(Way# 44) ANALYZING ISSUES: 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 who has been uh teaching us so many different elements that benay noah can integrate into their lives and put into everyday practice he's been going over the beautiful must uh uh here series uh the 48 ways to wisdom and today we've got part 44. uh it's been over a year of a journey in this series but it is something so important i highly encourage everybody noah to uh re-listen to every one of these episodes and acquire each one of those steps to wisdom uh they're so useful so uh necessary to understand the principle of what wisdom is and how to actually integrate it acquire it and to put it into practice so useful i'm so thankful that rabbi poston stays up late in jerusalem to share this beautiful series with us so let's just jump right in and see how the rabbi is doing today round by posting always good to be with you sir uh i hope you're uh um uh your yibane uh uh end of the year uh um campaign is going well thank you yeah it's we're halfway there and we have a few days left so uh there's rata whatever people give will help us continue to uh continue to output you know continue to give and to reach out so uh we're just happy for all those that have given and anybody who's thinking about it and continue to think about it the next few days anyway anyway thank you so much dan for having me on and uh actually you know initiating and asking me to do this series which we started a long time ago on beyond the seven and we started off with like a very good um let's just say background to what it means uh the seven noah had laws for gentiles uh for all humanity and we went into the six constant mitzvahs and then we just do this this book over my left shoulder based on the sixth chapter the sixth mission of the sixth chapter of perky avatar the 40 wasted wisdom now interestingly enough because the idea is called kenyan to acquire wisdom and today's topic number is in hebrew um which means to ask and to respond to answer but it's more than that it's it's hopefully understanding how important it is to ask the question to begin with to uh to analyze that's going to be the title analyzing the issues i mean it's unbelievable to today we live in a society where we're just fed information yeah no critical thought in fact we're just parroting um regurgitating if that's an okay word to use uh information and because we like the speaker or we're relying on the speaker now again we're not all expected to become experts in every area of life but we are expected to think to use our brains our noggin our seiko and given our reason yeah any if there's anything the gentiles can learn from the jews is i mean so many things the list is amazing but one of them one of them i think that would be undisputable is the critical thinking as you said how to think critically and to um to analyze things look i mean whether they're accountants or lawyers i mean jews have uh quite a reputation for uh critical thinking and hopefully uh this will nobel laureates yes okay so let's you know on one level you're talking about external information you know about science but a lot of this um um the exercise the ability to analyze something should help you in your life right um i mean i can go through you know as just a list i mean just to start off i mean what why shouldn't somebody ask this question but you know what i like to jump around and i want to try to keep it as miss dart as possible let's let's stick with the framework the roshiva starts with first of all nobody ever died from asking a question now i hope i could say that in the year 2020 too i don't know the way the world's going right there are people that are uh censored and let's say even murdered uh you know culture yeah culture not physically murdered but basically their lives their livelihood has been taken away because they ask questions so this is uh it's tragedy it's a tragedy that uh that people cannot ask questions but we have to learn you know what there's more important things and and to know the truth to arrive at the truth i feel like i have to skip around just to give you an idea but number one right the the jewish ritual i'll call a ritual called the passover seder right everyone knows well everyone knows it happens once a year and uh it's a central theme in judaism that we remember we recall we relive the experience of leaving the land of egypt this is where our identity as a national identity earth but it's also an an individual identity in terms of our relationship with the creator of the universe the one right it says in the first in the first in the first of the ten commandments if anybody knows it by heart right i am the lord your god okay so you have to know there's a there's one god but it continues i'm the lord your god who took you out of the land of egypt okay so it doesn't say i'm the lord you've got to create the universe right it's a personal relationship when one leaves bondage when one leaves whether it's addiction whether it's troubles you know constricted periods in their life where things are troublesome rocky you know uh uh what do you call those waters you know troubled waters right there's a song about leaving you know trouble waters anyway so every human being has experienced some one level or another uh more than once in their lifetime so it's about a personal relationship with god as we left you anyway my point was this during this seder during this ritual seeming ritual right what is done there are the four questions it's the central theme of the night ask as many questions as possible so this is one of the things that hopefully um the jewish people have brought to the world right abraham who discovered who not just discovered and realized but then spread the message he carried the message and three quarters of the globe believes in what i hope they do anyway um maybe that there is a creator of the universe and that the torah is true um you know whether the the muslims believe it was corrupted or whether the christians believe that there's a replacement whatever it is they all seem to believe there was uh historical facts that took place uh called the revelation of mel sinai okay so this is very important for us that we should ask questions and nobody ever died i'm gonna say it again i mean uh whether it's still true or not uh we'd like to believe that nobody ever died from asking a question so i want to go just into one more idea like how do i know god exists and you know what what if he does what if he doesn't does it make a difference in my life i mean how can nobody ask that question to themselves seriously right and if god does exist and the three-quarters of the globe somehow believe in this i'll call it a revelation but we're going to talk about the the transmission of this information called the torah that happened 3 300 years ago did was the god that gave it or was it written by humans i mean all these questions have to be asked because the next question is does it make a difference in my life like does it really make a difference and you're going to have to answer that question nobody's going to answer for you right another question one has to ask is how do i fulfill my potential like who am i where do i fit in the world and what about free will if god controls everything then what if if free will exist what is the limitations or where does where do the bounds begin and where do