91: A Worthy Reception

Hi, this is Rabbi Orlofsky, and welcome to the Rabbi Orlofsky Show. And wherever you're listening or watching to your podcasts, I am so happy that you have invited me once again into your life that we can share this special time together. And interestingly enough, um uh you know, last uh last episode I uh sang the uh Rabbi Orlofsky theme song uh a cappella. Um uh because I had offered the opportunity to people, and and nobody seemed to uh jump at it. But after my attempt uh so uh Nachum Lowy said to me that right at the dinner table, his wife said to him, "You got to do something." Now, I don't know if that's because she just thought my singing was so terrible that we cannot put up with this for another week. But any event, he uh he has uh graciously submitted a new a cappella version. It's the Rabbi Orlofsky Show. Torah and Halacha, ready to go with the Rabbi Orlofsky Show. Knowledge and wisdom will help you grow. Lots of fun for every episode. And we don't have to rhyme. It's the Rabbi Orlofsky Show on rabbiorlofsky.com. Torah anytime, YouTube, and more. It's the Rabbi Orlofsky Show on rabbiorlofsky.com. Again, uh he he himself says this is a rough cut, so there is still room for other people to submit their attempts. Like I say, I I the impression that he wasn't trying to win any contest with this as much as he just wanted to do that tremendous hesed for a client you saw. So, uh so, baruch Hashem for that. Uh we have a sponsorship this week. William Hein, the name is Zev Mordechai ben Chaim This is from Rochelle Hein and she writes, "My brother and I would like to sponsor the shiur right before parshas Bamidbar. That's this one." Um it is a mi yitzat sham our father's second bar mitzvah. His Hebrew birthday is kuf tes iyar. So, happy birthday. Unfortunately, as of now, due to the world situation, we cannot be with my father, nor will shul be open for him to have an aliyah. Also, I guess he does not have to say a speech either. Or he could and we'll be happy to put it up here on the Rabbi Lopianksy show. We know how much he enjoys your shiurim and this will be extremely meaningful to him. And so, happy birthday and I uh can just hope uh that uh it'll be a day full of bracha and all kinds of good things and uh we should uh be able to celebrate uh the next birthday in a nice fancy restaurant uh surrounded with good food, good people good times. And uh and what can I tell you, you know? I have not traveled uh to the States. Obviously, I went uh went towards the beginning of the year. Uh just to visit family. I have a daughter there, and my my mother-in-law and my brother-in-law are there, and uh and my brothers are there. So, uh it was an opportunity to be able to see family and and with each passing day I think to myself, I can't get alphabet noodles. They don't have them in this country. I'm out of Folgers. I don't have any Folgers coffee. I've been reduced to drinking Maxwell House. How much longer can this go on for? Whereas my family drinks Taster's Choice, they don't know the difference. It's just brown water. What's the point? But but that's all right. That's all right. Uh I also would like to see all my relatives, but uh get some American veal. All right, anyway, that's not important. I usually have a trip. All right, and this time it's on Schmooze. We usually make for lunch veal, but uh now I guess we'll make one of the delicious things we have here in our show. Yeah. Our show uh cold cuts. It's a different experience. Yeah. So help me. When we first came here, we bought chicken franks, and twice I found a feather in them. So what can I tell you, you know, I used to bring uh used to bring back American frankfurters when I went to America. My kids would like, "Oh, can we have those?" I said, "If you can eat the ones with the feathers, then you don't get these." Anyway, oh Hashem, oh Hashem, I might be supposed to live in our show. Our show nickname is show. That's what they mean when there's no Folgers. Anyway, but uh but I digress. Yeah. Because uh uh what I really want to speak about is the fact that uh I remember it was it was the Shabbos before Shavuos. And the Maishis Shapiro said that you shall miss always refer to this Shabbos as the Shabbos of Kinyan Hatorah. Now, obviously, as we know, Maseches Avos has five prakim. Um it's uh it's interesting. I may have told this story already, I don't remember, but when my son finished Shas the first time, so Moshe Shapiro spoke, and he said, "This is not really Siyum Hashas, this is called Siyum Hamasechtos." In order to do uh Siyum Hashas, you have to also do all of the Mishnayos that don't have Gemaras on it. So, uh um all of the ones in Zera'im