The Rosh's Move from Germany to Spain (Rabbis on the Run Series)

good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the continuation of our new series rabbis on the run rabbis on the run is an extension of a series we've been doing for many years now called the people of the book tuesday nights in which we examine different major personalities in jewish history and jewish scholarship it's enabling us to blend jewish history together with the total learning jewish scholarship and each year each season we try to think of another theme another way to communicate another unit in this series called the people of the book we are the people of the book you could find online on wayutora and elsewhere the uh series classes were grateful to be moscow's orbit and those who have taught this year our theme is rabbis on the run which are the people who compose tremendous scholarship even while fleeing persecution and oppression it's an astounding astounding thing i mentioned this morning in the pasture class that we have the luxury at least here in boca raton you sit under a palm tree today wasn't so nice taka you sit under a palm tree beautiful weather a sip of pina colada you got a laptop high-speed internet you can google you've got the barillan you've got and yet we can't have an original thought and we have an incredible incredible rich history of great rabbis great leaders who fleeing for their lives trying to secure their families who are on the run didn't have books no printing press didn't have a computer couldn't save drafts of what they were writing and we have been gifted gifted the tremendous torah that we have so that is our series rabbis on the run and i want to express express our collective gratitude to our dear friends leni and honey grinstein who sponsor this series in memory of their fathers morris christine and mr aaron tambor so thank you for your generosity and thank you for enabling all of this learning i have the privilege this evening just a little shocked anybody's here none of you must watch the news but hashem better that way i'm glad that nothing to be afraid of i'm glad that you're here and those who are joining us online as well it's wonderful to be together and we're going to examine the life and the legacy the story of the rash rabbenu usher any student of talmud knows you cannot learn gemara on the page itself you have rashi on the inside column or yitzhaki you have on the outside column rashi's descendants the school of the tosophists franco germantospos and in the back of the gemara you have the rosh rabbenu asher he is a staple in gemara and not only is he a staple in gemara he is a foundation and a pill or a staple in the process the mahabharat yosef karo in his introduction to the writes i'm not a rabbi being persecuted or on the run but i am trying to balance a lot so i did not get a source sheet done for you but i'm happy to share so many of these sources bravios caro in his introduction to the shogunate joseph carl of 1488 to 1575 the great machabear who will talk about writes a commentary the base yosef on the tour which is authored by the son of the rush the tour the base yosef was his extrapolation of halacha and then he said it's so long it's so lengthy no one's going to read it so no one's going to learn it he says i'm going to write a succinct summary of the base yosef and he publishes the this is a worthy of study in its own right we probably have previously in people of the book to the shocking review i have succinctly captured everything that was in my base yosef and i did it in such a manner that every jew can learn the entire shoghnar at least once a year at least once a year that was the expectation now the truth is the shaking is not short it's not as long as we perceive it because we publish only a paragraph or two on every page because of the rich commentary the super commentary that surrounds it but of yosef karo when the 16th century becomes the halachic standard in fact he shohan he sets the table upon which the rama of moshe islas puts his map his tablecloth on that table representing ashkenazic tradition ashkenazic jury living in spain then in israel and the ramaz living in krakow poland sir yosef kara who is the as i said the standard of the ramada disagrees but only occasionally ashkenazim too we too are bound by the shochan in his introduction he says after my investigation after my analysis i'm going to come to a conclusion because that's the goal we don't have while we have debate and while we have rich debate in an analysis we have to come to a conclusion we should have some level of a unified practice we shouldn't look like we have multiple torahs we should look like we have one unified system of torah so how is he going to do it he says well if i include everybody how am i going to get there to surrender there are endless not endless but there are many many rishonim so fast forward he says i have three pillars upon which the jewish home the jewish house will rest and they are harif in alphas the rambam maimonides and the third pillar is harosh a martial we follow the majority he takes it quite literally so he says these are the three who get a vote and then he chose an odd number intentionally by design and he says two of the three that's who we're going with and that is how he comes to this conclusions in the so alongside these giants the riff and the rambam is none other than our personality and we'll study this evening the rush usher different than the rift and the rambam the rush is unusual though not unique and the reason he's included in our series rabbis on the run is because the rush has the distinction of having been a gudl a great post-sake a great talmudist a great community leader a rav a day in a reshashiva not only in the world of ashkenaz in which he's born in france and germany but he migrates he emigrates to spain where he again emerges as a uh a leader who is beloved admired a leader who is a halachic authority and so in many ways he blends those two worlds and that is our study for tonight he was not born the rush that was not the name on his birth certificate it was not the name that was given to him at his bris it is not how his mother called him when it was time for dinner his name was usher we call him rabbenu usher ben he was born in the year 1250 and he died in the year 1327. he was born in cologne in the holy roman empire and he died in spain in toledo it was pointed out to me it's not toledo toledo's in ohio toledo is in spain so as i said he migrated from germany the holy roman empire to toledo to spain his father was a talmud scholar himself as we often find he had a mind he had an upbringing i mentioned last night introducing rav david yosef the son of ravivadi yosef sadiq ben sadiq that we have a tradition of how significant it is to be a talik bensatic is even greater than its been russia when you are the child of a wicked person so it's true you didn't have a role model to learn from but you also were motivated to be nothing like the person you came from hopefully one was turned off by that corruption they saw but it's somewhat um courageous of me to introduce him this way but i said at saddiq and sadiq you grew up in the home of ramadi is safe you say why bother why bother trying to compete why bother i'll never measure up why bother and to be at sadiq ben sadiq to author a 19 volume set on allah to be at sadly ben sadiq that is righteous so we find that with many of our scholars that was true with the rush with rabbenu usher rabbini is the son of rabbenu he descends as well from the ravan rabelazar na son he had eight sons we know of two of them their names because one of them is prominent in his own right rabbi yaakov yaakov ben rabasher is the author of the tour the arbaturum what we know as the four orders of of arachim your adayah evan is daily living and your daya available