(Way# 48) MAKING THE TEACHER WISE: 48 Ways with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

[Music] hey good day everybody welcome back to this wonderful series beyond the seven live from jerusalem with rabbi aaron david poston uh who has been teaching us uh the wonderful book the 48 ways to wisdom and today we're on part 48 but like he mentioned to us last week it's not the end uh the book by uh uh rabbi weiner actually has uh 50 parts to it so we will be having a couple more uh baruch hashem after this class but it's been exciting i loved last week's lesson learning in order to do last week's lesson if you didn't catch it you can catch it uh in the the nohide world center youtube or you can find it on yebene it's beautiful it was a beautiful lesson and i'm sure today's going to be just as good so let's just jump right in and see how the rabbi's doing shalom rabbi uh you're live on the air we're going to turn it over to you it's so good to be with you and we so appreciate you staying up late there in jerusalem to share with us the beauty of torah you're live rabbi shalom alaikum dan and all your viewers all the subscribers too can you hear me you're breaking up a little bit i don't know why um you're a little blurry as well can you hear me dad yeah okay let me try i can hear you i'm gonna try to fix doing um okay you can hear me better now yes i can hear you yeah can you hear me now yes okay i had too much stuff going on on my computer i just closed a whole bunch of stuff okay so hopefully hopefully that would make a solution and what i said so far was i'm so glad to be back then and i'm so in front of your viewers and your subscribers and uh we're in for uh i would have thought it would have been the um the grand finale but the truth be told that i mentioned last week already that um in the book that's behind me even though there are 48 ways to wisdom the roshiva did find other manuscripts that had different one of the 40 ways several of them were broken into two or there were different new soccer different versions so he wanted to be complete and he in his book made 50 ways to wisdom so i don't see why not right let's cover them all rabbi weinberg as you mentioned is the um the author or the you know the the creator of such a fantastic program however this is based on ancient jewish wisdom from perky available chapter six mishna six and i actually feel very privileged to have been able to give over so far i mean so far right yeah it's been a long journey for sure the last yeah uh tonight's topic today's topic number 48 is rabo now it's actually the title it's counterintuitive making the teacher wise you have to ask how is that going to make you wise well it's not that counter-intuitive if you really think about it the wiser your teacher is the more wisdom you can uh obtain so it's not counter-intuitive at all but the the counter-intuitive part would be and i just mentioned counter-intuitive because if it's something intuitive you don't need to teach it okay that's like something we've discussed many times something that is so obvious you don't need you don't need to teach it so in jewish wisdom the things that you're really learning hopefully are things that are counterintuitive so the mystical side of making your teacher wise how is that going to make you wiser well i think i think it should be obvious right the wiser your teacher is the more wisdom than you can obtain the question is how to go about doing it okay so what i'd like to do is go through a few ideas first and then get into the um get into the sources although every now and then i'm like oh now's a great time let's just go to the source even though it's not in order so i'll try to behave myself try to hold myself back and start off with the idea that we spoke about this before in gamora tanit 7a but before i even go into this you know when we started this um beyond the seven and specifically the 48 ways to wisdom you know why why is this specifically being taught on a no channel and from what i know the people that are watching you are seekers of wisdom and just in general beyond the seven means that knowing that the seven no high laws are not just seven very specific lines and wide but deep and wide major categories with many subcategories keeping in mind if you should go back and watch from the beginning of the series that also logical misfold things and things to do with ethics and morality are still obligated even if they're not specified outright in the seven so there's a lot to learn and since you're searchers um i think that it's um well let's just say the basics of how to acquire wisdom is so necessary because we're living in a society where i guess there's so many problems with society but one of them is the instant gratification you know you want to learn something real quick so you go to a youtube tutorial or you just check out a three minute video on the topic and that's not really sufficient it's not gonna help you really acquire um so we we we focused on these ideas the six constant mitzvahs the 48 ways to wisdom specifically the 40 ways to wisdom because as someone who is a searcher would you have to know why you know something right that's the roshiva he says five finger clarity just like i know that i have five fingers on this hand that's how clear i have to know or should know whatever it is that i'm seeking to have knowledge about acquire knowledge about so these um just to go back again to the idea that these are the 48 let's say during the leaving of egypt until we arrived at the revelation at c9 we were 48 levels we were sorry we were 49 levels below zero in terms of impurity and not only did we just go from 49 up to right minus to zero that's not what happened we went from minus 49 to plus 49 in order to receive the torah which is on the 50th level on the 50th day so each day is a journey which hopefully reverses many of the misconceptions and i'm going to use the word cognitive dissonance because that is one of the topics for tonight one of the things we're going to discuss tonight you know when you're so um emotionally wrapped up into a into a position it really it really hinders your ability to to come to the truth