(Way#15) THE ORAL LAW: 48 Ways with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

[Music] hey good day everybody welcome back to beyond the seven live from jerusalem with uh rabbi aaron david poston it's such a joy that he's teaching us the 48 ways to wisdom and today we got part 15. we did miss him last week because of purim uh but the last several lessons have been just great i encourage everybody to go back check them all out go back to the very first you'll see they're just building upon thought after thought after thought for wisdom that you can integrate into everyday life and it's just a joy that he's willing to share them with us so let's just jump right in see how the rabbi's doing rabbi posted i know it's getting late there in jerusalem thank you so much and we missed you last week but we're glad to be with you today i'm so glad to be back we had a fantastic forum here and it was a lot to prepare so i'm sorry i couldn't uh i don't know multi-function as much as i wish i could and also hash is coming up and we hopefully will be doing a tremendous amount of good for the community beforehand it takes a lot of coordination so we'll probably be covering the next two weeks and then taking a break i think we'll see we'll see how it goes at least at least the next two weeks and closer to poor pesach will have to take a shorter break and then get back into things exciting i love the last the last message the last three or four have just been profound thank you i mean it's really not me you know as we know of north weinberg and it's so funny my my parents sent me uh they had moved homes so they downgraded and they sent me a package of all these pictures so i actually sent you baby i don't know this is me with revloc weinberg i think it was in 1989. that was yeah so i was a lot thinner uh yeah the glasses were bigger back then too oh the glasses were much bigger right remember the 70s the glasses in the 70s were like goggles i have to tell you i was too young i uh i was born in 64. so yeah i kind of remember kind of remember so today we're dealing with another concept of the 48 ways to wisdom just to remind everybody when the israelites when the jewish people left egypt we were on our way towards the revelation of mount sinai and we had to prepare there was some preparation was necessary and in the mishnah which is the oral torah in the mission of perki avoid chapter 6 most most volumes it's mishna 6 deals with very precise um i would say they're just words but the words have meaning so these words signify different pathways to acquiring wisdom so if you've heard already many of the ways that anybody who wants to truly live a life full of wisdom to acquire the wisdom takes practice diligence um concentration effort i mean there's no there's no end to the words i can describe it's effort okay and you have to make the effort and these are the things that the israelites let's say transformed from in the negativity which we were minus 49 levels let's say of impurity while we were in egypt unfortunately and then in order to reach the 49th level of purity we had to go through a transformation so that was our experience but we're here to share with the world right anybody that wants to acquire wisdom could and should look at these um these ways these pathways so we're on number 15. now the title is called mishna mishna literally means for us it has many every word in hebrew has many definitions uh many ways to explain it mishna really we're going to talk about it means to learn or to review okay so in our context we're going to call it the earl law what we have we have nikra which we did i think that was last week mikra is the written the written the scripture itself which is to be read which obviously means it was written down mission is to review this is talking about the ural torah which you had um a transmission of rabbi let's say from moses our greatest rabbi down to joshua through the 70 the 70 elders and on and on to generation generation it was not written down until around the year 200 by yehuda nasi rabbi yodanas we call him rebbe and that's what we called the mishnah but we're not going to really talk about why it was written down although i might allude to it while we go along but basically oral taurus so for 1 500 years right it was oral it was only written down uh 1800 years ago so on one level the word mishneh is just a direct um a word described called the oral torah but the oral torah needs to be reviewed okay the word missionary is reviewed but also like let's say mishnah malek right second in command second is also concept of review call going over it again okay so basically he begins this chapter explaining explaining how how necessary it was that we had an oral torah okay so as he as he mentions we all know there's a written term that's the five books of moses but many people are not aware they're just not they don't have the clue that there's such a thing as an oral torah and how necessary it was but the idea here again it's to review in other words how does one acquire wisdom it's to review it's to really internalize and to have at the tip of your tongue the information so that not only is it useful because the whole point is to use it but also i would imagine to be able to help other people as well so let's just go first to a particular verse it is in um it's in deuteronomy chapter six verse seven chapter six verse seven do you want me to read it rabbi yeah i just want you to answer oh okay you don't have the hebrew i mean you're not gonna read the hebrew i'll read the hebrew go ahead and you shall teach them to your sons and speak of them when you sit on in your house and when you walk on the way and when you lie down and when you rise up now orthodox jews right observant jews say this verse several times a day it's in the shema now the first word is what i want to focus in on and that is this this means it's like the the same root as mishnah so in just here in the hebrew bishop we could say teach them it's true and it's something of the debarte bomb it's something you're going to speak it out literally it says right teach them by speaking about them we're talking about the words of torah of course what the torah means but rashi here explains the word the shinnan tam as an expression of sharpness so even though we called it the oral torah nishna and we say that it means review but literally the word so it's called sharpness when you have we all have a digestive system broke hashem and there's many parts of it i'm not you know from the time of let's say maybe even the smelling the food is coming right you're already the juices are flowing right so that's maybe the saliva start to come saliva is part of the digestive system right you have your your lips your tongue your teeth it goes down the right i mean all the different biological aspects of the breaking down of the food coming down into the stomach i i i'm not you know really familiar with all the different aspects but the teeth are actually part of digestive system okay so this is what we want to do we want to acquire the torah we want to digest it but you need something sharp to break it down it's also part of the part of the beginning process of the digestive system breaking it down so i'm going to go back again to the rashi and this is an expression of sharpness meaning that these words should she should be sharply impressed in your mouth so that if a person asks you something you will not hesitate about it but you will tell him immediately now this is based on the gamora in conduction 3030a which i will go into a little bit more um so why is this