What was so great about the Men of the Great Assembly? Pirkei Avot 1:1 by Rabbi James Kennard

with the first missioner and we didn't quite get time to we didn't quite get time to finish the maharal on some of the questions that we had I'll just wait for the uh wait for a bit of hush okay um and one of the questions we had last week was why does it say mosha Kel Torah Miss why doesn't it say Moshe receiv received the Torah from Hashem and the maharal answers that question question in paragraph two of the handout I just gave out today so let's get straight in and see what he says and he says regarding that it says MOS received the Torah from SII and it doesn't say that Moshe received the Torah from Hashem we can explain but it was for this reason that it says mosha received the Torah from the fact that it says mosha received the Torah from SII that tells us about the elevated nature of how mosha received it because Hashem specified a place for and the place was T to give to him the Torah and the thing was not incidental um as it says by the non-jewish prophets but yakar Elohim Elam so the famous contrast which is brought in many places between mosha and Bam in many ways mosha was the greatest of nim bam was a great but very bad non-jewish prophet and there's often a contrast between them and one of the ways in which they're contrasted is when it says that Hashem met bam it uses the word vakar which Rashi explains there means incidentally it was just a sort of casual meeting and that's how Hashem treated bilum in a casual fashion but when it came to Moshe Renu Hashem had a proper as it were meeting with him it wasn't casual it wasn't accidental and that's expressed says the maharal by this strange phrase mosha Kel Torah U it seems to me that we can understand this very easily in our own parlance that if we say we're going to meet somebody you could say I'll meet you sometime somewhere or you can say I'll meet you in a specific place at a specific time and that gives more that gives more significance to the meeting and that's what the missionary is saying Moshe received the Tor from a place that Hashem designated he said we're going to meet at a particular place and that saying that place indicates as he says the elevation the elevated level of the way Moshe received the Torah and I want to jump to paragraph three because the maral says there's a there's another reason he often does this he gives more than one explanation sometimes he gives several uh to explain the to answer the question that he's asked so here's another reason why it says Moshe received the Torah from sini and it doesn't say mosha received the Torah from Hashem as you might expect and the answer here is in number three t there's another reason when a Torah sorry when a teacher teaches Torah to a student there is a connection a sir and some sort of integration between the Torah between the teacher and the student that's one of the beautiful nature part of the beautiful nature of teaching Torah um we talked last week actually about how um those Stu a teacher teaches Torah to his students and those students become like the the children of the teacher and the teacher becomes like the parent of the students and there is a connection as he puts here there's a syif a joining together of the teacher and the student and that's a beautiful thing except there's one particular case of one teacher and one student where we cannot say that and that's what we're going to get to let me just finish End of Line one of paragraph three for there's a connection between the student and the teacher because the teach teacher becomes called his ra and that's a person with whom he has a connection and the student is called his student until they have some sort of connection together and this applies to every single relationship between a teacher and a student in the world a love even if they weren't uh specially connected even if the teacher is not his unique teach but any teacher who teaches any Torah to any student forms that bond with the student in all circumstances the student and the teacher have that connection this one teaches and this one receives and that is a transaction if you like the Torah is passed from one to the other and that creates the connection and it's for this reason that the M does not say mosha received the Torah from because if it did say mosha received the Torah from it would imply a connection a an integration between mosha and Hashem and of course that can't be because Hashem is is an entity uh about which the only thing we can say is sort of what what we can't say and one of the things we say about Hashem is he can't be integrated with a human being and therefore we have to say that mosha received the Torah from a place rather than from Hashem himself because if it said mosha receiv received the Torah from Hashem we would erroneously conclude that there was a sir an integration between mosha and Hashem and that would not be good okay moving on to paragraph four so we talked last week and one of the questions we raised was the change of the verb in the process of transmission mosha kibel but then it says yesu mosha received but it doesn't then say yahushua received from mosha it says mosha handed over to Yeshua and then it says Yeshua handed over to the zakim and Zak to n which we'll see in a minute later on we get to other tanim other rabbis in the mishna and we get one after another and it says each one received cabel from the previous