose good and evil and be unable to distinguish between good and evil and that's your eel that's going to also cause you to have this ability to stay away from and even find disgusting something which is not mixed up even though it's going to be far more helpful to you to serve and go back I would have thought it like you as well till I read this I would have thought the means to to work the land but he just now told us but we'll be getting food for free from the trees what does he say that it means the only thing that we were working on at that point was our souls by the way we messed it up that's uh that's part of this is there anything else that I want to get to and then of course in Perl we have where everything goes wrong now now let's be honest about something we have no idea what we're talking about when we talk about when we talk about a talking serpent we don't even know what it means and and the serpent said to the woman God said not to eat from every tree of the field which is a lie God actually said the opposite God said to eat from every tree of the field that that's just like the first part here um this is a wonderful way the atahar works it tells you you can't have anything if I follow the rules I will have nothing and and of course there was the opposite if I follow the rules I'll have everything but the tells you the opposite if I follow by the way right then right then should have been a response he also does a little bit I don't want to pick on lawyers for obvious reasons today but he does a little bit of an interesting phraseology you can't eat from every tree of the field so is that true or is that not true kind of is that true or not true you can't eat from every tree of the field the problem is the word every you can't treat from every tree of the field this is the second way the eight S works you can't eat from every tree of the field why cuz there's one tree you can't have and the one tree you can't have is going to kill you but but listen to the way it comes out you can't eat from every tree of the field well no you can't eat from every tree of the field there's one that you can't eat from but you but meaning what the Nash says is true you can't eat from every three of the field because one's really bad for you we can't eat we by the way it's also now is not the time for this which tree was described early it's actually there's already confusion here that's the second thing second point of confusion you're not going to die by the way everything the says is true they don't die well death will come in because God knows that when you eat it your eyes will open up you'll become like God knowing Good and Evil let's go a little bit over here in sour 16 we're still in the sperno who Satan who Sahar where he's really going with this he's saying there was no talking snake in the Garden of Eden he's not even saying that it's a metaphor he's saying is that there is a dialogue taking place between Eve and between her evil inclination that's the dialogue taking place and the way it's described is as a serpent and so why is it like a because a causes aash could hurt someone with no gain to it that's his point mean certain animals can attack and they'll gain from the attack a lion go back he mentioned a second a lion can attack with it will eat its prey he goes attacks and doesn't gain anything he goes That's the it attacks you and it's just ultimately it does not do anything for it this is the evil this is Satan the the power within us the desire it uses our imaginations this is what's really interesting because it's as if he's saying that no there was no serpent there but the way that the yahor works is it impacts our imaginations and it allows us to imagine such a wonderful world which will exist as a result of our bad choices that we make so this imagination then creates this false this being that doesn't exist which means the Y as itself becomes incarnate and now you have aash which is there convincing me to do that which is bad for me but he's saying all of this is a matter of what happens within my imagination which is part of the sin process yeah that is exactly what we wanted to get to that's the point that's exactly the point very good okay no excuse me very good and who's the one who raises this question uh but who raises it before there sorno and the answer and the answer is somebody who had a conversation about this with the rambam and he writes a book called the guide for the perplexed so you may be perplexed right now but no but that's good to be the ROMs perplexed is not a bad thing to be but we'll uh we'll we'll see we'll see this in a moment because that's all that the sperno is really doing over here is he's been explaining the ra why he doesn't bother telling us I don't know I have to assume that his audience in the Middle Ages any intellectual in the Middle Ages I have to assume that they knew this without any question whatsoever but that's exactly the point which means how many years after the hundreds of years hundreds of years years after hundreds of years after but it's but but that's what he's doing that that's exactly the point over here and and we'll we'll see some of the hopefully in a couple of minutes but again he's talking about how sin creates imagination which is wonderful you imagine all the pleasure and all the wonderful things that will happen when you s essentially there's this inner battle taking place in our minds in our imaginations in our desires we on the one hand create this world which is going to be so pleasurable so wonderful so vibrant and that is this world of sin and this is all a world of Illusion and we then completely convince ourselves about all the bad now the question is a wonderful question if eating from the tree is what's going to cause us to have a world