Rabbi Akiva Tatz - Truth and Faith

[Music] [Applause] [Music] so here here's the problem the word the word m we translate as faith faith or belief and the problem is that that word means something that you cannot know that's what it means the English word belief means something blind it means a leap of faith blind belief Blind Faith something that cannot be known that's what the word means the fact that you're sitting in front of me is something I know it's not something that's appropriate to call belief what's on the other side of this world we have to talk about belief I don't have direct experience of that so the word faith means something that is not known and the the fundamental question to ask is is the object of oura of our let's call it faith is it something that can be known or not and if you bring it right down to the most basic question of all it is the question about God's existence does Hashem exist or not that's a legitimate question all our commentaries are not afraid to deal with that directly and that is the place to begin the question is can you know that Hashem exists or can you not if you can know it we should we should talk about knowledge if you cannot know it why should I believe it is the question clear anyone if this is something that can be known then we should talk about the pathway to getting the knowledge it's true you might not start knowing it but any field of of inquiries like that any professional field you might start out taking it on some sort of Faith until you get a professional knowledge but we don't call it belief when I began studies as a medical student the first time I was introduced to ual clinical study so they took me into a ward a patient was sitting on the bed and they said put this thing in your ears and listen to his heart so I did that and I put it on his chest I couldn't hear the heart could not hear a heart I heard my fingers creaking I heard the buses going by in the street I couldn't hear the heart I'm going to be a doctor never even got a heart but as the years go by and you pick up experience you begin to you begin to gain the knowledge if I do that today I can hear that heart perfectly in fact I don't hear anything else I can picture the valves I can see exactly that's professional professional experience how many fields are like that so even though you may not start off knowing knowing or having the knowledge you move towards it and you call it knowledge so if there's a program of study of investigation that can take you to knowing that Hashem exists then we should talk about knowledge if we have to talk about belief it means something we can't know and then the problematic the real problem is why should I commit myself to something that cannot be known if it's some sort of a blind leap why should I do that why should I commit my life and maybe have to die one day for something that can cannot be known so um that's the question that's the question now let's put this in context because we live in a western ethos where faith is exactly something that is blindly believed the Christian the the Muslim world is a different issue here if we get time we'll talk about that but the Christian context that we find ourselves in that world defines Faith ex exactly as something that's a personal belief a personal commitment there's some sort of a leap of faith there's a personal commitment and logic is not the issue give you an example give an example some time ago I was flying from London to South Africa the long overnight flight and sitting next to me is a man who tells me that he's an Episcopalian charismatic preacher don't ask me what it is but definitely Christian okay and he spent the flight trying to convert me to Christianity okay about 2:30 in the morning he tried to show me that the founder of Christianity could fulfill the requirements for being the Messiah he could be the mhia why because one of the critical characteristics that he need is that he's descended from the House of David so he showed me at great great took great pains to show me that according to all four gospels Matthew Mark Luke and John his father Joseph the carpenter in Bethlehem the father right of JC who founded Christianity his father was descended from Yehuda from Judah through David and therefore fulfills the requirements for being the Messiah because we know mhia must be bid very very careful to show although the discrepancies in genealogy but definitely goes back to there so that Joseph the father of this man is descended from the House of David and therefore he could be the Messiah so when he got through explaining that to me I said to him but you as a Christian surely you believe that his father had nothing to do with his birth I mean uh problem so he said to me what does logic have to do with religion he wasn't being vicious he told me I was confused he told me that I was confused to look for logical evidence for a story that is a story of faith on the contrary he gave me to understand that the more illogical it is the greater The Act of Faith right that's the approach that's the approach the approach is that there's a personal commitment here it's not based on rigorous verification another way you can see this is that if you look at the um extremely popular modern subject of debating Torah and science or religion and science you'll see that almost always the protagonists in that debate are extremely well qualified scientifically and almost never have any religious knowledge at all Time Magazine For example a couple years ago they ran a debate between Richard Dawkins who's a violently atheistic biologist and Francis Collins who's I think a Nobel prize winning geneticist these two men are exquisitly highly qualified biologically scientifically neither of them has any training in religion right their their technical knowledge of religion is is less than childish how do you debate a subject at the highest intellectual level we have no training or or or technical rigorous back the idea is that in Christianity it's just a feeling right it doesn't need rigorous logical verification on the contrary it's a different category in England where I live now it's considered impolite to argue about religion how dare you argue with somebody else he's got he's got a right to his beliefs and you have a right to yours which means that if two people