generation so the word Kel comes back into fashion if you like we start with mosha Reed the Torah then we drop it and we use the word Mas he handed it over and then the word Kel comes back in and why should this be so so in paragraph four we read mosha Kel by mosha we find the word receive because a receiver receives as much as he he can according to his abilities um you might remember last week I think we saw the sorno who explained the word kibel as received completely totally now we're taking a different stand and we're having a different interpretation says the maral Kel means he received as much as he could but no more mosha tah in many other places the maral talks about how the Torah is so non-physical that a physical person can only grasp a portion of it and there's much more which are beyond our grasp and was even beyond the grasp of mosha Renu so kibel is the right verb here because mosha was not able to receive the entire Torah because we can talk about how much another plan time there there is actually a fact a numerical distinction that the mara refers to how much the the mosha could capture and how much was beyond his grasp but a lot of it was beyond his grasp however in middle of the second line number four but then it says he handed it over to Yeshua everything that mosha had received from Hashem which was not the whole Torah which why it says received nevertheless he was able to pass on 100% of it to Yeshua so Mas means he passed it on in entirety so now we see that Kel means he received as much as he could and Mas means he passed it on in its entirety so mosha was passed on all that mosha had learned to yahushua and yosua to bakum Etc and then the Mara says in paragraph five which I'll just say outside when it comes to later generations then we're back to a partial reception um the the ne each Tana each Rabbi in the mishna in succeeding Generations we use the word Kel as we will see in future weeks because um they received as much as they could from the previous generation but they weren't so great as the previous generation there's a uror there's a deficiency in each subsequent generation as they're further and further from the original source so they weren't able to get everything from the teachers of the previous generation they were able to get as much as they could and that's why the mishna as we will see uses the word kibel so the maral explains the Lash and the expressions in the mishna in that way now let's move on to the next part of the missioner so I've put it in bold on this page so after we've said that mosha handed it to Yeshua we then say for yosua MOS Yeshua handed it over to the elders and then the elders to the prophets and the prophets handed it over to a group of people whom we will learn more about today who are called the anet haa the men of the great assembly so we'll talk about them in a little while but first of all the we're going to go to paragraph seven um where we're going to read the words of the abarbanel and the abarbanel is curious about the order of the transmission here and in particular why the zakim come before the nvim so theim are the elders we talked last week um there was some degree of Prophecy amongst the elders but we're not referring to that now the elders are by definition not Prophets the prophets are not the elders and the elders are clever they are possessed of HMA they work things out that's the nature of their learning but they are not nvim and so you might think that nvim prophets are on a higher level than zakim than merely clever people and you might think that the order should have been yua handed the Torah to the Nim and then the nvim handed it over to vakum but that is not so so let's see what the Mah sorry the Abel says in number seven so the Abel as I said is a very extensive commentary on piot and he says from each missioner we have lots of things to learn and last week I think we saw one two and three things that he learned from this missioner today we're going to see so we missed out the fourth the fifth thing that we can learn in paragraph s but the level of the Z was greater than the level of the the source of the wisdom was from the Fountain of the Torah was whoever is nearer to mosha in historical chronological terms will be nearer to the level of mosha and whoever is further away just in terms of time from mosha will be on a lower level and therefore the zakim who were contemporaries of mosha were greater because they were closer in time and therefore closer in wisdom to mosha renu and they were greater than the prophets who came later so that's the first thing theel says that we can understand that zakim came first because they were there in the time of mosha if we turn over the page to um number eight and he says don't say that the prophets have I'm slightly paraphrasing a better way of learning and clarifying the Torah than the logic if you like and the knowledge of the zakim here's the thing the Nim by definition have a hotline to God they are prophets and God speaks through them and sometimes they speak to god so let's say we have a question in Haka we don't know whether we do it this way or we do it that way whom do we go to to find an answer you might think we go to the Nim and they will ask God simple and we would go to the Nim who've got this hotline to God rather than going to the zakim the ERS who will sit down and sort of work it out that is not so we don't go to NM to answer our questions and this is a very