and all the ones in Taharos, all the ones in Kodashim. So, interestingly enough, Daf Yomi includes the uh the only Masechta in Moed that doesn't have um a uh Gemara on it, which is Shekalim. They actually do the Yerushalmi. It includes Middos, it includes Eduyos, it includes all the ones that are just uh that are just Kinim. It has all the ones except for the ones in Zera'im and Taharos and Kodashim. Interestingly enough. So, um uh in my morning Daf Yomi, I told the story over, and I said, "At the end of each year, we're going to do one Mishna." So, uh we went through uh we went through Pe'ah, we're at the end of Demai, and then B'ezras Hashem, we'll get through this, and then we'll have to do Pirkei Avos after we finish Zera'im. Now, Masech- I say Pirkei Avos, but Maseches Avos is in fact five prakim. And uh that's why you'll find a lot of the Rishonim do not comment on the sixth perek. The sixth sixth perek of Pirkei Avos is not in Maseches Avot's. That's the difference between Maseches Avot's and Pirkei Avot's. Pirkei Avot's includes that sixth perek, and that perek is called the perek of Kinyan Torah. And it is in fact a collection of braysas. Uh braysa means outside. Because when they put together the Mishnayos, they took all of the various tannaitic texts that people had from all of their rebbeim. It wasn't assur to write down the Torah Shebaal Peh. It was assur to publish. Parenthetically, Reb Moshe Shapiro said once that the issur I should say different, that the hetter to write down Torah Shebaal Peh was only because of Eis Laasos LaHashem Heferu Sorasecha. Only because the Torah would be forgotten. And he said that that still applies. The only reason to write a sefer is because you feel you have something that has to be shared uh with Klal Yisrael, otherwise you wouldn't bother writing. Cuz it falls under the issur of writing down the Torah Shebaal Peh. Very interesting. But um uh so they wrote down all the notes from their various rebbeim, and they brought them all together to Rebbi Yehudah HaNasi and the Chachamim. And uh they organized it into the Mishnah. And uh uh those that uh some of them they kept them intact. Some of them they edited them, and some of them they had to rewrite completely new ones. So, the ones that existed they felt didn't do the job. And so, a braysa was all of the leftover tannaitic texts. So, they didn't get rid of them. They were set up by Rebbi Chiya uh They were they were the Rebbe Rashab. They were set up into a into a seder. Some of them were put into the Toseftas. Some of them were set up, you know, and other stuff. Some of them were just, you know, loose prices and went to the big brisa box in the back of the base medrash. And very often in Gemara, what they would do is they would pull out a brisa and uh compare it to what the Mishna says so that you can use it as uh for comparative purposes. They published a number of years ago a rough draft of Gevurot Hashem by the Maharal where he actually edited it. You could see where he was editing it. And they put out a a rough a rough draft. Yeah? Uh, Rebbe Meshulam said on that, "Ze mashu yoter intimiti." Yeah, something more intimate. You get to see the process that went into it. Parenthetically, um I've mentioned it more than once. There's this unbelievable translation of the Torah into English called The Living Torah. ArtScroll translates the Torah into a dialect that's similar to English, but uh but the the uh The Living Torah by Aryeh Kaplan can actually be read. And it is such an unbelievable task. I know this because I'm trying to do the same thing with the Mesillat Yesharim. Because it's so hard to take a line in Mesillat Yesharim and make it accessible without totally losing what's there. So, the first line of Mesillat Yesharim, which is um the foundation of piety and the root of perfect divine service, is to be clear and true what is our obligation in this world and where we We turn our outlook and our longings and all that we struggle for every day of our life. That's not the easiest sentence for people to relate to. You know, the translation that I'm working with is something more along the lines of um uh the first thing you have to do in life is to figure out why you're alive. And that's going to determine every decision that you make, how you plan your life, what you look for, uh and everything that you do. Now, I've taken something that he said and I reduced it and rewrote it, but you know, it's it's a line that I think people can relate to a lot more. So, it's it's tricky. It's definitely a tricky thing to do. In any event, um so, uh Aryeh Kaplan wrote the safer, which is a translation of the Torah into readable English. And