(Way# 43) FASCINATION WITH LIVING: 48 Ways with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

[Music] hey good day everybody welcome back to another episode of beyond the seven live from jerusalem with rabbi aaron david poston uh who's been teaching us the profound uh series the 48 ways to wisdom and today we're on part 43 i enjoyed last week's message was on achieving peace of mind uh number 42. if you haven't caught it i encourage everybody to go back in the messages or in the in the uh series and check it out and uh share it like it and uh yeah and acquire what the rabbis studied to share with us uh it's such a profound message so let's just tune right in and see how rabbi poston here live and i'm gonna turn to class right over to you sir thank you so much for for uh sticking with us uh thank you dan and thank you for all those people that are tuning in now and watching us later and what can i tell you um we're very happy that you're here and i'm thank you dan for allowing me to share this most important information we are in the 43rd of the 48 ways to wisdom for those who have not seen any of the previous episodes it's worthwhile catching up i have to say acquire each and every one uh yeah that's just very invaluable yeah just to like um you know get a 30 000 foot overview what we're talking about is mishna six of the sixth chapter in per kavod that mentions these 40 ways to acquire wisdom i mean who doesn't want wisdom and today's subject is fascination with living well that's how it's translated i don't think it's an exact translation i'll tell you in hebrew it's which means we have to define each word and i want to mention before we even begin that these steps that the israelites went through to get out of their 48 or let's say they were minus 49 levels of purity into cata being catapulted into the revelation of mount sinai which brought them to the 49th actually to the 50th level on shavuot on the 50th day we call it the the festival of weeks which is 49 which is seven times seven and the following day we have the revelation and why is the revelation so important i'd ask for a drum roll please why is the revelation so so you've heard me say before i'm sure you've heard other teachers who describe uh what it means to be a righteous gentile now the truth is every human being is a ben noah but i have to um gives you a few caveats the rambam clearly says and there are others right this is a jewish judaism 101 that in order to be a righteous gentile goes to heaven which i'm sure when we talk about today what it means to be fascinated with with living with life itself that you would be interested and i'm sure you anybody who's listening is probably interested in the afterlife in a eternal bliss um there's a there's a caveat that the rambam mentions in hilton and he says like this that um it's like this is gold okay this is gold this is priceless okay that if you are a very wise person very logically thinking person who came to these ideas on your own which is not a bad idea right that you came to the the seven principles these seven principles for humanity of civilization to be blessed in this world right you will find your life in this world will be truly blessed but i hate to say it but it you know it's the facts it's the truth is the truth and we don't own anything back here and that is the person who came to the conclusion on their own without the acknowledgement that it comes from god that it was part of the revelation of mount sinai will not see the world to come will not experience the world to come in other words will not have a place in heaven miss the whole point of of the man yeah so listen if the jews can do it i'm not going to say oh if the jews can do it anybody can do it that's not that's not fair uh but it's work there is work involved and that's why the 48 ways to wisdom is so important to to get a grasp on reality to get to to understand how important it is to to try to get a hold of this wisdom and make it real and to be critical in your thinking as you'll have to go back and see all the way through like i don't want to go through them all you have to do it on your own so just just know that the revelation itself is not just part and parcel but it's like the like you said it's the basis you're missing the whole point if you miss that so let's let's start with this one idea fascinating with living and i'm talking about really living i mean do we really know what living is so again mit yashev is to settle there has to be a point where you integrate right the wisdom okay so that's what mid yashev libo means your heart so we're talking about emotional there's it's not just intellectual but there has to be um a passion right because that's the seed of desire the heart is the seed of desire so it has to be a passion so there's a settling a sitting of what we're talking about wisdom okay but then but tell me though maybe i shave libo that which you learn that which you learn to integrate it but again we have to still define what living is really about okay so we're gonna get to it you just have to hang in there okay so the rosh hashif this is all based on this book that i have over my left shoulder the rosh shiva uh ravnaq weinberg zazal he brought to life he brought it out into the world not not that it wasn't there already but he taught so many students the 48 ways and made it a seminar as part of the yeshiva descentora that even though it was already known well known but listen it's the end of uh perkier vote right you have a hope and it's towards the the end perhaps people maybe didn't get to it so he wanted to make it real he made it into a seminar and in the links below that we put into our videos you could easily um listen to himself i mean these are recordings of the roshiva himself in his jovial in his deep engaging manner with uh usually um college students asking them questions is a lot of give and take and he makes it very um what's the word not just feel not just alive also but yes alive but relevant to a uh to a younger person and look it doesn't matter what age we are and we can all relate okay so there are links and i encourage you to to listen also to the roshiva's own um own words so it's like this to be thrilled to be fascinated with life right to place this on your heart's desire i actually want to i'm going to bring a lot of source material um one of them is let's start with deuteronomy chapter six uh verse seven this is what a jew repeats several times a day okay it's part of what we call the kriya i'm sure you've heard of the shema and this is chapter 6 verse 7. you want me to read it yes please and you shall teach them to your sons and speak of them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the way and when you lie down and when you rise up okay i want to focus on the hebrew where it's the in this the third and fourth word uh the bar to bomb and you shall speak in them we're obviously talking about the torah okay we're talking about the words of the shema which is found in the torah in deuteronomy chapter 6. that's not just there the three different paragraphs spread throughout the torah but if you notice it's talking about through your daily life from the time you wake up to the time you