important part of if you like Jewish Theology and it's expressed here very beautifully by the abarbanel so we're in paragraph 8 on the second line third word the nvim here are not considered uh receivers of the Torah because they are nvim to say incorrectly this is part of what we don't say we don't say that Nim know the pish of the Mitzvah the explanation of the Mitzvah and the truth of the MIT through their it's not the case that if they want to find out the meaning of a Mitzvah or how you do a Mitzvah they just use their hotline to God they are regarded as part of the recipients of the Torah end of line three because they are wise they are also wise so as the Canim are very wise because they're in the time of mosha the nvim are also wise and that's why they're in the um transmission chain of Torah but not because they are end of line three because have already made very clear to us that when it comes to the the are like anybody else they don't use their hotline to to find out the answer and if it were the case that a navi would to say Hashem has told me through my n that my explanation is the true one we don't listen to him and if there were a thousand with one explanation and A1 sages with another explanation so you've got a,1 sorry you got a th000 Nim with all that power of NAA all that prophecy on one side of the debate if you like and you've got the same number plus one of the sages on another side of the debate we would not say well the N must be right because they talk to God we would say rather let's do a headcount a thousand And1 beats a thousand um we would decide the with the1 even though they're not Nim and we would not decide the with the Thousand Nim what is the point here the point is we have to understand how we understand the Torah and we understand the Torah by working it out for ourselves we do not understand the Torah on the basis of a prophecy there is a famous famous story in brother msia which is often misunderstood but that's another story um about how there was an argument between RAB Yeshua and RAB rabang Gamel about whether a certain thing was Tom was ritually impure or not and rabang Gamel says if I'm sorry rabie elazar RAB elazar says if I'm right then this carob tree will prove it and the carab tree gets up and walks an amazing evidence from Hashem that RAB elazar is right and then he says if I'm right the walls of the BET midash will prove it and the walls of the BET midrash caved in and and rebua each time says we don't learn from a carab tree we don't Lear ala from walls and finally a Heavenly voice says I agree with Rabbi elazar and Rua says he the Torah is not in heaven it's been passed over to us it's been passed over to we the sages and we by sometimes taking a headcount of one side versus another or by analyzing our own logic we work out what the Torah is saying and Novi does not if a Novi comes and say you know what God gave you 613 mitzvot he's just appeared to me and told me you don't have to keep one of them it's only 612 or if a Novi said you know what hashem's just appeared to me and there's an extra Mitzvah he's just told me about 614 not only do we not listen to that Novi actually we punish that novy with execution because he is by definition a false prophet interestingly enough there are other religions two major world religions which work on the basis are their premise is that God gave the Torah and then he changed his mind and said you don't have to keep this bit and you do have to keep that bit we reject that view entirely what Hashem gave he gave in totality he will never change any Mitzvah and a Novi through the N can never be a part of the ongoing process a Novi MIT their because they're wise they can take part in the halak debate if you like but a Novi can't say that I've got a special level of understanding because God has told me says the abar now we see this in the transmission the Zim come before the Nim the reason for Zim come before the Nim is chronological and nobody should say but surely V aim know the Torah better they don't they might know messages from God about other things and they might give us mus about how we should behave but they cannot tell us in terms of their n what the Torah says and says theel we see this clearly through the uh transmission from the zakim before the N okay let me move on to paragraph 10 so let's see what the maharal says about this idea of Yeshua passing to the zakim so the says in number 10 the maral's got this sort of style um to say that whatever is in the mishna it has to be as I said last week the maral is of the opinion that anything that said by kazal is true it may not be literally true it might be true in a metaphorical sense that we have to understand and when we're learning a mishna that is absolutely the words of kazal the words of our sages so what they say has to be um from a logical basis it it can be the only that's the only way it can be so he expresses it in this sort of language when he says the uh zakim are uniquely qualified to be the recipients of the Torah from Yeshua Moshe then he talks about mosha and Yeshua compared to everyone else and he quotes an idea from the gar and he says in the second line number 10 the level of mosha is like the level of the sun um or the sun is entirely fire it has no physical elements that's not quite true as the way we understand what makes up the Sun but it has no solidity it's it's just gas gas on fire if you like so maybe that's what he means and so the fire so