uh and he writes in his introduction it took him 9 months to write it. And um uh he says that I feel like it's another one of my children took 9 months to conceive and to deliver it. If you ever want to do something fascinating, get the Living Torah and just read through the bibliography. I mean, besides the fact that he has every Jewish source Nigleh v'Nistar being quoted there. Yeah, he's got various Greek um philosophical works, Roman philosophical works, um uh you know, he's got um um now it's you know, it's been publicized a little bit more, but he had it there at the beginning with The Chalice, a a work called Dying in Ancient Israel, a unpublished manuscript by Rabbi Herzog, you know. So, now the trailers people have you know, publicizes, but it was really not very well known when he came out with it. He has the Odyssey, the Iliad, just fascinating reading through his bibliography, how much material went into this. Anyway, some years after he passed away, there was these two students who were doing a paper on this work, and so they came into uh came to his wife, his almana, and asked if they could see the the rough notes that he had. He says, "What rough notes? There were no rough notes. He just sat down and wrote the whole thing, just as you see it." Uh uh unbelievable accomplishment. Unbelievable. There was not You see, the Maharal in Jewish history had a rough copy, you know. So, um uh so uh these were the these were the the the rough notes, and they were left for comparison purposes. Meaning, you could take uh a brisa and compare it to the mishna and try to figure out, "Oh, this must be Rabbi Meir's sheet, because in the brisa that's said by Rabbi Meir, and Rabbi Yehuda argues with the Meir." You can compare it, the brisa. Um I gave an introduction once to my Gemara class, and uh as to the mishna, the brisa, you know, uh tanam, or all kinds of different things. At the end I gave a test, and I remember I asked, "What's a brisa?" And one guy wrote, "The little mishna that couldn't." I of course gave him credit. I mean, what a what a great answer. Later on in the year we were doing Gittin, actually. Later on in the year there's a whole discussion in the Gamara which reckon we're talking about. It says if you bring a get from reckon. So it says is it this reckon is it that reckon? There was a whole mach like is where reckon is. So I asked on the test later on in the year, you know, I said where's reckon? And he the same boy he wrote where isn't it? I had to I had to give him credit for that too. But so there's collection of prices. Interestingly enough the entire Mesillas Yesharim bases himself on a brisa of Pinchas ben Yair. Didn't make it into the Mishna. So the sixth perek of Pirkei Avot is a collection of brisas. These are not in the Mishna and they were organized into into perek. And the concept about it all the brisas that were put together is the greatness of learning Torah. Now Amanya is of course the brisa of the Mem Divarim She Niknas Bahem. The 48 things that you need in order to acquire Torah. And they are the Kinyanei Torah and it could be it's from there that the the name of the Shabbos Kinyanei Torah comes from. Um and it's a very interesting idea. All right, when you go through these things and I used to give a shiur um on each one of these midos. Now I take uh uh I I had the zchus to be in a shiur with Reb Moshe Shapiro um Pirkei Avot and I came in in the sixth perek and he was doing that that brisa. And uh it was an amazing thing and and I I I'm taking issue with lately with the 48 Ways to Wisdom series based on the North Weinberg. Um I had the tapes when there were tapes. Yeah, I remember listening to them. And on each tape they gave a little introduction, the same introduction. He says the 48 Ways to Wisdom are just good techniques for you to be able to acquire wisdom. You want to be a better mathematician, study the 48 Ways. You want to be a better uh you know, student, 48 Ways. You want to be more successful, these 48 Ways to Wisdom will help you be more successful. It's not true. That that that underlying principle is not true. You don't need these things to be successful in life. Um there was a book about a mathematician was called A Beautiful Mind. Um and this guy was uh I think he study suffered from schizophrenia. He was a very successful uh very successful mathematician. He won the Nobel Prize. Um was he besimcha? Stam not. Yeah. Um if you want to become a great uh in English literature, I would argue that Tyra will be at a disadvantage. My wife was in a literature uh class in uh Queen's College. They wanted to read a particular book and she made it very clear that she refused because