because you're and i'm saying you i'm saying people who are in i say you know afflicted with cognitive dissonance yes it's mostly an emotional response but it affects the brain i mean you can have the evidence sitting right in front of you and it's the emotions it's blocking you it's you're not willing to be honest with yourself you're so emotionally you whoever it is is so emotionally or so emotionally enrapt in their position that they're not willing to um to open their minds up to the reality so reality for sure so we're going to discuss these ideas so we're going to start off with the more time at 7a we've heard this before robert kanina said true i have learned a lot from my teachers okay we've learned a lot from our teachers and i learned even more from my colleagues meaning my associates people on my level but i learned the most from my students now we've discussed this before keep this in mind tonight's topic is making the teacher wise so this is from the teacher's perspective already who did he learn the most from his students so we see that the student has the ability even though it's coming from the teacher's perspective to actually help create a more wiser teacher which will only in the end benefit you the consequences of a wiser teacher is your ability hopefully as a student to even gain more wisdom sure so yeah so these are like uh maybe it seems to be quite obvious but the question is how to go about doing it with the utmost respect for your teacher right number one you're not just going to accept whatever your teachers or your mentors tell you right and the roshiva gives an example and for those who remember there used to be a clothing store at least in new jersey i was from philadelphia they had it in philadelphia or i forget maybe we went across the bridge new jersey so people in new york also familiar with sal sims uh i think that was his name but anyway the no the name of the store was sims so they used to advertise an educated consumer is the best consumer right so it would be first of all you as an advertisement it's great to give um you know to uplift your own audience that you're giving them uh praise but it's true right right they always had these um i mean consumer magazines if you're going to buy a car whatever it is you're going to purchase at least you should be educated for whatever type of car you're buying it for for whatever reason uh also um i guess when you have complaints you don't know what the complaints are before you get into something um okay so this is a an idea so what you should do you have to critically examine whatever you're being taught i mean this is what judaism teach use your brain right use your intellect in fact we discussed this before that the rambam well let's just talk about the word seiko seijo in let's say modern usage means intelligence and that's how the rambam uses the word seiko as intellect and this is something that is unique amongst human beings all human beings that animals certainly don't have and unfortunately a lot of humans don't use it right in maharalian terms the word seijo is inferring a spirit as something spiritual now where else does the spirit lie other than you know i mean you've seen all the pictures with halos or auras or there's no there's no denying that the shama sit the highest you know one of the highest levels of our soul um so the idea that i like to do is to take both definitions and combine them and call it a spiritual intellect because uh they both had just a perspective of safe and uh it makes a lot of sense to me so um when you're probing your rabbi you're probing your teacher you're you know intellectually you are activating the soul there's no question about it you're looking for the truth and there's a very uh it's part of your spiritual journey okay so what we what do we do how do we begin so there's a lot of source material like i said i want to try to keep that to the end but i i have a feeling i won't be able to so there's a first uh example here is let's see where is it i know i have uh see abaya and robber were somewhat contemporaries and yet one would always test the other um so rubber would teach abaya and what he would do i can't find the the source right here but it is here somewhere he would always uh give him some kind of logic that was not was not sound and he was anticipating the student already working through his teaching in order to come back you know when you many teachers want to test the students see if they're even awake if they're thinking right you're just sitting like a log you know doing nothing in a class no so this was more like and he would do this on purpose to try to motivate the student to to um i guess we call up slug the logic right if you're trying to tell me something i could pick i could pick holes through it right away and that would be a good thing so i know my ego wouldn't let me do that right i i don't want to present anything that's so wrong that could be uh you know today you know people put recorders and tape you and i would be afraid to be misquoted and saying something so unusually wrong um so but i would that's just me right but this is way back in the day they didn't have all that and he wasn't afraid of that um so that would be something that he would do just as an example but the idea is don't be afraid to challenge whatever's being presented right a good teacher is actually delighted to hear the students sharp questions that's what a teacher should be right and the critical thinking and the roshiva says because a room full of parents or mindless tape recorders is of little value right now of course whenever you do this it has to be done with respect whether it's your teacher or your parent right so make sure this is how you should express when you when you're hearing something that doesn't make sense pardon me excuse me i don't understand how you came to that conclusion because it seems incorrect to me for the following reasons now i know the emotions get a hold of us and we we we're not apt to act like this and uh we need to we need to respond out of with a lot of respect but make sure first you've correctly you've analyzed the matter carefully and that you can clearly clearly