the sun compared to the Moon which we're about to compare it to has no physicality it's just gas which is on fire and it has no physicality as we said last week Moshe in many ways was human but he was he he went up to SII he managed for 40 days without food and drink he was close to I'll use the words close to being non-physical and that's why he's compared to the son end of line three like we've explained many times about the level of mos he uses the word it was as if as if he separated from physicality like the sun is not physical it's just gas on fire yua but if mosu is compared to the Sun to whom is yua compared the moon now why is Yoshua compared to the Moon number one the Moon is something physical it's a big rock it's not like the Sun so whereas mosha was almost disconnected from his physical form Yoshua was not Yeshua was very physic IAL and that's why it's compared to the Moon which is something physical it has a body and the next thing which is very profound is why does the moon shine because it reflects the light from the sun and that's yosua Yeshua gets the greatness from mosha and he reflects moshe's greatness but he doesn't have his own independent source of greatness like the moon does not have its own source of light it reflects the light of the Sun yesu received from the shinness of mosha um and then I'm just going to jump to number 11 so the next level is the who on the level of wisdom gar uses sort of splits up the word Zak and says it refers to one who um receive who acquired wisdom soim we might translate as elders but the essence is they're very very clever they've learned a lot of Torah and they were also the ones fitting to receive the Torah from yesu because they had this elevated level of wisdom and they were fitting to receive from Yu but in wisdom they are closer to yesu closer than theim were and that's as we see in the gar wisdom or a wise person is on a higher level than a Novi in ways that we explained just a moment ago similar to what the ABAB saying not exactly the same but it's similar saying that someone who uses their wisdom is greater in their understanding of the Torah even than somebody who is a na'vi na'vi is pretty special but they're not as good as those who are particularly wise um and that when when we said a Zak who's acquired wisdom is greater than a na'vi we mean a regular common so what he's saying is we've said and in this case what we said in the for thear banel works as well as what the maral is saying but a zakan is on a higher level than a navi except there were two NV in history who were on a higher level than zakim and who were those two Nim mosha and Yeshua mosha the son yosua reflecting the sun they're Su generous they're different levels between the two but in this case we'll put them on a separate category then comes aim and then come the rest of the Nim so his point is and that's why he brought in this idea about mosha the sun Yeshua the Moon is that those two are unique in their they're number one and number two then the rest of the Nim come after the rest of the zakim that's our order so mosha number one he receives the Torah from Hashem although we say it from seni as we said earlier he passes it to Yoshua who reflects his Torah like the moon reflects the Sun and then the next in line are not the Nim because they're not on the level of the zakim so the next in line of zakim and then come the Nim yes when you said that mosha handed off to yosua what came to my mind was a Rel race with race a baton is handed off but for a fraction of a moment both hands are on the Baton and then your idea that yahushua is a reflection of mosha would fit in with that yeah absolutely abolutely I um I think a relay race may be one way of describing it certainly it's it's a passing on of the Baton or passing on the torch you might say but for a moment they're both holding it y y absolutely and you know what that's the relationship between a teacher and a student that's the Sy that's the integration of the two okay so I I'm I'm pacing myself and I've missed out a few paragraphs deliberately because I now want to concentrate on answering the question who were the UN and what did they do and with this we'll I think we'll understand um a bit more of what the mission saying and in particular I can narrow it down to what does it mean that the Nim passed it on to the unshaken because there's more than just passing the Baton it's going on at this point okay um so the gumar tells us a few things about the an and and what they did and then uh other sources the rumbum we're going to see tells a bit about who they are let's start with number 12 the gamor ascribes one particular job to the unshaken esset Hoda and it says like this are the notes before were from the mar uh no sorry 8 9 10 11 we just we did 10 and we're missing 11 we're on to 12 we'll come back to the maral um no we won't come back to the maral today but we will next time for sure uh but we finished the myal now and we're answering the question who were the unen hagadol and what did they do haa sorry F so the gumar in Milla says may the esim the unen at hago were 120 sages um I don't know I think it might be a bisa or it might be true but the knesset that in our Parliament has 120 members and that's connected to the 20 members of the aness haola I don't know might be a coincidence might somebody might know more about modern Jewish history than I do to answer that question but there were 120 members of the UN godaim