go to sleep whatever you're doing speak in scripture now scripture is learning right when you're i hope you're not just quoting verses and throwing them off your tongue right these should be meaningful to you each word is golden right so you see already from the torah it wants you what to make it i'm going to use a lifestyle it's your life right it's your passion now i this is kind of like we're kind of like setting this up here right if this is again part of your daily life it's part of your daily activity to speak of them so you have to understand some of the nuances to speak in them so when we learn we're supposed to we're supposed to actually move our lips and and be heard right not only that this there's a gamora that explains that's when you are what that's when you're learning when you're praying so you move your lips we saw hana right hannah is one of the i guess paradigm examples of what prayer is all about and ellie catches her and he thinks she's drunk because what is she doing she's moving her lips but there's you can't hear what she's saying this is why jews when we pray we move our lips but we make sure that only we ourselves can hear what we're saying there's a whole but you should not be uh praying out loud for other people hashem can hear you okay so just to show you the bomb you must speak of them okay it's so important but i think also that verse is really speaking about the lifestyle itself you're talking about again the word scripture in english i don't know what it really means right what does it mean it doesn't mean that much to me but in hebrew mikra the word mikra is what we call the five books of moses mikra means to be read it's to be read aloud okay it's to be spoken to be proclaimed that's what the word means so keep that in mind because this is also going to help you meet yashev make sure that it sits on your heart because you're not just enacting the word the word is alive right it's in your mouth so i want to take that for an example i want to go to deuteronomy chapter 31 verse 21 and i'm going to ask you to read that as well 31 21 says and it will be when they will encounter many evils and troubles this song will bear witness against them for it will not be forgotten from the mouth of their offspring for i know their inclination what they are planning to do today even before i bring them in into the land which i have sworn to give them now just focus on the words where it says um it shall be in their mouths right it shall not be forgotten from the mouth of its offspring so this is another reason why if you think about it right we're talking about the scripture we're talking about the torah it should be in their mouths so much so that that's going to cause them to remember it right part of repetition right part of the repetition i want to go back to chapter six verse seven the first two words which you said and it will be when you teach your sons so in hebrews now the word shinan could mean to teach okay that's how it's translated here but it also means teeth again relating to an aspect of the mouth but it means sharpness the teeth are sharp it should be so sharp in your mouth that it meaning clarity right the rosh evil's his five thing or clarity how do you make sure you know the scripture like you know you have five fingers on this hand or ten fingers altogether five finger clarity right it has to be reviewed reviewed reviewed so a few examples hiroshima gives let's say for example i mean there's different times when you're learning something the first time or learning something as a repetition you're only really going to be i shouldn't say that i'm talking for myself really engrossed in the learning if you think this information is going to change your life for the better or it's going to be meaningful or it's going to bring you success right you've been to seminars a guy says i'm gonna make you a millionaire listen i don't know how much you paid for such a seminar but if you paid money you better pay attention right some of these things are scams but the idea is that if someone has a skill and he's able to teach you how to use it and you think that's a valuable skill for you and you paid money then you better well pay attention so that's the first key is to know that it's important enough to pay attention give another example but we're going to get back to this um let's say for example someone is getting the roshiva used this example someone is going to teach you about engines and how they work do you really care i don't think so i don't you know unless you're good at 30 25 years in the auto industry rabbi i had to go to uh so many new launches and yeah i've seen so many engines cut in half and explaining uh the upgrades uh and the new safety integrations and stuff like that it's just yeah okay so you were in the field okay now you had to tell a client why you should buy this card okay so you you found that that's i'm hopefully you know intriguing okay maybe you did maybe you didn't but let's say someone's giving you a whole detailed i don't know four or five hour class on the carburetor and you know what i mean like i don't know you could fall asleep now let's say for example you were driving through the sinai desert and your carburetor got clogged or it's not functioning properly then you're going to think to yourself man i should have paid attention because i'm going to take it apart clean it and put it back together and it's going to save my life otherwise i'm going to die here in the desert right but if someone if you were in that position now where you are let's say stalled out or incapacitated to your car is incapacitated and you're aware or understand that it's your carburetor and someone is willing now to teach you how to take the carburetor apart and clean it you will pay attention as if your life the throttle body okay i have no idea but let's say you would understand this is life saving information well this is the same thing with the torah as i mentioned before if you don't believe that the torah the revelation took place and the seven laws of noah were reiterated in other words they were already told to both adam all the way through uh history reiterated to noah given another seventh right six were given to adam the seventh one was given to noah and kept you know up until the revelation so that's all of mankind kept these seven well i shouldn't say they kept them they they were aware of them and there were always righteous people who did keep them okay so so it's the revelation it's to make or break and this is something worthy of you whoever i'm talking to listening to this should say wow i can't believe this rabbi is saying this i have to underst i have to delve deeply to see if i believe because you have to come to believe or not right it's up to you is the revelation did it really happen is it relevant to me as a non-jew and that's what i implore you to do i do want to go to another verse because we talk about free will there is this idea that it's in deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 19. 