articulate and substantiate your own objections this is a very important line don't just object for the sake of objection there are people that do that the more does not have very nice things to say about people like this these are not the kind of people you want as your students but it's hard to pick them out because on a certain level you want to judge your students favorably and so many times i think i'm getting around to it where i really do understand that my student is missing some crucial information and it's probably my fault so let's go back through the argument from the beginning or somewhere in the middle and make sure that he has the foundations because he's coming from the wrong conclusion and already accusing me of being so wrong i want to understand and usually we get to the bottom of it and we figure what figure it out so as a teacher right don't always assume unless you know you have a track record with this particular student that they're only uh looking for attention they want to be the class clown so to speak and always slug up the rabbi it's it's a big test for rabbis as well teachers as well so another aspect is if you consider just considering your teacher wise i mean why else you coming to learn with him you obviously feel that he has something to give you right so always assume your teacher is saying something intelligent and worthwhile remember he has the credentials he also has the life experience and the wisdom at least give him a fair hearing and take the time to understand and examine whatever he's trying to to express don't dismiss right away by saying ah it's ridiculous it doesn't make sense right and this is what your gut sometimes tells you but don't dismiss him outright or assume that you know better rather try to listen better again put your objections on the side this is where the idea of um of cognitive dissonance dissonance comes into right give him the chance to fully explain his position now we also have discussed this idea between shaman hillel hillel actually had a majority of students and we know that torres says he followed the majority to do good right don't follow the majority to do evil so even though the gomorrah says that shammai was sharper let's say what does that mean it was more intelligent right the sharper intelligence and therefore we're not going to just finally follow shamai in fact i mean even his own students i'm sure did not nevertheless we follow hillel which sometimes let's just say a majority of the times seems to be let's say the more lenient opinion so the question always was why why did he have more students i mean so there was a few reasons why not only was he seemingly kinder and more patient from the stories we hear about him but what he always did and i mean always did i just can't repeat this enough he made sure that when he heard the argument of shammai and for he actually proposed you you state your opinion first and he would repeat back to shammai whatever he thought he understood and asked is it correct do i understand you correctly now obviously if once you understand it correctly and you agree with it there's no argument okay and only after you think you fully understand it then you can begin to let's say poke holes or you know ask some real critical questions that could uh make that uh what he called the the house of cards fall apart so it was a sense of humility and good character in which he in which he used and utilized and so perhaps that's the reason he had the majority of students in other words we follow him because he had the majority of students the question is why did he have the majority of students so this seems to be a character several different character traits that we've discussed but later on um who compiled the mishnah and you'll see later on the gomorrah as well others did the same thing they always put shamai first in every mission in the shaman hill who ever have discussions uh shammai is always first so even yehuda nasir comes from hillel carried on the tradition so it's obviously a very important thing again we're talking about making your teacher wise right so perhaps hillel actually looked at shamai because he was you know a sharper sharper individual and you know and would consider him wiser so i think that he looked at him his own his own teacher and with utmost respect he did everything he could to try to understand the other point of view before many raising any objections okay here's more about the cognitive dissonance idea so he may he discusses being emotionally invested in your own position is one of the biggest obstacles to learning from our teachers and giving them a fair chance right their position may strike a sore point in us causing us to feel threatened which puts us on the defensive and generates this idea of called cognitive dissonance now when your gut reaction is one of denial whether due to fear of the implications or an ingrained prejudice or intellectual laziness what happens means you must try to resist erecting the wall that shuts out your teacher again we're talking about making your teacher wise giving him the benefit of the doubt know that you have this cognitive dissonance and it could shatter your view of the world whatever it is well guess what you have to start to analyze for yourself you can you have to be honest with yourself and ask yourself what is bothering me what is it about his stance his position is it everything that i've learned up to this point is hanging and he's um just you know what do you call pulling the rug out from underneath me i mean that could feel very threatening right so you have to ask yourself what is it that i find threatened try to track down your objection and articulate it and put on the table identify where your teacher stepping on your prejudices and hitting a sore point and strive to rise above your emotions and examine the issue rationally and objectively okay um now we say it's actually most important to listen to someone else's view unbelievable what's happening today uh what counts cancel culture yeah um you know i i do listen to a lot of right-wing pundits is that they're called uh different podcasts i don't think i have to mention the names some