Understanding Rabbinic Judaism - Rabbi Benzion Klatzko - Library of Torah Thought

Last week we spoke about what is called de oraita. De oraita means from the Torah. Even though it was given orally, the the that that oral stuff is not rabbinic. The rabbis did not make up that filling is a blocks of straps. That is a very legitimate uh oral law. Uh that's a very legitimate oral law law. And that is not rabbinic. Uh like shaking an esrog, that's not rabbinic. Shaking the the a citron, that is from the Torah. So, the that's the first thing that people get confused about, and we just have to make a clear line. That's not rabbinic Judaism. That is Torah Judaism that was given over orally by God to Mosha, explained over a 40-year period to the people in the desert. It ended up being written down by Rabbi Judah the Prince. Uh and it was written down almost a little bit less than 1,500 years, about 1,300 years after the Torah was given, but that was never that was never uh rabbinic uh Judaism. That was always de oraita Judaism. Now, we are up to today. So, so what is rabbinic Judaism? Or even so, what power do the rabbis have? Why do they even make laws? So, on a very very simple level, you would expect we would expect any society to have a a some sort of jurisprudence, some sort of a mechanism where things can adjust and change so that society can continue to survive and thrive through uh through the millenniums, right? Through through history. So, it's not it's not surprising that there is a uh a governing body in Judaism that helps craft and direct the Jewish people. Uh in the same way that we wouldn't expect not the Declaration of Independence and not the Bill of Rights to be the the bottom line in how we live as Americans. But we expect there to be Congress, and we expect there to be uh a Supreme Court, and we expect uh as new cases come up, as we learn about, for example, we'll learn all about uh uh genetics, so we'll learn about grafting, we'll technology that they simply didn't have. There was no way to uh there was no way that the founding fathers of America were able to uh foresee Twitter. And whether Twitter has the right to censor different uh different folks and what they have to say. Like these are things that we need that that need to be dynamic. In that same way, you would expect any society that that functions to have that mechanism in place where you have living and breathing human beings that can help direct and lead the society as things change. There was a a person who wrote a book. He's a not a Jewish fellow, and he's a person who writes very interesting books uh about his experiences. So, he the that he wrote a book called My Year of Living Biblically. I basically said, "I'm going to live exactly according to the Bible. And let me see if I can function." And guess if he was able to. Of course he wasn't. Because without the oral law, I said you don't even know what don't kill means. Does that mean I can't go to war? Does that mean I can't put a murderer to death? Does that mean I can't be a doctor and perform a surgery cuz I may kill the person? Like you you can't function. So, certainly this person who lived a year biblically was a was a big flop. Or like for him it wasn't a flop, he wrote a book about it, but it came out to be sort of a joke. So, point number one is you need a governing body, and the the book alone is not enough. Now, how do we know that there is authority in that governing body? So, the answer is the Torah mentions uh in in a number of places that the leaders of the generation should be listened to and heeded. It mentions in a few different verses uh as I shall make a tira for those of you who know the Hebrew. The rabbis that includes the Torah scholars. Uh the everything they say you should listen to in terms of the how Jewish law evolves. Uh there were uh shoftim v'shotrim, there were judges that were uh uh that were put in all different parts of the land. It was never meant to be a book and just do what it says in the book. There always had to be leadership. That's how you would expect it. Okay. But what are the limits of that leadership? Or as we would say, what are the checks and balances? Now, what what stops there from being some sort of a dictator or some sort of an ogre or some sort of a uh uh egomaniac that comes up there and just just decrees uh things that eventually end up in jihad and end up in in in in destruction? W- Why wouldn't that happen? So, there's a few things to know. Number one, we know it doesn't happen because our history proves that it doesn't happen. We don't have a single character in Jewish history that the Jewish people have granted that kind of power towards. Interestingly enough, even kings had checks and balances in Judaism, which which was unheard of in Rome or Greece or or Persia. W- Even kings had checks and balances. As a matter of fact, a king uh as a special mitzvah, it's this not very well known, but uh it was known for the kings, that a king had to write not one but two Torahs. That means a king uh writing a Torah is