30 19 says this day i call upon the heavens and earth as witness that i have warned you i have set before you life and death the blessing and the curse you shall choose life so that you and your offspring will live now hashem gave us choices right he put opportunities it's up to you you have to wait out he says i set before you life and death but he does say you shall choose life okay you have free choice it's sitting right in front of you you it's up to you okay nobody is going to force this down your throat but you're once you're watching this video or listening to these uh teachings now you're going to be faced what are you going to do about it what are you going to do about it um i think that if you look at history right you know i say you know because there's no way to deny it that the jewish people are the witnesses we're the real witnesses now we did witness it because we're with revelation and that's why we're the teachers but also through our own experiences through history looking at the jews when they kept the torah and where they didn't keep this look at kings look at shelf team i'm sorry judges look at the book of judges look at the book of kings and that's history but look at today right were the jews and i'm going to use the word curse that i mean that's did we have pogroms i'm going to use the word holocaust with a capital h did we have meaning suffering for sure so you saw it with your own eyes right you see jewish communities how they survive and how they thrive and how they teach their children and what they do and it's up to you to come to your own conclusions right you could say oh well they're accursed people but once you say that then you know that the torah is true because the torah says if you do what i say there'll be peace and you'll be blessed and when you fail right when you don't live up to my expectations god says then i'm going to wake you up i'm going to do certain things so anti-semitism from an outside point of view obviously from a jewish point of view it has its own lessons right about assimilation and keeping the torah but from an external point of view someone who's looking at history and they see whatever that means anti-semitism in its history and even if it's today what does that mean to you right does that mean the torah is true more true less true why should it be if you read the torah you would know that there are these lists of god says i will never break my covenant but i will actually say it right there i will be like a loving father which is not that i don't not like saying that part but like a loving father who will chastise his son to get back on the right path okay and that's the whole purpose of the prophets the prophets were not there just to predict future events they are there specifically to tell the jewish people but warn you already know but are not doing it right there's nothing new in the prophets as moses says any prophet that comes to tell you anything that your own forefathers didn't know is a false prophet okay so i hope that non-jews can come to this understanding through study of the torah to understand the how do you say this not just historically accurate and true and you can find that through archaeological finds in history but morally you'll read the tone you'll just know hopefully intuitively that what the and if it doesn't make sense to you it means you're not reading it right right it says the torah way is a pleasant way it's paths are paths to peace so if you read anything in that torah go ahead you had a question or a statement well no i find in life if you truly study it that even us non-jewish people but they know it if you come to an understanding of a specific point or a a way to walk therein you then usually in life go through some sort of challenge or test to stand up for that principle or not this is what what what my life is you know over and over and over the more you study the more i seem to have to go through to to make sure it sticks so i'm gonna piggyback on that idea and that means that you're truly whoever is truly experiencing what you just said is a real seeker because hashem doesn't leave anybody behind right if someone is looking for the truth and that's what we're talking about here being fascinating with living if you fall into this category we're going to teach a little bit more about how to get to this point but if you're truly on that path hashem will be in your life to a certain extent that will guide you and you can ask him ask for the guidance show me the truth i want to understand your way right yeah it's almost like a sterilization process to draw close to hashem uh yeah you can't get any closer unless you adjust your life accordingly based on what you've learned in a lesson profound material just the materials life itself yep okay so let me just get back into the into the into the text itself because he's speaking about the fact that it's in your heart which is this the seat of your desire then do that with anything you're learning remember life is a journey it's even though i said mikra as if scripture is all there is it's not right as you just said ask hashem for help in your daily life learn from people learn from experiences again your learning is not only the mikra but that would be the basis that should be the basis interesting how hebrew besis is the base okay so he suggests be completely absorbed and fascinated with whatever you're studying or doing right doesn't matter let's say you're into cooking be fascinated go overboard i don't know go out to the the shook as they say and go and experience like an indian shook with all these spices right or here in israel we have a shook like that where you can go and examine the spices and just imagine what that would be in your food right and by watching these um i guess cooking videos or opening up a cookbook and experimenting not being afraid to experiment okay could be an expensive lesson but hopefully not but ask people people who have already made this um this dish or whatever it is you're cooking have conversations with people right be totally absorbed um be fascinated what happens is when you are fascinated your attention span expands right even though some people say today you know the average person has just the four or five seconds if they're not caught then forget get it you lost them already it could be much longer than that but you get the idea someone who has a fascination towards something so their ex their attention span expands they have greater retention remember right you will not just teach your sons but you'll have the sharpness again we talked about teaching we're going to talk about it again at some point but teaching sharpens your own you know convictions what you believe because then you're going to go look into it deeper and you'll either you know go deeper and in your belief of what you're speaking about or you'll change it you'll say you know what i thought i had it and i was i i need to readjust my uh my thinking in this area you'll have higher energy right we don't have fascination with living so when you're exuberant when you're fascinated about something you obviously have a higher energy and hopefully also you have more patience right in the end the end result will be you'll do a better job at whatever it is you're trying to accomplish um let's see i have a lot of notes here um okay the next idea he asked like who cares so we already brought