Q&A: Zionism, A Jewish State & Resurrection - Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

many not eat many not to eat the med even though allows it why isn't smoking and bathing a violation of cover based measur what why isn't smoking what smoking and vaping and vaping well yeah yes the question is that um according to the you are allowed to eat in a Bish you're not allowed to eat in a b Kess a besses is a room that's only used for daving Bish is used for learning primarily but also in so interestingly enough although the Holiness of a b hedish is greater than a Bas kessis because it's both a place of Torah and a place of prayer but Lisa we have certain leniencies because we don't want to force people to stop learning to leave so as a result it is permitted to eat something in a b Med and and the like some people although I haven't met that many people who are mock with natu but some people will indeed not have a drink even uh in a BAS medish and that's uh because of the COV of the basa medish so you're asking the qu or the question is being asked what about smoking and vaping uh so first I want to make a point that I am not discussing whether you're permitted at all to smoke or to vape that that's an issue of Sakana but let's assume for purposes of argument that you're allowed to do it uh is it an activity that is allowed in a Bas medish or not so again it would seem it would seem that it would have the same status as eating or drinking because if it's something that a person feels they need to do they get Restless they get anxious so the makes an accommodation to let you do it in here instead of having to leave and be M Torah so I think the same would hold true for smoking as well I mean after all uh the need to smoke can be as every bit as powerful as the need to eat uh the addiction might even be stronger so I would think this would be n in the heter of eating but on the other hand those who don't eat in a Bas medish certainly should not smoke in a Bas medish either now let me point out that with smoking there is another concern besides the health concern generally that is the impact you're having on other people uh that is not only the secondhand smoking health issue which is a matter of controversy and debate but even if it's not an issue of know giving somebody lung cancer it's simply an issue of discomfort and uh know making the environment not pleasant you may have an AAS not to to create uh an unpleasant atmosphere for other people so that's rule that's very important on the other hand I saw something out Ofna once which really really rubbed me the wrong way uh you know Thea had a hall that said no smoking in the hall okay that that's standard procedure and there were two elderly who were sitting at a table smoking and a young guy like a guy your age like went over to the two pulled the cigarettes out of their mouths and like extinguished it that I think uh there's a certain mck for der I maybe you can ask somebody not to smoke whatever it is but that type of aggressive behavior particularly to someone who was older than you and it could be there were as well I don't know but whatever it is uh you know don't be a fanatic to your particular cause uh if you claim that's you're very sensitive to smoke then maybe you can step out but you know you don't necessarily have to grab the cigarettes away from somebody but putting that aside uh if you don't factor in those things I think smoking would be included in the heter of eating by the way one little point about this the stier one said this Rim kin's father one said that he forgives every Jew that has ever hurt him except for the Yeshiva B that introduced him to smoking I mean it's a pretty serious statement he says the stier he said the ky's father was of Yakov Israel keski and he was known as the styler goon because he came from a town in the Ukraine called Horna stiple so when we say the stier referring to rim kin's father who who one of the great kador he was the kish's brother-in-law he married the kish's uh sister uh so that's an important Point rev desler also another thing about smoking that comes out rev desler uses smoking as an example in fact he he was very humble to use this example about himself how we think we are Bal we think we can make free will we can always choose right it's so easy rev desler in his honesty documents the struggles he had to try to give up smoking and he said like every time he thought he beat it you know it came back and it conquered him again and he was saying this is the Yara you know again he didn't have a Yara to go and eat tra for or be that wasn't but but the struggle with smoking was emblematic of how difficult it is to get rid of bad habits it is very very difficult yeah why would Hashem design a system where impurity would even be a factor at all too much with so many complexities to being purified why have it in the first place yeah well once again there is a general idea that we only appreciate light when we are confronted with Darkness we only appreciate Health when when we are confronted with sickness uh in a sense you need all of the negatives and all of the Opposites in the world in order to fully experience the joy of Purity and Redemption now if we understand that Tuma in its various forms is a form of distance from God and Purity in its various forms is a form of closeness to God you need the aspect of distance in order to relish and appreciate the closeness now T itself is enormously complicated uh because the rabam actually says that Tuma and Tara are not metaphysical states of being uh they are simply halic technicalities me meaning according to the rambam a t person is no different than a toer person the only thing we say is when a person is T that's a Shand for a of things he can't do in other words you're T therefore you can't go to the base of mikash you can't eatb meaning it's not a state Tuma is not a state it's just the label we attach to a person that has a bunch of laws connected to their identity so it's not a metaphysical reality meaning we don't say oh you're not allowed to go to the base of mikash because you are T it's the other way around since a guy that touched the dead body cannot go to the B mikdash we call that Tuma now the makal absolutely reject that idea uh and they basically say that Tuma is like a spiritual State a state of distancing a state of lesser connection to God and the Halos don't Define the labels the other way around the Halos emanate from the status of being of being T that would would be the P because according to the rambam's formulation it turns out T are totally arbitrary rules meaning you're simply saying oh I touched that body I'm not allowed to go to the temple why you know if it's not an actual state that you've contracted then why would these other seminate but going back to your question I think basically we need the distance to appreciate the closeness and uh that's why there is this concept of of Tuma in the world now in a more metaphysical way let me just remind you rers notes that all Tuma is connected to death now in some cases that's very obvious you touch a dead body right your T but even less obvious cases are connected to death for example a seminal emission is the potential loss of sperm that could have created a pregnancy Nida is the shedding of the uterine lining that could have sustained life um even child birth which is a Tuma right is because 's a life within the woman that is no longer there every child birth is a form of of death in and of itself so refers points out what makes a person T is whenever you encounter death you are reexperiencing the sin of the eight Adas in the Garden of Eden that brought death into the world meaning to say we are reminded of our imperfections and therefore Tuma in a rationalistic standpoint is connection with death reminds man of their rebelliousness against God and therefore we need a certain Chua which is done through the purification rituals that then give us access to the temple which is ganaden on Earth meaning the exclusion of the T from the B mikash is exactly the same as the expulsion of Adam Harish from ganen because of the of the right that's uh somewhat would refers as understanding of Tuma and mikash and the of the yeah he talks about how the the days like the have like a spiritual to them that um in each day we're like reliving that that spiritual energy and uh also for the Omare where I think you mentioned recently I think like the ramban I don't remember who said like it's like and so it has a spiritual energy of sim um now the that we that we uh take in this a semi aute of uh of uh what happened to theing of RAB AA does this mean does this thing mean that we're like Mel the spiritual en how does that work out with the call saying there's a spiritual energy and does that mean that event in history can have an impact on the spiritual energy of the day and how we experience that and I mean like some what some people have said about like yat like that that that's just another event in history that overrides another event in history really you're like how do we balance that out and say yeah what's right right right know those are excellent questions first of all the Ram's basic point which is a Cornerstone of cabala andas uh is the notion that time in Judaism is not linear but it is cyclical meaning linear means you simply move from a past to a present to a future and what happened byas MIT was thousands of years ago and you're just remembering it in Judaism time goes in a circle and when certain dates come you're getting the same spiritual it's the same p as our forefathers had in MIM now granted we're not physical slaves so the freedom will manifest itself in a different way uh that is the assort that the Holiness of time is not commemorative but it's experiential meaning you are actually going through that same moment uh in terms of spiritual Powers that's a very very fundamental idea in understanding the Holiness of time it is not commemoration it is experience now the question becomes uh well historical events come and go and they change and the Omare is a preparation for Torah which is a time of joy and yet we superimpose on the Omare the sadness of the deaths of rabi aiva uh does that change the spiritual energy does it go from Joy does it go from sadness or is there kind of uh a period meaning to say this all was defined by something at a certain date and what happens after that day you know it doesn't mean anything so in terms of om I know you mentioned Y which to but in terms of om the idea of happy versus sad I would actually say that that is not an interference in spiritual energies but rather the basic spiritual energy is to ready our nishas to receive the light of God's Torah and in order to ready our nishas to receive the light of God's Torah there are a number of steps we have to take we have to have the joy of learning and the joy of Mitzvah and the commitment and we have to be m gain hatred and rivalry and polarization which we do by commemorating uh the deaths of the students of RAB