Rabbi Gavriel Friedman - Food for the Soul: Rabbi Akiva - Part 1

so the question i want to ask you is a question about rebbi akiva and this is how we started yesterday a little bit talking about and hi if you haven't yet if you heard the class before so apparently either if you're still here you haven't gotten there yet in which case i could ask the question again and the question is have you heard of akiva you heard the name akiva heard very key video review where are you from all right we talked about that and you were sitting in the back seat and you speak a little spanish okay so um there's somebody named akiva there is somebody see what's that right but i said once upon a time there was a man by the name of akiva oh yeah sham hashem long dead yeah he died a couple thousand years ago um but he's not dead my pretty good friends alive i'm not pulling an elvis move on you i'm going to say okay let's just jump into it so akiva you heard of akiva tell me about him i don't know very much what do you know good that was good that was excellent i see you've been in yeshiva for many years now so akiva was a was a fellow if i could start by saying that he was a man and he was a man who was not he was jewish but he wasn't really into torah not exactly his thang you understand torah was not exactly his thing now he went on if we jump to the end of the story well the very end he ended up dying by having his flesh combed off his body with a hot iron uh but let's not go that far let's go before that and that's rabbi kiva becomes one of the greatest rabbis that ever lived one of one of the greatest rabbis that he gets who he gets the temple out of the state of english the stamp of approval even from anyone moshe abbey knew himself you heard of moses right heard of moshe you know that was right moshe long dead moshe bin he's alive the message tells us a fascinating story it says that the lord takes moshe albanu as michael j fox in uh back to the future this is the first back to the future ever and that is hashem took moshe god the lord prayed name took moshe and he sent them into the future to sit in in a class of akiva you heard this mattress innovative way hear this really so could be i'm making it up shoot no one under this hear this okay good so i'm on it so we both made it up then so what happens they send them into a class you know the message he says to uh to the class of akiva i remember akiva was darshaning he was expounding elaborating and elucidating on torah concepts but not just the classic torah concepts you go but he was actually elaborating and illustrating on what are called tagen i don't know that means tagen in the torah we have words right there are words in the torah and not only do we have words the words are made up of letters i know that's crazy but there are some letters that have on top of the letters coming off the top of the letters tagin which are called crowns what letters give me the letter give me shin shin which on which on which one the third one the last one you better be right here we go zion okay let's go with zion that'll work out better because i can't mess that one up right all right so the letter the letter zein for example okay so let's say this is the letter sign we don't have to let's say because it is now uh there are some letters like the letter z that have these little lines coming off the tie did that right is that accurate they have these lines coming off the top of them now it would be impressive if somebody is expounding on words of torah in its own right the torah is pretty deep every word means something but not only every word every letter means something right and we go and we expand if you learn something gemara's find that throughout the talmud they'll expound on the fact that there's an extra letter we learn a lot of different laws akiva wasn't expounding in the words of the letters he was expounding on the lines on top of the letters most rabbenu is sitting in on the sheer and he's like you know that feeling has anyone ever took calculus before anyone ever heard of calculus okay so i guess we are all on the same page here right okay all right very educated people that are familiar that there's something called calculus has anyone ever walked into a class late let's not say calculus any class any topic you walk in late and you're a little bit lost yeah you're more than a little bit you're like what is going on here yeah mojo ben who's sitting in the back row and he's like um i had a question right he had no idea what was flying and he turns to god and he's like why are you making me the leader of the jewish people get this guy look at this rebbe akiva this guy is the man excuse me don't get confused with other religions when we say the man because this is the man they make him why are we making him the man right so god's like no you're the man you're the man moshe abandoned who gives rabbi akiva the temple he's the man how many people get called the man from musha albino that's pretty impressive right okay sorry kiva he went on to become a great great stage but what were his beginnings how did he start he starts as a shepherd he's a shepherd for someone by the name of kalba savua who's kalba it's actually a nickname cabba's vote literally means i don't know it's aramaic i'll make it easier you know the word what saturated satiated right satiated satiated right person eight they're satiated and then they blessed this means from the blessing when we say when we say in the torah you ate you're satiated in your blood that's what we learned from right we learned the the grace after meals from so the word means the one who satiates dogs he was loaded off his mind the guy was a multi-multi the guy he had like hundreds of billions of capuchinis i don't know what the currency was then but anyway he had a lot of money and he employed a lot of people and when people a lot of poor people come to him because they were starving they would come like like hungry dogs and he would satiate them right he needed to feed them he had a daughter his daughter's name was jose rachel was once walking outside and she saw this fellow named akiva akiva was a shepherd he was a jew how old was he at the time 40 years old 40 years old and the man did not learn a word of torah didn't even know the aleph base didn't know the alphabet the hebrew alphabet you get that 40 years old are you 40 yet 40 years old he didn't know the aleph base yet he went on to become one of