of them are banned totally banned total punishment i mentioned their name who knows what could happen to us right but you know you know some of these names and if they are asking good questions they're asking good questions this is what needs to be done there needs to be cancel the cancel culture right it's unbelievable at least i spoke up i said what i had to say support these people that are just asking good questions i don't even come to conclusions but whatever conclusions are coming to the government or i don't know big pharma or the bureaucratic uh it's a pandemic or bureaucracy anyway whatever is happening here is uh is a travesty to the first amendment in the united states called freedom of speech and uh it's just making people so dumb and uh going after you know just like sheep sheeple to the slaughter really the intellectual slaughterhouse okay i i said it okay so it's it's so important to listen to someone else's viewpoint when they disagree with you sometimes the very reason you become so defensive is that deep down you suspect they may be right so if you find yourself being flippant or dismissing an idea out of hand this is precisely where you have an opening to grow and where you need to be most careful to remain objective override your own biases and have humility to realize you may be wrong um this other the next idea is i'm going to call conflict resolution right so we have to commit ourselves to broadening our own perspectives and seeing things from the other's point of view which i mentioned about chamomile hilla get onto his wavelength and understand where the other person's coming from even though you may be sure 100 sure you're right right so for the moment play the role of a lawyer for the other side and for yourself force yourself to come up with several reasons why the other person may be right even even if his conclusion is incorrect there may still be good reasons to accept his belief now apply this technique whenever you get into an argument this is very difficult for me but it's an it's an a effective tool in healing rifts particularly when the combatants are tense emotional or upset how many times how many times do i need to how many times have i said let's just take a breather i mean when i was in yeshiva jerusalem we had to do this a lot let's take a five-minute break come back with uh you know when you think things are getting really tense i mean i really believe i'm right i really believe he's 100 wrong and he believes the same thing and uh we're not able to work just we're not able to get to the truth so we have to remind ourselves we're just here to learn and get the ego out of the way and let's come back like it with a new slate and hopefully when you come back say can you now let me let me tell you what i think i heard you say and usually it's not what he said and that's why all that um that tension or again cognitive dissonance i know i'm right it's it's inappropriate so you might say look i really want to understand what you're saying so here are a few reasons why i think you're right now would you mind giving me a few reasons why you think i'm right uh i hope that you could actually do that but look if you're totally off there's no way the other person could do that but okay um okay we talked about charmaine hill already but putting the other person's position first and trying to understand that other position will help diffuse the tension and ensure that each side understands each other right just try to imagine how many disagreements could be resolved by using this method um i discussed before the idea our goal is to come to the truth of all truths right we want to know absolute truth which is quite i'm going to use the word impossible even just saying impossible is probably inappropriate it's um it's extremely difficult so but not impossible so what happens is like this when you're i i discuss this i think i don't know if i made this uh scenario up or i heard from someone else but it makes sense to me you have five people each person thinks they know let's just say the truth and if you're all let's just take a bottle you have a bottle of i don't know it doesn't matter what the bottle is a bottle of coca-cola is sitting in the middle of the table and everyone has a perspective of what the bottle is so everyone has really let's say 180 degrees of perspective so out of the five of you discard describing what you see or what you perceive each one is only giving whatever it is one-fifth of the description but listening well and absorbing what the other four people say will give you a better idea again as close to the absolute truth about this bottle as you possibly can get well that's the same thing about life and about any piece of wisdom everyone has an a certain perspective and we're here to learn we're here to grasp so you're here to grasp what you cannot see the other person thinking deeply about but he can share with you and you can share with them what you see and hopefully at the end of the day you at least understand their perspective doesn't mean you have to accept it in the end but why wouldn't you if it's objective as objective could be and you can accept and therefore your own viewpoint has become enhanced i mean who wouldn't want to do that um but unfortunately it's too much i don't know disbelief or or maybe judgment about the other person that is going to prevent you from accepting their their whatever their their perspective is okay so here's an idea right the same approach applies to contentious issues in jewish thought let's say respected teachers taught you a class of understanding what we call hashtag divine providence or in general and um now included in this idea is right we understand that god is a loving god so you're talking about how go just god is and how loving he is well guess what as soon as the holocaust is brought up all of a sudden people go ballistic how can it be a loving god a just god what do these people do wrong six million jews right so how many times have i tried to discuss this and i've run into call strong emotional opposition now one of the rabbis that they should turn around by mutti said and we're talking about 20 30 years ago that