in the example of you know you're hearing something about a carburetor you don't really care but then all of a sudden you realize it can make a life or death um you know um and what's the word uh outcome if you knew about this carburetor all of a sudden now you're interested well you know you should um when it comes to torah and and and lectures about let's say self-help right this if you go to a bookstore there's a whole section i don't know if they call it self-help anymore maybe it's like wellness they have all these other ideas of what they're called um meaning in life whatever this section is called i think that they it's like expanded over time it's like probably one of the most popular popular sections topics any topics anything that's going to help you in life you know the more you realize you're lacking it or how necessary it is the more attentive you'll be about it you know when i first heard that when i first heard this series rabbi uh uh you mentioned the word exuberant uh the rabbi that was teaching the class the very first time i did this really went into explaining that word exuberant uh and its etymology it has the word uber in it which means fertile and uh the early latin word was exubera which means to being abundantly fruitful so if you want your life to be [Music] fruitful you know exuberance is uh is part of the key and this is what i think uh uh definitively you're talking about loving life uh having that exuberance and i think you know didn't moses's face shine with the shekinah there was that exuberance it's got a it's got a beam off of you and makes all the difference about being fruitful and fertile um yeah yeah moses really wanted to know hashem's ways and hashem blessed him with with that knowledge and that was shown on his face for sure one of the ideas is we should always try to realize when we're learning something you know is it relevant to my life am i going to personally benefit from it as i already described in the beginning of this class to know that the torah is true and what's in it is obviously highly relevant if it's going to make or break your eternity so um here's a piece of advice the roshiva gives right when you're hearing a piece of wisdom or you're learning a particular subject ask yourself what do i want to why do i want to know this how can i make this idea relevant in my life and i think every time no matter what you're learning it's a worthwhile question it could be that it's so obvious you don't have to ask that question but at least that should be on your mind in other words you're you're draining or pulling forth or you know absorbing the information because it's so relevant right if it's so obvious and if it's not you need to ask yourself another idea that jews do before they go to sleep is they do what we call hanefesh we take an accounting of our own soul you know did i did what did i accomplish today could i have done better yeah but i've done better uh with without that how can you ever expect to become a better person so make the like everything we do is so valuable and you have to say what's the relevance of making a cash about an effort wasn't i awake during the day maybe yeah maybe no a lot of us are not and what's the difference you're going to get better so you thought you were aware during the day and if you think back it'll definitely um you know make it more uh real right he mentions this title like idea be fascinated with the torah itself now imagine for a second now i don't know if it's even true today maybe it's more true than ever that nasa came back with some signal from outer space let's say it's i don't know i'm using a number uh billions and billions of light years away and they're getting some radio signal and and they they blasted all over the world if anybody can help decipher it right so there's like one station you tune into for different people giving ideas of i don't know hopefully they're all professionals people who have some knowledge of what they're doing in trying to decipher this message wouldn't you be interested in listening like would it make a difference to your life if there's such a an idea of life in outer space so of course well guess what god spoke to us about sinai this is i think i mentioned this before when we were young when i say young many of the new guys in the yeshiva come from bali chuva non-religious homes so they're called bale chuva they they're returnees to judaism they were jewish at birth maybe they were somewhat religious maybe somewhat traditional maybe they had nothing but a lot of times they come back to their homes and their parents if they if the parents were not religious are not so fond of the idea that their child has decided to go to yeshiva instead of going to college or starting you know business or taking over the family uh business at the moment they're interested in learning this wisdom so he says listen you're going to find a lot of friction a lot of baggage a lot of emotional baggage and you're going to go home and they're going to ask you oh what are you learning now maybe they're not really interested in what you're learning they want to fight with you they want to say you're wasting your time oh that's not true the bible's not true or it's outdated whatever whatever a secular jew might come up with in resistance to hear what you have to say so he says tell tell them ten times he said ah it wouldn't interest you because they want to fight they want they want that battle what are you learning in yeshiva ah i'm not so sure it would interest you no let them beg you let them say come on before they're pulling their hair out what are you learning and then you tell them ready this is what you need to tell them this is what you're learning and it's not alive it's 100 true we're learning about the revelation of mount sinai that's it that's all you have to tell them and then maybe they'll be receptive because that's what the whole that's what judaism is all about right it's not okay i understand there's a lot of history we have a lot of pride in our history we kept the torah we're god's chosen people but the point is that god spoke to us and gave us a manual he gave us direction right and this is what we're learning why it's so important in our lives what happened 3 300 years ago it's relevant it's substantial it's how i live my life as we said in in the first verse we quoted right not just to speak of the torah when you're sitting in your house when you walk on the way when you lie down but to enact it to put it into practice in all areas of your life as anybody who starts learning torah understands there's nothing missing you're talking about the vastness of the oral torah it's just unbelievable it's 7 000 pages right that is i think anybody who's ever studied who doesn't have to be jewish doesn't have to be religious will tell you you know after examining it that there's nothing missing every major principle i mean you're talking about a car crash and who's responsible insurance wise so yes dr gamora speaks about this had a cow and the cow bumped into another cow but that's that's that was the reality of the day at the time but the principles who's responsible right in what case exactly when you find the lost object are you