believe two mutually exclusive things that's fine that's cool you have a right to believe what you want you a right to believe what he wants there's no requirement that there be objectivity or verification of fact there's a personal feeling one one very nice way to see this is that here in you sh a few years ago they had a debate between science and religion and the scientific speakers was were world famous uh experts in science and the religious position was taken by Rabbi refson who's a an Englishman with a very dry sense of humor and this is how the debate went the first speaker was a world famous astrophysicist unfortunately Jewish whose great-grandfather wrote a TMI dictionary but he's very assimilated very assimilated individual and he argued the atheistic position and he began his debate like this he said ladies and gentlemen I don't know much about religion first of all can you imagine beginning a debate that way you've been invited to jalam to speak at an international level on a subject and your opening statement is you actually don't anything think about the subject in which field would that be acceptable but anyway he began like this I don't know much about religion but I think it can be summed up as do unto others as you would have them do unto you and on the basis of that assumption he gave his talk robab refson was a second speaker he got up and he said ladies and gentlemen I don't know much about astrophysics but I think it can be summed up as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star you know if you're going to debate a subject and talk about it you ought to know it by when when it comes to religion that's not a requirement that's very telling and very important to understand in Jewish thinking that's ridiculous right in our in our to our way of looking at the world the subject doesn't begin unless it's rigorously verified and stands on very strong evidence so let's try to define a Jewish approach to this subject and I think it goes like this we claim that you can know that hashm exists and then all the spin-off Concepts that come from that giving of the Torah uniqueness of the Jewish people all of those things but it begins with knowledge that hasem exists and our claim is that you can know that in fact you ought to the ram says the Mitzvah is to know God that's our claim and that leaves us with two questions one is how do you get the knowledge if our claim is that you can know that Hashem exists then the first question is how do you get the knowledge and the second is the second is why call it Faith why Call Ita if that means blind relationship that's not in the category of knowledge right those are the two questions I'd like to spend more time on the second one today but just to suggest some beginning of an approach to the first one although we don't have time to work it out fully I would say this that if you asked formally and there's much more to the subject than this but if you ask for a formal definition of how we know that asem exists what are the formal pillars of Jewish wisdom Torah there are two one is that we met him personally we met him personally at Sinai and that has a subsection which is obviously how can I rely on the story of that the transmission of that story since I wasn't there personally but the first pillar of knowledge is that we have a personal experience of God and the second is scientific Philosophical Investigation of the world around us and that's a legitimate approach many non-jews have done that as well classic Jewish sources do that too and that's a second approach but second and importance the first pillar that is met Hashem we met God personally at Sinai this this you need if you want to take the subject further you need to look it up and research it the classic Source on this is the kusari who actually approaches it on a logical basis he tries to prove it and see how their attacks stand up and that's without doubt a classic a classic Source but just to just to point a direction I'll mention just one fact about Sinai which is unique do you know that the claim that we met Hashem we met God personally is the only time in the history of mankind in the East and the West that anybody has ever claimed that God spoke to a person with more than one witness present that means no Witnesses at all if you go through all the claims of all the religions of the world and all the sects and Cults ancient and modern there's never been a claim besides ours that Hashem manifested to a person with even one witness present and for sure there lies out there there's no question right there's plenty of liars out there and no one's even had the to fake a witness know this is a verse in the Torah the Torah says has there ever been a case of Hashem taking one nation out of another as I took you out of Egypt and it depends an amazing statement it says which means has there ever been purported to be such a thing and that statement made 3,326 years ago ago is still valid nobody has even purported to have a witness remarkable thing I'm not talking about miracles I'm not talking about manipulations of nature I've seen witch doctors in South Africa do things that are physically impossible with my own eyes not talking about that I'm talking about a claim of God speaking to you Christianity begins with Paul's famous Vision on the Damascus Road Paul of tssus right the Jew Saul he came back and he told the Jews that God had spoken to him and they said and who witnessed this with you and he said no it was personal private Revelation not good enough for us Muhammad came out of his tent Allah spoke to me and here's the Quran and who witnessed this Revelation private not good enough for us you can go you can go to Utah Utah in 1880 a fellow woke up Joseph Smith and he said God's and hundreds of thousands of people follow that right on the testimony of one individual with no corroboration we are the only incident amazing claim we claim that millions of people 3.6 million Jews 7.2 million if you include the Egyptian converts millions of people who wit the same thing it's a remarkable claim but I think more relevant is what bothers most I think modern people more is how can you how can you trust the story you're talking about a story transmitted through innumerable Generations through the mids of time there's no way it could be accurate if I