they end in terms of my own personal free will another idea one should ask themselves hopefully you're right they take a bonus they're constantly hopefully reviewing their day reviewing their relationships reviewing the consequences of what happened through the day how do i avoid making the same mistakes if you're not thinking critically guaranteed you're going to make the same mistakes again right okay so let's so let's um start a little bit we discussed this idea maybe you've heard of hillel base hillel and big sharmai how is it that the jewish people you know even though there are disputes among the earlier rabbis and we say they're all true statements but we end up through the sanhedrin going after the majority how is it that we can make that um well the tortell says to follow the majority okay but why did hillary write for good why did hillel become the majority number one maybe they were nicer maybe right maybe they were sweeter the truth is like this they had more students what what made them have more students perhaps that's the answer you have to think analytically so or maybe they just had better answers but we say not like that the truth is it could be that shamai had better or sharper answers but they did yeah but what they did was they always presented the other side of in any argument first in order to analyze it and therefore if they agreed with it they they would call um took back their argument and stuck with the truth because they analyzed it came out to the truth but the main thing was they were willing to hear and analyze and have a discussion yes so even till today i mean when i say till today because we're talking about over 2000 years you know when hillary lived before the writing of the talmud before the writing of the mission that rebbe who compiled the mishnah always put shammai's opinion first so even he he is part of the hillel establishment part of the um tribe of yehuda uh anyway when he canonized let's say what we call the oral torah he put all he always put bake chamomile first as a consistent with his own great great grandpappy's uh ideas so this is very important in terms of analyzing be open and willing go out of the box don't just keep hearing all the information that you're used to and you agree with try to hear the other side okay so that would really be the main the main reason obviously he became the robe the majority because he was let's say when you see when you hear all the different stories between beijing they say well it seems i'm using the word seems in apostrophes um that he was kinder and and but it was really because of his humility okay the kindness came out because of his humility that he was willing to lower his own ego and try to to get to the truth that's the only way you're going to get to the truth if you work on deflating your ego um let's see so this idea of analyzing issues called showel um now there's two ways to look at this because it really means to ask and to answer so i want to read something from a safer it's in hebrew i'll do my best to translate it in a cohesive fashion this is the mishna on purki about chapter six admission of six that mentions the words show el um and this is uh this is a um a commentary and just discusses this idea um what does it mean that the person is awakening within themselves to ask the question on whatever he's learning in other words it's very nice maybe you have to go to a lot of classes and maybe you have to sit with big rabbis with deep thinkers how to even ask the questions i mentioned that when i was already religious a few years and i was in yeshiva as an adult i went i continued to go to the beginner's classes uh classes that was set were set up to explain judaism to the brand new beginner and i was already a believer but you know what you have to be able to um crystallize to really concretize your own thoughts if you ever want to be a teacher for sure so the reason i went was not because i needed a refresher on the information the reason i went was i wanted to hear the questions the questions of someone who was coming in and i'm saying blind fresh coming in without any preconditions right they were really questioning and searching and this is what as someone who maybe claimed i'm already you know drank the kool-aid right well guess what i want to make sure that it's crystal clear to me and whatever question they're going to ask going to be very important for me for now and for the future so i was afraid for myself that i was missing the questions i want to make sure that those questions are fresh on my mind so i can hear them over and over and over again okay and after you do that at the awakening of the questions then you do everything you can to attempt to seek out to search out the answers and through this you'll have crystal clear clarity hopefully right you'll understand whatever it is you're trying to understand much better and that's how it's summed up but there's a footnote to that and the footnote explains there's actually two sides to this idea so what does it mean to uh sh um to ask and to answer so it says like this um so i want to read to you i'm going to go through this gamora in sanhedrin in in a second but what it's going to deal with in sanhedrin is when you have you have 71 sages and a capital crime meaning a death penalty the possible death penalty is uh learnt leak what you call it um it's hanging over right uh the litigant and if everyone meaning it's unanimous that the person is guilty what happens then he's let free he's acquitted and we're gonna have to discuss why is that so things like that disturbed me when i heard that in judaism i said look this guy is obviously guilty if everyone on the sanhedrin says he's guilty why are you going to let a serial killer or somebody like that go right he committed murder he committed rape or he did something that you know that certain types of rape that are um you know the death penalty yeah okay so it didn't make any sense to me and you have to ask the question why all right we're gonna we're gonna analyze it a little bit so i'll just read the words so if the sanhedrin the entire sentence agrees that the person should be killed the answer is that he's not killed after the fact the truth is that there must be somebody from amongst the judges who didn't inquire who didn't ask the right questions okay we have to find out what's going on here they bit on the lure of the narrative so there is to be concerned and to worry that they didn't clarify the indian uh completely there was something lacking in their investigation right okay fine however there's another way to look at these words which we're not going to really follow this other idea it's a minority opinion but it's okay i want people to know the other idea is that um that so if a person goes ahead and asks a certain question that he's dealing with like at the moment and um and he doesn't deal with both sides of the issue so it's more like this so if you're dealing with a particular issue and you're you should be hyper focused i try to teach my students this all the time we're trying to learn a certain idea and we're trying to stay hyper focused and a student brings in a question that's not related so if it's not related what it's going to do is going to cause a lot of confusion so joella may sheave ask an answer to make sure that you're answering the questions that are actually on the table and you're not going