yaka who died because they did not show proper respect and regard for each other so on one hand you can say it's a contradiction because sad versus Happy on the other hand at a higher level it's not really a contradiction it's really two different and complimentary perspectives of how we cleanse our namos to be ready to receive God's Torah one is by the joy in our Torah learning and the other is by remembering how destructive it is when there's polarization and dissension between Jews right so in that way I don't think you're interfering in any way with the spiritual energies uh the only danger is that sometimes we might allow the AAS to make us forget the Sim and that indeed would be incorrect there should be that Sim even in the spas of the OM uh itself now in terms of though which you know once again that seems to be interrupting so to speak the a of uh again you know maybe this will come out I my guess is probably in other questions that will come down the pike like it all depends on how you view yat meaning say if you view yat as like a Heavenly gift from God that he's uh Paving the way from mashia by giving us Isel then you can look at it as part of the process just like the the is going to be converted from a day of sadness to a day of Joy one might say that this is the beginning process of reclaiming SAS om to be times of Joy rather than times of sadness starting with yat and starting and continuing with Yim on the 28th of year we have two days of year uh that in the modern Israeli calendar uh have become very happy and joyous days so yes I think it is if you believe that Hashem operates in history and he has a continuous operation in history spiritual energies can be adjusted can be modified there can be different and New Dimensions that are added to the mix but this presupposes a certain ideological view of yat that not everybody would share right so in a sense you have to Define your stance to the holiday and then you can determine whether it legitimately affects the spiritual energies that are coming down the pike um why was the punishment of do justice for like seemingly minor did yes so we go back to the idea that 24,000 students that's larger than the largest Yeshiva in the world even today I mean it's unbelievable one Rabbi would have 24,000 students without a microphone or a public address system or any of those things uh and they all died virtually all there were a few that survived they all died between PES and it seems to be in one year although it's not clear theoretically you could actually learn the gamarra they died over several years but let's assume one year which is the way most people understand it and the gar says they died because they did not show proper kov to each other let's spend a moment on that kavod means honor respect now now rabi AA was a great man he was the greatest of the sages and one can assume that if you were a student of rabi AKA you were a great person also you couldn't just walk in off the street and say I want to be in Rab aka's Shear I mean listen it's hard to get into RAB ionic Shear you know uh so you're not going to get into RAB aa's year it's not going to be so easy so we have to assume that every talmid of RAB AKA was a great person so what would be if I could see how they behaved 2,000 years ago were they pushing each other out of line were they saying you're an idiot get out of here I assume that if we would look at the behavior of the students of Raba we would see dkit we would see Mite we would see proper behavior all of the Halas would be kept everything would be kept only God could tell that something was a little off now what was it that was off if all of the behaviors were right so here R shimal gives a very beautiful beautiful atmology for the word kovot a word origin kovot kovot comes from the same root as CED which means heavy heaviness now heaviness and even in English can refer to significance like you talk about this person is a heavy weight or this person has gravitas or this this person's understanding of things is weighty so we use weighty in matters other than physical weight to refer to this guy has heft this guy when he says something there's something behind it something waiting so here's what refers says having covod for a person does not mean you're polite it doesn't just mean you're nice because I could be nice to somebody but I fundamentally regard them as a lightweight meaning I'll be nice to you because I'm nice to everybody so uh even though you're worthless I'll be nice to you I mean that's what a person might be thinking that's not cot kovot is when you strive to see the significance of another person and for some reason we still have to explain this the students of rabaka fell short now maybe one might speculate just a speculation that when you link yourself up to the greatest of the greatest of the greatest so you make what is called a vertical connection with spirituality you don't make make a horizontal connection meaning to say I Look to RAB AO what do I need you for you know what are you what are you what are you going to teach me but that was a big mistake because as K say I learned so much from my Rees and I learn more from my from my colleagues and from my students learn most of all so according to there madrea meaning if you would have looked at them you wouldn't have even seen an a now that actually makes your question worse because because your question was why should they die over something like that and now I'm telling you even their behavior was okay it was a certain inner attitude so for that they deserve to die do you get the death penalty because you don't show other people the proper COV the short answer is that most of us would not get bem we would not get the death penalty for not showing proper covant but these were the leaders of the Next Generation these were the transmitters of Torah these were the the ones who are going to be the role models and gim and Hashem is saying you want to be a role model for am Israel you want to be a gut from Isel you want to be a leader from Israel you have to be a paragon of love and care and ra and seeing theas in other people if you cannot meet those qualifications good you can be a good Jew and live as a good Jew but you cannot be a leader of am Israel and therefore Hashem took them precisely because they were going to be the leaders and they were going to be the gdolim uh and that's an that's an amazing thing that actually tells you that the condition to being a true God in is one of the I mean there are many conditions but one of the conditions is a genuine genuine AAS Israel and seeing the good and seeing the kot uh in other people you know R Steinman as great great gutle that we lost a few years ago so you know rman exemplified this in such a I mean all go do but in a noticeable way he exemplified this you know he lived uh really in total poverty I mean he lived in a shack he and his reiton lived in the equivalent of a shack I mean you look at it uh and what he ate I mean he could have he actually could have lived at a higher standard but he was perfectly he and his rabbits and I should were perfectly happy living in poverty and uh whatever he ate I don't remember the details but something like he would eat like uh one boiled potato a day and he would drink the water a soup you you know things things like that in fact somebody once said you know why don't you have a piece of meat or fish he said so he said uh you don't know how good this tastes you know this this potato water you know tastes pretty good you want to he said you want to try it uh so people would come so people would come to R Steinman and they would be embarrassed because they're saying you know things like oh you know I've had this car for 5 years and I'm just wondering if I should buy a new car you know it's a little embarrassing you're talking to somebody who's like living in a shack with with holes in the wall say I've had this car but you know maybe it's not but the funny thing was people say I mean I did not have the to talk to him but people say that they never felt uncomfortable talking to him like he would go through the car does this and does that because he understood that people are on different madreo and what he does may not be for everybody but he still had this basic respect for people for hi that's what they're doing is legitimate and there was a sense of cover that you always felt that you were valued even though you knew that you were nowhere near him in any any madrea but there was never a sense that he was looking down at you that he's so much better than you looking down at you uh although there's one one myet that went the opposite direction which also tremendous muser a guy came a guy came in to him and a guy was a wealthy businessman and he said that he needs to get a new car he said but he's afraid of an I in Hara people will look at him and they'll be jealous and that's I in horor so Steinman was really was playing straight man here he said I in Hara Ah that's something very very serious he said to the man um have you finished Shas he says well no I haven't finished sh he says do you learn every day he said not not every day so steinon thinks for a moment and says so I'm not sure why why will people be jealous of you he says what the what's what's the iron Hara going to be so that was kind of a little bit of uh that was a little little bit of must but even that was very very very gentle so I think the lesson of reab AKA is what a needs to be and certainly what a Jewish leader needs to be a Jewish leader that doesn't have love and respect not just love but kovot for other yiden is not worthy of being a leader yeah in Reading like KN like especially with like davik and sha like before he's King there's a concept of having a government that that is legitimate but can be evil and legitimate at the same time and sometimes when I hear this is sort of like I guess a yam hot mood question because sometimes I hear a lot of people who you might describe as like anti- Zionist and they give all these antidotal uh situations of early zionists you know making people secular and ripping off p and stuff like this and my question is are is this are these sort of um stories kind of irrelevant um or is it more of like what like what you like like if you read it in in gamor like Kus k um K like do are the gdan that are anti Zionist do they tend to have that kind of an argument more like do they or do they or is it mostly just antidotes about people being mistreated because of religion yeah so so you have to understand that uh just as Zionism is a complicated phenomenon that has different manifestations anti-zionism is also a complicated phenomenon that breaks down into different schools one school of anti- Zionism which is the narta is that a Jewish state is simply forbidden until the coming of mashiah it's very important to understand this NRI carta's opposition to the state of Israel is not because many of the people in the state are not religious relig even if this would be a state in which every member