long. It has over 300,000 letters. It's a very big thing to write a Torah, and it has to be written on parchment with a quill in a certain way. So, a king had to moonlight as an actual scribe. And not only did he write two Torahs, but one of the two Torahs actually h- he had to write very small, and it was bound to his arm, his other arm, like the filling were bound to his left arm. On his right arm he'd have a Torah. So, if you picture a Jewish king, you may picture a guy with a scepter, but actually you should picture somebody with a Torah strapped to his arm. Did you know that? It's like very interesting. A miniature Torah strapped to his arm like filling. And the lesson was clear. The lesson is that you don't have absolute power, right? Absolute power corrupts absolutely. So, Ju- Judaism never allowed for that. A great example of the lack of dictatorship would be what happened two weeks ago. There was a very great rabbi in Israel who passed away. His name was Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky. He was, you know, the by all accounts the greatest rabbi alive today. He had nearly a million people at his funeral. And he had he had no power. I mean, meaning like he couldn't decree anything, he couldn't throw anyone in jail, he couldn't enact a fine. He would say things people would take it seriously because he was what's called a godol. He was a He was a big person. The rabbis uh don't have that kind of power, and they never did. And one of the reasons why is that in general, rabbis are not elected. When you're not elected, well, you could be a rabbi of a synagogue, be elected by the uh it's important to know that when we say rabbi, with this rabbi, there's rabbi, there's rabbi, there's rabbi. I could be the rabbi of Hillel, but come on, you know, you you may or may not know what you're talking about. I write a pulpit rabbi could be a great Torah scholar, or he could be a great orator, or he could be a great fundraiser, but there's a position called rabbi. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the sages, the the ones that we all look up to for guidance and advice and and and inspiration. Those people are not elected. And it's important to know that cuz if you're not elected, that means you don't have to pander to special interests. Normally, when somebody is elected, how does it work? When a person's elected, they simply find a group of people that will vote for them, and the higher they go in uh in office, the more groups they have to get to vote for them so that they will uh be elected. And the more groups that you need to vote for you, the more groups you need to pander to. So, it's very interesting. Most people who are voted today, I believe people who run for office, maybe in the beginning they were very sincere. Right? Maybe they were it was just a a mother who saw that there needed to be a traffic light on her street corner, and they weren't putting it on, so she went around getting people to sign a petition. And she got that traffic light put in the street corner, and it made the street safer for children to cross. And her neighbors came to her and said, "Hey, you should run for office. Look, you get things done." So, she thinks, "Oh, that makes a lot of sense. I'm going to start running for office." And she runs, and in order to get elected, there were different groups that each wanted something, and they said, "Okay, if you'll vote for this, then we'll get our union to vote for you." And then, when she goes on to the next higher office, she has to pander to more groups, and maybe what those groups want, maybe she wouldn't really agree with. Maybe they're not totally her value system. But, you know what she does? She says, "For the greater good, I'm going to give in to that special interest group, because I'll be able to do such good in office that it's worth it for me to pander to this group and that group and concede and advocate for this group and that group." And then, the higher they go, the more groups they have to pander to, until eventually it becomes a real question mark, are you giving up more than you're offering? Right? Have you conceded the moral high ground to the point that you're giving so much what you don't believe in, just because you hope when you get elected you're going to do what you do believe in, but maybe you've given up more. You sold your soul to the devil, as they say. That doesn't work in rabbinics. A rabbi doesn't get elected. So, yeah, you can have a rabbi elected to a synagogue, but a leader, Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, this example that I gave, he never he was never elected to anything. He didn't even have a synagogue. He just sat He just sat in his house and studied Torah all of his life. Wrote books, studied Torah. But, it didn't make a difference, because he was the leader. He rose to the top. So, when rabbis uh become these kind of figures, it there's a certain purity that's involved, and we don't you know the power struggles, whenever there's a power struggle you sort of pull away, because one