Q&A: Morality, Saving Yishmael & Hamas/Amalek Status (HaRav Yitzchak Breitowitz)

yeah I'll wait till till the room is till the room is clear okay okay um a person has many factors to consider um when we to D for example um we try to dve it at a consistent time in a consistent Place ding where one RS their Torah ding one of the first 10 people doing after plug when one can't fulfill all these factors in a single Minion which factor is the most important to prioritize yes so the question would be that there are a lot of rules regarding what is the best place to dve in the place where you learn the place with a minion the place with the larger minion the place where more kavana uh different so it seems that the number one thing you're looking for is to DAV uh when you have the optimal so for example daving before plug if you're going to do my of after plug I mean that's going to be the the single most important thing uh the second will be minion obviously ding over Yas uh now the other things are really kind of hard to we meaning there is an inion of davening in the place where you learn there actually is an inion there's also an inion of daving in the Mak kava where you normally ding so let's assume that in the past you were ding in a place that is not where you want to learn and now you want to change it so uh there'll be difficulties you know it's not we don't always have a clear priority list and in such a situation uh the tiebreaker will often be where you have the most cavana so we're going to bring in that idea there because with respect to the other factors there's not always going to be a clear a clear list but no so I think cavana would no zanim seor and then kavana would be the three most important things that you look at R what about when you can get seore but you have to make a compromise on in that you you're waiting for the Min passes but it's not it's yeah so so so so it really depends but frankly the mishura says specifically with respect to Shia Sunset it is better to than after so there we do have it now on other things such as like some people say there's aor toana instead OFA there if you can get a minion we would say you know go with Dominion but so so it really depends very specifically on which time issue you're focusing on uh another issue that comes up a lot is vasikin vasikin is when you time your davening so the you will begin with the rising of the Sun so you start ding whatever is a half an hour before that and you hit with the rising of the sun that's a very big inion that's called Davin now the question is what if you don't have a minion right in a lot of communities you're not going to have a minion at the time of us seen and the minion will be later so what do you do so there it's actually brought down that if you plan that you're going to DAV in ofas seeking on a regular basis then that trumps that overrides daving with a minion if on the other hand one particular morning you happen to get up early and you're thinking ah it's a nice idea for me to D vasin there you do have to go to the minion so it really depends on whether vasikin is going to be your permanent practice or whether it's just a one shot one shot thing yeah here's a send in it seems that topics like having a healthy relationship with yourself meditation mindfulness Etc are all being neglected in the Torah world and that the keys to that wisdom are in the non-jewish world why is that yes so uh the question is that issues like taking care of yourself uh mindfulness uh you know the books keep on coming uh presumably from non-jewish sources from secular sources or Eastern religion uh or whatever and why are these subjects neglected in the toor world so first of all uh I do need to uh correct that statement a little bit uh if you examine the books that are coming out now certainly in recent years you will see an explosion of works on mindfulness I I'm aware of at least three books that I wrote letters of introduction for and I'm sure there are many other books besides that and um a lot of issues that were not formally explored in a Torah setting are now being explored so the truth is there is a lot out there there really is a lot out there but why historically that doesn't answer the question why historically it wasn't addressed so much the truth of the matter is that uh you know Society I'm going to use a harsh word I don't mean to be that harsh but Society has gotten a lot more narcissistic than in the olden days you know people are thinking about I don't feel good I don't feel that happy and therefore we need to explore the reason reasons why I'm not happy the reasons why you know I don't feel fulfilled I I don't mean that that's narcissistic in in a in a negative sense but it's kind of a focus on what's good for me I'm just not getting the happiness out of life now you have to know that a hundred years ago even in general society that wasn't the type of mindset that people had people saw Life as a series of tasks jobs they had to do that I have a responsibility to kind of get married have a family raise my children have some productive occupation and if you're religious do Torah and mitzvos and there wasn't so much of a focus on how do I feel about it uh you know people might even laugh if somebody were to ask a hundred years ago you know uh I don't feel so happy uh in my yish they would have said okay so do it if you're not happy you know so a lot of the emphasis on self-help and on mindfulness really comes from from the fact that we have become a society that is preoccupied with a feel-good mentality now again there may be positive reasons for that meaning it could very well be that if people were not addressing those issues in the past maybe there was a lot of stress that could have been alleviated but I I I do think that the whole nature of how Society has changed creates a much greater demand because listen instead of asking the question how come the Torah world doesn't address it and the secular World addresses it I mean I could tell you that 100 years ago the secular world didn't address it either so in a sense the Torah world is not so discontinuous uh now it's been pointed out many many times it's almost a cliche that Judaism is not a religion of Rights it's a religion of responsibilities it's a well-known truism that is stated in many ways now on one level that's just a question of semantics if I have a responsibility to help the poor man isn't that the same as saying the poor man has a right to be helped was just you know rights and responsibilities are just two sides of a coin but in reality I think it is a distinction with significance because in a rights oriented philosophy you wake up in the morning and you ask yourself what does the world owe me in a responsibility orientation you ask what are my responsibilities to the world to Hashem to other people and Judaism very much focuses on responsibilities and in the world of responsibilities there's going to be a little less emphasis on the feel-good aspects of life now the secret is that ironically uh by focusing outside of yourself you actually achieve an inner happiness in many many ways in many many ways by focusing on how I can help other people by trying to make other people have a better life that actually addresses a lot of my existential loneliness frustration and depression so that's a very interesting payoff by being less focused on yourself you actually become a happier person inside of yourself as well yeah uh looking at the in ra there's the Mitzvah the the classic question Mitzvah to blot out annihilate their memory and the Mitzvah never to forget what they did do right um the terets that I came up with to this question of how those two things can be it obviously can't mean that nobody ever remembers who a Malik is anymore or that the it can't be to blot out the name because the name is in the Torah and we can't obviously Aras something from the Torah so ter that I came up with is what it must mean is that all that's left of them is what they represent us through the Torah their their cities their culture their individuals their history all their details are completely forgotten so I have two questions one is that a legitimate terce and two if it is can we be said to have successfully accomplished it that we don't know who they are anymore where were their lands who were their kings what was their music in all the reading I've done through classical Western literature I've never seen them mentioned yeah yeah the question that's raised is the famous question where the Torah says uh do not forget remember for eternity what amalik has done to you and then the Torah says eradicate their memory from the face of the Earth remember to eradicate their memory right so the question becomes if the idea is there should be no remnants no memory of amolik in the world then how could we eternally remember that whose memory is supposed to be eradicated right that's a famous contradiction in the Pim so the answer that uh Jordan is suggesting is uh that obviously to whatever degree the Torah requires you to remember them remember their evil remember what they did so that is preserved and when the Torah says eradicate means eradicate everything about them beyond the segmented area the designated area that the Torah wants you to remember and that is the evil that they perpetuated so you wouldn't you know you shouldn't write a doctoral dis dissertation on aolite music or Amite tent building or whatever it would be uh because that's n in the to eradicate their their memory yeah I think it's a plausible answer I think that's a good answer in other words the Tyra emphasizes we should remember the evil that they perpetrated the evil that they represented and in that way we resolve uh you know not to let it happen again to whatever degree and also to eradicate that evil tendency within ourselves that may parallel to some degree uh that which is an amalik but you are correct that uh we we should remember no remnant of them outside of that particular area that the Torah wants us to remember so the question that you then raised was well maybe we've done that Mitzvah pretty well because you know we don't know who amalik is we have no evidence as to a remnant of amalik we know nothing about their culture uh indeed has amal's memory been erased except for the torah's mention of amalik it's a very good point I think I think you have a point there