you may call this a classic, but I call this pornography. And I refuse to read it. So, she was she was excused from from the book. But if you want to be successful in English literature, Tyra is going to help you? Um you want to be successful you know as a pre-med student it's very highly competitive. No say by my helping your friend is not necessarily going to get you there. In general it's an amazing thing how how education has become so competitive. Stephen Covey in the seven habits of highly effective people say you know one of the big things we do in business is we try to get people to work together. Synergize. Have everybody work together as a team. He says if you do that in school they call it cheating. Now we discourage you from working together as a team and then suddenly you go into business where your entire education is based on doing this by myself. Now you want me to Now you want me to to to do this as a team? Very hard very hard concept. So it's not essential. A lot of the things that are there in the 48 things that you need to acquire the Torah not there. When it comes to regular work. But the answer is the Torah does not work like any other work. I tell them all of them does. I could grants you knowledge. Says the vine cutler. Mr. Aaron. Says a guy lives next door to the base managers. He walks in he sits and he learns for three hours. Another guy lives an hour drive away. He drives to the base managers. I know you thinking why isn't he just learning at home but if you just did last week's pure key of us then you know it says you know I say below hell like you know so he doesn't have the the sky of a leaker. Supposed to learn in the base managers. Yeah. So it takes him an hour to get to the base managers, so he can only learn for an hour cuz it's going to take him an hour to get home. So it says with iron, they'll both be coning in that amount of time, the same amount of time. There is a gift. So the Shabbos of Kinyani and Torah tells us like this that the whole Sefiras HaOmer is set up with one goal in mind. And that is for me to be prepare myself as someone who's ready for Torah. We spoke about this last year a little bit. Derech Eretz Kadmah LaTorah. You you need uh to uh be a mensch first. First you have to be a mensch before you can become a Torah. Now, in Derech Hashem, Ramchal writes about all the things you need in order to become a Torah. And then he says, but the Chacham U'Magalah HaSod and that is that if you learn Torah, it will transform you into a different person. And then he writes, as long as you learn it not to argue with it, not to make fun of it, not to you treat it with the same respect as you would any other chachma, then the Torah that you'll take in will have the power of transforming you. But you have to start from the point of view that I'm coming at it like a mensch. Because I can't I can't teach somebody who's just there to make fun. I can't I can't uh teach somebody who just wants to argue. How do you know? How do you know? Who says? Where did you get that from? Rabbi Nachman Weinberg, when he used to present his his proofs for the existence of God, he would always say he he had a general rule. He says, "Be a judge and not a lawyer." A lawyer's job is there to argue the case regardless of of whether or not his his client is innocent or guilty. If his client wants him to defend him, then he will go in there and defend the worst possible people who committed the most horrific crimes. And uh and the uh the the purpose uh of it is just to argue his defense. Is it right? Is it wrong? Yeah? Says in Pirkei Avot, "Al ti ya'akov orchi ad dayanim. Don't be like a lawyer." Be a judge. Look at the evidence and comment. One person says, "Why can't you say why can't a person argue?" He says, "Of course a person can argue anything." What used to people offer as uh argument uh for the for the existence of the world, you know, uh there was an article in Scientific America that says, "The odds of even a bacteria forming by pure chance is the same odds as a tornado ripping through a junkyard and assembling by pure chance a 747." Now, so that you appreciate that, there's a million parts in the wing of a 747. What are the odds of such a thing happening? It's it's astronomical. And so when you tell people, "The odds of even the universe existing and for that the anti-matter and matter didn't just each other out. It's like having a trillion white marbles and one black marble and by pure chance reaching in and pulling it out. I I stopped giving that argument. Because people say to me, "Yeah, sure was lucky." Then what am I going to do? You know, it's I always say this, any argument that is predicated