of the knesset and every Cabinet member uh would be learning in col half a day and only eat and be totally Hally observant the very Act of statehood itself is sinful because when God put us into Galos he does not permit us to end the Galos until mashia comes so that's the Nur character position now I want to point out that for you know most people you know that sounds pretty extreme but you know I want to say before 1948 that was a position that was considerably accepted in many many segments of the Ki world I they didn't they didn't call it K in those days who we wouldn't even call KED necessarily in the 19th century actually said Jews shouldn't have a state until mashia comes I mean that's before there was any real activity towards the states uh the brisker many many even kabad which became kind of a Zionist cus uh under the realm of of the last rebi but the rebi rashab raom be actually saids beish uh you're not allowed to have estat you know until mashia mashiach comes so that's that's one extreme of anti Zionism there's another uh aspect of anti-zionism that says you're not allowed to collaborate with people who don't believe in Torah and Mitzvah in other words they emphasized that when you strengthen the state you are making coalitions you are working with poro people who throw over the the Yol of of Heaven uh and therefore the problem is not so much the idea of a state but the people that you are working with supporting by definition endorsing and that is where the anecdotes will come in as to all of the bad things that zionists did or didn't do it whatever it would be going back to uh World War II not saving Jews I mean this goes back I you have to understand that a lot of the bitterness that many Kum have towards the modern state of Israel is rooted in some very very awful historical events such as uh what happened even during the Holocaust what happened to what are called the AL tyan in which there were European children brought over and uh they were forced into non-religious uh environments and uh yemenite children were literally kidnapped from their parents un raised you know their parents were told that the kids were dead there were some awful things that were done and and U and and again there are books about this written not by religious people written by non-religious historians who have tried to uncover what you might call the seami side of Zionism I will say though LTI maybe it's a little controversial uh that uh the modern secularists are not are not as bad in some ways meaning they're secular they're ignorant uh but this idea of surreptitiously kidnapping children I don't think uh would be done today in those days it was sometimes done uh and and and the like so you do have the Shah that's against the state which by definition would mean the state of Israel is not a legitimate government and then you have the Sha that acknowledges the possibility of statehood but feels you cannot collaborate with r now if you took that position then the legitimacy of even an evil government would be very very interesting because take the book of Kings the book saer MIM saer MIM gives us the hereditary monarchies of both the 10 tribes and uh the two two tribes yud bamin right the malus based of it and many of those kings were not good people some were righteous but many were not righteous and yet as far as we know they were still considered to be legitimate monarchs who were Sinners and sinful but that did not deprive the legitimacy of their actions to the degree that they weren't violating the Torah in those particular actions now the ramban makes the same points about khaka the rambam says why do we celebrate a holiday called khaka so many of us might say oh it's the miracle of the candles or it's the miracle of rededicating the temple right that's a good reason the ram says we celebrate khaka because it represents the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel by being redeemed from Greek oppression it's y the ra saysa is a celebration of a y now we know that although the original mabes were very righteous people we also know that their descendants of the jonian Kings the Malai became hellenists became persecutors of the right became in a way it's like George Orwell's book on the Russian uh Revolution or his parody was it animal uh animal farm and uh basically what happens is that sometimes the revolutionaries become the very thing they were fighting against the mbes are fighting against helenismo they establish a helist dynasty very fascinating but the rambam seems to say even that is caus for celebration so it seems that you have a fairly simple proof from the rambam that uh sinful monarchies do not necessarily become illegitimate monarchies and there is still something to rejoice in in there being a Jewish statehood that doesn't mean it's beyond criticism and that doesn't mean you try not to make it better and that doesn't mean you accept things that are anti- Torah but it does mean that there is a significance in the Jewish people having control over over ER Israel so I would say therefore uh your question would depend on why you're anti-zionist if you're anti-zionist because you believe statehood itself is illegitimate then by definition there would be nothing to Rejoice about if on the other hand you recognize statos is legitimate and good but you simply are concerned with the anti- Tor content then I think there would still be a mukum for legitimacy in what God gave us even if it's not uh everything that we would want it want it to be you know there also is a problem too I mean uh yir laid who is not a role model for for any Jewish person y laid is uh very very very far uh from Torah values in many ways um but he did make a speech a few years ago that was I thought a quite compelling speech uh he addressed the the amorphous ation and he said to the the who are the he said to the okay you guys won you guys established yourself as a big powerful influential force in society we thought you would die out that was a been grian thought but you have staying power you won ah but now that you won you got to take responsibility when the K world like in the 1940s or 50s was a tiny little sliver of you know 400 people so they could protest about the big bad government was doing all these bad things okay but now that you're a major power block in Israeli Society you can't go around looking at other people and blaming them for things not going right you have to take responsibility which means in other words ideally the world should develop you know what is you know uh ask rashash Shiva what is your position on global warming you know what is your position on poverty right in other words in some ways we're underdeveloped in certain areas because we haven't focused on what is the Torah approach to running a modern State we've been letting other people do it and then complaining all the time because they're not doing it right La Pit's point was you're big enough to be part of that process and that's a fascinating question uh I will tell you that the first Chief Rabbi of isra of the medas Israel who was a big big Herz he's the grandfather of the unfortunately non-religious president of the state of Israel it's his namesake YZ and this is the the president of Israel is yzak but yzak senior harav was a real guy I mean he was kind of almost Rebel yosi's Reby in some ways Rebel Yos had tremendous tremendous respect of although the kedi world didn't respect him so much but Revel Yash personally respected him tremendously and rev herach had this Grand Vision because he was also a lawyer he knew law he knew secular law and he had this Vision that in a Jewish State we have to develop how halaka deals with all aspects of a modern State how would a police department operate in halak guidelines fire department military security right we can't just assume oh let the do it let the do it let the M shabas do it right we got to figure out so he commissioned different to kind of investigate specific areas and write essays with practical recommendations Lisa that you could run a state in accordance with h in that in that way uh it never got finished and uh the little bit that was done is a little obsolete because it dates back to the 1950s but one Rabbi who did do a lot of writing on this was rabie elzar venberg who died just a few years ago he's known as the elzar and the elzar is like many many volumes of Shas but in addition to the elzar he wrote another book called hilos Medina the Halos of running a state in which he went through all of these different questions and that safe Fair had not been reprinted for many many many years it was like printed in the 50s and he was putting out after of sitzer shubas but hilas Medina never got printed because people were against it kind of you know you're not supposed to be involved in politics uh recently a few years ago they did reprint hos Medina and it really is a classic work but again as I say uh it's a it's it's a little out of date in terms of the practicalities of it because it is a book from the 1950s so Rach did have this Grand Vision of making erel not a theocracy but uh to create institutions that could carry out the functions of statehood within uh falty to to halaka uh but he himself did recognize that religious coercion would not be proper and we have to regard a government as legitimate even if uh the particular people were not religious yeah this question was um recently documents were leaked that the US Supreme Court is looking to overturn Row in row8 right being that the Halos on abortion aren't black and white what should our standpoint be on these laws is it better for abortion to be legal from a federal level for the times that it would be mutter or is it better to allow the possibility to ban it especially with the left pushing for late term abortions right so that's that's a very interesting question I will tell you that uh as a as a former lost student the for me the most interesting interesting part of this is not the Supreme Court decision but that a leak took place in the Supreme Court this has literally never happened in more than 200 years 250 years in the United States that a whole draft opinion Mish a whole draft opinion gets leaked how did that happen I mean this is like a wall of iron M sharza that there is never a leak who did it and there's a lot of speculation some say a liberal judge or a liberal clerk did it to embarrass the conservatives some say the conservatives did it because that way uh nobody could change their mind right because what's going to because it's a 5-4 decision uh but you know I know John Roberts always tries to make pz so I'm sure he was going to try to do it so by solidifying the five people who voted for it they can't change their mind now because people people GNA say oh you changed your mind because of pressure right all right so interesting m in the gossip is it liberal or conservative okay but that's more of the uh Gossip issues and again very very interesting because this has never happened before it's quite amazing but in terms of the