Simcha Barnett

rabbi thank you so much for joining us on the show it's pleasure to be with you charlie and you've been with us before and you've been behind the scenes for those who don't know robert barnett has been behind the scenes from the first day from the first show and every show since so so many times there are things that are happening that you don't know was because of this man so rabbi we really appreciate it and we thank you for your dedication not only did you shiva for this show in particular it's great thanks so the way you grew up give us a little bit about your your history and how much did you know about this upcoming holiday how much did you know about you know mount sinai and the giving of the torah you know i grew up on long island and i was i was went to reform hebrew school and like pretty much everybody i i knew we knew absolutely nothing about chevros and you know we will be called but we didn't know anything about it and i had a theory the reason is because hebrew school's over and if hebrew school's over that's it there's no more judaism schools over and really the only place my contemporaries and i knew anything about sinai was the movie the ten commandments you know that's who we got our torah from there you know they get it all wrong they basically have moses giving the tour of the jewish people not god so i didn't know anything about the traditional claim of revelation at sinai it was a eye-opening experience to me and i went to dartmouth college and i played tennis went to lehman brothers in it finally i ended up by in the old city i bumped into this amazing program discovery which one of the main segments is this uh this area of evidence that you're talking about tonight it's amazing that you know i i i experience in many times when people say to me wait what are you talking about you know god gave the tour to moses i'm like no he didn't this concept of national revelation right the idea that the divine presence revealed itself to an entire nation of people so take us through the first time you heard that and your reaction so i heard in discovery and the first thing you think is the game of telephone everybody thinks broken telephone how could a message 3000 years ago be the same message as today as you as you think about it as they present the construct you realize it's a claim that could not have been made unless it was true maybe because it was historical in nature and no one ever pointed that out before in other words if you take the supernatural part out of it right it's based on history like any other historical claim like civil war like that george washington was president there were millions of eyewitnesses that's the basis of the claim so it's a totally different claim than someone appearing to god whether it was john smith saying you know i got the tablets or whether it was muhammad saying i went up in a horse up in heaven it's it's i would call it you know you're a lawyer evidentiary it provides evidence and there's all the other claims they don't provide evidence at all meaning they never don't even report report provide evidence basically say trust me believe in me so it's like it's categorically a different claim it's on a different level of credibility and as you sit with it you realize if such a groundbreaking thing did happen you can imagine why history right away imagine why it wouldn't be questioned and why all the nations of the world the time christians the muslims everybody going forward built themselves on judaism in other words they changed everything else why didn't they change this right you know what the obvious the obvious answer i think is because they couldn't i mean this was just this was just historical fact yeah it's interesting that what we're celebrating next the holiday that in the way you're describing which is an interesting approach just that it's really it's not celebrated but it really could be celebrated by most of the nations of the world right mount sinai as opposed to you know passover and as opposed to other things that may have had different historical amplifications now sinai is nestled in islam and it's nestled in christianity it's nestled in the major religions so this isn't just in many ways our event this is the world event and this really like you're saying is the structure of which other nations have built their infrastructure because the claim the the the the the story of national revelation requires it to be a totally different approach because like you said one person could have an opinion but three million or two million you know don't so what's interesting and i'll tell you my experience and you can show your experience is that you know i grew up in a in a much more traditional religious home i never even it never even dawned on me that this happened and i never even thought about it meaning i didn't think about national evolution because i don't know it's the torah that's true i i never i never had a moment in my upbringing regardless if i was like you know good with the abs with the commandments i wasn't always like you know perfect with you know doing this or not doing that i can't say i was but when it came to like what the book was i was like yeah of course now from your experience though you were you were a lot different you were much more skeptical share this a little bit about that approach because it's so important that people understand that matter where you hold in this spectrum of like totally accepted or totally skeptical there's a place for you yeah i mean first of all i i that's that's the difference between a kid grown up and experiencing anything amazing and then an adult experiencing something amazing for the first time you see it as an adult with all your your sacral your wisdom your maturity and you want to dig deep into it but it's interesting the kid if if his parents tell him truth right and he takes it as such that's a beautiful thing i mean that's not a negative thing but when you were able as an adult what i think the beauty of what a balchu is about is he can dig a little bit deeper maybe you're like yourself and other people who grew up with it you know really to to ground yourself very strongly that you know you're not going to end is when you can see it really deeply the logic of it the you know it but jacob weinberg you know i he uh listened to a tape running to the eiffel tower after i left israel back and forth i didn't even see the actual power i'm listening to this and a reasonable person believe god spoken out sign up and he was just giving over such a insightful comments about we're talking about before and he said this cat this claim is so extraordinary and if you're god this is the one you're going with you're not going to go with a less good claim you're not going to go to muhammad when no one can verify it we're going with this claim but he would go further and say you'll know from that that all the other revelation stories their lies you know and when i thought about that philosophically it blew me away and it really he he ended up saying you know who was the first person who gave this proof over to the jewish people first person was moses in deuteronomy he says no people will ever make this claim and live right how could he be so sure right right if he faked it so to speak how could he be so sure someone else wouldn't come on because he was saying this is one claim this is one claim my friends you can't make unless it's true it's powerful the more you sit with it the more you think about how it could be false that's kind of what we did how could it be false we thought about it like that let me realize hey that doesn't make sense that doesn't make sense and then you realize you know what this is history and you should be proud of that you feel really people should be grounded you just feel hey stand on something rock solid yeah that's it man it's the pivot everything revolves around sign it's totally true i gotta tell you a funny story that i remember one time we were having this conversation um we were sitting around in my firm that i was working for so a bunch of lawyers sitting around talking about this so you know i was they were asking questions i didn't bring it up and they said what you know revelation and i said think about it your lawyers right just think about being in front of a jury and the difference between an eyewitness so to speak and a crowd of eyewitnesses it's a different game so one guy goes you know maybe moses convinced everybody that they saw it when they didn't like maybe he just went around against everybody and the guy next to me who just heard about the first time he's like moses convinced jews of something that they didn't see it's like you don't know the jewish people my friend i'm like if you think that somebody convinces two million jews are you out of your mind like that never happened and that never will happen again it's so true because we tried to get out of it almost like the baby got into it in somehow we're right there was no place to go you're absolutely right you're saying like as golden year said she's the prime minister of five million prime ministers you ever seen a bunch of jews be like yeah whatever someone told me yeah that's us that's us that's how we roll thank you so much for joining us for your wisdom for being a big part of this show and and uh and your perspective just how important is for us to slow down and just sort of grasp it because don't grasp national revelation slowly it's going to run right by you and you're going to miss the punch and the power of what it really is how many times did you did you hear motion deuteronomy when he said this and you know we just blow over it like wow this is yeah great awesome thank you rabbi it's really really a pleasure and happy holidays thank you thanks so much for watching for more content like and subscribe and be sure to tune in live every thursday at 8pm eastern at the shabacho.com or 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