Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: (Part 1) In-depth Analysis of The Shemah

Okay, hi everybody again as I just said it's a very nice to have a a live audience as as small as it might be and I appreciate you coming out and we actually we hope that uh the Corona shall pass although it seems like it will never go away and we should be able to resume not only the new normal but maybe the old normal as well but uh hopefully it's here if Messiah came and the goal is lame and that should be the new normal. I want to talk today about it's not exactly the parsha but it's almost the parsha. I want to talk about the Shema a little bit because you know the first paragraph of the Shema is it was in parsha Shema and on and the second paragraph of Shema was in last week's parsha parsha say gifts although we're a parsha ahead given the fundamental importance of the Shema to Judaism. So instead of looking at it as a parsha class let's talk a little bit about some aspects of the Shema but in order to uh talk about the Shema I want to preface something with the literary structure of safer Devarim. You know the book of Devarim Deuteronomy are the farewell speeches of Moshe Rabbeinu that are being delivered five weeks before his death. The book of Devarim begins Rosh Chodesh of the 40th year in the desert. We know that Moshe dies the 7th of Adar so this is literally five weeks. The whole book of Devarim is a reiteration a review of many many events many mitzvot new mitzvot as well. Uh that Moshe Rabbeinu was giving in the last five weeks of his life. And the Gemara in Mesekhet Megillah makes a comment that although makes perfect sense of my literary perspective is very difficult to understand from a religious perspective and that is the Gemara in Megillah points out that the whole Torah are the words of God but the book of Devarim are the words of Moshe Rabbeinu himself. Moshe Rabbeinu is the first-person narrator of the book of Devarim. Not Shema and came the rest of the Torah we have what is actually called in in in literature the omniscient narrator. Of course in this case it's quite literally the omniscient narrator. So for example when God speaks to Moshe the rest of the Torah it always says for you Hashem and Moshe God speaks to Moshe. When God speaks to Moshe in the book of Devarim Moshe says God spoke to me. The narrator of the book of Devarim is Moshe as opposed to the narrator of the whole Torah is God himself. And therefore the Gemara in Megillah says the book the words in the book of Devarim are not the words of Moshe not the words of God. They are the words of Moshe. Now in so far as literary analysis is concerned that makes perfect sense. The book of Devarim seems to be Moshe Rabbeinu's own words. And yet we know that one of the 13 principles of faith that the Rambam codifies as an absolute foundation of Jewish theology is that every single word of the Torah was given to Moshe by God. If you say that Moshe Rabbeinu wrote any letter in the Torah on his own volition without being commanded to write that by God that is called heresy that is called kafira that is apikoros one is not a valid member so to speak. I mean you're a Jew because that you can't get rid of but you are not a valid member of the faith community of Judaism. So how do you reconcile the idea that the Gemara itself says the book of Devarim are the words of Moshe with the idea that every single word of the Torah has to come from God? So in reality the Abarbanel again Abarbanel is a very colorful person a very I don't I happen not to mention him a lot and so perhaps I should just say a few words about him but you took Abarbanel was the finance minister of Spain during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella and he in fact was the one who financed who raised the money for Columbus's expedition to what eventually became the new world that was initially was an expedition to India but it eventually was the discovery of the Americas. And the Abarbanel lived exactly during the time of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 in which Jews were given a choice to either convert to Catholicism or leave and many left of course many stayed and practiced Judaism surreptitiously. They became known as the Marranos which actually is a derisive term but they're known as Anusim those who were forced etc. The Abarbanel because Ferdinand and Isabella needed his financial acumen he was the only one who was actually given permission to remain in Spain as a practicing Jew but he refused he declined the offer and he went into exile with everybody else and according to tradition although it doesn't quite fit the historical narrative the Abarbanel left Spain with thousands of other Jews on the 9th of Av 1492. It's not entirely clear. There were a number of groups of Jews that left at at different times in that summer. But in addition and that's why he's called Don Yitzhak Abarbanel because Don is a title of Spanish nobility. The Abarbanel was one of the great great interpreters of Tanakh. He wrote a commentary on the Torah. He wrote a commentary on all of the Nevi'im. He did not write on the Ketuvim except for the book of Daniel and the Abarbanel was a great great great student and expositor of messianism. And therefore of all of the books of Ketuvim that he was attracted to it was the book of Daniel to which he was very attracted and he wrote three basic commentaries on the book of Daniel plus a number of works about Messiah generally. He also wrote a commentary on the Haggadah of Pesach a commentary on Pirkei Avot and a commentary on the Rambam's Guide to the Perplexed of which he often takes issue with the Rambam but it's both a commentary and a disputation with many positions of the Rambam. The Abarbanel has a very very unique derech in which before he would explain a particular portion of Torah or Navi or whatever it would be or Haggadah he would preface many many questions. He might give up to 100 questions sometimes and then he would offer an explanation that kind of addresses all of those questions. So they tell a little a little joke about this that this is the dangerous way of teaching because there was a person who wanted to read the Abarbanel on the Torah after his Shabbos afternoon lunch after we ate cholent. So he sat in his easy chair and he reads 100 questions on the Torah contradictions repetitions redundancies things don't make sense and he fell asleep after the cholent before he read the answers. He became