so important in terms of acquiring wisdom so for those who are not familiar this could be a great review for all those that are let's say past the initiation stage and we have 613 mitzvahs that's for the jewish people for the non-jews there are i'm going to say only seven again even though i say these numbers it doesn't mean that there's only 613 misses right many of these misses have subcategories or let's say told don't you know like i guess subcategory is a good good word good description so too with the seven these are like seven universal principles that have many um sub-categories for sure practical application so i mentioned during the first 1500 years of our history this we have the explanations of the 613 mitzvahs meaning the actual explanations and all the subcategories was all um let's say oral it was all oral and trans transmitted down from teacher to or father the son teacher to disciple so i do want to just mention that i i discussed this before how it was transmitted originally from god to moses moses for 40 years in the desert right they he taught everyone else so in the there's a safer there's a book called the rambam's hamish nice interesting that turned the the the title of the book it's peru it's basically i'll translate that it's the explanation of the mission and that is his commentary on the mishnah he begins by explaining unbelievably beautifully the transmission from from moses until moses his name malmonides rambam is moses and he gives detail from you know joshua down to the through you know we have what to call the um the judges the time of the judges down through the time of the kings down through after king david of course and onward through all the prophets until the writing of the mishnah and then one word through the what we call the later sages called the amaryam like the tanayim were the ones who wrote the mishnah and then you had the people who discussed it and then this the the ceiling of the talmud and on and on until his his own very self he describes so this is something that i think anybody should look at and marvel at wow i mean they actually it's written down right it's not it's not a guessing game it's not um you know random this is recorded i mean i know people who who know exactly who their great great great great great great great great great i go and run all the way to king david all the way to kohen all the way back it's amazing amazing yes yes there's plenty of jews that have that unfortunately because of what we call the exile the persecutions and the assimilation much of that has been lost by by a significant amount of jews but like i grew up i knew my my own grandfather and my great-grandparents and they were kosher right my great-grandparents were i wouldn't say they were rabbis but they were known they were well known my mother said she used to walk by the synagogue and see her her grandparents arguing like you know she called them professional governors meaning they were always in shul they were always in synagogue i know stories about my own great great grandfather i only had met my great-grandmothers so they had already passed on my great-grandfathers but after i became observant i wanted to know more about them and i i met people that knew them and told me that whenever they were traveling businessmen and they always kept shabbat and they kept kosher and they were honest businessmen there's a lot to be you know proud of and i have um you know certain um i would say documentation but i have the names of the cities in europe so one day i will visit those places in europe and i've already seen tombstones of my great great great grandparents uh relatives whereabouts it's called well the place called prishanka it's a very small village outside of kiev okay so i know it's uh may i don't know i don't know if it's so safe just to walk around there today i don't know what's going on with russia and the crimean war but at some point i do plan to go but anyway back to the subject so moses taught our own and our own listened and he went to the side when he started on the left side of moses then he went on to the right side and then his two sons came in and then they heard and then the elders came in and then the people so everything was reviewed i'm just using this again we spoke about this reviewed four times four times and okay we spoke about this at length in previous classes but i just want to just side step for a second if you go to leviticus chapter 25 verse 1. 25 verse 1 reads and the lord spoke to moses on mount sinai saying okay really meant to but it's okay two speak to the children of israel and you shall say to them when you come to the land that i am giving you the land shall rest a sabbath to the lord so i really meant one and two together because basically this this verb this these two verses are telling us that god spoke to moses bihar sinai at this place called harsinai is saying the word i just want you to know that over and over again this is one of the most popular verses where it says hashem el moshe laymore forget the heart c9 this verse adds the word harsinai what do you need the words harsinai here for if god spoke to moses and the word is the adobe the ada bear means is something harsh which i'm going to describe here when i say harsh i don't mean harsh i mean concrete very um what's the word as opposed to flexible inflexible right is that a word strict strict that's the written torah is not flexible you cannot change you cannot add you cannot subtract there's something concrete and hard about the word vietnamese that's what god spoke to moses he spoke to him but it says lay more to say over i don't know if people are aware of that you just read the english and says okay god spoke to moses saying no god spoke to moses to say obviously moses spoke and said but the word emor is a flexible is a soft language of speaking therefore what moses needed to do was to say over in the way that the person listening could understand which means i'm not saying he embellished in a sense of adding to the torah but he embellished in the sense of the allowing the listener to comprehend and that is what the oral torah has been all along there's always what we call a generation i don't know what's called a generation gap it must be another term but we can't always relate to our grandparents right there's something i don't know there's maybe only this generation maybe in the past it was easier right but let's assume rightfully so that every generation or every other generation has a harder time relating to the previous generations so the whole point of this transmission it's so important we read that first verse in um in deuteronomy 6 7 how it's so important for the parents to teach it over also there's an obligation for the grandparents question is how great is that obligation but there's great benefits there's great rewards discussed when a grandparent teaches torah tuition i'll tell you what it is it says when the grandparents teaches over the torah to his grandson it says if he's receiving that torah directly from mount sinai now the question is who's who's the reward going to in other words think about the words when a grandparent teaches this the grandson it's as if he's receiving the torah right from c9 at first glance you must must say and it's the grandchild i mean i you know what i doubt i don't doubt that that's the reward that the grandchild would receive if he's already going back generations but you know what it's also the grandfather by by transmitting that valuable information to his grandchild he will receive what we say in hebrews assistance from hashem