laws of abortions let's go over bitzer what does halaka say about abortion so the halaka is not as complicated as you might assume the basic rule is abortion is prohibited unless the mother's life is in danger that is a bottom line now uh this is true not only for Jewish people who are governed by the 613 Commandments of the Torah this is even true for non-jews who are only governed by the seven Commandments of Noah but the gamar Sanhedrin says beish that the killing of a fetus is prohibited not only under the laws of Cl Israel but under the laws of B Noah now there's a lot of discussion here because when we say you can abort a baby or a fetus if the mother's life is in danger a danger can include a lot of things danger can include psychological stress as well as physical Danger let's take for example rape and incest right sometimes you'll have a pro-life person that says something like I'm against abortion except in cases of rape or incest now in some ways that's illogical because if I'm against abortion because I believe life begins at conception then what gives me the right to kill the this because it's rap or incest could I kill a baby that was born from rap rap or incest certainly not so why could I kill a fetus that was born from rap or incest so what would halaka say about rape or incest halaka would say this there is no such thing as a rape or incest exception there is only a p exception but H recognizes that the trauma of forcing a woman to carry a baby that is in her body as a result of rape or incest might be so immense that it might qualify as a suicidal event now that would depend on the person so we don't say there's a rape or incest exception but we understand that depending on the circumstances there may be pish there's also a discussion that since the gamorra says a fetus until it is 40 days old is mere water so some would permit a very very early abortion it's not even called an abortion Medical within 40 days of conception right so basically abortion is forbidden unless mother's life is in danger but danger to mother's life can be assessed psychologically as well as medically and we have situations of early ve very early term abortion within 40 days right that's kind of the overall structure now let's now apply now this is where you get into a bridge that could break on you or thin ice or whatever the appropriate metaphor is how do these halic values translate into what my political position should be in a secular government now the easiest thing to say which might be correct I don't mean to say that it's wrong but the easy thing to say would be I would like abortion laws to reflect the values I have as a Tor Jew and if I as a Tor Jew believe abortion is wrong unless the mother's life is in danger and I believe that that is true for noites for go as well as Jews then I will be in favor of a restrictive abortion law that says no abortion unless the mother's life is in danger and therefore I would be in favor of Justice alto's draft opinion over ruling Row versus Wade by the way you do understand I mean I don't want to get into the legalities here uh overruling Row versus Wade doesn't make abortion forbidden I mean you understand the way that works roow versus Wade created a constitutional right to an abortion that no state can take away Row versus Wade I'm sorry overruling Row versus Wade takes away the constitutional right it is then up to every individual state to pass their own abortion laws rest assured for example that even if Row versus Wade gets reversed you will still be able to get an abortion in California uh because they'll pass their own law that's going to per you understand that Row versus we simply means instead of creating a federal right it will go to Every individual State okay but be it as it may Texas and the like you know the southern states are going to pass anti-abortion laws and my initial reaction would be gun ha that's a wonderful news we need a law that follows uh not Jewish values but the values that Hashem wants even for non Jews so that's the that is the however there is another side to this and I'll just throw it out for you to think about I'm not advocating it and that is even if I believe that abortion is wrong and abortion is evil and abortion should be user I may not want a secular government to pass a law to that effect because once it is a secular law it will be interpreted in a secular way which may actually take away halakic rights that would otherwise exist let me give you an example Haka says abortion is only permitted if the mother's life is in danger let's imagine the state of Mississippi would pass a law that says the same thing abortion is permitted only when the mother's life is in danger so I might celebrate that and say the state of Mississippi pin's like the Ramba well let's imagine you have a woman that was raped and the r paskins that because of the fragility of her condition this is a matter of life and death and an abortion is allowed but the state attorney general or the state's attorney of whatever County in Mississippi thinks it wasn't life-threatening she could go to jail in other words by making it a secular law the interpretation of that law will no longer be Hal ially based or religiously based it's going to be secularly based so one could make the argument this is a you know kind of a subtle argument that even if I am religiously pro-life anti-abortion I would rather have the government not get involved and that way my freedom of religion to follow Haka is preserved as opposed to if the government gets involved my freedom of religion gets Abridged so the net result of all of this is that your halakic position does not automatically dictate your political position but that's a bit of a subtlety and many people will say that's wrong but it is something to to think about uh yeah um many of our great rabbis before the aonic period were also polymaths in their wisdom in many languages astronomy astrology mathematics and aftera has developed so much so much more specific you can spend your whole life really just studying one area so for one that's seeking wisdom like w the wisdom that satisfies the heart and the mind is it preferable to go so deep into you know the arbit and the commentaries or to go into you know learn Greek and Latin and and how astronomy works and you know like that's how the Great great early rabbis are described right right right right right well uh it's a very very good question I mean obviously the great early rabbis were so much greater than us if they could do everything the vagon mastered thank you mastered many many secular kot and still was became the vnon most of us have to make a choice to make a choice Torah is going to be more important but there is um a quotation from the vagon uh and some people claim it's a forgery so they're gonna tell you it's not authentic but R freedlander said it was authentic that for every measure of secular wisdom that a person does not have that's there's 10 times the amount of Torah he doesn't understand meaning if you don't understand mathematics and astronomy there will be huge sections of Torah that you're not really going to get so it is important to try to get at least the basics of these I mean after all the laws of Kes sanctifying the New Moon depend on astronomy you look at the ram look at the rambam gives you astronomical calculations based on angles trigonometry even keski keski had no secular education in school but you'll see in his Forum you'll see diagrams with s cosine the equivalent of trigonometry I mean he didn't use the the words but the concepts were developed and were uh were understood in fact the villon commissioned the translation of ID's geometry into Hebrew called M it's uid it's literally a translation in hebra and the Von treasured that book and he considered it to be uh very very important so I think it is true that knowledge ofos can be very very useful and that was the tradition certainly among the uh among many of the rishonim and even among the akronim up to the vnon and to some degree even after the vnon so the question really becomes a question of of number one time and a question of number two talent and interest meaning to say uh if we're not on the madrea to know everything and we have to pick and choose so maybe regretfully so but you would have to put your emphasis more on Torah knowledge than those other areas uh you also have the differentiate between different types of branches of knowledge you'll notice that when the rambam when the vagon uh when they talk about secular wisdom they refer to what you might call the hard Sciences they they'll refer to things like math astronomy uh physics things like that uh when you get into things like psychology philosophy literature there you actually see sometimes the opposite idea that since these are not objective realities these are just referring to different ways you view the world one's Vang one's world view should come from Torah and should not come so come from secular sources so you will see that even those who Advocate expanding your curriculum to embrace secular sources they do differentiate between hard science and the social sciences the humanities and the like on the other hand there's always another hand I have three hands already uh you have someone like rarin lonstein Lin was R Yosef do salic son-in-law he was a Rosa in his own writing a great rashash Shiva in his own right and he died a few years ago and uh he also had a PhD in English literature from Harvard University and although when he was a rashash Shiva he was a rashash he didn't like bring in all these things but said that even from Humanities there are insights into life and understanding that can enrich our service of God so he was not necessarily willing to consign all Humanities to the dust Heap he was willing to say that there is Insight in Shakespeare and Milton and and the like that one could use I think raer had the same sha because uh you know rers created in Germany the movement called Tor der which was integrating secular culture and Torah which was very different than the Polish Russian Lithuanian model of separatism and I believe of her's school he created a school a day school an elementary school and a high school and a Yesa but I believe in the elementary in high school uh they celebrated the um the birthday of Schiller not not to be confused with I rev Schiller but uh Schiller was a very very famous German poet uh kind of he and gerto were the two greatest German poets Andre P felt that that was a day worthy of Celebration uh Within his Yeshiva so like many many things there are different opinions different views and I think it's not a one-size fit all I think many many people will can benefit a lot from exposure to these ideas for other people it may hurt them in their faith in God so uh the same things that can be very beneficial to one person can be poisoned to another person and that's why these decisions are very very difficult to articulate on a general level yeah so uh once we comes and happens for people who passed