an apikoros because he said so many questions on the Torah the Torah doesn't make sense. So it's a little dangerous to front load all of your questions up up front. But the Abarbanel is one of the great great meforshim. In addition to his own explanations before he offers his own pshat he will often summarize everybody who came before him. So you'll get a complete overview of what the Talmud says and what the Midrash says and Rashi and Ramban and Eben Ezra. So it's very very beautiful because it is really a review of all of the commentaries. He then asks many questions on them and then he offers his own explanation. The problem with the Abarbanel is he is very long. It's a very long commentary. I mean he's a very clear writer but he's marekh he's not brief and as a result that scares people away. We all of us I include myself we kind of want to get something in a quick little segment and the Abarbanel you're not going to get that. You're going to wander in there and there will be a long long exposition that will take many pages. So interestingly enough just in recent years in fact I had the occasion to write two different two different approbations for two independent works both of which are focusing on summarizing the Abarbanel and making it adaptable for people who are not that proficient in Hebrew. So you can actually go into the Jewish bookstores now and you can actually find English adaptations of the Abarbanel that are not just the translations but they are adaptations meaning to say that the main points are more concise. So that's a little bit of a commercial for getting back to the Abarbanel who's been a rabbi that unfortunately many people have neglected for you know many hundreds of years even though there's tremendously beautiful important ideas in his commentaries. So be it as it may, I'm bringing in the Abarbanel today because in the introduction to the book of Devarim he offers a beautiful resolution to the question that I raised and it's such a beautiful resolution that once you hear it, you know, you're going to kind of say that's obvious, it's simple. There was no question to begin with. And the Abarbanel differentiates between the spoken word and the written word. I mean let's take a very simple example. In the Torah there are plenty of words of bad people. You know, Asaph talks, Pharaoh talks, Balaam talks. Now of course when he's blessing us that's Hashem but but you know Balaam says words. Now what does it mean every word of the Torah comes from God? Did Balaam tell I'm sorry did Hashem tell Laban what to say? Did Hashem tell Korach what to say? Obviously Pharaoh's words are Pharaoh's words. Laban's words are Laban's words. So what do we mean when we say every word of the Torah is from God? We mean the decision to put a given spoken word into the written text of the Torah must only occur by divine authorization. Pharaoh for example may have said many things. First of all Pharaoh didn't speak in Hebrew. Pharaoh spoke in Egyptian. But whatever it would be, even if the Torah is writing a translation it is God that said to Mosha this is what you should write. Meaning to say the idea that every word in the Torah comes from God is not a reference to the speaker who says words that are his own words. It's a reference to which of those spoken words make it in the Torah that comes from God. So the Abarbanel says once you differentiate between the spoken word and the written word, we now understand the book of Devarim. In the rest of the Torah, God told Mosha what to say. Vayedaber Hashem el Mosha lemor and God and Mosha is saying the actual words of God. In the book of Devarim God untethered him from the leash so to speak. And Mosha was given permission to express the will of God in his own words. In other words, in the book of Devarim God did not tell Mosha ahead of time what words to use. Mosha is the speaker. But Mosha may have said many many many things. What determined which of Mosha's autonomous words are in the Torah? And which of Mosha's autonomous words are not in the Torah? That was the Almighty. Mosha did not write a single word until God dictated it to him. But Mosha spoke the words of Devarim without a prior divine decree unlike the rest of the Torah where God first gave him the words and Mosha's repeating God's words. Now that really is a very very simple answer because that just means saying the book of Devarim are Mosha's own words is the same thing as saying what Pharaoh said are Pharaoh's own words. What Laban said are Laban's own words. Yeah, but when it how does it make it into the Torah that is only from Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Which actually means therefore when you come to a pasuk which is the you know some I mean we're not supposed to say what's the most important pasuk but this is certainly a candidate. Shema Yisrael Hear Israel, understand Klal Yisrael. Shema doesn't just mean hear but you know it's actually like in Yiddish when you say daheir. Daheir means to understand. Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad God is there's only one God. And you shall love God with all of your heart and all of your soul and all of your might. Those words did not originate from God. That is Mosha Rabbeinu speaking to us as our teacher and as our guide. And God said after the fact inscribe it in the Torah. Now I understand that the logically there's a conundrum here because the Torah existed 2,000 years 2,000 generations rather before the world was created. So God knew what Mosha would say but God didn't tell Mosha ahead of time. God happens to know the end of the story, that's fine. But that's God's private knowledge. Mosha said Shema. This was his own outpouring. Right, that may make it even more moving. This is what Mosha Rabbeinu was doing summing up what it means to be a Jew. What it means to serve God. Okay. So now let's focus on Shema a little bit. So obviously the Shema is the proclamation of the unity of God. In fact the Kli Yakar says a very beautiful p'shat which actually can be very very easily read into Rashi. But the Kli Yakar is ma- mazberet a little uh more lengthy. He points out Hashem which is Yud Kay Vav Kay is God's attribute of mercy and kindness and compassion. Elokeinu is Elokim. That is God's attribute of justice and retribution. In the world that we live in we sometimes perceive divine mercy. And we sometimes perceive retribution, rejection punishment. We live in a world where it's almost as if there are two gods, the