where we are confused so then what kind of confusion can cause us to eat from the world from this tree which is going to be the source of confusion did I explain your question properly yes and that is a that is a again no taking away nothing from you the fact that R says what he does that's a wonderful wonderful question by the way the way it's asked of the Raam is even better you will give me a second but I think we have enough of this this to get a sense of where we're going um look at source number 18 some years ago a learning Man by the way I figured that once we're not reading the Arabic The English is no worse than the Hebrew right you you agree with me on that okay some years ago a learning man asked me a question of great importance it would appear and I you see I skipped about it would at First Sight appear from scripture that man would originally intended to be perfectly equal to the rest of the animal creation which is not endowed with intellect reason or power of distinguish between good and evil notice the words over here good and evil what's good and evil go back to Hebrew for a second what's good and evil Tovar why because we were not supposed to be able to distinguish in Tovar what allowed us to distinguish in to only when we ate from the Tree of Tovar so therefore if we were not supposed to eat from the tree that means we were not supposed to have the understanding of to but that Adam's Disobedience to the command of God procured him the Great Perfection which is the perality of man the power distinguish between good and evil the noblest of all faculties of our nature the essential characteristic of human race it thus appears strange that the punishment for rebelliousness should be the means of elevating man to the Pinnacle of perfection to which he had not obtained previously so his question is actually a little bit sharper it's not just how does this happen that's going to be part of the answer as well how does this happen he's saying if the purpose is for man sorry if man becomes a being to be able to distinguish the good and bad that only takes place after eating from the Tree of good and bad if you can't distinguish the good and bad that means you're no different for any of the animals so then how does man become man if not from eating from the tree and why is that part of the plan why is that only considered a sin which brings on this whole world of pain so what's the ROM going to need to do first of all again the question is really good but in terms of the answer or the response to this it is not to be understood as you think at First Sight but as you will find after to Due delber deliberation namely the intellect which was granted to the man as the highest advant which toed him before his Disobedience with reference to this gift the Bible states that man was created in the form likeness of God on account of this gift of intellect was addressed by God and received his Commandments and the Lord commanded that which means no matter what you say you cannot command an animal not to choose between good and bad which means the Commandments are absurd that's part of the ROM's Point Adam was created at the end of chapter 1 he's created again another description the beginning of chapter two in Chapter 2 Adam was was commanded certain things by the way included incl by the way now you realize that means to save this to save this ability which is this spirit of God that He gave you is to guard your Humanity to guard your elim within you which again is is really interesting because all of us always imagine that it means means that you should the thing you should be working on is Garden of Eden save the Garden of Eden and the sorno is telling us no you should be saving man but I'm going to say it again the Forno has this rambam open up right in front of us as he's telling this and he continues and he says and the Lord God commanded for no Commandments are given to brute cre creation or to those who are devoid of understanding through the intellect man distinguish between the true and the false now notice something he just now shifted he says that Adam when he was created had the ability of distinguish between truth and falsehood then he eats from to ver and that's good and bad part of what the ROM is going to get to here is that truth and falsehood and good and bad are not always the same because truth and falsehood are should we get back to that word again if you willing to accept it or objective TR truth and false are objective of course we live in a world where there is this incredible assault upon truth there's ass salt upon truth there's assault upon language there assault upon biology there's assault on on on all kinds of things but nonetheless again the Rah is telling us that Adam before the sin had a complete ability of distinguish between true and falsehood but what happens to the meeting of the tree that's when you get to to this confusion between good and sorry between good and bad what happens when you get to confusion of good and bad so let let me go back a step I have true and I have false could I choose what's bad yeah I know it's false I know it's a lie can I choose those lies yes that's before the sin there's a clarity right truth and false after the sin we get impacted and then we know longer know what is truth and what is a lie and therefore we live in a world which is a confusion of good and bad and now I can justify my bad and say that it's really good which means that's what happens with sin there's obviously a lot more to say about this and obviously also we have to wind down and get towards a conclusion the verses that we read are very easy to understand only as the sporno even gave away this is the end of days and this is what's going to happen when the knowledge of God will fill the world and