financial interpersonal business and evan ezer status marriage divorce these for halacha for jewish law to be arranged and organized into those four categories into those four orders was introduced by the russia's son rabbenu yaakov he references that he had a brother and we have works of his brother his brother was rebbe yehuda so the russia had eight sons two of them we know their names are yaakov and rabbihood at least two daughters as well we know that his sons only marry within the family even when they emigrate to spain they remain and they continue part of that ashkemazic tradition his two daughters marry spaniards his two daughters marry within the spanish community and that is a great i think statement of confidence immersion integration that the russia is willing to allow such an intermarriage between an ashkenazi and asvari a mixed marriage an inter-marriage and the russia allows that with his daughters the russia had a very very prominent rebbe the russia learned in the basmedrash the rush was a student of anyone know lived from 1215 to 1293 the marami ruttenberg is the continuation of a chamber of great scholarship anyone know who the rebbe of the maharami rotenberg was the mayor of rothenberg who his rebbe was none other than the orzarua and ravichiro of paris of paris one of the great balayatosos so the maharami ruthenberger of mayor of rothenberg was considered the last of the balayatosvos the talmud is divided again we discussed this in the one of the early units of people of the book we have the mishnah tana literature we have the talmud amaridic literature the braces that susceptus are still part of the tunnelitic literature then we have the period of the gonam following the period of the gonam which by the way just as an aside the russia scribed no greater status to the onum over the rishonim the rush writes and achuva that he doesn't give greater authority to the government over the rishonim although other disagree so we have the tanayam the amaryam we have the period of the gonam and then we have the richon and the medieval early character and then we have the achronim and we have the early achronim and we are still in the period of the later achronim i'm sure the even later acharonim will consider us us we'll consider us the middle still part of the early acronym but we are in the period of the of the acronym so the balayhatosos rashi his descendants rashi's own sons-in-law grandsons are part of the school known as the baleatosas live in france and germany medieval times they suffer from the crusades and the last of the balayatos is considered to be the final authority of the balayatosos israel mayor of rottenberg the maharam of rottenberg student of the orcs he was present in 1242 we're all familiar with the story we read it on tish above morning the kina that he wrote the maharami ruttenberg authored the kinah of charles roof of he was present when there was the burning of countless wagons of the talmud in paris in 1242 prior to the printing press we can imagine how devastated we would be if someone collected all the volumes of our sacred library of our basement and publicly burned them the statement it would make how devastated we would be lost and all you'd have to do is go on amazon and press print and they'd print another set for you and the library would be full again and it would be devastating imagine no printing press imagine the painstaking labor of the hand copying of manuscripts of limited editions and the burning of these wagon loads what that represented maharami ruttenberg understood that as punishment for the having burned the books of the rambam we all know from the king of tish above mourning shalitif that is the maharami ruthenberg the last of the balayatosas but the first of the balliatosus who really published elaborately his chuvas his responsa the marami ruttenberg is considered to be the halaq authority in germany and the surrounding areas the holy roman empire what it was considered then how it was labeled or known then france and germany among the baleatos so this maharami ruttenberg who i just described is the rebbe of the rush it's in his basement that rabbenu usher learns that he grows up that he studies and that he gains a methodology approach to learning and approach to halacha and an approach to life 1286 we go to 1286 king rudolph the first can root up the first institute's new persecution against the jews he increases the taxation and he ups the physical persecution as we all know in antiquity through the middle ages and until today the non-jewish host nations that have jews they have this vicious cycle of being grateful for our presence because it helps the economy we do a good job stimulating the economy and conducting the economy and protecting the economy and then when they're comfortable in the economy they remember they hate the jews want to persecute oppress want to exterminate or want to uh or want to send us out of their land so this was one of those periods of persecution a rise of anti-semitism 1286 we're talking about the end of the period of the of the crusades after the crusades and a new period king rudolf the first the maharam as i said is the biggest rabbi in ashkenaz in the rhineland at the time and he's recognized as such with that distinction now it's unclear exactly why king rudolph went after the mahara but according to many traditions wanted to go territorial he wanted to move to the land of israel and the king was concerned that if he would leave he would take the jews with him and what would happen if he took the jews with him you don't have a lot of people to tax you got a nice return on the taxes you could squeeze the jew in particular with very little consequence so if his people would follow and the jewish population would would would diminish there'd be fewer to attacks and that would hurt the economy and hurt the king's status and so the maharama was arrested the maram was arrested he had left germany at 70 years old but he was followed he was arrested by the duke of lombardy in italy in 1286 and he was imprisoned the maharam in a prison in on sushem prison in assange france in that year in 1286. we know the story from several sources including sources because there is a halachic discussion that revolves around this capture of the maharam i know our topic is the rush not the maharami ruttenberg but understanding this particular episode in the story of the rame ruttenberg sets the stage for why the rush ultimately emigrates why he feels he needs to flee michelin kitten tells us that while releasing a captive while redeeming somebody who's been taken captive is among the greatest mitzvos releasing somebody who's captive which in our day thank god we don't have although we still do we have two bodies that are being held by uh hamas still in gaza hadar golden and others and we should not rest until we get them back and there are several campaigns still underway we interviewed his mother golden behind the bema and she talked about the efforts we could still be exerting it still remains a great mitzvah and we should be devoted in halacha there's an analysis and a hierarchy in fact of even selling sacred objects in order to have the money to redeem someone it's considered to be such a great mitzvah helping a woman who's in aguna is redeeming somebody who's captive we have modern applications sadly still of this great mitzvah so the mission and getting qualifies and says that while it's considered to be if we're going to rank mitzvos we're not usually in that practice in fact we're encouraged the opposite to not see them as different rank but this is considered high up redeeming a captive but the mishna says do not spend more than the value of the life to redeem them why because of an enemy captures and we're willing to overpay so to say to get them back what will we do we incentivize the