god of light, the god of darkness. The god of rachamim, the god of din. The god of Yud Kay Vav Kay and the god of Elokim. But what Mosha Rabbeinu was teaching you is that even the punishment and the retribution of Hashem is actually an expression of a higher mercy and kindness to bring us to teshuvah, to give us the discipline that we need, to bring out potentialities and kochot and abilities that would otherwise be dormant. So look at how beautiful the pasuk reads. Shema Yisrael, understand Hashem Elokeinu in our world we perceive a Hashem a Yud Kay Vav Kay of rachamim and Elokeinu which is din and punishment. But that's a mistake, that's an illusion. It is Hashem Echad. All of it is a single unity of Yud Kay Vav Kay rachamim. And that is the meaning of the pasuk that we say at the end of Aleinu. You say pasuk in Zechariah, Vihaya Hashem lemelech al kol ha'aretz. There will come a time when God will be the king over all of the world. Bayom hahu yihyeh Hashem Echad. In that day God will be one. Ushmo Echad. And his name will be one. So what does that mean? God will be one? God is one now. And what do you mean the name is one? So the Gemara in Berachot says that the days of Mashiach or Olam Haba are not like Olam Hazeh. In Olam Hazeh when good things happen we make a beracha tov umeitiv God does good things. When bad things happen we make dayan emet God is the true judge. But le'atid lavo we will have a deeper understanding. That even the evil of the world on some level is an expression of God's rachamim. And therefore God will be one meaning instead of a Hashem and Elokim which are different aspects of divinity. Rachamim and din. You're going to only have understand that everything is rachamim. Ushmo Echad and therefore God will only have one name. Yud Kay Vav Kay. He will no longer have the name Elokim which is the midat hadin. And that's the meaning Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad. Okay. Now the next verse in our Shema which is Baruch Shem Kevod is not in the Torah at all. So I'm not going to talk about it so much. Blessed is the name of his glorious kingdom for eternity. That is not in the Torah. It is said by the Midrash that that was a praise that the angels would give God that Mosha stole from the angels when he got the Torah and therefore in order not to antagonize the angels we say it silently except on Yom Kippur when we ourselves reach the level of the angels. But in the Torah itself Baruch Shem Kevod does not appear. But we then have the next verse. Veahavta et Hashem Elokecha. You shall love Hashem Elokecha meaning even if you're getting rachamim or din Hashem or Elokim bechol levavcha with all of your heart uvechol nafshecha with all of your soul uvechol me'odecha and with all of your might. So let's analyze uh the really four ideas in the pasuk. First is the idea of loving God. Rashi explains there is of course a great importance in serving God out of fear. And fear itself is a multifaceted idea. There is the fear that is fear of punishment. I'm scared. I better behave or God will punish me. And that's true. But then there's another type of fear which really is not the word fear in English does not capture it so much, but it's not fear of punishment, but it's awe and reverence. Right? So, if the Queen of England walks into the room, you're not afraid even if you're in England even if you're in London. You're not afraid as you might have been in the days of Henry the VIII or whatever that you're going to get your head cut off if you misbehave. That's not going to happen. But there's a certain awe, certain reverence. I'll cover Homer. Melik Malki am lacking. Mali color Cavuto. There is awe and reverence. So, in a way the word fear, it's a little unfortunate that we use the word fear in Hebrew Yira for two different ideas and they are two very different ideas. One is Yirat Ha Onesh, fear of punishment. The other is called Yirat Romamut. That's a sense of awe and reverence for God's grandeur. Now, we then go beyond Yira and we move to love. Right? Serving God out of love is greater than serving God out of fear. But how does one come to love God? What does it mean to love God? So, the truth of the matter is you know, the Rambam, Maimonides, we often look at Maimonides kind of love the like a kind of Dr. Spock remember Star Trek, you know, no emotions, only computer, pure rationality, no mysticism. But if you look at the Rambam's description of what it means to love God, the Rambam says loving God can only be compared to a love sick man who is pining after a woman. And he cannot take his mind off her. And he thinks of her every single moment of the day. And that is what loving God is and which a person literally is love sick. The Rambam's language is he gets sick, sick over it. He so much yearns to be connected to God. Now, how do you get to that though? Obviously that you know, in human terms that could sometimes be described as lust. You know, we wouldn't automatically even call that a real love. So, how does it connect to God? So, so, so the Rambam clearly sees, this is very important, the Rambam sees that there's a close relationship between Yirat Romamut and love. And that is as I get overwhelmed with God's utter perfection, his grandeur, his power, I look at the complexity of the universe which is despite its complexity can be managed so to speak, reduced to some fundamental principles. Right? Physicists are actually looking for one fundamental principle, the theory of everything. And therefore what happens is I get overwhelmed. In other words, the Rambam understands. Now, maybe only an intellectual would would would would get this emotional response, but it's important to understand that the Rambam felt that a deep intellectual comprehension of the grandeur of God when contemplating the universe will give rise to a love of God because it is a love of the perfection that is inherent in the magnificent structure that reflects God's omnipotence. So, according to the Rambam, the love of God is not rooted so much in the personal encounters that I have with the divinity, but it's kind of a love of the perfection. And that is why Yira is not considered to be like a contradiction, rather Yirat Romamut according to the Rambam is the foundation of love of God. And that is why the Rambam actually says that by studying science and the like you can come to love God because you see the complex structures which which teach you about divine wisdom. Now, it is true of course that many