responsible to return it or can you keep it because if you keep it and you're really responsible to turn it it's called stealing and that's one of the seven noah high laws do not steal now the the repercussions are are great they're great they're much greater for a non-jew who steals than for a jew and if you don't believe me you have to look into it right if a non-jew violates any of these seven principles they're held to a greater level of responsibility than even a jew you know that's a very hard concept to get around but uh you have to look into it don't trust it it should be common sense yeah okay so if you if you realize god spoke at mount sinai and he gave us his message in his torah okay and this torah has actually changed the entire world right the wisdom is unbelievable and the value there is so nothing could be more riveting than to study the words of the almighty himself when you learn torah be focused the almighty is speaking to you you have to hear revenge weinberg you have to listen to his his his not just jovial he's full of wisdom you know for his age and how many people he spoke to and himself with his lineage of fathers and grandfathers being great rabbis and his brothers and his children is unbelievable so you want to be able to be fascinated with the torah to them try to decipher the message and it has to be done i have to tell you the truth it has to be done either in direct hebrew which many of you do not learn or at least with a rabbi who understands the torah and can answer your questions when you have a problem the i'll call translation because there's no such thing as a translation it's an interpretation every translation is an interpretation and therefore battle i don't mean go up against him like he's your enemy battle him like he's your kavruta like he's trying to catapult you into a higher level of understanding say i don't understand mine the gold did you say this then and now you're saying this now how did that how does that and the rabbi will explain well that was in that case and maybe he'll describe a little bit more in detail why it's different than what he just said and why it's not a contradiction or maybe he'll say you know what you're right i made a mistake and that's one of the first things we learned in rabbi school is you have to never see anything you don't know and when you make a mistake you have to say i was wrong i made a mistake okay so that he also speaks about and of course learning can be very difficult never give up speaking about this idea of desires there is a verse here that i want to speak about and the questions do i have it um yeah i must have it here somewhere unfortunately i'm just all over the place um i had here open okay it's now i closed it by accident so i'm going to have to go into it now but it's in a vodazara i'm going to go to it gamora voters are 19a i believe so let me just quickly go to it because there's a few verses here i want to mention here we are and then go to 19a here we are okay um i believe this is the point here if you go into psalms chapter 1 verse 2. now before you read it maybe you go ahead read it first and i'll discuss it chapter 1 verse 2 says but his desires in the law of the lord and in his law he meditates day and night okay so you imagine if you're fascinated now the word in here it's delight this is the person's um this is his delight so one of the ideas here is you should learn what you like learning let's say you're very philosophically oriented learn philosophy let's say you're very law oriented for some reason justice right you see the injustice of the world and you're fascinated with trying to change the world for justice sakes so then learn law right if you're more into spirituality or meditation go in that direction there's something for everybody but this verse wants to explain and the gemara actually speaks about how the rabbis would tell the the students to whatever is your delight that's where you should concentrate um i also want to mention now in perkiavo chapter 1 verse 15. so if you have it up or if you want me to read it well i only want to focus on what sham i said about making your torah study a permanent fixture in your life again we read that that first verse of deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 7 where it's from your waking until you're sleeping you're engrossed in torah but what does it mean here make your torah study a permanent fixture i and to a certain extent since we're talking about the hebrew midgashev right the the hebrew was to sit in your heart you're learning i can read that rabbi um let's just see uh uh authored by shamai the colleague of hillel um let me just see many disputes rose um even so the talmud attested there was nothing but affection and uh camaraderie between the two camps in spite of their many differences okay shamai's first words of advice are that we make torah study fixed um and there are two closely related explanations found on in the commentaries rashi and uh yeah okay i just wanna i just wanna focus on those words make your torah study a permanent fixture in your life because this is really what we're talking about here you know why would you do that if you're not vaccinated so you have to become fascinated with it and if you're not then you have to learn that whatever is important to you should be um you should focus more time and energy because you know externally you know let's say logically you know that objectively it should be important again you're going to have to do your own investigation to find out if this really is we believe that the torah itself is the blueprint for all of creation that says god looked into the torah and created the world i mean what is the how can that be the torah is something external from god not necessarily i mean today we have a physical book called the torah but before it was given and revealed it was in god's head so we're talking about god looked internally within himself and created the world the world is a physical existence but it's called yesh miyan yeshmi is usually translated as something from nothing i don't like that translation yes means substance i in usually means nothing so there's substance from nothing i i don't think that's a good translation i'll tell you why because the word iron really is symbolic of god's aim self aim i in self ain't self means there's no end yeah endless so they're talking about pure spirituality so what he did was he created the physical world but he used pure spirituality in which to create it so the torah itself is really it's in his own mind it's you know what we see in the physical world is the physical word in a certain sense is god's mind and it's and then became concretized so we can read it but to really understand it and it's we talked before hanukkah about the idea that there's a supernal light that's hidden in the torah and so the word hidden does not mean inaccessible it means you have to work to get it there's no reason why a non-jew should not even make the attempt let alone whatever he does or she does draw from it that light to apply to their lives of course of course so the torah is the blueprint of creation it contains all the secrets of the universe right you talked about if nasa