like in a diversion fashion and causing i'm going to call it which means i'll just say let's call confusion so this is what a student should learn you want to learn the truth you have to learn how to hyper focus keep the questions you know now there are always um what's the word um divergent questions there's no question about it you're going to ask questions that are going to be a little bit to the side but at least it should be as pinpoint as possible to the actual discussion at hand meaning what's being said and we also have to learn to stay on focus so that we're not going to deal with that opinion we're going to stick with this idea of and i want to go to the sanhedrin idea because how can it be that such an important case comes from sanhedrin and it's so obvious this person is guilty and if everyone claims that he is guilty so then what happens he's let free and he's not just let free he's let free immediately now that's even a bigger catch because let me give some background if i'm on the sanhedrin we have 71 people we're discussing whether this person is guilty or not and it looks like a majority of us conclude this guy is innocent so let's take the vote and we see his innocent and i say innocent it could be unanimous or it could be majority so we'll let him go that day and that's the truth that's what we should do we should free him immediately okay he's innocent there's no reason sitting there really there's no jail in judaism but in other words let's not have him confined overnight but if we think that a majority thinks that he's guilty and i say majority at this point so what we do is we wait until the next day to make a final decision because overnight uh evidence may come in that will show that he's really innocent now there's some more background okay that if you already had a preliminary vote and you said he was innocent you could change your vote to guilty but if you put up your hand and said he's guilty you um you cannot say the other way right it's the other way around one second am i getting confused now uh one of those may have to go into the the um here it is let me just read actually sanhedrin 40a okay so if yesterday the person taught a reason to make him libel so if he said he was guilty he can change his mind and teach for quitting but if he said he was able to be acquitted so then he may not teach to be liable okay so that's where it goes okay so what's going to happen now if we all decided he's guilty what we're actually all doing is all saying that he's innocent and if we're all saying he's innocent then none of us can change our opinion i know it sounds crazy but that's what's happening so that's why even though he's guilty and we say okay wait till the next day but in this case since we all ultimately said meaning we didn't say it but the consequences is that he's going to be acquitted he's innocent therefore none of us can change our mind so there's no reason to wait the next day that's a little cra but that's how it's going to work out um but i want to give some more background to that because a court such as this whether it's the 23 or the 71. these are k these are courts that can only of that size deal with capital crimes a court itself is only a court if it has people who are on the court who look for and try to find and have found something of innocence as well as those who have found something of guilt if it's a fully um culpable court the court says he's fully guilty it's not a court it doesn't even fit the criteria of a court and i want to give you a a a few verses just something rabbi that the binay noah can uh uh uh integrate i mean we have the the the positive uh command to uh establish courts of justice right so yes yes so i want to i want to mention about that it's very interesting they're obligated to set up a system of justice that is reasonable and there's no reason why they can't adopt the jewish system in certain cases okay when it's more strict uh they say you know what everyone agrees we want to we want to do what the jews do in this case and therefore we'll take the stricter opinion and we'll take the the jewish view and there's no reason not to do that and that's another reason why i mentioned that as a ben noah they can learn so much of the torah itself the shokhan arak that deals with khoshan mishpat the laws of justice there's no reason not to there's relevance yes i mean first of all they can they can be with a non-jew in a jewish court right if a non-jew wants to take a non-jew a jew wants to take a non-jew to court he can take them to the non-jewish court but the jew the non-jew can turn around says you know what i believe in the god of israel i don't want to go to this idol worshiping court i want to go to the jewish court now even when he goes he could say look i'm a non-jew i want to be treated as a non-jew or he can say whatever the jewish law is i want to be treated the same way and it's up to the court they can actually do that so it's quite advantageous for a non-jew to learn all the laws of hoshan mishpat if he wants not obligated not obligated that's optional uh and uh they could be who knows maybe they'll even convert who knows i mean i'm not trying to promote that i'm just saying that you never know because this is a very interesting idea in terms of the court itself that we believe that even if a non-jewish court has the same rules and system that we have we're not allowed to go to that court i mean there are they're going to be certain circumstances where we can but let's just say outright the first choice between jew two jews is not to go to that court okay period and it has to do with the belief in the power of judgment coming from god as the the god of israel and therefore it's it's like it's likened to idol worship for a jew to go to a non-jewish court uh outright they're submitting to uh yeah yeah without getting permission from the jewish court the jewish court will give permission under certain certain circumstances um especially today why we don't when we don't have the sanhedrin and we don't have the power of the base then as not as it was because we don't have a i'll just say a torah state we don't have a torah state okay we may have what they say a jewish style state and unfortunately it's like for those who understand what i'm talking about there are kosher restaurants that are kosher and then you have non-kosher restaurants they're called jewish style okay they serve they serve culturally jewish food but nothing about the place is kosher anyway so in israel today we have a jewish style state it's not a kosher state it's not a torah state okay i don't want to go too far off topic i want to go to the verses in numbers numbers chapter 35 verses 24 and verse 25 numbers chapter 35 yeah verse 20 and 25 yeah 24 sorry chapter 35 verses 24 and 25 yes okay let me just uh read that 24 says then the congregation shall judge between the assailant and the blood avenger on the basis of these judgments 25 the congregation shall protect the murderer from the hand of the blood avenger and the congregation shall return him to the city of refuge to which he had fled and he shall remain there until the cohen goddall who anointed him with the sacred oil dies now even though the context is dealing with what we call inadvertent i don't know if that's the correct but showgig inadvertent we call it manslaughter murder and there are very you know unique laws dealing with