whisper something in your ear and you whisper it in his and you whisper it in his by the time it gets around to you have nothing to do with the original story you can show that easily so how can we trans how can we trust the story that's been transmitted through countless tellings is there any way that could be accurate the usual way this claim is made by the anti-semitic sources on this they say you know it was probably a band of Nomads some some Arabs abrahamic family in the desert you know probably smoking something very good they having uh you know experiences and that sort of uh hallucino you know that type of experience was embellished over time and today it's the Torah that's the claim the claim is it was probably some sort of charismatic experience very small and it got Amplified and embellished that's a ridiculous claim and when someone makes that claim you need know how to answer it and the answer is this first of all do you know that if you call let's take a round number and call Sin 3,200 years ago and if you call a generation 40 years which is enough time for people to tell their children and even people to tell the grandchildren which is a Mitzvah 40 divides into 3,200 how many times only 80 we're only talking about 80 generations and we know exactly who they were the rambam in his introduction to the missioner lists the leader of every single generation from Sinai to his day not only do we know who they were we have the original writings in every case and in most of those cases we have the original parchment for example if you go to if you go right here in your sh you go to the Dead Sea Scrolls the Dead Sea Scrolls are at least 2,000 years old there's a fragment of every book of the Torah there except for migil of Esther right amazing thing Raba told me that he took his children there and his 10-year-old climbed up on a box and he looked into a glass case and he started reading a scroll of Isaiah that's 2,100 years old he said ABA we learned this 10 days in school said the real Miracle is that the kid remembers what he learned 10 days ago in school but here's a child in the modern era reading a scroll of yosiah that's exactly a parchment not just the same copy text the same right you know I have an amazing I live in England now a few months ago I had the amazing privilege of going you to see the kairoa you know about this amazing amazing thing do you know in 1896 in fat in Cairo they were redecor raing the sh and the fellow Plastering the wall found a soft spot and he found himself in a room that hadn't been open for for a long long time and in this room they found 200,000 documents that the community had been keeping for 1600 years you're talking about pieces ofo you're talking about sidim you're talking aboutus you're talking abouton cheese given to carite unbelievable things I held in my own hands a piece of a sa Tor written in the year 600 600 before Islam became a religion you unbelievable thing you told me there's business letters yoseph Caro there with his signature there's letters of the Aral there 400 cuas there's there's a heon cheese given to a kite manufacturer in Cairo just before the rambam arrived and they made him swear the rabbis in Ciro made him swear on a safer toe because you know the carats didn't accept anything later right and put a stop to that you see that stops immediately the the time that he arrives unbelievable thing I held in my hands a CID of a child written in the year 11 1150 it's the only thing in Color By the way all is the rest is regular parchment this is a beautiful colored sudu and on the first page the child has practiced Al Al Al B B B and then he has a little picture of himself on his camel you're talking about documents you can hold in your hands they going back to the year 600 which are exactly you're talking about a chain of transmission where we can pinpoint every step and we have complete corroboration do you know that the difference between ashkanazi and Andor is one letter the the word d it's spell with Al with it's not bad for 3,200 years so you're talking about Jews all over the world sitting down said telling their children first of all can you imagine all Jews agreeing if that isn't miraculous I don't want nothing compared to that Jews in Tunis and Yemen and Poland telling their children exactly the same story and exactly the same words unbelievable corroboration by the way I saw haod there from the year 900 and something the the ha has five questions the has five questions it also has a fifth question how come we don't eat roasted meat on this night same ha as we have the fifth question as well corresponding to the five cups anyway so you're talking about a chain of transmission that has unbelievable corroboration and therefore we we talking about a completely different order of transmission and verification among a people who are naturally extremely skeptical but that's a subject for investigation that needs to be done and there's also Philosophical Investigation which we don't have time to go into now either perhap just point out one detail there is that most of the arguments that are brought from science and philosophy the pattern of argument like the argument from design for example it's very important to know that all of those those arguments are second rate in terms of our evidence and one of the reasons is that they're all negative they're all um exclusion they're all arguments by exclusion right for example the argument from design the argument from design says that it complex structure such as the universe could not have come about by accident in other words you can impune the notion right that it's accidental you can't prove God directly you can prove that the alternative is is problematic which is you know in mathematics you can either prove a thing by der ation which means you build it up from first principles or you can have two options and prove that one is impossible so by exclusion you prove the other they're both rigorously accurate and and and reliable but the difference is this when you prove a thing by derivation you end up understanding it when you prove a thing by exclusion you end up proving that the opposite is true and no idea what it is all you know is that the alternative don't right and if there's a leap of faith perhaps perhaps that's where we should begin thinking