was putting out this uh i don't know whatever you want to call it some kind of uh you know a recording of uh of you know of some thing that needed to be deciphered and everyone would be interested in what it has to say well here you have it this is it right in front of you okay but you don't believe it because you're reading all these translations by christians and muslims and who knows who else that are just interpretations and there's very little substance there's no meaning listen to the rabbis who are explaining the details of the beauty of the depth of the words and you'll be absolutely fascinated and if you're not fascinated you're listening to the wrong people so i can tell you anyway every word you study is a mitzvah again the word mitzvah means it means connection it doesn't mean command we translate it as command but the word itself is from the word seven seven means a group of people working together all right we call that the staff you go to a hotel you have the people in the front desk all the way to the to the against bell boys and the the cleaning staff and the cooking staff and i mean you have sal staff whatever it is there's a one goal the goal is to make as much money right for the hotel as possible and keep a good reputation going right so people will come back and people tell others and whatnot right that's the goal and everyone is working in tandem so the word sevit literally means unified a unified goal everyone's working together so the word that's what the root of mitzvah mitzvah is with mem causative meaning that's the that's what it causes it causes unity with hashem in fact the name of god is people are aware of is yud and ahe and avov and hay so the love in hey in the word mitzvah that's the last two letters mitzvah of hey the first two letters is memzadek memzadek in the at bash for those who are not familiar with that is a code like you have in english a and z you would replace a with z or z with a and then b with x y right then with the y so you replace it so in hebrew the atpash in fact you can look up at wikipedia it was used in world war ii and perhaps even before that but it was part of how the world the war was won because there were it's called athbash code enemy yeah the enemy couldn't pick up the communications yeah that's army in the code bunch in the code to uh to whatever between spies or between in communication to other people and so at so you have the word the letter mem and sadiq are actually equivalent to the yud and the hay okay you can look it up there's even graphs at bosch graph hebrew graph connection more than commandment it brings god into the world right and i'll give you another example we say kiddush on friday night okay just know that the youth and the hand of oven hate do not appear at all in chapter one god is not called yudkevke in chapter one of genesis when he created the world in six days comes the seventh day which is already chapter two okay so you have what do you have there you have hashem you kevin now you have two attributes of god so in in uh in day in chapter one of the six days of creation you have god's attribute of justice that's elokeem or even nature but then you only have the god of mercy the description of god of mercy being used in tandem with the god of elohim god of justice now interesting on kiddush on friday night we say the era of the evoker yom hashishi now what i just said any jew would say well we don't say that we just say yo mashi it's true we say out loud but every sinner would say say these words silently just imagine and it was evening it was morning you say silently the sixth day you start out the sixth day and god finished creating the heavens and the earth and goes into what we call the holy sabbath i'm telling you because it's absolutely fascinating the era of evocaire it was evening this morning we say silently but we still say it because there's a rule we don't use half verses you have to say the whole verse and not only that would it make any sense just to say yom hashishi the sixth day it's part of the verse so we say the sixth day out loud and then we go right into the sabbath but the truth is if you look at the letters yom hashishi starts with the yud the word yom the the sixth day and hey the heavens of love and hay this is what the jewish people's job is in this world and again anybody in this world can assist us right you can assist us in bringing god into the world and that's what we're doing we're bringing god into the equation that's what we are we are the witnesses we're god's witnesses okay i know there's a religion out there they call them the j witnesses but we are we were there nobody even denies that right the christians say yeah you were there but i don't know something happened the muslims say yeah you were there but something happened look into history god says i will always have this covenant with you and if you don't behave right i'm going to straighten you out and this is exactly what has happened god says it's an everlasting covenant it will never be uh abrogated so look at the history and just know the truth okay um i mentioned was the last thing i mentioned um i do want to go into this idea of making sure that you have your torah study is a permanent fixture in your life okay so how do i go about doing this uh there's a few sources in um in review there's in chapter 13 paragraph two it mentions that if you hear from a man we're talking about a not just any man a rabbi um if a person hears government if a person hears from a rabbi a hachem a wise person in a study hall the akshibu haitif i'm sorry i skipped something don't make it like it's happenstance like it's casual i think like you said also when you're really interested in and fascinated about trying to find an answer and you ask people so you're in a baby josh that means a study hall and you're hearing a rabbi speak don't just think it's casual there's meaning this person said this at this time for this reason and don't make it just casual by you but rather settle it in your heart and consider it very well i think that's an important idea that's brought down in others naruton regarding this there's a gamora in megillah megillah 7b mcgillis 7b mentions now this is an amazing story i don't want to get too much into the story but there was a group of students supposed to arrive at the rabbi's house and they were late and the assumption was maybe they were involved in their meal but everyone knows the real meal is on purim day not purim night so they're going back and forth but didn't you teach us that the main meals on purim day that if you ate at night you still have to eat one during the day and the rabbi basically says you know you're right and i have to review this 40 times so ravashi then learned it from him again 40 times until he remembered it so well that it seemed to him as if it was placed in his purse placed in his purse in other words for the sake of remembering you should and i'm telling you like as a friend right whoever's listening if you have information that is important you will review it the shinnantan right you go over and over and over it you'll review it many many many many times okay it's another idea um for the sake of remembering and let's go to