upon you being reasonable If life has taught me anything, it's how incredibly unreasonable people can be. People have a tremendous capacity for unreasonableness. So, if a person tells you, you know, um and I, you know, "Wouldn't you grant me that? Won't you, you know?" So, there are people who are like, "No. No, who says? Who says? Who says?" Some people search for the truth. And some people want to be right. Yeah. And you have to look at the situation and decide what's the most important thing to you. Do I want to be right? Or do I want to find the truth? Yeah. And so, um so in order to be able to tell you tell you I was coming to tell you that I have to at least be open-minded and reasonable. Now, uh I remember I was at Discovering once at the end of the program, you know, during the question and answer, someone said, "I we heard everything that you have to say, but what does the other side have to say?" One of the rabbis said, "Didn't you go to college? What did they teach you there? Genesis, Bereshit? Talmud? Or or did they teach you, you know, science, skepticism, you know, atheism? Uh they presented things from a Jewish point of view. That's That's not part of the Certainly not part of the average curriculum. There was a guy in Aish HaTorah who was He had gone to the Yale Divinity School. And uh uh he went back and he was in Yale Divinity School. I'm talking about Divinity School. You know, God School. And uh they were arguing Bible criticism. Bible criticism is of course that there were multiple authors who wrote the Bible, you know. Um so they brought different proofs. And uh and he still had a a Havruta with a rabbi and so uh he'd go back to the rabbi and the rabbi say, "Ah, shkoyach. That's a major shot over here. That's a Gemara over here. It's a Rashi over here. Everybody answers these questions. He's not the first one to think about." And he kept going back and he says, you know, "Professor, those aren't proofs because you can answer this and answer that." Until finally the professor got frustrated with him and said, "We know God didn't write the Torah. Our job is to figure out who did. But in university we do not accept the concept that God wrote a book." Well, so that's pretty good. So I say, "Okay, who killed Nicole Brown Simpson?" Uh it wasn't O.J. So now who killed him? You might go, "Well, all the evidence was there." No, no, forget about O.J. O.J.'s not involved here. So who did it? John Wilkes Booth didn't shoot Lincoln. Okay, so who did? No, but he did. No, no, no, no, we're rejecting that. That premise we reject. So, you have to be able to come in with a certain open-minded attitude. I uh when I would give classes to secular people, every now and then I would say like you know, I would turn to people and say, "Am I making sense?" And if they said no, so I would try to address the issue, but most of the time they would say, "Yeah, what you're saying makes sense." That's all. I just want to present the result. You don't have to accept it. You don't have to change your life, but tell me if what I'm saying makes sense. So, I was giving a class once on on marriage. And so obviously in the class uh we dealt with relationships outside of marriage and why they were not positive, you know. I remember at one point I turned to a guy and said, "Am I making sense?" And he goes, "Unfortunately, yes." So, so a person has to be open. So, the Mem HaGolah is telling me the following, based on how much I develop my character, that's how much I'll be able to be connected to Torah. Otherwise, I'm going to color the Torah with my own preconceived notions. And that's why as much as possible, we went down to Mitzrayim which is described as a core vessel. What's a core vessel? It's a smelting pot. You boil out all the impurities. Turn you into pure choymer. Perfect raw material to be able to take on a new existence. Free from all previous assumptions. Let everything go. Open your mind. I may I mentioned this I feel like I mentioned this recently, but very frustrating to play backgammon with somebody that you taught backgammon to. Because they play the same way that you do, cuz you taught them all the moves. When you play with somebody who learned someplace completely different, you suddenly get a whole completely different game, because they don't They're not coming with your own assumptions. That's where it says, I learned the most from my Talmudim because my Talmudim aren't coming from this the same way that I am. They're looking at it from a fresh perspective, and they're like, "Why can't you say this?" Look at it in a whole new way. And that's certainly not the way I would have looked at it, but that doesn't mean that it's