scientists are atheists, Stephen Hawking for example, but you know, Albert Einstein. Now, Albert Einstein did not believe in a personal God. He did not believe that God would give you commandments, but there's no question that he saw in the structure of the universe such a deep intelligence that he was convinced there was a supreme omniscient intelligence that was the architect of the laws of nature and he described his relationship to that deity in terms of awe, reverence and even love. The problem from our perspective is Einstein never accepted the premise or at least well, whether he there actually in a short a short time during his childhood he actually was taught he came from a totally assimilated Jewish family. There was no observance in his family. But since Einstein was a very rebellious person, his whole life he was very rebellious. So, one of the ways he was rebelling against his parents was he was actually toying with being an Orthodox Jew. So, when he was around 11 or 12, he was doing mitzvahs, keeping Shabbos before his bar mitzvah. Unfortunately, there was a Jewish boarder, a medical student in his uh parents' house who dissuaded him. And bizarrely enough, uh the name of the medical student's name was Max Talmud. So, somehow a fellow with the name Max Talmud was the one that kind of uh steered Einstein away from looking at at Torah per se, but there is absolutely no question that Einstein had a deep deep reverence and love for God coming from his deep perception of the wisdom and structure of the universe. Again, I don't want to get into uh physics too much because uh I'm you know, walking on thin ice, uh but this is why if you know anything about the history of physics, why Einstein never really accepted quantum mechanics as a valid understanding of the universe because Einstein saw regularity. He saw laws. He saw predictability. He saw the beauty in the fact that the universe was not random. And in his famous expression against quantum mechanics, uh he said, "God does not play with dice. God does not simply guess or go with probabilities. God has structure and God has laws." And the truth of the matter is that's exactly what the Rambam says brings a person to have a to sham. But I just want to say that this idea that I am in love with God because he is perfect and I see the immensity of his wisdom isn't necessarily the approach that works for everybody. Uh for many people, and this was emphasized in Hasidic writings and to some degree in Kabbalistic writings as well, uh the way you come to love of God is by kind of developing within your psyche an ethos of gratitude, Hakarat Hatov, to feel the kindness of God in your life and to look at the world and try to identify not so much the wisdom of the creator, but the benevolence and the kindness of the creator. So, one looks at colors, one looks at music, one looks at children playing. One can think about their own children or they can think about the fact that God, you know, gave them health after sickness. And even though we do live in a world where indeed there is much suffering and there is much darkness, there is also much joy and there's much love. And if one puts their focus on that, that can generate in their heart a sense of love. So, there are really two different pathways to love of God. One is I love God because he's perfect. The other is I love God because he's kind. In other words, these are two different ways. The first way is kind of a very abstract idea. There's a mathematician mathematicians may say they are, you know, they are in love with calculus. Right? They simply see such a logical structure, you see? Uh so, the Rambam had that kind of abstraction. I love God because he is so perfect. The other is more of a personal. I love God because he gives me strength, he gives me courage. He gives me blessing. He gives me opportunities that I cherish. Right? That's more of a a personal love of God that comes from a sense of gratitude and seeing the benevolence of the creator in the world. Okay. But be it as it may, this is the mitzvah of loving God. Doesn't the Rambam also have this one come to love God by the next words and you should place these words upon your heart. In other words, to learn Torah. Yeah, that's correct. And then that then it says that the other way of loving God is by learning his Torah, but once again, the Rambam says that that is also because you contemplate the perfection of the social order that God creates through the laws of the Torah. And that's why the Rambam felt it was very important that we don't just look at mitzvahs as arbitrary commandments of the creator. Like some people had an attitude, the Rambam writes, that you're not supposed to understand mitzvahs. God said, "Do it. You just do it." But the Rambam says that would be defeating the point because part of what God wants us to do is to see his wisdom in the mitzvahs of the Torah. And therefore we are obligated. Now, not not not everybody agrees. I'm not presenting this as a universal opinion, but the Rambam says we are obligated to look for reasons for mitzvahs, knowing that we're not going to exhaust all of the possibilities and knowing that we might be wrong. But we have to try to find the wisdom. The Rambam says there are some foolish people who think that the less sense a mitzvah makes, the more righteous you are because you're doing things that don't make sense. The Rambam says that doesn't make sense because the whole idea of the Torah is that I should be margish, I should feel the wisdom of God. Okay? And therefore one should look for the wisdom of the laws of the Torah. Okay. Now, let's go a little further, but the but after the Torah gives us this mitzvah to love God, it emphasizes three different ways that you love God. Love God with all of your heart. Love God with all of your soul. And love God with all of your money. So I just want to go very very simply what exactly do these do these three expressions mean? So I'm just going to go with Rashi. Rashi says that levav levavcha is a little bit of an unusual phrase because normally a heart is lev and your heart would mean libecha. V'ahavta et Hashem Elohecha b'chol libecha. Why levavcha? So Rashi says the double vays connotes that you have to love God with two of your hearts. You love God with your yetzer tov, your good inclination. Call that the heart. And you love God with your yetzer hara. You got to love God with the two inclinations that you have. The yetzer tov and the yetzer