this nevertheless it is a capital crime if the person is found to be uh premeditated right that's why he goes to the judges to be decided what was this person um did they have brogues was the person who he killed inadvertently by accident his enemy or not where was there you know secret threats does anybody know whatever you can't just assume every time somebody's ax handle came off uh that it was a accident okay so this this has to be judged now it's dealing with the court now in in hebrew i'm sorry in english it's the first words in numbers 24 right 35 24 it says then the congregation shall judge in hebrew the shaft and then go to the first words of 25 it says the congregation shall protect so in hebrew the hitsilu now is a code word for a minion for a minimum of 10. so this happens to be the minimum judges in a court that's dealing with capital crime is 23. i don't want to go into how they get out of this that there's 23 but the basic idea is that you have a large majority that are there to convict that's what it means in hebrew the congregation shall judge meaning harshly you know for the negative let's say if to obligate the person and on the other hand the first few words of verse 25 is the congregation shall protect so we know that the baked in the the court itself is made up to be a court it has to have both aspects those judges are looking they have to look for the truth to both make it a judgment a harsh judgment or to find the person innocent to protect the the the the accused let's say so here you have it so basically if the court is unanimous in the negative towards the um towards the guilty it's not even a court it's not even a judgment and therefore another reason why he should go free because you didn't put him before a court now the truth is another court could convict this person okay let's say they all can said he was guilty now again i just want to there's a lot of levels to this if you had 23 judges or 71 judges and there was various reasons why he was guilty in other words let's say it's unanimous they'll say he's guilty but let's say whatever a third of them say he was guilty for this reason another third city is guilty for another reason and the other third i'm just using a various numbers doesn't have to be this uh the other third said he was guilty for a difference they didn't agree on the reason but they all did agree he's guilty so that doesn't fit the category that he goes free they all have to be unanimous for the same reason and that shows us somebody didn't do their homework there's no way you get two jews in a room you got three opinions right there's no way that they all came to the same conclusion looking out the fixes in critically uh and analyzing the issues um i hope this is uh becoming a little bit more clear yep all right that's to prevent kangaroo courts um okay let's go on i think i pretty much covered a lot of these sources that show you that we we have to we have to do these things analytically okay i just want to go back into another idea before we really get into the the nitty-gritty i mentioned already like in your own personal life when it comes to let's say religious ideas how do i know there's a god doesn't really make a difference but what about non-religious you know look anybody who's living a truly religious life there's no such thing as separation between right you have to be honest in business what are the first questions what's the first question you're going to be asked when you go to heaven right remember the first two questions did you set aside time for studying torah but were you honest in business it sounds like okay there's a religious aspect to your your judgment but a very um you know were you living a moral life were you honest in business and i believe that non-jews will be asked this question so uh be careful okay okay so i have a list of just i think are important ideas that we all deal with in the are called the secular or physical world but they all will have ramifications so in the even the spiritual and moral world right let's say you're a first responder and you're coming to a scene of an accident and you have to quickly analyze right there's a thing called triage right you know what who comes first right i mean this is life or death here right you're going to analyze the situation evaluating priorities and inferring what actions to take and in which order um this is life or death another idea let's say you're a police detective in this case maybe even even a a a victim right a cr crime scene analysts lawyers judges juries these are all you know everyday people are part of this right there you're systematically investigating interrogating examining and evaluating the evidence as you all seek justice you're winning yeah yeah these are very uh applicable ideas what about job interviews right you have to whether you're the one uh sitting there for the job where you're the new employee the possible employer right it's the applicant preparing for a job interview thinking about how to explain his or her particular skills and experience in a way that will be relevant and the value to the prospective employer of course the employer also is this person the right person to you know dedicate you know a lot of our our team secrets and our resources to okay what about a a master sergeant or a captain uh working out tactical plans for a dangerous military mission i mean whether you're on swat or whether you're you're a street cop who you know has to uh make a what they call a split second decision and this is very interesting because i think this is very relevant today we're not all scientists and this is the biggest thing i can only claim about myself with the raging debate of uh different um mitigating uh medicines to use in such a pandemic but let's say a team of scientists working with great precision through complex experiment right through a complex experiment in an effort to gather and analyze data right we're all in we're all living through a great experiment i have to say that and there are people who are much better uh attuned to figuring out data than i am and i just want to mention because i did write a list of who i thought are pretty good at this um i'm just you know without we're not hopefully not good at violating the youtube issues here but uh there's a doctor john campbell from england he seems to be able to at least analyze and give over without telling anybody what to do but making suggestions about this issue there's a doctor z he's actually an egyptian guy z-dog md his name is dr zubin the mania anyway this is just from the secular point of view and also just again i'm just going to list a few more people that i feel today you can use to help you think through they analyze what's going on and i don't i think that they're pretty moderate and they're not taking any extreme views and maybe people will disagree i'll just mention their names briefly russell brand he's quite quite a funny guy jordan peterson dennis prager okay now let me get into the rabbis okay that's the secular right you want to think about how to analyze situations politically medically whatever those are my suggestions but using wise rabbis people are experienced in dealing with people who ask questions a lot and listen i think i mentioned this before as a rabbi if someone comes to me with a question if i don't ask questions back which is another idea or she says you asked you a