and there were amongst the many nvim but they weren't necessarily functioning as nvim in this role tiku Shimona es they established the 18 Al where do we get the amida from how do we know that there are 18 later on added one was added that made 19 but we still called it the Shimon EST the unsh haa did that now it would be helpful to know when and let's see the rambam in number 13 that will give us some clue as to who the Ana were and hence we can work out when they were so says the r okay says the r we have a time frame Ezra who was Ezra Ezra is a very important figure in Tanakh he led the Jewish people back to Israel after the Babylonian exile the Babylonian exile lasted 70 years and then the rebuilding of the society and crucially the rebuilding of the B mikdash started so Ezra and the other names were about to see uh on the cusp between B Rishon the first temple B sheni the second temple or more precisely they're there at the inauguration of the second Jewish Commonwealth and the B sheni so the rambam goes on I'll start again number Zar those are the names of some of the prophets that we read about in the trasa the 12 small books of of n um so they are those actually people straddle um from theban through to the re building the Daniel Kan mishel the aaria these are all people who either get their own book inak or they're named goes on Ben who was Ezra's partner yeah the we know from so those names we can actually place them most of them and they're all in this period Well which makes sense because the rambam says they're all there contemporaneously they're all in this period where theban the Babylonian destruction and the Babylonian exile gives way to the rebuilding and the reestablishment of the Jewish country and then he says and in total you get 120 and the last of them is shim sadik whom we're going to meet in the next mishna and we learn more about shimad sadik and that makes it the end of the period of the unshaken and he was one of the 120 little bit hard to work out the chronology there because we know shim sadik lived in the time of Alexander the Great and Alexander the Great was quite a bit after the time of the Babylonian exile um maybe that implies shim lived a very long time and received the Tora the oral law which is we're talking about from the other members of the unra and he was the co after Ezra we'll learn more about him next time so what the rambam has done for us and why I quoted it here is given us some sense of the time frame of when the aness haola operated it was at the time of Ezra at the time of the rebuilding of the B cheni and of the Reet the reestablishment of the Jewish Commonwealth or by the way the Jewish k at that time was under the control of the Persian Empire and then was under the control of the Macedonian Empire and only under the kashim the the the mabes did it achieve political Independence for a short while but most of the time we talk about the second Jewish Commonwealth it was not independent it was not sovereign it was under the control of others we'll come back to that idea so sorry control well first the Persians and then the Greeks uh and then the Romans and there was a short break between the Greeks and the Romans um interestingly the thing the the gar we just saw in Milla says that the one thing the UN did was establish Mona es I just wanted to take an opportunity to get on one of my hobby horses um there is a view among so-called Jewish historians that after the destruction of the second temple there was a sort of Rabin Revolution and what we call Rabin Judaism was created and it was very different from what we had on before for and one of the things what happened at the time of the second destruction is that sacrifices gave way to filot to prayer this is incorrect this whole notion is incorrect I might talk about it another time because it's something a favorite of mine and we conceive it it's incorrect from that one line of the gumar that the Shona the formulated prayer went back to the beginning of bay sheni not the end of B sheni so already from the time of the beginning of bayet sheni Jews were govering the sh ES as we do today there is a direct line from then to now okay let's turn to another story that is told about the unshaken at haola and this is um a pretty wild story and it say goes like this so in number 14 um in gar in y we start with a fromia which not coincidentally comes from the same time period and the says they we don't know who they are but I'll tell you now it's the unshaken haa cried out to Hashem in a great voice that's what the PK says so then the gar says what's going on here myar what what's being said what what are they crying about ra and maybe it's raban says and if you go to the next page they were crying b bi bi not quite sure how you pronounce that um wo wo this is what destroyed the mdash and burn down the sanctuary the and killed all the sadim the righteous ones and exiled the Jews from their land and it's still dancing amongst us what is it what are they complaining about what is it that caused the destruction of the first temple and the Exile of the people it's the Yahara the evil inclination and the unakena are saying we don't want the evil inclination anymore they said middle of a second line on on our page Why did Hashem give us the Yahara the evil Incarnation we know why so that we could receive the reward of not listening to it so every one of us has within us a little desire to do the wrong thing and Hashem