it's too soon to discuss why the holocaust happened because there's too much emotionally charged tunes too raw yeah the wound is tender so let's say you have a certain idea and then you know there's there's obviously various various approaches regarding this such as he says god in the holocaust so the rabbi's approach stirred up anger and resentment in you and part of you wants to just dismiss his argument well open your mind this is an ideal time to to rise above your emotions and put in the effort to truly understand the rabbi's point of view try to examine his sources articulate his reasoning right go ahead and ask your questions and then try to meet him to discuss it even further this serious type of thinking will broaden your own perspective enable you to understand a very different point of view even if you need at the end you don't have to agree with it the least will help you understand it the last little paragraph before we go into some of the sources is the gomorrah and voter zara 5b it seems to explain that it took many years for the jewish people to really truly understand moses and i'll read the verses clearly but you imagine the war is telling us it took 40 years until the jewish people understood moses so what do you expect you're sitting in front of your rabbi how long three months three hours three years it takes a while to really understand and there's a lot of nuances you know where he's coming from and perhaps even the vocabulary his demeanor yeah so um if that's true that it takes 40 the good morning tells us it takes 40 years till you understand your rabbi so then you need to think and rethink what your teacher says it certainly applies when you don't fully understand him or when even when you disagree with him but even if you do agree with what he says chances are you're only seeing the tip of the iceberg right do not be so sure you've received the full message you got to go over and over and over again you have to review whatever he said many times and see if you can get a deeper understanding and of course we all accumulate so much wisdom through our own life experiences and we only begin to unravel within ourselves layers how much so how much so also for the for the rebbe who's teaching us um we're going to unravel layers of depth of our depth of our teacher's words gaining a deeper appreciation and a more nuanced understanding of his wisdom the more we dig the more we'll find out how much there is to dig we've discussed this before the goal of acquiring wisdom is again i think counter-intuitive but when you hear it you say ah it makes sense when we're talking about humility right abraham said i am but uh i knew enough of afar i am but dust and ashes right moses says what are we what am i to understand the more wisdom you acquire the more you realize how little you know the so the cleocard says the goal of acquiring wisdom is to know you know nothing like how much wisdom out there is how much wisdom there is out there and it's a it's first of all it makes you a vessel like when you let's take a let's take an example of a vessel of every vessel has a thickness of a wall so on the outside you have two cups or two vessels on the outside that look exactly the same because the external vessel is the same shape but on the inside one has thinner walls which one can contain more i don't have to tell you the one with the thinner walls obviously not so thin they would crack and break but the the one with the thinner walls wall will be able to contain much more whatever the ingredient is it's inside the vessel so this is if we think about it make your teacher wise first of all it's going to take a lot on your part of humility and appreciation but the idea is to work on your own character get rid of your own ego don't go in there to argue for the sake of arguing but the less ego you have the thinner the wall of your vessel the more you can actually um contain wow i love that analogy beautiful okay so here the first the first source i just want to show you is in tina 7a so it mentions why are torah matters this is in the name of nachman by yitzhak why are torah matters likened to a tree so it says in proverbs 3 18 right we know this well it's a tree of life to those who hold on to it eight's it's a tree of life to those who grasp it okay very nice now the analogy here is that the verse is coming to teach you that a small piece of wood right they call kindling a very small i don't know if you shaved pieces whatever it is it's not a big log right a small piece of wood can actually ignite a larger piece of wood so two minor torah scholars meaning we in fact that's a very interesting idea never never thought of but now we called these young rabbis in the torah in the talmud as embers of um what they call the hot coals of the rabbis that's amazing hot coals of the rabbis we call those you know budding students the ones that have a lot of potential why because they will ignite the larger pieces of wood so going back to that idea uh it's kind of that's just one interpretation obviously it has many levels and interpretations but that's an amazing idea and right away that's where the gomorrah uses that famous statement ruby kanina says i've learned much from my own teachers even more from my colleagues and i learned the most from my students those students are called the hot coals they ignite the uh it makes the teacher wiser this idea that it took moses 40 years to really gain the trust as a good teacher so it says like this or it's let's say from the other side for the students for the people in the desert to really hop and get an understanding in um there's going to be two verses i'm going to use well actually they're back to back but we're going to read 29 in deuteronomy 29 4 first and then we'll read 29 3. so going in that order right the more says even moses our teacher who said this to the jewish people did not allude to the jewish people until 40 years that they should have stated state stated this request now it says if you want to read verse 4 says i led you through the desert for 40 years during which time your garments did not wear out from upon you nor did your shoes wear out from upon your feet okay so