about it but be that as it may we claim that it's a rigorous study that is necessary one needs to investigate this and our claim is that this ought to be a knowledge and not a belief by the way it's critical to understand that when we talk about knowledge we do not mean absolute knowledge we do not claim that you can know that Hashem exists absolutely that's very important to know that and the reason is because the human mind not capable of absolute knowledge it's not because the evidence is weak it's because you can never know anything absolutely all you can ever have is good enough evidence you can never have knowledge I mean I'll give you a simple example let me ask you a question are you awake right now I mean those of you who are are you awake right now okay are you sure okay are you absolutely sure no you might be back in your room dreaming sleeping dreaming that you're listening to a wonderful talk on the subject of IM and you think you're awake when you dream you think you're awake that's why you can go through ecstasy in a dream or abject Terror if you knew it was a dream you wouldn't be terrified right so you can't even know you're awake the famous philosopher Russell proved that you can't even prove that the world is more than 5 minutes old maybe the world popped into existence minutes ago with all your memories in place I mean these things shouldn't bother you if they bother you seriously you know you need therapy but you know the point is that from a formal point of view rigorous analytical philosophical point of view can never know anything absolutely all you can ever ask for is good enough evidence right and important things life life and death things like like flying on a plane you trust a pilot you trust a surgeon you do something really dangerous like get married I mean whatever it is you never have absolute knowledge somebody who says Rabbi I accept 95% evidence in the rest of my life but in religion I want 100% I cannot deliver the goods I can't satisfy that request if the person asks me for evidence as compelling as other areas I can begin to deal with that by the way the ramban says that the evidence we have in religion is not as good as it is in mathematics and engineering says that openly in his introduction to the work on the balamore so when it comes to theological knowledge we talking about a knowledge that is called compelling evidence and an honest person will predicate his actions on on evidence as compelling as he predicates other actions that's an honest person we can deal with him but a person who wants 100% and he knows that his mind's not capable of 100 other areas that that we can't do and therefore we're talking here about a working knowledge and by the way for those of you involved in Outreach I think it's a serious mistake when people advertise come to my seminar you know my Outreach seminar you walk in on Friday afternoon as a as a as a skeptical cynical atheist and you walk out Sunday night as a fanatic extreme right-wing person blow drying his pis you know I think that's a mistake because I think when people advertise proof and they don't deliver they leave people worse off than they were before I don't think we should be advertising proof we should be advertising compelling evidence right evidence is excellent amazing but to advertise proof and they leave a person walk out feeling it wasn't completely proved I think there's a Mist a mistake in agenda and I don't think it I don't think does anyone any good personally so part one we claim that AEM his knowledge can be known and there's an agenda of work that needs to be done to get to that knowledge but I'd like to spend the time we have this morning on something else and that is why do we call it faith and this requires concentration because this is not familiar territory if our approach is based on rigorous study and coming to know in a way where the evidence is as good as other fields of human inquiry then why do we call this faith and the answer is this the word EMA is not translated as faith we translate as Faith because we listen we live in a Christian world so our language is is is rolent with the values of a culture language isn't only a way of communication it's also a something that Steeps you in a culture and so when we say faith when we translate amon's faith we do like the King James Bible so we have in our heads a Christian kind of a faith that's a wrong translation here's the right translation this will take you much further the word Amai should be translated not as Faith but as faithfulness it doesn't mean faith it means Loyalty amona means to be loyal it means to know something and then be loyal to the knowledge first of all textually textually when you get time go through the text of tanak and find the times when the Torah used the word IM and see honestly how it can be translated Moses holding his hands up right M holding his hands up in the battle against Amal as long as his hands are in are up we win the battle when his hands sink we lose the battle and the Torah says his hands were till the sun went down his hands were Faith it's impossible to can't slate that way his fans were faithful they stayed put amona means a tenacious loyalty an attachment to duty that doesn't move it doesn't mean blind belief what's not worth hasem is speaking to AB and during the conversation it says b and the King James Bible says it means and he believed in God Abraham believed in God a prophet doesn't believe in God he knows he's speaking to him it means he was loyal to this God even when asked to kill his own child we're not talking about blind belief the M says that when God created the world the MJ says God believed in his world and created it God believed in his world that means he believed it means he was loyal to the project there was an aspiration and a definition of destination and he did it all the way through means to be it means to be loyal it doesn't mean blind belief let's think about this how does this work that means you get a knowledge and then there's a loyalty to the knowledge that's required but why what fool would see a direction clearly see all the evidence and have it as clear as it gets in the human human capacity and then completely ignore it and walk in the opposite direction completely betraying the truth that he knows who would do that what fool