gives us a reward if we overcome that so they said you know what it's not a good deal we don't want it and we don't want the reward tell you what Hashem take away the eight Sahara yeah we won't get the reward for not listening to it but that's fine we don't want the reward anyway what did they do so it's all AR because it's the G telling a story they sat for three days in fasting the and three nights and then it was handed over to them the yahar was given to them for them to destroy isar and then the gar we can clarify a little bit more there's much more to the story but we won't get into that is it was the Y it was the Y Hara was destroyed for aod Zara for idolatry you might wonder you read tanak you read the par particularly in D where we are now and Hashem says over and over again don't worship idols and you read the Tanakh particularly the book of shoftim um time after a time they worship idols and Hashem gets cross with them and then in the malim there are some good Kings there are lots of bad kings and the bad kings were ship idols and gets cross and you might sit here thinking a little bit smugly how foolish to look at a statue and say that must be God to look at a tree and say that must be a God we don't do that anymore the gamarra tells us why we don't do that anymore because what we've just read the Yahara for aara the evil inclination for idolatry was destroyed at that time at that time we'll see in a moment we what that time is and the unessa changed the game they removed they through their doing and through their uh sit their righteousness and through their fasting they reached a stage where we were able to remove the Y yah har for aod Zara and that's the world we live in now we don't have that yat Sahara and that's why we're not so accustomed to worshiping trees or rocks or statues or planets or stars like they were in earlier times times there is a fascinating um r s Raba which is a midash which gives a chronology of Jewish history if you like in number 15 and it says the following alexand mtan sh sh Alexander the Great we've heard of him through ancient history he ruled for yearses up till his time the Nim would prophesy through their through their Holy Spirit quoting a postic from michl after this time after Alexander the Great people should incline their ears and listen to the words of the sages so that quote from s Raba which is an important midrashic Source um says that there was this time when there was a change in the world so we've already learned about one change but the removal of the desire for idolatry there was another change the Nim stopped prophesying we read in tanak lots and lots of nim they came and they gave messages from Hashem they didn't teach Hal we've talked about that but they did give messages from Hashem and often we feel if only we had a Vim today to give us messages wouldn't that be good we don't get those messages and the midrash here links the coming of Alexander the Great with the end of nav and if we just close the circle with one line in number 16 the vagan says on that s rabba he was commenting on number 15 he says from the time thear was destroyed naua was ended so the two events are connected what we learned about in the gumara where they killed off the atahar for aod Zara and what we learned about in the midash that there were no more nvim the two come together and I'll tell you why you saying that they're related I'm going to say they're related I'm going to say they're related in earlier times if somebody came um and said I have a message from God what would people do they would listen they say wow this is important if somebody today stood up in the middle of the street and said I have a message from God what would we do we'd lock them up because they're obviously mentally unfit why don't we think maybe he's actually got a message from God because we've lost the same desire for the same desire for aara was the desire to let would that enabled us to listen for messages from God there's a very bad thing about Yahara very very bad people say you look at this tree it's a God but there's a very good thing about Yara as it is somewhat ironically somewhat counterintuitively in the times of of oara people were looking for God it's just they found him in the wrong places today people don't look for God so much we don't listen out for messages from God so much we've turned the page now is a good thing in the sense that we've passed the era of the Nim and we've moved to the era of and that's also expressed in the mission that we're dealing with mosha pass to Yeshua yeshu to the n and the to the unshaken Thea and this connects to what we're seeing here in this midash as explained by the vagan all these things took place at the same time the end of Na the end of the uh desire for the for aara and the beginning of the period when we rely onma uniquely and we can't rely on N to help us understand the Torah and that the the midash quotes this P from Mish that says dka now you incline your ear and listen to the words not of the prophets of the so another time when it's close to puim um if I'm still here I will share with you how puim we can see marks that transition Pur millad eser is the first book of Tanakh after the Kish which has mitzvot in it I said a while ago that Nim can't Institute new mitzvot morai instituted a whole bunch of mitzvot the mitzvot of Purim he was the goor but how can he do that I don't I said if a Novi says I've got an extra Mitzvah we execute that