wrong. It's just it's a it's a different perspective. Now, if I could show you why it's wrong, okay. I want to get you to think. I want you to get to look at things in a new way. So, as we reach the last Shabbos before Shavuos, where is the Shabbos that we finish Pirkei Avos, not Maseches Avos, but Pirkei Avos, which includes the sixth perek called Kinyanei HaTorah, which are the brisos that are there to instruct me on the chashivus of Torah. If you want to get Torah, you have to want it. You have to want it. I I I I I told this story at one point, but I was teaching in a yeshiva, and uh uh I was speaking with another one another one of the rebbeim during prep. And there was a guy from LA. He was there for his second year. He was a real macho guy, you know, cool guy. You know. Quite quite physically fit and talented and you know. And they got him they got him the first year. They got him into learning they made him into a mentor. So he's sitting preparing during the during the prep time. And he comes over to ask his rebbe who I was talking to a question on the Gamara. And he explained it to him and he goes oh okay and he goes back. So I went back to what I was saying to him and he says wait watch this. And before he sat down he did this kind of like little dance before he sat down. And the rebbe looked at me and said that's the simcha I wish I had when someone answered a question that I had in the Gamara. That level of excitement. I probably told the story before but I you know at this point uh I'm old enough that I can repeat myself now. Um On that by the way Rav Chaim Soloveitchik once gave the same shmooze several weeks in a row in the mirror and someone finally came over to him and said you said this already. He goes in mussar we don't only have to say a chiddush you have to say an achdus ha Torah. You have to hear it again until you until you integrate the message. So um So my son told me that he heard from his rebbe who heard from his grandfather who heard from Rav Ber Bear who was there the first shiur that Rav Chaim Soloveitchik gave in Volozhin. So he comes in and uh the Tzeis Es Kasha. Now, the Kitzes wrote very, very minimally. Uh he was so poor he couldn't afford the ink. So, he wrote very very, very brief. Almost cryptically, if you can say. Anyway, so Reb Berach Ber So, Reb Chaim asks this question. And he says sitting around the table were all the Rush Yeshiva that we still learn today. And he went around and asked everybody to give a teretz, and everybody gave a teretz. And when they were all done, Reb Reb Chaim shrugged up all their teretz and he showed how they were all wrong. And then he showed how Reb Berach Ber in a few words knocked off all their answers. Well, as you can imagine, he had everyone's attention. And then he gave an answer. And everybody was thrilled. And then he shrugged it up. So, everybody was devastated. And then he showed you in the Kitzes how the Kitzes wrote of his answer, too, and how he answered it up. He says, "How is that believable?" He brings another answer. And this is the way my son tells me that he got the story from his Rebbi from his Rebbi's Rebbi. He says, "It It It was It was like a chasuna. People were so happy, he says they were dancing on the tables." And then he shrugged it up. He said it was like Tisha B'Av. And then he showed how the Kitzes had anticipated that question as well. And this went on for 3 hours. I don't have that level of enthusiasm. I wish I did. But I can tell you there are times that I have gone to Shiur Reb Moshe Shapiro, where I came out and I wanted to make a bracha. Asher bocha bono mikol ha'amim venoson lanu those things. My heart is so sad. He wanted He wanted so much. And the moment of near at all. This is the showers of Kenya near Tara. We have to fill ourselves with the thrill and a desire for Tara. And if we do, then I'm really a sham. We will be like to an American policy. And that's it for this week. Uh if you want to find out more about the show, you can go to my website rebeliaski.com. You can leave comments and you can uh uh contact me and uh you can sponsor an episode. Uh click on the sponsor an episode button. And uh that's it. I'm Devin Orlawsky and this is the Rebbi Orlawsky show. It's the Rebbi Orlawsky show. Torah and Simcha ready to go. It's the Rebbi Orlawsky show. Knowledge and wisdom will help you grow. Lots of fun in every episode. And we don't have to rhyme. No, we don't. It's the Rebbi Orlawsky show. Orlawsky.com Torah anytime. YouTube and more. It's the Rebbi Orlawsky show. Torah and Simcha ready to go. It's the Rebbi Orlawsky show. Till next time till we meet again. The Rebbi Orlawsky show. It's the Rebbi Orlawsky show.