enemy to continue to take captives to take prisoners now this has become a popular halachic discussion when gila chalit was captured in others prisoner exchange what are we willing to do what price are we willing to pay in order to get people home it's a different conversation for the bodies though an important conversation than it was for living soldiers who were taken captive so the gemara says that might be different to redeem a community leader or a talmud you might be entitled to pay even more than the value of their life and even greater ransom so the russia banu asher his rebbe marami runeberg the great last of the baleatosos the undisputed leader of postic of ashkenaz of the rhineland and beyond is held in prison for seven years and the rush leads the charge urban russia leads the charge to put together significant funds in order to pay a ransom for his release only one problem the maharami ruttenberg won't hear of it he says absolutely not i'm staying in prison you cannot overpay in order to get my release because if you do you will incentivize and motivate the enemy to simply imprison more and more people fast forward by the way this discussion rabino usher wanting to overpay to get his rebbe out of jail and his rebbe objected and protesting and saying you cannot do that in black september i don't remember what year it was 19 1970. black september 1970 a plane to israel is hijacked and re-routed to jordan on that plane as our own rhony rabb and his family in our community and on that plane is none other than the great rush of shiva in berlin rafinha is on the plane and a group of tamid from berlin a group of great rabbinic leaders say there's an exception that you're allowed to overpay in order to release a great talmud shiva garlador and who objects and says no reviac of kaminetsky of torah says no why because he says when are you allowed to overpay in times of peace but in times of war you cannot embolden the enemy by overpaying and he objects that they should not gather extra money in order to pay for the release of rafner ultimately the prisoners on the plane altogether are released raftner comes home and i wonder what the next meeting of the moetzes is like of rafitner and ravyakov i wonder what that conversation was like i don't know i'm sure it was the shame shamayim and both sides i hope recognized that that so the marami ruttenberg resists he hesitates and he says to rabbanu usher the rush his talmud absolutely not i object he's in jail for seven more years he dies in prison he dies in prison in 1912 93 and his body is held until 1306 for another 13 14 years until finally a pious jew pays in order to redeem and get the release of the body the maharami ruttenberg and he is and he is buried the story is told this analysis is done um luria the great maharshal writes in his uh in his troops ruthenberg the colonel of rochester and the community wanted he wouldn't allow he said you can't yosemite there was nobody his equal nobody like him shari leftovers it would have been legitimate to gather all the money in the world and redeem him and if out of his great humility he didn't want me to torah so even if he didn't want that was very selfish of him we should have recognized that his being in prison was causing great pitta torah and we should have wanted him back and then he goes on to point out that he had a great student says lives 1510 to 1573. so we're talking about a few centuries later and the marshal is a tradition and he says i understand and here's why it's relevant to our story that after the marame ruttenberg who was target number two none other than his great esteemed student rabbenu asher the rush the no de lo barach and he ran to toledo benitso barack obama and he was saved out of hashem's great mercyme that the fact that the maharam did not acquiesce did not give in suffered personally and paid the ultimate price by dying in prison he actually saved rabbinic leadership he saved jewry in some sense because by setting that precedent though they wanted to get the rush the rush fled and they realized the authorities king rudolf and others that there was no point in continuing to imprison great rabbis because they wouldn't pay the ransom it wouldn't help while the marami ruttenberg was in prison rabbenu usher assumed her of mayor's position mahram's position in worms he became one of the great rabbis of the rhineland the holy roman empire in germany and then as the maharashtra just told us our tradition is that the government was targeting the rush next he was blackmailed and therefore he was forced to flee he left germany in 1303 he went first to southern france provence catalonia and then to spain now when i tell you that itinerary sounds like a nice summer trip you buy one flight and then you get a ticket on the train and you could hit all those cities you could hit all those cities not in a period of months you could hit all those those cities in a period of days of hours it's a train ride you could probably get a great ticket a groupon get it all locked up in one shot southern france provence catalonia toledo but then to pack up your family to pack up all of your possessions to make that trip from city to city was no small feat and rabano usher did it and authored the rush and gave us the pisgah rush and gave us all the all the literature that we're going to talk about tonight where was his first stop when he got to spain he first migrated to southern france to provence but he wasn't satisfied with the level of frumkite it wasn't just that the persecution continued and to follow him there he wasn't satisfied with the environment religiously and so he continued to go he continued to descend into spain and his first stop was barcelona and where was he greeted by somebody who actually was a contemporary a peer a colleague and a friend somebody he had exchanged responsa with namely rip benaderes otherwise known to us as the rajba the rajpa the rajbo was a talmud of the ramban and the rashbandaramban unusual for spanish leaders had an affinity for ashkenazi leaders for the leaders for the rabbis of ashkenaz of france and germany for the baleatos as we'll mention in a moment the rest of spanish jewry and rabbinic leadership had very little use for ashkenazim not much has changed today but had very little use for ashkenazim and in fact did not incorporate the learning of toasters at all the rashba as a student of the ramban were exceptions to that rule and therefore there had been halachic exchange letters responsible between the rush while he was still in germany with the rashba he stops in barcelona to and he's greeted and spends time with the rashford benaderes who then the rashba gives him a rabbinic endorsement very important ashkenazi comes from germany and is going to look for a rabbinic position among the smartem you need to have a big haskamma from a spanish rabbi from a svardic rabbi and he gets from his friend and colleague the rashba where he moves to toledo and he becomes the chief dayan the chief judge in matters of jewish law the chief rabbi of the community all based on the haskamma based on the invaluable recommendation of the rashba which proved critically important for him in toledo in spain where he serves the rush learns arabic interesting he's a judge how could you be a judge and listen to the to the litigants and not speak their language you have a translator you know what gets lost in translation surabay no usher the rush learns arabic he learns spoken arabic but not written arabic i read in one of the scholarly articles that i don't know exactly how they know that but that he understood arabic and because he felt he needed to learn it in order to serve as a judge in court but he did not read or write arabic ultimately he dies in toledo on the ninth of jejun in the year 5088 1327 he dies in a state of poverty which can imagine