the greatest sages that ever lived that moshe albino himself said you're the man what's going on how do you get there what's what's the in-between story so actually rachel very much encouraged him said like you can be big you could be great now why would she want him he was this lowly shepherd but she saw he had a lot of good meadows a lot of good character traits although his feeling towards torah his connection to yiddish was not so strong as we mentioned yesterday he hated tamid he hated great sages so much you know how much he hated them he ate him so much he wanted to bite them and we said yesterday what type of bite the bite of a donkey why do you hate them so much why do you hate them so much threatened by their intelligence interesting threatened by their intelligence could be interesting answer anyone else that's a better answer you have to grow up religious to know what that means okay good i mean class for shalom how dare you say such things uh ready you grew up going to this course uh why else any other answers why do you hate them i don't really get what i said tamir kham are great sages scholars the big rabbis he hated them so much he wanted to bite them the bite of a burro the bite of a donkey i don't know if the greatest of shepherds the greatest of the jewish people were shepherds no one this is on a shepherd right mosha bader was a shepherd who's a shepherd akiva well we're talking about him yeah so these great people were shepherds why did he hate great sages oh i'm going to share with you something so powerful and if you grew up religious you'll fight it but you'll know it's true if you didn't grow up religious so then okay you'll hear it maybe that depends on your background here we go we have a parish in the torah the parish is called parshas bihu kosai if you're israeli or sfaradi or you enjoy ben yahudah's hebrew then you'll say in paris it starts by saying the following one of the portions of the torah it says if you walk in my ways we never spoke about this if you walk in my ways and then goes off all the good things that will happen however but if you don't walk in my ways says the lord and if you're disgusted by my ways then it goes on to negative things that will happen has anyone ever been on a diet before yeah okay you've been on a diet now when you're on a diet and you break it you've got to do you know let's say you're a diet with a bunch of people has anyone ever done that before no no one's ever done it with people you've done it before and what i've done it before i did a diet with a bunch of people you put anyone sometimes they a bunch of years ago here in ace about seven years ago they're like you have to put in 500 bucks to join this diet and the one who lost the most weight percentage to body you know because it's not fair right took all the there was like 10 people it was like we're talking about 5 000 i didn't join that god because i totally would have lost but but but when you join with other people so i want to i want to tell me how do you feel if let's say even if you've never done this we're going to still play this game you're on a diet and you're at a wedding and you're at the wedding with all this food and all this stuff going on there and they have like this big table the sweet table but the sweet's not just sweets it has a bunch of things it has meats there there's sweets there next there's like salads and whatever all the different stuff going on and you walk by the salad of course and you're taking salad and more salad okay now as you walk by the cake area it's not your fault you hear a little whisper you look over and the chocolate cake's talking to you you've had this before and he's like come on you know you want it and you're like we've spoken about this not here not now and it goes just one bite you're like fine and you go out and you take a piece of cake as you're eating the cake the friend of yours who's doing the diet with you walks by with a plate of lettuce how do you feel about that person oh now we're talking do you want to be here someone's done this before ooh now we're getting somewhere oh now we're getting somewhere everyone hear what she just said how do you feel about somebody who's doing the right thing when you're doing the wrong thing and you know you're doing the wrong thing how do you feel about that person can you hear what's going on here does this make sense to you speak it out you could disagree i didn't say anything yet how would you feel about a person how does that make you feel as an individual let's put aside that person are you from england oh forget we're not going to get an answer to you all right so now everyone else who could or actually going to give me their emotions in other words when you're doing if you're doing the wrong thing and you're just not thinking about the fact that you're doing the wrong thing then you're more able to live with yourself that you're doing the wrong thing because i'm not really conscious of the fact that i'm doing the wrong thing you could know you're doing the wrong thing you're just not thinking about it does that make sense anybody hear that idea when we do the wrong thing there are times we do it we feel bad there are times we do it when we've blocked it out of our consciousness so therefore we're going to do bad and like i'm not really worrying about i'm not thinking it's not in my mind right but what happens all of a sudden what happens all of a sudden when you see someone who's doing the right thing now it comes into your realm of consciousness that you're doing the wrong thing does anyone get what i'm saying or am i alone here i don't mind being alone i've been on before the awkwardness i enjoy i'm good with this yeah but in other words i don't have to get everyone i'm okay i have enough self-esteem i'm just want to know that we're on the same page here somewhat if you see someone who's doing the right thing and you're doing the wrong thing how do you feel about it i'll give you an example let me give an example i live in a neighborhood called french hill anybody heard of that neighborhood do you want to be more specific i live in a place called samaritan if you're watching this at home don't come get me so in any van i live in this neighborhood now one may think by looking at me one might judge by looking at me that i'm jewish perhaps i look jewish one might even judge that not only jewish you might actually you might actually think that i'm religious