really it's the first part i have led you for 40 years in the wilderness now keep in mind that followed the previous verse so which shows you all that that really was showing you that was moses did this we'll call this public lecture this speech was at the end of the 40 years right after 40 years so says yet until this day the lord has not given you a heart to know eyes to see and ears to hear so it wasn't until the 40th year most right moses is saying it took you this long so what do you think what do you think did that that generation was called the doradea the generation of of knowledge they they actually witnessed the revelation they had gained right i mean again they were people firsthand knowledge yeah passed on and people who were born but for the bulk of them right that went through because people under 20 years didn't die right in other words we say the degeneration of the desert died but it wasn't the entire generation anybody under 20 entered the land of israel so we're talking about a bulk of the people who was following moses for that 40 years only and people who were born only understood really they in other words when this the verse says previous prior to this the lord had not given you a heart to know and eyes to see and ears and ears to hear until this day so it took a while to really get it and if that's true by them as the gamora concludes rubbish said conclude from here that a person does not understand the opinion of his teacher until after 40 years as moses said this to the jewish people only after 40 years of learning torah here's an interesting gemara maybe this is a fantastic idea but the question is well how does this relate to the idea that make your own teacher wise so there were four different academies and each academy believed that their own teacher was the messiah was the meshiach you can find this in sanhedrin 98 b so the gomorrah was discussing messiah and whatnot and then it says what was the messiah's name or what is the messiah's name so just keep in mind i'll just tell you there were four different opinions i don't know if we're going to go through each proof maybe i will because it's a fantastic idea each one now as a way to remember this the word mashiach is spelled if you go through it each one of these schools had a teacher with the first letter fitting the acronym so you can already re mesh mem is menachem shin is shiloh yura's yinon and the last one is kanina okay so i'll just tell you the gemara goes like this so they asked what's the rabbi what's the mashiach's name so the p the students of verb sheila they said shiloh is his name and the verse we're not going to read the verses but people are probably familiar with genesis 49 10 about until shiloh comes and that's a reference to the meshiach the school of yanai they said yinon is his name um actually one of my my son just got engaged his name is yinon uh yaakov he known and there's a passage there's a verse in psalm 72 17. it says may his name endure forever may his name continue as long as the sun s-u-n and many may many bl many men bless themselves by him this is a reference to mashiach means forever and yaakov lives forever as my son's name after the other school of rabbi khanina they said is the name and there's a verse in jeremiah 16 13 with the khaneen at the end and then the school of menachem ben hezekiah they said his name is menachem just amazing i mean why is this idea amazing that each one made like if you think of the possibility of your own teacher being meshiach and i think i said this before i have students who tell me you know i have uh i think maybe i'm a shia i think i don't know if i mentioned this already but the roshiva in one of the previous classes said if you didn't think you were a messiah be worried about you you know because of the sleeping giant mentality because with the potential that we all have to make a a difference in this world but if you think of your own teacher just short of an angel right and that actually brings us to the next is the next one actually it's not i know i have it here somewhere and maybe i have to go in order but we'll get to that this idea very important um what i want to show you is where we leave off uh maybe okay in giga 15b what do i want to show you here um let's just start the gamora poses a question see rebbe mayer had a teacher his name was ache right not his name is not really aker akka means the other one okay so he went off the uh the derek he uh became a heretic and ribby mayer continued to learn from him so it's a bit of a problem right i mean you have to admit that if you're a teacher as a heretic how are you how are you still learning with him so they asked a question like this i think this is who i wanted to show you but didn't rabbah barakhana and ben khanna say that rabbi said what does it mean by this verse it's in malachi 2 7. so i'll let you read that malachi 2 7. two seven reads two seven reads for a priest's lip shall guard knowledge and teaching should be sought from his mouth for he is a messenger of the lord of hosts okay so my translation in the messenger anyway here is malach is a hashem he's an angel of the lord right so what is this idea that your rabbi should have good character right now obviously i shouldn't say obviously but review did not have seemingly good character in in every respect there was something lacking because he became a heretic so what is the verse teaching us if the rabbi is similar to an angel of the lord of hosts meaning perfect in his ways then you should seek torah from him from his mouth but if not you shouldn't seek torah prison from his mouth so ray shlakis says you know rabbi mayer found the verse and then interpreted it differently and that verse is in proverbs 22 17. 