Novi why why don't we execute wait because I thought that it was the time of P that neua had closed correct well that's the answer how much how are these two per I I'll just let me just finish my point and then I'll give a imperfect answer to your question um morai Can Institute new mitzvot precisely because he's not a Novi he's a rabbi he's a he's a he was part of the UN and purium is all part of that same time frame that transition from exile to B sheni and now the rabbis can Institute mitzvot precisely because they are not nvum and we don't have nvum anymore nve are fading out there are still a few left at the time at the beginning of Bania but basically they're fading out um what is the time period Well the time period seems to a little bit elastic because Alexander the Great was 200 years after the Corban um it seems to be that the period we're talking about stretches really from the beginning of B sheni to Alexander the Great so it's in that time um if it's near Hanah I could talk about why Alexander the Great because it's the Greek philosophy that also was part of this transition but we'll leave that for another time time between alexand the great uh porum was first yeah okay let me move on to another trait of the unshaken haola in number 17 and the gumar here says as follows why were they called the men of the great assembly what was great about them so we've already seen two things by the way which is pretty great we saw that they established sh es we saw that they killed off the Y Zahara for aod Zara but there's something else which the gar says actually gave them the name of the great ones they restored the crown to its former glory what does that mean so it means a particular thing those words which we recognize and there's no coincidence as we'll see from what we're about to learn from the Shon were originally said by mosha in the Torah and mosha describes God as God Great gior Mighty Norah awesome then what happened thei camear and he said go the non-jews are having a party might be a good translation of makarin they're doing something very bad in your sanctuary in the because yahu lived at the time of the destruction of the first B mikdash and he's very concerned about the disgrace that's going on where is your awesomeness lar and if we look at a in we'll see he used the same appellations for without the word nor so it says the gar he said we can't talk as God as awesome anymore or maybe terrible is a better translation because God can't deal is it well maybe that's not the right way but God is not dealing with the disgrace to his own Sanctuary continues the story end of line three non-jews have enslaved your children Danel was one of those where is your greatness your mightiness lar and therefore if you look at the p and Daniel you'll see that he used the same appalation of mosha without nor and without gior so yahu and Daniel say we can't relate to Hashem in the way we used to because Hashem is not showing his might he's not showing his Terror so we're on the fifth line here number 17 then they came who's they the unessa and we have to pause here because this is most one of the most remarkable pieces of uh well the gamor is remarkable any ways but this this is a very very special piece that it's saying they came and they said on the contrary this is the might of his might he conquers he overcomes his desire he is longsuffering slow to anger against these Wicked people so you know what Daniel said there's no might anymore because Hashem is not displaying his might because his own children the Israel have been enslaved so we can't see hashem's might the uncha said this is exactly his might but it's a different type of Might it's not the might where you go around smashing other people it's the might where you are kov if we're still here for the fourth chapter of Pat we'll see that from phrase used and uh who is mighty somebody who conquers his own y his own desire of course Hashem wants to liberate his people but Hashem knows that now is not the time and he's able to withhold his own desire and that is his might and then we can go on uh and the same situation we can also see his awesomeness because if it were not for the awesomeness of hasem how could one nation that's us endure amongst all the other nations while we're in Exile while we do not see hashem's might in the sense of Hashem smashing things up we see hashem's awesomeness in another way that we are still here but the Jewish people endures so the unshaken AA they restored the greatness they restored the crown to its former glory they were the ones who said we can reverse what yahu said we can reverse what Daniel said because we can have a new understanding of why Hashem is so great we don't see him defeating our enemies but we do see him holding back on his own desire and we see him allowing the jewi people to carry on R solic says let's look at the significance of the timing here and that's why I'm concentrating on the timing ra solic says b sheni was not the same as B rishan there weren't the Miracles in B sheni but they were in B Rish and as I've already mentioned that there wasn't the political Independence the sovereignty the power in by in the second Jewish Commonwealth as there was in the original Kingdom of Yehuda and Israel it was muted in many ways and that's why the unessa said you know what we have hashem's greatness it's just a different type of greatness we have hashem's a it's just a different type of a and now I want