is that right you might think i'm observant you may you might be actually thinking that that perhaps that i'm involved with torah right you might think that i'm someone who observed the commandments of the is would you think such a thing by looking at me yeah now where would you think i would live looking like i look in a religious area at least predominantly religious does that make sense is that what you would think is that how you would judge me you don't even know me all right since that you judge me well i live like i mentioned in french hill now french hill there's a couple different areas and when i said i live in a place called samaritan iran on my block that i live on there is one other what we would probably categorize what would you categorize me as let's say da tilumi uh maybe you don't know the terms have you heard of such things before do i i looked at t me too right now we're talking here about an orthodox yeah yeah what would you categorize me is not orthodox yeah anyone else they're probably messing around here right from the alex because you know he's you know morocs but everybody take a look and you see look look how radio put on a good front at least yeah ultra orthodox yeah okay not yet but i still have minis yeah but okay they're almost yeah okay so so we have is that i am right wing fanatic black yarmulke jew is that right that's what you think now where do i live on my black there is one other heredi there are one i might be blanking if there's more i can only think right now of one datilumi and the rest is a mixture between secular and arab that's why i live they may ask why in the world do i live there and you already know the answer now moving along oh my are you gosh my sleeve okay when i was walking through this neighborhood to try to find a place to buy i'm looking around to you know buy an apartment rent an apartment walking around knocking on doors the feeling of hatred that people gave to me was like i'm just an american guy like what's going on was shocking people look at me and they right away have this look what's the problem you don't even know who i am i never said a word to you what are you what are you bothered by okay so now there's a lot of different ways we can answer this for those who who are that type of person which i don't think any of you in this room are none of you are that person because you most everyone here is anglo right anyone here israeli no near israeli right you you were born here really where religious okay so then good so that even then you also won't understand but you'll understand the concept what i'm talking about but you understand that you're not that person you're not the secular person coming against me who has that hatred why do they hate oh because the political and a lot of different things you could say but ultimately you want to know why they hate and they'll never agree to this until they agree to it is because you can't live with the fact that i'm next to you doing something which is correct when you're doing something incorrect you can't handle it even though i'll never say a word to you if i this is not okay what i'm gonna do now this is really bad i shouldn't do it it's being recorded i shouldn't do this hitler yamashima hated jews you familiar with such a thing okay some of you are a little bit shocked let's start over there's someone named adolf hitler you're familiar if you heard the name before he was not a big fan of the jews he hated him so much he's quoted as saying even if there would be one jew alive anywhere in the world that would be the what's his words he uses the petri dish which would then regenerate then he goes on to explain how much he wants to rid of everyone in the world he hates everything that we stood for jews have brought two terrible things upon humankind circumcision on the body and conscience of the soul can't deliver such a thing i don't want that therefore i like to rid of that says hitler himself it is true we are barbaric it is an honorable title i for you malin humanity of the soul this goes read his writing it's crazy what's the problem live and i live i'm i can get it if i'm bothering you if i'm sitting next to you i'm saying shabbos right i get it as you drive by on a tuesday shabbat i can get that would bother you it was what my neighbor was a very sweet lady not religious woman when i was walking looking for houses and i ended up on my block so i said to this woman i said do you know anyone selling a house so she looked at me and she didn't i didn't feel charged at all it's very interesting she says oh yeah this guy my neighbor is looking to sell his house great okay thank you so much and okay afterwards she says you're not going to tell me not to drive on shabbos are you i was like not at first yeah so i said i said no we can do whatever that you want it's your hell not mine anyway so i didn't say that i'm just kidding i didn't say w1 i said don't do it no i said do whatever you want you do whatever i'm not saying anything and i really i haven't said it maybe i should see them i haven't said anything okay she interestingly didn't why because this is a woman who's a very i i mean this in a positive way although it may come in a very simple woman in other words what i mean by that is like she's not coming to fight it's a political whatever she's a woman is living her life and saying like she doesn't understand her right she doesn't necessarily even know that what she's doing is wrong she's not holding in certain areas to know who are the ones that hate judaism the most who are the ones who are the biggest anti-semites that are jews that grew up religious the ones who have knowledge and know that it's true they don't want to admit it but they know that it's true because if you know it's false if you know it's a bunch of baloney then who cares why can't people believe in unicorns why does that bother you if they believe in unicorns do you ever hear what i'm saying why should it bother you if somebody believed in a unicorn or god let's say why would that bother you it only bothers you because you know it's true and you're not believing in it since you're not living up to what you know is true and that's why the pussac says if you don't walk in my ways you and you're disgusted by my ways when a person doesn't follow what they know is right they're disgusted by those who follow what's right now i can i can hear that you can disagree with me i would love to someone