hara. Well, what does that mean? I understand what loving God with my yetzer tov is. I have an inclination within me to do good, to be holy, to be righteous, to be kind. So when I activate those potentialities within me because I love God, I'm expressing my love of God by following the dictates of my yetzer tov. But how do I love God with my yetzer hara? So there are two explanations. One explanation might mean that Rashi simply means, actually it's from Chazal, that the same way you love God by following your yetzer tov, you love God by conquering your yetzer hara. So the yetzer hara wants to get involved in egotism, selfishness, aveirot. When I conquer my yetzer hara and I keep it in place and I become what Pirkei Avot calls the gibor, the hero, the mighty person, eizehu gibor, who is the mighty person? Hakoveish et yitzro, the one who conquers the evil inclination. So I serve God by my yetzer hara by subduing my yetzer hara. That's pshat number one. Problem with that is you're not really serving God with the yetzer hara. You're serving God by ignoring the yetzer hara. So that wouldn't be the simple meaning of the idea of serving God with your yetzer hara. So in Kabbalah, there's a much deeper idea. And that is the yetzer hara is not all evil. Even though it's true, we talk about the good inclination in man and we talk about the negative or the evil inclination in man. But the truth of the matter is the evil inclination serves a very very positive role in life. And that is the following. The yetzer tov, which is totally connected to God, is actually fundamentally a passive force within man because the yetzer tov that connects to God realizes that without God, I can't do anything. And as a result, the yetzer tov looks at a world that has many many needs. Right? There's illnesses, uh draining the swamps, conquering diseases. And if the yetzer tov would be all that we would have, we would simply say, "Who am I to do anything? Let God take care of it." But God doesn't want a world like that. God wants a world where we take a certain degree of autonomy, control, and initiative. We drain the swamps. We try to cure diseases. We build cities. We create societies. Even in spirituality. To build your own yeshiva, to be mechadesh, to write a sefer. You know, if all I had was the yetzer tov, I would say, "Who am I to add any thought to God's Torah?" Meaning to say the yetzer hara is really identified with egotism. And egotism is the push within man to create, to build, to memorialize himself, to leave a type of legacy. Now, we call that evil because that is a power that very easily can lead a person to arrogance, hubris, and rebellion. So in that sense, it it is a yetzer, it is it is an inclination that leads to evil. But the inclination itself is not evil. Egotism is the koach within man, within humanity, that enables and facilitates accomplishment. Now, once we understand that, that the yetzer hara has a valid and useful function in being God's partner in the in making the world a better place spiritually and physically, so we understand the meaning of serving God with your yetzer hara. Take your ego, take your desire for accomplishment, and harness it to the goals of the Almighty. And of course, in a more general sense, the idea of serving God with the yetzer hara means capitalize on your deficits. You know, Hamelech says in the book of Mishlei, and he's talking about educating children, Chanoch l'na'ar al pi darko. Train a child according to his way. Gam ki yazkin lo yasur mimenu. So even when he gets old, he shall not depart from it. And the Vilna Gaon explains, and this is the pashut pshat of the pasuk, every child has their own personality, has their own way, has their own approach. And when you try to educate a child by trying to make him something else, not only are you not going to get that something else, you're not going to get the child that he could have been, the man that he could have been, the person that he could have been. When you try to place a round peg in a square hole, you know, you may ruin the peg so it doesn't fit in the square hole and it doesn't fit in the round hole anymore. And therefore we have to be attuned to understand that some of the qualities that we label as bad might just be alternative ways of accomplishing good. So for example, let's take I mean just to give an example, you can have a child that might be hyperactive. I'm not talking about ADD, I'm not talking about medical issues here, but just, you know, and I want my child to sit at the Shabbos table for three for three and a half hour meal. And if he cannot do that, you know, he's he's a bad boy, he's not doing what he's supposed to be doing. But you know, that's not correct. Uh people who are more hyperactive, their job in life is not to sit down for 3 hours. But I could take that hyperactivity and he could be the one who organizes events at school, buys the refreshments for Melaveh Malkas on Shabboses. In other words, instead of trying to squelch a personality trait, you take even the negative trait and you use it in a positive way. So you're taking what could have been the yetzer hara and you're dedicating it to something good. This is an important idea in in education generally, and that is instead of trying to obliterate a child's personality to conform to some pre-existing model, and this is a major major problem in education. So it's probably in all education, but in Jewish education it may even be worse because if you think about it Okay, I don't want to get on a soapbox about this. I mean if you think about this, on one hand to be a religious Jew does take a great deal of conformity. We cannot deny this. You know, religious Jews are supposed to keep Shabbos, are supposed to keep kosher are supposed to daven, are supposed to say brochos. So we can't have a Jewish religious education that simply says, "Do your own thing." There is a great deal of conformity built into the structure. But the puzzle is how to work within the constraints of that conformity to enable the individuality and the uniqueness of each child to come out. And there I think you have to differentiate between maybe the religion of Judaism and the sociology of Judaism. Meaning there's a lot of stuff we expect kids to conform to which are really not part of the religion of Judaism. It's not a matter of halakha. For example, does halakha say you have to wear a white shirt on Shabbos instead of a blue shirt? There's no halakha that I'm aware of that says