I wouldn't necessarily say that that's a Mitzvah that we did but in a sense God kind of ran the world in such a way that amal's memory is more or less obliterated uh from world history yeah is it possible to say that saying that times change became more focused on our is it possible to say that hasem want something different yeah that's actually a very very interesting question you know um uh Thursday night you know tomorrow night I give a share in Evan scha which are the writings of the gra and for the B medes and there is a passage in the Evan sha that I think I'll be doing tomorrow but I think it's very relevant here uh the gr says that uh just like there are six days of creation there are six Millennia until mhia like 6,000 years even though mhia can come early and just like every day of creation something different was created in every Millennium there's a different type of mid of Hashem that becomes dominant in that millennium and therefore all of the aod of CLA Israel or anybody is tied into the particular manifestation of godliness that is connected to that generation now unfortunately the gro did not specifically delineate uh what the AA is but that does suggest a certain approach to Innovation that's very very interesting you know on one hand we say oh the Torah is from God and even the AAL law is from God Etc and things don't change on the other hand there's a lot of things within Torah Judaism I'm not talking about conservative reform within Torah Judaism that represents change Innovation uh what did theic movement represent Etc uh the musim movement now again these are not totally new they're they're taking old ideas but they're certainly emphasizing certain things and there actually is a concept and these movements were criticized by the way anytime somebody is trying to do something new there's going to be a lot of criticism but one could legitimately stat exactly your point that as mankind goes through the cycle of History I don't want to say evolves to a higher level because in many ways we go lower but we're different in any sense the avod that worked at a certain time and period may not be the appropriate of hasem at a later Point yes the Torah does not change absolutely theak does not change the Mitzvah do not change that's not what I'm talking about I'm not talking about reforming Judaism as a system but within the basic framework of Torah and mitzvos the particular emotional aspects of Personality that one uh one will emphasize May indeed differ from generation to generation and therefore that which may not have been appropriate 100 years ago may become appropriate so you are correct that it may be very possible that may be the what you might call the development of the self is not simply a weakness of our narcissism but it may be part of God's plan to complete different facets of the human personality that may have been a little incomplete at earlier stages that that's a a very good possibility now again um you never know meaning it could be a combination of our yuras sados and it could also be a combination of a to bring out certain aspects that were not brought out before even cabala that way you know people ask the Kasha the Aral right the Aral created whole world of cabala not just one world worlds of kabala now the question is the Arisa was very very great but was he greater than the rambam was he greater than ramban was he greater than the tan who didn't seem to have all of these mystical ideas so sometimes they claim oh they had them they just didn't say them but the Pasha says they didn't have them they didn't have them the Aral certain insights and even Revelations that earlier Generations didn't have does that mean he was greater than them no uh except for the fact that he had this extra Revelation but rather different Generations needed different things uh it could very well be at an earlier stage in time people had a direct and simple connection to God that did not require the complications of cabalistic thinking later it was thought that people needed a a relationship that was more complex and multifaceted so yes there is um this is a long-winded answer there is an element ofus in the metamorphosis of new ideas entering into the Torah world uh it's very very complicated and it's also a dangerous idea so no hate mail please uh the dangerous idea is that that in some ways the rhetoric that I said the vocabulary that I said is the very justification for reformed Judaism so you know some guy will get up and make a speech about Society changes human personality changes we have to have a flexibility in the Torah of Hashem and lail this is the same thing they argue about the US Constitution a living Constitution it has to change it has to evolve as opposed to Justice Scalia who hated the living Constitution he used to say I don't like living constitutions I like dead constitutions he said I like it the way it was in 1787 in many ways Scalia actually had a very close Affinity to Orthodox Jews I can tell you this uh because he he saw Orthodox Jews the same way that they took their Traditions coming from God and they we still with it we don't say it changes with the times so I remember um I I I was at um kind of a Jewish legal convention that that kabad was organizing years ago and Justice Scalia was invited to be uh the main speaker and um fact I kept that in my office CU at one point um he act when I was teaching at University of Maryland law school he actually called my office just to get directions or something so there was a phone message from my secretary says justice Scalia called so I kind of framed that message for a long time you know whatever but um so Scalia got up now he was Catholic and the first thing that he said was he really apologizes uh since he got on the court he's not able to keep up with DF yomi and and the like um but once again so the point I'm making is on one hand I'm telling you there is a metamorphosis there is a change there is a growth there is a dynamism there is the notion of new ideas being developed within the framework of Torah on the other hand we would reject using that rhetoric for reform and the like so it's a dangerous way of speaking but just because it's dangerous doesn't mean it doesn't have truth when it's properly applied okay so I hope uh that addresses what your point a little bit Yeah I write say again iite yeah oh I see in other words right you write on your documentay with the help of heaven so the question is if you're doing such a thing should you write it on both sides of the paper or is the one on side one going to cover you for side for side two I I you know you know guys since it's not so it's hard to say what the is but I think it's better to U do it on both sides so I'll tell you again so tonight is the night for law school stories for some reason that um you know law school exams like like a lot of college exams are graded anonymously so people don't write their names uh but some of them are handwritten and this is before computers and uh Yeshiva guys would often write the bakala so at least I would you know I would know who they were at least I would know they were the fir people and the would be that uh the thought would be it wasn't true that I would grade them more leniently and the like but one time uh one of the other law professors asked me he knew it was Hebrew but he didn't know what it was he asked me uh what is this thing here so I said well the student is asking for the help of God in doing this exam so he says I don't think his God helped him that much so I just said well it could have been worse you know you never know so God can help you uh much better than it would otherwise would have been but I I think the Min get to do it on both on both sides yeah with the with AI becoming prevalent they have uh Services where you can generate voices so wondering what the the approach would be to female voices that are generated through I and maybe even a a more of question today is how does um things like Auto that are already very prevalent things like what where it sort of enhances the voice or CH some how does that fit with yeah yeah so the world of of AI artificial intelligence is very very scary although I actually think it's it's getting a little less scary than we originally thought I mean when AI first came out it really seemed to be everything that a human brain could do and that was quite scary uh I was thinking to myself G all the rabbis are going to be out of a job here we'll just have ai to Pas and shilas it does turn out I'll get i'll get to your question it does turn out after very careful analysis that at least at this point it is not as profound not as accurate not as complete as we might might have thought so right now it is not going to replace the need for Creative knowledgeable human input that that's the good news but on the other hand the Technologies do improve and you know you never know what's going to be down the road at this point AI is really an or a mented perhaps Superior way of doing research in other words uh better than Google instead of having to look up 20 things or 100 things AI can give you you know everything together but it cannot really do that much original thinking at this point we hope never now uh you're raising some side questions which are again interesting questions and that is AI has now moved from text generation generating text to generating you know pictures you know uh images voice including singing voices and and and the like and the question would be what are the implications of things like coal Isa when you have uh these AI generated female uh female uh voices um so it is an interesting question um let me point out the following there are there are shetos that are very very makeo in anything that's not a live singing voice even if it's an actual recording of a singer you if you took a female singer and you actually had a YouTube recording there are people who are makeo some people are makeo only if it's a an audio so you don't know what the woman looks like some are make even if it's a video as long as it's not a live Zoom feed or something because once it's recorded it is not considered to be a human voice now if you go with the opinions that say that even a recorded human voice is not within the prohibition of Kisha then I think K an AI generated voice would not be Nik in Kisha the question is if you're mmir on uh a recorded voice at least