assistance from heaven to be able to give it over hopefully properly and correctly which is one of the proofs the amazing proofs that we're going to talk about tonight that i said tonight you know wherever you are listening to this and take for example to fill it this is one of the greatest marvels that our oral torah is basically still integral has a tremendous amount of integrity i don't think except maybe in this generation some feminists making pink to fill in but if you go back into all of history you'll see no matter what country no matter what time period the to fill in are always the same the same dimensions and it doesn't describe anywhere in our book you know i say our book i don't want to be little uh in in the in the in the torah itself i'll give you an example what he wants to say like it says in the next verse deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 8. if you want to read that for us i'm going to get back to the the harshest in chapter 6 verse 8 reads and you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand and they shall be for ornaments between your eyes now in the hebrew it says total foss if you want to leave it as ornaments or as today it's called phylacteries i mean we call them in hebrew fill it okay but what in the world are totophos and so if you did not have this integral oral torah being transmitted you would find the reshiva jokes about you would find some people you know in different countries different times maybe it means your left shoe you tie your left shoe on your forehead or you tie a blue ribbon on your far end or i mean you could just imagine anything i mean i've seen i've seen i've seen it all i i there are people that didn't have any real torah i'm not talking about jews i'm talking about people who are i don't know where it's i don't want to be too insulting but um i'll call it michigan you know just crazy uh i think they mean well but they would wrap maybe a safer torah around their forehead right i mean how could you even see how can you even walk and not only that it's not put here but it's put above your hairline in the soft spot that um when we were born right you can tell that from a new baby baby there's a soft spot it's right there on that soft spot between the hairline in the middle of the head towards the front and it means between your eyes because it's going to be dead center but how would you know what totophos were had there not been an oral torah i'm just saying that obviously there was something transmitted and it was transmitted correctly for the last 3 500 years okay it was written down 2 000 years ago but nevertheless before that they have found i don't know if it was masada or other places they have found uh along the coast in israel there's a lot of archaeological sites that they have found uh to fill in ultrafilling and it's all the same as we have today it's just unbelievable now i just want to go back to this idea of harcina a second because we read in chapter i think was 25 of leviticus there were two statements one was the addition of baharsina so not only do we have god spoke to moses i.e the we call the written torah the the torah that we have as well as lame word to say over but this verse adds in the words har sinai and then if you go through the whole chapter of 25 you're gonna find so many details about what we call shemitah right this rest the land shall rest as a sabbath to the lord well guess what all all of it all and i'm gonna a-l-l all of the torah all of the 613 misses were given over and all of their explanations were given but not all of their explanations are written in the torah i just use that as an example it's filling i mean i can give you another one right we all know that jews cannot just go ahead and go hunting and then eat what they they trap um they have to slaughter the animal in a certain way and that is in our oral torah but it says in the written torah right you shall eat these animals as i have instructed you and you do not see anywhere about all the different laws meaning the details of the slaughtering or cautioning process here's just another example and yet all over the world everyone is all jews are in agreement of what those slaughtering processes are so obviously obviously there's an oral torah whether you you know as an outsider you're not you personally saying whoever's listening as an outsider wants to say well what's that to me well the whole concept i'm going to say the whole concept these seven nullified laws to a great degree you're relying on our constant transmissions right i've heard it said i'm not saying i i believe it i'm just telling you there are rumors there are people who are against the seven no high laws and say it's a it's a jewish invention right and it's not only ancient it's something new it's something modern well guess what i mean i have sparring that are you know two thousand years old in my house i mean not not the actual book i'm saying reprints right from the um the midrash the gomorrah the mishnayots are you know 1800 1500 years old and they're discussing the transmission before that point and they discuss what they call ben and noah the words ben noah so today if someone oh noah doesn't appear anywhere well i'm not so sure if we call it ben no it's just a modern translation of someone who has adopted right the these these these laws not just the laws the whole philosophy because the philosophy is by a jew if the jew does not believe that the book this i can't call it a book the the mikra the five books of moses is from heaven he may or she may not end up in heaven in other words it's measure for measure if you don't believe that the torah is the same torah if you don't believe this torah is from heaven right so then you may be forfeiting your i will profess to you that i absolutely believe this is applicable to the non-jew as well meaning the the the righteous notified you want to be a righteous noah do you want to go to heaven well i i'm going to hate to break the news to you you have to believe i'm not telling you you have to i'm just saying if you want to buy into this jewish tradition that we have jewish tradition says by a jew guess what that same mishna the same mishna in sanhedrin that discusses that later on in the talmud goes on and discusses non-jews as well bilaam is included and he's not a jew and whether he gets aloha or not he's actually excluded he doesn't get all about okay so this exclusion i i i don't want to get too technical but you imagine that it says all jews will have a place in the world to come except for and enlist all kinds of principles one of those principles is believing that the torah was from heaven and then it lists certain kings and certain regular people who are excluded again they're not just people the principles the kind of lives they lived lived or the beliefs they had they're excluded bilum who's a non-jew is explicitly mentioned as being excluded and this is where we know that all other meaningless eight billion people on the planet right or other people are actually could be included right but again they would have to believe the same thing that a jew would believe that what the torah was revealed at sinai with the oral law that we still have today so i know that's a very difficult thing i i get it because you most these christians were either brainwashed or whatever there's a lot of fake news out there right and it's very difficult to believe that the jews have um this continuous transmission i mean they're taught to believe the jews have a veil over their eyes that they are i don't know i don't want to say the horrible things that