would do a thing like that and the answer is you with all due respect because we are built in that way we are built in such a way that you can know a thing clearly and completely betray it and walk in opposite direction the Greeks in classical Greek thinking they call this the problem of acaia acaia means the gap between the head and heart right right in Old philosophical language it was called incontinence it means inability to hold the project all the way through there's a gap between The Head and the Heart Is a fundamental thing to understand there's first of all the head that needs to gain Clarity and there's a second work of character that needs to take that that Clarity all the way through into action it's a completely separate agenda we built in such a way that we can see a thing clearly and completely I'll give you an example I see a lot of dubious faces ever tried dieting here's how Diet Works on the one hand there's your Clarity right you see the direction see you have to go self-image next summer on the FR Beach you know like uh self-respect relationships like clear and you know exactly what you have to do and if you do it you'll get there would you call that a Clear Vision clear strong motivation Clear Vision and on the other hand there's this little chocolate wedged thing with a bit of cream and a cherry which represents 10 seconds of pleasure during which you'll feel like an idiot and a minute later you're looking at a plate that is licked clean there's not even a lick of chocolate how did that happen how did that happen you had an agenda you had a Clarity you knew exactly what you had to do the alternative was absolutely pathetically ridiculously childish how did you fall for it you know when I was a a junior intern in surgery one of the first patients I ever had in the hospital where I was working was a patient with Burger's disease this disease is an Exquisite sensitivity to nicotine and cigarette smoke people who have this disease if they smoke their blood vessels close down first their fingers fall off then their hands fall off in multiple amputations there's not one recorded case in a nonsmoker this man was a 45-year-old highly intelligent engineer he was smoking he came into our Ward because his leg was Blue the main artery supplying his leg had been closing four black toes we had to cut off that day and this man knew that if he carried on smok him we have to cut his leg off he knew more about the disease than we did the man carried on smoking and 3 weeks later we forced to do an above knee amputation the next time I saw him I was a senior intern in surgery and I remember seeing him being wheeled down the hospital Corridor in a wheelchair with no legs smoking on his way to losing an arm by the way when I mentioned this to a colleague in New York he told me he's got a friend who's a vascular surgeon he had a patient like this when he lost his second arm he had them rig up some wire on the wheelchair so you could carry on smoggy but you're talking about sansy with get that thinking clear leg cigarette H cigarette leg throw away the cigarette leg live man husband father walk leg or 30 seconds of pleasure during which you'll feel the cold Hand of Death how could you get that wrong how could you get that wrong and the answer is it's a long way from here to here or here whatever the problem is there are two efforts of character that are required one is tenacious attachment to the study program to get it clear clarification verification corroboration examination of evidence but that's not enough once it's clear there's no guarantee it will come down into action the organs of action have their own agenda you know the zor says amazing thing the zor says that they're two departments to truth and Faith the zor says this thing here truth is called male and this thing faith is called female and only together with a marriage of the two are you integrated human being the Z puts this whole clumsy discussion that I'm trying to go through with you in four words the Z says e who Ms the he he is truth and she is Faith what does that mean it means this there's a male effort of clarification by the way this is traditionally why men study talmud the object the reason you study talmud is to gain clear thinking you do not learn gamorra to learn the outcomes you want the output the outcome you look in the code of Jewish law the gor is there to teach you how to think clearly by the way the gor is there to teach you how to not think unclearly the gor doesn't present things clearly the gor presents the wrong things and shows you how to see through them the G doesn't give you the G gives you H minut what you would think and then it shows you where it's wrong teachers do not accept the world at face failure and then when you punched through to a new level of clarity don't accept that either it's that rigorous training and stripping away the facade from reality but once you've done that that male work there's a second work that's required and probably it's the more difficult work and that's bringing it down into action and that's a female work how does this how does this operate there are many ways to show this I mean the model of course according to cabalistic sources the model is that when a child is conceived there's male and female components and you see it clearly the male component is instantaneous the male component involves no tenacious attachment to anything there's no pain there's no suffering there's no the male component is giving half a genetic code that's all that's all that's required the rest is all female day after day of a pregnancy ending in difficulty and danger and pain and risk and crisis and all of that is the female when you hold a new newborn child in your hands it's all come from the mother there's nothing there from the Father the father's contribution is a theoretical half a gene that's all the entire body of the child is built by the mother right and there's two completely opposite poles there's the male which is an explosion of potential you know I'll never forget the incredible experience of having to dissect a human embryo you know that you know that the organs that form seed come from the kidneys piece of the kidney breaks off and starts moving down in the body right and in the male they become organs that form seed by the billion and the