of the hallmarks of being a rabbi is humility. So, why are you fighting to be a you know, okay, maybe you feel like you could lead your community better than the next person, but very often a a really righteous person will concede, "Okay, I don't I don't want to get into a fight just to be the rabbi." Now, let's talk about decrees. What's a decree? There are certain laws that the Jewish people keep that are not from the Torah. And yet, they're severe. They were decrees that were made by the rabbis over the passage of time. And I want to explain to you how they came about and why they're important to us. There is a law that we don't ride a horse on Shabbat. Now, why don't we ride a horse on Shabbat? You know, that may seem like a like a law that doesn't touch us today, but 100 150 years ago, that was the transportation. Why don't we ride on on horses on Shabbat? Well, so the answer is that when a person rides on a horse, what they will do very often is, in order to get the horse to go, they'll give it like a little you know, a little patch, a little whip by its uh on its hind knee. Like, let's go. And sometimes they'll be going on the horse, and the horse is like dragging its feet, and it's not really going. So, what the person will do is, as they're passing a tree, they'll reach out and just yank off a a branch, so that they could hit the horse with. This is a very common practice. You know, you just grab a branch from a nearby tree, and breaking off a branch on Shabbat is actually a Torah prohibition. And because it was so common when people rode on horses, that that was just the thing they did. That was one of the first things they'd grab their branch. They'd ride around with a riding crop, like they were playing polo. You know, that was you just grab a grab a branch and smack. And that was so common that they forbade um riding on animals on Shabbat, because people were desecrating Shabbat. Give you another example. There's a rabbinic decree not to play musical instruments on Shabbat. We don't play guitar. We don't play drums. And really, it would it sounds like it would be better to imagine Kabbalat Shabbat. We're welcoming lecha dodi likrat kallah. And and it feels good, and it sounds good, and I'm getting into a groove. Why is that decree made? And you will find within traditional Jews, no one's going to use a musical instrument on Shabbat. Not something you would think of. Except if you're my kids, and you play musical instruments. Why? Because it's very very common, when a person's playing an instrument, that something will go out of tune, or something will break, or something will snap. I have a few kids who play guitar, one kid who plays violin, and it's a very common thing that as you're playing, one of the strings snap. Or the drum, something's got to be tightened. And fixing something on Shabbat is a Torah prohibition. And since there is this concern that what when you play musical instruments that are used they're very fine-tuned, and in the middle of playing on Shabbat something breaks, and you fix it, and fixing a vessel, fixing an instrument is forbidden from the Torah, so we don't play musical instruments, so that we are not tempted, "Oh, this went off key, or this needed, you know, the the the the snap ripped, so I have to I have to put a new snap or a new tie on the drum." Because of that, we don't play musical instruments. So, how did that come about? How did they decide what to make a gezeirah gezeirah? Uh gezeirah's like a fence. How did that work? How did These are fences, so you don't transgress the law. How does a fence work? So, I'll give you one of the approaches, and this is very common. There was uh there's something that the Jewish people have had for thousands of years, we still have it today. It's called the Yarchei Kallah. The Yarchei Kallah happens once or twice a year. When you've got rabbis from congregations or from yeshivote, and they have a convention. It's the rabbi convention. Yeah, a lot of matzah balls and a lot of singing and some slivovitz, right? And the rabbis get together, and as they get together, they discuss what's going on in their community. Okay, so we're at a convention, all of us. Jeremy's there, and Hal's there, and then Isaac is there. We're all there. And as we're at the convention, I turn to you, you turn to me, and we say, "Hey, I got a question for you. You know, I've been getting this question in in my community a lot, that people have been playing these instruments, and then like one of the strings break, and they're in the middle of this really glorious Shabbat service, so you know, for the for the honor of the service, they want to fix their instrument on Shabbat. And of course, I tell them you can't do that. That's that's Torah prohibition. But, they said, 'Oh, they didn't realize and they did it.' And I turn to the rabbi next to me and say, 'Wow, that's an issue.' And you know, the rabbi turns back to me and says, 'You know what? I got the same issue going on in my community.' And after a while, there's like this buzz in the