22 17 reads incline your ear and hearken to the words of the wise and put your heart to my knowledge now it says my knowledge so where do you learn from you learn from a rabbi right so it implies that as long as you're learning god's knowledge from the person the person themselves doesn't have to be on the highest level as long as he's properly transmitting so this was the idea that um ray shlakesh was trying to say after we just said that you have to go after a rabbi who's like an angel then we had this reluctance explaining that rebbe mayer must have held this it doesn't matter about the character as long as it's in essence true it shouldn't be a problem basically what they do in the end of the day is they um they put them together and understand there is a contradict how to resolve the contradiction and that is that there's no difficulty in this in this case when it's permitted to a flawed scholar it's referring to an adult so an adult can listen to a flawed scholar whereas a minor you want to make sure that he because the minor is going to absorb a lot more but rebbe mayer himself was an adult and was able well first of all he was very unique because he would be able to distinguish when all the other rabbis started criticizing rebbe mayer for still learning from acher some said you know what rebbe mayer is different because he is so advanced in his learning he could actually be able to uh distinguish and separate so just keep that in mind that that's basically the resolution so um the next idea is really it's it's it's a it's a per cal vote that we spoke about many times um and that is in perchivo chapter 1 mishnah six it's really just a few words that i want to take from there and that is um make for yourself a rabbi so in in other words we're saying what's the title we're title we're talking about making your teacher wise so make for yourself a rabbi how do you create iraq you find somebody with potential perhaps he has the information or he has the ability to get the information and you make him great you you begin to learn with him even though he's not some famous teacher but you see the potentials there you can already start learning with such a person and put somebody like that on a not a pedestal it's not what i'm looking for but a cavua basis try to drill the person get as much see how he's aimed his thinking process if he's brilliant but he doesn't have that much life experience give it to him give him life experience why not okay so that's what i think is the idea over there although i did want to use this book and explain to you what it says over here in the matifta i wanted to do that in the beginning i got distracted like always okay one second i think i put uh causing it's causing your rebbe to become wiser shia talmud basically the student is involving himself in the give and take of the words of his rabbi delving deeply let's say into the words um and asking lots of questions and through this process the rabbi himself will become wiser and as a result of the mailer after and as a result automatically even the student will merit will receive the reward of what we call the the crown the ketter the the crown of the torah i don't think there's any um argument about that okay so they they bring down the whole idea of race location and that's what i want to bring up now so in gamora above mitsuya 84a so i think we discussed the idea of rebbi yokonan and reishlakish how they met i don't want to get into that right now but ray schlockisch ends up marrying rabyokonan's sister you can refer to an earlier anyway it's a beautiful story how a bandit a bandit becomes the greatest rabbi you know he does chuva he repents from his past life but he had so much potential and strength and integrity in terms of you know he was like robin hood stealing for the rich and given to the poor but uh nevertheless the most amazing part of the story is that when uh ray schlafes died rebjoking was i mean he lost his own brother-in-law but uh he was very saddened and most because rish-lakesh with shuman lakish i would say fought with him tooth and now in other words he was a great carusa he never let him slide on anything the gemara says that he would ask 24 questions and he would force his rebbe which was rabbi yokomo to give 24 answers to every question unbelievable why that number is used i don't want to get into that right now but the idea here is that when rash lakisha passed away they tried setting him up with other study partners and every single study partner says oh yeah rabbi yochanan i'll give you support for what you just said you're so right listen what you're saying it says over there too that was not that wasn't i'm not so sure if that's what it means but uh he was agreeing he wanted someone to argue with him he he wanted to sharpen himself and that was what he was missing after the death it's one of the things he was missing after the death of ray schluckish you see how important it is in order to make your teacher wise again with respect you know good well thought out questions okay so that's pretty much the material that i prepared what i'd like to do is just sum up because this is like if this would be right if this would be the end which it's not we've got two more i would make a seam and i'm going to i think you know blind blender you know at the end of the the 50th one you should make one now because we really finished but the roshiva even said we're not finished there are different manuscripts and we might as well cover them so when when a jew finishes a great work whether it's a a attract hate the talmud uh it depends if it's just mishnayot's it's a certain book we made a big seam when we finished uh the kuzuri it took us three years me and my caruso uh rabbi doctor moshe cooper and it took us three years to finish the kuzuri we made a party yep so i think we have in another two weeks however whenever we'll figure it out we'll make a little bit of a party um yeah it's a big accomplishment sure yeah yeah i remember uh 10 months ago thinking oh my god she's going to go on for quite a long time and i figured you know sometime uh january february we'd be done and uh uh you know you try to account for the holidays knowing that you got to take time off uh respectfully um it's just a joy to see you stick with it and share with us the beauty of this uh this book this is uh just i remember the first time i read this uh course um in my personal studies a number of years ago i was just mesmerized i found the words even if the the the lesson was only a short page with a couple of paragraphs i found that it could unfurl like uh just just yeah keep growing and