the new testament speaks about in terms of jews for those who are familiar you know what i'm talking about um that we are partners with the devil i hate synagogues yeah we're the synagogue of satan that we are the real true antichrist whatever that means you know couldn't be further from the truth because we are the real messengers of the concept of the messiah right they don't even have a clue basically what the jewish messiah is all about because they're taught what do they have to offer us unfortunately okay so going back so this whole idea that not only was shemitah the sabbatical year given over with all its details at mount sinai but the entire torah right just to give you an example when you get back let's say to deuteronomy chapter one verse three all the way to five let's see what that has to say one verse three says it came to pass in the 40th year in the eleventh month on the first of the month that moses spoke to the children of israel according to all that the lord had commanded him regarding them after so this is one month or it's really whatever it say it's two months before he passes on website it's a month before he passes on okay um he he passed it's a month and a week let's say he passed away on the seventh of adar so you're talking about the beginning of the 11th month moses passed away in the 7th day of the 12th month so it's uh it's a month and a week and what is he asking them he this is when he's going to tell them let's go on let's read the next two verses it's really uh the um keep going keep going after he had smitten uh king of the amorites who dwelt in heshbon and og king of bashan no but i'm sorry let's just stop here let's just use this verse right it came to pass in the 40th year in the eleventh month on the first of the month what did moses do moses spoke it says in hebrew diber moshe el moses spoke to the children of israel cole everything according to hashem otto elaine so he wanted to make sure before his passing that if there were any questions if there were any doubts if there was any things that needed clarification now is the time so we have from leviticus chapter 25 where god spoke to moses at mount sinai everything and it could be i have no qualms that we're talking about like a yeshiva for the next 39 years the the learning continued but by the end this is the end there's a review this concept it's called what would anybody know what deuteronomy is called why is it called deuteronomy it's called mishnah torah it's even though the ramban later on well a thousand years ago wrote a wrote a book wrote a series of books called mishnator he also said this is a review of the torah but here deuteronomy so i don't know that much about latin or greek deuteronomy what is do okay i don't know but i know that it's based on this idea of i thought it would be viewed too no well even if it is true mishna means second mishneh is like second in command like i said in mishnah means the second in command um that's what mordechai was elevated to so yeah joseph was basically mr malek mishnah in modern hebrew means the second in command second is it's think of it as review right it's a second time we did it the first time now we're going over it okay so deuteronomy is look into it okay i know this is a yeah no it makes sense i see where you're going yeah so that's called mishnito the mission it's a review and um so everything in between was a learning process and that's what i wanted to get across from across to you guys okay so basically um second law or repeated law yeah it's from a greek title septuagint's uh uh uh greek title to the book uh deuteronomy deuteronomy meaning second law or repeated law a name tied to one of the hebrew appellations for the book bish natora exactly so you call second or repeated it's the same thing second time okay um so one of the main points that roshi wants to get across is that any piece of wisdom you have to constantly review it so he asked his students okay like how old do you write he was giving a class they're in their 20s you know 23 27 whatever your age you are have you learned any important lessons in life so he put him on the spot and they had nothing to answer right okay but if you give enough thought to it and you really sit down and think about the most important lessons you could probably come up with maybe 10 or 20 very important lessons i mean this is time you spent on the earth think about these lessons have them written down and review them because you know we don't want to make the same mistakes over again you learn some valuable lessons when i say valuable it could have been valuable right it could have been a loss of money time god forbid right how are lessons learned sometimes there's losses involved you don't want to have to keep learning those lessons over again sit down concentrate and this is what the jewish people have done i mean they just think about all the prophets the prophets are going over the mistakes that the jewish people failed to learn and this is something this is called the bible we call the bible right tanakh so we constantly review the lessons that the prophets have have told us as well so one thing that anybody should do is try to make a list and of your own your own wisdom things that you've picked up in your i don't know short time on this planet right so another idea is like if you were going on a plane right you get on the plane today i don't think they leave the cockpit open it used to be you get on you could say hi to the maybe they still do i don't know what do they call that the the terror and hostages and hijackings they probably have a different protocol but i mean they used to smoke on the plane forget about that so i don't know let's just assume the cockpit is open and you're walking in and the guy has a list here's a checklist imagine he says you know what i'm tired of this checklist let's just fly the plane no that it could take a half an hour maybe it's 20 minutes i don't know even it's 15. i don't care if it's five minutes he's got a checklist is this light on does this work does this work they check things out it's a good idea you're talking about life or death here so if the if that works for you know you're taking responsibility for could be up to 300 some people it makes sense that you want to take a checklist with you as a pilot and make sure everything's running good so too in life i mean this is really very important and that's basically what the mission is that's the checklist for the jewish people he gives another example um we'll get to it okay um he wants to emphasize over and over again because this is our checklist for daily living i mean god gave us the manual we spoke about this before you can go back and review these ideas right if you got a computer right and i mean that's that might be a you know a bad example because today we all know how to how to work a computer but let's say you wanted a refrigerator one of these high-tech refrigerators it comes with a manual i mean if you were trying to figure it out i don't know you're gonna might ruin this you might ruin the food right if it's not at the right temperature or if it's not set properly so any time you acquire something you basically get a manual and torah is our manual for living now there will be contradictions here's a contradiction for example i just have to find it i can't find it here but i'll try to remember what he said so for example it says right love humanity you have this concept loving humanity that's really what the torah is all about believe it or not do you love humanity on the other hand there's another statement talks about