room. It's a buzz. People are saying, "Wow, this this comes up a lot. This this is coming up." And after a while, they make a meeting out of this, and they say, "Okay, is has this been an issue in the community?" And when you got a lot of people saying, "Yes, this comes up. This is real." So then, what happens is they say, "You know what? We've got to create a fence, because this is something that clearly is a weak link in the chain to desecrate Shabbat. And we want to be in this relationship with God, and relationships, you don't want to have an oops. Oops. O O O P S. Oops. Sorry. Didn't mean to but sorry, we don't we don't roll like that. We try to do the best that we can. And these fences are really important. I actually um I have twin grandchildren. They're 2 years old. This Shabbat uh it was Shabbat afternoon, and we were at a hotel this Shabbat. I was speaking at a convention. And my wife decided to put them to sleep in the afternoon. So, where did she put them to sleep? It I guess with the with the cribs weren't brought for whatever reason. So, she put where there were two beds in my hotel room. So, one of the two year olds were put on my bed, and one was put on her bed. I came in later on the afternoon, and oh, it's so cute, two twins, you know, they're identical, and they're each sleeping on a bed. It's very cute. But, then I noticed that next to the twin that was sleeping on my bed was my bottle of pills. And I have my bottle of pills and I take all my pills. I take for my heart and this and for that. And I I know what they look like so I just put them all together in one bottle. I don't have to mark it off. I know what they are. And it was on the nightstand right next to him. Now, I know my grandchildren. The very first thing this kid is doing is tasting them. And that is highly highly highly dangerous. Except that he couldn't open it because it had a childproof lock and he's 2 years old. So, when you click it, you lock it and he tries to open it, he can't get it open. Thank God for a fence. A fence could have saved my grandchild's life. I wasn't there to make sure that he didn't open the bottle. Looks tempting, looks like a toy, looks like candy. So, fences are what keeps us as a society safe and it also guards Judaism and the Torah. I'll give you a very interesting fence. There is a law not to eat milk and meat together. You all heard of that? No milk and meat together? Right? So, cheeseburgers out. Of course, you could get soy cheese or soy burger and I have had the pleasure many times of having a Subway sandwich in a kosher version of Subway with with the parve cheese. It's actually pretty good but that's cuz it's watered down with everything else. I'm sure cheeseburgers are delicious but they're forbidden according to the Torah. But what about milk and chicken? Now, milk and chicken should sound like it's not an issue and I'll tell you why. Because the Torah says don't cook a kid in its mother's milk. Right? Except that chickens don't give milk. Right? So, I understand okay, meat and milk together because even if it's not the mother itself, the Torah is alluding to I give another class how why it says it like that, why it phrases it like that. But the bottom line is something that gives milk you shouldn't cook in it's mercy, it's cruelty. But a chicken doesn't give milk. A chicken's not a mammal, it's a fowl. So, why can't I eat chicken and milk? And the law is we don't. We don't not only don't we eat chicken and milk, we wait 6 hours between after eating meat before eating milk and after eating chicken. Why? So, this actually comes from that same concept. There was this Yarchi called convention and one of the discussions were one of the rabbis said, "Hey, I got a question for you." There was a this person and he had franks, let's say I'm just giving you an example, hot dogs, franks and he thought that they were chicken franks. So, he just had them with some cheese. But chicken franks and beef franks look very similar. Today they look very very similar because you could put the red food coloring in it. It used to be like chicken franks were a little bit lighter, you know what I'm talking about? Those who remember the old chicken franks were lighter and the beef franks were darker. Today you can make chicken franks look exactly the same. Okay, they make them all a little bit thicker and so you can tell the difference. But really right? Or what do they call a turkey burger a turklurkey? I forget what it's called. Turkey and meat. You can take fowl and you process it and very often it's used um the same way as meat is. And what was happening was there were so many people who were taking foods, they were mixing them back and forth. They kept thinking it was chicken or turkey or some sort of fowl. It ended up being actual meat. They ended up making all their chicken all their dishes not kosher. They ended up eating not kosher and they had no ill intent. It just became a thing because the way the the way chicken is prepared is so so similar. So, there was a decree, you know what? You got to