away what happens to the people who are alive when mhia comes do they change like physical being do they yeah that's an excellent question uh eventually there's going to be resurrection of the dead and that's going to be sometime after mashia now we don't know if it'll be a year after mashia or 10,000 years after mashiah meaning until and people are still going to die mashia is going to die mashia is going to be succeeded by by son of mashia in other words mashiah is going to establish a hereditary dynastic succession like d Ando so there might be a hundred msia so to speak until but at some point unknown point is g to come and those who are from their soul will be reunited in their body but the question is what if you happen to be you just happen to be alive you you're a kid who was born uh the day before right but you were born you didn't you didn't have to be resurrected you just happen to be there so it's kind of strange what exactly is it so my next door neighbor is going to live forever but I'm going to die and then what they come back later like you know uh so one way of understanding it is once there so just like the people who were dead come back for eternal life the people who are alive are now given eternal life meaning to say everybody who is z to arise is given eternal life some people are coming back from the dead some people never died they didn't go through a death experience because they happen to be alive when comes so that's one possibility meaning the resurrection will take place by not dying as opposed to dying and coming back but the moral is mhma not the way the morale is mhma a little bit that those people who happen to be alive they still have to go through a death experience that somehow it is essential for ultimate Redemption that you go through a death and then God brings you back to life so that would mean that would be a round two OFA meaning to say the first round will cover all of history and the second round will cover all the people that uh were uh alive at the time of that they're gonna have to die at some point now maybe a lot of question maybe God will kill them right away and bring them back right away so there won't be a time lag or maybe they'll live a normal life expectancy and be taken away and then come back you know honestly don't know uh but there apparently is a m if those people will have to undergo death or they will just automatically be given Eternal eternal life uh yeah back yeah in English and it's a very useful book because it summarizes and but as an example it gives a list of when one should wash one's hands it gives certain circumstances for example if you touch your hair but then you learn further that it's not simply you touch your hair you wash your hands there has to be modicum of sweat Etc so if you're just reading the at face value doesn't always literally assist you otherwise you're washing your hands all the time how would you advise one approaches the and any other books that not help in this yeah this is actually very excellent question the the abbreviated sh was written by a great great Rabbi in the 1800s Rabbi schlomo Gans who was a Hungarian Rabbi and he was a big big a big and the is quite an amazing and impressive book uh but the decisions of the kit are not always followed for example the mishura which is written later may not follow the kiter the may not follow Etc the minhag may not be like the kiter um the stringencies of Hungarian jewelry were're not necessarily the same in Poland and Germany and America and England and the like so for a lot of things the kiter is not at all a definitive source of Hal so what you need is is you need an addition of the kiter that updates it with contemporary pum so my best recommendation is Art Scroll once again art scroll comes to the rescue once again uh they put out a a in English which will give you the annotations from the mishura from rosha Feinstein from the konish and the like and will actually tell you when is standard Orthodox practice like the kiter and when is it not it's really essential because without that type of guide book uh you really will not know because although the kiter is indeed a very very fine safer and rev gonre was a very but it is it is indisputable that we do not always follow his so my recommendation is get get the Arts grow kiter and you're going to be okay yeah what is the power in a CLE why do we have to use a CLE to wash our hands or to drink out of or many other you knowas or otherwi what what is a CLE that's a very that is a very good question a CLE idea of utensil is a very important aspect of so for example uh washing your hands before bread uh the Water must be poured from a CLE you can't just uh unless un or or well if you have a Mikvah you can put your hands in a mikah that that's true but short of a Mikvah if I simply dip my hands in the sink in a basin that is not valid there has to be the pouring and has to be from a CLE and all sort of shilas is plastic considered a CLE if there's a hole in it it's no good right Etc because it has to be a CLE and the question becomes uh what is so spiritually significant about the idea of something being a a CLE like who cares I mean as long as it's water right it's water clean so what's the difference where the water comes from um you know I don't have a complete answer to that the the one thing that I think about is this this a CLE represents uh kind of man's creative Mastery over raw material that I take a raw material and I fashion it in some way whether it be metal whether it be wood whether it be plastic I made it from something that was not directly usable to something that was usable maybe the lesson is at least when we talk about uh sitting down and eating uh what I'm doing is I'm saying that even though things that I've created through my Ingenuity and my skill I acknowledge that it is from God that I was given that ability and therefore I take it and I use it to consecrate myself to Hashem as if to say I do not regard myself as an autonomous agent in the creation I regard myself as a servant of God and I do so by taking the things that I've created or some company created by its own Ingenuity and consecrating it and using it but it is ultimately still a good question uh somebody asked me this question I think it's obvious but it's a little uh there are two ways you can do one way is you pour water from a CLE onto your hands the other way is you can dip your hands in a mikah you dip your hands in a Mikvah and that's if it's a kosher mikah so somebody said is it only if you dip your hands what what if I go to the Mikvah does that mean I go to the Mikvah I can eat bread without uh without washing my hands because I went to the Mikvah now it seems logical I think although I couldn't find it beish that hey uh if dipping my hands is good then when I'm in a Mikvah I my hands are in the mikah the only thing is that generally speaking when you get dressed you know you you you'll tend to touch areas that are normally covered so you'd have to wash again for that reason but assuming that you know you wouldn't do that theoretically uh one could go to the Mikvah and then eat bread without uh without having to do because that would be n inas because I I didn't see any principle that it has to only be your hands and not not the rest of your body so that's an interesting hor to be aware of yeah back the whole discuss about everything that's like more I guess in the more idealistic way now I guess like L said like post facto that we have a Jewish econ State um what is what is so controversial about seeing um the this I guess the fact that there's there is so much hor there so much what is what should be our response to that mean what are we supposed to do about that like fact that's already done yeah so so this this is really I think very much illustrated by kabad itself I had mentioned that the rebi rashab that's ra Shalom be schneerson who died in the 1920s uh actually wrote that it was forbidden uh to have a Jewish State until mhia comes and that's called a rebellion against Hashem right very much like the position now we know that R Merson the last rebi was a very big supporter of the state of Israel of the army he was against giving any Terr H's back he was absolutely adamant against it so how do you explain it I mean is he just repudiating uh what his great grandfather Grand whatever his his relative or predecessor rebby said so I think the the understanding is it's exactly along the lines that you're suggesting the rebi didn't say it so much but I I would take the have the nerve to say that perhaps it would have been better had there not been a state of Israel but but once there is a state of Israel and once you have millions and millions of Jews living here we have a sacred responsibility not to endanger their lives and to allow for the building of Torah and Ras to the greatest degree you might call this I could even coin a term you might call this pragmatic rather than ideological Zionism it's not ideological in the sense that we have a state we're independent but it's it's an after the fact type of recognition that hey we're all here we got to do the best that we can so that's not the same as but that's simply saying whenever you have a lot of Jews in any one place you got to try to create the environment that's best for them so I think that's very true now they tell a story I love this story and I really really uh hope it's true I'm told it's not true so don't send me emails that the story is not true I know that but I'm going to tell you story because it does illustrate something and I really I actually do hope it's true but again a lot of evidence says it's not actually true uh those of you that remember American history you may remember Richard Nixon and you may remember that uh the candidate that ran against him in 1968 was Lyndon Johnson's Vice President yubert Humphrey yubert Humphrey was a liberal from Minnesota he was a Zionist way before 1948 he was a big supporter of the state of Israel uh in those days Democrats used to support Israel not like not like today uh and he was told when he was running against Nixon that there's a large group of Jews in Williamsburg that come out in Mass to vote so he ought to go there these are s so he goes to Williamsburg and he has he has an interpreter to speak in yish and he gives a speech about I support the Zionist State Zionism and my life has been devoted to Zionism uh for you know five decades and there's no Zionist as strong as I am and he was a little concerned because these are hearing all of these words you know know Z and they're they're not like they're not like getting excited so uh one of his Jewish AIDS realized that something's wrong and then he figured out what it was that this is not the crowd that you talk to about Zionism so he goes over to the SAT rebbi and he says you know please please forgive you know Humphrey has good intentions he just was ignorant about the Reby shos and everything else and the S rebbi was smiling and the S rebbi said listen here's the thing I'm against