Parshas Balak: Pirates, the 4 Hostages, and the Providential Role of Italy in Jewish History

this Torah class is brought to you by Torah anytime.com okay welcome everyone um I was searching for a topic for Paras bak and it's just such an amazing thing that I happen to open up to in and uh lo and behold we have a that talks about the ships and ships will come out from the tites the ramban defines the ktim As Romans the Roman Empire but even more amazingly the tag defines ktim ASA Italia from Italy and it's just such a coincidence that just happen to be needed a topic on Italy and it fits so well into this one word that the time brings down so it's a good excuse to uh speak about a little bit of a uh a very important historical twist which is really um the beginning and the foundations of all the tah of theim now the name of this story is welln this story is dubbed in classic Jewish literature as the arbu the four captives um so we have a saer over here called was written by R conforto conforto is n in the year 1648 and he brings down a story and there is a degree of of uh controversy about the accuracy of the story but it is brought down in many authentic sources the the M of the which happened in the times of R was one of the and this story happened approximately in the year T Shin n of the fourth Millennia the year doid tun so the year dun is approximately the year 990 and basically there were four great who were traveling on a boat and they were uh embarking from a area called Bari Bari is an area region in Italy and they're headed to Sabastian to four great who were they number one is Ruel Rael was the father of RA everybody is familiar often appears on the side of the gar the father of number two the father of number three and says the the fourth I don't know who he was I don't know who he was and what happened was they were they set sail they embarked from Bari and a pirate came along and uh got onto their ship tied them up took them hostage and sold them as slaves well there was a tremendous slave market very often this was a pretty common thing where where Wayfarers on the sea would be captured and be sold as slaves to to the various countries now we're going to see more details as reported in other sources and uh so this pirate took these four sages and first they took rushel rushel was sold to to Africa he uh probably North Africa and he finally makes his way to alar alar I believe is in Tunis in Tunisia and eventually R he goes there he has ra and the that came from North Africa all started from from R okay now by the way just be aware we're talking and in the period of the in the times of the the main Torah Center was in B was in Babylon Sur you had an amazing Torah Academy there which was headed by now what these four were doing on the ship they're different opinions for now we'll say they were collecting money for the Yas in in B okay now this incident we're going to learn really transitioned Tyra from B to Europe so that means all until this point all Tyra in the world was in is and in B now is taking four of the greatest sages in the world and placing them very uh very strategically to four various areas so RAB goes to Africa to alaran there he becomes the chief Rabbi his son r one of the great okay next they take R and they take him to Cova where's Cova right Cordova in Spain so they bring him to Spain and R is becomes the leader the chief Rabbi of Cordova and following him R son takes over now at this point there's a little bit of also very unusual twist here because even though RAB was obviously the greatest sage in Spain his son rabi Kan there was some disagreement between rabi and another talid of Raa his name was r y Benes now when ra died ranes he wanted to sort of uh get a piece of the uh of the rabet but but at at the time there was a great um Jewish leader his name wasid shaut remember back from your Jewish history and maintained very powerful Authority he didn't let anybody usurp any power from however when passed away this rabanes rabanes he wanted to uh take some of the Rabin it after all you should know ranes wrote the first translation of the gamar so your first art scroll was written back you know in in the uh 10th Century but he didn't write it in English he wrote it in Arabic for the king of Arabia okay so you know just a little trivia the first uh translation of the and there was a lot of contention between RAB and well what do you do when if you have a you put the other person in soan was put in and he had a leave so where does he go he goes to B he comes to was so happy to see because did not like these four these are not my words these are the words of the why listen very carefully until this point in time all the in the world emanated from B these four were supposed to be bringing back funds to B now they each one of them is setting up shop in a different Community one of them in um one of them in Tunisia one of them in Cordova we'll see the third one is goes to Alexandria and now all the funds are being channeled away from B for breakaways yeah exactly so now now you you know right you know aul's made it when there's a breakaway well yiva Yeshiva made it when when uh there at least three breakaways so so was not happy with what they did ultimately looking back at it it's clear you see the just as an aside um so I learned in so when I came to until his 90s his father founded the his father wasz Liz is considered one of the main of the Ram once came to the Yesa a long time ago he spoke atz's yard site Ram said that throughout history whenever theam sees the impending decline of Tyra in one place he always paves the way by sending in advance to prepare a country with t like did with the and remember he lik whatz was sent to America to start he started as well and these were like one of the that he was the first this is the any event told there's I have one problem I like you very much but you're in can't speak to you if someone is in you can't you can't converse with them and sent away okay so this is the famous story of the just make note of the fact that these emanated from Italy they emanated from Bari okay so pay attention to that there's another ancient work