killing your enemies so you have these i call them seeming contradictions love humanity you know when your enemy comes to strike you strike him first i mean whatever it is about your enemy you have to take him out so is that loving humanity how do i deal with this it's like a seemingly seeming contradiction now i can ask you could you love humanity and hate your enemy at the same time i can say yes because i figured it out but you will find in life contradictions well this is why we have a checklist we have to know what is the priority how to go about doing it and how to resolve uh what we call contradictions okay how important it is huh sorry i said for sure i mean there's got to be clear and understandable logic to overcome apparent contradictions uh that are only surface level i mean it's got to be resolvable sure okay i'm just looking at this verse a second i'm not sure it's that verse it may be a different verse and actually you just look at one second it is here number 10 okay go to numbers 21-14 numbers 21 14 reads concerning this it is told in account of the wars of the lord what he gave at the sea of reeds in the streams of eamonn or arnon excuse me okay so i just want to relate something that when one approaches you're trying to gain wisdom you find like i said these contradictions i discussed before what it's like in a jewish study hall the decimal level is beyond the charts right you go to any library in america or wherever you are a library is like hush hush you know even if you like don't pick up a chair and move it you move you you scratch the chair against the floor everyone's gonna look at you like you're you're diseased interrupting them yeah no people are there to concentrate but judaism i'm not saying we're not about concentration but we're we're we're working it out with a study partner now this verse i just want to show you something about this verse i just want to mention the the question is to ask about a certain verse and that verse i'll tell you in a second verse seven seconds of the same chapter no no no i it's something else i i just want to um i'll just mention it don't don't don't uh don't pay too much attention to it um the verse says i'll tell you where it is it is number six it's in psalms 127 5 you don't have to read it i just mentioned about it it's talking about praiseworthy is the man who fills his quiver with them they shall not be shamed when they speak with enemies in the gate we're discussing at this time because the word is used um about the about these arrows the arrows are constantly sharp and this this verse is discussing believe it or not this idea of who's the enemies in your gate it's actually the other rabbis who are you're having a a not just a philosophical or a lucky discussion but you're you're trying to get to the truth so our verse which i just mentioned that is in numbers would we say was the number in right now numbers were in chapter 21 14. concerning this it is told of the account of the wars of the lord alkane yomer besay for milk hashem this is talking about people who are at war okay not not always not always in the external sense but in the internal sense meaning two rabbis arguing it out it says at the now in english it just means what he gave the word behave at the sea of reeds however the explanation here is that we're talking about that when even a father and a son or a teacher and a student are studying torah together in one gate at first they become enemies one to another they do not move there from there until they become become devoted friends one to another as the verse says and one gives but the word is besufa at the end meaning the word ahava lovers they become lovers at the end so in the beginning they're like fighting but in the end they become lovers this is someone who's really looking for truth is and has that from the very beginning knows that they're going to eventually come even if they disagree they're going to disagree with respect they're going to try their best not to convince the other person the right but to try to convince themselves that they might be wrong i want to look at it with a whole um object objective perspective try to come to the truth that's the goal so i just want to go back in this particular gemara in gamora uh kadushan 30 it's really 30 um at the a at the bottom the last few sentences and it says like this it uses our word vishinantan and you shall teach them thoroughly the gemura says shall you deve torah that the words of the torah shall be sharply boned in your mouth i don't know what that means bone but i know honed honed okay sharply honed meaning so sharp right in your mouth i get that that she is that if somebody asked you a question the tomer lo do not i'm going to say either hesitate or um and stutter they translate this as stammering but i would translate it as either hesitating or stuttering don't stutter or hesitate but saved and say to him ella rather what you should you do emer m amor lo miyad say to him immediately shinnamar as the verse says now these are two verses i would like you to read the first verse is interesting where it doesn't say okay it does it's proverbs 7 4 and then we're going to go back to 7-3 but okay let's start with 7-4 i'm in the wrong spot here proverbs 4 yeah 7 4 reads say to wisdom you are my sister and you shall call understanding a kinsman now let me just open it up it says like this this idea in hebrew where it says say to wisdom you are my sister i think i described before to one of the rosh hashida stainless expressions called five finger clarity how do you know what you know i know i have five fingers on this hand right that's how i know whatever i know that's that's how clear i know it just like i'm looking at my hand i know i have five fingers that's how i know well guess what you know what this verse is telling me you're not you're gonna flip out you have to have your seatbelt on say to wisdom you are my sister ready you have to know whatever you acquire you should know obviously through review and clarification you should know so well just like you know that your sister is forbidden to you you know your sister's forbidden to you for marriage for anything else so that's how you have to know your wisdom if someone woke you up in the middle of the night hey hey hey you're allowed to marry your sister you're gonna say what get out of here you're kidding me of course not right that's how clear every other piece of wisdom should be just like that so let me just give you the the comment here on the gomorrah this verse is taken to convey that one should have an as immediate a grasp on torah wisdom as he does of the fact that he has forbidden to marry his sister alternatively now there's a another part of the verse and let me just see where it is it's verse three actually we'll go to verse no no sorry the continuation of verse four it says um which means like this and you shall call understanding a kinsmen now i'm not sure what that means but the word moda is intimacy so maybe that's what the the word moda like we said the god that hey adam knew his wife right that's called right intimate knowledge right when you meet somebody in israel on the street and then you sell so yeah i know them you wouldn't use the hebrew i recognize them it sounds very strange right i'm just in hebrew animakir it means i know that woman i recognize her i shouldn't say i recognize her you would only say that about your wife you're someone who's you're intimate with that you know that person i'm talking in the hebrew language so here this is that intimate um i hear he says kinsmen but okay and that intimacy of