the state of Israel there shouldn't be a state of Israel I hope for the peaceful dismantlement of the state of Israel I'm against it but as long as there are Jews I don't want to sing s Le Jew's life to be in danger so if we have to give weapons to the Israeli Army so that Jewish lives don't get killed I want those weapons to go so I support every I I want the state to be dismantled but I support every single military aid that you're giving because I don't want any any Soldier to be hurt uh it's a beautiful story because basically it says yeah I'm against the state I'm not against the Jews I want the Jews to be protected they tell another story with the SAR rebbi which is maybe even better the SAR rebbi there was once like somebody who gave a talk about uh Israel you know ought to be dismantled Etc so somebody said to something re here here you have you have this politician just like you he says like this he says listen I'm against the state because I know this gar that GAR these these this guy doesn't know any of that why is he against the state he's just an anti-semite he say so so what's my what's my connection to him he said I have mcus I have reasons I have lumus he has no lumus so he's against it he just hates juice right so there's a difference there difference there as well he was very was a brilliant and very very sharp very very uh stute yeah and during the times of the Sanhedrin what was the penalty for someone who uh performed an illegal abortion yeah so this is very interesting this is a very curious dichotomy between the noahide codes and the Torah laws the noahide code is what pertains to Gentiles and the Torah law is what applies to the Jewish people and paradoxically the noahide law is stricter under the laws of the seven Commandments of Noah if a Ben Noah performs an abortion that was not permitted it is a capital offense for which he would could get the death penalty if a Jew performs an abortion that is not permitted it is a prohibited offense but it is not a capital offense and in fact there is no designated punishment other than financial liability uh and that would depend if if uh on whether the father agreed to the abortion now there's there's a general rule in the Torah that if you kill the fetus you have to pay the Father the damage but if the father consented to the abortion that that wouldn't be the case right so that would depend so it's a little strange that the laws of abortion are stricter for non-js than they are for juice and that throws into a wrench conceptually I don't want to get into too much because this is uh a whole whole Shear the tyr does not allow abortion okay granted but what's the halic theory is abortion murder is that why it's forbidden or is abortion something else whatever else that would be now here's the argument if a abortion would be murder then it ought to be a capital crime like murder the very fact that it's not a capital crime indicates that a fetus is actually not a person but it is a potentiality of a person and the Torah says you have to respect the potentiality that it could become but it's not murder and that explains another anomaly that I don't know if you were thinking about this this I had mentioned that the one hak permissibility of abortion that is indisputed or Undisputed is you can abort a fetus if the mother's life is in danger now think about that that actually doesn't make sense because the generally is you're not allowed to kill One Life to save another life so why would why why would I be allowed to kill the fetus I'm a doctor kill the fetus to save the mother isn't that the rule that you don't kill one person to save another in other words what is the halic logic that you can that the mother's life has precedence over the fetus's life Rashi says Rashi says because the fetus is not really a life the fetus is only a potential so although you can't kill an actual life to save an actual life you can terminate a potential life to save an actual life now that's what Rashi says rambam gives another reason rambam says that the conceptual basis for killing the killing the fetus to save the mother is if the fetus is the source of the endangerment the fetus is a Roda the fetus like threatening the mother's life although it's an involuntary Roda so those are two different rationals but at least according to Rashia you clearly see that abortion is not the same as murder and that is why it is not a capital crime okay so uh that much is yeah um in terms of uh kadish and toila I was wondering if the Rob could explain like the purposes and differences of the different uh and then where they're placed and why in the like the present day along with the like the sign the significance of like the amount per type of CSH right um and then lastly when we can or should respond to them if we're like not with this the speed of the seore and we're behind and we're saying something else like that along with boru other responses yeah yeah yeah there's a lot of questions in in that uh let me just make one one uh simple Point first that is Kadesh people associate with the MERS Kadesh the Kadesh over the dead and the like Kadesh has nothing to do with dead people uh Kadesh appears many many times in daving in many many different forms uh and essentially Kadesh marks the conclusion of a service as a period at the end of a sentence or sometimes a semi colon that divides different parts of a service so the kades is a semicolon and the Kadesh sh is a period by that I mean when you're making a break between and the of but you're still dingak so the way we signify that break is with what's called thees right that's the break similarly when we finish the Torah reading but we're going to continue with Ash and the like we have so kades is when you're dividing different uh parts of the service and the purpose is to kind of sanctify God's name we finished an activity let's sanctify God's name with the h kades sh is at the conclusion of a service Shak that is uh Shak after well again shakas is officially over after right so we say after and the the main characteristic of kades is the addition of the phrase Tel accept the prayers of Israel that's the conclusion of Shak the conclusion of Min after Tak and the conclusion of MV after the now you'll notice interestingly enough that the kades sh is positioned differently for Shak and the kades sh ofak is after thead of is after thead shom of is after now obviously in my you don't have and you don't have so that's why you do it there but the one thing you'll notice in all three is that the Kadesh sh is recited before alen after ALU we often recite the mourner's Kadesh which is a full kades minus the sentence so the truth of the matter is alenu is not really part of the service alenu was added later it's a very important prayer it is a very important prayer uh but it is not really a of and that's why the is before that point so if the Kadesh is designed to split different parts of a service Kadesh which is called kades is designed to end a service by asking Hashem to accept our prayers now if you forgot to say kades shal after then you will say kades shal after aleno and even after the Yom whatever whatever it would be now Kadesh is a Kadesh now this is a little bit of a problem that theoretically is supposed to be recited every time you finish your Torah learning at least if it's a or the like now that would mean you now why don't why don't we say a kestra and after every morning Sater or after every afternoon CER uh I don't know I don't really have the answer so much uh because the Kadesh is for learning but we only use it at certain times primarily for MERS to give them an extra Kadesh but theoretically it can be used all of the time uh what is the most important part of kadish there is no question whatsoever that the line may God's name be blessed may his great name be blessed forever and ever is the most important line of kades say anyone that answers with all of his strength which means all of his kavana then even if God forbid there's an evil decree that's been on the books for 70 years Hashem rips it up I think I mentioned before that um I remember the very first time uh I visited aiva I was like in sixth grade and Rabbi Rosen bam who actually comes to D here now kind of took the boys took the kids to visit AA visit Nel which kind of why I went to n Isel and uh the first time I heard y Rab in the Yeshiva Bas medish was so different than what I remembered in the Young Israel or whatever it would be that people were literally saying it out loud with a lot of enthusiasm it made a great impression now you know you get used to it after a while so I can't say I I still have that same impression as I had more than 50 years ago uh but is a very very important point so as a result going back to your last question about interruptions I mean check the article C there are a lot of details but generally when it comes to answering Kadesh the two things that you need to be meticulous on is and at the end of the end of what would be even that last domain is important so those two you will you will actually answer almost everywhere you are even in the middle of shma at least if you're at the end of a PK everything else you will often not answer if you're in a place that you're not allowed to interrupt okay so Kadesh does have those two most important parts uh the rest is important but not of the same same if you're like in the middle of T oh no no so there so there are many differences so so so for you answer virtually everything in kades in you only you only answer and the the after the if you happen to be between and you answer nothing and in you answer nothing in there is nothing that you answer the only exception would be kadus if if if if you are up to kadus up to kadus when the Kaz is up to kadus you say kadha with the Kaz but if you're not up to the kadosha or you're after kadosha you simply uh be silent you remain silent have to be with but you do not say anything in the AM You Say Nothing at All The Only Exception would be if you're up to kadha or if you're the when the Kohan are you say after the three says but you do not say am to the why is theah of having kids only for men and why is the curse childbearing on yeah so uh the mitvah r is a very strange Mitzvah there's a Mitzvah to have children or at least try to have children but the Mitzvah is only on a man the Mitzvah is not on a woman now obviously a man cannot have kids by himself so he has to find a woman who wants to have kids but the woman is not to have kids why is that so so uh there are two reasons and they they move in opposite directions actually well well well the first reason is how do you know that you know that because the teror describes PR or Vu as conquering PR or Vu be fruitful multiply mil fil the land the shua and Conquer it so having kids is called Conquest anyone that's a parent understands you know you got to conquer this hostile Force there and since con Conquest is a male activity not a female that's how we exclude women because a woman is not involved in Conquest now