Journey to Greece 2024: Athens - Alexander the Great and the Cessation of Prophecy

this Torah class is brought to you by Torah anytime.com okay good morning everyone I hope everybody had a good sleep and a good breakfast and here we're in Athens the seat of Greek ideology I want to continue to speak about Alexander the Great and his role in history and uh yesterday we mentioned Alexander the Great really Rose to power a thousand years after we left MIM again calculation being we were in the midbar for 40 years we were in a Israel 440 years before they built the first B mikdash the first B mikdash was built 480 years after they left MIM first B of mdash stood for 410 years 70 years in B the gamar tells us Alexander Rises to power 34 years into Bay sheni and in the 40th year which is a thousand years from is the main ascendancy of Alexander the Great so I want to read to you what the rambam writes the ramam gives us his calculations of how he formulates it's called he intercalates the calendar and the ramam is so to speak excusing himself he's being misel because the the r makes are not based on Jewish sources he says the the calculations he makes the Greeks compos many books these are books that the Jewish sages have in their possession so the Rah says why didn't I come on to Jewish sources the Jewish sources would have been from the sh the PK says we know specialized in intercalation so the r is bothered why is he coming on to Greek sources why doesn't he use the sources of uh the Jewish people he says the the Jewish books we never got them so says ran but still how am I allowed to rely on Greek sources maybe they're distorted maybe they're miscalculated says the rambam this is mathematics it's a measured formula this is not a matter of ideology or philosophy it's something that could be counted measured and we know how they arrived at these calculations therefore it's irrelevant where it comes from let's let's look at the content let's not look at who presented it so the raham is so to speak bothered how is he allowed to get this content from the Greeks and the answer is it's just a scientific formula so really it doesn't matter where the content comes from Shapiro asks on this rambam what's the rambam troubled by if the ram was presenting to us what's 10 * 50 and the ramam would say well 10 * 50 is 500 then what difference would it make where the ramam learned that formula from it's something that we could all figure out on our own of course it's irrelevant where it comes from why is the raham even troubled that he got it from a Greek Source the ram is not giving us the ram is giving us how to interpolate the calendar why is the ramam in fact bothered where he gets these calculations from but apparently per says the Jewish calculations would have been very different than the Greek calculations and that's because the Jewish calculations we would have understood how they're derived from the toyra itself but unfortunately now all we have is the content but we don't understand how it stems from the toy itself we know all disciplines are rooted in the toyra so the ram is being misel that unfortunately we don't have our own sources for the for the lunar year we have to come on to the Greek sources now I want to share with you the comments of s everybody know what s is yeah say for instance if you look in rashi rashi will often quote Rashi when he when he tells us what year things happen then Rashi will call are that come from T about the years of the world's history in s it says on the PK and Daniel that the he goat referred to and Danielle is the first king of yavan and Alexander Mikan who ruled for 12 years ready for the listen to S says s all conversation will continue after theha thank you very much but listen to S sayam tells us Alexander Ruth for 12 years until Alexander the prophets prophecied from Alexander and prophecy ceased tilt your ears and hear the words of the sages so s is saying something that until Alexander the Great ruled there was nvu on the world once Alexander the Great ruled prophecy ceased and we now have to come on to but we no longer have okay put that in your back pocket for a moment comes the rambam and the rambam writes that when we write a get and you want a date a get the Min is we count the years of G either we count by the creation of the world when a Jew writes a get they no longer would write 57 whatever it is they write the year from Alexander the Great in fact Shapiro says that he remembers as a kid this is called minion he remembers seeing day dated from the time of Alexander the Great this is the minog in tamon I don't think they still do that but this is called minog a minion comes the the gr is found on S R and the says why in the world when we write a Jewish document would you date it by Alexander the Great why would you date it by Alexander the Great why would you not dated from the time of the creation of the world says the Alexander when he met shadik he wanted to put a okay this is the only Mar of this the gar doesn't say Alexander wanted to put an idol in the says Alexander wanted to put in the and they needed to appease him so as a token gesture they said Alexander don't put the we're going to throw you a bone the bone is from now on whenever we write a document we will date it by the year of your ascendancy okay this is the of the that the reason why we date by Alexander the Great is it was an appeasement to Alexander he wanted to put a now again we know that on or according to rash the being Malala Alexander wanted to put and as a way out of that you know the gar says we appeased him by giving by naming after him right we call children even among CLA Israel we don't call them Herod we don't call them theasian we don't call them Titus but we'll call them