being a venus understanding uh you shall call so the way they translate it you should call understanding this intimate relationship so he goes on he says about the end of the verse i'll tell you what his translation is and call understanding your close acquaintance the latter part of the passage would imply that one should be well well acquainted with understanding of the torah okay now there's another verse i mentioned now look back to number three in other words chapter seven in proverbs verse three you read it and i'll say the hebrew bind them on your fingers inscribe them on the tablet of your heart okay so in hebrew shahrain it's like almost like command form to bind them really to tie them to tie you know when you have um your google well today we have uh all kinds of notes we could have a a cell phone we could have whatsapp i'm walking through the store with my shopping list that's on my whatsapp right but okay so if you let your wife was uh you know send you out with a list you have a list or she tells you don't forget she puts a little red string on your finger right don't forget to buy whatever it is elastic she did once right don't forget to come home with this she really wants it so buying them on your fingers charity let's put inscribe them on the tablet i mean we're talking about look at just verse two keep my commandments and live right sherman suicide right this is all about and my instruction like the apple of your eyes bind them what are we talking about binding the torah on your fingers inscribe them on the tablet of your heart we're talking about wisdom okay so this is something that you can only really acquire to constantly review again review after you've made the clarification very important just wanted to get that across another thing that the rabbi really wanted to get through to everybody is this idea of uh the four levels of what we call the pardes you go into the orchard pardes in modern hebrew is orchard right now not modern ancient evil it doesn't matter it's hebrew and it means when you go into the depth of the written torah the written torah you're going into multi multi-layered levels okay so shot means the simple understanding drush is like medrush it's a homolytic source we're gonna go we're gonna talk about each one of these remez which are hints and so which are hidden mystical meanings so it's it's important to know these exist par days going into the the orchard going to the garden of eden so to speak right so shot rashi does help us with shot shot again means the simple explanation of what the torah is actually saying and rashi told us that that's what he's going to try to do but interestingly enough if you ever look at rashi almost everything he is saying there's a quote where he's getting it from and he's mostly bringing midrash so the midrash is expounding on the anomalies within the text the text has words that are okay in order it's true sometimes they're out of order in other words that's not the way people speak or it's not spelled the way that in grammar it should be spelled remember there's no vowels and it could say anything but there's a meaning behind the very fact that there's an extra letter or there's a letter missing i'm saying from grammatical point of view obviously it's not missing from the torah um or why this particular word is used when a more common word could have been used right first time and only time this word is used so the drush which is the next level a lot of time goes goes into that and that's what rashi is using he had it his fingerprint and his fingertips all of the oral torah and he chose one particular um example from the whole oral torah to tell you that is the best way to explain the shot but he got it from a drush so understand that even on a shot level simple level it's very complicated you need the oral torah period and that's another thing that i tell my students the ones who are brain obviously the ones who are converting have a whole another system but the ones who want to remain in they're almost afraid there's a fear oh my god it says i shouldn't involve myself in torah well what does that mean i'll just review we spoke about these ideas before everyone agrees that they're allowed to read and study what we call the written right the tanakh right the knock for sure the tough the the the torah itself no problem what about the oral torah well guess what there's no way you can understand even the written torah without whatever part of the oral torah is explaining so stick with russia to start with but you're going to go into and i hopefully you're inquisitive enough you're curious enough where did rashi get that from what was bothering rashi why and you'll learn hebrew you learn how jews think there's nothing wrong with learning how jews think right especially if you're attaching yourself to the jewish people so stick there's so much you can learn just from the tanakh you don't have to go and start learning um you know mar na vuchim the i mean you can right there's plenty of other philosophical books that i think you should learn but in terms of starting with the the tanakh itself you cannot take it at face value right an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth the jews never behave like that that's not what it means okay i mean like uh that's like judaism 101 everybody knows it's financial compensation for various things not just physical damage there's also emotional damage there's emotional there's pain right there's doctors bills there's unemployment benefits there's it's all kinds of insurance okay so know that when you if you're really open to know what the tanakh says you have to know there's an oral torah and it has integrity you can believe that's what the torah says you don't like what it says okay so then have a discussion further discussion with your l o uh what is the lor local orthodox rabbi right um find out what it really means okay so that's shot then drush as i already explained is a little bit a homological source for biblical concepts and explains how to apply them to living remez is more it really means hints but it's a more sophisticated level of madras where different word pronunciations reveal different meanings one of the words one of the explicit explanations i gave before and i'm happy to give it again the word murasha right that this is um this is um that moses right this is something that moses commanded this was received by moses and given over as an inheritance to the jewish people the word murasha means inherited inheritance but it also means um with the shin can be turned into a sin and where islamic in this case it means betrothed we spoke about the idea that and this is really what i want to emphasize now there's different levels of this that one of the seven noah high laws is do not steal now if this is inheritance to the jewish people that means if you don't recognize it as an inheritance to jewish people you think it's yours that's called stealing if it's theirs and i'm using their explanation and i'm staying true to form that is perfectly fine to study the word according to the way it was given over i'm not stealing it i am not um what's the word like um yeah yeah but like plagiarism is like saying i take a quote and i incorporate and make it like it's my own i don't mean plagiarism in that sense but i mean like taking something that was given to someone else and claiming it as your own so that is stealing but on the other hand the same word is maurassa as a betrothal that the the tablets that the the 613 that the the whole torah itself is the torah itself is the um is like the dowry is the