question you expected answer with another question a question being asked in return so how can you analyze anything without knowing all the facts there's no way when the person said can i ask you a question uh presented everything uh if they did they presented everything in a certain order they probably came to they could probably come to the answer on their own you need to draw out from them things that they haven't thought of hopefully you will help them come to their own answers that's the greatest if you again if you just regurgitate and tell them this is the answer uh you know it doesn't it's it's not going to make lasting impression the the lasting impression is when they can come to that proper answer on their own so i'm going to mention a few rabbis and i hope none of them are on any kind of list of controversies but anyway so rabbi michael skoback from jews for judaism he has a knack the way he can analyze something and you know that these rabbis are all asking questions the best way to give over a class is to ask a question right i mean the clear card does that all the time he begins by asking questions i wish i could do that right but anyway um that's one right by tovia singer he usually also asks lots of questions during his presentation sure uh rabbi mannis friedman he always presents some kind of you know a counterintuitive you know thing that arouses uh people's thoughts rabbi y jacobson rabbi akiva tax these are all very highly intelligent thinking people and the last one i you know it's like uh the most dear of all uh rabbi yitzhak braidowitz right oh yes yeah he does so much with you and he's you can tell he's so profound i i've never heard him asking questions often though but uh he has such a gift for sharing profound concepts in very few words yes so you'll see if you now try to pay attention that he'll he'll make certain statements that he'll call assumptions and then he'll tear them apart um he'll begin why is it in this order he'll ask lots of questions and um he'll help you hopefully come to you the whole idea is to draw your own conclusions to come out because the main idea is think for yourself think for yourself this is one of the things that um i guess is like you know really irks especially christians right that we have so many questions and where we try to um to get people to think for themselves so one of the things roshi always asked is what is like the first thing what is the first question your kids asked you like really deep thinking and this is something you would immortalize this question it was like a big deal okay um you know like you know parents well i remember my kid took his first walk a step or i remember when he first rode his bike or i remember when he would have her first time he hit hit a ball no the most important thing right is the first really deep question your kid was able to ask it really shows you that he is a thinking person uh happens to be in this week's parsha right moses is wondering why is the why is the bush burning and yet it's not being consumed these are the questions one should ask right um there's something about about yeshivas i mean and that's what they teach you and yeshiva's how to think critically so who usually got to marry the roshiva's daughter the dean of the school his daughter the one that was able to stump the rabbi the one that was able to ask the questions that nobody could could answer that is like the the top of the list so these are all very important ideas um even though they're and i mentioned already there's different sections of the shogunate and one of them is khosh and mishpa dealing with the laws of of um of the law civil laws and whatnot so there's everyday life there's marriage then there's like more mystical ideas of what we call what's permissible not permissible in terms of food and anyway um the idea here is that every torah scholar knows and there's no reason we shouldn't share this with the world right even though there's these four sections we all say that there's a fifth it's unwritten it's called it's called seiko you have to use your own them the ability to weigh things out that's why you have to ask the questions you have to understand where the person is coming from right the famous story of these two people that came to the rabbi with chickens now the chickens seem to be not kosher why because of some blemish that the women saw on on the some blood clot that developed question is was it from before the slaughtering was it after the slaughtering so anyway these two women came it was the exact same problem the students saw the rabbi the rabbi said to the student i'm sorry to the one with the first woman coming no this is not kosher and you're gonna have to throw it out and the second woman came with the exact same problem and he said it's not a problem enjoy so the student said rabbi what's going on here he says you don't don't understand the problem is a rabbinic issue we know that rabbinic issue we can be lenient under certain circumstances the first woman was a wealthy woman and there's no reason she can't afford a new chicken that's right by the new chicken the second woman was a uh a poorer woman or a poor one very like straight he would have went hungry if he made the same ruling yeah it's a rabbinic issue and then this rabbinic issue the rabbi's already declared that when it's a major loss then you can be lenient okay so it's because the rabbi used his seiko he knew now if he didn't know he could ask those questions he could ask apparently he knew the women personally makes all the difference doesn't it yeah yeah yeah um okay i'm just looking at my nose see what i cover what i didn't cover here most important so when you sit down to analyze something to even ask a question there are a list of a list of order of the questions so we call it what meaning to define why deliberate we'll talk about it and then how how to apply so the first thing is what we always spoke about define your terms right that's the first thing before you get into a in depth whether it's with a fabric in an argument a debate whatever it is define your first define what is the issue before you even begin to argue it argue about it and know your terms then what what what about why why is it important to me is it all important to me what are the consequences what's going to come out of this is it matter or does it not matter and then figure out how to apply it right how do i use this and integrate it into my life what am i going to do about it okay this is like make it a habit this until they become second nature this would be uh very important another thing is to look for inconsistencies look for contradictions right and these are his words open your eyes and mind to the irregularities and inconsistencies of life don't be passive if you see a contradiction point it out and ask unearthing contradictions and incongruities opens the window for better understanding be sensitive to them okay um questioning also protects you from being susceptible to all kinds of manipulation i mean this is really i mean we call uh the mass media right the what they call it the you know what i mean the media's and he this is what he says right in today's world this is written you know years ago there's always someone eager to fool you into buying something you don't need or accepting an idea that's not true i mean i was so disturbed i saw a very short documentary it was