having moved from place to place to place and he's known uh his known surviving children ultimately are killed in persecutions that affected spain in 1390 so let's unpack let's tell you more of his story when the rush moved he was not a young man i'm about to his age he was not an old man but my point is he wasn't 19 years old going for his year in israel he was 55 years old at the time that he emigrated he packed up his family and went from place to place to place and reinvented himself and learned a new language and established himself with new authority and tried to assimilate religiously into his new surroundings by the time he had left germany he had mastered the the uh approach to total learning the halachic methodologies of germany and france of the baletosos and here there is a fundamental difference and the rush plays a critical role in being a bridge between these two schools these two methodologies merges them in a way which is a gift and it's hard to imagine the development and evolution of halacha until today without this contribution of the rush in ashkenaz in france in germany was talmud centric i'm about to tell you is going to blow your mind because it's hard for us to imagine when i say the word yeshiva if we were to play word association if i say yeshiva you say gemara you know everyone complains why don't they learn tanakh there's a tiny little muslim maybe you could take the most hardcore khasi shiva litvisor they all have in common in emphasis and they center on the study of gemara but mayor shapiro gifted us the da fiomi how many hundreds of thousands of da film yidden around the world today it's unbelievable the gift of the daphyoi our life revolves around the daf what offer are you on what is the daft that day gemura gemara to be a shasiad to be a ashamed has become a badge of honor in our world to us it's synonymous with being yeshiva's learning gomorrah learning the daf completing shaas being a shasiyd and that's the way it was in ashkenaz in france and in germany yeshiva the curriculum was talmud centric and that's where the tosophos developed because they compared they contrasted they did an analysis they asked questions based on the gemara any student of gemara knows you open gemara and you start eating toast how could the gemara on this page say this what about the gemara on that page it says that and now how are we going to reconcile the gomer on this page with the gemara on that page and make sense of it oh it must be in our analysis here's the common thread or there's two different authors or your assumption is wrong and asking the question but the entire the entire school of tosos is based on a talmud centric style of learning and comparing and contrasting and working it all out together i recently met with um i recently met with godaddy zlata was the head of art scroll he was in town we were talking about some of the changes in the world of publishing what articles putting out art school is now putting out english translated and elusive data tosos started in cedar mode and that way the yeshiva guys are not going to cheat and go right to the arts called toast but it's interesting i said to him who's the market english to like if you want to learn ptosis usually you know how to learn toastless if you don't know how to learn who's the market so he said it you know the argument when art school first put out his translation again we take it for granted today art school gamers have done for total learning it's absolutely absolutely extraordinary and other translations which have come out korean rabbi schneider insults and others what else girls done is amazing the first volumes of arts girl had pages and pages and pages of endorsements of husqvas why not because they thought it would sell better but because there was in fact opposition it was not unprecedented but it was extremely controversial to make our torah shabbat which had to be written down but wasn't meant to to make it so accessible to the masses by translating it it was deemed incredibly incredibly controversial incredibly controversial others thought you're going to dumb down gemara study i remember when i was in shiva and karen biavna i don't know if it's still this way the rule was the oscar gamaras they had them but not in the base madrish they were in the library if you got stuck in a gemara you couldn't just go to the shelf on the side of the room you had to make it all the way to the library you know between siddharam at lunch or later to check up the art school it shouldn't be a crutch it shouldn't be a way of not in fact toiling and exerting our greatest effort and learning so he told me it's fascinating that with art scroll the more people who have access the more open the gemara has come it has not dumbed down learning it's elevated learning so people who've now gained access because of what art school's done they want to learn ptosis also if our world of the yeshiva world if the world of of rabbinic judaism revolves around gemara then tosos is included in that conversation closest is a main character a main voice in that conversation so they're translating tosos it's absolutely wild so the baleatosus they wrote according to the order of the talmud or zarua even though they're not printed on the page we think of toasters as those on the side of the page but we have many balayatosos they're not printed but they are printed according to the order of shas now let's go on the train and go to spain castile the 14th century yeshivas don't study talmud they never heard of tosus they have no use for ptosis the baleatosos these offspring of rashi and beyond these leaders of france and germany spanish jury says what do they have to say for us we don't need them we're not interested in them and it doesn't revolve around the talmud how did they study and what did they study two other works anyone guess who they were i'll give you a hint we mentioned the shogunate decides based on three and the russia is not yet living in spain so who are they studying the riff and the rambam the bainu al-fasih the rif that is printed in the back of our gemara who comes to halakh conclusions after the discussion of the gemara and the rambam the rama who does not go according to the order of the gemara the rambam who organizes all of allah into his mishnah torah into his yada kazaka the rambam who lives 100 years before the rush who lives in egypt and then moves to israel the rambam organizes in an encyclopedia thematically into 14 different categories 14 different books the rama in his introduction says the name of his book is the mishna torah mishnatora means the repetition or the codification or the whole torah the rama's vision and in fact this is what happened in spain the rama's vision was you don't need a whole library you don't need a whole bookcase you don't need a terabyte thumb drive all you need is my books because i took the entire talmud from beginning to end and i simplified and i consolidated and instead of all the debate in the back and forth it's mishna torah this is the repetition of the consolidated version of the whole torah the rambam we said was controversial for several reasons his books were burnt some great leaders said he was reincarnated as a worm there were all kinds of terrible things that were said about the rambam but among the reasons he was controversial was not only our some of his philosophical positions was his his um bolden this and saying mishna torah you don't need a whole library all you've got all you need is my 14 books we don't call it the mishna torah we called the yada kazakha yad yadda 14 their 14 books the yada khazaka the rambam's 14 books so indeed the jews of spain followed the rambam's directive they embraced the rambam's proposal you can shelve the talmud let it gather dust and all you need to open up is the alakazako all you need to do is go through