if there's also a picture or an image so the question would be would AI fall under that under that category um you know I honestly don't know I I think there would be at least a Shila like those opinions but I don't think I have any I've seen any particular Pak on it um so something to think about something to work about but but as I say I am fairly confident that if you're make on recorded human voices you would be make on this as well yeah I was interested in uh in the that the r cites that the king is allowed to have how do you pronounce it P PES Pim yeah um so I was wondering if you could tell us some details about this why uh what was the role of the am I pronouncing that right yeah pish P the RO of pish in the King's life or why would he want one why would she want to become one um can you tell us any more details like any inter yeah so first all yeah yeah first it's important to know generally that there is a concept inish and in as well called the PES which is defined as a concubine or a mistress and there's ausim what is the difference between a PES and a wife right there's a wife and there's a PES so according to uh some according to most including the rames has kadan there was a kadan plus a CA that's Anisha that's a wife a PES is without marriage at all quite literally a mstress or a concubine so most say a PES is a woman without kadan there is is another view that actually says even a PES has kadan but she agreed to forgo a casua so she's also a wife but she's a wife that doesn't have the economic protections of kuua but that's a minority opinion let's go with the rambam's opinion generally that pagash is an unmarried woman without kadan without casua now there is a big big M there are inim who say even a nonm is allowed to have a pish quite amazingly Rakin brings us uh that pish is mud now this is not to be taken we don't pass him this way uh but the r Ando in the they all P that there's an iser DEA for a Jewish man to have intercourse with a single woman outside of kadan it's an Isa and therefore the concept of a Lees is Hally prohibited for anyone other than a Mel right that's the r and thein although the does not mention Mel obviously so the rambam learns unlike the brings that PES is only AER for a m PES is not AER for a HED for a nonm okay today we don't have a category of Mally so no nobody can have a p leges so the question you're asking is one that I don't know if I have an answer for that is okay uh why would a Mel why should a bees why would a want a PES how were Pim treated and the like uh the truth is you know I honestly don't know we really don't have any evidence of how pakim were treated uh we know that just as a mik is not allowed to have many many wives he's also not allowed to have many many Pim that he shouldn't get distracted uh in the performance of his duties uh but in terms of why would a Mel elect to go with a PES it's not entirely clear now in terms of royal succession in terms of malus going to a child I do not believe that there's any disc in other words you might have a hav to say well maybe the Mel chooses the Queens if he's willing to have his successor from them but if he's not willing to have his successor from a woman she'll be a PES and that way you're not going to have royal succession uh that might be a havina to think about but I don't think it's EMS I believe that royal succession to the son of a king goes to whichever son is Mo most suitable and it makes no difference if it's from a a wife or from a from a pish so all all I can say is it's one of the prerogatives and privileges that are given to monarchs but I I don't know why in particular a king would elect uh going that we can learn from this about how we relate to hem as the Jewish people how we relate to each other that only the Monarch has this privilege to basically uh have girlfriends well I I will tell you this there's a PK in Shir shirim that talks about um there are 60 queens and 80 but only you speaking about the Jewish people you are my my choices and Rashi explains that all of the Seed of Abraham including Ishmael and ASA it's very strange are called God's queens and then the descendants of Noah that are not part of the Abraham line are called God's concubines so in that poetic imagery there is this difference uh based on relative closeness what's quite astounding to me is that if you're classifying Abram's descendants as the queens of God and uh the other Noah descendants as the concubines of God in the calculation of 60 that Rashi enumerates the 60 Queens he is including asov Ismael asa's children ishmael's children to me it's quite astounding uh including amalik yeah it's quite astounding that you're including these rash somehow on a higher spiritual level than some of the other Gentile Nations that are fall under the concubine standard right little but that's where Yus comes in but they're still from Abraham and therefore there's some privileged status that they have but I don't know uh you know I I I don't know why a king would decide this see it's very hard for us um you know we have you know the muser and the MOs that that we understand we're supposed to live by we primarily get from kazal the mishna the gamar the medish you know peros books of muser and then one of the big big difficult I'm just being very honest and open with you one of the very big difficulties we have is when we try to match the morality of Judaism as taught by the terish ofal and then we encounter biblical figures there is sometimes a disconnect meaning to say the behavior of the Jew of the tanak does not always correspond to the behavior of the Jew in the terish now what Kaz now kazal themselves recognize that problem and often they bridge the gap by interpretation they interpret the PIM in a certain way but other times they don't really give us an interpretation and it could be that some of the interpretations were lost or or kazal just didn't give us an inter interpretation and I think the issue of PES is one of those issues that has not been clearly explicated in kazal certainly if we had some great rashash Shiva who's in the habit of taking pilim we would look a scance at it we would not look at it as a good and kosher and Noble thing and yet the Torah allowed it for a Mel which means obviously it's not considered to be the most evil thing of all and it was considered to be good within a certain context so that's where we sometimes have a disconnect of how to how to make things fit in so it is a problem that you'll encounter many times and once again it's kind of similar to what you asked me last week about uh tah Hillen 137 you know smashing the heads of the babies on the Rocks you know how could that be once again it's a disconnect between what the PUK says and the morality of now love him to be humiliated and not to strike back Etc so they're going to be those problems that we can't fully fully answer uh yeah I'm sorry I didn't hear is oh well well there's no question it is absolutely more special vasin is a great great Mitzvah um now why is it so so number one it is based on AIM where D proclaims we will rever you God with the sun it's like you're participating in the cosmic Praise of God there is a notion when the Sun rises every morning it is singing a song of praise to God as the day begins and you're joining yourself in nature in that chorus so vasikin is a very very beautiful thing but as I indicated um you know if you're not going to do it on a regular basis you wait until the minion later uh but if you want to do it on a regular basis it may override even now I will say that uh modern vasin has lost a lot of the spiritual power um you know um today uh vasikin means you want to start Shimona es with Sunrise so now they have these atomic clocks that tell you exactly when the Sun rises even to the tenth of a second so it'll say you know 550 and 510 of a second and they're watching the clock there and you know they're up to Shon but they're not quite there yet so they'll stretch out the last [Music] line get it exact so they're looking at the clock they're not looking at the sun they're not looking at the sun they're looking at the clock so I remember uh one of the one time uh I had the doet of aasin Minion and it was my my father's yite and it had to be vasin minion so I asked if I could be and I was like 2 seconds late 2 seconds late with Sunrise whatever you know it's hard to time it exactly so they told me I could never dve in there again because I missed Sunrise I missed fikin I was Mal now let's think about this when we ask ourselves how didas kazal didn't have clock there were no clocks they were looking at the sky and when they saw the sun rise obviously it was an approximation that's when you begin vasikin so this notion that vasikin is somehow correlated to a tenth of a second is I think very very foreign to the way it was done historically but it's also foreign to the spirit of it because the spirit is you should be in awe of nature becoming a new day and that inspires you I'm looking at the Sunrise and knowing that it comes from God and all of creation is a testament to God's greatness and God's grander instead I'm in a windowless basement with no windows at all so I couldn't even see the I mean that that was that particular case and we're just looking we're bending over looking at a clock so you could ask the question what's so great about V and under those circumstances well helically it still is but spiritually uh I think we've taken a lot out of the the experience of of a yeah there's another sentence the gamar in G tells the story of how M acquired the Shamir worm from Ash this story is very similar to lail St George and the Dragon since both ashada and dragon are symbolically chained to gain Master did the Inspire their story or is the painting of a formidable monster simply an archetype common to all Humanity y um well those are excellent questions and those may be controversial questions um the particular reference was to to an aada in the seventh peric of gon that talks about a massive gigantic King of the Demons whose name was ashid and ashid had to be subjected he had to be trapped he had to be uh subordinated and the gamar says the various tricks that were used to capture him and after he was captured he was able to identify what schl needed for the B mikash and that's the Shamir worm because you know in the B mikdash you can't use iron tools so we are told