this saer is calleda theala was written by the rivid now everybody heard of the rivid right there's a famous comment of Shakespeare wherever there's a rambam the riv it is not far behind it's a joke okay so that's there that's the riv the is called the right if you ever learned the r you see in small letters you have comments of the r now historically if you're Jewish you need to know this there were three rivs there was Riv Harish there was Riven there was Riv hasi okay who are these people the rivid that wrote is known as Rish he wrote the say for he was killed that's then you have R and the r is known as the the r who wrote the comments on the ra is R the r as far as I know is the first source of this story and the Rish tells us that this story wash this this story was the Yem to sort of end T in B and transition it to Europe he brings down a number of very fascinating tidbits and additions to the first of all he writes that these were collecting okay he also adds very interestingly this raoa rosha ended up in Cordova his wife was with him on the ship his wife was unusually beautiful and the pirate has his eye on her and she doesn't know what to do she knows that uh the the pirate could kill her husband and violate her so the pirate so she screams out to her H husband in Hebrew in she said he said she says to him if I jump off the ship and I kill myself will I have right similar to what thear says Where the boys and girls were being taken off to Rome to be violated and the gar says the girls jumped off and they dar that will retrieve all the bodies that were decimated and and uh and have been torn apart will reconstitute them for and this is what told his wife that if you commit suicide to to stop this you will deserve in fact she jumped off the ship and she was let's go back to Cordova for a a minute let's let's talk about what happened in Cordova so R comes to Cordova interestingly none of these L on that they were big because they knew they were being ransomed and they didn't want the Jewish Community to have to pay an exorbitant fee so as far as anybody knew they were just redeeming regular Jews so comes to theiva in Cordova and at the time the leader of the Yesa was he was the and is giving SH now at the time says the rivid in Spain they didn't have strong knowledge of of Shas and was teaching and the speaks about is speaks up he says you know you're creating you're obligating too many for the everyone turns around looks at this you know stranger who basically just came off the boat wearing Rags you know who is this guy how do you know and they start asking him how do you know about and he started to impress them in his knowledge whereupon removes his cloak steps down and makes the following announcement I hereby retire as Chief Rabbi of Cordova I officially point rabu to be the next chief R of Cordova I venture to say this has never repeated itself in history where somebody of high position willingly gave it up to um to somebody else but uh you see back then that uh their their and their they only served whoever they felt would be the best choice for the job so they willingly gave it up okay by the way in case uh you wanted to know the name of the pirate that also the riv reveals to us I don't know how the riv knew the name of the pirate the name of the pirate is Ben de so you have that on the six line in number two who was dispatched by the king of Arabia okay so just in case you were wondering so this story is reported in the it's reported in the r and amazingly the who's considered now if you learn one thing from tonight you have to know the wrote in alltime great safer the name of the saer is sh really everybody should have the saer sh wrote without computers even with computers it would be nearly impossible to write a book like this modern day bibliography for Marvel at what the was able to accomplish basically it has two parts the from memory recorded the name of every single God of that lived before his time and then in alphabetical order so you have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of G so people who you never heard of who you don't even know anyone who ever heard of and then the second half of the safer is hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of all the that were written before the time of the in alphabetical order and it's considered a very authoritative work historically in other words if the record something so for example when he writes about the r which I'm sure many of you heard there a historical work and the basically debunks it as a uh a work that cannot be relied on he says it's not historically accurate but what the writes was considered the traveled all throughout Europe he visited all the libraries all the museums he memorized manuscripts that were found everywhere and he records an alphabetical order so what I'm bringing out is the brings down missel who was the uh the go who was ransomed off to T he writes he basically records the story he's one of the four that lived in the time of R in the year 4,750 and he and he was redeemed to Africa and he became the head of okay by the way says we have a tradition we don't really know where any of the are buried but says we have a tradition that if you go to Tunis Tunisia that there are buried in Tunisia okay when RAB described this story of the AR he dubbed in the following way he coined the following phrase everybody knows it's apos and we all sing it on coined the following phrase in other words uh symbol of the fact that basically all the T that we have today came from Italy from these four and another another we don't know who it is and to me it's just amazing how it works out conveniently for me that I have to be speaking about this and just it happens to be there I'm talking about it this week just joking um that all the T that we have today should come from Italy it's a little bit uh unusual strange thing that the T that we have should come from Italy Italy is the seat of the Roman Empire that's the the quintessential capital of Asa arasha it's the seat of uh Christianity that's where the lives that's where the pope lives and that's where t comes from it comes from so maybe we could