to quote Ros number 18 and he says and he connects this episode that we've just read about the Liturgy about how we refer to God he connects it to the historical time frame of the reestablishment of the second Jewish Commonwealth and he says in number 18 they the unaka came and created A New Concept of nationality as well as a new idea of heroism one of reverence and sacrifice this is the new idea that they taught keset Israel is a nation not only through political social Community not only through political sovereignty like it was in the time of the first B mcdash not only through a large army not only by so all the cities of these Kings and all their kings yahoshua took and struck them with the edge of the sword in other words display of military might that's one way of establishing a nationality that was by Rishon that was yosua that was the wars that were fought against the other nations which we won nationality is created End of Line five not only by military leadership such as that of sham anat and Barak Ben aoam not only by David and schlomo the great military Heroes of the Tanakh but also by embodying a definite to Torah ideology by fighting for a particular world order by observing laws in judge and judgments by identifying with the heroism is sometimes demonstrated not only on the battlefield but also in daytoday life in a stubborn fight for the realization of definite values of creativity and existence despite the obstacles so what Rik is saying with his usual brilliant Insight is by Rishon there was a concept of nationality it was based on power it was based on physical might it was based on defeating the enemies on the battlefield by rishan was different and at that cusp and the transition from one to the other come the ESS gadola and say we can find God not just in physical might but in Torah in mitzvot in identifying with that was the greatness of the Anessa and then he says and I've missed I'm jumping a couple of pages to paragraph 19 when did the men of the Great create this new idea of a historical and politically Transcendent sh Nation it is precisely when Jews had through the grace of Cyrus Kish built their own kingdom in other words when they returned after the Babylonian exile and they started rebuilding and they built it with self-sacrifice and heroism they didn't build it with military might until the mccabes we don't find any wars that the Jews fought and won they were still subjugated to other kingdoms but where was their nationality it was a new type of nationality it involved self-sacrifice and heroism it was precisely at this time when the men of the great assembly proclaimed the new sh Nation indeed now by the way this this these Quotes come from addresses an address that R gave to the mrai movement and he's talking about our modern Zionism and how the mizaki movement imbus Zionism with its religious identity so mind when he says in the middle of line five indeed we must have a state as well as a legal political Nation with all its accoutrements for the state and the nation will serve as the laboratory in which the great ideals and values of the political nation and the values of the Great Mighty and awesome will be realized so this is R Sol's vision for our state of Israel which he's comparing to the establishment of the second Jewish Commonwealth and he says that what must have we must have in Israel is that element of nationality that was introduced by the unet haola that idea that nationality is not just about winning wars it's not just about the accruement of statehood but it must have the great ideals and values of the political nation and the values of Great Mighty and awesome the men of the great assembly argued that we should not reduce Great Mighty and awesome from its transcendental Torah attribute to to Great Mighty and awesome in the political legal sense in other words words we are still in the era of the unshaken we look for greatness we look for greatness of the dwelling amongst us we look for greatness in the Torah that we learned and the Torah that we fulfill and that is what the Ana achieved at that time at that kasp so bringing all these ideas together and with this I will finish and I apologize for overrunning a little bit bringing all the ideas together the unakena existed at the time of the Babylonian exile and the reestablishment of the Jewish Commonwealth we seen three things that they did number one they created the Shona es they created doing as we know it today and for reasons I won't get into now that was the time in order to make that change the second thing they did is they got rid of the asahara for aara now how we understand that whether it's literally true or metaphorically true it's at the time when no longer did people go around deifying wood and stone and planets it's the time when they understood that Hashem is the only Hashem there was a downside to that as well or a coroller to that that prophecy stopped at the same time because we weren't there to listen to the prophets we listened to the sages instead and the third thing they did and this is why thear says they're called the Anessa is because they reestablished God's Greatness by reframing it in a way that no longer involved military might but rather involved connection to AES through the Torah and that to conclude is what the mishna means by they passed it to the unshaken ESS of G the Nim passed it over at this time in Jewish history and this is what the an were able to achieve [Music]