entitled conspiracy theories like question mark like okay interested what is that little um documentary about it was about the cartels of 100 years ago all of the manufacturers of lipos they all got together and they made an agreement um see light bulbs would would last for a long time and they made an agreement that they would diminish the quality of the light bulb so people would have to replace them really sad it's really sad when you think about it it disturbed me so much because it went on to talk about our cell phones today i mean there's no reason these cell phones can't list let lit last uh you know 10 years whatever it is um but they they made a change they used to be able to replace batteries now you can't replace a battery and basically you have to replace the whole phone i mean they're really interested in getting rabbi i saw that in the auto industry uh where the in the 80s they started to develop something called a specialty tool and what it did is is unless you took your car to the garage you couldn't get that fixed because you needed this specialty tool in order to get at the part and uh and it became a concealment thing and and then they started to design uh breakdowns into the product and uh you know our grand or great grandparents bought cast iron frying pans for a reason they lasted more than a lifetime right right right i mean well it just disturbed me so great you know to do my own investigation first of all is this true did these changes take place was there an agreement amongst uh organizations and guess what it opened a whole can of worms it's not just them it wasn't just the light bulbs and it wasn't just the the the cell phones like you said it's in the almost every industry um it's in the fashion industry right i mean it's everywhere it's everywhere shelf life and then you have to question you have to question and i drum roll please i mean you have to question who's really responsible for climate if if climate i don't even know the word uh you know the the um to be concerned about the climate then i would want to fix these issues with these tech problems these techish i mean first of all they're ripping everyone off if it's true right and they take us for fools and suckers and who's really responsible for whatever problems people are saying exists in the climate i'm not even debating whether it's man-made or not let's just say we are responsible to make sure that we don't pollute and make the world a worse place than we came in valid point sure let's agree on that right so what's going on here how can we're just giving them so much money to continue to destroy our environment and not hold them at all responsible they should be the first ones responsible in all honesty okay but this is called you have to analyze don't believe me check it out and every one of those people forget about the rabbis of course they'll tell you check it out but that list of uh of people they're the ones who are specifically telling you don't believe me check out what i'm telling you and that's why i specifically mentioned those people because that's what they all claim okay and questioning also protects you from being susceptible to all kinds of manipulation we read that idea don't do not blindly accept what people or the media tell you think it through yourself ask your questions and draw your own conclusions uh on any fish lures yeah yeah um [Music] we all we said and i hope it's true right that nobody ever died from asking a question um but the point of of asking these questions is to work on discovering their answers that's the whole point getting clarity right the five finger clarity just like you know you have five fingers on this one hand that's how you have to know everything so getting clarity does take time and that's what i want to tell you before we started we talked about this idea that you can get inundated a lot of information you need time to pause and to allow the information to fester digest and ingest process process because that that will be where the questions will come up as it settles you'll see the inconsistencies or where the questions are as i mentioned before rev north weinberg said always make sure before you go to sleep at night you have a question ask the question speak it out think about it now this is a metaphysical idea that in in judaism we believe we have different levels of our soul the higher level of our soul let's say departs disconnects from our lower part of the soul and it joins up or it's always been joined up but it has less background noise less white noise because you're sleeping and it's able to um let's see see with clarity what had been bothering you that's why you asked the question so then when you wake up in the morning subconsciously depends on what level you are the higher conscious level person you are maybe even consciously you'll realize you have an answer but at least subconsciously this will help you in life with an answer so again questions are good nobody ever die i'm sure people have died in their sleep but i don't think they died from the question the reality is many people have died from not asking questions ah very good very good um anyway this is part of the thrill of living as we say it's the journey right the journey is amazing right you may not be aware of the answers you may not sometimes the question is so much better you'll hear rabbi say that question is gold i don't have an answer for it but i don't think i'm ever going to forget that question that's amazing you hear that that's how important questions are it's the first step in gaining greater clarity and confidence basically sit down introspect see what important unresolved questions you have inside yourself don't let them faster you have to keep asking make a list carry with you keep these questions in mind readily available and when you meet somebody who might actually have some insight ask them asking the question right it's a business question wait till you meet someone who's successful you have a rabbi question wait until you have you know i'm talking about not where you can ask him online or um in public or you know through the email but when you are presented with two seconds five seconds two minutes with a rabbi you can ask him the question right listen if your business was faltering you wouldn't just sit around losing money you would do whatever it was that you could to identify the problem and try to solve it take life just as seriously figure out what's confusing you and work to resolve it so let's finish with this one idea um i mentioned already i mean this is what we do in yeshiva that's why there's somebody at the nightstander who walks around he's called the show alameishi that's our title here he's there to ask the questions and hopefully if he does his job he'll ask you questions to help you resolve whatever it is you know read rashi again what did rashi say you know and then hopefully you'll come to your own understanding so learning the text of the torah entails and asking investigative analytic questions right as we do with the clear car share what's the anomaly what is strange about the verse why is it in this order why is that word being used why is that word spelled differently than it is anywhere else these are all questions that have to be asked right yeah go ahead no rabbi but what what do we do as benigno if we come to a conclusion that is contrary to traditional jewish thought