understand in the following light we know Inu came um to steal the from so y masquerad as as and he came in and says and gave a great a wonderful he said basically gave yov everything and what happens comes in just as yov is leaving and comes in and he says I came for the and the was very scared boy did I blow it big time you telling me I gave the wrong person the and says what could I do I have nothing left for you I already ate everything I gave the so then says to his then says to his father you have one for me please give me one and chist simply y just had nothing left to give him he already gave the to there's nothing left he didn't he doesn't you don't save it's not like you save up just in case the rain this is you know the end of his life he gave everything to said to his father his father said you know what I'll give you he named I will give you the fattest land and I'll give you from the do of Heaven you hear the words Behold from the fat of the land will be your habitation from the do of the heavens says Rashi what did says rash the that gave was yeah the boot gave him Italy how strange how does Rashi know that all the says is he gave him a fat land oh maybe that's uh there a lot of nice lands out there a lot of beautiful countries how does rash know so there's an amazing comment from the rebba H who by the way was not a rebba the rebba of hesel was the r of Cal in the times of the Shak actually um times of the sh there was no there was noid yet the re of hes was one of the great he was um he was in the times of the Malala was somebody had G in fact when the city of Cal was looking for a r they asked malal who should we appoint so the Muk opened up he's the next brings this down anyway the re of H says like this you know how Rashi knows that the country that that is giving as is a country of Italy very simple because had already given Yu every single country in the world there's nothing left to give him so the only thing he could give him is something that doesn't exist yet that didn't exist now which country didn't exist ah says when gel came along right the says he stuck a re in the sea and a sand Bank developed and that's where Rome was built you hear this meanor is saying that Italy never existed Italy is like a man-made invention actually not a man-made invention it's created by a Mal it's created by Mal Gabriel now the mar explains Gabriel is the one who destroyed the B mikash but okay but ultimately the one who destroyed the bikash that we're suffering from are the Romans so the way gel set upik is the moment married which was really the initiation of these were this were the incipient the seeds of AAR so at that moment Gabriel already had to set the stage to have the base of English destroyed it was at that moment that Rome began that IL was created so Gabriel took the stick he sticks it into the Y and then the sandbank begins to grow that is the origins of Rome so when Y is thinking to himself you know what I have nothing left to give you I already gave yaku every single country in the world there's nothing oh then he says you know what there's one country I didn't give him yet there's one country that's that's Italy so I'll give you Italy because I never gave that to so in other words that's how Rashi knows that has to be referring to Italy by the way just another interesting is that the it says first the do and then the Earth and then by it says so the sa brings down exactly because when it comes to y already had the land so y we could start off with the do the D has what to fall on so there's D and then the D will create a certain richness in the land but by had no land the thing that the country that was giving did not exist so by it has to start in the other direction by it has to start I'm going to give you the fattest of land and once the land has been established only then will give this really got me thinking of the following idea and that is aside from the fact that the tah of all theim emanated from Italy most of the cabala that we have today also emanated from Italy so for instance you know we already quoted the spent most of his life in Italy is one of the greatest all time is perhaps the greatest person who lived in the last years somebody who uh V said he had the greatest understanding of hasem of any human being spent his whole life in Italy until he was chased out interesting that all of these all of the farno and all of this to and The Rao and all of this emanated from the the of all T in the world so it could be it could be that this is the one country in the world where one of the actually blessed the land originally in other words every other place in the world it emanates from Shay we start so it's it starts with there's one country in the world where you see firsthand this country is the blessing of one of the and we know there's a concept that every physical thing is merely a reflection of the spiritual so if you see a country which is the fruition and the crystallization and the concretization of of then it also has a very unique spiritual quality as well and in that sense you know that might explain to some degree why all the Toyah in the world that we have today or at least a very significant amount of it emanates from that place but just also on a much simpler level had not married Bas then um there would have been no and we wouldn't have gone into gas and we wouldn't have needed all of the tah that would keep us and and and help us survive through the gas all of the of the and all of the of the that emanated was only needed because of because married B so even though the when married he's allowing for the creation of the thorn in our the Roman Empire but also in so as Hashem is creating the the source of for so he's also Paving the way through the M of the and through the creation of the source of of the Torah that really lastes through the G I mean canot everybody is familiar and has learned and has been exposed to the wisdom of the of the and of all of these good so this is just uh by way of introduction and uh we're going to have now one more uh one more brief topic you've just experienced another Torah class brought to you by Torah any time com