is the brit it's the covenant that that connects the jewish people with their god and if you again incorporate it and saying it's my i'm i'm part of this relationship when you're not that's called adultery right because this is a male female that god uh with this bride the jewish people and you're involving yourself in a relationship you have no part of but again so there's an idea of adultery adultery is one of the seven no high laws right so you have to be careful to make sure that only that which is permissible to you you study and the truth be told there's so much more right a a non-jew can set up a jewish court i'm sorry a non-jewish court and use jewish law so there's so much you see the books behind me the right hosh and mishpot so many you can decide you want to keep any of the laws like keeping kosher the rambam says if you're going to do it do it right like in other words you're doing it for the sake of receiving reward you want to you want to keep kosher do it right you have to learn so there is a lot you can learn but so anyway that's remez is dealing with like the word marasa or and has it can reveal different meanings remember the torah scroll is not vowelized which obviously allows different pronunciations and elucidations but this was given to us so so is the final of those four letters par days pay for shot uh uh sorry pardes right it's for remis then drush and then the last one is sod and that is the hidden mystical meaning of the universe mainly explained in the kabbalistic texts such as the zohar um okay i really didn't go through everything i had some other interesting um source material um i do want to i guess end with one idea of the 13 harmonical principles um the thirteen harmonica principles those people might ask do you mean you receive the entire spectrum of what we call the oral torah i'm gonna say absolutely but with some caveat you know how would they based in how would a jewish court decide today how to use electricity or let's say an elevator shabbat elevator on shabbat and how it works i don't know the exact technique but i do know that basically it's set up that it it's it's pre it's preset to land on certain um floors let's say in a hotel so it might go every other floor on the way up and then on the way down it's just straight down evens and odds yeah might just go straight up and then different floors on the way down but it doesn't work according to the weight normally the way elevators do work is if five people get on or one person gets on it's going to use a different amount of energy or however the weight system works there's something that's um that's unique to each time that it's being used but the way the shabbos elevator is going to work is that it's preset and it will not um work in the normal way that if five people get on or three people go on it's gonna work differently no it's gonna work the same way whether one person or five people get on so you're not affecting it okay there's some people that don't even believe in these these things but how would it be determine how one could work because these are principles that we learned at mount sinai and that's going to be the point that if even if you don't believe that i'm not saying i believe or not believe it's irrelevant i do believe that the 1300 municipal principles the way that we derive the laws were given so that in future generations these dilemmas could be resolved and the result based on the majority so there is a very important part of this information i want to give over to you and that is based on we find it in deuteronomy let me just get the quotes here i don't have all my sheets here whenever there's a dilemma right you're sitting in your town and a issue of jewish law comes up so you go to the court now if the court can figure it out great but if it's too much beyond them we know that there's higher courts right each city had then they had you know your counties or your let's say your tribal areas and then beyond that it might have to go to the supreme court all the way to jerusalem and would have to be decided um on a on a deeper level so i'm just trying to find the uh sorry give me one second huh you have as much time as you need yeah well we're gonna tell you where we're gonna find this we're gonna find this probably in chapter 13 of deuteronomy um i love verse one everything i command you that you shall be careful to do it you shall neither add to it nor subtract from it yeah but let me just find the verses um one second one second here it is okay it's not it's not 13 on a second let's go to 17 or 18 17. okay 17 and it is verse 8. now we discussed these ideas before if you allow me just to read it just for time say if a matter of judgment is hidden from you so the judgment like i said you're starting in your own city and you have a personality issue so the judgment is hidden from you it's either not clear it's not clear in the torah it's not clear between blood and blood between verdict and verdict between plague and plague matters of dispute in your cities you shall rise up and ascend to the place that hashem your god shall choose that means jerusalem to the highest court you should come to the kohanim the levites and to the judge who will be in those days and you shall inquire now so this requires you to speak it out to show evidence and try to figure out a member the lower courts were not able to so the higher court should be able to do do something right you you need clarity you can't live your life without clarity you're gonna inquire and they will tell you telling you means they're not showing you inside the book obviously it's a doubt if it was in the book there's no doubt and why wouldn't the lower court be able to show it to you so the very fact that there's a doubt you don't know what to do it means it's not written anywhere you're running quiet you're gonna they're gonna tell you the word of judgment and what do you do you do according to what to the word the word means spoken word that they tell you again there's a word they're going to tell you al p hadav to the pair the p the the mouth that is speaking you right that's what you're going to do whatever they tell you to do from the place that hashem will choose now you have to be careful to do everything according to everything that they teach you this idea they're going to teach you something again who are they this is what god commands this is the commandments from i'm reading right out of the torah right you're in doubt you don't know what to do you go to the court they don't know what to do i mean if it's black and white there's no problem you you're we're going to eventually go what according to whatever they tell you we're going to call that the oral law and now verse 11 according to the teaching that they teach you according to the judgment they will say to you you shall do but what do you mean of course there's an oral torah and there's a central body called the saint henry the great court you shall not deviate from the word how many times do i have to say the word word or the word mouth or the word speaking it out teaching you you shall not deviate from the word that they will tell you right or left i'll stop there we also know that you go according to the majority of the saint edward right the sanhedrin itself it consists of 71 uh people right you have 70 and then you have the the head but if you have 35 36 that's how that's how it's going to be determined you're going to go by the majority once the majority decides we say the sanhedrin says i understand you can have a minority report right today in the in the supreme court the united states