um and and and can't reconcile it no so i think this is just off the top of my head you should ask a qualified rabbi is this or is this not now you might not be satisfied you can ask another rabbi but when you go to the second rabbi you have to tell him i've already asked so and so and he has not been able to um give me proof he just says it's not consistent i'm looking for proof whichever rabbi you go to you're asking him if this is not consistent show me what judaism says that shows you this is not consistent once you have a statement and i'm talking about from that rabbi i'm telling the rabbi is quoting you some earlier conclusive statement that's written in khazal that the rabbis for thousands of years have held this way so then you can conclude it's true it's inconsistent with judaism i somehow there's a fault i'm going to go up against thousands of years of of uh of thought that's the burden of proof's now on me to prove that it really is well good luck finding it i mean if the rabbi is able to show you consistently this is how hazal have thought that that idea is inconsistent so then you you just give up your fight now it doesn't mean you shouldn't struggle you should still be strong in what's inside you that's preventing you from seeing it and that could that could force you to go deeper into those sources that the rabbi showed you maybe he read it wrong maybe you know it's it's possible right he's just telling you that that's why you can go to more than one rabbi but when you go to the second rabbi you must tell him i mean look it's not a it depends what you're asking it's halakha it's a question whether you can even go to a second rabbi but if you think the first rabbi is making a mistake you go to the first rabbi the second rabbi and you say look i went to a rabbi you have to mention the name and he told me this is the answer to the question and again hopefully that rabbi will ask you a few questions and he'll say yes you know he's 100 right or yeah he made a mistake and that's fine but you have to reveal the fact that you went to this right if you're asking a philosophical question there's no reason why not to answer what the rabbi thinks about it but it's not a bad idea to say to him listen i already spoke to this one rabbi and he tells me that rep sampson raphael hirsch said these words now that doesn't mean that rough sense of raphael hearst is the end-all right he you know he lived in a certain period of time he was addressing a certain type of people um if it's a philosophical idea it may be a legitimate um view under circumstances and that may be what you need to hear that's what he meant but that you go ahead you want to say something no no no i i'm following what you're saying it means it means a lot like nobody wants to question hollica it's just uh when we we we start to dive into the text often uh uh we see a lot of similar questions amongst bonainoak uh and and and they become repetitive or easy enough to answer because we've heard the answers uh enough times but there are uh many many difficult things especially in uh torah that um yeah i even still i've been at this for a lot of years i can't seem to reconcile like one of the biggest difficulties for myself is um [Music] the torah calendar you know and the numbers in uh early genesis from chapters five and ten they just don't they don't coincide and um how do you reconcile that that's there in the torah so you don't mean the calendar you're you're talking about historical chronology the chronology exactly you know the chronology and the timeline um you know i my bent is more on uh tangible historical uh historical uh evidence archaeology okay so it may not fit historical evidence that that because that evidence may also be faulty what we do is we rely on i'm just going to throw out you know seder olam or the the rambam and there's other uh source material to use that you should if you're so interested compare and there could be what we call maclaucus right where there's 180 to 80 years missing okay and you can understand there's a mac locus if you're trying to resolve the the secular historical chronology to the torah chronology you may not in this lifetime okay but you will have to decide this is what the torah says okay that should be understood and the torah says that it could mean this or could mean that based on whether you're using the seder olam or at least like you know people say oh i know it's true i know that i heard it said by that person but i don't know if it's true in other words i'm repeating what i i heard from somebody i'm not going to tell you what i heard i'm not going to tell you that what i'm saying is true what i'm saying is that i heard it you have to believe me that i heard it that doesn't make it true okay so when we talk about ghazal same thing in midgers for example this is what the medras says am i going to debate whether it's true or say sometimes they use hyperbole an exaggeration maybe it's a uh what do you call it a parable the parable is true are all the facts true in the same way that we understand facts maybe not they're all true but they may mean something that i'm not aware of okay so if you're talking about chronology it's just beyond us to think that people lived hundreds of years right and whether it's a a thousand years 700 years 600 it's just hard for us to imagine but if the torah says it so you have to say you don't have to but i would suggest accordingly you can't can't say it does not say it when in fact it does sure that's true what is the truth trying to tell me that then i'll have to figure that out that's now my life's mission if the torah is telling me the person lived 400 years so why does it want me to know that okay as opposed to trying to figure out oh is it true is it not true and never get anywhere right so at least according to the torah it's a true fact that the torah says it what does the torah want me to know by knowing that now i'm going to have to figure out let's say metaphysically what is the lesson it doesn't want me to like think outside the box so much that i believe that people live 400 years that may be true but that's probably not the point of the torah telling you that the point of torah telling you that is for some other reason that perhaps i'm going to get into metaphysical maybe it was a reincarnated soul maybe there was an overlap between this person's life and that person's life maybe he whatever it is you have to figure it out you have to try to ask the question ask the question thank you sometimes it's greater than the answer itself so i want to go into this idea of um a story he ends with the story but before that he just says that the yeshiva is the ideal place to learn the skill of analyzing and asking probing questions the guidebook is the talmud the world's greatest manual on questions and answers that is exactly what the word does you have let's say the five books of moses the tanakh there are i'm going to call them stories not just stories they're the instructions for living that is cryptically written in story form and then you have the mishna which is you know the oral torah written again in cryptic form but the talmud the gamora itself is questions they want to know where did you know this from what where it's just unbelievable the question that this is exactly what's happening ana it's a it's an analysis of every statement that was ever made there's nothing you