the 14 books of the rambam is mishna torah and you have it all and here we have a clash between ashkenaz and svard between france and germany and spain between the balayatosvos the rambam and the rif are we meant to continue to study the talmud analyze and debate and extract and extrapolate compare and contrast or no we come to the final conclusion and that's what matters the takeaway you know sometimes i give classes and rabbi what's the bottom line that's i love that question you start with the puzzle can we go with the gemara and the rishonim and moshe says this way and the remote says this way says this way and someone raw what's the bottom line just give me the bottom line spain they wanted the bottom line and in france and germany they wanted to know how they got there in 1310 and as you sowed olam a book on astronomy and the calendar yitzhak israeli who's a student of rabbanu ashraf student of the rush rights he writes quote as soon as the work of the rambam was made public and disseminated throughout the diaspora all of israel agreed to rule in accordance with its dictates on all matters of law rabbinic ordinances and custom before the shogunate was embraced as the authoritative work the rambam was in spain that was it that was all you needed and that's what the rush discovers ravenwasher discovers when he moves at 55 years old with his family to southern france to provence and he stops in barcelona and he makes his way to toledo in toledo when he arrives 1305 he finds the local rabbis the dayanam they pascan they are familiar with they are aware only of the rambam says bring me a gemara they say what's gemara where gomorrah what volume of gemara again does that blow your mind we can't even imagine it yeshivas who don't have gemara in the curriculum rabonum dayanam and postkim who aren't familiar with the gemara they're quoting and they know the riff and the rambam they care about the bottom line conclusion no sources no divergent opinions no debate that is that is how we got there the rambam himself regards the rabbis of france as inferior to those of spain so there is a tradition from the rambam to spanish jury to view the leaders of ashkenaz as their scholarship as inferior ashkenaz as we said it was all organized according to the order of the of the talmud so the rush comes from that experience in school and he discovers this now here in spain and he is terribly terribly bothered and he's borrowed bothered for two reasons the russia banu usher is bothered because he thinks fundamentally the methodology is wrong abandoning the study of talmud not being gemara centric not knowing from the primary source not studying divergent opinions and coming to conclusions based on majority fundamentally and methodology methodologically he thinks it's wrong but then then sociologically he sees the level of observance or lack thereof some of the laxity in halacha he sees some of the assimilation he sees some of the acculturation and the rabbenu asha the rash can't help but conclude that there's a connection between the methodology and learning and the practice the behavior the levels or lack of levels of piety of scrupulous observance of the of the community of the community itself there's no emphasis on talmud's study only on what they call the talmud cotton the rif al-fasi the rift is known as the talmud cotton in spain amongst fardham who needs the big talmud we have the consolidated concise we have you know some of us grew up on my parents are here but the cliff notes the riff is the cliff notes so i would have been very happy in spain so in spain they say we really have to read the whole book do they have a movie are there cliff notes the riff is the talmud they're very happy with they're very it turned out okay i'm teaching a lecture tonight the people who actually showed up it's extraordinary my parents still don't believe it i still don't believe it so this is what rabbenu usher discovers when he comes to spain and he's terribly bothered because as i said fundamentally he's bothered in principle and he's bothered because he correlates the laxity and observance and the behaviors that are bothering him he correlates it specifically with this methodology and so he devotes and dedicates himself to reform and change the learning in spain this is an enormous contribution he takes the culture culture of germany and he brings it with him down into spain he reforms the curriculum in yeshivas he introduces and reintroduces the gemara rashi tosos he inspires the rabbanum and the dayanim to not only know the cliff notes to not study the art scroll halacha conclusions but go back to the primary sources go study the gemara see the richonam analyze and understand in castilla russia edits a set of authorized toasters he teaches toasters he reintroduces the style of tostos and he edits the ptosis known as toso sarosh if you've ever studied toso sarosh it's not printed in the gemara some volume just on the side but printed independently and several massages we have the toaster which it's unclear whether they represent his own toso so they're simply published edited and amended by him it includes the opinions of his rebbe tosus it includes the ramban it includes mayor abu lafiyah in tososara she integrates tosos of france and germany with some of the greats of spain where he is in an effort to try to wean the students to tell the talmidam and the leaders from the rif and the rambam the rush decides he's going to compose his own succumb he composes his own conclusions he generally quotes the rift's opinion and then he suggests an alternative conclusion based on tostos will sometimes try to reconcile them and the rush comes to his own conclusions and that is the gift that we have in the back of our sectors of the piske harosh the pisgah rush are the russia's analysis of the talmud he was trying to wean the students from going to the shaskatan of the rif study the gemara come with me on the journey through rashi tosus and the spanish authorities the ramban and others and then this is my conclusion says the rush the russia's pisgah russia on the back of masatas but only the russia does not write an agaretta so mr khatanes those who just learned the daffy miss which is almost all overwhelmingly agatha the rush doesn't have that much to say other than portions the rush concerns himself only with the conclusions in jewish law not with not with the agata he makes it very clear that unlike the rambam who thinks that the spanish rabbinic leaders are superior he thinks that they are inferior in their scholarship and he writes that in his succumb he's not shy to be able to mention that was he successful did he transform the attitude and the curriculum and the methodology in spain well let me read to you the words of his own son rabbi huda who says quote it was from hashem that the russia to leave germany in order to raise many students in the lands of spain for in the lands there was no accurate commentaries on the talmud in the 14th century a student of the russia's son yehudah rabbi yehudah wrote in his cedar ladera he has a safer called say the ledera and he writes to 1385 he is a son he is a student of the son of the rush and he says thank god thank god that hashem put into rabbenu usher benichiro's mind to migrate to move from ashkenaz to toledo with his family where he instituted he set up yeshivas and he re-established the learning of talmud he made a connection between the methodology of the rif with the tosus and so on and so forth writes the writes the but the spirit of hashem awakened within rabbenu usher and he came and he was incredibly and he was incredibly successful the rush was very frustrated he was very frustrated by this lack of methodology and here he was successful he writes it in his own shoeless let me read to you from some chubas of the rush in the rash writes and shruva