that the Rocks were cut by a little worm that would eat through the Rock today we would use lasers lasers would also be an alternative to the to the Shamir uh by the way just the second there's a second part of the story that ashai eventually uh got schomo and took over schlomo's malus for a while and had to be U you know discovered so it went both ways schlomo got him and then he got schlomo now the question was that there are similarities between let's say the story of ashid where a formidable formidable opponent uh is uh disabled uh versus St George and the Dragon which has a similar story about a dragon and uh obviously one thing I can say for sure is that the St George story is later so for sure the TMA didn't get it uh from St George which is B you know I don't have to answer that particular problem but the question is uh did uh what were these stories in Europe and Christian culture were they from the talmud were they based on the talmud or were there kind of just developments in people's Consciousness certain Universal themes that kind of emerge different times different places different cultures because they are Universal archetypes to use Carl Young's um terminology um the answer is I don't know the answer is I think both are possible certainly there is no question that talmudic stories uh were known at least some stories were known in European Christian culture and uh there's no reason to doubt that they could have easily spread and then taken on different forms but uh it's also the case that there are certain Universal themes that emerge from Human culture um the word mythology you know again this is a controversial word because when you when we when you say something is a myth that normally is kind of an insult it's a Bubba Misa it's not true it's a story but in reality uh myth has a different meaning actually myth means a symbolic Exposition that represents an important idea in human psychology or philosophy in other words I'm I'm GNA say something that will sound like an a I'm I'm an aorus maybe I am for other reasons but not not for this reason uh I'm going to say that many midashim are mits no hate mail please now when you hear the statement many midam are myths you expect me to be saying ah their stories they're superstitious their foolishness God forbid God forbid that's not what I mean by it by a myth is exactly what the rambam says the rambam writes in the that that there are three categories of people in terms of how they look at aad and medish category one says everything kazal says is 100% true no matter what the rambam says these are God-fearing people who are fools category two say kazal statements are full of superstition and lies rambam says these are evil people who areon so if you say everything is literally true you're a God-fearing fool if you say it's full of falsity you're an aporus rather the rambam says the true approach to a is every single thingal say is absolutely true but truth is not always understood in a literal way K used in some cases not in all cases razal used metaphor mush allegory as a framework to convey deeply spiritual ideas the spiritual ideas are true but to make them more palatable kazal employed stories which are not necessarily literally true now the rabam says that we don't know some midashim are meant to be literal and some midam are meant to be figurative and metaphorical and he promised us that he was going to write a book to tell us which midrashim were this and which midrashim were that what a book that would have been unfortunately uh the Ramba never wrote the book he never got around to it so we don't have that book but uh commentaries like maral and ramal try to go through this so when I say something is a myth that's not an insult a myth is simply a form of symbolic thinking in which certain ideas are expressed through symbols that are not necessarily meant to be int meant to be taken in a literal sense in fact in that sense it's been well said by Scholars of Mythology that myths are sometimes truer than facts because they communicate deeper ideas you know a myth can teach me all about my life and my struggles a fact might be oh I had a hamburger for lunch like the stuff they po you you know facts are just facts facts don't necessarily have any particular meaning in a myth there is always meaning okay so for your own self-preservation in Yeshiva please do not use the phrase medish is a myth they're going to kick you out if you say that but in reality if you understand what I'm saying uh that is exactly what the rambam says that the truth of midashim is not always literal it is symbolic So based on that idea as human beings go through life and they have Godly Souls there is the possibility of simultaneous a certain idea emerging simultaneously in different cultures and that is why in mythology in particular mythology in particular you will see myths that transcend cultures you'll have Greek myths Roman myths Norwegian myths British myths uh Scandinavian myths South South American myths you know cultures that did not necessarily have any connection but they deal with the same theme so I'm I'm perfectly open to that as a possibility Yeahs like negotiating City and I understand like mosu being a negoti for am you know after when when they mess up but for people who are so such aari people it just sounds so difficult that in this it sounds like yeah it's a difficult question I mean uh you know AB prays for sadom first of all let me point out that it's interesting when God tells him to uh take his only son Y and bring him as a Corbin AB doesn't argue at all he just does it but for S he argu ues on that I think I I may have told you an answer that there's a difference between a direct command and God just giving him the news in the case of thank you in the case of AES God gave him a command once he gets a command he doesn't question it by stum God just giv him the news so AB feels he could argue but your question is are you supposed I mean somebody asked me for example um are you supposed to pray uh that you know Hamas doesn't get killed are you supposed to pray uh that Goda you know God show Mercy on Gaza uh right these are rashim these are enemies who want to destroy us destroy Jews destroy every Jew in the world uh and sodome were rim of that type of magnitude so the question is is prayer appropriate for them right it's one thing you pray for a Jewish people Etc um you know it's a hard question I I would say there is a difference that although sedom were evildoers their evil seems to have been contained within their society I think that's a difference you don't find sedom doing terrorist operations trying to kill other people their evil was within their particular place and as a result Abraham might have reasoned that there's always a possibility of chuba that there's always a possibility that as bad as people are you know uh we can help them work with them who knows what will happen to them Etc as opposed to people who are actively trying to kill you you know there you don't seek you don't seek rim for them but it is it is a good question um I think Rabbi lamb Rabbi Dr Norman lamb a Col of was longtime president and officially even rashba of Yu uh once wrote an article about how you know theiva world has changed let's imagine today a man would appear Aram Ain would appear and he would go to Time Square in New York Time Square is a little cleaned up now but he used to be a very immoral District and he would start praying for all of the uh drug addicts and all of the criminals and all of the pickpockets and all of the murderers uh in Time Square uh undoubtedly there would have been a declaration against him for being misguided and the like the very thing Abraham did if he would do it today he would be condemned so we' become a little more Hummer uh but still you you are right I don't think even Abram would pray for Kamas or or or whatever whatever it would be so it is it is a good question by the way uh for those of you who are liberal it's interesting there is a kazal that says that the real a of Sodom was they were anti-immigration there to that F because Sodom was a very very prosperous economy and there were poor people who wanted to migrate to sadome to try to make a living and benefit from its economic growth and sadome was afraid that these immigrants would deplete their economic wealth so they had an anti-immigration policy where nobody was allowed to move to sadom unless they were wealthy and kazal say it was that selfishness that caused theban of Sadam so if any of you Advocate although today I don't think we would a sensible person would advocate for it but if any of you wants to advocate for open borders in Immigration uh you could use that kazal as a little bit of a source for it yeah I think by now most of us have heard about the Yeshua that many of thebat communities that surrounded Gaza had on Sim T that uh basically the terrorists drove up and the gates were closed their trick of waiting for someone to come open didn't work and they moved on to easier targets on the other hand the uh worst Devastation was at the Rave if you know a little bit about me I used to be a touring DJ and sound systems engineer I know what's going on at those RS people gilia Riot breaking breaking Shabbat and even even worse than that there's uh I'm I'm I saw a picture of a temple to Buddha the re yes some tell yeah so um and I've been at other other parties like that temples that are that are I've seen them they are so what occurs to me is that uh hashem's not really being very subtle with us here the you know the communication of what we're supposed to of what CLA is supposed to learn from this is not you know I don't really like we have to go oh what does say you know we need to really like it seems like really the regular should be able to get the picture yeah and so my question is um one is there an appropriate way to for us to explain that to people who are still being openly shabat in the face of this very clear communication from Hashem um is there is there a delicate way to talk about this and two how do we deal with this sense of fear and discouragement as people who are schmer mitz Botho that like if you know if we as Claudia not getting the picture from this then like really really what's it going to take and like that coming event yeah this is uh actually a profoundly uh uncomfortable uh question uh because the one thing