you should wait after fowl as well as as meat. And that's where it comes from. G'zeros, these fences are are really powerful because the history has shown that when these fences break the dam the dam breaks on the law. Um the Talmud has a very interesting story. One of one of the decrees and there aren't like that many decrees by the way but whatever there is, you know, we take seriously. One of the decrees is that a person is not supposed to read on Shabbat by an oil lamp. Today we have light so it doesn't it doesn't apply but but you should read by an oil lamp. And the reason why we don't read on Shabbat by an oil lamp is again, you'd have to be a person who uses oil lamps but oil lamps, you know, if the oil decreases or if the wick shifts, so then what they used to do is they used to like jiggle the the wick to make sure that it drinks up more of the oil. And when a person's reading and and that's forbidden on Shabbat, you can't increase the fire on Shabbat. That's a Torah prohibition. And what people used to do is they used to read and they'd get real engrossed in their reading and if the fire of the oil lamp would begin to flicker, which means it's it wasn't absorbing the oil properly. So, they as they would read, they'd go like this and just sort of fix it. And without thinking they'd be desecrating Shabbat. So, there was a decree not to read by the by an oil lamp on Shabbat. And then the Talmud says there was one rabbi who he was a he was a great sage and he said, "I got total self-control. I know it won't happen to me. I could do it." I could do it and he just for whatever reason, whatever his calculation was, I could do it and he began to learn Torah and there was an oil lamp and guess what happened to this great rabbi who said I could do it? As he's reading, he started to go like this and then he caught himself. He said, "Wow, you know, I'm I I I I was wrong. I was wrong. There's a reason why these decrees are in place." The decrees make it clear that we take the laws of the Torah seriously and that's that's a beautiful thing. By the way, this is how our society works today as well. When we figure out, for example, what the alcohol level is, when you how much you could or can't drink before you drive and then you get a DUI if you if you go over or what a speed limit should be. Or like we it it evolves but you have to have people who have a deep understanding and that's one point. That's how decrees are made. So many different scenarios can come up when it comes to any mitzvah in the world. Thousands of scenarios. I can think of thousands in literally any case, medical, you know, endless. Right? When it comes to keeping Shabbat, especially with today's technology. And even the the Torah is just one book. And even the oral law that fills in the blanks, it's it's also contained. So, how do we figure things out that continue to to develop? How do we figure out what the right thing is to do? And the question is a little bit deeper. I'm in a relationship with Hashem. That's another discussion, not for right now but the point of Judaism is to be in a relationship with God. Which means that when I'm in a relationship, I want to know what does God want from me? Just like if my wife says, "Oh, if you are you're coming home from work, can you pick up some food?" But I love you so what kind of food do you want? Do you want a hamburger or do you want pizza? Do you want sushi? So, because I love her, I'm going to want to I'm going to want to nail it. So, we take law seriously. So, I want to do it right. So, what does it mean when it says, for example, to listen to shofar? Right? We listen to the shofar on Rosh Hashanah. I want to do it right. So, what if somebody stole a shofar? Am I allowed to listen to it? What if a little child blows? But a little child is not obligated to listen to shofar so maybe they can't blow the shofar either. What if it's blown mechanically? Does it have to be a human being? How does it sound? What if I'm using a hearing aid? Am I am I hearing it with my ears or am I hearing an impulse that's being magnified? What if I hear it over television or the computer? Like there are on and on. You you know what I'm saying? Like we could sit here and just play with this. So, how do I know what the parameters of the law are? It's great question and this is why Judaism is a very it's a serious it's a serious I I don't like to call it a religion but it's a serious religion. It it takes itself very seriously and it tries not to just dismiss things. Like, "Okay, I'll do my best and hopefully God will be happy with me." It doesn't work like that. We we really try to understand where is God coming from? He's very smart. He made, you know, space, time and matter. He asked to do something, what does he mean? Now, if you've ever studied Talmud, you'll see something really interesting. You'll see that the Talmud often gives us scenarios that are bizarre. Like the strange cases, what could happen if I had a chicken and the chicken had a string wrapped around its foot, right? It's hopping