that. And yet in many, many frameworks this would be so totally unacceptable that the kid would be berated or whatever it would be. One has to be very, very careful. Not every sociological datum is a matter of religion or a matter of principle. Okay, be it as it may. This is the explanation on how do you serve God with your yetzer hara. One is by conquering it, ignoring it. The other is by taking the ego and devoting it to higher goals. And the third would be to turn your deficits into positives. Uh and and and and that should be part of the educational framework. Okay. We then come to the second level. Right, serve God with all of your heart. Serve God with all of your soul. So here again Rashi says, "This refers to the duty of martyrdom even if you have to give up your very life." Now, we do know of course that for most of the Torah we're not supposed to give up our lives. Uh we know that for pikuach nefesh, in order to save my life or the life of someone else someone else, we violate I say it's not even violation, but we do it would otherwise be a violation of Shabbos, of kosher, of Yom Kippur because the Torah was given for life and not for death. And as Chazal say, "Better to desecrate one Shabbos in order that you might be able to keep many Shabboses." So normally saving a life is the highest of all values. But there are going to be occasions, as we know when I am obligated halakhically to give up my life, to die before I transgress an aveira. And the basic rule is what we call the big three, right? There are three aveiras for which a Jew must give his life. One is idol worship which includes renunciation of Judaism. Uh the other is sexual immorality. And the third is murder of an innocent person. If somebody threatens me, I can kill them for sure. But if somebody goes over to me and says, "Kill that innocent man or I'll kill you." I can kill the threatener if I could get him. But I'm not allowed to kill the innocent man to save my life. And that's because who says your blood is any redder than his blood? Why should your life be better than his life? And even if you're pretty sure my life is better. But what if I'm pretty sure that guy's a bum? Of course I'm I'm better. Well, the answer is you still can't do it. Even if you're the tzaddik of the generation and that person is a drug addict, whatever it would be, you cannot actively decide that his life is less valuable than yours. And in fact, you can't even play a numbers game. Uh in the famous trolley cases, which is a branch of moral philosophy, it's not direct this this was not formulated about Judaism. This is a secular aspect of moral philosophy, but it is so connected to Jewish questions. So we have so many, many, many people who speak about Jewish philosophy will often draw on these trolley cases. And the reason why it's a trolley case rather than a light rail is because they were developed in England by a professor of philosophy in Cambridge. Uh I think in the 19 and 20s uh 30s. Her name was Philippa Foot. And for those who are interested, she was actually the daughter of the American president Grover Cleveland. And she married a British citizen and she became a professor of philosophy in Cambridge University. And she did a lot of writing on what are called trolley problems. And you'll see in a moment what an example of what a trolley problem uh is. By the way, uh apropos of nothing at all, Grover Cleveland has one unique distinction uh in American history. He was the only United States president who served two terms that were non-consecutive. He was president. He lost the next election and then he ran again. So he had two terms that were separated with somebody else in the middle. But the trolley cases are simply this type of problem. I'm a I'm a trolley driver. Right? And all of a sudden I see my brakes fail. I'm not able to stop. And there are 10 children who are playing on the track. And there's not enough time for them to get out of the way. And I'm going to kill 10 children. If I just keep on going, I'm going to kill 10 children. I don't have a choice. But there's a track even though I the brakes aren't working, I can turn the train onto the track onto a an empty track or a track that's not being used. And that'd be wonderful. But the problem is there's a guy, a worker, who fell asleep on that track because he figured that no trains go there. So if I divert the train I will kill one sleeping fellow. If I don't divert the train I'm going to kill 10 children. Am I allowed halakhically to divert the train away from the 10 and save the 10 if that's going to be at the expense of the one? Now if you would be Jeremy Bentham the British philosopher who espoused what was known as utilitarianism and utilitarianism says that every moral decision should be based on the greatest good for the greatest number. That's called utilitarianism. Uh it's associated with both Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. We would certainly say, "Hey, it's better to kill one person than to kill 10 people. So if I could save 10 people from getting run over by killing one person utilitarianism would say, "Turn the train." But you know halakha says you can't do that. Halakha actually says that you are not allowed to make a judgment that 10 lives are worth more than one life because maybe in God's book it's not the not the case. Life Every life is infinite. And therefore you cannot make any decision on that. Now again, I I understand that you might be asking me, "Well, wait a second. If I can't decide that the one that the the 10 are better than the one then why should I be able to decide that the one is better than the 10?" Now there's some philosophers will argue there's no such thing as not making a choice. You're If you're not going to turn the train you're making a choice to kill 10 people. What gives you the right to make that choice? That is not an inconsequential argument. But the way halakha views it is this. You could argue with this. Halakha views it as if I simply leave things the way they are we don't treat inertia as a choice. This is called shavya al tasya. Meaning like this. If I don't do anything, the train is going to kill the 10. In order for me to divert the train, I have to do something. And I'm not allowed to do something cuz I can't say that the one is less important than the 10. So even though that means that 10 kids are going to get killed. But halakha does not view that as a decision I'm making. Halakha views that as an abstention. The