that we don't want to do when clell goes through it sor is kind of blame some other segment for the problem like say oh yeah they are the ones that caused this tragedy because that kind of gives us an excuse not to engage in our own Chua our ownes and it becomes self-righteousness and it becomes arrogance and it becomes GAA so to point fingers at other people is always a very very very very dangerous and self-defeating uh exercise you know just to uh I'll get back to just to give you a story I mean years and years ago I remember uh before I was a rub AOL so I was a consumer of Dres instead of a giver of Dres the good old days um so I went to two Dres in Baltimore uh one was AA real show uh where everybody was a Borah and the Dr was about the importance of keeping shabas Kahala which everybody was doing anyway okay uh the was a little cold a little unfriendly but then I went to a more modern Orthodox show where people were not so fir but they were very friendly and warm so the RV spoke about the importance of greeting everybody be pimos both dresses were very excellent but I was thinking to myself it would have been so nice if the dresses would have been reversed that the ISA that was not so friendly should hear about Sav pfas and the other show which already was sa pfos should hear about the importance of shabas now the way it worked then is given the fact that you're preaching to the choir as the expression goes so when you're sitting in this K sh and you're hearing thereof talking about how important shabas is you're thinking yeah that sh down the street ought to take you know ought to listen to the message and when the sh down the street is hearing how important it is to be friendly yeah that show down the street right other words addresser shouldn't be that you're thinking about other you know the faults of other people so that's why it makes me very uneasy on the other hand on the other hand um I can't deny the reality of the situation you know one of the zirus of chabas in written by R Ezra shabas kishen when I keep chabas God will watch over me that it's not see you don't even have to look at it as a punishment for shabas you can look at it as shabas Springs I think that's actually maybe a better way of of saying it Hashem will protect meab and it's an amazing thing I mean it's on video where these terrorist you know they're trying to get in and they can't and they just give up ah let's go and let's murder some other Village you know whatever it would be they couldn't they couldn't get in it took so little I mean it took so little to just to repel them just you have a close fense and the like and then you're right the majority of the casualties were at this concert and the concert is call TOA you know Aros and even a Buddha whatever reason that was there but uh I heard that as well so it is very very clear that these AAS are a contributing cause and and the tah itself says that when er Israel is desecrated in this way the land vomits us out and the ramban has a very important point that that Hashem will tolerate AOS that he will not tolerate inm No Sodom was a confederation of five cities Sodom Amora adma and so in MIT but soar was spared and only the four cities were destroyed and the ramban explains that Sor was just as bad as you know the other cities but they were in a well this wasn't allows to be in a certain level of Tuma so there's no doubt about it that when we look at these things we do have to think about those areus of shmir shabas but I do think we then have to turn it back even so we have to turn it back at our and ourselves and that is okay what can I do as a person to try to spread the message of chabas and Mitzvah to the world because if there are Yen who don't keep chabas it's not only their problem it's my problem like what could I have done that I didn't do you see what I'm saying so if you look at it in terms of your responsibility rather than blaming other people looking down at other people then I think something constructive can come out and the emesis there are not as much as we would hope but there are some constructive things emerging here uh the sense of unity the sense of akas now if you remember the situation in is before the war no a month ago uh and you know it's like a distant memory people don't even remember it uh you know Israeli Society was was being ripped apart over judicial reform had all these demonstrations and then the draft thing had all those demonstrations and uh people were not just demonstrating they were saying this is Civil War you know there was even a a fear that soldiers wouldn't serve in the Army which brashem didn't didn't materialize but they were talking about you know uh not reporting to duty civil unrest end of Israel and the like and there was so much fighting so much so much on all sides of the coin andem if we can talk about a silver lining in a time of tragedy and sorah there's a lot of unity a lot of and it's even been translated into greater MIT of observance in some ways I think I mentioned there are tens of thousands of soldiers who want to tius there's a big demand for tius it's hard to meet the demand and these are a lot of them are not religious or formally not religious illin right there are tius campaigns fillan campaigns daving campaigns and non-religious people are responding and and it's because the religious people are dealing with them with with love and with care and with concern so yeah um I I I you know I'm not a novice and none of us can point to anything exact but certainly the shabas the prus the immorality uh has its cost has its cost and we've seen the cost but we have to ask ourselves what can I do to make it better I'm not here to criticize other people you know other people many other people are tin shisha you know they didn't learn and I'll tell you an example you know Rebel yashiv said once and he said he thought there was no such thing as Tino in he says what do you mean every Israeli knows about religious Jews right you can't escape it so how can you say you know this Israeli never heard of chabas never heard of kosher Rebel basically said Hally that's impossible because for sure they heard about it if nothing else their car got blocked at a demonstration of of and the light but I'll tell you I'll tell you that somebody told me or I heard I remember I think it was a director person director ly witness this that they were doing a kabad thing of although they were not kabad but they were inviting a secular Jew to put on Fillin in the airport and the secular Jew put it on and he began crying as he remembered uh his childhood and he had a daughter and she asked her father what is this she never she never saw a pair of Fain and uh he said when he said Shay Israel she asked him what are you saying now this is frankly amazing and I wouldn't have believed it you can grow up Jewish in the state of Israel and you have never heard the P sh is it's amazing I mean it's unbelievable i i i h honestly did not believe it said sure they heard about it but you see you see Lisa there are people who have not and this was not even like I don't know it was outside of Tel Aviv it wasn't like well Israel is a small country but there's no middle of nowhere here but uh there was it was not there was no equivalent of the middle of nowhere in that situation so as a result I don't want to be outer focused on them they may have a whole bunch of excuses but I want to be focused on us and yeah I think this highlights the Aras that we have to take to try to bring Jews to Torah and we can only bring them to Torah with love not not with condemnation uh yeah this is a Anonymous sending question if someone breaks chabas to save a life example for example to turn on a light for a sick person is that person allowed to benefit from that light even if it's not for the purpose of that sick person yeah that's a very excellent question uh let's assume that somebody desecrated shab well it's not a desecration but they did What Would otherwise be a violation of chabas for AA that had a Sak and turning on a light would be included because even though that doesn't cure him but it makes him feel better and that's n in Sak is he the person who turned on the light allowed to benefit from a chabas desecration that was done for because normally when you do on chabas you're not allowed to benefit from that Mal right that's the general rule the short answer is in this case you are in other words is that that which you do for you are then permitted to benefit because that's treated as a permissible action rather than an impermissible action yeah what's the on the gadder and what's the jewi said there has to be a Jewish view on everything what's the Jewish view of the gallbladder yeah I suppose you're asking because we're not really sure what the function what the function of the gallbladder is um the gamar makes reference that there is there's quite uh a number of M Kaz that refer to the gallbladder to the to the mara in in in various in various ways and we do believe that Hashem did not put anything in the human body or in the universe that does not have a purpose but I don't know I I I'll check it I don't recall if kazal identified any particular purpose but as a matter of hash it's absolutely the case that everything has everything has a function everything has a purpose so the person able to remove it for no reason so I would say no uh you should not remove it because there are purposes that you don't understand now again uh like anything else uh if there's sickness if there's infection so you remove what you need to remove uh but you don't indiscriminately just decide to remove something because if Hashem gave it to you you know we don't believe in evolution we don't believe it's just some vestage vestigial organ we believe it has a present function so don't fool around with it yeah another sendon there have been a number of legal cases recently where usually English courts rule to take religious Jewish or Christian children off of life support despite perhaps some remote chance of an experimental trial that would work assuming one has exhausted all legal appeals what is the Jewish obligation in the face of such circumstances does the principle of Roda require that one take arms in defense of the child even such approach would y so this is a very interesting question uh the exact parameters are very very complicated and I'm not going to