growing the thoughts and it's so profound if you take it to heart if you really think about it the whole purpose everybody is about acquiring these traits in order to gain wisdom and everything the rabbi has been sharing all 48 so far is about uh uh uh you gotta look at it as a an injection uh to get you get you where you need to go uh but you gotta acquire it it's gotta be uh uh taken in and um understood integrated revise it and i'll tell you you know being around other people that want to grow is the biggest i'm not going to say just incentive because you have to have the incentive but it's the it's the propellant you know to keep you moving in the right direction having community you know i know that's very difficult for the benenoa who are spread out quite thin but today with the internet it's somewhat helpful i'm sure it's very helpful and even to find local people you know i encourage you all to find people who are and and have a herota and learning whether it's the books that are put out by the no had world center or by goldberg or others or the tanakh learn learning with you know there's so many great teachers online you know uh whether it's personal or just they're teaching the masses you know to get a hold of their you know i'll mention it today's lesson is so key about uh how bene nowak should be engaging with their their rabbis uh they've got to make the teacher wise in other words don't be don't be afraid to ask hard questions or difficult questions but do such in a in a respectful manner and you will find uh uh the wisdom i love the analogy today of the coles you talked about uh uh like the kindling and and uh so uh i've had the honor of connecting with many banane oak over the last uh especially this last year people that are having certain difficulties with certain uh uh fundamentals and it just you know just getting questions just opens the opportunity to build relationship more than that uh to let the answers sharpen themselves and it tends to provoke out of the teacher um everything that he has studied in order to give a torah response and uh i find that it's so beautiful uh uh we know rabbi that you've spent a lot of years in study and i'm sorry i haven't asked you enough questions um i try to look and see if there's any responses online but this has been quite a journey and i know we got a couple more uh classes to go and uh you've made it fun it's been it's been a bit of an uphill journey in the sense that our numbers were real strong in the beginning uh but with this introduction on here i don't know if you folks know but uh on uh specifically facebook i have been hit over and over every time i play this intro um i've been hit with a copyright infringement claim from places like sony and warner brothers and even tour de france making claims to the video which uh you know mainly the song but you know uh we've paid for it and got uh uh uh uh copyright permission from the the actual author and we do buy the book and do it right uh and uh hashem uh you know opens the door i always win when it's a uh uh have to open a uh um a challenge to their claim and we always win but the shame is that that it blocks there was a number of weeks where as soon as i posted the broadcast up on facebook or something it was blocked and not available to the public but yet uh so it caused the numbers to dip for several months there but we're glad to see the numbers come up back again don't be afraid to share this course with others because there's just such beautiful wisdom in it and we know there's a lot to it we've been at it for around oh i'd say a year and three months rabbi i think since we started and um yeah it's uh it's definitely maybe a year and four months even uh it's been a journey but uh a couple more weeks and we'll have this one completed and uh it's definitely a milestone and i think i hope and pray that you benefit that have been following have actually acquired some of these ways to wisdom or at least it gives you bearings on where you can refer to when you need to uh and dive back in and see what the wisdom of the sages have to say on the matter yep so uh i'm looking forward to next week all right so uh hashem willing our we're we're on for the same time next week all right well uh baruch hashem we wish everybody a beautiful beautiful week and thank you once again rabbi poston for taking the time out of your so busy schedule we hope that uh you're blessed that yebene uh folks you can find him uh on his website ubenay.com or his uh youtube page uh yibbone uh just like it smelled there on the banner uh check him out he gets uh over 30 000 views a week uh and his his page is well over a million uh it's been just a joy to get to know you and and see your page cross that journey in such a short time um you're a blessing rabbi and everything you're sharing with yibane we know you're doing good work there in jerusalem and we just pray that your success is it continues to grow i mean keep up the good work yourself and everything you're doing oh i'm trying i'm working these night shifts and i'll tell you it just kills me for these later afternoon uh broadcast like i when i'm done here i'm going to hit the bed and probably get about six hours sleep and then i got to work all night again it's going to be a ton of fun but hashem provides and i'm i'm so thankful and joyful and working towards maybe someday having a conference up here in my region uh where we can invite some rabbis from uh from abroad to come and share the light of torah and maybe get some no hides to congregate and let connections come together and maybe it might just like you said coal sparked something that might just you know uh allow the light of torah to shine or or or grow somewhere and uh we're so thankful uh to hashem uh for shining such a light on the world even though we've been through some uh darkness with this covid uh uh it's allowed us boney noah to actually connect on these online uh classes and it's so uh needed i think there's there's definitely a good coming out from it and uh so we're gonna sign up for today but we will be back to next week same time hashem willing so have a wonderful wonderful week everybody bye for now [Music] is