These are very hard questions. These are very hard questions. I mean, a philosopher could argue an abstention is a decision. I hear I'm not I'm not making believe that that's not a powerful question, but I can tell you as a matter of halakha you are not allowed to turn divert the You're not allowed to divert the train because you would be making a decision that one life is less important than 10. And you cannot make that decision. Now, as a little aside, actually I didn't want to get into all of this, but but it is so interesting. So whenever I start talking about it, I I kind of digress. Let's consider an aspect of the trolley problem. Uh going back to the World Trade Center. Let's go back to if you remember many of you might remember uh 2001. Some of you may not have been born. Uh right, so uh September 11 2001. So, you have a plane that is heading towards the World Trade Center. And uh if it crashes into the World Trade Center as it did, you will lose I I don't even know how many 5,000 people. Now, let's imagine that you had the opportunity of shooting down that plane. I could shoot down the plane and prevent it from hitting the Twin Towers. But by shooting down the plane, I would be killing not only the terrorists, which of course no problem with that, but I would be killing 200 innocent people. Now, I just gave you an example that according to Halakha, it's pretty clear. You cannot save 10 children by killing one guy. All right, that's what I said. You can't divert the train. So, here's the question. Could you kill 200 people by shooting down the plane in order to save 5,000? Is that the same as the In other words, is that the same as a trolley case? Meaning I'm diverting the plane by shooting it down. So, again, I'm not giving you a psak and and and uh you know, neither the is you know, the US uh government did not call a rav for a psak about this. But there is an important difference. And that is even though you're not allowed to kill one guy to save 10 people, and you're not allowed to kill 200 people to save 10,000 people. But those 200 people on the plane are going to die either way. You see, it's different in the trolley case. In the trolley case, if I don't make a decision, I'm going to kill 10 and that guy lives. So, I'm not allowed to say his life is worth less than those 10. But in the World Trade Center problem, if I don't do anything and the plane crashes, I'm not only going to have 5,000 people get killed, but in extreme probability, the 200 people are going to get killed bang bang bang. So, my choice is not 5,000 versus 200. My choice is 5,000 plus those 200 versus those 200 alone. There, according to at least some opinions some opinions uh Rashi in Sanhedrin, I'm allowed to make a calculus of maximizing the saving of life because those people are going to die anyway. Okay, so fascinating fascinating issues of the trolley case. Now, let let me point out a variation of this now. Let's assume you determine that if I shoot down the plane in mid-flight, it's going to crash in a residential neighborhood, and I'm going to kill 10 people. Mhm. Now, there, that is the trolley case. You cannot shoot a plane down that will kill 10 people who otherwise wouldn't die, even if you're going to save 5,000 people. You see? You can shoot down the plane if the only people that you're shooting down are the people on the plane because they're going to die anyway. But if as is often the case, by shooting down the plane, there'll be other people who will die, that is mamash the trolley case. I can't divert the trolley and kill somebody who otherwise wouldn't die. So, this is again, fascinating fascinating moral problems. Again, what's scary is that, you know, it's nice to talk about this academically, but these are real things that happened. These happened in real time, and these were decisions that were really made. Now, um I'm trying to think I don't I just don't remember the details now, but uh there was a famous famous military decision that Winston Churchill made in World War II. Uh about knowing that the Germans were to bomb a certain city in England. He didn't tell the city. I don't know I just I should go back and check the story because he thought that if the Germans knew that he knew, this would endanger many many more lives. So, as a result, he lets really thousands of people die in that bombing attack in order to save a larger number. So, he did play a number games uh game of numbers, but that's a very again, Halakha generally says we're supposed to avoid that. Now, if you remember, this idea of serving God with all of your soul were the famous words of Rabbi Akiva. Do you remember on Tisha B'Av we read about the 10 martyrs who died for the sanctification of God's name. They didn't die at the same time. Although the poem makes it sound as if they all died like one after the other. In fact, they died over a span of 100 years. Poetically, they the stories are collapsed. But if you remember Rabbi Akiva was teaching Torah, and the Romans arrested him, and they were scraping his flesh with iron combs. And his students said to him, "How could God treat you this way with all that you did to serve him?" And Rabbi Akiva said, "All of my life all of my life, I wanted fulfill the mitzvah of serving God with all of my soul, being willing to give up my life. And now Hashem has given me the opportunity to give my life to Hashem. Shall I not rejoice?" That was Rabbi Akiva. But in truth, I'll give you an example who of a person who was very very far from Rabbi Akiva, but he ultimately did the same thing. Do you remember Daniel Pearl? Daniel Pearl, you know, not not a religious Jew. Daniel Pearl was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. And he was kidnapped. I think it was I think it was by ISIS. It was by a terrorist group. May have been ISIS, may have been Al-Qaeda. Was it Al-Qaeda? Al-Qaeda. It was Al-Qaeda. Okay, it was before ISIS. Al-Qaeda. And uh you know, Al-Qaeda was putting up videos of them beheading people. I mean, they were mamash putting up the videos. And you know, they had a a sword or a knife or a against his throat, and they said, you know, "Accept Allah." Whatever it would be. And he said, "I am a Jew and I will always be a Jew. I am a Jew." And mamash on YouTube. I mean, they took it they took the video off pretty quickly, but for a while. They killed him. They murdered him. Can you imagine? Chazal had an expression, Yish kona olamo b'sha'ah achat. A person could get his