saras simon memgimo he says quote a curse on those who decide the law on the basis of the books and codes of the great ones without knowing anything of the mission in talmud he was cursing his colleagues in spain he was cursing that that culture that curriculum impossible to reach accurate or correct conclusions without examining competing sources because copyists are fallible he was worried all you're going to study is the rama man riff what if they made a mistake you have to go back to the primary source how do you know it's accurate without going back to the primary source when i was in yeshiva they taught us that often don't take anyone's word for it just because the achrom quotes the reshone that way and then analyzes it open the reshow and check for yourself whenever someone writes the hulai three dots and then makes assumptions or tries to simply summarize what they said this is true i'm sure in secular academics and scholarship go back to the primary source the only way you could be a true scholar is if you're literate and familiar with the primary sources themselves and not relying on what others write the rush was terribly bothered he writes in another chuva lamid aleph prone to era are those who decide the law in accordance with the words of the rambam well not knowing the talmud of the sources they are they permit the prohibited and they from prohibit the permissible he was worried that not only will he be mastered that which is us but they'll assure that which is mutter they'll distort it won't be accurate and then rabino usher the rush the little rabbinic trash talking talks about the rambam the rambam did not do as the other authors did they brought proofs for their decisions they directed the reader to the talmudic source of their decisions they allowed the reader to comprehend the important than the true he the rambam however wrote as though he were a prophet without explanation without sources you open a missionary opening you don't know where he got it from he doesn't tell you where the source is he doesn't tell you how other people studied it or understood it he writes as if this is the only way to understand it and the russia is very very critical of it all those who read his work believe they understood his intent but it's not so whoever is not attentive to what's written in the talmud cannot truly comprehend his words and will ultimately fail in deciding and deciding the law so the rambam and here we have this contrast the method of the riff and the rambam rabbenu usher comes from the school of tosos sort of integrates the two and brings that methodology and methodology down to spain and now go to the next generation i told you that the rush had a son of yaakov the rash wrote his sakim how and where do they appear according to what order the back of the gemara the back of the gemara the problem is that assumes that you know where everything is in the gemara for example there are significant suggest nida that appear for whatever reason because it was a detour the gemara took me and the russia's halachic opinions and many of them are in but how would you know that there's no index there's no table of contents talmud bavaria is mithvil bal it's all mixed up if hutner has a whole argument why that is by design on purpose it preserved the tereshaba alpe it preserved the oral transmission idea you still needed a rebbe a gemara is one big mish kebab again if you've ever learned gemara your head is spinning halfway through one page a detour followed by a detour followed by a detour it's hard to remember where you got started or how to get back on the highway so if you're going to write a commentary and a lot of conclusions based on this middle bow based on this mixed up and no system literature how will anyone know where you're sakim are so that motivated his son rabbi yaakov to say you know what allah has to be organized if people are going to study it people are going to apply it it has to be organized so rabbenu asha the russia's son says not according to the order of messages published in the back of the talmud but a separate system the fourth two room a tour is a column these are the columns that will hold up the jewish house so he called it the arbaturum or khayyam these are the arbaturum and by the end of the 15th century the tour overtakes the mistorah as the primary legal text in castile in spain that's all the rush until the rush it's the rif and the ramen that's being studied it's only halachic authority there is no analysis there are no diversion opinions but because of ash and the russia's influence by the 15th century it is his son rabiacos arbaturam it is the tour that is the dominant allah text that's being studied even in spain and what was the methodology of the tour his system his code is systematic there's no talmudic sources so his father's criticism of the rambam you could have of the tour the tour doesn't quote where the gemara is however he does embrace his father's methodology of giving divergent opinions so rabbenu yaakov the russia's son in his halachic system the four tour and the four columns comes to a a compromise between his father and the rambam on the one hand like the rambam he does not incorporate the primary text he does not quote the gemara however like his father the rash he does quote the virgin opinions before coming to his allah a conclusion of what's right by the way the tour writes usher writes the tour the arbiter the four columns because he doesn't tell you the primary source two contemporaries have a race to write commentary on this tour in order to tell you what were the primary sources and how he got there one is raviol cirques de bach and the other is yosef caro 16th century known as the base yosef name known as the basioso de basiose got there first of yosef caro and his name is yosef if he wrote the arbaturum the four columns what are the four columns holding up my house the base yosef the house of yosef raviol serks who disagrees often says oh yeah you wrote the house the house of yosef guess what there's a new house in town and he writes to buy his the bach this is how they named their books i say one day i want to publish a book called rabbinic trash talking between the rambam and the arrived between the ramban and the bala more between the bach and the base yosef all respectful and all in order to increase torah study what a strickel competition kennesaw from the rush is in the back of the gemara his son creates four categories of al-aqsa four columns the four columns hold up the commentary of the base yosef then the bias says there's a new house in town he writes to buy his debach on the basis of safe the basio safe says it's nice that we have a house that's held up by columns but you know what you need inside a house you need a set table so he writes the shulhanara and then moshe is the rama comes along it says that's a nice table you know what it needs it needs my tablecloth my map is spread out on top of it and we keep going with the names and the images of each one one upping so to say one upping the one upping the other okay so this is the rush why he had to flee what he discovers and what he changes in terms of study and halachic methodology in his religious attitude he resembles his teacher the marami ruttenberg he takes a very strict uh approach he has an aversion to lenient opinions to kulas but rather he rules often strictly but he also follows the maharam and that he's very opposed to the study of philosophy he's opposed to the study of philosophy of secular knowledge and in fact he writes that he thanks god for having saved him from its influence and he boasts usher boasts that he has no secular knowledge he has no knowledge outside of torah he's proud and he boasts that his old view of the world only comes through the prism of of torah his position is defined when he states that philosophy