speak up if you don't want to i see you guys are very lively crowd today but if you don't want to that's good but now why did rabbi akiva hate me he would no but he knew what was going on he was a man who knew what was happening you know what there was this idea called torah he knew this idea of what truth was it wasn't a stupid person i'm not saying a person stupid or not but i'm saying he was he was a knowledgeable person about the concepts of the world he just didn't do it maybe yeah if he just started at the age of 40 and he became one of the greatest rabbis and i guess he was very very smart and i guess even when he wasn't like whether he did no he had the knowledge to okay so he had the knowledge of understanding of what's right and what's wrong before he actually participated with it in which case he sees they're going and doing things and they're involved now there's two feelings because it's interesting we spoke up both over here then one is like this hatred towards that person and there's no it's just really sad like i feel sad that i'm not doing it myself but i don't want to be doing it therefore i'm going to just shift it not from sadness but the hatred to that person and like and i don't want to live next to them this woman literally is like get out of here they had they had that uh there was a campaign in my in my community where they put like things on people's cars like get the car ready to mat i was like what is what people what is wrong with you right first of all we don't throw rocks at your cars that we didn't set aside we set them aside for shabbos it's not books huh right so we got i'm kidding by the way right so but uh right loaves of bread but we don't like what's the problem okay anyway let's get back to my point my point is like this rabbi akiva became one of the greatest sages ever why did he come in because he saw people that were living up the truth and he wasn't living up the truth that's hard and you know what's scary and this does not apply to everyone this only applies to those who grew up observing what's sad is that if you go up observant face the facts you know what truth is you're wasting your time to run away from it because to run away from it you're just going to have it your whole life bothering you until you get clarity that it's baloney you're going to be living a miserable life because it's always going to be like oh that's stupid instead of oh that's stupid hey maybe it's beautiful maybe it's true maybe it's real maybe get involved with it maybe start doing it okay so my question now you see a lot of people doing what you seem to think is the truth in a way that they shouldn't be doing it i saw a guy yesterday i stopped at a red light and a guy went through a red light okay i i had to make a left turn like this and the cars the way the light works is these cars go this way and when then they get a red light then i get a green light okay and this one went and i saw as it was ours turned green this guy went through now we all know if someone goes to a red light who cares unless it's blocking you right then it's like come on you know so the guy went through the red light i looked and i saw him like i can't believe the guy went through headlight and then i saw he was a cop it wasn't a police car it was a regular car but he was wearing his uniform i was like and it's a cop and it's a cop can you believe it a cop went with the red light that's ridiculous you know what i thought about it exactly what you're saying now what if he was your driver great great exactly exactly no 100 so i'm just saying when i said and it's a cop i thought to myself wow that's so crazy that i just said that because that's what all people that are trying to get away from judaism say i saw a religious jew do something wrong and he's religious i'm never gonna be religious that's disgusting because judaism is beautiful the essence of what yiddish kite is is amazing there's some bad people out there or there's some people have done bad things and therefore we make the association but the reality is that's not judaism it's not judaism what do i tell a 13 year old get help what if there's someone after that after they have to work these things out but the end of the day that's one and number two and this is i think right in its own right even without ruby akiva that when we are not doing the right thing and we see other people doing the right thing we have a hard time with it and therefore we don't want to be around people that are doing the right thing and we stay away from people are doing the right thing because it just makes us feel bad and therefore we go further and further away hence until one day what ended up happening now the question i wanted to ask you in the beginning was are you rebbi akiva you don't look like him but what i mean when i say that question are you ready akiva is ended up doing is he flipped his whole life around and he ended up becoming one of the greatest that ever lived and not only in terms of torah but in terms of medos in terms of character traits as far as i know there are no stories at least that came out in terms of all the things cnn was not around yet or just there's nothing to say there was no negative that came from it and any negative that did come from in judaism believe me we speak it out right we're pretty we're pretty blunt when we say about things that happen that the jewish people did wrong we don't really hide these things if anybody learns tanakh at all you'll see it's full of stories of negative things that happen right yet it didn't speak about that just another interesting point if you understand what i'm saying if you're familiar with tanakh yeah if you know david if you know uh ruvin if you know all the stories of sleeping with his mother and uh taking a married woman and uh and moshe albanu right we story after story after story about all the negative things that happened that'd be a kiva yeah we say the guy hated it we didn't say the reason why not because obviously it wasn't what was going on over here so why are we not rebecca even this is what god willing what's today wednesday so god willing tomorrow for those who are still able to possibly join us at 12 o'clock we're going to go through what steps have a kiva took to become rebbe akiva and then i want to try to figure out why we ourselves are not living up to the love of a cuba people until next time it's been a pleasure seeing when i see everybody everyone bye