same tissue in the female becomes organs that form eggs one at a time and you can count every one a woman ovulates every month of a fertile years she'll use every single last one and when male meets female you're talking about an explosion of billions meeting one only the beauty of the male is UN endless energy the curse of the male is only potential the curse of the beauty of the female something's real and alive in the world the curse of the female only this one all the rest has died complete opposite P nothing in common at all mess a point of origin no hard work required at all no staying power at all energy potential and female is the long road of the work that's done with all the pain and difficulty that tenacious attachment to a project that takes it all the way through to fulfillment that's the female you know the amazing Source on this you know the is old talic dictionary rash quotes it puts it like this you should look this up the maral has a fantastic analysis of this very straightforward simple Hebrew and he says this we won't have time today to go through it fully but just to point a direction the AR puts it like this it's incredible Source look it up in auna the says there was a young woman who went to visit her father they dressed in a finest and she was wearing a jewelry every detail here is critical but just the general gist of this this is called the story of the Bor and Thea the bore and Thea the bore is a pit in the ground and AA is a wild ferret or a wild cat or a weasel some sort of dangerous small and by the way the cabalist say that the Bor and Thea are female and male also but without getting into that this girl was going to visit her father and on her journey to see her father she strayed into her Wilderness and in that desert she got lost and she accidentally fell into a boar and she was a bottom of this pit she couldn't climb out she certainly would have died there but as she cried it so happened that a young man was walking there and he heard her cries he walked over to the pit and he looked down he saw a woman he said who are you she said her name she was a Jewish girl he was a Jewish young man he was a coin in fact he said to her are you human he thought maybe she was one of the Twilight Zone shading creatures of the desert semi human she said I'm human he said make an oath swear how would that help by the way would a liar swear that he's going to wouldn't a liar swear that he's telling the truth but the dark side cannot use hashem's name you have you make it sure you have to use hashem's name and and she did he said fine I believe you now if I save you will you marry me so she said yes she didn't have much Choice did she so he lifted her out of the pit and he wanted to consummate the marriage on the spot see we're talking maless here you understand this is a story of male and female so she said that's not decent that's not how we behave I'll go back to my town and prepare for the wedding you go back to your town and give me time to prepare then after enough time you come and meet my parents and then we'll get married so young man agreed but before parting they wanted to make a vault right a a Jewish engagement but to do that in Jewish law you need witnesses there were no Witnesses was a wasteland so they decided to take the only two things that were present to be their Witnesses the bore into which she had fallen and AA that was running past by the way this is a deep subject this is this is parallel to the Torah where M makes Heaven and Earth which are also male and female and also non-human witnesses to the Jewish people there's a lot lot to talk about here but they they they promised each other that they would marry and the Bor and the would be their Witnesses and they parted she went back to her town and began preparing for the wedding he went back to his town and forgot forgot it's even more humiliating than that the says which means as soon as she was out of sight he forgot sometime later he met another woman he got married she became pregnant she had a child the child fell into a bore and died she became pregnant again she had a second child child Was Bitten bya and at that point the woman turned to her husband she said this is bizarre what does this mean and then he remembered the story of the Bora and the and he told her and she said if that's true you divorce me and you go back and you find the woman that you promised all those years before you see it's a woman who teaching him and a woman is waiting all says he divorced her and he he made his way back to the town that he remembered the girl had said she came from and when he entered the town he found her father and her father said unfortunately you can no longer see her she's become insane The Waiting has made her insane people go near she shreds their clothing she's just completely become insane but he begged to be allowed to see the girl he entered the room where she was she started shredding his clothes insane he said to her Bor Ander she recognized him and then she revealed to him that she'd been pretending to be insane so that nobody else could marry her cuz she was waiting says they're married they had children they had a happy life together what's being taught here male female what's the male quality verification absolute verification let's get it clear let's get it absolutely clear I want you to swear instantaneous Gra ification immediate results staying power zero nothing the female clarification zero no's no idea where she is wonders in the desert hopelessly lost useless staying power total unbelievable you gave a word you gave a commitment it's got nothing to do with logic what are the chances it's going to come back years later that's not the issue the issue is you you have a commitment and you stay with it these are are two opposite poles the first is clarification it works only in the instant it's absolute clarity as absolute as it gets flash of light and then there's the darkness you know the rambam says that life is like standing on a dark plane on a stormy night you stand there beaten by the wind lashed by the rain hopelessly lost and at your moment of greatest despair unexpectedly there's a flash of lightning and in that flash of lightning you see the road clearer than by day and as you see it the light disappears and the rest of the night is walking