is based on critical research and religion is based on tradition and therefore there is no harmony and you cannot reconcile the two and philosophy he not only rejects but when he comes to spain and here in spain he finds a greater embrace of philosophy we know the morning of the rambam we know the kusari levy we know some of the great philosophers that come from spain that's of course jewish philosophy but they have an awareness of secular philosophy as well rebainus the rush again correlates the laxity in observance and the level of assimilation with the exposure and the embrace of philosophy and secular knowledge he comes and he signs on to abandon that nobody under the age of 30 is allowed to study is allowed to study philosophy he says they're not allowed so what's interesting i heard of lopianski describe it this way non-jewish historians when they analyze rabino usher the rush they like to paint the picture that in spain it was the golden age of spanish jewry and then a group of extremists migrated some fundamentalists came from germany and they came out against philosophy and against culture and they tried to destroy and undermine this beautiful golden age of spanish jewry but that's not an accurate and clear picture that paints it with a bias the truth is that there were challenges within the spanish jewish community and there was an ongoing battle already the rambam rabbiniona and others and in fact you can read all about it the hours are already late so i'm going to summarize some of this well there's so much richness to share here about the russian about what was happening in ashkenazi inspired germany and spain is a book called the minhas kenos the minhas kanos was published a series of letters back and forth from that time all about this debate how much should a yeshiva curriculum how much should religious jews be exposed to secular philosophy into secular culture on the one hand it can enrich it can elevate on the other hand it can detract and distract it could corrupt what we believe in and so there was a series of letters called upon the rajba to get involved and other spanish rabbis sent a letter proposing this ban and many embraced it and there was a big schism between the jews of spain and the jews of france in exactly this level of exposure and integration and involvement with secular philosophy secular culture there was a book called adaraba that came out against this series of letters that dealt with this ban and that dealt with what was going on among the two extreme voices some entirely in favor of studying philosophy and secular culture and others enormously and extremely opposed the rajba and the rush were considered in the middle they were more moderate on the one end they were opposed they were concerned but on the other hand they were more moderate in their voice in their voice against it what's interesting is that even though the rush did sign on that ban and even though the rush was opposed to what was the default behavior until that point nevertheless he was beloved he was embraced he was respected widely by the jews of spain he was appointed to the great synagogue in toledo his influence grew and grew as i mentioned his two daughters married sparred him and his decisions his halacha rulings became the standard in the whole of castile in the whole of spain they embraced the rush so this is the russia's contribution the rush comes and he remains ashkenazi central centrist in his hashkafa so to say in his world view he remains ashkenazi centered in his approach and methodology of halacha and yet he's living that way in this foreign country in in spain in spain he brings some of the values of germany not only methodology and not only opposition to secular knowledge but sadly something that the jews of ashkenaz had to learn that the jews of spain had not been familiar with which was the issue of martyrdom the jews of ashkenaz because of the crusades the first and second crusade were well aware of the question of giving your life we're familiar with those stories again we read the kinas on antishiba and beyond so the russian russia brought the concept of self-martyrdom to spain to svarad and during the anti-jewish riots in seville in 1390 and 1391 his own great grandson rabiaco ben usher ii took his own life and the life of his family rather than submit to the cross rather than convert and that horrific act that he took his own life and killed his own family elicited horror from the svarda community who were unfamiliar with that type of behavior who would not experience that type of martyrdom so clearly that was part of the family tradition and the tradition of ashkenaz that he brought that he brought as well it's interesting that though most of his career was in germany most of his writing takes place in spain so most of what molded him into who he was as a halachist took place under the german influence the influence of ashkenaz but his rulings took place in in spain they were almost all the shivas were written in the last 23 years of his life and even though he's writing in spain he's still quoting the ashkenazi gadolin and not the spanish golem however he does fuse these halachas and again if we had more time there are many many examples when the tour quotes should you wear to fill in he talks about the fact that his father wore twillon the custom ashkenazi custom the sparty those who are also follow to natwarzvillen and the tour quotes adoni avi harash he very often quotes adoni aviharash did this he quotes the diversion opinions and comes to allah conclusion the rush tried to bring that practice to spain as well one practice he was successful in bringing was kitnios kidney is an ashkenazi innovation svardhan never observed kidney kidneys was introduced by the richonim by the smog the smack and they were concerned with two things kidney kidneys legumes and pesach one concern was that anything that can be ground into flour and manipulated like one of the five grains if we allow you to eat that you might come to eat actual hummus ha today we have kosher pasta bagels kosher pesto pizza the spirit of kidney is certainly being violated left and right today that was one reason the other reason was that these legumes and beans were stored and sold in sacks that the proprietor often used uh flour wheat in order to bolster and to bulk up the sacks there was concern that there was actual comets mixed in so whichever the reason ashkenazi jury embraced the custom of a prohibition of kittneos but this fired him never worried about it however the rush brought the practice of kidney us to spain and as a result any moroccans here moroccans have the worst of both worlds they have to get up early every day of elo and they don't eat kidneys though we always think that fardham do we kidneyos moroccans at least many moroccans do not eat kidney os and that is part of the legacy the contribution of the tradition that romania russia that the rush brought to that he brought to spain the rush is so significant that the maharaja review the lawyer of prague actually suggests at one point that the rush should be printed on the side of the gemara not instead of toasters necessarily but that the rush is such a critical voice that it should be printed on the side of the of the gemara as well i wanted to study but i'll just leave it to you to look at what you have here on the handout is one example where the rush himself writes about his experience in germany and then his experience in spain we could take a look at it i can read it to you in the in the translation a little bit but he writes it was the year it's on the page that says 14 on the right-hand column see it it was in the year it was in the year 5073 [Music] 3 or otherwise the year 1313 and it rained very little the entire winter and the community declared a fast again those women in the darf are familiar from the