Alexander that was the appeasement but the gr says that's short that's short but the name is we never told them that told we tell the mailman back to sender but we told Alexander the Great we would we would name after him but the gr has a little bit of a variance of that says the gr what we gave Alexander the Great is minion star so the question is what exactly is this concept of Minion what's the meaning of it why would we continue to practice minion do we really care about the year that Alexander the Great Rose in power R in his tells us that minion is a lot deeper than just the year that Alexander Rose to power because as the as it says in s the year Alexander Rose to power n stopped says there was a world with n and there was a world without NAA it's a different world it's a different Bria there was a world that Hashem communicated to man and then there's a world that we have to figure out what the re wants from us through now I always say I like that some people they like to go to because they feel the Mak will say you know I have the inside scoop I know what Hashem wants I think it's better to go to isn't it better not to know what Hashem wants and to figure it out then for you know I think the says anyway we're going to talk more about that later says the of Min is that there are two eras in world history there's the era of NAA and there's the era of when Alexander the Great came to the world apparently he created a m the m is Greek ideology Greek ideology says we only believe what could be measured what could be figured out what could be calculated but we will not utilize information through divine origin we no longer come on to NAA we no longer come on to Divine communication we only come on to when Alexander create came to the world he created a of there is no longer now as says now it's very interesting because we know [Music] the they created a p a you know it says in M says Rashi when there's no longer the idea that protects from that's why there's an idea that when we have to rely on then we're open to error we're open to mistake they're PR in the the guard guardianship of the Jewish people I want to share with you the gar tells us that when theim translated the T theant the descended to the world for 3 Days that's one of the reasons we fast on on they translated the T I have a question for you did Darkness descend on the world when art girl translated CH I have a better question how about whenu translated the T into 70 languages before we enter transl rash says why when the Greek translated the T Darkness came down to the world for 3 days and when m translated the T that's okay what's what's wrong with translation what's wrong with translation Misha translated it yeah we translated it the translated it we were the ones and by the way the G says translated so what was wrong [Music] I think the answer is like this why did the Greeks want the Torah translated the Greeks said the ramban writes the Greeks believe in believed in anything they could calculate measure and understand with human reasoning the Greeks were trying to translate the T to be able to glean whatever wisdom was something that resonated with them on an intellectual level something that they could understand on a level of se but anything that was divinely of divine origin anything of the supernatural they would discard their purpose in translating the Torah was to make the Torah something that wasi so that brought Darkness to the world that that stopped prophecy that's when Alexander the Great came to power prophecy ceased and began but if the purpose of translating the tah is to be able to understand the entire Tyra not just what resonates to human se but even the supernatural then that's perfectly okayu himself was the one who translated the Torah for cl is one more thing I want to share with you you know the gr tells us that when Alexander came to the heal he wanted to put AUM in the and what did we do we started Counting St from the years of Alexander so listen to this somehow by counting St from the year of Alexander it was making it listen carefully everybody knows that when n stopped what else stopped so listen to what the wisdom of the they saw that Alexander wanted to put a in the and they had to make an executive decision if we're going to give Alexander minion what will that be saying that there's a new era in world history before now there was prophecy there will no longer be prophecy said that's our only way to ensure that he won't put it in because by stopping prophecy you know what else would stop a would stop meaning this was not just a practical mood move to say what well we'll throw you a bone we we'll give you minion and now you won't put a in it's by counting minion they were saying we're going to usher in the era of a world without prophecy ah a world without prophecy is a world without AAR M Alexander no longer had the desire that t was abolished of the so this is a little bit of a background of what Alexander the Great stood for and I just want to end off with what the malum says on the closing words of of the Nai we know the nvi Mali the last Navi by the way in the year a thousand when Alexander the Great Rose to power a thousand years from 34 or so years into the second mikdash that's when stopped so who passed away then Mali passed away according to many he was Ezra passed away and zakar pass away what are the closing words of [Music] malas says the Mal why now because was about to stop if we had it wasn't as critical we would still have to remind us we would have but now that was stopping so now the tells us Z Tyas MDI this is a little bit of the background of Alexander the Great and the era that he ushered in thank you very much you've just experienced another Torah class brought to you by tor anytime.com