really address this but suffice it to say there are going to be times where Hala requires that we try to keep somebody alive and secular law may not only permit but even order that the person be taken off life support now again when that is is would would take me at least an hour an hour and a half to go over but let's assume that there's a scenario where Haka says this child must be on life support but the courts have ordered that uh we no longer sustain these types of lives let's take them off so the question becomes if I am an orthodox Jew and this could be in a number of ways I'm either the doctor or I'm the parents or I'm just the Orthodox Jew who wants to protect human life can I regard this as Roda in other words the doctors or the nurses that are going to disconnect the life support can I kill them because they're about to kill another human being based on their definition of death and everything else can I treat those who want a discontinu life support as radim which would allow me to take Extreme Action or the like now the problem there is of course that that the Roda does not see a Roda is can get killed not as a punishment for his sin but he gets killed to prevent the damage of his killing others now you understand the difference I can kill a Roda not because of what he did but to prevent him from killing somebody innocent so as a result that's exactly where you have the problem here uh you know some nurse come in to take a kid off life support so you shoot her because she's a Roda well what's going to happen is somebody else will come in you know under armed guard or everything else so it would seem that in a situation where killing the Roda is not going to avoid the threat to the Nera there actually would be no hetcher you would not even be allowed to kill the Roda if it's going to be in inefficacious so I would say that in this case Reda would not app apply uh you try to pursue your legal Avenues or maybe in an extreme case kidnapping might work I mean it depends uh This was done sometimes in Israel uh not in this particular context uh but uh in the context of autopsies you know in the 60s and actually 50s 60s and 70s hadasa hospital was doing autopsies on everything anyone who died in adasa hospital got a full autopsy which involves cutting up a corpse dis of a corpse desecration of a corpse and this is a major issue hak may allow autopsies in certain areas but it certainly does not allow indiscriminately doing autopsies for you know medical education or whatever it is so that was an issue they don't do that they don't do it anymore uh the law was changed but in the 60s 7s early 70s there were many many many demonstrations against autopsies but one of the things that uh some from activists did was they would put on white medical jackets impersonate doctors come in with gurns you know into mors and literally steal the bodies they would steal bodies take them out of the hospital and give them a burial fact there are even stories they would take a dead body into a cab with them in other words they uh get into a cab and they just tell the tell the doctor uh not the doctor tell the cab driver this guy had too much to drink you know he's like you know falling around right and they would uh and they would bury him now in the case of life support that's a possibility but it's much more difficult because if you're taking a person on life support out of the hospital the question is how are you going to keep them on life support So in some ways I I don't know if there's any satisfactory uh solution but I I I don't think Roda is the way to go because Roda is not going to eliminate the the threat Bel yeah could you explain why cheese is kosher which is a mixture of milk and meat in form of renit it's been explained to me that the r renit becomes but that doesn't make sense to me because the renit is the thing that turns the milk into cheese the ren it's what makes it what it is and plus if it was you could still could do it and then it's also been explained to me I heard a different answer that it's Alma but if it's Alma and it doesn't have the status of anymore then why is it required that the renit needs to come from C the yeah yeah so again the idea of kosher cheese is is an interesting problem uh historically the way cheese was made and many most cheese is made even today not soft cheese not cotage cheese but you know harder cheeses is you need what is called a curdling agent an agent that causes the milk to curdle into balls that solidify and uh the agent that was typically used is something called renit which is from the the lining of an animal now the lining could be Pig could be cow could be anything uh and that's called renit and that's the major curling agent uh of the milk that that CA causes it to coales into into cheese now the problem basically is uh you're taking milk and you're introducing meat into milk so isn't that going to be a problem of B so here let me explain something um your question is a very good question butaka there's a difference between non kosher renit and kosher renit now non- kosher renit is either from a pig or an unshed cow right that's non kosher renit kosher renit is from a Sheed cow now non- kosher renit uh even if there's more than 60 times the volume of milk caned the renit uh the renit is not B Bish it is not nullified in 60 and the reason that is so is exactly what you said D that that which effects noticeable chemical changes in a product does not lose its kivas meaning yeah if a drop of milk or even a drop of pork you know falls into a meat soup it's nullified but where that drop is a catalyst for chemical Transformations there's no be so bottom line is non kosher renit is not but Bish and therefore there is no hetcher to eat cheese that's made with non kosher Ren now your question is but why don't you have the same problem with kosher renit yeah the renit is kosher but once you put it in milk you got a meat and milk mixture which should not be Bish because the kosher renit is mid it it it's a catalyst for chemical changes it's a very good question so the the and the say that the rule of D that which is a catalyst is not nullified only applies to a mid of iser but when it's a mid which is a substance of heter and it only becomes user through the combination combination with the milk we will allow even for this is the a claw that is said now uh some cheese is in fact made with vegetarian Ren they now have chemical or vegetarian renit uh I honestly have to check the the St statistics but I believe today I believe today uh most kosher supervised cheese is is made with vegetarian renit but but the MS is uh the does allow even uh Kosher meat renit based on the fact that it's a mid of heter yeah what is the the obligation or the or maybe there's the lack of oblation to sort of persuade or to educate um non about to to show them why what is Israel's right to defend itself or um protecting the Jewish people is important do we have any obligation to um persuade or or to teach the G yeah yeah yeah so this is the um whole area that in modern Hebrew is called hbar and hasbara means propaganda exactly what it means and uh it was said that um Israel is not as skillful in propaganda as the other side is and I think I think we've seen that and you're asking to what degree is there an obligation um I I think there is an obligation and the obligation stems from two different sources One Source is the general idea of Kes Hashem that if the Jewish people are doing something that is perceived by the world as immoral that is perceived by the world as disproportional is perceived by the world as violent then that casts the Jewish people in a very very negative light and therefore it's important in terms of Kes Hashem that the world understands that we're doing things that we have to do not because we want to do them and the danger is such that you have an enemy that wants to wipe us out that uh they're the ones that are using human Shields not us and that we give warning so my point is that if I'm living in a world where people are looking at me and looking at me as evil and as a Russia I do have an obligation to try to clarify that appearances may be deceiving and there's a lot more here that you don't know now maybe it'll work maybe it won't unfortunately it will not work to a large segment of the of the population but it will work for some people so one reason is kesem now then there's a pragmatic reason that I think propaganda is part of our is tius you know listen it is Hashem that gives us the victory for sure but we do have to make human effort we have to have an army we have to train our soldiers so part of aradus is that we need to Curry favor with the nations of the world that's the nature of being in gullas in which part of ourish Tas is to have a good relationship with the United States and other countries so as a result propaganda I'm using it in a neutral term hbar is a way of of the other nations understanding what we're doing and in that way they're more likely to support us and to help us and even though obviously they're not the ones that are giving us Victory but it's our radist to try to enlist a different help so the so the two bases for uh I think are K which is a religious imperative and that requires that you get the cooperation of the um does it apply on a individual level because people spend lots of time on whatever social media trying to convince an individual oh okay so that's a good question meaning I think as a general rule this is a Jewish societal imperative should I as a bentor should you as a bentorah spend a lot of time doing this uh frankly I think there's a better use for your time meaning a person has to prioritize this time uh propaganda or explaining Israel's case you know is a useful thing but it's not as useful or important as some other things and if it's going to take away from your learning and your aotus hasem then I think you need to prioritize I know that the learning is a more important thing to do but if you have you know some spare time it might be something uh another service you can do for col round uh yeah two of my great grand were in thir not buried in the above ground Jewish mum trying to give my ancestors a traditional Jewish burial that can cost thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars and they also cause Strife amongst my SE relatives who don't want to go against my great Grand's wish