then we'll be able to get to this point of a recalibration and everyone's going to understand that there's one God and so on and so forth and truth will be again absolutely manifest and so on none the year nonetheless every single year as we're getting towards rashash sh we can just you know try to say okay listen you know maybe I'm maybe I spoke too much lashara and maybe I got angry too quickly with somebody and maybe I didn't drive as nicely as I could have or maybe and I can go on and on and on along the way picking on little things but I think what we could take away from all of this is this need for a recalibration is this need to really go back to really basic issues and have I convinced myself that something which is really okay do I live a world which is a lie have I confused truth and falsehood have I been able to be the victim of this combination of good and bad and then justify bad and convince myself that it's good and then by extension convince myself I live in a world of Truth as well which means the process of chuva is not just a process of you know picking on a list of things I can do this better I can do this better I do that better but rather a much larger again what's the word recalibration and saying do I have a Clarity do okay by the way I don't have to consider I don't I can finish that sence do I have Clarity do I see things clearly do I understand what truth is when it comes down to it truth is very closely aligned with under I kept quoting that that phrase I am a servant of God if I'm a servant of God I'm here to serve God and therefore what God asks me to do is essentially a definition of what is good that is the tree of life that that what brings life when I have this combination of of bra and CLA and and and blessings and curses and choose life choosing life is choosing the choosing means CH choosing Torah choosing Torah means essentially choosing what God has commanded and my world view could be that I have all kinds of justifications and reasons why that's not really good for me so now I know that now I know that I need a recalibration and I need to put myself within the mindset of now trying to get back to the core issues what is good and what is bad what is truth and what is falsehood and once I'm able to do that then I'm able to emerge out of this by saying okay this is what I'm here this is what I'm here to do I'm here to serve God let me now process these mitzvot again I'm not saying that all this is easy but what I'm saying is is that chuv is not just a question of fixing a couple of things along the way it's a process of recalibration that that that's really what the point is over here and to realize as the sperno was explaining this and and he keeps on doing this it was in chapter 26 and it was a chapter 29 and it's a chapter 30 and he keeps coming back to this point and it's also embra in peric bed and it's peric gimmel which means essentially what we're going through here at the end of the Torah is the same thing that went on the very beginning of the Torah in the very now you go okay so so what happened what changed ah so what changed was this wonderful ability to justify wrong that we do what this forer was claiming and again this based on the ram is that before the sin and you have to go back clearly look at the conversation between Eve and the is says all that he says and what is that say that her response is if you want what what verse was that if you look at the whole conversation the says you're not going to die in he tries to convince and you'll be like God that all the arguments that he gave get left on the side and there's one word there that really troubles me lust once there's lust then everything else is going to fit in which means if you would have asked her right then is this good or bad she would have said I know it's bad but I I I I need to do it that's the difference between beforehand and afterwards beforehand there could have been or there probably was and I think there was I think that's what the Robin was climbing beforehand there was an acknowledgement and knowledge that this is I am giving into lust and this is really really bad and it's going to have really bad conse quences after you do that now you live in a world of confusion which means this is in a certain sense what is that sin causes you to justify your behavior your sin and I have to justify it you want to live with cognitive dissonance you want to say okay that basically whoever said that you shouldn't do that didn't know what he's talking about and that is not really bad for you and then you end up getting into a confused world view and living in a confused world you have to constantly justify the things that you do and now you've compl you create in your own mind a system of what is right and wrong and you even get to the point of what is truth and what is falsehood so essentially I'm going to go back again so what do we now need to do at the end of the year going at the end of el going into yamer what do we need to do we need to recalibrate we need to go back to basic assumptions we need to go back and ask ourselves okay what is true and what is false how did lust affect our choices affect us to conf get into a world of Confusion And once the world of confusion that we can no longer see what's right and what's wrong anymore so what do we need to do we need to recalibrate that's really hard to do so we one of the things we need to pray to God is before we begin before we begin ending with this before we begin me to go God God give me Clarity God help me see things clearly God open up my mind and open up my heart and let me look at things in a way which they really are and that then becomes the beginning point to be able to really make meaningful changes everybody have a shabbat shalom and have [Music]