they do publish i think it's called i don't know what's called maybe it's not called the minority report but in other words the minority opinion right the minority opinion it goes down at least they got to voice their opinion but in the end even the minority the bottom line is the court made a judgment so too here too right as the verse says where is it it's in exodus chapter 23 verse 2. forgive me i was just taking some notes exodus chapter 23 verse 2 reads you shall not follow the majority for evil and you shall not respond concerning a lawsuit to follow many to pervert justice now when it says you shall not follow the majori majority to do evil again we're relying on our we were there we're the witnesses we're the j witnesses we're the real i'm you know the j-o-h-a-v whatever we're the real witnesses to the uk buff k we were there we stood at the revelation and when we heard these words you shall not follow the majority to do evil we understood that also the main meaning is you should follow the majority for good and that is the sanhedrin right the sanhedrin are the eyes of the congregation and they determine the law as we just read in deuteronomy chapter 17 verse 8 onward that you should follow the majority right 36 verses 35 or it's whatever 99 to one you whatever you follow the majority and that is the the the den of sanhedrin and they would use the 13 harmonical principles that we received in our sinai to develop we'll call the oral torah to develop you go ahead you had a question well i was hoping you could elaborate on the second half of the um chapter 23 2 of exodus there and you shall not respond concerning a lawsuit to follow many to pervert justice if you could elaborate on that for me which verse is it exodus chapter 23 verse 2 right where it said you shall not follow the majority for evil but the second half of the verse reads and you shall not respond concerning a lawsuit to follow many to pervert justice i mean i can't i'm going to have to then i'm going to have to think about i see here rashi says and if the litigant asks you about that corrupt corrupted judgment do not answer him concerning the lawsuit with an answer that follows those many to prefer the judgment from his true ruling but tell the judgment as it is and let the iron the neck iron hang on the neck of the many i'm not sure i have to think about that but i think that um rashi gives an idea enough yeah thank you sir thank you rabbi raskin this guy raskin who uh was the one who um wasn't asking was it no this guy tapper on cnn i think he's jewish i can't believe it anyway so uh when when trump's lawyer wanted to leave friday early it happened to have been parshat mishpati and he wrote he wrote i don't know it was a tweet a letter of some sort that he couldn't believe that this orthodox jew was defending a criminal in his eyes as a criminal that he was going home to spend shabbat at home but in the meantime he was defending evil like i don't know it was just the craziest uh thing because he wrote it in hebrew as well like i think tapper from cnn uh these it's just so amazing how how corrupt the system is people are um but you can obviously i mean dershowitz speaks about all the time at least in america that everyone has a right you're innocent until proven guilty and everyone has a right to a good defense and um i mean obviously we all are aware you know i stay out of politics and i hope that we don't get in trouble for this but we are aware you can't stick your head under the sand that he was acquitted so if he was acquitted according to their rules then he was found to be not guilty uh that's clear i don't have to i'm not i'm not defending anyone i was just so surprised that one jew was pitted against another jew by claiming that he is defending evil uh first of all you're innocent until proven guilty and anyway we won't go any more into that but um it's the first part of that verse do not follow the majority for evil simultaneously you do here look at rashi right there there are halachic interpretations for this verse given by the sages of israel but the language of the verse does not fit its context according to them but here they the sages expounded that way that we may decide unfavorably for the defendant by a majority created by one judge they interpreted the end of the verse that means after the majority you shall decide to mean that if those judges voting that the defendant is guilty outnumbered those the voting that the defendant is innocent by two by the way when i mentioned about 35 the versus 36 that is in regular cases when it comes to a death penalty you have to have a majority of two okay the verdict is is to be decided unfavorably according to the majority's opinion all right the text speaks of capital cases okay but in monetary cases the majority of one is necessary so you already see when we're talking about a majority of a court so this tells you that when it comes to a death penalty you must have a majority of two meaning can't be 35 36 it has to be 37 34 right make sense okay but when it comes to monetary cases then a majority one is okay okay so there's a lot to learn and that's you know it takes a lot of ability to understand that we're coming from a place of innocence you want to know the truth we have to go to the people that understood they were there and this at least if you want if you're interested in what they have to say right they the jews right what they have to say if you want to be closed-minded and say look i'll take the torah as my own i'll interpret it as i want then i mean i think you believe you belong on medication and in the mental hospital honestly because let's say you took the manual from this um you took you bought a brand new i don't know computer and you took the manual and you said um i'll just read it and apply it to myself i'll make messiah i don't know i'll make a whole religion out of a manual for a computer i mean that's really what they're doing because it was given to us it was given to the jewish people as a safe keeping as to be a guardian and we are responsible for its transmission of course as we've been speaking about for its clarification for its application and the tour itself says it over and over again so anybody who starts to read it should come and i meet people all the time say i can't believe my whole life they are so thrilled to be learning the truth right we're learning hamish with rashi and they're like like just blown away this is amazing i've been taught my whole life this means something else and now i'm looking at it with you know my own eyes in the original and it's uh it's just fascinating and it changes their lives right their whole lives now have meaning anyway so hopefully people will pay attention learn a little bit of hebrew takes there's so many classes online today right you can find anywhere on youtube just go to h.com this that's like three of tens of thousands right those are the top sites and of course yeah that yemeni.com yes and and i know you've been uh showing more of rabbi breidowitz uh there on your ubene.com beautiful messages he shares i just i enjoy everyone i get to catch uh but i am thankful that you're willing to share this beyond the seven class and uh i think you started it off really on the right foot here today about review review review review review you know i i i just can't get enough this rather shem will just continue to review okay all right well so hashem willing we're on we're on next week rabbi but then you've got uh uh passover coming up in a couple of weeks so uh uh we're gonna be here same time next week then folks sure [Music] is