to be buried in such M furthermore I could see this project causing my family to lose any patience they have for me with any future efforts I try to them to they lost p with me nevertheless the Min of honor of Jewish Family with additional burial is immense does Rob recommend I pursue this project with said risk yeah this is a very difficult issue the issue of Maan burials we know that the T gives us a Mitzvah of kavur of burial and Mitzvah of Kur is normally in the ground Maan burials are not acceptable Hally of course in Israel this is a a current problem you know U all right we don't bury people in maoams but if you ever go to Haron house you will see something that looks like parking garages they bury people because there's really a lack of space and if you want a simple on the ground burial you want an on the ground I I want to be buried on the ground uh that's going to cost you $50,000 in your $50,000 you can be too poor too poor to die uh and uh uh see what's interesting isi the the National Insurance in Israel gives every Israeli citizen a free Barrel you will get a you can get a free barrial but the only free barrier you'll get in Yim is in the parking garages which is like uh it's a building and you know they make uh niches in the wall like catacombs in the wall or now they have something underground it's amazing thing uh i s saw the advertisement for it um in a way it's ludicrous it looks like a beautiful city and they point out it is 78 degrees year round and you even have Wi-Fi connections a little strange but okay um and there's a very very big Shiloh people are debating Rebel Yos was very much against the parking garage kavos other post the rabut allows it because they say that's not really a melum because it's a small space that has dirt in it therefore it's like you're just raising the dirt but a pure molum indeed is not is not proper the question becomes how much uh do you fight for it again it's a hard answer I I would recommend uh this is a person in amer is this your question or you're asking for somebody else no okay so talk to me I would recommend and this is in the states yeah I would recommend that you talk to a a rabbi zon who's the head of the uh kadas the National Association of kadas and uh and queens and he's a go-to person on all sorts of things cremations and mums and um he could probably give you some very practical advice as to how to proceed because you are correct that this is important but on the other hand if it will endanger other things that you're working on it may be that this may not be the issue to push so contact me afterwards I I'll give you some information uh yeah yeah so this daughter their father because they thought that everyone was destroyed how's it possible that daughter thought that wiped s that they knew they were child right right so so the big question is that we are told that Lo's daughters committed incested with him uh and that's how they got Ammon and moav uh two nights in a row uh and uh Rashi explains that really their intention was for the sake of Heaven because they literally thought uh the world was gone they like look like a nuclear uh landscape and therefore they thought they were the last human beings and therefore they had to reproduce even though it was incestuous so your question is how could they possibly think they were the last survivors they surely must have understood that if God saved L he would in the Merit of Abraham he certain certainly would have saved Abraham and SAR uh and Hashem promised Abraham and S and SAR that they will have a child so what was the he what forced Lo's daughters to assume that they would be the only way they'd have children yeah again it's a very excellent question um of of the two possibilities that you mentioned I think the second one makes more sense to me although I don't have arah meaning they knew that Aram and Sor were alive but they may not have been aware that Hashem promised them that they would have a child because after all L had been separated from them for a while and maybe they even made the that L was Abram's kind of adopted son and therefore whatever promises God made would be fulfilled through L that might be the way it work but I I don't think they they thought Abraham had died I think that's very unlikely in that case yeah also has I know that simp understand I was that basically just where he was holding at that specific moment and didn't into consideration coming out of just everything going on just it just still seems so difficult as well um how that's how you judge especially cont yeah yeah so this is again this is a a famous question that the mar asks in M we say that as is was apparently dying of thirst uh the angel said to Hashem let him die because uh his descendants are going to persecute us so much persecute Jewish people so much and Hashem said aam right now he is not such a Russia right now he is relative obviously it's relative because he was expelled but he's relatively righteous and therefore I judge him the way he is and not the way he will become in the future so people ask Tasha we look at the Bor omora the rebellious son now the rebellious son all he did was steal from his parents he didn't do anything else and he's not of Misa because of his stealing so why is he executed again again say it never happen because there's a lot technicalities but at least on the books there is a death penalty for Ben and the mishna says Al shame sofa he is judged on the basis of what he will do meaning to say he starts off this way he'll eventually turn into a GH who will murder people so Hashem says let's kill him now so he'll never turn into the guilty person who will kill people so you see Mish opposites uh right AER ham says I look at at you now not what you'll be in the future Ando is I'm going to destroy you for what you will do in the future even though right now you're not so bad so the mar ask the the mar gives gives a few answers uh one answer is that the benora he himself will become the Russia that will do The Killing In other words yesel the was his descendants will be the R so AER means Hashem is not going to destroy you because of the icious of your descendants but n Al might mean that you will be judged for what you yourself will do or the other thing is that the negative behavior that will culminate in Murder By the benor Moa has already started meaning there's already been a start of that negative behavior apparently is I mean there must have been something negative but apparently the negative root of that hatred did not yet did not yet start so that's those are two things to Marti let's say also like little like baby am for example also same yeah yeah you are correct that one of the one of the arguments of amalik is that we kill even the babies because they will grow up to be Hitlers uh so amalik according to that idea is connected to nid Alam sofa yeah that that is a good Kasha but again amalik is a unique is a unique category really we don't we don't extrapolate aik you know it's very interesting the whole tendency of is to narrow it narrow it we don't know who they are we'll only do it when mashiah comes so in some ways you know I don't know you know you can't you can't fully you can't fully generalize it also let me make another Point although the gamar doesn't say it so that's a problem with yesma there is a concept that isma himself did Chua and say the nations of is will do so that itself already is a difference meaning yeah they'll become R but they will also leave that category of rash so if you're looking at the future you got to look at the future positive outcomes and not just the future negative outcomes I mentioned this morning that the M says even the conversion of the Arab Nomad nomadic bids from paganism to Islam was a first step in their chuva by believing in God and the Second Step would be that will renounce their violence against am Israel which I think you might have seen in the abrahamic Accords with the Emirates Dubai the Emirates Etc which is unfortunately now in the back burner so there is a process simultaneously with the violence ofas there was a a bit of a Chua movement on the part of different Arab Arab peoples uh yeah I read in Aiden Stein Sals that one of the things that shapes the ritual forms of judum is the absolute prohibition against fashioning a statue icon or a mask and yet we see in the par of the golden cat that when mosha comes down the mountain he covers his face with a mask when it is radiant yeah um so my question is that I think that it could be fair for one to assume that at this time everything the did was on some level probably suppos to that we had to an actual real life walking human sa Torah I mean like the sa Tor God told him to do and so therefore how can he Dawn a mask which um which Rabbi steinel explains is fundamentally prohibited in opposition to idolatry at all levels at the very point of transmission of the Torah to the Jewish people you know I'm I'm not quite sure what he means about a mask I I get the thing about images about not donning a mask but I'm assuming he's referring to kind of a ritual where you you would you would uh you would put on a face of some type a face which expressed some type of deity some type of God that you would be worshiping now that's very different than just a cover in other words mhha rabeno didn't have a m it wasn't the mask it was uh he covered like just like you cover your head with a Talus he covered his said because his light shown in fact if anything you can look at it as anti- idolatry because here if you have a man who's walking around with the light of God shining from his face people might worship him as a God so if anything this was not a mask to kind of create the worship of something this was a mask so people wouldn't worship Him in many ways so I think it's an opposite thing and again look at the analogy you know we you know married men who wear a Talus we put a Talus over our heads right so we don't call that a mask we're just kind of uh you know we're enveloped turned out to be a semantic question yeah yeah I think so yeah yeah um I'm not sure who says say that when you're in your mother's wom you and the angel slaps you and that's you yeah I just wanted to know also yeah yeah so it's interesting that you know you have I have to know where the source of the second part of it is the the statement that before you're born the Malik uh teaches