deuteronomy chapter 5 verse 1. you want to read it you have it yeah five verse one and moses called all israel and said to them hear o israel the statutes and ordinances which i speak in your ears this day and learn them and observe them to do them so look god god moses right this is moses speaking deuteronomy this is a little bit more of um this is another avocado sun actually it's the same one one second let me go back to i think it's the same one actually it is the same one and i actually have an english translation so it goes into a little bit more detail it quotes shamai that says make your torah study at fixed practice so they say how do you do this so it teaches you much that if a person hears the advice from the mouth of a sage in the study hall he should not make it an occasional practice but a fixed practice okay this is going to be the point whatever a person learns he should do and then teach it to others and we talked about this idea when you teach others it's so it's going to really ingrain it in yourself and you should teach them what they should do and how do we know this this is the deuteronomy chapter 5 you just mentioned because moses says learn them and do them right learn them and do them it says in hebrew learn them guard them and do them this is the order okay so yes it starts with learning them and taking care to really practice it and then go on from there and ezra in chapter 7 verse 10 there's a similar teaching over there you have ezra chapter 7 verse 10. verse 10 reads for ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the lord and to perform and teach in israel statute and ordinance so one of the sounds like a prerequisite he prepared his heart right here he he really prepared his heart lid rosh has a torah to seek out the law of the lord but then what did he do he did it he performed it and then he taught so i'm i want to instill in in everybody right this is this is the wisdom right when you're fascinated you'll realize this is important information and not only will you incorporate it in your own life but if you know that it's so important for your own life and it's not just for your own life then go out and teach it go out and teach it i can't stress anymore anymore um okay there's still a lot to go through mainly i think the roshi also says this so many times know what you're living for we spoke about if you're willing to die for something don't do it don't die for it i mean obviously when the push comes to shove you may have to but once you just do a heisman nephew every day you realize what's important about life and you know if i'm willing to die for something then what the roshiva is asking us is live for it that's what god wants if it's so important that you're willing to die for when that opportunity you know comes up but do it now know what you're really living for what do you want to accomplish in life write your own answers down and hopefully you'll be very passionate about it okay i want to actually read his own word ah i actually skipped something and i want to he talks about being fascinated with real people and i want to tell you i'm a real teacher people watcher i love watching people so i'm sorry i want to just go back to this because i want to continue to talk about what roshi have just said but i want to just go back to this idea human beings are just a mystery you know we talk about every human being has a different fingerprint a a different face a different personality right so when you encounter people their whole world the whole universe engage in them find out more about them ask them questions about themselves right and he mentions this and i think this is unfortunate a lot of society today that um people are more interested in fictional characters like in films and novels than they are with real human beings right so be open engage these people right just like every snowflake has a different pattern which is fascinating so too people are absolutely fascinating okay now i want to go back i'm really sorry that i went back into that thing but now we're talking about know what you want in life you have to know what is life all about and what what is what do i in other words who's the most fascinating person you're ever going to meet in your whole life dan it's you it's you right the most fascinating person i'm ever going to meet in my own life as me so you know let's say for example if you want to be a doctor right think about a second so i don't know how many years it takes but at some point he's still not a doctor but he's a graduate of something well but if you're really um passionate about being a doctor you're probably going to already have a good bedside manner you're already going to be talking like a doctor even before you are a doctor because you've been engrossed what's the word you used um with the uber exuberant exuberant you you delved so deep and we're so passionate about it that you could feel yourself being a doctor even though maybe you only did autopsies you only worked on dead patients right but at some point you have been so engrossed that you are ready to be hired by a great doctor or start a stage as they say uh what's called the practice and a practice you know um even before you finish your own practice right your own your own studies um if a person really knows what he wants out of life they'll be fascinated by anything even remotely related to helping that person reach their goal be focused don't just bumble along know what you want stay connected to your desire for greatness and limit the time you waste on diversions that deflect you from reaching your goal okay so this brings us back to one of the original points i mentioned already in gamora voters are in 19a uh that a person should always study what his heart desires we mentioned that was in psalms chapter one verse two okay so he then he mentions here use your natural entrance interests to help guide your learning we all have like an internal compass and we all have a drive if you're fascinating if you're fascinated by the topic of jewish philosophy take advantage of that innate proclivity use it to enhance your engagement with your learning and increase the enjoyment and satisfaction you derive from the subject matter furthermore the enthusiasm you have for one topic can spill over into another making it easier to learn the less fascinating topics for jews anyway we have to learn everything we're obligated to learn everything and again you can still focus and put a lot of your attention into what you really like use that enthusiasm to see look the deeper you go in this you never know what you're going to discover in the other areas you should do the same thing as non-jews as well wow i think that'll bring joy along the way will it not if you're if you're passionate and exuberant you're going to be joyful it's just like you know work doesn't seem to be work when you enjoy doing it yeah know that the torah encompasses every topic imaginable it's impossible you won't find one that grabs your interest i'm not trying to sell the torah i'm trying to get you involved if you are truly want to be a righteous noah know that one of the prerequisites is that you have to know that the torah is from hashem and you have