through the the storm on memory alone of a flash of light that you once saw the ra says some people see more flashes of light some people see less but no one walks in the light and these are the two poles there's the male flash of clarity it couldn't be clearer and then it disappears and then there's the female work of remaining attached of remaining loyal long after the evidence has become very thin indeed and that's a test of character and only an integrated marriage between the two results in a a human being worth being you know that the uh you know that when the evidence gets weaker and weaker and the process continues further and further eventually it enters a crisis where not only there no evidence left but the eviden is all become completely controverted completely perverted completely inverted and all that's become clear is that what I committed myself to could not possibly be right and you still have to go through that again the cabalist showed very clearly how does a woman give birth the concept ction is no problem and then the pregnancy continues but finally when she goes into labor it looks like two people are dying doesn't look like birth doesn't look like birth if you stepped into a room where a woman was giving birth imagine man a male who had no idea about how women give birth steps into a room and he sees that process going on for the first time you know he'd probably call the police I don't You' need therapy I don't know what would happen and if he had to go through it himself he' need therapy the rest of his life there's no question he would never he never recover it looks like she's dying but the ran points out that it looks like the baby's dying too cuz what the child goes through in the womb you know the r was a doctor you you forgot this as well but but listen to this the rambam says this the child in the womb lives opposite to the way a child is born you know that that child in the womb has 25 different conditions that he needs to keep him alive any of which would kill him if you gave it to him when he's born and you have conditions keeping you alive that if you gave any of those to the fetus you'd kill him so a child has to be born from one situation into complete inversion of dozens of factors a child in the womb lives underw he has no air to breathe he has holes in his heart the blood flows in the opposite direction he has no lungs the child in the room has little scrunched up Nubs of tissue all the blood going to the lungs goes in the opposite direction through one of the biggest blood vessels in the body he's got blood vessels coming out of his liver he looks nothing like you he's a different type of blood and all of those things keep him alive in ID idilic way in that environment and then birth begins and this is about to be Thrust out into another world there's no question he's going to die you know there's a famous work on death and dying called the gim in the third part of that work he talks about standing at a gravide watching someone being buried and our feelings there and he says it's like two twins in the womb whereas one twin begins to be born the remaining twin starts to mourn for his brother no question he no no way can survive out there he's got 10 different features in his body that are going to kill him little does he know that that's where life begins that's how you should be thinking when you stand in such a moment no so this child is born and the little kid you know I've done this dozens of times as a doctor you deliver that child you you hold a little baby in your hands and you watch him start to die first the child goes blue then he goes purple starts to make these terrible gasping movements he's bleeding like crazy you know that the the child newborn child is about 300 ccs of blood that's all and he's bleeding furiously through the amical cord there's 10 different reasons why he's going to be dead in 2 minutes for sure and as you stand there helplessly you hold this little child first umal cord clamps down like a cord of Steel at exactly the same moment the H in his heart Clos and the blood flow reverses the major blood vessel taking all the blood away from the lungs closes down and the blood hits the lungs at exactly the same moment the lungs up and he takes his first breath and about 3 and a half minutes later it's all reversed and he's doing fine that must have taken a good few orangutangs in the trees over good few million years to get R by accident talking about a lot of chimpanzees that must have not made it before we got to us unbelievable situation and that's the female experience a woman goes through that in her flesh and by the way that's why we sing as on a Friday night because Friday night is the transition from the mundane process of the week to the Redemption of shabas and that's called Mash mash means the birth process of mhia and it's a woman who experiences that man has no idea about that man is a first phase creature where it's all easy just a blast of energy and potential but it's the female who goes through what feels like death for two people and delivers life into the world because she's remained attached to the project by the way you know Mash you know there's a mish you know the M says that before the mashah Comes This is an amazing M you look it up yourself it's a mish called basa Mish written about 2,000 years ago 1,800 years ago the M says that before the mashiah come the Arabs will have a building on the harab you know about this this was written four centuries before Islam became a religion the M says the Arabs will have a building on the Temple Mount And just before the mashiach arrives the leaders of the Jews will go to the Arabs and say to them remove your building we want to build the temple and the Arabs will say no it's our holy sight there'll be a moment of tension and then the Arabs will turn to the Jews and say to them let's not argue let's make a Divine test we believe in God as you hadn't noticed whatever he says is fine with us even if C Our Lives we'll build an altar and you Jews build an altar we put a sacrifice on you put a like in the days of old BYO and we'll see a fire comes from heaven for which of our but we make a deal with you if Hashem accepts our offering you join our religion but if he accepts yours we'll join follow the Torah and the Jews agree the M says the Jews