cannot find that's a double negative everything can be found in the talmud so the talmud is a repository of brilliant jewish minds digging for contradictions and asking reams of incest incisive questions the jewish people have developed this form of study into a fine art it's no wonder that many of our the sharpest minds of the jewish world have come out of uh yeshiva study halls so here's here now one of you here's a story okay guy gets on a train okay he's traveling he's a scholar he learned in yeshiva and he's going from a place called odessa um he's traveling from odessa to moscow now he gets on the train and he finds an empty seat wow what a makaya what a great thing find an empty seat but you know what at the next stop the young man sits down next to him so what is the scholar he looks at the young man and he thinks well this doesn't look like a peasant a peasant i guess would dress a certain way he doesn't look like one now and if he's not a peasant so then he probably comes from this district okay and if he comes from this district he must be jewish maybe he didn't look so jewish but i can figure he's probably jewish because after all this is a jewish district now if he's a jew where could he be going obviously they're heading towards moscow now i'm the only one in our district that has permission to travel to moscow for one second right outside of moscow no so he knows already that he's the only one in his district that has permission to travel so but there is a little place outside of moscow that one could visit without permission so it must be that that's where he's going so here he uses his analytic mind where is he from busy okay so it's called samvet and you don't need special permission to travel there but why would he be going there he asked himself well he must be going to visit one of the jewish families there he already thought he was jewish must be the jewish family there but you know how many jewish families there are there there's only two and who are they the bernsteins and the steinbergs well the bernstein's right now are experiencing many overwhelming overwhelming challenges so he's probably not going to see the bernstein's it must then be the steinbergs now why is he going well the steinberg's have two daughters so maybe he's one of their son-in-laws right now if he is which daughter do you think he um he might marry if he's already uh going to be their son-in-law so he thinks well the sarah she's already married to a nice lawyer from budapest and the other esther is married to a peddler from a i can't even pronounce the city zitmoyer the zeitgemer so it must be sarah's husband which means that his name is alexander cohen if i'm not mistaken uh but does he come from buddhist but if he comes from budapest with all the anti-semitism there he must have changed his name to be accepted into university so what would be the hungarian name of cohen he thinks kovac oh kodak he must have earned a doctorate from that university so at this point the torah scholar turns to him and says how do you do mr kovacs imagine every step until he gets to this point in his own mind and you know the guy says very well thank you but how did you know my name so the rabbi the scholar says well it was obvious if you're sherlock holmes how obvious if you if you think deeply and me meta metaphorically and you really think through the methods so there's no question you come to the right answer just like he did on this seemingly superfluous unnecessary doesn't make her change my life one bit imagine taking all those issues that really make or break your entire life is there a god does it make a difference this is the god of israel abraham isaac and jacob or is it some other god and i'm serious when i say that we're talking about the creator of the universe the one who revealed himself at mount sinai to the jewish people and gave them this information is that the god i want to believe in or not is it going to make a difference in my life am i going to be a no height because these things make sense or am i going to be in no hide because i believe in the revelation of mount sinai and they make sense in other words am i going to take it beyond the seven i'm going to take it one step further and i'm that's going to make or break whether i go to heaven or not okay as a non-jew anyway so that that said i always mentioned you got to do your own homework you got to investigate yourself because what we're doing is just giving the information the the the book um is behind me of my left shoulder you can find it online usually in the comments but in the um in the description box you can have uh you can listen to all of rabbi noah weinberg's classes um there are other people other students of his that have also given the 48 ways classes and uh these are these are these are also it's enjoy enjoy the journey wow rabbi thank you so much that's beautiful well well said i mean may we all learn to grow and ask the right questions to to to to get the information we need uh if we're facing any uh problems or difficulties you know my weekly rocky mountain readings we've been reading uh um a guide for the perplexed by the rambam and that is so full of uh arguments and debates or just just points to consider and the reality is you can just tell it's a gentleman such as the rambam you know asked and pondered so many questions and you could see how it made his life uh who he was and uh just just yeah important important stuff and uh you got almost like i said like sherlock holmes there in the end now folks uh i'm placing a link there in uh the chat room and this link is for um uh gibbons doing their year-end fundraiser they're more than fifty percent of where they need to be and i just want to encourage everybody out there if you if you are able to help or support in any way shape or form um given a they do such a wonderful work i know that rabbi poston uh it's all he does is help people in jerusalem and they're always doing kind works there and more than that loads of videos you can follow on their given a youtube site uh him and rabbi yitzhak breiderwicz profound teacher uh so much there for you to to dive in and learn from and i just want to encourage you if you can uh please uh click on that link uh check it out and don't be afraid to help them with their year-end fundraising because this is what they do to keep themselves going for another year and we want to encourage rabbi poston for uh continually uh working with us we made it to 45 now next week is technically a calendar i think new year or so but uh rabbi hashem willing are you okay or on is your schedule allowed to do part 45 yeah we're fine yeah it's not the new year's for us but i know it's a new financial year so uh we'll celebr we'll celebrate it not in the way that you guys do but by clean clean books right starting from all right so hashem willing folks we're going to be back same time next week with part 45 of the 48 ways to wisdom we're almost there it's just such profound stuff if you've got any questions or points go back check it out or or or dive into uh the pirkei evos uh chapter six and uh you'll see for yourself exactly these profound steps and uh i want to thank rabbi poston for doing this beyond the seven series and taking the time over more than a year now we've been at this and we're coming down to the end part 45 next week folks so until then have a wonderful wonderful week [Music] is