to be able to decide that on your own nobody can nobody can tell you right i mean i can tell you all i want it's for your your belief system so i'm imploring you um i'm not begging you um encouraging you to check it out for yourself wake up to that reality and uh yeah it becomes alive in that respect and then you're truly living for sure yeah i do want to end off with one more source and conducion 30 and there's a gemura that discusses what you have an object a parent has an obligation to teach his son torah we already mentioned deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 7 it says and you shall teach them diligently which vision now can also be read in a different way as vishloshtem means three times non-temp could mean twice like like shaney the word cheney is twice so you have to review you can't just teach once you have to keep teaching but there's a drusha expounding that it means three times and that one should always divide their learning into three okay so it's a little bit complicated i don't want to go too much into it but we say that you have the bible the five books um or let's say even let's say the bible let's just take it as the whole bible what we call from genesis all the way to chronicles and then you have the mishnah which is the basis for the oral torah and then you have the talmud which is the discussion the later discussion of the oral torah so it's a very fascinating question that they go through well if you're the statement here is one should divide their life their years into all three so would you imagine if someone lives to the age of 60 which was the average lifespan i guess at some point in time so what does that mean the first 20 years you're going to learn bible the second 20 years you're going to learn mishna and the last 30 years you're going to learn the gemara how's that even possible you don't know how you're going to how long you're going to live let's say you only live 25 or 35 or 45 you miss out so you're attempting to manage at that at least well the gamora says no that's that's not what we mean you should divide your week you have six days right the seven days for review but let's just say you have sunday and monday learn bible tuesday and wednesday learn mishna thursday friday learn the talmud so they're gonna ask the same question how do you know you're gonna live through the week maybe you'll die in the mid-week and you'll you'll miss out so the word concludes learn what they call tomwood bob lee probably it's the babylonian timeline but it means it's all mixed it's integrated you have every page out of those 7 000 pages every page has all three ingredients i shouldn't say every page but almost every page has all three we have all these verses from the tanakh you have mishna it's spread out through the pages and the gemara and that's what you should do so basically in other words if you are so fascinated with torah there's nothing going to stop you there's nothing going to stop you and that's talking to the jew and there's no reason why it shouldn't apply also to a non-jew to be absolutely fascinated mix up some of your learning don't just learn philosophy learn a little bit of this learn a bit a little bit of that mix it up spend your time like you are on the face of the earth to acquire as much wisdom as possible be fascinated with it and learn with these rabbis who are teaching you what you can learn in respect to all three of these ideas whatever tanakh mishna and talmud are teaching you this is already permissible for you to learn by them and i suggest that you do so but anyway that's where we start let's let's be clear with your last statement that that if the rabbi's teaching it to you it's it's definitely clear and it's okay but i've had a lot of questions in the last month about about noahide studying talmud and uh i've had a few rabbis say it's off limits right let's say like this everyone's on a different level a different place if the rabbi's teaching you the ethics the agutas the the life points behind yeah um we're not talking about learning page one to the end that would be for very selected unique uh brain okay i have to i have to tell you that there may be a place and a time for that um but in the general idea is when a rabbi is teaching a mixed crowd right right then he's teaching you because ethics are part of the um i'll call them remember we started off by saying anything logical yeah right it's logical so and there's there's i mean we don't want to go into this now but i've mentioned before it's like the flavor in the soup yeah but it's much more than that because there will be pieces that a ben no may or even should go into i'll give you an example you have one of the laws to set up your own system of justice there's no reason why you as in the benoit can't be a judge in a court and you're not just a judge in a gentile court or even a lawyer in a gentile court and therefore you need to know the law and the law whether it's obviously you have to focus in on the seven misses first but a gentile can say i want to go to a jewish court and i want to take the stricter opinion there's no reason they can't do that and there's no reason they can't know what the jews hold okay you have to start with your own first you always have to start with your own but more advanced you are there's no reason not to the rambam also mentions that you can do additional mitzvahs as long as you do them right so if a non-jew does decide after keeping the seven laws and advancing that he wants to keep kosher laws there's no reason why at that point he can't delve deeper into the kosher laws right um just as these are just examples right even like murder i mean there's a lot of discussion within the gemara about murder jews non-jews right if a jew killed a non-jew or a nanju killed a jew there's a lot of there's a lot of details and if it really interests you then with a jewish rabbi find guidance to go deeper so i am encouraging that i'm not saying it's uh it's off limits but you gotta know the focus mainly is on the seven and once you've mastered that there's no reason you can't go further with a rabbi and with proper guidance well said well said rabbi thank you so much for uh sharing this beyond the seven class it uh it uh it gives the thirsty um uh hope uh and inspiration to keep uh progressing uh with that uh uh exuberance to uh to to live uh and live live uh a godly uh way the torah way and um yeah fortunate i've seen in just these last few years i've seen if you've been a noah that have you know converted and you can just tell when you met them that they were would not going to suffice for this that the other thing and they wanted to push further and you know baruch hashem several have but who knows what hashem's got planned for each and every one of you but uh you all have unique potential and we encourage you to fulfill uh all you can be and i think today's message on truly being passionate about life uh will ignite you forward for sure so thank you so much rabbi poston um so hashem willing are we on tentative for 44 next week bizrat hashem looking forward all right so hashem willing we will be back next week folks um with part 44 and we wish you all a beautiful beautiful week [Music] it's