you all of the Torah and then hits you and you forget it that's in the gamor that actually is in the gamorra but the statement that this is the indentation of the upper above the upper lip that is not in the gamar so I'm wondering I'll try to see if I can find out if that's just something that people add or it's actually Mak in Kaz but let's assume that I mean I I've heard that also let's go with the assumption that this represents the Malik hitting you so why do goam have it uh do goam learn Torah right Etc I think the answer is they do learn Torah uh but but it's not the same Torah they learn the seven Commandments of Noah uh with all of the details they learn an understanding of Hashem and their whole life they have to try to live up to what they learned so Torah is understood in a less literal way than you know the five books of Moses or or whatever it is so I think there would be Torah for goam too uh yeah um yeah does Kamas have a din of uh you know I would say no I I would differentiate between the spiritual idea of amalik and the construct of amalik the to kill AAL is based on a very specific Nation this is the grandson of Asa soas is not genealogically aikas is not the nation of amalik you see uh so if you would ask me do I have a Mitzvah to kill Kamas the same way I have Mitzvah to kill amalik the answer is no uh my Mitzvah to kill Kamas is not because they're a my mitvah to killas is because they're a ro and someone is coming to kill you or kill someone else you kill them first it's a different orientation so I wouldn't say there's a Mitzvah to kill the babies of Kamas even though there's a likelihood that they may grow into this but right now we would not we would not kill them now there is however a spiritual idea of aik it says in the name of Sal that any nation that wants to destroy the Jewish people is amalik but I don't think R meant that meant that in terms of the riches in terms of the evil but the Haka itself is limited to a particular Nation Nazis I would say the same thing with the Nazis the the Nazis were the closest you could imagine in many way way I would say Nazi ideology is more amalik like than even Kamas because Kamas at least has the claim that they they want land and this Kamas can characterize its position as we want this land because this is our country Nazi Germany didn't have that one even so in terms of pure hatred naziism absolutely is the K of aik but Hally I I still would say they're not aik either right you have to be very careful I mean listen uh we read in the Evan schl I'm going to quote the EV again the gr talks about the a the influences of the a in am Israel and he mentions that in am Israel there are whole segments that are connected to the A and he mentions and they are also called so the gr says that a is called now got to be careful what does that mean that means if somebody is Aus I can take out my knife and kill him almost certainly not so you have to understand that sometimes we are referring to spiritual Kos but we're not referring to the technicalities of the Mitzvah ofik and that's important and that's why it's a little dangerous to use amalik as a term uh because uh some beniva will hear the word amalik and carry it out in a Misa when it really was not meant to be Lisa in that way uh yeah uh okay this is more philosoph question I wanted to know if the holds that without a god um if there if morals would exist and then a followup question to that is that if a baby grew up with no sense of morality like in a chorus um would it feel sorrow any feeling guilt with stealing or murdering is it an inherent part of the human being or do need to be taught yep you know uh there's a nice book that was written many many years ago and um it was by Dennis Prager and Joseph tushin Joseph tushin has remained an orthodox Rabbi modern Orthodox Rabbi uh Dennis Prager who's now become somewhat famous is a traditional Jew who's no longer Orthodox but he was Orthodox at the time uh and they wrote a nice book it's a nice book to give to somebody to a non-religious relative it's called well the first edition was called Eight questions people ask about Judaism and then they did a second edition called Nine questions people asked they added a question about intermarriage and but one of the questions they they ask and you know they give nice answers is can there be morality without belief in God can there be a notion of natural conscience and and the like and they basically make the argument that dfki makes uh in in crime and punishment where he says without God everything is going going to be permitted meaning there is no morality without God now you may ask me an obvious question well wait a second here there are atheists in the world and not every atheist is a murderer or a rapist or a criminal or a Serial sex offender are you telling me there's no such thing as a good and decent atheist there certainly is I mean I'm willing to say I'm sure Sam Harris even Christ Hitchens uh I'm sure in their normal everyday Behavior they were perfectly normal normal people but that's when you're not under stress when push comes to shove and you're faced with dangers or you're faced with pressures if you don't believe in God why shouldn't I steal if I can get away with it why shouldn't I kill if I could get away with it and I needed to get away with it so I think a very strong argument could be made that without God there is no basis for Morality but now let me make the opposite point no I I I no but I but I would say I would say this I would say this if without God there is no basis for Morality but I feel morality anyway you know I naturally feel morality then I think that's proof that there's a God that put that conscience inside of you gave you that Nish in other words I'm not saying if I don't believe in God I don't have morality I'm saying the other way around if I have morality it came from God it came from God and that's why we believe that even a child who grew up in the jungle without any influences at all would come to some sense of normal moral Behavior because it is imprinted in him in his Divine soul and when we talked about the angel teaching you Torah before you're born that's part of the Torah that the angel is teaching you the principles of morality that's why non-jews will have it na now you're right you're right the the the answer is that you can be brainwashed that that is very very true you can be brainwashed you can be hypnotized uh you're correct a kid that just grew up in the forest wouldn't be that way wouldn't be that way in fact that's what they say when you call uh murderous terrorists their animals you know you're insulting the animals you know animals you know live the way they're you know the way they're supposed to live they do the best they can in their environments uh but this is how powerful brainwashing is it's brainwashing it's not that they have an evil nature but you take a kid and you know you train him from the time that he's you know two years old to hate Jews to hate people to kill to believe that violence is the best thing so you're perverting but deeps again people would ask well well do the does Kamas is Kamas made in the image of God are Nazis made in the image of God I hate to say it I believe they are made in the image of God but they destroy it they smash it but I believe you know the baby that was born was born in a in a pure state that could have been nurtured in the right direction you know and the hope would be if there's any hope I mean without mashiah there there's no hope but the hope would be that some somehow there would be a generation of people people as kazal say that would come to some type of chuba and realize that they have to move away from this we help yeah um speaking of animals in hilik M we see a clear hierarchy of Damages according to the level of responsibility or irresponsibility of the owner a mu action and Shane Braille in public is zero responsibility for the owner a Tom AC of of an attacking sword has half damage in every area the expected damages of Shan Vel in the r ofak you pay the full amount and if these attacking um behaviors become muad then moving up the hierarchy then in the public domain it is also a payment of the full amount despite it being in the public domain but then the hierarchy stops and in the domain of the N still the MU the the attacking action which became muad still is paying the full amount just like a damage that was Shane vgo so I was wondering if you could help with any insight about why the hierarchy comes to a sudden halt now that you're asking why is Shane verel in the Rus of the nisak the same damage as as kin which became muad in the Rak is the same uh same compensation of mish in other words why don't we why don't we differentiate between Tom and muad by by sh Shane and reg me in other words yeah what yeah I'm trying to get exactly what what so the the question I'm sorry it's a bit technical in theia but the question is that it seemed to me that the um the penalties are organized very rigidly according to how much aot the balab had in the situation right so it goes up up up up in terms of how much he has to pay with balance towards how responsible he was towards that area that he doesn't have and then suddenly when it gets to the issue of a Karen action which became mad now he's paying the same amount for damage that happened in the Rish as the no but I I think I well I think again maybe I have to go through the suya in more detail but I think the basic idea is that once you reach muad muad is the Apex of responsibility meaning to say once you know you have a habitual dangerous animal an animal that has gored you know three times so then at that point we make no difference if it's public private uh you have a responsibility to guard that animal and not let it perpetrate damages so all of the presumptions that allow you to kind of walk with my animal in the public domain without liability or partial liability just cease to exist once you're mu other words mu trumps everything uh at that point because muad creates unlimited responsibility no matter what area no matter what so it's more like instead of there being a hierarchy it's that once the care and action has become midified it's now it's now made to be equal that that that that that's correct there is no liability distinction at that point okay I'm going to stop here but anyway thank you and uh my CH sor