olam haba in one second. I I don't know Daniel Pearl. He could maybe he was a very righteous person generally. I I I don't want to say one way or the other, but all I can tell you is that no matter what his life was before that point, he died sanctifying God's name. That's a tremendous tremendous tremendous mitzvah. Puts him all the way at the highest levels of olam haba. Do you remember Rabbi Chanina ben Teradyon? Again, kind of reviewing a little bit of the 9th of Av. He was also a martyr. The Romans wrapped him in a sefer Torah, and they set the Torah scroll on fire with a lot of kindling. And they put wet sponges between the parchment of the Torah and his chest to kind of slow up the burning up of him, so he would feel the pain. And he was asked by his students, "What do you see now in your last moments?" And he said, "I see a parchment that is burning, but I see the letters going up to shamayim. The Torah is never going to be destroyed. You can destroy bodies, you can destroy buildings, you can destroy Torah scrolls, but the holiness of God's word always endures." And at some point, one of his students said, "Why don't you open your mouth so you could swallow the flame and die quickly?" And he said, "I can't do that. That's committing suicide. Let the one who gave me my soul take it." But then we have the part of the story. Again, this is Halakhically very interesting. The executioner the non the non-Jew he he said to him, "Would it be okay if I removed the sponges?" And that he said, "Yes." He He He allowed the executioner to remove the sponges so Rabbi Chanina would die more quickly. And uh he promised the executioner a share in olam haba. And the executioner jumped into the fire, died, and a bas kol, a voice from heaven said, "Rabbi Chanina and the executioner are mezuman l'olam haba." Now, Halakhically, again, I'm just I'm just alluding to things here tonight. Halakhically, this is a very very fascinating discussion that is highly relevant in a hospital or a hospice context. Because on one hand, Rabbi Chanina said, I can't commit suicide, I can't open up my mouth. But wait a second. Removing the sponges is going to cause him to die earlier. He would be living longer. Removing the sponges is going to hasten his death. So what is the halachic difference here? He says I can't open my mouth and swallow the fire, but you can remove the sponges. So what you see from this is there's a distinction between actively killing yourself and the removal of something that's keeping you alive. In a sense, the sponges were like a life support. They were an artificial thing that was keeping a person alive. Again, this is not a p'shat in halacha, this is not a halachic shiur, but I just want to point out how from these stories we can sometimes derive some difficult and com- solutions, and that is that there's a distinction between active suicide and determination of processes that are maintaining life. And at least on some level the Rabbi Chanina ben Turagian story is the authorization for a withdrawal of life support and not as not being equivalent to suicide. Again, not it's not a p'shat in halacha, this is a vast and complicated topic. But as I say, for some reason as we talk about it, I just throw out the free association. Okay. So we looked at two of the three things. We looked at serving God with all my heart. We looked at God, we looked at serving God with all my soul. Now we look at number three. And I'll continue this next week uh because I'm going to go into V'ahavta Sh'ma too. So it's kind of a unit, a two shiur unit on Sh'ma. But serving God with all your might, what does all your might mean? Me'od. So Rashi here too gives us two explanations for me'od. And both of them are very interesting. The first is me'od means your possessions, your money. You must be willing to serve God with all of your possessions. Meaning to say, even if by keeping Shabbos you won't be able to get a job and you'll be poor and you'll be in the streets you have to be willing to give up all your money. Now Rashi raises a question if the Torah already says you have to be willing to give up your life for Hashem. Then obviously I would know I have to give up my money for Hashem. Why do you have to tell me I have to give up my money if I have to give up my life? So Rashi brings from Chazal that there are some people who love their money more than their lives. So if they would be told to give up their lives, they they'd do that. They'll jump into a fire. But they're not willing to give up all of their money. You may remember the famous Jewish comedian uh Jack Benny. Very famous. And although Jack Benny was actually a generous person, but his persona, his character was uh he played a very, very stingy person. And before there was he was on TV, he had a radio show. This is before I was born. This goes back to the uh 1940s. And on the radio show, you know, he's uh he's uh walking through Central Park and there's a mugger who stops him in Central Park and the mugger says, "Your money or your life?" And then on radio there's a 30 seconds silence, which in radio is like going forever. You don't know what's going on. 30 seconds. And after 30 seconds, Jack Benny says, "I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it." Right? Money or your life. Now if that sounds ridiculous, I mean, let me point out the obvious point that many people are perfectly willing to endanger their lives to make money. Whether it's daredevil stunts, whether it's doing dangerous work. People endanger their lives for their money all the time. So according to the first p'shat of Rashi, b'chol me'odecha is the obligation to be willing to give up all of your economic assets in the world in order to serve God. Rashi then gives a second explanation that me'od does not mean possessions or money, but it means middah. It means the measure that God has given you, meaning whether God has given you joyous experiences or negative experiences. You have to serve him with love no matter what he puts in your life. Right? So Rashi gives two different p'shatim. Okay. So we'll stop here. Next week we'll continue a little bit with this me'od and then I'm going to use it as a bridge to V'ahavta I'm Sh'ma. So this week and next week as I say, it could be a little bit of a separate series on the uh reading of of Sh'ma. Okay. Have a good evening and uh good week. You are my You are my everything. You are my everything. You are my everything. You are my everything. You are my everything.