around, gets a string tied around its foot, and then that string ends up getting attached to a pail, and as it's hopping the pail is maxing into my window and breaks it. Am I obligated? Now, what when's the last time that happened? Did it ever happen in the history of ever? And the Talmud does this constantly. So, what is the Talmud doing? The what I'm giving you right now is a very beautiful insight into how Talmud works. So, in Talmud, you'll see these really interesting scenarios. What what's going on? After I explain it, it'll make perfect sense. What the Talmud's trying to do is it's trying to create a parameter around a law. To understand how far does a law stretch? So, what it does is it gives me an extreme scenario. Something that maybe never happened in real life, but if that extreme scenario, for example, with this chicken and the pail and the string, if in that scenario I am liable, means I'm obligated, I'm culpable, so then let's say this is the these are the parameters, then I know that everything within those parameters, which are more your fault, which are more likely, I'm for sure culpable for. So, what I've done by giving an extreme case is I've created the parameters of a law. Let's say the law is, no, I'm not culpable. Right? It's too weird and I can't be obligated if a string and it gets tied to a pail. Let's say I'm not culpable. So, what does Talmud do then? It then moves the parameters in a little. And says, okay, not in that case, but what about in this case? Okay, I'm still not culpable. Let's move it in a little further. What about in this case? And then eventually, what you've done is you've created a framework to understand law, what is included and what's not included. Now, this is something that those people who mock rabbis, Talmud, Judaism at large, they don't understand it. But people who study law understand it very well. They understand that that's what's going on. Very interesting. I used to be a rabbi at UCLA. And I was very friendly with the dean of the law school. It's a very famous person. His name is Norm Abrams. He was a Jewish fellow. He's actually a modern Orthodox Jew. And today there's, you know, he retired. There's the Norm Abrams Award. Like he's he's he he goes down as somebody who's who's created tremendous tremendous law in his state. And he became the dean of the law school. And I asked him once to speak to my students at one of my events. And he spoke and he was wonderful. And then somebody raised their hand. It was a big crowd there. I actually promised the students, anyone who comes to this event, I'm going to get you a little bit of face time with the dean. So, all those pre-law students wanted some face time with Professor Norm Abrams. So, they we had a lot of people come to that event. So, one of the students raised their hand and they said, Got a question. What's the difference between Talmud and law? Interesting question cuz Talmud is very cerebral. It's very um jurisprudence focused. It's very legal. And it sounds like law. And Norm Abrams said the following. He said, actually, it it is so similar, the logic is so similar that he will take students straight from Yeshiva to law school, they could skip undergrad. Because their minds are so calibrated to thinking in these terms, they usually excel in law school. He said there is one difference though between a Talmudic student and a law student. He said, in Talmud, we try to get rid of gray area. You're either obligated, you're not. You have to do this, you're guilty, you're not guilty. We try to get rid of gray. And in law, you try to introduce gray area. Yeah, you think he's a murderer, but maybe they didn't murder. Maybe it wasn't premeditated. Maybe they were somewhat insane. Maybe they were under duress. So, you introduce gray area, while in Talmud, we try to remove gray area because Talmud's trying to figure out what God wants, and gray area is not good cuz then I don't know what God wants. Now, how do I figure out law in the Talmud? How do I figure things out? How do I know whether to move in the walls of the parameters of a law? So, now we're going to get to something else that's very interesting. The Torah actually puts in 13 mechanisms that you can figure out any law that comes up, no matter how far into the future it is, using 13 mechanisms, you can figure out law in the future. Now, the laws, those mechanisms, uh these tools are intellectual tools, and they're used sometimes by themselves, sometimes they're used in tandem. They're known in Hebrew as the Yud Gimel Midot, the 13 measures Sha Torah Nidreshes Bahem that the Torah is understood from. So, and some of them are so similar to law that that that to to nor to normal law that they actually are the same. And they're just they're called they're called something different cuz they're called their Hebrew or Aramaic counterpart, but they're the same. I'll give you an example. There's a law, one of the 13 principles, that's known as Kal V'Chomer. Kal means light, and Chomer means heavy. And I can figure out a law using the Kal V'Chomer. The