that's the derivation what's the logic so there are two opposite soras that are given SAR number one is is that since childbirth is a Sak pregnancy and childbirth endanger the life of a woman so Hashem is never going to command you to do something that endangers your life Hashem can command me as a man to find a woman who willingly wants to endanger her life but Hashem is not going to command a woman you must put your life in danger that is what the says others give an opposite reason and they say that the maternal yearning of a woman for a child is stronger than again these are generalizations but is generally stronger than the yearning of a man to have children part of it might be a man has indefinite time a man can have a child at 90 a woman has a biological clock so there's a greater sense of urgency So based on that difference the maternal instinct is stronger the Tyra did not give a myth to a woman because that is something she would naturally gravitate to do anyway so she doesn't need the push of a Mitzvah a man who might think I'll just take my time Hashem says no you got to get to it as soon as you're able to do it right so that would be a difference of the maternal Instinct now the gives a third reason which is very very fascina listen to this reason we know according to before Ram's enactment a man could have two wives but a woman can only have one husband so if a man marries a woman and a woman cannot have children he doesn't have to divorce his wife he can just take another wife so putting the Mitzvah on the man does not destroy a marriage but if we put a Mitzvah on a woman and let's say a woman marries a man who can't have kids but she could have kids since a woman does not have the option of another husband the only alternative available to her would be to get a divorce the Tyra does not want to situate the Mitzvah in such a way that it would compel the breakup of a marriage by putting prer Vu on the man it is not necessitating a breakup of a marriage by putting it on the woman it would have necessitated the breakup you understand the idea because uh if I as a man marry a woman who can't have children I don't have to divorce my wife but I'll fulfill puru by another wife but if a woman married a man who cannot have children if she would have a she would be forced to leave her husband and the Tor doesn't want to make that type of system and the applies the the torah's ways are ways of pleasantness now the truth is this is a beautiful in IUS explanation but Lisa practically it's no longer true because under the ban of renam a askanazi man is not allowed to have two wives and that would actually mean therefore that if a man married a woman who could not have children he might be obligated uh to divorce his wife so unfortunately we're BFA in a system that would not have been optimal but we are that the says that although Medina a get might have been required we do not compel husbands to divorce wives because the wives are not able to have uh children yeah stop learning or the enti to stop learning yeah that's an interesting point we had the siren uh last night and today in honor of or in memory of the soldiers who had fallen in defense of medat Israel and army Israel uh and then last week uh the end of Nissan we had ywa Holocaust Memorial Day where also had a siren and the light and the custom in Israel is that everybody stops what they're doing it's like those uh movies where time freezes you know uh even the bus I happen to be on a bus last night when the siren and the bus just stopped in the middle of middle of traffic and the like people get out of their cars uh everything like that uh so number one I did make the point which is obvious but I'll say it again if you are outside and you are being seen by other people you absolutely positively must stop if you do not stop it is a that is to me P okay but the question is let's say I'm not outside I'm in my office I'm in the base medish I'm in the middle of a she there's no non-religious people that are watching me or photog in me or the like am I intrinsically supposed to stop what I'm doing uh to stand up so uh the truth is you're not now I would differentiate depends what you're doing if you're learning Torah uh you're in a Shear or you're even at a Mader I would say there's no reason to stop other than if nobody's watching you I don't think if on the other hand you know uh I don't know you're watching TV or you're eating a Falafel whatever it is then I think uh maybe remembering the Fallen Soldiers uh might be more important than finishing that phael or the like now I would say that if you're learning and not getting up uh you can have a thought in your mind that may this learning be an elevation for the nishas and that'll be just as good as standing up you know there are people who wrote sh us that the whole idea of standing up moment of silence is really that was not the Jewish way of mourning that is not a Mourning ritual Etc so they so they actually tell people not to do it but once again if it's in public you got to take into account you know Israel even though we've grown a lot Israel is still a small country and almost everybody knows somebody who knows somebody maybe three degrees that lost someone in one of the wars or through terrorism uh whether it's a parent or whether it's a child or whether it's a sibling or whether it's a friends so it's important that besides theak uh not to step on people's memories not to kind of behave as if it doesn't matter that somebody died in the defense of of arel but I I don't see a per se um of standing up in the middle of a year if there's no so there's um the idea that you're supposed to stand up for elders and down the age someone above the age of 70 and say you work places or you're in an area where there's a lot of elderly people passing by to what extent do you have to get up and yeah that that's a very excellent question uh logically you know there's no particular excuse not to get up if it happens a million times happens a million times but the HRA that we use not to do that uh is the idea that it's understood in most of society that the Zak is Mo and does not expect you to do it and M is valid same thing with parents according to you are supposed to stand up every time your parent enters a room so if you're living at home every time a mother or father come into a room you are obligated to stand up now it's very very rare even in the most firm households that that's going to happen I mean you're living at home with Etc and the heter is that the parents are we assume our generally Mo that would be the header there there as well um but you're right technically there is no heter now I remember reading AA from and I don't understand the I mean it makes sense to me but I don't know why it makes sense to me I mean it makes sense pragmatically but Hally I'm not sure you know there is a that when a poor person directly asks you for Stucker directly says something you have to give him something you're not allowed to just walk by him you can give him a she you can give him very little but you have to give him something so moer said that when he lived in a small town before he came to vilna every time he would see an Oni he would always give but he said in vilna that became impossible kind of like here because every uh every two feet you know somebody puts out his hand says in such a situation you're putcher I mean it makes I mean I understand because otherwise you'd be giving out money the whole day but I'm not sure why you're putcher I'm not sure what the heter is and how crowded it has to be he said the same thing about saying good morning thear says about r that r no nobody ever greeted ran before ran greeted them he greeted everybody first and even even a in in the marketplace greet said he used to greet everybody but in vill it was impossible what do you do you're walking by I mean you're walking at Ben Street hi hi hi hi hi yeah so and some point there is a realization that you can't do it but I I I don't know exactly you know how you define that situation but there is that so just swear yeah says like we know like in Judaism the more older a person gets the more you respect him and so I can pick over here like the more it gets more more like kind of cynical kind like yeah this is a hard mission right the and goes through the different the different stages of man when you're five you start learning 10 Mna and 15 gar and then 20 you get you know 18 you get married 13 is mitzvos and 18 you get married Etc it goes through all the ages and it goes all the way to 100 and each age all right so by 90 already it says you know 80 is Inner Strength he says 90 is your bent over okay it's already a little pessimistic then 100 says Ah it's as if you're dead and no longer no longer in the world so you know you read that literally and it's kind of saying oh the guy's 100 you know he's already a goner um so obviously that's not the case obviously first of all for a person to live to 100 in ancient times was I mean in the Torah people live much longer but but by the time of kazal it was not a common thing even for a person to live to 70 was a very big big accomplishment but the way it's understood is that a person has to meaning he has to think about the fact that by definition his time is limited and therefore his AA right now is Chua meaning there's a time in your life where you're still supposed to be I mean cha we have to think about all the time but there's a time in my life where my energies have to be directed to a lot of outside things by the time you hit that age the outside world is not your perview anymore your world has to be your internal world so it's really giving a person a message think about your internal R because you're going to be meeting Hashem very very soon so it's not putting him down it's just giving him a sense of what his mission is at that point that's also important psychologically because let me explain something one of the issues that uh we face in old age is we do face you know diminished capacities we can't all the stuff that we used to do we can't do it God still young so you haven't experienced it but it's a reality it's a reality and that can make a person very depressed oh I used to be able to do this I used to be able to do this but you have to understand Hashem gives you a different role at each stage in your life so the fact that I can't do what I did when I was at a younger stage doesn't mean my life is without value it just means I got a find a new value for my life so here you have a 100-year old person there's not that much a 100y old person can really do but he can focus on his R and that's his job now I remember reading something about GI that uh it's very sad on one level but to me it was also very very moving towards the end of his life and he was not 100 but he was older he was not a was a brilliant AAL and he had complicated Shor p p him but at some point uh menure something he just couldn't he couldn't do that any so he used to sit in the Bas medish and all he could do was learn gamar