success that we just concluded so what happens and here it is the first night of pesach and we finished having marev and it's good to know that even then the men lingered actual after davening their wives undoubtedly complained and the governor was hanging out on his right on his left we were all hanging out with the rush the year 1313 after mar of the first night of pesach we weren't ready to start the seder yet and the rush says now is the time to raise a matter that's always bothered me why don't we continue saying the saint talamata until shivus why did that bother the rush so he told the rush why don't you tell that to the elders i thought that's a good idea why so again we don't have time but the gemara says when should we make the switch to the saint aloha mata in israel is a debate the seventh of jasmine and the gemara says outside of israel 60 days after the equinox in baval 60 days after the equinox which comes out to be december fourth again discussion what's an equinox why 60 days but the rainy season in bubble correlates with the rainy season in bubble so there was always a halal discussion that said but what if i'm not living in buffalo why am i praying for rain based on the rainy season of babylonia i understand if jews center our lives around israel even then pray for the rain for the rainy season in israel what happens if you're living south of the equator what happens if you're living in an area where the seasons are reversed you're going to pray for the rain in the summer and then in the rainy season in the winter you're going to be saying to saying how does that make sense so spain is a southern country and the russia's bothered that our core rainy season he learns when he gets to spain is from pesach to chavuz so why are we stopping to say the saint aloha mataran pesach keep it going until and that's what they tell the hazan tomorrow mention geshem they ask the canvas what happens the board gets together the ritual committee says nobody asked us we didn't vote on this who instituted this who said this we too kola martial arroyo and a whole discussion the whole debate comes out and the rush says skip to the underlying says the rush ever since i was back in germany i've had two concerns two complaints and this is one of them and he goes on and he talks about the other one of them and this is an example and it's worth reading this entire chuva here of the rush where he talks about perhaps continuing to say it he pens this very lengthy chuva and he advocates for his position and he claims that this is the position of the rambam in fact as well and the halachic analysis continues until today i'm happy to send the source sheet to anyone who wants them post kim in our day are dealing with that if you live in australia when do you say the saint aloha should you reverse it in your barakaleno do you stick it into schmaccolino and the key source in this analysis is the rush and why is he the key source because he goes from germany to spain and he brings with him that experience and he has this discussion he has this halachic analysis he dies in 1327 his son who succeeds him as the rev of toledo and uh i'll tell you something amazing there's a book called amica bracha written in 1491 1491 it's written later but it recalls that in 1491 someone had a dream and in their dream they said someone at spain we need to destroy all the maters including rabbenu yonah and rabbenu usher the rush because the jews are soon going to be expelled and the non-jews are going to destroy and violate and in order to preserve and protect we ourselves need to destroy the maters and so the say foreign records that the mateva of the rush were destroyed we don't have his mate but we have something even greater we have his torah we have the legacy of his torah of his contributions the pisgah russian the back of the gemara and much more rabbenu usher and his two sons all wrote savos they wrote ethical wills and they have very interesting emphases in their ethical wills they emphasize why did they write that why do you think rabbenu usher specifically called upon his progeny his offspring his children i want you to be passionately devoted to the observance of mitzvos obviously it was a value that he held dear but also because of what he saw what he had back in germany what he was concerned about in spain so that's why he tells his children interestingly rabbenu asher the rush and is admonishes his children to study tanakh with dick duck i'm glad i wasn't one of his children the dicta part which he said it was neglected in germany he discovered it was being studied in spain and it's correct so some things even in spain he's holding on to from germany and some thinks he comes to spain and says they get it right here studying tanakh and diktok is one of them he also endorses studying rabbina and rabbini yonas what he calls iguara sachuva what i imagine is our shahree chuva of rabbenu yona of rabbenu yona the pisgah rush the tournament studied in germany in the 14th century we see that there is a now not only in the 15th century in spain to the tour take over the rambam but in the 14th century in germany the pisgah rush have made their way back meaning the jews of germany don't see the russia as a defector a defector geographically and a defector methodologically the pisgah rush are being studied by the jews of germany in the 14th century i'll conclude by sharing with you his literary contributions his scholarship what do we have from the rush he wrote of course we said on the back of the talmud his pisgah rush he wrote a commentary on zeroim with the exception of brachos commentary on tarous here it is toso rush we have the chuvas the response of the rush he wrote a commentary on torah which uses mystical interpretations in gamatriya similar to rabyakov benasha's commentary there's a forgery has anyone ever heard of the basamin rush the basamine roche is falsely attributed to the rosh it's a series of response of halaq analysis but it's actually a forgery from the 18th century from masculine and he didn't in fact author it even though the whoever counterfeit used his name and lastly he wrote a book which i studied back in yeshiva i looked today i haven't looked at it in years i have all uh underlined and highlighted it he wrote a book called which are essays on ethics and he wrote it for his sons and he sets down very simple messages for how a jew should live basically here's what you should think about here's how you should behave here's what matters in life little by little here's how to live it's a diary of jewish life of principles of jewish life and living that he wrote for his sons and over many centuries it's been cherished and it's small but it is a beautiful beautiful map so it's living a righteous and a pious life tosus yantif my version has a commentary of the tosus yantif rush zissel the altar of kelm has a commentary it talked about the importance of centrality of it and the original has a commentary on it it's a wonderful work i believe art school translated it does anyone know if i'm right you don't know you should go get it it's really worthwhile it is uh excellent with jakov kaminetsky studied it and endorsed it and thought it was excellent as well so this is a legacy in the life of robinu usher of the rush who has to immigrate under the threat of persecution after having seen what happened to his own rebbe the maaram of ruttenberg he brings the tradition of germany of the balayatosos to spain he succeeds in transforming and reintroducing the study of talmud to the scholarship of spain which is an enormous invaluable contribution he also tightens the levels of observance and piety of spain while drawing the best of what spain has to offer as well he serves as his bridge between the two communities he leads us this great legacy and i thank you for coming this evening have a fence