law the law the the the mechanism works like this. If Harold, who cannot lift 100 lb, can lift my computer, then Jeremy, who could lift 100 lb, could for sure lift my computer. That's known in law as an a fortiori. And in in Torah in in Gemara in Talmud, that's known as Kal V'Chomer. It's one of the mechanisms that we use to figure out laws that are not that are not explicit in the Torah. So, therefore, if something comes up in the future, I'll say, yes, this case is not mentioned, but I can know it from a Kal V'Chomer from another case cuz this case is even more severe. So, if the law over here is like this, then surely the law over there must be like that. That's one of the 13 principles. And what we do, and this is a lot of what Talmud does, when Talmud rabbis, when you study Talmud, when they have disagreements, they're not just yelling at each other. What they're doing, and this is really sharp, what they're doing is they say, what's the law in a certain case? And they and one rabbi will say, well, using principle one and four, the law would be that they're guilty. And then another rabbi would say, no, but principle five overrides both one and four, and therefore, the person's innocent. And they use the mechanisms to have this debate in what the law should end up being, what the mitzvah is, what the Torah's trying to say. That's exactly how we do it in the secular world. We have certain principles. We have certain precedences, where you we could see a law was in the books, maybe it was from the 1800s and no, it was never used. Maybe it was a law like Roe versus Wade that was that was enacted much more recently. And we have a law, then we have another one that we try to figure out based on the scenario. Is it is it exactly the same? Maybe it's a little bit different. All of this tells me the following. That built into the Torah is a way to figure out how to live as a Jew in the year 2022. And it's not guesswork. So, for example, if I go to the local rabbi of my synagogue/temple, and I tell him, am I do I have to do this? And he says, oh, it's a rabbinic thing. Your answer should be, what what does that mean, rabbinic thing? Did you mean a fence? Was it something that was figured out from the 13 principles? Was it oral law? Which which one of the three? They're all three very different. Oral law is not really rabbinic, it's really from the Torah. If it's figured out from the 13 principles, the principles themselves come from Torah. If it's a decree, then then you're right, then it's not actually Torah, but it's a decree that the Torah says to listen to the rabbis and the Jewish people have accepted upon themselves. Or there's a fourth scenario, which is maybe it's minhag. What does the word minhag mean? Minhag means custom. There are certain laws that the law came about because it was a custom of the Jewish people to do a certain thing, and usually that custom had a a a halakhic a Jewish law reason behind it. What kind of fish do we eat on Shabbat? The gefilte fish. Did anyone here ever go fishing and catch a gefilte fish? There's no such thing as a gefilte fish. Did you know that? There are sardines, there are salmon, there's no such thing as a gefilte fish. So, what is gefilte fish? It's known in English as fish loaf. It sounds very unsavory. But you put a a good amount of the red horseradish on top and you're good to go. Nice little sweet carrot, and it's delicious in the right when you're in the right frame of mind. Not on a not on a Tuesday for lunch, but right on Shabbat morning, it's delicious. Friday night. Why do we eat gefilte fish? Why is there a custom like that? Well, that custom actually comes from Jewish law. There is a law that on Shabbat you cannot separate the bad from the good. You cannot separate bad from good on Shabbat, it's called borer. It's one of the 39 laws of Shabbat. Not getting into why that is now, but trust me, it's one it's a it's a biblical law. It's not a negotiated thing. It's a biblical not separate bad from good. So, usually where where did the supply usually supply to farmers who would have to separate the wheat from the sha- from the chaff. So, it was it was a farmer thing in the Torah forbade because that, but separate the bad from the good could happen anywhere. Like I could have a bunch of Legos and I tell my kid my kids like they they want to get rid of all the yellows, or you got a bunch of jelly beans jelly bellies and you don't like the blacks. So, you go into your jelly belly thing and you get rid of the blacks. That's not allowed on Shabbat. We don't separate the bad from the good. So, where did this come up very often? This came up when eating fish. Because when I have a nice piece of salmon steak, not a salmon fillet, but a salmon steak, what does it have a lot of little thin bones? So, what people do is they go and they pull out the bones and that is called borer on Shabbos. So, we don't separate the bad from the good on Shabbos. So, the Jewish people because of that biblical law of not separating bad from good, they invented a fish with