and Rashi and he would learn gamar and Rashi the whole day and somebody I don't know how somebody brought it up somebody said Gee it must be so sad that you used to be in all the and all the now you only learnin rashan he said no it reminds him of when he was a young teenager you're just beginning to learn gamorra where he didn't yet know all the mafor and it was just the pure joy of just learning and he said he's able to experience that again so he said he feels like he felt when he was 12 years old or 13 years old and that's an extraordinarily beautiful statement because on one hand he was so much more limited than he had been but he saw the joy in it he saw the goodness in it he saw the BR in it that's the Madre I mean that's one of the reasons why he was a guttle because it's not just a guttle because he was brilliant he was a gutle because he saw the the goodness of Hashem even in the difficulties in his life that's something to think about when you're 190 you know because you know you will have diminished I mean listen I I mean I I know it now you have diminished capacities in in various ways but you have to redefine the uh the mission yeah it seems to me that often times when P there what is it's good to take the opinion more that say both opinions so I was wondering withal you know if there's a subject whether isal or not doost um and your y say multiple opinions do it yeah you know I I uh you know this is a really really excellent question and I I've raised this many many times that I don't wear but I don't know why I don't wear I can't really defend it other than the GM have not told me to wear it and that is it seems to be a no cost proposition uh because it either is or it isn't okay so let's assume that it's a 50/50 all right so if I'm wearing that is I'm just restating your question I have a mitv if it's not I have BL sites but BL sites are not puzzle right now the rad does say should be white except for the but that's a that's not a so even if there's only a 50% chance even if there's only a 10% chance even if there's only a 5% chance why shouldn't I wear just in case because there's no downside if theot would be fake would Poss that it is then I could say h if I don't know I'm not going to do something that causes me to lose the mitzvah but if that's not the case and that is not the case then why not very excellent question I don't have a clear answer I mean the answer that people give well one answer is well if it's not you're transgressing the AA of adding to the Torah bosf I I honestly I honestly do not that does not make sense to me at all because if I'm doing something because maybe it's a Mitzvah there's no B of if me you're doing something to be say Mitzvah so is not another thing people say is that they're so sure that this is not that it's not a suff it's not a 1% chance it's a 0% chance I heard Rabbi Risman not not our Rabbi Risman Risman of well he's also our Rabbi RIS with Flatbush uh just said don't have to worry tus because there's zero chance that it's tus well I agree that if it's zero chance that it's you don't have to wear it I agree but how can he say there's a zero chance I mean the articles are written they bring rias they have proofs I mean you could argue with the proofs but but it's not frivolous it's not nonsensical but that's what he says he says it's a zero chance why do I have to follow something that's a zero chance so I'll tell you the truth I I you know I I hate to say it I don't have a good answer uh it seems to me exactly as you're saying that it's a no cost preposition yeah is it possible that the 0% chances rely on their Aro in other words because the Aral says that we're not going to have till mashia comes so automatically it got to be well okay all of a sudden but but all of a sudden uh the lfish have become a kubal you know you know all there's plenty of things theal says that that that are not followed now maybe I I shouldn't say that okay I'll say it because I I say things but um the the innovat first of all you understand that there two basic Tes out there I hope you know this there is uh reden tus which is used by breast which comes from the cuddle fish a fish and then there's Theus that comes from the murex which is a shellfish and a snail uh the r again I don't want to be mo but the has been largely discredited and uh even those who are Advocates of other than breast itself do not consider that to even be a valid option but but the murex Deus the shellfish Deus does have uh support in it and the ones that kind of brought it to the four were in the Dai Community they're the ones who pushed it and I hate to say it but sometimes in the K World there this idea if it comes from them it's got to be wrong you know so okay but say I'm sure people don't say that's an unfair accusation but I sometimes have this feeling that there's almost a gut reaction it can't be right because they said it yeah would we consider caring on shabas if you were to tell us that are not uh yeah so the question becomes if there's no AEV or you don't rely on an AEV so the question would be would the fake deas be considered carrying um almost certainly not because uh when a garment is dyed I mean listen uh you know you wear anything that has dye on it the dye is a but to the Garment so if the Garment is not carrying you don't look at the D as a separate entity so it's true that there are cases where situs can become carrying for example if your Talus got pule on chabas so wearing a pule Talus on chabas might be carrying the tius that that is correct so your concept is a correct concept but I don't think you could apply it to something like like d that is absorbed in in in the fabric yeah that's a question sent in at the what is the origin and why do people why is and rum that yeah yeah so the truth of the matter is the second question is kind of is kind of the answer to the first question first of all was the greatest the the garan Su says BR that that Hill hak the Great Hill had 80 T the lowest of them was the great R who knew everything and the highest of them was y son Ben whose kadha was so great that when he would learn Torah the Angels would come and listen and a bird who would fly over the fire of the Angels would get burnt the belt likes to say that the difference between a and a mate is What is your response to that story a would say look at the Holiness of yanis that even the angels of heaven come to hear his Torah and the bird gets burnt lak would say who has to pay for the bird who to pay if cause the bird to be burnt if the bird belongs to somebody is he or is it right so the will'll analyze it in terms of the standpoint uh but J was nominally great we have the T that is from Y and we also have on the T but that's is that because say he wrote on and not right that's who wrote the on the T but you are correct he is buried in amuka uh which is a deep deep valley near spat and it is brought down that it is a suula to pray for of course sometimes people facilitate the process a lot of people just forget their sedim there with their name address and phone number uh and uh then hopefully a member of the opposite gender wants to fulfill the Mitzvah of Hasa and say hey are you Ry you know I found your C either way boy girl girl boy I found your sitter I want to be MAA maybe we can meet at the pizza place I'm 13 AV Etc and they say marriages have happened that way uh but it is brought down I I have to go and ref refresh my memory that it is brought down that yis manil never married and as a result there was a certain loneliness in his life but he took Hisar and he said Let It Be A and A kapar for all other Jewish people who are suffering the loneliness of not following their mates and that's why he's a special for those who need a need a so it is considered to be a schooler for that but why he didn't get married I have to check I don't remember the reason uh perhaps it was similar to benaza it is recorded that when the gar discusses then aai said he didn't get married and he said what can I do my soul so much desires to learn I can't get married like we used to call uh n the older Bachelors who were not yet married we used to call them oh they're members of the benaz club uh so maybe the same I'm not sure I'll try to check and maybe get back to you uh I will say one thing about tysus I want to bring this out tyus and yamus brings from a medish that benazzi did get married but he was divorced benai married RAB aka's daughter and got divorced so here is what I think this is mish speculation I have no MC for this at all and maybe I'm just making up a Bubba my but if you were benaz benaz says I don't want to get married I want some I want to learn all I want to do is learn but I got to get married so I have to find a woman in the world who would be most tolerant of just letting me learn so he figures RAB A's daughter because RAB aa's wife let her husband go away for 24 years to learn Torah if the daughter is like her mother that's perfect wife so he married RAB aa's daughter the problem was again maybe I'm just speculating that rea's daughter saw all the pain that her mother went through and she was not prepared to live that way and therefore she needed a husband who was more there so the sh was not able to to work out again this is just m speculation but it was such a curiosity to me that BFA the woman that he married was rba's daughter and they got divorced this is what tsus brings inamas without giving us the reasons uh for any any of that okay I guess wrapping up last question yeah um as well M says it's common picture of nor with Nam written in it and B yeah however um I've only seen this in when why did this prce stop yeah yeah the issue of sh right that's the P that says I place God before me at all times to visualize the sh and there's a picture of and you can see it at the back of Sam uh that has theim and has the shame of and the like uh you'll see it in fridy shows you'll see it in some ashkanazi shows you're not going to see it that often like we don't have one here for example most isas and the question is since the Mish bre says that it was a prevalent Min of ASM to also have a sh so why did it fall out of common uh use and common uh practice um you know I I I I don't know I don't know because uh you are correct the older the older but kot in fact did have it um what happens well again I mean sometimes I just have to guess I mean I'll give you a little bit of a guess and that is what happened in the aftermath of shaps was that ashkenazic congregations tried to erase a lot of connections to cabalistic ideas because cabalistic ideas were dangerous in terms of in uh exciting false Messianic predictions uh and that is why some Minh that were in cabala kind of got discarded in the aftermath of shap I'm wondering although the mare was after that but but I'm but the mare was probably recording an earlier Source I'm wondering if that earlier Source was pre shaps because it could be that as a result of the shap some of those cabalistic Min hugan got minimized but I I'll try to check check in that