build an altar they put a sacrifice on the Arabs build an altar put a sacrifice on and fire comes from Heaven to accept the Arab's offering talking about a test of faith that a woman gives birth doesn't look like she's having a picnic looks like she's dying looks like exact opposite at that moment the Arabs turn to the Jews and they say to them we had a deal the Jews Say Never there's a terrible battle those who survive flee to the desert and after 40 days of hiding in the desert the Mia AR and the M says he goes to he wakes up the he leads them out of the very long and beautiful m i once asked will it be like that and he said it will be exactly like that meaning a story where all the evidence is opposite and only your go through that bloody and difficult death appearing experience that's called where birth and only a woman who can go through that in Egypt the men collapsed the women held strong in the desert the men collapsed the women held strong at Kan it was yuris who began the Revol that PO him it was es it's always a woman who goes through the crisis of character that's needed it's the man who brings Clarity M on the outside Bringing Down the message with Clarity and it's Esther doing the work in what looks like exactly the opposite of what should be and that's the story the story is that there's two departments there's Ms and there's the clarification the male process that's torist study that's clarification that's learning to think objectively rigorously corroborating evidence nothing less than the best will do but half the work after that there's the work of bringing down into the character and staying with it and that's called to be let me finish with a story here's a story and I'll I'll leave you to think about this this is a true story now you know nowadays you have to tell true stories cuz people Google what you say and therefore all my stories are true some happened and some didn't but they're all true anyway here's a true story here's a true story if this doesn't move you there's no hope for you 1942 the Japanese invaded the Philippines 1944 they left but after the Japanese evacuated the Philippines a strange series of incidents occurred in the Filipino jungle 30 people were killed reason is one Japanese soldier got left behind and he carried on fighting the war by himself it was a highly intelligent man his name was Lieutenant onard was an officer you know Japanese orders a fight to the death there was no surrender and he carried on fighting the war by himself on his own with his gun in the jungle stalking the enemy and fighting the war this went on for a long time it went on for 30 years 30 years I've seen a picture 54 years old in his uniform with patches with his gun 1974 the Japanese you know they were getting complaints to the Japanese government they sent a major Suzuki into the into the Filipino and he found him in his uniform with his gun he said on what are you doing he said I'm fighting the war he said to him are you being ridiculous what are you doing he said you being illogical or not said A Soldier's duty is not to be logical a soldier's duty is to do his duty if every Soldier starts thinking logically what's s of army do you have I'm being loyal to my task he said to him do you know the war's over he said I'm not a fool of course what are you doing completely logical the war's over he said I was given instructions this is what my orders were and this is what I'm doing I'm being loyal to my task talk abouta talk about tenacious he couldn't convince him to go home Suzuki went home will not have carried on fighting the war the Japanese High Command put their heads together came up with a plan they found an elderly officer who had been present during the original Japanese evacuation they sent him back into the Filipino jungle with the original Japanese demobilization evacuation order he called him to attention in the jungle and he read him the order or another handed over his gun he went back to Japan the Filipinos called him a hero they bought him a new blue suit it's very emotional thing thousands of people came to meet him in Tokyo Airport he saw his family for the first time he left a pre-war Japan and he came back to a modern industrial Japan had seen his for 30 years but imagine here's the problem imagine you standing there in the jungle and you say on what are you doing and he says I'm doing my duty and you say you're being logical and he says what does this have to do logic you're talking this I'm doing this what would you say to what would you say so I asked a group of young school children in England this question and one girl said he said she said he had but he didn't have MS right you need both you need both it has to be right and and after it's right you has to be has to be done but one without the other is ridiculous you know what you look like if you have this without this you got intellect without action it's like the Great British philosopher who taught great moral philosophy great ethics one morning his students found him crawling out of a house of very ill-repute very disgusting place they said Professor you taught us such great moral principles how can you behave so immorally he said why does a mathematician have to be a triangle the logic and the knowledge is one thing but hey what I want to do with the other in judism that's it's just ridiculous and what do you look like if you have this without this unbelievable attachment to Duty with nothing up here have you noticed unbelievable Faith ready to die at a moment's notice right for the faith but scrambled eggs up here very dangerous unbelievable Readiness to die at a moment's notice with pride total attachment unbelievably tenacious attachment and commit to the cause but it's got to be right and therefore the Torah agenda is the agenda of intellect and character there's no escaping either the agenda is intellect not silly superstitious emptiness but rigorous training of wisdom and logic examination of evidence and history and then there's a bringing down into action one doesn't get guarantee the other and if you can get that right if we can get right the the program of studying deeply with total commitment without alterior Motors invested interests and then gain the clarity and after that bring it down into the real then we can produce a real birth thank you [Music]