no bones. And the name of that fish was called gefilte fish. So, and and by the way, this is for everything. This for challah, even for cholent as as a halakhic background. A halakhic reason why it was created. So, gefilte fish suddenly is not just a weird ethnic fish and jelly, but it it has a halakhic basis. So, when we have customs, we we shouldn't just discard them. You know, even though you know, we got Tevye dancing around tradition, tradition with a lot so sweet tradition, but traditions or customs are actually really important in Judaism, and there's even a saying in the Talmud that says minhag k'din, a custom has the has the severity of a law. Now, it depends what kind of custom. So, this is where and I'm going to finish with this idea. This is where the great saying in Pirkei Avot comes into play. And the saying is Asei l'cha rav, make for yourself a rav, a Torah scholar, a rabbi who knows his beans. Make yourself a personal rabbi. Find that go-to person and be able to call them and ask them your questions. Because the truth of the matter is outside of a person who's devoted their life to understanding Torah, most of us and most of our Jewish education ended when we were pretty young. Yeah, we we dabbled here and there, but let's face you know, people go to college and grad school till they're 25, 26. Not many people are learning Talmud except for again, those Yeshiva Talmud students who are really serious. Most people like you know, they went to Sunday school or they went to you know, maybe elementary school, maybe they hated it, maybe they were confirmed, maybe they learned for their bar mitzvah, but they were they were kids when they finished. I don't even think that real intellectual Jewish knowledge can enter a person's brain until they're 18. That's my I I heard from a great rabbi once that 16-year-olds don't have a brain. And I have a 16-year-old, so I I know what the rabbi means. Like they they have they have they got feelings and emotions and we love them and but you know, they're very involved they're very self-absorbed many of them. Like high schools and cliques and politics and you know, I'm I'm I'm that's that's one thing I hope never to be a teenager again. If there's reincarnation, like no no, I don't want to go through 11th grade. No more 11th grade. So, but when we're 18 our brains become more developed and that's why you know, college begins at age we begin to really understand things. Except for a lot of people their Jewish education is finished by then. So, if you have a chance to go study study in Yeshiva, that's optimal. And when I see people who go and they're they're a little bit older, they gain they get much more out of it. But if a person can't, then at the very least they should have a really competent halakhically knowledgeable rabbi on their speed dial. And I want to tell you that even rabbis have rabbis on their speed dial and I do as well. Because no one knows everything and we we want to do it right. We don't want um the gravity of Judaism. The gravity is called halakha. Halakha is Jewish law. That's the gravity that keeps Judaism in place. The moment halakha is abandoned is the moment the Jew sort of drifts off into the into the either into the right? Because there's nothing that ties me. I can do whatever I want whenever I want and I'll call it Judaism. In the same way that I can't just make a baseball anything is called baseball. Instead of four bases, I'll I'll make six bases and instead of a round ball I'll use like a little football shaped ball instead of a bat I'll use a broomstick, right? Eventually that's not baseball. So, halakha is the gravity that keeps Judaism Judaism. So, that's a little bit about rabbinic Judaism, there's much more. What I wanted you to get out of this is that it is not fly-by-night, it's not you know, shoot from the hip. It is formulated and developed and learned by tremendous scholars over 2,000 plus years, much more than that, that's just in September, really over 3,000 years. Our rabbis are known to be tremendous tremendous geniuses in their breadth and in their depth. They're also known to be people of high moral character because people who are not never rose to the top, right? People who were were morally decrepit, they can be the biggest geniuses, but we're not going to listen to them cuz they can't back up what they purport what they say what they preach with their own actions. So, as a Jewish nation we dismiss them. They're not they're not what we're looking for. We're looking for somebody whose insides reflect their action their their outside reflect that what they preach and those are the people who we look up to for guidance. They're not mullahs, they're not elected officials. Rav Chaim Kanievsky never got a penny for being this great rabbi and yet a million people at his funeral. Didn't get one penny for being a rabbi. Didn't have one was not a pulpit rabbi. Did not have a Yeshiva. He just the cream rose to the top because people acknowledged him. So, that is rabbinic Judaism. I thank you all for listening.